Vigilante justice: feminism's latest attack on human rights

Is there another way?

The problem truly lies in the overall approach we take to violence, which is very similar to the approach we used to take towards alcoholism. Less than 80 years ago people who suffered alcoholism were simply blamed for their own condition and thrown away by society. They were viewed as weak, of bad character, morally corrupt and deserving of their fate. Then Alcoholics Anonymous came along and we began to see that they were human beings caught in the grip of a terrible disease, real people who needed our compassion and our help to recover their lives.

Family violence is also a disease, passed from one generation to the next, not a moral choice made by an individual. People do not wake up in the morning and randomly decide to beat-up their spouse or abuse their children. They arrive at that behaviour though a history of trauma, neglect, exposure to violence, poverty and lack of education. It is no accident that most family violence is committed by poor people with addiction problems and psychological issues. Violence is not a choice people make - It's what happens when they've run out of choices.

Male or female, they need our understanding, our compassion and our help. They need the opportunity to heal and recover, to become the person they might have been if life had been kinder to them. They need us to have the wisdom to intervene in the intergenerational cycle of violence in a positive and effective way.

Condemning and punishing the violence of others is the behaviour of people who have failed to come to terms with the violence within themselves. It is easy, self inflating, self gratifying moral posturing – and it is part of the problem, not the solution. It is in fact a form of psychological and social violence, and violence always begets violence.

There is another way. The professional mental health community, the people who should be guiding our policy response on these issues, already know through extensive research what the true causes of family violence are. They know how to successfully intervene. They have the knowledge and the understanding to stop this terrible disease from infecting the next generation. What's lacking is the funds and the political will to put that knowledge into action, resources that are currently being diverted into failed 'gender' programs, sexist propaganda, and lynch-mob laws that will only make things worse.

If the knowledge that any person will now have the power to appoint themself your judge, jury and executioner (without the slightest proof) troubles you then I suggest you write to Mr Clark at robert.clark@parliament.vic.gov.au. In politics, the loudest voice wins.