Fiendish feminists' suicide gotcha

Last Christmas, one of our major suicide prevention groups had a call from a very distressed, suicidal man. The counsellor did his best to support him and arranged to keep in touch. But there was no answer to the counsellor’s follow up calls. Following their organisation’s duty of care rules, the counsellor made a call to NSW police, fearing the man was at imminent risk of harm.

The police reaction was shocking. “Is there a female partner who could be at risk? Is he likely to hurt her,” asked the police officer, whose immediate concern was not checking on the man in crisis but rather assessing the risk that the suicidal man could be violent.

Welcome to the latest triumph of feminist policy innovation:

A system that looks at the man standing on the edge of the abyss — the group dying by suicide at three times the rate of women — and decides the most urgent question to ask is not ‘How do we save you?’ but ‘Have you been hurting women?’

It is a policy of breathtaking intellectual dishonesty and moral inversion.

It all started in Victoria but could well become official policy across the country. The 2021 Victorian Government MARAM Framework document is prescribed for over 6,000 organisations and approximately 392,000 professionals in Victoria, including mental health, drug/alcohol, homelessness, family and health services.

The Framework is based on the premise that significant numbers of men who commit suicide each year have a history of using family violence. Their official practice document guides practitioners “to screen for suicide threat in the context of perpetration (and vice versa).” Professionals are advised to explore violence history and controlling behaviours when assessing suicidal men, especially in separation/distress contexts.

“Responding to suicide risk should consider the risk of the person using violence to themselves, their family and community,” explains the document.

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) has pushed a similar line, recommending screening male clients for DV perpetration in mental health, alcohol/drug and crisis services – precisely the settings where suicidal men often present. “We are missing opportunities to identify domestic violence perpetrators,” proclaims an article in The Conversation from Silke Meyer, Nicola Helps and Kate Fitz-Gibbon, authors of the AIC policy article.

And what happens if they identify a suicidal perpetrator? The Orwellian list of consequences will leave you reeling…

When a suicidal man reaches out for help and is identified (or merely suspected) as a potential perpetrator, MARAM recommends “keeping perpetrators in view.”

Here’s what that actually means in practice: