New plan against violence ignores male victims

The newly launched 10-year national plan to end violence against women and children ignores the existence and needs of male victims of family violence, it was claimed yesterday.

Greg Andresen, a senior researcher of the One In Three Campaign - which raises awareness of men in domestic violence situations - said: “We are extremely disappointed that the new Labor government has decided to ignore the one third of victims of domestic and family violence, and the half of victims of emotional abuse and coercive control...male victims are completely ignored by the new plan”.

“The Albanese government continues to pursue the gendered violence strategy that has comprehensively failed to reduce violence over the past decade. It has failed because it claims, without evidence, that family, domestic and sexual violence is caused primarily by gender inequality.

"It ignores the established risk factors such as low income/unemployment, childhood-of-origin exposure to abuse and domestic violence, conduct disorder/anti-social personality disorder, depression, drug and alcohol use, separation, and high-conflict/low satisfaction relationships.”

ABS statistics show that the biggest risk factor for sexual assault is not female gender but childhood. Boys aged zero to 17 incur almost double the risk of sexual assault compared to adult women. Yet the National Plan contains nothing for these boys, Mr Andresen said.

The recently published ANROWS study, Adolescent family violence in Australia: A national study of prevalence, history of childhood victimisation and impacts, found that:

• a larger proportion of adolescent females than males reported perpetrating violence in the home (23% vs 14%)
• adolescent females were more likely to report they had perpetrated both physical/sexual violence and non-physical forms of abuse against their family members compared to males (38% vs. 29%)
• female young people were statistically more likely to perpetrate violence against multiple family members than males (46% vs. 38%).

Photo: Drew Hays/Unsplash