MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.

The Ministry of Justice is carrying out a review of the Domestic Violence Act 1995

Somehow I don’t think we should expect substantial reform:

Recently we have consulted government agencies, the judiciary and some representative interest groups to obtain an up-to-date picture of how the legislation is working. Most people we have consulted support the principles and framework of the Act, and there has been no indication over the years that a more fundamental review is warranted. Therefore, we have taken an “issues-based” approach to this review.

(more…)

Dads not happy with mum’s violence challenge
By JOHN HENZELL - The Press | Wednesday, 05 December 2007

A fathers’ group is outraged Christchurch police have been challenged for informing a dad that his children had been present during a domestic-violence incident between their mother and her new partner.

The father learnt of the incident more than a year later when his son mentioned fighting and that they had been “in a police car” when they were taken to the safety of their grandmother’s home.

… Darrell Carlin, spokesman for the Union of Fathers, said it showed once again that the authorities were failing to make children’s rights the priority.

“Fathers need to be in a position to protect their children (but) it happens quite frequently that fathers don’t get to see what’s going on,” he said.

“He could have gone through the custody case and the court wouldn’t have been notified that this had gone on because it didn’t involve both (the mother and father).

“This case was about the mother’s dignity and feeling of humiliation, but we’ve got to bring it back to the kids and what it’s like for them and what it’s like to be taken out of their house in the middle of the night in a police car.

“To keep the checks and balances, fathers definitely have the right to know whether their children are likely to be in any kind of danger.”

1. J.A.M has been developed by Jim Bagnall during and through his support for over 10,000 Fathers and a few Mothers going through the Family Court.
2. The word justifiable applies to the context of the anger and its source and does not glorify anger in anyway. Justifiable is a word for an acceptance of that person’s anger.
3. The Pay/Fight back scale provides a framework and a structure in which anger exists and an explanation both to the angry person and their helper of how both the energy from the anger can be used and how a person can use the scale not only for understanding their anger but for analysis and action to combat their role deletion.
4. The scale usually should be read or listened to from its base which starts out with description at the Instinctual level and then moves up through anger’s mind treadmills and obsessions to a social level and a place where a person can find outlets for his/her analysis of where he/she is at.
5. At the top of the scale there is a place where standards are reshaped through analysis and where a re formed identity is realized and a higher justification is reached based on valuing people and a just outcome giving new strength through adversity.

Contact Jim Bagnall for J.A.M
09 815 0307 or 021 170 7375

Link :

What National is saying is that they are going to give our Police the same authority of a Judge to issue an interim injunction. This is an injunction that will automatically stop one party from associating with any children in that relationship.

This rises by association with the “Terror Raids”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6309791.stm

By Heather Sharp
in Hamilton, New Zealand

And in the most recent national survey of victims of crime, 42% of Maori women said a partner had abused them physically, compared to only 20% of white women.

and

We’re in many ways still a settler society, and the view of the male as macho and physically strong is very strong

Brian Gardner

Scoop Release

The stark reality behind New Zealand’s family violence statistics has seen the emergence of a new profession — that of Child Victim Advocate practitioner. Child Advocates from around New Zealand will gather on 4 October 2007 for a Hui sponsored by the Family Safety Team (FST) initiative and supported by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). The Hui aims to establish and maintain a national network of Child Advocates as well as to share information, debate advocacy issues and establish interest groups with particular advocacy focus.

The NSPNZ is on the march. Using the school as an entry point - now that hasn’t been done before, has it!

The police shooting and killing of a man in Christchurch last night appears to be another tragic example of the DVA’s principles in action. The police were called to a domestic indicent and no doubt followed their current guidelines as demanded by feminist groups including Wimmin’s Refuge. They will have treated him immediately as a criminal rather than a distressed person and ganged up against him with the woman, ignoring any violence or provocation from her, encouraging her to use the DVA to shut him out of her life and the lives of any children, disregarding the issues and frustrations to which the man was reacting, forcing the man out of his home and generally depriving him of any sense of security, future or hope. Following this enlightened intervention by the police, the man left the house highly threatened, angry and feeling he had little left to lose. Never mind, Heather Henare will be happy to know the police then murdered him, better than most men deserve and sadly wasting four bullets in the process. They did have the decency though to apologize to the public for the inconvenience it caused to traffic flow.

We don’t yet know all the details about the case of “Pumpkin”, the little Chinese girl whose father abandoned her in Melbourne on his way to the US. However, the case stands already as another dramatic failure of the Domestic Violence Act (DVA) because a protection order was in place that failed to protect and perhaps increased the risk of violence. That won’t be noticed though by the media, even less by the domestic violence industry. All we will hear is unbalanced allegations against Mr Xue of domestic violence, omitting any consideration of the violence done to him by the DVA and Ms Xue. We will never hear Mr Xue’s side of the story nor get any insight into his experiences through his eyes. I am not condoning whatever Mr Xue may have done in reaction to his situation. He deserves normal justice for offences he has committed. But I would like to see some realistic analysis of the case and what it says about the DVA. (more…)

An article in the Herald yesterday entitled “Teen, 16, in violent tiff with lover, 42″ highlighted the gender double standards and female privilege applied by police, Courts and the media. Police treated the case as one of domestic violence by a male and charged him accordingly. If the young person had been female and the older person male we could expect a very different story. The police would have treated the situation as one of sexual abuse, avoided charging the girl and instead referred her to Women’s Refuge. The man would be facing at least domestic violence charges. The girl’s violent outburst would be understood as a reaction to being sexually exploited in a relationship under massive “power imbalance”. No way would the girl be bailed back to the man’s house! The media would never refer to the 42-year-old male as the girl’s “partner” with whom she had a “tiff”. Media would attempt to identify and expose the older male and his occupation. Louise Nicholas supporters might march to denounce him as a rapist protected by the system. Instead, this case reflected ingrained male-blaming double standards despite developmental differences causing boys generally to be less emotionally mature than girls of the same age.

Spotlight on New Zealand Relationships
04 September 2007 12:43pm | Relationship Services

Deaths and Violence Must Stop
04 September 2007 1:04pm | National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges

Call for public to be clear family violence not OK
04 September 2007 12:16pm | Families Commission

New Zealanders Urged to End Violence
04 September 2007 1:29pm | Joint Media Statement

Family Violence is Hurting Communities
04 September 2007 2:16pm | Roger Ellis

Combined action needed to stop family violence
04 September 2007 2:24pm | Ideas Shop

Address to the Launch of the Campaign for Action on Family Violence

Individuals and communities are coming together to say that family violence is
not okay.

——————————— (more…)