How about the man’s story?
Nicola Boyes article on “The human cost of domestic violence” appeared to be lacking good research. How about the juxtaposition of the cost of false claims of violence that leads to men being evicted from their homes and separated from their children. Are these men and their children not ‘human’? I don’t want to diminish the seriousness of legitimate claims, however, false claims represent a large amount of ex parte orders due to the incredible power they bring to the applicant in a custody case or an attack on a prenuptial agreement. By all means tell the stories of innocent beaten women but innocent men have a story as well and it needs to be heard.
Men become depressed and suicidal when the state smashes their life by unjustly depriving them of defence and treats them as a pariah for three months or more. The premise of justice, innocent till proven guilty, is overridden by proxy. Surely the herald has the recourses to investigate the hundreds of men who kill themselves each year and perhaps discover a link between recent alleged DV allegations and suicide.
It is an indictment on NZ’s justice system that a man’s human and civil rights can depend entirely on the integrity of the woman he chooses as a partner. There must be a better way to protect a minority of genuine female victims and leave the majority of innocent accused men and their children with justice.
Hi Triassic,
Good post. We really have to question where they get their numbers from. Apparently the police do not keep records of men or women separately dying because they are not allowed to treat genders differently.
I have heard way less than that number only recently from other research.
Also this part is out there. What is \’family violence-RELATED situations?\’ How many of these kids I wonder were in CYFS care and protection? How many were killed by women?
Another thing is that there is a big difference between someone being \’charged for a crime\’ and someone found \’guilty\’ as we all know from the well publicised \’rape charges\’ from long ago.
Under the \’Privacy act\’ we have rights to view the records they are using.
Comment by julie — Sat 15th July 2006 @ 3:53 pm