During a domestic argument, you head-butt your partner in the face; breaking their nose and spraying the children with blood.

You would expect the police follow their mandatory arrest policy, lock you up overnight, take out a domestic protection order, and charge you with assault. You might be seen to jail, or depending where you live, a Living Without Violence programme run by men if you are lucky, or one run by feminists if you’re not.

You only see your children at supervised access for the next year or so, at the end of which time it is obvious to everyone that custody should go to the primary caregiver ie: mum. You spend the next decade or so as an indentured servant to IRD Child Support, perhaps seeing your kids a few days a month. Right guys?

Well no, not if you’re a woman…

Alternative video download link

Video excerpt from Police 10-7, broadcast on NZ TV2 on 22nd May 2007.

To be fair to two of my local policeman, they acted pretty compassionately and used their discretion quite sensibly in my opinion. I was most disturbed at the threat to put the children into CYFS care if Craig made a statement, but I believe it was delivered as a statement of fact rather than an attempt at manipulation. Fortunately, Craig was astute enough to realise that his family problems could easily become exponentially worse, and he made the decision that any sensible father would be compelled to.

Jill doesn’t seem to have been offered any assistance with her violence problem, so presumably it is only a matter of time before the police are visiting her house again.

I also wonder what kind of lessons the two young children involved just learned. I guess as long as nothing get added to the domestic violence statistics everything’s sweet, eh?

Can you imagine the outcry if a video showed police behaviour like this with the genders of the participants reversed?