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The People’s Blueprint

Filed under: Domestic Violence,Law & Courts — Downunder @ 9:26 am Fri 28th November 2014

The Glenn Inquiry into child abuse and domestic violence, set up in September 2012, has reported back with recommendations in its second report, announced here Glenn Inquiry Domestic Violence a Disaster.

UPDATE: Report is now available for download here: The People’s Blueprint.

Released the day after the fatal stabbing of a women with a protection order there is no doubt room for a kneejerk reaction similar to the homicide that brought about the original domestic violence legislation.

We see the usual dinosaur-feminist attitude from the patron of the Glenn Inquiry, Dame Catherine Tizard …

“We are mad as Hell” and the findings show victims are running out of patience for a “broken” system.

… who can only see the owner of a protection order as the victim, not the other parties including the children of the family.

And again from Bill Wilson QC …

“we found many cases of people breaching protections orders – the blueprint says if there’s justification for protection orders there is justification for electronic monitoring.”

The Family Court has been exposed time and again for its bias, incompetence and illegal behaviour, and here we have a QC suggesting that’s grounds for the mandatory tagging on respondents (read that as men)

20 Comments »

  1. So, there is a terrible problem which is getting worse and worse and worse; especially, it seems, over the last few years. But over the last few years, we have seen the introduction of the Family Court, protection orders, refuges, and innumerable brave women Coming Forward.

    They say correlation doesn’t imply causation, so there can be no possible connection. Let’s do it some more, then.

    Comment by Ted — Fri 28th November 2014 @ 11:08 am

  2. #Ted, it sounds so Oirish, if it ain’t working, lets do it more?
    Why do you bang your head on the brick wall? Because it feels so good when I stop.
    Maybe now is the time to stop?

    Should we keep upping the ante, until all the men are in prison and all the women buried?

    On the Glenn Inquiry website, there is a button Hide Your Visit. Top right hand corner.

    They must think that they are so dangerous, that we should all hide our visit to their website?

    I am not sure why they are so dangerous, I thought they were more stupid than dangerous?

    I do support them, in so far as they help to protect children, from both parents. But the biggest danger to young children is emotional neglect by mother and homicide by mother …..

    Cheers, MurrayBacon.

    Comment by MurrayBacon — Fri 28th November 2014 @ 1:57 pm

  3. Contents
    A Message From The Patron 3
    Chairman’s Foreword 4
    Preface – Janice’s Story 6
    Introduction 9
    Summary – What Needs To Be Done 13
    Section 1 – New Zealand’s Family Violence Problem – Slow-Burning Disaster 15
    Section 2 – Transforming Our System 17
    Implementing A Whole-System Approach 18
    Section 3 – Transforming Our Culture 21
    National Prevention Campaign 22
    Alcohol Reform 24
    Section 4 – Transforming Our Leadership 26
    Leadership 27
    Sustainable Investment Approach 28
    Stand-Alone Operational Agency 30
    Workforce Development 31
    Strategic Research and Evaluation Programme 33
    Section 5 – Transforming Our Services 35
    National Intervention Programme 36
    ‘One Family: One Judge’ New Family Violence Court System 38
    Equitable Responses to Groups Vulnerable to Family Violence 41
    Long-term Counselling 42
    Section 6 – How To Know We Are Having An Impact 44
    Indicators of Progress 45
    Making An Impact 46
    Inter-agency Collaboration – AVIVA 47
    Prevention – Big Buddy Programme 48
    Early detection/intervention-eCHAT 49
    Community Action – Safe Man, Safe Family 50
    Postscript 51
    Last Word – Sir Owen Glenn 52
    Appendix 1: Key Statistics 53
    References 55

    The Family Court has been exposed time and again for its bias, incompetence and illegal behaviour.

    I suggest to add “relationship vandalism”.

    The Glenn Blueprint has fallen into the same political holes as sir ron davison, in the Bristoll Enquiry and all along through NZ Government history to their Blueprint.

    What was claimed to be a wide-ranging study, is the old hit them harder, that is killing too many women now.

    Comment by MurrayBacon — Fri 28th November 2014 @ 2:06 pm

  4. The ‘People’s’ recommendations (actually, nearly all female people who were interviewed by nearly all female interviewers) are draconian, as though there is no need for fairness or justice towards any male accused.

    One recommendation is to set up special family violence courts that operate under an inquisitorial method. The last inquisitorial courts were for the witch-hunts and you can be sure what these feminazis envisage will operate with just as much injustice.

    These courts will be judge only, no juries. Judges on their own can much more easily than juries be pressured politically or by lobby groups. Judges alone in secret courts can get away with all manner of injustice. Judges on their own can decide that sufficient proof of guilt is shown by the way an accused holds his mouth, and sufficient proof of honesty from the accuser is how well she cries in court. Actually, judges alone don’t need to bother about even that trivial evidence at all; they can simply convict four out of every five accused because that’s what’s demanded by the feminists.

    The Glenn authors also recommend that these sole judges plus the lawyers, psychologists and all court workers should be given special training to understand ‘the dynamics of domestic violence’. Those dynamics will involve the Duluth patriarchal power and control model even though it has little relevance for most domestic violence. In fact, there are many different types of dynamics depending on each case, but the feminists want the judges and court workers to all follow the male-blaming plan.

    If any of these recommendations are implemented we will see significant increases in domestic murders and serious violence, as men feel increasingly threatened and backed into corners from which they will come out fighting. The Glenn and other reports are simply urging more aggressive versions of the same punitive measures that have been failing for decades.

    The two Glenn reports are a pathetic product on which $10 million has been wasted. There has been no comprehensive review of the international literature and no attempt to come to grips with the real causes or effective understandings of domestic violence. That understanding will be essential before solutions are developed and recommended. The Glenn ‘researchers’ have not done so and don’t even suggest they have. They have spent the millions mainly on their jaunts around the country interviewing disgruntled women. Sure some of those women have terrible accounts to give and deserved better treatment, but we all knew that before the Glenn people started. The Glenn reports have done almost nothing to increase our understanding of domestic violence and what works to reduce it.

    Instead, the Glenn reports (and the other femicentric reports) aim to develop panic around the issue, by (among other ploys) using ridiculous terms such as ‘epidemic’. Look up the meaning of that term and see how dissimilar it is to the nature of domestic violence. Panic makes the population more easily manipulated to follow mass stupidity but it’s not good for good effective thinking or problem solving. Panic was what drove the witch hunts (in addition to the inquisitors who made a lot of money from stealing the property of those they sentenced to burn).

    Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 12:13 am

  5. I wouldn’t go as far as the Stuff headline author and label the Glenn Inquiry into Domestic Violence as ‘a disaster’, because there are one or two ideas that could signal possibly progress. Overall however, I believe my prediction back in 2012 that it would be a waste of money has turned out to be largely correct.

    The report begins with an acknowledgement by Patron of the Inquiry Dame Cath Tizard –

    The People’s Report, launched six months ago, disabused us of any illusion that we might be making good progress towards solving the problem of family violence in New Zealand.

    We have one of the highest rates of child abuse and domestic violence in the developed world and the situation seems to be getting worse.

    The feminist dominated domestic violence industry has funded many people to build successful careers and professional reputations. The deeply flawed Family Court routinely enables women to exert power and control over men. Abused children, women and men are simply collateral damage.

    It should be no surprise that the basic thrust of this report is that we should ‘do it more’, with much more public funding made available.

    In common with many femi-centric reports of this nature, it begins with an atrocity story by someone called “Janice”, who is married to a psycho called Len. Despite beating her regularly, and even breaking her jaw, Len is not charged with MAF. The Police are ‘not interested’ in enforcing protection orders. The Lawyer for Child is focused on ensuring the children had access to their father. Len’s unproven allegations are accepted as fact by the Court. Yeah, right, it must be Tui time.

    Most MENZ readers will quickly realise that this story is fictional. For the uninformed public however, tales like this are a propaganda technique designed to evoke strong emotional reactions and reduce critical thinking about the messages to follow. Of course, there is no balancing story about an abused man.

    At first, most of the language is gender neutral, but the ‘women good / men bad’ ideology is clear.

    And what of the survivors? The hundreds of women put in hospital every year, the 3,000 women and children who flee to safe houses, the 81,000 crisis calls to Women’s Refuge, the nearly 4000 who seek court-backed protection orders – which often get breached – the one-in-three women who will experience domestic violence in their lifetime?

    The impacts of family violence do not fall evenly, with disproportionate harm occurring to women, babies, small children, and Māori.

    There [should be] zero-tolerance to violence, particularly against children, women, those with disabilities, and the elderly.

    A greater focus on involving boys and men in preventing family violence is also required.

    Alcohol is also heavily implicated in research on perpetrators conducted for the Glenn Inquiry. This showed men commonly had to decide to either stop or moderate its use before they could be violence-free.

    The elephant in the room – unaddressed violence by women – is never mentioned. Under the heading Workforce Development, the report even suggests that any recognition that women might share responsibility for family violence is a problem that needs to be eliminated by training and indoctrination.

    Service providers may blame victims. For example, mothers of children who have been abused are often shamed and blamed for their partner’s violence. Often women are also expected to stop their partner’s abuse and violence, and are held accountable if they do not, or blamed if they do not simply leave. Unhelpful, and sometimes dangerous workforce responses signal an urgent need to upskill all frontline workers who come into contact with people affected by violence.

    One glimmer of hope in my mind is the recommendation that there should be refuges for men, who are overwhelmingly the ones removed from their homes. I have serious concerns about who might run these refuges, and whether they would be safe for men and boys in the current climate, but they do need to happen.

    Expand existing refuge and social support services to include the provision of emergency housing for those women with older boys, women associated with gangs, those belonging to the LGBTIQUIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual) community, and dedicated housing for boys and men who have been affected by child abuse and/or family violence.

    Provide dedicated houses for men who have either been ordered to leave their home under a Police Safety Order or who are seeking to address their violence away from their families and communities. During this time, the men should be involved in a ‘stopping violence’ programme.

    I also see some merit in shifting the court away from an adversarial system dominated by lawyers, although there are dangers that would need to be recognised and addressed.

    Adopting an inquisitorial approach and, where appropriate, applying principles of therapeutic jurisprudence can remove the confrontation of adversarial justice which those affected by violence (especially children) often experience. Victims of violence are all too often exploited by lawyers who paint distressed mothers as unfit or crazy.

    The inquisitorial approach neutralises the advantage that a well-funded party has over a respondent with scant resources, including the ability to drag out court processes to frustrate or ‘burn off’ the other party.

    Recently I met a father who has spent well over $300,000 on successfully defending a never ending series of vexatious complaints by his ex wife, who has been funded by legal aid. He has used up all his own assets, most of his parent’s life-savings, and is now $40,000 in debt.

    Provide free, long-term, trauma-based counselling for survivors of child abuse and family violence.

    This recommendation will no doubt be popular with counsellors. I am not aware of any research which shows that long-term victim-focused counselling has any benefit to clients.

    Another positive suggestion in the Blueprint is the endorsement of the eCHAT screening tool, developed by my wife at the University of Auckland. Over recent years there has been pressure by feminists for service providers to ask all women questions along the line of “how often does your husband beat you?” The eCHAT questions are gender neutral and are likely to provide some good data about victimised men if widespread adoption is enabled.

    In the Key Statistics at the end of the report is a good example of how information can be presented in a way that distorts reality and confuses rather than clarifies.

    Nearly half of the children who died between 2009 and 2012 were known to Child Youth and Family. Almost four in five children killed were under five years of age. Half of the children were killed by an inflicted injury to either their head or trunk that resulted in their death. Men were more likely to cause these injuries, with almost half being ‘stepfathers’. Women were more likely to kill children within the first 24 hours of life, part of a murder-suicide, or by neglectful supervision.

    The People’s Blueprint purports to be about protecting children from abuse. The statement above is typical in the way it conflates ‘fathers’ with ‘stepfathers’, and obscures the proportion of mothers who kill children.

    If the information was presented clearly it would be obvious that statistically, children are safest in a household with the biological father present.

    Comment by JohnPotter — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 8:32 am

  6. Thanks for your further analysis John (#5). One point; you may be confusing the nature of the ‘court’ that the Glenn people want to be inquisitorial. They are not referring to the Family Court (which, although still suffers from its adversarial aspects, is already a long way towards inquisitorial and doesn’t need any evidence of merit to come up with its decisions). They are referring to a criminal court and their intention is to deprive accused men of the ability to defend themselves according to due process and principles of justice. False convictions made easy, just like the inquisitorial witch-hunt ‘trials’.

    “But wait, there’s more! A free GPS ankle bracelet for each accused!” (Actually, the accused men will probably be made to pay for that privilege, as they have been for decades for the ‘violence prevention’ feminist indoctrination programmes they have been forced under protection orders to attend.)

    Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 8:47 am

  7. Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but my impression is that they are proposing an entirely new Court to deal with both existing Family Court (protection orders / control of parental access, etc.) issues AND criminal family violence charges.

    10. A NEW ‘ONE FAMILY: ONE JUDGE’ FAMILY VIOLENCE COURT SYSTEM
    Establish a new Family Violence Court so that: (a) there is a comprehensive and integrated response delivered by well-resourced and specially trained Judges and staff who treat people and families holistically, and (b) the safety and protection of those who are affected by violence, and the accountability of those who inflict violence, is assured.

    Comment by JohnPotter — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 9:49 am

  8. Yes, that’s my reading of it too John. Dangerous stuff. Don’t expect any sort of fair hearing if you are a male accused.

    Under the recent Family Court changes, there are more false allegations of violence because this brings free and automatic entry into FC hearings that otherwise cost about $1000 for mediation etc. We can expect the witch-hunt inquisitors of the court proposed by the Glenn people to welcome false allegations; this will help them to update their Lamborghinis more frequently.

    Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 10:03 am

  9. Does that mean you will be able to be convicted of a domestic violence ‘crime’ on ‘substantive’ evidence rather that the traditional ‘beyond reasonable doubt’?
    OMG! We’re all f(^&(*)&&*)!

    Comment by OMG! You're (&^^%^(**( — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 11:42 am

  10. I looked at this post last night because I thought it might be about the Auckland man who killed his partner (I don’t know about the kids) this week and told father’s supporters he was going to do it right up until … was it Wednesday or Tuesday when he did it?

    I don’t understand why the domestic violence court is being talked about as if it’s not established. But then perhaps I am missing something or perhaps it’s because Government tests in a few areas before it’s full swing around the country. Men’s groups are involved in Waitakere’s court and doing programmes. It’s a good idea IMO, because for real, just like the drug and alcohol court, repeat offenders are not aware there is a different way to live. These lifestyles have been passed down through generations and help is better than punishment, IMO.

    When the family violence court was first established, people were panicking because they went through past FC cases so they could put all families involved in family violence on a database. Hence, MP Paula Bennett being quoted in the media saying, “We know who they are.”

    By the way, CYFS is in the process of an overhaul too. Same thing, a few areas are the test-runs.

    But back to ex husbands and ex wives killing ex partners. This is premeditated murder and the people with the knowledge are not in mental health, plus, plus. They may not know about the obsession and how these people have the murder going round and round and round and round in their mind.

    What would father’s supporters (antifeminists) do when they learn a mother is premeditating murder, what would mother’s supporters (antimen) do when they learn a father is premeditating murder? It may be worthwhile go deeper into family violence.

    Comment by julie — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 12:35 pm

  11. We need to stop looking at these issues from the point of view of what we are loosing, ie our court system, standards of evidence, etc and look at what feminists want.

    Feminists don’t won’t a justice system, they want a women’s system. They want women to become a legal entity against which men offend.

    That can only be based in some form of civil law in which a man cannot be right under any circumstances.

    You’re wrong not because of anything you might have done, but because you ended up in this court.

    That’s where we are headed with this; as Moma says – it’s “dangerous stuff”.

    And it’s nothing new; I heard David(now judge)Burns talking along these lines 10-15 years ago.

    Comment by Downunder — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 12:35 pm

  12. OMG! (#9). Yep.

    Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Sat 29th November 2014 @ 1:00 pm

  13. Hey, umm, thanks for letting my comment stay.

    I think the biggest issue at the moment is mediation. I think when you get to looking at this, you will find every man and his dog is now a mediator. But the ‘man and his dog’ means women, too.

    Word of mouth is picking who the dominant person uses and they drag the other partner along.

    Some mediators are taking men for a ride and a half and some mediators are taking women for a ride and a half.

    Gosh, we should be cashing in on this, lol.

    But anyways, my point is, “Be careful out there”. This really is a deadly business and just so you know, the father in question attemted to kill the children but he didn’t succeed.

    I personally go mental on both men and women when they mention killing the other parent. Whatever you do, don’t ignore men and women when they say they are going to kill the other partner.

    Comment by julie — Mon 1st December 2014 @ 10:03 pm

  14. People do not have endless financial and emotional capital.

    Separation in most cases lowers financial capital for men, but more likely both, the same outcome is not as likely for women.

    For some people the net outcome will be so low that they are no longer living life – for some, left in such a depressing situation, they are more likely waiting to die.

    While mediation might provide an outcome, based on the historical situation, it doesn’t necessarily provide the answers, people need.

    What the Family Court has religiously hidden since it’s inception is homicides and suicides that have occurred during court cases.

    Such situations will not evaporate simply because mediation has replaced some court cases.

    Likewise violence will not evaporate by imposing some form of dark-ages inquisition trials over domestic violence, blaming men and holding all women up to be paragons of virtue – it is simply not reality.

    Put men in this situation we will see the nature of the beast.

    Comment by Downunder — Tue 2nd December 2014 @ 6:21 am

  15. I think this proposed ‘domestic violence’ court is just another secret court in which men can be found guilty of more serious crimes without juries or fair trials. watch this space.

    Comment by phil watts — Tue 2nd December 2014 @ 11:11 am

  16. ‘Protection’ Orders and Femaly court were invented to make money and control men and also to try and push them over the edge to make a self perpetuating billion dollar industry. They succeeded.

    Comment by phil watts — Tue 2nd December 2014 @ 11:13 am

  17. We already have Family Violence Courts operating on a experimental basis in 8 locations around the North Island. Waitakere, Auckland, Manukau, Whangarei, Hutt Valley, Masterton, Porirua, and Palmerston North.

    A good idea of these courts is faster processing and a more team approach.

    Of more fear may be Amy Adams current review of the DVA and more scary “the enforcement” regime around it.

    Comment by Allan Harvey — Tue 2nd December 2014 @ 12:45 pm

  18. The idea of a court, whether it’s a legal court or a tennis court is that there is a referee and a fair game.

    To whose advantage is playing the game faster.

    If you are being processed rather than participating in the game, of course this sounds like a really fair deal for men, doesn’t it.

    Can’t say I agree with your thinking on that one, Allan.

    Comment by Downunder — Tue 2nd December 2014 @ 2:39 pm

  19. Clearly Downunder you have never suffered the non-association clauses of bail conditions.
    You don’t see your kids while charges are pending and pending and pending. Lots of guys I have known have pleaded guilty just as that is the first step in regaining some contact with their children. Yes Faster is better. Justice is a foreign concept in these matters it is just about speed of processing for many. Delay means not seeing and having no input for your kids.

    Comment by Allan Harvey — Tue 2nd December 2014 @ 9:11 pm

  20. #18 – Tennis caught$ are really good, especially by comparison…..

    Comment by MurrayBacon — Thu 4th December 2014 @ 3:00 pm

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