What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence: a response to Dr Michael Flood by Men’s Health Australia

The White Ribbon Foundation is an organisation that works to prevent male violence towards women – a goal that is extremely worthy and worth supporting. The White Ribbon website states that “all forms of violence are unacceptable,” however in 2009 the organisation issued a document to it’s male Ambassadors which used erroneous ‘facts and statistics’ to downplay, diminish and report incorrectly about male victims of violence. These Ambassadors use federal government funding to take the White Ribbon message into regional, rural and remote communities. These significant errors could have led the Ambassadors, and through them the general public via federal funding, to be misled about the nature and dynamics of interpersonal violence in Australia.

Some of the dangerous myths about violence circulated in the document include claims that men are less likely than women to experience violence within family and other relationships; that we don’t yet know the impact of violence on men’s overall health; and that there is no evidence that male victims are less likely to report domestic violence than are female victims.

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National Geographic seeks male victim/survivor of domestic violence for prime-time documentary

Sarah Isaac is currently researching the topic of men as victims of domestic violence at National Geographic and is looking for a younger male victim/survivor who is happy to talk on camera. The reason behind this being that they want to highlight that this is a global and not domestic story.

The show that she is researching on behalf of, Taboo, is National Geographic’s most successful show. Taboo is a long-running prime-time documentary series on the National Geographic Channel. The series presents an in-depth analysis of human behaviours and customs from around the world. As the title suggests, the focus is on practices that some countries or cultures might consider strange. But often things that are considered taboo are not well understood. In each episode, personal stories are presented alongside analysis from leading academics and experts in the relevant field.

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Domestic violence trends and issues in NSW (Inquiry)

This inquiry is a current Legislative Council inquiry conducted by the Social Issues Committee . The inquiry was established on 25 July 2011 to inquire into and report on domestic violence trends and issues in New South Wales. The terms of reference were referred by the Hon Pru Goward MP, Minister for Family and Community Services and Minister for Women. The Committee encourages public participation in the inquiry process. Submissions can be lodged by email, fax or post. The closing date for submissions is Friday 16 September 2011.

Kids to be denied their Fathers, because of ONE Man’s vote – Tony Windsor

Please read the following letter that was sent to Tony Windsor, Federal Member for New England, on the proposed 2011 child custody/family law changes currently before Parliament, designed to prevent most separated fathers from having contact with their children. The office of Tony Windsor has made it clear to me that they do not care to respond to the serious issues confronting separated fathers and children of separated families, despite being given ample opportunity to do so in response to this letter, and in previous discussions.

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Monash academic retracts erroneous claim that DV is major cause of divorce

The following statement seeks to correct the public record with respect to some minor and inadvertent inaccuracies that were contained in the book  “Child Abuse and Family Law” that was published in 2007 by Allen and Unwin and co-authored with Professor Thea Brown.  The following material statement also seeks to correct the media release that was issued by Monash University's Media and Communications Unit in August 2009.

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