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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One in Three Campaign publishes analysis of Position Paper by the Women’s Council (WA)

In August 2010, the Women’s Council for Domestic and Family Violence Services (WA) published their Position Paper in response to the Intimate Partner Abuse of Men research report commissioned by the Men’s Advisory Network and conducted by Edith Cowan University. The One in Three Campaign's just-published analysis examines in detail the claims made in the Women’s Council Position Paper. Most of the claims are not supported by evidence. They appear to have been made in an attempt to maintain the status quo that has existed for many years in Australia whereby male victims of domestic and family violence are downplayed or ignored; hence few services if any are provided to assist them and their children.

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Campaign hit by false stats

A domestic violence campaign has been tarnished with twisted crime statistics and a critical Ombudsman's report, amid claims State Minister Gail Gago's Office for Women has been hijacked by "feminists pushing a political agenda". Premier Mike Rann has been asked to shift the Don't Cross the Line domestic violence campaign from Ms Gago's portfolio to the Attorney General's Department, so the campaign takes into account violence in the home against men and children as well as women.

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Feminists 'tilt' figures

The issues of child protection and domestic violence have been hijacked by politically motivated feminist cliques, according to a coalition of men's groups.

The claim came after an ombudsman's report found bureaucrats guilty of "unreasonable and wrong administrative action" after failing to correct false and misleading information that promoted the idea men were overwhelmingly responsible for domestic violence.

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Ombudsman finds domestic violence campaign ‘misleading’: men’s groups call for changes

On the first anniversary of the launch of the South Australian government’s Don’t Cross the Line campaign, the Ombudsman has found the Office for Women guilty of unreasonable and wrong administrative action after failing to correct false and/or misleading information on the campaign website.

The Ombudsman asked the Australian Institute of Criminology to investigate the errors after a complaint by Men’s Health Australia showed that statistics on the website misled the public about the nature of violence in young people’s relationships.

Men’s Health Australia spokesman, Greg Andresen said “The research evidence shows that, as far as young people are concerned, the experiences of males and females with regard to relationship violence are quite similar."

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