One in Three's appearance before the Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence [Hansard]
Hansard has just published the transcript of our appearance before the Federal Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence.
ANDRESEN, Mr Greg, Senior Researcher, One in Three Campaign
HUMPHREYS, Mr Andrew, Social Worker, One in Three Campaign
Evidence was taken via teleconference—
CHAIR: Proceedings are resumed. I welcome representatives of the 'One in Three Campaign' to give evidence via teleconference. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I should advise you that this hearing is a legal proceeding of the parliament and therefore has the same standing as a proceeding of the House. The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. I now invite the witnesses to make a brief opening statement before we proceed to a general discussion.
Mr Andresen: Thank you for this opportunity to assist the inquiry today on behalf of the 'One in Three Campaign'. As the senior researcher with One in Three, I'm familiar with the body of research about male victims of family violence. Andrew has been involved as a caseworker for over 30 years with male and female victims.
I would like to start by thanking the chair, Mr Wallace, for consistently raising the issue of male victims of domestic violence during the course of this inquiry. Since our inception, One in Three has argued that a simultaneous, two-pronged approach is required from governments and NGOs in order to best address the needs of male victims of family violence. We need government funded public awareness campaigns to raise awareness of family violence against men and to break down the stigma that prevents men disclosing such violence. These campaigns need to be carefully designed so as to complement campaigns about violence against women and not damage their effectiveness.
At the same time, governments and NGOs need to provide a modicum of services on the ground to support male victims when they do summon up the courage to come forward. Alone, these two strategies are almost guaranteed to fail. But together, they would hopefully encourage more male victims to come forward and seek the help they need while providing some services to support them.
The good news is that male victims appear to be coming forward in greater numbers than ever before. There was a fivefold increase in the proportion of men reporting current partner violence in the last 12 months to the ABS between the 2005 and 2016 Personal Safety Surveys. However, there's still a lot of work to do. The main challenge we face is the perception that advocating for male victims is somehow an attack upon female victims or upon women in general. It's not; it never has been. We believe our society has the capacity to support all victims of family violence, whether young or old, male or female, gay or straight, rich or poor and wherever they live.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Mr Humphreys: I thank the committee for requesting our reappearance today. I note that committee members and persons presenting have remarked upon the very poor performance of men's behaviour change programs. In my first appearance before the committee I said that I'd observed that men's behaviour change programs and, indeed, the domestic violence sector, are informed by a perspective which says that domestic violence emanates from male desires to exert power and control over women. This has commonly become known as the Duluth model. The designers of this model now accept that this model of domestic violence is utterly flawed. Ellen Pence, the codeveloper of the Duluth model, has written:
By determining that the need or desire for power was the motivating force behind battering, we created a conceptual framework that, in fact, did not fit the lived experience of many of the men and women we were working with. ... many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner. Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find.
I explained to the committee at my previous appearance that the Duluth model did not tally with the clients I've seen over the past 30 years. I found that many perpetrators of intimate partner violence, both male and female, are violent for other reasons, such as mental illness, brain injury, adult post-traumatic stress and childhood trauma. Given that our men's behaviour change courses are based on this bogus theoretical model and applied to individuals for whom it is not appropriate, I don't think it's surprising that men's behaviour change courses usually fail. I think that comments that women are somehow validated by this failed process are pretty tenuous.
I'm currently assisting a woman to access DV support. I have easily obtained legal advice and advocacy for her. She, after some prodding of police by me, is now gaining support from a NSW Police Domestic Violence Liaison Officer, and an AVO is in place. Her statement of claims for victims-of-crime compensation is progressing smoothly and we're able to access assistance for her to relocate. She has, rightly, been believed and treated with care, respect and sympathy.
This contrasts sharply to the case of a young man I also recently assisted who has been assaulted more than once by his female ex-partner. After previous assaults, I counselled him that, when this occurs, he should leave his home, photograph his injuries, seek medical attention and go to the police. He did this, and his partner was charged and an interim AVO was put in place. Despite this, the alleged perpetrator retained custody of their child and then denied him access, in breach of Family Court orders. When the matter progressed to court, the perpetrator said that she was the victim, that my client had assaulted her and that he had, in fact, held her over a balcony by her ankles. This was despite the court having before it medical evidence that, due to a spinal tumour and a fracture, my client cannot lift anything heavier than a pound of butter. The perpetrator was acquitted, and my client is yet to see his child again. When I raised the possibility of perjury with the police, I was told that people lie in court all the time.
There's been no formal support for my client. The various helplines, if they believe the man, have no services to refer to. Despite my repeated letters to various New South Wales ministers, I'm yet to be provided with a clear referral pathway to the supports for men funded by the New South Wales government. There's been no advertising of the supports put in place following the New South Wales Legislative Council inquiry into domestic violence in 2012, before which Greg Andresen and I also appeared.
CHAIR: Can I just get you to clarify something? You've thrown a bit of a cat amongst the pigeons. You said you gave evidence previously.
Mr Humphreys: Yes.
CHAIR: I don't believe you've given evidence to this inquiry previously. Am I incorrect?
Mr Humphreys: I presume this is the family law inquiry. I've got the wrong title, have I?
CHAIR: You do, yes. This is the inquiry into domestic and family violence. There is a concurrent inquiry in relation to family law, and there is significant crossover.
Mr Humphreys: My apologies. Yes, that was the inquiry I previously gave evidence to.
CHAIR: It's an understandable error. I just wanted to make sure we hadn't heard from you before, because I don't remember getting your evidence.
I'm happy for both of you to address the questions I'm about to ask. You say several things which caused me a little bit of concern. You say gender inequality is not a contributor to domestic violence. You would certainly be in the vast minority of submitters that would put that proposition forward. The vast majority of submitters put a totally opposite position forward. Why do you say that gender inequality is not a contributor to domestic violence?
Mr Humphreys: I'm not saying that isn't a factor; what I'm saying is that there's a multitude of other factors. Gender inequality can certainly be a factor. And I've seen that particularly amongst some more traditional communities and amongst some men who hold very old, outdated and patriarchal views. What I'm saying, however, is that there are a number of other factors that are important and that we ignore.
Mr Andresen: As you would have read in our submission, the evidence that I based that particular claim on was probably the largest review of the international empirical literature ever undertaken by researchers in America. They looked at all of the risk factors for partner violence that were found in approximately 12,000 studies across the English-speaking world. As you would have read in our submissions, a whole lot of risk factors were predictive of violence. But gender inequality did not come up as a risk factor. It may be the case that there's some confusion in the terminology here. A lot of previous participants in this inquiry have talked about domestic violence being gendered. In our point of view, that is a very different thing to talking about gender inequality. Perhaps that will help clarify the issue.
CHAIR: In your submission in the executive summary at point 5, you say:
The evidence for gender inequality being a contributor to the prevalence of domestic violence is weak and highly contested. Rather than focusing upon gender inequality, resources would be better put towards addressing other established risk factors.
I need to challenge that point because it's at odds to what we're hearing from—I won't say all submitters, but certainly the vast majority of other submitters say that gender inequality is the main contributing factor.
Mr Andresen: I've listened to the recordings that are available of all the previous inquiries, and I'm aware that we're by far in the minority here. However, I would ask you to look at the research that we've cited. It's extensive and valid. Over the years—and we've been going for 11 years now—whenever the issue of gender inequality being a causal contributor to domestic violence is raised by the various stakeholders within the DV sector, I'm always careful to look at what particular research those claims are based upon. In 11 years, I've found that in most cases that claim is made without citing any evidence whatsoever. And in those cases where evidence is cited the evidence is extremely tenuous. I haven't found any concrete peer-reviewed studies that show that gender inequality is a significant risk factor for interpersonal and intimate partner violence. I'm making these claims from the data that I've seen over an 11 year period. I'm aware that I'm in the minority. I would just ask the committee to not take that claim at face value and to look into the data that is behind it, whether or not that exists. Of course, if such data exists, I'm more than happy to revise our claim.
CHAIR: Thank you. I next want to take you to your statement in point 8:
Government policy and training materials teach members of the judiciary and service providers that heterosexual men who present as victims of intimate partner violence are probably perpetrators.
That's a pretty big statement. Can you back that up?
Mr Andresen: Absolutely. I'm more than happy to provide the quote from the training material on notice so that we don't take up time with this particular discussion. I'm more than happy to provide those excerpts for you. In our submission we have already included some of those excerpts. Basically, the training materials in the MARAM framework, which I'm sure you've had mentioned to you previously, and also in the Judicial College of Victoria's training materials for members of the judiciary, very clearly state that if a heterosexual male presents as a victim it's very likely that he's actually a perpetrator, and to treat him accordingly—in other words, to investigate his story thoroughly just to see whether or not that male who's presenting as a victim may actually be a perpetrator.
I've heard the evidence from No to Violence this morning, and it's absolutely the case that perpetrators, both male and female, can present as victims. However, our concern is that only men, and only heterosexual men, who are presenting as victims are told by these training materials to be investigated in this way. If any woman comes forward then her claims are taken verbatim, and if a non-heterosexual man comes forward his claims to be taken verbatim. It's only men who are investigated in this manner.
We would just like a level playing field so that any victims who come forward to services, who may or may not be a perpetrator claiming to be a victim, are investigated or treated in the same way. We want those cases of female perpetrators who come forward as victims and who are actually perpetrators to be teased out and treated accordingly, and likewise with men, and we want genuine male victims and genuine female victims who come forward to be treated with the care and compassion that they deserve. There is nothing that is going to turn off a victim more than coming forward to a service as a victim, a genuine victim, and being treated as a perpetrator. They probably won't call back and they probably won't seek help again.
Mr Humphreys: I'd like to add there that I think my case study illustrates how, at the coalface, in the courtroom, that can affect the experience for a male victim, and I've seen more cases than just the one I mentioned.
CHAIR: I think I read in your submission—I apologise; I've read so many submissions in the last few months—a suggestion that the bench book provided support for your proposition—that men fronting as victims should be treated as perpetrators, or words to that effect. Did you provide an excerpt of the bench book which supports that?
Mr Andresen: I'm happy to take that on notice and supply that excerpt, absolutely.
CHAIR: Was it the Magistrates Court? Which jurisdiction?
Mr Andresen: It's the Judicial College of Victoria's Family Violence Bench Book.
CHAIR: So you'll provide that information?
Mr Andresen: Absolutely.
CHAIR: Thanks very much. You may have heard me ask the previous witnesses about the next national plan. This inquiry was established to make recommendations to government about the next National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. One of the submissions we've received is that, to ensure that we have equity amongst the sexes, the next national plan should be directed towards reducing domestic and family violence rather than just domestic violence against women and their children. Do you have a view on that?
Mr Andresen: I think that would be an excellent move forward, as long as nothing is removed from the current area of concern in the process. It's essential that the current supports for and focus upon women and children, whether they be victims of domestic and family violence, sexual assault or sexual harassment, are maintained and that the area of concern is expanded to cover male victims, gay or lesbian victims and broader family violence that may not be between intimate partners—for example, violence between children and their parents. I think that's a fantastic idea, and it is one of the things that we have been arguing strongly for for 11 years now.
Mr Humphreys: I'd also like to add that, in my professional experience working with children and the elderly, I've seen significant instances of family violence where the perpetrator is female. If we have a policy that only focuses on violence to women and children, those other areas of family violence don't come into consideration at all.
CHAIR: There certainly has been fairly harrowing evidence about what has been going on in our residential aged-care facilities. In one of your other propositions you state, 'Women are a significant family violence risk to children.' That's on page 4, in your executive summary. Once again, that's a pretty bold statement. Do you want to take us through that?
Mr Andresen: Yes. Let me just pull up the particular stats from our submission here.
CHAIR: It's point 3 of your executive summary.
Mr Andresen: The 2015 Children's Rights Report, by the National Children's Commissioner, found that children comprised the second-most-frequent group of victims of family and domestic homicides, after intimate partner homicides. They were quoting data from the Australian Institute of Criminology's National Homicide Monitoring Program. For the 10 years between 2002 and 2012, over half—52 per cent—of all family violence child murders were perpetrated by women. In the most recent biennial reporting period of the National Homicide Monitoring Program, which is 2014 to 2016, mothers killed 20 children, while fathers killed 13 children, and four children were killed by mothers' new male partners. In 1997, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare made a decision not to publish any more data indicating the gender of child abuse perpetrators. No such data has been published since. That's about a 23-year gap, where no data has been published on the gender of child abuse perpetrators. That action was taken just one year after the figures were first published, in 1996, which showed that 1,138 women and 968 men were perpetrators of child abuse. A more recent FOI request to all states and territories to obtain more data—and only the WA government complied—found that mothers, once again, made up the vast majority of reported child abusers in WA in 2007 and 2008. I think that data provides ample evidence that women are a significant family violence risk to children, and it's on that basis that we make that claim in our submission.
CHAIR: Just so I've got this right, is that the 2015 Children's Rights Report referred to on page 13 of your submission?
Mr Andresen: Correct.
CHAIR: Can I get you now to address the issue of the stigma for male victims. Mr Humphreys, you're a social worker of some years experience. When a male is the victim of domestic violence—and I don't think it matters whether the perpetrator is male or female—what are they experiencing, apart from the physical hurt?
Mr Humphreys: There are a couple of aspects of it. Firstly, men do feel great shame that their partner has assaulted them, but they then meet the dilemma that they will be disbelieved. Not only are they embarrassed by what has happened to them, but they're certainly likely to get disbelief from police or services, which in most cases won't assist them anyway. I've certainly had men say to me: 'I've gone to the police with a black eye. I've complained to them, and they've said to me, "Look at the size of you; man up, mate!"' This is the sort of attitude that will turn men away from reporting. They see it as a failure in themselves. These are certainly some of the broad attitudes towards masculinity that we have in our society.
CHAIR: What services are available for men who are victims of domestic and family violence?
Mr Humphreys: Very few—and I've made inquiries. First of all, men in New South Wales can actually access some services through Victims of Crime. Initially, control of those services was, believe it or not, given to the minister for women. Then it was transferred to Victims of Crime. But there has been no advertising where these services are. On the occasions when I have rung up one or two of the numbers I have seen advertised, one of which was in Grafton—I was saying that I had a client who needed help—I was straightaway put through the process of 'What did he do to make her attack him?'—that pathway that is very, very common. I was in the first cadre of trainees for No To Violence in Victoria back in 1999 and we were rigorously instructed to disbelieve men and to question them about what they'd done to promote violence by women. So, yes, men are reluctant to come forward and they don't know where any of the services are likely to be.
Ms CLAYDON: I do want to come back to the issue of the research and statistics being used, but I am interested to know what you would like to see the government do to ensure men feel more comfortable accessing family violence services.
Mr Humphreys: First of all, we need to publicly state that men can have access to these services. I noticed when I was in Queensland that advertising outside one of the courts openly stated that there was support for male victims of domestic violence coming in. We've done nothing like that on a national basis. First of all, the debate is only about violence to women and children, and men feel totally excluded from that. Then we have no frontline providers in communities. Most of the frontline providers are not designed to help men and don't want to. So we need to do something separate—I would suggest through organisations like the community resource centres, which is where I am doing this interview from today.
Ms CLAYDON: What is a community resource centre? Where are you calling from? What state are you in?
Mr Humphreys: I'm in New South Wales. In Victoria, they are called citizen advice bureaus or centres for information and support. South Australia has something similar. It is based on an English model. They exist in most states.
Ms CLAYDON: Is this a government funded initiative—the community resource centres in New South Wales?
Mr Humphreys: It is community run but it is largely funded through Family and Community Services. But we also get other grants—and with no political agenda. They are a very effective and comparatively cheap organisation.
Ms CLAYDON: How are you funded to do the work you do?
Mr Humphreys: I am a volunteer here and have been for some time. I'm almost retired. I do locums here and there. I'm available as a crisis worker for this organisation and I have a friend who is a psychologist who does the same thing here.
Ms CLAYDON: Is that the same for Mr Andresen?
Mr Andresen: Yes, it's absolutely the case that we are an entirely volunteer organisation and we receive no funding whatsoever from government or from private donations. There's a group of about 50 or 60 of us—most of us are located in Australia, but some researchers and academics are overseas—and we all put our time into this campaign on an entirely voluntary basis, and have done for 11 years.
Ms CLAYDON: As we ascertained at the start, you have already given evidence to the family law inquiry that is occurring at the same time, so I don't really wish to go to those issues today. But I am anxious about the contradictory evidence that you have provided. If I haven't misunderstood you, you were concerned that there wasn't a peer review around the gendered nature of violence in Australia. Am I correct in my recollection? Was that your concern, Mr Andresen?
Mr Andresen: Almost. I was previously trying to make a clarifying point, but then we went on to discuss other things, so I might make that point now. We try to distinguish very clearly between gender equality and the gendered nature of violence; those are two very separate things. Gender equality is looking at things like the wage gap and the number of women on boards and in government — those broader social areas in which women are seen to have less representation or less power than men. That's gender equality. In those sorts of areas — having fewer women on boards, for example—there is no data that we have seen that shows that there is any link between that and the gendered nature of domestic and family violence. So that's what we mean when we say there's no evidence that gender inequality is a contributing factor to domestic violence.
However, there is no disputing — and our name, the One in Three Campaign, makes it very clear — that domestic violence, as it presents itself in terms of victims and perpetrators, is a gendered issue. Clearly, if a third of the victims are male — and you may dispute that, but we've provided lots of data to support that — then two- thirds are female, so there are twice as many females as males. That's extremely gendered. And it's not only in the area of the number of victims where domestic and family violence is gendered; it's also on the impact. Because men, on average, are larger and are built stronger than women, the amount of injuries, severe injuries and homicides that come through domestic and family violence is greater for female victims than male victims. However, many male victims are still severely injured, and occasionally homicides of men occur, too. I hope that clarification may go some way towards helping you understand what we're trying to say today.
Ms CLAYDON: I would say to you, it is not my opinion but the opinion of nearly every national research institute in this nation, that there's some very clear data and a body of work that has been done — whether we are looking at the work of ANROWS and the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre or the data and evidence given in a royal commission — that would contest some of the statistical data that you are relying on. You have made a strong point that violence, wherever it is experienced, is an issue for our society broadly. That is something I'm interested in talking to you more about. What do you think are those possible solutions that would address even men's violence against other men, for example? If you've got concerns around men's behaviour change programs, what does your organisation see as a mechanism that is going to be effective to change behaviours that are clearly detrimental to the whole of our society and especially those who are the victims and survivors of violence?
Mr Humphreys: One thing I'd like to say there is you can actually hear that we've only looked at family violence through one lens, which is violence by men to women. We are not considering here, as Greg was mentioning before, the prevalence of violence by women to children and—certainly in my experience in the aged sector—violence by women to the elderly, particularly when they are carers or relatives. We've only ever looked through one lens.
In terms of the broader concept of trying to change men's behaviour, one of the first things we need to do is give men equity of access to supports and services. We talk about encouraging women into non-traditional professions. Unfortunately, the caring professions are overwhelmingly dominated by women. In my social work course, I was one of only four men. It was very difficult to even have a rational discussion about issues related to male behaviour; there was great hostility to it. So it's unfortunate that so much of the helping sector actually comes from a position of being hostile to men.
Ms CLAYDON: But there are many men who are genuinely concerned about the level of violence in our society. I'm interested to know: what services are the men you are working with currently using? I know you say there's a challenge about access to services, and I've asked you a few times about what you would like to see the government do in terms of ensuring men are more comfortable about accessing services. Where are the men you are working with going now? Is there a service you hold up as some model that you would like to see replicated?
Mr Humphreys: A good example would be SAMSN, the Survivors and Mates Support Network, which was set up by men to help survivors of sexual assault.
Ms CLAYDON: Yes, I know of SAMSN.
Mr Humphreys: Of course, men traditionally were denied access to feminist-founded sexual assault services for a very long time. This is why we ended up with two-thirds of the presenters to the royal commission into sexual abuse being men. So we actually need duplicate services that have a male focus and have male staff. We need to increase the number of men in the helping professions and positively encourage them into them.
I would also suggest we need to look at the curricula in many of the training courses which don't adequately prepared male or female workers going into the professions to deal with distressed men. I always say that when I want to engage with a woman, I need to show her that I care; when I want to engage with a man I need to show that I can act. We actually need to have a gender relevant method of engagement with men. We need services that are openly accepting of males in distress, which is something that has been mentioned in a number of the inquiries into suicide and has never been acted upon. You could walk into the local community health centre where I work, and the walls are covered in posters related to men as perpetrators of violence. Very few men would come in there for some of those reasons.
Mr Andresen: May I have a go at answering your question about what we'd like to see as well? I'd like to step out to the big picture a bit more than my colleague did just then. Over many, many years, Australian governments have run public awareness campaigns. You mentioned a few of them in the course of this inquiry: TV ad, bus shelter ads, that sort of thing. They are just for raising awareness of domestic violence as an issue. But those campaigns, to date, have only shown and talked about men's violence to women. We would really like to see those same sorts of campaigns talking about domestic violence but in a way that shows the big picture: men as perpetrators, men as victims; women as perpetrators, women as victims; and gay and lesbians as perpetrators and victims. It is about broadening out those campaigns and saying that domestic violence is not okay and that it happens to anyone—no matter whether you're gay or straight, male or female—so that we don't have this idea, which is still quite prevalent, especially amongst men, that domestic violence is something that happens to women and children. Instead, we will start to build up the broad community opinion that domestic violence affects anyone.
If you're a man experiencing domestic violence and you're wanting to come forward, one of the main things that often stops you coming forward is the feeling: 'There's something wrong with me, because domestic violence is a women's issue. Maybe it's something I'm doing. It doesn't happen to men.' So we normalise that and say, 'It happens to anyone.' That's No. 1. If we do that broad awareness raising and men come forward and there aren't services on the ground to support them, then we're going to revictimise those men.
As an example of the sorts of service that we'd like to see on the ground, I'd offer up the New South Wales Domestic Violence Line. It's a 24-hour statewide telephone crisis and counselling and referral service for women, including trans women. Counsellors on that line can help women talk to the police; get legal help, hospital care and family support services; obtain an AVO; develop a safety plan for them and their children; and find transport and emergency accommodation for them and their children. So it's basically a suite of services that can wrap around but which is case managed by a central point. I know that this doesn't exist very well for women, and I know that there isn't enough of that for women. But, at least, if men could access a service like that which is available to women, that would be a huge step forward.
Ms CLAYDON: Thank you. I'm sure that women across Australia would welcome the fact that you would want to see more men entering the caring professions. I think then there might be just a shot at getting some good wages and conditions for those currently marginalised, insecure workers holding up the nation. Thank you very much.
CHAIR: Mr Andresen and Mr Humphreys, thank you for your attendance at today's hearing. You will be sent a copy of the transcript of your evidence and you'll have an opportunity to request corrections to transcription errors. You have been asked to provide additional information, so please forward that to the secretariat within two weeks of receiving the Hansard transcript. Thank you once again for your submissions and your appearance today. You are now free to leave us.