Open Letter to the Joint Select Committee on Coercive Control (NSW)
Open Letter
12th July 2021
To: The Joint Select Committee on Coercive Control
CC: Hon Mark Latham
CC: Attorney General Mark Speakman
CC: Shadow Minister Jodie Harrison
Dear Committee,
The One in Three Campaign wishes to raise concerns we hold regarding the wording used on page 24 of the Report 1/57 – June 2021 into Coercive control in domestic relationships:
Mr. Craig Bennett appeared before the Inquiry as both a male survivor of domestic violence and a member of the One in Three Campaign.
After reading the Report, Mr. Bennett believes his evidence to the Committee has been misrepresented in two ways.
Firstly, he was attempting to demonstrate to the Inquiry that his experience of discrimination related to his gender (male), not as the Case study claims, to what is described as his disability.
Secondly, his actual quote (recorded in Hansard) quite clearly states that when he contacted the NSW DOCS domestic abuse hotline he was told that he was not really being abused because “only men abuse women". These crucial words from his testimony have been omitted from the paraphrased version in the report (quoted above), which instead states, “When he called the NSW Domestic Violence hotline, he was unable to get any support”.
We hope these important misrepresentations can be rectified by way of an erratum.
Yours sincerely,
Greg Andresen
Senior Researcher
One in Three Campaign