Hi Suzeonline, Are you sure you know what you're talking about? It looks to me as though you might have been attending too many femo run dv gabfests which spread myths like the one about the Rule-of-Thumb etc.

"The US Government's 1997 report Child Maltreatment found 62.3 per cent of perps were women. The Heritage Foundation Study, The Child Abuse Crisis, found that of the approximately 2000 killed each year, 55 per cent were killed by mothers, 25.7 per cent by live-in boyfriends, 12.5 per cent by stepfathers, and 6.8 per cent by biological fathers."

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1997/05/bg1115-the-child-abuse-crisis

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There is a great deal of talk along the lines that "male family members commit more violent acts against other family members (other male, female and/or child relatives) than females do." This astonishing statement, made about the gender that is traditionally considered the protector of their mate, their family, their tribe and - more lately - entire societies, is worth examining. Surely, the often-repeated idea that men are more violent than women can't be wrong, despite the historical evidence?

In the USA, where a lot of domestic violence statistics originate, there is even a law specifically to protect women from violence. Most violence in that country is committed against men. Looking at the various reports from the judiciary and government statistical offices, this seems common in all countries. Nevertheless, that is an issue for that country, if they want to draw up laws only protecting the minority of victims. The point about all statistics from the USA, however, is that they are slanted by that law, which helps to bias the convictions in domestic violence by defining some acts of violence that can only be committed against women.

This is like proving that all cases of rape in the UK are made by men: the law there doesn't even admit that women can commit rape, so of course all rape convictions are against men.

Further, most of the states in the USA, define a strange standard of evidence for determining whether Domestic Violence has occurred. Rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt" or even "a preponderance of the evidence" all that is needed is "the subjective fear of the woman" I'm sure that it is clear how this not only encourages a woman to declare DV in any dispute (such as when she is beating up her children) but also means that an accusation is nearly impossible to refute: a man accused is a man guilty.

cont..

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Erin Pizzey, who founded the first ever woman's DV shelter has been clear in her findings of DV: women are the initiators in over half the cases and cause more domestic violence than women. Her findings since establishing shelters for female victims led her to be patron of an organisation trying to establish men's shelters.

There are a great many INDEPENDENT (always important to check for when feminists are arguing with anti-feminists) studies that have backed up Pizzey's statement. In Eire, where perhaps the stereotypical image of the drunken male brute is most prominent, a study (McKeown, 2001) of 530 heterosexual couples seeking marriage counselling found that 48% of those couples experience violence in their relationship, in which 33% are mutually combative, male-perpetrated violence occurs in 26%, and in 41% of the couples the woman initiates the violence.

Similar problems occur in Australia, where the gender bias is now extending beyond the practice of many police and court decisions right into the law itself! Even government papers trying to prove that violence against women is greater, or at least worse, have to fall back on statements such as that "quantitative measures of incidence [] DISTORT the complex qualitative differences in how men and women generally experience and perpetrate violence" (my emphasis). This is effectively stating that the basis of statistics as counting the evidence of it occurring is somehow a distortion of the truth. The IMPACT and EFFECT of such violence is a different debate and not one for statisticians to make judgement on: that is for the psychologists to debate and argue about.

In summary, while there are some independent reports on domestic violence that indicate occurrences by women on men are as low as one third of the problem, most reports indicate that occurrences of domestic violence by women on men is greater than those of men upon women.

Whatever the true measure, domestic violence is not good. Any laws that are drawn up to be gender-biased, and any gender-biased enactment of laws not written to be gender-biased, cannot lead to a just and healthy society.

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There are some beliefs that when one partner accuses the other of violence in the home, that accused should be automatically removed from the home.

In some ways this makes sense: someone has called attention to an issue and safety is more important even than justice.

That's right: this is not about justice, since the person being removed has to put up with not being at home, with all the social, employment and especially family implications. The evicted person is, to all intents and purposes, treated as a dangerous criminal until it can be determined they are not. Very close to guilty until proven innocent but without the conviction record.

There are a number of likely scenarios:
1) The evicted person is guilty. A potential danger has been removed and, whether or not there really was an ongoing danger, who really cares: a criminal has been treated like a criminal.
2) Both the partners were mutually violent towards one another and one pulled the Family Violence card as a way to be even more vindictive, thus extenuating the abuse.
3) The evicted person is innocent; there never was any family violence. The children, however, are either given the implication that the police will take people away for no good reason, or they learn that maybe that partner has something about them to be feared. Either way, a social or a family damage has occurred.
4) The NON-evicted person is guilty and raised the issue of family violence to evict the partner who was complaining about it and possibly threatening to invoke the law. In this case, the abuser is left behind, potentially with the children who are being abused. Any further attempt by the evicted partner to intervene and protect the children is very likely to turn the protective partner into a criminal.

cont..

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To be able to evict a partner, and thereby imply violence, can be a powerful weapon in a divorce case. A statement at court that "the police removed him because they were concerned about his violence toward me," becomes both very convincing and absolutely true, even with no proof whatsoever.

The reason that men are particularly worried about these scenarios is because the law is usually applied to discriminate against them. Men will try to resolve issues amicably more than women (men are half as likely to seek divorce, for example, even though there is no indication that men are any worse in a marriage than women). So men are less likely to seek police help in an abusive situation and when they do, they are less likely to be believed or sympathised with. This inevitably means that unless men learn to be a lot more destructive in relationships, they will be discriminated against by a law that allows removal of a partner without conviction or summary judgement. Following from that, men - who are society's traditional protectors of women and children - are more likely to be removed from a home where they are needed for the protection of the children.

None of these issues are easy. None of them are straightforward. Ways to protect families, children and adults are needed without the possibility of causing as much harm as would be prevented.

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@Suzeonline- If you're saying that then clearly you have been selective in your reading of comments made by Liz45 and Chaz P who have both accused me of lying about having been the victim of both child and spousal abuse and while trivialising the plight of male victims.

Furthermore, if "noone" condones child abuse then why is it that the media reports the grooming and statutory rape of underage boys by older women as "an affair" and society shows nothing but indifference, when it would be up in arms if the grooming and statutory rape of an underage girl by an older man were described in that way.

You say that it is undeniable that male family members commit more acts of violence against family members than female family members. Based on what? "Qualitative" studies? Reporting figures?

The reality is that male victims can more often than not expect to be ridiculed and vilified not only by the peripheries of society where female victims still encounter such abhorrent treatment, but by mainstream society, the police and even the courts.

Expecting male victims to come forward in such a climate is like expecting women who have been raped to come forward in large numbers if even the judges presiding over rape cases said things like "well it wouldn't have happened if you weren't dressed like a slut now would it?" (Yes there was a recent case with Justice Conlon of this very type of behaviour towards a battered man).

The reality is that society perpetuates sexist myths telling battered men to "just man up". Meanwhile "qualitative studies" are carried out by an industry so misandrist in its outlook that it even drove out its founder (Erin Pizzey) from the very shelters she'd established herself, when she tried to point out the universal nature of abusers and victims.
(to be continued)