This looks like Cassandra is trying to bend a few laws to make it even more one sided against men. Surely with activists judges it can't be too hard for her to rip off the men for her & of course her client's advantage.

I wonder how many very doubtful Protection Orders she has managed to get against for her clients against their men, to make ripping the men off easier.

I wonder how many men here have ever hit a woman. I haven't, & in fact I haven't hit anyone since I started at my last school & had to fight the class bully. That's only 63 years ago of course.

I have had to grab the wrists of a couple of ladies, who thought they had some right to hit men, to protect myself. I wonder if such thoughts were down to the Cassandras of this world, or 60s Hollywood.

Bet Cassandra would claim I was committing domestic valance for doing that of course.

I switched off as soon as I saw it was another men bad women poor defenseless victim trash. Come back when you want to fix DV.

I must admit, until two close female friends became the victims of domestic violence, I didn't give it much thought. It was then that I realised that domestic violence is treated as a pseudo-crime only. Men, and in far fewer cases, women get away with crimes that would not be tolerated if committed by members of the general community. Marriage and de facto relationships give perpetrators a free pass.

One of the female friends I mentioned was thrown through a plate-glass window by her husband and nearly died of blood loss. The only thing that saved her life was that her husband took her to the nearest hospital, not to have her wounds addressed, but to have her psychiatrically assessed. He threw a massive tantrum when the hospital staff questioned him about why she was cut to pieces by a plate glass window. He immediately went to his lawyer to issue a restraining order. It cost her almost $100,000 to defend herself from his claims that she was a violent person, and finally to get 50% custody of their son. The court was made fully aware of her physical injuries, but still treated him as a husband and father, with full rights to parental custody.

Had he thrown someone other than his wife through a plate glass window, resulting in severe physical damage, he would have stood trial for aggravated assault. But because he was her husband, his case was treated as a family dispute. She tried to bring charges against her husband, but the police wouldn't touch it. Instead, they offered her sympathetic advice to just stay away from him - a bit hard when he was sending her up to 50 text messages a day telling her that she was a whore and conniving bitch.

The court was shown these texts, but chose to ignore them. He was just an upset husband. Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along.

The law has to catch up with this. So far, there has been one law for intimate partners and another for the general community.

Killarney:

What you are arguing for is that punishment for domestic violence should be the same as for any other type of violence. What the author of the article is arguing for is that domestic violence should be punished with special measures over and above other types of violence without having a good reason why this should happen.

The punishment for domestic violence should be the same as any other type of violence. If your example is the norm then more effort needs to be made to make sure that domestic violence is treated as other types of violence but one example does not make an argument.

"The issue has become so extreme that it has prompted discussion by some political parties of dismantling the entire family court system."

Yes there are a few politicians who want Australian Family Law overhauled to make it fairer to men.

SMH July 30, 2016:

"Pauline Hanson's One Nation party went to the election with an explosive policy of abolishing the Family Court and replacing it with a tribunal of "mainstream Australians".

Commentators say Hanson has tapped decades-old grievances among a cohort of disenchanted men, particularly those in regional areas faced with growing unemployment. After meeting Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this week, Hanson described the family law courts as "huge on my agenda"."

Phanto

I don't normally like putting up posts that give anecdotal accounts, because readers have every right to suspect that the commenter may be making it all up. Other than exaggerating some aspects for dramatic effect, the anecdote I gave really happened.

There is a place in the legal system to create a hierarchy of crimes within the category of domestic violence. By way of comparison, Sweden created a system of categories of rape. Forcing or cajoling a woman to have sex without a condom is viewed as a class of rape, as it 'softly' assaults a person's bodily integrity. But, legally, it is classed at the bottom end of of a hierarchy of rape crimes, the worst of which is the traditional rape crime of a psychopath jumping out of a bush and violently raping and/or murdering someone who happens to be passing by.

Domestic abuse could also be legislated in the same way, with a hierarchy of crimes relating to intimate partner violence - from basic emotional harrassment to full-scale assault. Most incidents of intimate partner violence have witnesses, especially children, so this is not outside the realm of legally punishable offences.

The law is stuck within the traditional premise that what occurs within an intimate relationship stays within the relationship. There was a time when marital rape had absolutely no legal recourse, but legislative reform put an end to that. The same can be applied to intimate partner violence. The law is long overdue to apply a similar set of laws on intimate partner violence.