Antiseptic: <"I quote:"There were 441,400 women not in the labour force who wanted a job and who were available to take up work but were not looking, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)."

Poverty? What "poverty"? Try "laziness" or a sense of entitlement to a free ride...">

Following is the report in full. The 441,400 are one portion of, "... 1.1 million adult Australians who were not in the labour force, who said they wanted to work. Of these, 728,700 were available to start work, although most of these (94%) did not look for work."

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/6239.0Main%20Features3Jul%202008%20to%20Jun%202009?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=6239.0&issue=Jul%202008%20to%20Jun%202009&num=&view=

Reasons for not working included caring for children; caring for others (aged; disabled); home duties; cost; lack of alternative care for dependents; needing more training; returning to study or retraining; age; demographics, illness and so on, as well as a proportion who didn't want to work the majority of whom were over 55 yrs of age.

The report also included figures applying to a time frame of a few weeks where people said they hoped to return to work beyond the study time frame, such as at 6 months. To appreciate the situation for both men and women, please read the report.

There is no basis for victimizing single mothers.

Women are responsible for at least 75% of child care. Child abuse most often attributed to women consists of neglect. Neglect - failure to provide adequate basic necessities such as housing, clothes, food etc most often arises as a result of poverty.

Where women are responsible for fatal abuse it is most often young, inexperienced mothers as sole carers for newborns and toddlers. Older children are more frequently physically abused by men. Fatal abuse of both women and children is most often the outcome of violence by men.

It is also more likely to happen after the woman has left the relationship. Women and children have most often been killed when separated from abusive men and very often while complying with court orders.

Sue: I had a link to a study which I think I already posted somewhere; that supports your perception that mothers' boyfriends are more likely than biological fathers to sexually (and I think it said physically) abuse children, by a factor of 4 or 5 I think it was. I'll try to find that again when I have more time.

There is nothing in those proposals put by Antiseptic that act to protect or benefit anyone except a perpetrator (whether male or female) of violence.

http://www.xyonline.net/content/fact-sheet-3-how-fathers%E2%80%99-rights-movement-undermines-protections-available-victims-violence-

http://www.jirehhouse.org.au/Conference_notes/Extra%20Les%20Whittle%20Domestic%20violence%20men%20&%20Boys.pdf

Suzeonline:"I could say exactly the same about your' prejudices"

You could, but it wouldn't be true. I do my best to look at the data and come to robust conclusions that stand examination based on that data. You, OTOH, prefer not to see any data at all. see the difference?

Suzeonline:"they are just usually bigger and more threatening."

That, in a nutshell, is the problem. At a visceral level, you respond to the sight of an angry man with fear. it doesn't matter whether he is actually dangerous, he just has to be angry to induce that fear. IOW, it is an irrational response. No problem so far, we all have those. The problem occurs because legislation takes your irrational response as being more relevant than his actual behaviour. If you felt scared, it must be his fault, when in fact he may have had no intent whatever to scare you. One of the main tests for a Court is Mens Rea - did the defendant intend the act. The DV laws actively discourage examination of that.

Pynchme:"To appreciate the situation for both men and women, please read the report."

Done that, hon. It still says that there is lots of work available for single mothers (very few of whom are aged over 55, BTW) and that despite that, over 440,000 of them (out of 2,000,000) can't be bothered looking.

You can't have it both ways: if you claim that single mums are poverty-stricken and should receive handouts, then you'd best be able to show that they have done their best to relieve their situation. It's patently obvious that there is little incentive for them to do so, which suggests that poverty is not as big a problem for them as you would have us believe.

Poverty? What poverty?

I cited the latest, most comprehensive data from Government sources and you respond with Flood? Silly sausage...

As Anne Bressington, the Independent MLA from SA said? "Most of the problems facing families that come to my office are caused by rogue social workers on power trips"

Pyncme, thanks for that info, I would like to see that if you find it.
'Septic, you are actually saying that women who are faced with an angry man are irrational when they fear that man? Why is that?

The definition of domestic violence from Wikipedia states:
'Domestic violence has many forms including physical aggression (hitting, kicking, biting, shoving, restraining, throwing objects), or threats thereof; sexual abuse; emotional abuse; controlling or domineering; intimidation; stalking; passive/covert abuse[1][2] (e.g., neglect); and economic deprivation.'

So, the way I see it is that if a man verbally threatens me in some way, I can call that violence, even though he doesn't actually strike me.

This sort of intimidation violence is very difficult to prove in court of course, so many families have to wait until someone is bashed before they can get help. That is an awful situation.

I can understand why some family courts do support women in these allegations because the alternative of allowing some men unsupervised access to their family could be fatal.

Again I say that the children must be the priority where there are any accusations of domestic violence. There will be some made-up allegations, but can we take the chance they may be true

Suze

The point that Anti made that you don't get is that a man doesn;t actually have to do anything wrong, he just needs to get a little angry and be bigger than the women around him before one of them can say "I feel scared". That is enough to get an AVO. The problem is that the man is being punished and he hasn't done anything wrong. AVOs aren't design to punish, but I'm sure that many recipients feel that way.

"Again I say that the children must be the priority where there are any accusations of domestic violence."

"The children" effectively means "the parent with most custody". Once they have the AVO, they have the children and they can do almost anything they want without consequences, because punishing that parent will disadvantage the children.

"There will be some made-up allegations, but can we take the chance they may be true"

So in other words, you are prepared for thousands of men to be disadvantaged, most of whom have done nothing wrong, to protect a few women. That sort of lack of empathy for blokes explains why most of the men on OLO have a pretty dim view of this whole fiasco.

Benk, "thousands of fathers are not disadvantaged". It's difficult to perceive even abusive men as disadvantaged, as even research preceding further leniency indicates:

<"In terms of the actual outcomes achieved in the cases we studied, again there was a lack of evidence that men were being disadvantaged. Contact orders were made in 161 (91 per cent) of the cases. In only eight cases did orders provide for no personal contact between the child(ren) and the nonresidential parent (four of these orders allowed the parent to write to the child). All of these no-contact orders were made against the father, and involved extreme circumstances. The fathers in these cases had variously:

- assaulted the mother during the case;
- applied for contact whilst he was in gaol for raping the mother's sister;
- acted in a drunken, aggressive and suggestive manner towards staff at a Children's Access Program;
- had a psychological disorder and his behaviour was having an extreme
impact upon the child, which was also supported by expert reports. In this case, the father's behaviour was described in the final judgment as 'chilling';
- acted in an extremely violent manner, threatening and pursuing both
mother and teenage child. The child did not want to see the father;
- smashed up the mother's home with a sledge hammer, and threatened to
kill her and abduct the child. The child expressed a strong wish not to see the father at all;
- had problems with alcohol and drugs (for which he had previous
convictions), had a psychiatric disorder, was extremely violent, had been convicted of a number of assaults in other states, and had allegedly abused the child. The mother, however, had difficulty convincing the court that the father's problems warranted a no-contact order. He then sexually assaulted the mother in front of the child, and was convicted. Even then, there were another three interim hearings while the father was in gaol,until the court made final orders.

cont/d