Pynchme

The AVO is often applied for as the couple are breaking up. Many of them are based on embellished information. In most of the other cases both sides are as bad as the other, but only she gets the advantage of the AVO. It creates a chain of events that is hard to stop. She gets the AVO, he is out of the house. This gives her custody over the kids until they go to family court, he will find it hard to get near them. During this period, all sorts of things can happen. Mum can fill the kid's heads with ideas. Dad needs to find a new house, it might not be a house with bedrooms for the kids. Dad might find maintenance payments crippling and go on the dole or overseas. He might find it hard to maintain a reationship with his kids. All of these will disadvantage him, even if he eventually gets some access.

"If someone bigger who has the capacity to overpower you is shouting at you, how do you think you'd respond"

How do you think I'd respond? Do you think that I'd run straight down to the police station and take out an AVO?

Suze

"Surely you aren't suggesting the courts should give all men accused of domestic violence the benefit of the doubt"
Sure am. I'm not prepared for men who appear to be innocent to be disadvantaged, even though it appears obvious that the DV claims about them are malicious. You needn't worry about this, you personally aren't disadvantaged by this fiasco. It must be wonderful to have these "principles" that others need to pay the price for.

Benk, The thing that I find absolutely astonishing is your assumption - despite the numbers of women and children seen in outpatients departments; womens shelters; GP surgeries and other welfare agencies - that AVOs are by default malicious fabrications. This is especially bizarre in light of research showing that only 30% of women who are physically assaulted report it to anyone.

In any case, do you think that women have the corner on malicious and unfounded allegations?

As to how you'd respond to someone bigger shouting at you - what's your guarantee that the abusive person has no intention of punching you out?

How can one know that? I would say that if one couldn't get help (and most can't; or not in time anyway) that one can only passify the angry person (which is encouragement to an abusive person isn't it - they therefore know how to control and get their demands met) or take the hit. Which would you do? What do you expect women to do?

Btw - AVOs do not belong to women alone; any citizen can sit down and talk with a magistrate and have one taken out. Anyone, including a concerned father, can make a report to DOCs rather than leave their children with an abusive woman - and reporting is preferable, surely, to having children exposed to violence and rages from ANY adult.

Benk, nice summation of the situation.

What I find truly astonishing is that when people such as myself put forward suggestions on ways to reduce conflict during that separation and post-separation period we are shouted down. It suggests to me that many women who claim to be interested in the subject are really just interested in maintaining the status quo: prepared to allow some women and children to suffer genuine violence in order to pursue political games intended to further the social dominance of women. After all, "the ends justify the means and it's not as if it's anyone we know"...

pynchme, you say you have a son. How would you feel if he was to come to you and say, " the wife got a DVO on me because she wants a divorce and she was scared I'd get mad? I can't go near her or the kids until the divorce is finalised. I've got nowhere to live, can I stay here for a while?"

You'll note, SHE wants the divorce (over 80% of divorces are initiated by the wife) and HE gets forced to move. No actual violence of any kind has occurred, no threat has been made, but she "felt scared". Do you tell your son that you support her move?

An old pillar of justice was that one *is* innocent until shown guilty and that false accusations *are* malicious and *will* be persued in their own right.

Without this protection there is no reason for people to respect the justice system.

Rusty

Pynchme

I will attempt to keep this discussion productive, by focussing on your question "what do you expect women to do?"

I would suggest that they think twice before applying for an AVO. If their man is genuinely violent,he isn't going to worry too much about a piece of paper. If he isn't genuinely violent, but she still wants to leave him, then stretching the truth to get the advantage of an AVO (however tempting) will undermine her chances of having an amicable seperation.

I would also suggest that they look at the way that they handle conflicts. In the past, society has been very quick to position women as victims and of course, you can't blame the victim. While this was well intentioned, it discouraged women from learning from their mistakes. At this point, I should point out that the arguement above shouldn't be taken to imply that everything is her fault. That is a quite artifical dichotomy. Obviously many men need to make the same changes.

Moving to society in general (here we go again), paternalistic, backward attitudes need to change. Constantly positioning women as victims, despite mountains of contradictory evidence, needs to stop. Thinking that men need to wear any inconvenience, as long as women can feel safe needs to stop. Blowing up a heated argument into a massive threat to women's safety, needs to stop.

Antiseptic: <"many women who claim to be interested in the subject are really just interested in maintaining the status quo: prepared to allow some women and children to suffer genuine violence in order to pursue political games intended to further the social dominance of women.">

Prepared to allow women and children to suffer genuine violence?

Violence committed by whom ?

What are you saying?

and

<"How would you feel [my son]if he was to come to you and say, " the wife got a DVO on me because she wants a divorce and she was scared I'd get mad? I can't go near her or the kids until the divorce is finalised. I've got nowhere to live, can I stay here for a while?"

I'd FEEL sad, but how I feel wouldn't be of much relevance to the situation.

I doubt that a woman would need to obtain an AVO on my son. However, if that happened and a divorce was in progress we would give him the best advice and support that we could. Including:

1. Going to the nearest community health centre to arrange to speak to a child and family counsellor. Many of the counsellors are male - if one prefers to speak to a male.
2. He might consider mediation - depends on whether the mother of their children wanted to enter into that process.
3. He would be most unlikely to want to live with me. He has friends and sisters that he'd probably prefer to stay with until he organized a place of his own.
4. I'd suggest to him that he sit down and have a good talk with a solicitor to see where he stands and to obtain advice appropriate to his situation and the state he lives in.
5. I wouldn't need to advise him to support his children financially; he would go out of his way to do that regardless of contact arrangements.
6. If the mother of his children didn't want to be resident parent he'd be a very capable sole parent