This thread is the biggest I've seen on OLO and I left off way back...

Suseonline,
"Slowly, these men they love start restricting their movements, money and friends, and then they find themselves trapped because he threatens their family members or friends, or says he will kill himself or her if she leaves him."

Your example demonstrates when a man has emotional insecurities, and commits emotional blackmail.

I'd like you to think about what happens if the situation is reversed; with the woman restricting the mans movements, his access to his friends and committing emotional blackmail against him saying she will kill herself if he leaves her?

Tell me what happens then?
Answer = The same thing.

Eventually he will lose patience with the emotional blackmail, lose respect for her, and eventually lash out at feeling trapped.
(It's inevitable)

So what did we learn here?
It doesn't matter who owns the insecurities to begin with.
You could ask who's right and who's wrong;
Is it the person with the insecurities or the "insensitive" person who can't comprehend the other ones crazy behavior?
Or; Does it even matter in the end?

If a man feels he is pushed into a corner there's an increased chance he will lash out.

So then what do we make of this female on male violence?
Could it be a question of Dominant v's Submissive behavior in the relationship?

Where do these messes start?
The lack of being able to be there for someone on an emotional level?
Not building and maintaining emotional trust?
What if person who has control of the relationship and whom the emotional blackmail is committed against lacks the skills/experience/empathy to be there for that person and resolve the issue?
Is the relationship not doomed?

Yes it is all very complex, (I know) but lets move onto solutions.

Spending 100 million dollars on an issue that costs our society way more than that?
Think of it as an investment.
Will it be a good investment?
We better do our research and make sure we get value for money.

What if one of the solutions to this issue was controversial?
Would you all consider it?

- Changing Drug Laws -
Lower the punishment for cannabis and increase punishment for ice/amphetamines
Decriminalise Cannabis and make it a legal option to drinking alcohol.
Right there you create a situation where people don't have to go and get drunk when they are going through breakups.
And you make the choice for cannabis greater than the choice to use ice and help individuals and police steer away from speed psychosis related DV issues.

- Better Education balanced with Increased Punishment -

If we want increased punishment, we better come up with some workable prevention solutions as well.
Anyone can suggest increasing punishment.

1. DV website where users can upload their stories and find out how others dealt with similar situations.
(Can also be used for research studies - a component of the investigation)
2. Relationship website to teach young people what we adults spend years learning.
-Why let them make the same mistakes we've made generation after generation?
Our challenge is to teach them what we learned without them making our mistakes in the first place.
3. All students participate in relationship skills class in secondary school.
(If were going to teach them about gender reassignment surgery at 12 without parental consent we can at least give them the tools to succeed and handle situations in a normal life.)

Then we need to dig into the HOW.
Who and where isn't enough data for DV.

Use the website to enable the studies and gather the data.

You don't need to pay an expert a bucket of money to state the obvious or what should be considered a common sense path forward.

Hell, build the website, turn it into a non-profit organisation - run a global gofundme campaign and save the whole 100 million.

"If we want increased punishment, we better come up with some workable prevention solutions as well.
Anyone can suggest increasing punishment."

Doesn't need research to know that violent criminals can't hurt anyone (except other violent criminals) while banged up in prison.

So bang them up in prison, first offence, and leave them there for a very long time.

That's solving the problem at the expense of those whose violence creates it. It's not punishment aimed to deter, it's direct protection of the rights of their victims, at the expense of the perps.

Any approach focused on making victims hide away in fear while do-gooders try (usually unsuccessfully) to persuade violent criminals to control their anger problem is an assault on the victims.

Armchair Critic "Tell me what happens then?
Answer = The same thing."
No, not the same thing all the time.
Some violent men go ahead and kill the women in many cases, as we well know.

There may be some difficulties in gathering data on some forms of DV, including who started what, who hit first, who said or did what first etc, but there is no denying murder statistics of men killing relatives or spouses in their own homes. And of course there are also men killing other male or child relatives as well, and of a few women doing the same thing.
Obviously these murders and how best to prevent them must take priority over any other form of DV for obvious reasons.

I think the time of 'gathering data' is over, we know the murder statistics.
So yes, bang them up in jail the first time, and don't allow any lame excuse for that sort of violence. Why don't we treat it like the 'one punch' laws and create mandatory sentences?
Just like filthy paedophiles and rapists, there is no 'treating' the so called cause of these criminal behaviors like DV.

"So yes, bang them up in jail the first time, and don't allow any lame excuse for that sort of violence"

OK, to try that out,

In 2002, 26% of indigenous males and 23% of indigenous females report being a victim of physical or threatened violence in the past 12 months. Add threatened and actual together to get the total affected by violence that year. That was only those aged 15 yrs and older.

Banging them up (which appeals to me too) is not going to be accepted for the cohort with the highest per capita source of beatings and deaths.

Rather there will be agonising, splitting of straws, rationalisations, excuses, duck-shoving of blame elsewhere and so on. That has already been apparent in this thread.

Further, while the feds are quite willing to grandstand and purport to ban a visit by an alleged partner-beater to Oz, there is NO, NIL, NADA screening of the suitability of migrants and claimed 'asylum-seekers' to ensure that SOBs, male and female, with a predilection and cultural tradition of resolving ordinary disputes with violence, esp, weapons, are given the lowest priority, or better still, refused entry. My previous post refers,
onthebeach, Friday, 25 September 2015 11:38:22 AM
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=7006&page=3

In SEQld where the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 has been successful in keeping the heads down of vicious SOBs who are responsible for the gun and other violence, including against their 'onions', Premier Palaszczuk has moved to 'deep six' VLAD. My previous post refers,
onthebeach, Sunday, 27 September 2015 11:58:01 AM
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=7006&page=9

While it is all very right to talk about firmer action by courts (and they already have considerable scope in sentencing), there is NOT the POLITICAL WILL, particularly by left-leaning governments to hold violent SOBs accountable. Instead there is always duck-shoving of blame onto to the good, law-abiding citizens, men and women.

Nor is there the required proactivity in immigration policy to ensure Australia isn't importing toxic political systems, traditions and values, despite the chilling example of Rotherham and other centres in the UK and Europe too

I almost feel like I'm on the side of the argument where my position might be mistaken as defending men who commit physical violence against women.
I assure you both I'm not trying to justify or defend these kinds of violent actions.

By putting forward the compulsory Relationship Studies class in secondary school idea (with a handbook to keep) as well as these dedicated websites for relationships and domestic violence ideas I was putting forward the idea that we give adolescents the tools to know how to act in certain situations and not let things get to the point that physical violence occurs in the first place.

You could even have the same or similar as an optional adult course for when police are called out to DV and its only verbal abuse and hasn't yet worsened to become physical abuse.

Surely you would not oppose these kinds of initiatives if they were to be a benefit and reduce the incidence of domestic violence?

Surely this would prevent murders from occurring.

This is path that speaks "We have new initiatives to prevent domestic violence occurring" or "We have new initiatives to help people make better choices and help themselves".
It also says to perpetrators "You can't say you weren't told" or "You can't say you weren't given the tools resolve your own problems peacefully or prevent these situations from occurring", or "act right" or "deal with your anger and insecurities", or "dealing with someone else's".

This way, you can increase the punishment and you have done it the morally right way because you also made efforts in prevention.

What better way to get the data you need than from people who actually want to share it with each other to help each other?