Myth Number 1,
DV is 'gendered'.

<The killer story we could not publish until now

IN August 1993, a little boy - John Ashfield, aged 6 - was beaten to death with a hammer to his head.

His mother, Gunn-Britt Ashfield, then 25, led the assault; her boyfriend, Austin Allan Hughes, then 20, was a keen participant.

According to evidence presented to court in December 1993, Ashfield became enraged when she heard that John, who was in Year 1 at East Nowra primary school on the NSW south coast, touched his three-year-old sister in an inappropriate way. Her boyfriend agreed the boy could not be allowed to "get away with it".

He didn't. Less than 24 hours later he died in Shoalhaven Hospital, his tiny body covered in more than 100 bruises from his parents's savage beating -- a beating that ended with Hughes putting the Nowra telephone book against John's head, and hitting him with a hammer.

They were each sentenced to 21 years in jail, reduced to 19 years on appeal, with a minimum of 14 years...

John's sister Melissa, 17, does not want her mother released. "I have not seen my mother since I was 11," she said. "The last time I saw her (in prison) I pulled her hair and slapped her. I have flashbacks to what happened. She tried to blame me. She tried to get us to help her bash John. She tried to say that John touched me. He never touched me."
..
When it became apparent that John had lost consciousness, his mother dunked him under a cold shower, then a hot shower.

Several hours passed before Ashfield took her son to Shoalhaven Hospital. In the meantime, she told her other children to tell police John had been beaten by a gang of teenagers while walking through a park.

Her oldest boy, then aged eight, went on national television to back up the story.

In a shaky voice, he said: "We were going to buy milk and bread when four boys said, 'Come here. We want to bash you up'.">
tbc..

contd..

<

The story was never going to stack up: John was cold and bleeding from the nostrils when he was airlifted to Westmead hospital in Sydney.

Doctor Barry Wilkins would later tell the court he had more than 100 different coloured bruises, suggesting "repeated, non-accidental beating".

His small hands were swollen and bruised, which suggested he had "attempted to fend off an assault". He had suffered a very serious brain injury.

On the day of John's funeral, his natural father, Brian Ashfield, wailed over the white coffin.

Brian is now dead but he told reporters at the time of his son's murder that he had warned the NSW Department of Community Services that his wife was violent, and that she intended to hurt the children. In fact, DoCS had about 35 notifications that all was not well at Ashfield's home...

John's uncle, Andrew Ashfield, said the law banning publication of John's story had "protected the people who killed him, and the social workers who let it happen".

"DoCS knew that she was violent, and knew that she was troubled," he said. "But they didn't take the kids until after she killed one of them."

Wendy Campbell, who was Brian's fiance at the time of John's death, wants the case to get media attention because she "promised Brian, if they ever apply for parole, I will be there, and I will stop it".>
http://tinyurl.com/nv3s79k

Otb,

"The slanted, sometimes outright fraudulent research and advice being proffered to government - at the expense of taxpayers and many victims, eg children, men and LGBT, indigenous women too - shores up the essentially contested feminist patriarchy paradigm, advantaging the dogmatism, wallets and careers of the already advantaged educated, professional, middle class women who are feminism in the West."

Everything otb consistently bleats on his pet subject is exemplified in this doc...."Backlash: Angry men’s movements" - Michael Flood PhD:

http://www.familylawmattersaustralia.com.au/sites/familylawmattersaustralia.com.au/files/documents/pdf/Flood,%20Backlash%20-%20Angry%20men_107.pdf

"...Fathers’ rights groups make claims to a victim status, downplaying
any sense of men’s or non-custodial parents’ agency, making analogies
with oppressed groups such as Aborigines, and painting their
opponents as possessing enormous power...."

Otb, has certainly gathered all the oppressed groups around him - "...eg children, men and LGBT, indigenous women too... - he's busily expanding his analogies.

"Bettina Arndt is calling for all to question the biassed assumptions and sloppy, self-serving 'research' being promulgated on domestic violence."

And where are those "facts" to which you allude, otb?

Interesting that we not privy to Arndt's so-called "research" - apart from her reference to 1700 peer-reviewed articles...and a vague reference to One in Three having loads of "proper statistics". It's nowhere. The sex therapist writes an article in which she generalises wildly - offers no statistics - lambastes anything that doesn't dovetail with her agenda - and spends a while denigrating the ABC.

Doesn't that all sound familiar.

"I’ve been calling these “men’s rights” and “fathers’ rights” groups,
because these are common descriptions and because some of the
groups use them themselves. “Anti-feminist” is also a useful
description for nearly all these groups. Another term is
“masculinist”, popular among American men’s rights men but in
less frequent use in Australia. More bluntly, men’s and fathers’
rights forces have sometimes been described as “pro-sexist” or the "angry men's movement".

Finally from Arndt's article:

"... If you need help in putting together emails to send them, send a blank email to domesticviolencetruth@gmail.com and you will automatically receive in response another email containing information you can use in your letters."

Weird.

Here's some actual coroner's statistics from NSW - or will you and Bettina think they're dodgy too?

"The Domestic Violence Death Review Team released their third annual report earlier this year, which analysed the 877 homicides reported in NSW between 2000 and 2010. To summarise their findings:

593 men and 283 women were killed in NSW over 10 years.

101 (17%) of male and 137 (48%) of female homicides were domestic violence related.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were significantly overrepresented in both male and female victims.

108 women were killed by their intimate partners.

* 105 of those women were domestic violence victims.
* 3 were killed by a partner where there was "evidence of violence and abuse used by both parties with no clear coercion and control".

35 men were killed by their intimate partners.

* 6 of those men were domestic violence victims, all 6 were killed by male partners.
* 25 men were identified as being the abuser of the woman who killed them.
* 3 were killed by a partner where there was "evidence of violence and abuse used by both parties with no clear coercion and control".
* 1 man was the extramarital intimate partner of a woman and was killed by her and her abusive husband acting together.

Over the whole ten years, "there were no cases where a woman was a domestic violence abuser who killed a male domestic violence victim".

53 children were killed by a parent.

* Nearly 60% of them were boys.
* Half of them were under 2 years old.
* 75% occurred in a domestic violence context, but in just over half those cases, the child was not the direct victim of the abuse.
* 80% of the fathers who killed their children were perpetrators of domestic violence.
* 94% of the mothers who killed their children were victims of domestic violence.

22 adults were killed by family members.

* 16 men were killed by sons, step-sons, brothers, daughters and fathers.
* 6 women were killed by sons, daughters and a nephew.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/what-the-coroners-court-report-reveals-about-domestic-violence-20150517-gh3qhj.html

Poirot,

As has been pointed out to you and Suseonline by other posters in previous threads, but perhaps you forget, the 'One in Three Campaign' has challenged misinformation about family violence, including the myth of gendered violence.

See here, or at least other readers could avail themselves of the opportunity since you and Suseonline say you don't read anything that doesn't accord with your long-held opinions,

http://www.oneinthree.com.au/misinformation/

Like Bettina Arndt who is calling for all to question the biassed assumptions and sloppy self-serving 'research' that is being spruiked on domestic violence, the One in Three Campaign says it, "aims to address the widespread misinformation about family violence and abuse by providing accurate data to the public about this important issue".

and

"The One in Three Campaign is fully supportive of all genuine programs designed to protect women and children from violence. We are simply seeking similar protection for men and boys and asking that the vast majority who are not violent are no longer tarred with the brush of violent males?.

That all sounds reasonable enough.

Now, back to the murder of John Ashfield, aged 6, who was beaten to death with a hammer. His mother, Gunn-Britt Ashfield, then 25, led the assault; her boyfriend, Austin Allan Hughes, then 20, was a keen participant.

I wonder if the kind, civic-spirited Ambassadors to White Ribbon Day might ask next time for some necessary balance. That isn't too much to ask is it? Fairness, equality and compassion, and less feminist idealism (especially in lieu of facts)

-Because domestic violence isn't gendered at all and children like the late John Ashfield need champions too. There are more recent examples with more numerous casualties. Out of respect for the recently bereaved I have left those examples to one side.

strangley enough most prison officers will tell you that working in the womens units are the worse for violence. They bash the << out of each other even more so than the males. Just another inconvenient truth that shatters the very narrow simplistic narrative. We were told by the social engineers that when smacking kids stopped the violence would disappear. The opposite has taken place. The engineers want to be able to sexualise kids at a young age, allow the porn education to feed then (often dressed as education) and expect this confused people to turn out model citizens. Well I suppose Turnbull and co are good at slogans which is why the root causes will never be addressed. Some groups will receive more grants while many women and some men continue to be bashed. As for culture well we aren't allow to go there (unless of course it is a white man).