Every time I speak about violence against women, someone prompts me as if I must have forgotten that violence can happen against men too and therefore I need to be reminded.

It is not a competition to see which sex is being more impacted than the other. Family Violence is something that we should all be addressing and working to solve, because currently the impacts are affecting us all. Not only in the home behind closed doors in secret, but it crosses into the wider community in the form of bullying at school, controlling behaviours in the workplace, it has infiltrated the Police Force, the legal system among Lawyers, Magistrates, Judges, Family Report Writers, ICL’s (Independent Children’s Lawyers). There is evidence of abuse in places that provide care to vulnerable people – residents of Nursing Homes, carers of people with disability. And we all know about the horrific abuse against children that has been perpetrated by men who proclaim themselves to be men of faith – religious leaders of all denominations. It has found its way into elite sport, the Boy Scouts – I could go on all day. Basically anywhere children gather without their parents is potentially a place where an abuser feels free to do harm, while grooming the children into silence.

For myself, I work with women survivors exclusively because I am a woman who has survived violence and the women I work with are understandably very uncomfortable being around men, even male support group facilitators are an enormous challenge to the women and are therefore not appropriate. I am helping women survivors of violence because we women understand one another, we speak the same language and communication is strongly used as a healing tool. I refer  any male survivors of violence to trusted male Coaches or Counsellors who can help them – who will view their story from a male perspective and speak their language. Together we are collaborating in an effort to end the scourge of intimate partner violence and sexual abuse of children.

In the Mens Behavioural Change Programs there are usually male and female facilitators working alongside each other. A woman’s presence is appropriate in that scenario because the men have to start to learn (by the male facilitator’s example) how to treat a woman, how to listen to a woman – they hear feedback about how the perpetrator’s abusive tactics would have affected their partner.

When I was a child, Family Violence was considered “a domestic” and something that the Police did not interfere with because it was “a family matter”. That “family matter” often involved brutal beatings of women – and I say women purposefully here because women had no way to escape the violence more than 50 years ago, they had to remain in an abusive marriage for life. At the same time there was often sexual abuse of children happening – something that has a lifelong impact and something that can’t be ignored as “a family matter”, especially if it’s a member of the family who is the one perpetrating the abuse. And that sexual abuse was perpetrated on both sons and daughters in the family.

In conclusion, the only competition that should exist is not to see which sex is more impacted by violence, but to see who can be more effective in the gradual elimination of family violence. Solving this issue at a family level is where we need to start because the family is the cornerstone of society. We need to work together. Stop being offended if someone doesn’t prioritise the gender you want them to. Be grateful that they are actually addressing the problem, because all of us will benefit from their efforts.

Stop wasting energy on what has pitifully become a competition between the sexes and start investing all your energy in solving the problem. I don’t care if the victim is male or female. What I do care about is that there are people out there who are suffering at the hands of brutal abusers.

I care that our solution is focused on two things:

1. 1. Assisting survivors of violence to achieve a full recovery from their trauma so the cycle of violence does not repeat across generations and
   2. We must consistently hold perpetrators of violence accountable for their actions – in their homes, in the workplace, in the community and in the legal system – and, at the same time, educate serial abusers about how to relate in an intimate relationship in a healthy and sustainable way and how to parent in a way that can genuinely be called “love”.