Is the Ban on ‘Coercive Control’ Effective in Preventing Domestic Violence?

Commentary

“Preventable murder.”

That’s how the West Australian radio show promoted their recent program arguing for new laws to criminalize coercive control laws in the state.

The Relationships Australia manager interviewed for the program struggled to describe the type of controlling behavior she was talking about, suggesting this could apply to a partner not liking a woman going out with her friends or spending money on herself. But the message was clear—locking up men for this type of controlling behavior could prevent murder.

That’s how the concept of coercive control was first sold to the public in this country by the grieving parents of Hannah Clarke, a Brisbane mother killed with her children in a horrific family homicide.

These poor parents were recruited by the feminists to promote the argument that this family might not have died if coercive control laws had been in place.

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The researchers used a “text-mining system” to capture behavior associated with coercive control from 526,787 relevant police reports and used this measure to detect/predict domestic violence over the next 12 months.

That research was published months ago but naturally it sank without a trace. No way most of our media was going to report a result that could derail the domestic violence industry’s latest weapon against men.

Unlike current domestic violence laws which usually require multiple breaches for a man to be sent to jail, the new criminal coercive control laws make that a very straightforward process.

In the next year or so, new coercive control laws will be rolled out in Queensland and NSW.

A Queensland barrister recently commented that lawyers in his state are “awaiting the tsunami”—as the first wave of coercive control allegations hits the courts, and lawyers try to stop men being sent to jail on these highly contentious charges.

It’s very telling that the new coercive control laws are being kept on ice in NSW and Queensland for years as authorities try to ensure the right people—namely men—get charged.

Yes, police are still sometimes charging women instead of men. Shock, horror.

This “misidentification crisis” is occurring despite strenuous efforts to train police to only charge men. The article warned that the “crisis” is not isolated to Tasmania.

But when it comes to this new brand of supposedly, solely male villainy, it’s hardly surprising that police officers across the country are finding that, as often as not, it is women who exhibit these behaviors—the Australian Bureau of Statistics has shown men and women are equally likely to experience emotional abuse and control from a partner.

It’s encouraging that many of the men and women in blue seem to be resisting the feminist demand that they only charge men.

It is also good to see coercive control being subject to scrutiny by researchers. But we need also to look at other aspects of domestic violence law and ask if they are doing their job.

Look at applications for apprehended violence orders, or AVOs, which are now a major part of the workload of magistrates everywhere.

A violence protection order was supposed to be a shield rather than a sword. It was supposed to be about protecting a person, usually a woman, from future violence, not a weapon to be used by an angry or disgruntled woman to destroy a man.

How come we so rarely even talk about whether it is doing a good job protecting vulnerable women?

Too right.

The evidence base for our massive violence order system has always been mighty thin on the ground.

Not much has changed, even though there’s Australian research looking at reoffending rates for people on violence orders.

The Sunshine State

With so many violence orders now based on false accusations used in family law battles, it’s nonsensical to suggest breaches tell us anything about the deterrent effect of a violence order, given that breaches are often set up as part of the false accuser’s strategy.

Plus, there’s the fact that we’re often not talking about physical violence, with violence orders now issued for emotional abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse, spiritual abuse … the list goes on.

Knowing this, it is very irritating reading these studies laboriously adding up rates of repeat offending and order breaches. These researchers are living in La La Land.

To put the whole thing in perspective, let’s look at just one state—Queensland. The Sunshine State, they call it.

Oh yeh? Queensland has more people locked up for breaches of violence orders than the rest of Australia put together. Not much sunshine for that lot.

Violence orders are already being issued at five times the rate of divorces. And this is a huge growth industry. The number of people imprisoned for breaches of these orders has gone up by 54 percent in the last 3 years.

The future looks particularly grim for men in our Deep North but rest assured, the move is on everywhere. Violence orders are already scattered like vile confetti across the land.

Yet the growth in numbers of men locked up through breaches will pale into insignificance once coercive control’s fast route to prison is fully operational.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.