‘We don’t care about Family Violence against Men’ – Service providers betray their Charter
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Editors Note: A F4E member recently received an email from Relationships Australia, presumably because  he was a client of their service at some point during his separation.
This email highlighted a new program made available at Relationships Australia – Westmead NSW, called “Family safety – Women’s Choice and Change”.
Given this member’s history, it comes as no surprise that he was infuriated by this email, and has written back to Relationships Australia challenging them on why such services are evidently not available for male victims of abuse.
This member was in fact a victim of abuse and violence from his ex-wife, and has complained bitterly in the past at the lack of services available for male victims of abuse, and the completely dismissive disinterest in ‘male pain’ as he calls it, by organisations established to protect victims of abuse.
This man eventually won full custody of his young child, but only after the child was seriously injured by the mother. Up until that point, this man claims to have been criminalised by a system that only supported and believed women.
Below is his email to Relationships Australia.
Addressed to: Lisa Johns
Lisa,
Given that men are the most unlikely victims of family violence  to speak up, seek assistance or be provided any assistance at all, why can I ask does Relationships Australia ONLY provide a program for “Family Safety Program – Women’s Choice & Change”, as your email seems to suggest.
Maybe I am wrong and there are other services, but given my experience in seeking help for abuse, I consider it very unlikely.
Based on the program list, one has to ask whether your organisation simply does not receive any government funding if it provides services for Male victims of Family Violence, or perhaps is it merely the case that Men’s safety is not important to Relationships Australia?
As a male who has experienced family violence first hand, and who was denied any form of guidance, protection or support from numerous shelters I contacted, from every organisation and support network I contact, as well as being humiliated by the receiving officer when I approached the local police station to file a  report,  I need to continue to ask why there is no equivalent program being offered for men?
I am sure many men would value a program that informs them of “their Choice” as well, if we can humour ourselves for a moment and pretend that men have ‘choice’.
If they did, they would value services to help with emotional, physical, psychological and systemic abuse.
I would argue that as far as protection from family violence goes, women are already over-serviced, yet there is a glaring non-existence of genuine services for men.
Given the reluctance of men to report an abusive wife or partner, and given the overwhelming stigma and humiliation of being a male victim of abuse, and given the depression and suicide rates of male victims of abuse, where is the support for men?
I believe that properly delivered programs that covered men’s safety and well-being is what is needed in this country, not more services that are sexist in nature and seem to only care about the welfare of one gender at the total exclusion of the other.
Men need services to help them cope with the emotional, physical, psychological and financial abuse at the hands of their wives.
They need services to help them cope with a fundamentally sexist family law system.
They need services to help them cope with being thrown out of their homes, with being denied contact with their kids, with being falsely accused of child sexual abuse and domestic violence.
And this is only scratching the surface, because unlike the Gillard government, men do not need to change the definition of family violence in order to show that it happens. It happens at a disturbingly high rate, but is simply ignored.
Please respond and advise if there is equity in services provided for men and women with regard to safety in Relationships Australia, and if not, why not?
If not, then Relationships Australia should realise that by focussing on  half the alleged victims only, you are exploiting everyone, because you are being paid by the government to fundamentally fail people in need.
Relationship Australia have been asked for a response by Fathers4Equality. If they respond, it will be posted in this thread.
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How sad that it is that man is his only enemy all the science knowledge and people with lovely tickets abound yet solutions even to how the hell Egypt and their pyramids abound.
Again and again the only problem I see is one and all of us as if we do not take the blame equally than an equal answer will not come for the best of equality.
Simple things in life
United we stand
Survival in hand
Together as one
Ability
Inventive
Neutral
Agriculture
Believing
Intense
Level
Intent
Temperament
Yourself
NOTICE THESE WORDS SPELL ALONG SIDE
(SUSTAINABILITY)
SUS HOW SUSTAINABILITY IS NOT TALKED ABOUT SUS HOW SUSPECTS WALK FREE WHILE THE INNOCENT AND INNOCENTS OF MAN IS RAPPED FROM US. YES ILL GO ON IT IS SUS NOT TO SUSTAIN OUR GREAT WIDE LAND. SUS YES IT IS ALL SUSPICIOUS WE HAVE SUSPICIONS SUCH A SUSPENSE DO NOT SIT ON A FENCE
SUSTAINABILITY
FREESTYLERFLYER
B.McKell
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a woman may not be physically abusive though I had 15yrs of mental abuse as one prime example of my ex telling me I was just like my father? What she never met him or even seen a picture WHAT THE?
This was constant even to the last and now mentally enduring more through falsified AVO after AVO.
Women are not abusive of course not they abuse others so that they walk into the line of sight and get shot. It is like shooting the user but the dealer goes free.
FREESTYLERFLYER
B.McKell
0414822882
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And yet another example of it was a man not woman and woman do not commit Family Violence hence the concearn for the violence men do not committ but must be blamed for.
A 10-year-old girl recovering from brutal abuse meted out by her mother in a case that shocked the country will get to spend time with her brothers and sisters during Christmas this year.
The girl’s mother was jailed on Wednesday for seven-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to 25 charges relating to horrific acts of abuse on the girl and her eight-year-old brother.
Just before the holiday season last year, the west Auckland girl was discovered by police hiding in a wardrobe of her home.
She was starving, dehydrated, bruised, had broken bones, anaemia from internal bleeding, and her scalp had been half torn off. She also had obscenities written on her body by her mother with marker pens.
This year the girl will spend the holidays with a foster family with whom she is doing well, said Grant Bennett, Regional Director of Northern CYF.
Alongside her eight-year-old brother she has an older brother and two younger sisters all in care, spread amongst various foster families.
Is 7.5 years jail enough time for this woman?
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Greg Canning Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Now where near enough! Just think of how much time a man would be sentenced for the same crime, and you might be getting close. 20 years with a non parole of 15 might be closer. She’ll be out in a couple of year ,7.5 means nothing really. Justice , puufffttt!
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Men are now blamed for absolutely everything, soon we will be forbidden to ride in a bus, train as our presents distresses the opposite sex and this will be enough… so my friends us long as the voice of stupidity is heard and accepted by majority there is not a chance for change…. we are on our own… I fill so sorry for future generations of man… we had failed us and them… we had failed them…
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Thanks Paw, agree, I’m doing the right thing then. Muz
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Just wondering if anybody knows if you can actually do something about the bullying tactics the Family Relationship mediators use to convince you to give the kids to the x. I have been in the past and have court orders for my children, this has been going on now for 1.5 years now all of a sudden with the Gillard government passing these latest laws the x feels she needs to take me back there to reduce my
time, I suppose you have to get that certificate to go back to court. This is just bullying and harassment by them and the x as the outcome has pretty much been written. Just more wasted time and tax payers money. I will go and see if they have changed in the way they deal with fathers and will let you know the outcome. This time at least if I feel like I am getting bullied I can just get up and walk out.
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admin Reply:
December 13th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Given that these Centres are funded by the Federal government, there are processes in place to monitor and penalise under-performing Centres, and if required, cease their funding.
These processes rely heavily on complaints, especially complaints regarding impartiality, bullying practices and misinformation.
My understanding is that if a Centre receives more than X amount of unresolved complaints in a given period, its funding is automatically wittheld.
Problem is that men simply don’t complain in a formal way or through the right channels.
F4E lodged a formal complaint a few ago ago on behalf of a member with FaHCSIA, after getting no where with the Centre itself.
We argued that a Family Advisor provided misleading legal information to the couple, and subsequently encouraged the mother to make unsubstantiated allegations of family violence.
[This was later raised in Court, with the Mother stating this on the record]
In any case, this advisor also provided discredited studies to argue with the father that any form of shared parenting was bad for the children.
We raised this with the Centre a few times via formal letter of complaint, and finally receive a belated condescending response after calling and demanding a response. Oddly the centre did not deny the allegations, but refused to redress the situation, and even indicated that it would support their Planner to continue to act in “such a professional manner”.
We then contacted FaHCSIA, and only then did the Centre take the complaints seriously.
This Family Advisor was released from her duties as a result of the complaint.
If you experience similar problems with a Family Relationship Centre, please consider it your responsibility and obligation to constructively complain, and demand remedial action.
For more information, go to:
http://www.fathers4equality-australia.org/equalparenting/fathers4equality.nsf/pages/complaints-frc
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Muzza Reply:
December 13th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Thanks F4E will let you know what happens and if there still up to there same tricks.
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Muzza Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 8:47 pm
Today I received my letter from Family Relationship Centre it states that I contacted them on the 8th of December to which I did not, I contacted them on the 7th of december to inform them that I was working on the 9th of December to which my scheduled appointment was and that I would get back to them and let them know when I could attend. Yet the letter starts with “Thank you for speaking with us regarding our services on 8th December 2011″. What I find confusing is that I received a phone call from them yesterday being the 14th of December and the women i spoke with stated she was doing up a letter to send out to me to which arrived in the mail today 15th December. ( I simply rang them and told them I would have to take a rain check as I was working ). The letter also states that my X which I will now use the abbreviation of LF wishes to discuss matters regarding my children and separation. We have been seperated since 25th January 2008. As it is my understanding she is upset that when I return the children on the Monday to school my 8 year old says hey has a stomach ache, LF then returns to school to pick him up as most schools do that now, LF states that when she gets home he is fine. LF also stated that this was the 4th time this year that this had occured. LF then wrote
to me requesting that I return the children a day earlier being the Sunday evening so LF could better prepare them for school the next morning and that my son was missing her, yet LF asked me if I could have the kids for 14 days in a row over Christmas holidays so that she could visit her partner in Egypt to whom she has a child to which obviously was the cause of my separation. On the 7th I spoke with the practitioner who is running this case and told him that I believed this was a parenting issue and should not tie up family relationship centres, as that any 8 year old would pull a stunt like this to get out of school and that he did it to me as well. The way I fixed the problem as I knew there was nothing wrong with him was take him to the doctor, he has never cried wolf since. So considering this is a parenting issue and as stated before I spoke with LF and the practitioner, they still want me there. What a waste of tax payees money and where do they draw the line. My orders were never court ordered they were signed by the both of us ( I had them put into orders as I am very well aware of LF’s situation ). Now that LF has recently just bought a new home if I was to give a night back to LF to which my kids don’t want, I would loose my shared parenting ( which means I pay more child support and loose my centrelink benefits, yet LF is back working now and has been since December 2009, but won’t go and put her tax return in, go figure ). which has now been active for 1.5 years. So I have voiced my thoughts regarding this to the practitioner yet they still want me to come in surely this would fall under there policy (b) which states “the practitioner decided the case was not appropriate for family dispute resolution”. Or are they now trying to tell me that this is my fault and I should give her a day back. Won’t happen, and I would not let my kids down by agreeing to it as they don’t wish this to happen. I feel that this is a total waste of tax payees money, my time, the practitioners time etc. Will keep you all updated as I am just as interested to see how family relationships will handle this. MUZ.
Paw Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
Muzza,
My kids do the 50/50 and they tell me of how they feel upset each Monday morning. The anxiety starts on Sunday afternoon and goes until the end of Monday.
If I were you, I’d go along to this meeting and simply lay out the fact that it is a combination of the son going through a little anxiety over the chang-over, but also playing on it to his advantage. He needs to be taught he cannot wag school indirectly by pulling a sickie, because that is in effect what he is doing.
But we do need to recognise that although shared parenting is the best option for our kids if the parents are both behaving themselves. The fact is, the children still suffer anxiety and sadness.
The problem with a lot of parents is that they don’t think about the fact these children are going to suffer for the rest of their lives, the pain of having their family destroyed and parents split up, and especially because they had no say in it. They feel betrayed.
If I were you, I would start talking to your son about this issue and I would warn him that if he keeps this behaviour up when he returns to his mother, then she is going to try to have the arrangement changed so that he will spend less time with you.
YOur kids need to be educated as to the games that can occur in the children hating court system. They need to be given some say in what happens, considering they had none when their parents broke up.
So I tell my kids, if you don’t want ‘such n such’ to happen, then you better ‘do this or that’, or ‘not do this or that’. I always make sure I never say anything negative about the mother and encourage the children to remain with her, but make sure they are aware of what their bad behaviour can bring about as a consequence.
Hopefully this will help them decide that they had better pull their heads in and stop pulling stunts like this.
Best of luck!
I too have had similar treatments with ‘a Qld relationship centre’ just 2 years ago, when the presumption of shared care was being heckled back into submission by these notorious and gender specific tyrants, whom, masquerade as caring Social workers, that are trained to advocate for social justice.
And no one in any authority has any answer whatsoever, in which to address or make accountable any worker in the discriminative industry, of family law and child safety.
After arranging for an personal interview in one of ‘these so named relationship centres’ was informed by this self-confessed specialised’ to put all the cards on the table and inform the centre of every episode that had occurred. With two filled annual diaries in hand, replicated all that had happened in regard to my children at the hands of one sordid woman.
Taking a seat outside to contemplate what decision the centre would surely implement to safeguard my child, had the opportunity speak to another customer, of whom was female, and expressed her relief at what the centre was going to do about the bad tempered partner of their child.
As not to pin point any clues to the identity of this person, will remake that as she was speaking to myself, the Centre was in the process of making some very important calls and referrals to other depts in which to get this child to a safer place as a measure of urgency.
This is the service I received.
Two weeks passed, and a headed letter arrived by post, in which the centre defined their reluctance to help, by stating that Mr and Mrs ……. situation has been viewed as inappropriate, under the circumstances described, for the centre to undertake the case in question.
Go figure.
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Relationships Australia is just another organisation that exists for women’s needs/wants and has no history of being helpful to men that I know of.
I have also sat with one of their counsellors hoping to get some sort of empathy with my situation. My children and I have been abused also, but this woman only sought to make up excuses for my ex’s behaviour and hinted that I must have done something to cause it.
It is typical of the attitude in this country to women who behave in a criminal fashion. The govt has set up services to cater to women’s every whim, which has seen women go way past what society would have normally seen as acceptable behaviour.
Just as an aside. The woman who brutally murdered her two teenage girls in WA a couple of weeks ago, has been forgiven in the media already. And this is before the investigation has been completed.
Idiot so-called criminal specialists have come out in the WA newspaper saying stupid things like, “Mothers kill children out of love, unlike “other parents” (meaning men) who kill out of revenge”.
If the system is so damn corrupted by this radical man hating feminist vomit, then all men should be educated about this, and they should avoid these relationship centres like the plague.
I was also told by a woman here in my town, that I should have never come back and should have left my children to live in peace. I am also now the primary carer and the abusive mother is only hanging on to the kids by the skin of her teeth, because I am the one encouraging the kids to stick it out with her.
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Scott Reply:
March 3rd, 2012 at 2:27 pm
there are other mediation centres – just refuse to attend those that are run on feminist ideology – even if this means you have to conduct the sessions over the phone…
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No response nor any acknowledgement from Relationships Australia.
This is a similar pattern to other institutions.
Remember NAPCAN?
http://www.f4e.com.au/blog/2011/08/
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I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a response from Relationships Australia, because even if one is forthcoming it will not address the legitimate concerns raised in this email, they are experts at feminist denial and double speak, hard wired into the corrupt domestic violence/family law system on which they depend for their existence.
My experience with them was an exercise in futility, shes right , your wrong, you must change because you are the male and therefore “to blame’” and the cause of any relationship issues. No such thing as give and take, conciliation, compromise in their view of relationships.
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Yanta Reply:
December 13th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
I concur. I had exactly the same experiences. On top of that, “Trish” from one of their offices suggested I not apply for any access to my children. She said “if you care about your children, you will let your wife have them and be thankful for what ever time you get with them”. She also stated that taking my wife through court for access to my kids was in itself domestic violence and I should consider that when filing my application. That was in May 2007. The boy live with me full time now.
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