In the lead-up
to Christmas just past, I signed an online petition asking Australian Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull to establish life-saving funding for domestic
violence refuges. The petition came to me through Change.org and by then some
7,000 people had also signed it. I know Malcolm Turnbull cares about domestic
violence – he said so. But action is needed urgently.
We need more
refuges. The writer of the petition I signed said that one in every two women
who seek shelter in a refuge is turned away because of lack of space. That is
shocking.
Many who have
studied the subject know that attempting to leave a violent partner creates
escalated danger for the victims. Violent partners want control: they want
their woman and children in their power, to do with them as their aggressive
mood dictates. To attempt to leave is to risk shocking retribution.
To then be
unable to leave because there just isn’t a safe place to go is also shocking.
Timely, safe help is an absolute priority in these crisis situations. There’s
no use receiving a message to say ‘try again in business hours and you can talk
to a counsellor’ if someone is about to bash you for simply picking up your
phone! Yet if one in two victims can’t find shelter, then that grim scenario is
the reality.
Please Premier
(of my state of NSW) Mike Baird; please Australian Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull put additional refuges for victims of violence at the very top of your
funding priorities. This is a national emergency, just like the sort of natural
disasters we have seen over these past weeks: the bush fires and the floods
that have taken lives and destroyed livelihoods.
Domestic
violence destroys lives too. Our news coverage has been full of domestic
violence tragedies these past few weeks. Women – it nearly always is women,
though there are men victims too – suffer physical and psychological abuse. But
so do the children, who will suffer the psychological scars probably life-long –
and sometimes be killed, as Luke Batty was.
Meanwhile, the
perpetrators themselves are victim too, in a way. Violent people not only lack
empathy, they are locked out of decent, kind, loving relationships with the
people they most need.
The problems of
domestic violence are many and complex. But providing safe shelters for women
and children fleeing from terrifying situations is surely something we can put
at the very top of our priorities list. Please.
My
novel ‘Finding Felicity’, which takes an in-depth look at domestic violence and
dealing with troubled relationships, will be published early this year.