Speaker 1: This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land. Hi guys, and
Speaker 1: welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut.
Speaker 2: I'm Laura, I'm Brittany.
Speaker 1: Now, as you know if you've been a part of
Speaker 1: the Life Uncut family for any length of time, domestic
Speaker 1: and male violence is something that we have.
Speaker 2: Spoken about for many, many years.
Speaker 1: We have spoken to so many experts on this podcast
Speaker 1: about this very thing, and it is really a conversation
Speaker 1: that over the last couple of years has been hugely
Speaker 1: thrust into the spotlight. And that's because it is something
Speaker 1: that has not improved and is not getting better. I mean,
Speaker 1: as we've all seen, women are screaming, screaming out for
Speaker 1: reform and for changes to be made. In this way,
Speaker 1: we've learnt that the most dangerous time for women fleeing
Speaker 1: violence is when she actually decides to leave the home,
Speaker 1: and also how many times it can take a woman
Speaker 1: to actually leave a relationship where domestic violence is occurring.
Speaker 1: We've spoken to victim survivors and family members of victims
Speaker 1: of abuse and learn about the early warning signs of
Speaker 1: violent perpetrators. But an aspect of violence that we haven't
Speaker 1: really had an in depth conversation about is what happens
Speaker 1: after she leaves? What happens after a woman actually makes
Speaker 1: that choice to remove herself from that situation, and does
Speaker 1: the violence continue and how does that violence transform. Joining
Speaker 1: the podcast today is doctor Brian Sullivan. Doctor Brian is
Speaker 1: an academic and the founder of Secure Domestic Violence Training
Speaker 1: and Support. He has been working with men who use
Speaker 1: violence in men's behavior change programs for almost twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Brian is joined the third season of the podcast There's
Speaker 1: No Place Like Home to address the changes that are
Speaker 1: needed in our conversations about violence and to ask the
Speaker 1: right questions questions like why does he do it? And
Speaker 1: how do we help the next person leave safely? Brian,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3: Thanks Laura, Thanks Britt. Great to be here with you.
Speaker 4: Such an important topic. And as we just said, you've
Speaker 4: been working in this industry for twenty five five years.
Speaker 4: Can you just explain to us what is it exactly
Speaker 4: that you do?
Speaker 3: Well, that's a really good question, because it hasn't been
Speaker 3: the same thing for twenty five years. I got into
Speaker 3: this work quite by accident. When I was studying in America.
Speaker 3: I needed money basically, and I was doing one thousand
Speaker 3: hours of internship for this doctoral program in the University
Speaker 3: of Toledo, Ohio, and the only one I could find
Speaker 3: that would pay me was as a co facilitator of
Speaker 3: a court mandated program for domestically violent men. And one
Speaker 3: of my colleagues, one of my friends over there, was
Speaker 3: doing this work and she said, why don't you come
Speaker 3: and do this work with me? So poverty got the
Speaker 3: better of me. I was really up to that point.
Speaker 3: I'd avoided, or thought i'd avoided domestic and family violence
Speaker 3: in my work as a school counselor and as a
Speaker 3: counselor anyway. I started the work and became quite fascinated
Speaker 3: with these men's stories of how they justified and how
Speaker 3: they rationalized their violence to make them sound like the
Speaker 3: good guys and the victim was the provocateur, the crazy bitch,
Speaker 3: to use their language, who was causing all this. And
Speaker 3: it became so weird to hear them trying to justify
Speaker 3: the unjustifiable in my book that I ended up doing
Speaker 3: my doctoral research in that so I looked at the
Speaker 3: effectiveness of court mandated programs for domestically violent men, and
Speaker 3: when I came back to Australia, I started teaching in
Speaker 3: universities University of New England in Armadale, University of Queensland,
Speaker 3: and I was teaching courses on violence issues in counseling,
Speaker 3: but I was also doing some training on the side
Speaker 3: to those who wanted to learn how to work with
Speaker 3: these men in intervention groups. I went back to practice
Speaker 3: for a period of years where I was actually the
Speaker 3: program manager for an organization in Logan up here south
Speaker 3: of Brisbane called YFSS, the Responsible Men Program, and I
Speaker 3: worked there as a program manager for a number of
Speaker 3: years before returning to academia where I was teaching and
Speaker 3: doing research into domestic and family violence, focusing on men's
Speaker 3: groups and interventions for men. And in about twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: I think it was, I started Secura, which is my
Speaker 3: own training consultancy where I do training for police, corrective services,
Speaker 3: men's behavior change groups, TV organizations. I've done training for
Speaker 3: lawyers and for magistrates etc. So last year I was
Speaker 3: on the board of the Red Rose Foundation and it's
Speaker 3: a foundation that has been close to my heart for
Speaker 3: a number of years. I was on the board there
Speaker 3: for five or six years and then asked to be
Speaker 3: the CEO when the founder a legend a woman called
Speaker 3: Betty Taylor retired and I did that role for a year.
Speaker 3: I always said it was caretaker role. I always thought
Speaker 3: that position should be a role for a woman of
Speaker 3: a women's organization working with women who were victim survivors
Speaker 3: of non lethal strangulation. So I stood down from that
Speaker 3: role at the start of this year and have gone
Speaker 3: back to my securer work, where I'm continuing the train
Speaker 3: an education for those who work with male perpetrators of
Speaker 3: domestic violence. That's a long story.
Speaker 4: Short You just mentioned something, Brian, that you worked very
Speaker 4: closely listening to these perpetrators justify the unjustifiable. What is
Speaker 4: the main rationale that you hear from these perpetrators And
Speaker 4: do you genuinely think that they believe what they're saying
Speaker 4: or do you think that they know what they're doing
Speaker 4: is not right, but they're just trying to make an
Speaker 4: excuse for their actions.
Speaker 3: My experience over those years has led me to believe
Speaker 3: that when a man tries to justify his violence, it's
Speaker 3: really a strategy of image management, and that image management
Speaker 3: is a double sided coin. So one side of the
Speaker 3: image management is to make him look good, or even
Speaker 3: to make him look like the victim of this evil woman,
Speaker 3: of this psychotic woman, of this very unfair woman. And
Speaker 3: the flip side, of course, is while making himself look good,
Speaker 3: he has to make her look bad, so he has
Speaker 3: to trash talk her. So when a man, and these
Speaker 3: are typical strategies that men use when they front a
Speaker 3: program and well into the program, until for many men,
Speaker 3: the light goes on and they start to realize that
Speaker 3: their dishonesty is not working, that we're not buying it.
Speaker 3: So you think about yourself, if you deny you've done something,
Speaker 3: if you try to excuse it, if you try to
Speaker 3: blame someone else, if you try to minimize it, it
Speaker 3: wasn't so bad. I know when I do that, I
Speaker 3: know I've done something wrong, and I'm trying to cover
Speaker 3: it up. It's a way of camouflaging what we know
Speaker 3: is wrong. So I think, to answer your question, I
Speaker 3: think that men have a belief system, or these men
Speaker 3: have a belief system which is all about male privilege,
Speaker 3: male entitlement, control over women and children. So when a
Speaker 3: woman challenges that or doesn't comply with that, then he
Speaker 3: ramps up and he then starts to get abusive or
Speaker 3: increases his controlling behaviors, and to me, that's a way
Speaker 3: of reinforcing or re establishing his worldview over hers. But
Speaker 3: the fact that he's also minimizing, denying, blaming, justifying shows
Speaker 3: me that he knows that what he's doing is actually wrong.
Speaker 3: So that's where we want to get to in men's groups.
Speaker 3: Get them to that point where they were honestly take
Speaker 3: responsibility and fess up and say, yeah, I knew what
Speaker 3: I was doing, I knew the harm it was causing,
Speaker 3: and I know it's wrong. And I think once we
Speaker 3: get to that level of honesty, then we can start
Speaker 3: to work with men for change.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: Because we know that, you know, it's not just people
Speaker 1: who have come from abusive households, or who have come
Speaker 1: from drug addiction or I think there's used to be
Speaker 1: this kind of thought that domestic violence was quite othering
Speaker 1: and that it was only a specific type of male
Speaker 1: that would do it. But as we've seen and recently,
Speaker 1: people who come from incredibly privileged backgrounds can be perpetrators
Speaker 1: of this violence all often. Ah yeah, And I guess
Speaker 1: my question is what is it that creates this type
Speaker 1: of monster in a man? What's happening in terms of
Speaker 1: the social upbringing or in terms of the exposure that
Speaker 1: they've had to think that they have this entitlement over women.
Speaker 3: Brilliant question. I think if we knew comprehensively and deeply
Speaker 3: the answer to that question, we could work with these men,
Speaker 3: maybe better than we're doing. But my take on that
Speaker 3: is that typically a man, when he was a boy
Speaker 3: generally or an adolescent, he's had a role model, whether
Speaker 3: it's mum's husband, you know, his father or stepfather or
Speaker 3: living boyfriend or whoever it was, get what he wants
Speaker 3: by very disrespectful, abusive treatment of his partner, of the
Speaker 3: boy's mother. The boy realizes at an early age that
Speaker 3: this gets him what he wants, when he wants, and
Speaker 3: how he wants. If this is how he treats a woman,
Speaker 3: he can fulfill he thinks all his needs. And the
Speaker 3: third part of that is he's gotten away with it.
Speaker 3: And I think that's where societal interventions and courts, police
Speaker 3: corrective services, child safety has to step up so that
Speaker 3: men and really it goes back to families and communities
Speaker 3: at an early age, early intervention that boys should not
Speaker 3: be getting away with this sort of stuff. We need
Speaker 3: to know what boys are up to I think at
Speaker 3: earlier and you know that recent series Adolescence is showing
Speaker 3: us that parents need to be far more aware of
Speaker 3: what their boys are getting up to. When we know
Speaker 3: that boys are accessing pawn at earlier and earlier ages
Speaker 3: eight nine, we've got a major problem in the way
Speaker 3: a boy's brain is developing in terms of his beliefs,
Speaker 3: in terms of his attitudes, in terms of his values,
Speaker 3: in terms of his developing masculinity. And you know, when
Speaker 3: we're dealing with these men in groups after they've been
Speaker 3: court ordered or on probation and parole to do these groups,
Speaker 3: that beliefs system has been there for quite a while.
Speaker 3: I have a sign on my wall which says first
Speaker 3: time offender, long time abuser. So even though that might
Speaker 3: be the first time he's been caught by police or
Speaker 3: first time he's ever been to court, he's had this
Speaker 3: belief system. He's been doing these behaviors for a long
Speaker 3: period of time.
Speaker 1: Well that's the thing, right, I mean, Statistically, most people
Speaker 1: who almost men who use violence in the household never
Speaker 1: spend time in prison. They never ever even face any
Speaker 1: repercussions for it. And the people who do end up
Speaker 1: in prison or do end up in these court mandated programs.
Speaker 1: The violence that they've used has to have been significant,
Speaker 1: has to have been something that was able to be
Speaker 1: proven in court, which often it can't be. It has
Speaker 1: to be some reasonable about absolutely so inforce that it's
Speaker 1: like an undeniable place. I guess my question is that
Speaker 1: you deal with the worst version of these abusers, do
Speaker 1: these programs work and is there a way of rehabilitating
Speaker 1: men who have such violent behaviors and such long systemic
Speaker 1: belief systems around the value of women.
Speaker 3: To your questions, both of you are really on the mark.
Speaker 3: I would say, well, I wouldn't be doing this work,
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't have been doing this work for twenty
Speaker 3: five years if I didn't carry a deep hope within
Speaker 3: me that men can change. These men can change high risk,
Speaker 3: high harm men can change under the right constraints, under
Speaker 3: the right context, under the right conditions. Now, whether we've
Speaker 3: got that constraint, context, and conditions in place at the moment,
Speaker 3: I'm not so sure about that. But if you're dealing
Speaker 3: with a man who has these entrenched beliefs and behaviors,
Speaker 3: if you're dealing with a man who's a serial abuser.
Speaker 3: If you're dealing with a man who has a long history,
Speaker 3: then obviously we need to go at this holistically. So
Speaker 3: he's got to have an intervention that's going to deal
Speaker 3: with his stopping of violence, stopping of abuse, stopping of
Speaker 3: coercive control. That's long term work. It's not a quick fix.
Speaker 3: It's not an easy solution. But he may have also,
Speaker 3: and not in all cases, but he may have mental
Speaker 3: health issues from potentially trauma that he's suffered in his life,
Speaker 3: so he may need that trauma addressed. He may have
Speaker 3: alcohol and drug issues that he's dealing with. He may
Speaker 3: need that addressed. He may have employment, housing problems. He
Speaker 3: may have a whole suite of problems which he needs
Speaker 3: addressed in it with a whole suite of interventions. So
Speaker 3: sticking a man in one program, let's say a men's
Speaker 3: stopping violence program, I don't call a men's behavior change programs.
Speaker 3: I don't like that terminology. Because you can change your
Speaker 3: behavior of courts and police are looking at you, and
Speaker 3: he might stop your overt physical abuse of your partner
Speaker 3: or your ex partner. But that doesn't mean she's not terrified. Still,
Speaker 3: she's not intimidated she's not living in fear because of
Speaker 3: the emotional violence, the verbal violence, the psychological violence, the
Speaker 3: coercive control can be very non physical that it can
Speaker 3: be extremely terrifying, and it can still be his tyrannical
Speaker 3: hold over her even without the physical So I don't
Speaker 3: call them behavior change. I think we need to go
Speaker 3: deeper than behavior. We need to be really delving into
Speaker 3: that deep belief system. So it will need a long
Speaker 3: term stopping violence program. You know, in Queensland they can
Speaker 3: range from between twelve sixteen twenty twenty six weeks. Is
Speaker 3: that long enough? I potentially don't believe, so I think
Speaker 3: you know, And certainly in America there's forty weeks, there's
Speaker 3: fifty two weeks, there's two year programs. So I would like,
Speaker 3: if I had my way, and if I had my
Speaker 3: power to change the system, I would love to see
Speaker 3: a high risk, high harm men do stopping violence program,
Speaker 3: do an abuse of Dad's program, do alcohol and drug interventions,
Speaker 3: and also do mental health interventions too if needed. So
Speaker 3: when you add all those programs up, it may actually
Speaker 3: take more than a year, and that's going to cost
Speaker 3: a lot, and it's going to require skilled personnel who
Speaker 3: can do that. I'm not sure about your neck of
Speaker 3: the woods, but we have trouble at times being able
Speaker 3: to staff men's intervention programs up here due to the
Speaker 3: location where they may not be skilled staff to do that.
Speaker 3: So there's lots of systemic barriers and blockages too that
Speaker 3: need to be addressed. So again, long story short, Yes,
Speaker 3: I believe these programs can be effective, but in and
Speaker 3: of themselves less so they need to be part of
Speaker 3: an integrated, coordinated community response to domestic violence and they're
Speaker 3: a very important component of that. But they're not a
Speaker 3: standalone They should never be a lone ranger program alone
Speaker 3: ranger solution. That's asking too much of it. It's got
Speaker 3: to be tied and tied tightly with other responses, other interventions,
Speaker 3: other work from outside that space too. So you know,
Speaker 3: program are good, but they also need to have individual
Speaker 3: work with these men. I believe.
Speaker 4: It's hard not to feel and I think the world
Speaker 4: right now off the back of Netflix, is feeling this
Speaker 4: collective sense of helplessness and despair and how we're ever
Speaker 4: going to change the system. And I think what adolescence
Speaker 4: did really well is highlight the fact that this is
Speaker 4: starting from childhood this is starting from adolescence and it's
Speaker 4: coming from and this was a very conscious decision that
Speaker 4: I really loved that they did. It came from a
Speaker 4: really stable home with loving parents that had had a
Speaker 4: marriage for twenty years. The dad was so respectful and
Speaker 4: so hard working and loved his children and gave them
Speaker 4: everything they needed. And this child ended up being a perpetrator.
Speaker 4: How are we supposed to do? And I know there's
Speaker 4: not an answer to this, but I don't have kids.
Speaker 4: And I finished that series and I was petrified to
Speaker 4: have a child. I was petrified to bring a child
Speaker 4: into this world now when it highlights that teachers cannot
Speaker 4: do anything at school anymore. And I read an article
Speaker 4: this morning in Australia that was saying, with the likes
Speaker 4: of the Andrew Tates and the Kanye West that are
Speaker 4: coming out with social media, the prevalence of social media,
Speaker 4: there are teachers saying I have never seen the disrespect,
Speaker 4: like from twelve years old that I have in the
Speaker 4: past couple of months. And they're like, we do not
Speaker 4: know what to do. How are we supposed to stop
Speaker 4: what is happening? I know we're supposed to say, well,
Speaker 4: it's all in education. But if teachers are throwing their
Speaker 4: hands up and saying I can't do anything because of
Speaker 4: these external sources like social media, what the hell are
Speaker 4: we supposed to do? And that's a bit of a
Speaker 4: rhetorical question because nobody has the answer, or we wouldn't know.
Speaker 4: But I feel like you've been in the industry for
Speaker 4: twenty five years, we have actively been working so hard
Speaker 4: towards trying to make change and trying to make a
Speaker 4: safer world for women, trying to educate, and we have
Speaker 4: gone backwards.
Speaker 2: This year.
Speaker 4: We have seen a high increase in domestic violence against
Speaker 4: women than we ever have before.
Speaker 2: What are we supposed to do?
Speaker 3: Again? The sixty four million dollar questions, isn't it? If
Speaker 3: I may, can I give some thoughts that I've had
Speaker 3: around this. Absolutely, there's been a pro to the federal
Speaker 3: government to have age restrictions on access to pornography. We
Speaker 3: don't have that. There are countries that do have that.
Speaker 3: So you know, a nine can twelve year old boy
Speaker 3: can access extreme violent porn and not can, but ah
Speaker 3: and do, and so I think we have to have
Speaker 3: restrictions there. There's women on Pornhub and other porn sites
Speaker 3: that are trafficked, that are drugged, that are abused, that
Speaker 3: are underage, and there's no check. You know, they say
Speaker 3: they have checks, they say they have assessments, but they're
Speaker 3: dealing with so much of this stuff and parents don't
Speaker 3: take responsibility. I mean parents, as you say, from hard working,
Speaker 3: long lasting relationships that seem stable on the outside. But
Speaker 3: I think there are parents who just say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I can't stop screen time. It's just out of control.
Speaker 3: If I stop it, he's going to she's going to
Speaker 3: be very upset and their behavior is going to deteriorate.
Speaker 3: So you know, it takes a concerted effort, right from
Speaker 3: our federal government to state governments, to local governments. And
Speaker 3: then I would love to see people doing parenting courses
Speaker 3: and learning how to monitor and manage and I guess
Speaker 3: rain screen time usin for young kids especially, And I
Speaker 3: know that's a hard task. It's almost like the horse
Speaker 3: has bolted. It's out there, it's gone. But you know,
Speaker 3: I don't believe that we can just throw our hands
Speaker 3: up and say, well, this is the world we live
Speaker 3: in now, this is what kids are. They're innocence, childhood's
Speaker 3: gone because of mobile phones and because of porn access.
Speaker 3: I don't want to live in a world like that
Speaker 3: because I don't think we've to tell you the truth.
Speaker 3: I don't think we've seen the worst of it. I
Speaker 3: don't think we've seen the full impact of how extreme
Speaker 3: pornography usage for a young mind, how that affects well,
Speaker 3: I think we're starting to see it, aren't we, how
Speaker 3: that affects a boy's brain development into full adulthood. And
Speaker 3: in terms of still coming from stable families. You're right,
Speaker 3: Brick to a identify the peer group can be very,
Speaker 3: very influential, especially at that early teenage time when boys
Speaker 3: want to fit in, when boys don't want to be different,
Speaker 3: when boys can be shamed because you know, he was
Speaker 3: a thirteen year old boy who was mocked because he
Speaker 3: was a virgin in that adolescent show. So I think, parents, really,
Speaker 3: and it's highlighting we need to be having conversations with
Speaker 3: our children about sex, about sexuality, about masculinity, about all
Speaker 3: of that. Well before I mean, I know, when I
Speaker 3: was a boy, it didn't happen. It didn't happen. I
Speaker 3: remember coming home once and Mum, and to her credit,
Speaker 3: she left some brochure on my bed. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: think I was about seventeen at the time.
Speaker 2: You're like too late month, you know, Brian. We had
Speaker 2: a situation. We spoke about it on the podcast last year.
Speaker 1: It was I was away on holiday with my two
Speaker 1: little girls and they were sitting next to me and
Speaker 1: they were doing an activity on the phone. We're on
Speaker 1: a boat at the time, going on like a day
Speaker 1: snorkel or something, and they were on my phone doing
Speaker 1: a coloring inactivity, and I could see that someone was
Speaker 1: trying to air drop something to the phone. I just
Speaker 1: I didn't even think I had air drop on and
Speaker 1: there was a group of young boys they would have
Speaker 1: been about nine years old, and I took the phone
Speaker 1: off my three year old and I was like, what's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: Who's air dropping?
Speaker 1: I thought for a second my husband was air dropping
Speaker 1: something to me, so I accepted it. And this little
Speaker 1: boy sitting across from us, this group of them laughing
Speaker 1: about it was sending hardcore porn to people on the boat.
Speaker 1: And we went and approached the parents and we spoke
Speaker 1: to them and said, you know, we told them what
Speaker 1: was happening. Firstly, they got super defensive and were like,
Speaker 1: how do you know it's my children doing that?
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, look at them.
Speaker 1: They're sitting there laughing and looking over to see who's
Speaker 1: received the air drop. But it was the defensiveness and
Speaker 1: the lack of accountability from that family that was truly shocking.
Speaker 1: And the thing to me, I was like, and the
Speaker 1: dad very much said, oh, you know, boys will be boys,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you were creating boys who think
Speaker 1: that this is normal, and they lent nature of the
Speaker 1: pawn that they were air dropping to me was horrifying
Speaker 1: that someone that young would have any exposure to it
Speaker 1: or any understanding, let alone think it's funny. So I
Speaker 1: really deeply understand what it is that you're saying. And
Speaker 1: as much as as parents we don't want to think
Speaker 1: that we could be producing or contributing this. There has
Speaker 1: to be this deeper connection that we have with our
Speaker 1: kids and knowing what it is that they're consuming and
Speaker 1: who they are becoming. I do have a question for
Speaker 1: you in terms of what has been reported recently. This
Speaker 1: is something that was discussed on There's No Place Like Home.
Speaker 1: In the last four years, Victoria Police revealed that there
Speaker 1: was more reports about former partners than current ones.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that this is the case.
Speaker 1: You know, why is it that people are either more
Speaker 1: scared of their former partners or more willing to report
Speaker 1: what's going on with them than what it is with
Speaker 1: their own current partners that might be equally as violent.
Speaker 3: The fact is, when you're an ex partner, he's lost
Speaker 3: control if he has that, and these men do have
Speaker 3: that sense of sexual possessiveness that you're my sexual property.
Speaker 3: You don't get to leave, you don't make that call
Speaker 3: your mind. So when a woman doesn't comply, when a
Speaker 3: woman fights back. You know, even in this context, the
Speaker 3: word separation sounds so civilized, doesn't it to me? And
Speaker 3: in my experience and in talking to victim survivors, separation
Speaker 3: is actually escape. It's fleeing. It's not some sort of
Speaker 3: mutual decision that we, well, when this isn't working out,
Speaker 3: we don't want to be together. There's no mutuality there.
Speaker 3: She's trying to stay safe, she's trying to stay low,
Speaker 3: she's not putting up with this horrendous behavior anymore. And
Speaker 3: she's resisting, she's reacting, and she's not only fighting against
Speaker 3: his violence, she's fighting for her life. And we know
Speaker 3: that not only post separation abuse increases at that time,
Speaker 3: because separation doesn't equal safety. And I'm on the Domestic
Speaker 3: Family Violence Fatality View Committee up here in Queensland, which
Speaker 3: is out of the Coroner's office. We know that the
Speaker 3: majority of fatalities happened post separation. So that's why the
Speaker 3: escalation occurs. He's losing control, he's trying to bring back
Speaker 3: control and this is not a relationship for him. This
Speaker 3: is a war. This is a war. He's got a win.
Speaker 3: That's the script. Males win, females lose. So that's why
Speaker 3: I think we have family annihilations where the man will
Speaker 3: kill her and the children and then take his own
Speaker 3: life in many cases because if I can't have you,
Speaker 3: no one else can, and I'll have you in death.
Speaker 3: That's my final act of definitive control over you is
Speaker 3: to kill you and then to kill myself.
Speaker 1: Do you think you know in all your experience, Often,
Speaker 1: and you see this in media and how domestic violence
Speaker 1: is reported on, there is this sense that it is
Speaker 1: a man who's lost control. They were so bereft by
Speaker 1: losing their family or the grief, and as you've said,
Speaker 1: this villainizing of the woman who has left that it's
Speaker 1: often communicated in a way that infers that the man
Speaker 1: had a snap of reality and lost control in your experience,
Speaker 1: is that the case, or is this violence so premeditated
Speaker 1: and predetermined and it is a very conscious decision to
Speaker 1: try and enact the most violent and revengeful acts that
Speaker 1: can possibly be done.
Speaker 3: Twig snap, branch's snap, rice, bubbles, snap, crackle, and pop.
Speaker 3: Human adults don't snap. They make decisions. And while they
Speaker 3: might use that excuse or that language, you know, I
Speaker 3: saw read, I snapped, I exploded.
Speaker 4: She pushed my buttons, something came over me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, the devil made me do it.
Speaker 3: These are all ways of obfiscating the fact that he's
Speaker 3: making decision after decision after decision. These are very controlling men.
Speaker 3: These are not men out of control. This violence, this
Speaker 3: is not accidental. It's not random, it's not isolated. It's deliberate,
Speaker 3: it's strategic, it's purposeful, and it's planned. There were some
Speaker 3: research done some years ago, and while there's been you know,
Speaker 3: maybe some conjecture around this research, to me, it still
Speaker 3: makes sense to a degree. Jacobson and Gotman did this
Speaker 3: research in the nineties where they wired violent men up
Speaker 3: and they looked at their physiological reactions, so brain waves
Speaker 3: and blood pressure and skin galvanic skin responses and heart
Speaker 3: rates and all that sort of physiological reactions. And they
Speaker 3: showed men violent episodes of violent scenes against women, and
Speaker 3: they broadly categorized there being two kinds. One was kind
Speaker 3: of impulsive and loud and aggressive and in your face
Speaker 3: and almost impulsive, and they call those the pit bulls
Speaker 3: and the other kind and their heart rates apparently dropped
Speaker 3: and they became very cool and very calm and very calculated,
Speaker 3: and they call them cobras. And you know, you can
Speaker 3: guess which ones are the most dangerous. And so I think,
Speaker 3: you know, for our high risk, high harm guys, they
Speaker 3: tend to be the cobras. They tend to be the
Speaker 3: very very purposeful, very deliberate, very strategic use of behavior
Speaker 3: and words and actions. You know, I remember working with one.
Speaker 3: This happened in a court where the magistrate wasn't looking,
Speaker 3: and she was in the court with him, and when
Speaker 3: the magistrate looked away, this man just went cross at hurt.
Speaker 3: No one saw it but her and the DV workers
Speaker 3: of course too. So that isn't accidental, that's very deliberate.
Speaker 3: He picked his moment when the magistrate was distracted doing
Speaker 3: something else and he made that sign to her, and
Speaker 3: obviously she knew what that meant. And one thing I
Speaker 3: have learned is you take threats seriously. That's not just
Speaker 3: a man who's ranting and raving and who's angry at
Speaker 3: being in court because of her calling the police and
Speaker 3: him getting a devo and him breaching a devo. That's
Speaker 3: a man with planned intentionality. To do a sign like
Speaker 3: that is a death threat. So I would believe that
Speaker 3: he would be a very dangerous character. That man would
Speaker 3: need very close containment and constrainment. And I talk about
Speaker 3: the lethal essays. One of them I'm adding to that
Speaker 3: now is sending a message. When a man sends a message,
Speaker 3: whether it be subtle, covert, or whether it's quite overt
Speaker 3: and obvious, we need to believe that he means business.
Speaker 3: He is not just blowing off steam, or he's not
Speaker 3: just in some form of rage. He's actually sending a message.
Speaker 3: And again, through the fatality review committees, not just in
Speaker 3: Queensland but around Australia, we know that men before they
Speaker 3: will commit murder do send some kind of message.
Speaker 2: The essays that you speak of, I've got them.
Speaker 1: Here there's separation, stalking, sexual violence, strangulation, and suicidality. Why
Speaker 1: were these so important and how are these indicators of
Speaker 1: such extreme violence?
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know, again, the research around men
Speaker 3: who commit murder, domestic violence murders has shown that those
Speaker 3: ESS's are prevalent prior to the murder. There's a number
Speaker 3: of people who've done that research. So those lethal ESS's
Speaker 3: tend to be prevalent in many cases. And if you
Speaker 3: see them in a report of a man, and you
Speaker 3: can see an accumulation of these essays, well that means
Speaker 3: our systemic response should be ramped up very very quickly,
Speaker 3: very urgently to contain that man and to keep that
Speaker 3: victim safe. So they're really essential part of risk assessment
Speaker 3: and risk management. And if we want to keep women
Speaker 3: alive and we want to stop these men from murdering women,
Speaker 3: then we have to pay very close attention to those
Speaker 3: risk factors.
Speaker 1: Why is the system when you speak about that, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are so many parts of this, there's so many precautions,
Speaker 1: and there's so many evident signs that would indicate that
Speaker 1: someone could be a very violent perpetrator. Why is the
Speaker 1: system failing women so repetitively and so fundamentally.
Speaker 3: Again, if I had any power or any sway in
Speaker 3: this response, I would want to see a system overhaul.
Speaker 3: I would want to see courts and lawyers better trained
Speaker 3: in understanding perpetrators behavior and intentionality. I would love to
Speaker 3: see courts and lawyers and police better trained in understanding
Speaker 3: victim responses, so that a woman who might view force
Speaker 3: herself that's a trauma response. Remember we talk about freeze,
Speaker 3: flight and fight and form, those sort of responses to trauma,
Speaker 3: and yet when a woman fights back, she can be
Speaker 3: misidentified as a perpetrator. So we seem to forget that
Speaker 3: fighting back is a trauma response. And when women fight back,
Speaker 3: that's not abuse, that's a reactive resistant force to the
Speaker 3: male violence, the abuse of violence. So you know, identifying
Speaker 3: a woman as a perpetrator actually makes her far more
Speaker 3: at risk of his violence. And very sadly not so
Speaker 3: low ago in Queensland we had eight Indigenous women killed,
Speaker 3: and each of those women that year had been identified
Speaker 3: as a perpetrator. But each of those women had been
Speaker 3: hospitalized from his violence. None of the men had been hospitalized,
Speaker 3: and yet each of those women ended up dead. Terrifying
Speaker 3: isn't it It is? You know, when you get courts
Speaker 3: who've identified their court lists, who've identified accord to a
Speaker 3: third I've seen in Queensland some courts this is four
Speaker 3: or five years ago. I think the numbers have improved somewhat.
Speaker 3: But when I saw those court lifts lists and there
Speaker 3: was thirty percent twenty five percent of perpetrators respondents they're
Speaker 3: called in Queensland identified were women, then we know we've
Speaker 3: got misidentification happening there and we need to increase the training.
Speaker 3: So if I had my way, it'd be a far
Speaker 3: more focused and well trained understanding of domestic violence, effects
Speaker 3: on the victim and strategies of offenders, and then far
Speaker 3: more consequences for non compliance for the offender. When I
Speaker 3: worked with men in group and they've been court ordered
Speaker 3: and they turn up two or three times and then
Speaker 3: they don't front anymore, I'll report that to the court.
Speaker 3: This bloke's being court ordered. He was here for what
Speaker 3: was going to be something like forty hours of intervention
Speaker 3: and he's ended up doing doing six or seven and
Speaker 3: he's not here anymore. Then there doesn't seem to be
Speaker 3: any response to that. There's no consequence for his non compliance,
Speaker 3: so he knows he can get away with it. So
Speaker 3: until men realize that they can't get away with this,
Speaker 3: that there are going to be consequences. So it's going
Speaker 3: to be I think a really wholesale reappraisal of our
Speaker 3: approach to victim survivors and to domestic violence offenders if
Speaker 3: we want to change the statistics with misidentification.
Speaker 1: In your experience, do you think that there is a
Speaker 1: skewed racial element to this, because it does seem as though,
Speaker 1: and in so many stories that we have heard and
Speaker 1: we've spoken about at different times, that Indigenous women are
Speaker 1: more inclined to be booked as a perpetrator or seen
Speaker 1: as a perpetrator than what a white woman would be
Speaker 1: if they were the victim of domestic violence.
Speaker 3: I think that's what the research would suggest. Yes, absolutely, Again,
Speaker 3: that means more training, more understanding of way in Indigenous
Speaker 3: women might use force more so than someone from a
Speaker 3: different racial background. I was talking to people who work
Speaker 3: in Indigenous communities and the complexity of the violence and
Speaker 3: the lateral violence and the context of the violence there
Speaker 3: is culturally different, and I think police courts and non
Speaker 3: indigenous workers on those communities need to have a very
Speaker 3: nuanced understanding of that before working in those spaces.
Speaker 4: But when we talked before about how we can go
Speaker 4: about change and what are we going to do, like
Speaker 4: what are we going to actually put in place, and
Speaker 4: how we do feel helpless? I want to link this
Speaker 4: because I think for everybody, I think it's a really,
Speaker 4: really great example. There's a Scottish comedian, his name's Daniel Sloss,
Speaker 4: and at one of his shows he did a whole
Speaker 4: piece at the end, very very seriously on rape and
Speaker 4: how the issue and the change needs to come from men.
Speaker 4: Obviously there's plenty of male perpetrators, but there's plenty of
Speaker 4: amazing men to women are doing everything they can, screaming
Speaker 4: out and doing absolutely everything to instill change, but the
Speaker 4: real change has to come from other good men speaking out.
Speaker 4: And he does this whole piece on how he blames
Speaker 4: himself for somebody he knows, like his friend raping a woman.
Speaker 4: He completely owns the fact and says, I didn't know
Speaker 4: he was a rapist, but I saw the signs over
Speaker 4: the years, all those deadly essas that you spoke about.
Speaker 4: He's like, as a friend, there were things that were
Speaker 4: said that weren't right. There were signs that I saw
Speaker 4: that I ignored because I was a man that didn't
Speaker 4: want to speak up. And his message is men are
Speaker 4: the ones that need, like the good men are the
Speaker 4: ones that need to be having these conversations in their
Speaker 4: male circles. And sometimes I think, as much as we
Speaker 4: have these reforms and these changes in these programs, which
Speaker 4: we absolutely need, we need to be encouraging our husbands
Speaker 4: to be having these conversations with their friends and our
Speaker 4: sons to be having these conversations with their friends, because
Speaker 4: they're the people that are going to actually instill the change.
Speaker 4: It's not the women that are saying, please don't rape me.
Speaker 4: That's that's not what's going to change anything.
Speaker 3: Absolutely right. You know, the number of men who are
Speaker 3: abusive who have access or get access to an intervention
Speaker 3: program is a drop in the ocean. I'll just cite
Speaker 3: some figures here, their ballpark figures. In Queensland last year,
Speaker 3: I believe that we had something like sixty five thousand
Speaker 3: domestic violence orders issued. We had something like forty five
Speaker 3: thousand breaches of domestic violence orders. And when an order
Speaker 3: is breached in Queensland, it becomes a criminal offense. So
Speaker 3: it moves from the civil code into the criminal code,
Speaker 3: So breaching a DV order is a criminal offense. Forty
Speaker 3: five thousand. Now, I can't accurately ascertain how many men
Speaker 3: start a domestic violence intervention group, start, not finish, because
Speaker 3: we know there's an attrition rate to those groups. But
Speaker 3: I would estimate maybe fifteen hundred men. But you can
Speaker 3: see the disparity between the forty five thousand breaches, and
Speaker 3: we know who these breaches are because that's the criminal offense,
Speaker 3: and then the number who actually get an intervention for transformation,
Speaker 3: for rehabilitation, for change. So we can't rely just on
Speaker 3: a small men's intervention program to solve the whole problem.
Speaker 3: That's not going to happen, not at this point in time.
Speaker 3: So you're right. I think good respectful men who've done
Speaker 3: their own work, who won't collude, who won't exonerate, who
Speaker 3: won't turn a blind eye to the disrespect and abusive
Speaker 3: ways of other men, we really need to call on
Speaker 3: that resource. And it's not easy because you know, often
Speaker 3: men find it difficult to stand up to other men
Speaker 3: because men tend to police each other. You know about
Speaker 3: what you can do and what you can't do, you know,
Speaker 3: the man box, of course. So it takes a man
Speaker 3: who's not willing to be contained in that man box,
Speaker 3: who's not willing to put his head in the sand
Speaker 3: or turn a blind eye or turn his back on
Speaker 3: disrespectful behavior from another man, and to stand up and
Speaker 3: be who he should be as a good respectful man
Speaker 3: and call it. We need to really focus on that.
Speaker 3: And I think, as you say, that's got to come
Speaker 3: from a male community. That's got it comes from men's groups,
Speaker 3: and not men's rights groups, but from men who understand
Speaker 3: that this is unjust, this should not be happening.
Speaker 1: Brian, what you just mentioned said that domestic violence case
Speaker 1: can turn from being a civil case to a criminal case.
Speaker 1: What would constitute a breach to change it to a
Speaker 1: criminal case?
Speaker 3: Any breach, Any breach should mean officially, and it is
Speaker 3: officially a criminal act. So case in point, a man
Speaker 3: I worked with texted his partner and phoned his partner
Speaker 3: multiple times over one weekend when there was a no
Speaker 3: contact order. So let's say he did it two hundred times.
Speaker 3: Theoretically that's two hundred breaches. Action should have been taken,
Speaker 3: but it was a no contact order. Oh, he just
Speaker 3: breached by contacting her when he shouldn't. That's technically a breach.
Speaker 3: You know, I've heard that term use a technical breach.
Speaker 3: No such thing is a technical breach. Is a breach?
Speaker 3: Is a breach? No action was taken. Next breach this
Speaker 3: man committed. He turned up drunk on her doorstep, bashing
Speaker 3: on the door. She was hiding in fear inside. Eventually
Speaker 3: he left. She reported that breach, no action taken.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 3: Third breach, very hot evening in Queensland. Security door locked,
Speaker 3: the doggy door left open. He was a small guy.
Speaker 3: He squeezed through the doggy door and he was at
Speaker 3: the end of her bed at two am in the morning.
Speaker 3: Third breach. So you can see an escalation there. When
Speaker 3: we don't react, when we don't respond to the initial breach,
Speaker 3: he's going to see how far he can go. Each
Speaker 3: of those breaches was an escalation to the previous breach.
Speaker 3: So you know, we need to have swift and certain
Speaker 3: consequences for breaches of behavior, for any non compliance.
Speaker 1: But my question to that is, why is it that
Speaker 1: we see domestic violence as a civil case, whereas if
Speaker 1: someone was to do this to someone who they weren't
Speaker 1: in a romantic relationship with Like if I was to
Speaker 1: harass someone with two hundred phone calls after physically abusing them,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't ever be a civil case. That would be
Speaker 1: a criminal case to start with. If I broke into
Speaker 1: someone's house, if I showed up on their door drunk,
Speaker 1: smashing on the door, like breaking into We treat domestic
Speaker 1: violence cases as though they are not as violent, or
Speaker 1: that they are more acceptable than what we would if
Speaker 1: it was a stranger and it wasn't an intimate partner relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do, that is true. I agree with you completely, Laura.
Speaker 3: But having said that, we have other laws. We have
Speaker 3: stalking legislation, we have torture legislation, we have deprivation of
Speaker 3: liberty legislation, we have non lethal strangulation legislation here in Queensland.
Speaker 3: We've got other legislative acts that we could respond to
Speaker 3: his behavior with other than just the domestic violence legislation.
Speaker 3: So my question is, with all these legislation, why aren't
Speaker 3: we able to contain these men better? And my only
Speaker 3: concern with the making DV legislation criminal behavior, as you
Speaker 3: write so rightly say, when we have misidentification of women
Speaker 3: and she's identified as an offender, does she get criminalized
Speaker 3: because of that behavior? So I think we need to
Speaker 3: be very very cautious and careful about that. I agree
Speaker 3: with you. I agree that it is criminal behavior, and
Speaker 3: I agree that we need to respond better than we're
Speaker 3: doing to contain his abusiveness. But it's part of that
Speaker 3: unintended consequences sometimes conversation that we need to have around
Speaker 3: how this may impact on her. I agree totally with you, though,
Speaker 3: I think if it's criminal behavior initially, and if it's
Speaker 3: done right, an investigation clearly identifies him as the abuser,
Speaker 3: then maybe her safety is a should more quickly, more urgently,
Speaker 3: more comprehensively than if we leave it under the civil code.
Speaker 1: I would really love to know as well. How is
Speaker 1: it the perpetrators weaponize children in these sorts of situations
Speaker 1: when a woman leaves and they take their kids with them,
Speaker 1: and they try to protect their kids, which is usually the.
Speaker 2: Main priority for mums.
Speaker 1: What is it and how is it that men are
Speaker 1: able to use the children in order to gain access
Speaker 1: and to further terrorize the women who have left.
Speaker 3: Men will weaponize anything and everything. They weaponize courts, they
Speaker 3: weaponize children, They weaponize their own sons are radicalized very
Speaker 3: often to committing horemendous behavior against the mother. So the
Speaker 3: use of children is particularly horrific, I think, because it
Speaker 3: just continues and lengthens the time of abuse that children
Speaker 3: have to experience. You know, there's awful cases of fathers
Speaker 3: giving access to children when the clear indications were that
Speaker 3: this was a sexual predator, this was a dangerous a
Speaker 3: dangerous man, and yet all that was overlooked because men
Speaker 3: have a right, their right to fatherhood because they fathered
Speaker 3: this child. Men will get access to kids through courts
Speaker 3: and then they've won the battle. And so she hasn't
Speaker 3: been able to protect these children as she wants to.
Speaker 3: The court has dismissed their right to safety virtually in cases,
Speaker 3: and children become just another means to get back to punish,
Speaker 3: to have revenge against the partner for having the temerity
Speaker 3: to want to live in safety from his violence. You know,
Speaker 3: I remember I was talking about weapons and what weapons
Speaker 3: men had at home in a group one night. Some
Speaker 3: of these men were living on properties where they had
Speaker 3: access to guns, of course, and use guns as part
Speaker 3: of their lifestyle, their livelihoods. You know, the discussion became
Speaker 3: around men who use crossbows for hunting on these properties
Speaker 3: and hunting knives. And then one man just very clearly
Speaker 3: and very calmly cut across the conversation and said, Brian,
Speaker 3: you know what, I can use anything I want as
Speaker 3: a weapon. And I thought, you are being very honest
Speaker 3: and very truthful. And the truth he was talking about
Speaker 3: was kitchen knives or chairs or tools at home. But
Speaker 3: the reality is that he's not only talking about implements
Speaker 3: in the home. He's talking about courts, is talking about police,
Speaker 3: is talking about school. He can use anything as a
Speaker 3: weapon in his strategy of coercive control to create misery
Speaker 3: and to increase his tyranny over this woman's life.
Speaker 2: Absolutely petrifying is what it is.
Speaker 3: It's petrifying, absolutely.
Speaker 1: But it also, I mean, it's such an almost depressing
Speaker 1: conversation to have because everything that we've spoken about comes
Speaker 1: back to this idea that the systems in place they're
Speaker 1: not protecting victims. The systems in place are broken, they
Speaker 1: don't work, and there needs to be a radical overhaul
Speaker 1: of how we manage and take care of victim survivors,
Speaker 1: but also how we punish, rehabilitate. What it is that
Speaker 1: we do for perpetrators as well. It seems like the
Speaker 1: system itself is fundamentally broken and there isn't a way
Speaker 1: out of this yet, and how is it going to
Speaker 1: be fixed?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's a conversation we need to have
Speaker 3: nationally with politicians, with academics, with practitioners, with people with
Speaker 3: lived experience with children. And it's not about having another
Speaker 3: report or another investigation. It's got to actually lead to
Speaker 3: what you're calling a systemic overhaul. When we know the
Speaker 3: risks of fatalities that high risk high harm perpetrators have,
Speaker 3: we need to have some kind of task force within
Speaker 3: the police that deals specifically with high risk high harm
Speaker 3: domestic violence offenders. And I know there are certain areas
Speaker 3: which are moving potentially towards that. I think we need
Speaker 3: to have what's called focus to terrans in our police force,
Speaker 3: where we focus on the highest risk HALM guys, and
Speaker 3: then we have other levels of intervention for men who
Speaker 3: may not be at that stage as imminent a risk
Speaker 3: as the high risk I harm. I think we've got
Speaker 3: to really focus on the early intervention that we were
Speaker 3: talking about before, in terms of young boys, young girls
Speaker 3: access to social media. What are we doing in our
Speaker 3: schools in terms of respectful relationships. And let's also remember
Speaker 3: that schools are there to educate and to socialize our children,
Speaker 3: but they can't do at all. I think we need
Speaker 3: to have parental programs which are teaching parents how to
Speaker 3: be maybe more engaged, more involved in their children's lives,
Speaker 3: and not to shrug their shoulders and give up parenting
Speaker 3: for mobile phones or for social media. I think courts,
Speaker 3: as I said previously, need to be far more nuanced
Speaker 3: in their understanding and be far more trauma informed about
Speaker 3: the effect of trauma on women and children, far more
Speaker 3: nuanced in understanding the tactics and how perpetrators manipulate courts
Speaker 3: too and weaponize courts and call that and see through that.
Speaker 3: So it's got to be a multi leveled approach. It's
Speaker 3: going to take a lot of personnel, a lot of resources.
Speaker 3: You know, people sort of governmental levels cry poor often
Speaker 3: that there's not enough money to do this. Well, if
Speaker 3: we prioritize and value the lives of women and children,
Speaker 3: and let's remember it's not only women we want to
Speaker 3: keep safe. It's the next generation. It's the potential perpetrators
Speaker 3: who are growing up now, the potential victims who are
Speaker 3: growing up now that we want to block or disrupt
Speaker 3: that pathway to being a perpetrator or that pathway that
Speaker 3: may lead to being a victim survivor. I want to
Speaker 3: interrupt that in ways that are going to keep people
Speaker 3: healthy and safe. It's a wicked problem, and wicked problems
Speaker 3: have to be addressed at multiple levels. I don't believe you, know,
Speaker 3: as some people do, that this can be defeated within
Speaker 3: a generation. I'm sorry, I just don't see that happening.
Speaker 3: I don't think that understands the nature of the problem
Speaker 3: we're dealing with. Really, I don't want to be a
Speaker 3: pessimist or appear to be negative, but I think when
Speaker 3: we deal with this wicked problem, we have to be
Speaker 3: realistic and we have to throw the resources that are
Speaker 3: needed at it. But understand that this is going to
Speaker 3: take time.
Speaker 1: Brian, thank you for coming and for being a part
Speaker 1: of the podcast and having what is such an important conversation,
Speaker 1: and for all the work that you do in trying
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate, trying to enact reform. Yeah, it really is
Speaker 1: such It's such a hard conversation to have because it
Speaker 1: does as we just kind of landed on it does
Speaker 1: feel as though change is not happening fast enough. But
Speaker 1: we so deeply appreciate you being a part of the
Speaker 1: pod and everything that you're doing to try and make
Speaker 1: that happen.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks to your word too, Laura and brit because
Speaker 3: I think podcasts are a way of hopefully, you know,
Speaker 3: people may learn something. I'm only one voice, so I
Speaker 3: realize that. But when people listen to podcasts that talk
Speaker 3: about this awful reality, the impossible lives that some women
Speaker 3: are living, hopefully it deepens their awareness. They're understanding, and
Speaker 3: who knows, it may actually instill a motivation to be
Speaker 3: able to do something about it in their neck of
Speaker 3: the woods, in their family, in their area. They may
Speaker 3: be able to speak up and shine a light on
Speaker 3: where it needs to be shone. So you're part of
Speaker 3: the community responds too. So the work you do is
Speaker 3: valuable and valued. So thank you very much and for
Speaker 3: the invitation to be here today.
Speaker 4: These are definitely the conversations. You say, you're only one
Speaker 4: voice and we're only one podcast, but they are the
Speaker 4: conversations that could potentially save a life, and if they
Speaker 4: do save one life, then that's what matters. So thank
Speaker 4: you so much brain.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the con the Cobany, the conta, my membay, b