The Culture of Cool

GETTING IN EARLY TO PREVENT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Alison Towns
Mt Albert Psychological Services Ltd
and
Hazel Scott
Inner City Women’s Group
June 2008

Topic Area: Intimate partner abuse, Adolescents, Young persons, Prevention/intervention/treatment

Report Summary:

The underlying thesis of this project is that men’s violence towards women is preventable. This study aims to identify the social and cultural values and beliefs that inform ownership practices and in doing so increase the possibilities for preventing men’s violence towards women by bringing the language, values and beliefs that support ownership practices out of the unspoken realm and into conscious awareness. When the language, values and beliefs that inform ownership practices are made overt, the history of them, the impact of them and the behavioural trajectories of them are open to critical appraisal. These appraisals open up possibilities for resistance. If young people are more informed about these practices they will be more able to resist them in their own relationships.

 

Accountability, natural justice and safety:
the Protection Order Pilot Study (POPS)
of the Domestic Violence Act 1995

 

New Zealand Family Law Journal 5(7) 2006: 157-168
Publisher: Lexis Nexis, Wellington, 2006

Alison Towns
Mt Albert Psychological Services Ltd
and
Hazel Scott
Inner City Women’s Group

Topic Areas: Intimate partner abuse, Women, Perpetrators/offenders, Victims/survivors, Justice, Protection orders, Care and contact, Legislation, Gender, Policy, Prevention/intervention/treatment, Cultural and professional practice

Report Summary:

This article provides findings from a research project investigating concerns around the way the Domestic Violence Act (1995) is being implemented, in particular, the difficulty victims experience in obtaining temporary protection orders and legal protection from psychological abuse. The researchers utilise justice statistics and a discourse analysis of interviews with 10 informants working in the area of family violence, including court staff, police, and community workers.
 

The practices of dominance and entitlement that emerge from social and cultural pressures can no longer be considered “natural” or “just the way things are” for men and women. Young people’s actions in relationships become informed conscious choices. The intention of this research is that the knowledge uncovered can be employed to construct new curricula in schools and to inform existing curricula which work towards the early intervention and the prevention of domestic violence. It is hoped that these curricula will involve critically reflecting on our cultural heritage - questioning historical and current media representations and other institutional practices that promote ways of being which work against ethical and just behaviour in boyfriend/girlfriend relationships - and promoting egalitarian relationships which appear to protect women from men’s domestic violence. This research demonstrates that qualitative research of this nature can provide important knowledge about the relationship between culture and violence and can usefully inform early intervention and prevention practices.























They discuss two key themes drawn from the interviews: perpetrator accountability, and human rights issues. Perpetrators of violence are not always being held to account for their violence, particularly due to the failure to follow-up perpetrators’ non-attendance at mandated stopping violence programmes, and police not prosecuting other breaches of protection orders. Furthermore, the researchers assert that due to many reasons (including costs, variability of decisions made by judges, and inadequate court resourcing), legal protection from domestic violence is now less accessible to female victims. A focus on men’s right to natural justice (their right to answer allegations made against them) means that women’s human rights to safety and protection are being violated.