Violent men should be the ones to leave the family home, Judge tells TVNZ’s Q+A this morning
 
Former Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier questions the need to have women and children leaving a violent family home. Judge Boshier says Gisborne is one of the few places in the country with a house set up, a ‘man stop’, for violent men to take time out.
 
“One of my points is if men are violent, why should it be the women that have to leave?  I cannot see what the rationale or wisdom of that is, and so I think a place where men can go and talk about what’s going on in their lives and how they might change might be a very very constructive thing,” he said on Q+A this morning.
 
Judge Boshier, chair of the White Ribbon campaign, renewed his call for a domestic violence to be an offence under that name.
 
“My point on this is that if you are a drink-driver, you get charged with drink-driving.  You’re branded – you are a drink-driver, and you have to be accountable for that.  But not so, and I cannot understand or fathom this— with violence, there is no offence of domestic violence.
 
“I would like, when I see someone’s list of previous convictions, to be able to see that they have assaulted a woman, a partner, maybe more than one over a period of years and that it’s been domestic.  At the moment, I don’t know.”
 
The Judge is looking for change on three fronts in relation to domestic violence: Attitudinal change: “We’ve managed to do this with drink-driving.  We’ve managed to do it with smoking.  We can do it with family violence, and we’ve seen some top rugby players beginning to come out and acknowledge.” He wants more options for women, and more work done on making men accountable, acknowledging their violence and making change.
 
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Q + A
SUSAN WOOD INTERVIEWS PETER BOSHIER
           
SUSAN          A very good morning to you.
 
JUDGE PETER BOSHIER – Former Principal Family Court Judge
                        Good morning.
 
SUSAN          This campaign is about men speaking to other men.  Is there any evidence that men are listening – that there is less family violence?
 
PETER          Well, I think what we’re doing is beginning to talk about it much more.  Unfortunately, only about 20% of family violence ever surfaces.  There’s an enormous, enormous amount that hasn’t been talked about, so one of the real—
           
SUSAN          How did you get that number?  That’s a huge amount we are not talking about.
 
PETER          It is.  It is a huge amount.  Well, people are often unwilling to seek help.  They feel locked in, they feel unable to share it, so one of the real purposes of White Ribbon is to flush it out and to get people talking about it.
 
SUSAN          But you’re talking to the men, and so often in these cases we are talking about, generally here, women as the victims of it, and the trouble is they are tied up.  They are tied with children; they are tied up economically, aren’t they, so often?  How do you break that?  How do you get these women to speak out?
 
PETER          Well, I think there are three things – three things that I would focus on for change in New Zealand.  And first of all, it’s attitudinal change.  We’ve managed to do this with drink-driving.  We’ve managed to do it with smoking.  We can do it with family violence, and we’ve seen some top rugby players beginning to come out and acknowledge.  The second thing is we’ve got to give women other options.  We’ve got to enable them to feel that there is something that they can do and somewhere they can go.
 
SUSAN          And what are those sort of options?  I know we’ll get to the third one, but what sort of things specifically do you need to give women?
 
PETER          I think there are two things.  The first is if you’re in a violent relationship, you can’t just go back to it once the person who’s perpetrated the violence has been arrested, otherwise the thing goes round and round in circles.  And the poor children, just like the Once Were Warriors situation, are huddled, listening to their parents fighting.  So we’ve got to give women, first of all, somewhere to go, secondly, to empower them to make and force change.
           
SUSAN          And the third point?  So we’ve got a chance in attitude, something for women to do, and what’s your third point?
 
PETER          Well, the third thing, and we’re beginning to see it more and more, is men being accountable, talking, acknowledging and making change.  And we have seen— We have seen men who have been violent in the past who have come out and said, ‘I no longer want to be violent,’ so we’re beginning to get men talking about it.
 
SUSAN          So they can change?  At the moment, probably a 20-week course is the best you’ll get.  Is it enough to get what is possibly ingrained behaviour changed?
 
PETER          It is not enough, and in legislation that is coming through to reform the Family Court, one of the good things about that legislation is enhanced programmes – broader, more customised.  Look, violence varies, Susan, as you probably know.  Some is contextual – it happens as a result of a marriage break-up.  Other is lethal.  We have men who are virtually pathological, and one 20-week programme isn’t enough.  They may need a programme stretching over years.
 
SUSAN          Across society— We have heard often that domestic violence is right across society.  Is that your experience?
 
PETER          Yes.
           
SUSAN          It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor in Remuera or whatever – it’s right across?
 
PETER          It is, and don’t forget that family violence isn’t just punching and kicking.  It is often much more insidious, and the control – the psychological violence which there is out there – is just as bad as the physical.
 
SUSAN          Do you see that?  Did you see that in your job – the psychological violence?
 
PETER          I listened at times to voice recordings on answerphones which women had had in the Family Court and I had access to the recordings that men had made.  It’s terrible stuff.  And the other thing we’re beginning to see more and more is the text messaging and the use of emails.  So now everyone’s pretty marked – if you sent a bad text message, the chances are it’ll surface.  And some of the melancholic, awful, intimidating text messaging, often during the night, now is beginning to surface.
 
SUSAN          This week, interestingly, Professor Greg Newbold from the University of Canterbury came out saying that Maori are overrepresented in many of the bad statistics in this country, as we know, sadly.  He was blaming the warrior culture and patriarchal culture of Maori for domestic violence.  Do you buy that argument?
 
PETER          I don’t necessarily buy that argument at all.  The evidence that I have suggests that pre-colonisation many, many years ago, violence was not part of Maori culture, and that’s certainly the case in the Pacific.  So I don’t think it’s— I think it’s far too simplistic to say that we can blame that.
           
SUSAN          Now, in a legal sense you’re also advocating some changes, aren’t you, one being there is actually an offence of domestic violence.
 
PETER          Yes.
 
SUSAN          Because at the moment, you could be charged with assault, common assault, assault against a women, but it doesn’t actually show if it’s domestic violence.
 
PETER          Correct.  You see, my point on this is that if you are a drink-driver, you get charged with drink-driving.  You’re branded – you are a drink-driver, and you have to be accountable for that.  But not so, and I cannot understand or fathom this— with violence, there is no offence of domestic violence.  The most that we get is male assaults female, and that’s the biggest clue you get that it could be domestic.  We can and should do much better than this.
 
SUSAN          So it would make a difference to have on someone’s record ‘domestic violence’?
 
PETER          Yes, it would.  I would like, when I see someone’s list of previous convictions, to be able to see that they have assaulted a woman, a partner, maybe more than one over a period of years and that it’s been domestic.  At the moment, I don’t know.
           
SUSAN          You’re also suggesting some sort of 0800 Crimestoppers, if you like, centralised place for women to go when there is a case of domestic violence.
 
PETER          Yes.  One thing I would very much like us to promote through the Blue [White] Ribbon campaign and other things is who do you go to where you can be safe?  And women may feel fearful that Child, Youth and Family might intervene and take away the children.  They might feel fearful that the police will act in a way they don’t want.  There’s got to be a safe way to talk about this.
 
SUSAN          You’re also suggesting somewhere for men to go, like a ‘man stop’ I think you called it.
 
PETER          Yes.
 
SUSAN          How would that work?
 
PETER          Well, it does work.  I’m from Gisborne, and I’m proud of that fact because it’s one of the few places in the country that’s set up a house where men can go.  One of my points is if men are violent, why should it be the women that have to leave?  I cannot see what the rationale or wisdom of that is, and so I think a place where men can go and talk about what’s going on in their lives and how they might change might be a very very constructive thing.
           
SUSAN          You mentioned earlier in the interview men starting to speak.  Are you seeing that more – starting to speak amongst themselves, starting to put the, I guess, peer pressure on each other in a positive way?
 
PETER          Well, I am.  You may have heard of the White Ribbon motorbike ride, where a whole bunch of people visit 86 centres.  And one of these which I went to was just wonderful – very very empowering.  Because I think a lot of men do know – do know that they’ve been violent.  They are ashamed of it.  To be able to talk about that with others who have done similarly is a way of getting out there that they need to change.
 
SUSAN          How do you help them, though, if they do want to come out of it?  As we said, a 20-week course isn’t going to do it.  A decent man who’s done a bad thing – how do you get him right?
 
PETER          Well, we all know that there is aggression.  There is aggression on the sports field, and controlled aggression is acceptable.
 
SUSAN          We admire it on the sports field.
 
PETER          We do.  But what we don’t admire is the sportsman that then loses the plot, and we used to see this in the old days on rugby fields, but I suggest less so now.  In the old days, aggression was uncontrolled.  There were free-for-all punches.  It’s dreadful stuff.  So what I’m trying to say, through the White Ribbon campaign, and we all are, is this fact – there’s a big difference between controlled aggression and violence. 
           
SUSAN          Do you think we will get there?  You mentioned drink-driving as a good example.  It’s a very good example, because in my youth, no one even thought about it.  These days, none of the youth I know would think of drink-driving, and there is a real social stigma on it.  But do you think we will get there in a generation or two with domestic violence?
 
PETER          We will make change.  Look, the fact that I’m here today speaking about this – this wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago.  And the fact that so many mayors, people are our ambassadors— John Key, Len Brown, Ruben Wiki, the famous rugby league player, are ambassadors, this wouldn’t have happened years ago.  I’m ever the optimist.
 
SUSAN          Well, good luck.
 
PETER          Thank you.
 
SUSAN          Very good to talk to you.  Thank you, Peter Boshier.

ENDS

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