FixedIt: Invisible perpetrators are everywhere

Sky News reported on the increasing number of women and children being forced into homelessness by violent men perpetrating domestic violence and structural poverty built into the housing market. 

Somehow, they managed to do that without mentioning either the individual perpetrators of violence (mostly men) or the perpetrators of structural poverty (mostly coalition governments).

Violent men who terrorise women and children into homelessness are once again invisible. “Families suffering from domestic violence” got a mention, as did “mothers escaping domestic abuse and violence with their children”. The men who are so abusive that women and children are safer sleeping in cars and shelters than staying at home were erased from the story. 

The video – which inexplicably includes what I hope are actors playing out violent scenes – is an interview with CEO of not-for-profit organisation Women and Children First, Dr Gabrielle Morrissey. She advocates for perpetrators being removed from the homes in which they commit violence, that they are held accountable by the legal system, and required to undertake therapy and education. All of this was erased from the headline and write up. 

Shockingly, Sky News, also failed to mention the structural housing affordability crisis created by decades of government policy designed to benefit people who can afford to invest in property, ignore (at best) people who cannot afford to buy a home, punish people living in poverty, and keep wage growth low in an entirely successful effort to shift income from workers to corporations.  

The National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children, and the Royal Commission into Family Violence are both very clear that domestic and family violence will not stop unless we hold perpetrators accountable for their choice to use violence. 

It’s difficult to know how that will happen if we can’t even acknowledge their existence in reports on the terrible effects of their violence.