Does your boyfriend or girlfriend, your friend, your carer, or a family member:
- Put you down, criticise or humiliate you, or make you feel worthless or stupid?
- Constantly check up on you or get irrationally jealous when you spend time with other people, even accuse you of flirting when you’re not?
- Pressure you into sex?
- Scare or hurt you by threatening to or being violent?
- Make you afraid to disagree or upset them?
- Make excuses for their behaviour, i.e. Drugs, alcohol, bad day at work or school?
This is domestic violence. The H&A producers did a good job in making Macca and Cassie’s relationship a textbook example of domestic violence. Macca claimed it was the drugs that caused him to hit Cassie. He became extremely remorseful after his actions, using Cassie’s genuine love for him as a bargaining tool to give him another chance. Unfortunately, violent behaviour is unlikely to stop and more likely to get worse over time, as shown in Cassie’s case. Claims that it is up to you to change in order for it to stop are another form of abuse: your partner should accept you for who you are. They should not make excuses for their behaviour. It is your right to be in a relationship where you feel secure, loved and respected. Your partner may claim their actions are because they love you: like becoming jealous and possessive. But this isn’t love, it’s control.
The Facts: Did you know?
• Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime.
• Nearly half of the Australian population personally knows either a person who has committed a family and domestic violence crime or is a family and domestic violence survivor.
• At least one-in-three Australian families are affected by family and domestic violence.
• Family and domestic violence occurs in families from all socio-economic backgrounds and all cultural groups; it is a serious problem in both the city and the country.
• Family and domestic violence is frequently of a severe and prolonged nature, and may escalate in intensity over time.
• Nearly one-in-three serious assaults against women in this State are committed by the spouse and about 46 per cent of all female homicide victims have been killed by their spouses.
• At least 95 per cent of abusers are men, and those experiencing family and domestic violence are overwhelmingly women and children.
• Four per cent of relationships experience ongoing chronic violence.
• Child abuse is 15 times more likely to happen in families where family and domestic violence are present.
If you witness or experience domestic violence, there are many resources available to you and positive courses of action for you to take. The Domestic Violence & Incest Resource Centre (DVIRC) has a link to a site devoted to teenagers and relationships called ‘When Love Hurts’ (dvirc.org.au/whenlove), which is a good place to start. You can also talk to you school counsellour, parents and friends. Take action and say no to violence today!
