Archive for Relationship violence

Powerful cabaret tackling Domestic Violence launches in Melbourne

// June 10th, 2017 // No Comments » // Relationship violence

Grace

Shining a light on the dark side of the rainbow, “My Other Closet” has played in Sydney and this powerful cabaret now is set to launch in Melbourne.

This production is a true first-hand account of one man’s journey to become a Domestic Violence Survivor. It delivers powerful storytelling and re-worked classic pop songs, helping to dispel the myths surrounding domestic violence in LGBT relationships while teaching us how to end it for all genders and sexualities.

Join the Melbourne Premier on July 15, 2017. Season runs July 15th-28th, 2017 at Bella Union, 54 Victoria Street,
Carlton South. Tickets available through http://www.www.myotherclosetthecabaret.com

Third-party and assisted violence reporting links to VicPol needed

// March 15th, 2016 // No Comments » // AVP news, Media discussion, Relationship violence, Trans and Gender Diverse, Within Australia, Within Victoria

Grace

Violence impacts the LGBTi community yet remains vastly under-reported. According to the state’s LGBTi Anti-Violence Project this hides the true nature and extent of harassment and violence in Victoria and nationwide.

The AVP has asked Victoria Police to partner with them and other LGBTi community organisations to help reduce harm for LGBTi individuals while also enhancing the range of ways violence can be reported, how reports are accepted by Victoria Police and becoming integrated into their data systems and how those impacted by violence can be triaged more effectively from experiencing violence towards the supports necessary to provide support to them.

This need has been long discussed and the research available for many years but what is missing is a mechanism to pull the threads together”, says AVP executive director Greg Adkins.

“Whatever the source of violence, street harassment, relationship violence or lateral violence between individuals, if the necessary work can be undertaken to bring police, unfunded community-led organisations and other non-government organisations who are funded to provide services to victims of violence, more closely together then the whole society stands to gain.

“Service gaps will be readily identified, gaps in current police resources to fully address the actual extent of violence can then be identified and planned for, and funding gaps for unfunded community-led organisations working in this space can be plugged.

“Community, police, government working together in a new whole-of-life approach to violence impacting LGBTI people.

“In 2016 only a small percentage of LGBTi individuals report their experiences of violence to anyone, the needs of the majority of victims is unknown and healthy outcomes for individuals are delayed well beyond what the broad society would expect is acceptable. This means the long-term cost for society blows out of proportion to the policy solution that should be put in place today.

Queer men are victims of street harassment nobody talks about

// November 28th, 2015 // No Comments » // Around the globe, AVP news, International, Media discussion, Relationship violence, Within Australia, Within Victoria

Grace

This week we observed White Ribbon day and discussed how pervasive and destructive masculinity can be towards women.

However as Derrick Clifton writes in The Guardian, ‘uncomfortable, if not traumatizing, experiences (of harassment of gay men) get swept under the rug, or worse, internalised as something that “just happens” and shouldn’t be taken seriously’, revealing that many gay men, too, cope silently with harassment and consent issues in male dominated social spaces.

In Australia, governments are yet to turn their social policy lens and budgetary spends towards violence and harassment targeting the LGBTI community. The AVP believes that this makes Clifton’s argument, that its time to have more of a conversation about how the misogyny and patriarchy imbued in rape culture targets gay and gender non-conforming men, a very real and timely conversation to be had.

Read the full article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/27/queer-men-like-victims-street-harassment-nobody-talks-about?CMP=share_btn_tw

White Ribbon Day – Walk Against Family & Relationship Violence

// November 25th, 2015 // No Comments » // AVP news, Media discussion, Relationship violence, Relationships, Within Australia, Within Victoria

Grace

We in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community have grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts and other family members who have been and will be victims of relationship and family violence at the hands of men.

The abuse of power within many relationships is a common thread that joins the broader community to our LGBTI community in our shared experience of family and relationship violence where patterns of power, control and violence have been passed on and learned from male family members.

With great sadness we note that one in three women has experienced family and relationship violence and that family and relationship violence is also the silent epidemic within the LGBTI community despite being the subject of increasing scrutiny in heterosexual relationships. One in three LGBTI couples experience family and relationship violence echoing the general population. Additionally many women within the LGBTI community have experienced relationship violence with men before coming-out as same-sex attracted.

We say, with determination, on White Ribbon Day, that the Anti-Violence Project of Victoria recognises and acknowledges that our joint LGBTI and broader heterosexual Victoria and Australia community, cannot be safe until family and relationship violence by men in our society is named, called out as being unacceptable and is dealt with in a way so that it cannot reoccur and is prevented from being passed-on to future generations.

Just as relationship and family violence by men in the broader community is under-reported, we acknowledge homophobia and prejudice motivated violence against the LGBTI community is another form of violence emanating from mens’ behaviour and being passed on through generations.

We call on the Australian and State governments to increase data collection on all forms of violence driven by mens’ behaviour, to develop new strategic public policy, to fund front-line services supporting all victims of family and relationship violence and increase funding and infrastructure to support a community-led response to under-reported violence in all its forms.

Shifting the debate on partner violence

// November 12th, 2015 // No Comments » // Media discussion, Relationship violence, Within Australia, Within Victoria

The AVP has known since our inception in 1997 of the connection between overtly masculine behaviour and violence in heterosexual relationships towards women and the link with homophobic violence through similar abuse of power relationships.

In this discussion,  Bianca Fileborn and Philomena Housley say “Most incidents of sexual violence, for example, are perpetrated by men against women. Likewise, men who enact certain types of masculinity – such as hostile masculinity – are more likely to be the perpetrators of such violence”.  The LGBTI Anti-Violence Project agrees.

Our “Boxer Campaign” targeted men in gyms and martial arts establishments in Victoria where masculinity could easily become hostile towards others and homophobia had the potential to ramp it out of the gym and directly into the LGBTI community.

Read the ‘Conversation’ with Bianca Fileborn and Philomena Housley here:

https://theconversation.com/beyond-gender-lgbtiq-abuse-shows-its-time-to-shift-the-debate-on-partner-violence-50238

NSW LGBTI domestic & family violence funding focuses attention on VIC govt response to its Royal Commission findings, due later 2015

// September 24th, 2015 // No Comments » // Media discussion, Relationship violence, Relationships, Within Australia, Within Victoria

Victoria’s Anti-Violence Project heralded NSW’s announcement of funding for LGBTI domestic and family violence as a defining moment for Australian state and federal governments which brings measures to address LGBTI family and relationship violence equally to the table alongside funding and programs to support the elimination of domestic and family violence in the broader Australian community.

“Victoria has no single lead LGBTI organisation working in the health or family violence space, unlike ACON’s principal role as the dominant funded non-profit in NSW”, said AVP executive director Greg Adkins. “However Victoria does have organisations, working for LGBTI community to support people and address family violence, who are either poorly resourced, or in the case of LGBTI community-led organisations, not resourced at all”, he said.

“This NSW funding decision now focuses attention towards recommendations on the Victoria Royal Commission into Family Violence (RCFV) which are expected later in 2015 and the policy response by the Andrews Labor government. These RCFV recommendations will frame society’s urgent family violence problem with clear evidence of whats working and whats not, where the gaps are and will point to a much needed targeted response by the Victoria state government to lift LGBTI organisations out of their unfunded or poorly funded existences to better and more efficiently support individuals from LGBTI community experiencing this type of violence in their lives.”

In announcing the NSW funding, Minister for Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Pru Goward in the NSW Baird government said the funds will support ACON campaigns, programs and services that will help identify and prevent DFV among LGBTI people.

AVP executive director Greg Adkins said “We look forward, to a similar outcome in Victoria to the NSW funding so that LGBTI focused campaigns, programs and services in Victoria are enabled to respond to LGBTI family violence in a way where 100% of people experiencing it have the avenues to address its impact on their lives and perpetrators of LGBTI family and relationship violence can be identified and supported to deal with their behavior before lives are lost and people are damaged.”

Read the NSW funding announcement reported here in Gay News Network, Wednesday September 9, 2015

Family violence royal commission: the seven lessons learned so far, according to The Guardian with a forward view from the AVP

// July 21st, 2015 // No Comments » // Relationship violence

These seven lessons map easily onto family and intimate partner violence experienced by individuals identifying within LGBTI community. With a few missing links.

LGBT individuals “vote with their feet” and access services that have immediately available and easily accessible quality trained staff, most often LGBT themselves or equally empathetic and non-judgemental individuals who are not themselves LGBT.

Community led LGBTI organisations working in this space are less funded, if at all. The funding of these organisations is both crucial and pivotal to the shifting of appallingly low levels of violence reporting – including family violence reporting – to reveal the true nature and extent of family violence within these communities. Without this new funding acknowledging the important role community-led organisations play in family violence solutions the flow-on health ramifications for primary and secondary victims can never truly be addressed.

This Royal Commission has the potential to recommend the establishment of third party reporting processes for family violence impacting LGBTI community – similar to the much needed third party reporting processes on prejudice motivated violence and homophobic harassment – that has at its core leadership from community-led organisations.

(Most intersex individuals fit within and share life experience of relationship and family violence with the broad community however some intersex individuals identify and are welcomed within the LGBTI communities, experiencing the same issues that limit the way violence of all kinds can be identified, moved out of silence and into the daylight and then adequately addressed.)

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/18/family-violence-royal-commission-the-seven-lessons-learned-so-far?CMP=share_btn_tw

Family violence hearings begin

// July 14th, 2015 // No Comments » // Relationship violence, Within Australia, Within Victoria

The first week of public hearings at the Royal Commission into Family Violence has commenced (Monday, 13 July 2015). The focus of the first week is violence against children.

A number of organisations supporting individuals experiencing family violence from within LGBTi community are expected to give evidence at the Commission on 16 August 2015).

More updates here as they become available.

Public Hearing Live Stream available here: RCFV Live Stream

DOMESTIC AND FAMILY VIOLENCE IN THE LGBTIQ COMMUNITY

// June 4th, 2015 // No Comments » // Relationship violence, Within Australia, Within Victoria

Troy Nankervis writes about domestic and family violence including many accounts that feature in a submission prepared by the National LGBTI Health Alliance to be heard in the current Senate inquiry Domestic violence in Australia. Read his piece in: Right Now – Human Rights in Australia

Anti-Violence Project Victoria executive director Greg Adkins says greater awareness is key to incite necessary changes to services and support, and that the “visibility” of the LGBTIQ community is essential in starting a better conversation. “If relationship violence is hidden all over, and awareness is down, we’re even less likely to have it discussed and so victims of violence feel even more isolated because of a lack of visibility,” he says.

How can we build awareness? “We need resources,” Adkins says. “We need not just one-off campaigns, but national and state frameworks that resource these issues.”

“Relationship violence is too important and too much of a canker in Australian society for it to be done by volunteer organisations that are unfunded.”

Dean McWhirter, the Victoria Police Family Violence Command Assistant Commissioner, agrees that cases of LGBTIQ domestic and family violence remain heavily underreported. “Research and our statistics tell us that the majority of family violence is committed by men against women. However, we know that it is an issue which affects the whole Victorian community and is under-reported in the LGBTI community,” he says.

According to Gavi Ansara, Research and Policy Manager at the National LGBTI Health Alliance, this kind of stigma often prevents victims from coming forward. “If there was less stigma and less discrimination, people would feel that it would be easier to seek support from organisations within the sector set up to do that,” he says.

http://rightnow.org.au

Beautiful App unpacking trust feelings and teenage intimate relationships

// March 12th, 2015 // No Comments » // Around the globe, International, Relationship violence, Relationships

A brilliant concept – not just for teenage intimate relationships but for all of us! Download via Google Play and check it out.
http://stiritapp.eu/