Editorial: Law failing battered women

Opinion

The Weekend Herald disclosed that an investigation into the operation of domestic protection orders has unearthed more than enough wrong to warrant some action. A study commissioned by women's groups has found that they are issued perfunctorily - a family court judge admitted to signing them in tea breaks - and poorly enforced. So poorly that a declining number of women are bothering to apply for them, saying they make little difference.

Too many brutal men have been breaching the orders with impunity and women are left defenceless. The consequences can be fatal even for successful applicants.

It needs to be acknowledged that domestic protection orders, issued too lightly, can also be vexatious and do an injustice to men. The study found that judges seldom have sufficient information before issuing an order. They probably act virtually on request, and waste no time about it in case the woman is at immediate risk. They are right to do so, even at risk of an unfairness to men. It is not men who feature in the fatalities when protection orders fail.

Between January of last year and April this year, 4004 orders were granted and just under 2000 people were charged with breaching an order. In each of the past 12 months, more breaches have been committed than new orders granted. It needs to be noted that every order contains an obligation to attend a violence avoidance programme and a failure to attend constitutes a breach. All told, 35 per cent of recorded breaches are no more serious than that, but a programme director told us that such breaches are often not recorded, which means the overall level of defiance is even greater than we know.

The worst of it is that when domestic protection orders are poorly enforced they are worse than useless; they run the risk of increasing the victim's danger. The fact that she has gone to such length to seek an order will be enough to take many a violent partner to a heightened state of rage. And probably nobody is monitoring the situation once the order has been issued. The judges say they usually hear nothing more unless the name of the person who sought the order turns up in a newspaper reported to be badly injured or dead.

This is a damning indictment of the system but it is easier to say so than to suggest improvements. Domestic violence is fearfully common in this country. Statistically, one in four women is likely to suffer an attack some time in her life. It causes about half the murders committed here. The incidence is so high that it is probably unrealistic to ask that police monitor all cases more closely. An answer has to be found in earlier intervention and, if possible, prevention programmes.

The problem is too serious for possible remedies to be inhibited by ethnic sensitivities. If domestic violence is particularly common in certain cultures within this country, then programmes must be directed at them. There ought to be no tolerance, let alone humour or glorification, of the subject in films, literature, music or other creations depicting any culture here. The sanction need not be official censorship. Public opprobrium ought to be enough.

We need to leave no doubt of the disgust with which the vast majority of New Zealanders regard the very idea of a man assaulting a woman. Men who claim women can be violent too deserve to be laughed out of court. It is not the same. Feminism has made "the weaker sex" an unfashionable term but it has not changed physiology. The age-old message needs to be ingrained in men from childhood, that no matter what the provocation they do not strike a woman, full stop.