Tasmanian police resist feminist weaponisation of DV laws

Dr Fiona Girkin works with the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies teaching police about domestic violence. When she first wrote to me nine months ago to tell me about her work, she thanked me for "being willing to protect men from women who seek to destroy their lives."

Fiona Girkin is no longer prepared to call herself a feminist. Before her present teaching job, she worked for 20 years in the community services sector alongside many feminists, "It was the most toxic workplace I have ever worked in," she said, explaining that she had "experienced many women who claimed to be empathic but instead wielded power of a different kind. They would bully and manipulate staff to gain power over in the resources they held including large sums of Government funding for service provision."

Fascinating stuff, eh? Particularly as it led her to do a PhD on female psychopathic behaviour in community services! That's a story for another day – I plan a second video with Fiona about that intriguing topic.

Fiona's experience with this feminist culture left her shocked at the manhating narrative where "only women can be the good ones and men are always bad." When she applied for the teaching job with the police service, she explained that she refused to misrepresent the truth about domestic violence – namely that men and women are equally likely to be perpetrators.

Amazingly it turned out that was exactly what police management were seeking – someone who would give police proper information about how two-way violence plays out in relationships, teaching police to properly analyse the presenting situation, evaluate evidence and make careful decisions about whom to arrest.

It's nearly a year since she started the job and she's been delighted to discover Tasmania police seem to be doing their job in just the fair, unbiased manner she has been promoting. The result is, she believes, just as many women are being arrested as men. "Women are certainly being arrested, taken to the station to be assessed as perpetrators. I think that is happening 50% of the time."

How about that? Here's little Tasmania, in our Deep South, holding out against the feminist push to weaponise domestic violence laws against men. This stands in stark contrast with Queensland's relentless campaign to weaponise domestic violence against men – see my video with two police whistleblowers. My interview with a former NSW police prosecutor showed police and prosecutors in this state are coming under similar pressure, as is true now in most other states and territories.

Fiona reports Tassie police are actually encouraged to talk to both parties, look at the evidence on both sides and figure out what seems to be going on, and arrest the person who seems responsible. Then the case ends up being examined by an experienced senior officer who, with the help of a specialist family violence unit, determines whether to charge.

Proof they are doing the right thing came in an ABC article 18 months ago, which complained bitterly about Tasmanian women being "misidentified as perpetrators" of domestic violence. "Domestic violence workers in Tasmania have been warning of a simmering misidentification crisis: mounting cases where police have mistaken the victim for the perpetrator and taken out a protection order against them or charged them with criminal offences - with devastating consequences." The article claimed many of these women are able to have these orders revoked by magistrates (no doubt nervous of attracting feminist wrath) – but it's pretty clear evidence that police are doing their job in applying the law in an unbiased fashion.

Fiona is most frustrated by the billions of dollars being poured into domestic violence funding and used to support the huge DV industry intent on shaming men while the families most at risk get absolutely no attention. "We have certain addresses that police actually know quite well. They've attended multiple times over the last 20 to 30 years. They might have initially seen the parents and now they are seeing the kids of the kids who are being violent."

She explains these multi-generational violence problems are often related to drug and alcohol issues which are being totally ignored by the domestic violence industry. "That's what bothers me. I think: why aren't we putting money into these families that have become generationally abusive, to try to break the cycle?"

Here's a Tasmanian government graph showing that although there's been a significant increase in reports of domestic violence in her state, high risk cases involving physical abuse have declined.