Last week several of us were discussing the amazingly rapid rise in popularity of the term ‘cougar’, used to describe women involved with younger men.
The lead-up to Christmas can be stressful – presents to buy, money to spend, holidays to arrange, events to attend. Yet despite waking up to Christmas Day a little frazzled, most of us look forward to the sun, BBQ, holidays and the opportunity to spend time with friends and family.
The trial of Clayton Weatherston whose sentencing took place today (18 years non-parole; read the Christchurch Women’s Refuge Media Release) and the details of the crime he committed certainly caught our attention. Not only in Dunedin, where it occurred, or Christchurch, where the case was heard, but throughout the country.
If I could have one wish it would be that all the emotional and physical effort that has been expended on the ‘anti-smacking’ law – which for the ‘no’ voters is more about parental rights than concern for child welfare – could in some way be channelled towards our children’s care and protection. New Zealand’s statistics are atrocious regarding child abuse. Why are we making so much noise about a law that has not criminalised good parents, instead of campaigning against bad, abusive, and neglectful parenting? Let’s get up in arms about something that really does matter.
Cotton On retail clothing chain is marketing sexualised t-shirts for children in a bid for sales. This marketing ploy is a tongue-in-cheek, adult snigger at such incongruous images as a little boy wearing a t-shirt that says “I like big boobs and I cannot lie”. Cotton On is putting sexualised words into baby’s mouths, masquerading as humour, for the purposes of profit.
It seems very likely that New Zealand will lose its defence of partial provocation. Many of us, having watched in dismay bordering on revulsion as Weatherston took the stand, will heave a sigh of moral relief. But, as with all legal wrangling, the case is not as straight forward as it seems. Questions remain that New Zealand’s legal fraternity have yet to adequately answer.
And just like the Claytons drink, there’s more froth than substance to Clayton Weatherston’s defence. Weatherston is using a “partial defence of provocation” we are told. That a man can premeditatively take a knife around to a women’s home, systematically stab that person 216 times; use the knife to mark and maim her eyes, her throat, her nose, a breast, her genital area, and other parts of her body and argue he did it because provoked and it was therefore manslaughter, defies the logic of reason. And I thought that reason is what should ideally be provoked in a courtroom. Thus, in effect, Weatherston declares that he butchered Sophie Elliot but it wasn’t murder.
It certainly is a poser isn’t it? How on earth did New Zealander’s end up in the position of answering such a convoluted question as: “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?” The wording of this ballot has been arduously spurned by many an esteemed person, our Prime Minister himself notwithstanding.
The effects of family violence are insidious and far-reaching. In the Christchurch Press on May 5th an article headed Rapists Faced Abuse, asserted that New Zealand’s prisons are full of people abused as children. Citing as one example Joseph Thompson, New Zealand’s worst serial rapist, criminologist Dr Greg Newbold said that Thompson “had endured a childhood of sexual abuse”. Now, I realise I could be opening a can of worms here. Many people feel that this argument is a well-worn excuse used by perpetrators to cry off from facing the ramifications of their crimes. However, bear with me. What I want to speak about today is not excuses, but rather causes.
The oft touted ‘anti-smacking’ law has always seemed to me to be a misnomer, and a crafty one at that. It’s so easy to get up in arms about parents rights to discipline their children and use the age old argument that smacking does not necessarily equate to violence. To smack your child is not to punch, clout or strike your child is it? However, when the “ear-flicking” but in reality “face-punching” father Jimmy Mason was finally found guilty of assaulting his child, it gave me cause to reflect. Perhaps we can re-think the meaning of ‘anti-smacking’. For all the hyperbole about the Mason case being a “test of the anti-smacking law” I think that perhaps it could be a test on our perceptions of the meaning of the law.
We have been inundated of late by media attention concerning Tony Veitch and the much publicised abuse of his previous partner Kristin Dunne-Powell. This "architect of his own misfortune" to quote Judge Doogue, was initially going to "vigorously defend the assault charges" but ended up capitulating a slight degree when, although pleading guilty to kicking her in the back, he changed his story to "If I reacted differently, if I had been allowed to walk away".
The face of Family Violence in New Zealand is changing. No longer considered something that only happens in other families and other neighbourhoods, family violence, it seems, has gone mainstream.
