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Why men should complain to the BBC about Domestic Violence documentary

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The BBC’s Panorama programme completely misrepresented the reality of Domestic Violence  and men should speak out and complain, says Nick Langford.

This week the BBC broadcast a Panorama programme purporting to cover the issue of domestic violence (DV).  I have made a complaint to the BBC about this programme and would encourage you to do likewise: a larger number of complaints will make it more likely they will be taken seriously.  This is why I have complained.

Panorama claims to feature “investigative reports on a wide variety of subjects”, it is the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme and has been broadcast since 1953.  It has made some remarkable programmes including Martin Bashir’s 1995 interview with Princess Diana and the 2006 exposure of the Vatican’s suppression of child sexual abuse scandals.

Last night’s programme involved no journalism, investigative or otherwise, despite being produced and directed by award-winning journalist Joe Plomin.  It said nothing new about DV, despite professing to present a “real understanding of what it is” and presented no solutions, coping strategies or general advice to victims.  It was a 30-minute state-sponsored fund-raising propaganda video for the feminist lobby group Women’s Aid which is currently running a campaign to criminalise “coercive control”.

Panorama depicted DV as perpetrated only by men with women as victims, and children as incidental victims.  Women were presented fleetingly as perpetrators only in same-sex relationships and there was no mention at all that men could be victims or that fathers might sometimes need to protect their children from DV.

Panorama entirely misrepresented the reality of DV.  Perhaps the best source of accurate data is the Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK) which reports that 28.3% of women are perpetrators and 21.6% of men; over a lifetime 23% of women and 19.3% of men will be victims, meaning that men represent 45.6% of victims.  Any male victim of DV watching would have felt, yet again, that he was invisible and irrelevant; that his license fee was being used to promote a disgraceful lie.

The only DV support organisation referenced was Women’s Aid, of which Julie Walters, the narrator, is a patron.  There was no mention of any other women’s organisations, and certainly none of support groups for men.

I feel particularly aggrieved for the very brave women featured.  No doubt they felt that allowing the cameras to intrude into their lives, recording their horrific injuries, would raise the profile of DV and help other victims come forward and escape abuse, but I believe they have merely been exposed to further exploitation and victimisation by the BBC.

Sandra Horley, chief executive of Women’s Aid’s sister group, Refuge, famously said, “If we put across this idea that the abuse of men is as great as the abuse of women, then it could seriously affect our funding”.

Domestic violence is big business, attracting a great deal of funding, chiefly from our taxes.  The victim of DV is a cash-cow, and if anyone were seriously committed to ending DV they would stop misrepresenting it as a gendered issue, come clean about the reality and seek to understand why some people abuse intimate partners and how they might be helped to stop.

—Picture credit: Flickr/Steven Depolo

You can buy Nick Langford’s new book, An Exercise in Absolute Futility: Whatever happened to family justice? from Amazon. Nick has also co-authored a handy guide to family law in the UK, with his wife Ruth, which is also available on Amazon.

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The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of the insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to to join the conversation about men, masculinity and manhood. Our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

Why new changes to family law won’t make a difference for dads

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New laws governing the role that mums and dads play in their children’s lives in England & Wales following separation will not make a difference for dads, says Nick Langford.

—This is article #15 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

October 22nd 2014 marked the introduction into Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 of what for brevity we can call the presumption of parental involvement.

Judges are now advised that a parent’s involvement is likely to further their child’s welfare; “involvement” means any kind of involvement, direct or indirect, but not any particular division of a child’s time.  Since the division of time is about the only thing a court can rule on, this doesn’t offer desperate parents much hope.

This reform represents the culmination of decades of family campaigning and the end of the road for the presumption of equally shared parenting.

Lest we are in any doubt why reform was necessary, let’s remind ourselves of a few facts.  More than half of children will see their parents separate before their 16th birthday and more than half of those will lose contact with one parent. Absent parents are overwhelmingly fathers and residence is overwhelmingly awarded to mothers.

Campaigns for 50/50 shared parenting are doomed to fail

Most applications for contact are by fathers, and while a mother’s parental responsibility (the official recognition of parenthood) depends on her relationship to her child, a father’s depends on his with the mother, and can be taken away again by the court.

It isn’t surprising fathers wanted this situation to change.

While the effect of reform remains to be seen, it seems likely it will merely increase delay, while misinformed parents try to assert rights they do not have, and may hand the courts further justification to disenfranchise parents.

Many will continue to campaign for a 50/50 presumption, but they won’t succeed, for two reasons.  First: as the progress of the Children and Families Bill proved, opposition is just too strong, too well-funded and too well-organised.  Second: however desirable such a presumption might be, it is inseparably associated with the hectoring and intimidation of the less savoury fathers’ groups, and no government can afford to be seen to surrender to them.

Family breakdown costing UK £46bn 

Sadly, there’s no simple legislative solution: no quick fix.  The reality is that the courts have become increasingly irrelevant: applications have fallen by a quarter.  Contrary to government intention, the take-up of mediation has also fallen by 45%.

The vast majority disputes were once settled by negotiation between lawyers, but since the loss of legal aid this option, too, has evaporated.  Most parents will need to resolve disputes themselves.

Not all of the £46bn cost of family breakdown can be laid at the door of the courts.  As a society we need to treat fathers better, to value them more; to learn that a couple of nights a fortnight isn’t parenting, that mothers have no place to “allow” fathers contact, that a father can care for a sick child as well as a mother, that staying overnight with Dad won’t cause a child any harm, that Mum’s level of child support is determined by her child’s need for contact, and not the other way around.  Only then, only when this has been learnt, can we expect the courts to catch up, and by then perhaps, just perhaps, they won’t be needed quite so much.

—Picture credit: Flickr/Steven Depolo

You can buy Nick Langford’s new book, An Exercise in Absolute Futility: Whatever happened to family justice? from Amazon.

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

The government’s latest campaign won’t prevent family breakdown

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The Government’s new initiative to tackle family breakdown in the UK won’t  won’t save a single child from the devastation of fatherlessness says Nick Langford, author of a new book on family justice in the UK. 

Recently the Centre for Social Justice – the think-tank established by Iain Duncan Smith – published its report “FULLY COMMITTED: How a Government could reverse family breakdown”.

For 10 years the CSJ has studied family breakdown, and it understands both the causes and the solutions; we might not always agree with it entirely (no mention of the role played by the family justice system) but it has earned our respect and the right to be listened to.

It pointed out that after decades of political complacency and shilly-shallying Britain now leads the world in family breakdown, which now costs the economy an eye-watering £46bn.  More children have a smart phone than live with a father.

Although the CSJ recognise this government has spent more on family breakdown than any other, the spending is piecemeal and unfocused; we are rapidly heading away from Cameron’s commitment to make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe or to apply a family test to every policy.

We can stop family breakdown 

The CSJ made a number of recommendations which a fully committed government could employ to reverse family breakdown:

  • Cabinet-level minister for the family
  • Re-branding children’s services as family services
  • Relationship education in schools
  • Family hubs (this is such a good idea it has been championed by people as politically disparate as campaigners Fathers4Justice, solicitors Mishcon de Reya and feminist academic Liz Trinder)
  • Relationship support for couples
  • Greater involvement of fathers from birth and especially after separation.

These are all good ideas which have had wide support for years, so we have to wonder what is going on when we learn that a group including One Plus One, Dad Info and Netmums is spending £45,000 of taxpayers money (from a Department for Education fund of £2.7m) to collectively come up with yet another vacuous website.

Presented as a virtual fruit machine (is the Government subliminally encouraging gambling?), a press of the Spin button reveals pearls-of-wisdom such as, “My dad makes my mum a cup of tea every morning” or “I go to the cinema with her to see a film I really don’t want to see”.

They claim scientific justification for this nonsense, but as each “nugget” is sent in by the public (these guys don’t do more work than they have to), none has any validation, and watching a film you really don’t want to see hasn’t been proven to enhance your relationship.

Beneficiaries are ideologically driven

There is a sense here that the Government isn’t taking this desperately important issue very seriously; this is a sop, a pacifier, but it won’t save a single child from the devastation of family breakdown, of fatherlessness, of poverty, of the destruction of potential.

There are organisations which could spend £2.7m more wisely, which are crying out for funding – the CSJ itself, which could spend it on some more much-needed research; the Marriage Foundation, who aren’t afraid to extol the merits of committed relationships; Wikivorce, who are so good at providing support after relationships have broken down.  Instead, it is always the same collective of ideologically-driven, ineffective beneficiaries of governmental largesse; as Karen Woodall said recently:

“Forget children’s psychological adjustment, ditch the concerns about mothers who alienate, away with the idea that children benefit from the relationships between their parents and off with the heads of anyone who thinks that fathers are necessary.”

Oh, and did I tell you the name of this astonishing waste of tax-payers’ money?  It’s “Love Nuggets”.  What a load of bollocks.

—Photo Credit: flickr/daquellamanera