The number of women accused of violence against partners has risen by
almost 25 per cent in five years.

Feminists have pushed for more DV laws and enforcement - to get men - with
the result that they are catching out more women. So they blame the
victims - men! And the police, for doing their job. The reality is that
women are human and are and can be equally violent.

Feminists and "women's groups" are in denial about the reality of female
domestic abuse and violence by their own biases and misandry (hatred of male).

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/domestic-violence-victims-become-accused/2008/02/22/1203467388841.html

The Sydney Morning Herald
23 February 2008

Domestic violence victims become accused
By Jordan Baker Chief Police Reporter

The number of women accused of violence against partners has risen by
almost 25 per cent in five years, and domestic violence workers blame the
rise on police mistakenly arresting victims for trying to defend themselves.

Policies encouraging arrests for domestic violence have had the unintended
effect of increasing the risk that women will be arrested with an abusive
partner or be blamed for violence, they say.

That view is backed by a new report by the Australian Domestic and Family
Violence Clearinghouse <http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/>, which
warns it can be hard to pick the aggressor but that accusing victims can
make them distrust the justice system.

In the 12 months to September 2003 police recorded 4,918 women as persons
of interest for perpetrating domestic violence. By 2006-07 that had risen
to 6,056, figures from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research show.

Of the women arrested for domestic violence-related assault in the five
years to last September only 32 per cent of the cases reached court,
compared with 56 per cent of cases involving men, statistics show.

The bureau's director, Don Weatherburn, said the increase was likely to
have been driven by more than one factor. Others could include an increase
in binge drinking, or more men who were willing to admit they are victims.

"It's possible that people are becoming less tolerant of violence by
females than they used to be," he said. More women are also being arrested
for assault not related to domestic violence, which some attribute to a
rise in alcohol abuse. Others say women can be as violent as men, and that
in more than half of violent partnerships partners struck each other.

The Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse report said
policies encouraging arrest or making it mandatory had resulted in a rise
in the arrest of the perpetrators and "a corresponding rise in the number
of dual arrest and single arrests of women for domestic violence".

The report warned it was sometimes hard for police to identify who was the
victim or the perpetrator, especially if both had injuries. Wounds
inflicted in self-defence, such as biting, were more immediately visible
than bruising.

A report on domestic violence by the NSW Ombudsman in 2006 raised similar
concerns, saying it was especially a problem in cases involving same-sex
parties or in which the victim did not conform to stereotypes of how
victims should behave. This could result in a lack of action or the wrong
response.

"Sometimes she's hysterical, or doesn't look like what they think a victim
should look like," said a spokeswoman for the NSW Domestic Violence
Coalition, Betty Green. "It's easy to make a judgment rather than an
assessment. Going through the court process as a perpetrator of violence,
when that's not what it's all about, can be shattering."

However, Superintendent Rod Smith, commander of policy and programs, said
every police force in Australia had rejected primary aggressor policies as
a bad investigative tool. Police did need to get better at identifying victims.