Men must face up to facts
FAMILY violence campaigner Rosie Batty says the community must not shy from the fact that family violence is a gendered issue killing women and inflicting trauma on children.
The 2015 Australian of the Year captured the hearts of more than 300 people in Geelong yesterday where she spoke at a GMHBA and genU White Ribbon event confirming a commitment to respectful workplaces.
Ms Batty was thrust into the public eye in 2014 when her 11year-old son, Luke, was murdered by his father, Greg Anderson, at a sports oval.
Since then her story has resonated with thousands of women — many who attend her forums and personally thank the Australian of the Year for encouraging them to seek help.
But late last year Ms Batty made the decision to take some steps back from the public eye.
“Since Luke was murdered I spent most of my time travelling interstate or overseas or into regional areas,” she said.
“I was at the airport nearly every day.
“I am very thankful because I think that’s helped create discourse and change, but I had to also understand that I had set up a foundation in Luke’s name and that it had become too much for me.”
Ms Batty said thousands of women had contacted her to share their own experiences of abuse.
She said this was sometimes difficult to cope with because she did not have the ability to help every woman in the way she wanted.
“It’s very testing when there are so many women reaching out in desperation, hoping that you can personally intervene and help them in their situation, it’s difficult when you don’t have the capacity … to respond to the them in way you think they are deserving,” Ms Batty said.
She said while there was some great work happening in the family violence space, she said one of the biggest challenges was accepting it as a gendered issue.
She has called for more outrage and media attention to the domestic homicides of women, saying a woman should not have to die for the issue to come into the spotlight.
“We have people very uncomfortable about this being a gendered issue. We do have one woman a week being murdered,” Ms Batty said.
“It is overwhelmingly men that perpetrate violence.”