New campaign to help abused men launched on International Men's Day

As part of the 2009 International Men’s Day celebrations, a new campaign for male victims of family violence is being launched. The One in Three Campaign is named after the little known fact that up to one in three victims of sexual assault and at least one in three victims of family violence is male (perhaps as many as one in two). The campaign aims to raise public awareness of the existence and needs of male victims of family violence and abuse; to work with government and non-government services alike to provide assistance to male victims; and to reduce the incidence and impacts of family violence on Australian men, women and children.

The One in Three website can be found at oneinthree.com.au.

Ending Family Violence Program

This paper deals with a program developed specifically for Indigenous Offenders in the area of Domestic and Family Violence related offending. The aim of the use of the program is to divert offenders in this category away from violent offending through a culturally appropriate offender intervention program. The aim of this process is to allow offenders to stay in the community whilst working on rehabilitating themselves with a view to an end to violent offending in the future, resulting in a safe environment for the family

Me & My Family: Program Manual

A program designed to bridge the gap between men and relationship services. Designed and developed by Julian McNally and Eric Van den Bossche from Jesuit Social Services. This program provides a respectful way of working with men who have ben violent in their families.

This program manual is intended for trained facilitators who will work with groups of marginalised men with family relationship issues. The manual contains plans for each of the ten two-hour sessions as well as guides for how to conduct the intake and exit interviews. In addition, immediately following the plan for each session are notes, which give ideas on how the session can be run. There is also a set of resources in the appendices, and a Relationship Action Plan for the participants.

Facilitators may wish to provide session content of their own and to run the sessions in a different style to that suggested in the session notes. However the authors recommend that before implementing this program, facilitators should have been trained in the approach taught in the Me & My Family Facilitator's Training as well as having prior group facilitation experience.

Why I Won't Wear A White Ribbon, by Adam Jones, 1992

An oldie, but unfortunately still very relevant, as the White Ribbon Campaign is still very much alive. Jones argues that the White Ribbon Campaign seems to be based on a notion of universal male guilt.

Why I Won't Wear A White Ribbon

by Adam Jones (1992)

[Published in the MERGE Journal, 5: 5 (1992.)]

On a frigid December day three years ago, while Marc Lépine was roaming the classrooms and hallways of l'École Polytechnique in Montreal, I was a couple of kilometres down the road, laughing and sharing a few drinks with friends.

We heard the first reports on the evening news. But the real horror sank in only the next day, as the dimensions of the slaughter became clear, and the analyses - and recriminations - began.

Several days later, I joined tens of thousands of Montrealers who queued, some for hours, in subzero temperatures to file past the caskets of the victims. The crowd was a cross-section of Quebec society: male and female, young and old, anglophone and francophone. For a day, Quebeckers were united in grief.

The dignity of those proceedings stood in stark contrast to TV images of demonstrations across the country: the megaphones, the slogans, the wild assignations of blame. I was struck by many protesters' readiness to exploit the trauma of victims' families and friends for their own narrow, exclusionary political ends.

Click to read more ...