Comments by "Allison James" (@allisonjames2923) on "7 News Spotlight"
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This isn’t some big brother world where people can be locked up for future crimes they haven’t committed yet. The police are stuck in a very difficult situation. They can only do what the law allows them to. And the law says that unless a direct & credible threat is made, they can’t do anything. You can’t lock people up for making vague threats of “paying someone back”. And unfortunately, just knowing something may happen or is even probably going to happen isn’t enough for the police to legally stop them. They need evidence. And you literally cannot stop people like this who are committed to revenge, until there are concrete grounds to arrest them & keep them locked up. It’s a delicate balance between the law protecting people who are actually innocent but are being accused of abuse & those who are abusive & need to be stopped. Maybe all people who are involved in DV situations, especially those who have restraining orders taken out against them, need to have mandatory psychiatric & risk assessments done as well as mandatory counselling. With information from the assessments & any threats identified in counselling being able to be used to help restrict their access to their victims. If anyone failed here, it’s the judge who changed the order allowing him to be present at functions where his wife was. And judges who order that abusive partners are still allowed access to the children. Once you’re found to be abusive, you should lose your rights to access children until you can prove you’re not a threat to them. Too many abusive parents murder or harm their children to get back at their partner. But at the end of the day, the people who are truly at fault in this case are the husband & anyone else who knew he planned to harm his wife. And I hate to say it, but if you have to flee someone who is that abusive & you’re in genuine fear for your life, you need to take your children as far away as possible, change your name, your job & stop contact with anyone who might tell him/her where you are. It’s not fair by any means & shouldn’t have to happen, but like this guy, the man who set his wife & children alight in a car & all the other psycho abusers proved - some abusers are just hell bent on revenge no matter the cost to them. But it’s the only way to be safe. And perhaps that’s another area that we need to look at as a society - having programs that help DV victims hide & stay hidden.
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