Opinion: Educate young people about family violence

THANK you for your article in last week’s edition headlined “Suite of initiatives in plan to halt violence”.

I would like to expand on the issue for the benefit of readers.

Everywhere, almost all initiatives of this kind are about addressing the symptoms not the cause.

Watch the outcomes of the Royal Commission into family violence in Victoria. The first premise is that a man should never hit a woman. The second premise is that children are often the real victims, 800,000 in Australia at this time.

Other considerations for readers are that violence against men is perpetrated in one third of cases and the male suicide rate is astronomically 70 per cent greater than the road toll but hardly addressed.

That this was not the way it was meant to be is an understatement.

So in addressing the root cause in gender collaboration and not in conflict, education of our precious youngsters through all of high school years as to what is expected in their relationships and stages of marriage would help to address the rate of marriage breakdown and all the frustration, bitterness, disappointment and community cost that goes with it.

No bloke should ever hit a woman and those who do and vice versa are dysfunctional and it becomes a mental health matter.

TONY NICHOLL, facilitator,

Dads in Distress,

Frankston, Victoria.