\u201cNo one\u2019s got any right to put hands on anybody,\u201d Josh says now.<\/p>\n
Yet for three decades, that is precisely what he did, cycling through severe addiction, violent outbursts and prison cells.<\/p>\n
Growing up in Granville in Sydney\u2019s west surrounded by alcoholic relatives and drug addiction, violence was the first language he learnt.<\/p>\n
When his marriage broke down following the death of his mother and brother, he turned to drugs and started inflicting financial abuse and exhibiting controlling behaviour.<\/p>\n
When his wife took out a domestic violence order in Queensland to protect herself and their kids, Josh\u2019s reaction was immediate – and explosive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came home one day and I couldn\u2019t live at the house anymore, and so I went f***ing nuts,\u201d Josh, now 43, reveals. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like, I bought a house with my dead father\u2019s money \u2026 I said, \u2018No f***ing way she\u2019s kicking me out.\u2019 That\u2019s when it got violent.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a heavy cocktail of heroin and ice at 3am, Josh broke into his family home, put his hands on his wife, and tried to strangle her. <\/p>\n
He spent months on the run trying to force his way back into the relationship to \u201csmooth things over\u201d, amassing more than 30 AVO breaches before police finally caught up with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was on the ones for strangulation and suffocation and choking and common assault charges,\u201d Josh says.<\/p>\n
When asked why a court-ordered AVO didn\u2019t stop him from returning to abuse his wife, his answer is chilling in its simplicity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d never been in jail before. The piece of paper \u2026 it\u2019s like it didn\u2019t exist to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sentenced to three years in prison, Josh was released after serving his minimum required sentence, only to walk straight back out the prison gates and directly to his ex-wife\u2019s front door that same afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone in jail said to me, \u2018You\u2019re going straight back to her, and you\u2019re going to come right back to jail.\u2019 And (that\u2019s) exactly what I did. I got out and bang, I went straight to her house and I was locked up that night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding the house empty, Josh broke in, smashed her car windows, and terrorised her again, landing himself right back behind bars to serve out the rest of his sentence.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s domestic violence laws \u2018broken\u2019, radical fix<\/p>\n
Josh\u2019s story is precisely why former police officer and criminologist Dr Vince Hurley says Australia\u2019s domestic violence laws are completely broken. <\/p>\n
While the response to domestic violence typically focuses on removing victims from violent situations, it fails to address the behaviour of perpetrators, and, Dr Hurley says, does nothing to address the unprocessed trauma that\u2019s often behind the harmful actions.<\/p>\n
Dr Hurley is one of the driving forces behind a bold state government proposal called Safer Men-Safer Families.<\/p>\n
The plan – which needs a $6 million investment from the NSW Government – flips the current response to domestic violence on its head. <\/p>\n
Under existing responses, families are routinely forced to flee their homes while perpetrators remain. <\/p>\n
The proposed initiative aims to keep mothers and children safely in their family home, while the male perpetrator is removed under court direction to a 24\/7 managed residential facility for assessment and intensive rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
The initiative specifically targets high-risk serial offenders – men who continually cycle through the courts and prison for breaching AVOs and committing domestic violence.<\/p>\n
Instead of releasing men back onto the streets with a piece of paper or sending them to a prison cell to fester alongside other angry offenders, the program would court-mandate serial perpetrators into intensive, 24\/7 residential rehabilitation, confronting them with trauma-informed behaviour change before they can escalate to murder.<\/p>\n
Dr Hurley says the service connects specialist police and magistrates to work directly with offenders using a Drug Court-style model, incorporating fortnightly check-ins to provide real-time interventions instead of waiting for an Apprehended Domestic Violence Order (ADVO) breach or further violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen commit domestic violence, we give them this bit of paper that says, \u2018You\u2019re being bad, don\u2019t be bad,\u2019 and then we don\u2019t do anything else until the next time they breach,\u201d Robinson says. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t educate the people you work with about their behavior and why they do it, how do they stop it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Domestic violence specialist practitioner Melissa Sharman, who has worked across the sector for 15 years in crisis refuges, family law courts, and child sexual assault advocacy, says the model addresses a massive gap in Australia\u2019s response.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spend week after week cleaning up the mess that yes, is caused by men. This is not a women\u2019s issue, this is a men\u2019s issue,\u201d Ms Sharman says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny model where the perpetrator can be removed and the woman and children can remain in the home while he is supported to get assistance\u2014I think that is a really good model, and it would definitely take a lot of the main issues we have and make them easier.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor men who have perpetrated violence, there are very little services. It is not just an anger problem\u2014it is a pattern of behavior that can come from generational trauma, drugs, alcohol, and mental health. If men can get more support in this space, it is actually going to work out well for the women as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Men are the problem\u2019: Cop on Sydney\u2019s DV epidemic <\/p>\n
Having joined the NSW Police Force in 1981, working through rough beats in Mount Druitt, St Marys and Blacktown before serving as a hostage negotiator and joining organised crime units, Dr Hurley spent 35 years studying domestic violence policy for the Premier and Cabinet and lecturing in criminology. <\/p>\n
He says standard Apprehended Violence Orders and traditional custodial sentences do nothing to address the core driver of the crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember really distinctly going to 20 domestics in one night with a bloke, name of Chris, still vividly remember it,\u201d Dr Hurley told news.com.au.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it was just f***ing chaos, just domestic after domestic after domestic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of the thousands of domestics I attended, Saint Marys, Blacktown, as a detective or in uniform, that woman would have been flogged afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was actually the fear for the children in homes because they were terrified of their parents. And once a child has seen violence, they can\u2019t unsee it and it will have a lasting impact on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen are the problem, and if you don\u2019t address the men\u2019s issue in violence against women, then you\u2019re only looking at half the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Hurley pointed out that there were over 50,000 AVOs taken out last year in New South Wales alone. A staggering 22,000 of those legal court orders were breached. <\/p>\n
\u201cAn AVO does nothing on its own. It is literally just a piece of paper handed to a violent man. You cannot paper over violence, and you cannot criminalise or punish our way out of this crisis without confronting the perpetrator,\u201d Dr Hurley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a man has no self-respect, no boundaries, and no intensive intervention, a piece of card in his pocket isn\u2019t going to stop him walking through a front door at 3am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Claude Robinson, the manager of a Sydney transition house for men, Rainbow Lodge, agrees that relying on prison cells without intervention only feeds the cycle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t criminalise our way out and punish our way out of it,\u201d Mr Robinson, who spent seven years in prison himself during a 20-year battle with drug addiction, says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know from my own experience that when they go to jail, they\u2019re not getting any help. And a lot of the time they\u2019re sitting in jail with other people who\u2019ve committed domestic violence, angry at their wife. When they go to jail, they\u2019re getting reinforced by their wrong belief systems from other men who are all in the same boat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drug-addicted DV offender saved by program<\/p>\n
For Josh, the cycle of violence only broke when he was exposed to Rainbow Lodge and its trauma-informed programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done a few programs in jail. But the best ones are done with people that have lived experience, you know what I mean?\u201d Josh says. <\/p>\n
\u201cMost the other ones, they\u2019re just people have written out of textbooks and they don\u2019t \u2026 it\u2019s totally different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learnt, I realised it was because of the trauma that I\u2019ve had in my life, that that\u2019s why I\u2019m doing what I\u2019m doing, you know? I never thought about that. I never coped with my grief or anything. It\u2019s all just built up, you know? That program really opened my eyes to why I do things. I put myself in her shoes, to not just my own. She\u2019s got trauma too. If she pisses me off one day? I\u2019ll just go for a walk. It\u2019s never going to be roses every day, but it\u2019s just having the skills to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now clean, in a healthy relationship, and working toward a bright future, Josh believes that if court-mandated residential intervention had existed decades ago, his life\u2014and the lives of his victim-survivors\u2014would have been completely different.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot enough can do these sort of courses, you know?\u201d Josh says. \u201cLike, I want to get off of this course \u2026 my life, I\u2019m 43 now. And it\u2019s only the last year that my life turned around. Which is, if I was offered the help years ago, I might not be talking to you. My future is looking bright. We want to stay clean, get back into work, and hopefully have another kid with my partner. Bright future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNo one\u2019s got any right to put hands on anybody,\u201d Josh says now. 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