7 March 2002

"The US human rights report targeting New Zealand violence is biased, inaccurate and misleading", FARE spokesperson Darryl Ward said today. He was commenting a US Government report citing 'high levels of violence against women and children in New Zealand'.

"Nowhere is it stated that women are just as likely to commit violence against their partners as men are. Nowhere is it stated that when men are victims of domestic violence, they are blamed for their predicament. And nowhere is it stated that the primary perpetrator of child abuse in New Zealand is our ideologically biased and adversarial family law regime".

"It can no longer be denied that men and women are equally likely to commit acts of violence, and indeed the majority of physical abuse of children is committed by women, but it continues to be fashionable to lay the blame at the foot of men, along with the blame for all other social ills."

"Statistics and reports such as this will be continue to be meaningless and misleading so long as they are based on ideological prejudices instead of cold hard facts".

"Until we recognise that family violence and child abuse are human problems that can not be blamed on gender politics, these blights will never be removed from our society," concluded Ward.

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