I had been married to my partner for 12 years. During those 12 years I experienced trauma in my life and even today I still recall all the traumatic experiences that had such a negative impact on my life.

I had been threatened by my wife in 1999 that if I had separated from her, she would ask her relatives to kill me or if I was not killed she would ask her relatives to kill my family members.

I had been continuously harassed at my workplaces. My partner would come to my workplace and harass or verbally abuse me. In 2002 I had been continuously living in fear from the constant use of weapons (knives, stones and wood). My partner actually missed me with knives on a number of occasions. At one point in time she raised a knife to cut me on the head but I quickly avoided the knife, then a year later she missed me with a pocket knife, almost stabbing me on the tummy.

In 2001 she was 3/4 months pregnant and forced me to terminate the pregnancy. I refused and left. After 4 weeks she self-terminated the pregnancy and again in 2005 while studying in Townsville I was told to return because my partner was sick. I withdrew from studies and left for home.

At home my partner arranged for termination of the pregnancy in the house in my room without my consent. I was left in shock and confused.

In 2008 she threatened to terminate the pregnancy when she was 6 months pregnant.

I was late to report this to the relevant authorities because the Australian system is a new system for me and I thought it was shameful to report such a matter to the authorities.

Earlier this year while studying, she accused me of seeing a neighbour and had threatened to break the windscreen of the car while I was in it. I decided I needed a break and asked her to pick up and leave.

I really did not realise how much the trauma had affected my work. I was always having extreme anxiety...

I hope people out there can share with me their experiences.

I left after one day when we were walking to MacDonalds, where we were going to meet her, and one of the kids asked if they could play on the play structure. Knowing how she was about germs in such places I said "let's wait till we meet mommy and see what's going on." One of the kids pointed out "yes, we have to wait because we all know mommies are the bosses." I had completely lost my authority with the kids, and looked up the DIY divorce papers later that day.

After separation, I planned to drop the kids off after my weekend, and went into their room while picking them up to get their socks and underwear. As the kids went outside to play in the street, she barricaded me in their room, holding a broom across the door and refused to let me out until I put the underwear and socks back, as I was NOT to be permitted to have them overnight Sunday. She refused to listen or budge as I pointed out the kids could be close to the busier street unsupervised. When I put my hand on the broom to move it out of the way, she said "Go ahead, touch it and I'll have the police on you." Knowing from many other men's experiences how biased the police and courts are, I put the underwear and socks back, and gave up on Sunday night dinner with the kids.

Not long after, I picked them up again. This time I wanted the video camera, to copy the tapes so I'd have the memories of when they were young, too. I'd just had knee surgery. When I picked up the camera out of a cupboard she slammed the cupboard door on my hand, then crash tackled me. As I could barely stand I grabbed the wall, and pushed myself to vertical so as not to further damage my knee. She fell off my back, snatching the camera and telling me I'd never see those videos. In too much pain to argue, I left, but sagely went straight to the police station to document the injury to my hand. By the time the AVO summons came from her lawyer, I had already filed mine in anticipation. It became a Mexican standoff, thankfully, rather than the disaster it would have been if I had not been able to show at least some evidence that I'd been acting in self-defence. An AVO would have pretty much ended my professional career.

The horrific biases against men have been fully revealed to me through the abuses of the court system and the Child Support Agency, the stress of which has surely shaved a number of years off of my life. I've listened to the glee with which CSA representatives describe in detail how they'll seize my assets and prevent me from ever seeing the kids again if I don't cough up money I don't have. I've reported her lawyer to the Law Society for lying - in writing - to the police about "proceedings before the court" that never existed, which lie resulted in me being unable to protect my sons against her boyfriend's violence, because I was "making it up." The result? Nothing. That old saw about knowing a lawyer is lying by virtue of the fact that his lips are moving needs to be extended to 'fingers typing' as well, it seems.

Photos of my boys with bruises from her new partner? DOCS NSW said "it's not serious enough, we have much worse cases to spend our time on." If your first thought after reading that is "yes, probably females," then you're exactly where I was after writing it. Maybe that shouldn't be the case, but the fact that it is, is telling.

As long as the rhetoric continues around male violence toward women, and not the 3 other types that exist (M/M, F/M and F/F), our sons will continue to grow up not only without effective fathers, but into a world where they've been trained to accept that violence against them will never be dealt with. The helplessness they experience faced with a system that treats them as rubbish cannot possibly help them to integrate well into society. Rather, it increases their risk of lashing out, out of sheer frustration if nothing else. And thus, the campaigns to reduce violence by ignoring reality and blaming men will do nothing but be self-fulfilling prophecy that do the opposite of what they are intended to do. Only when *everyone* has a sense of safety and justice will the violence that comes from fear and frustration stop.

Without carrying on about the horrendous bias and destruction being inflicted upon men all across Canada by "family" court, the other tragedy which I have come to realise through this experience is that there is a cover-up occurring within our government. A cover-up that has been executed so well that most people, even those that are living through its' horrors, don't even know it is present. I am referring to the domestic violence myth.

When you mention "domestic violence" to anyone, they immediately picture women or children (most likely young girls at that) being yelled at, beaten and otherwise abused by some horrible husband and/or father. I am certain you thought the same when I mentioned it. Like everyone else, you have been led to believe that "domestic violence" is one-way; males abusing females. The media is full of such images, yet void of anything regarding women abusing men. There are hundreds of shelters, employing thousands of people and receiving millions of tax-payers' dollars in funding, for women and children seeking refuge from some horrible man. There is one shelter in this entire country (receiving zero dollars in public funding) for men, with or without their children, trying to escape an abusive spouse. There are even school districts which are training their teachers how to spot potential "future-abusers" in young boys; without paying any attention to abusive tendencies in the other gender. This has all been by design, not accident.

The government's own study, conducted by Statistics Canada in 2005, showed that just under half (46 percent) of all inter-partner domestic violence is actually committed by women against men. I would bet my paycheque that nine out of ten people in this country did not know that such a study was even conducted; let alone that this was one of the key findings. All the public has seen is a propagation of the stereotypical male-on-female domestic violence image.

Whether or not my boys and I go bankrupt for having ended my former abuser's reign-of-terror, I take comfort in knowing that they will become neither abuser nor abused now that I am in control. This has been my main objective throughout this horror. The other goal which I have inadvertently accepted is to expose the domestic violence "myth". To this end, I will tell you my story.

In front of others, she was the "perfect wife" and "perfect mother". I played along like a good little husband; afraid to indicate otherwise for fear of retribution later. Behind the walls of the house, however, I was being kicked, scratched, hit, belittled, worked like a dog and blamed for all of her problems. The point where I hit back for the first (and only) time was the very same day that I sought counselling for myself; ensuring that, no matter what may happen, my boys would at least have one functioning parent.

There had been many assaults, too many to count. Just as horrible, though, was the mental abuse. Many people would not be able to appreciate how horrible mental abuse can be unless they have lived through it. For those that don't understand it, the only parallel I can draw is to imagine military boot camp from some of the television shows or movies you may have seen. Mental abuse from your spouse can break you down in exactly the same way.

To help keep myself sane, I started a diary on our computer (locked with a password of course, so she would never be able to read it). Through the worst of the abuse, my diary grew to over 70 pages in length (single-spaced pages); most of which was written while she was sleeping. Inside, I would tell of everything that was horrible that she had done to me that particular day.

One daily entry in my diary talked about her insisting I help with our son (we only had our first child at the time) from the moment I returned from work until she went to bed (as I did every day); yet insisting that I stay up to clean up the mess that she had left for me in the kitchen (from the entire day). It took me until 2:30 in the morning, but I managed to clean everything up. I was tired, and knew that work would be tough that day (on three hours sleep) but, at the same time, there was a feeling of comfort; knowing that there was no way she could be upset at me about anything when she woke up. Just as I was getting ready to go up to bed, she came down from the bedroom. With a look of anger on her face, she walked over to the kitchen. I was terrified. She picked up the dish cloth from the left side of the sink, slammed it down on the right side of the sink then grumbled at me angrily, only inches from my face, "This goes over here!!!". Saying nothing else, she went back upstairs and got back into bed. I cried. I actually cried; silently of course, so that I wouldn't give her any other reason to get mad at me.

Another diary entry described my Fathers' Day experience in 2004. The night before, I was up until past midnight (for the same reason mentioned above). As I went to bed, I promised myself I would not give her any reason to be angry at me the next day; curious to see if she would actually be civil to me on, of all days, Fathers' Day. Morning came. I woke up to the sound of her looking after our son. I was amazed she had actually let me sleep a whole thirty minutes after she woke up. She said nothing when I came downstairs from the bedroom. I started interacting with my child. She barked at me to stop interfering with her routine. I got myself a bowl of cereal then sat at the table with my family. She made some remark about how it must be nice to be able to get breakfast for myself. Without saying anything, I obediently went back into the kitchen and prepared something for her to eat. When I placed it in front of her, she got up from the table angrily, telling me to forget about it - I was too late. She then took our child upstairs. I sat alone at the kitchen table.

The day carried on in much the same way; with me still wondering if I was ever going to hear the words "Happy Fathers Day". Sometime that afternoon, she brought out two wrapped gifts. I thought this was going to be the turning point in the day. She placed the gifts, and our son, in the middle of the living room then sat down beside them. Looking over her shoulder at me, she still said nothing. I sat down with them; expecting this is what I was being ordered to do. She then placed each of the gifts in front of my son and opened them up; saying to my son in a sweet, motherly voice, "These are for Daddy".

Later that night, a friend called. When I answered the phone, the first words she said were, "Happy Fathers Day Don!". At that point, I realised I had gone the entire day in my own home, among my family, without having had anyone say those words (or even be civil) to me. The feeling in my stomach was indescribable. Still, I was afraid to even tell this friend what it was that was bothering me; in case my abuser overheard. It didn't work. The look on my face was all she needed to get angry at me; insisting on knowing who was on the phone and why I looked so upset. As much as I didn't want to fight, I ended up getting raked over the coals and smacked around for half an hour before she finally gave up, took our child upstairs and fell asleep with him in our bed.

When a person is enduring abuse as horrible as this, they are in survival mode; just trying to get through each day - hopefully, without being punished, humiliated or attacked. You inherently stop paying attention to your own needs. Such was the case with me. Near the end of 2004, I started noticing I was more tired than usual. With what was going on at home, I guess I wasn't too surprised. I was also having some twitching in my arms and legs, and the occasional dizzy spell. Again, I thought it was just stress. The few times I did mention something to my abuser about how I was feeling, I was scorned. How dare I be so self-centred; only caring about myself instead of concentrating on helping her. When I finally did go to a doctor, in early 2005, it was discovered that I had an egg-sized cyst growing in the middle of my skull. I was scheduled for brain surgery within three weeks' time.

There was a lull in her abuse of me in the six weeks that I was off work following my surgery. Shortly after I returned to work though, she returned to her old ways. A few days later, while I was feeding one of our boys (we had two by then) some dry Cheerio's, she started insisting that I let him pick the Cheerio's out of the cup rather than me taking them out and placing them in front of him. I (foolishly) ignored her demands and continued what I was doing. When she grew more irate, I picked up our son and started walking down to the bedroom so that I could avoid a confrontation. She attacked me from behind while I was carrying our son. I set him down, turned around and hollered at her to stop. When her fist connected across the side of my head, there was a sharp pain and immediate ringing in my ear. Wincing, I stood up and hollered at her again. She did the same to the other side of my head. After yelling at her one more time, she began wailing across my head with both arms. I grabbed my coat and left for work before there was any more violence in front of the boys.

Later that day, when the pain and ringing hadn't subsided, I went to the hospital. After naively trying to tell the doctor that I didn't know what was wrong, telling him some story about how I woke up with a strange feeling in my ear, I eventually told the truth.

Having already been charged with one count of assault against me, and subsequently released on twelve months probation (less than a year earlier), I knew that reporting this incident to the RCMP would result in her being charged again - and left with a criminal record. Over the next couple days, I tried convincing her to sit down and talk with me; explaining there was something very important we needed to discuss. She eventually conceded; insisting that I tell her over breakfast with the boys present. I looked at her and calmly said "When you hit me two nights ago, you fractured my eardrum." She stared at me for about five seconds then said, with a cold look on her face, "You deserved it!". She then returned to having her breakfast.

I calmly grabbed my jacket, walked out of the house and drove to the RCMP station where I reported her latest assault on me (and breach of her probation). She was arrested and removed from the home. She spent a couple days in jail then moved around various places for the next few weeks; all the while putting lots of pressure on me to let her back into the home. She explained how she was in counselling, felt sorry for what she did, promised it would never happen again, etc. I eventually gave in and let her back into the home. However, her remorse ended a few weeks later and, in the middle of another one of her “episodes”, I asked her to leave and have not let her back into the home since.

When I went to "family" court, all I wanted was official custody; so I wouldn't have to worry about how I was going to get the boys back if she ever decided to run with them. I didn't want money, or to point blame; all I wanted was the approval of the courts to carry on raising the boys the way they deserved. The problem is that she had no intention of keeping it this simple. After I supposedly ruined her life, she had one thing on her mind - revenge; and the perfect vehicle with which to enact it - "family" court. Consequently, the boys and I have been ordered to pay her more money than we have every month. I have become another "Deadbeat Dad" statistic; still owing her the $15000 in spousal support that she supposedly "earned" between the time she was removed from the home by Criminal Court process and the judge's decision. I have also incurred $30000 in legal fees trying to get my divorce and have the original (erroneous) spousal support decision corrected. Unfortunately (for the boys), with the way the system is set up, she has no incentive to settle anything; having been granted a nice monthly bonus (in the form of spousal support) from now until 2033 as well as unlimited (and free) legal services - courtesy of Legal Aid. She won't even agree to the divorce (almost three years after she was removed from the home). As a result, the only financial support that two young boys have (me) is now bordering on bankruptcy.

I was a good husband and father while our family was together; and I did everything a person could be expected to do in order to try holding it together. A point came, though, where I realised it was beyond my control and I could no longer worry about "rescuing" her (my former abuser). My priority had to be salvaging my boys' sanity and childhoods; making sure that they did not end up repeating the cycle (as the abuser or the abused). This decision will likely cost us (the boys included) our life savings – but I have no regrets. If we are ever to eradicate domestic violence in this country, there are a couple things that need to be changed:

i) “family” court needs to be fixed (so that men are not punished so brutally for trying to end the abuse they are enduring); and

ii) the current “one-sided” view of domestic violence needs to be updated to include all of the male victims that are enduring abuse (most of them silently because they are afraid to speak up).

I was a lucky one to have members of my extended family to give me support, understanding and affirmation of my self-worth.

My story is at www.my.story.grahamguy.com.

Without a Christian Faith, relevant teaching at Church and caring Pastors I would have imploded a long time ago.

Resources are needed for adult male survivors of sexual assault during childhood.

What is out there is very limited hence my own web site.

I've lived to tell my story.
I owe it to other survivors to put it out there.

One of her favourite ploys was to pick up our young child and sling verbal abuse, physically poke me and make wild accusations. This is an old provocative trick which many mothers use as I found out. The object was to try and get me to retaliate so she can make comment to the effect of "he abused me while I was holding our child." These verbal barrages persisted for months, then years, projecting all her wild irrational thoughts and actions onto me, all in front of our child.

Always degraded and humiliated around friends and family. Told I don't make enough money. Spat on. Poisoned.

I dearly hope our child is not treated the same.

One year later I met a lady who is 11 years younger than me. At first our relationship was amazing. I told her things that my ex-wife did not know. She showed only a small amount of jealousy towards me. Then one night I found her crawling on the floor. She had a friend up from Nimbin and she was off her face. From that day this extremely jealous monster appeared.

She defamed one of my good friends to his wife. She started spreading false rumours about my ex-wife. She constantly verbally abused all of the female and male friends I had. Over a period of 2 years she moved in and out of my house 4 times. She was fanatical about having a child with me and became pregnant. She told me that smoking a small amount of marijuana stopped her from getting morning sickness. It wasn't until halfway through the pregnancy that I found out she had smoked a large bag of dope in 3 weeks. When I asked her about it she moved out the next day.

During the period we lived together she accused me of having 18 affairs. Another night I caught her going through my personal computer. I asked her to turn it off. The next morning I found out she had kept reading very personal family letters. Once again she moved out. I found out that while she was pregnant she went down to the Northern Rivers and lived on alcohol and dope for a week.

After our daughter was born she got worse, and on one occasion after her and a friend of hers were stoned, she bit me on the arm. She then called the police stating that I had stolen my own daughter. She moved out again. Her son, who at the time was 7, told me that he had to look after himself, my daughter and mummy because mummy was so wasted that he could not wake her up. This happened twice.

After the baby was born she became very depressed and tried to jump out of my moving car. I went to the local crisis centre and pleaded for some help, but none was given. She started to constantly lie, accusing me of stalking her and hitting her. The town I live in is very small and the rumour mill started.

She started to hang out with one of the local drug dealers and in March last year she told me that she was not right and I could have my daughter. She dropped my daughter at my house and sped off. She was still breastfeeding my daughter so I took my daughter to her mum's house that night. The local drug dealer was sleeping there and she would not feed my daughter so I walked out with my daughter. The mum lunged at me, ripping my face open as I was holding my daughter above my head.

I went to the police, and went home. The mum turned up 1 hour later and attacked me again. The police came and arrested her. All I wanted was for the mum to get therapy, but she wouldn't. She still blames me to this day for her shit life. I did not want to place a DVO on her, but in the end the police placed it on her, so she told the police that she was scared of me and they placed a DVO on me.

In October she went out with the same drug dealer and the next morning when she was meant to be looking after my daughter I ended up taking her to the accident and emergency department of the local hospital. She was in there for 5 hours. Whenever the doctor tried to take some blood she would start screaming, so in the end they gave up.

My first legal bill was $10,000. She kept delaying the process and because she was getting legal aid she did not give a shit. One minute she would tell her solicitor and the police that she was scared of me then the next day she would ask me to go out with her. She has taken 5 DVOs out against past boyfriends and also her father. I now get my daughter 3 days a week.

I am amazed at the bias in the system. She is constantly late dropping off my daughter, but the police won't call her. If I'm 5 minutes late they are on the phone to me. I regularly get lectured by the local police about being violent. I have never hit or hurt her. I have been physically abused by her 4 times. I have sent legal letters trying to stop her defaming me, costing thousands of dollars, but she continues. I sent her 4 text messages in the space of half an hour asking her to stop hurting me and my daughter. She went to the police and I was up for harassment. Then the judge lectured me about domestic violence. The assumption is always that the man is guilty. This is not all that has happened.

A week later the police had served a DVO on her under the new legislation where if they hear about domestic violence they act on it. We went to court and I told the police prosecutor I didn’t want a DVO. I told him this only because I was under extreme pressure from my girlfriend and her family for her to take my daughter and leave me. I believed correctly that a DVO was 2 years mandatory. The decision was a 6 month DVO. The police prosecutor did not tell the judge that she threw a knife at us. At the court the domestic violence ladies supported my girlfriend and as the aggrieved spouse I received zero support.

A couple of months later the John Howard campaign of “Violence against women is wrong” was in full swing. I rang the hotline to get some support and they refused to talk to me because I was a man. They told me to ring the man’s hotline. It was unattended and rang out.

The only reason I stayed living with my girlfriend was for my daughter’s sake. I did everything in terms of caring for her. Eventually, while mum was in town drinking, again, I packed up my car with everything it would carry and then some, put my 3 year old daughter into the baby seat and drove out of there. I initiated and fought family court from a considerable distance away. It initially became shared care, mum didn’t bring my little girl back on time and rang me to tell me she had no intention of bringing her back. Following a successful recovery hearing the state police in her location made my girlfriend and my daughter get on a plane. State police in my location met the plane, took them to the police station for hand over. Mum was flown back the next day. Child Safety paid for the plane. I had full custody and responsibility until final orders.

A year later mum failed to appear in court, she had been cut off legal aid for not returning any phone calls and failing to turn up to any meetings they arranged in her location. It was all over in 10 minutes. I had final orders and it was ordered by the court that I have full custody, responsibility etc, and get this: contact as can be agreed between the parties but only in my location during daylight hours. In the past 5 years mum has made the effort three times to seek contact. On one of those occasions she failed to turn up 4 days in a row. The other occasions I agreed to 2 hours on one day only at a playground (location was mum’s idea).

It’s a real shame my little girl doesn’t know her mother but she’ll never grow up to be like her. For me: I’ve been riding a wave of celebration and relief every waking second since Final Orders on May 15, 2006. I love being a single dad. My priorities are my family not my career. As a teacher I would expect to be in an admin position in a school by now had I not chosen to fight for my daughter. Instead I’m a relief teacher and work in a different school every day. Fits in great with my responsibilities as a dad. And Family Court was the best $20,000 I ever spent. It’s worth every penny.

I'd suffered so much violence from before the time I was born. My 'mother' tried to kill me three times before I was born. She was a famous dancer on the Tivoli Circuit just after WW2; so I was the biggest SOB on the planet. And boy did she pay me back by marrying the guy she did five years later. The guy she ended up marrying tried to finish the job for her. In fact he nearly succeeded twice. And I lost count of the number of times I was knocked out, and that doesn't count the concussions I suffered. After the first 15 years of my life being treated like crapola, I thought this was perfectly normal.

My ex thought this was normal also, and took up where things stopped when I was 15 and sent away from home by the courts because I'd been bashed so badly. But her violence was of the silent kind. She never spoke unless she was spoken to. The pro forma replies were "yes," "no," "I don't know" and shoulder shrugging.

After 5 kids and 19 years of this zero acknowledgement and even less acceptance I managed to get away from her. Lost everything of course.

Her greatest achievement, however, was not doing the job directly on me: it was teaching the children never to listen to me. Never to speak to me. And her living memorial is 5 children that regard their father as the biggest arsehole or weirdo, whichever comes first, that exists on the planet.

Now, this is what I live with, hour by hour. I have 5 children who not only don't speak to me now, apart from one who rings me now and again to tell me how she's going (but there's no personal matters ever ventured into), but, not once, in the thirty-one years I've been a father, has one of my children ever asked me a question. About anything. Ever.

Wow!

Now there's nothing. My health has given up after two nervous breakdowns in 2009 after getting assaulted on consecutive nights driving a cab.

So we've ended up on a disability pension, a $400 car, a couple of boxes of books and sleeping on a friend's couch in a small one-bedroom flat. At 61 it's all over.

For me though, having my balls cut out in public, and especially in front of my children, is just something from which I'm unable to recover.

I don't know how you feel, but I get a strong sense of your pain, brothers.

Best regards to you all. Robin.

Our marriage lasted 23 years and I paid dearly for that tooth but I never did hit her again. She was abusing me in many ways. Yelling and screaming was her regular weapon. I never did any housework well enough for her. When I did the shopping there was always something I bought that was wrong and it was worth shouting and nagging. Heavy objects were thrown at me a few times. I don’t know how I avoided being seriously injured. She tried to hit my head many times with long and heavy objects. My hands were bruised from taking the blows. Countless verbal abuses were used with real haterade. I have never heard such vulgar language from anybody else. Normally we were about the same weight, height and strength but in her rage she was much stronger and I always had to salvage myself with avoiding and escaping tactics. I remembered the tooth and could never retaliate.

We had 2 sons. When the older was about 15, he reacted once by holding her so she could not attack me when he saw her trying to hit my head with long and heavy piece of wood. It must have looked to him very dangerous as he never before reacted in any way to our fights. She went to see family and friends with the words “the son is holding and the father is beating”. Even though she did not have any bruises or any other marks of “beating”, only her words, nobody ever asked me or the sons about what really happened. They “knew” from her description. I think this was the effect of the ever present government campaign “Violence against women Australia says no”. The power of TV ads is very strong and everybody is programmed that “violence in the family = he is a perpetrator and she is a victim”.

Amazingly, she was always extremely careful to make sure that nobody from outside the house saw her shouting, being angry or violent. And nobody ever did. I often remember such a picture: she angrily and in a vulgar way complains about her friend, lets say Barbara, then the telephone rings. She picks up the phone and after a while, with a sweet voice says: “Oh, Barbara, we were just talking about you. How are you, darling?” I could never be able to be so hypocritical.

Sex? I had to beg for it always and usually when I bought something nice for her we had it but I was never allowed to ejaculate inside her. The sperm was too “yucky” for her to defile her “pure” body. I really don’t know how it happened that we had 2 sons plus 2 abortions.

Sometimes, when she had good days, I asked her: ”Why are you shouting at me and attacking me physically?” Her answer was always the same: “Because you are my husband. I have you for this reason.” I argued that I never agreed to be a victim, I never gave her licence to do that, and she promised before the altar to love me and care for me. She never had any answer to that.

I moved out twice and twice she tracked me down, was very remorseful and I came back. Eventually we decided to separate for good and we signed the agreement which I thought was fair. I said we could always swap places if she thought the agreement was not fair to her. It was like this:

- She was to stay in our house with both sons until the last of them would leave the house

- She was to pay the mortgage rates

- She was not to claim any child support from me

- I was to move out taking only my personal belongings

- If she was unhappy about this agreement I agreed to swap places with her.

I thought it was fair because we both worked, she even earned slightly more than me and our sons were 21 and 16, almost adults. Then she was left in the house with all the furniture and equipment and I had to start anew and buy everything again.

Well, it was only 3 months before I received letters from the Child Support Agency demanding support money for our younger son and from our bank informing me that our mortgage was not being repaid. As I found out later, our agreement was not valid legally and she was advised to ditch it.

An old lawyer from the Citizens Advice Bureau told me that if there is no VRO and no injunction was made by the Family Court about the household, I could simply take the truck, go to my house where she lived and take everything from the house, perhaps leaving her personal belongings. This is what I did. At this time both our sons were living with me already by their own choice and she had to pay the child support for the younger one to me.

The younger son was big and strong so he helped me to load the truck. She came from work and called the police but they could only ask me to leave some staff for her, they could not force me. The old lawyer was right. When the police were out the door she punched me in the face and my glasses fell off. I called the police back. My son was the witness so, very reluctantly, they had to charge her with common assault. Later she was found guilty and was fined $200 in the magistrates court.

I regretted then that our son had to go into court against his own mother but it was the only way to prove the truth of who was the perpetrator and who was a victim in our family. His mother turned against him for that as revenge.

Now I don’t regret anything as a few years later our oldest son committed suicide. He was involved in drugs but there is no doubt in my mind that the true underlying reason for this was violence in his family. Lack of self worth, lack of any help from other family members (my brother and his family lived in the same town), humiliation, lack of a role model from his father, my own suffering, humiliation, alienation from friends and family. All that contributed to his escape to drugs and tragic death.

The worst for me was the fact that all 3 of us being males had no chance of getting help from anywhere. Nobody wanted to know that a woman, the wife and the mother, was a perpetrator and 3 males were victims.

After separation and divorce I found to my surprise that there are women out there who actually like sex, they are loving, caring, not angry or shouting. In general, that there are normal women in the world. I really did not know that during 23 years of our marriage.

Before I migrated to Australia I was proud to be a man. I knew my role in society, I had good self-esteem, even though my wife was already violent to me. At that time it was not so often and society's awareness about family violence was different. Our Society was fighting against “Family Violence” not just against “Violence against women”. And I have always been against any form of violence so my integrity and self-esteem remained intact. In Australia this was simply impossible. According to everybody any violence in the family equals the schematic: she is a victim and he is a perpetrator. Full stop. This is very convenient for the Government and Police but is it fair? Is it true? It relieves everybody from any judgement but how can it be true? After all, both men and women are almost the same as human beings. Both can be angry, both can lie, both can hurt their partner. Why then such a simplistic solution to the problem of family violence in Australia? My God, politicians - wake up! This is not about a feud of men versus women. It is about a healthy society. How can it be healthy if we turn a blind eye to the truth? Why did you lose the balance and common sense for so many years? Maybe it is time to change, and return to a balance and equal rights for both genders.