Our stories
It's really difficult to insulate yourself @Zoe7 from the news 24/7, and even if you can at home its hard to out in the world on public transport and in conversations with other people. I did hear about it and then read a couple of news articles, when you have been raised in family violence it is like a moth to a flame when a story like that breaks and you can't help but get involved. It took the wind out of me and my sibs, there's just no words for that, it makes me so angry in lots of different ways.
And what's so sad is how obvious all the signs were that he was abusive and controlling. She referred to her parents being 'completely normal' so his personality traits and behaviour were all new to her.
I think the ABC's and Guardians articles were really good about the 'monster myth', and I could really relate to that. If we dismiss it as simply and mad man or mental illness, this has a tendency to end the conversation abruptly and also the action of implementing change. As soon as you say, well he was just a minority psycho, it doesn't examine him, the man, and also how regular his life was, and the impact of his social status on people around him turning the other way.
People think that abusive men and women are encrazed and %100 psycho with %0 personal insight, but their personality's are much more nuanced than that, and it is false to believe that they are so off the scale, that they don't even realise what they are doing. What is really chilling is that it is not uncommon for an abusive person to refer to themselves as a 'monster', or they may sugar coat it a little and say stuff like, "I am no angel", or, "I am not perfect". This reels people in and keeps their friends and family sympathetic to their outbursts or the damage they have done. They think, "ohhh poor person, they didn't mean it, see, they know it was bad, they won't do it again".
But there's a difference between episodic states and personality traits, and as one of the articles says its the repeated behaviour that are red flags, such as repeated cheating that could be revenge cheating, repeated online stalking and breaking their privacy with total disregard for the other person, jealousy and manipulation. My sib was telling me that she was looking at the BB website a few times and how scary some of the posts were. Someone had hooked up a camera to catch their partner cheating and stuff like that. I would be happy to forgo some online privacy for the greater good and I think that stuff like that should be followed up by the police and the state of federal police should monitor forums like that. Maybe the new metadata laws will change that, I don't know, I think that social media could do more to help family violence cases from escalating.
Social media does give a platform for abusive people like Baxter to manage their image and portray themselves a certain way, and to also play the victim, torn away from his children, sad and lonely.
There's so many issues that are pertinent that I could go on and on and on about, and I think that we do need to talk about the really difficult stuff that no-one wants to admit, but seems to have such a huge impact on the policing and law enforcement sectors such as people that do lie about family and sexual violence.
This is why I get so so so angry when people do that, because it is a small minority but it appears to have an enormous impact on how women/men are perceived and treated. There has to be consequences or interventions for people that lie, because they set back the progress 10 or 20 years. It is just so infuriating and I have no idea how on earth we tackle that.
Obviously being LGBTI myself I worry that it does increase the invisibility of same sex violence and abuse, because women are just as capable as men to abuse and male on male abuse happens too.
But like with the #Me Too movement I have been very disappointed with the amount of men that have not stepped forward and spoken up about the violence inflicted upon them. There were the guys with the Kevin Spacey cases but other than that I can't think of any men that have come forward to broaden the conversation and be allies for people like Hannah Clarke and her children.
I just keep thinking about her poor parents, imagine being her parents, how they can survive this is just unimaginable. That amount of pain and grief would put anyone in an early grave, I think I would die of a broken heart if that was my sibling and nieces and nephew, which is actually physiologically possible. The poor family, it is horrific beyond words.
Corny 
Hope you are well @Maggie I haven't seen you around much, but big hugs to you
https://twitter.com/WoofWoof_TV/status/1207743279812530177
Corny
Don't beat yourself up @Former-Member you're a wonderful person and lots of people on here would share your feelings around the inadequacies of the legal system, and also the fact that in the community, generally speaking, people do not intervene, and stopping these heinous crimes is incredibly difficult.
I don't know why the small minority that do lie about violence have such a powerful impact on the opinions and beliefs of law enforcement and police etc.....it just seems to stick for some reason. It's strange. I guess there is always a small percentage of people out there in any system that manipulate it, the legal system, the tax system, the welfare system, the education system, and they play on biases and generalisations to their advantage....but for whatever reason, all the focus seems to be on them, and not on the victims and the honest, genuine people.
I can't remember exactly how they wrote about it, but in one of the articles I read it was saying how the abusive person "changes the terms" or "changes the focus" or something like that, and this switches the emotions of the victim to sympathy and feeling bad for exerting boundaries. It said that she spoke to him on the phone the night before and he was crying, and this reels her back in, but it also makes others believe that he isn't the typical 'monster' because he is experiencing volatile mental health at the present time. My father was SH'ing and really, what chance did we ever have in people believing that our household needed investigation for DV when he was presenting that way.....its very rare that you meet a nurse or social worker that questions all of these red flags and possible clues to DV.
The reality is unless you stayed with your boyfriend or girlfriend from your teens, everyone experiences rejection, heart break and relationship break down, but not everyone reacts like he did. It also said that if she didn't have sex with him every night that he would give her the silent treatment for days.....it's just uncanny how similar theses situations are and all the common behaviours that they exhibit, and yet these patterns haven't been given a name that can be medically monitored or treated in some way, they wouldn't be considered dangerous or 'unwell', in the same way someone with DSM mental illness would be.......but I agree its extremely difficult and heartbreaking that this has occurred, and addressing the complexity via one government agency is not realistic.
It does feel hopeless some days, and you're not a bad person for feeling that. I haven't seen much dramatic change since I was a small child, all the same dynamics are flourishing in the community and people are looking the other way.
Corny
