DOMESTIC VIOLENCE = PROPERTY LAW yet ASSAULT = CRIMINAL LAW ... WHY?

I hope I live long enough to see the tag of 'Domestic' removed from the descriptors of violence.

An assault is an assault. Who and where it is committed has no bearing. Yet as a society we continue to perpetuate the reason 'Domestic' was added to the nomenclature of 'assault offence provisions'.

The history of this nomenclature is this:

Women and children were considered the property of men in days past, therefore the men were allowed to treat their property in any manner they saw fit.

Sadly this attitude has carried over to 'same sex' relationships where assaults committed by people who purport to love, care and nurture each other are still viewed through the eyes of property law and not criminal law.

The same applies to the differentiation between child sexual assault offenders i.e. incest or child sexual assault - the difference in how the courts and police treat the two is staggering, and again it is all based on this archaic assumption that if you abuse your own children/step children then it is seen as a property law matter and not a criminal law matter. The offences may traverse the criminal justice system but the attitudes that surround its journey through that system are those of a property law matter and not a criminal law matter.

You need look no further than societies reactions to child sexual assault for confirmation of this differentiation.

If a person sexually assaults a child unrelated to, or completely unknown to them, society wants them hung drawn and quartered... and put on a Child Sex Offenders list for public shaming.

If a person sexually assaults their own child/step child/relative society retreats into the mindset of 'that's a family issue and we don't air our family dirty laundry in public' ....

We will never find a just solution to violence and sexual assault in our society while there's a differentiation in nomenclature within the offence provisions of our criminal law statutes, These differences serve no other purpose than to flag to the police and the courts the relationship between offender and victim and to steer the passage of the matters before courts down either the criminal law mindset or the property law mindset.

A perfect case example

Address this key flaw in the system first, then there's hope of addressing the core of the problem - VIOLENCE - and ultimately developing sound solutions and caring, safe outcomes to violence between human beings.