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I’ve written before about the NRL’s generally lame response to domestic violence, and briefly about the inadequacy of the current penalty regime for on and off-field misdemeanours.
After last weekend’s festival of street fighter thuggery, the Bulldogs didn’t even have time to get back on the field before another sordid tale of violence surfaced. Senior team trainer Frank Ciraldo is now on a 12-month good behaviour bond for committing the crime of assaulting his former wife in November last year.
I know that this column, like the last one, will bring out the minority of Roarers who make excuses for domestic violence and other acts of violence that men commit in the heat of the moment, or because they’re passionate players or because they were provoked.
My blood boils every time I hear these excuses. Why? Because it sells all men short. It implies that, deep down and in the right circumstances, all men have the potential to be slaves to their baser instincts.
I’ve been around too many good men to believe this. In a former life in the mining and gas industries, I ran what I called June Dally Watkins for drillers. Blokes used to working in Central Australia or offshore needed a quick brush-up on community expectations back in civilisation. They really took it to heart and we always got great feedback on their behaviour in the communities, which is to be expected when you carry groceries for old ladies.
They were great guys.
It was part of a decade spent on drill sites, mine sites and construction sites. On site and in the corporate offices, I was one of the one in ten women. Experiences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination? I don’t even need one hand to count the lot of them.
There’s a chance that it happened that way because I wasn’t pretty enough, or was too sharp-tongued to bother with. I prefer to think that it was because I got a lot of respect for walking the talk and being really open about my belief that men’s capacity for good behaviour is limited only by the environment they create.
In that industry, fighting on site is instant dismissal. Testing positive for recreational drugs or going to work over 0.02 is a three strikes situation. I could go on, but you get the picture.
These guys weren’t cruising around in air conditioning. They were out welding in a 40-degree open cut pit, or pulling core on a drill site. They were doing a 12-hour day in a tyre bay. There were plenty of opportunities to chuck a spanner in sheer overheated frustration but they managed not to.
Behaving badly made the risk of losing your job very real. It was a great motivator to behave well. Those men knew the consequences, owned their environment, set a behavioural norm and stuck to it rigorously. It worked.
For me, the Sportsman Accidentally Does a Bit of Domestic Violence story is a yawn. I’ve been around too many good men to believe the lame excuses about the heat of the moment, provocation and passion. All the story proves is that, if behaviour is bad enough to be discussed, it’s because it’s outside the boundaries of shared values and the person concerned is unwilling to learn to control their behaviour.
These men are professionals. They work under contract for an organisation that publicly opposes domestic violence. Every person in the game has a hand in setting the standard against domestic violence. It shouldn’t be hard, given that the vast majority of their peers are good, kind and compassionate.
There are a few cowards in league who are OK with bashing someone else’s daughter, sister or friend. Why aren’t the good men in league imposing on them harsh, consistent penalties that really hurt? Is there a consistent commitment to making these men participate in a proven counselling program for domestic violence offenders?
It’s easy to hate a violent man, but when people know better, they do better. Giving offenders the knowledge they need to change their behaviour is a critical part of stopping the cycle.
Why the good men of league aren’t stepping up, owning this problem, penalising it and changing it is a source of confusion that I can’t quite get.
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