When violence and rioting broke out at a Sydney football match earlier this year, 23 people were evicted, 16 were banned for life and six people, including two youths faced court charged with offensive behaviour, throwing missiles, intimidating police and refusing to move on. Two police officers were hurt, one requiring stitches to his face and dental work.
Representatives of the National Rugby League and New South Wales police deemed the assaults and property damage as so serious that they held a summit and conducted security audits.
Public outrage dominated news headlines for weeks. And yet, when an 84-year old woman has spent more than 60 years in a marriage where she is beaten and victimised or when a 16-year old school girl faces harassment and has her arm broken at school by her ex-boyfriend because she does not want to be with him anymore, there is a deafening silence.
Wollongong Women's Health worker Marlene McAlear is frustrated that the community can not see the comparison between domestic and public violence. She spends most of her days working with women who have been raped, beaten, humiliated, tortured and locked away from family and friends by their own partners.
``Why is it we live in a society where such behaviour used under the guise of political oppression can cause outrage but when the same behaviour is used against women and children in their own home we don't see the same outrage? If they get into a fight at the pub they get the full arm of the law. We have to fit the punishment to the crime.'
While people in crisis need protection and support, no amount of resources would stop domestic violence until the penalties fitted the crime. The fact that women stayed with abusive men also needed to be considered more carefully.
``Why does a woman stay with an abusive partner, is not the question we should be asking. What I think we should be asking is why do we live in a society that excuses perpetrator behaviour. It is not that women fall out of love with the perpetrator. They just want the behaviour to change.'
However, in an article in the Illawarra Mercury on September 30, 2000, Wollongong men's health worker Peter Orr said that the situation was changing, particualrly for men. He believes more will come forward as they realise that they will not be turned away. 'Domestic violence against men will continue to grow as an area of need,' he said.
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