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The
Dominion
August 21 1995
Bent Spoon for violence report
by Alan Samson
A Justice
Department report on domestic violence in New Zealand is this year's winner
of the Skeptics Bent Spoon award.
The Bent Spoon award is named in honour of Uri Geller, who claimed he could
bend metal with his mind.
Making the award, Skeptics head Vicki Hyde said the report, Hitting Home,
painted a disturbing picture of New Zealand men as abusers of
wives and partners -- till you examined the fine print.
"Since the report defines `abuse' to include criticising your partner's
family, it is not surprising that half the men surveyed were guilty of some
form of psychological abuse," Ms Hyde said. "By so exaggerating the
extent of abuse, the report trivialises the real domestic violence that goes
on.
"The report claims that `in at least one circumstance' six out of 10 New
Zealand men say the woman has only herself to blame for being hit . . .
"This only sounds shocking until you understand that the circumstance
where hitting might be justified is to stop a violent woman from abusing a
child or to act in self-defence against a woman who is attacking the
man."
By completely ignoring violence by women against other women, children and
men, the report gave a highly distorted picture of domestic violence in New Zealand,
Ms Hyde said.
Skeptics awards for excellence went to journalists from Television New Zealand, Metro and the Listener.
Ellis Through the Looking Glass, an examination of the Peter Ellis and the
Christchurch Civic Creche child abuse case, was singled out for accolades.
Also praised was Assignment's The Doctor Who Cried Abuse, an investigation of
a Dunedin
physician whose diagnoses "wreaked havoc on New Zealand".
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