'No more' violence. Stand up and be counted

Good men, the ones who call out the abuse, have been urged to stand beside women in Bendigo today in a bid for lasting change which has been elusive.

The violence that our police and court reporters see on a daily basis has its tentacles in all areas of society. It is a crisis.

A seemingly never-ending stream of sex crimes and assaults, thefts and bad behaviour wend their way through the Bendigo Magistrate's Court system.

I've had numerous, soul searching conversations with journalists about how we cover what are nearly always difficult cases.

Who we name, who we don't. How we protect victims but name the perpetrators knowing the reporting is a deterrent not only to those convicted but to others lurking in the shadows.

The men (and they are largely men) who put their partners in hospital by walking through AVOs, who rape women they claim to love, who abuse children in their care (or friends of their children), who kill women.

The abusers never "look" like monsters. They could be a person in the line with you at the supermarket, somebody you say hello to on the bus, the guy who looks like your kindly elderly uncle.

The very ordinariness of them makes their crimes all the more appalling. You can't spot them in a crowd. You can't easily single them out.

So how do we deter them from becoming recidivists and stop others from following in their footsteps? That's at the heart of much of our soul-searching.

Perhaps it starts with just one person standing up. And then another. And another.

Half a century ago my father walked away from a group of friends because they spoke about their wives and partners with zero respect. He's still calling out that bad behaviour to this day.

There are many men and women who stand beside him in fighting that good fight.

That gives hope to us all that lasting change can come.

Juanita Greville, Editor