A COUNSELLOR says he was forced to resign from Relationships Australia WA for endorsing a newspaper article which asserted domestic violence towards men is downplayed.

Rob Tiller, who has lodged an unfair dismissal claim, insists he was told to resign or be sacked after bosses at Relationships Australia (RAWA) found out about emails he’d sent more than one year earlier to a professional network of male counsellors from several organisations.

Mr Tiller, 43, said he didn’t criticise his employer in any of his emails, but the article written by social commentator Bettina Arndt in The Weekend Australian challenged the “feminist-framed” policy on domestic violence, which is supported by a range of organisations including RAWA.

In the emails, sent from his work account, he’d agreed with the premise of Arndt’s argument that men were often victims of domestic violence, as well as women. He had also shared Arndt’s article on his private Facebook page.

He claims he was told his actions had breached his work contract, but RAWA said it couldn’t comment on the details of the case because the matter was before the Fair Work Commission.

“They said, ‘You’re fired’, but, ‘Because it’s not a major breach we’ll give you the option of resigning just to keep your record clean’,” Mr Tiller told The Sunday Times.

Mr Tiller said he was devastated to lose a job he loved without a warning or caution, despite having an unblemished record during his eight years with RAWA.

“I loved my job there. If they had said, ‘You can’t circulate newspaper articles on your email account’, I would have said, ‘OK, it won’t happen again’, and the same with (sharing on) Facebook. But they had already made up their mind.

“I wasn’t allowed to have a final conversation with any of my clients. Some of these people I have been working with for five or six years ... there was no therapeutic closure. I was the only male counsellor in their Perth office. I have been the only one there for years.”

A spokeswoman for RAWA said it employs 35-plus male counsellors and facilitators.

“Any person specifically requesting a male counsellor can easily be accommodated,” she said.

RAWA also pointed out that its domestic violence policy was consistent with policies of both the Federal and State governments.

On its website RAWA says its family and domestic violence policy “is historically framed by a feminist analysis of gendered power relations”.

Camera Icon Rob Tiller is claiming unfair dismissal from his job with Relationships Australia WA. Credit: Justin Benson-Cooper

Mr Tiller said when he and colleagues raised the issue of aggression by female partners at RAWA they were shut-down.

“That’s a taboo conversation,” he said.

“The orthodoxy is that women are victims and men are perpetrators.”

He said from his experience counselling couples, issues were more complex.

“They haven’t really upgraded the policy to address what’s happening in more and more couples’ situations where there is escalating levels of aggression, conflict and actual acts of violence coming from both partners,” he said.

“They are sticking to this orthodoxy that is based on the Duluth Model that came out in the 1980s and that model isn't based on any current international research and that’s what Bettina was challenging in her article.

“I was circulating it, saying, ‘Hey guys, finally somebody is telling the truth about what I'm seeing in my couples sessions on a weekly basis’. Then a couple of years later I get sacked because of it.”