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An historic and much overdue ruling came out of Wales recently where the Equality and Human Rights Commission ruled the Safer Wales run Dyn Project should cease in discriminating against male victims of domestic violence. The “helpline” had previously screened male callers in order to determine whether they were perpetrators, thus refusing to believe them. No such screening of of female callers by similar taxpayer funded services took place, thus demonstrating undeniable sexism against men.

Feminists are rightly ridiculed for their insistence that police, courts, juries and society as a whole should “believe the victim” and thus automatically assume guilt the moment anyone alleges abuse. However, arguably the one and only place where “believe the victim” could be appropriate is for a service such as a domestic violence helpline, where the impartially required from the police and justice system is not necessary.

The hypocrisy of feminists who throw their “believe the victim” rhetoric out the window the moment the victim is male and perpetrator is female is of course unsurprising, but of course they’re going further than that. They’re not simply being sceptical of men who seek help, they’re assuming the worst and of the impression that men seeking help are not merely liars, but also abusers and criminals themselves!

You’d have thought blatantly misandrist illegal sex discrimination by taxpayer funded services would have been stopped by a body such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission long ago, but they’ve actually been fully supportive of sexism against men. The EHRC in Wales previously stated it was it was essential to “screen” male callers to determine whether they were “genuine”. Thankfully, after campaigning by the likes of Welsh Assembly Member Mark Drakeford and Anne O’Regan they’re taken legal advice and realised the error of their ways, but it’s most concerning that such a body openly supports sexism against men until finally forced to see sense and actually do their jobs in enforcing equality law.

The sexist policy was also defended by arguing “women comprise the overwhelming majority of victims of domestic abuse”. This is of course utterly false and its’ most ironic that those who accuse male victims of lying about abuse are in fact the ones guilty of such lies themselves! Don’t take our word for it either, an official ruling by Sir Michael Scholar of the UK Statistics Authority adjudged this exact statement to be false in 2009 on two separate occasions. The authority instructed both the Crown Prosecution Service and also the Welsh Government to stop spreading the lie back in 2009.

The UK Statistics Authority stated that such text is “inconsistent with the evidence” on the matter and that a “substantial” proportion of victims are men.

As a result both bodies had to remove it from official documents. its notable that this was a time when the number of male victims coming forward was lower than today, and thus it’s even more inexcusable and a fraudulent defence.

The case of the Dyn Project isn’t an isolated one. The very same illegal phenomenon occurs in England and Scotland with the misandrist “Men’s Advice Line” also screening callers. Their conduct is even worse, with MAL not only assuming many male victims to be liars, but combining this with a blatant conflict of interest too. The parent organisation of the Men’s Advice Line is “Respect” whose core business is running perpetrator programmes for men who commit domestic violence (and not women of course). Thus it’s in the interest of MAL to find””lying” male victims who they insist are perpetrators who can be then put on lucrative perpetrator programmes run by the parent organisation.

Looking at the the bigger picture here, beyond the breaches of equality law and this is simply a massive scandal and should be headline news everywhere instead of relegated to one regional Welsh newspaper. Male victims of domestic violence are the most marginalised, the most discriminated against and have next to no assistance available such as shelters, despite now numbering 700,000 annually. Understandably, male victims of abuse feel they won’t be believed and are the least likely to come forward and report abuse, and yet when they finally gain the courage to call these taxpayer funded “helplines” they face yet more hostility and people who are officially instructed not to believe them either! Just imagine calling a helpline for the first item only to realise they person “helping” you thinks you’re the guilty one and wants to refer you to a perpetrator programme instead. It’s obscene.

There’s very real consequences to this screening too. For example a briefing paper produced by Respect for a debate on violence against men in the Scottish Parliament stated:

“A significant number of men calling the Men’s Advice Line who initially identify as victims change their own identification by the end of the call or provide information about the violence in their relationships which strongly suggests that they are either not a victim or in fact are the perpetrator.”

So we have a taxpayer funded organisation not only refusing to believe male victims, but then using their supposed “evidence” of men “lying” to advocate in Parliament against helping and believing men. The statement in question was read out in full by anti-male Labour MSP Bill Butler during the debate, and he was rightly labelled as “shameful” by MSP Mike Rumbles for doing so. The following year MSP Alex Neil also condemned the Men’s Advice Line in a document outlining concerns about those looking “for reasons to undermine the claim of abused men and their children for equality of recognition and support.”

Surely, the real question here is surely why on earth do we spend taxpayer funds on services who aren’t merely failing those they’re supposed to help, but who are ideologically opposed to even believing what they say to such an extent that they want to turn reality on its head? When did you ever hear of any organisation tasked with helping a particular group instead going out of their way to manufacture and disseminate “statistics” on just how many of those they help are liars, frauds and actually criminals themselves? Some feminist organisations refuse to believe that phenomena such as false rape accusations even exist, let alone documenting, inventing and exaggerating them.

Furthermore, whilst wasting taxpayer money on these failing misandrist services, we simultaneously deny funding to the legitimate organisations out there who genuinely care about male victims such as the Mankind Initiative, an organisation yet to receive a single penny of government money in its 16 year history, despite clearly being the leading advocates for male victims of domestic violence in the UK. We should defund those bodies who don’t want to help victims, stop wasting money, stop harming victims and instead give support to those who actually want to help victims of abuse and treat everyone equally regardless of their gender.

We’ll be writing to the EHRC in regard to the Men’s Advice to see if they’ve ended their illegal practice of screening male victims. and encourage others to do likewise. One has to wonder if the failure to provide perpetrator programmes for female abusers is illegal too? It would also be nice if the blatant lie about the proportion of male victims was retracted too, though at present we’re unsure whether it came from the EHRC or Safer Wales / The Dyn Project.

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