Trigger warning: This post deals with domestic violence, including footage of one distressing incident.
The footage begins with an unremarkable image of a blue minivan driving along a quiet road.
But before long, the video takes a chilling turn.
Seemingly from no where, another car aggressively zooms towards the blue vehicle from behind, billowing smoke.
After several seconds of tailgating, the car violently rams the minivan off the road, causing it to flip twice before coming to rest on its roof.
The women in the flipped blue car was Sandra Wolfe. The man driving the car that hit her was her husband.
It sounds like a scene from a horror film. But the real-life incident occurred in Albany, Western Australia in June last year – and happened to be captured by a dashboard camera.
Luckily the victim, Sandra Wolfe, escaped with only minor injuries.
But she was left “gob-smacked” when the perpetrator, her abusive husband Mark Burt, was sentenced to only five years for his crimes.
ABC News is reporting that 48-year-old Burt pleaded guilty to more than 20 charges in Albany District Court. The charges included a staggering 17 breaches of a domestic violence restraining order.
But he will be eligible for parole after three years – and will have to serve three before he is eligible for parole, according to ABC News.
The Daily Mail reports Burt had allegedly tried to influence witnesses by calling his sons from jail, asking them to convince their mother to drop his charges.
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When this woman becomes a another statistic in the near future when he gets out, media and social commentary will be breast-beating, analysing where the "system" went wrong and how the "system" had failed yet another woman. And promptly forget. Until the next victim. And the next.
It's so much easier to discuss and analyse and "raise awareness" in perpetuity than actually changing things in a way that domestic violence comes out from the realm of the "private" and into the real of the "public social problem". Real social change is just too hard. Judicial and police attitudes are too subjective and varied in response, some are great , others are meh and let the woman carry the weight of prosecuting her "domestic problem". It seems like those in power and able to make some changes, even at a glacial pace, care more about political point scoring (Bronwyn and her transport choices) rather than protecting the powerless.
I fail to understand how the argument that there was no prior documented violence between them (despite multiple breaches of an AVO) was a mitigating circumstance which should lessen his crime and sentence. It was not an isolated road rage incident with a maniac. It was clearly a deliberate and presumably sober and self-aware act of violence. And violence of such force that it was clearly intended to inflict maximum physical damage, or death, to this man's wife.
No prior violence? And despite the AVO? That would be like saying, "oh, Fred had not previously been caught/recorded/documented trying to assault or kill, Barney, (AVO's might just be evidence of crossing someone of your christmas list), therefore ramming Barney's car with sufficient violence to flip it and potentially kill Barney was not very serious. But if Fred had previously been documented to have tried to kill Barney, then it would be more serious".
Social change can happen - and without turning the world and life as we know it upside down. It does take public awareness campaigns, it does take legislative changes, but it does take focussing on the perpetrators and treating it as the social and "public" problem which it is. Examples? "if you drink and drive, you are a bloody idiot"; or, "one coward's punch hurts him and lands you in deep shit, so don't effin do it"; combined with courts working with a coherent policy of making examples of those who break the rules. It's about taking a stand as a society, to say that "this" behaviour, abusing, assaulting or killing women and children is no longer "domestic" violence something which "happens" privately to women and children, it is "public", there is a clear perpetrator and we are not coy about naming him and addressing him!
If a drunk driver nearly kills a pedestrian, do we refer to the situation as a case of the pedestrian being a "survivor of drunk driving"? Something that can happen and good on you for not dying? What about coward punches? Does media and legal and social response say, "Here lies Ethan in his hospital bed, a quadriplegic, a survivor of coward punching"? "So how are you doing Ethan?" Ethan's face is in shadow. "Well, here I am, these are my injuries, I feared for my life, that guy is out there, I will have to hide from him, hopefully, I can find a spot at a coward punch victims' refuge"!
Death by partner or violence by partner is a scourge that kills people at worst and damages our society. (Please notice that I did not attribute gender to the victim/perpetrator roles before damning me for not including abused men). It has to be treated as a public and not "domestic" problem any more. We need to be brave enough to name and make examples of the perpetrators. It is not the victim's individual problem in every case, so we can rationalise ignoring it. it is a problem which is recognised as being public and social and no longer tolerated.
I don't know anything about the law.....Can anyone with a law background explain to me why this man wouldn't have been changed with attempted murder? It certainly appears to be a pre meditated attack?