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Melbourne man allegedly 'slaughtered' wife in front of children

23/3/2017

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A Melbourne man "slaughtered" and then mutilated his wife in front of their three young children.  
The 35-year-old Broadmeadows man is also accused of bashing two of their children, aged under six, around the head — in one instance with a milk crate — and burning his toddler daughter with hot water.
The man cannot be identified under a court order to protect the identity of his children.
Read the full story at:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-23/melbourne-man-wife-killed-over-decision-join-is-court-document/8381350
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Chamari Liyanage is a doctor and she killed abusive husband

7/3/2017

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Chamari Liyanage doesn't look like a woman who's endured years of abuse.
Key points:
  • Chamari Liyanage suffered years of abuse by her husband
  • In 2014 she bludgeoned him to death
  • She was charged and convicted of manslaughter
  • Released from prison after serving two-and-a-half years
Family violence support services:
  • 1800 Respect national helpline 1800 737 732
  • Women's Crisis Line 1800 811 811
  • Men's Referral Service 1300 766 491
  • Lifeline (24 hour crisis line) 131 114
  • Relationships Australia 1300 364 277
She doesn't look like a woman who was beaten by her husband with a wooden rolling pin and a metal chair, forced to perform sex acts for strangers on Skype, who lived in constant fear of the man she thought loved her.
She certainly doesn't look like a woman who bludgeoned that same man to death with a mallet as he lay in bed in their Geraldton home in June 2014.
And that's exactly why she's telling her story.
"I knew all about domestic violence myself as a medical officer, I've seen it and I've dealt with it," she told 7.30.
"But in my own life I was trapped and I was isolated and I couldn't talk about it.

"So people have to understand no matter how intelligent, no matter how independent, it's difficult for people to come out and ask for help."
The Dinendra Athukorala who Ms Liyanage met in Sri Lanka in 2009 initially seemed charming, but that outward charm hid an inner evil.
Justice Stephen Hall would later describe him as "a manipulative and merciless offender" who regularly abused his wife and kept 13 terabytes of encrypted child exploitation and bestiality images on his three laptops and a number of hard drives.
Ms Liyanage's eyes well up and her face crumples as she talks about what it was like inside her marriage to the man she calls Din.
"During that four and a half years when I was with Din, he made it quite difficult for me," she said.
"There was quite significant violence — emotional, physical, psychological, sexual, financial.
"I think emotional abuse was the most difficult part to deal with. That constant manipulation, that constant control which I felt — I was so much trapped, and I could not leave. And constant threats to myself and my family and loved ones made me very helpless."
The abuse escalated and so too did Ms Liyanage's state of fear and anxiety until one night in June, she snapped.
She says she still can't remember what happened that night.
"Din asked me to go to sleep so I closed my laptop and I went to sleep and then when I woke up I really didn't know what happened that day, and still I don't know what happened."
What happened was Ms Liyanage bludgeoned her husband to death with a 1.79-kilogram mallet.
She called triple-0 at 6:30am on June 24 and police officers arrived to find her huddled by the couch in a distressed state.
When they walked into the main bedroom they found her husband lying on the bed surrounded by blood, with a pillow over his face and the mallet beside his head.
"I cannot imagine because Din is my one and only partner," she said.
"I loved him so much and one reason I kept going is because I thought he would change one day to that gentle loving person whom I met four-and-a-half years ago.
"I've seen the good side of him, I've seen the wonderful side of him and I thought he would change if I followed his orders, if I tried to make him happy.
"I thought one day he would change, so I could not believe what happened on that day."
Two days after Athukorala's death, Ms Liyanage was charged with his murder.

'When I got to prison I found a safe haven'
She told friends she felt more free inside Greenough Regional Prison than in her own marriage.After a three-week trial that heard evidence of the extensive domestic violence she'd endured, Ms Liyanage was found not guilty of murder but was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison, back-dated to the night of her husband's death.
"When I got to prison, it was a safe haven; I found my own peace in my mind and in my heart and it let me explore myself and be myself," she told 7.30.
It was there she developed a passion for painting.
"It's like meditation, it helps me to concentrate, it helps me to liberate myself and take those emotions which have been hidden inside me for so long, for years and years, to get them out in an easier way," she said.
While behind bars, her friends stood by Ms Liyanage, campaigning to allow her to stay in Australia after her visa was cancelled last year.
That relief came in January when the Immigration Minister revoked his decision which would have seen her deported to an uncertain future in Sri Lanka. 
That's another reason she wanted to share her story.
"I wanted to thank the Australian community who has been there with me throughout these very difficult times, continuously supporting me," she said.
"I wanted to thank them sincerely for their support, their kindness and their understanding.
"And I wanted to say sorry for Din's family, for what they have to go through, and wanted to express my sincere sympathies for everyone who's been affected."
Ms Liyanage's newfound freedom comes with a long to-do list.
She's trying to get her medical licence back, find somewhere to live, and help others who feel trapped in abusive relationships.
But first, she's enjoying the simple things like going to the beach and feeling sand between her toes.
For two-and-a-half years in prison and four-and-a-half years feeling trapped in her marriage, that seemed unimaginable.


By LAUREN DAY from http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-06/doctor-chimara-liyanage-speaks-about-killing-abusive-husband/8327370

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'How could this happen?' The reprehensible letter from the man who murdered Tara Brown

6/3/2017

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In 2015, Australia was rocked by another horrifying crime of intimate partner violence when Gold Coast man Lionel Patea brutally murdered his ex-partner, Tara Brown. Brown had just dropped the pair's daughter off at childcare when Patea chased her down in his car, ran her vehicle off the road and – while she was trapped in the upturned wreckage – proceeded to viciously beat her with a metal plate. Brown was taken to hospital with six skull and face fractures and died 24 hours later. She was only 24 years old.
Last week, Patea pleaded guilty to murder on the first day his trial. He has been sentenced to life in prison. It seems like a fairly open and shut case, sadly reflective of the state of affairs in which men's violence against women in Australia results in the murder of at least one woman weekly. And yet, in a reprehensible letter intended for Brown's family, Patea wrote "The questions that haunts us all (is) how such a tragedy like this could ever have happened."

Patea could offer no answers except to say, "I can't clarify it for myself either."
How can a person accept responsibility for a crime in which they knowingly slaughtered not just another human being but someone with whom they shared a child and yet still wonder how a "tragedy" like this could have occurred?
​This is not accepting responsibility or ownership – this is recognising that the evidence mounted against you (which included CCTV footage) is so comprehensive that a court could have no option but to find you guilty and attempting to negotiate a lower sentence by avoiding a drawn-out fight. In refusing to accept real responsibility for his actions, Patea is only further exercising the control over Tara Brown that he expressed in the days and months before he chose to kill her.Tara Brown's death was not a "tragedy" in the way Patea is attempting to frame it. This was a deliberate, horrific act of violence that formed the deadly culmination of increasing abuse perpetrated by Patea against Brown. I can tell him exactly how and why it happened – because no matter how much awareness we raise and feminist action we mount against family and intimate partner violence, there are still not enough people paying attention, and responses from law enforcement and the justice system are still not good enough.
Until we take a sustained and committed approach as a community, men like him will continue to terrorise women whose bodies, hearts and minds they think are theirs to pour their anger and entitlement into.
How could Brown's life have been spared the brutal anger of Patea? Being taken seriously by the police might have been a good start. According to Natalie Hinton, Brown's mother, Brown went to the police in the days preceding her murder to apply for a domestic violence order. It was ultimately granted, but not before officers probed her about why she hadn't come immediately following the incident (unnamed in news reports) that had led to her filing for an intervention order.

Some members of the public might ask the same thing. Others still might be tempted to judge this young woman and others like her for "getting involved" with someone like Patea in the first place. Blaming women for the abuse men inflict on them is not unusual and "why doesn't she just leave" remains a common refrain. But Brown, like so many other women murdered by men in this country, was trying to leave when Patea chased her down and beat her to death.
Rosie Batty had left her violent ex-partner and he murdered their son in an act of revenge. At only 16 years old, Anj Barker broke up with her abusive boyfriend and he retaliated by beating her so brutally that it took her five years to learn to speak again. She now lives with a permanent brain injury.
In fact, it's in the period immediately after leaving a violent relationship that women are most at risk of being killed by their ex-partners. And given abusive people don't tend to reveal that side of themselves to people they become intimate with straight away and certainly not all at once, it's plain ignorance to suggest that any of the blame should lie with the victims.
Men like Patea rely on the public's ignorance about these matters to continue perpetrating violence against their partners and family members. They rely on the normalisation of violence to slip beneath the radar. They are bolstered and protected by the false sense many people have that their friends, their colleagues, their family members couldn't possibly be guilty of this kind of behaviour.
And what this subtle acceptance of a broader view of women tells men like Lionel Patea is that their actions aren't really that bad. That they just lose their temper. That they would be able to keep it under control if she didn't provoke him so badly. If she just kept her place.
But in the end, the simple answer to Patea's pretense at confusion is that Tara Brown wasn't taken from this world and her family because of an unnamed "tragedy", nor are the circumstances around her murder unexplainable or mysterious.
Tara Brown is gone because Lionel Patea murdered her in an act of revenge for her leaving him. She is gone because a man took her life away from her rather than let her take herself away from him. Her final hours were full of terror, pain and anguish, and she leaves behind a 4-year-old daughter who will forever live with the knowledge that her father murdered her mother.
The real tragedy of it all is that this story, so heinous, so horrible and so difficult to accept, was one of more than 80 murders of women in 2015 alone, many of which were under far too similar circumstances. In 2017, the number is rising again.

from http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/how-could-this-happen-the-reprehensible-letter-from-the-man-who-murdered-tara-brown-20170305-gur5zc.html

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State borders should not be an impediment when protecting victims of domestic violence

4/3/2017

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We all know that IVOs are not the be-all or end-all of protection but state borders should not be an impediment when protecting victims of domestic violence.

impact is pleased that laws have passed the South Australian Parliament this week which means that people leaving a state or territory to escape an abusive relationship will have their protections carried with them into SA.

​Yay!

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