Families Apart Require Equality (FARE) spokesperson Darryl Ward today condemned the series of advertisements currently
being broadcast in support of the Women's Refuge Campaign as being "hate promoting and seriously socially
irresponsible", and called for their immediate withdrawal.
The full text of his complaint to the Advertising Standards Complaint Board is transcribed below.
Contact Details - Darryl Ward 025 230 1667
Media Release Ends
Letter Begins
24 July 2001
Dear Sir / Madam
Urgent Formal Complaint about Advertisements
This letter is a formal complaint about the Women's Refuge Appeal advertisements that are currently being broadcast on
television. Although this is not the normal procedure, we would request that whatever steps are possible be taken to
immediately stop this advertising campaign on the grounds that this campaign is hate-promoting as well as seriously
socially irresponsible.
As an organisation that routinely deals with the victims of family law, we have a major social problem with many male
victims of family violence coming to us in desperation because they are unable to obtain official help. This is because
of a mistaken belief by the authorities that violence is exclusively a male problem and a resultant tendency to dismiss
cases of female initiated violence, even though the evidence is overwhelming that both genders are approximately equally
likely to be violent towards each other.
Advertisements such as those in the series we are complaining about add to this climate of misinformation. We strongly
contend that unless family violence is recognised as being the two way street that it is, then this blight on our
society will never be removed.
Accordingly we would request that the Board urgently requests immediate withdrawal of these advertisements. Urgency is
requested, as we understand that these advertisements are being shown for a short period of time, but with an intensive
frequency of screenings.
These advertisements urge a donation to the Refuge, and give an 0900 number that would result in an automatic donation.
I have listed two examples of these advertisements that were broadcast on Monday 23 July 2001. The first one screened at
8:59 PM on TV1, and featured a woman with blonde hair who had swollen eyes, cuts and bruises fade in and out with
captions such as "lost the rugby" and "dinner was cold". It clearly implied that a husband or male partner was
responsible for her injuries.
The second advertisement we saw was broadcast approximately half an hour later. It gave a warning similar to "the
following advertisement shows violence etc... which should not be viewed by anybody". This was less implicit than the
earlier advertisement, but again portrayed the message that men are violent to women. We have reports of other similar
advertisements as well.
We consider that such advertisements are an unacceptable demonisation of men, which directly leads to a huge variety of
social problems ranging from unequal treatment of men in the Family Court right through to lack of support for male
victims of family violence. Therefore such advertisements are also directly contributing to fatherlessness and its
consequences.
We would request that whatever steps are possible be taken immediately to withdraw these seriously socially
irresponsible and hate-promoting advertisements from being broadcast any further pending an investigation by the Board
into this complaint.
Yours sincerely
Darryl Ward Spokesperson
Letter Ends