Page 1378 - Week 05 - Thursday, 26 April 1990
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gentlemen, from 27 April to 6 May, on FM103.1 there will be some good listening.
Domestic Violence
MR STEVENSON (5.36): I did not have time to speak in the discussion on domestic violence, but I will do so now. I have never suffered violence or assault in the home but I was just assaulted in this Assembly particularly when the Leader of the Opposition stood up and said the things she did about domestic violence, knowing what I do about the causes of much domestic violence. Let me read some of the testimonies of the victims of crime. This is by Sharon. You might smile, but you should read the book because I sent it to you months ago. She said:
... John couldn't be without his pornographic material. He also increased his insistence that we participate in interracial and group sex ... John was physically abusing me by pulling my hair, slapping me, kicking me, stomping on my feet.
We talk about doing something about domestic violence, but one of the major causes is pornography in the home.
Mr Moore: On a point of order, Mr Speaker; it is reflecting on a motion that has already been carried.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Moore, but I believe that in the adjournment debate it is proper.
MR STEVENSON: Another victim was Patricia, who said that on one occasion Paul, her husband, tied her to a bed and sodomised her. This occurred after she refused to be bound and tied, as the models appearing in some of his pornographic magazines had been.
Thirteen-year-old Sara was forced, by rape, into prostitution. At one time she was told to go to an apartment in New Jersey to meet some men. Afterwards she realised that the acts that she had been told to do at that time had been filmed and used in pornography. The only sex she knew, she says, was that which she was taught by the women who had been coerced into pornographic services.
Another woman, who spoke on behalf of Women Against Pornography and many, many organisations throughout America dedicated to ridding America of pornography, said:
Our fight against pornography is also a fight against the legacy of the 1970 report of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography ... that pornography is harmless.
She said that the reason for its conclusion was simple: women were invisible to the commissioners.
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