By Tom Livingstone | 2022
‘As a population we are becoming desensitised’.
Former boxer and anti-violence advocate Danny Green wants legislation around coward punches to be changed.
Green said victim families and the community are being “let down” by courts letting offenders off with light sentences and the legal system needs to be looked at and reviewed.
“When it goes to court a lot of perpetrators are being charged with a manslaughter offence instead of a murder charge,” Green told Today.
“If you hit someone, they don’t know it’s coming and you shouldn’t have hit them and they die that’s murder.”
Green said society has become desensitised to acts of violence from what they watch on television and to mark the start of “Stop the Coward Punch Week”, he is continuing his efforts to completely remove coward punch crimes in Australia.
“Coward punches need to be completely omitted from our society,” he said.
“I was watching one of the streaming services and the violence was just out of control.
“It was almost like the show was trying to be more violent than anything else to get people to watch it – It was bizarre how young kids are faced with such gratuitous violence we see everyday.”
Since 2000, 172 people have been killed by a coward punch, according to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine.
Green said work around eradicating coward punches had seen a decrease in the rate between 2012 and 2018 and they are finding out more about who the offenders typically are.
“The coward punch is a disgusting act,” he said.
“Perpetrators are mostly male, the median age is around 26-years-old and 60 per cent of the victims have no idea who they are.”
For more information on ‘Stop the Coward Punch week’ click here.
See what else Green had to say in the video here.
