Thank you for the question.
It's really everything you just said. The problem is that there are these myths and stereotypes.
I'll just be speaking from a great piece written by Deanne Sowter and Jennifer Koshan. They would just say that the ideas that women make allegations of family violence to gain an upper hand in family law proceedings or that they're alienating their children from their former partner out of some sort of vengeance or spite rather than concern for their children's safety are based on myths and stereotypes. These are really similar to those that are recognized to improperly taint the credibility of sexual assault complainants.
For whatever reason, there is more of an understanding these days that there are these myths and stereotypes in the sexual assault context, even if they're still not properly applied, whereas in the intimate partner violence context, there's a real lack of acknowledgement in the public that these same myths and stereotypes exist and function. It's not that these things never happen, but judges readily accept accusations that allegations of family violence are false without doing impartial fact finding and paying attention to context.
This bill will help with those issues because women are more likely to be accused of falsely claiming family violence even though under-reporting of family violence is known to be widespread. There's a big disconnect here.