The mediator's power is directly related to endorsement from the society at large. Thus a mediator's interventions, particularly where they take on an advice giving or a guidance role, will reflect local perceptions of justice. My deep-felt worry here has to do with levels of social tolerance. I also know that, outside of some tisking and head shaking, the tolerance level for violence against women is very, very high. That a far, far greater number of Aboriginal women die at the hands of their partners than any deaths in custody, is representative of what I mean in terms of social concern, if this is to be measured by government response.
Tolerance increases still more when the aggrieved party belongs to the offending group itself.
This is the case for women generally, and for Aboriginal women living in communities, significantly more so. Conduct considered outrageous by an outsider is endured by one's familiars. If, as suggested by Donald Black, conflict management is isomorphic with its social field, then it expresses and dramatises that social field in a pure and concentrated fashion. Like fractals, it resembles the whole of which it is part, and, in effect, recapitulates and intensifies its larger environment. Consider, then, a larger environment in which the level of tolerance for women bashing, child sexual molestation, and violence is high.