Tara Brown will confront a wife beater on tonight’s 60 Minutes. Source: Channel 9

As complaints continue over a lack of funding for domestic violence in this week’s Federal Budget, Brown offered a rare insight into the mind of a wife beater.

60 Minutes shared the confessions of Steve, a man who ended up behind bars after he repeatedly bashed and emotionally manipulated his wife, Sharron.

Steve and Sharron were teenage sweethearts who reconnected and married 30 years later. However, his dark side was exposed before the wedding day. Steve developed deeply controlling and threatening behaviour that included beating Sharron, running a knife across her throat, burning cigarette butts on her skin, spitting at her and throwing her to the ground. He was finally sent to jail after breaching a protection order.

As a free man today, Steve is remorseful for his actions, but Sharron, who also opens up to the program, is not convinced that he has reformed.

When discussing his relationship with Sharron on screen, Steve told Brown: “Some people bring the best of you out, and I believe some people bring the worst of you out.”

Wife basher, Steve. Source: Channel 9

Tara Brown. Source: Channel 9

And it’s at this moment in the interview that Brown visibly bristles at Steve’s answers.

“Seriously? You’re going to sit here now and tell me it’s Sharron’s fault?” Brown says. “Well, that’s just what you’ve done.”

Brown told news.com.au that Steve’s comments showed he had yet to understand that he was the only one to blame for his actions.

“The onus is on you if you lose control, but he was blaming her,” Brown said. “That’s why it got my back up. To me, using those words in the context of beating your wife — he was telling me that she provoked him.”

Brown said she believed tonight’s story offered a “unique look” at domestic violence, Australia’s hidden crime wave.

“What sets it apart is that it gives a rare insight of the mindset of a man who would do this,” she said.

“I think most surprising was that I don’t think he still has come to terms that he is completely responsible for his actions.

“On the surface he is genuinely remorseful, but he is yet to really comprehend that the only person responsible for his actions is him.

“When you see the story, you’ll see he’s still trying to downplay what he did, trying to justify it.”

Steve’s former wife, Sharron, opens up about the horrors of domestic violence. Source: Channel 9

Brown explained that Sharron still lived with a “great deal of fear”.

“She doesn’t believe that he is taking responsibility, that all of this rage can disappear. I think she loathes him,” Brown said.

One Australian woman is killed every week as a result of domestic violence, and there are thousands more who survive, but are left with horrible physical and emotional scars.

“The message has to be straight and repeated from a very young age: It’s not acceptable to hit anyone, and it’s not acceptable to manipulate people emotionally or violently,” Brown said.

“It was clear to me after dealing with Steve that some men don’t think this is a serious crime.

“So it’s about an understanding across the community that this is not acceptable, and that women have somewhere to go, that they are not blamed.

“They do not have to live with shame. They need to live with support.

“I really do take my hat off to women who are strong enough to talk about what happened to them and who expose what goes on behind closed doors.

“It takes a lot of courage to expose their partners for what they are.”

Steve reflects on his time in jail. Source: Channel 9

The Abbott Government has received backlash from Tuesday’s Federal Budget for only committing $16.7 million over three years to domestic violence.

ABC reported that domestic violence advocate and Australian of the Year Rosie Batty said on Wednesday that she was disappointed to see the Government had given a disproportionate amount of funding to terrorism at the expense of domestic violence, which killed many more people,

“Let’s put it in its context; this is terrorism in Australia,” she said. “If we look at the money that we spend on terrorism overseas, for the slight risk that it poses to our society, it is disproportionate completely.”