[Special call out to the Kansas Peace Initiative - Alternatives to Battering Program (with their so called 80% success rate), it is time to re-evaluate, and
place PROTECTION over profit.]
By Barry Goldstein
Introduction
A few years ago, I attended a national conference for
and about batterer programs. One of my colleagues aptly referred to it as a marketing
conference for the batterer program industry. I am sure there were many
people at the conference that sincerely sought to reduce domestic violence and
believed their programs could help accomplish this. Nevertheless, I was appalled
at practices that undermined the safety of women partnered with abusive men and
frequent inaccurate claims that their programs could change men’s behavior and
make it safe for women to live with them.
The modern movement to end domestic violence began in
the mid to late 1970s and helped make men’s violence against women a public
issue. This focused attention on the question of how to stop men in
heterosexual relationships from abusing their partners. At the time, there was
little research available to help policy makers and most of the decisions on
how to respond to domestic violence were made by people who did not
understand domestic violence dynamics. This led to attempts to promote
partner safety through ineffective approaches that continue to the present.
One of the fundamental questions was whether to
respond by changing individuals one at a time or to promote societal changes.
The primary response has been to focus on the individual such as by creating
shelters and counseling for survivors and batterer programs and
forms of treatment for abusers. This has undermined recognition of the
need to make fundamental changes to the status quo by creating an appearance
that society is engaged in an effective response to domestic violence. Ironically,
the present response has resulted in a substantial reduction in the number of
men killed by their heterosexual partners, but only a small decrease in the
number of women murdered by their abusers.
Common Practices Providing Little Protection for Women (read the rest of the article here)
