Former Doncare counsellor speaks out about domestic violence
CARMEL O’BRIEN
Herald Sun, 6 October 2016 2:08pm
LET’S start shifting the blame in relation to domestic violence.
When I started working with survivors of intimate partner violence, I thought I knew what to expect.
In the last few decades I have worked with countless women and children and the occasional man.
Over months and years, then decades, I came to a few disturbing realisations.
First I was struck by the patterns in their experiences, repeated over and over from survivor to survivor.
They all thought it was only happening to them and most thought they were at least partly to blame.
She wished she was a better cook or lover or housekeeper, if only she didn’t have to ask him for money, if only she could have the children ready for bed when he got home.
It took me years to realise these women weren’t the only ones who thought like this.
If I happened to meet the partners, and even talking to some colleagues, I would hear:
“If only she lost some weight”, “I think she winds him up”, “You know she has a bit of a drinking problem.”
I would sometimes see a couple for assessment.
One man told me: “either my wife has the worst PMS in the world or she’s a nagging b****”.
It turned out that this man often locked his distressed wife in the bedroom for hours because he “could not stand her anymore”.
The humiliation of these women was immensely sad and their willingness to do almost anything to try to stop the abuse was courageous, even if usually futile.
Many of the women had given up their hobbies, forsaken their friends, taken on his pastimes, and the bulk of the household and parenting workload, in the hope they could make him happy and the abuse would stop.
It had usually taken them many years to reach the point where they sought help and even then they often hoped I could tell them how to change themselves to stop his violence.
Many survivors were surprised to realise no matter what they did, they could not stop the abuse.
They believed the logical conclusion was their partner was choosing to behave as he did.
Despite frequently telling her she was useless, hopeless and hated, he often escalated his bullying behaviour if she decided to leave the relationship.
Supporting these survivors through to recovery led me to my second realisation — the services that we rely on to keep victims safe often blamed her as well.
Child protection services can effectively shift the responsibility by expecting the victim to stop the abuser from hurting her or the children.
Courts fail to hold abusers accountable, the most common outcome for a domestic violence matter being a bond of some sort.
My own profession has at times focused far too much on what might be wrong with the victim instead of laying the blame squarely with the perpetrator.
Pauline Hanson is not alone, apparently, when she talks about men killing their families out of “sheer frustration”.
Surveys of community attitudes reveal while we generally do not condone violence, far too many of us are ill informed about intimate partner violence.
In 2013, 64 per cent of people thought domestic violence was due to some men being unable to control their anger.
Unfortunately for their partners, these men can almost always control their anger with everyone else.
This explanation suggests these men simply cannot help it — they just have an anger management problem.
By settling for such an explanation the behaviour is less likely to be treated as a crime and it is more likely their victim might be encouraged not to ‘upset’ them.
In the past 30 years we have become better at providing some support services for survivors, but we will really only turn things around when we change how we think about domestic violence and when we start placing the responsibility for change with the person behaving badly.
In the USA, first in Quincy, Massachusetts and more recently in San Diego and Nashville, there have been concerted efforts to reduce the incidence of domestic violence.
What they have done is outlined in The Quincy Solution by Barry Goldstein.
It describes how a commitment has been reached from across the community to recognise domestic violence is serious, must be addressed and it takes a united effort to reduce it.
Progress was made when there were clear and consistent enforcement of protective orders, pro-arrest policies, officer training in correct collection of crime scene evidence and training for prosecutors and family court personnel.
These inspiring ‘solutions’ have had marked success and our policy makers should be lining up to find out how we can replicate them here.
We need to blame those using violence for their violence and stop blaming the victims.
We need to do that in our homes, courts, schools and neighbourhoods but most of all in our minds.
When I started working with survivors of intimate partner violence, I thought I knew what to expect.
In the last few decades I have worked with countless women and children and the occasional man.
Over months and years, then decades, I came to a few disturbing realisations.
First I was struck by the patterns in their experiences, repeated over and over from survivor to survivor.
They all thought it was only happening to them and most thought they were at least partly to blame.
She wished she was a better cook or lover or housekeeper, if only she didn’t have to ask him for money, if only she could have the children ready for bed when he got home.
It took me years to realise these women weren’t the only ones who thought like this.
If I happened to meet the partners, and even talking to some colleagues, I would hear:
“If only she lost some weight”, “I think she winds him up”, “You know she has a bit of a drinking problem.”
I would sometimes see a couple for assessment.
One man told me: “either my wife has the worst PMS in the world or she’s a nagging b****”.
It turned out that this man often locked his distressed wife in the bedroom for hours because he “could not stand her anymore”.
The humiliation of these women was immensely sad and their willingness to do almost anything to try to stop the abuse was courageous, even if usually futile.
Many of the women had given up their hobbies, forsaken their friends, taken on his pastimes, and the bulk of the household and parenting workload, in the hope they could make him happy and the abuse would stop.
It had usually taken them many years to reach the point where they sought help and even then they often hoped I could tell them how to change themselves to stop his violence.
Many survivors were surprised to realise no matter what they did, they could not stop the abuse.
They believed the logical conclusion was their partner was choosing to behave as he did.
Despite frequently telling her she was useless, hopeless and hated, he often escalated his bullying behaviour if she decided to leave the relationship.
Supporting these survivors through to recovery led me to my second realisation — the services that we rely on to keep victims safe often blamed her as well.
Child protection services can effectively shift the responsibility by expecting the victim to stop the abuser from hurting her or the children.
Courts fail to hold abusers accountable, the most common outcome for a domestic violence matter being a bond of some sort.
My own profession has at times focused far too much on what might be wrong with the victim instead of laying the blame squarely with the perpetrator.
Pauline Hanson is not alone, apparently, when she talks about men killing their families out of “sheer frustration”.
Surveys of community attitudes reveal while we generally do not condone violence, far too many of us are ill informed about intimate partner violence.
In 2013, 64 per cent of people thought domestic violence was due to some men being unable to control their anger.
Unfortunately for their partners, these men can almost always control their anger with everyone else.
This explanation suggests these men simply cannot help it — they just have an anger management problem.
By settling for such an explanation the behaviour is less likely to be treated as a crime and it is more likely their victim might be encouraged not to ‘upset’ them.
In the past 30 years we have become better at providing some support services for survivors, but we will really only turn things around when we change how we think about domestic violence and when we start placing the responsibility for change with the person behaving badly.
In the USA, first in Quincy, Massachusetts and more recently in San Diego and Nashville, there have been concerted efforts to reduce the incidence of domestic violence.
What they have done is outlined in The Quincy Solution by Barry Goldstein.
It describes how a commitment has been reached from across the community to recognise domestic violence is serious, must be addressed and it takes a united effort to reduce it.
Progress was made when there were clear and consistent enforcement of protective orders, pro-arrest policies, officer training in correct collection of crime scene evidence and training for prosecutors and family court personnel.
These inspiring ‘solutions’ have had marked success and our policy makers should be lining up to find out how we can replicate them here.
We need to blame those using violence for their violence and stop blaming the victims.
We need to do that in our homes, courts, schools and neighbourhoods but most of all in our minds.