Newsletter
Fall 2002
"Did He Successfully Complete the Program?"
"Who's asking and why do you want to know?"
David Mandel
State’s Attorney: “Your honor, the batterer intervention program reports that Mr. Smith has completed their program.”
Judge: “What does that mean? Has he changed?”
State’s Attorney: “I don’t know, Your Honor. The report only says he has had no new arrests and that he attended all twenty six sessions.”
Judge: “But has he changed?”
State’s Attorney: “They didn’t say.”
One of the most important and challenging jobs a batterer intervention program has is communicating back to a referral source about the progress a client is or isn’t making. The most common questions are “Did he successfully complete the program?” or “Can you update me on his progress?” The answers to these questions can have very serious implications for the safety of battered women and their children, batterer accountability and decisions by the court and child protection agencies.
Successful communication in these matters requires a clear understanding of the definitions of success and progress and the expectations of multiple parties involved with the situation. Many instances involve at least six different perspectives: the adult victim, the children (if any), the referring agency (e.g. the criminal justice system, child protective services, other therapists), the clinical staff working with the perpetrator, the perpetrator’s attorney and finally the perpetrator himself. Many programs and coordinated community response systems fail to clearly articulate, let alone standardize, the definitions of progress and success. This can leave room for misunderstanding, which in turn can lead to poor decisions related to the safety of battered women and children exposed to domestic violence.
There is no way to avoid the issue of communicating to others about progress and successful completion. It is built into the systems in which we operate. Some programs choose to report in the most limited way possible. “He is currently in good standing in the program” or “he met the criteria required for completion,” are common comments. Sometimes these answers are enough to satisfy the referring agency. When state standards for batterer’s programs address progress and completion standards, it is usually in the most basic way. Repeated physical violence, poor attendance and participation, and failure to pay fees are some of the more common criteria mentioned (Austin and Dankwort, 1998) . But in many instances, the court, the victim or a child protection agency want and deserve more information about the client’s participation in the program.
As child protection agencies become more involved in domestic violence and batterer intervention, there will be greater need for a more sophisticated and comprehensive response to the question “How is he doing in the program?” Child protective service agencies primarily measure progress for batterers against the safety, well being and “the best interests” of the children. Child protective agencies and juvenile courts are mandated to make decisions about a wide spectrum of factors related to families including the permanent placement of children and the termination of parental rights. The assessment of a batterer’s progress in a domestic violence program may impact whether a child can remain in the home or with her parents.
Because a report on a client’s progress can play a critical role in the lives of numerous people, batterer intervention programs have a responsibility to educate their audience about the nature and limitations of the report. This means articulating how the program design may limit what is known about the batterer, the sources of information for the report, the relationship of the reports to the batterer’s potential for new violence, and the weight and meaning the reader should give to the batterer’s participation in the group.
Articulate Program Limitations
The first hurdle to effectively communicating about a batterers’ participation in a program may rest with the limitations of the program. Programs that are more oriented towards education versus counseling, that receive less information from referral sources and have less contact with battered women and their advocates will have much less to say about a batterers’ progress and success. It is dangerous for a batterer intervention program to overstate the meaning the court or another agency should attribute to a client’s completion of their program. Their communications should include regular reminders of the limitations of the information they are providing. The limited nature of the feedback may lead to other agencies becoming frustrated. This frustration is preferable to overly optimistic appraisals leading to decisions that provide a false sense of security and hope. The amount of information a batterer intervention program can reasonably provide back to a referral source is one of the variables for evaluating what type of batterer intervention program is best for an agency or community.
Identify the Sources of Information
The most thorough assessment of progress integrates information from a diversity of sources. The greater the number of information sources the more likely the assessment of progress will be accurate. These information sources might include the victim, the victim’s children, the court and law enforcement agencies, child protective services, other therapists, other programs (e.g. substance abuse), the batterer intervention staff and the batterer himself. The inclusion of information from the victim or the victim’s children requires careful screening of how the disclosure of the victims’ perspectives will effect their safety. Ideally, inclusion of this information is always done with explicit permission of the victim after she has had an opportunity to explore the consequences of her involvement in the assessment process. Victim’s requests for confidentiality need to be respected except when she has been explicitly informed, in advance, that any information she shares with the batterer intervention program might be shared with the referring agency and through them, possibly, the abuser.
Articulate Pitfalls in Assessing Risk for New Violence
The most challenging progress and completion communication issue is around the potential for new violence. Assessing risk for domestic and other forms of violence is closer to an art than a science. Despite the proliferation of various tools, instruments and acronyms (the DVI, the SARA, the K-SID), conventional wisdom still indicates that when you know a person’s history of violent and abusive behavior you have a sense of what they are capable of doing. A thorough history combined with an assessment of the current situational variables (e.g. pending divorce, escalating jealousy, a new order of protection, access to victim and children, access to weapons) may offer the best assessment of danger.
It is close to impossible to make any kind of reliable assessment of risk for new violence based solely on a batterer’s participation in group. Referral sources and victims need to be educated to the fact that a batterer’s participation in group may have absolutely no relationship to his behavior at home or his risk for new violence. Batterers often act very differently with strangers, friends and professionals than they do with their family members. Even when a client is genuine in his desire to change, his actual behavior may lag far behind his participation in group. For example, clients will frequently acknowledge the negative impact of their abusive behavior to their group without offering the same admission to their family members.
Communicate the Context and Limitations of Changes
When a batterer does appear to make changes, the batterer intervention programs need to be able to communicate the meaning and context for these changes. From the perspective of the perpetrator, change usually occurs in small steps that feel like major shifts for him. His self-centeredness also amplifies the importance of his changes. Changing lifetime patterns of behaviors, emotions and beliefs require concentration and persistence. Often times the perpetrator will experience a sense of progress when he handles one situation without violence or abuse where in the past he would have gotten abusive or violent under the same circumstance. It will take him months, but more likely years, to translate this into sustained, consistent, and trustworthy change.
Frequently, the victim will justifiably not be able to tolerate this time line. She has the right to demand the violence and abuse stop immediately. She also has the right to demand that he come to a swift understanding of the impact his past violence and abuse has had on her and her children. Reconciling these potentially conflicting perspectives often represents a significant challenge for a batterer who has begun to make an effort to change his behavior. He will frequently have a much higher opinion of his efforts than his victim will. New danger can come when he expects or needs her to give up her needs and perspective to appreciate and respond to the changes he feels he is making.
A batterer intervention program needs to be grounded in the context and history of the abuse when reporting on the progress or completion of a client. The victim’s experience needs validation, acknowledgement and consideration. No progress by the perpetrator, no matter how important it feels to him, obligates the victim to any particular emotional response or course of action. A batterer’s progress can only appropriately be acknowledged within the context of the adult and child victims’ realities and the expectations of the criminal justice and child protective service systems.
Standardize Progress Criteria
Standardizing batterer intervention program progress and completion criteria may help better communicate to referring agencies and victims the nature of a client’s progress in a group. Progress and completion criteria should be clearly articulated and reflect the goals and objectives of the program. They should be connected to a vision of what change looks like for batterers and what needs to occur in order to make it happen. Gondolf, in his 1995 article on discharge criteria, developed a ten-point set of criteria for evaluating a batterer’s progress (See sidebar for details). The criteria covered a range of characteristics including attendance, nonviolence, sobriety, help seeking, process consciousness and self-disclosure. Each client’s participation in a batterer intervention program was evaluated on a scale of 0 to 5 with 0 meaning “no opinion, uncertain, not applicable” and 5 meaning “ extremely present.”
Modeled on Gondolf’s efforts, the Non-Violence Alliance developed a set of criteria for evaluating progress tied to our operational profile of an abuser (see earlier Issues in Family Violence) and the principles, goals and objectives of our program. Using the same measurement scale (0-5) with the same definitions, the criteria helps group leaders evaluate the client in the following areas: understanding control, definition of abuse, entitlement thinking, emotion identification, impact, risk management, behavior change, children, aggravating factors, general qualities and progress (See sidebar for details).
These criteria and their definitions are helpful when communicating with the referring agencies about the nature of a client’s progress in group. These criteria also help identify the areas where a client may need to do more work. Although recent research has indicated that Gondolf’s list of discharge criteria is a weak predictor of reassault, he argues that measures of this type have an important role to play. He writes
“The discharge instrument still predicts better than chance and better than actuarial data. The whole prediction business is rather complex, so current prediction results should not be used to dismiss the use of structured clinical observations and assessments (albeit these should be used with caution). (These types of criteria are a)...useful set of what we sometimes call proximal goals and a way to keep tabs on them. Theoretically and philosophical(ly) these are things that we say are important and that we are trying to teach in counseling groups. We ought then, as a means of our own accountability, have some way of measuring them to see if those things are in fact being learned. This is what we do in school classes--test for proximal outcomes or goals. But most counseling programs don't pay much attention to them.” (Personal Communication, December 10 & 20, 2002)
Batterer intervention programs need to review on a regular basis what they are communicating to their referring agencies. Batterer intervention programs change and evolve and the needs of the referring agencies change and evolve. A program needs to make sure that their partners in a coordinated community response have an accurate understanding of what is being communicated. As new partners, like child protection, join a coordinated community response, there is a need for thorough and thoughtful discussions about the role that information from a batterer intervention program can and cannot play in the determination of issues like the “best interests of a child” and the physical safety of victims.
References
Austin, J. & Dankwort, J. (Revised August 1998). A Review of Standards for Batterer Intervention Programs. Available on line at http://www.vaw.umn.edu/vawnet/standard.htm.
Gondolf's Progress and Discharge Criteria
Full article is accessible here
David Mandel
Described in his article, “Discharge Criteria fro Batterer Programs” (1995), this list represents one option for evaluating the progress of a batterer in an intervention program. The group facilitator uses following scale to score the client: 5=extremely present, 4=very present, 3=somewhat present, 2=a little present, 1=very little present, 0=no opinion, uncertain, not applicable.
_____Attendance: arrives at group session on time; socializes or lingers afterward; contacts program in advance of absence; has legitimate excuse for absences.
_____Non-Violence: has not recently physically abused partner, children or others; no apparent threats, intimidation or manipulation.
_____Sobriety: attends meeting sober; not high or drunk; no apparent abuse of alcohol or drugs during week; complying with ordered or referred drug and alcohol treatment.
_____Acceptance: admits that violence and abuse exists; not minimizing, blaming, or excusing the problem; realizes responsibility for abuse; identifies contribution to problem.
_____Using Techniques: takes conscious steps to avoid violence; refers to time-outs, self-talk, conflict resolution skills, etc. does homework assignments or recommendations.
_____Help-seeking: seeks information about alternatives; discusses options with others in the group: calls other participants for help; open to referrals and future support.
_____Process conscious: lets others speak one at time; acknowledges others’ contributions; asks questions of others without interrogating; heeds direction of counselors.
_____Actively Engaged: attentive body language and non-verbal response, maintains eye contact; speaks with feeling; follows topic of discussion in comments.
_____Self-disclosure: reveals struggles, feelings, fears, and self-doubts; not withholding or evading issues; not sarcastic or defensive.
_____Sensitive language: respectful of partner and women in general; non-sexist language and no pejorative slang; checks others who use sexist language. The full article is available for download at http://www.mincava.umn.edu/papers/gondolf/discharg.htm.
Non-Violence Alliance Progress Criteria
David Mandel
Using the profile of an abuser (see earlier Issues) and other perspectives, the following criteria were developed to evaluate the progress of domestic violence perpetrators involved with a batterer intervention group. Scoring the client involves the same scale developed by Gondolf: 5=extremely present, 4=very present, 3=somewhat present, 2=a little present, 1=very little present, 0=no opinion, uncertain, not applicable.
_____Understanding Control: displays understanding of the relationship between acts of violence and control as motivation; considers how his violence leads to his partner and children feeling controlled.
_____Widening and Deepening Definition of Abuse: talks about a wider range of his behaviors as being abusive, talks about his pattern of abuse in a less fragmented, more cohesive manner; relates current situation and behavior to his abusiveness in prior relationships.
_____Entitlement Thinking: questions his own right to be abusive, controlling or possessive over partner and children; works positively with challenges to entitlement thinking from group leaders or members; sees the connection between his entitlement thinking and his abuse; sees connection between entitlement thinking and feelings of fear and helplessness.
_____Emotion Identification: separates the feeling of anger from the actions of abuse; identifies feelings of powerlessness and fear related to his pattern of control; identifies emotions as triggers for abuse.
_____Impact: expresses awareness of the emotional impact of his abusive behavior on himself, partner, children and others; has some understanding of long term impact of abuse; appears to feel pain, powerlessness and fear about the negative impact of his behavior; understands that he can have positive impact on others. .
_____Risk Management: has identified high-risk situations; has identified internal warning cues to abuse and violence; has identified non-violent actions he can take to avoid future abuse; has handled high risk situations without violence.
_____Behavior Change: reports positive changes in how he handles himself relevant to his prior pattern of abuse; displays an understanding of how his prior abuse is impacting his current situation and the behavior and needs of his partner, ex-partner and/or children; describes behavior that accounts for the need for family members to have safety, self-determination and satisfaction.
_____Children: displays understanding of the needs of his children; can separate his needs from the needs of children; displays commitment to not use children as a weapon of control against his partner or ex-partner; takes actions to provide for physical and emotional needs of his children; treats step-children well; does not physically or emotionally abuse his children.
_____Aggravating Factors: concerns about substance abuse, mental health issues, or situational factors that may increase risk.
_____General Qualities: focused his own process instead of others behaviors; cooperative; motivated.
_____Progress: has the client progressed since he entered the program or since the last time he was assessed?
International Research into Batterers' Perceptions
of their Children's Exposure to Their Violence
David Mandel
A man is about to murder his wife but stops when he hears his children crying. After arrest, probation and treatment, he eventually commits to ending his pattern of violence and abuse because he wants his children to avoid the effects of his behavior. Another man upon learning from his neighbors that his son is terrified of him begins to look more closely at changing his abusive behaviors. A third man worries about the effects of his violence towards his partner when he sees his own behavior mirrored in the tantrums of his young child. He does not want his child to grow up to be like him.
In each of these real life case examples, batterers are reevaluating their violent behavior through the lens of its effect on their children. Children have been shown to be a significant reason batterers change their behavior (Donovan & Paterson, 1999) yet very little has been done to study how batterers view their children and the children of their partners. Greater knowledge about batterers’ perceptions of their children and related domains may help shape more effective interventions, accountability strategies and programs for men who batterer.
Using a newly created survey called the Cognitive Assessment of Abusive Fathers (or CAAF), David Mandel, one of the co-founding partners in the Non-Violence Alliance and the Domestic Violence Intervention Training Institute is currently researching a international sample of men involved in batterer intervention and treatment programs. The study builds upon the results of an earlier Connecticut study using CAAF and the literature on the effects of domestic violence on children, parenting alliance theory, and father involvement.
The study will examine data on the following key domains of batterers’ perceptions: (a) the extent of their children’s exposure to their violence and abuse, (b) the actual impact their behavior has on their children, (c) concerns for short and long term effects of their abuse on their children, (d) the relative concern for various effects their violence might have on their children, (e) help seeking actions they might take if they thought their children were being affected, and (f) how they perceive their partner and themselves as parents.
The study will attempt to capture the perceptions of batterers as it relates to the broadest group of children they might affect: their children and the children of their partner. It will examine correlations between perceptions and demographic variables such as referral source, age, race, income, and educational level. Based on participant self-reports the research will also correlate perceptions with levels of violence and verbal abuse, and violence during pregnancy.
The physical and emotional risks that batterers represent to children are well documented (Gleason, 1995; Graham-Bermann & Brescoll, 2000; Huth-Bocks, Levendosky & Semel, 2001; McDonald, Jouriles, Norwood, Ware & Ezell, 2000; Periodic Survey, 2002). Batterers harm their children by exposing them to their violence toward their partner or ex-partner, direct child abuse and neglect, using them as weapons to hurt others, and undermining the parenting of the adult victim. Abuse and violence that impact family planning decisions and pregnancy can also be included in our understanding of the risks batterers’ present to children (Campbell, Woods, Chouaf & Parker, 2000).
A batterer’s behavior always strains and frequently ruptures the parenting alliance that is important for the positive development of children. In his self-centered approach to his needs and the needs of others, a batterer frequently abdicates his responsibilities as a father to pursue his own interests above the short and long term interests of his children.
Understanding how batterers’ perceive their children’s exposure to their abuse can improve existing interventions and create new avenues for preventing abuse. If we can learn about how being a batterer affects a man’s image of himself as a father we may be able to offer better guidance to child protection workers, juvenile court judges and others attempting to engage batterers in intervention programs. If we know which effects of abuse most upset batterers we can help batterer treatment program staff target their counseling and education efforts. The same type of information may also be of use to medical, mental health and substance abuse professionals attempting to work with batterers and their families. Public health prevention campaigns might be built around data that indicates batterers are worried that their children are going to grow to be victims and perpetrators.
Because of the nature of the study sample, this research also may point out the strengths and deficiencies of existing batterer intervention programs. Traditional batterer intervention programs vary in their approach to children. Few systematically address issues related to batterers as fathers (Peled, 2000). Although cross sectional in design, this study may still give us some insight into how batterer intervention programs change client’s perceptions of themselves, their children and their partner. For instance, data from the Connecticut sample indicates that men who are farther along in treatment may be more sensitive to the impact their violence has on their children than men in earlier stages (Mandel, 2002).
Learning more about batterers as fathers may produce benefits for battered women and their children. Often, battered women and their abusers share a child or children. In many cases, it is not safe for the batterer to have any contact with the adult and child victims. But in other cases, for a myriad of reasons, a battered woman may want a batterer to be in contact with his children if it can occur safely. In most jurisdictions, a father who has abused his partner will be allowed some contact with his child or children (Sheeran & Hampton, 1999). A greater understanding of batterers’ perceptions of their children may be useful in developing interventions to improve the parenting of a batterer and healing the damage his abuse has done to his children.
From the children’s point of view a batterer, despite his violence and abuse, may be a very important and instrumental person in their lives (Peled, 2000;Sullivan, Juras, Bybee, Nguyen &Allen, 2000). Slade (2000), writing about supervised visitation between batterers and their children, raises a number of issues related to the importance of batterers to their children.
“What if a violent father has managed, none the less, to forge a bond and attachment with his child that is meaningful and significant to the child? What if the child idealizes and identifies with the missing father? If such a child then maintains the ‘link’ with the missing parent by enacting aspects of the father’s behaviour, aggression and impulsiveness for instance, in his or her own relationship with the mother, then has aggression as a method of dealing with problems crossed generations? Is it possible that some male perpetrators of violence might yet play a positive part in their children’s development if guided to correct damaging lessons of the past? Contact with missing parents fulfils a number of important functions for children: maintaining significant emotional and psychological links; testing the reality as against the fantasy of an idealized missing parent; and maintaining links to extended family and perhaps a second culture or race.” (p. 507)
The vast majority of batterer intervention programs are accessed through the criminal justice system. In many cases this means that men of color and poor men are disproportionately represented in these programs. Researching batterers as fathers may create the data needed to design and implement prevention based models that utilize multiple screening and intervention points with men that do not necessitate their involvement in punitive systems. If batterers can be motivated to voluntarily seek treatment for their abuse because they have been convinced their violence harms their children, we increase fairness and share the weight of responding to this issue beyond the already overburdened courts and child protection agencies.
By exploring research that might help batterers as fathers maintain safe contact with their children, we are addressing the issues of family and family integrity that are so important in many communities of color. Quoted in “Assembling the Pieces: An African American Perspective on Community and Family Violence (2002),” Dr. Esther Jenkins says “Black women don’t want men removed from their families. They want their relationships fixed.” While this statement is true for women of many different cultural groups, it may have special meaning for communities that struggle under the forces of economic and social oppression that damage families and intimate relationships.
It is the author’s hope that this exploratory research study will make a useful contribution to the current dialogues about batterers as fathers, victim safety and how best to address the long term relationship many batterers have with their children or the children of their partners.
Endnotes
2.References available at http://endingviolence.com/references.htm.
3.This study is being conducted to fulfill graduation requirements for a masters in Counseling Psychology from Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont. Thesis Advisors: Dr. Jim Fitzgerald and Dr. Tracy Garrett.
References
Austin, J. & Dankwort, J. (Revised August 1998). A Review of Standards for Batterer Intervention Programs. Available on line at http://www.vaw.umn.edu/vawnet/standard.htm.
(c) 2002, The Non-Violence Alliance. Permission to reprint with the following information "Originally published in Issues in Family Violence, Volume 4, Issue 4 Fall 2002, The Non-Violence Alliance, www.endingviolence.com."