By Katherine van Wormer, MSSW, PhD
Domestic violence remains a major cause of physical and psychological injury to women. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that at least 85% of the victims of domestic violence are women. Women are far more likely than men to be injured and even killed by such acts of aggression.
Recognizing the need to address domestic abuse as a growing public health issue, batterer treatment programs have been developed to treat individuals who use violence toward an intimate partner. Batterer intervention programs provide judges with an option other than incarceration. Their philosophy is consistent with a belief in rehabilitation rather than retribution.
The basic goal of batterer intervention programs is to eliminate family violence through helping batterers change their behavior and attitudes. Secondary goals are to teach effective communication techniques and develop social problem-solving skills.
Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Program
Developed in the early 1980s, The Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Program (DAIP) has been a revolutionary force in its creation of a coordinated community response to domestic violence. Reforms in the criminal justice system to meet the needs of victims of violence have taken place accordingly.
The components of the model include pro-arrest or mandatory arrest policies, follow-up support and advocacy for victims, prosecution, monitoring of offender compliance with probation conditions, and court-mandated participation in batterer intervention programs.
Typically, persons arrested for domestic violence are mandated to complete a state-approved batterer treatment program as an alternative to incarceration.
The Duluth Model Education Group design is based on the premise that violence is used by men in order to control women’s behavior and reinforce male dominance. Its focus is therefore on reducing batterers’ power over their victims, and teaching these men new relationship skills. The curriculum is built around the Power and Control Wheel.
The Wheel was constructed as a teaching aid and based on input from 200 battered women. Facilitators teach batterers about how they have used various strategies which are represented on the cogs of the wheel to maintain control. Examples are economic abuse, using male privilege, and using children. From this perspective facilitators are expected to avoid getting sidetracked by discussion of participants’ personal problems, and to maintain a continuous focus on power and control tactics and methods for changing them.
Biopsychosocial Approach
In contrast to a “one size fits all” approach, social workers tend to view the causes of domestic violence as multifaceted. This approach is consistent with research revealing that biological and psychological as well as social factors are all involved in intimate partner violence.
Biological factors in violence are sometimes overlooked. Empirically based studies have linked interpersonal violence and poor impulse control with biological conditions such as low serotonin levels in the brain, high testosterone production, and brain damage from head injury.
Alcohol and drug addiction may be related factors in that they reduce inhibitions to violence. Intoxication also negatively affects one’s cognitive functions and elicits irrational thought. The combination of unemployment status, heavy binge drinking, and approval of violence is significantly associated with a high rate of wife/partner abuse.
A biological proclivity toward aggression, however, does not necessarily mean control is totally absent. For example, these men often do not attack people outside their family but displace their aggression onto family members. This seems to indicate a psychological component to their violence.
Many batterers have difficulties involving an inner sense of insecurity; this often results in extreme bouts of jealousy, suspicion, and possessiveness. Yet such men are frequently unaware of any feelings other than anger. Suffering from an inability to openly communicate with others, they see themselves as powerless victims.
Violent men have been found, in hypothetical jealousy-provoking situations, to consistently misinterpret their wives’ motives as intentionally hostile. Nonviolent men in a comparison group did not feel personally threatened by the same scenarios. Their own over-dependence on their spouses causes these men to resent, hate, and sometimes even kill them.
Social factors link violence against women to cultural expectations. In families in which men are expected to beat their wives when drunk, they will be inclined to do so. Such men have internalized distortions of masculinity rooted in their social upbringing. In many parts of the world, violence against women is the norm.
How Social Workers Help
Social workers, as mentioned above, tend to treat battering holistically, with attention paid to biological, psychological, and social components. Interventions aimed at the biological level may include a referral to a substance abuse treatment center, to a self-help group such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, or to a mental health center for a psychiatric evaluation.
Psychologically, treatment of battering men is geared to helping them replace irrational thought patterns involving jealousy and control issues with more functional thinking and behavior. A positive cognitive approach may also help them abandon their egocentric worldview as they learn to tap into their own inner strengths and acknowledge the good in others.
Treatment for batterers begins with establishing a relationship and motivating the participants to work on their issues. Strategies of motivational enhancement are highly effective in work with reluctant clients who have been court-ordered into treatment. Motivational interviewing directs interventions toward the client’s individual level of readiness to change. (Learn about these techniques at www.motivationalinterview.org ).
A Cautionary Note
A minority of the batterers have a mood disorder such as antisocial personality, which makes them unsuitable for treatment. These types can be weeded out with standardized psychological tests. These types of individuals lack the normal emotional responses to the pain of others; they completely lack empathy. Such men are not amenable to change, and could pose a threat to all concerned.
Group Work
Treating battering men in groups attends to the social side of treatment. Ideally, men’s batterer groups will be led by a male/female team. Ideally a male co-facilitator will model attitudes and behaviors for the group members.
The challenges facing the leader of a male batterers group are many. First, there is much defensiveness to overcome. And secondly, as is typical of victimizers, many of these men perceive themselves as victims: victims of the system, of the mass media, and/or of their partners. Accordingly, a study of the Power and Control Wheel can be expected to have little meaning for them.
A strengths approach makes use of personal narratives to help clients discover where their fears and distrusts are coming from, while simultaneously coming to recognize some of their hidden strengths. An exploration of family-of-origin issues may be elicited in this way as well. Group feedback is invaluable in helping members develop insight concerning their tendencies to overreact to certain situations that arise in a relationship.
An effective strategy is to invite victim-offender panels to give a presentation before the group. Panel members may be battered women who are unknown to group members. The panel might also include men who were victims of child abuse. In hearing the stories of pain and suffering that the crimes of violence engendered, offenders not only may get in tune with their own past victimization, but often they may feel empathy for the victims as people who were hurt by the careless or cruel behavior of others.
Social workers are uniquely capable of working with these issues from a holistic perspective. They frequently work with male batterers in individual and group situations. They also, even more frequently, work with women who have been victimized by their spouses and partners. They are aware, therefore, of the magnitude of domestic violence, of the need for treatments of proven effectiveness to put a stop to such violence, and to support healthy relationships.
