BBC article on domestic violence - 'family based' solutions - why is it making me uncomfortable?

True.

I thought the relationship in the article was the type of the situations they were targeting - non-violent controlling relationships, with pregnancy as a risk factor for escalation, where the woman didn’t recognise the relationship as abusive. I can’t understand the ‘family’ approach when there’s violence involved.

@daffodilandtulip hi there i sometimes think harnessing womens experiences about perp programmes is a way to go. We should keep our eye on this and rally mumsnetters if needs be.

Glad you are okay now.

@Prawncow How are they going to know that then?

@ArabellaScott

Womens Aid affiliates are all independent charities. I do believe that there was a membership vote against accepting Tans women into services.

So there is hope that most of the refuge services will not go for this.

However i doubt the same could be said for affiliate members, who are not women led.

I think it may be an initiative with pounds waved at local Authorities to administer.

Seen it all before will come and will go as of no marked improvements in outcomes.

I left the sector permanently around 2015, so no longer in the loop.

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I thought they were trying this approach when there hasn’t been any physical violence?

Joan Smith made an interesting link...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1787476065/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jxxAx1ePGAKIrTFr7HX9k-Y4FL7TmeTRJjrkgAfkkM94HMhhD0FW8IZm-M9UcJ0_b_1FKA1Rs56M7BsxIrQH7NM7V2BaLUznLUmmpBvfoR_IJFJLQ0m3ozS9-0FcAs4V9pgO72evFjc6GMd0FM3UHgdAoLpZDXgRWy_Hy-EPsuICbdMxgE_fNRBtudU-jENdDY51MAFOOUyTEPdY7GXzYw.8QZcr61T0L3Nkagl4bRSxCvby5vm_J_A-K-nAeqipgE&qid=1715111720&sr=8-1

@Karensalright Funding and resources must be focussed on support and “coaxing women and her children out of such situations.

This. But also they deserve better from the criminal justice system and the family courts. It's terrorism.

I was in a "programme" along these lines after my ex had tried to strangle me (as well of many years physical and emotional abuse). It was the worst time of my life.

The other point to make it really is collusion with the perp. Making her feel she should save him, which is a frequent feature in DV where she feels she is responsible for saving him.

@ArabellaScott

Worked in DV and SV for 20 years. Ran a womens Aid affiliated refuge service providing outreach telephone help, refuge counselling legal clinic. No perps programme i might add.

Firstly a few posters referring to victim loving perp will not leave etc. Please read Evan Stark on this, you will then understand what domestic terrorism is and how it works to prevent women leaving.

As regards this project as far as i am concerned it is the same old same old. A perpetrator programme. Except it breaks all the agreed practice rules established over many years about keeping the victim safe and having separate advocacy for the VICTIM and children.

Based on my own experiences of negotiating and intervening in perpetrator programmes, set up and practice, this never worked. The Support staff for the perpetrator, without variation, and unsurprisingly, would get drawn in to and advocating for the perpetrator.

They would write spurious and easily demolished reports to the Courts, and shut their eyes to being themselves manipulated.

The Probation service programme was reviewed by (the now) professor Elizabeth Gilchrist, some time ago the re offending rate was 88% according to her.

Subsequent reviews of local non mandated programmes revealed a similar pattern.

She was at the time part of Warwick university, Make research count, project along with Mulholland et al.

I knew them then.

Note Elizabeth is now at Edinburgh.

Last i spoke to her she was working on profiling different types of DV abusers, saw a paper by her on this, on google.

My two pence was that there are personality disorder types (most prevalent), psychotic types, just plain bad type.

This kind of project gives me a rage.

As does Women's Aid services delivering Perp programmes

.That IMHO is a complete waste of time dangerous and submitting women and children to an unnecessarily prolonged misery.

Funding and resources must be focussed on support and “coaxing women and her children out of such situations.

@ArabellaScott So they learnt how to maintain coercive control by the implied threat of violence instead of actual violence, thus enhancing their own social capital and chances of maintaining plausible deniability?

I suppose its better not having a broken jaw, but the women's cortisol levels must be through the roof.

(That was about Project Mirabal.)

As the research that this group is only one of the ones being considered, is Government funded, is there any right to ask for them to clarify who they are considering, and have for example DV providers been consulted?

If it works, I’d set aside how I feel about it.

The reality is that lots of women in controlling and abusive relationships don’t recognise that their partner is controlling or abusive. To them it’s normal. We know that, for women in those relationships, pregnancy increases the risk of violence or death. We also know that, even when physical violence is involved, women don’t leave straight away and many take several attempts before they leave for good. If you’d offered to help to the woman in the article get out of her abusive relationship she would’ve run a mile. This scheme might not be your idea of the kind of help you’d choose to give a woman in a controlling relationship but if it’s help she’s likely to accept isn’t that better than nothing?

Even if it doesn’t manage to change the behaviour of the abusive partner in the long term, it’s at least managing to get their abused partners to recognise that they are being abused and that it’s not part of a normal relationship. It’s clearly identifying the abusive partner as the problem, putting the responsibility on them to control their anger and pointing out to the victim how they have ended up walking on eggshells because they fear their partner’s reactions. It’s also on the record that professionals had enough concerns to refer the family. Any official acknowledgment that the partner was abusive can only help the victim in the future if they end up in the family court system.

As with so many human problems (eg the environment) there's an irreconcilable tension here between the greater good (redemption, rehabilitation, breaking the cycle of violence, things that are hard work and take time to achieve) and the enlightened self-interest of the individual (the best advice to the victim is surely always to get out right now?).

I know lots of victims don't want to leave, and in that case there's nothing to lose by trying to mitigate the behaviour, but I'm not very optimistic, and it does feel like expecting women to fix everything (I see the male victim didn't feel under that obligation).

Some one the relationship board a while back linked to some research into if perpetrator of DV can change. The research found some people/men who genuinely wanted to want and who put an awful lot of effort into changing could but none of them could stop being abusive if they stayed in the relationship where they have previously been abusive.

Lundy Bancroft is my hero. In my opinion all women should read this book.

Thanks for the link Arabella.

I do feel somewhat reassured after a brief look through.

I can't argue that research into how best to work in this area is not needed.

Also, I absolutely see the value of addressing intergenerational trauma/breaking the cycle.

And yet, the presentation of the scenarios in the press release, still rests very uneasy for me; as does my point still stand about the potential for, and impact on children and partners, of false engagement in the process. Which would actually go against the aims.

I suppose there is the possibility, that the founder (of BabiesFirst) may have been moved to set this up based on his particular trajectory ('personal crusade')- and there could be (as there often is) a blindspot about the motivations and potential of others in apparently similar situations.

So my doubts remain around working through an abusive partner's own trauma history- whilst still in the relationship. And as other PPs have pointed out, without recognising that genuine change is often not possible.

I'd have to read the link info again to get a better sense of the approach and ethos.

Obviously, the intention of the project is to protect children, but it's clear from the range of responses here that it is raising alarm bells.

Would be good to hear thoughts from any professionals experienced in working with this area.

I keep meaning to read the Lundy Bancroft book.
Thanks for reminder crackofdoom

As with so many areas right now, I think I see that tension between good intentions and harsh realities in this.

Sorry, I should have said the ONLY important one 🙄

because there's nothing in it for them

Exactly, their behaviour works for them.

And when it's their babies who are taking away their victim's attention from The Most Important One ...

A DV article with only the POV of two men - wtf??