DV: Advice from someone who turned their R around (so worth it)

[Abitwobblynow]

This is an extract from KIM COOPER's book 'Through the Looking Glass' It is available on download and you search narcissismcured.com The comment at the end is from her now-grown-up husband explaining things from his point of view and what her behaviour did for him.

Step 4. If he is Intimidating Call The Police
Again, when you call the police, don?t expect miracles or be overly emotional with them. If they ask what you want them to do, say, ?I want you to tell him what the consequences will be if he continues to intimidate/threaten/assault me.? If he runs away when the police come, you can still talk to them and make sure it is on record and that he knows you reported it. Still, you need to insist that they talk to him directly about the consequences of his behaviour. While they are talking to you, try to do it out of his earshot but where he can still see you, so he is left wondering what has been said. (Say, ?Can I talk to you over there?? and point to where you want to move the conversation). This is a really important point that the police taught me. One officer talked to me for twenty minutes, leaving Steve waiting where he could see us. He said, ?See, he is wondering now what we are talking about and let him wonder!?
You need to let him know that you will not tolerate emotional or physical intimidation and that he is going to have to deal with the consequences, not you. If you have already gone in to the police and spoken to the head of D.V. (domestic violence) it will help a lot. Just knowing this person?s name will make the police attending respect you better. In my case I got an AVO (apprehended violence order) on Steve (where he could still remain living with us) and this was very worthwhile. This was in Australia and I don?t know if they have something similar where you live but I hope so. Once the order is in place, if he intimidates or hits you again, he will go straight to jail. If he needs to go to jail to see you are serious about this boundary, so be it. You mustn?t try and protect him from the consequences of his bad behaviour.
The court brought us back three times on the assault charge that precipitated the order. I found this frustrating, but in retrospect it was important. Each time they said Steve was not ready and had to prepare better. This taught him that his bad treatment of me was more serious than he had thought. The male judge and police officers in the court room looked very disapproving and that helped too! Many men who mistreat their wives grew up with men who did the same, so Steve seeing these men who were respected and in authority really disapproved of his behaviour was a big wake up call. Their disapproval really sunk in and made a big change in him. The judge also thanked me for my time and even commented how nicely groomed I was. This might have been because I had made the effort to make friends with the police, but whatever reason it was a very good day for me. They made me feel very solid, strong and supported and showed Steve he was on shaky ground.
Some men whose wives assault them do not feel they can get the police to help. If this is your situation, I think it is important that you do. You do not have to play victim in court or with the police, but instead you might want to say that you are concerned about her behaviour and that she needs to learn it is not okay and that you do not want to be forced to restrain her or play policeman in your own home. The truth is that women, just like men, can be very scary and dangerous when they are violent.
The AVO helped us because Steve then knew that if he intimidated, threatened or hurt me again (and in his case one of the provisions of the order was that he could not drink at home or
16
come home if he had been drinking) and I decided to call the police, he would be put straight in jail. This was important. He learned that he no longer had the upper hand and was not going to get away with sweet-talking anyone anymore. The power balance was now swinging in my favour.
If you can get a provision like this (that he can?t come home if he has been drinking, or something very easy to prove) in the AVO, it is really good, then it is not about the police taking sides. Once the AVO is in place, if you call and he is at home and has been drinking, he gets locked up, that?s it, no telling stories. He does not have the chance to charm anyone or provoke a fight, or confabulate and confuse things. I would still let Steve drink, but he knew there was a line in place and what would happen if he crossed it.
Fortunately, I never had to have Steve put in jail, but that was only because he knew I would call without hesitation if he ever tried to intimidate me again.
This will be a big disincentive to your partner continuing to disrespect you, but you have to be prepared to go through with it. Again, the only reason I didn?t have to have Steve put in jail was because he saw without a doubt I would do it. This is really important - as threats won?t work, he has to know you mean it, and that will probably involve you having the police over a few times. Don?t call them as a threat or because you are angry, call them if you feel you need protection. The sooner you do this and the calmer you are about it (?Honey, I don?t know how to handle you when you are like this so I think I am going to need to get the police here to talk to you?) the more effective this will be. You might also choose to quietly call first, then explain this, or he may try to stop you.
He might tell you he is not in control of his behaviour, but I am telling you that he only intimidates or puts people down who he thinks are weaker than he is. He?s not insulting big guys in bars, he makes decisions about who he can get away with this behaviour with. You need to become the wrong person for him to pick on.
This was quite troubling for me. The experience of court was horrible. I realised that I had made a terrible mistake and that the law was there to punish me. The D.V. officer from the police explained the terms of my Apprehended Violence Order and they were that I was to obey the terms or be thrown in jail. His words were simple and matter of fact, ?Prison is a tough place to survive.? That was enough for me, but I DID need to be told. Kim was sad the day we went to court, I could see that she was very disappointed that our relationship had come to this, but she kept a brave face and knew she was doing the right thing. This experience I will remember forever, and I cannot ever have my conviction for ?common assault? overturned. Society, through a magistrate, was able to make a statement to me that my behaviour was unacceptable. I had crossed a boundary that I obviously had no respect for. Steve

I love the notion of spending maintenance on herself. If a mother is getting maintenance this simply means that she can spend less of her own income on looking after a child that two people created. Therefore she has more money left over and can afford to spend it on herself. It doesn't mean she is making her child go without.

In the vast majority of cases, a maintenance payment is a notional nod to the cost of raising a child and in no way reflects the true costs which are borne disproportionately by the resident parent.

Ken - If you spend 30 seconds in the company of my childrens father he will tell you that I victimised him. That he is desperate to see his children but i forbid it. That he took me to court to gain access to his children and yet i refuse to abide by the courts ruling. He will tell you that I am evil and twisted and that i lied about the DV in order to block him seeing his children.

Thankfully the court ignored his ridiculous pleadings and instead took the word of the 32 police attendances to our home in 40 days, The medical reports and cafcas reports where my autistic son, then aged 5 told them all about how mummy is naughty and so daddy has to hit her.

Im sorry Ken but your argument holds no water at all. There are no facts to what you say, just woman hating misogyny.

bloody hell even the founder admits he was being a twat and as soon as he started acting responsibly and making himself into a safe and good parent his ex was happy for him to see the children. why do we allow men like this to waste so much of court time and money? it would be a lot easier to say to the mother what is it that would need to happen to allow you to feel safe letting this person have contact? and if she says something simple like stop drinking, stop threatening us, stop making abusive calls etc then give the nrp a month to show he's done that and then discuss contact again.

this delusion that there are millions of women out there who out of pure maliciousness would not want another parent involved in supporting the child and giving her some time off to lead her own life too is ridiculous. there are very few women who would put themselves through 24/7 sole care of their children without real reasons for doing so.

funnily enough parenting is a hard job and as a single parent with no involvement from my son's father i can tell you it would have been bloody lovely to have every other weekend and one night a week to myself whilst my son was cared for by a loving parent. who wouldn't want that?

I spent years trying to understand and 'work out' my ex's behaviour. If I'd read the extract it would have enabled me to 'try even harder' with someone who was a cruel bastard.

There have been one or two posters in this forum, whose mothers kept them in poverty whilst receiving large amounts of maintenance. There are rather more who suffered with cruel, abusive mothers.

Their number is dwarfed by the amount who were physically, emotionally and sexually abused by fathers whose wives permitted the abuse, misguidedly believing they could 'manage' the relationship. That author is teaching her children (if she has any) some very unhelpful lessons about adult relationships.

Fuzzy and sp, it's so sad to hear about your children's anxiety. How incredibly hard for a child to grasp such unfairness in life :(

Also in my experience what some NRPs consider to be the mother spending the maintenance on herself is actually spending it on rent, food and bills. You know, the costs of keeping a child fed and clothed and off the streets. But if they don't see brand new Nike trainers regularly then clearly the money grabbing ho is just using the dosh for her own purposes.

yes these feckless mothers spending the child support on housing and energy and all those little bills that come with running a family home. she should just buy her kids playstation games and say, 'this is from daddy'.

And as if the father could possibly know exactly which bills went where.

If she cuts her hair, it must be with his maintenance money, surely.

Thanks for that Rebecca, I now feel that I truely am a MN'er as I've had a post deleted due to speaking out about my shock and outrage at some of the misguided advice given by 2 posters on this thread, but yes, my message needed deleting

A personal attack? I think not. Shame on you MN for keeping this thread going :(

Tbh I'm glad this thread hadn't been deleted. Hopefully if some desperate woman googles this book she will find this thread too.

Lol Garlic, that's a good one

Ken can you explain how a woman spends the maintanance on herself? We all know maintanance does not cover the cost of raising a child.

I'm reluctant to take the focus off the real point of this thread, or dilute in any way the message that abusive men are dangerous to their partners and their children, but this:

"this delusion that there are millions of women out there who out of pure maliciousness would not want another parent involved in supporting the child and giving her some time off to lead her own life too is ridiculous. there are very few women who would put themselves through 24/7 sole care of their children without real reasons for doing so."

• is very sadly just not true. A good friend is a CAFCASS officer. She's also gay and a feminist, so hardly a defender of the patriarchy. She says no gender has the monopoly on horrible behaviour in contact disputes, and implacable hostility, without any foundation, is a major and fairly intractable problem, just as aggressive and controlling fathers are. If you think this is a gendered issue, try googling Re G. It's a lesbian parenting case and clearly one of totally unfounded intractable hostility. Fathers (and mothers) who abduct overseas are doing the same thing, writ large. It's simply more likely to be women now as they tend to be the primary carer and thus the residential parent, but an inability to separate your own needs from those of the children is the issue, and while that's not on the same spectrum as violent abuse, it's terrible for those children, either.

My own father wasn't ever that interested in any of his kids once he'd left their mother for his new wife (currently on number 4) and would swan in and out, saying horrible things about my mother when he bothered to remember I existed and often NOT bothering to remember my existence, even when arrangements had been made. Birthdays and Xmas - don't make me laugh. And he has been a shit financially to every ex and every child, so believe me, I know where you're coming from. But to deny another form of shitty behaviour doesn't undermine that, either. I know several perfectly nice men struggling to see their kids because their exes are arses, just as I know several mums whose exes want nothing to do with their poor kids and try not to pay maintenance. I don't care about chromosomes, just behaviour (and none of those men are non-payers, I may add. I despise that attitude, that if she makes contact tough he'll make payment difficult - the money is for the kids, and denying the kids that on top of not seeing their fathers is to punish them twice over for adult failings. Totally arse-backwards and making the parents as bad as one another IMO).

Don't even get me started on the CSA charging resident parents - total fucking disgrace. They should charge the person making the CSA's involvement necessary; if a NRP can show s/he was regularly paying the same or more than the CSA would order, then fine, charge the RP. Otherwise, bill the feckless fucker who made using the CSA necessary in the first place.

perfectstorm I accept your point about hostility not being one way only, but I don't think anyone here has claimed that women are incapable of behaving badly. To deny it would stereotype women in the 'angel' role as much as promoting it tries to cast them as evil devils, and I don't think that does women any favours.

I'd like to run with your post though because I'm always happy to debate with someone posing an alternative POV in a non-offensive, willing-to-engage manner.

First of all, think about how many couples with children split up every year and compare that to the number of cases dealt with by CAFCASS. Although each case is individually a tragedy (in the sense that things have gone badly wrong by that point), they are a minority. Most parents - after some initial difficulties and hostility - work something out because they love their children more than they hate their Xs. Therefore, to claim that millions of women prevent access to their children is delusional since even if the hostility of CAFCASS cases is 50/50 by gender most separating couples don't go to court in the first place.

I am sure the vast majority of CAFCASS officers try their best and do a good job. I'm sure your friend does an excellent one. But there are many, many cases where women who have been accused of unreasonable hostility are telling the truth about DV but cannot prove it. When you consider that there are, on average, 35-40 instances of abuse before the police are called (if ever), it's not that surprising that there is no evidence. To make matters worse, by the time a case gets this far, an abused woman is usually so worn down or has been manipulated and undermined to such an extent that she can present as hysterical/overly protective/unco-operative/downright vindictive in court while the abuser can come across as the calm reasonable one. False allegations of abuse are rare. Home office statistics put it at less than 10%, which is about the same rate as false reporting for any other crime. (Rape incidentally is lower again at 6% but that's another story).

Therefore, when claims of abuse are made in family law cases, even when there is no evidence it is likely that many of these women are telling the truth. If there is no evidence and therefore the CAFCASS officer has no choice but to discount it as untrue, is it any surprise that the woman becomes hostile and unco-operative and even refuses to comply with whatever contact arrangement the court has ordered?

I don't know what the answer is as a fair legal system has to work on the basis of evidence or probabilities, but I feel it is something that needs far more exploration in the interests of keeping victims and children safe.

If you take abuse out of the equation, I have no problem whatsoever believing that the remaining cases of intractable hostility are equal by gender, but I believe that unprovable abuse accounts for a lot of cases in which women are deemed hostile.

Yes, OK, there are some women who behave badly: no shit sherlock. But a man who is separated from his children's mother and wants to see them can often make things a lot better for both himself and DC by: turning up when contact is due, keeping his communications with the mother polite, formal and limited to access/finance/practical stuff, never presuming he can go into her home against her wishes, not badmouthing her in front of the DC etc.
A lot of the time the man whining that his XW won't let him see the DC is the man who is only interested in making the XW jump through hoops, so insisting that he is allowed into the XW's home for contact whenever he wishes, witholding maintenance, making unreasonable demands, not looking after DC properly etc.

Quite hard to make things better if she's being vindictive though SGB

I know only of one case where the mother did her best to prevent the father from seeing his children.
He hasn't really made the effort, though, not even seeking contact through the court.

The other cases, either both parents have good access to the children, or the father is a git who doesn't really care about the children, but the mother still helps maintain contact.

I also know of one case where the mother left the father and the children with no contact.
Most other cases are the opposite.

A list of signs that the abuser is better:

www.escapeabuse.com/?p=110

I hope it helps, Kens.
I'm sure it can be accomplished even if the mother is being "vindictive".

If you think she is being vindictive, then you are not really repentant, are you?

the hwole book/site etc referred to in op is nuts.. and why does op refer to "her now-grown-up husband " ?did she marry a child?
were all our exes jsut children adn we ahd to wait for them to grow up?

the extract is bonkers - "Still, you need to insist that they [police] talk to him directly about the consequences of his behaviour" as tho anyone can dictate to police whether or if they go talk to the person.... but then we talking about a child here arent we so it's like when police are asked to go talk to child who shop lifted the first time to scare them...

i agree with swallowedafly "it would have been bloody lovely to have every other weekend and one night a week to myself whilst my son was cared for by a loving parent. who wouldn't want that?"

in most cases there is good reason - i have good reasons - when i thought things were going well and contact was building up i started to plan so much "life" for me on the future "weekends off "- they didnt get to happen - because of his issues not my choice....

but of course there are a few cases where mother or father is being obstructive for no apparent reason - but it is always hard to judge from outside in....

I have met far more 'seeing the kids was too much hassle' types that 'I'll do anything to see my dcs'.

I think a woman did start this thread, HereIgo.

But I agree about the 'gather round and listen to me' bit. So the experience of the women on this thread is far less valid that a shitty ebook. Yup.

i think it was started by a woman but a woman who is trying to brainwash herself into mansplaining versions of reality hence adopting the tone.

hope you're ok op and are able to read this thread and take on board what people are telling you about their experiences. it's sad to think of you trying to find a way to believe it is a good thing to stay with an abusive man. there is no need - a relationship is a freely chosen contract that should be loving and respectful and not require police involvement. when it becomes violent and dangerous there is only one cure - end it.