Ellen Pence, founder of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, RIP

[KRITIQ]

I was shocked to hear that Ellen Pence died recently from breast cancer. She founded the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, Minnesota and its community-based approach to making perpetrators accountable for their actions. It's a model that has helped reshape how public authorities and services address violence against women in settings throughout the world, including the UK.

I was fortunate to meet her when she led a week of workshops on domestic abuse in Hammersmith back in the early 1990's. She was inspiring, insightful, funny, passionate and truly dedicated to making people think as well as act differently with regard to violence against women.

The exercises and discussions that week transformed many of my perceptions of domestic abuse and were instrumental in shifting my own practice. I still use many of the "tools" shared at that time in a variety of training and support activities. The Power and Control Wheel is still one of the clearest conceptualisations of the dynamics of domestic abuse. It's also an excellent basis for exploring intersectionality of oppression - which was one of the ways it was used during that week.

Julie Bindel has written a wonderful tribute to Ellen in the Guardian today and there is a lovely tribute to her from Praxis International, the research and training organisation she founded with the goal of eliminating violence against women and children.

RIP Ellen.

And a bit more about the impact of her work here and here.

Thank you for this Kritiq. I hadn't heard of her but she sounded inspirational.

Posted this on FB yesterday. RIP Ellen. :(

Thank you for posting this. I use the power and control wheel in training sessions and will always be grateful to those who contributed to its development

Thanks for the comment. She truly was an amazing person, responsible for saving and transforming the lives of hundreds of thousands of women. There were just so many common sense pearls of wisdom from her that have stuck with me.

For example, she talked about her and colleagues efforts in the 1970's to talk to the police, courts, social workers, etc. to "raise awareness" of domestic abuse. She said they thought naively that once their eyes were open and consciences were raised, they would miraculously change their practice and stop colluding with abusers instead of helping the victims.

Yes, some were convinced, but often not the people with any power to change things. Others just ignored them. It took alot of time and effort for what was a drop in the ocean. The culture of misogyny was just too entrenched in many institutions to get anything changed.

Then, they hit on the idea that instead of trying to change attitudes (hard work, takes a long time), they should seek to change practice. They got in with the top dogs in the police in Duluth and convinced them to change the protocol for dealing with dv call outs. It didn't seem that controversial - just making it mandatory to collect photographic, statement, forensic, etc. evidence at every call out, whether anyone pressed charges or not.

What it meant is that rank and file officers knew they had to collect all this stuff, not because it would help the victim. It didn't actually matter if they were the biggest sexist toe rag in the city, they knew they had to follow the protocol or get it in the neck from sarge, so they did it.

And, as a result, more evidence was collected than before (when call outs were written off as "domestics"), more women pressed charges, more women were convicted. As a result, attitudes within the police started to change, the more they followed the protocol and actually looked at rather than ignored the facts, and the more cases they saw followed through, (a common complaint was that it was a waste of time to do anything because women never pressed charges, but they hadn't thought that might be partly due to knowing there probably wasn't enough evidence collected to get a conviction.)

I've borne this example in mind many times - if you can change the policy and practice so even reluctant people have to comply, you can improve the situation for those who are disadvantaged. And, with time, sometimes the attitudes shift as well.

(Oh, and don't know how to move a thread, but happy for it to go anywhere. Just wanted to pay my own little tribute to an unsung heroine of feminism.)