A New Advocacy Tool for Battered Women’s Advocates – December 17, 2015
Battered women often seek to understand why the men who say they love them are also violent and abusive to them. This live video conference will provide advocates with a tool and framework to help battered women better understand why men are abusive and what it would take for men who batter to change.
Spending most of her early career as advocate for battered women, Melissa Petrangelo Scaia was often told and asked by battered women, “Why does he hurt me? Why does he do this to me? Do you think he could change?” or “He promised he wouldn’t hurt me anymore. I don’t think he’ll do it again.” Through her years as an advocate and then a batterers intervention program facilitator and international trainer of “the Duluth Model”, Melissa began to see how the curriculum, framework and tools of the men’s non-violence program could be useful when adapted for use by advocates in their work with battered women.
The Control Log is an essential teaching and analysis tool of the Creating a Process of Change for Men Who Batter curriculum that men’s non-violence groups use with men who batter. It is designed to facilitate an analysis of six key elements of abusive behaviors and then to identify how men can be non-violent and non-controlling in intimate partner relationships with women. The Domestic Abuse Intervention Program (DAIP) staff in Duluth, MN has taken this widely used tool used for working with men who batter and adapted it for use by advocates to utilize when helping battered women understand and answer the questions, “Why is he violent? Will he change?”
This live video conference will provide a tool and method for advocates to help battered women understand why men batter. This video conference will also address and help advocates answer the following questions and statements posed by battered women:
- If he would just get some help and get better, he would leave me alone and be nicer to our kids.
- Doesn’t he just need therapy?
- I think he is bi-polar. I think he needs medication.
- What if we went to couples counseling? I think we just need to communicate better and learn to compromise.
- My pastor said he will talk to him and meet with him. I will go, too, if he wants me to.
- I know he didn’t have the best childhood ever. What if he talks about it with someone? I think if he just talked about his childhood, he would be better.
- He gets really angry. Is there an anger management program he could go to?
- All he really needs is treatment. If he just stopped drinking/using drugs he wouldn’t hurt me.
Watch the Video Replay
Handouts:
- Can he change – What would it take for him to change – the Duluth Model Videoconference – PowerPoint
- A Log for Understanding Your Partners Hurtful and Abusive Actions – DAIP Log and Guide
- Power and Control Log for Victims of Battering to Better Understand Why Men Are Abusive to Women – Example with Lisa