Area’s First Batterer’s Intervention Program Coming to Jackson

Melissa Webster

The Center for Violence Prevention is spearheading a batterer's intervention program in Jackson.

by Ronni Mott
July 22, 2009

Domestic violence. It’s such a bland, vanilla euphemism for some of the most brutal and damaging pain that people inflict on one another. Brutal, of course, because people—mostly women and children—get their faces punched, their bones broken and sometimes die. Damaging, because the same people who profess love are those doing the punching and breaking, permanently scarring their victims, physically and psychologically. And for women, dying at the hands of an abuser is a real threat: In 2002, two-thirds of all women murdered by firearms were shot by their intimate partners.

“Many cases of domestic violence go unreported,” states the Mary Kay Ash Foundation on its Web site, “so statistics are difficult to get. However, the Family Prevention Fund estimates that between 960,000 and 3 million incidents of family violence go on each year.”

Earlier this month, a Times-Picayune story revealed that New Orleans police classify more than half of all sexual assaults against women as non-criminal complaints, highlighting another difficulty in quantifying the enormity of the problem. But an annual “census” from the National Network to End Domestic Violence reveals that 60,799 domestic violence victims were served on Sept. 17, 2008, nationwide. Twelve of the 15 Mississippi DV programs participated in the census, reporting that they served 295 victims and answered 149 hotline calls; they could not meet 45 requests.

That’s just one day.

In Jackson, people on the bleeding end of the violence have at least some access to help, including legal resources and shelters like the Center for Violence Prevention, which offers residential and non-residential programs. But for abusers, unless they have the resources to pay for private therapy, other help doesn’t exist beyond a few anger management classes.

It’s a little like only dousing the flames at the front of a burning house: Unless you put out the flames in the back, the house will still burn down.

Anger management is not enough, said Sandy Middleton, director of the CDV in Pearl, who is bringing batterer’s intervention programs to the area.

“Everybody has a core of beliefs … what you believe about what’s right and what’s wrong,” she said. “Feelings and actions come from the core set of beliefs. Anger management ‘mows the grass.’ It teaches you how to deep breathe, how to act differently. Batterer’s intervention gets down into the core beliefs,” she said, getting to the root of the belief systems that keep the cycle of violence in place—"tilling the soil," to allow fundamental change.

Last year, the Center for Violence Prevention took the first steps toward bringing a Duluth Model batterer’s intervention program into the area, getting eight people trained as program facilitators through a grant from the Mississippi attorney general’s office. Middleton estimates that the programs, which will be available in Rankin, Hinds and Madison counties with the help of community support like the Jackson Free Press Chick Ball, will cost between $60,000 and $70,000 its first year.

The Duluth Model, first implemented in Minnesota in 1981, provides a blueprint for community response and inter-agency coordination to stem the tide of domestic violence. The model recognizes that social and justice systems work best together to protect victims from ongoing abuse, which is the overarching goal of every action within the model. For example, police, prosecutors and judges need guidelines and training to respond to domestic abuse situations appropriately—including putting offenders behind bars—while social agencies provide victim safety and programs designed to give abusers the opportunity to change.

Under the model, judges would order abusers to take part in a 24-week intervention program, intended to confront the abuser with his behavior, allowing him to take responsibility and break his personal cycle of violence. The classes delve into abusers’ beliefs, including male privilege—abusers frequently believe that they have the right to dominate their women and families simply because they are men—and how they use intimidation and emotional and economic abuse to control their victims.

“The way to change that is not to change the way he handles his anger,” Middleton said. “You have to get down into his core belief systems. … For the first time, (we’ll have) the opportunity to address the cause, not just the result (of domestic violence)."

“If somebody keeps falling in a hole, some smart person at some point is going to fill the damn hole in,” she added, with her typical candor. The program will give prosecutors and judges an option, rather than just putting men in prison or slapping them on the wrist.

Participants also explore the nature of nonviolent, equitable relationships. The program uses role-playing, group discussions and written exercises to educate participants. Facilitators work in teams of two, a man and a woman, and are compensated through the mandatory session fees of the participants. The programs are non-linear, meaning that participants can join a group at any point in the process. And, although the goal of the program is not “marriage counseling,” men learn how to have relationships based on equality instead of power and control.

The Duluth Model is not without its detractors. The major criticisms of the program include its focus only on male abusers, its confrontational approach, and its lack of therapeutic or psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. The Duluth Model needs to be modified to account for the growing problem of women abusing men and same gender abuse, critics say, and to address substance abuse and psychological problems, which are often present in abusive situations.

Duluth Model batterer-intervention programs are specifically not represented as therapy; people with mental problems are weeded out during the intake procedure. They can be better understood as educational and peer-supported programs, with similarities to Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step program. And in cities like Jackson, where offender programs of any kind are virtually non-existent for low-income residents, the program will fill a huge void.

“People can change if they want to change,” Middleton said. “The bottom line is that we have to do something to get a handle on domestic violence.” Domestic violence is the No. 1 police call in the area, she said, and the most dangerous because of its volatility.

“As educated, civilized people, we have to do something,” she said.

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