Change This: Today's Programs for Domestic Violence
by
Trudy W. Schuett
Except where otherwise
, this article is
licensed under a
This is something I haven’t
written much about in recent months; in fact it’s been almost a year
since I’ve engaged in much public activism. There was a time,
though, when I thought of little else. For nearly four years I
wrote, e-mailed, faxed, phoned, and even spoke to groups in public
about this. I worked many hours each day in this truly unpopular
cause.
The odd thing was that when I
got into a discussion either online or in person, with people not
directly involved with the issue, I found most people agreed with
me.
Yet in the larger arenas of the
Big3 Traditional media, and the places where the other side of the
story most need to be heard – the legislatures, the universities,
the charitable institutions – I’ve been labeled worse than a
traitor, or more often, simply ignored. My ideas are simply not
politically correct. The mistaken belief in these most influential
quarters is this:
To give voice to the reality
of the serious problems and mistakes in the way we now approach
the issue of domestic violence is the same as saying
women do not
deserve any help.
This belief is persistent and
close to universal among these people, although entirely illogical
and untrue. Not one of the dozens or possible hundreds of people
seeking change has ever used that phrase, to my knowledge.
I’m not suggesting the baby be
thrown out with the bathwater; I’m saying the tub is being filled
from a mud puddle, and that dirty water is no good for a bath.
Before I began my activist
campaign, I had about fifteen years’ experience working either as
paid staff or volunteer at the administrative level for small
private charities. I know how these non-profits work.
This is a complex, long-standing
issue, so bear with me for a few paragraphs as I go back about
thirty years to the beginning of what we now know as “women’s
shelters.” The first one I’m aware of was
established in England in
1971. This one, as well as those that soon followed, were
established as places where women in immediate danger of physical
injury or those being repeatedly beaten by their husbands could
go and begin to get some help. Back then, it was difficult for a
woman to find any assistance in these cases. Society did not want to
admit this kind of problem existed, and these shelters and programs
were limited mainly due to reasons of funding and staffing, etc.
These were practical difficulties, rather than those of a
theoretical or belief-based nature.
It was not easy in the Seventies
to set up this kind of program. There were no established grants, no
specialties relating to domestic violence in the fields of
psychology or medicine, no peer-reviewed studies to prove the
existence of a problem. Shelters were generally set up by one woman,
or a small group who managed to seek out funding and provide the
buildings and staff. These same people established the procedures
for aiding victims because there was nobody else. Few programs were
established by anyone with education or training in psychology or
medicine; they were mainly lay people with an interest in helping
female victims of domestic violence. The emphasis for designing
procedures was on the practical.
It took a special kind of woman
who was able to draw on her inner strength, remove herself and her
children from her home, and step off into an unknown void, with no
assurance that even the most basic needs for herself and her
children could be filled. This kind of woman was likely to make the
best of a tragic situation and with a little help and encouragement
from a shelter, build a stable life, while doing her utmost to
prevent an unfortunate circumstance, or bad relationship to repeat
in her life.
The clear solution for this
woman was to divorce her abuser. In that same era, divorce laws
around the country began to be relaxed, and many previously-battered
women took advantage of the changes in order to help themselves.
Shelter staffs could recognize the value in this situation for their
clients, and established these procedures for all their
clients, based on the successes of the first group of women they
helped.
Some women found their now
ex-husbands not taking kindly to the fact their wives had left them,
and attempted further violence against them. So, shelters also
established programs that would assist these women in relocating to
other states, and even changing identities.
There was a
one-solution-fits-all approach established, but apparently it was
never recognized this solution did not fit all.
Around the same time, the
feminist movement began to take hold. Widely circulating
catchphrases like, “men are pigs,” and “a woman needs a man like a
fish needs a bicycle” were taken less than seriously by most people,
myself included, when in fact they were meant in deadly earnest by
those originating them. I don’t know whether the issue of domestic
violence was “hijacked,” by the feminists in order to keep their own
funding coming, as claimed by
Erin Pizzey, the woman who established
that first English shelter. It could have been that way or some
other, but in any case, some of the more-radical feminist ideology
began creeping into the inner workings of domestic violence
programs.
There was plenty of feminist
writing circulating at the time. It was highly fashionable, and an
important part of the day’s societal issues. There is certainly
nothing wrong with anyone having an opinion. Unfortunately, domestic
violence began to be identified as one of the myriad “women’s
issues” in the minds of the general public. Domestic violence is an
issue that cannot be regarded as affecting only one sex. How could
this single question out of the many associated with marriage and
family affect only women, when other concerns affect both men and
women equally? It just can’t. To presume otherwise defies logic.
It is understandable why
mistakes were made so early on. Many, if not most, women’s shelters
were established by victims themselves, and/or their friends or
loved ones. In my experience working directly with domestic violence
victims, it is quite impossible for them to see the matter
objectively, and there really isn’t any reason they should. After
all, people who are passionately devoted to a cause make good
activists, fundraisers, and volunteers. They are often bent on
revenge, and while this may be only a phase when victims are getting
treatment, it is not productive when it comes to allowing these
individuals positions of authority.
Where the problem enters is when
those passionate victims or survivors are in charge of
administrative functions, or directing the future and policies of an
established organization. The strong bias that serves their
organizations so well in other capacities becomes a liability when
it comes to the areas requiring pragmatism and an objective
viewpoint. In most social services kinds of agencies, these
positions are held by people who can understand the needs of the
clientele, but at the same time are not personally affected by the
issue the agency addresses.
As time went on, grants from
both governments and private foundations became available, studies
were done, and laws reflecting a “more-enlightened” attitude
regarding domestic violence were passed. From just a few shelters
for women back in the 1970s, there is now at least one shelter,
program, or some kind of service for abused women in each of the
over 1300 counties in the United States. Funding for these and their
associated agencies concerned with such areas as divorce and child
custody now approach billions of dollars a year nationwide.
Please note the change in
terminology. The definition of domestic violence has changed to
include a wide variety of circumstances, some of which would not be
considered violence in other kinds of contexts. Hence, the change
from “battered women” to “abused women.” While it is understandable
that this has been done in order to improve outreach and encourage
victims to seek aid, it has also opened the door to manipulation of
services and even the issue itself by those with less-than-honest
objectives.
Today’s Programs
In the shelter programs themselves, little or nothing has changed
since inception of programs. Even with funding available and
numerous programs now in existence, only a portion of those
immediately affected by domestic violence are able to find help.
Why has this happened? Are there
so many more battered/abused women the programs can’t serve them?
The answer to that is a resounding, “no.” The actual incidence of
domestic violence has declined somewhat. The thing that has changed
is the kind of potential client. Other needs have begun to be
recognized. While there are still battered women, who fit the
profile of the kind of situation shelters are designed to address,
there are also battered men. In addition, while many organizations
have rudimentary programs for male abusers, female abusers are
hardly acknowledged. Ignored entirely, and frequently claimed by
shelter advocates not to exist at all are those who are addicted to
violence. Sometimes referred to as “serial victims,” these women are
enabled in their addiction by policies of the programs in service
today. (Because available programs serve exclusively women in most
cases, there isn’t much known about male serial victims, but there
is no reason to presume they do not exist.)
Domestic violence programs are
still focused on that small group of women they were able to help so
successfully in the 1970s. Today, a woman approaching a shelter is
offered the single choice of divorce, and relocation if deemed
necessary. There are seldom policies restricting a woman using the
same services multiple times, which is where the enablement factor
regarding serial victims enters in. These women often use the
shelter stay only as a cooling off period before returning to her
abuser, or as a hiatus between different abusers. Because there is
no recognition or practical help for these women, they could easily
become part of the statistics and publicity the programs use to put
forward their numbers of women murdered in domestic violence.
Some programs offer so-called
“anger management” courses for male abusers, but abusive women
looking for help are often rejected as not qualifying for services,
sometimes forced into victims’ programs against their will.
There are no dedicated
residential shelter programs for male victims. The few services that
exist for men are only small, severely-restricted parts of
established programs for women. There is one non-sexist shelter in
Lancaster California, and only one nationwide hotline, The Domestic
Abuse Hotline for Men, giving direct help for male victims.
There are many reasons for this
non-response to changing times. Anyone who has worked in or with any
social/human services program will recognize that organization
personnel often become “gatekeepers” for their programs. Outside
influences and change are summarily rejected, and/or viewed with
suspicion. Unlike the private business sector, where companies
change both policies and staff with relative frequency, social
services tend to retain administrators and board members for lengthy
periods. Often a retiring administrator will return to serve on a
board of directors, or as a volunteer in other areas, while still
retaining her influence in the organization. In the case of domestic
violence services, many of those who established operations decades
ago are still in the same positions of administration or sit on
boards.
Domestic violence services are
in fact, notable for their lack of change. While nearly all other
organizations in the social services field have grown and begun
using different kinds of client services, adopted new fundraising
techniques and ways of communicating with the public, domestic
violence services have only gotten bigger, and reached farther.
Shelter staffers and advocates
would argue that they have changed significantly and point to the
many activist campaigns and other things they’ve been involved in.
The problem is that most of the active areas of their sphere of
influence have nothing to do with expanding or improving client
services in domestic violence.
Evidencing the Need
One of the earliest promotional techniques by non-profits and
business alike, and one still in use today, is to use advocacy
research as an informational device. For the uninitiated, advocacy
research is a study conducted by a company hired by the organization
to use some numbers or statistics to call attention to a problem.
The general public reacts well to claimed studies, because it lends
validity of a sort to the opinions of an advocacy group. Since the
organization or a friendly donor is paying for this research, the
conclusions are foregone. Sometimes an organization will conduct a
study on its own, and there are even federal grants available for
this purpose. This is common practice among many kinds of
organizations. Still, the results of these kinds of studies are not
objective in any way, neither are they scientifically or
statistically valid.
Occasionally an organization
will fudge some numbers a bit from an independent study, to
emphasize a point. This practice is so common among non-profits it
is hardly worth mentioning. Generally speaking, it is never done to
misrepresent or evade the truth. There is always genuine information
to be had, and readily provided, by organizations in the social
services field.
There have been so many of these
kinds of studies, so much number fudging done over the years in the
domestic violence field, that today most people – even degreed
professionals in fields of psychology or social work – don’t
recognize how very little bona fide, analytical research has ever
been done in this area.
While any organization will use
studies and research that agrees with their goals and intentions,
only in the field of domestic violence has advocacy research come to
be relied upon as actionable truth. Every October, in newspapers
across the country, you will see the statement most shelters live on
today: “95 percent of victims of domestic violence are women.” This
statement has no basis in fact whatsoever, not to mention it simply
makes no logical sense. Ask any shelter director, however, and she
will swear this statement is true. She will also most likely believe
it herself. That is because shelter personnel only see those clients
their agencies serve, which are limited by policy or custom to
female victims.
There is a US Department of
Justice study that says 85% of the cases on record report a
woman as the victim. In other words, the cases they know about. They
don’t claim to know about all the cases, because most are
never reported, or if reported, are often classified as something
else. You can verify this statement simply by asking any
experienced police officer, or crime reporter at a local newspaper.
Yet the 95% statement alludes to knowledge of all victims,
when that cannot be possible.
To add to the confusion, there
is often manipulation of figures to present an exaggerated count of
the number of clients served. Without additional explanation, a
member of the general public can easily make the mistake of thinking
the term, “service unit” represents the number of people using a
service. In fact, the term refers to one night in one bed. Often, an
agency presenting these figures will accompany them with a statement
such as “We served 23,000 women and children last year.” This does
not mean the agency has 23,000 clients; it means it provided 23,000
service units. A mother with two children who spends a week at the
shelter will be represented multiple times in this number. Without
accompanying information, such as the number of beds, and the number
of days in the time period used for calculation, this figure is
useless in determining the actual number of unduplicated
individuals.
What seems to be happening here
is that they’ve come to believe their own publicity.
Check a few websites for women’s
shelters or advocacy orgs, and you’ll see a remarkably similar set
of factoids presented as truth or proof of their basic attitude.
“Only women are victims, only men are abusers.” The quote here is
mine; I’ve never seen the statement published anywhere, but I have
no doubt it is the guiding philosophy. It is very clear the programs
have an interest bordering on fanaticism in serving their portion of
those they could feasibly serve. However, some shelter websites and
other public information items seem determined to demonize and
criminalize men, to the point where men have told me it feels to
them like a legitimized hate campaign. One particular case hit home:
In late 2002, my son fell off a ladder and broke his wrist. As a
result, he spent many hours in the emergency room at his local
county hospital. They had many posters at various locations designed
as part of an outreach program for domestic violence victims. Each
of them was focused on female victims, and some went so far as to
suggest all men are at fault for the problem. My son was
uncomfortable enough that he wondered if he’d inadvertently stumbled
in to some kind of place where men would not be given adequate
treatment.
The women’s shelters will be
quick to point out there is no exclusionary or hate speech intended,
but rarely, if ever, has an established women-only program examined
its public statements in light of the way they are received by those
being accused.
What other area of social
services exists to serve one segment of the community while blaming
another for the problems they purport to address?
Thirty Years of Progress?
I mentioned earlier that domestic violence services have only gotten
bigger, and reached farther. What I mean by this is that their
definition of domestic violence has expanded to include as victims
women who would not previously be thought to be in need of
residential shelter services. They have also begun to focus on their
thirty-year-old solution applicable only to some victims – divorce –
and made it nearly the prime focus of their programs. These agencies
are spending in some cases, the majority of their time in activist
projects related to divorce and all its ancillary issues. Meanwhile,
there is almost no attention being paid to finding new ways to
address the care and treatment of those directly affected by
domestic violence.
There should have been some
progress made in thirty years. Agencies that address other issues,
such as food banks and homeless programs, have made dramatic changes
in the way they serve their client population, but have not diverted
from their initial function.
It is almost as if domestic
violence programs have become divorce assistance programs instead of
havens for battered women. Even programs owned and operated by the
Catholic Church function the same way in promoting divorce as the
only solution for domestic violence. One can only wonder why.
Divorce as a Cure
An accusation of domestic violence has become almost a given these
days in contested divorce actions. Far more often than not, these
accusations are only cases of one party in a divorce action deciding
to “work the system.” Even the accuser, when questioned more
specifically, away from the court setting, will often admit no
actual violence has ever occurred.
In my local community of Yuma,
Arizona, we have a shelter. Just like any other women’s shelter,
they remove a woman from her home, and assist her in divorce. They
also provide “counseling” for any male children, in order to ensure
they will not take on the violent traits presumed to be inherited
from their father. No special attention is given to female children,
who are presumed to be totally non-violent due to their gender.
The Arizona Coalition Against
Domestic Violence claims a 70% “success rate.” What they consider a
success is a woman removed from her home and marriage, never to
return. There is no follow-up to find out if clients go on to
improve their lives or if the situation occurs again.
Here is how it works today: All
a woman needs to do is present herself in some way. She may phone or
show up at a facility if she knows where it is. There is no
procedure for determining the validity of her claim, or if she is
simply one of those “working the system.”
She will then be accepted if
there is space in her local shelter, where she will be instructed in
all kinds of ways to apply for government programs, changing her
identity, relocating to another state or country, and implementing
favorable divorce procedures.
If she has named her alleged
abuser, she can put legal actions such as orders of protection in
place. (Most people don’t realize an accusation of domestic violence
is enough to restrict military personnel from re-enlisting, and
others such as doctors or teachers to lose professional licensure.
This accusation is irrevocable in some cases, so the accused can
never work again in his established career, no matter if the
accusation was valid or not, recanted or not.)
Nearly all the elements of
treatment of a domestic violence victim go back to the issue of
physical separation and/or divorce.
It should be obvious this
emphasis on divorce has little or nothing to do with the treatment
of domestic violence victims or abusers. Yet somehow, divorce with
all its related problems has become so deeply ingrained in today’s
domestic violence services they are sometimes seen as inseparable
aspects of the same issue. Unfortunately for both clients and
agencies alike, this has resulted in a situation where nobody wins
but those few bent on revenge against violent husbands. They likely
get some emotional satisfaction from their efforts, but at what
price to the community?
Violence Knows no Gender
Because of the inexplicable and unsupportable view of domestic
violence by current services, the shelters and programs exclusively
for abused women are becoming harmful to both clients and the
community at large, in their practices.
In the shelter culture, victims
are considered deserving of treatment and aid; abusers are the
enemy, deserving of retribution. All people fit into one category or
the other. The sex of the individual plays a major part in this
determination. There is no recognition of the grey areas most often
present in other kinds of human experience, neither is there any
recognition of the expanded roles of women in society. This view is
not only myopic, but sexist. There is no reason to presume in 2004
that a woman lacks or possesses any particular kind of capability
due to her gender, yet domestic violence services perpetuate
outmoded myths in all their fundraising and outreach efforts.
This kind of discrimination is
not acceptable in other agencies, and the general public could be
forgiven for supposing the same rules apply to domestic violence
services. However, under the national Violence Against Women Act,
this kind of bias is not only accepted but encouraged. Some
municipalities, in support of this misguided attempt to secure
more-universal help for female victims, have passed laws and
ordinances such as the one passed by Los Angeles County, which
defines all domestic violence as a crime perpetrated by a man
against a woman.
The most troubling aspect of the
entire situation to me, as an advocate for the un-served, and
underserved populations, is the evident lack of compassion or
humanity projected by most services. I’ve heard horror stories from
women bullied and threatened into accepting shelter services when
they hadn’t asked for help, or felt they needed it. I’ve heard of
public fundraising events where women were encouraged to physically
assault and humiliate men; behavior that could get them arrested at
any other time. Any suggestion to an agency that violence addicted
people are in need of their help is either met with resentment and a
counter-charge of “blaming the victim,” or laughed off. Other
agencies that serve addicted individuals recognize addictions as
conditions needing treatment; why won’t they?
I’d like to know the reasons
behind the stagnation and resistance to change these services
demonstrate. Why have they not recognized the realities of domestic
violence as it exists in the 21st Century? Why do they
cling so zealously to unsupportable data and continue to insist
their view of woman equals victim, man equals abuser is the only
correct one? And last, why is it they put so much energy into what
is ultimately a destructive solution for a severely limited number
of individuals?
Solutions
Of course, the most effective answer would be for all the services
to dump their ineffective treatment modalities and harmful ideas,
and start fresh. In light of the fact that the industry has taken
three decades to come to this pass, that idea is not realistic.
There are too many individuals depending on the status quo for their
livelihood, some of whom quite literally would not know how to make
a living any other way.
I do have confidence that the
transparency beginning to emerge in media, business, and government
will soon reach the non-profit sector. There will come a time when
even the friendliest media outlet will no longer accept the
oft-repeated factoids at face value and insist on data from
authoritative sources. Funding organizations, both public and
private, will begin to ask hard questions and expect answers based
in verifiable fact. This will take time, however. There is a
powerful lobby in Washington and each of the fifty states with a
vested interest in seeing programs continue on their current course
of blame, shame, and division. It will take an equally powerful
mandate from the people to change this course to one directed for
the public good.
If I had one thing, and only one
thing I could do to effect change, it would be to abolish VAWA. It
is a bad, counterproductive law, which has done much to exacerbate
the previously existing problems in domestic violence services. When
it was passed ten years ago, it was not intended to limit services
to a fraction of those requiring assistance; however, that has been
the pragmatic result. It has given gender discrimination validation
and stalled productive inquiry into the issue in ways never
expected.
There is no reason domestic
violence services could not serve the community in its entirety at
current levels of funding. The argument given by shelter advocates
that they could not serve the others without taking away from female
victims does not hold water. Research conducted in an objective
manner would no doubt show the actual number of bona fide victims to
be considerably smaller than currently recognized. Functional
screening processes in combination with a set of qualifying
standards would determine if anyone requesting services had a
verifiable need for shelter. Alternate, off-site programs, similar
to the kind of outpatient care used by other services could be
implemented; funded by the budget previously used to pursue divorce
activism.
Finally, domestic violence
services must get out of politics and out of the divorce business.
These programs were originally established to assist individuals in
trouble, but continued failure to recognize the issue in its
entirety will ultimately prevent their ability to help anyone at
all.
Contact: Trudy W. Schuett
P.O. Box 1252
Yuma AZ 85366
TWSchuett @ peoplepc –dot- com
