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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
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