Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.
Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment’s stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.
I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog–to learn more, click here.
Dr. Donald Dutton (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) is one of the premier domestic violence authorities in the world. He co-founded the Assaultive Husbands Project in 1979 and has published more than 100 papers and books, including the Domestic Assault of Women, The Batterer: A Psychological Profile, The Abusive Personality, and his latest work, Rethinking Domestic Violence. Dr. Dutton can be reached at dondutton@shaw.ca.
As I’ve previously noted, one of the recurring themes of the conference was the way the domestic violence establishment has pushed out those who do not buy in to the feminist Duluth model which asserts that domestic violence is committed almost always by men, as part of their role in the patriarchy.ÂÂ
One of Dutton’s main contentions is that the batterers’ treatment programs which are based on the Duluth model are utterly ineffective. By being ineffective, they are, in fact, putting abused women in harm’s way.ÂÂ
At the conference, Dutton said that he had been “banned from the state of Georgia.” The reason is because Dutton relentlessly promotes the view that batterers’ treatment programs should be using cognitive behavioral therapy methods, as opposed to ideological feminists/Duluth treatment methods.
A couple years ago I wrote a newspaper column based on Dutton’s views and experiences. The column appears below.
Domestic Violence Treatment Policies Put Abused Women in Harm’s Way
Daily Breeze [Los Angeles] (11/7/05)
By Glenn Sacks
Despite the widespread publicity surrounding the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act and October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month, little attention has been given to a crucial aspect of the battle against domestic violenceâ€â€the way batterers’ treatment programs are conducted. Yet there is a growing consensus among treatment providers that the strategies currently mandated are ineffective, and are placing abused women in harm’s way.
Current treatment strategies are based on the Duluth model, which depicts domestic violence as a function of patriarchy and men’s patriarchal privilege. This model assumes that the reason men physically abuse women is to maintain control over them. In ideologically-driven classes for offenders, men in need of serious psychological intervention are instead screamed at and called “domestic terrorists” and “fascists.”
A recent report by the National Research Council’s Committee on Law and Justice condemns these programs for failing to consider non-Duluth causes of domestic violence. The report criticizes the way batterers are “treated as a homogeneous group,” and states that treatment programs are “driven by ideology and stakeholder interests rather than by plausible theories and scientific evidence of cause.”
While some domestic violence no doubt stems from a warped desire to control spouses or intimates, most experts believe that the roots of domestic violence generally lay elsewhere. Psychologist Donald G. Dutton, author of The Abusive Personality: Violence and Control in Intimate Relationships, asserts that personality disorders are the cause of most domestic violence. According to Dutton:
“Treatment providers who work with abusive men are very frustrated by the current domestic violence treatment paradigm. Research shows that Duluth-oriented treatments are absolutely ineffective, and have no discernible impact on rates of recidivism. These methods cannot work because they preclude patients from developing the crucial therapeutic bond with their treatment providers. However, when we treat offenders like normal patients by focusing on personality disorders and employing cognitive-behavioral treatments, we see progress.â€Â
Last year University of Houston psychologist Julia C. Babcock and her cohorts published a meta-analytic review in Clinical Psychology Review which examined the findings of 22 studies on domestic violence treatment programs. The authors found that in the few genuine cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment programs available, CBT is effective in reducing recidivism among DV offenders.
Unfortunately, powerful but misguided domestic violence organizations have used their influence to squeeze out psychotherapeutic treatments and instead preserve Duluth-oriented methods. Some states even have statutes barring funding for non-Duluth programs such as: communication enhancement or anger management techniques; techniques which identify poor impulse control as the primary cause of the violence; or individual, couples, marriage, or family therapy. (more…)
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