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Marguerite Roulet
I. INTRODUCTION
Much recent work has noted a connection between poverty and the
occurrence of violence against women. This research has found that
women from poor households are at greater risk of experiencing violence
than women from wealthier households and that violence is often
a contributing factor to their continuing poverty. While several
of the studies have made these findings based on survey research,
Jody Raphael’s Saving Bernice explores the connections
more thoroughly as she chronicles one woman’s experiences
with violence and poverty and her struggles as she tries to change
her situation. Raphael has much to say on poverty reduction programs
and policies directed at girls and women. However, she concludes
these arguments with the statement that “it doesn’t
look like it will be possible to eliminate women’s poverty
without doing something about the pressing needs of the other half
of the equation: low-income men” (2000:150).
Over the past decade, even as public supports for men have been
eliminated (e.g., the General Assistance Program), community-based
programs have tried to fill this void to address the issue of men’s
poverty. The development of these programs throughout the country
was in part supported by government interest in augmenting the earning
potential of a segment of this population, namely noncustodial fathers.
In these instances, the government’s efforts are primarily
directed at increasing the fathers’ ability to pay child support,
either to their children or to reimburse the government for prior
assistance provided to their children. While the primary focus often
remains child support (as evidenced by the frequent collaboration
of the office of child support enforcement with programs and the
increasingly mandatory nature of some programs), many programs (particularly
those that are voluntary and community-based) try to support the
fathers’ relationships with their children and other family
members and with members of their children’s families.
These programs—of which there are only a few hundred throughout
the country (see, for example, the National Practitioners Network
for Fathers and Families for member organizations)—try to
take a holistic approach to serving their clients,addressing everything
from their education and employment needs to their lack of such
basic resources as housing, food, and clothing, their isolation
from social institutions (other than institutions of enforcement),
and their concerns about their social and familial relationships.
In taking this approach, these programs are different from most
other programs that serve men, which tend to be more specifically
directed at one issue, such as training programs directed at securing
or augmenting employment options or batterer intervention programs
directed at changing
abusive behavior in familial or other intimate relationships.
Within this context, one of the difficult issues confronting programs
that work with fathers is how they can or should address domestic
violence, particularly if the programs are actively supporting their
clients’ involvement with their children and other family
members. While most fathers who avail themselves of these programs’
services are not batterers, program representatives’ experience
and the aforementioned research indicate that the issue is of critical
significance if programs are to serve fathers and families in healthy
and holistic ways.
Since its inception CFFPP has been concerned about these issues.
We have worked to support low-income fathers and the programs that
serve them and to advocate for policies that meet their needs rather
than undermining them. At the same time, we have been concerned
that policies and practices we support not harm children or women.
To this end, we have worked with women’s policy advocates
to recommend mutually supportive policies (see Common Ground
series on paternity establishment and child support policy); have
interviewed both noncustodial fathers and custodial mothers about
their experiences with government support
systems, paternity establishment, and child support (see Negotiating
the Child Support System reports and forthcoming reports on
interviews with custodial mothers); and have specifically discussed
domestic violence with custodial mothers and included information
about domestic violence in some of our legal question and answer
handbooks (see WI Custody & Access handbook).
In addition, we have held meetings with domestic violence advocates,
batterer program representatives, and fatherhood program representatives
about how to address this issue on a programmatic level. This report
represents some of the discussion from two such meetings, which
were held in May 2001 and July 2002 in Madison, Wisconsin. These
meetings did not exclusively address domestic violence, but rather
focused on a variety of issues that fatherhood programs contend
with regularly in providing services, including child support and
paternity policy, federal public assistance policy (TANF), issues
resulting from incarceration, barriers to securing housing, employment
and education, and the effects of poverty and
racism on the lives of the men they serve. Within this context,
domestic violence was acknowledged to be an issue that needs to
be recognized and addressed alongside other issues of concern to
fatherhood and men’s programs.
Representatives from over 20 programs throughout the country, as
well as batterer program representatives and domestic violence victim
advocates, participated in the meetings, and the conversations were
direct and open. Participants in the meetings did not come to specific
or uniform conclusions on how programs should address this issue.
Instead, they raised concerns, discussed divergent frames of reference
on the matter, and began a conversation about domestic violence
in poor communities and their potential role in helping reduce violence.
II. Prevalence of Domestic Violence
One issue that participants in both meetings agreed on was the
significance of domestic violence in the US, and the importance
of according it serious attention. As one participant pointed out:
Domestic violence is an issue that has a tremendous level of
magnitude in our society. If we look at police reports alone,
there are four million of them … reported annually in the
United States of America. In Wisconsin, there’s 30,000 reports
filed annually. Now, police reports … just tell such a fraction
of the picture, because domestic violence and sexual assault are
dramatically under-reported crimes.
Jody Raphael corroborates this in her work, Saving Bernice:
National surveys estimate that domestic violence is a factor
in approximately six
percent of all U.S. households. During the past five years researchers
have consistently found that 20 to 30 percent of women receiving
welfare benefits are current victims of domestic violence, and
approximately two-thirds are former victims. (2000:25)
Meeting participants who are practitioners in fatherhood programs
concurred
that they, too, view domestic violence as a significant issue for
some of the clients
they serve. One participant noted that, although many fathers who
come to their
program have not necessarily been referred to the program because
of domestic
violence, it is nonetheless an important issue for many. As he stated:
[T]he guys that we have in our program that come court-ordered—under
probation
and all that—there’s a flow that comes through. But
there’s a whole number of men that never get addressed in
our fatherhood programs. They’re not reported for domestic
violence. But we know anger is an issue … So we get a lot
of men in our fatherhood and our teen fatherhood program that,
dealing with this issue of violence in relationships is a central
issue.
However, even as meeting participants acknowledged the prevalence
of domestic violence throughout the U.S. and the need to address
it on a broad basis (including through fatherhood and men’s
programs), they also acknowledged that historically it has been
difficult for domestic violence victim advocates and fatherhood
advocates to work together on this issue. Throughout the discussions,
participants explored some of the reasons for the lack of collaboration,
and identified ways in which they think such collaborations can
be successful, particularly in the
context of working with low-income, “fragile” communities
in which both men and women have historically been, and continue
to be, disenfranchised from the structures of power within society.
III. General Barriers To Collaboration
One of the issues raised as a barrier to collaborative work between
fatherhood and men’s groups and domestic violence groups has
been the historical unwillingness of many sectors of U.S. society
to acknowledge domestic violence as a widespread and serious problem.
Not only have individuals minimized the prevalence of domestic violence,
but the legal and court systems have frequently been unable or unwilling
to protect women, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence
of violence against them and their clear need for safety and protection.
As one participant put it, “sometimes women only want [and]
need safety, and the
systems don’t do what they need to do.” Particularly
if a batterer is in a socially privileged position, it can be difficult
for women to receive protection from the state. As one domestic
violence victim advocate stated:
[D]isproportionately, arrest and prosecution in the area of domestic
violence affects low-income people, much more so than it does
high-income people or even middle-income people, despite the fact
that we know that domestic violence is happening in all socioeconomic
classes.
In contrast to low-income people of color, wealthy white individuals
who commit domestic violence are more frequently able to avoid arrest
and prosecution, to reduce sanctions, and to use the legal system
to their advantage—for example, in seeking and being granted
physical custody of their children.
The often-complicated nature of many individual situations further
exacerbates the tendency to minimize or ignore abuse, since victims
themselves may respond
to their situations in seemingly contradictory ways. As one participant
commented:
[Domestic violence] is probably one of the most complicated issues.
It is so multi-layered and multi-faceted, and … none of
us can ever assume that what we are seeing or hearing from any
of the participants truly reflects what is actually happening
in that picture …An example of that is that in all my years
of doing direct service with victims, I can tell you that practically
every one of them saw that getting their abusive partner into
some kind of program—whether it be counseling or something—to
help that person understand the violence and the abuse, was like
the primary goal stated of many victims. They didn’t want
their relationship to end, many of them. They loved this person
…That was really a primary goal and many victims would state
that to me. And then at different points in my work, I’ve
worked with probation agents who would say, ‘These victims
are coming in here and they’re screaming at me and saying
he shouldn’t be in this counseling program for abusive men.
He’s not an abusive man.’ …So the probation
agent gets a shot of something that probably is not what it seems,
and probably what’s happening is that coercion and control
is happening and the abuser is saying to the victim ‘I don’t
want to go to this counseling program; get me out of this counseling
program,’ and she goes to the probation agent and says ‘he
shouldn’t be in this counseling program’. And the
probation agent is thinking, ‘What the heck’s going
on here? She’s the victim and she’s saying he shouldn’t
be in this program.’ So you should always assume that things
are not what they seem, and that’s a really important element
of the work we do …I spent almost nine years working at
the local shelter program, where I got to, over those years of
working with hundreds of battered women, there’s some of
them who you sort of see and work with year after year, and you
get to know them quite well, and they are always saying things
to me like ‘None of the police take this seriously. The
DA doesn’t take this seriously. No one believes me. No one
takes it seriously.’ And then I went to work for the DA’s
office, and those same women would call me up and say ‘
…You know me. I wouldn’t lie to you. This isn’t
happening. Y’all are blowing this out of proportion. This
is no big deal.’ And I sort of had to try and put two and
two together and try and figure out that there’s something
more going on here than meets the eye.
In addition, numerous organizations and individuals in the U.S.
continue to actively try to undermine and discredit victims’
concerns and efforts and those of advocates who work
on their behalf. As one advocate noted:
The emergence of fathers’ groups such as [those at the
conference] is relatively new … compared to the fathers’
rights groups, which mostly are middle- and upper-class white
men who are concerned with money … and access [or visitation],
and they have a tremendous amount of power. They are extremely
vocal, and they attack domestic violence advocates at every turn.
Each of these issues has forced advocates to protect themselves
and their constituents and have made collaboration between them
and fatherhood and men’s organizations complicated.
Given this context, it is often assumed that domestic violence
victim advocates and fatherhood organizations necessarily have directly
competing interests. Advocates, it is assumed, are anti-men and
anti-fathers, while fatherhood organizations are viewed as wanting
what one participant referred to as “fatherhood at all costs,
rather than healthy fatherhood.” Participants noted that,
while organizations exist that hold these positions, most organizations
they work with view this issue in a more nuanced way.
As one participant noted:
I think that what domestic violence groups typically do is to
view fatherhood in the context of fathers’ rights, because
fathers’ rights are the most vocal, and also give domestic
violence the most difficult time … [T]he first thing that
we wanted to do in [the article “Fatherhood and Domestic
Violence”] was to explain the different intentions of the
various fatherhood groups, and also to say that there are different
groups that you can find common ground with and work on common
efforts with.
In the same way that domestic violence organizations may view fatherhood
organizations as representative of a single voice that seeks to
undermine their efforts, participants suggested that fatherhood
organizations can find it difficult to view advocates against domestic
violence as supportive of fathers.
As one stated:
[O]ne of the things that I think is a common misperception about
people like me who are sort of career domestic violence victim
advocates, working to end domestic violence, is often that people
perceive us as being anti-father. And that’s sort of a hard
thing … [W]e are not anti-father. We’re anti-domestic
violence. We want to end violence in the lives of families.
However, while participants pointed out that much of the apparent
conflict derives from the inability to distinguish the different
agendas and intentions of different groups, at the same time they
acknowledged that the advocacy positions can seem contradictory,
particularly in the context of a specific situation. So, for example,
one participant stated:
[M]ost victims I’ve worked with over the years said very
clearly as the relationship was ending, ‘I want out of this
relationship, but I want him to have contact with my kids.’
And what I heard from them very clearly is they wanted those contacts
to happen in a way that was safe for them and in a way that was
safe for their children, and that becomes, really, the primary
goal. And it’s at a point that it becomes not safe for them,
or not safe for their kids, that that’s when they start
raising the red flags and saying, ‘I don’t want him
in my kids’ lives; I don’t want him around my children.’
And I think that that can be really a hard thing for people working
with dads, to have the dads coming and saying, ‘She doesn’t
want me to have access to my kids. She’s not letting me
have visitation.’ … [A]ssisting victims in achieving
safety in their lives is really … the number one issue for
us, and that may sometimes be in conflict with the fatherhood
folks.
Many participants acknowledged this difficulty, which they described
as one of trying to reconcile the at times competing effort to “keep
people’s lives connected in that way that people so much want
to have happen, but [to] build in safety at the same time.”
IV. Additional Barriers When Working In a Context
of Oppression
In addition to the above-mentioned barriers to collaboration, participants
identified specific issues that pose further challenges in working
in low-income communities of color in which community and familial
relations cannot be understood without consideration of societal
oppression and racism. Given that the domestic violence movement
has been deeply informed by the experiences of white, middle- class
women, many of the practitioners working with low-income fathers
of color have found that some of the interpretations of domestic
violence should be reframed in accordance with the experiences of
the particular communities with which one is working.
One of the clearest manifestations of this issue is the discrepancy
in how the criminal enforcement and legal systems operate in regard
to different communities and the impact this has on individuals
who are differently positioned. So, for example, participants recognized
the frequent failure of the legal system to protect women, and the
ability of abusive men to use the courts to further their abuse.
As one participant noted:
Just from my own experience[:] …[W]ithin the [local city’s]
limits, there are two sort of wealthy areas … they’re
right in the city, but they’re distinct little townships
…; they have their own police department. And in the six
years I was the director of the domestic violence unit in the
DA’s office here, I think we saw one police report from
[one of the townships] and exactly zero from [the other]. Yet
we saw literally thousands from the rest of the city … and
those two communities are very wealthy. And it’s not that
… I would ever imagine that domestic violence isn’t
happening there. But they’re communities in which police
officers … aren’t making arrests for domestic violence,
even if they go to households in those communities. We just don’t
see police reports.
Another participant concurred:
… I see it in terms of how, if you’re well-to-do,
have some cash, and white, that what happens is that you get tickets,
the police won’t arrest you, or you get an attorney.
By contrast, participants argued, in low-income communities of
color, the structure of oppression reconfigures the playing out
of the legal provisions, which were initially established, as one
participant noted, to address the disenfranchisement of European-American
women and not that of African-American and other women, who “were
disenfranchised in different ways.” Thus, as he put it:
[W]hen you look at the court system around domestic violence,
too often what you see is black and brown people in the courtroom,
because those are the people that get arrested and sent to jail
often times. Not to say that the systems are strong enough, in
terms of accountability, but that’s the reality when you
go from location to location. And I always say I don’t have
a problem with who’s there. I have a problem with who’s
not there.
One participant described the implications of such different treatment
and the impact it has not only on the individuals directly involved,
but also on those who are related to and associated with them:
I remember growing up when my uncle used to hit my aunt, and
nobody would do nothing—right?—because nobody wanted
to get sent to jail, and nobody [knew] what was the appropriate
thing to do. And I remember my younger cousin—he’s
about a year younger than I am—he would run to my uncle
with the broomstick—right?—and try to hit my uncle,
and my uncle would turn around and hit him. But nobody ever wanted
to do anything because they didn’t want him to go to jail,
because they didn’t want to figure out how they were going
to pay the rent. Why did Dad go to jail? Was he going to come
back? Most importantly, what’s going to happen when Dad
comes back from jail? What’s he going to do to Mom?
In addition to the different experiences with the criminal enforcement
and legal systems, participants also suggested that the various
forms of intervention, redress, and treatment in response to domestic
violence are frequently inappropriate when applied to individuals
in low-income communities who are contending with many other forms
of oppression and marginalization.
One concern participants raised is that batterers’ treatment
programs frequently are narrowly focused and do not address other
issues that affect people’s lives. As one batterer program
director suggested, “[W]ith the batterers’ treatment
programs, what needs to happen is there needs to be a component
that teaches men how to be good fathers.” In addition, he
stressed:
The other thing … is to integrate culture into it…
What [culturally competent programs] do is they, basically, understand
… the whole context. Amos Wilson says, before you can end
up talking about the violence that somebody does, you have to
understand the victimization that they experience. But if you
understand … the oppression that they experience, then they
have to also take responsibility for the oppression that they
do … The programs that we work with and that we write about
and such, it’s real important to deal with the issue of
culture.
In addition to having too narrow a focus, participants suggested,
many batterers’ treatment programs, in conjunction with the
court system, have developed interventions that have additional
unintended resonance in oppressed communities. So, for example,
even as he repeatedly underscored the need for separation in specific
contexts, one participant argued that, used as the sole remedy,
it has very different implications in some communities:
Our philosophy is that, yes, the abuser uses violence to gain
power and control in a relationship, through coercion, intimidation,
and oppression. But basically black and brown men are within a
system that uses violence to gain power and control in a relationship
through coercion, intimidation, and oppression. [We must] deal
with the social, historical legacy of oppression, of racism and
how certain populations are targeted and labeled and only go to
treatment, and are not necessarily healing … [O]ne of the
things within the welfare reform/TANF law says ‘you must
go to a batterers’ program.’ But those programs have
no sensitivity to your issues, and you are made to go to those
programs. You’ll not see your kids. You go to jail. That’s
power, that’s control, that’s coercion, it’s
intimidation. So if we’re really attempting to deal with
these issues, then there’s some, first of all, a sensitivity
that we must have to the whole aspect of relationships.
By contrast, he suggested:
[T]he way that the society deals with it, is by doing time-out,
isolating, ‘let’s treat these people’ …
And when you separate—and I understand separating for safety,
because this is one of the things that is really important, and
let me just say there are men that have generations of wounds,
that the spirit is so damaged … and those men need programs
and rehabilitation and even constant supervision, and some men
never in this generation have the ability to be reunited with
their families, because the wounds are multigenerational. But
over 70% of the men will go back to the relationship and will
be back in the relationship, … and the majority of them
will have a relationship with their fathers. Knowing that, then
what do we do with men? I
believe you … don’t separate the disease. So in every
program that we have … it all deals with the sacredness
of relationships.
Several other participants concurred with aspects of this statement,
including the sense that current batterer treatment models are not
sufficiently broad, that they isolate the behavior from other aspects
of individuals’ lives, and that they do not adequately account
for, or address, the fact that many victims and batterers will continue
to maintain a relationship over time. As one participant stated:
[S]ometimes families want to work together and work it out. I
mean, when you’re working with communities of color, one
of the things is that women want safety and protection. But sometimes
what they want to do is they want to work it out … [L]et
me say this, because I don’t feel comfortable laying that
out there without saying the other thing, but it’s very
difficult to tell when [an abusive relationship will become lethal].
So that’s why this sense of protection is so important in
the field, because you can’t predict. You want to be able
to protect everybody who’s at risk. So when you’re
looking at the cases where it in fact occurs, you gotta find some
way to be effective in protecting. But, that being said, there’s
a lot of people in the world where violence has been a situation
and women have experienced those things, and the husband, or ex-husband,
orboyfriend, the father of the child and the mother have worked
it out, and have worked it out for years and years. There needs
to be research to bring those cases up so we’re informed
about how did they manage to work that out.
Again, participants underscored the need for intervention programs
to integrate
the treatment of the violent behavior with an understanding of other
relationships
in batterers’ lives:
[One batterer intervention curriculum deals] specifically with
fatherhood, reflecting over the impact of a man’s growing
up years and the influences of fathers in their lives, positively
and negatively. But in addition, what it talks about is how to
undo what they’ve done in terms of exposing kids to violence,
looking at the impact of that behavior. But it also talks about
developing a positive relationship with the—if the mother
chooses and the court allows and all these other disclaimers,
but if those things are met and there’s an agreement that
there’s going to be this connection, association—what
things they need to construct in terms of being an effective father
… to their partner’s children and/or to their biological
children.
In considering the very definition of domestic violence, participants
noted that some of the paradigms to understand dynamics of domestic
violence may not fully encompass issues that need to be considered
in communities contending with additional forms of oppression. Some
of the participants discussed the sense of fear rather than power
that permeates the lives of some men. As one participant stated:
… I really believe that a lot of folk who are into that
are motivated, not out of the definitions that you all have used,
but out of fear. When a guy gets backed up into the corner and
emotionally the woman is tearing his butt up, and he doesn’t
know how to respond, that ain’t about trying to control
nobody. It’s about him being in absolute fear and not having
a clue about what to do except what he has either seen in his
home before, or he resorts to the violence out of fear, not out
of an attempt to control anybody, because he’s trying to
control himself and having a hard time at that.
One participant responded by noting:
There’s a lot of fear all over, and the fear is very real.
The fear of losing a relationship is at the core, and if you’ve
come from multiple losses already, it’s a trigger to so
many things … Fear is a very critical issue that has to
be dealt with.
As another participant noted, dealing with such issues is one means
for batterers’ treatment programs to become more effective:
What happens in culturally competent batterers’ treatment
programs is similar to what happens in fatherhood programs, because
what they deal with is the shift, in terms of what content you’re
focused on gets expanded in terms of dealing with the unemployment,
dealing with substance abuse issues, dealing with other resource
issues men have, but also dealing with the fact that there’s
comparableviolence in terms of male to male violence that occurs,
and when you look at death rates, you have to add in acquaintance
violence. You have to have some discussion about that because
you can’t be unifocused. You gotta be broader in terms of
the way that you look at it. Now, let’s deal with the issue
of fear. For men who batter … often times the way that any
emotion gets expressed is through anger. So what happens is that
men have to learn how to expand. I mean, you hear them talk about
it. You ask them what they feel, and they’ll tell you what
they think. You ask them what they feel, and primarily the emotion
that they’re able to tell you is anger. So what’s
important is … when you’re talking about fear, people
have to develop a level of skills to be able to identify the various
emotions that they have, and one if they identify that as fear.
I saw a man change. He gave up his physical abuse. But he also
gave up his emotional abuse when he identified that the emotion
he was feeling was not anger. It was sadness. But so what you
do with the people that you’re working with is you start
to give them different skills to be able to express things, and
not just tell you what they think, but also to tell you what emotion
that they’re feeling, and then to be able to get to a point
where a person can articulate that his fear helps him to grow.
Considerations About Collaborations
It was in recognition of the need to address all of these issues
that participants underscored the appropriateness and value of having
fatherhood programs address domestic violence within the context
of all of the other issues they address. As one participant pointed
out:
[W]hen you do talk about working with men that are in fragile
communities and such, sometimes one of the things that you might
hear is that groups have difficulty approaching the subject of
domestic violence, because if they bring up the subject of domestic
violence, what happens is the men are discouraged to be involved
… [P]eople I can think of have had success bringing the
subject of domestic violence up, because one of the things that
I think is important is, if you have a trusting environment, then,
as you’ve done, men expect you to be confronting and challenging
with them, if they feel as though you’re a resource …
So if you could talk to them about substance abuse, then you can
talk to them [about] unemployment. If you can talk to them about
fatherhood, and being an able father and what responsibilities
they have to their children, if you can talk to them and try to
get them connected to employment, how come you can’t talk
to them about domestic violence? … Also I think sort of
an implicit philosophy among some folks is if you look at domestic
violence as a primary issue and you connect it sometimes to women’s
issues, then what happens is … you’re [seen as] doing
something to sort of backhand men, and I think we have to separate
the issues, because one of the things that I have felt is the
ethos of the fatherhood movement and activities is to create healthy
environments and connections between children and their fathers.
So the thing is that if you want to have a healthy environment
… and if violence is a dysfunctional behavior, it’s
something that has to be approached.
Participants recognized the particular ability of fatherhood programs
to undertake this work, given their often unique position and ability
to understand the individual situations and social contexts of the
men with whom they work; address the multitude of issues that are
affecting their clients’ lives; serve as a personal and community
resource they can continue to rely on over time; work in ways that
are culturally appropriate and sensitive to the particular community
context; and ultimately provide an environment in which their clients
can find
peer support. As one participant commented:
One of the things … I’ve learned in terms of looking
at fragile families and the intersection of domestic violence
and fragile communities, is the fact that the best way to do the
work is when you have broad programs that deal with a number of
issues, and as people have needs and come through that system,
what they’re able to do is do an assessment, figure out
what they need, and direct them to different places, like what
you all do. And the thing that I think is that domestic violence
has to be added to that, because people’s lives would be
saved.
Another participant stated:
When you isolate people, with your thinking you’ll destroy
your spirit. So that’s why we need to make sure we have
this inter-connectedness, where people are able to share …
I can see people and say ‘Man, you pissed off.’ ‘No,
I’m not.’ ‘Yes, I can tell you are. We don’t
need to do a psychological assessment to tell us something’s
wrong with you.’ But we have young men that say, ‘No
one ever asked me how I’m doing today. I don’t have
a dad. I don’t have a uncle. I don’t have nobody that
asks me. The only time they ask me is when I get in trouble, when
the thing has happened.’ So with this young man, if there
had been someone in his life to say and to know … ‘I
need to stay with you. I can’t leave you alone.’ I
mean, and to say, ‘You’re thinking about doing something
wrong, aren’t you? I know what you’re thinking because
I’ve done that’ and to go there, walk them through,
‘You can’t do that. Let me tell you why you can’t
do that: because if you’re thinking about you’re going
to be away from your kids, now you’re really going to be
away … ’ I mean, all of that, and to have somebody
that can walk through that—that’s critical, that aspect
of having a place to go. And I always talk about the porch, that
there used to be a time when there was a porch, where you always
knew if you went to the porch, somebody was there. We need to
recreate the porches, so that there’s always someplace to
go, that you don’t need a funding source or a scope of work
or treatment plan. Just show up on the porch.
However, participants were also quick to note that this effort
to confront issues of domestic violence in fatherhood programs cannot
be undertaken without careful consideration. As one participant
noted:
[T]his issue of domestic violence is a critical thing, and there
are some men that have generations of wounds. We need to make
sure that we are aware of all the idiosyncrasies and don’t
take it lightly, because sometimes in wanting to be a friend or
a partner … we can downplay things. Sometimes … some
of the people are so wounded that really sometimes they need real
drastic measures, and so we should also take that other side into
deep consideration.
Several participants suggested that, given the seriousness of the
issue and the potential danger for individuals involved, the severe
penalties imposed by the criminal justice system, and the implications
for programs if they intervene inappropriately or ineffectively,
it is dangerous for fatherhood programs to attempt to address this
issue. One representative from a fatherhood program indicated that,
in part due to these considerations, his program refused to accept
men if they are known to have committed violence:
[W]e knew we did not have in place the services needed to meet
that need, and it just didn’t make sense to try and attempt
to build that into a brand-new program that we were already starting
to get up and running, because we just didn’t know how to
do it. The second thing was, as a philosophical position, we thought,
if we’re building … a program where we’re trying
to establish guys’ relationships with their children in
the most positive light, there’s no way to do that if there
is a history of physical or mental abuse. So we just didn’t
think that it was the best way to get a program up and running
if that was a major hurdle that we had to overcome.
Several other participants concurred with the need to, on the one
hand, do no harm to individuals and families and, on the other,
protect programs that are providing much-needed services to low-income
fathers. Some participants worried that if they did not support
fathers—even those known to be abusive or violent—these
men would have no other system of
support available to them:
[Yo]u do have to start somewhere to build a foundation and stick
with what you believe in … But at the same time, people
keep turning their backs on fathers and things of that nature,
who are they gonna be able to turn to? [They’re] gonna say,
nobody’s out here is gonna help me. So why should I change?
Why should I take part in my child’s life, which, first
of all, the system is on me for child support and stuff like that?
I owe $10,000, and I only got ten cents in my pocket, and I can’t
get anybody to actually open their doors up for me to say, ‘hey,
come on, we’re gonna take you in. We’re gonna start
this process.’
Several participants underscored that it is precisely for these
reasons that the programs must consider ways in which they can contend
with this issue. For example, some participants agreed with the
idea that programs might not be in a position to confront domestic
violence within the context of their own work, but that they can
develop relationships with other agencies and individuals who can
address this. Again, however, participants stressed the need to
develop links with agencies or individuals that can recognize the
situations of the clients they are working with. As one participant
put it:
Most people don’t like being sent all over the place and
they get offended by that or they just don’t want to deal
with it. The bureaucracy takes us through a number of changes,
so when we run into an agency that says they handle this, they
can help you with this, for the most part, most people expect
it to be … a one-stop shop … But when you tell someone
up-front you’ve got a list of agencies that you know do
the work, and you’re in relationship with them, then that
referral is very good, and you’ve won the confidence of
that individual. But they are more likely to make that trip when
you tell them up-front, ‘listen … we don’t deal
with this issue. But I do know an organization and I know that
they’ll help you out’ and refer them, then they’re
more likely to follow up.
In addition, practitioners again stressed the importance of addressing
the issue comprehensively and holistically:
You’re going to [have to] address [it] by addressing the
whole family … I’ve seen agencies where all they do
is help the mother out, get the kids out of trouble, and leave
the man alone, and the man’s back out there looking for
another victim and beginning the cycle and continuing the cycle
and worse. Mainly, however, participants argued that the issue
needs to be addressed because it is a critical issue in the lives
of the clients they serve—both in terms of the implications
of the current criminal justice model of addressing it and in
terms of the safety and health of individuals and families: Domestic
violence has always been in my heart. [M]y mom died, got beat
up by her boyfriend. I saw it done. That’s why I’m
in it … [I]f you leave it alone, they’re going to
come back to you when it’s a big mountain, and it might
be too late, because the domestic violence nowadays is considered
like a felony, and that they look at it as a felony. It’s
on your record, you’re treated worse, and it’s very—it
affects the soul … It affects that woman very dearly and
affects the kids that grew up. The kids do grow up to be violent,
or they grow up to be haters, or they grow up to be whatever.
But it affects the whole family, and if we don’t touch on
it every time, if it doesn’t become part of your program,
it needs to. If it’s not there, it needs to, and maybe just
a little touch, and maybe not every touch. But you do need to
address it, because it’s happening all over—happening
with your neighbors. You’ll call the police on your neighbors
when the music is loud. Are you gonna call the police if you hear
the girl screaming? You know? But we need to really get involved
in it in more ways than one … I grew up thinking that what
happened to my mother was her fault. It was her fault. She shouldn’t
have did whatever to him, and she wouldn’t be dead now,
and I thought that all the way until I was about 25, 26, 27 years
old. I’m 37.
References
Carrillo, Ricardo and Jerry Tello, eds. 1998. Family Violence
and Men of Color: Healing the
Wounded Male Spirit. New York: Springer Publishing Company,
Inc.
Raphael, Jody. 2000. Saving Bernice: Battered Women, Welfare,
and Poverty. Boston:
Northeastern University Press.
Williams, Oliver, Jacquelyn Boggess, and Janet Carter. 2001. “Fatherhood
and Domestic
Violence: Exploring the Role of Men Who Batter in the Lives of Their
Children” in Sandra A.
Graham-Bermann and Jeffrey L. Edleson, eds. Domestic Violence
in the Lives of Children: The
Future of Research, Intervention, and Social Policy. Washington,
DC: American Psychological
Association, pp. 157—187.
Williams, Oliver. 1999. “Working in Groups with African American
Men Who Batter” in Larry
E. Davis, ed. Working With African American Males: A Guide to
Practice. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications, pp. 229-242.
Williams, Oliver. 1999. “African American Men Who Batter:
Treatment Considerations and
Community Response” in Robert Staples, ed. The Black Family:
Essays and Studies, 6th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing
Company, pp. 265-279.. |
