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Chapter 9
‌

Family violence and family safety: working therapeutically with victims, perpetrators, survivors and their families

Arlene Vetere

Meet Arlene Vetere

Arlene Vetere and Jan Cooper are both systemic family therapists. Arlene is also a clinical psychologist and Jan is also a social worker. Together they established a domestic violence service in a major city in the south of England. Their safety methodology was developed over 16 years of independent practice, alongside local statutory agencies. They put safety first at all times. Arlene and Jan encourage people to develop a sense of entitlement to their own safety, to take responsibility for their own and others’ safety, as much as they challenge any sense of entitlement to treat others with disrespect, and they encourage family members to take responsibility for their behaviours that harm others.

Their moral position is clear – they tell clients that they believe that no one should live in fear of the people they love. In saying this, they recognise that they are subject to the same confusing and contradictory social discourses around the use of violence as their clients and that they experience similar moral dilemmas over the use of violence. They discuss this at their first meeting with families, and similarly that they too struggle to find constructive solutions – hence why they emphasise responsibility and give people credit for trying to make a difference.

Jan has now retired, and Arlene continues with the therapeutic work.

Introduction

In this
chapter, I shall describe an approach to working therapeutically with family violence, established by Jan Cooper and myself in the Reading Safer

Families project, UK (Cooper and Vetere 2005). Our safety methodology is informed by systemic thinking and practice, and draws on a number of social science theories to understand and explain how violence comes to pass, and gives us a road map for therapeutic change (e.g. family systems theory, social learning theory, attachment theory, feminist theories of power and control in relationships, cognitive behaviour therapy). The three cornerstones of our methodology are risk, responsibility and collaboration. So, in this
chapter, I shall describe how we manage the risk of violence, assess for risk of further violence, and attempt to work collaboratively with family members and professional colleagues in an area of practice where legal and moral considerations are paramount. Safety planning and supporting signs of safety in family members’ relationships is key.

In our psychotherapeutic work with couples and families, we sometimes know that physical violence and emotional abuse are present, and sometimes, despite asking the question initially, we only find out during the course of therapeutic work. In both circumstances, i.e. knowing of family violence, or knowledge emerging, it is of vital importance to assess the safety of family members and their safety in the therapeutic work. If violence has already been talked about, within the family system, or the professional referring network, establishing a safe platform for practice is our first priority on meeting the couple or family, as we put safety first. If violence is revealed during therapy, we need to stop what work we are doing, and establish safety for family members before proceeding again with therapy as such. Thus safety is our highest priority and our highest context for therapeutic practice, within the framework of the UK law, statutory agency policy on working with family violence, and within our own moral positioning on the use of, and effects of, violence in intimate relationships.

Definitions

Violence in the family can involve physical, sexual and psychological abuse, and neglect, in combination, and over time, and sometimes spanning generations. The term interpersonal violence is favoured by some to capture the complexity of both single events of violence and repeated, chronic violence, both predictable and unpredictable (Walby and Allen 2004). The Home Office defines domestic abuse as ‘any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality’ (2009). The definition has been widened recently to include practices such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage and so-called honour crimes. The full definition recognises the effects on children of ‘witnessing’ violence in the family, as much as they might also be direct victims of assault.

Liz Kelly’s (1988) idea of a continuum of sexual violence helpfully overlaps with formulations of violence in family members’ relationships to amplify complexity, i.e. an evolving and dynamic interaction between different forms of violence, severity, frequency and duration that may involve two or more

people once, or continuously. Systemic thinking tries to understand the constant interplay of patterns in behaviour, in relationships, and over time, and the impact of meaning and levels of context in determining outcomes. Within a systemic framework, the notion of a continuum of violence is helpful in pointing out the many shapes and forms of interpersonal violence and perhaps developments in violent behaviour over time, but cannot explain the complex interweave of emotion, thought, entitlement, action and reaction in feedback processes within dyadic, triad and larger family relationships. Systemic thinking is concerned with what goes on both for individuals and between individuals in different family, social and political contexts. Thus a systemic perspective provides a useful meta-theoretical framework for ‘continuums of thought’ to explore potential linkages and to hypothesise their interconnectedness to other explanatory theories of pattern and process in relationships.

Incidence and prevalence

Estimates of incidence and prevalence vary, but most demographers suggest that domestic assault is under-reported. It has been estimated that nearly one third of reported violent crime in the UK is domestic assault (British Crime Survey 2000, 2010). Walby and Allen (2004) estimated that one in five women and one in ten men are assaulted by someone they know well. Sexual assault involves physical assault and emotional abuse, and many sexual assaults in adult intimate partnerships occur in the context of wider physical violence in the family. Moffitt and Caspi (1998) estimate that children are present during two-thirds of all family assaults, and that they are four to nine times more likely to be assaulted themselves than are children who live in households without physical violence. Many perpetrators of violence are themselves past or present victims of assault and the short- and long-term adverse effects on development and relationships are well documented (Vetere and Cooper 2005).

Ways of working

We work in a gender-inclusive way, with men and women who are both victims and perpetrators in opposite-sex relationships and in same-sex relationships; with violence between parents, children and adolescents, of any age and at any point in the family life cycle; with sibling violence; and with violence between older people and their carers. We take equally seriously all forms of physical and psychological violence, however the victims and perpetrators themselves might attribute meaning and seriousness to acts, events and intentions. This means that we use our safety methodology for all levels of risk, duration, frequency and severity when working with interpersonal violence.

Patterns of threat, coercion, intimidation and assault can be unidirectional, bidirectional, and involve three or more people. People can be both victims

and bullies/perpetrators. Violence and psychological abuse can be intended as self-defence or both self-defence and payback. For example, when the man partner has physically abused his woman partner, she may continue with strategies of humiliation once the violence has stopped, claiming the moral high ground and her right to pay him back for the years of abuse she endured. Disentangling these patterns takes time, care, and a sustained focus. We describe our approach to this work in the section on safety planning. Patterns of abuse tend to be similar across all nature of family and couple relationships, but always need to be understood in relation to theories of power and control and moral and legal notions of responsibility. Couples in same-sex relationships appear to engage in similar patterns of physical, emotional and sexual violence as do couples in opposite-sex relationships. It is in the intersect between attachment relationships on the one hand, and power and control on the other, that we see the complexity in the mix of passion, love and violence. Arguably, the capacity for violence is held by us all and it is in our developed capacity for empathy that we stay our hand. This
chapter is dedicated to thinking about how practitioners can help people develop responsibility for their own and others’ safety.