Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (39 page)

By the date of his hearing, Phil had put more than three good months together in a row. Betty reported this change in him to the judge, and Phil described his involvement in our program, saying that he had accepted that he had a problem he needed to work on. The judge was impressed that Phil had gotten into counseling on his own initiative without waiting for the court to mandate his attendance. The charges were dismissed.

Phil and Betty walked down the courthouse steps together before heading off toward their separate cars. As they parted, Phil gave a smile that looked more like a sneer and said, “Well, I guess that’s it for Mr. Nice Guy.” And he meant it. He never set foot in his abuser group again and overnight reverted to his habitual mistreatment of Betty.

After watching a steady trickle of clients in our program follow in Phil’s footsteps, we finally adopted a policy of not allowing men to join our program between an arrest and the date of the court disposition. We didn’t want to be another tool used by abusers to manipulate their partners and escape legal consequences.

Women often berate themselves for not following through with prosecution. A woman may say to me: “What an idiot I was. I don’t know why the hell I believed his promises. I should have gone ahead and testified. Now look at the mess I’m in.” If you have had occasion to dump on yourself in this fashion, stop for a moment and consider: Why is it your fault that he is so persuasive, that he knows so well how to muddle your mind, that he has collected information over the years about your vulnerabilities and knows how to play them? How are you to blame for how manipulative he is? The reason it takes so long to figure out an abuser is that he knows how to keep himself hidden in constantly shifting shadows. If abusers were so easy to figure out, there would be no abused women.

In counties where abused women find a court system that is well trained in abuse and sensitive to their circumstances, and where victim advocates are actively involved, 80 percent or more go forward with testifying. If you can’t stand dealing with a system that doesn’t understand your needs, that isn’t a shortcoming of yours. Also, remember that your decision to drop a restraining order or criminal charges doesn’t mean you can’t try again to use legal protections in the future (although you may encounter prejudice against you from the police or the courts if you have started actions and dropped them in the past).

T
HE
C
OURT
H
ANDS
D
OWN A
S
ENTENCE

My physically violent clients seem to have nine lives when it comes to staying out of jail. Through dozens of interactions I have had over the years with probation officers, magistrates, prosecutors, and judges, it has become clear to me that courts have been regrettably slow to free themselves of the beliefs that any man is “bound to lose it sooner or later if his wife pushes him far enough,” that “alcohol is what really causes partner abuse,” or that “women frequently exaggerate partner abuse out of hysteria or vindictiveness.” These persistent attitudes can dovetail with the abusive man’s native ability to lie convincingly and elicit sympathy.

Sentences for the violence that men do to their wives or girlfriends are shorter on average than those they receive for assaults on strangers, even though partner violence causes more serious injuries and deaths than male-on-male fights do. Courts don’t want to send abusers to jail, because they consider them a special class of offenders who deserve unusual compassion and because they often accept victim-blaming justifications for men’s violence.

Old attitudes die hard. A few years ago, a judge approached me after a judicial training session I had given and said, “All right, I understand about these men who beat their partners black and blue, who punch them in the face and put them in the hospital. But how about the guy who just gives his wife a push or a shove once in a while? I can’t treat him like he’s a
batterer.
You didn’t explain what judges should do in those cases.” I attempted to explain how shocking and intimidating a man’s shove can be to a woman, but I could tell his mind was already closed.

I’ve seen judges who were worse than this one, who seem angrier at the woman for reporting the violence than they are at the man for perpetrating it. But I have worked with others who look carefully at the evidence, listen respectfully to all parties, and make a decision based on fact instead of prejudice. In cases where the man is found guilty, they speak to him in strong terms about the seriousness of his offense, reject his excuses, and impose a punishment that fits the crime.

I have spoken with judges who like to give an abuser a strong verbal admonition
instead of
imposing some sanctions, in the belief that a stern warning from a judge can make an abuser realize that he has to stop. But in reality, the man considers the judge’s lecture a joke if no sentence comes with it. He puts on a chastised expression for the court but then smiles all the way home, smug and empowered. I see the emboldening effects of such court dates on my clients.

I am not an advocate of long sentences for abusers, however. Abusers spend much of their time in jail brooding over their grievances against the abused women and plotting their revenge. Men’s jails do not help them to overcome their oppressive attitudes toward women; in fact, they are among the more anti-female environments on the planet. Yet courts are going to have to overcome their reluctance to send abusers to jail if they ever want them to sit up and take notice. A
short
jail sentence, combined with a long postjail period of probation and participation in an abuser program, can provide powerful motivation for an abuser to deal with his problem. Jail time involving at least a few weekends—so that the man can continue bringing in income for his family—should be imposed on his
first
conviction for any offense related to domestic abuse. Each subsequent offense should lead to a longer sentence and a higher fine than the previous one, following the principle of “staircased” sentencing that is often applied to drunk driving. Unfortunately, this type of approach is rare at present.

An important part of the sentence for any man convicted of domestic abuse should be an extended period—not less than a year—of participation in a specialized abuser program. The abuser program cannot be replaced by psychotherapy or anger management, as those services are not designed to address the range of behaviors that make up abuse and the core attitudes that drive them (see Chapter 3). In Chapter 14, we will examine how a competent abuser program works and how to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a particular program in your area.

T
HE
A
BUSER ON
P
ROBATION

I used to supervise an excellent young abuse counselor named Patrick. He was fiery and courageous, but both he and the group clients were always aware of his youth—he was twenty-three and looked about nineteen—and his small size. We assumed that sooner or later one of the more violent abusers would try to intimidate him. Sure enough, one day when Patrick was laying down the law with a client about his disruptive behavior in the group, the man demanded that Patrick “step outside” so that they could fight. His body posture demonstrated how much he relished the opportunity to use his fists. Patrick politely declined the offer, however, and told the abuser to leave the room. The client considered his options and decided to storm out without hitting anyone.

We reported the incident to the court and waited to see how quickly this man would be jailed for threatening the counselor at his court-mandated abuse program. Imagine our astonishment when we heard from the chief probation officer two weeks later that she had called the man in to give him “some strong talk” and then had instructed him to
enroll in another abuser program
. In other words, his “consequence” was that he got out of completing our program. I had a similar experience with the same court in a case where we suspected that one of our clients was abusing his prescription pain medication. We requested permission to speak to the prescribing doctor, but the client refused. His probation officer was soon ringing my telephone and sputtering angrily that a client’s prescription medication was none of our business. The probation officer then proceeded to declare to me unabashedly that
his
pain medication was prescribed
by the same doctor.
(No wonder he didn’t want us examining the matter too closely.)

My clients have no problem figuring out whether or not their probation officers consider domestic abuse a serious crime. Each man tries out his excuses and justifications to see how fertile the ground is; the more space the probation officer gives him for whining and victim blaming, the less strict he knows the supervision will be. The probation officer’s attitude regarding domestic violence is, in turn, largely a reflection of the tone set by the chief probation officer, just as I have observed to be true in police departments. When I work with courts that have pro-victim probation departments, the majority of men they refer cooperate with my program and complete all the requirements. But when the sympathies of the probation department lie primarily with the abuser—as seemed to be true in the court described above—the men present recurring behavior, attitude, and attendance problems, and I have to keep kicking guys out of the program for noncooperation. Why? Because they have already figured out that getting terminated isn’t likely to lead to serious consequences at that court, so they would rather not put up with an abuser program that challenges them.

When an abuser finds that he can manipulate or bond with his probation officer, he not only paints a twisted picture of the abused woman but also employs his divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to the abuser program. “I
know
what I did was wrong,” he says, “and I really want to work on myself. But over at the abuse group they don’t help us change; they just tell us that we’re terrible people and everything we say is wrong. They just hate men over there, and they take it out on us.” The probation officer then calls me to relay the man’s complaint. My response has always been: “Come over some night and sit in on two or three of our groups. You’ll see for yourself what we offer.” One probation officer did in fact visit a few groups and then started attending regularly once per month. He caught on quickly to what a patient and educational approach we actually take with abusers, and he became impossible to manipulate after that.

The abuser’s distortions regarding the abuser program follow the same lines of his thinking about his partner. If I tell a loquacious client that he can’t dominate the entire group discussion and needs to be quiet for a while, he tells his probation officer, “The counselors say we can only listen and we’re not allowed to talk at all.” If I set limits on a man’s disruptiveness in the group, he turns in his seat, drops his head like a victim, and says sarcastically, “Right, I get it: We’re always wrong, and the women are always right.” If I terminate a man from the program after three warnings for inappropriate behavior, he says, “If we don’t tell you exactly what you want to hear, you kick us out, and you don’t give anyone a second chance.” His twisted reports on our statements provide important glimpses into how he discredits his partner at home—and why she may feel so angry, frustrated, and ready to scream.

E
FFORTS TO
B
OND

As the abuser encounters each new player in the legal system, he tries to make a personal connection. With men he relies on “male bonding,” making jokes about women or seeking sympathy based on anti-female stereotypes. With women he experiments with flattery and flirtatiousness, or tries to learn private details of people’s lives so that he can show concern with statements such as: “I heard your daughter has been sick. How is she doing?” The unspoken message running through these efforts is: “See, I’m not an abuser, I’m just a likable, ordinary person like you, and I want to be your friend.” My clients attempt to run the same routines at the abuser program, so I come to know them well.

U
SING THE
L
EGAL
S
YSTEM FOR
H
IS
O
WN
P
URPOSES

Over the fifteen years I have worked with abusive men, I have seen my clients become increasingly shrewd at getting the police and the courts to work on their behalf. Abused women are arrested much more commonly than when I began, as abusers have learned to use their own injuries from a fight to support claims of victimization. I find that the more violent an abusive man is, the more likely he is to come out of a fight with some injuries of his own, as his terrified partner kicks, swings her arms, and scratches in her efforts to get away from him. But some police take a look at the abuser’s injuries and say: “Well, we’re going to arrest her, because he’s got scratches.”

Abusers have also learned to rush to the court for restraining orders before their partners get a chance to do so and sometimes scoop up custody of their children in the process. It would be difficult to find anyone more self-satisfied than the man who repeatedly assaults his partner verbally or physically and then has the pleasure of handing her a court order that bars
her
from the residence. And of course the shock to the woman of discovering that the court has kicked her when she was already down can propel her several more yards in the direction of resignation and bitterness. But, fortunately, the story need not end there for the abused woman.

S
URVIVING THE
L
EGAL
S
YSTEM

Despite the confidence and superiority of abusers and the regressive attitudes of some police and court officials that still persist, tremendous progress has been made in the legal system’s response to domestic abuse. Hundreds of thousands of women per year succeed in obtaining orders of protection from courts, and a large proportion of those orders accomplish what the woman is seeking: restoration of her safety and a desperately needed break from the abuser. Many states now mandate the police to arrest abusers in domestic-abuse cases, and district attorneys often are diligent in pursuing convictions.