The programs referenced on the Silent Witness site appear to be based, not on accountability, but on "anger management" principles. This is not an approach recommended by most DV professionals. They also claim to be interchangeably applicable to both perpetrators and victims!! How is that possible?
Stosny's approach is evaluated in this article: http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/168638.txt An important qualifying exclusion which Stosny himself reports (http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1175/n2_v31/21280056/print.jhtml): It's a 12-week program, and if they don't do their homework, they go to jail. We have surprisingly little resistance. I also say if you don't feel much better about yourself, we'll give you your money back. You'll like yourself better when You're compassionate.' I've treated over 1200 abusers in my career, and even the antisocial ones -- no matter how justified they felt at the time never felt proud of hurting someone they loved. Our group is about becoming proud. Does this work even for the true sociopaths, the ones Jacobson and Gottman call Cobras? These people are not afraid of the criminal justice system and they don't usually come to treatment. Most people in treatment are different. They're the dependent personalities who only hurt ones they love, and who get over-involved in the relationship. If sociopaths and people with antisocial personality disorders do come into treatment, they don't learn compassion. But they do learn to use emotional regulation techniques to keep from getting upset. Some of them use this as another form of superiority -- you're going to get hysterical and I'm not -- but it's better than beating up their wives in front of the children. It's a form of harm reduction. So, the most dangerous batterers, the "cobra" type, are not included in this treatment model. Also: While 75 percent of women and children in shelters go back to their husbands, out of 379 couples to go through our program so far, 46 percent of them have left their spouses. So there is more satisfaction with the treatment because the victims remove themselves from the abusers, not because the abusers are easier to live with. For more information on evaluations of batterer treatment models, see this site: http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Violence_and_Abuse/Family_Violence/Offender_T reatment/ and this article: http://www.mincava.umn.edu/papers/limits.asp for some critical evaluation of batterer treatment. and this site: http://www.iup.edu/maati/publications/ for a multi-site evaluation of batterer treatment. --Cheryl ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
