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    Light Bulb Moment

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    Light Bulb Moment

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    Please note that this blog was posted over 2 years ago and may no longer be accurate

    Losing control versus Being in control?

    For the purposes of this blog, I am going to refer to ‘she’ as the victim/survivor and ‘he’ as the perpetrator. I know that men experience domestic abuse too and although I have worked with some male victims, predominantly my work has been with women victims and survivors, hence my vocabulary in this particular piece. I will be addressing the issue of domestic abuse and male victims in future blogs.

    When someone is in a domestically abusive relationship, it is difficult to see ‘the wood for the trees.’ Trying to understand and accept that the person you love has CHOSEN to be abusive to you is probably one of the most difficult aspects of being in and moving on from an abusive relationship. I speak from experience! I still find it difficult to accept that my abusive ex-partner chose to do the things he did, and my experience was over 33 years ago.

    I have spoken about this to every woman I have worked with and in every Freedom Programme I have done. They describe it as being a ‘light bulb’ moment. Every woman I have ever worked with begins by blaming themselves and/or blaming drink, drugs, stress, unemployment – you name it. But that is not THEIR excuses for it, it is the perpetrators. “He just lost control” – they tell me. “He was so out of control he doesn’t know what he is doing when he is like that.” “He is only like it when he has been drinking.”

    What I say to them is this…

    “If someone bumps into him in the street by accident, does he round on them and shout and swear and call them names?”

    “If his boss is telling him what to do or criticises his work, does he hit them”? “Does he walk out, slam the door, threaten his boss, tell them it is their fault”?

    No, of course not, she says.

    So surely if he were out of control, he would do all those things to everyone, not just you?! He is very much IN control and that is why he does not do it to other people.

    There it is! The light bulb moment. I see it in their eyes every time. Realisation and devastation in equal measure. Because we would all like to believe that there is a reason for our partner to treat us so cruelly and abusively. We make these excuses for them because it is easier for us as victims and survivors to rationalise the situation. Because to accept that they have chosen to hit us, abuse us, coercively control us, rape us, treat us like something they trod in – well, that is worse, isn’t it? Because he has chosen to treat her in this way, she has no control over that. There is nothing she can say. Nothing she can do to ‘help’ him because he has made a decision – a choice!

    It is devastating. It is very difficult to accept but until they understand this, in my view, they are not ready to move on because there will always be that nagging thought – “Could I have tried harder”? “Could I have helped him more to change”? “Is this my fault”?

    This is precisely why Anger Management does not work and is not appropriate for men who are abusive to their intimate partners. At one time, they were the go-to for many professionals, social workers and therapists who worked with domestic abuse cases. “We shall send him to Anger Management”! But Anger Management programmes just make abusive partners better at being abusive! Because it gives them the tools to excuse their behaviour and blame it on anger. Domestic abuse and violence is not about being angry. It is about being IN control, not out of control.

    Obviously, there is no one size fits all and occasionally there are perpetrators of domestic abuse and violence that are abusive to other people around them and clearly this is even more of a dangerous situation to be in. However, even these individuals are making a choice at the end of the day.

    So, for those of you that are reading this and seeing this explained for the first time – is it your light bulb moment? And if it is, reach out for help and support.

    Sharon Bryan
    Head Of Partnerships & Development Of Domestic Abuse Services

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    By Fiona Bawden, Times Online (8th May 2007)

    “Steve Connor, a student at City Law School, is a man on a mission. Six years ago he was a fairly directionless 27-year-old. Today, as well as taking the Bar Vocational Course, he is chairman of the National Centre for Domestic Violence, a ground-breaking organisation that he dragged into existence after a friend could not get legal help to protect her from an abusive partner.

    Connor’s route to the Bar has been circuitous. In 2001 he returned from a year in Australia (he says that he would not dignify describing it as a gap year), and took a job as a process server in South London. The job (“I just saw it advertised in the paper”) was not quite as dull as it sounds. On one occasion he was threatened with a machete, on another, he was nearly stabbed by a man he had arranged to meet on Clapham Common to serve with a non-molestation order: “He’d seemed really friendly on the phone…”

    The turning point in his life came when a friend, who was being abused by her partner, turned to him for support. Connor went with her to the police. She did not want to press criminal charges so the police suggested that she visit a solicitor to take out a civil injunction. “We must have seen 12 solicitors in a morning. We just went from one to the next to the next to the next. Everyone was very eager to help until we sat down to fill in the forms for the legal aid means test,” he says. The woman, who had a small child, did not qualify for public funding. But, Connor says, her financial situation as it appeared on paper did not bear any relation to her financial situation in reality. “She had a part-time job and she and her partner owned their home. Yet she didn’t have any money. Her boyfriend was very controlling and controlled all the money; he kept the chequebooks and didn’t let her have access to the bank account.”

    The injustice of the situation got under Connor’s skin. “I just couldn’t believe that there was no help available to people who did not qualify for public funds but could not afford to pay.

    I just kept feeling that this must be able to be sorted if only someone would address it.”That “someone” turned out to be him.

    In 2002, thanks entirely to Connor’s doggedness, the London Centre for Domestic Violence was formed. It started out with him and a friend, but is now a national organisation, covering 27 counties, and has helped approximately 10,000 victims last year to take out injunctions against their partners.

    NCDV now has nine full-time staff, 12 permanent volunteers and has trained over 5000 law and other students as McKenzie Friends to accompany unrepresented victims into court. We have also trained over 8000 police officers in civil remedies available regarding domestic violence. The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) has branches in London, Guildford and Manchester and is on track to have branches in 16 areas within the next two years.

    NCDV specialises exclusively in domestic violence work and could be characterised as a cross between McDonald’s and Claims Direct. The high degree of specialisation means that its processes are streamlined: clients can be seen quickly and the work is done speedily and cheaply. “Sometimes, we will have one of our trained McKenzie Friends at a court doing 10 applications in one day,” Connor says.

    Clients are not charged for the service. NCDV staff take an initial statement: clients who qualify for legal aid are referred to a local firm; those that don’t get free help from the centre itself. It runs on a shoestring, heavily reliant on volunteers and capping staff salaries at £18,000 a year.

    Steve expects to qualify as a barrister this summer and hopes that having a formal legal qualification will give the centre added clout. “We are already acknowledged as experts and consulted at a high level, so I thought it would be helpful if I could back that up by being able to say I’m a barrister,” he says. He is just about to complete a one-year full-time BVC course at the City Law School (formerly the Inns of Court Law School) and, all being well, should be called to the Bar in July. Although Connor sees his long-term future as a barrister, he says that he has no immediate plans to practise. “I want to get NCDV running on a fully national level. Then I may take a step back and have a career at the Bar.”