Seeing Beyond The Behaviours in Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Work

By Justine Blakeman

Working with perpetrators of domestic abuse presents unique challenges for all professionals in this field. Whilst public safety and protection of victims must remain central the work, this needs to be balanced with seeking to develop a meaningful engagement and not squandering the opportunity to work with the preparator of the abuse to attempt to achieve long term behavioural change.

Working in the engagement and delivery of voluntary perpetrator programmes creates an additional layer of complexity. How do we work around the presenting behaviours of denial, minimisation or shame that will also often be present either hidden or obvious? How do we coax someone in to take support when they are denying they need it?

For Police and Statutory Services, this can be even more challenging as they face the barriers of Perpetrators not wanting to admit to behaviours for fear of receiving a charge or restriction. For us as practitioners, who have the luxury of being able to give these service users more time and space to actively encourage them to accept support for behavioural change, although still complex, this requires a person centred, trauma informed approach, where practitioners are able to look beyond the behaviours but hold the behaviours in mind to influence the pathway of the work and to work towards accountability and not to expect it straight from the outset.

If we ask for full accountability for all the behaviours too early in the process, this can in effect, ‘scare away’, the individual who is often unable to sit with the guilt and shame or is afraid of the consequences of admittance of guilt. If we are able to develop a trusting relationship between service user and practitioner, work in a trauma informed way and support them to sit with the shame, this can propel them into behavioural change. We may then be able to create meaningful intervention which leads to self-advocated behavioural change.

When a service user is offered an environment to self-advocate and drive their own pace of change, feeling supported in the emotions that will come with looking at their behaviours, and begin to recognise the impact of those behaviours whilst been given the skills to change, they step in. Seeing beyond the behaviours, supporting them to look into the causation factors and triggers and providing a safe and secure relationship with a practitioner to facilitate that full step in is the difference between seeing full engagement or experiencing disguised compliance.

Perpetrators of abuse will deny, they will state “I don’t know what I have done wrong” “I am the victim here as I can’t see their children” “I have lost everything  by been asked to leave my home” all of these are distraction techniques to prevent them from having to dig into the pit of shame, where let’s be honest, no one feels comfortable. Is it therefore a surprise to us that they can’t deal with that shame when their lack of emotional vocabulary, lack of understanding of their own triggers and window of tolerance and inability to sit with any difficult emotions are often the reasons their relationships have never been healthy and functioning and indeed the reason they find themselves with us in the first place.

See below a summary of our insights at Red Snapper for a meaningful voluntary engagement with Perpetrators of Domestic Abuse;

Environment

• Offer safe and secure environment that meets their needs
• Use experienced practitioners who can see them as more than the sum of their behaviours or offences.
• Avoid punitive responses or shaming tactics that can trigger defensive behaviour
• Validate the person, not the behaviours.
• Create an environment of consistency and mutual goals.

Person Centred  & Trauma Informed

• Ensure they feel heard
• Recognise complex histories – trauma, abuse, mental health, substance misuse, or systemic disadvantage
• Provide coping mechanisms, and views on relationships and control.
• Understand the underlying drivers to behaviours but do not excuse the abuse

Paced Process

• Be shame sensitive in all aspects of the work
• Pace the steps towards full accountability
• Work within their window of tolerance, not outside it.
• Be attuned to signs of dysregulation or avoidance.
• If necessary, go back a step and/or slow down the pace of the work.

Self-Advocacy

• Foster the feeling they are driving their own pace of change/joining their own dots
• Encourage but don’t force accountability
• Promote self-agency, teach them new skills and help them to see change is possible and sustainable
• Offer choices through scenarios within clear boundaries.

Pro Social Modelling of a Healthy Relationship

• Do not collude in abusive behaviours
• Listen and reflect boundaries
• Respond rationally and with empathy
• Develop their emotional vocabulary and literacy
• Recognise they may be in a grieving process of the ending of their relationship and respond accordingly (bargaining, acceptance, denial)