source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2305 -

"Charm is a Guise ; Batterers Belong in Jail, Expert Says"

3 mai 2006

BLOOMINGTON - Men who beat their wives and children can be charming — and so manipulative and dangerous that jail and court supervision is the best way to keep them from repeating their crimes, says an expert on domestic violence.

Lundy Bancroft, an author, trainer, counselor and activist on issues of domestic violence and recovery, spoke Thursday at Doubletree Hotel, Bloomington. His audience was comprised of professionals in the field at a program sponsored by the McLean County Family Visitation Center at The Children’s Foundation and Mid Central Community Action Countering Domestic Violence.

Saying "domestic violence in the home" is wrong, he said. "Domestic violence is in the batterer."

Lundy, who has worked with about 1,000 men who batter, said 5 million children a year in the United States witness a violent assault against their mother. There are cases of women battering men, but they are rare, he said.

A batterer assumes he has the right to beat the woman in his life, Bancroft said. "She has no right to leave him-she’s an owned object."

Batterers are commonly described as charming because they devote so much energy to manipulating people, including those in the court system, Lundy said.

"This word, ’charming,’ turns up over and over again," he said. "They start to love this guy."

That skill with manipulation makes it hard for the court system to deal with these men, he said.

A batterer will generally do fine in supervised visits with his children because somebody is watching. Then the batterer is typically allowed unsupervised visits, but that means the mother is not there as a buffer to protect her children, he said.

Also, parenting classes are a bad idea because they give the abuser get more ammunition to use against the mother, he said.

Meanwhile, battered women develop mental and/or physical problems from the abuse. Then the batterer can use the woman’s health problems against her in the legal system, he said.

Lundy said he constantly gets phone calls from women who have lost child custody to a batterer.

When other women hear horror stories about their legal battles for custody, they may stay with their abuser out of fear of losing the children or leaving them in an abuser’s care, Bancroft said.

"Women know what is going on in family court," he said.

What works fairly well is a combination of jail and probation, he said.

As for treating abuse, Bancroft said an abuser does not need psychotherapy - that only makes him a happy abuser.

The problem isn’t a psychological flaw, it’s in his attitude toward women and children, he said. Society also doesn’t help by glorifying violence, especially through woman-hating rap lyrics, he said.

Article original : « Charm is a Guise ; Batterers Belong in Jail, Expert Says » - « EXPERT ABUSERS BEST OFF IN JAIL ». April 14, 2006 Friday, Financial Times

– Copyright 2006 Financial Times Information All Rights Reserved Global News Wire KRTBN Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News - The Pantagraph

On Sisyphe, May 4, 2006

Source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2305 -