By Chuck Derry For many years, I facilitated courtmandated groups for men who batter. In the early 1980s we were concentrating on healthy relationship skills building, emotional identification and selfcontrol, and anger management, among other related issues. Then battered women in Duluth, Minnesota, began gathering to discuss the impact of the violence on their lives.… Continue Reading Abusive Men Describe the Benefits of Violence
It doesn’t tell you how to do these behaviors, it’s a list of perceived benefits, and I think the author’s end commentary is making the point that a lot of abuse victims chalk their abusers’ behavior (which they may see in the list) up to personality or upbringing, and this list of all the “benefits” by abusers who are clearly treating this is a very conscious cost/benefit assessment shows that it’s not those, it’s an intentional and willful choice to hurt them.
It was on that day that I realized if I had to choose between providing batterer groups for men who batter or a consistently effective criminal and civil/family court response to domestic violence, I would choose the criminal and civil/family court response every time. There are just too many benefits gained from this behavior.
After that first time asking the men about the benefits of their violence, I began to be much more effective in my work. It was astounding how dramatically the groups changed once I acknowledged and remembered that the violence was functional— and that was why they used it.
It doesn’t tell you how to do these behaviors, it’s a list of perceived benefits, and I think the author’s end commentary is making the point that a lot of abuse victims chalk their abusers’ behavior (which they may see in the list) up to personality or upbringing, and this list of all the “benefits” by abusers who are clearly treating this is a very conscious cost/benefit assessment shows that it’s not those, it’s an intentional and willful choice to hurt them.