The Communicator:
A newsletter of Family Nonviolence, Inc.
Volume 4, Number 4 September & October 2005

In this issue:

• October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month - from the Executive Director
• Workshops For Spanish-Speaking Parents
• What Men Can Do To Stop Domestic Violence
• The Executive Director Presented A Proposal
• Our Concern About Family Violence
• Domestic Violence in Massachusetts
• ³Too Little Attention Paid To The Domestic Violence Problem²
• Lessons in Interpersonal Communication

October is highlighted as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The Greater New Bedford Women¹s Center sponsored a number of activities in recognition of domestic violence. On Oct. 22 & 23rd The Great Paperclip Caper was held at the Dartmouth Mall to raise funds and increase awareness of domestic violence. Volunteers attempted a Guinness Book of World Records paperclip train. On Oct. 25th & 26th flowers were passed out in Downtown New Bedford in tribute to those affected by domestic violence. A Candlelight Vigil and March took place Oct. 26th at 6 PM for the commemoration of victims who have lost their lives to domestic violence. It began at New Bedford City Hall and proceeded to the First Unitarian Church, corner of Union and County Streets. A part of the Vigil was the display of the Clothesline Project which contains personal messages of victims of domestic violence.

With this issue of ³The Communicator² we introduce Joni Gaudiello as the new editor. She is an Adjunct Professor in Speech and Communication at Bristol Community College. We welcome her to this position.

We have been fortunate to have had the expertise of Mr. Richard Clark, our former editor. He originally suggested the new name of the newsletter and has provided dedicated leadership in the past two years.

On June 22, 2005 the Standard-Times of New Bedford published an article submitted by me on ³Too Little Attention Paid to Domestic Violence Problem.² This was followed the next day by a lead editorial by Monica Allen, Editor of the Editorial Page who invited readers to respond with their concern regarding domestic violence. Unfortunately, there was no response, either to the article or to the editorial.

In the hope that there will be some merit to keeping the issue before some of us who are concerned about family violence, the article is repeated here. (See: ³Too Little Attention Paid To The Domestic Violence Problem²) Anyone wishing to respond to the article is free to write to me at P. O. Box 814, Fairhaven, MA 02719 or to call me at (508) 996-1100.

Through a United Way Community Building Mini-Grant our agency was able to provide training in Nonviolent Communication to twenty-one caregivers in the Portuguese community in the fall of 2004.

That same grant has made it possible to initiate another service for the Latino parents of the greater New Bedford area. This is being done in cooperation with Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in New Bedford, Catholic Social Services and the Cultural Affairs Office of the Mayor of New Bedford.

The monthly workshops, to be given in Spanish, began on August 23. The first topic, ³Understanding My Child² was led by Sara Roderiques, a social worker with Catholic Social Services. Future workshops will be concerned with ³Dealing withŠDSS, Schools, Immigration, Relationships, Violence, Friends/Gangs, and Drugs² as well as where to get help.

The sessions will be held in the hall of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church at 233 County Street, New Bedford. More information about the workshops can be obtained by calling Our Lady of Guadalupe Church at (508) 992-9408.

First, read the well-documented article on ³Domestic Violence in Massachusetts² by Richard Davis, Vice-President of Family Nonviolence, Inc. (See: Domestic Violence in Massachusetts) Second is the article by Robert Heskett mentioned above that was published in The Standard-Times of New Bedford in June. (See:³Too Little Attention Paid To The Domestic Violence Problem²)

Scholars and researchers agree that the lack of agreement concerning the definition of ³domestic violence² has led to confusion in the attempt to discover cause, consequence and intervention.

Battering

Most researchers agree that a ³batterer² is a family member or intimate partner who with premeditation and malice aforethought repeatedly uses coercion, force or violent physical assaults to manipulate and control the behavior of another family member or intimate partner.

Family Conflict

Family conflict most often occurs without premeditation or malice aforethought and involves the use of threats and/or minor physical assault in a specific or isolated disagreement. This behavior is often the result of real or perceived misbehavior, chronic substance abuse, financial, health or resource difficulties, jealously, anger, or retribution.

While there are many incidences of ³battering behavior,² data documents that domestic violence is often ³family conflict.² In fact, the National Incident Based Reporting System contains both state and national data that documents approximately half of domestic violence incidents that law enforcement responds to are not spousal or intimate partner related.

A June 2005 Department of Justice (DOJ) report, Family Violence Statistics, documents that family violence accounts for 11% of all reported and unreported violence and the majority of family violence is simple assault, e.g. pushing, shoving, slapping, hitting, etc. Less than one half of one percent (0.3) of family violence is fatal.

The National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS)

The NVAWS document that 1.3% of women and 0.9% of men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually and that 40% of women and 53.8% of men experienced some type of physical assault by an adult caretaker as a child. Approximately 39% of female and 24.8% of males reported being injured during their most recent physical assault.

Research documents females are significantly more likely than males to suffer physical injury or emotional problems as a result of intimate partner violence. However, domestic violence is not only or primarily a problem for women and girls.

The Wellspring

The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBSS) on pages 39-40, documents that nationally 8.8% of girls and 8.9% of boys report that they were hit, slapped or physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend and that 11.9% of girls and 6.1% of boys were physically forced to have sexual intercourse. www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/SS/SS5302.pdf

Many children learn from their parents, regardless of gender, that intimidation, threats, economic coercion and physical assaults are often effective, at least temporally, for controlling or altering the behavior of others.

The above behaviors are first encountered in the family hierarchy rather than society in general. In our homes physical assaults and coercion between adults and physical assaults against children continue in families that ethically and morally still believe that ³might makes right.² Hence, familial behavior can teach some children that:

1. Those who proclaim to love you can also hit you,
2. It is not criminal behavior to hit other members of the family;
3. The use of coercion or physical force is often effective.

Studies documents that corporal punishment and sibling violence are the most common forms of family physical assaults in America and it is rare that either behavior is viewed as ³domestic violence.²

Jane Doe

Jane Doe is the lead agency for the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. The Jane Doe website claims that domestic violence and battering are one and the same www.janedoe.org. .

Jane Doe seems unaware that Department of Justice studies and in fact by statute law in Massachusetts, ³battering² and ³domestic violence² are not one and the same. On the www.Familynonviolence.org website the report ³A Domestic Violence Research Tool² is a conduit to many of those studies.

The Jane Doe website reports that 1 in 5 female high school students reports being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner and ignore the YRBSS information about our sons being physically or sexually abused by a dating partner.

Jane Doe claims that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) estimates that more than 90% of all domestic violence victims are females. There are reams of contemporary data from the DOJ document that is not factual. Purposely or not, it appears that the Jane Doe website minimizes, marginalizes, and ignores male victimization.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The safety of both our daughters and sons depends on factual educational information. A more inclusive dialogue is needed concerning both the offending and victimization of girls and women and boys and men.

Richard Davis

I recall that it has been 10 years since The Standard-Times made an important contribution to the public awareness of domestic violence. In a series entitled ³Shattered Love Broken Lives² there were more than 60 articles published on various themes including these headlines: ³abuse victims trapped in a violent cycle,² ³Chaotic relationships lead to pain for desperate lovers and frustration for police,² ³Why does society allow this to happen?² ³23 women killing the name of love in 1994² and ³Batterers seldom stop after the first time.² (For those interested in reviewing these articles, they can be found at www.s-t.com/projects/DomVio/domviohome. HTML)

I was especially interested in the article about batterers because I was interviewed for it and was quoted as the executive director of the Community Center for Non-violence, a state-certified batterer intervention program. My view on batterer treatment was put in contrast to that of David Adams, the founder and current executive director of EMERGE, a batterer intervention program headquartered in Cambridge. The reporter, Bill Ibelle, saw the issue as being between ³curing the batterers² (that position I was supposed to represent) and ³punishing² the batterers (the position attributed to David Adams). Certainly, the choice at that time was not that simple, nor is it today.

Much has changed over these 10 years since that series was published ­ except the reality of domestic violence. In the first article of the series, ³Abuse Victims trapped in violent cycle,² the reporter stated that in 1994 ³23 Massachusetts women ­ including two in Fairhaven and one in New Bedford² ­had been murdered. According to Jane Doe, Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, in 2004, the number of deaths because of domestic violence are these: 17 women, 5 men, 3 children, 3 bystanders, 9 suicides by perpetrators ­ for a total of 23 incidents. Could we say that domestic violence is no longer an issue because 17 women were killed in 2004 and instead of 23 in 1994?

Things have indeed changed over the years even though the horror of the silent epidemic of domestic violence has not changed. In the 1995 article regarding batterer treatment (which the state has changed to ³batterer intervention²), Mr. Adams was quoted as saying about EMERGE: ³The goal is not to change men, but to make the women safe and the men accountable.² However, in an address that he gave in Worcester in October 2000 he stated, ³They [batterers] need to understand that they need to change. That is our goal.²

In response to a letter from me about this apparent contradiction, he wrote, ³I was surprised to see your surprise about my making reference to change for abusers. I¹ve always believed in change as a goal of BIP¹s [Batterer Intervention Programs].²

Another significant change over the last 10 years is that the attention has shifted from solely focusing on women who have been killed y their abusers to the equally tragic deaths of other persons. It has become clear that although women in relationships continue to be those who receive the worst abuse and are killed more often, some men are killed by women. Also, children and others (bystanders, as noted above) have become part of the horrifying statistics.

But the beating goes on. The killing goes on. And the apparent silence goes on. There seems to be more attention to the danger of obesity than to that of the horror of domestic violence. Does the little attention that media pays to the ongoing tragedy of abuse in relationships mean that the killing of 17 women in 2004 instead of the 23 in 1994 is a sign of progress and so society can move on to other matters?

Is domestic violence a fad that is now out of favor?