This story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org. License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/ international. -------------------------------------------------------------- The question should be ‘Why doesn’t he stop?’ Not ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’ By: [] Date: None Despite the alarming prevalence of domestic abuse in the UK – an average of two women are killed each week by a former or current partner – there is very little investment in challenging perpetrators or trying to transform their behaviour. This is something that domestic abuse charities and organisations are trying to change. Historically, time and money have been spent on the victims, mostly women and children, and the much-needed crisis response, creating refuge spaces for those fleeing abuse. Any attempts to rehabilitate abusers, so that they are less likely to reoffend, have been deprioritised and underfunded. However, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which became law at the end of April, states that the government must have a perpetrator strategy. This is why more than 70 domestic abuse charities and organisations have launched a public call to action, urging the government to ensure its plans are ambitious and wide-reaching enough. Instead of asking ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’, charities are demanding a shift in focus to ‘Why doesn’t he stop?’. We win on government secrecy! We’ve just won a three-year transparency battle against Michael Gove’s department. Can you help us keep fighting government secrecy? Donate now A chilling short film called ‘Helen’s Story’ was released last month by Drive, a partnership project working with high-harm offenders, which was developed by the charities SafeLives, Respect and Social Finance, the leading forces behind the call to action. ‘Helen’ believes she would have been killed by her partner or would have killed herself had it not been for the intervention of the project, both to help her leave and to tackle her ex-partner’s behaviours. The film, which features figures from leading domestic abuse charities, makes clear that intervention should always prioritise a victim’s safety, not encourage victims to stay with abusive men, and aim to reduce the chance of violence and abuse in future relationships. This summer also sees the first-ever strategic gathering for England and Wales on perpetrators. The government’s domestic abuse commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, will bring together leaders from health, housing, probation and other areas, to focus on how their professions interact with perpetrators, underscoring the idea that perpetrator accountability is a society-wide issue. “The conversation has got louder,” Jacobs says. “COVID and the Domestic Abuse Act have opened up the conversation to say we can't only have funding for the crisis anymore. And that's what people have said for years and years. But there's just been a lot more conversation with the government, and with ministers, about the wider breadth of work.” A criminal justice system that repeatedly fails victims with low conviction rates, a police force that isn’t fully trained in coercive control, and a family courts system in need of desperate reform may also explain why the sector is trying to find accountability in other ways. Perpetrator programmes The UK domestic abuse sector was born in the 1970s out of the women’s liberation movement. It was a crisis response, offering refuge to women fleeing violence. By the late 1980s, perpetrators’ programmes began as an “experiment in whether men can be engaged in a process of change”, according to two domestic abuse experts, professor Liz Kelly and professor Nicole Westmarland. Initially, these programmes offered group sessions on behavioural change to straight men who were violent against women, before individual counselling sessions were developed. Over time, these became mandated by the courts. The categories of both abuser and victim were also expanded. The courses that exist today, known as Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programmes (DVPPs), tend to use either cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), often over 24 weeks, to try to challenge learned patterns of behaviour, or the Duluth Model, a proto-feminist system from the US that looks at domestic abuse in a wider societal and patriarchal context. Perpetrators can self-refer or are referred by the police, the courts or social services. The charity and national umbrella organisation for perpetrator intervention, Respect, which recognises domestic abuse as a gendered crime while also providing support to male victims, has developed an accredited set of standards for how these programmes should operate. Number one: ‘Do no harm’. Perpetrator programmes do achieve results, according to some evidence – including Project Mirabal, an award-winning, six-year research project into the effectiveness of 11 DVPPs in the UK. Researchers from the University of Bristol also evaluated Drive, a pilot DVPP used in parts of the UK between 2016 and 2019. They found that high-risk physical abuse was reduced by 82%, high-risk sexual abuse was reduced by 88% and jealous and controlling behaviours were reduced by 73%. The researchers concluded: “As a result of Drive, victims-survivors were safer and more likely to be free from abuse.” [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/the-question-should-be-why-doesnt-he-stop-not-why-doesnt-she-leave/ [2] url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ url: https://theconversation.com/us/republishing-guidelines OpenDemocracy via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/