Radical New Look at Domestic Violence Forges Groundbreaking Treatment Programs

By Barbara Jester

The American family is violent: 35 percent of parents hit their infants when they believe they are misbehaving; 94 percent hit their toddlers. As the amount of physical punishment experienced by a child increases, the rates of wife and husband abuse go up. And yesterday’s victims are today’s criminals. Men and women abuse each other at similar rates, although men’s injuries are less serious and go unreported more often.      
    Meanwhile, over 50 percent of abused women, given the chance to escape their abusers, would prefer to salvage the relationship. Conventional wisdom has it that abused women are trapped in relationships they want desperately to leave but often don’t because of children or finances. But in actuality, about half of those involved in domestic violence wish to stay in the relationship and want to be offered more options than simply leaving or calling the police.
    Linda Mills, professor of social work, public policy, and law, as well as director of the Center on Violence and Recovery and NYU’s senior vice provost for undergraduate and university life, has been researching domestic violence for over 13 years.  Her work suggests that women are as violent as men, and that victim and abuser collaborate in violence through a “dynamic of abuse,” often learning these patterns in childhood from parents and siblings.
    Mills, a victim of intimate abuse herself in high school and college, believes that a judicial system that uses arrest and prosecution to mandate the separation of the abuser and the victim is often at odds with what the couples themselves want.  
    “Less than 30 percent of women and 15 percent of men who are physically abused ever call the police,” she says. “And those who do find themselves in a system they have no control over. In the vast majority of domestic violence cases, the best outcome might be developing a plan for treating the violence, rather than focusing exclusively on punishment or trying to get the victim to leave.”
    In her recent book Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse (Basic Books), Mills presents a number of case histories that reveal both the dynamics of domestic violence and the way the violence travels from generation to generation. Tracing the history of the Battered Women’s Movement in the U.S., which began in the 1970s with the founding of the first women’s shelters, Mills shows how enormous strides were made, but that they had unexpected consequences: the criminal justice system actually was taking the control away from the victims, the ones who needed to be empowered and needed to be in control of their lives.
    Maintaining that batterer intervention programs emphasizing blame and shame do not work, Mills recommends treatment programs such as “Violence Anon¬ymous,” a 12-step program for both victims and abusers that addresses people’s addiction to violence, and another called Peacemaking and Healing Circles, which she developed. Peace¬making Circles are for families referred or involved in the criminal justice system; a Healing Circle is a treatment utilized by families before the system intervenes. Both circles bring the whole family together for treatment.  
    Peacemaking Circles are up and running in Nogales, Arizona, where Mary Helen Maley, a criminal court judge, helped Mills establish them for those in her county who had been arrested for family violence crimes. “Circles of Peace/Circulos de Paz” thus became the first restorative justice treatment program of its kind for intimate violence in the nation. In 2008, Circles of Peace was named one of Harvard University’s Ash Institute “Top 50 Innovations in American Government.” Healing Circles are currently being piloted in Passaic/Clifton, New Jersey, among the Orthodox Jewish community.
    Mills looks to a future when a menu of options will be provided to people in abusive relationships, from the criminal justice system to couples counseling to Peacemaking Circles.  
    “Ideally, 30 years from now, adult partners who feel trapped in a violent relationship will seek help before the law intervenes,” she says. “And circles will be offered in communities across the U.S. to address domestic violence.”