Therapy Helps Wife Beaters Defuse Their Rage

One night John was arguing with his wife, getting angrier and angrier, when she put up her hands in the sign of a T. He stopped, he said, and took a timeout.

A few months before, he probably would have hit her.

During the “majority of the time” in the 14 years they were married, John’s wife “had a cut lip or a bruise or two, here or there,” he said. “If I came home, and I was really wound up and no one would talk to me, nothing would happen. But if she would say to me, ‘You didn’t fix the sink last week, can you do it now?’ that would be enough.”

After he was arrested on misdemeanor assault and battery charges in January, John, who works as a cook in an Orange County restaurant and asked that his real name not be used, chose to participate in a therapy program for batterers rather than go to trial.

Since John started in therapy for beating his wife, he has kept an anger journal to monitor his angry feelings and the way he deals with them on a daily basis. And now, he said, when he starts to feel angry, he walks away from the situation to keep himself from hitting.

The night he was arrested, his wife went to the police station to try to drop the charges. John said he was glad that the police refused. “If she had dropped the charges, we would have went on as before, and who knows, it could have gotten worse.”

Treated as Wife’s Problem

Before the late ‘70s, wife abuse was often treated as a marriage problem or a wife’s problem, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Lois Haight Herrington, who supervised the 1984 U.S. Attorney General’s Report on Family Violence. Only recently have men become the focus of a problem that occurs in thousands of families across the nation.

In one out of every three homicides in the country in which adult women are the victims, the woman was killed by her husband or live-in partner, Herrington said. One-fifth of all homicides involve one spouse killing another, she said.

Recent studies show that the percentage of marriages in which wife-beating occurs may be anywhere from 2% to 50%, Herrington said. She said reliable figures are not available because many cases still go unreported.

Most batterers will get treatment only if their wives leave or they are threatened with jail, Herrington said.

Even batterers who seek treatment rarely have an “internal motivation” to stop abusing their wives or to get help, said Ira Gorman, a clinical psychologist in Santa Ana who has treated more than a dozen batterers and has evaluated “a few hundred” for diversion programs and child custody battles.

Conscience is normally developed in childhood, but because so many men who beat their wives were themselves beaten as children, “they didn’t develop that internal conscience,” Gorman said. When they were young, parents who hit them gave them the message “that once you’re punished, you’re free.”

In order to stay and work at therapy, batterers “need a motivator,” Gorman said. “Internally, once the pressure is off, they don’t have the guilt to sustain (their motivation) to come (to therapy).”

Sitting in a restaurant, Ted has his arm around Annie. He pours the cream for her coffee and asks her how much sugar she wants.

It was one of the few times Ted had seen Annie since she left him three weeks earlier. After he hit her three days in a row, she escaped out a window and went to a battered women’s shelter. They both still love each other, they said, but if they are going to get back together, “things have got to change,” Annie said.

After Annie left him and moved into the shelter, Ted agreed to go with her to a marriage counselor. “I don’t want to be without her. I don’t want to lose her,” he said.

Blond and muscular, Ted would hit Annie after long and heated arguments, he said.

“I was looking to end the conflict we were having. I don’t even know if the conflict had to end, but the pressure had to stop,” Ted said. When he hit her, it did not end their arguments. “It usually made them worse,” he said, adding, “unless I knocked her out.”

Ted and Annie, who live in Orange County and asked that their real names not be used, have been married for about a year.

The violence started at the beginning of their marriage with pushing, shoving and physical confrontations. The physical abuse became more frequent and more severe as time went on, they agreed.

Ted was married once before for six years, but he never hit his first wife, he said.

“I didn’t get as angry with the first wife, because I didn’t care,” he said. Annie “has made more positive things happen in my life than anyone else.”

Ted said he was beaten up as a child by his father and by “sadistic” older brothers. “Believe it or not, I’ve always been afraid of violence,” he said.

John Taylor, a marriage, family and child counselor in Tustin who has treated batterers for eight years, said the majority are “second- or third-generation batterers.”

Many men who become batterers do not exhibit any kind of violent behavior during the courtship, and only begin hitting after they are married or have made a commitment to the woman, Taylor said. Most of the time, the battering starts during the first six months of the relationship; 25% of the time, “it starts right on the honeymoon,” Taylor added.

Taylor said battering serves three underlying purposes for the abuser: to relieve stress, to gain control and power over the woman and to make the relationship secure.

“Battering is an effective and powerful way to relieve stress,” Taylor said. “When they (wife batterers) yell and scream, they feel better. They let out that pent-up stress and frustration.

“Yelling and hitting are incredibly effective in getting your own way,” he added. Because batterers are often powerless and taken advantage of at their work, “they become addicted to the power and the quickness with which they get the power (through violence at home),” he said.

Aims for Total Dependence

Batterers often feel inadequate and insecure, Taylor said. They believe “if the woman becomes strong and assertive, she is, of course, going to leave him.” Therefore, “the physical and verbal abuse is aimed at making the family totally dependent.”

Women usually don’t know they are marrying a batterer until it’s too late, Taylor said. “It could happen to anyone,” he said. “During courtship, people with anger problems are picture perfect, almost too good to be true. And, in fact, they are.”

Verbal abuse is present in 100% of all battering relationships, according to Taylor.

“It starts out in a low, sort of subtle way,” he said. He may start by expressing disappointment at something she did or didn’t do or giving qualified praise (“This was good, but . . .”).

“It builds, builds, builds to being very constant, very direct,” Taylor said. The abuse escalates to attacking her friends, her appearance, her body, how she cooks, how she makes love. The message is “I love you, but you’re a mess. No one else would,” Taylor said.

“The typical batterer hits from once a week to once a year,” he said. “The verbal abuse goes on daily. The physical abuse is like an exclamation point that keeps (the woman) in line.”

John said that he hit his wife about once a month. The worst incident occurred about four years ago, when he hit her with a closed fist.

“She fell and broke her wrist. I hit her pretty hard,” John said. “That cast was there for a while, and I felt bad. But, of course, after the cast went away, the feeling went away.”

John said he usually wouldn’t hit his wife when she had a cut or bruise he could see; that made him feel guilty.

“You feel ashamed,” he said. “A husband shouldn’t hit his wife. But deep in my mind was, ‘If she didn’t make me mad, I wouldn’t have done it.’ ”

John said that he hit his wife to relieve stress and to get his own way. “Let’s say we had a disagreement, or I didn’t want something to take place. I’d let her know I was angry, and it wouldn’t take place.”

In therapy, John said he learned that “a husband and wife can have a disagreement. It doesn’t mean you have to win,” he said. “You start thinking, she’s a somebody, she’s not just someone to walk on.”

John is one of about 150 men currently in an Orange County diversion program for spousal abuse. In 1979, the state Legislature passed Penal Code 1000.6, which allows for diversion to a therapy program in spousal assault cases, according to Don Latimore, director of adult court services for the Orange County Probation Department.

Before 1979, many cases never went to trial, Latimore said. “The wife would say, ‘You’re taking away my breadwinner,’ and, sad as it might be, ‘I’m better off learning to duck,’ ” Latimore said.

Men in Orange County who are arrested for spousal abuse and diverted to therapy see a therapist in private practice who reports back to the Probation Department, Latimore said. The batterer, who lives at home and is free to work while in the diversion program, must pay for his own therapy, he said.

To be eligible for diversion, a batterer must have had no convictions in the past seven years and must not have been in a diversion program up to five years before the arrest. A batterer must also be determined suitable for diversion by the Probation Department, Latimore said.

“If the guy is a menace, a dangerous character, chances are he needs to be locked up,” Latimore said. But most men arrested for spousal assault have no criminal record, hold a job and “are (otherwise) stable individuals. They just can’t handle their anger, and they take it out on their wife,” he said.

The diversion is for six months, after which the therapist submits a progress report to a judge, Latimore said. The diversion can be extended for up to two years, although Latimore said he has never seen a diversion program last longer than a year.

Latimore estimates that 70% to 80% of the men successfully complete the program but said the county does not stay in contact with the men when they are no longer required to attend therapy sessions.

“There is a lot of evidence that men can change; what we’re not sure of is the percentage of men,” said David Adams, counseling director of EMERGE in Boston, the nation’s first counseling center for batterers.

Treatment Relatively New

Treating men for battering is relatively new, Adams said. EMERGE opened in 1977, four years after the opening of the first battered women’s shelter, he said.

Of men who complete a counseling program for battering, “the majority . . . make very significant changes about their violence,” Adams said.

Adams, who is a social worker, often treats couples together. “What I always tell the women is there is a much better chance (of success) when there is a separation, with the understanding that he needs to work on it on his own,” he said.

“It makes a lot of sense for the woman to wait and see some solid evidence that he has changed,” Adams said. A batterer’s behavior has truly changed “when it is no longer contingent on her rewards,” he said.

Annie said that she planned to move back with Ted in a few weeks. “I never really wanted to be without him,” she said.

And although in the past Ted has broken promises that he wouldn’t hit her, “now I really do think he’s sincere,” Annie said.

“I knew I was doing bad stuff when I was doing it. It wasn’t like I knew I was right,” Ted said. But when he was actually hitting Annie, he said, he felt he had some justification. “I had an excuse for everything. ‘I have a limit, and you (Annie) pushed me past it,’ ” he used to tell her.

“I definitely had a hand in it,” Annie said. “I did so much verbal abuse to him, kept at him.”

Susan Leibel, executive director of the Women’s Transitional Living Center in North Orange County, said many of the women who seek shelter there have low self-esteem. They often arrive at the shelter (the largest of its kind in California) saying things like, “It’s my fault” and “I should have been better,” Leibel said.

Women at the shelter are required to attend two individual counseling sessions and two group sessions and can stay for a maximum of 45 days, Leibel said. But “certainly that isn’t enough to counteract the brainwashing,” she said.

Many women will return to their husbands no matter how severe the abuse is, she said. The women who come to the shelter are often financially and emotionally dependent on the husband, and the majority are young women with young children, Leibel said.

Batterers “tend not to be attracted to assertive women,” said Roby Gallagher, who holds a weekly group session for batterers at Lin Brockington Associates in Santa Ana.

‘Like Little Boys’

“If (a woman) says something assertive, they interpret it as an attack,” said Gallagher, who is a probation officer in Los Angeles County and is also working as a marriage, family and child counselor intern.

They are often “emotionally like little boys who have not grown up,” Gallagher said. Many “had a horrible relationship with their own father.”

“What seems to have happened earlier in these men’s lives, because there was a lot of violence in the home, (is that) somewhere back there they’ve turned off emotions,” he said.

Gallagher said that he tries to get the men in his group to identify their emotions. “Once they get in touch with their feelings, they develop empathy. Hopefully that tends to put a check on battering behavior.”

“Most people believe that anger is something you inherit, like red hair,” said Carol Lindquist, a clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at Cal State Fullerton who has studied domestic violence and treated batterers. But Lindquist said that violence is a learned and not an inherited behavior.

“Often, they have problems with expression of positive feelings, giving compliments,” she said. “That seems far removed from anger control, but it is important,” she said.

She said therapists can help batterers deal with anger by making them identify it and by “getting them to realize . . . positive feelings and express them, as well as dissatisfaction.”

Alcohol and drug abuse figured in about 60% of battering relationships in a study done by Lindquist that involved 90 couples--30 happily married, 30 who were in marriage counseling and 30 in battering relationships.

Not Necessarily Drunk

“It’s not as simple as they get drunk and beat their wives,” she said. “They are not necessarily drunk when they beat their wives. And most of the wives don’t realize they (their husbands) are alcoholic.”

Lindquist said that about 80% of the batterers in that study came from violent homes. Jealousy, communication problems and a belief that the woman should be responsible for the happiness of the couple were other problems cited by the couples dealing with battering. “It’s interesting that they say they love each other” as much or more than the other couples in the survey, she said.

Batterers generally do not have a reason to stop. “Violence has worked for them. When they pound on someone, they get what they need,” Lindquist said.

Battering “is like anything else you go to therapy for,” she said. “The first time you hit your wife, the chance of getting better is good. The further it progresses and the more violent it becomes, the fewer the chances.”

Initial Bias

Batterers have often been regarded as difficult to treat by therapists, but that is changing, according to Gail Goolkasian, a research analyst for ABT Associates in Boston, which has been commissioned by the federal government to do a study on success rates for court-mandated therapy programs around the country. “I think initially there was a bias against treatment by everybody (psychologists),” she said.

However, she added, “It’s definitely safe to say there have been improvements in the last five years. There are hundreds of (therapists) now trained to handle batterers, and the methods are being refined,” she said.

Goolkasian said that the length of time of a diversion program for battering often depends on the county or state, and some do not provide a long enough period of time to correct a lifelong behavior.

She said batterers tend to resist therapy and many deny that they have a problem. She said a counselor in Seattle told her that a man in a diversion program “in the last session (finally) said, ‘I guess I do beat my wife.’ ”

Herrington has sent copies of the U.S. Attorney General’s Report on Family Violence to thousands of law enforcement agencies and courts around the country. Sent with the report is a recommendation that batterers should face stiff jail and prison sentences if they do not agree to therapy.

Herrington said she is worried about the children who are witnessing battering and learning to repeat the pattern.

John said that he watched his father beat up his mother while he was growing up. “It was quite often real bad,” he said. “It was guaranteed once a week. She would usually run.”

John and his brothers and sisters were physically abused by his father, he said. “I mean beat, with a belt or a fist. We used to get punched; we used to get hit hard.”

He said he hasn’t hit his own children because he didn’t want them to have the kind of childhood he had. And he hopes his son, his oldest, won’t grow up to be a batterer.

“What has gone on so far has (probably) had a great effect,” he said. “I hope as he gets older, he won’t walk in my old shoes, but my new footsteps.”

He said that he has already noticed changes in his children since he began therapy. When he drives up to his driveway after work lately, he hears the noise of his children playing.

Noise Used to Halt

“You know kids, they’re rowdy, they yell,” he said. It used to be that when he’d drive up, the noise would halt and the kids would disappear, he said.

But that was before he stopped beating his wife. Now “whatever was going on, keeps going on,” he said.

He said that his relationship with his wife has also improved over the last several months.

“I still feel she is afraid of me to some degree,” he said, but added, “I know she’s more relaxed toward me.”

Before, when he hit his wife, he said: “You feel that you’ve got something to hide. You can’t feel good. You can’t feel clean. Now that I have made steps to fix the problem, I don’t feel ashamed anymore.”

He said that after the six months of his diversion was up and it was time for his therapist to make an evaluation for the court, he told his therapist that he still thought he needed more time to work on his problem.

He said that he will probably continue therapy for at least another year. “I know I have a long way to go, but I’m going to get there.”