Confronting Batterers and the Rage That Drives Them

Counselor Ann Bouquet and I were sitting alone in a conference room at the Costa Mesa police station.

We had been talking about domestic violence, the cycle of despair that batters bodies and shatters souls, and the kinds of people caught in its web.

When my questions stopped, Ann sensed my apprehension, asking me if I was nervous. Indeed, I felt myself on edge. In a moment six of her clients would enter the room.

These are men who beat the women they say they love.

The names I will give these men, all of them here voluntarily, yearning for empathy and help, are not their own. For most of them, violence is their secret, deep and ugly, and it shrouds them in shame.

As they file in, I see that they, too, are ill at ease. One of them compensates with bombast, another can barely get out his words.

“I hit her,” he finally says.

Hardly anyone knows that these men meet here, one night a week, to take part in the men’s anger-management group sponsored by Human Options, a private service organization in South County.

These are men who know that they have a problem; most batterers won’t even concede that. The few who have been referred by the courts--none of the men here tonight--have dropped in once, twice, never for very long, but group therapy just hasn’t been their cup of tea.

Although the Police Department is not associated with the group, as I sit in this austere meeting room, next to the police chief’s office, I can feel the unspoken message: strong, cold, black and white. Yet much of the talk this evening is about gray.

Ann Bouquet, who also counsels battered women, says that she wanted to hear the men’s side as well, understand what she calls “the dance” between couples who in many ways have come to accept violence as natural, as unavoidable as its pain. They have known it all their lives.

“These men are in pain,” Ann says. “I cannot stress that enough. They are not monsters. There is no mystery as to where these people come from. . . . Anger begets anger. If we are not nicer in our families, we are going to get battering people.”

As I listened to the men talk about their failed relationships, their bursts of rage, their delusions that, just this once, everything would be all right, I thought about what Ann had said.

No, these men are not monsters, as in unfeeling brutes, but they have acted monstrously. Now they are afraid that they may act that way again.

John, 40 years old, a former Marine captain, college graduate and medical sales representative, says he cannot stand to feel that women may control him, on the job or at home. He has beaten his wife of 18 years, who recently filed for divorce, and their three children.

“All my major customers are women,” he says. “But every time they talk, I keep hearing the messages of my mother. My mother used to beat me with broomsticks, belts. . . . I’ve been setting myself up for failure. . . . I finally realized that I was doomed. I’m not a drug addict. I don’t drink booze. This is my private hell.”

Steve, a 36-year-old marketing manager, looks delicate, pale, almost frail. As he talks, he illustrates his words with the movements of his fingers, tapered, artistic, and his eyes open wide, incredulous: Could this really be happening to me?

He tells me about his wife of 10 years, a woman he loves, yet one he calls violent and crazy. He describes a scene, almost a year ago now, where his wife was showering with their 2-year-old son. The child was screaming and so was his wife.

“There was a lot of tension in the house,” Steve says. “I went to pick up my son, take him out of the shower. My wife tried to grab him back. We were pulling on my son. So I popped her in the face. I had no idea she was going to call the police.”

Steve’s wife is divorcing him now, and the latest twist, he announces to the group of us seated around the table, is her accusation in court that he sexually abused their son.

“There is no evidence,” he says. “But it’s the whole nine yards. . . . If I had hooked up with a healthier person, I wouldn’t be in this box now.”

Ann had explained to me earlier about the concept, almost a buzzword today, of co-dependency. Many of these men feel it’s a scenario that fits them well. They say that they linked up with women whom they had wanted to help, desperately needing to feel that they were the stronger of the two.

Brent, a high school dropout, former alcoholic and drug abuser, and the youngest of the group at 24, says he assumes that I am healthy. When I nod my head, showing that I believe him to be right, he says that he doubts he would ever connect with a woman like me.

After listening to the other men tell of wives and girlfriends who have hit, bit and scratched them, Brent says it takes much less to set him off.

The other night, while he was lying in bed with his girlfriend, he sensed through her silence that she did not want to have sex. He got up, feeling rejected and ready to leave, then began an argument that ended in blows.

“I don’t have to be hurt or bit to hit a woman,” he says. “I can do it just off the wall. I don’t have to dress it up.”

Doug, a 36-year-old sales representative, says that his salary doesn’t stretch too comfortably around himself, his wife and their four children in South County. He can’t tell with certainty just when his anger will boil over, only that it will.

He has hit his wife, from whom he is now legally separated, several times. Maybe it was because the children had food on their faces, or unwashed dishes were piled in the kitchen sink.

“Or a lot of times,” he adds, “it was just how she looked at me.”

The stories of the other men are similar: rage, violence, and sometimes, jail. Steve says the “anger journal” that Ann has asked them to keep is helping. He can feel the emotion rising, like bile in his throat, and then he tries to tamp it back down.

“I hate to use the word hope ,” Ann had told me earlier when we were talking about these men. “I think there is a possibility that they can relearn how to handle their anger. . . . I’ve seen a lot of progress.”

A moment before I left the group, Larry, a 32-year-old bachelor and engineer, asked me if I had come tonight with any preconceived notions. Yes I had, I told him. Nobody likes a batterer.

Then he suggested that maybe I could come back in, say, six months, to see how the men in the group have fared. I told him that wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Maybe then Ann, and I, would be comfortable enough to use the word hope .