The Fight Against Crime: Notes From the Battlefront : Victimizers Confront Pain Abuse Causes

It was roll-call time at the Domestic Abuse Center in Reseda.

“My name is Bill and I’m here because I hit my lady friend with my fist.”

“I’m Kevin. I hit a woman. Banged her head on the wall.”

“I’m Sam. I sprayed a woman in the face with air freshener.”

And so it went around the room--21 men, each with a sound-bite version of how they ended up in a court-ordered class on the causes and consequences of domestic violence.

Normally in this class the men would engage in role-playing or group discussions. They would learn about control issues, how they resort to violence and economic constraints to gain power over women. They would hear about how they dehumanize a partner with terms like bitch or my old lady .

But this was not a normal class. The men were directed to all crowd into one side of the room. They sat on sofas, folding chairs, tables and the floor, facing Gail Pincus, who heads the center, and three other counselors.

Also sitting with the counselors were five pleasantly dressed, carefully coiffed women. During roll-call, they quietly stared at each man as he introduced himself.

The men knew what the women were doing there. All had been battered. On this 13th class of the 14 in the course, they had come to tell their stories and confront the men with what’s it’s like to be on the other end of domestic violence.

A blond woman spoke of a time she was on vacation with her former husband, a successful businessman.

“We were on an airplane and he asked me to put down my tray table so he could put his coffee on it,” she said. She told her husband she didn’t want to because she was about to get up and go to the bathroom.

Just then an attendant passed by them, bumping her husband’s arm and causing him to spill some of the coffee. He turned to his wife and threw the rest of the coffee in her face.

“Boiling hot coffee,” she said, her voice shaking. “Can you imagine what that was like?

“I sat there and asked him why he did it and he said, ‘If you had put down your tray, bitch, I would not have burned my hand.’ ”

Some of the men looked directly at the woman as she told the story, others stared into space or looked down at the floor. Some expressions conveyed shame, others boredom.

The stories continued for almost an hour with the first four women speaking about abuse--the pain, humiliation, despair and also the disorientation, guilt and economic dependence that kept them in the relationship.

Their voices quavered as they spoke. They fidgeted nervously as they heard the other stories.

But during it all the fifth woman, sitting at the end in a striped blue dress, sat absolutely quietly, without stirring.

When she spoke, her manner was direct and firm.

At first, her story was similar to the others. Her husband had struck her on several occasions. The relationship would get better at times, giving her hope that this man she loved would somehow reform.

Then one night he came home high on cocaine and put his hands around her neck, choking her.

“I picked up a knife,” she said calmly, “and I stabbed him. To this day I don’t remember doing it, but I did.”

Some of the men who had been staring into space suddenly sat up.

This woman’s husband died and she went to jail, but only for eight weeks because of the circumstances of the killing.

“Only one of us was going to live that night, and it was me,” she told the men. “I think I lived because I had work to do. Now, I talk to groups like this.”

In comments afterward, most of the men expressed sympathy with the women and said how much they learned from the experience of listening to them all.

It was hard for an outsider to determine just who among them was being sincere. After all, the men know that Pincus and the other counselors regularly report to the courts about their progress. But Pincus was satisfied.

“This is a very, very effective kind of session,” she said, afterward. “Maybe a third of them don’t get it at all, and maybe another third are in the middle.

“But a third of them really hear themselves in these stories. And that’s what we need if there is going to be change.”