Teaching Accountability at House of Ruth's Abuser Intervention Program

Founded in 1977 on North Calvert Street as the city's first domestic violence crisis shelter, the House of Ruth has for more than three decades been a safe haven for victims of abuse in Baltimore. Now located on Argonne Drive, today it is recognized as the nation's most comprehensive domestic violence center with a staff of more than 90.
    
So what are batterers doing there?
    
"The House of Ruth has had a batterers' program for about 25 years. What's new is, we've changed our approach, the way we work with these guys," says group facilitator Louis Machen, a psychotherapist and graduate of Loyola University in Maryland.
    
Part of the House of Ruth's Gateway Project, the Abuser Intervention Program seeks to increase the safety of domestic violence victims by holding their abusers accountable and teaching them non-violent relationship skills. Those in the program must attend 90-minute group sessions for 22 weeks. The sessions are led by a male/female team of facilitators. Currently the program receives about 600 referrals per year.

"In the beginning, working with batterers was like a crap shoot," Machen says. "You'd say, let's see if this works, how about this? The attitude (toward the batterers) was, 'You're an asshole, so change.' Big shock that this doesn't work as a therapeutic approach."

Baltimore native Lisa Nitsch, manager of the Gateway Project and an employee of the House of Ruth for 13 years, admits the old approach with dealing with abusers was "very confrontational. In the past, even battered women's organizations didn't think about them (abuser programs), but it was the battered women who kept asking, 'What can you do for him?' People who work as victim advocates really struggle when it comes to working with batterers, to see the batterer as a whole person. But the victims may see them as a partner, a father, someone who has been kind in the past, not someone who is 100 percent bad.

"We work with the batterers to see they have potential to be healthy partners. Before, the approach was either 'You're a bad man, what did you do to this poor woman?' or it was just a men's rap session with no focus at all," she says.

Nitsch explains that The House of Ruth uses the "Duluth model" -- named for the Domestic Abuse Intervention project launched in Duluth, Minnesota. "It was the first written curriculum (for domestic violence), started in 1979, I call it the 'batterers program for dummies.' It goes session by session, here's what you say, here's what you say back if they say this, and people hung on to it for dear life. It's a wonderful piece of work, but it's out of Duluth -- so, great if you're dealing with middle class white men," Nitsch says, noting that the vast majority of the men in the Gateway Project abusers program are African-American, poor, or both.
    
"The model is based on the power and control philosophy and you can imagine how well that goes over -- me, a relatively young white woman, telling a room full of African-American men that they have too much power and control. I'd get laughed out of the room," Nitsch says.
    
Key to reaching the batterers is to define the true sense of their victimization. Machen explains that the vast majority of the abusers are "court ordered" to participate so "they have to be here, they don't want to be here, and often come in feeling victimized themselves -- 'It's her fault, she was in my face.'" Nitsch echoes Machen, saying "It's pretty common for someone who is abusive to see themselves as the victim -- 'I had to hit her, I had to yell' -- and it is this perception of victimization that the Duluth curriculum insists men NOT be allowed to dwell on. Instead, facilitators are cognizant of the abusers' victimization by society, as in terms of racism, socio-economic status, etc.
    
"We've come to the point where we can't ignore it. You sit in a Gateway session and you see we are over-represented by low income, African-American men. It forces us to answer the question, Why aren't there more white men here? Who are the victims of institutionalized racism, who is the most heavily policed population, lives in the closest quarters? We have to recognize these things; when we don't, the men get frustrated with us. We work with the men to recognize these issues and help them see how they impact their relationships," Nitsch says.
    
Machen similarly notes, "It's the tap dance we have to do. A lot of people in this business feel that if you acknowledge in any way that they (abusers) have had rough lives, you're forgiving them. But if we can't go to them, talk to them about who they are and where they came from, how can we expect to lead them to somewhere new?"
    
John Miller, now a senior counselor and facilitator at the House of Ruth for 16 years, notes that "22 weeks is not a magic formula, but we have more guys coming back once they complete (finish the program) to further address behavior issues, to sit in on sessions, than ever before. I had a client call me just today who completed eight months ago and talked about how he'd been trying things he learned while he was here, things he'll use in his next relationship. So it's about maintaining a dialogue; it's a process, a journey, helping these men come face to face with reality."
    
The program seeks to instill in the men "alternative behavior" -- instead of being aggressive, to be assertive.
    
"If we say, don't be aggressive, they mistake that as meaning we want them to be passive. We move to objective, nonjudgmental language. Instead of saying 'I feel angry, pissed off,' we insert the thought, 'I feel disrespected,' or 'I feel jealous, and in the future I would appreciate�' and then make a reasonable request. It's hard work -- what's a reasonable request? It feels awkward at first until they find they can acknowledge their behavior, they can express themselves and make a request" versus dealing with a situation with violence.
    
"We talk about trust, relationship issues, the respecting of women, and try to incorporate that into the showing of video and audio clips, it's just a way to help them understand the message. And we introduce current events, like the domestic violence cases ongoing in Baltimore City, we get a dialogue going about these issues," Miller says.
    
For Miller, taking on the task of working with abusers isn't only just for the betterment of the individual men, but for the community and society as a whole.
    
"When you can get a guy to acknowledge that he's used abusive behavior and get him to really own up to it, it's the beginning of a process that not only will help him in his relationship, but in all future relationships, and that helps the City of Baltimore, it helps all the other people this man is going to interact with."


A native of Baltimore, Dan Collins is freelance writer/blogger, university instructor and public relations professional of more than 25 years. 


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Photos by Arianne Teeple:

- Gateway Project group facilitators, Guy Matthews and Seante Hatcher, LCSW-C, in Baltimore
- A member of the gateway group arrives for a session
- Gateway Project group facilitator, Seante Hatcher, LCSW-C, works at her desk in Baltimore
- A Gateway Project pamphlet
- Gateway Project senior counselor and group facilitator John Miller