summary

presented by Avraham Hoffmann at the ICPA 12^th annual conference: Ghent , Belgium, October 24 – 29, 2010.

In recent years, the awareness to spousal violence has expanded. Israeli society and media’s refusal to let the phenomenon rest unreported, and the judicial and law enforcement system are taking a much firmer line with offenders.

A change has occurred in the perception of the spousal violence as a specific offence – and not merely violence in general. Previously the prevailing attitude was of forgiveness, perceiving this situation between a couple as being outside the realm of the law. Now it has become an offence in itself. And as a consequence it required a special treatment.

This progressive change in perception influenced the courts and the police and correspondingly began to be treated by the welfare services. As a result, new populations were incarcerated, belonging to social classes previously perceived as unconnected to delinquency.

As awareness was growing, more men were incarcerated for spousal violence. Hence, there was a need to create appropriate programs and services to deal with this phenomenon.

Before discussing the solutions, we shall evaluate the phenomenon and draw the profile of the batterers.

How Extensive Is The Domestic Violence Problem In Israel?

Israeli society has seen reported domestic violence climb sequentially over recent years, to the point that in 2002 more than 20,000 police files were opened for spousal violence every year. Many of these battering husbands or boyfriends end up in prison. Every year there are more spousal violence prisoners and detainees: in 2003, over 1,500 new prisoners[1], and in 2009 about 1,800, as opposed to only 570 in 1997[2]. Currently in Israel there are 2,400 prisoners incarcerated for spousal violence.

What Makes Domestic Violence So Different From Other Forms Of Violence?

It is different from offences that are committed outside the family in two (2) main aspects:

1. This offence is directed to a family member.
2. A legal connection and, in many cases an emotional relation, continues between the offender and his victim. Most of them return to live with their spouses that were subjected to their violence.

A research about our Hostel for spousal violent released prisoners shows that after leaving the hostel:

About 50% will return to live with the spouse or partner they had battered. About 25% will live with another spouse. And the rest are not planning to live with a spouse in the near future. We know that most prisoners that are sentenced for spousal violence complete their prison term[3]. Dealing with violent prisoners must be a high priority

Can We Draw A Profile Of The Batterers?

Many years of research have helped us to draw a profile of the male batterer on three levels: The personal level; the interpersonal level and the societal level[4].

Interestingly, we have found out that some of these prisoners have additional problems such as delinquency, alcohol or drugs dependency, a lack of working habits and employment stability, malfunctioning in the family accompanied by severe violence. Therefore, they were previously perceived as unable to rehabilitate.

This violence phenomenon is defined as a social problem that necessitates a comprehensive therapeutic approach and the co-operation of all the concerned organisations and services. The Ministry of social affairs emphasises the systematic therapeutic approach that must include the battered women, the batterers and the children who witnessed the violence.

Treating violent released prisoners necessitates a unique therapy on both the comprehensive domestic level and on the personal individual level. It requires professional, skilled and experienced staffs that know all the different services that offer solutions to the unique needs of these patients and their families.

What Did Israel Do To Treat This Problem?

The first step was to open shelters for battered women. It meant moving the women to a safer place, but not solving the real problem: the batterers’ violence.

Until 2002 a few programs[5] existed to treat the male batterers and their families. However, they were not meant for released prisoners. Moreover, due to the new policies the number of spousal violence prisoners increased considerably. Hence, a few programs were developed in the Prison Services:

1. Training for social workers who treat male batterers while incarcerated.[6]
2. Anti-Violence Committees, that discuss each domestic violent prisoner, to protect the victims and ensure their safety during the batterer’s prison leaves and after his final release.
3. “House of Hope”[7]  – a special domestic violence treatment unit, opened in 2000 within the Prison Services facilities.

How Does Incarceration Effect Spousal Violence?

The incarceration itself without continued therapy may cause continued and even escalating violence, because in many cases the wives’ complaints helped convict their husbands. The temporary separation allows the woman to feel an illusionary security. Her husband being away in prison, she would like to think that the punishment taught him a lesson and therefore the problem is solved. But the separation caused by incarceration always increases tensions, all the more so for violent men. Moreover, the rehabilitation activity done during incarceration is done in sterile conditions not allowing the men to “practice” what he learns and the treatment usually stops after the release from prison, and the hard work done is in vain.[8]

Hence, the PRA concluded that there is a need to create a continued program in the community that will also include the spouses, and in 2002 proposed the Hostel for released prisoners incarcerated for spousal violence.

How Did We Strengthen The Rehabilitation And Ensure A Safer Return Home?

In 2005 the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority opened a Residential Hostel for Spousal Violent men named “Keys”[9]. It offers these prisoners a soft landing and creates a community transitional rehabilitation program set between the release from prison and before the return home. It allows them to overcome the incarceration trauma by returning to live in the community and work, while dealing with the spousal violence issue in a guided and supervised environment.

As Israel has seen immigration from many and diverse cultures, we have encountered cultural perception that do not perceive domestic violence as being illegitimate. The Keys Hostel offers its residents new keys to a non violent life. A Key to return Home.

Along this lecture I will present you the positive results of a research conducted by the Israeli National Insurance Institute surveying the first 30 months of this Hostel.[10]

What Does The New Therapeutic Model Include?

The first set includes:

• Spousal violence itself.
• The long-term separation from the family.
• Prepare for the return home. Learn how to create a bridge to the family.

The second set includes dealing with the outcomes of being cut-off from society and family and returning back to them:

• The incarceration stigma.
• The return to the workplace after a long period or seeking a work position.
• Drug and alcohol dependency.

The combination of delinquency and violence, addiction and violence, requires a special therapeutic approach. The hostel deals with all of the prisoners problems. I will focus on the particularity of spousal violence.

What Does Our Therapeutic Model Innovate?

This program deals comprehensively with the prisoner’s other problems in a transitional setting, allowing intermission and progressiveness. It offers a possibility to create a renewed bond between the couple in protected conditions. Hence, the man is able to return home free of the problems caused by his incarceration and release from prison, and is ready to devote himself to his family and the continuing therapy.

What Aspects Of Domestic Violent Men Are Treated?

Stopping the violence: Deal with the attacker’s responsibility; control of anger; sexuality; proper communication between the family members; providing the patient with positive communication tools as opposed to violence.

Family and couple: In light of the violent and defective communication that existed for many years, there is a need to rehabilitate the couple (after stopping the violence) and enable the husband to return to his family in a healthy and positive way. Hence the importance for all the family members to participate in therapy, that enables them to express themselves, go through the changes together and attain a solution to the family problems together.

Learning ways to behave and progressively take responsibility in the family: a violent prisoner that is away from home for a long period, is cut off from his family’s daily life. Therefore, he must learn to gradually take part in house duties and chores. The treatment in the Hostel enables to gradually create of a relation with his spouse, and to attain shared decisions concerning his return home and his responsibilities.

Future accompaniment of the patients: it is important to follow up the patients for a period of a year following their departure from the Hostel to ensure their rehabilitation is preserved.

Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive systematic preparation toward the reunion of the family and a comprehensive therapeutic approach to the offender as well as to the victim and family.

This project is designed to complement the existing services. Its purpose being to ensure the safety of women that are interested in their husbands’ return home, without taking into account the risk entailed by the separation the incarceration caused.

The research findings show that after leaving the hostel:
About 50% will return to live with the spouse or partner they had battered.
About 25% will live with another spouse.
And the rest are not planning to live with a spouse in the near future.

Who Can Join The Hostel?

This program is intended for prisoners that were sentenced for spousal violence and that meet with the following criteria:

• Therapy participated in a therapeutic program in prison.
• Rehabilitation participated in a pre-release program of the PRA toward their absorption into the Hostel.
• Potential to rehabilitate diagnosed as willing and being capable of changing.
• Drug free have gone through a physical detoxification, during or after their incarceration.

The reasons the men stated for joining the Hostel:
Most of them reported they joined the Hostel out of their own will.

However they stated other additional factors that they do not perceive as contradicting:
12% – experienced pressure from their spouse to join the Hostel.
75% of the men reported they had been advised by prison counselors to join the Hostel.
More than 25% said that the parole was the reason for joining the program, as opposed to about 50% reporting it wasn’t the reason.

What Do We Expect To Achieve?

• Stop the spousal violence – by teaching techniques of self-control of anger and providing these men with normative behaviour patterns.
• Help them to successfully overcome psychological addictions through a profound psychological therapy.
• Ensure a proper return home through a family therapy with their spouse and children, according to the spouse’s wish.
• Improve their healthy parenting patterns.
• Integrate these released prisoners into workplaces.

The results of the research testify that these goals are successfully attained:

In their interviews the residents (men) reported they had learned to:

• Behave in a non violent wayControl angerBe self confidentRecognized feeling they ignored previously, including their weaker parts.Ability to recognize the causes for violent behaviour.Change of communication with the family, through new ability to express themselves.

The spouses mentioned their view of the program’s outcomes:

• New ways to relate to their spouse.Look differently at spousal relationships.Are aware of the need for communication, support and cooperation.Look differently at the man’s and woman’s roles at home – a more egalitarian perception of the couple.

Implementation

The program is divided into 2 consecutive stages:

1. Residential Hostel: treatment for a period of 6 to 9 months.
2. Follow-up stage: After completing the stay in the hostel, a social worker from the hostel visits the graduates at home twice a month, operates a group meeting twice a month and monitors the gradual passage to community treatment during a year following their departure from the Hostel.

Methods And Intervention

This hostel focuses on the couple therapy and violence related issues.
It is run like all the other PRA’s Hostels, dealing with issues related to released prisoners and “clean” drug addicts. Residents must start working, supported by the Authority’s employment counsellor.

Therapy Strategies

• Individual: intake, setting an administrative and therapeutic contract – the patient receive an individual therapy at least once a week.

• Group therapy:
  • Therapy groups that deal with: Changing the behaviour and controlling anger, acquiring tools for self control and taking responsibility for personal behaviour, learning to be aware of the needs and desires of their companions, and how to communicate, learning parenting, sexuality, etc. psychodrama  is one of the methods used. These groups meet 3 times a week.
  • A support group guided by a social worker.
  • The formerly drug dependent residents attend an N.A. meeting once a week.

• Family and Couple treatment:

According to needs there is a family and/or couple therapy once a week. The program’s innovation is that this therapy takes place in the Hostel before the residents’s return home in protected conditions with an ongoing assessment process. The spouse attends these meeting voluntarily.

• One evening a week is devoted to employment problems, enrichment or leisure time activities (such as movie, museum and theatre plays).
• Creating an operational outline for taking responsibility for his home and family by paying bills and providing for subsistence. Patient learn how to participate in family life. During therapy the patient contributes to his family expenditure.

The Leaves:

The hostel leaves are an integral part of the treatment, given gradually – 8 hours, then 12, etc. – in correspondence with the progress in therapy and with the outcomes of the previous leave, and according to the spouse’s consent.

Preparation toward the Return Home:

Toward the end of the stay in the Hostel the Hostel’s management and the practitioner in the community discuss the continued therapy in the community.
It is obvious that it is impossible to resolve all the problems in a period of 6 months. Our aim is to advance the patient as much as possible, to enable him to be ready to rejoin his family. To ensure the endurance and strengthening of the treatment, a social worker continues the therapy in the patient’s home for a period of one year following his return home.

What is Special about this Hostel’s Facility:

All other Hostels are set to help the hostels residents – while this hostel helps also his family. Therefore, there is a room where the children can play, while the parents are in treatment. And geographically the hostel is easily accessible so the women can join the couple therapy.

Conclusions

To conclude I would like to mention what the Hostel’s residents mentioned as being the causes for their change:

• The stay in the Hostel and its homey atmosphere.
• The fear to go back to prison.
• The separation from home.

Thus, there is no way to return spousal violent offenders to their family without a continued and continual therapy. All the more so, when it is clear that they cannot return to their initial family and wish to build a new relationship.

 These men must learn a new way. As the prophet Malachi said

“… Because the Lord testified between you and the wife of your youth, that you dealt treacherously with her, and she is your companion and the wife of your covenant. […] Now you shall beware of your spirit, that it shall not deal treacherously with the wife of your youth.”

(Malachi 2:14-15)

---

[1] There are also 500 additional prisoners that were incarcerated for other offences, for which the problem of domestic violence was revealed during therapy.

[2] There are approximately 10,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons.

[3] That is, they are not released for good behaviour after completing 2/3 of their prison term.

[4] Some of the different levels’ characteristics of male batterers are:

Personal level: Low self esteem; Strong urge to control; Defence mechanisms to minimise and deny the violence, and throw the blame onto the wife or circumstances; Predominating emotions of anger, abandonment anxiety, jealousy, dependence and depression; Tendency to interpret interpersonal situations in a distorted fashion; Lacking proper communication skills; Difficulty in trusting others.

Interpersonal level: Batterers are lonely people who tend to avoid society, hesitate to develop close ties and, careful not to choose partners who want close relations; Many batterer-battered couples live in isolated units, which increases the mutual dependency, and vice versa; It creates jealousy; All outsiders are perceived as invasive or threatening; family history: many batterers have themselves suffered from violence in their childhood or were witnesses to violence between their parents.

Societal level: Throughout history women have been battered. The majority of societal institutions, rooted in patriarchal values, ideologies and behaviour patterns, have been accepting verbal violence as a way for men to vent their anger and display their power. When the social authority fails to enforce a counter-view, it gives, by implication, society’s sanction for men to treat their women violently.

Sima Blecher, Dana Ben-Yehuda and Orly Safir, “Bet Hatikva (House of Hope) The Israel Prison Service’s National Domestic Violence Treatment Unit,” Innovation exchange (Israel: Ministry of Public Security, 2004).

[5]  1.      Non-violence therapeutic groups in day centres. To date there are 34 local centres in different municipalities, that also deal with violent men. The programs include individual and group therapy. The treatment of the men is given in parallel with that of the wives and children.

 2.      “Beit Noam” – A residential hostel for violent men It offers an intensive therapy for battering men who have been ordered by the courts to stay away from their family. The Hostel is designed as a home, to allow these men to go through a corrective experience, including taking responsibility for the different daily activities and chores. There are both individual and group therapy. Every morning the men go to work outside the Hostel. They stay in the Hostel for a period of 4 months. It does not accept released prisoners

[6] The Prison Services initiated a program to train the social workers to treat violent men while incarcerated, since most of them go back to their homes after their release from prison. While incarcerated, they have little motivation to participate in therapy and most of them tend to deny their violence. Being aware of these facts the Prison Services works at developing the professional knowledge and expertise of its social workers. To date a group of 25 trained social workers treat domestic violence. They run therapy groups for prisoners that were incarcerated for domestic violence. The Prison Service plans to spread out the professional knowledge on domestic violence among all its social workers.

[7] “Beit Hatikva”

[8] Rotem Sha’er, Therapy in a punishment environment: The experiences of prisoners from the drug detoxification and therapy process within Prison (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 2003). Sha’er discusses rehabilitation of drug dependent prisoners.

The released prisoners, interviewed for this research, perceive the therapy in prison as a primary therapy stage and theoretical in essence, that enables the drug addicted prisoners to acknowledge their dependence and start a primary therapeutic relationship. However, to strengthen and preserve their new way after their release, a continued therapy is needed, to help them overcome the difficulties they will encounter during the process of integrating the normative society, especially in face of the numerous external stimuli and provocations.

Changing trends and agendas have led many researchers to question whether it is possible for prisoners to rehabilitate. A survey of researches that examined the situation of prisoners who completed therapy in prison, found that the most positive results were achieved by prisoners that attended therapy during a long period, as well as prisoners that continued their therapy in the community after their release from prison. Hence, we can assume this can apply to prisoners incarcerated for domestic violence. 

[9] In Hebrew “Maftechot”.

[10] November 2005 through April 2008.