Class Teaches Respect for Women to Batterers

I occasionally discuss here, so I thought this recent article might be of some interest. The article (which is also a podcast) features a domestic violence treatment group for abusive men. The group’s intention is not rehabilitation but to combat what it sees as “unabated sexism”:

In New York City, police respond to more than 200,000 domestic violence calls a year. The majority of the perpetrators are by far men. Only a small fraction end up getting convicted for abusing their partners. An even smaller fraction serve jail time. The rest are given other types of punishments. Some do community service, others pay fines. And hundreds are sent to batterer’s programs. One in Brooklyn rejects the idea that abusive men need counseling or therapy. Instead it views domestic violence as unabated sexism and attempts to challenge common assumptions about male and female roles. WNYC’s Cindy Rodriguez visited the program and has this report.

A couple of things stand out from reading the article. One, both Hunter and Bunch do a terrible job of actually addressing sexism. The whole of what they do (as reported) is little more than humiliating the men, which probably explains why sixty percent of the men never finish the six-month forced program. Both instructors’ attitudes towards those men are remarkably similar to the attitude those men may have towards women. It would not be a stretch to imagine that the men in the program would realize that.

The second thing is the absence of the instructors’ credentials. While it is certainly true that even people with a degree and license can and do create woefully ill-formed and misguided programs, it would be nice to know what qualifies Hunter and Bunch to run such a program, particularly given that there is nothing in the it dedicated to addressing the needs of the people subjected to it.

The other thing was this comment by Bunch:

Bunch says the strict rules probably have more of an impact on the men than what they learn in class. He is a strong believer in holding men fully accountable and feels too many excuses are made for batterers. Yet he hesitates when asked if men should go directly to jail.

BUNCH: I have mixed feelings about it because they are mostly brown and black men and they are already getting more of a consequence then most white men get for the same crime, and I would not want to further penalize them in the criminal justice system.

Despite not wanting to make excuses for batterers, that is exactly what Bunch did and ironically it demonstrates how slanted his own view towards “brown and black” men is. If his implication about the difference in consequences is true, then technically he is admitting that his own program is a one-sided, potentially racist and — judging by his above remarks– an unfair consequence.

The program seems rather dubious, as does the intent. Trying to psychologically bludgeon men into respecting women obliviously will not work. However, what makes it truly questionable is the total lack of concern for the men forced to attend the program.