Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 4, 1991 TAG: 9102040100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
So he punched her in the face.
Then he told her, "Let's go in the den and sit down and talk about it rationally."
When he went into the kitchen to make coffee, she ran out of the house in her bedclothes.
"She just started screaming `Help, help' - a blood-curdling scream, as if her life was in jeopardy," he remembered later, expressing surprise at her reaction. "I didn't maim her or do anything really horrible."
Indifference to the pain and terror they inflict is common among men who beat their wives or girlfriends.
They strike out because of a twisted combination of impulses that may include anger, insecurity, a desire to dominate.
"It all has to do with power. Not love. Not money," says Alvin Nash, a Roanoke counselor and social worker. "Power, control - that's what brings on most violence."
When a man who is insecure and prone to anger feels his power being threatened, Nash said, violence is a likely result.
How to prevent abusers from repeating their crimes is a question lawmakers, counselors, police officers and judges continue to grapple with.
Nash works with one program that tries to respond to this problem. He is a co-leader of one of five "men's anger control groups" run by Family Service of Roanoke Valley, a private, non-profit counseling agency.
The goal behind the group is to break through the walls of anger and violence that the men have built in their relationships - and show them alternatives to brute force.
"They are dug in trenches in the way they are thinking," Nash said. "If you give people ideas about how to think, you'd be surprised at what it would do for them."
Like the Roanoke man whose bedroom punch sent his wife screaming into the night air, many men come into the group believing they have done little - or nothing - wrong.
Some volunteer, but most who attend have been ordered into the program after being convicted of assaulting their wives or girlfriends.
Roanoke Valley judges generally give first- and second-time offenders a choice: Either attend 13 sessions of the counseling group or go to jail.
Circuit Judge Diane Strickland, who serves on a state task force studying domestic violence, believes the group has an effect on the men she has ordered to attend.
Often when they return to court after finishing the group, she said, "I will see a very different person than the person who was originally before the court."
Darlene Young, director of the Roanoke Valley's Turning Point shelter for abused women, is skeptical about the effectiveness of the men's counseling program.
"I can't tell you any case that I know of when a man went through the group and was changed," she said. "We see too many women back in here whose husbands have been court-ordered" into the program.
Steve Miller, who directs the group program for Family Services, believes ordering men into counseling is a big improvement over the way the courts handled their cases a decade or more ago. Back then, they were often sent home with little other than a lecture from the judge.
"Having a suspended sentence hanging over someone is effective," Miller said. "That makes a difference in getting them to follow through" with counseling.
Miller said no figures are available on how often men from Roanoke courts resume their violence after completing the program. But in Bedford County, he said, just six of the 28 men who completed the group had returned to court on similar charges within six to 24 months.
Those numbers don't include men who refuse to attend or don't finish the required 13 sessions. Fewer than one-fifth of the men ordered into the program fail to complete it, he said.
Young said she believes the anger-control program is a good idea and is well run by Family Services. But her concern is that counseling needs to be used in addition to jail time rather than being used instead of time behind bars.
There is evidence that jail sentences help reduce repeat episodes of wife battering.
A study of the Minneapolis Police Department found that men who were jailed after a domestic assault were less likely to repeat their attacks.
Violence was repeated within the next six months in 37 percent of the cases in which an officer had simply talked to or warned a batterer. Violence recurred in only 19 percent of the cases in which police arrested the suspect.
The Virginia General Assembly is considering a bill that seeks to encourage police officers to make more arrests in cases of family violence.
The legislation, introduced at the request of Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, also would make assault against a family or household member a separate crime.
The penalty for a person's first two offenses under the new law would remain the same as in other assaults - up to a year in jail. But a third offense would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Young, whose battered-women's shelter is the largest in Virginia, said men who terrorize their mates must learn that it is a crime.
"They should pull some time for them to see it's not acceptable to beat a woman. I think we're too easy on them, especially the first time."
\ NOTE: TV Documentary: Information for this series of stories came from research for a documentary, "Wounded Sky." The video will air at 8 p.m. Thursday on Jake Wheeler's Nightline on WBRA-Public Television.
by CNB