THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 25, 1994 TAG: 9406250208
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940625 LENGTH: Long
The majority of the men, like Hall, had been convicted of assault charges and ordered by a judge to either join the group for 12 weeks or serve time in jail.
{REST} For most, the group was an easy way out. The men, like batterers across the country, included professionals and blue-collar workers, men of all racial backgrounds and temperaments. But they shared one underlying feeling.
``Everyone felt like they had no need to be there,'' said Hall, a slim but muscled man. ``I thought it was going to be a waste of time. Some of us were victims, and the wives, there was no class for them. That's what amazed a lot of people.''
Gradually, though, Hall came to realize that what he had done that February 1993 evening was wrong. That slugging his wife in the face, wrapping his hands around her neck and screaming at her while their children watched in horror was not the way to settle an argument.
It's a point of illumination at which some men never arrive, a revelation that experts in the field of domestic violence say O.J. Simpson may never have experienced. Some of the lines in a letter Simpson wrote last week expressed sentiments that Hall had felt in his own marriage:
``Like all long-term relationships, we had a few downs and ups,'' Simpson wrote about his relationship with his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson. Later in the letter: ``At times I have felt like a battered husband or boyfriend, but I loved her, make that clear to everyone.''
Many of the men who have been through support groups for batterers in Norfolk and Virginia Beach cling to similar conclusions: The abuse they've been accused of was nothing more than marital spatting. They were just as abused as their spouses. Or the allegations that landed them in the class simply didn't happen.
Minimizing, blaming, denying. This mental cycle keeps men from breaking the abuse habit, and makes rehabilitation of batterers one of the toughest pieces of the domestic violence puzzle.
Cheryl Bonneville, who coordinates the Men's Domestic Violence Program for Norfolk's YWCA, says roughly one-fifth of the 100 men a year who come through the support groups are ``hard-core abusers.'' In other words, they never acknowledge that what they have done is even wrong.
Their standard lines include:
``I didn't hit her that hard.''
``She hit me first.''
``I only hit her once.''
``If she hadn't taken the money, I wouldn't have had to hit her in the first place.''
Other men in the classes walk out resolving not to hit their wives or girlfriends. But, Bonneville says, the men's spouses say that even though the slapping and shoving may stop, the emotional abuse and controlling nature usually don't.
While Hall, 35, admits that what he did was wrong, he places equal blame on his wife. He boils down his history of violence to two incidents: During one, he and his wife were driving along, discussing one of their most impassioned subjects - money - and he hauled off and hit her in the face.
The second, he says, was one night in February 1993 when they were arguing, once again, about money. Hall said his wife had taken out a $1,100 cash advance on one of his credit cards. He asked her about it, and an argument ensued.
``I jumped her,'' he said. ``I grabbed her by the neck and knocked her on the couch.''
He left for a few days, but returned to what he thought was life as usual. ``We worked it out,'' he said. Although he had considered the fight a normal family experience, his wife, Sonia, had been alarmed enough to file a police report.
Four months later, when the couple got into another fight, Hall lunged toward his wife again. She picked up a hammer to ward him off, she says, and hit him in the head. ``It was that, or lay there and get killed,'' said his wife. He ended up in the emergency room, getting five stitches in his scalp.
When he tried to file charges against her, he was arrested on the warrant that she had taken out on him in February. At an August 1993 hearing, he agreed to take the classes and pay $226 in fines and court costs. His 90-day jail sentence was suspended on the condition he attend the support group. The couple have separated and are going through divorce proceedings.
Although he says the group helped him realize he had mentally and physically abused his wife, he still doesn't consider himself a violent person. ``I only hit my wife twice,'' said Hall, who lives in Portsmouth. ``Once in '85 and once in '93. Those were the only two times I physically put my hands on my wife. But if you were to hear my wife tell the story, she'd say there was something constantly going on.''
He's right. Sonia Hall, who lives in Virginia Beach with the couple's three children, said the incident he was arrested for was just part of an on-going pattern of abuse during their 10-year marriage.
She cites a litany of times when he threatened her or tried to choke her, after which she would call the police or crisis hot lines. ``He'd act like he didn't know what I was talking about,'' the 30-year-old woman said. ``He's very aggressive, very hostile. He'd become very dangerous. I wanted him to get counseling for his problem. He said he was satisfied with himself.''
Odell Hall, however, describes many of the incidents she cites as ``something in her mind.'' And he says she was just as abusive. Sonia Hall pleaded guilty in December 1993 of assaulting her husband with a hammer. She was sentenced to 12 months in jail, but the sentence was suspended on condition she not have contact with him.
Bonneville said women do lash out at their husbands, but they are often defending themselves. ``While she may fight back, the woman is usually the one who is terrorized,'' Bonneville said.
Support groups for men try to turn men away from blaming their spouses and focus their attention on what they themselves did wrong. Slowly, methodically, the facilitators of the groups try to instill a message almost childlike in nature: Hitting is wrong.
But the toughest part of rehabilitating men, the experts say, is getting them to stop trying to control their wives or girlfriends, and to break lifelong concepts of the roles of men and women, husband and wife.
Twelve weeks is rarely enough time to change a lifetime of indoctrination. ``It takes us 12 weeks just to break through the denial,'' said Rob Gallup, who runs a program in Denver in which male batterers receive from 36 weeks to three years of counseling. He believes the answer lies in long-term counseling by people trained in domestic-abuse prevention.
Rehabilitation efforts will be powerless without stronger criminal action against batterers, said Ruth Micklem, advocacy director for Virginians Against Domestic Violence. ``Rehabilitation is useless unless we have criminal consequences. Not all men are amenable to treatment.''
Odell Hall says it took both a trip through the criminal justice system and the support group to make him take that first step of admitting that hitting his wife was wrong. ``It's not OK. It's like history. It repeats itself.''
{KEYWORDS} ASSAULT WIFE BEATING SPOUSE ABUSE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SUPPORT GROUP
by CNB