The STOP Program: For Women Who Abuse
It used to be that, when we trained mental health professionals, probation officers, victims’ programs, attorneys, and correctional officers all over the world, we had to convince people there was such a thing as female domestic violence.
But over the past decade, the landscape has shifted—and instead we hear pleas everywhere for a quality treatment program for women who abuse that is specifically targeted to women’s issues.
So, after years of pilot group testing, integrating rapidly emerging new research trends, and borrowing from the tremendous success of “The STOP Program for Men” (now in its Third Edition, published by Norton in 2013), this new treatment program was hatched: “The STOP Program: For Women Who Abuse” (Norton, 2016), focusing on innovative strategies for women who abuse their partners.
Like the men’s manual, this new program integrates contemporary interventions and client-centered guidelines to successfully treat domestic violence offenders—who happen to be female.
This program is timed to address the rapidly increasing awareness of female domestic violence and need for quality treatment services. Developed and field-tested for over twenty-five years among military and civilian populations internationally, this program offers therapists, social workers, and other counselors a new level of sound, psychologically-based interventions that actually reach the very women who often seem so unapproachable in a treatment setting.
Presented in a 26-week or 52-week psychoeducational format, “The STOP Program: For Women Who Abuse” is packed with updated skills, training exercises, articles, video clips, handouts, homework, and other resources–that push participants to examine the complex roles of trauma, emotional dysregulation, self-esteem deficits, and history of personal victimization in their relationship problems. And the program gives them new tools to manage these unique issues.
This manual includes many of the same sessions as the original STOP Program for men, with appropriate changes in pronouns, vignettes, and examples. We also have developed and integrated new material specifically dealing with issues that contemporary research and our clinical experience indicate are especially relevant for female offenders: victimization (and rationalization) issues, assertiveness vs. aggression issues, shame, grief and loss, parenting and co-parenting, boundary violations, emotional self-management and dysregulation issues, jealousy, self-esteem issues, gender rules and gender roles, and need for social support.
We are offering training workshops in this new model throughout the world. COME JOIN US IN OCT 2016 FOR THE TWO-DAY “STOP PROGRAM: FOR WOMEN WHO ABUSE” CONFERENCE IN SAN DIEGO. For more info, go to www.RTIprojects.org
And if any of you are doing similar work, please let us know so we can all share and learn.
David B. Wexler, Ph.D.
dbwexler@gmail.com
Aug 24, 2016 @ 02:50:36
We have begun to treat the incarcerated female population in Sacramento. We also have a small group of women in our public classes. I have ordered your book and look forward to reading the material. We are always looking to improve our outcomes and offer cutting edge material.
Daniel Thomas
Man Alive Sacramento Inc.
Sep 14, 2016 @ 05:32:40
I am currently conducting field research with women who abuse their male partners as part of my Doctoral dissertation in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University in Montreal. I am interviewing women who engage in physical abuse in order to understand their experiences as perpetrators rather than victims of IPV. Although there are many types of IPV, physical abuse is the criteria for inclusion in this study. I am still recruiting participants for this research and, as David Wexler and others have rightly commented, it is difficult to convince people that female perpetrators even exist. Therefore, services for female perpetrators of IPV and their male victims are severely lacking. The overwhelming message at the ADVIP conference was that there continues to be a dearth of research related to female perpetrators of IPV. Therefore it is surprising that many of the treatment providers I have contacted have been reticent or are unwilling to engage with research that focuses on female perpetrators. Without the research into female perpetrators of IPV, a largely ignored section of the population, understanding their behaviour and improving their outcomes will be very slow indeed.
Lesley Lambo
PhD Candidate in Social and Cultural Analysis
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec
(Lesley.lambo@concordia.ca)
Jan 09, 2017 @ 05:54:03
Lesley,
Please feel free to contact me at Daniel@no2violence.com
Jan 09, 2017 @ 06:42:02
Lesley:
Have you seen the recent presentation by Tonia Nicholls at that Canadian conference? You can find it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtOsEkY_UHc
May 27, 2017 @ 18:09:22
Daniel and John,
I have completed the field research and interviews with the clients at OnTrack in Medford, Oregon. I have just begun writing my dissertation. This research with women perpetrators is extremely challenging, particularly in Canada where I had planned to conduct the fieldwork. I was advised by a counsellor here, that it was not worth his job having me conduct research among his clients, according to him their funding would be put in jeopardy. Two counsellors invited me to attend the women’s support groups because they agreed that this research is crucial, only to be shut down by their Directors before I could conduct any interviews. Therefore I am very grateful to OnTrack Inc, particularly Leslie Kendall and Dr. Rita Sullivan, for allowing me access to their clients, many of whom magnanimously agreed to be interviewed for this research.
May 27, 2017 @ 19:47:28
Lesley:
Leslie Kendall and Rita Sullivan are wonderful clinicians, who have no fear of putting evidence-based practice and the needs of victims above political considerations. A few years ago, at their invitation, I joined the noted researchers Sandra Stith and Deborah Capaldi for a one-day domestic violence training in Medford. Except for a small number of dissenting voices, the presentation, which included a call for couples counseling and differential treatment over the usual one-size-fits-all approach, was very well-received. I wish you the best with your research!
May 27, 2017 @ 21:16:09
Hello Lesley. Thanks for positing your update about the trials and tribulations of your female DV offender research. Please keep me posted about how it’s going (and I’d be happy to look at your lit review or other materials). The world of DV treatment is awaiting your findings.
May 28, 2017 @ 15:14:58
The “funding position” will be exactly right. The unfettered and unchallenged finance all goes to preventing violence to women and girls VAWG. That initiatives like the Duluth Abuser programme are now largely discredited needs to be “put out there” to those people who currently, willy-nilly, fund the nonsense.
Below
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/305319/transforming-rehabilitation-evidence-summary-2nd-edition.pdf (p.25)
What is the impact on reoffending? The most recent systematic review of US evidence indicates that the Duluth Model appears to have no effect on recidivism.154 However, this review also identified substantial reductions in domestic violence reoffending by offenders who had attended other interventions. These interventions varied widely in their approach (including cognitive behavioural therapy, relationship enhancement and group couples counselling), and the reviewers were therefore unable to make recommendations about specific preferred alternatives to the Duluth Model.”
To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, above is the MOJ (Ministry of Justice Paper). Cafcass is a department of the MOJ. Cafcass still funds essentially Duluth work by the “approved accreditor”!
If we do not provide those funders with the relevant questions they need to be asking, then that power base will simply continue, and make no mistake the advocates are very happy to duplicate services. Women’s Aid in Britain has approximately 378 affiliated members there are 5 at least within a 15 mile radius of Northampton each applying for and gaining money from local authorities for “necessary services”. The councillors involved have no idea in most cases of just what is going on and what they are funding. If we don’t tell them nobody else will! They need to be primed with relevant information, so they can ask relevant questions at funding time. They are not aware that the cost of a refuge bed in the UK is, in very many cases between about £60k – £75k per year, that only a small percentage of income is spent on “refuge” and a very large proportion on political lobbying – for more money etc. The councillors will not be aware that the “very helpful” Freedom Programme (for all women, victims or perpetrators and both) is more an ideological feminist brain-washing operation of traumatised women, ensuring that those women know all about the 8 or 9 versions of abusive men (which means all men!) than about helping the woman to manage her traumas. Where RESPECT insist that every perpetrator programme have a female victim supporting department the councillors will not be aware of pro-feminist researcher Edward Gondolf (2003a) who states that since only 8% of female victims maintain contact with the programme that arm of the work is not associated with reductions in domestic violence!
https://www.biscmi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Evaluating_Batterer_Programs-CDC_summary-fin.pdf
“While about a third of the batterers’ female partners reported some contact with
battered women’s services within the first 3 months of program intake (beyond contact with a
legal advocate), only 8% of the women had any contact in the next 12 months (Gondolf,
2002b). Most of this later contact was ‘‘reactive’’ in that it was a response to additional
assaults. Consequently, women services were not associated with a reduction in reassault
(Jones & Gondolf, 2001).” p 624
I know it sounds like sour grapes when we say / write it. But, if we don’t nobody else will. The vested interests are just far too great. Male victims are quite rightly coming to the fore. Who is going to be applying for the money to support them? You got it! And what will their first task be? To establish that these men are not really victims of women’s violence, heaven forbid! They are all male abusers in disguise. Rule 1. Read the policy again, VAWG!