In this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf discusses the history, trends, and current innovations in the abusive partner intervention field with Juan Carlos Areán, program director of Children and Youth Programs at Futures Without Violence. They highlight the Abusive Partner Accountability and Engagement Training and Technical Assistance Project, a collaboration between the Center for Court Innovation and Futures Without Violence to help communities enhance their responses to people who cause harm through intimate partner violence.
The following is a transcript of the podcast:
We talk about that intergenerational cycle of violence but there's such thing as the
intergenerational cycle of love and we don't talk about that so much. To change that, to change
that legacy is not only to change it on your children, but it's changing it in many generations to
come.
Rob Wolf: I'm Rob Wolf at the Center for Court Innovation with a new episode of In Practice, our podcast that tells the stories of practitioners -- people who work in or closely with the justice system, who are trying to make the system live up to its name, that is, make justice, more just. Today we're going to talk with a national leader in efforts to respond to domestic and intimate partner violence. Juan Carlos Areán, is a program director in Children and Youth Programs at Futures Without Violence. For the past two years, Juan Carlos has been working with the Center for Court Innovation and other organizations to enhance intervention programs for abusive partners.
As part of this project the Center and Futures have developed guiding principles for this kind of programming and Juan Carlos has also hosted a series of podcasts, looking at abusive partner intervention programs from various angles. As a leader in the field, he has numerous areas of expertise, including the intersection of fatherhood and DV, cultural approaches to end violence, and curriculum writing. He was previously the director of the National Latino Network at Casa de Esperanza and the Sexual Assault Prevention Specialist at Harvard University. He has led hundreds of workshops and presentations throughout the United States and around the world, and he is also an ordained interfaith minister and holds a master's degree in music composition. Hey, Juan Carlos. Welcome to In Practice.
Juan Carlos Areán: Thank you so much Rob. Thanks for the introduction and thanks for having me.
Wolf: Well, it is a pleasure and an honor to have you here. So, why don't we just dive in, and for people who may not be familiar with some of the terminology, if you could just define what is abusive partner intervention programming and maybe you can reflect a little bit too on how it has evolved over the years and the factors that have fed its evolution.
Areán: Well, so what we call abusive partner intervention programs is basically working with people who use violence in their intimate relationships and that cause harm in those relationships. We are at a period in history for this field that we're changing language around it and different people use different names for this kind of work. It traditionally has been called batterer’s intervention, although some people prefer to call it battering intervention. And I think some of us are trying to talk more about intervention of the behavior, rather than the person. But whatever you want to call them, these programs work with people who use violence -- originally men, but in the last few years, more people across the gender spectrum.
These programs started in the 1970s pretty soon after the battered women's movement started with the second wave of feminism. I think there were men who were allies to the women in this movement, and, as I hear from people who are originators of this kind of programming, these women basically told the men, go do something with the abusers, help them change. So, it's a relatively new field in some ways, but somewhat established now after 40 years. I have been doing the work for 30 years now, this is my 30th anniversary year. And one of the things of having been doing it for a while, one of the advantages is that you do see evolution. Sometimes evolution that you may agree with. And sometimes that you might not agree with, but in general I think this field has evolved in ways that I do agree with. Well, at the very beginning, people really didn't know what they were doing. There were no laws against domestic violence in the mid 70s and people were just trying to figure out how to do this work. As the domestic violence movement became more and more aligned with the criminal and legal systems, the programs did that, too.
So, we are now in a situation in which most of these programs are very connected with the criminal justice system, some of them with also the civil system and with child welfare, but not so much. And I think historically, there was a lot of emphasis on what a traditional definition of accountability. And what I mean a traditional definition is like mainly focusing on consequences, legal and sometimes also outside the legal system, and not so much focusing on the process of change, if you will. That's something that has been changing in the last few years. And even though not everybody is in the same boat with this, this is by no means a monolithic field. In fact, there's a lot of disagreement in many things, but more and more people are starting to realize that in addition to having very strong limits and consequences, what some people would call accountability or traditionally, you also have to be thinking about support for positive change and for barriers that might be on the way for people to make choices that are more healthy for their families. So that's one way in which I have seen the field change and it's a significant change, by the way.
Wolf: That's so interesting and before I ask, and move on, move the conversation forward. I thought maybe just to make sure so I understood correctly, it sounds like when these programs first emerged in the 70s because there wasn't a lot of legal leverage or it wasn't even recognized necessarily as a crime everywhere, domestic violence, that the effort was on, just do something. And it sounds a little more like, get them to change. And then it became more punitive as the justice system got involved. And now we're at a place where both have a role to play if there's change and there's also the accountability that comes with having laws in place. If I summarize that correctly, I'm wondering if I did.
Areán: I think that's a great way to put it. I myself had not thought about it that way. One thing I do want to add is that I think at the beginning, even when there were no mandates for people to go to these programs. A lot of people approach the work from, kind of like a righteous perspective, if I might use that word. There was either purposefully or not, there was a lot of shaming happening. And a lot of kind of separation between practitioners, some people that participated in the program. And I think there's now plenty of research to show not only in this field, but in general and when you are trying to invite someone to change that shame might not be the best way to do it. It might work for some people and guilt might work, which is different from shame. Guilt is more about feeling bad about what you've done and shame for me is more about who you are.
So even though at the beginning, there was no that legal mandate, I think the approaches and again, I totally understand that back then people were trying to figure out okay, how do we do this, how does this work? But I think through the years we have to realize that to invite people to change from a more compassionate way without colluding. And that's where people get tripped up with this issue is that sometimes they feel like, okay, what we are saying, that if we support that change, if we see more of the humanity in people who use violence to help them change, we are colluding with them, and we're making things worse.
But I believe that as you said at the end of your statement that you can do both things. You can keep a strong accountability, both from a legal and outside of the legal system like natural consequences of life. But at the same time, you can be supportive in that process of change and empathize in that way with the person. And again, it's interesting because I think more and more research is showing that that combination, that balance between those two things are probably the way to go.
Wolf: Let's jump forward in time, that is from the 1970s to now where Futures Without Violence, and the Center for Court Innovation have been collaborating. I know the goal of the collaboration has been really to advance understanding of abusive partner intervention programming and the latest research and best practices. So, how have you approached this work and what's your vision for it?
Areán: Center for Court Innovation and Futures Without Violence, in my view, are maybe the only two national organizations, and I hope that I'm not leaving anyone out, but they're at least from my knowledge the two national organizations that historically decided to include looking at abusive partner intervention as part of our work. There's many other organizations that focus on supporting victims, as we do too, and CCI does too, and bystanders and also prevention, and so on. So, there's a lot of aspects to approach this work, but I think it was in some way natural that eventually CCI and Futures would connect around this thing, this topic. Because we both have been approaching it from somewhat different perspectives, at least from the beginning. And we have been more coming from a community kind of approach, obviously CCI, a lot of their works is in the courts.
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