Men's behaviour change sessions helping cut domestic violence

But when change involves turning around ingrained behaviour learned over a lifetime and that underpins nearly every interaction you have – the change becomes lifesaving in more ways than one.

Katie Richter has the job of helping men who treat women badly see the error of their ways.

How do she and her colleagues across Shepparton, the Goulburn Valley and the country do it? Max Stainkamph finds out.

The circle will be full of men – they will be sitting in chairs arranged in a circle, giving off the feeling of an Alcoholics Anonymous-type group meeting.

These men are part of a behaviour change session. Some of these sessions are voluntary, when men put their hand up as having a problem or have volunteered themselves to come forward, but the men in the circle when Katie Richter walk in aren’t there by choice.

These men – who might have breached AVOs, or gone before the courts on charges related to domestic violence – are old and young, some gruff and some well-dressed, and all mandated by courts in one way or another to be there.

Ms Richter is the senior practitioner of Uniting Victoria Tasmania’s family violence intervention program.

Specifically, she’s part of the court intake and assessment program, which is where many men who are sentenced by courts to complete men’s behaviour change programs are sent.

How do you change that? Years – or decades – of learned behaviour, of men justifying what they’ve done?

“We don't actually change the men, the men change themselves,” Ms Richter said.

“My job isn't to tell them that they're wrong, it's to explore it with them, and they do the work.”

She said when the men began the 20-week course, they often had a “lack of accountability” for their actions in their first few sessions.

“We work to unpack that and get them to shift their accountability and be accountable for what they can be accountable for,” Ms Richter said.

“That's something we say every single week: you can only be accountable for what you can be accountable for.”

The courses – which are run throughout the eastern states – were largely designed by No To Violence, an organisation that engages with men to try to end domestic violence.

No To Violence put together the framework on which Ms Richter’s Uniting course is built on, and chief executive Jacqui Watt said the course was based on the fundamental principles the organisation believed in.

“We don’t believe men are born violent, we think there are social and environmental factors which cause them to become violent,” Ms Watt said.

“We want them to understand what they’re doing.”

Ms Watt said having other men in the room was crucial to the sessions, and having participants at different stages of the program allowed them to lead the way for newer members.

“It’s a big ask for a man in his 40s who’s been using emotional manipulation for the last 20 years to admit to his behaviour and acknowledge it’s wrong,” Ms Watt said.

“We rely a bit on peer pressure.”

In practice the men, Ms Richter said, often came around — and thanks to men who had been there for longer, usually the majority of participants ended up with stronger grounding in taking responsibility for their actions.

“Blokes will come in on their first night and they'll be like, ‘where's the women's group’, and . . . the ones that have been there for weeks will say ‘yeah mate, we've all been there [and thought that], it's not about them’, and just shut it straight down,” Ms Richter said.

Both Ms Watt and Ms Richter work with men who have perpetuated family violence, be it physically, emotionally, financially — or in any other form.

They don’t see them as monsters.

“Family violence is everything that men have been taught their entire lives growing up, it's so systemic,” Ms Richter said.

Breaking that system down isn’t easy. Often, many men don’t recognise the underlying behaviours that lead to violence, intimidation and emotional abuse.

“A typical presentation that we get is a lack of accountability in the first few sessions in the first few assessments that we do with them, but we work to unpack that and get them to know, shift their accountability and be accountable for what they can be accountable for,” Ms Richter said.

People who run the courses don’t directly tell participants they’ve done the wrong thing to end up in the sessions – and they don’t necessarily focus on the violence itself.

Be it physical, emotional, financial or using children as a bargaining chip, practitioners such as Ms Richter explore what’s behind the actions.

“We ask ‘what do you think her experience of that was?’ and get him to unpack it,” she said.

“Eventually they realise it themselves.”

Each of the sessions are run by two facilitators – a man and a woman.

Ms Watt said having women in the conversation was important.

“The courses are designed with a male and female facilitator, that’s one of the fundamental things it’s designed on,” she said.

“Part of what sparks [family violence] is disrespect for women, and that disrespect gets amplified up to homicide.

“That’s not to say anyone who disrespects a woman is going to commit murder but that’s where it starts. We have to tackle that [disrespect] to fix the issue. It starts at demeaning comments and goes all the way through.”

Ms Watt said having a woman in the room was to “keep the men honest”, but more importantly it showed a man and a woman working together.

It’s not overtly mentioned or addressed, but “subliminally it’s a factor to show opposite sexes can work together”.

Crucially, does it work?

''Yes. It doesn’t have a 100 per cent hit rate – nothing does, let alone something like this. The court-mandated sessions can be tricky,'' Ms Watt said.

“We don’t expect people to walk in and say ‘I’ve been a bit of a bastard, can you fix me?’” she said.

The fact the program exists at all gives Ms Watt hope, and the fact voluntary programs – where men ring up and say they think they have a problem, where they want help – are growing in number.

However, more is needed.

“I think it’s fundamental to be able to say ‘we have a system to help prevent family violence’,” she said.

“We’ve got bits of a system . . . we never seem to have enough courses or counsellors or funding.

“Family violence does damage to kids, to health services, to the country . . . it’s intergenerational.”

Ms Richter said from her experience the men “usually become better partners and fathers” after completing the course.

“Sometimes I think that [improvement] won't be in the same relationship that they're in, I think in the next relationship they do really well,” she said.

No To Violence runs a men’s referral service on 1300 766 491. If you’re a victim of domestic violence and need help, call Triple-0 in an emergency and 1800 737 732 for the domestic violence counselling line.