Do you have any words of wisdom for practitioners beginning to work with fathers who have used violence?

I think one of the things that can be helpful is really taking the temperature of where an individual or where the team is at and…assess their readiness to engage men around violence.

[S]ome of us might come with our own preconceived notions, stereotypes, or even fears that are based in reality.

[T]he first step is to really do your own self-assessment to see, ‘do I have any barriers or any type of lens… that may already give me a preconceived notion of what the outcome may be when working with this dad?’”

[Have] an open mind and understand that you don’t have to make this immediate paradigm shift, but … just test one small strategy to see if it improves your work with a dad.

From an October 2017 Digital Dialogue with Dr. Johnny Rice II, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Coppin State University and founder of Social Justice Ventures LLC.

How would you go about engaging with a father who won't admit his actions and denies the violence?

What I find has been more challenging sometimes—on a community level—for an individual who has not been formally charged with an act of domestic violence… is that [T]he individual has to want to change. [I]f they don’t acknowledge that they engaged in domestic violence, the first step is trying to educate them because it could be that they don’t perceive their behavior as domestic violence based on how they were raised—it could be normal to them.

When I worked in Baltimore city…it wasn’t until when we met with [fathers] and went through peer facilitation and exposed them to another way of understanding family dynamics… that they acknowledged and said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that verbal abuse was also abuse; I didn’t know that action of mine was physical abuse.'

From an October 2017 Digital Dialogue with Dr. Johnny Rice II, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Coppin State University and founder of Social Justice Ventures LLC.

How does what you’ve learned through the about polyvictimization demonstration initiative guide prevention priorities?

Phillips: We’ve seen a shift in the paradigm. It’s no longer just crisis intervention and event based. We’re looking at the whole person holistically over their entire lifespan and moving from being a domestic violence advocate or a child advocate to being a trauma advocate and being able to assist with healing over the lifespan.

Aguirre: In our work at Family Justice Centers, because we largely work with the parent or the adult survivor, we focus on prevention by working with the whole family to ensure that we’re breaking the cycle of violence, and providing education to prevent something from happening again.

[W]e’ve taken it as a learning lesson as to how we can build these hope-centered programming and interactions with survivors, and what that information will provide us for moving forward from the policy angle or to increase our capacity to serve survivors.

From a December 2018, Digital Dialogue with Natalia Aguirre, National Director of the Family Justice Center Alliance at the Alliance for HOPE International; and Stacy Phillips, Program Manager for the Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime.