7:26am July 22, 2013

➸ Massachusetts figured out a simple solution to prevent domestic homicide: Target abusers.

gumballriot:

Massachusetts you god damned geniuses! Good for you!

The system works in no small part because it turns the logic of an abusive relationship on its head. The abuser works by making the victim feel like she will never be free of him, his violence, and his surveillance. If she tries to leave, he escalates. If she gets a new boyfriend, he escalates. The idea is to make her feel like her choices are to submit or to live in terror. The high-risk teams shift the burden of being surveilled from the victim to the abuser. Now, if he makes a threat, Massachusetts has the power to escalate. If he uses visitation time to attack her or her children, Massachusetts restricts visitation. Now he’s the one who has to make his decisions with the understanding that someone with power can further restrict his movements and his ability to live freely. Abusers often victimize for years before taking things to the level of a serious beating or murder. By restricting movements in the early stages, it appears that the program helps keep abusers from getting to that point.

Glad to see some changes there. One excellent indication of just how messed-up the system often is: “If he uses visitation time to attack her or her children, Massachusetts restricts visitation.” When an abuser’s “right" to jerk people around and terrorize them with visitation is considered far more important than the kids’ actual safety and right not to be abused and/or witness violence against other family members, there’s something bad wrong. (BTDT, with one of the high-risk ones this program is targeting—and before the MRAs really got into this stuff. The court system was frequently bad enough, before they started in with the orcish appeals to “fairness". )

It still disturbs me that the child abuse here is getting framed in terms of “her" children, and maybe not even getting treated as a separate offense. Go around abusing family members, none of them should ever be legally required to spend time around you again. Supervised or otherwise. But, bad behavior having much impact on visitation at all is an improvement.