S3 Ep4: Desistance: How it's Transforming Attitudes to Family Violence
The fabulous Dr Hayley Boxall shines a light on family and partner violence by teaching us about "desistance", and practical ways that we can encourage people to stop choosing to use violence. In this refreshingly down to earth interview with Patty Kikos, Hayley talks about the importance of 'respect' for different cultures, valid reasons people choose to remain in relationships, how violence is not limited to lower socio economic environments and why pressuring someone to 'just leave', won't necessarily solve their problems.
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Transcript
Hayley
So that all kind of contributes to this idea of, like, “we just want them to leave”. We have to check our own privilege and our own biases when we just kind of insist that that's the only thing we can do for them and sit uncomfortably in that space of, how do we support victims to have the relationships that they want safely?
Patty
Yes.
Hayley
And that looks like a really different conversation. And I think desistance can be really helpful here because if we look at it through a desistance lens, it's about, “okay, the relationship's going to be you guys are staying together, how do we support the perpetrator to stop perpetrating abuse? How do we support the victim to keep safe? What does that look like within this context?”
And desistance work can be really, really helpful for that. But we just don't have those conversations in that way at the moment because it's all about, how do we support the victim to leave? And that’s just not realistic for many people experiencing abuse.
Patty
Hello. I'm Patty Kikos, and welcome to our latest chat with Dr. Hayley Boxall. Now, don't let her ‘doctor’ title fool you into thinking that she's going to be a boring academic. She's anything but. Hayley is down to earth, real, and passionate about her work and life. In fact, she's a tattoo and crochet enthusiast and a podcast junkie as well. In the small amount of time that I've known her, she's taught me so much about desistance.
And we talk a lot about how it applies to family violence, more specifically, how we can use it to prevent it from reoccurring. Desistance refers to the process of moving away from criminal behaviour. And it's fascinating when we apply the lens of family violence to that term. How is it that people can give up being violent, for instance? We unpack this together and we use different examples from our own professional careers to try and make sense of a concept, that is still not so well known in the vernacular of mainstream society.
Haley is a criminologist who has been undertaking research on domestic and family violence for 13 years. She's got a lot of experience in collecting and analysing data, including large scale surveys of people in Australia, as well as a proven track record of engaging with vulnerable people as part of interviews and other qualitative research methods. This includes children and parents involved in Child Protection systems, young people who use violence in the home, and women with lived experience of sexual violence and intimate partner violence. Hayley is a mom to 3 littles, and is actually one of my hero’s, especially because at the time that we recorded this interview, it was her turn to navigate the bug that they'd all brought home from daycare. And she rallied like an absolute trooper to speak to me. Hayley, you've been living in Canberra, but you hail from Sydney originally. What prompted the move?
Hayley
So, I finished my undergraduate in Bachelor of Criminology, and I was looking for a job. And because I mean, what do you do with a criminology degree? And the Australian Institute of Criminology was advertising, and I was lucky enough to get a job and they were based in Canberra. So, I took my little 25 year old self and moved to Canberra.
Patty
And then subsequently started a family.
Hayley
Yeah. Everything kind of happened for me in Canberra, really. Canberra has a really bad reputation, as being, you know, a bit boring.
Although I think it's starting to change now. And I know people who have spent 10 years in Canberra and are still like, 'Yeah, nah.' But they've just kind of managed to put down roots and so they have to stay. But I always, I just really liked it. It is like a big country town. It's, it's much more chill. And I met my husband here and I've had 3 babies here and I've bought a house here and it just suits me down to the ground, which is really nice.
Patty
You literally put roots down. What was your life like in Sydney? It was it was lovely. Like, I mean, I, you know, Sydney's great.
Hayley
It was very privileged. I grew up on the Northern Shore. I went to public schools and all those kinds of things, but I lived in very kind of bougee heritage listed houses.
Patty
How did you manage that? {both laugh}
Hayley
Well, just managed because my parents just loved buying heritage listed buildings. And so I grew up in building sites, so, I constantly woke up to tradies demolishing kitchens. And became really, really adept at making really good cups of tea, and dealing with tradies from a very early age, because my parents would run out the door saying, “oh, can you just tell this to the tradies before you go to school?”
So, yeah, like, upbringing was very, very privileged, very, very middle class, lived in very, very nice suburbs in Sydney. I was 25, started at the AIC, and the AIC is a great place to work if anyone ever has an opportunity to work there. But because you're an early career kind of researcher, you don't really know what floats your boat. And after working there for a few years, they really just came to me and asked if I had an interest in domestic and family violence because they knew that there was a big interest in it in 2015. And so, they wanted to up skill someone to get a lot more knowledge in that space.
And I'd always had like a peripheral kind of interest in it, but when I started really doing research in it, I just fell in love. It was an area that just really resonated with me. And in retrospect, I think I was attracted to the space and it really started to float my boat because I could see the impacts of domestic and family violence throughout different generations of my family.
So, I mean, as I said, I came from a really privileged background, really kind of bougie middle class background, but multiple generations of domestic and family violence within the history of my family. And I can see the impacts of that played out through all levels of my family. And doing this research has been really helpful for me to kind of really understand the dynamics in my family, and why some of my family members are the way that they are, and my childhood really lovely and all of those kinds of things, but also really challenging in some respects.
Patty
So how did your framework for understanding intergenerational violence help you understand why you might've found some family stressful and even upsetting for you?
Hayley
Well, because it kind of gave me a language to talk about it. It kind of helped me to really go, well that's why I found that person challenging or that interaction challenging, because they are perpetrators of abuse or because they're a victim of abuse. And trauma manifests in certain ways for them and influences how they interact with other people. So, it gave me a framework for really understanding the behaviours of family members and also understand my reaction to those behaviours in a really helpful way, I think.
Patty
It's nice to hear you say that we came from a white privileged family. Family violence exists in so many different cultures, doesn't it? Hayley
It really does. And I mean, the way that it manifests can look really different. But I think that that is a really important thing to kind of think about is that it does not discriminate, in the sense of it does happen in very white middle class kind of backgrounds. It might look slightly different to what it looks like in other communities, but this is a universal experience. This is something that every culture, every community, every neighbourhood has to kind of deal with.
Patty
True that. True that. Hayley, through you, I have discovered a lot more about desistance. And the more I learn about it, the more I realise that in some cases, I've even seen examples of this in my own professional, and possibly personal life. But can you help us define what it is?
Hayley
So, desistance is really about trying to understand the processes that support people to stop offending or engaging in some kind of negative impactful behaviour. So, historically, we've thought about desistance as basically when someone stops offending.
So, it's a kind of like on that day, they stop offending. But really, what we know about behaviour is so much more complex than that, that it can take a lot of time. It can occur, like, incrementally over the life course, that really kind of like people can work towards desistance or stopping offending over a long period of time. So really, that's all desistance is. It's really about trying to unpack what that looks like for individuals.
But when we think about it from a domestic and family violence perspective, we really haven't actually done that research, because desistance as a concept is actually relatively new. It's something we've only really been talking about for the last 30 years within Criminology, and most of the research that we've done on desistance has come from populations and samples of people who may not be abusers themselves.
It could be that they're property offenders, or that they're violent in other context, but not towards their family members. So, a lot of that evidence is only just now starting to kind of creep into the domestic and family violence space. And that's really where a lot of my research sits, is trying to understand not only who does perpetrate violence, but who stops perpetrating violence and what can we learn about those people that helps us support other people who might be on their desistance journeys.
Patty
Why can and why do people stop being violent and what helps them stop? Is that the million dollar question?
Hayley
Yeah. I mean, this is it, right? And I mean, frustratingly, what we know is that it can be a very individualised thing. So, what works for one person may not work for another person. So, there's this constant frustration of, “well, how do we design that perfect universal program that's going to meet everyone's needs?” And it's like, well, that doesn't exist. We need multiple different levers that we can pull.
But in general, what we know that supports some people to desist is, a combination of different factors. So, one of the things that we talk about is social factors, so things like employment, education, family structures, things like that can be really, really important for some people. And we talk about that as being important because, it becomes more costly to engage in offending behaviour. So, if I get done for an abuse offence, like if I get done for DFV, I might lose my job. And certainly, a lot of women I've spoken to have said, I didn't wanna report the abuse or my partner stopped, because they didn't wanna lose their security clearance, or something like that.
But we also know that what's happening in people's brains is really important, so how they think about themselves. Like, do they want to be an offender? Do they want to change? Is really, really important. Relationships are really important. So having children can be really important for some people to stop abusing. Getting different kinds of friend networks, so whether or not their friends are involved in abusing abusive behaviours can be important. But usually, it's a combination of a whole bunch of different things that cumulatively kind of contributes to behaviour change.
Patty
Okay. So, when we're talking about desistance, it can occur when someone's circumstances also change, like you said.
So, for instance, we hear people say, my mum was a ferocious bully, but after she had a stroke, she mellowed and her and entire demeanour softened, and she was no longer physically or verbally abusive. Or for instance, my dad used to drink and become violent. But after the heartache of my brother passing away, and him needing to take care of his granddaughter, so that she wouldn't be put into foster care, he never touched a drop or laid a hand on us again. Would either of those examples fit into the definition of desistance?
Hayley
Yeah. For sure. I mean, particularly the second one, because you can kind of go, well, okay, so why was taking on the care of their granddaughter so important for the granddad? Well, it's like, well, number 1, it could be that they're contributing to the next generation, and so they have this kind of investment in they have a new role for themselves, which is granddad. I'm trying to protect my granddaughter, which can be really, really important, for desistance stuff.
So, it's about how you see yourself and your role and those kinds of things. It could also be that investment in relationships. So they go, “I want to be a positive role model for my granddaughter, so I don't want them to be afraid of me. I don't want to repeat the mistakes that I might have made with my other children.” And I mean, that's something that we hear a lot from, particularly men who are parents, who the birth of children, can be really important for them that they kind of go, “I don't want to have the same relationship with my kids that I had with my abusive dad,” for example. And so, they do try to make that really positive change in their behaviours.
Patty
Yeah. More so than my physical capacity has diminished, and I therefore am not able to perpetuate violence, like I used to.
Hayley
See, I think that there is, I think that is desistance as well. I mean, we have a lot of conversations about, well, if someone's just not capable of perpetrating that abuse anymore, is that still desistance?
And, I mean, there's a lot of academic wanky, kind of, conversations about whether or not that is desistance because the person hasn't consciously gone, “I want to change and so I am going to change.” But there are other people who say, “o we really care as long as the outcome is the same?” So, if they stop offending because of a medical episode, is that not desistance? Because they have stopped.
Patty
It's like involuntary desistance, isn't it?
Hayley
In a way, yeah. Like we call it spontaneous desistance or like, you know, desistance brought about by default. So basically, all of your opportunities to offend have been reduced and so you stop offending.
So, I still think that that's a really helpful example though of just how different horse’s different courses, about explaining why some people stop and under what circumstances.
Patty
Yeah. Because desistance comes down to a rational choice as well as a motivation to change for the most part. So, for instance, being born into a family where committing crimes like robbing people or dealing drugs is like a rite of passage, but we consciously choose not to follow in our kin's footsteps. Someone might choose to step away from those temptations and start a new life, for example.
Hayley
Yeah. I mean so something that we're thinking a lot more about in Australia as part of our national action plan, is about high risk cohorts, so people who are high risk for perpetrating violence. And we particularly talk about young people who are exposed to or are targets of abuse within the families. Because we know that young people who are exposed to these behaviours are more likely to perpetrate these behaviours later on.
And there are different kind of reasons why we think that is, but there's a lot of work that's being done about respectful relationships and trying to get in early with these kids to kind of teach them alternative models of, like, you know, relationships and stuff to kind of go, you don't have to have that relationship that your parents have, or you don't have to have that idea of masculinity that your dad's been modelling for you throughout your life. And so, this kind of creating this alternative pathway that people can kind of go, okay, “I don't have to have that. I can have something else,” which I think is really, really positive.
Patty
I do too. Perhaps it's worth mentioning the elephant in the room at this point here, which is that for some people, desistance will never be an option. Because I can only imagine some of our audience members who are listening to our conversation and thinking of someone that they might know of who'll never be sorry for their actions.
In fact, this particular person might believe that they're the victim and they're unlikely to ever take accountability for their actions. And I think it's important we acknowledge that this conversation is definitely not directed to them.
Hayley
Yeah. Like I think that that's a common criticism of things like early intervention, or kind of like, you know, how do we support change when there are these “monsters” and inverted commas, like, you know, Rowan Baxter and the men who kill their intimate partners, because their intimate partners choose to leave them.
I don't think that desistance frameworks are necessarily set up to deal with those men. And, I mean, I think that they need a completely different response. But the vast, vast, vast majority of people who use violence in the home aren't going to murder their partners. And so, desistance frameworks are likely to be much more relevant for them.
Patty
Hayley, do you think that this is a process that is equally effective for both male and female users of violence?
Hayley
It's a really important question. I mean, a lot of the desistance research that we've done is surprise, surprise, incredibly male dominated because men are more likely to be offenders. And, I mean, that bears out with domestic and family violence as well. So, a lot of the research hasn't had that kind of gendered lens in terms of trying to understand, well, do those factors differ for men and women?
But the research that we have done has shown that the desistance mechanisms or the things that support people to want to change, and to change their behaviours, are quite different for men and women. So, I've said, that, you know, for some men, their kids is a really big motivator for them to try and change their behaviours.
It's even more so for women. So, women, kids, and particularly reunification with their kids if their kids have been removed from their care, is really, really strong motivator for them. So, we don't know that there are quite gendered drivers in terms of what is more likely to encourage women versus men to change their behaviours.
But, I mean, I'm drawing that from a broader body of research that's not specific to domestic and family violence because we haven't done that research yet because so much of the conversation is dominated by gender based violence, which is obviously because most victims are female, and most perpetrators are men.
But particularly when you look in the family violence space as well, we should be doing that research with women to kind of go, what supports women to want to change their abusive behaviours in particular? So, it's a really good question and we don't actually have the evidence for that, but that's a really big gap in our knowledge.
Patty
As a community, how can we deploy the principles of desistance more intelligently, maybe even more soulfully to get better results?
Hayley
It's such a good question. I mean, so I was watching this TED and this is like, you know, like, you know, since we've had our amazing chat the other day, I was watching this, TED talk with someone who was talking about a calling in culture, of how when we call out people by naming and shaming them, we're basically inviting an argument and we're kind of really creating a very defensive position. So, when we say to someone, you're a crap person. You've used abuse. You're an abuser. That immediately makes for a very adversarial and very argumentative kind of comeback of, “I'm not an abuser. How dare you say that to me? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Patty
Do you think that someone becoming defensive and saying, I'm not an abuser, is equivalent to them not taking accountability and responsibility for their violent actions towards somebody else?
Hayley
I guess it depends on how you look at it. I mean, yeah, most likely, but it could also be driven by shame of this thing of I mean, no one wants to own up to their worst behaviours, right? And I think that we have this perception of men as being well, men and women who use abusive behaviours, or people who use violence that they're really rational, that it's front of brain, that they're kind of going, “I'm using this behaviour to perpetrate abuse because I'm trying to get this specific outcome.”
And that's very much where the conversation has gone in terms of public conversations about this, where we talk about it's a choice, and I do believe it's a choice. Do I think it's necessarily a rational choice where this master manipulator is sitting there going, “I'm going to abuse this person to get this particular outcome?”
No, I don't. I think that we're giving a lot of these people way too much credit in the sense of we're kind of suggesting like they're sociopaths, that they're sitting there with these mind maps of how they're going to get the outcomes that they want. When really, I think a lot of these people are dysregulated. They're disordered. They use abuse because it works for them in that particular moment.
And a lot of these people do hold significant shame associated with their behaviours. I think they're not walking around kind of going, “I'm top. I'm like the top dog because I use violence.” A lot of them are really ashamed and, you know, really terrified that other people are going to find out that they're using these behaviours. So, naming and shaming, if they come back when we say you're an abuser and you suck as a person, the immediate response is denial. And that could be because they don't think that their behaviours are wrong, but it could also be like a fear based response of, “I'm really ashamed of these behaviours. They're calling me the thing that I never wanted to be called, and so I don't want to be confronted with that information.”
So, you could see kind of like 2 different ways. It could be, don't want to take accountability, but also don't want to take accountability because I'm really ashamed of these behaviours.
Patty
Yeah. This is true.
And also, we don't want to loop everyone into one big group where you mentioned, you know, there are some people that are sociopathic. There are some people that will never take accountability. Let's take them out of the equation. And then let's look at the people that lack impulse control, that are dysregulated, like you said. What would be the best way to open conversations with men who we think might be using violence or are showing signs of disrespecting women and children, in a way that can honour that ‘Caring Conversation’, which also happens to be the theme of this year's, podcast?
Hayley
I love the co I love I love the idea of a ‘Caring Conversation’, because it's about curiosity. It's about holding space to kind of go, like, what you've said, I don't agree with, but I love you the person, and there is an alternative available. So, what does that kinda look like in practice? I mean, they talk about, that's a really interesting point of view. Tell me more about it.
So having that kind of curiosity mind, because then you're inviting someone to a conversation as opposed to inciting an argument. Because the worst possible thing that we could really be doing with people who we suspect of using abuse and people that we know that we love that we care about, is ostracising them.
Because what's the benefit of that besides us kind of feeling a bit morally superior in the sense of going, that person's crap and over there and by comparison, I'm really great. It means that they're not having their behaviours challenged. They're not being presented with an alternative, and they're not being provided with a pathway back into the community.
It's this kind of thing of like, if we start from this point of view of, “hey, those attitudes, where are they coming from? Tell me more about why you believe this.” Then we can have a conversation with them where they're not feeling judged. They're not going to immediately go into a defensive posture, and then we are able to have that conversation with them. But the really important bit is to also keep them in view, so that we can provide them with the with the reflection back to them that it is possible to change.
You do not have to be this way. Because I think for so many men who use abuse, it's worked to an extent for them in those times, but they don't know how to break that cycle. Because again, these are behaviours that they could have been had modelled to them. But for decades, it could be just what they go to when they're in a relationship. This is how they think relationships kind of work.
So having those ‘Caring Conversations’ where you do actually engage with them and you shame the behaviour but not the person is really, really important. And we know that from distance research is that community relationships really, really important for supporting behaviour change.
Patty
Oh, a 100%. And I think it's important to note that we also live in a society where the media still have a very antiquated view of gender reporting, and it hasn't necessarily evolved since the 1950’s. For example, someone that kicks and catches a ball for goodness’ sake is called a footy hero. And his partner, irrespective of her own identity and accomplishments, is referred to as WAG, which is an acronym for wife and girlfriend, which many consider to be quite misogynistic.
Now while many of us hope this transcends in this lifetime, me included, it's unlikely to change overnight. So, what can we do as individuals within a community, obviously, to push past these demeaning stereotypes that elevates one gender while simultaneously disempowering the other?
Hayley
Oh, god. That's a million dollar question. How do we make a better society in general? The concerns that I have about media reporting around these types of cases is the incredible, I guess, schizophrenic nature of it, where someone like Ben Cousins is lauded as a football hero and those kinds of things, while the Daily Telegraph is simultaneously on their front page naming and shaming perpetrators of domestic and family violence and calling them cowards.
Patty
This is a wonderful example.
Hayley
Yeah. Of just like so in one hand, this person who has been charged with and found guilty of these offences is completely re accepted back into the community without showing any kind of demonstration of that they've changed, that they've done the work to kind of make these behaviour change.
And then we're splashing on the front cover, these are cowards. ‘They're not real men. They're monsters.' Like, this is the kind of terminology that we're using. And there's this kind of thing of like, how do we reconcile these 2 very different kinds of ideas that we're proposing? But I guess my major concern is probably with the naming and shaming one as well, like the campaign that was run because, again, it doesn't provide an alternative in terms of it's basically, you suck, you abused.
And, of course, the abuse is terrible, and they should never have perpetrated that abuse and all those kinds of things. But what's the pathway back for those individuals? We're doing it in so many other realms of behaviours that we find so, abhorrent. Like, we do it in some jurisdictions with child sex offenders, where we recognise the importance of community, and we build models around that. In the US, there are all these models of, deradicalizing people who are in the Ku Klux Klan and things like that.
But this is my major question. What's the pathway back for perpetrators of abuse? How are we as a community holding them in view? And why haven't we got that accountability, question down really well by now, that we can kind of go, we don't like the behaviours. We can we condemn the behaviours, but you do have an alternative and we as a community will support you to achieve a non-violent future. Where’s that piece?
Patty
Especially when it comes up a lot. I have a client. Actually, I had a client once say to me, “I had no idea what a horrible husband I was to my first wife until I saw the abuse that my sister's partner was inflicting on her. And I could never understand why she didn't want me to be close and why she kept rejecting my offers of assistance.”
And he said he was genuinely confused, and he asked her why. And his sister responded by pointing out that the difficulties that she was facing in her relationship, were the same things that she grappled with in their dynamic, and pointed out some parallel examples of his behaviour with his wife, with her, and highlighted that this is what she was facing with her ex.
And through his sister's eyes, my client saw the effects of how his sense of entitlement had been reinforced within their subculture. Like you mentioned earlier, predominantly because of how their father had modelled this dynamic with their mother, and more so how society had validated this power imbalance as being the norm. And the liberties that had been given to him were ones that his ex-wife and sister had to fight for.
And he said that when he saw the pain it caused his sister, he could finally see how, well, dogmatic and sexist and even unfair he'd been in his behaviour. Now while he's done his best to make amends, there are repercussions that still come up years later. So, for instance, when he's are repercussions that still come up years later.
So, for instance, when his daughter changed her surname to her mother's because she didn't wanna carry his name and wanted to honour her mom's lineage, which in their culture was a sign of extreme disrespect. And he shared that it was so tempting to say, “this was years ago, when are you gonna let it go?” Simply because he had. But it's a conscious choice to say, “I honour you and I respect your decision, and I love you unconditionally.”
But he needs to be supported in order to be able to do this. Would this be another example of desistance?
Hayley
It definitely would. I love that story. I love that case. That's a really beautiful kind of, I guess, case study of desistance and how it can work. So, in that scenario, desistance researchers would talk about the role of feared selves, in the sense of he almost had an out of body experience when his sister was telling him about the abuse, and putting it back on him of like, that's me.
The feared self is the abuser. And he could almost project himself into the future and kind of go, that's going to be me in the future if I don't change. And so, this story that he was being told by his sister was a really good example of evoking a feared self. And it's something that I've spoken to a lot of women about, how they who have experienced desistance, and they talk about the importance of feared selves. So, one that I spoke to, she said that she was keeping diaries that, and she was keeping them in the context of she was going to leave her partner.
And so just keeping these really detailed journals to kind of help her to leave the relationship and provide evidence of the abuse so that she could get full custody of their children. But then before she could leave, her partner found the diaries. And instead of confronting her with them and yelling and screaming at her, as he had done so many times before. Instead, he kinda collapsed into tears and said, like, I now see what you've been telling me. I don't wanna be like my dad because he had grown up in a in an abusive household, with his dad perpetrating abuse against his mom.
And that triggered a really long period of desistance for them, where the violence had stopped and, they had a really positive relationship for that period of time. And when she was talking to me about that, it sounds very much like an evoked of the feed itself. Like, he projections himself to the future, and he was really able to compare himself to his dad. And that was really powerful for him. And there are different examples of that that I've come across as part of my research.
And so, it's consistent with what we know about desistance and that for your client, that must have been really, really powerful. But just to kind of pick up on this point of, like, you know, him like, there must be this element of him going, “well, when do I get to be acknowledged for all the good work that I have done?” And those kinds of things.
There needs to be spaces where we do celebrate or endorse men's view of themselves as nonviolent when they have done the work. We know from desistance that having this reflected back to them, that the work that they're doing is meaningful, that we're seeing it, and we appreciate it, can be really, really important for supporting longer term desistance. So, desistance is a maintenance process.
Patty
Yes. That's a great thing to say. It is every day. In the case of my client, it's his current wife who has a very different relationship dynamic with him than his, former wife, it’s his former wife, who now sees him as an ally and a co parent.
And the fact that he was supported, it's like, you know, this is still her decision. It doesn't mean that you're still a bad person, but she also has the right to enact her will and ask for what she wants in reference to what she experienced. So just because you've changed, it doesn't erase her experience. 2 opposite things can be true. The fact that she's still healing from this and the fact that you're no longer like this. And the fact that you can hold space for each other in this dynamic.
Hayley
That's such a good point because it's that thing of like, the system should not come at the cost of someone's own recovery journey. So, it's this thing of like, you know, for her, her recovery journey looks like getting a name change.
Patty
Empowering herself saying that this is the lineage that I want to be part of.
Hayley
Yeah. And he could have experienced that as ‘well, it doesn't matter what I do. No one's ever going to say that I've changed”, but holding space for that is really, really important. And does, I think it's really powerful and demonstrates that he really has done this really important internal work where it's not all about him. It's not about his sense of victimhood and all the bad stuff that's happened to him. It's actually kind of taking accountability of, like, well, this is what happens when you perpetrate abuse. It's like your kids may not want to have your last name. And that's just what you kind of have to wear. So having those spaces though, those supportive spaces.
Patty
When you talked about feed self, you use the example of, if we were to say, “you know, this acts the way you do this, it's just like your dad or your uncle or your brother.”
You're enacting the same kinds of behaviour or even, “can you see that your children are scared of you? Do you wanna be the same kind of father or mother? Is that what you want?” Would that be an example of the feared self?
Hayley
Yeah, for sure. It's interesting though. I think when we're thinking about ‘Caring Conversations’, so a lot of the things that we're thinking about talking to our friend, family member who we think is using abusive behaviours, these are all things that have probably been raised with him before by his partner, by her partner of saying like, “you know, you know you're acting like your dad,” and things like that. And that may not have been an effective message from them. The victim may not be seen as, you know, someone who is legitimate in the eyes of the perpetrator of the abuse. So when they say you're acting just like your dad, they're like, “oh, shut up. You don't know what you're talking about.”
Patty
Well, when that is happening in a heightened state, it's almost like, “that's just a slur, you didn't mean it. I'm going to dismiss it because I'm also coming from a very reactive space.” But in safe space of, “let me tell you, let me, let me be curious. Have you seen this before?” Have you seen it's a different energy, especially because you're open to receiving information and also understanding that it can only take a little moment to make a commitment to make a small adjustment. And then another small adjustment when you feel that you've integrated that, and you can embody that new self that you're you've integrated that and you can embody that new self that you're becoming.
Hayley
Yeah. I think that's such a nice way of putting it. And we've spoken about it before about this planting of seeds of this thing of, like, we kind of think like this is gonna be this light bulb moment and that they're just going to change. And it's all gonna be sunshine and lollipops. But incremental little conversations over time can all cumulatively contribute to really significant change.
But the benefit of the ‘Caring Conversation’ is also it's someone else other than the victim trying to talk to the abuser because very easy to dismiss, as you say, in a heightened state, but also, they've become very adept at dismissing whatever they say. But having someone else kind of say to them, “look, where is this coming from?” Like, as and I love that idea of, like, “have you seen this before?” as being a really good thing because most of the time, they will have seen it before. They'll have seen it in their families at some kind of stage. I think that's a really nice kind of entryway to having something that could be a really important conversation for them.
Patty
Yeah. And in terms of caring conversations, how do we support someone to make decisions that we don't necessarily agree with? Because leaving is not always necessarily the answer for someone because what they want for themselves is layered through a rich tapestry of personal values, as well as their own culturally defined beliefs. Often by leaving, they'll no longer have the support systems that they are connected to and don't necessarily wish to lose. I've witnessed this countless times among the indigenous, the LGBTQI plus communities, as well as specific European, South American, Muslim, Asian, Jewish, and even Christian communities.
Hayley
Mhmm. The yeah. It's so complicated, isn't it? But one of the things that I always talk about is that question of, how do we support victims when we don't necessarily agree with the decisions that they make? And that's because we come from this very privileged kind of perspective of, “the only way the violence is going to stop is if she leaves, and leaving looks a very specific way.”
And that's how a lot of our support systems are set up. Like, if someone wants to leave a relationship, they have access to a whole bunch of networks of services that they don't have access to while they're still in that relationship. And this is something that is a really uncomfortable truth, that for some women, even if they're experiencing abuse, they still value aspects of the relationship, and they still may love the person that they are being abused by and want to remain in that relationship.
And you're so right about the cultural kind of layers and the societal layers that kind of contribute to that, in terms of the goods that they get out of the relationship may not be completely negated because of the abuse. And so, there's this questionable are they actually gonna be safer once they leave the relationship? If they lose access to the community, if they are just subjected to different forms of abuse, it may actually, for someone when they just kind of go, “I don't know what that post separation context looks like, I'm gonna stay.”
And particularly when we add in the issue of kids. If they've got kids with the abuser and they've got young kids together, that whole custodial kind of arrangements post separation, who knows what that looks like. So that all kind of contributes to this idea of, “we just want them to leave”. We have to check our own privilege and our own biases when we just kind of insist that that's the only thing we can do for them and sit uncomfortably in that space of ‘how do we support victims to have the relationships that they want safely’.
And that looks like a really different conversation. And I think desistance can be really helpful here because if we look at it through a desistance lens, it's about: the relationship's going to be you guys are staying together. How do we support the perpetrator to stop perpetrating abuse? How do we support the victim to keep safe? What does that look like within this context? And desistence work can be really, really helpful for that, but we just don't have those conversations in that way at the moment because it's all about, “how do we support the victim to leave?” And that's just not realistic for many people who are experiencing abuse.
Patty
And I love that you said that. I think that's the key here. I really do. Because we also think that by empowering women to be financially independent, secure, and educated, it's going to minimise the risk of them being harmed. But you and I know that that's not the case. We both know of women on either side of the financial spectrum. So, for example, financially dependent versus financially secure, who've experienced violence and don't necessarily want to leave the relationship, or even relinquish their status in the community, which might be important for us well-meaning white cis men and women to respect.
So, it leads me to the concept of status and honour. Is it culture specific? I mean, do we see it with men who use violence in the form of a concept that is referred to as a “status injury” when, for example, women would exert dominance in domains that a man might not like or feel emasculated? For example, you mentioned it earlier, “she left me, so I'll kill her, or she earns more money than I do, or she's seeing a friend that I don't approve of, so, when she gets home, I'll hurt her or I'll teach her a lesson.”
Hayley
Yeah. So, I mean, is it, is it culturally specific? I think it looks different in different communities in the sense of what perpetrators view as important in terms of their own idea of status and adherence to gender norms and those kinds of things.
Patty
But for victims as well
Hayley
Yeah, exactly. And I mean, what it kind of looks like differs across communities, but it does come back to this status injury of, “you have made me feel lesser than, or look lesser than to the community, to my family, to my friends, whoever, and so I'm going to use abuse as a way of rectifying that injury.”
And so the worst manifestation of that is, “I'm going to kill you because you have made me look terrible within my community, or you refuse to reconcile with me. And so that makes me feel like less of a man.” But, I mean, I've spoken to so many women from very privileged backgrounds who experienced these kinds of abuse, and they talk about it as, “I earned more money than him, and so, there was this persistent kind of thing of I had to just kind of give him sex whenever he wanted because it was a way of him making him feel like he was a man.”
And we've seen that from, like, you know, really big community samples, and surveys and things like that, where women who are the primary breadwinners within relationships, are more likely to experience sexual abuse from their male partners, as opposed to women who have the same kind of earning capacity or less earning capacity.
And that just kind of demonstrates that throwing money at the problem isn't necessarily going to stop abuse. It may make it easier for some women to leave relationships, which is a really important thing, but women who are privileged, who are financially independent, still experience abuse within relationships. It just might look a little bit different.
So, there is still this really big important piece that we need to be doing about gender norms and masculinity and what makes men in particular feel so kind of aggrieved when their status as a man, as a community member has been challenged by the actions of their partner. Like, it's just there's a whole other big body of work that needs to be done in this space, which is, you know, being led by the likes of Michael Flood.
I think the men's group piece is really, really important, because and we do it in so many other aspects of, societal life when people are doing things like engaging in use of drugs, alcohol, all these kinds of other behaviours. We view their recovery from that, as a maintenance process as being really tied to community and relationships. And so, we have these programs that are set up that are about establishing relationships between recovering addicts.
And we provide them with this touch point that we go, go to a meeting. Like whenever you're starting to wobble, whenever stuff is starting to go wrong in your life and you're feeling like you're going to do the thing that you don't want to be doing. Go to the group, it's your touch point. These are the people who can reflect to you, “Yes, you're doing good work. You are making change. You are capable of change.” And that can be so important that we actually do kind of provide that space for people to see their best selves reflected to them.
Patty
Yes. Would a great opener for a helpful conversation also be one that is instigated by someone else, as opposed to you? So, for instance, when someone comes to you and complains, what would you say?
Like, would you say things like, “are you open to hearing my observations? If not, no offense is taken,” or bringing it back to them. “So why do you think that is?” Reflecting back the observations that you're noticing with the impact that the violence has had? And then use future questions like, “what do you want your future to be like? Who do you want to be? What does that look like? Who would be around you? If that could be the case?” Would that be something that would be helpful?
Hayley
Yeah. I think that that would be incredibly powerful. I mean, being able to kind of help someone move to ‘future focused behaviours and thinking’, is so important for persistence because it's really important that people do the reflective work of who they are now, but they need to be able to look into the future and go, “who do I want to be?”
Patty
I feel like the missing piece there is also have aligned action. So, you can't do something massive. It's going to send your nervous system into a tailspin, but incremental aligned action. So, if I want my future self to be this, then I need to commit to that. And I need to keep what I want to be and how I want to be and who I want to have around me, so that I can, for instance, complete this degree, or save up for this house.
Hayley
Yeah. Like, it's kinda like, it's almost like a mood board of like, you know, “how am I going to get to this violent, non-violent state?” And again, just acknowledging the elephant in the room, which you did so beautifully of like, for some people, this isn't part of their journey. There are other responses that are needed for those people who cannot be safe within the community, but the vast majority of people who use violence don't want to use violence.
They just don't really necessarily know how else to get what they need without using violence. And so, it's about modelling those positive nonviolent selves and reflecting to them that change is possible. That is so important. So, a caring conversation that starts with some of those openers, and you should write like a blog with just some of those as openers Patty, that was just great.
I'm just like, you know, are you open to getting some feedback or reflecting back of like, okay. So, have you seen these behaviours before? Or another one that has come up as part of my research is reflecting on the impact in terms of you don't seem very happy at the moment. So, you don't even need to call it as abuse or kind of say, “because you're abusive, you feel like this,” but kind of go, “look, mate, you just seem a bit like, you know, you're just not yourself lately,” or “I know that you and your partner have been fighting a lot lately and I'm a bit concerned.”
And immediately those kinds of openers might feel uncomfortable to some people, because all they want to do is to hold the person using violence accountable. And for them, that might look like, “you are abusing, and you need to stop.” But if our ultimate goal is behaviour change, we know from the research that calling someone out and saying, “you're an abuser is just an invitation to an argument.” We want them. We want to keep them in view.
And I think you called it, you said something like, “don't leave the chat.” You have to try and encourage them not to leave the chat because that doesn't help anyone. It doesn't make anyone safer if someone disengages from you completely because they don't like what you're saying to them. So, it's gentle openers to encourage a conversation that may be one of a number of different conversations that you have with someone over a period of time.
Patty
Yeah. I like those gentle openers, but consistency in a gentle way as well. Plant those seeds, water them softly and gently, and be prepared to play the long game. You're not going to sort it out in a small amount of time. The consistent connection and compassion that's going to be kind, is going to facilitate a greater result in the long term. I think.
Hayley
Yeah. Matt Brown, who wrote, ‘She Is Not Your Rehab’, has written a lot about this, about how you have compassion for people who are using violence, and you give them space, because a lot of these people, they do have histories of trauma. They have their own histories of victimhood. And that's real and that's really important to acknowledge as well. These aren't monsters that have just kind of come out of nowhere.
We as a society have created situations where people may use abuse, And so we should be part of the solution as well. We should take accountability for our own role in the perpetration of the abuse.
Patty
100% because it started very slowly. And so, it's a process of unlearning, unschooling. And if I'm going to do that, if I'm going to take this habit away, I need to replace it with something else. And then when you take that other habit away, what else can I replace it with?
So that all of a sudden, I'm not only stopping the abuse, but I've also got a whole set of tools at my disposal that I'm comfortable using because I've used them before and I know which one works best in different environments.
Hayley
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, there are always going to be situations where you don't have capacity to do those slow burn incremental kind of conversations, because immediate safety could be a massive factor.
Patty
I think that's a great point because we also need to know how to manage our own boundaries and honour our personal capacity when we need to draw a line in the sand about what we are not prepared to hear.
Do we say, “this happened a long time ago, and I understand that you're still recovering, but I'm not in the space where I can keep listening to you complain about it. So, this is the stop where I need to get off. I wish you all the best on your journey. If we want to traverse and travel together, these are my boundaries.”
Hayley
Look, I think that's really important. I mean, the reason I like Matt Brown’s stuff so much is because he says, “she is not your rehab,” in the sense of he's very good at disengaging a lot of the victimhood kind of conversations and cycles that people who use violence get into. Because, I mean, there is that trauma and there and those victimization experiences are awful, but he says, “what happened to you is awful and shouldn't have happened, and I'm so sorry that happened, but your recovery is your responsibility.”
So, it's kind of this thing of, I know that that really sucked. All of that stuff that happened to you sucked, and it wasn't your fault. So, it could have been your dad was an asshole and was abusive towards you. It could have been that you were placed in Child Protective services, that you had to go into out of home care because your parents couldn't look after you. But your recovery is your responsibility.
Your family is not responsible for your recovery from what it could be significant trauma. So, what are you going to do to go on that recovery journey? And I think that's really one of the reasons I really like Matt Brown stuff, because he holds space for both. I love that.
Patty
I love that. Dr. Hayley Boxall, you are amazing. My final question for you today is, are you a solo walker or do you like to walk with company?
Hayley
Solo walker all the way.
Patty
You have 3 kids! I knew the answer to this.
Hayley
Yeah. I just need some alone time to listen to podcasts and to get out in nature. For sure.
Patty
I like that answer. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your amazing wisdom.
Hayley
Thank you so much for having me.
Patty
And that is it for today, folks. I'm now going to pass the baton to our fabulous co-founder, Kirrily Dear, who's going to share some amazing information about what RAV are up to behind the scenes. And, of course, if you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone you think could benefit from hearing it. Liking, subscribing, but especially leaving us a 5 star review ensures that we give that algorithm a helping hand to get to the listeners that need to hear from us the most. Bye from us today.
Kirrily
Thanks Hayley and Patty for an incredible interview. I encourage everyone within the RAV community to go back and listen to this interview many times. It is offering us a pathway toward ending family violence that is quite different to that that has been traditionally taken. Yet I believe it is a far more effective path and it will get us to our destination sooner.
I'm Kirrily Dear and I am one of the founders of Run Against Violence. Run Against Violence is a volunteer led, not for profit, dedicated to the prevention of family violence. Our mission is to build communities where family violence can no longer live. We're not simply just talking about family violence or raising awareness; we are doing the hard work to build those communities that are free of family violence. Over the past decade, whenever I've talked to people with lived experience, I've asked them about what they want.
And consistently, almost unanimously, they tell me this. What they want is a healthy, happy, thriving family. They want a loving partner, a caring parent. They want to have the dream. What they don't want is to feel unsafe, to feel threatened, to have their partner incarcerated.
They want to be helped back into that healthy relationship. Now when we hold that as the focus of our effort, our plans, our paths for getting there are very different to what we've been doing, up to now. Run Against Violence has a 4 point plan for making those communities a possibility. Caring communities, respectful relationship normalisation, healthy self-esteem and reliable services. They're the 4 strategies that we are putting into play.
Part of that caring communities piece is being able to hold ‘Caring Conversations’ and that's been the focus for this year's Run Against Violence Virtual Team Challenge. In this interview today, Hayley and Patty discussed some very, very simple techniques that we can all use to breach those uncomfortable conversations, but have them in a way that supports people back to health, back to healthy relationships, that helps build self-esteem, and build responsibility, and build capability.
I challenge you this, go back, listen to the interview, and write down 1 or 2 of those techniques and begin using them every day because they're applicable to all our relationships. Not just our intimate partner relationships or relationships that are currently troubled. Start using those techniques.
Make them your new normal for when you're talking about uncomfortable subjects and watch the impact that it has. Because if we all choose to do those little things, to take small steps, you'll be amazed at how much all of that effort adds up to change and transition in our communities. Because it's by taking those steps together, we will ultimately build communities where family violence can no longer live.