Violence is a choice. It’s always the decision of the person who uses it

Anna J. Dudek: How did you get involved in working with perpetrators of violence?

Daniel Mróz: Initially, we worked with victims in interdisciplinary teams for many years, but it turned out that these actions were ineffective.

Why?

Working with the victim, although very important in helping them, does not stop the violence. Why? Because it counteracts the effects, not the cause. And the cause is the perpetrators’ behaviour. In order to stop violence, you have to work with those who use it. It’s also less frustrating for specialists, because it’s more effective.

What does working with a perpetrator look like?

It works in two ways, we run corrective and educational programmes. These are 24 meetings of three hours each. If we work individually, then it’s 12 meetings, one per week.

Do the perpetrators sometimes come by themselves, or is it by court order only?

It varies. Men usually enrol on the individual programmes of their own volition, self-motivated or motivated by a family member or a friend.

Sometimes such a man has received an ultimatum from his wife or partner.

The perpetrators in the group programmes are usually there because of interdisciplinary teams or courts. They come to us, and participation in the programme is the fulfilment of the conditions for suspending the sentence.

Where does working with the perpetrator begin?

We assume that violence is a choice. It’s always the decision of the person who uses it. This decision can be dictated by your upbringing or beliefs. The work is precisely about changing these beliefs, that is, showing that I use violence not because this woman is evil and so is the world, but because in this way I fulfil my need for power and control. We are focusing precisely on the mechanism of power and control, because it is fundamental in violent relationships. We educate on what violence is, where it comes from, what its manifestations are, then on the examples of people in the group we discuss the causes and mechanisms. We show that there are other ways to behave.

How many people don’t return to violence after participating in such a programme?

The effectiveness of the programme is 37%. This is how many perpetrators haven’t returned to violence in the three years we’ve been monitoring them.

Is that too much or not enough?

There isn’t a more effective method in Poland. One third of perpetrators stop using violence, and the scenarios vary.

Some people go back to their wives, partners, families, other relationships fall apart. We had a case where a woman, after a man had finished therapy, withdrew her divorce suit because she thought her husband was back to the way he was before he started using violence. Our principle is not to forcibly save relationships, but to ensure safety. So the idea is for the perpetrator to enter into a new relationship without violence. If the victim is being protected, the man who used violence against her will do the same when he starts a new family, has a new partner and new children. Focusing on victims doesn’t stop violence. It’s just inflicted on someone else.

Are there perpetrators who use violence unconsciously?

No. People always knowingly use violence, but don’t always interpret their behaviour as violence. They are aware of their behaviour and responsible for it, but they don’t know, for example, that financial restrictions, limiting the freedom to leave or controlling correspondence is violence. We make them aware of this and show them that they can behave differently – it’s their choice.

What about perpetrators who enjoy violence?

There aren’t many of them. There are definitely fewer people who use violence for psychopathic reasons. We don’t work with such perpetrators, we bar them from the programme. Then we notify the courts and the prosecutor’s office that this is a person impervious to change, and the most effective thing to do in such a case is isolation, i.e. a correctional facility. It’s the same with people who are mentally ill.

What are the red flags?

There’s a prevailing myth that the perpetrator wants to hurt their victim. That’s not the point (except in the case of psychopaths). The classic perpetrator doesn’t want to hurt, for them it is only a tool: they hurt to achieve a goal, that is, power and control.

Red flags are situations such as: I do something that goes against what my partner had in mind, and this causes frustration, anger and aggression in them.

The first elements are making a woman feel guilty, controlling where the partner goes when she goes out and lowering her value. It makes the victim feel uneasy, but she hears that she cannot cope on her own, she has fewer and fewer friends, because the perpetrator isolates her from them, he makes her dependent on him and makes her feel unworthy of anything. His goal is gaining full power and control, and what I am mentioning are the first elements of this pursuit. It's the beginning of trapping the victim in dependency. This is followed by insults, verbal abuse, and then physical violence. It’s important to remember that violence is universal: anyone can be a perpetrator and anyone can be a victim.

What is the most important thing, apart from showing the mechanism of power and control, in therapeutic work?

Showing that it’s all up to the perpetrator. His behaviour doesn’t depend in any way on the behaviour of their partner. Her behaviour doesn’t affect it, because whether he acts violently or not is entirely up to him. It doesn’t result from his partner’s provocation, it’s not the aftermath of her behaviour. Secondly, the perpetrator must take responsibility for his behaviour instead of passing the guilt on to the victim.

Are the legal instruments functioning in Poland sufficiently effective? The statistics are appalling.

The legal provisions themselves are quite good, the problem is not on the part of the rules, but on the part of the intervening institutions, whose representatives do not act lawfully. Our observations show that the police very often violates the law by not initiating proceedings in the case of offences prosecuted ex officio, requiring the victim to submit a crime report in accordance with the law, i.e. Article 304 of the Polish Code of Criminal Procedure. If a person experiencing violence reports it, for example, to the police or the Municipal Social Welfare Centre, then in the vast majority of cases such an institution is receiving information about an offence prosecuted ex officio, e.g. on the basis of Article 207 of the Polish Criminal Code (mental or physical abuse) or Article 157 of the Polish Criminal Code (bodily injury), and yet these institutions fail to act accordingly.

There are also a lot of dismissed cases.

If the victim refuses to testify, the police discontinue the proceedings, which is also illegal, because refusing to testify proves that the victim is afraid to testify and not that there has been no crime.

The same applies to other regulations on restraining orders or orders to vacate the premises. Despite these rules, it is still all too often that the victim has to flee and the perpetrator is not isolated. All this is due to the violent beliefs of police representatives, who very often use violence themselves. Even yesterday I received information from Mielec that the victim, after reporting the violence, was told by a police officer that nothing would happen – he as a man understands her husband’s behaviour, because when he heard from him what she was doing (false accusation of infidelity), he figured that the husband’s behaviour was justified. The representatives of the institutions often judge by their own beliefs. Even if this were true, nothing justifies violence and doesn’t entitle the perpetrator to use it, which is why not only the rules are so important, but also the attitudes and beliefs of the representatives of the institutions. And these are very often violent and victimise the victims and justify the perpetrators.

 

Anna J. Dudek talks to Daniel Mróz

• Daniel Mróz - the Feniks Foundation for Prevention of Violence employee and member of the monitoring team for preventing family violence in the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy.

The interview was published on wysokieobcasy.pl, 7 November 2020