One background to the decommissioning of the DAPPs
From the background of a therapeutically informed project, Temper Domestic Violence which has been running for just under 30 years
A timeline of the failure of the Duluth style model which has been the preferred model of Respect
And a timeline of the failed DAPP projects, of which Respect was, until June 2022, the surrogate “accreditor” for Cafcass.
Warned about the lack of evidence surrounding Respect’s position with domestic abusers in 2011 by Dr Louise Dixon, the mistake by the MOJ (and Cafcass) in making Respect the accreditor of the programmes for their pathway went unrecognised for a long time, well at least until 2014! p.25 when scepticism was highlighted but it then took a further 8 years before the decommissioning took place.
“Violent men are all the same and they will not change” was the ludicrous war-cry of Sandra Horley, the woman who essentially ousted Erin Pizzey from her very significant role in the setting up of the charity, Refuge.
“Two women a week are killed on average” was the second part of Horley’s war-on-men-cry. What she also carefully avoided telling us was that children are killed at about 3 or 4 times that rate, killed in more or less equal numbers by men and women, their mother, their father or their step-father. ( Incidentally the “wicked step-mother” of Fairy tales is the least likely, statistically, to be a lethal danger to children.)
Ms Horley also took the trustees of the charity REFUGE for a ride. Her salary of £210 k plus, p.a. making the recently displaced Sue Gray (Govt. adviser’s) salary look like relative peanuts! The former was eventually exposed by the Times and the Mail. We perhaps need to carefully point out that “Violent men” are not all the same and although some few are engaged in “instrumentally violent behaviours”, most are engaged in “reactive behaviours” for which they need to learn “responsive behaviours”, and the vast majority of them can do just that.
Thus to the time-line of domestic abuser programmes – which later became the desired direction of “Respect accreditation”, and hence the Cafcass pathway, and, with Cafcass’ advice often being accepted by the Family Courts and Magistrates Courts it infected their musings as well.
Pre 1986 The Change / Caledonian project in Scotland The Duluth Power and Control wheel – see Ellen Pence below.
Research on the above was by Dobash and Dobash who resigned as chair and secretary of the charity before producing their research into the outcomes. 46 men over a period of 6 years, “with a 70% success rate”, presumably in reducing violence to a partner or later partner = 33 men, in 6 years.
1986 – DVIP in London gets permission from Women’s Aid (and presumably Refuge) to research and run a perpetrator programme. Conditions: – must not seek funding from sources associated with Women’s Aid or Refuge, must run a parallel women’s support project.
DVIP staff go to America and research The Duluth Programme written by Michael Paymar and the late Ellen Pence and also the Manalive project in Boston.
From about 1990 They returned to Peterborough / London and set up the DVIP programme.
1998 Joseph Rowntree funded research into DVIP heavily criticised the outcomes, the dropouts of the men and internal wrangling regarding “male and female” tensions within the organisation. DVIP’s client group of that time was significantly mandated via the Probation Service – who would have been people, mainly men, but obviously only men, criminalised for their behaviours and thus needing Probation Service style supervision or prison sanctions to “punish” their behaviours. Those would more usually have been “high risk cases”. Probably resulting from the above research, The Probation service withdrew from DVIP and set up their in-house IDAP programme. So we could say that DVIP’s original main client group were high risk, high harm candidates. (The Family Courts, private law, and Cafcass now mainly deal with a relative flood of medium and low risk cases.)
DVIP was within days of closure –according to the Ellen Pence book. It was apparently saved by an anonymous donation.
Prof Audrey Mullender wrote the following, my underlining
“An evaluation of the Violence Prevention Programme (DVIP) in London (Burton et al, 1998) found that the programme had some impact on most of those who maintained attendance for a reasonable time. However, this evaluation also suffered from low numbers as by the end only 31 men out of 351 went onto the second stage of the programme, and only six cases could be tracked and interviewed following substantial programme participation.”
The NPN (National Practitioners network) brought others involved in “perpetrator work” together. It consisted of about 16 other programmes, orchestrated first by DVIP and then by Respect from c. 2000.
1999 The late Ellen Pence edited the book: Coordinating Community Responses to Domestic Violence – Lessons from Duluth and beyond. She herself observed her “power and control wheel”, often referred to as the “Pence Wheel”, did not match the reality of most couple relationships.
- prior to 2000 Ms Jo Todd and Ms Kate Iwi re-wrote DVIP’s original, failed programme.
2000 Respect was formed into a charity – Ms Jo Todd was elected CEO of Respect. Ms Kate Iwi trained facilitators via the organisation Pai Pact to deliver their “new programme” which obviously eased an organisation’s way to accreditation.
2006/7. Financial shenanigans in DVIP led to the prosecution of the former company secretary.
2006/7 Mr Neil Blacklock former CEO of DVIP moved to Respect to become Project developer. “Sometimes as many as a quarter of the men make it through the (DVIP) programme,” was his statement on BBC Radio Northampton in a conversation with Bernie in which my colleague, Mrs Knowles, took part, the dialogue is contained in the previous link.
Blacklock was succeeded at DVIP by Mr Ben Jamal, a former trustee of DVIP, with permission from the charity commission.
DVIP Charity accounts 2007 showed an income of £219k devoted to the perpetrator operation and 220 referrals and a “completions output” from 4 probably 5 projects of just 33 men.
The Home Office select committee, heard and questioned Mr Jamal (CEO, DVIP) and Ms Jo Todd (CEO, RESPECT). The question of completion statistics was carefully avoided. Asked what the success rate was, Mr Jamal quoted the “industry standard” 70% – translated into men that completed the DVIP work that would mean just 22 men. DVIP were running at least 4 programmes at that time and probably 5.
2008/9 Respect set up their “accreditation standards”. A detailed examination of their “positions” is linked here and Dr Louise Dixon’s criticisms have been previously added.
2009 DVIP and Families Without Fear were the first 2 programmes to receive their accreditation – the little ceremony was at an NPN meeting in central Bristol. Resentments of the membership are contained in a letter linked below.
2009 At the above meeting serious concerns were raised by members of the NPN about the direction of Respect and particularly the relationship between Respect and DVIP – DVIP’s former employees were a large part of the Respect management; by this time this also included Ms Thangham Debonnaire who was later elected MP for Bristol West. When she lost her seat to a Green in the 2024 elections she was raised to the peerage by Sir Keir.
The documents available via the following link itemise the original criticisms of Respect by Dr Louise Dixon in 2011. https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-8333.2011.02029.x
A summary of Dr Dixon’s conclusions is here.
“Perpetrator Programmes for Partner Violence:
Are they Based on Ideology or Evidence?
Article Type: Article
First Author: Louise Dixon, Ph.D.
Order of Authors: Louise Dixon, Ph.D.;John Archer;Nicola Graham-Kevan
Purpose: The ideologically-based view of intimate partner violence has traditionally influenced policy and practice in modern western nations and dominated cross-national research and practice. This review considers the validity of the position statement of a British organisation responsible for accrediting male perpetrator programmes as an example of this ideological influence.
Method: The statements, informed by the patriarchal view of partner violence, are evaluated using empirical evidence from various branches of the social sciences, including psychology, that have not been guided by the patriarchal view.
Results: Overwhelming empirical evidence is presented which refutes ideologically driven
assumptions that have been put forward to guide current practice and evaluation of it.
Conclusions: This review highlights the need to investigate intimate partner violence from a scientific and gender inclusive perspective. The implications for psychological practice are discussed.”
In 1999 the late Ellen Pence edited and contributed to a book: “Coordinating Community Responses to Domestic Violence Lessons from Duluth and Beyond.” The book stated categorically that she, the co-creator of the Duluth abuser programme, had been mistaken in her assertions that men sought to achieve power and control over their female partners. The link to the book title, page and quote are here.
The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank, published the following paper in 2012, “Beyond Violence – breaking cycles of domestic abuse.” The link is here. They called for the abandonment of the Respect accredited programmes “ When something is not working…. “ https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/beyond-violence-breaking-cycles-domestic-abuse Relevant snippits from the paper are here.
“Treatment to help perpetrators stop their abusive behaviour is a key means to prevent
further abuse of current and future victims”. The Centre for Social Justice.
We then move into the next efforts by Respect to establish some credibility for their style of project:
The Mirabal project 2012-2015
This 3 year project had no control group.
4 areas ran a programme, DVIP in London and a programme in the South west and 2 programmes in the North of England, “Anonymised” under names of Steel Town and Ashville.
At that time DVIP was running 4 programmes in London, if we conclude that each of the other 3 organisations was running only one programme each it would mean that there were 7 programmes involved in the research. 7 programmes, 3 years and …… wait for it …..
There were just 34 researchable outcomes!!!!!!
The Drive project summarised from
The 19 page “Executive summary” told us:
- A) Physical abuse reduced by 82%
- B) Sexual abuse reduced by 88%
- C) Harassment and stalking reduced by 75%
- D) Jealous and controlling behaviours reduced by 73%
SOUNDS really IMPRESSIVE!
HOWEVER on page 71(!) of the 184 page DRIVE report they told us:
A 3 year “Trial programme”
Divided into a “drive” cohort who had the “perpetrator programme treatment” and a control group which didn’t.
The “exciting” outcomes broadcast in the “Executive summary” virtually disappeared when compared with the “control group”.
“Reductions in:
Physical abuse a 2% difference between “drive” and control
Sexual abuse no difference between drive and control
Harassment and stalking a 2% improvement over the control group
Jealousy and controlling behaviour a 1% difference”
MyTime, a “perpetrator programme” running in the West Midlands is, like the DVIP in London, a division of the larger charity The Richmond Fellowship
This evidence was provided by Cordis Bright. Funded by the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner at a cost of £350k per year for each of the 3 years:
- a) 1074 men were referred to the programme, LIKE DVIP it is a division of The Richmond Fellowship.
- B) 296 men were deemed eligible to be worked with.
- C) 196 of those men actually started the work.
- D) Just 24 of those men completed the work.
My FOI request of The Home Office 2022. Which highlights other research for the Home Office.
Respect now looks to have reduced the required length of a project from “75 hours over 6 months, less than this is dangerous “ to 32 hours over 16 weeks according to the Iceni Project and Fresh Futures aka The Yorkshire Children’s Centre.
The Iceni Venta project an 18 week “Respect accredited programme” in Suffolk.
“Fresh Futures” appears to be accredited – but check out the language! https://freshfutures.org.uk/dapp/#:~:text=DAPP%20works%20by%20forcing%20men,responsible%20for%20them%20abusive%20behaviours.
So just what happened to the efforts of Blacklock and Todd to increase “by accreditation” the time spent in a DAPP from 75 hours to 96 hours? It collapsed.
For a long time the efforts of the Family Court have been moving towards having hearings completed within 26 weeks. With the new pathfinder trials from Dorset and North Wales now being extended to West Yorkshire it looks as if the completion within 26 weeks is being firmed up on.
This RESPECT document looks as if it can be read from this perspective. “Quality assured places”! LOL! That is Laugh out Loud!