December 04, 2006

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton

The National Coalition Against Domestiec Violence (NCADV) has organization in all fifty states, it is often presented as the national leader concerning domestic violence and its political power drives national domestic violence policies. The NCADV website claims that its mission and purpose is:

The NCADV believes violence against women and children results from the use of force or threats to achieve and maintain control over others in intimate relationships, and from societal abuse of power and domination in the forms of sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, able-bodyism, ageism and other oppressions. The NCADV recognizes that the abuses of power in society foster battering by perpetuating conditions, which condone violence against women and children. Therefore, it is the mission of NCADV to work for major societal changes necessary to eliminate both personal and societal violence against all women and children.

This documents that the NCADV believes that the “root causes” of domestic violence are the many “isms,” “the “abuse of power” and “oppression.” An irony that the NCADV needs to understand is that the NCADV should not use its political power and economic clout, to engage in the same historic and dangerous form of demagoguery it rails against.

It is a historic fact that those in power set the agenda. The agenda of the NCADV, as its mission statement clearly documents, is not male victimization. By willful omission the NCADV has decided to oppress a group of victims who, perhaps because the NCADV views them as being “different” or possibly because the NCADV believes that their numbers are so small that their victimization is deemed inconsequential. And by the omission of male victimization the NCADV implies that males are the problem.

The wellspring of “isms,” “abuse of power,” and “oppression.”

The authors of the National Institute of Justice “nonviolent coercive control” report, Development and Validation of a Coercive Control Measure for Intimate Partner Violence: Final Technical Report defines coercion as, “…the idea of compliance with demands or expectations.” 

“Nonviolent coercive control” is behavior that generations of children, regardless of gender, learn from their parents and other family members and then many children will replicate different forms of this behavior in their adult lives. The National Research Council in its report, Violence In Families  documents that, “Running through discussions of child maltreatment, domestic violence, and elder abuse is the idea of unequal power in the relationships between abuser and victim.”

The majority of psychologists and sociologists agree that the concept of compliance, demand, expectation and unequal power relationships in interpersonal interactions often occur between siblings, adult heterosexual men and women, homosexual men and women and adult men and women concerning children and the elderly.

Some of the methods noted in the “nonviolent coercive control” report are isolation, intimidation, threats and withholding resources. Spanking or “physical assaults” are almost universally used or condoned by and spanking is designed to change or alter the behavior of children. Most parents, regardless of gender, have used one or more of the “nonviolent coercive control” methods or a “physical assault” to change or alter the behavior of a child at some point in their life time.

Perhaps people believe there is some “magic age” or “economic gauge” where the ‘nonviolent coercive controlling” behavior and “physical assaults” by adults against other family members who have less physical strength or economic resources, becomes inappropriate behavior and needs to be criminalized.

Psychological and sociological studies document that females use more “indirect” coercive behavior and males use more “direct” forms or coercion. Data documents females suffer more serious, injurious and lethal family violence than males. However, if the goal is prevention to reduce intervention, it is important that researchers and advocates recognize the latter are effects not causes. Coercion is coercion, assaults are assaults and psychological abuse, as most advocates understand, can be as harmful as physical abuse. To end any negative effect we must properly document the cause.

Until now most of the different hypotheses and the myriad of causal theories concerning domestic violence have ignored the fact that males and females learn their use of these behaviors, either “nonviolent coercive control” or “physical assaults” in their childhood from their parents, siblings and friends and then, as adults, many of them will use what ever form of this behavior that works best for them, to advance their own particular interest.

Would it not be in the “best interest” of all domestic violence victims for researchers and advocates to understand that the use of “nonviolent coercive control” or “physical assaults” by one individual or group against another individual or group to change or alter their behavior, regardless of age, gender or sexual orientation is wrong?

The issue of “violence against adult heterosexual women” is the primary interest of our public policy makers and domestic violence advocates – hence we have the Violence Against Women Act. It is a fact that the Bureau of Justice Statistics documents that the total number of child, sibling, male spousal and intimate partner, elder, gay and lesbian victimization is greater than the total number of adult heterosexual women who have been victimized by adult heterosexual men.

What the NCADV and our public policy makers must work towards, for the safety of all victims, are major societal changes that eliminates personal and societal violence against all victims regardless of age, gender or sexual orientation.

Richard L. Davis served in the United States Marine Corps from 1960 to 1964. He is a retired lieutenant from the Brockton, Massachusetts police department. He has a graduate degree in liberal arts from Harvard University and a second in criminal justice from Anna Maria College. He is a member of the International Honor Society of Historians and the American Society of Criminology. He is a college instructor for Quincy College at Plymouth, MA in Criminology, Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence. He is the vice president for Family Nonviolence, Inc. in Fairhaven, MA. He is also the vice president for the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women.

He is an independent consultant for criminal justice domestic violence policies, procedures, and programs. He is the author of Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies by Praeger publishers and has written numerous articles for newspapers, journals, and magazines concerning the issue of domestic violence. He has columns concerning domestic violence at http://www.policeone.com, and http://www.nycop.com, is a distance learner instructor in Introduction to Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence for the Online Police Academy and has a website. He and Kim Eyer have a domestic violence website The Cop and the Survivor.

He lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts with his wife and the youngest of five children. He experienced domestic violence professionally for 21 years as a police officer and personally as a child and as an adult. In his retirement he continues to use his education, experience, and training to help the children, women, and men who have had to endure violence from those who profess to love them. He may be reached here.

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Liz Claiborne Inc. (Part 2) Power, Control and Emotional Abuse

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