Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
-We have listened to women every day, for so many years-
-and we hear the same stories, same structures, same patterns over and over again.
Almost like using tracing paper, that's what it looks like.
That's how ROKS explains why women don't leave abusive men.
They have been indoctrinated to accept the violence.
-That would make me livid. It completely lacks logic.
It's ***.
I wouldn't want to visit a women's shelter only to have this spouted to my face.
Anki lived with Göran for 12 years, Carina for 5 years.
It is not unusual for women to stay in violent relationships for years.
But Anki and Carina deny that they ever accepted the violence.
-It may sound strange to say I never accepted it, after all I did stay with him.
But there was never any acceptance. None whatsoever.
As time went by there was only hate. Hatred was all I had for him.
Women often stay because, like Anki, they don't dare to seek help.
Or like Carina, some women hope that the violence will end without intervention.
Women in violent relationships are constantly thinking about and planning change,
-a fact which is confirmed by Margareta Hydéns research.
-Women resist the violence in countless different ways.
Some are successful in that the violence is avoided-
-and some are less successful because they don't stop the violence.
The chairwoman of ROKS is aware of women who tell of their resistance-
-and how they tried to end the violence.
But she doesn't believe them.
-Some say, "He's such a good father" or "he is such a kind man when he is good."
"But the violence..." They want to keep the relationship, but without the violence.
But it doesn't work that way.
If a relatioship is violent, the only option is to break the relationship.
Anki eventually overcame her fear and sought help.
Carina's relationship to Göran ended in court.
He was sentenced to prison. But to Carina, that is not an adequate solution.
-There will be more women after me. He will find another woman.
She shouldn't have to go through what I have.
If there was proper treatment and therapy maybe she wouldn't have to.
Maybe then she would get a pleasant man who knows where the boundaries are.
Had Carina known that there was no help to be had, she would have left Göran much earlier.
In retrospect, the years with Göran feel like unnecessary suffering.
If Carina had lived 30 miles further west, finding help would have been much easier.
In Norway, the fact that women tend to stay in violent relationships-
-is the basis of the treatment that is offered to violent men.
Most people who seek help have been faced with their partner's ultimatum.
-In our experience, a lot of people do very very well-
-which is due to the fact that we don't take a short term approach.
The average duration of individual therapy is just under a year.
For group therapy, it is on average two years.
The men are told that the purpose of the treatment is not to talk about their hardships.
The problem is the violence they subject their women to.
A common perception among the men is that the woman provokes their violence.
-We are very clear that this is a male problem-
-and not primarily a family problem or a female problem.
Men will often play down their violence, and claim it is less serious-
-or that it is an isolated incident.
This makes it easier to face oneself.
Carina and Anki never managed to get Göran to take their bruises seriously.
-I tried to tell him, "this is how much pain I am in."
He just said, "I am sorry, I am ill and I don't know what I do."
-He would often claim that he didn't remember.
But he must have remembered hitting and hitting and hitting and hitting...
You must be pretty ill not to remember.
-Why do you think he said it?
-He didn't want to remember.
Not owning up is a necessary strategy which lets the violence continue.
A particularly painful part of the treatment involves describing the violence hit by hit.
The man must face the effect of the violence on the woman.
How it hurts her, and limits her life.
According to ATV, these methods are highly effective.
The first phase involves mapping out the violence in detail.
This already leads to a dramatic reduction in violence-
-and sometimes the violence stops completely, just from talking about it in realistic terms.
To have a lasting effect, it is also important to consider the man's problems.
-Our experience is that men who feel small, inadequate, humiliated-
-or powerless, that is when there is an increased risk of violence.
To use violence, to be furious and raging-
-is a very powerful antidote to feelings of powerlessness.
Today, treatment is official policy in Norway.
The difference to Sweden is startling.
In Carina's and Anki's town, there is no treatment to be had-
-as is the case in most of Sweden.
There are a handful of local projects, but no national programme-
-and there is no government plan of action.
In Norway, treatment programmes are being extended to cover the whole country.
To Norway's Minister of Justice it is essential, to save women from violence.
-We have to make sure women are not forced to become refugees in their own country.
And we know that men can be helped.
Experts say that men can be helped with their violent behaviour in seven cases out of ten.
But we have to reach them at the right point in time, and in a correct manner.
To ROKS, treatment means investment in men, at the expense of women.
They worry about the Norwegian developements.
-We are very worried, because we have seen some experiments like this in Sweden-
-where men are supposed to be treated in one way or another.
But there is no understanding of the power relationships, and the fact that the woman-
-is completely controlled by the man.
ROKS' strong rejection of treatment programmes is well known.
But not long ago, Sweden was moving in the same direction as Norway.
In the mid 90s, the government was working on the Commission of Violence against Women.
The government was influenced by treatment models in Canada and the USA.
The National Board of Health and Welfare was tasked with finding a model for Sweden.
But something happened along the way.
ROKS found a powerful ally in Margareta Winberg.
-My strong political commitment was born in the nineties.
Prior to the nineties, I was not a feminist.
Back then, I found it somewhat suspect.
Margareta Winberg describes how she moved closer to ROKS' analysis in the nineties.
-That's when I started calling myself a feminist.
It opened my eyes to gendered power structures.
I could see it and understand it. I saw it everywhere in society.
And above all, I saw one of the grossest expressions of these gender structures-
-and that is men's violence against women, in all its forms. �