Together, We Can End Domestic Abuse

Domestic violence is a serious crime that impacts our community at every level—from individual families to public health to the local economy. The problems of family violence cross all racial, social, religious, ethnic, geographic and economic groups. This webpage contains information and resources for people seeking help and support, as well as information about how individuals can join the cause to end domestic violence in Clackamas County.

If you are seeking immediate assistance, please contact:
Clackamas Women’s Services 24-hour crisis line
503-654-2288 or 1-888-654-2288
If you are in immediate danger, call 911

We are excited to introduce a new feature at End Abuse Clackamas: a blog! We will be adding entries to our homepage in the space below. Check back often to see what's going on in the county, current services being spotlighted and hot topics discussed. If you have any ideas for issues you'd like to be covered, feel free to contact us.

Clackamas County Resolution Services                          February 7, 2012

Sometimes the amount, and extent, of available resources can be surprising. For example, most people are unaware of the work being done at Clackamas County Resolution Services (CCRS).

CCRS services include:

These services are available to anyone in the community and fees vary by service. Couples who are in the process of ending a marriage or partnership are entitled to some mediation sessions are no additional charge (the cost is covering by court filing fees).

Domestic mediation can be a helpful option for resolving disputes. It is less expensive than formal litigation and includes more accountability than meeting in a coffee shop or addressing conflict via text. For domestic violence survivors it is especially helpful to have a third party in the room—and vital that they understand the dynamics of abuse. Survivors are often baffled by the odd requests their abusers make and then further frustrated as his mind changes on a dime. It is not uncommon for a couple to hammer out a parenting agreement that heavily favors the abuser’s demands only to have him throw the agreement out the next day. Having another person to support a survivor’s reality can help reassure her sanity during a time when the abuser often revs up his tactics to maintain power and control.

That being said, mediation is not always the best thing for a DV-involved couple. CCSR screens for domestic violence and can alter the form mediation takes to suit individual need. This is also true for those with a restraining order at any time within the last calendar year. Couples with minor children may be ordered by the court to attend mediation.

About 75% of service users reach an agreement on some or all of their issues as a result of mediation. Mediation is also available in Spanish.

Beyond a Bruise: Domestic Violence Is…                           January 31, 2012

There are many terms to describe an abusive dynamic between two people in an intimate relationship: domestic violence, domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, wife-beating (just to name a few). Yet, there is one image these all bring to mind--physical violence.

Domestic violence is typically considered to be a punch, a slap, a bloodied nose, a bruised arm or a blackened eye. And only that. This misconception is damaging to the many survivors living with, or navigating life after, an abusive and traumatic relationship that wasn’t physical. It doesn’t help the stigma that the legal definition (needed to precipitate an arrest or warrant a restraining order) encompasses only physical abuse that can be proven.

An abusive relationship is so much bigger than bruises; it cuts deeper too. We often hear survivors say that bruises heal in days or weeks but it can take decades to get an abuser’s voice out of their head. Most survivors report emotional abuse as the most debilitating; it nurtures self-doubt and often leads to a total loss of self-worth.

Abuse can look and feel like many different things but always boils down to the same issue:

Power and Control

Domestic violence is not a one-time event. It’s not the result of a single angry outburst or the product of one drunken night. Domestic violence is systematic. The tactics of abuse follow a pattern and it’s a pattern both survivor and the abuser are familiar with.

If you’re having a hard time wrapping your mind around DV being purposeful and calculated, consider where the abuser directs his “anger”. It’s not at his boss. It’s not in front of his friends. It’s toward his wife and it’s in his home. So often the behavior itself disproves the “uncontrollable outburst” theory.

It’s important to understand that the survivor of an abusive relationship knows best. It is not uncommon for a survivor to struggle with labeling her relationship as domestic violence--even if she is familiar with her partner's unique abusive pattern. If she does confide in you, recognizing the extent of her suffering can make all the difference. In a society that draws the line at a black eye, it’s easy to become desperate for validation of other forms of abuse.

Can Batterers Change?                                                       January 24, 2012

In the spirit of the New Year, change is in the air. Resolutions will be made and many will be broken. One may wonder how do abusers tend to fair in stopping their violent behavior?
The answer to this question is a tricky one and it varies widely. First, there is a range is what an “attempt” at change can look like. On one end of the spectrum, it could be a man trying to keep a promise he made to his wife that it would “never happen again”. Or it could be an abuser making that same promise with no intention of deliberate follow through.

Often the batterer we think of when we evaluate change is the one actively involved in some kind of rehabilitation program (usually facilitated by a court mandate). This is also the batterer we are better able to track and have more access to researching. For those reasons, data on this topic is likely to be skewed toward court-involved men in Batterer’s Intervention Programs (BIPs).

Even narrowing the field to men engaged with a BIP produces a wide range of approaches and a lot of grey area surrounding outcomes. According to the Duluth Model, “68% of men who pass through the criminal justice system response and are sent to our men's nonviolence classes have not reappeared in the criminal justice system over a course of eight years.” That is a promising statistic. Unfortunately, the Duluth Model is not used universally.

That means that the best case scenario is that approximately two-thirds of abusers don’t appear in the criminal justice system for eight years. Which really just means that they don’t get arrested. We know that domestic violence is one of the most underreported crimes, so we can assume that some of these men continue to batter without detection.

The question here is not how many batterers change, but if they can. Since we believe abuse is a choice, we must also believe that abusers can choose to stop it. The difference between success and relapse could be any or all of the following factors:

As a society, if we are going to address the entire issue of domestic violence, we must not neglect change among the abusers. In Clackamas County we practice offender accountability through the Domestic Violence Deferred Sentencing Program (DVDSP), within the Family Violence Coordinating Council (FVCC), and numerous BIPs.