The Role Of Ellen Pence And Her Contribution To Domestic Violence

Although we lost Ellen Pence, a woman who changed how domestic violence is addressed, in 2012, there are many lives that are being saved to this day because of her work. Ellen Pence found her calling in 1977 when she began working for the Minneapolis Housing Authority that helped individuals relocate with housing complications (StarTribune, 2010). It was then that she immersed herself through domestic violence cases and set the standard for addressing these cases. Ellen Pence is especially known for establishing the Duluth Program, a program that address batterers in the court systems, and Praxis Training, which are training on addressing domestic violence for law enforcement, advocates, community agencies, and institutions. Pence’s 35 years of service change the way domestic violence cases were handled, educated key players in domestic violence cases, and showed the world what it was like to be a victim of domestic abuse. Without her efforts, many individuals in power addressing these cases would be lost and those to who are victims would not be understood as they are today.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a type of abuse that occurs between people who are involved in a close relationship. “Intimate partner” is a term that is used to include both current and former spouses as well as dating partners. IPV exists along a continuum that ranges from a single episode of violence through ongoing battering.

How do you define, talk about, and understand domestic violence (DV) /interpersonal violence (IPV)? Ms. Latimore defines domestic violence as a pattern of physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse or the threat of abuse used to get and maintain control over another person in a domestic setting. She says intimate partner violence (IPV) is violence in an intimate relationship by one spouse or a partner onto another spouse or partner. She says that no one ever knows that their relationship is going to become abusive from the beginning, as everything seems perfect during the early stages. She further states that controlling and possessive behaviors emerge as the relationship grows. Ms. Latimore concludes that although domestic violence may not look the same in every relationship, the one thing they all have in common is, the abusive partner wants power and control over his victim.

The Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WSCADV, n.d.) provides training for advocates of domestic violence (DV) survivors and their families. This paper reflects my experiences as I worked through the first three sections of training: the history of the DV movement; the key requirements of DV advocacy; and safety planning. The primary thread throughout the training sections is the importance of providing advocacy based on survivor-empowerment and meeting clients where they are. In this paper, I also explore my role as a mental health counselor in an interdisciplinary response team working with survivors of domestic violence.

The Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) deals with the concerns of battered women and their families. For 30 years we have represented both rural and urban areas. Our programs support and involve battered women of all ages, racial, social, religious and economic groups. We oppose the use of violence as a means of control over others and we support equality in relationships and the concept of helping women assume power over their own lives. We strive towards encouraging independent, community based groups in which women make major policy and program decisions.

It was not that long ago that what transpired at home was considered a secretive, a personal matter and was not looked at by the public. Within the last few years, there has been an rise in awareness of the importance of child abuse and negligence, spouse/partner mistreatment, and elder cruelty not only as serious societal problems but also as crimes. The PEACE Domestic Violence Agency was step up to help individuals break through the barriers.

Ellen Pence helped build the foundation of batterer programming with the Duluth program. The purpose of the program was to adopt a common set of policies and procedures directed at providing a uniform response to the assailants in domestic assault cases (Pence

Every year, nearly 10 million men and women are abused by an intimate partner in the United States. Intimate partner violence or IPV is defined as any behavior within an intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological, or sexual harm to those in the relationship (Burgess, Regerhr, & Roberts, 2013). Acts of physical aggression include slapping, punching, kicking, beating, and biting. Twenty individuals are victims of physical violence every minute in the United States. Psychological maltreatment is the hardest form of abuse to detect, however it can cause long-term detrimental consequences such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Displays of psychological maltreatment include, but are not limited to verbal attacks, isolating the victim, verbal threats of harm, humiliation, controlling the victim, and stalking. Sexual harm is characterized as any forced sexual intercourse. Research suggests that 1 in every 5 women will be raped in her lifetime (Burgess, Regerhr, & Roberts, 2013).

The intersectionality of women’s health issues such as domestic violence overlaps this problematic worldwide situation and connects vastly across cultures and continents, as domestic violence does not discriminate against women--people do. In the peer-reviewed academic design study article, “Intersectionality and Framing Domestic Violence”, Jennifer Nixon and Cathy Humphreys investigates intersectionality of feminist framing of domestic violence, and hypothesize a feminist theory specifically aimed at issues of violence against women. Nixon and Humphreys postulate that “deconstruction, not to cause harm on feminist activism has made ideological, material, and political gains for survivors of domestic violence” (Nixon and Humphreys 138). Additionally, they establish meaning that domestic violence is extensive, oppresses women, and is multi-cultural and the economic segments require revision. Subsequently, recommending that need to re-frame domestic violence should be a concentration on intersectionality, with its focus on the overlapping repetitions of gender, race, and ethnicity, class, disability, and sexuality. As the empirical results are constantly fluctuating, incorporating inclusions of updated results are vital, especially to include intersectionality which comprises the larger overlapping inclusion of the violence against women movement. In fact, Portwood and Finkel Heany’s (2007) peer-reviewed design study, “Responding to Violence Against Women: Social Science

Hence, they would be charged fully for the attack, but not for domestic abuse in its fullest form. This is the most common form of physical violence that men experiences, with the knife as the weapon of choice for abusive women (Drijber et al., 174). Regardless of the results from numerous studies, it is still difficult to view women as perpetrators of domestic violence crimes due to the belief of female victimhood (Busch and Rosenberg, 49). This concept connects richly to gender-role stereotypes in America. The female against male domestic violence would be considered non-prototypical, or overlooked in simple terms. The sex of the individual(s) in a domestic violence incident tends to predict what responses should be expressed (Seelau and

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is known as a common public health problem throughout the world especially among low and middle income countries(1).IPV refers to “behavior by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or emotional harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors.”(2). It indicates the educational, economical, equity, human rights and health situation in different societies(3).

A crime that affects between one and four million women in the U.S yearly is domestic violence. This crime, which many do not know is a federal crime, responsible for about thirty percent of female murders (Asher, Elba, Sugg 1). According to the American Bar Association (ABA), 90-95% of domestic violence victims are women (2) and “ 70% of intimate homicides are female” (2) intimate murder, as opposed to murder by a stranger. Women today need to understand what domestic violence is and need to educate themselves that domestic violence is a serious crime. Domestic violence towards women is the most common form of violence throughout the United States. It affects a woman’s lifespan from health-related problems such as sex

Domestic violence against women is a global issue that is happening all across national boundaries as well as socio-economic, cultural, race, and class distinctions. It is a problem without frontiers. Not only is the problem happening all across the world, but it’s incident is also large, making it a typical and accepted behavior because it happens a lot. Domestic violence is not an individual event but a repeated behavior that the batter uses to gain control and power over the victim. Domestic violence isn’t always physical abuse but also mental abuse. Batters use psychological terrorism, isolation, sexual abuse, threats against their children, economic methods, and brainwashing techniques to keep them in violent relationships.

This site not only discusses the violence women endure, but also the effects it has on them, the families, and specifically the children. The chart on the website shows the continual cycle that many women face with the abusive partner and how it repeats. This source gains credibility from the work done by the Oakland County Council Against Domestic Violence. This website provides information into the specifics of how males will manipulate a female partner into a situation they are or feel, trapped in.

Throughout history, women have been victims of abuse worldwide, whether it is sexual, physical or even emotional abuse. This ongoing issue has become a natural state for women, because even when they haven’t been abused, so many women around them have experienced some sort of violence that it is natural for women to wait for their turn, always hoping it won’t happen to them but knowing that it is possible to go through it at any