"Raise your hand if you have fears about allowing abusive fathers back into the lives of their children," asked Juan Carlos Arean, MA, lead consultant of the Fathering After Violence Project, at his talk on Thursday, October 23, the 3rd Domestic Violence Awareness Month event. More than half of the people in the room raised their hands. "A lot of people have fears about this project, but we can't be paralyzed by this fear," Mr. Arean stated.

That is why the Fathering After Violence Project (FAVP) was created. The project aims to help men who have renounced their violence become better fathers and co-parents. They ultimately hope to support and complement other innovative work happening throughout the US. There are several risks involved in this project and Mr. Arean stressed that physical and emotional safety of the victims was their primary concern.

These men have a desire to be involved with their children, but will the women that they have abused allow it? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Through focus groups and interviews, FAVP found that women had a strong desire for fathers to be involved with their children, even if they had used violence in the past. They clearly stated however that men have to first change and take responsibility for their abuse, and that a man cannot be a good father if he is abusive or disrespectful to the child's mother. The mothers are the gatekeepers for abusive men to have any access to their children, and their wishes must be respected.

Focus groups and interviews with abusers and victims yielded the following themes:

• If men want to start healing their relationships with their children, they must stop their violence by practicing self-care and self-awareness.
• Men must examine their own past.

These areas have been avoided for the most part in the past due to the realistic fear of the batterers using them as excuses or diversions, but FAVP feels they are necessary, powerful tools for change.

Men must:

• learn about the effects of violence on children and develop empathy.
• start modeling good behaviors and employing consistent and non-abusive discipline.
• realize their secondary paternal role and support the mother's authority.
• understand the reparation process and follow its steps with commitment and patience.

The last theme is perhaps the most important finding thus far. Mr. Arean stated that helping fathers to fully understand the reparation process was the key to ending their violence and establishing a healthy relationship with their children. Literature on reparation is limited, so the FAVP has established a working model based on their research. The following stages for change and reparation are as follows:

• Stop abusive behavior - This is a prerequisite to starting any reparation.
• Modeling constructive behavior - It is not enough to simply stop abusive behavior; Men must then model positive behavior.
• Stop denial, blaming, and justification - Teach men about the negative effects of these denial techniques on children.
• Being fully accountable - Not simply from a criminal justice perspective. Consequences of their behavior may also include rejection and the loss of trust, love, and even contact with their children. Men are taught to expect and understand this and that they must learn to accept it.
• Acknowledging damage- Men must realize the amount of damage they have inflicted and let their children know that they understand specifically how they have hurt them.
• Not forcing the process - Every stage of this process has to take place on the children's terms and timing. Fathers must learn and respect that children may not want to have contact with them now or ever.
• Not trying to turn the page - Fathers must be open to talking about the past as many times as the children need to. Once behavior changes and the family begins to feel safe with the father, anger will emerge. The fathers need to understand this and not push children to put it behind them.
• Listening and validating - Fathers need to prepare and be willing to receive anger, hurt, sadness, fear, and rejection while validating the child's experience.

Because reparation is a complex and painful process, it cannot be completed during a whole cycle at a Batterers Intervention Program (BIP), which is 80 hours, or typically 40 weeks. Ongoing support is essential, however it is currently not available. FAVP is working to incorporate these findings into policy and programs.

FAVP has developed several exercises that will help BIPs throughout the US teach their clients about the reparation process, as well as focus on developing empathy and modeling good behavior. Several experimental approaches are being tried at BIPs located in Boston. Participants are asked to draw a picture illustrating how they see their own father, and then to draw another picture illustrating how their child may view them as a father. Drawing a picture helps the men to think about their child's perspective. Also, men are asked to write down both good and bad characteristics of their fathers, the good and bad of how their father treated their mothers and the children in the family. Likewise, the men are then asked to do this same thing relating to themselves and their own families. Mr. Arean emphasizes the advantage of focusing on both the good and the bad aspects. This will help the men to see positive behavior as well as negative. Creative activities like these are creating progress throughout the healing process.

The program is also exploring other settings that offer access to the batterer population. They are finding that Child Witness to Violence programs are not appropriate, but are considering the appropriateness of supervised visitation sites. They have found that, possibly due to jurisdiction issues between probate and district courts, men are referred to either barterer's treatment or supervised visitation, but not both. Perhaps a correlation of services will help make progress with this population.

-Thanks to Juan Carlos Arean for his assistance in editing this article.