COUNTYWIDE : Women’s Shelter to Counsel Abusers

For 15 years, the Women’s Transitional Living Center in Orange has offered battered women shelter from abuse. Later this month, the center for the first time will begin a program to prevent violence before it happens.

The nonprofit center, one of the nation’s oldest and largest women’s shelters, plans to offer counseling for men who have become abusive and for those who fear that they might. Each week, the center will hold meetings for two groups of up to 10 men each who pledge to commit to a year of counseling, group discussions, role playing and other exercises.

The program was created based on research and advice from other domestic violence experts and therapists, officials of the center said.

“This is so new that there’s really no model to follow,” said Kathy Klein, men’s program coordinator.

Traditionally, battered women’s advocates have concentrated on helping the women after abuse has occurred. The Women’s Transitional Living Center, for example, offers a 45-day emergency shelter program for battered women and children from throughout the county.

While groups do exist for spouse abusers who have been convicted on domestic violence charges, there are few, if any, that try to intervene before the problem reaches the courts, said Fran Shiffman, executive director of the center. By advertising at social service agencies and other locations, the center will try to reach men who are potential abusers or who batter their wives but have not been jailed.

“The men are as isolated as the women,” Shiffman said. “They can tell no one that they go home and beat their wives. . . . Our goal is to get them to stop.”

Statistics show that domestic violence crosses all ethnic and socioeconomic boundaries and that most spouse abusers have been abused or come from families where domestic violence was the norm.

In Orange County in 1989, the latest year for which statistics are available, police received 11,195 complaints of domestic violence. Calls from Santa Ana topped the list with 2,239 reports, followed by Westminster, Garden Grove and Orange.

Shiffman said reports of domestic violence in the county have doubled between 1986 and 1989 because battered women are finally turning to law-enforcement officials for help. Still, abuse goes widely under-reported, she said, and statistics on recovery for those who batter women are gloomy.

“Even if the woman leaves, (the spouse abuser) will go on and find another partner and batter another partner,” Shiffman said. Less than 7% of those who batter woman are said to recover, she added.

“There’s no easy solution here to change a lifelong activity,” Shiffman said. “It takes commitment and it takes time.”

For more information on the men’s groups or on shelter for battered women, call the center hot line at (714) 992-1931.