Lundy Bancroft and Janet Johnston

At a recent training, Lundy Bancroft mentioned Janet Johnston which has caused a bit of a stir with a few members of our community.  Bancroft did not go into detail at the training but referenced his book The Batterer as Parent where he spends an entire chapter discussing Janet Johnston's research.  As I couldn't find our copy of the book, I found online a blog post by Bancroft that addresses this very thing.  About half way through the post in the section titled, "The Connection Between Battering and Child Abuse" Bancroft discusses the typologies identified by Johnston and the issues he sees with using these typologies to assess risk in child custody and placement cases.  The AFCC (Association of Family and Conciliation Courts) used Johnston's research on these typologies in developing their risk assessment.

Lundy Bancroft

Our organization had the pleasure of hosting a training led by Lundy Bancroft last month who has extensive experience in batterer's treatment and domestic violence and has published several excellent books.  We refer many of our clients to his book entitled Why Does He Do That?.  The Batterer as Parent is a great resource for professionals working with victims of domestic violence and their families.  Below are some key messages I took from the training led by Lundy Bancroft.

Overlap of abuse towards mother and child abuse

• 49% of batterers also physically abuse the children
• Batterers are 7 times more likely to physically abuse the children than a non-batterer
• Batterers are 6 times more likely to sexually abuse children than a non-batterer

 How the batterer appears in court or when meeting with professionals

• Will deny/minimize allegations of domestic violence
• Make allegations that the mother has mental health problems, abuses alcohol or drugs, or is an unfit parent
• Will commonly appear as the friendly parent
• Skillfully dishonest and manipulative which professionals may not recognize
• Will usually outperform victim in psychological tests – there is no psych test that will show someone is a batterer
• Will not seem capable of the kind of cruelty or abuse being accused of
• Very good under observation
• Will appear very calm when meeting with professionals like an officer immediately following an incident – batterers are very controlled in their behaviors even though at times they may appear out of control – an example – when he destroys things, he avoids destroying his own belongings

How the victim appears in court or when meeting with professionals

• May not appear to be a good parent as the batterer typical undermines and interferes with her parenting
• Often do not perform well on psychological tests which are usually only about 70% accurate in evaluating mental health and usually do not relate the results to the individual’s ability to parent
• Typically not good witnesses

 Impact of battering on children

• Batterer often causes divisions in the family affecting children’s relationships with their siblings and with their mother
• They learn by example the values and behaviors that lead to perpetration or victimization
• Separation increases the chances of children witnessing violence as it often occurs during exchanges
• Children are often used as weapons or tools to continue the abuse

 Other comments by Lundy Bancroft

• Domestic violence is not a relationship problem, it is a battering problem.
• Our legal system sends victims mixed messages – if they stay with an abusive partner they are failing to protect the children; if they leave, the abusive partner is granted extensive unsupervised placement with the children leaving the victim unable to protect her children
• Children heal through repairing their connection to the non-abusive parent and their siblings.  They also heal through increased safety and establishing loving, appropriate relationships with adults.
• The risk of a boy becoming a perpetrator is directly related to whether the boy grew up believing the violence was the non-abusive parent’s fault or whether the abusive parent had to take responsibility.
• Victims tend to give up financial orders (maintenance, child support, property division, etc.) in order to get custody and placement.  This often backfires as most financial orders cannot be modified at a later date but custody and placement can be modified.  With the lack of favorable financial orders, the victim doesn’t have the financial resources to fight it when the batterer keeps bringing them back to court to modify custody and placement.