Anatomy of Manipulation – The Jailhouse Tapes

When Women Became Victims

by Angela Marie MacDougall

Over the objection of prisoners’ groups and defense lawyers and already routine in some New York State and federal prisons, New York City changed policy in 2007 to permit the recording of prisoners telephone calls at the city jail. “Fly on the wall” accounts of emotional manipulation and threats by men cooling their heels for violence against women were documented in jail house recordings and reported in The New York Times February 2011.  Chilling in detail for the first time, the larger public got a glimpse of what women and their children deal with when surviving male violence in an intimate relationship. 

Going one step further Meet Me on the Hill Where We Used to Park:  Interpersonal Process Associated with Victim Recantations  is a U.S. study which for the first time recorded jailhouse telephone conversations between men charged with, (what they call) felony domestic violence and their woman victims to reveal why sometimes women decide not to follow through on charges. 

Researchers listened to telephone conversations between 17 accused men abusers in a Washington state detention facility and their women victims, all of whom decided to withdraw their accusations of abuse.   According to the study, the couples were aware they were being recorded through an automated message at the beginning of each call.  The analysis of the conversations confirmed what we have been seeing in our work at Battered Women’s Support Services that the men abusers are not necessarily threatening more violence rather are using a more nuanced and sophisticated appeals designed to:

• minimize their actions,
• deny the experience of the woman,
• create doubt of her account and recollection of her experience,
• blame her for his actions,
• ultimately gain the sympathy of the woman thus
• turning the focus away from any harm done to her to the sense of harm he feels is being done to him by being in jail/involved in the criminal legal system.   

Adapted from the abstract, after analyzing the calls, the researchers identified a five-step process that went from the women victims vigorously defending themselves in the phone calls to agreeing to a plan to recant their testimony against the accused abuser:

Stage 1

Typically, in the first and second conversations there is a heated argument between the couple, revolving around the event leading to the abuse charge. In these early conversations, the woman is strong, and resists the accused perpetrator’s account of what happens.  The phone calls show how the woman starts out with a sense of determination and is eager to advocate for herself, but gradually that erodes as the phone calls continue.

Stage 2

The male abusers utilizes classic emotional power and control tactics minimizing the abuse, denies that it happened at all and if it did it wasn’t that serious and if it happened it was her fault.  In one couple, where the woman suffered strangulation and a severe bite to the face, the accused male perpetrator repeatedly reminded the woman that he was being charged with "felony assault," while asking whether she thought he deserved the felony charge, eventually wearing her down where she agreed that he didn’t deserve a felony charge. 

Within the second stage the male perpetrator appeals to her sympathy describes how he is suffering, depressed, and misses her and the children.  This is often effective where she begins to provide empathic responses attempting to comfort and soothe him. 

In one case, the accused perpetrator threatened suicide and said in a phone call to the woman victim, "Nobody loves me though, right?"  At that point, the woman’s tone changed dramatically, and she sounded concerned that he might actually try to hurt himself and from then on, the woman promised to help him get out of jail.

Stage 3

In the third stage, after the accused abuser has gained the sympathy of the woman, the couple bonds over their love for each other and positions themselves against others who "don’t understand them."

Stage 4

The fourth stage involves the perpetrator asking the woman to recant her accusations against him and the woman complying.

Stage 5

Finally, in the fifth stage, the couple constructs the recantation plan and develops their stories.

My daughter Leona, who represents the larger public, not necessarily privy to first-hand survivor accounts, read the abstract and had this perspective, “We all know they (abusive men) are manipulative, it is good that this research shows in great detail exactly how they do it.”

It appears that the study was not written for larger public, like Leona, and seems to have been written for criminal legal system personnel and victim advocates.  Though identified as a target audience for the recommendations, feminist and feminist ending violence activists consulted for this blog were underwhelmed by the study and irritated by it’s premise that women and women’s advocates don’t already know this.  The overwhelming sentiment from advocates consulted for this blog, identified the challenge of working with the system where over forty years of survivor based expert information is seemingly disregarded until an academic study “reveals” it. 

“The fact that perpetrators use emotional manipulation, minimization, mothers’ guilt feelings re: children or the abuser’s welfare…this is exactly what we share with them(women). The article is disturbing, not because of some revelatory study, but because it suggests some women’s advocates and some academics ‘still don’t get’ the dynamics of woman abuse despite 40 years of experts – survivors themselves and feminist frontline workers – explaining it to them. This also implies that we ‘haven’t’ been telling (women) this, which is shocking and astounding to me.”  said “S” from Ontario

Alison Brewin, gender consultant and former executive director, West Coast Legal Education and Action Fund shared these thoughts, “…but does this research surprise you at all? Anyone who understands women’s lives understands the complexities of loyalty, love and the profound pressure to keep a family together…our society is designed to support women keeping their men and fathers of their children in the nuclear family unit and it usually results in women doing a whole lot of ‘compromising’ including keeping an abusive and violent spouse in the home for the social and economic ‘benefits’ that entails.”

Curiously, the study characterizes the actions of the perpetrators as “witness tampering”, and the U.S. has witness tampering laws.   Canada doesn’t have “witness tampering” laws per se, however Section 139 of the Criminal Code is close.  Contemplating these manipulative actions of perpetrators as obstructing the legal proceedings could benefit from more legal analysis.  As a legal strategy for crown prosecutors, this may have benefit and a measure of balance for women who are forced to navigate a violent abusive partner and a criminal legal system that needs it’s witnesses.  I have never heard of a case where a perpetrator was further charged under this section for manipulating women victims to recant.  I have, however, seen and heard numerous instances where women victims are punished by the criminal legal system for failing to participate in the criminal legal proceedings as witnesses to their own assault.  At Battered Women’s Support Services, we have often heard criminal legal system personnel refer to women victims as “reluctant” witnesses and how problematic that is for them and for the criminal legal system.  Marjaneh Aghamohseni, Battered Women’s Support Services Victim Service Worker said, “Some abused women recant out of fears/terror/distress since they are afraid of further violence by him. Based on women’s experiences with the police, they know that the accused will be released on conditions after arrest. If there is a protection order in place, it gets complicated if he pretends that he wants to see his child. Police tend to be on his side. But we know that this is another tactic from the abuser to continue his abusive behaviours.”

When it comes to violence against women in intimate relationships, through our work at Battered Women’s Support Services we have identified at least three areas that the criminal legal system can’t navigate…well:

1. Women who self-defend (here’s what we have written on women arrests,  resources we have written for women and advocates and stay tuned, there is more to come)
2. Women who “recant”
3. Survivor-based and/or feminist anti violence activist knowledge and experience

“E” from Vancouver had these thoughts, “Really when you think about it, the recant issue is something that has been going on for a very long time.  Though women who have been charged with assault (in the numbers we are seeing these days) is comparatively new, in both of these situations the feminist anti violence activists knowledge isn’t acknowledged, foremost, in these discussions even though we would have seen these things long before the system.”

“S” from Ontario further added, “If this study provides ‘proof’ of what survivors, feminists, advocates and countless authors have been saying all along about male violence against women, well I can only ask why four decades of women’s voices wasn’t proof enough?”

Annie Zhang, Battered Women’s Support Services Legal Advocate shared this regarding the women who self-defend and the women who recant,  "The issues in both categories, in my opinion, demonstrate the shortcomings of the criminal justice system not only in providing protection toward battered women, but in achieving its own ends of convicting the guilty while protecting the innocent.”

When Women Became Victims Series:

Risk Assessment – E-Learnings

Social Justice VS Criminal Justice

When Women Became Victims

Risk Assessment E-Learnings

by Angela Marie MacDougall

At Battered Women’s Support Services, we have been looking for and attempting to create accessible resources and training for front line anti-violence workers.  We have been developing Strategic Interventions and looking at different models from other regions around the world.  A women’s coalition in Ontario has developed accessible training and other resources for their members.

OAITH is a provincial coalition founded by women’s advocates in 1977.  Their membership includes community based women’s service organizations, first and second stage transition houses.  As a coalition of women’s serving organizations they work to educate and promote change in all areas that abused women and their children identify to their freedom from violence.  We appreciated that the coalition comfortably declares that they operate from an integrated, feminist, anti-oppression perspective on violence against women, recognizing that violence and abuse against women and children occurs as a result of unequal power and status of women and children in society.  They highlight that racism and oppression of women is a form of violence.  They advocate for the strong inclusion of women who access services to inform service delivery and related policies.

Their commitments appear on their website and summarized here:

• Removing barriers to equality for all women and children
• Ensuring the voices and experiences of all abused women are heard when working for social change
• Increasing awareness through education, public advocacy and empowerment for OAITH members agencies
• Assisting agencies in offering support and services to women
• Offering training of OAITH members
• Working with equality-seeking allies in the community to end all forms of violence and oppression of women.

Compare and Contrast Context – Ontario and British Columbia

After reviewing the domestic homicides of Arlene May in 1996 and Gillian Hadley in 2000, Ontario prioritized risk and threat assessments for law enforcement and related systems as well as co-ordinated approaches between all working with domestic violence cases.  A conference was held in Hamilton, Ontario in 2010 Reducing the Risk of Lethal Violence.  Collaboration in Threat Assessment and Risk Management from Theory to Practice.  This prompted OAITH to develop E-Learning resources for front line anti-violence workers, working in community-based women’s organizations, first and second stage transition houses. 

In British Columbia, the BC Domestic Violence Action Plan was created and the  Violence Against Women in Relationships Policy was amended December 2010 with risk assessment and evidence based risk assessment investigations leading the way forward.   The plan and the revision were prepared through consultations between the BC ministries of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Attorney General and Children and Family Development with an emphasis on integrated services, that is, the need for a coordinated response to domestic violence among all agencies involved including referral to community-based victim service organizations where they exist.   The ministries identified the need for change following the Lee/Park coroner’s inquest and the Representative for Children and Youth’s report on the death of Christian Lee.  Christian Lee, his mother Sunny Yong Sun Park, and his maternal grandparents, Kum Lea Chun and Moon Kyu Park were killed by his father in 2007.  

UPDATED
Here are the suggested joint recommendations to the coroners jury, very thoroughly developed by OAITH and the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children (METRAC) from July 1998 regarding the domestic homicide of Arlene May.

Here is the report to the chief coroner of British Columbia on Findings and Recommendations of the Domestic Violence Death Review Panel, May 2010 prepared by BC Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.

The Risk Assessment E-Learning Modules for Front-line Anti-Violence Advocates

OAITH has prepared four modules for front-line anti-violence advocates: Feminist Analysis of Risk and Risk Assessment, Justice System Perspective on Risk Assessment Tools, Risk Assessment in Partnership with Women, and Safety and Advocacy Planning. 

It was encouraging to see OAITH attention to a Feminist Analysis of Risk and Risk Assessment module.  This module is very validating of the work of women’s anti violence advocates over the years.  In particular, the module examines current risk assessment practices which have largely been designed for law enforcement, legal systems and health systems which place the women at the centre as victim with the service providers surrounding her as experts.  The application of a feminist analysis of risk and risk assessment was refreshing.  The module encourages reviewing concepts of risk empowering front line anti-violence workers to analyze and develop models that make sense for the women they serve and the work in their communities.  The module details what risk assessments can and can’t do.

The Justice System Perspective on Risk Assessment Tools module provides an important overview and feminist analysis of the justice system risk assessment tools.  The module is de-mystifying, defining the difference between safety, threat, lethality and risk assessments, provides an inventory of spousal violence risk assessment tools including SARA and B-Safer developed by forensic psychologists Randy Kropp and Steven Hart and popular with police services in BC. 

The module includes Danger Assessment by Jacquelyn Campbell, Danger Assessment 2004 and a website dedicated to Danger Assessment that can be completed with women.  The module provides information for front line anti violence workers supporting women going through the risk assessment process with police services and legal/justice systems.  Women Abuse Council of Toronto has High Risk Assessment Training by Jacquelyn Campbell on their website. 

Risk Assessment in Partnership with Women module provides an overview of how front-line anti-violence workers can support identify risk to strategize with women, emphasizing that risk assessment shouldn’t be a mysterious process.  The module validates and recognizes that front-line anti-violence advocates have always conducted risk assessments if not in a standardized and/or formalized way.  

Safety and Advocacy Planning module examines how anti-violence workers can work with women to create safety and advocacy plans and it reviews safety plans available online.  The module includes a section on safety planning with children by Lundy Bancroft.  The Safety Not Justice section of the module has critical significance to our front-line anti-violence work in BC presently.

Risk Assessment and Big “A” Advocacy

The four modules validate the broad based advocacy that feminist advocates do all the time.  Our detractors often challenge our work by suggesting that we have no proof for the claims we make based on our work with women.  In reality in the past two decades women’s advocates have rarely had the time or resources to conduct research, additionally, we may not have felt empowered to embark on systemic and institutional advocacy, believing it was some other organization’s responsibility, not within our mandate or too daunting.  Risk assessment provides an opportunity for our front-line advocacy because we collect loads of anecdotal information that if organized effectively can be identified as research.  Risk assessment provides an opportunity where our work with women can help us identify systemic and social issues that as feminist advocates we can attempt to address with our broad-based advocacy.  That through identifying the facts, the consequences and the possible solutions so the data collected through risk assessments can assist us with our larger systemic and institutional advocacy.  At Battered Women’s Support Services we have used this process to do the systemic and institutional advocacy with the increasing instances of battered women arrests.  In the first half of this month we have seen four new cases representing a 200% jump in referrals.  In advance of the adoption of the White Paper on Family Relations Act:  Reform for new Family Law Act, Battered Women’s Support Services is identifying areas for systemic and institutional advocacy. 

Substance Use and Harm Reduction

Substance use and Harm Reduction in women’s services,  transition house/shelter service provision has been a challenging service delivery issue in BC and Ontario for some time.  There has been much debate and in some aspects has created polarized political positioning within the transition house and shelter providers.  OAITH has produced “Safe For All” Harm Reduction training video for front line service providers particularly transition houses/shelters, who may be thinking about harm reduction and policy development.  The video looks at safety, stigma, trauma and parenting policies also.   The video is a good starting place for anyone looking for information on harm reduction and violence against women.  Battered Women’s Support Services is examining current research and has developed training curricula on the harm reduction continuum and working with women survivors of violence.

If you are a woman dealing with intimate partner violence and/or you’re working in a community based women’s organization, community-based victim service organization, first or second stage transition house in British Columbia or if you are an interested community member in any region, we would love to hear your thoughts on this post and the resources presented here.  Please comment here or email us at endingviolence@bwss.org.

Here is a previous instalment in this series Social Justice vs Criminal Justice

HOW BWSS LEGAL ADVOCACY EMPOWERED ME

In 2009 I found the courage to escape my abuser shortly after discovering I was pregnant. When I left, I was so traumatized that I couldn’t even carry a proper conversation.

Next began the daunting task of rebuilding my life, which included the legal system. I had never dealt with anything like it before and felt powerless. I spent a lot of time crying and complaining about how unfair the process was. Finally, I came to the realization that no one was going to do this for me. If I wanted my life back, I would have to take action.

I started doing research. I looked into countless resources and eventually found Battered Women Support Services. Their legal advocacy services were probably the most important support I had. They put me in touch with appropriate representation and helped me acquire knowledge on how to navigate the legal system.

This gave me some control over my situation and began a snowball effect. I started to regain my confidence. I began to feel empowered and knew my voice had to be heard. As my self esteem grew, I became motivated to make positive changes in my life, including pursuing my education. All of these things have been important not only because they’ve help me improve my life, but they also gave me creditability in court. I gained the strength to stand up to my abuser in court. I knew that I would be believed!

My battles in court are still ongoing and it is possible that I may have to do this many more times in the future. However so far I have done well and my abuser has yet to gain access to my daughter. Had I not had help from legal advocacy and become informed, I am certain the outcome would not have been as positive. Although this experience may be one of the most difficult things I’ve ever been through, it has also been the most valuable. It has taught me that I am capable of success and that I can protect myself and my child.

When a young women, using the internet to research how to leave her abusive relationship, erased her internet browsing history, her abusive boyfriend assulted & kidnapped her.

He was changed on Sunday after she was able to escape.

Read more about this story here.

BWSS understands the importance of safety when using the internet and is developing a safety strategy for website visitors.

In new York, phone calls made by prisoners to everyone but their doctors and lawyers are being taped. This has been used as evidence in trials and have become central in domestic violence cases.

Read more about that story here.