Voice For Change Domestic Violence Support

‘VOICE FOR CHANGE WATERLOO’ Liverpool Merseyside — Attended 2012
WORKSHOP (Domestic Violence awareness)
T H E C O U R S E
GOOD
The text itself is direct & simple.
It ensures each student is aware of what domestic abuse is & the effect it has on a child.
BAD
There are no details as to who wrote it, references to studies or statistics that support the information given.

T H E T U T O R S
GOOD
The tutors were committed to their cause, genuine & passionate.
They tackled a serious subject by making it interesting.
BAD
I found the tutors could be judgemental.
It was made clear that I should not be attending this course for my partner’s problem, but much of my behavior was influenced by my partners drinking. Precautions to protect my daughter such as taking car keys during binges then became acts of control & abuse once we ignored the reasons for it.
I have no police record, & come from a fully functional & happy family. Therefore I found it upsetting, how the tutors could allude that I was lying or causing someones drinking. Only in a Jeremy Kyle style workshop could this happen, as if I was to write down the complications of our situation & supply evidence, then any bias would be obvious. But here we have a problem that is bigger than V.F.C. I guess the resources needed to look into actual evidence would be too great. The system has to assume the woman is telling the truth — even when legless & incoherent.
DOES IT WORK?
Seated next to me on this course were guys who had openly been violent. Many had done time in jail. Some said the course was doing them the world of good, yet they seemed to be the course veterans. It was hard to know, whether they were genuine or just afraid of losing their kids. I suspect the veterans would tell you they wore ladies underwear, if the tutor suggested they had. One guy explained to me, it was a choice between jail & attending this course. At times, it seemed the tutors were almost using bullying techniques to ensure everyone took responsibility & admitted being abusive. For some this might actually work. A place to say you want to change, reflect & have a cry. For the innocent, it’s a nightmare & reminded me of the 70’s film ‘One flew over the cuckoos nest’.
Part of the problem for me started with the many people around my partner such as the health visitor, hospital counsellors & VFC all hinting at mental abuse. The worst being the women’s councillors in Fazakerly hospital who blatantly twisted & influenced my partners words yet had no accountability & enjoyed anonymity. There seemed to be a mission to find abuse regardless of evidence. The problem with this, was that if my partner had turned on me and lied when sober, its quite possible that I could have been served with a restraining order — taking away my child’s only protection.
CONCLUSION
I think for convicted abusers in denial, this course could work, but to judge people without evidence is dangerous. Social Services are fond of throwing people on these courses, as it gets good results on paper. The truth is they cant always solve Alcoholism by finding the cause because alcohol can become the problem regardless of the original cause. My daughter is still exposed to alcoholism & all’s it did was forced us to split up, took away my help, & caused big family divides. It was never treated like an illness because when drunk, she disguised it as being down to things I did out of a fear of losing some imagined future custody battle. She was also encouraged to think this way by all people involved.
Update 2015 My partner quit drinking for a while in 2012, only after a deadline of losing her child to me by Social Services. and them completely ignoring the domestic abuse farce. Tax payers money was used to chase ghosts for 16 mths by allowing my partner to disguise alcoholism as a domestic issue. Expert opinions were based on the word of my partner, yet they assumed quantities drunk, times & domestic events were all true. The possibility that an alcoholic could bend the truth to keep on drinking, especially if it is reinforced that its someone else’s fault was never considered. The pattern of alcohol addiction that ran through my partners immediate family was never looked in to & there was an obvious bias towards the female by the whole system. I moved out of the house in 2013 and now we share joint custody. My partners alcoholic problems continued — which kind of confirmed what I already knew. In my opinion, alcoholism is an hereditary disease, and finding the reasons causing it just results in new reasons. That explains why alcohol counselling has poor success rates long term. No consolation if anything had of happened to my child through alcohol. There would have been no hiding place for the people that were on a mission to blame abuse at any cost. They never put pen to paper, but the world would have put each and every person who added to the tragedy on trial.