A gem from the Gems page. The Gems page can be found under INSIGHTS on the top menu bar.
“You take a guy like (former NFL running back) Ray Rice, a guy who can just cold-cock his wife like that and think you’re going to send him to a little counseling? No way,” said Lundy Bancroft, the former director of Emerge, the nation’s first reform program for abusive men. “Once a guy starts abusing women he locks in, in many ways,” he added. “Jail takes a bigger bite out of recidivism1 than even the good batterers intervention programs do. (Quote by Lundy Bancroft from this article: Why Domestic Violence Prevention Programs Don’t Work.)
1According to Merriam-Webster [Internet Archive link] recidivism is defined as “a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior”.
***IMPORTANT NOTE: While we endorse Lundy’s writings about the dynamics of domestic abuse, we do not recommend anyone attend the “healing retreats” Lundy Bancroft offers or become involved in his “Peak Living Network”. See our post, ACFJ Does Not Recommend Lundy Bancroft’s Retreats or His New Peak Living Network for more about our concerns.
[April 5, 2023: Editors’ notes:
—For some comments made prior to April 5, 2023 that quoted from the post, the text in the comment that was quoted from the post might no longer be an exact match.
—For some comments made prior to April 5, 2023 that quoted from the post, the text in the comment that was quoted from the post might no longer be found in the post.
If you would like to compare the text in the comments made prior to April 5, 2023 that quoted from the post to the post as it is now (April 5), click here [Internet Archive link] for the most recent Internet Archive copy of the post.]
A Cry For Justice 
Yep. Experienced that.
My husband will do everything possible to never back-track anything he’s ever done to me. It gets ridiculous how silly he appears in his efforts to behave as if choices he’s made towards me are ok. Even when it’s glaringly obvious he’s wrong he will sit there and with an innocent face insist he’s right and I deserve whatever he dishes out.
It’s not just the abuser who locks in, so do his allies. And often also lawyers, judges, social workers, psychologists, doctors, even members of the victim’s own family, including their children. Once that happens it’s very very difficult to break. It happens because people don’t understand the true nature of the abuser, or the reality of his predator / prey relationship with the victim.
There is an evil re-writing of history that occurs in the minds of abusers. Their memory does not work like ours.
Freed By God, could you please email me to talk about the other idea you have suggested to us? Thanks.
barbara@notunderbondage.com
Freed by God – you stated it so well. For years I was baffled at how abuser(s) in my life could so readily forget…. When confronted about a situation I’ve had one in particular act dumbfounded and say, “I can’t believe I said that.”
Short term memory?? At least whenever it involved me it seemed that way.
Nothing will change unless [the] legal system changes. In a system that allows someone who abuses his wife / family to have 50% custody of kids, punishes mom for not protecting children from him, allows him to keep visitation if [he] refuses to pay support why would he change. Courts rarely recognize any abuse other than severe physical abuse. Why would these men change, they don’t want any consequences and they usually get away with little or no consequences. Even after leaving, the abuse continues because the woman is forced to interact with him due to [the] children. The abuse never ends.
I followed the link to the NBC News story and two things stood out:
First, physical violence was referred to with greater frequency in domestic abuse / violence, little to no mention of the other forms of abuse.
Second, towards the end of the article, reference was made to “stress dripping off those walls.”
Stereotypical, though not surprising considering the circumstances that opened the Pandora’s box.
If only a fragment of the picture is discussed, the “solution” will be ignoring huge segments of the population.