Don Hennessy speaks with wisdom and compassion. Much good info here.
One thing I learned that I hadn’t heard before was Don giving more details about the Cork Relationship Counseling Centre’s experience of running groups for male perpetrators. After running those groups for a while, they realised that the groups were doing more harm than good.
- The abusers were learning new abusive strategies from each other.
- The target women were expecting the men’s groups to reform their partners / ex-partners, so they felt let down by the counseling centre.
The counselors kept running the men’s groups for a while longer, not in the expectation they would be able to change the men for the better, but in order to study the men to be able to find a language that described the abusive men’s mentality and strategies.
They eventually concluded that men who abuse their intimate female partners were using the same strategies as PEDOPHILES — targeting, setting up, and grooming. They also concluded that men who abuse adult women in intimate relationships are better at targeting, setting up and grooming than pedophiles are.
This interview of Don Hennessy was done in 2018, but I have only just found it.
I will be adding this post to my Don Hennessy Digest. If you want to learn more about Don’s work, click that link.
[November 18, 2022: We added the following RTÉ Radio 1 Facebook links to this post of Don Hennessy’s interview, as the interview wasn’t found anywhere else on the internet (including RTÉ Radio 1’s other webpages). Editors.]
Don Hennessy interview on his book Steps to Freedom (with time mark) — Ray D’Arcy is joined in the studio by author Don Hennessy, a relationship counsellor who has just published his new book on domestic violence called Steps to Freedom Escaping Intimate Control, starting from 11 seconds into the interview.
Don Hennessy interview on his book Steps to Freedom — Ray D’Arcy is joined in studio by author Don Hennessy, a relationship counsellor who has just published his new book on domestic violence called Steps to Freedom Escaping Intimate Control.
[November 18, 2022: Editors’ notes:
—For some comments made prior to November 18, 2022 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 November 18 1, 2022 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 November 18, 2022 that quoted from the post to the post as it is now (November 18, 2022), click here [Internet Archive link] for the most recent Internet Archive copy of the post.]
A Cry For Justice 
Wonderful to hear Don. I haven’t read “Steps to Freedom”, but I have just read his second book, “How He Wins”. As a target woman I was overjoyed to find that someone, especially a man, could describe my nightmare marriage so succinctly.
He gave me a language to describe my husband and how and what he did to me. I was married for almost 3 decades and Don helped me understand how I lived so long in that nightmare.
My husband is an evil menace and I am afraid of his capability to lie and groom others. We share 3 sons, so I’m in prayer every day for our protection.
Don is a light in the dark world of psychological abuse.
[Paragraph breaks added to enhance readability. Editors.]
Hi, Auriel, just FYI, How He Wins is Don Hennessy’s third book.
Cork University Press published Hennessy’s first book How He Gets Into Her Head. Liberties Press published his second and third books: Steps to Freedom and How He Wins .
In my journey to freedom I have read most of the major works I can get my hands on, Hennessy is the only one for me that tied up the knots! I am not 100% free YET but I take great hope in that future. Until then God is with me, He hears me, and He has supernaturally guided me. Am I weary at times you bet, but He keeps leading me to my source of strength which is Him, and I am finally okay with that!!! What a fight I put the Lord through to capture my soul. I am no longer enslaved to my abuser but to Jesus Christ!! I heard this line that was in the Harriet Tubman movie:
Thank God for the weapons He gives us through this site and people with some sense like Hennessy.
Wow….very revealing — and I agree with the assessments. I found out after being hunted out by the abuser – then quickly married – then abused – and months after I fled – that he, the “godly” charming Bible-quoting self-righteous man had a history that included the pedophile life decades old….and apparently had also been a huge factor in the reason his last wife left him. I – we – had no idea – until it was too late…. He learned how to get away with it, and cover it up somewhere….had he been in one of the programs you mentioned, he would have been the exact person that would have taken the input to do more evil. You cannot force healing – if someone is ordered to attend a course – good luck.