Don Hennessy interviewed by Kerry McAvoy

My summary of the key points Don made in his interview with Kerry McAvoy

• Don describes how the the workers at the Cork Domestic Violence Project came to realise that men who abuse their female intimate partners operate in a similar way to pedophiles.
• The thing that’s missing in the Power and Control Wheel is the steel rim of the wheel.
• The steel rim is the man’s ultimate goal which is to have sexual dominance in the relationship.
• All their other behaviours are just to get women to think differently.
• It’s not that he’s ashamed; it’s not that he’s insecure; it’s not that he loves to have power; it’s about he’s trying to protect his sexual dominance.
• They want to guarantee themselves that their partner will be available when and if they need to have sexual gratification, that’s all they’re interested in.
• These guys, they hide behind all the other activities.
• They are highly skilled at concealing their goal to have sexual dominance in the relationship.
• In other words, these men are highly skilled at concealing the steel rim of the wheel.
• In the Cork Domestic Violence Project men’s groups, the men were learning from each other more ways to control their partners.
• Their physical violence is directly in proportion to the amount of resistance they meet. If a woman is compliant there’s no physical violence. But if she’s not compliant, then physical violence will re-emerge.
• When a woman walks into court and says, ‘He abused me,’ there’s the assumption that both partners are equally responsible, both have full autonomy and full agency. But that’s not what actually happens in these relationships, because what these abusive men do at the beginning of the relationship completely unbalances the whole process.
• Nobody has brought the legal system to learn. Don tried to teach them in Ireland and they wouldn’t even allow him back into the colleges.
• We need a cultural change. The only people who will create that change are men, and men are shirking the job, they won’t do it. They’re quite happy if their own particular circumstances are okay, they don’t want to engage with anybody else, they don’t want to challenge other men who are abusive.
• Psychology has largely ignored the topic of evil.
• At the end of the interview Hennessy says he’s writing a fourth book titled We Need To Talk About Him. The publisher of his second and third books went broke.

His second and third books were published by Liberties Press. I have searched for his second book Steps To Freedom and can’t find it anywhere. His third book How He Wins [affiliate link] is currently only available on Kindle.

I lost contact with Don Hennessy years ago when he changed his email address, but I’ve now made contact with him again and he’s agreed to let me record a video interview with him. Yay! Subscribe to this blog if you want to be notified when I publish that interview. I will also upload it to the Don Hennessy Playlist at my YouTube Channel.

Why You Didn’t See It Coming: How Male Predators Can Dupe Anybody…Even You

In this video Kerry McAvoy talks to Don Hennessy about his first book How He Gets Into Her Head: The Mind of the Male Intimate Abuser. [affiliate link]

Don talks about the Cork Domestic Violence Project. He says the project had six workers, three men and three women, and they decided to run separate groups for the men (the abusers), and the women (the targets).

Transcribed from 3:58, with a few interpolations by me—
Don: We worked for about five or six years believing that as very clever Irishmen we could persuade other Irishmen to behave properly, and teach them things they didn’t know about how to behave properly.

And then, for about three years, having listened to their partners over those five or six years, and realising that what we were doing was quite dangerous, we decided on a slightly different tactic in that we would bring the men into the groups, but rather than try to educate them, we invited them to educate us. We didn’t tell them that’s what we were doing, we still told them they were getting treatment and giving them all sorts of guidance. But we actually listened to them and we documented all their sessions, we recorded everything and we analysed it subsequently. And because both myself and one of my directors had been working also with what we call pedophiles — we were a church-based organisation here in Ireland and there were huge amounts of pedophilia going on in the church and it began to become exposed — we had plenty of clients in that area. So we went to a conference in Birmingham in the UK where they ran a treatment centre for pedophile men, and it was in that conference where we got the language to describe the pattern of how these pedophiles operated.

And when we came back to Ireland, we began to realise that these guys we were working with were following the same pattern. And we began to explore that and confirm it. So it came from an unusual source in that we knew it about other men, but we didn’t have any idea how these men operated until we began to analyse them. And as we analysed them we realised they were behaving in exactly the same way.

We also went to the women who were attending our groups at the time and we ran questionnaires past them and we asked them to try and see how they would describe what actually happened to them. And what was really scary at the time was that none of the ladies actually knew what had happened to them: they had no idea how they ended up in an abusive relationship. They kept on saying ‘I must be very stupid, I must be very naive.’ If it had happened more than once to them. ‘It must be written all over my face, that I’m a sucker for these kinds of men,’ or whatever, but they kept on internalising the responsibility. And when we began to look at that, we realised, no, that’s not what’s happening. We suddenly began to realise that the men were doing something which we couldn’t quite define. So we spent about three years exploring what the men were doing, and trying to have a language to describe it, and realising that their operation was very covert, and the women who were the target of that operation were not able to define it or describe it.

So that’s where we got our ideas from. That’s why we began to think, oh, hold on a second, there’s something we don’t know, or something we’re not able to see. And as we revealed that we found the pattern, we found how they were operating.

And I have to admit that when I started finding this, I said “Oh my God, I’m going to get five or six or seven books out of this now, it will be great for my career!” And then we began to realise that all the guys do exactly the same thing. There was only one book in them really. We began to define it. And eventually, four or five years later, I wrote the book. [How He Gets Into Her Head]

But we had spent a number of years touring Ireland, going round to various centres, and expressing our opinions. What was really fascinating was that on platforms, the people who attacked me most were women, they said, “Why the hell are you telling us what we know already? We know what’s going on. We know how women are suffering. We know what they’re putting up with. And we don’t need men to tell us why they’re suffering, or what’s going on for them, and we certainly don’t want to waste time thinking about the men!”

What I began to say was that their approach was like treating a cancer. So if you had a stomach cancer you’d have pain and bleeding and all sort of digestive system problems. And what they were doing was actually treating the impact and the effects, so they were covering up the blood, reducing the pain, and all of that. But nobody was examining the tumour.

So that’s what we were doing, that’s what my books are all about: taking out the tumour and dissecting it.

Kerry: You said you started trying to treat them men, but it just made things worse.

Don: What we discovered was that the men were learning from each other. So if they were physically violent to their partners, they could transfer that to a mental control and they would be equally in control but they wouldn’t be physically violent any more, so in this country they weren’t breaking any crimes, causing any criminal convictions. So the women didn’t know how to handle these new guys. The men who were physically violent it was still obvious, but most of them actually found a new way of controlling their partner….

10:44
Don: You and I, Kerry, if we go into a new office to work, within an hour we’ll know the person who will help us with the photocopy machine, or tell us where the coffee cups are, and we’ll ignore somebody else. We’re all quite skilled at finding people who will cooperate with us, make our lives a little bit easier. So grooming is a natural thing.

What’s difficult to accept with men, when it’s an adult grooming another person, is that the intention is devious. They’re not just out to make everybody’s life a little bit easier, they’re out to take advantage of the partner. And that’s the piece of it that was somewhat hidden from us, and also something that was very difficult to accept, because most of the men we met were very pleasant individuals. And they could talk really well, possibly better than some of us. Some of them were very successful in their own businesses, professional men. And we felt a bit daunted by them in a way, and it was quite hard for us to keep focusing on the idea that all these guys are very very cynical and very malevolent in what they’re doing at home.

12:13
Kerry: So could you distill down to what their ultimate goal was?

Don: It became very clear. As a matter of fact I was asked about this only yesterday, by somebody from the States.  I was asked what did I think of the Wheel that Duluth people, Ellen Pence she produced it back in the 90’s or late 80’s, I said, “The only thing that’s missing in that wheel is the steel rim that should contain it, because that’s sexual abuse.”

Kerry: Are you thinking of the Power and Control Wheel?

Don: Yes.

Kerry: Yeah, because when you made a statement in the book, it rocked me. When I read it in How He Gets Into Her Head, you said they’re looking for sexual entitlement, the privilege of sexual access to women. Oh sheesh! You’re right! That’s what all this is about!

Don: Yes. And the older I get, and I’m nearly 80, the older I get the more I realise that all the other behaviours, all the things that are written about and castigated and condemned in other people’s books, all that stuff is just a smokescreen. What they’re really about is sexual dominance in the relationship. All their other behaviours are just to get women to think differently.

[Allan Wade says “violence is deliberate, as evinced by perpetrators’ strategic efforts to suppress victims’ resistance.”¹]

And what I find, anyway, is that it’s so difficult to get women to open up about what goes on in the bedroom. They don’t want to talk about it because they’re shamed, or they’re uncertain that it might be all their own fault, or whatever other reason.

So these guys, they hide behind all the other activities, the physical violence, which I’m now beginning to think is directly in proportion to the amount of resistance that they meet. So if a woman is compliant there’s no physical resistance, there’s no physical violence. But if she’s not compliant, if she’s saying. “I’m not doing that any more,” then physical violence will re-emerge.

And the other parts of that, is that when women are trying to explain why they’re so upset, or why they’re so heartbroken, or why they’re so unsure of who they are themselves, they never mention their sexual experiences. They all talk about the other things, the fear, and the lack of money, or the tension in the house, or anything else. But to get them to talk about what goes on in the bedroom is impossible almost.

Kerry: Yeah; and you talk about why, and you’re right, you nailed it. I’m a woman; I’ve been living this life. And that is, almost from when we’re born, our sexuality, everything that happens around us, everything that occurs to us, is then turned into an interpretation about us. So as a result, if I’m not interested in intimacy, then somehow I’m frigid, or I’m a tease. It’s always flipped so it’s a reflection of my failure, instead of being seen as a dynamic between me and the other person.

Don: Absolutely. All the responsibility comes back onto the woman if the relationship is unsuccessful in any way. I say, right at the beginning of that book, that she gets full responsibility for the emotional temperature of the relationship — it’s all her fault whether it’s working or not.

Kerry: So what you’re essentially saying,  let me back up and say it again because I think this is so powerful.. It’s not that he’s ashamed; it’s not that he’s insecure; it’s not that he loves to have power; it’s about he’s trying to protect his sexual dominance. That’s what you thing is going on in these abusive relationships.

Don: That’s all that’s happening. And what really makes my hair fall out (and you can see a lot of it’s fallen out already) is to find most of the literature today is discussing why men are narcissists. It’s the buzz word. And actually a narcissist is quite a harmless individual, he just loves himself, which these men do as well, but that’s another smokescreen. They not really thinking about themselves except when it comes to sexual gratification. And they want to guarantee themselves that their partner will be available when and if they need to have sexual gratification, that’s all they’re interested in.

Kerry: Wow! How did that affect you, when you realised that, especially as a man? I would love to know what your reaction was.

Don: Well my reaction was relief. Because as a young man I was studying to be a priest in the Catholic Church, and I was severely abused on a number of occasions by other men. And that left me kind of puzzled about what a man was, and what a man should be. And it took me some quite time to realise that these guys were all the same, they were all operating from the same principle, which is their gratification is what they were entitled to. And it didn’t matter how hurt or how damaged the person, the target, might be. They just saw it as their right to have their own sexual needs gratified.

Kerry: So then you make is another big huge conclusion in the book, and that is: we’re looking in the wrong direction when we’re talking about victims and victimology, what we really should be talking about is male entitlement.

Don: I’m just looking at you Kerry and I’m thinking that there’s something Irish about you, partly because of your name. But to think that every woman who is being abused in this world today (and in Ireland there are about 25% of relationships that are abusive, could be even higher, but there’s definitely 25%) and it has nothing to do with the women. It has nothing to do with them, but that’s how clever men are, that’s how devious these guys are, they put all the responsibility back on the woman.

19:15
Kerry: Yeah, there was a recent research study which came out of France, and it was looking at autistic girls and women. And it found that nine out of ten autistic women were sexually assaulted before the age of 18. Nine out of ten! I cried! Because it’s nearly universal. When there’s a more vulnerable population, it’s nearly universal. And the majority of these women were under 15.

[The research Kerry is referring to is summarised here: Sexual violence against autistic females. Full research paper — Evidence That Nine Autistic Women Out of Ten Have Been Victims of Sexual Violence.]

Don: Yeah; that’s the kind of world we’re living in, unfortunately. It’s probably been this way for the last ten thousand years. Women are always seen as less than. Women are always seen as being subservient to a man. The church that I used to belong to was very much in favour of men’s rights, conjugal rights. My mother died in 1998, and she believed that it was the duty of any wife to be available to her husband when he requested it. Which meant that just after the war in Ireland, when we were all very poor, my mother had five children within three years, she had twins. The other thing is that my sister is a twin, and I realised, on reflection, at how the world treated her so differently than I got treated. So, it’s been going on a long time. Women are second class.

There’s a book by a woman, I forget the name of the author but she talks about himpathy. And she says that’s what’s rife in the world today: there’s some difficulty in a relationship our immediate position is to groomed by the man into feeling sorry for him, irrespective of what he’s doing to his partner. [Don is referring to Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by Kate Manne. Read Kate Manne’s definitions of misogyny, himpathy and herasure.]

Kerry: So talk about how it happens culturally, and what you think we need to do to shift that.

21:35
Don: We need a cultural change. And I regret to have to say this, but the only people who will create that change are men, and men are shirking the job, they won’t do it. They’re quite happy if their own particular circumstances are okay, they don’t want to engage with anybody else, they don’t want to challenge other men who are abusive.

And the only other way to challenge that is in the law. We have a new law in Ireland, we’re not sure how to use it yet, it’s called coercive control and it has been criminalised, it’s been taken out of family law and put into the criminal courts, and some men have been prosecuted under coercive control. The difficulty at the moment is that the whole process relies on the target woman to produce the evidence, and women aren’t skilled at doing that yet. But maybe with some effort the women will begin to collate the evidence, and produce the evidence, and then the sanctions will be appropriate.

But the biggest problem from what I can see now (and I’m not very familiar with Facebook or any of those things, I’m not on them) is that the new generation of men that are growing up are being almost encouraged to be misogynistic, and to look for their own rights, and that women are there to be used. And there are several very prominent people in this part of the world who actually say those things openly on social media, and that’s the big danger; these boys are growing up in families where their father mistreats their mother, and they will think that’s the right thing to do.

Kerry: … I see a lot of women walk into court and they’re already behind the eight ball. As a woman when you walk into court, and you say, “He abused me,” there’s the assumption of full autonomy and full agency, like both partners have full control over themselves and their choices — but that’s not what actually happens in these relationships!

Don: No, you’re right. The belief is that it takes two to tango, so everybody’s equally responsible. But nobody has actually brought the legal system to learn, nobody’s tried to teach them; I tried to teach them here and they wouldn’t even allow me back into the colleges. Because nobody knows, or nobody’s prepared to accept, that what men do at the beginning completely unbalances the whole process. And without appearing to do anything in the first year or two of the relationship, they can control a woman’s mind without actually ever being physically abusive, actually quite appearing to love her almost, while charming her, but they’ve already gained access to her thinking, and they use that then against her subsequently. And she finds that difficult to explain because she didn’t know it happened in the first place. If she goes to court, she can’t explain it.

Kerry: Yeah. I took your brainwashing scale at the back, of that second relationship that I was in. Just to give you perspective, he never physically touched me, never called me a bad name, didn’t even scream at me, but I rated mind control with terror. I was terrified of him. Terrified! And what he did was he used very subtle withdrawals. He would emotionally disappear on me and punish me, if I didn’t comply exactly the way he wanted. He let me know right at the beginning it was his way only, and that I would lose the relationship if I didn’t go along.

Don: And that would be your loss, I mean to say that you would suffer the consequences off of that, so you were being stupid if you didn’t go along.

Kerry: Yeah, he would say things like, “You’re making such a big deal! Why do you have to turn everything into a storm in a teacup?” And I’d say, “No, it’s my feelings.” Or, “It’s what’s happening between us!” And he’d say, “Are you going to let it ruin the day?” He was very good, he established it right off. By the second date he was already implementing strategies that would set it up. Why would I care? Because he presented as the perfect person. So I was really invested.

Don: Yeah, he had to present himself as the perfect person because only then would you open up to him. Only then would you reveal who you really were, how your inner world worked. And that’s the information he needed.

So one of the things that would be very clear at the beginning of any relationship — these men told us that — that within a half hour of meeting somebody they would assess whether they were kind or not. So if you were a bitch, which is what they called ladies who only thought about themselves, or were high maintenance, they wouldn’t touch you. So you had to be kind. And the second most important thing is you had to be truthful. So you didn’t dress up your own life, you told them what was happening for you, your dreams and your anxieties and your previous experiences, and all of that. Bit by bit, you didn’t have to tell him all in the one day, but you began to speak like that about yourself, but that’s what fed his information, that’s what gave him control over your mind.

Kerry: Yeah. I concluded at the end, when I stood back and looked at the whole thing from a psychological perspective, I realised I never knew him. I have no idea who he is. And I was in a relationship and married to him for two years, and knew him for three.

Don: Yeah. That’s the really sad thing, because I’m not sure how far psychology has gone, but when I looked it up twenty years ago, and gave up on it, I realised there were very few discussions about evil people. But that’s what these guys are: they’re evil people.

Scott Peck, who wrote People of the Lie, and in that book he said that he wasn’t sure about evil people, and one thing he realised was he worked in the prisons on the East Coast and he said the evil people are not in the prisons, there are some people who have done very evil things, but they’re not evil people. The evil people are out wearing the best of suits and the best of shoes, and parading themselves around. And how he would describe evil is somebody who gets out of bed every morning with the intention of undermining another human being. That’s what’s going on. That’s how they think. It comes kind of easy to them. But that’s what they spend their whole day doing. You become their project. And they want to make sure that they are infiltrating your thoughts and manipulating how you react.

At 30:00 Kerry describes how her ex groomed a young nurse who was caring for his ill mother.
Kerry: He called it hunting. He was hunting. 

Don: Yeah, that’s what they are; they’re predators. As most predators, you need to be very subtle. You can’t just run up and jump on somebody: you have to make sure that they don’t run away. You have to make sure that when you’re being abusive they blame themselves for it. And you can abuse bit by bit them until such time as you gain complete dominance and the person you’re targeting has no idea how it happened, or what happened even, but they certainly feel it.

1. Allan Wade, Despair, resistance, hope (2007) in C. Flaskas, I. McCarthy, & J. Sheehan (Eds.), Hope and despair in narrative and family therapy: Adversity, Forgiveness and Reconciliation. New York, NY: Routeledge.

Post lightly updated a few hours after was published

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Further Reading and Viewing

Don Hennessy Playlist at my YouTube Channel

Don Hennessy Digest — all my articles about Don Hennessy

https://breakingfreenarcabuse.substack.com/p/think-it-cant-happen-to-you-don-hennessey