Contributions of Ellen Pence to Ending Violence against Women - Essay Example

Contributions of Ellen Pence to Ending Violence against Women Number Introduction Ellen Pence, born in1948, wore many hats including that of a scholar, activist, educator, a mentor and a friend to many women and children across the world that had undergone some form of violence. Until her death in 2012 due to breast cancer, Ellen remained a prolific leader in the field of domestic violence and institutional ethnography. She made numerous novel and pioneer contributions to the movement to end violence against women, which have seen her gain accolades. Some of the personal achievements include co-authorship of two books titled and co-founding of the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention project with centers currently spread across the world. Moreover, she is credited with founding of Praxis International to identify, analyze and correct failures of the institutions to ensure the protection of people in the legal and justice systems because of violence. Ellen Pence was involved in popularizing the concept of batterer interventions as a method of organizing communities to respond to the challenges associated with institutional interventions in households. She also formulated new concepts concerning supervised visitations, and led in the development of safety and accountability audit procedures now in widespread use all over the world. Indeed, her efforts were not limited to one area of activism against domestic violence as she was involved in dealing with all stakeholders in the movement including advocacy, shelter and training programs development for various agents of law enforcement, and human service providers. This paper looks at the contributions of Ellen Pence to the movement to end violence against women, specifically drawing on her major efforts until her death in 2012. The Duluth Model and Batterer Programming Ellen Pence was heavily involved in the creation of the Duluth Model as an intervention program for men who batter, and is mainly intended to end ongoing abuse by engaging batterers in a reflective process and monitoring their behavior (Gondolf, 2010). The Duluth Model serves as a curriculum for educating men who batter, and offers an illustration and understanding of the dynamics of battering and domestic violence. The success of the Duluth Program is its evolution into a multiagency program that bridges the efforts of advocates of movement to end violence against women and criminal justice officials through the ‘Power and Control Wheel’. Pence was also involved in pioneering the Coordinated Community Response (CCR) which is a multisystem way of protecting women against ongoing abuse by supporting them, and holding men accountable through concerted and collaborative efforts between various relevant institutions. Working together with other contributors to the activism to end violence against women, pence was able to come up with initiatives that would help men to end domestic violence (Paymar, 2000). Under the Duluth Model, Ellen was able to painstakingly bring together officers in the criminal and civil justice systems to formulate policies, implement procedures, conduct comprehensive training and hold staff accountable in a collective manner. The Duluth program has been considerably useful in sorting through the disarray that had hitherto been associated batterer approaches and programs (Dasgupta, 2010). The Duluth Model is a workable model given that it is designed to bring about safety for women and children. The model also offers incentives to men to transform and bring about positive changes in their behavior, and has a mechanism for identifying would-be offenders who may be a threat to the safety of women and their children, the law enforcement and the society in general. Although Ellen strongly believed in using the justice system to ensure accountability on the part of offenders, she often sought that intervention measures taken follow a humane approach so that offenders’ safety is safeguarded as well. Safety and Accountability Audits Another important contribution of Ellen Pence to the movement to end violence against women was her work in formulating concepts on safety and accountability efforts aimed at exploring ways through which safety and accountability are integrated in to the daily routines of workers who handle reported abuse cases. The premise is that workers in institutions are structured in how they carry out their duties, and the Audits are not intended to serve as performance appraisals of individual employees, but rather an examination of the performance of the institution. Audits of the paperwork and other texts generated when cases of domestic violence are reported provide a framework for establishing areas where reforms and resources are necessary (Edleson, 2010). Safety and Accountability Audits also examine the accountability of the offenders, and can serve as a valuable tool in coordinating and prioritizing community efforts aimed at ending violence against women (Sadusky et al., 2010). Pence was also heavily involved in the introduction of institutional ethnography as means that would help stakeholders to understand and design major institutional reforms that are concerned with the safety of women and children in the society. The importance of these audits in bringing about institutional changes in areas of law enforcement, child welfare, women safety among others has increased and widespread across many countries. In order to ensure that the Safety and Intervention Audits work, it is important that the interagency approach to resolving issue to do with victims of domestic violence and offenders are adhered to. In addition, Ellen stressed that in order to bring about change and secure the safety of women and children, it is important for domestic violence to be recognized as a patterned crime, which require continuous engagement with both victims and offenders (Edleson, 2010). . Supervised Visitation Ellen Pence, working together with colleague Martha McMahon, rethought the established norms on supervised visitation in cases of domestic abuses, focusing more on children’s welfare while at the same time challenging the principle of neutrality. She advocated for the reexamination of programming rules, roles, missions, intake and documentation of supervised visitation institutions in an effort to establish equal regard for battered women and children (Scaia and Connelly, 2010). This was a groundbreaking contribution as it led to the creation of principles of practice, and a structure that intersected domestic abuse with supervised visitations, thereby providing guidelines in an emerging social service. Ellen objected the long-established counseling methods in practice, and argued that the collective counseling sessions for both victim and offender were unsafe and indirectly implied that women were to blame for the abuses. Conclusion Ellen Pence has contributed tremendously in changing our way of thought, assessment, and multidisciplinary collaboration concerning ending violence against women. She provided remarkable illumination on a rather not-so-perfect world, revealing numerous novel principles of practice so that the safety of children and women who have been violently abused is secured. She was also instrumental in helping batterers to put an end to violence, and ensured that accountability of offenders is adequately addressed. Ellen had a deep understanding of the issues on domestic violence, and through her uncanny abilities, wit, passion and patience, she was able to bring about change even in places that and people who thought that change would not come easy. Her contributions have had wide-ranging impacts from individuals whose lives had been shattered but are now living with a renewed outlook into the future, to the numerous countries where her contributions have been adopted. The contributions of Ellen Pence have received numerous national and international acclamations for bringing about fundamental changes to the way community institutions respond to domestic violence in general and violence against women in particular. References Paymar, M. (2000). Violent No More: Helping Men End Domestic Abuse. Hunter House. Sadusky, J. M., Martinson, R., Lizdas, K., & McGee, C. The praxis safety and accountability audit: Practicing a “sociology for people.” Violence Against Women, (September 2010); 16(9):1031-1044. Scaia, M. & Connelly, L. With ‘equal regard’: an overview of how Ellen Pence focused the supervised visitation field on battered women and children. Violence Against Women. (September 2010); 16(9):1022-1030 Dasgupta, S. D. (September 2010). My friend, Advocate Ellen Pence. Violence Against Women, 16 (9):985-991 Edleson, J. L. (September 2010). What’s the Pence Line? Violence Against Women. 16(9): 981- 984 Gondolf, E. W. (September 2010). The contributions of Ellen Pence to batterer programming. Violence Against Women. , 16(9):992-1006. Read More