| Many abusers rely on our collective inability to distinguish among the various types of violence to exploit the very reform efforts put in place to protect battered women and their children. Ensuring that his victim is labeled as an offender is the abuser’s most significant and powerful instrument of self-preservation and protection from community intervention. In such cases our actions become their weapons of post-separation control and punishment.
This new two-day training is an opportunity for advocates, CCR coordinators, prosecutors, probation officers, police officers, social workers and counselors to look at the issues that arise when battered women are arrested for domestic violence crimes. This training will help participants from all intervening agencies identify gaps and create a plan for implementing new responses when battered women are arrested.
The training will address:
- Coercive control and battering vs. resistive or coping violence - How battering works to produce resistive violence and the case for treating these domestic violence crimes differently
- Police - Policy options in cases where victims of battering assault their abusers including self-defense determinations, predominant aggressor determinations and when it's appropriate to arrest a battered woman who has assaulted her abuser
- Prosecution - Charging and sentencing options for battered women who use resistive violence
- Probation - Supervising women on a caseload who use violence within a battering relationship
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