In 2002, Dorothy Giunta-Cotter was shot and killed in her own home in Massachusetts

by her husband and relentless abuser of 20 years, William Cotter. He then turned the
gun on himself. Dorothy, 35, had fled from him with their two daughters a few days
earlier because Cotter had begun to hurt their 11-year-old, but she had refused the offer
of a refuge. She told the police that if her daughters were with her, Cotter would find
them, and kill all three. “She attempted to avert the worst of two terrible outcomes,”
wrote the American journalist Rachel Louise Snyder in an article published in the New
Yorker in 2013, “the loss of her daughters’ lives along with her own.”

That article, A Raised Hand, became part of eight years of research from one of the
frontlines of what the World Health Organization (WHO) has deemed “a global
epidemic”. Snyder’s work is now an award-winning book, No Visible Bruises: What We
Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us. In the UK, the issue of domestic
abuse is not “taboo”, which Snyder says the subject still is in the US. Here, while it may
be a family secret, it is recognised and discussed nationally; the impact of austerity on
closing refuges, slashing legal aid and axing specialist domestic abuse services, has kept
the issue high on the UK agenda. It’s a crime that impacts on men too but women make
up the overwhelming majority of victims. Eighty women were killed by a partner or ex in
the year to March 2019, an increase of 27% on the previous year, while an incident of
domestic abuse is reported every minute in England and Wales. The government
estimates that the social and economic cost of domestic abuse is a staggering £66bn a
year.

Snyder, 51, combines the forensic eye of the investigative reporter with her skills as a
professor of creative writing but there is an added empathy. She explains that when she
was nine, her mother died. Her father remarried two months later and became
unstinting in his beatings to rein his daughter in. “Violence swirled around me,” she
writes. It’s this personal experience that perhaps helps her to coax women, their families
and the men who have abused and killed to speak out. “Patrick”, for instance, a retired
federal official, middle-class, narcissistic, who murdered his daughter and wife and
believes they will be waiting for him in heaven “with open arms”.

Snyder also talks to the criminologists, public health workers, domestic abuse advocates,
police and lawyers who are fighting to stop the harm – working in an arena that has its
own unique frustrations and challenges. As Snyder writes: “Love is what makes
domestic violence different from other crimes.”

Visiting an intensive prison programme to help abusers to change, Snyder tells a circle
of men that she too had been a high-school drop-out; she too knows about violence. “I
was a rebellious teenager,“ she tells me now on the phone from her home in Washington
DC. “I was smoking cigarettes at 10, pot at 12. [After her mother died] My father
married a woman I met on the day of the wedding and took my brother and me to live
500 miles away… My dad believed women were secondary to men. My brother, me and
two step siblings were spanked often in an assembly line. I wasn’t afraid to fight back.”

In September 1985, all four teenagers “were kicked out of the house”. Snyder dropped
out of high school at 16. She worked as a waitress, living in her car. “The manageress let
me sleep on her couch for a month. They were good people.” At 19, she says, “I knew the
life I’d lived for the past three years would also be my life for the next 60 unless I got an
education. On my mother’s side, I had an uncle who was a heart surgeon. Another had
devised the TV show The Addams Family, my grandfather was a professor and a poet.”
In 1988, Snyder, without any qualifications, presented herself to Rick Spencer,
responsible for admissions and grants at her local university, North Central College in
Illinois. “I knew she had been on a rough road but there she sat. That took guts. She still
has that spark,” says Spencer, now vice-president of institutional advancement at the
university. He gave Snyder her chance. “Two weeks into my first semester, I loved it,”
says Snyder, now a tenured professor.

After her studies, she became a foreign correspondent, reporting from more than 50
countries before returning to the US in 2010. Once she began investigating domestic
abuse on her home patch, she says, she realised that here was a crime that linked many
of the issues she had covered abroad including child brides in Romania and the forced
sterilisation of women in Tibet. Across the world, 137 women are killed every day by
familial violence. Domestic abuse, she writes, “is as common as rain”.

No Visible Bruises was published in the US last year. Halfway through a national

book tour last June, Snyder, flew home to Washington DC to attend her 11-year-
old daughter’s fifth grade graduation. At the airport, she received a voicemail
from a close friend, Michelle. “Something’s happening at Jason’s,” she said.
Michelle’s brother, Jason Rieff, 51 and his wife, Lola Golumova, 45, both
diplomats based in Washington DC were due to finalise their divorce. Lola had
been given custody of the two daughters and intended to take them overseas on a
four-year posting. At 9.25 am on the morning of 7 June while the girls were at
school, Jason – who had bought a gun 10 days earlier – shot and killed Lola and
then shot himself. In the US, 50 women a month are shot dead (90 a month are
killed in total) in familial violence.
“I had to tell my daughter that her friend’s daddy killed her friend’s mummy, then killed
himself,” Snyder says. Her daughter, Jazz, knew how death was delivered. “With a gun,”
she said.

I ask Snyder why she thinks the rates of killings and abuse are escalating. “The #MeToo
movement calling out male behaviour has triggered a backlash,” she suggests. “Just
because women are seen to be ‘winning’, though, doesn’t mean those men are ‘losing’.
And, in Britain and the US, we have elected macho, misogynistic, authoritarian leaders
that set a tone. The violent response has become increasingly normative.”

Thirty years ago, a breakthrough in understanding and communicating the clues that
point to domestic abuse came in the form of the work of Jacqueline Campbell in Maine
and her danger assessment tool, which helps health professionals to identify victims.
She now travels the US teaching others how to use the tool. Among the 22 risk factors
Campbell identified are threats to kill, extreme jealousy, forced sex, stalking and a
woman’s isolation. Strangulation is also a vital clue. Strangling to the point of loss of
consciousness can cause brain damage and internal injuries often not recognised, yet
60% of victims in the US are strangled at some point in an abusive relationship.

Drawing a timeline to identify a pattern of abuse as it unfolds, sharing the information

among frontline collaborating professionals, is vital, Campbell stresses. In this way, an
escalating pattern of control and/or violence is revealed and understood as so much
more than an isolated “accident”. Yet still, in the UK, according to Davina James-
Hanman who reviews domestic abuse murders for the Home Office, scarce resources
mostly go to high-risk cases, for instance where attempted murder is flagged up, and not
to lower-risk cases where intervention much earlier in an abusive relationship gives the
woman a chance to break free.

Snyder says that after the deaths of Jason Rieff and Lola Golumova, among the first to
send their love and support were the mothers of Michelle and Rocky Mosure. Michelle
had had two children with Rocky before she was 18. Rocky appeared the perfect
husband but he was also exercising coercive control over Michelle, a crime in the UK
since 2015 but not in the US. But in 2001, aged 23, Michelle was breaking free. She had
returned to education and had a restraining order on Rocky. He broke the order,
Michelle went back to him. Snyder says women return for a variety of reasons, including
their lack of finances, the paucity of protection, the fear. Soon after, Rocky shot dead
Michelle, his two children and then himself.

Does Snyder believe abusers can stop, turn themselves around? “Jimmy hasn’t abused
for years,” she says. Jimmy Espinoza was a drug addict, pimp, rapist and serial batterer.
He had also been sexually abused as a child. He became a group leader of
a programme to help men desist from abuse. In the book, Snyder notices a poster on the
wall at one meeting. “How do you persuade a 30-year-old to stop beating his wife? Talk
to him when he’s 12.”
“Across the board the violent men I met didn’t want to be violent,” Snyder says. “What
they don’t know is alternative behaviours. They don’t understand that where there is
greater equality in a relationship, it’s generally stronger and more satisfying.”

She says that among the measures that may make a difference in tackling domestic
abuse are better training for the judiciary and the police, constant analysis of risk,
education in schools and innovative initiatives such as protected housing so a woman
doesn’t have to uproot herself and her children and travel 200 miles to a refuge.

Snyder wants to trigger an international debate about domestic violence and has her
own ideas. She proposes an app to provide advice to teenagers distinguishing, for
instance, stalking and harassment from “romance” and a helpline for men who want to
stop the violence and control. (The UK has a call line, Respect.)
When Snyder had her daughter, she was reconciled with her father and stepmother,
Barbara. Close to death, Barbara revealed that she too had been a victim of domestic
abuse in a previous marriage. The book is dedicated to her. Prevention, education and
early intervention all matter but something far more fundamental and deep-rooted also
has to shift because inequality and male power are at the root of this epidemic.
“You have to take the longer view of history,” Snyder says. “Until very recently, for
instance, it was legal for a man to rape his wife. I’m an optimist. I have to believe that
change is possible.”

Summary 2

No Visible Bruises: Rachel Louise Snyder’s NY Times Top Ten

BookAward-winning book on domestic violence
serves as platform for change

Domestic violence is an epidemic in the United States. On average, nearly 20 people

per minute are physically abused by a partner. Most of these crimes will occur behind
closed doors. Very few victims will tell anyone or reach out for help. And if they do, they
may likely face cruel and incredibly unfair questions: Why didn’t they just leave? Why
couldn’t they tell a coherent story to police? Where are the marks on their bodies?

And the worst question of all — did they do something, somehow, to provoke the
violence?

American University Literature and Journalism Professor Rachel Louise Snyder has

dedicated the past decade of her life researching, documenting, and dismantling the
misperceptions that underlie these questions. Snyder is our nation’s leading writer on
domestic violence. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times
magazine, Slate, Salon, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, the Chicago
Tribune, the New Republic, and many other leading news outlets.

Snyder’s most recent book is No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic
Violence Can Kill Us (Bloomsbury Publishing, May 2019). The critical praise has been
extraordinary. Esquire magazine called No Visible Bruises “gut-wrenching, required
reading.” The New York Times called it "extraordinary." The Washington Post said that
the book is "compulsively readable . . . It will save lives." Eve Ensler, author of The
Vagina Monologues, called it “a tour de force.”

The book was one of Esquire magazine’s 25 Most Anticipated Books of 2019 and
a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year. It was named as one of the best books of
2019 by Amazon, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly,
BookPage, BookRiot, Economist, and New York Times Staff Critics. It was a finalist for
the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction, the 2019 Kirkus Award in
Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the New York Public Library’s
Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. It won the prestigious 2018 J. Anthony
Lukas Work-In-Progress Award.

Close to Home, Behind Closed Doors

A decade ago Snyder was working as a foreign correspondent, writing stories on human
rights issues ranging from child marriage in Romania to forced sterilization in Tibet.
Violence against women was present in all these narratives. But it wasn’t until she
moved back to the United States that she realized the real magnitude of domestic
violence, right here at home.

By chance one day, Snyder met a woman named Suzanne Dubus who was developing
a risk assessment tool that identified the 20 highest risk indicators for domestic
homicides. The goal was to predict the homicides before they occurred. The idea
floored Snyder. “You might as well have said to me you figured out a way to end
poverty,” she says. “I was utterly speechless. I drove around with [Dubus] for hours,
sitting in the back seat of her car, asking questions and taking notes. I realized very
quickly that I had been buying into all these myths about domestic violence. She really
changed the course of my life.”

Snyder spent the next several years learning about the size and scope of the issue. The
statistics she shares in No Visible Bruises are staggering. Every day, an average of 137
women are killed across the globe by intimate partner or familial violence. In 2017
alone, 50,000 women were killed by partners or family members. And in the United
States, 20 people are assaulted every minute by their partners. The overwhelming
majority of victims, about 85 percent, are female. In our nation, more than half of all
murdered women are killed by a current or former partner.

Blowing Away the Myths

In No Visible Bruises, Snyder goes beyond statistics, bringing to life the people behind
the numbers. She tells the stories of victims, abusers, family members, law enforcement
officers, caseworkers, prosecutors, reformers, and advocates.

New York Times book critic Parul Sehgal wrote, “There is a fullness and density to
every one of her subjects — the former prison guard turned restorative justice advocate,
the notorious pimp who now holds antiviolence classes for abusers. She glides from
history to the present day, from scene to analysis, with a relaxed virtuosity that filled me
with admiration. This is a writer using every tool at her disposal to make this story come
alive, to make it matter.”
No Visible Bruises begins with Michelle's story. Michelle met Rocky when she was just
fourteen years old. Within two years, they had two children. He brought a rattlesnake
home from a national park outside of Billings to intimidate and terrify her, a form of
coercive control that Snyder says is common in abusive relationships. He limited her
access to friends, family, and work — more coercive control. And Rocky beat Michelle.
She finally pressed charges against him, but recanted them after Rocky’s parents
unexpectedly bailed him out of jail.

Recanting was a calculated decision on Michelle’s part. Without income, credit, or any
job history, she knew she could never get away from Rocky, and she was terrified of
him. She allowed him back into their home to appease him and buy herself more time to
escape.

With this, Snyder blows away the myth that every woman can just walk away from an
abusive relationship. “Michelle did not recant because she was a coward, or because
she believed she had overreacted, or because she believed Rocky to be any less
dangerous,” Snyder writes. “She did not recant because she was crazy, or because she
was a drama queen, or because any of this was anything less than a matter of life and
death. She did not recant because she had lied. She recanted to stay alive. She
recanted to keep her children alive. Victims stay because they know any sudden move
will provoke the bear…. They stay because they see the bear coming for them. And
they want to live.”

Within two months after being allowed back home, Rocky purchased a gun from the
classifieds section of a local newspaper. He shot and killed Michelle, their children, and
them himself.

Michele is just once face of domestic violence in No Visible Bruises. Snyder interviews
the perpetrators too, like Jimmy, the former pimp who facilitates an anti-domestic
violence program, and Donte, who is working the program until he accepts an ill-fated
ride home from a friend and ends up back in jail. She sits for two days with the Montana
Fatality Team going through every detail of one domestic homicide to figure out how to
prevent it next time. She rides along with police officers on domestic violence calls. She
takes readers into the lives of victims and perpetrators, law enforcement and
advocates. 

A Platform for Change

Since the book’s publication last summer, Snyder was interviewed by Trevor
Noah on The Daily Show and appeared on Fresh Air, Diane Rehm’s On My Mind,
Newsday BBC, The New York Times Book Review Podcast, C-Span’s Book TV, and
many others. She has been asked to speak with lawmakers and state congresses, at
the upcoming Women in the World Summit in New York, and at the United Nations.
The book has influenced everyone from law enforcement officers in New York, to
policymakers in Washington, to movie stars in Hollywood. In New York City, more than
700 NYPD officers received copies. In Washington, DC, the Assistant Secretary of the
US Department of Health and Human Services asked her staff to read the book. They
are now talking about implementing oversight into domestic violence grantees.

And as a direct result of No Visible Bruises, the District of Columbia has introduced a
strangulation statue for the first time, changing strangulation charges from a
misdemeanor to a felony. It’s a critically important distinction, says Snyder, because
sixty percent of domestic-violence victims are strangled at some point in the course of
their relationship with an abuser. Strangulation is a critical factor portending a potential
homicide.

Snyder doesn’t want to stop there. Along the way, she has collected lots of innovative
ideas for preventing domestic violence. She wants a national hotline for abusers, similar
to those for suicide or addiction. She also wants sponsors, like those used by Alcoholics
Anonymous, so that abusers (or potential abusers) can find support before they get
violent. And she wants to create a teen dating violence app.

On the local level, Snyder looks to the #MeToo Movement as a model for bringing
difficult conversations out into the open. She would like to see more domestic violence
education in houses of worship and in workplaces. More abused women go to talk to
clergy members than police. And many women are killed by their partners at work, or
while going to and from work. Colleagues may suspect that something is wrong but
don’t know how to broach the subject.

“We need to include all members of society in these discussions,” Snyder says, adding
that we need to start talking about the issue as a men’s problem instead of a women’s
problem. “Women don’t beat themselves,” she says, paraphrasing Eve Ensler.

Systemwide Change
Change needs to come from above, too. First, Snyder wants to see the Violence
Against Women’s Act reauthorized and better funded. She wants our batterers’
intervention systems to include gender education and restorative justice as their key
philosophies. And she wants self-defense laws to start accounting for gender and
differences in intent. “When men kill their partners, they kill them because they are
losing control; their partners are leaving them or trying to gain some agency in their
lives,” she explains. “But when women kill their partners, it’s because they believe they
are about to be killed.”

And then there are gun laws and background checks. Owning a gun is one of the top
three risk factors for domestic homicide. “Guns make a dangerous situation lethal,”
Snyder says. And for every woman who is killed by a gun, nine are almost killed. All too
often, guns turn a domestic violence episode into a domestic homicide.

From a Place of Understanding

When Snyder is not researching or writing, she is teaching at American University
where she holds a joint appointment at the College of Arts and Sciences and the School
of Communication.

In addition to her journalistic writing, Snyder is the author of a well-received novel, What

We’ve Lost is Nothing. At AU, she teaches nonfiction writing, fiction writing, and literary
journalism. She says she works hard to establish a community of trust and respect
within her classrooms. “It’s really meaningful to me to be trusted by students with their
stories. It’s one of the most important things I do.”

Building trust and relationships are critical to Snyder’s work. It’s how she is able to
interview everyone from victims, to abusers, to bereaved family members. When Snyder
did a reading of No Visible Bruises in Los Angeles, one of Rocky’s sisters came to the
event. Until then, she had refused to speak to Snyder or anyone else about her brother.
But she had just read No Visible Bruises. She told Snyder that after finishing it, she was
finally able to sleep through the night for the first time since the murders twenty years
earlier

Question
Can a restorative justice approach be applied in cases of serious crime?

Method
Researchers evaluated a program that applied a restorative justice approach to cases
of serious crime, after a plea of guilty but before sentencing, where offenders were
facing a term of imprisonment for the crime they had committed. The study included a
total of 288 evaluation participants; 65 offenders and 112 victims in the program group
and 40 matched offenders and 71 victims in the control group. The evaluation examined
client characteristics, program activities, program impacts and the added value of the
restorative justice approach when compared to the traditional criminal justice system.
Answer
Results indicated that a restorative justice approach could be successfully applied at the
pre-sentence stage in cases of serious crime. Over 70% of accepted cases involved
crimes against the person; 20% were property crimes and 9% involved driving offences.
Although crimes against the person can vary in the degree of harm caused, it can be
argued that they are all serious. Cases ranged from fairly serious (e.g., property crimes,
or person-based offences without physical injury) to the most serious (i.e., a death
resulted). Interestingly, over half of the offenders were first time offenders and the
majority of them were assessed as low to medium risk. Only 15% were high-risk
offenders, which is not surprising given that they usually have longer criminal histories,
may be less remorseful and less likely to take responsibility to repair the harm caused
by their behaviour. High-risk offenders require more intensive intervention and
specialized treatment plans, which many restorative justice programs are not designed
to provide.
Final results of the evaluation indicated that almost all program participants were highly
satisfied with the restorative approach, especially when compared to participants who
experienced only the traditional criminal justice system. Victims and offenders were
offered the opportunity to actively participate in the decision-making process, in
developing a reparation plan and in some cases, providing a sentencing
recommendation. Overall, individuals affected by serious crime were empowered to
achieve satisfying justice through a restorative approach.

Applying Restorative Justice to Domestic Violence: Web Resources

Proponents of restorative justice, on the other hand, hold out the possibilities of restorative
processes in changing behavior of offenders and empowering victims. The listing below offers
on-line resources that address the many issues in the debate around the use of restorative
justice in cases of domestic violence.
Avalon Sexual Assault Centre. (1999). Formal Response of the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre to
the N.S. Department of Justice. RE: The Restorative Justice Program.. Submitted to the N.S.
Department of Justice, Restorative Justice Programme, September 1999. 28 October 2002. Hot
Peach Pages. 
Block, Heather And Lichti, Chris. (n.d.). Restorative justice with respect to domestic violence
and sexual abuse. TMs (online). Boston, MA: Unitarian Universalist Association.
In view of the challenge of seeking the best response to domestic violence and sexual abuse, the
authors explore how understandings of restorative justice and family violence theory intersect.
Integration of restorative justice with domestic violence and sexual abuse theory is difficult, in
part because of the complex and unique dynamics of abuse. Yet, using a detailed chart for
purposes of comparison and contrast, the authors highlight key ways in which restorative justice
better applies to domestic violence and sexual abuse than retributive justice.
Braithwaite, John And Daly, Kathleen.. (1995). "Masculinities, Violence, and Communitarian
Control.". Australian Violence: Contemporary Perspectives II. Canberra : Australian Institute of
Criminology.
Braithwaite and Daly recognize that traditional justice system responses towards violent men
have failed, and outline another approach that is compatible with the principles of republican
criminology. They suggest that the justice system can be reformed to give voice to women and to
continue the struggle against men’s domination of women. A key element to this approach is the
community conference strategy adapted from Maori culture in New Zealand. The community
conference embodies principles of reintegrative shaming, and can become a key building block
of a political strategy against exploitative masculinities.
Coward-Yaskiw, Stephanie. (2002). Restorative justice. Herizons 15 (Spring): 22ff. 
Daly, Kathleen. (2002). Sexual assault and restorative justice. In Restorative justice and family
violence, ed. Heather Strang and John Braithwaite, 62-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Kathleen Daly looks at the question of whether restorative justice is appropriate in cases of
sexual violence. She cautions at the outset of her essay that the problem of responding justly to
such cases- refraining from punitive responses that further brutalize perpetrators without
appearing to accept their violent behavior - is ultimately unsolvable. Yet, because sexual assaults
occur, Daly pursues the problem in terms of its two components: how to treat harms as serious
without harsh forms of punishment or hyper-criminalization? and how to do justice in an unequal
society? She contends there may be a way forward in addressing the problem of responding
justly if three things are done, which she explores in this essay: (1) rehabilitate “retribution” and
make it part of restorative justice processes; (2) redefine the harm of rape, other forms of
gendered harms, and violence more generally; and (3) recognize the variety of meanings and
contexts of sexual violence, domestic violence, and family violence. To illustrate her points, she
discusses a number of cases of sexual assault in South Australia disposed of by conferencing.
Dissel, Amanda And Ngubeni, Kindisa. (2003). Giving Women their Voice: Domestic Violence
and Restorative Justice in South Africa. Paper submitted fort he Xith International Symposium
on Victimology. 13-18 July 2003, Sellenbosch, South Africa. Downloaded 21 August 2003.
This paper seeks to look at some of the issues involved in responding to domestic violence with
restorative justice by locating restorative justice within a context of high prevalence of domestic
violence in South Africa. It aims to look at the inter-relationship between victim offender
conferencing and the objectives of the Domestic Violence Act (South African legislation). It also
looks at the effectiveness of VOC in cases of domestic violence, and at the extent to which VOC
assists in preventing further violence. Finally, the paper aims to highlight some challenges for
future interventions. (excerpt)
Edwards, Alan And Haslet, Jennifer. (2003). Domestic Violence and Restorative Justice:
Advancing the Dialogue. Paper presented at the Sixth International Conference On Restorative
Justice. Centre for Restorative Justice. 1-4 June. Vancouver BC. Downloaded 21 August 2003.
Edwards and Haslett address the growing debate about the use of restorative processes in cases
of domestic violence. They hope to add to the debate by discussing lessons learned and
challenges encountered by the Mediation and Restorative Justice Centre of Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada. They discuss the philosophical issues, practice implications, challenges, and dangers
involved in working with victims and offenders in domestic violence cases.

Hayden, Anne. (2000). Restorative Justice: Has it Potential for Dealing with Domestic
Violence?. Paper presented at the Just Peace? Peace Making and Peace Building for the New
Millennium conference, held in Auckland, New Zealand, 24-28 April. Auckland, New Zealand:
Massey University, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Centre for Justice and Peace
Development.
While many advocate for the application of restorative justice system-wide in criminal justice,
some have questioned its effectiveness or appropriateness for certain types of crimes – for
example, domestic violence. In the latter instance, domestic violence is described as having
unique characteristics, such that restorative justice is not suitable for cases of this sort. In this
paper, Anne Hayden raises the question of restorative justice and domestic violence by pursuing
four objectives: (1) a challenge of the misconception that domestic violence is perpetrated only
by men; (2) an examination of the dynamics of gender and power in domestic violence; (3) a
comparison of possible outcomes of interventions in domestic violence, with an argument for the
use of restorative justice in some instances; and (4) a discussion of certain principles for the
practice of restorative justice in domestic violence cases.
Hooper, Stephen And Busch, Ruth. (1996). "Domestic violence and restorative justice
initiatives: The risks of a new panacea. ". Wakaito Law Review 4 (1). 
Maloney, Lana And Reddoch, Graham.. (2003). Restorative Justice and Family Violence: A
Community-Based Effort to Move From Theory to Practice. Paper presented at the Sixth
International Conference On Restorative Justice. Centre for Restorative Justice. 1-4 June.
Vancouver BC. Downloaded 21 August 2003.
This presentation is a joint endeavour by the University of Manitoba and the John Howard
Society of Manitoba. Work is being undertaken in Winnepeg to assess the potential for
expanding a restorative approach to dealing with family violence. It describes the results of focus
groups with survivors, offenders, and family violence practitioners in Winnipeg. The practitioner
focus groups included representatives from the University of Manitoba, Departments of Social
Work and Sociology; Province of Manitoba-Community and Adult Corrections; Winnipeg City
Police and other community organizations that deal with family violence. The focus groups were
convened to consider the use of the Family Group Decision Making model developed by Dr.
Gale Burford and Dr. Joan Pennell. (Author's Abstract)
Pelikan, Christa. (2002). "Victim-Offender-Mediation in Domestic Violence Cases-A
Comparison of the Effects of Criminal Law Intervention: the Penal Process and Mediation.
Doing Qualitative Research.". Forum Qualitative Social Research. 3(1).
The theme of domestic violence and the use of criminal law interventions have from its
beginnings sparked off controversy and so has the research thereupon (PELIKAN & STANGL,
1994). Also the research project presented in this contribution resulted from a veritable criminal
policy controversy. The core piece of this controversy was whether the instrument of Victim-
Offender-Mediation (VOM) should and could be applied to cases of domestic violence, more
precisely in cases of violence in an intimate relationship. In Austria, the establishment of a pilot
project "Victim-Offender-Mediation in General Criminal Law", i.e. for adults, which took place
in 1992, had brought about the referral of a considerable number of cases of minor assault and of
dangerous threat that had occurred within the family or a man-woman relationship to the
agencies of the so-called Außergerichtlicher Tatausgleich (Out-of-Court-Offence-
Compensation), Austria’s version of VOM. Right from the start, this practice faced critique and
the opposition of the activists of the women’s shelter movement.  The research project "On the
efficacy of criminal law interventions in domestic violence cases" that started in 1998 was
intended to further challenge this critique in a constructive way and to produce empirical data on
the effects and the efficacy of VOM on the one hand, the criminal court procedure on the other.
 
Pelikan, Christa. (2000). "Victim-offender mediation in domestic violence cases-a research
report.". Paper presented at the United Nations Crime Congress, Ancillary Meeting on
Implementing Restorative Justice in the International Context. Vienna, Austria, 10-17 April.
Pranis, Kay. (2002). Restorative values and confronting family violence. In Restorative justice
and family violence, ed. Heather Strang and John Braithwaite, 23-41. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 
Provincial Association of Transition Houses of Saskatchewan. (2000). Restorative justice: Is it
justice for battered women?. Saskatoon (?), Saskatchewan, Canada: Provincial Association of
Transition Houses of Saskatchewan
In April 2000, Provincial Association of Transition Houses of Saskatchewan (PATHS)
conducted a conference or forum in Saskatoon to address the following kinds of questions.
Should the Saskatchewan government allow or institute restorative justice strategies for family
violence cases throughout the province? Only in certain communities? Only under certain
circumstances? Only with certain safeguards? Participants included individuals with expertise
and experience in the justice system, alternative or restorative justice, women’s advocacy, and
victims’ issues. This report on the conference highlights key themes and responses to those
questions and the issues raised. A variety of views were expressed, ranging from strongly
supportive of restorative justice strategies for family violence cases to strongly opposed. The
report includes many direct excerpts from the discussion
CONCLUSION

The restorative justice process opens up new opportunities for victims and offenders to actively
participate in the criminal justice system. However, the desire for change should not be allowed to blind
us to the limitations of the process. These limitations arise from the dynamics of mediation and
conferencing and are clearly exemplified in cases of domestic violence. In this early trial period of
restorative justice initiatives in New Zealand, great care and thought should be given to whether
domestic violence cases should be referred to these programs. In our view this decision should not be
taken lightly. The process should only be attempted in rare cases and then only after special protocols
are followed to ensure a victim's free and informed consent and safety. It must be remembered that in
most cases, an abuse victim turns to the criminal justice system for protection from on-going violence.
She should not be asked to participate in any process which may compromise her safety and risk
exposing her to further violence. At the very least, the system which a victim turns to for protection
should not be complicit in her further victimization.