Summary: We feature highlights from the Intimate Partner Abuse of Men Workshop held on Wednesday 16 June 2010 in Perth, Western Australia. The workshop was aimed at service providers plus anyone who works with victims and perpetrators of family and domestic violence, and considered the implications for service providers of the Edith Cowan University (ECU) Intimate Partner Abuse of Men research. In this, the sixth part of the workshop, Richard Wolterman from Lifeline reflects on more than 20 years of working with both male victims and perpetrators. Listen now (MP3) Richard Wolterman: Good morning everyone. I find myself in the company of great academics and unfortunately I never reached a Ph.D. because I started doing different things. That means my professional life and working in the field of domestic violence and other abuse-related areas are experiential and I will relate my experience to you as such and from the heart. I’ve been working the field for about 20 years, from 1988 onwards, more or less. Before I give an oversight I just want to speak to the lady from Fremantle: the word “hope” struck a cord with me. I think the word “hope” is a key word that does not appear in any guidelines for treatment in particularly the domestic violence area and I think it does not necessarily apply to CALD to people or multicultural cultural victims or perpetrators. I saw it as a major point for us as counsellors and group facilitators in the first place to find ways of bringing hope to the people who came for assistance. And secondly, empathy and being with them. I hope I can talk about it later a bit. It’s necessary for me to do some self revelation and I just want to let you know that domestic violence is a broad field but it’s also a narrow field. And I’m actually happy to say that I’ve worked in a lot of areas. It started in 1988 in New Zealand with private practice combined with avocado growing. I think it’s a remarkable, fruitful combination working out in the fields and doing counselling. But it encompassed family court counselling, victim support, at the time family court encompassed all the various aspects of separation, conciliation, reconciliation, custody access, children, anger management, and also domestic violence which started to become an issue at the time. I also was a probation officer and a counsellor, sorry, a contractor for corrective services with violent offenders and sexual offenders the time. The Hamilton Project in New Zealand was I think the first overseas location of the Duluth Model and I became an approved and registered program developer, and also counsellor in New Zealand for male perpetrators. There’s one area in particular, spiritual abuse support that I started up and I’m still engaged with that in different ways. Coming to Australia in 1998 when I was recruited by Anglicare to set up male domestic violence services in Albany that encompassed I suppose it was the first Australian men’s domestic violence crisis service, but also what we call the normal perpetrator group programs. And later on an early intervention family domestic violence program. Other fields were child protection and currently I’m managing a program for separated fathers with Lifeline. The last item on the list is probably more impacting on me as a professional than anything else because there is also a history of abuse that I never sought out for myself. And I was never determined to consciously work into the abuse counselling field but two years at least of sexual abuse at the Catholic seminary has marked my life. Further exposure to a war-torn country, living in the Middle East with terrorist border crossings and bus bombings did an additional damage. A further year-in-a-half in the Persian Gulf War and a detainment by the Iranian navy was another aspect of a traumatic experience, and there were a few more. But it helps me to come to terms
