Congressional Briefing by Dr. Etiony Aldarondo: Reinventing Interventions for People Who Use Intimate Partner Violence

Note: Last Spring, TMI’s Executive Director, Etiony Aldarondo was invited by The Bipartisan Working Group to End Domestic Violence, led by co-chairs Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Young Kim (R-CA), Gwen Moore (D-WI), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) to present a research briefing on the effectiveness of interventions with abusive partners as part of a Congressional Roundtable on Reinventing Interventions for People Who Use Intimate Partner Violence. Below is his testimony.

Thanks to the Congressional Bipartisan Working Group on DV and to Future Without Violence for the opportunity to be part of this important and historic congressional briefing.

Over the past two decades many community leaders and researchers have argued for an increased recognition and support of Abusive Partners Intervention Programs, also known as Batterer Intervention Programs. We have argued that abusive intervention programs are an important part, and perhaps the most neglected part of our evolving systemic response to intimate partner abuse. I am excited about this initiative and take it as a sign of commitment at the highest levels of government to strengthen our systemic response to intimate partner violence.

Abusive Intervention Programs Effectiveness

It is important when talking about the effectiveness of abusive intervention programs to understand that these programs are a small part of a broader systemic response designed to curb and eliminate the use of violence and abuse in intimate relationships. This system includes legal interventions such as arrest policies and protective orders, judicial oversight, as well as coordinated community network responses designed to increase the efficacy of the system and further reduce IPV recidivism.

The data show that each level of intervention is making modest and important contributions to stop and reduce violent behavior by abusive partners. Protective orders are an effective form of violence deterrence for more than one-half of the men. Approximately two-thirds of all men arrested for domestic violence offences do not reassault within six months.

Now, intervention programs for men who batter began to emerge slowly in the late 1970’s and significantly increased in numbers following the criminalization of domestic violence in the mid 1980’s. By 2014 there were an estimated 2,500 BIP across the nation, serving half a million men per year (Boal & Mankoski, 2014).

Since the 1980’s there have been over 60 published program evaluations looking at the effectiveness of ‘‘batterer intervention programs’’ in preventing reassaults.

Summaries of individual outcome studies consistently report lower rates of reassault by men who complete intervention programs. Reviews of quasi-experimental evaluations have found intervention programs to prevent reassault for about half to two-thirds of participants who complete the programs when compared to non-completers.

They have also found that about 20% of men in the programs continuously reassault (Gondolf, 2002).

There is also evidence from Ed Goldolf’s Multisite Longitudinal Study, as well as from other studies, that coordinated community response networks can significantly enhance the efficacy of various interventions and further reduce IPV recidivism. As Goldolf has noted “program effectiveness depends substantially on the intervention system of which the program is a part”.

At odds with these findings, in the late 1990’ and mid 2000’s meta-analyses of BIP evaluations and experimental studies put into question this assertion and suggested that the reported rates of reassault in these studies suggested “little” or no ‘‘program effect.’

The broad consensus among researchers has been that methodological shortcomings (e.g., measurement issues, high dropout rates, follow up retention rates, lack of fidelity of implementation, sample attrition, intention to treat) compromised most of these studies and limited the validity of their conclusions.

New Wave of Meta Analyses

In recent years, however, there has been a new wave of meta-analyses by research teams in the US and Europe suggesting that BIPs make significant contributions to the prevention of reassault in intimate partner relationships.

Together these analyses are also important because they include a larger pool of controlled studies and “new studies with hybrid approaches to treatment” that have been produced since the earlier meta-analyses were conducted. Included in this new group of studies are evaluations of programs designed to better address comorbidity issues (e.g., substance abuse and trauma) and high drop-out rates known to affect the effectiveness of BIPS.

In 2019 Shih-Ying Chen and her colleagues reviewed 14 studies including treated to untreated comparison groups. Their “results indicated that BIP participants were about 3 times less likely to have DV recidivism and about 2.5 times less likely to have general offense recidivism, compared to nontreated control/comparison group”.

Also in 2019, Theresa Gannon and her colleagues looked at 14 DV studies of intervention programs led by “professionals”. They found that intervention programs “are effective in reducing violence for male perpetrators of IPV comparing post to preintervention” and reported a relative reduction of 36% for domestic violence programs.

The same year, Gunnur Karakurt and her colleagues evaluated 17 outcome studies (1,492 participants) with pre and post data. They said: “Our examination of pooled pre and post data from 17 studies…indicated that intervention programs that are designed for male perpetrators are an effective way to reduce violence at post-test... When conducting exploratory subgroup analysis, we found that treatment approaches incorporating substance abuse and trauma yielded better results.”

Although different intervention methods (CBT, use of motivational interviewing, standard treatment-Duluth) were not significantly better when compared with each other, “pre-post studies which used augmented substance abuse and trauma treatment yielded better results in reducing the violence of perpetrators.”

Finally, in 2021 Aine Travers and her colleagues looked at 31 outcome studies “to evaluate the types of interventions being used to prevent IPV recidivism from the last decade” and to assess evidence for interventions situated in a risk-need-responsivity framework, in comparison to the more traditional ‘one-size-fit all’ intervention approach. Their analysis showed that “RNA-informed programs (i.e., individualized treatment programs) demonstrated effect sizes suggesting potential reductions in recidivism of 65% to 79%” for studies with follow ups of 1 year or less. Studies with follow-up of 13 to 24 months “also demonstrated a positive effect of treatment”. Analysis of longer follow up studies did not demonstrate effectiveness…”

In closing then:

New analyses of the effectiveness of BIP appear to be more in line with what had been found over time from many BIP outcome program evaluations and quasi-experimental studies.

This research helps us appreciate the limitations of the earlier wave of meta-analyses and helps us construct a more accurate narrative about the effectiveness of BIPs.

More importantly, they highlight innovative efforts taking place in the field to better respond to the multiple needs of abusive partners attending intervention programs and the positive impact of these efforts in preventing reassault.

Thank you for your commitment to make our homes and communities safer and for the opportunity to share this information with you.

^[1]Special thanks to Ashna Ahya for her assistance conducting the research literature search used to inform this statement.