Mapping Perpetrator Patterns: Avoiding Misidentification in Cases of Cross-Allegations
By Rasha Hamid, PhD Student at the University of Essex and Safe & Together Model Certified Trainer
Responding to domestic abuse can present many challenges to practitioners across various agencies and sectors. That’s something those of us working with the Safe & Together Model deal with daily at a practice level. In addition to the challenges faced around managing safety, assessing risk, and reducing harm, many practitioners come across cases where both parties have made cross-allegations of abuse through competing protection orders, mutual allegations made in family court, or reports being made into children’s services further complicating their ability to respond effectively.
Such cases of allegations can often be a feature of one of the following scenarios:
The perpetrator is making false counter-allegations against the victim.
The victim has responded to the perpetrator in an abusive manner, indicating patterns of violent resistance or self-defense.
Both parties are using abuse, though there are likely to be significant differences in the way they both use abuse or in who holds the power and control in that relationship.
“Mutual” Violence?
Often, these scenarios are lumped together under the term “mutual violence.” This is where both individuals are then considered to have the same type of problem—a kind of one-size-fits-all response. It may increase survivor entrapment (e.g., when she is wrongly labelled an abuser). This, in turn, may increase the perpetrator’s power and have negative consequences around how support and safety measures are shaped for the family. This is often the result of a focus on incident-based versus pattern-based approaches to domestic violence. The mistake of mutualizing abuse is also more likely to happen when the focus is heavily on physical violence.
Instead, consider the broader patterns of behaviour associated with coercive control and behaviours harmful to children. The concerns practitioners normally have around labelling perpetrators can become even more substantial if they feel unable to assess who that might be. This can be complicated further when there are children in the family with concerns that are exacerbating for practitioners who may now feel that neither parent is a protective parent.
Mapping the Implications and Consequences of Mutual Allegations
Consequences of practice that do not deal with mutual allegations effectively are significant and, at times, irreversible. This issue can lead to genuine victims being mislabelled as perpetrators and perpetrators being mislabelled as victims. Consider a genuine victim who is now being seen as the perpetrator. They may lose access to victim support that can support them around their safety. Decisions around their parenting and assessments of their protective efforts can become skewed against them and in favour of the actual perpetrator. Planning may include a requirement for them to attend a perpetrator programme, which further embeds their status as a perpetrator. And decisions around the care and residency of their children may be influenced by this leading to removal of the children from their care.
Equally, perpetrators seen as victims could obtain access to victim services, which could increase the risks they pose. Their behaviours remain unaddressed. And they may now become the stable, protective parent who children are “safer” with. This results in victims losing faith in the systems built to support them. Perpetrators may continue to evade systems designed to hold them accountable. I have observed these consequences play out in practice. Many times, it is due to limited or no processes put in place to rectify these when a correct identification has been made as to who the perpetrator or victim is. This victim may now be recorded as a “perpetrator” and the perpetrator as a “victim” on systems and databases for as long as these records are kept.
Mapping Your Response to the Allegations
At the heart of any effective response to domestic abuse, one must have a good understanding of the perpetrator’s patterns. They must also ensure that their work is centred around good assessment. Planning for support interventions should then be informed by this specific, thorough and behavioural assessment. This becomes even more vital in cases of mutual allegations where the process of identifying who is causing harm and who is being subjected to it should be the first step. When all a practitioner knows about a case is that there are “arguments between parents,” it can be difficult to then establish who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.
However, if this practitioner is then curious in their assessment of this statement and asks questions such as:
What was the argument about?
Who said what?
How did this start?
How did it escalate?
How did it end?
They will end up with much more valuable information.
This information leads to patterns of behaviours displayed by both parties. It’s a better assessment of the power and control dynamics within that relationship. This line of examination can be applied to any reports of domestic abuse that practitioners receive and should be standard practice. Implementing this assessment approach through a pattern-based lens, as opposed to an incident-based one, will allow practitioners to understand how they are responding to this one incident at the moment. And how it fits in with the wider picture of the perpetrator’s behaviour and its impacts on the family.
A Useful Method
A useful method I was introduced to during my journey with the Safe & Together Model is to collate this information and use it to create a table with two columns. Each column indicates one person’s behaviour towards the other. This information can then be listed under each column to help establish who is using what behaviours. Also, it can be used to conclude who may hold more of the power and control in the relationship. This facilitates the process of identifying which of the three scenarios above is at play here.
For example, on one side of the column, we may have “person A stopped person B from leaving the house.” But on the other, we see that “person B was attempting to take person A’s phone and leave with it.” This would suggest that person A’s actions could be assessed as an act of violent resistance. This is not to say that person A’s actions are justified but that they ought to be seen in the context of the power that person B clearly holds within this relationship.
Mapping Additional Considerations
In order to ensure a safe and effective assessment of patterns of behaviours, any practitioner should also ensure that their work is centred around the gendered aspects of domestic abuse and that their work is informed by gender throughout every step. We know from research and practice, that women’s use of abuse is more likely to be a result of violent resistance or self-defence. This is as opposed to a pattern of abuse that is embedded in power and control.
This is not to say that women cannot be perpetrators. It is to highlight that patterns of behaviour displayed by women need to be critically analysed. In many cases, it can rule out abuse that may be a response to their experiences as victims. Without a good understanding of this, we fail to consider the grave impacts that abuse can have on women who may be acting out of frustration, desperation or in response to being failed by our systems.
Making Links
In cases where there are children or any vulnerable adults in the family, making links between the identified behaviours and any impacts they may be suffering can also support our assessment. For example, this could be a child who is now mimicking one parent’s behaviour. Thus, giving us a possible indication as to this parent being the abuser and highlighting the extent to which their behaviour is harming this child.
The simple practice tool I learned about with the use of two columns is based on Safe & Together’s Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool (PPMT). It has shown me and other practitioners how critically important it is to map behaviours and actions of both parties. The tool is a gender-responsive way to ensure we are getting it right in relation to how we identify who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. There are so many potential consequences victims can suffer from when they are misidentified as perpetrators and vice versa. The PPMT provides us with a logical and straightforward way to ensure we have enough information to identify who is causing the harm and who needs protection from it.
About the Author
Rasha has been working within the domestic abuse sector since 2011 and much of her work has been in the charity sector and in local authorities in the UK. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Essex and her research focuses on domestic abuse perpetrators and assessing engagement patterns and interventions aimed at addressing their behaviours. Rasha became a Safe & Together Certified Trainer in 2019 and has been working with the Institute since 2021 as both a trainer and a mentor. She has also worked on various research and evaluation projects as a consultant and senior researcher.