This Helpline Works To Stop Domestic Abuse -- By Talking to the Abusers

"A Call for Change" is an ambitious experiment that aims to interrupt abusive behavior

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

A man somewhere in America was recently considering violating his restraining order and confronting a survivor of domestic abuse.

He knew when she got off work, and he wanted to drive to her home to see her.

But then he picked up his phone and called A Call for Change, a Massachusetts-based domestic abuse helpline with a twist: its primary audience is those who are doing the abusing.

On the other end of the call was Temperance Wilson, the lead responder and operations manager for the helpline.

In an interview, she explained how she helped the man make a more healthy choice.

“Interrupting that logic, where do you want to be in 20 minutes? What would your life look like if you violated that restraining order? Having them say out loud: I would go to jail, I would totally just destroy any chance of rebuilding with her, and this is what my life would look like,” she explained.

Wilson’s counseling helped him to rethink his actions and avoid violating the restraining order.

Shifting the burden away from survivors

A Call for Change was founded shortly after the onset of the pandemic.

“We started COVID where we noticed an influx of domestic violence-related issues arising. We wanted to create a space where it wasn’t reliant on police and it didn’t harm any of the callers that would call to talk about what’s going on in their relationships,” Wilson explained.

The helpline is supported by the Massachusetts Department of Pubic Health and initially was focused on the local area, but it soon received callers from around the nation and, occasionally, other parts of the world. It was the first helpline in the country dedicated to speaking directly to people who are controlling or abusive in their relationships.

JAC Patrissi, a longtime abuse prevention specialist and founder of A Call for Change, said they’ve received almost 900 calls since their founding in April 2021 through June 2024.

Patrissi acknowledged that earlier in her career she would’ve been skeptical of an approach that focuses on talking to abusers rather than survivors.

But she argued that survivors first and foremost benefit from the work that A Call for Change does. She noted that the burden of escaping abuse — which can include tasks like seeking restraining orders or finding shelter — always falls on survivors.

“And we’re like well, the best thing would be if the people just stopped hurting other folks. So we decided to put the labor where it belongs: with the people causing the problem. And creating conditions so we can interrupt that and not waiting for survivors to do all the labor,” Patrissi said.

In addition to talking to those engaged in abuse themselves, A Call for Change also talks to people who are close to those people. Patrissi said that half the calls they get are from friends, family, community members and professionals. Survivors also call.

An advertisement that A Call for Change Helpline uses. Photo credit: JAC Patrissi.

Interrupting bad behavior

The work with those who are in danger of engaging in abuse is all about interruption. What can the helpline do to help people recognize their harmful attitudes and prevent abuse before it happens?

Patrissi described a case of a man who had issues controlling his temper around his girlfriend. Once, he found himself enraged that his girlfriend left a gathering early and went home. He found that she was drinking a glass of wine, and he was angered that she would be drinking a glass of wine that they had paid for rather than having a free one at the gathering.

She responded by pouring the whole bottle of wine down the sink and telling him to call the helpline.

When he called, Patrissi recounted, what helped him was writing a sticky note.

“My girlfriend is not me,” she said he wrote. “It’s such an interrupter for him. That’s where he was starting. She is a valuable person who has her own needs in life. I will be curious about that.”

Part of the work that Patrissi and Wilson do is getting people to realize things about themselves. In the heat of the moment or over the course of an abusive relationship, people can get trapped into mindsets where they refuse to self-reflect.

“There’s a lot of space when they…start to see themselves differently. We help them see themselves. We interrupt and offer different ways of thinking. We make meaning of the situation with them, and we help cultivate their skills until they see themselves and interrupt themselves,” Patrissi explained.

Some calls are one-off. Others are repeat callers who are well-known to the call takers at A Call for Change. The organization advertises on billboards in the state, and it’s currently working on expanding into California.

People call from all kinds of backgrounds. Patrissi recalled a woman who even called in after leaving a religious cult.

“She said I just want to call to talk to people who believe in equality,” she recalled. “I’ve been raised like this so I’ve never met any of you.”

Transforming people

Patrissi is no fan of the common refrain that “hurt people hurt people.”

“There’s millions of hurt people who are reliably safe with other people. They don’t hurt other people,” Patrissi noted.

She has a different approach.

“We say hurt people with untransformed abusive values hurt people,” she said.

She spends a lot of time reading a popular Reddit page where people ask, “Am I the Asshole?”

“I have been so heartened over my decades in this field to see how great people have become at identifying manipulations, abusive patterns, and I realize people are then terrible at what do you do with them?” she said. “The only thing people do is be like um I’m gonna cut you off. That’s it…a good boundary’s all they have.”

She thinks more is needed.

“People need the skills and the interrupters to create the conditions so that other people can change. And we’re not saying the targeted person has to do it. We’re saying community has to get better at doing it, and we’re part of leading that,” Patrissi said.

“People need people,” Wilson added.

That doesn’t mean that A Call for Change is equipped for all situations. They often make referrals to others to provide support with professional mental health care, legal assistance, or substance abuse programs.

But Patrissi, who is a runner, analogized what they do to volunteers handing out cups of water to runners during a marathon.

“We don’t know how good a shape people are in. Do they have a heart condition? Have they been training for ten years? Those are the callers. We don’t know all of that. And the scope our job is to make sure the water — our intervention — is good for them,” she said.