Pulling men from brink of abuse: Group offers hope

The Blueprint program, to be implemented by St. Paul police next year, offers new hope to women trying to escape domestic abuse. Tragically, as the Star Tribune pointed out Sunday, the innovative program, which assesses offenders' potential lethality, didn't come soon enough to save Pam Taschuk. Taschuk, 48, of Lino Lakes, was fatally shot last week by her estranged husband, who then killed himself, police say.

There's no doubt that the Blueprint is best served up with more -- more shelters, advocates, police officers and monitoring. But there's another essential component to stopping the madness (more than 200 Minnesota women have died from domestic violence since 2000) that I wish we'd talk openly about.

How does a man reach this point? What pushes some men over the edge? Most important if we are ever to break the cycle, what pulls some men back from the brink?

I can't answer with certainty. But I got a hint a few weeks ago when I sat next to "Dave" at a luncheon celebrating the work of the Minneapolis-based Storefront Group, a human services and mental health provider whose mission is strengthening families.

After pleasant small talk, Dave (a Storefront client who asked that I use only his first name) walked to the podium and issued a whopper of an opening: "I might have done that."

What he might have done was an act similar to the Labor Day killing of North St. Paul Police officer Richard Crittenden. Crittenden was shot by a man who had twice violated a protection order from his estranged wife.

Dave, 55, grew up in Minnesota with a father who was a railroad worker "and hard drinker." His father's anger turned explosive, and it was often unleashed on Dave's mother, physically and verbally. Determined to take a different path, Dave never drank in his teens or early 20s. By 24, though, he was married and an alcoholic. One day, in a stupid argument over cigarettes, his wife hit him. He hit her back.

The marriage broke up. Dave worked hard on his recovery, eventually working in treatment centers. He also found strength in his faith. He remained single for 20 years until he fell hard for a woman with three teenagers. Marrying again, and becoming an instant stepfather, was tough, and Dave felt his anger bubbling up again.

"I became aware of how much of my wife's energy and focus was on her kids and their issues," he shared with the Storefront audience. "In spite of several long talks and attempts to implement some boundaries between the kids and our marriage, things did not improve. I became extremely stressed. I began to feel like my marriage, and the fulfillment it brought to me, was slipping away."

One night, the couple argued and Dave became so verbally abusive "that I had no idea what I said." The marriage collapsed. Dave, who could no longer live with himself, found his way to Storefront's Men's Anger & Abuse Group Therapy Program. While he entered voluntarily, many men in the program are there by court order.

"When they come here, they're not ready to admit that they did anything wrong," said Frank Tougas, a licensed psychologist and the group's facilitator. "They see me almost as a judge, and they try to plead their case in front of me. I tell them, 'My job is to help you so this never happens again.' I have no vested interest in their failing. My vested interest is in their doing well."

The key to doing well is what Tougas calls "a wake-up moment." Maybe it's a spouse or a friend who says, "This is just too much." Maybe it's a judge or the police. Most men don't "wake up" until about six or seven weeks into the program, which meets for two hours a week for 25 to 35 weeks. "That's why the program is as long as it is," Tougas said.

"The thing about emotions is that we are hard-wired," Tougas said. "When those emotions flare up, our ability to think diminishes or disappears. We teach them to slow down and make a conscious decision."

In eight out of 10 cases, "we never hear from them again," Tougas said. "Some wives tell us [the program] was a miracle."

Today, Dave has a steady job (his employer does not know about his past) and a healthy romantic relationship. He said the anger group was key to his recovery. He's grateful, too, for a pastor who guided him and for friends in his church who never abandoned him. Some men, he guesses, "had nobody there to come along beside them and help them."

Many men, he said, "want to come out on the other side being good husbands and fathers. They say, 'I've had enough. I'm not the victim. I can take responsibility. I can control my own destiny.'"

Then there are the others.