David Nugent once lost it and smashed up the family car, bashing in the windscreen. Seeing the look of terror on his children's faces reminded him of his own childhood. It was a turning point. He knew he had to change. "I was an arsehole." Attending a behaviour change group saved his relationship with his family. He would go on to study at Swinburne University of Technology and complete postgraduate studies at La Trobe. Today he counsels men with a history of violence and teenage boys in schools in Victoria.
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Thirty nine-year-old Nathan's marriage is over. His wife has had enough of the unpredictable violence and he is devastated by the divorce. But his two daughters live with him and he wants to be a good father. Sasko is still with his partner but she is concerned about his explosive temper.
"I want men to be honest. They think they are a successful person and portray an image but people are walking on eggshells around them.''
Forty two-year-old Justin's children are scared of him. There is an element of coiled danger about him. But he wants to be allowed to be in their lives.
These are men who create fear and chaos. And they are all attending a four-month program at Heavy METAL (Men's Education Towards Anger and Life, a private counselling program run by Nugent) in an attempt to change their abusive behaviours. They appear in the close-up and confronting ABC documentary Call Me Dad, which follows them over their sometimes raw and rocky fourteen weeks in the program..
In a cafe in Melbourne on a rainy afternoon, Nugent, who facilitates the program, brings the perpetrators' perspective to the table. He does not cut them any slack.
"Any abuser," he says, "makes a choice."
He agrees that most of the men he deals with grew up in fear of their own fathers. As much as they didn't want to be like their fathers, they are.
"They hate that part of themselves." But he is not interested in excuses. "One of the excuses is 'I can't help it, I have got a short fuse.' 'My father had a short fuse, it just happens.' And then alongside this is, 'I was drunk, I am under stress at work, I have financial stress'. I say 'Bullshit'. How come at work people don't see you like that? If you did it there you would lose your job. If you did it in the street someone would punch you. You do it behind closed doors. That is a choice."
His clients range across the social spectrum. "I have had family lawyers, accountants, I have had policemen, I have had a bricklayer. It is a myth that we are all products of our environment."
What a lot of them have in common is that they "don't know what love is. [Some believe] a woman is property. 'I own you.' That is not love. You talk about intimacy with these guys. They have got no idea." Love for these men is conditional on things being done their way.
Nugent believes the media has got it wrong in focusing on physical violence. Any situation where women and children are walking on eggshells around a man is abusive, he says.
"We kind of hang our hat on that explosion of violence that is about someone being bashed or assaulted or going crazy and smashing things. The other extreme is a passive guy who just shuts down and distances himself and disappears. That can be a form of an explosion as well, and have a lot of damaging effects. It is playing mind games. It is emotional violence. In between there is a whole lot of stuff that goes on. Male privilege, social control, these are all forms of types of violence. "
Once the men begin to understand the cycle of violence and how it builds up; the isolation, emotional abuse, economic abuse, sexual abuse, threats, their use of male privilege, they begin to see that they have been trapped in it for all of their lives. "When they see that for the first time you can see their jaw drop," says Nugent. "'That is why she has left me' or 'That is why she is not talking to me. I can understand it now.' There are lots of things that go on before the explosion. There is the brain running away with all the negative thoughts."
Acknowledging this is the beginning of making the choice to stop it.
These men have grown up in a culture where showing any kind of vulnerability is deemed 'girly'. "They think that if they can't be the king of the castle or the house that they are not real men. They feel that they are failing. It is quite the opposite."
Letting go of "male ego" is part of what drives the change. "We are conditioning them to believe they can stop. By saying 'You can help it.'"
Women in abusive relationships will try to find coping mechanisms. "The woman becomes the rescuer," Nugent says. "She starts to take on responsibility for his moods."
She can think it is her fault. "I will hear women saying 'I just need to do a bit more around the house, I will lose a bit of weight, I know he is stressed.' But she actually loses her own self-esteem and that can lead to breakdowns, alcohol, depression, suicide."
Part of the agreement of the four-month program is that if Nugent suspects anyone around these men is unsafe he has a duty of care to report. And he does.
"We are role modelling for our children," says Nugent.
"I want men to be honest. They think they are a successful person and portray an image but people are walking on eggshells around them. Their wives and children are too scared to tell them if something has gone wrong at school, for example."
Nugent has just one question for the men who contact him. "What are you going to do about it?"
Call Me Dad will be broadcast on the ABC on November 26th.
