General Community Legal services began in the early 1970s as a community response to increasing lack of access to legal services. It was a one-size fits all approach in terms of gender. It soon became apparent that women were impacted by particular disadvantage reflecting gender bias entrenched within the structures that produce our legal system. This was particularly acute in relation to family law and child protection. A campaign for the establishment of specialist women’s legal services was largely successful and following a series of Australian Law Reform Commission reports, each State and Territory introduce a specialist women’s legal service by the mid-1990s. Over 25 years later the need for women only services has grown, alongside an epidemic of family violence. Women’s legal services are specialist services with particular expertise in addressing the intersection of family violence, family law and child protection. Of great concern is the high rate of imprisonment of women who have experienced domestic and family violence. The relationship between offending and the experience of family violence appears to factor very little into most criminal hearings or pleas – yet they are often heavily intertwined. The rate of misidentification of women as the perpetrators violence in instances of defensive or retaliatory violence is on the rise, in the context of significant misunderstandings of coercive control among mainstream justice agents. The time has come for specialist criminal law services for women.

This paper draws on the front line experience of and information sharing from all women’s legal services in the NT and Women’s Legal Services Australia, to make the case for a new way of doing criminal law for women.

This workshop will provide the audience with an opportunity to gain insight from a former domestic abuser regarding the mentality of abusers and the process of change. This workshop will also cover the presenters experience working in the field of domestic violence and a discussion of best practices.

The first part of the presentation will be Dominique Waltower delivering his personal story which will cover 3 areas of his experience with domestic violence;
1.Being a victim of domestic abuse as a child
2 Becoming abusive as an adult
3.Facing the consequences of his abusive behavior and understanding the impact of his behavior on others. Dominique will also discuss going through the difficult process of change.

Dominique will provide details as to what is necessary for successful transformation. He will discuss five key areas that are essential for offender change. Areas to be discussed are awareness, assistance, accountability, action, and actualization. Dominique will introduce the audience to how these areas are necessary for offender program success. Discussion of internal/external motivation will be discussed here as well.
There will also be discussion on areas of improvement in the current system of batterer intervention treatment. In this portion of the presentation, Dominique will also discuss the stages of offenders. The four stages that will be discussed.
1.Hostage
2.Exploration
3.Student
4. Student/Teacher
These stages will help the audience identify where certain individuals are on the scale of change. This will also help the audience in managing their expectations of offenders as they transition through the different stages.

In the final part of the presentation, Dominique will discuss the experience of working in the domestic violence arena as a former offender. Dominque will discuss the difficulties and successes in working in the field as someone who has caused harm.