Paola Lalla, a psychologist at Rescue, sees a man who had behaved violently with his family. This meeting is part of the work she has been doing with him for several months now.
Rescue is a service offered by the City of Sambreville, which aims to “fight criminal and violent behavior.” Of the forty-some cases handled each year, one-half pertain to domestic violence. With these individually-treated men, Paola Lalla works essentially on their awareness of the existence of a victim, the factors that trigger their violence and on learning alternate methods of communication. Paola Lalla stresses that the encouraging results she has seen should be put in perspective with the initial filtering she must perform: “For at least half of the men I work with, their problem is with anger and emotional management. The rest are often perverse manipulators: they experience no suffering, do not question their actions and refuse any type of awareness. For this second group, there is nothing I can do, so I refuse to go any further than our initial meeting.”
March 17, 2011 – Sambreville – Belgium.
© Pierre-Yves GINET