Berlin Intervention Project against Domestic Violence (BIG)
1995 - 1999

The primary objective of the "Berlin Intervention Project against Domestic Violence (BIG)" was to promote co-operation among women's protection projects, administrative departments of the Berlin Senate, the police, the judicial authorities and other projects and institutions whose work involves them in individual aspects of domestic violence. The main thrust of the project related to reformulating and networking police, legal and social procedures.

Implementation

In 1993 a number of active members of the women's movement in West and East Berlin got together to launch a working group. It was made up of shelter workers and workers at other refuge facilities and counselling centres as well as of women and men working in the anti-violence field. Their objective was to develop new approaches and strategies to combat male violence in private relationships. They argued: "Effective protection for women who have been exposed to violence and for their children will be possible only if society - and also the judicial authorities - unequivocally condemn domestic violence and if the perpetrators are made to bear the consequences of their actions." (BIG e.V. Co-ordination Team 1998, p. 40). The association "Berliner Initiative gegen Gewalt gegen Frauen - BIG e.V." was established in 1994 to carry out the project planned by the working group.

The primary goal of the Berlin Intervention Project was to enhance the protection and safety of women exposed to domestic violence. An important principle here was the perception that men must be made to bear responsibility for their violence. An improvement in the protection for battered women - in both short and long terms - is feasible only if society unequivocally condemns violence and attaches the blame for it on the perpetrator. Thus, the project set out both to prevent violence and to reduce the incidence of violence in the domestic context.

The project's aims included:

• developing a framework which guarantees extensive protection of women and sufficient support for women and their children
• strengthening the rights and legal status of abused women
• ensuring that society outlaws violence and its perpetrators
• holding the perpetrators responsible for their deeds, e.g. through the police taking violent men into custody and/or through legal stipulations under civil law and sanctions under penal law
• practising and elucidating co-ordinated action on the part of all the participating institutions against domestic violence
• providing information about male violence against women and establishing preventive work.

The Special Nature of the Project

These aims comprised a fundamentally different social approach to dealing with domestic violence; they required a change of institutional and project-related attitudes.

The institutions and political decision-making bodies were called upon to take domestic violence and violent men as perpetrators seriously by regarding them as a political and social problem which could not be left to the responsibility of women and women's projects alone.

Institutions and projects were jointly required to agree on target-oriented co-operation with each other and to establish a broad alliance of all powers in society.

This co-operation gave rise to a wide variety of police and penal and civil law measures as well as political and social action against male violence in the domestic sphere. All these measures were linked in order to be effective. They were particularly targeted at the legal domain and ranged from acute intervention to ways away from violence which prove successful on a long-term basis.

The realisation of these ideas was planned in terms of the following practical steps, whose implementation was discussed by the bodies concerned:

• Clear instructions on police conduct to protect women in abusive situations and to proceed against the perpetrators were to be drawn up. Rules had to be laid down in a manual regarding the way police officers intervene in cases of domestic violence, how they take down records of the violence, in what circumstances they take the perpetrator into custody, and what information they provide for the abused woman.
• Clear legal regulations for the criminal prosecution of the perpetrators should be formulated. One example is that there is a public interest in the criminal prosecution of domestic violence and in sentences for the perpetrators. Additional educational and training programmes for violent men should be implemented as a form of probation.
• The application of current laws against domestic violence had to be reviewed and suggestions for changes should be made where existing regulations had proved to be inadequate or ineffective. For example, women have to be granted the right to assert claims concerning domestic violence, e.g. a ban on approaching and contacting the woman. The basis for such claims had to be enshrined in civil law.
• There is a need for additional protection measures and support services for women and their children. For instance, services should be developed for abused women through which they can obtain information and support on both a communal and a central level.
• Recommendations for improving the specific legal and psycho-social situation of migrant women exposed to violence should be elaborated, e.g. to guarantee them a residence permit independently of their spouse.
• Domestic violence must become an issue in the (vocational) training of the police and public prosecutors as well as of the staff of courts, public authorities and information offices. Concrete plans had to be drawn up to this end. Plans for education and training programmes for violent men had to be devised.
• Support services relating to the specific situation of children and adolescents had to be developed. This entailed drawing up proposals for improving their status in the legal domain.

Organisation and Structure

The Berlin Intervention Project's principal co-ordination and decision-making body was the Round Table. Its meetings were convened by the Federal Ministry of Family, Senior Citizens', Women's and Youth Affairs and the Berlin Senate Department for Labour, Vocational Training and Women.

The Round Table was made up of representatives of the Federal Government, the State Government, the Berlin State Commission against Violence, representatives of the project's expert groups and plenary board, and the BIG co-ordinators (who had no voting rights) (Kavemann et al. 1999).

The project was headed by the Co-ordination Office of the Berlin Intervention Project (BIG). The co-ordination team consisted of legal experts and qualified pedagogic specialists. They were responsible for: preparing and heading the expert groups; providing material; maintaining the flow of information throughout the project; co-ordinating the intervention measures as drawn up by the project; and preparing the Round Table sessions. The Co-ordination Office also liased with the project provider, carried out the public relations work as it related to the expert groups and the project, and performed representative duties on behalf of the project as a whole. Moreover, the co-ordinators held the further training seminars for specific groups of professionals, most notably for the police and professionals in the legal field, and acted as "mediators" between the representatives of the Berlin Senate departments and the staff of the women's support organisations.

Seven Expert Groups existed for the duration of the project. They dealt with the following fields: police intervention, civil law, prosecution and penal law, migrant women, support programmes, children and young people, and the perpetrator programme.

The Expert Groups were recruited on an inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional basis and were composed of 120 experts from Senate departments, anti-violence projects and other bodies and facilities. The primary goal was to evolve new strategies and procedures for intervention. All of the Expert Groups pursued a joint goal: "to formulate proposals relating to their specific target groups / professional groups on an approach to ensuring that domestic violence is taken seriously and treated with the appropriate professionalism" (Kavemann et al. 1999, p. 8). A further objective was to extend the scope of co-operation between the various bodies and to identify gaps in the available services.

The most important principle governing the work of all the groups involved was the principle of consensus.

Concluding Remarks

In February 2000 Beate Leopold, one of the BIG scientific supervisors, reported on the project's success in a lecture which she delivered at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture, Youth, Family and Women's Affairs and the Ministry of the Interior and Sport (cf. Frauenhaus-Koordinierung 2000, p. 20).

The Berlin Intervention project's most significant achievement has been to establish continuous and systematic co-operation. The support programmes available to battered women in Berlin have been substantially improved by such measures as the publication of new information material and the existence of a hotline, which was launched in November 1999. The "BIG Hotline for domestic violence against women" operates between 9 a.m. and midnight on 365 days a year, providing information, counselling and support for women and their children exposed to male violence. The primary goal is the protection and empowerment of battered women and their children. The Hotline also involves the public authorities, social institutions and facilities as well as individuals from the victim's private and social environment.

Another of the project's achievements is that for the first time children were treated as a target group in their own right, with their own support needs. Significant advances were made in co-operation among the professionals involved in dealing with domestic violence; their work has improved as a result, and the beneficiaries are the victims. Such improvements include a joint platform of communication, mutual recognition of competence, and the availability of training and further training programmes.

BIG prompted important changes in the relevant institutional regulations in Berlin from which the victims of violence benefit. But the project also brought about improvements for victims of domestic violence on a wider geographical scale, in the form of draft legislation, standardised legal application forms (for civil law injunctions, for instance), and information sheets.

The last session of the Round Table also reached a positive evaluation of the project. In addition to the achievements listed above, the Round Table noted that the classification of police intervention in cases of violence within the family had been renamed, from "Family conflict" to "Domestic violence". Moreover, guidelines have been issued for police action on domestic violence, and special further training courses for police officer and judicial professionals have been held on the implementation of these guidelines. Information sheets have been published for victims explaining the available protection measures under civil law and the scope for prosecution under penal law.

Outlook

Patricia Schneider, one of the BIG co-ordinators, has defined the new goals and targets established after the project ended on December 31, 1999. The new model project, which began on January 1, 2000, will run for two years. The aims are to introduce new aspects and improvements in three main areas (Frauenhaus-Koordinierung 2000, pp. 21f):

Establishing a clearing office for intervention issues relating to the police and to civil and penal law To evolve structures within which the institutions and projects involves can continue to deal with the problem of domestic violence To improve the available protection and support programmes for women and for children and young people

Further objectives will include: introducing an extensive range of seminars for the training and further training of professionals, most notably police officers and judicial professionals; intensive public relations work to continue breaking down the taboo surrounding the issue of domestic violence; and a review of the effectiveness of the measures formulated during the first model project (1995-1999).

Author: WAVE, Austria 2000
in:
Prevention of Domestic Violence Against Women
European Survey Good Practice Models
WAVE Training Programs

European Info Centre Against Violence
WAVE Co-ordination Office
Bacherplatz 10/4
1050 Vienna
Austria
phone: +43-(0)1-5482720
fax: +43-(0)1-5482720-27
e-mail: office@wave-network.org
website: http://www.wave-network.org