Abuse is always a choice, and it is never the victim’s fault. This is essential for anyone to know who is responding to or working with an abuser.
Abusers often blame the victim for their problems or lay the responsibility for an issue at the victim’s feet.
Accountability for abusers is difficult, yet it is precisely what they need. Accountability does not mean they will change. Change is not likely for an abuser, and whether the abuser can shift their worldview and make genuine, lasting change is complex.
The Accountability Model of Courage provides practical steps for anyone walking alongside an abuser to place the responsibility for abuse where it appropriately belongs.
Important Note: We recommend caution if you want to use these steps yourself if you are being harmed. Once you gain clarity, healing, and strength, you may be able to implement one or some of these. However, confronting an abuser - as the last step indicates - could be dangerous for a victim. Ultimately, this guide can help abuse victims know what to look for in the person walking alongside their partner to determine if they are safe and ensure they are aligned with the victim.
This guide for responders of abuse outlines the seven essential steps of the accountability process for abusers and how to implement them.
Let’s have a look.
The Accountability Model of Courage
1. FACE - Challenge the One Causing Harm With An Unwavering Disposition
Only Take Action if You First Gain the Victim’s Permission
Facing is a profound act of courage that takes place between the responder - the person on the front line - and the abuser.
Facing begins as a calm, thoughtful, and even-handed conversation about what the abuser needs to recognize: the abusive behaviors they are expressing.
This involves challenging them with a strong and steady voice.
In this step, you will not take action as you might in an intervention. Instead, you are simply helping the abuser become aware, think about, and face the reality that what they are doing is harmful.
2. OWN - Taking Responsibility
Ensure a Meaningful Apology Happens with Reparations Commensurate with the Harm Caused
Owning is a crucial step that involves the abuser taking responsibility for their harmful words and actions, as well as their distorted belief systems.
This step is not easy—for either the person helping the abuser to face what they are doing or for the abuser to admit that what they were doing was wrong.
Owning requires the abuser to stop the harmful behaviors they have been engaging in. If that does not happen, it is false owning.
3. RESOURCE - Be An Accountability Partner
Become an Accountability Partner Who Holds the Abuser Accountable and Responsible
Accountability may be a difficult consequence for the abuser to accept, but ultimately, this is what they need and what the survivor needs.
An accountability partner can be an invaluable resource—someone with knowledge of the nature and activity of abuse, how this particular abuser has enacted those activities, and who is willing to hold them accountable for the changes that need to occur.
If any property of the victim’s has been damaged, hold the abuser accountable for making repairs.
If the survivor’s reputation was damaged, it might take double or triple effort to salvage it and ensure it is never tainted again. Keep the abuser accountable to right this wrong.
Hiding or taking a course of action that stalls or avoids the consequences of public humility for the abuser because they are in a position of employment, community or church leadership, or volunteerism is unacceptable.
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4. EDUCATE - Use Your Influence
Use Your Influence to Confront Destructive Beliefs and Explain the Pillars of Abuse
Abusers need insight into their faulty and destructive belief systems. And they will need help with this. It is essential for the abuser to understand the impact their behaviors have on their partner.
The MEND tool, The Pillars of Abuse, explains the mindset of the abuser:
To learn more about The Pillars of Abuse, click here.
5. REQUIRE - Clarify Relationship Expectations
Command Cooperation, Accountability, and Responsibility While Upholding the Victim’s Position
If you meet with the abuser in any capacity, be sure to state that you are there to support them only in their tangible efforts to change. Command their cooperation to be accountable and take responsibility, accept nothing less.
If you socialize with an abuser, hold them accountable for their harmful behaviors so you are not colluding in the abuse and adding significant trauma to the victim.
An abuser will need to come to grips with the requirements of what a relationship needs.
While hundreds of books have been written on this subject, here are just a few of the essential requirements that an abuser needs to accept and then learn how to provide:
- Necessary repairs
- Building
- Equality
- Emotional and physical safety
- Discovery
- Mutual respect
- Reciprocity
- Individuality
- Affection
- Caring attention
- Support
- Honesty
- Pleasure
- Variety
- Accountable freedom
- Protective boundaries
6. DETERMINE - Matching Words & Actions
Hold the Abuser to Fulfill Exactly What They Agreed to and Respect Boundaries
Determining is setting a new bar for the abuser to ensure what they agree to is upheld through matching their words and actions and accepting nothing less.
This includes determining the goals for new standards of behavior, productive ways of communicating, sharing knowledge of and responsibilities for child-rearing, financial considerations, running a household, and supporting work efforts.
The goals are set and implemented to honor the victim’s requests and needs. To accept less or to give credence to justifications is colluding in the abuse and is traumatizing to the victim.
7. CONFRONT - Facing Outcomes
Respond to Abusive Behaviors with Thorough Consequences without Lowering the Bar
Confronting is the brave act of facing, once again, but this time in terms of recognizing, analyzing, and either celebrating and building upon successful outcomes or owning the immediate failure to achieve determined goals while becoming willing to embrace the challenge of trying again.
A structured program, individual therapy, an accountability partner, and a support group become invaluable resources for the abuser to take accountability and responsibility for their words and actions.
Confronting an abuser does not shift the priority to them - the priority is always the victim. Doing otherwise would cause additional harm to the survivor.
You are not a rescuer, an enabler, a distraction, or a force.
You are the voice of sanity and accountability—highlighting the trauma that occurred due to the abuse and the necessary realities that must be faced and owned.
Conclusion
This response model is called The Accountability Model of Courage because it takes courage to hold an abuser accountable. We believe you can do it effectively if you feel called to or are in a profession where you work with those who cause harm. It is no easy feat, yet following the steps provided here can equip you to do so in a way that causes no further harm to the victim-survivor.