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If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence and would like to talk with an advocate, call 866-834-4357, TTY 1-800-437-1220. This free, confidential service is available 24/7 and is accessible from anywhere in Maine.
People convicted of domestic violence in Maine’s second most populous county are being allowed to end their probation early after the only local program aimed at changing male offenders’ abusive behavior closed nearly a year ago.
When York County probationers and others cannot get into another domestic violence intervention program in Maine, victims are feeling less safe, and justice is not being served, said Susan Giambalvo, the director of Caring Unlimited, York County’s domestic violence resource agency.
“It’s leaving survivors and victims feeling like they’ve been abandoned again,” Giambalvo said. “That emboldens the person who’s committing violence and allows them in one more way to get away with it. It just feels so unfair.”
Domestic violence intervention programs, previously called batterers’ intervention, have been valued for their ability to address the belief structures underlying people’s abuse. Certain programs have been shown to reduce violence and provide more oversight of offenders.
The 48-week classes are the default probation option for people convicted of domestic violence in Maine. Courts place people on probation in lieu of or after incarceration and require them to meet specific conditions — such as to complete a domestic violence intervention program — or else potentially go to jail.
Offenders may also complete the intervention programs to meet the terms of their deferred dispositions, where they can have their charges dismissed if they complete certain requirements. Others can be required to attend by child protective services.
York County’s domestic violence intervention program for men, Violence No More, which was based in Biddeford, closed last August, and no one has since resumed the work, signaling the tenuous financial situation of many similar programs across the state. Maine now has 16 intervention programs for men and 12 for women, according to the Maine Department of Corrections.
“There are some real struggles in keeping these vital programs running. It’s a very specialized skill being able to run these groups. So you have to have training. Then you have to have mentorship and a real infrastructure to keep them going,” said Francine Garland Stark, executive director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence.
The state-certified educational programs are designed to address offenders’ deliberate patterns of domestic violence, which aim to exert power and control over a victim. They delve into topics of honesty, accountability, trust, responsible parenting, economic partnership, sexual respect, negotiation and fairness. The programs must coordinate with local domestic violence resource centers, which offer their services to victims of the offenders in the classes.
While many do not report abuse to law enforcement, the Maine State Police tracked 448 victims of domestic violence in York County in 2022. Domestic violence is prevalent across Maine, contributing to about half of homicides each year and 30 percent of assaults reported to police.
York County District Attorney Kathryn Slattery said her office has kept referring defendants to domestic violence intervention programs as part of their probation conditions in case a local program starts up again and because she knows how important the classes are for promoting victim safety. Sometimes defendants can get into a program run remotely in another county.
But when defendants cannot get into a class elsewhere, they are asking to end their probation early.
“For domestic violence assault, the court is allowed to impose a two-year period of probation to allow people to finish that course,” Slattery said. “But they’re seeking early termination of the probation because they will never be able to fulfill that requirement.”
If the victim does not object, and the defendant has served at least half the required probation time and is otherwise in compliance, the court will grant the request, she said. If the victim objects, there is a court hearing to examine how the defendant is doing on probation and whether the person can get into any other program, and a judge will decide whether the defendant’s probation can end.
She did not know how many offenders had ended their probation early.
Some defendants have been referred to a shorter, online course run in New Hampshire. While people on probation can’t attend it because it doesn’t meet Maine’s standards, others, such as those on a deferred disposition, can.
“We’re being asked, ‘Is that an alternative that you would accept?’” Slattery said. “That’s a circumstance where we would say, ‘Well, OK, you could try that.’ But it’s not good. It’s not a good situation.”
Without a local program for 10 months, victims in York County have questioned why they should bother to report violence at all, Giambalvo said.
“Taking all these steps can increase their risk. To go through all of that and then have the system not able to really hold that person accountable is a real failure,” Giambalvo said.
Giambalvo estimated there are at least 150 people in York County who should be attending a domestic violence intervention program now but are not. That estimate is based on her conversations with agencies involved in referrals: the York County District Attorney’s Office, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and the Maine Department of Corrections. She has been talking with them because Caring Unlimited is currently examining whether it can run such a program under its auspices.
But while Caring Unlimited wants York County to have a domestic violence intervention program, Giambalvo said the organization must be cautious about running one itself. Caring Unlimited already shut down its nonviolence curriculum for women, called Turning Points, a year ago for financial reasons.
While the courts have more frequently referred offenders in recent years, there is no requirement that the programs exist and no guaranteed outside funding to help run them.
York County’s program for men, called Violence No More, was privately run by Tricia Ledoux. A former probation officer, she said she took over as director in November 2021 when all of the classes were held remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a sign of the group’s financial struggles, she had to relocate to a church when she started up one in-person class the following year because her rent was going up, and Violence No More couldn’t afford market prices for another office.
She said she taught all eight classes — twice as many as generally recommended — in addition to overseeing the program. She would have stepped back from teaching so much, she said, but she could not find co-facilitators, especially because at that time each class was required to have one male and one female teacher, and it was a challenge to find men trained in the work.
Meanwhile, as the courts wound through their case backlog after the pandemic, she received a flood of referrals, and the state approved raising the cap on her class size to 17 people. She was overseeing a total of about 135 men at a time.
“I was having to put people on a waiting list because we were getting more and more referrals. And with the difficulty of finding co-facilitators I couldn’t make myself available for one or two additional classes, and I didn’t have any staff. I actually had a couple staff who were leaving me,” Ledoux said.
Despite the number of referrals, the program did not generate enough funding, as it ran off fees of $35 per class paid by participants — who didn’t always pay. The state partially covers the costs for indigent offenders, but Ledoux said she was usually owed between $4,000 and $6,000 at any given time. It made it more challenging to pay herself and her staff decent wages, and meant she was often managing collections.
“I felt that I wasn’t going to be able to continue doing quality work if I had to continue doing the workload that I was doing,” she said.
Finally, faced with the prospect of losing two of her three male co-facilitators, she stopped running Violence No More in August 2023. She had wanted an agency to absorb the program, and she had been in talks with one that she declined to name. But, in the end, the prospective owner backed out because Violence No More was not financially viable.
Penquis Community Action Agency in Bangor took some of Ledoux’s students who had partially completed Violence No More. So did a program in New Hampshire. And while she was grateful, Ledoux said she also knew it was preferable to keep perpetrators in programs closer to home. Domestic violence intervention programs are more effective when they are part of their local coordinated community response to domestic violence.
“There were lots of times when I would notify probation or DHHS if I saw something that was concerning,” Ledoux said. “I’m going to see somebody once a week for an hour and a half, which is actually a lot more than they’re going to see their probation officer. It is an important part of that team approach.”
Domestic violence intervention programs in Maine receive no outside funding for their operations, so they are often run as part of a larger entity, such as a local domestic violence resource agency, that subsidizes them, said Stark, with the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Because they cannot be run on fees alone, she would like to see the Maine Legislature support them.
“The cost of business continues to go up for all of us doing everything. The programs are just really, really struggling, and the funding is nowhere near sufficient to support them to do the work,” she said. “They need our help and support in order for them to be all that we need them to be — and everywhere that we need them to be.”
Erin Rhoda is the editor of Maine Focus and may be reached at [email protected].
