Can a violent man change? Can he stop the assaults on those he is supposed to cherish, and reduce his psychological games?
Yes - to some extent - according to optimistic new research that looks at the effectiveness of men's behaviour change programs in Australia.
These programs have become the go-to option for magistrates scrambling to find a penalty for men who use family violence where incarceration is not appropriate.
Once a week (usually for 24 weeks) men attend a group session that encourages them to change their behaviour and their attitudes toward gender stereotypes and build respectful relationships. But there has been little Australian research into their effectiveness.
The majority of 300 men surveyed who did behaviour change programs did change in the short and longer term, finds the new research report from the Department of Social Work at Monash University and the national charity Violence Free Families.
Their violence was reduced in all areas and did not shift from one form to another (from physical violence to financial abuse, for example), it found.
And, interestingly, men who were court-ordered to do the program showed a greater improvement than men who were not.
About 65 per cent of men who completed the program and were interviewed two years later for the study were either violence free or almost violence free.
"While enabling the men to make changes, the programs were not a silver bullet that stopped all men from being violent or stopped all the violence of the men who made changes," the report finds.
But they are one of the most useful and cost-effective tools currently available, says David Smythe, the chairman of Violence Free Families.
"The research was very encouraging because it showed the men were making substantial reform and maintaining it, though often with some difficulty," Dr Smythe said.
But partners' views of the program varied considerably. Original partners who stayed with the violent man, or new partners, were very positive about the program.
But former partners who had left the perpetrator were negative, saying the program had not protected them or came too late to matter to them.
Because the men were reporting on their own behaviour, it took skilled and experienced phone interviewers to ask questions from different angles and know "when men were telling them what they want to hear", Dr Smythe said.
There is a paucity of men's behaviour change programs in regional and rural areas and this could be addressed in part by providing online programs, he said.
The confronting nature of working with men who use violence also means there is a shortage of skilled facilitators for groups, as many burn out and leave the field after a few years.
Better, more accessible, training would address this, as would the provision of more behaviour change programs, the researchers said. The current wait for such programs is about six months.
"There's a great demand out there and courts refer men into them, but then the men have to wait for months to start."