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This is the first time in my life

I ever stopped to look at myself for a long time in the mirror.

And it was like, "Damn, I took a woman's life."

And that's the hardest thing to live with,

is that I killed a woman.

I would choke her, I would push her down,

I would hold her down.

I was addicted to that... dominance.

I've lied to her, I've spit on her.

I have grabbed by the neck too, yes.

I've pushed her down in the dirt and I stomped on her hand.

I remember cornering that girl

and I physically beat the shit out of her.

My name is Deeyah Khan.

I'm a filmmaker and activist.

I've been fighting violence against women for the past 15 years.

I wanted to meet the men who abuse their loved ones.

I wanted to find out why violence against women happens,

and how we can stop it.

I never cared. It was about me.

I'm in my house, so nobody's really gonna tell me anything.

It feels like America's phrase, "land of the free."

There's a greater consequence in the United States

for killing a bald eagle than there is for assaulting your wife.

Y'all say y'all love us.

Y'all say y'all wanna take care of us.

But this is what you do. Why are you doing what you do?

MARSHEL: I'm sorry. LORI: I know, I know.

CROWD CHEERING

LAUREN SINGS

What was she like? Lauren?

Very funny, musical.

She was so... Curious and energetic.

She was a firecracker.

LAUREN SINGS

This is Malcolm and Mary.

At the age of 16, their daughter, Lauren Astley,

started dating a fellow student, Nate Fujita,

at their high school in Massachusetts.

He was a bit of a hero for the football team.

It was her first relationship.

And then it became fraught.

She became very aware of his trying to control her

and he was not going to let her break up with him.

He would find some way to be with her.

And then once she really said it was over,

I let my guard down. I was so relieved.

But I hadn't realised his anger was so great about this rejection.

And in the two months that she had this time

where she started dating other people,

his anger just built and built and built until he killed her.

One day, Lauren disappeared.

A friend rang Malcolm to say that her car had been found

at a nearby beach.

Malcolm went to look for her.

I first had gone into the water, hoping I could find her.

A woman cycling along the shoreline found her body.

Her knee was out of the water.

He apparently had tried very hard to push her into the mud.

We learned later that there was a fist out of the water,

which I think of...

..of as a sense of her defiance.

A court found that Nate had lured Lauren to his garage.

He strangled her and slashed her throat

before trying to hide her body in the marshes.

I just got totally stuck in... re-imagining the moment.

And the neck wound, had the neck covered in...

Jagged.

The casket...

We had a scarf on her there.

I have gone through hard re-enactments in my own mind

of coming into the garage as Nate is killing Lauren and...

..it's a deep, deep struggle about what I could have or would have done

if I'd gotten to that garage in time.

The coroner said that she was aware for a certain amount of time.

Probably a minute or two.

That's...

I always wonder if she was calling out for us.

MARY EXHALES

Nate was jailed for life.

He never spoke during the trial to explain what happened,

but the prosecution alleged

he'd murdered Lauren out of rage and jealousy.

Malcolm and Mary have set up a memorial fund

to raise awareness for Lauren

and to try to find out why men can be driven to such extreme acts.

In America, most female homicide victims are killed

by their current or former partner.

One in four women experience domestic violence or abuse.

Some women abuse their partners too,

but the large majority of abusers and killers are men.

Many victims say they'd never seen it coming until it was too late.

PHONE RINGING

AUTOMATED VOICE: February 22, 2017.

In 2017, emergency services in Baton Rouge received a call.

Angela Gabriel had been shot by her partner Carl Thompson

while she was lying in the bath.

He was standing in the bathroom door

and I saw the last two gunshots,

and when he stopped shooting I said, "You shot me."

And he says, "Look what you made me do, Angie.

"You made me shoot you."

Doctors saved her life, but at a terrible cost.

My mom was standing there and she was crying,

and she asked the doctor, "Is my baby...

"permanently paralysed?"

And the doctor says, "Yes, ma'am.

"Your daughter will never walk again."

My reaction to that news was, "Mama, don't cry.

"I just beat you to a diaper first."

That's how I took the news that I would be paralysed.

Immediately after he shot her,

Carl also rang 911, confessing to the crime

and expressing remorse.

Like I said, initially, when I came home,

I couldn't turn over.

I had to wait for my mum to get up,

come help me roll in the bed and help me get dressed.

Angela's partner was given 45 years in prison.

She has now made an extraordinary decision.

She visits groups of convicted male abusers,

to speak to them face-to-face about their actions.

Why would you want to engage with abusers?

Because I know that they actually have a story too.

All the help comes to us as women.

And not trying to take away from the pain

that they're inflicting on others,

but there is something wrong with them.

They are a victim of something.

Leslie Morgan Steiner

is a Harvard-educated author and journalist.

She says she was subjected to years of control and brutality

after marrying a Wall Street banker.

Five days before our wedding, his hands were around my neck.

And he squeezed really tightly.

And he used the chokehold to hit my head up against the wall.

Five days later,

I put on my mother's wedding gown and I married him.

And then he beat me twice more on our honeymoon.

He was abusing me very regularly, strangling me,

pushing me downstairs, beating me up.

Eventually, Leslie escaped her husband.

Like Angela, she's now trying to understand

why men beat the women they claim to love.

Although it's very important to focus on victims

and survivors of abuse, and get us the support we need,

we are never gonna end violence against women unless we help men.

You can't help an abuser by saying, "You're evil."

You have to come at them from the point

of trying to gradually get them to see that

they were victims themselves,

and that they're acting out of that kind of pain and rage.

I spend months and months trying to get a male abuser to speak to me.

One centre in Indiana, which deals with domestic abusers,

says they can line up a group of men.

But no-one turns up.

I'm not sure why it's been so hard to get people here.

I think the shame is too strong.

Shows how difficult it is to get people to come

and talk about their most shameful moments.

I don't know another way to say it. Maybe it can't be done.

Maybe it just is a much longer road and...

and the people we asked aren't ready,

or maybe they don't believe their own change, deep down.

Eventually, one man does agree to talk to me.

Daniel says he wants to tell his story to help warn others.

He's recently been released from prison

for what he did to his wife.

She was a beautiful person.

I remember her laugh.

I remember her smile, her freckles.

I wont ever forget it.

I won't ever forget it, because...

Daniel says, before he met his wife,

he had had a very troubled childhood and became a drug addict.

He was in recovery when he met his future wife.

In hindsight, I was masking a whole lot of feelings

that I was trying to run away from.

She ended up becoming a scapegoat

to a lot of the feelings that I was trying to run from.

He started to develop feelings of anger and jealousy

and became very controlling.

She felt like... I remember her saying

that she felt like she was walking on eggshells with me.

What was that like, to hear that,

to hear your wife being afraid of you?

I... I didn't care.

I didn't care.

It made me feel like, "Oh, I'm... This is what you're supposed to do.

"Make sure you instil fear in them,

"cos if you instil fear, it's a controlling mechanism."

Why did you need to control her?

Because I was afraid that she would leave me.

My biggest fear was of... the feeling of being abandoned.

I didn't want her to abandon me.

Daniel had a good job as a chef,

but after he lost his job, he turned again to drugs.

That was the worst thing I could have did,

because I had lost all control.

I was a negative entity.

The anger had affected my whole body.

And we became separated, but I became obsessive.

And not only did I become obsessive, I became a stalker.

That lead up to the morning that I actually did what I did.

When I went there on September the 19th...

..it was around six o'clock in the morning.

And I went there...

..and I was so angry.

And I did not know to the extent

of how bad I reacted until I seen the autopsy report.

When I read the autopsy,

I didn't know that I had stabbed her multiple times.

And it was one fatal, fatal blow, and it was at the base of her neck.

That was a fatal blow.

That was... that... and...

But I didn't know that it was 13 times,

because I was so far in a rage, that it did it.

And I jumped up and I ran.

And, um...

And...

She had died with her friend's mother trying to save her.

That's what shame feels like.

Looking at yourself in the mirror and all you see is a monster.

You hate what you see.

I hated me so much.

I hated me.

It's been...

..32 years.

I think about it... But I think about it every day.

Because it's the worst thing I could have ever done.

Daniel served nearly 30 years for murder.

He's now become a counsellor for addicts,

and says he's trying to find ways

to help other men stop being violent.

But he says he doesn't expect any sympathy,

and he makes no excuses for the brutal murder he committed.

I want to talk to more abusers,

but it takes nearly another year of trying

before I finally get another opening.

The Family Peace Initiative in Kansas

runs a battering intervention programme to re-educate abusers.

Dorthy Halley co-runs the project with her husband Steve.

For the first time, the project has allowed cameras

to record what happens at their meetings.

Ha! Good to see you.

Most men are sent here by a court after committing,

or being suspected of, domestic violence offences.

Even after completing the programme,

some men still drop in to discuss their progress.

Men such as Anthony.

Um, I'm Anthony.

I'm... anxious,

nervous, scared.

I've been physically abusive, verbally abusive, emotionally.

And now, not to minimise it,

but a lot of times it's verbal or emotional for me.

I still get very manipulative, very upset and angry.

And in those moments, you don't think about that.

You're just gonna lash out and feel bad later.

It's hard cos it's just those demons coming out, you know,

and having to battle those every day.

Some of the men haven't used physical violence.

I'm all about manipulation, emotional abuse, verbal abuse.

So I didn't think that I needed this programme.

This ain't for me.

But then, when I figured out the different types of abuse,

I seen the monster I was, you know?

I seen that I'd hurt a lot of people, people I love.

I've learned things each time, but I still mess up, you know?

I still have some of the same feelings.

And the more I talk to people, the better I feel.

Really? Yeah.

My house is the house everybody comes to.

LAUGHTER

Kenneth took the classes voluntarily

after being abusive in both his marriages.

I've lied to her, I've spit on her,

call 'em cunt, call 'em bitch,

call 'em names, a lot of name calling.

I've covered her mouth.

I've done anything you can do to quiet 'em.

As matter of fact, I've even pointed a gun at her face one time.

She says I did. I don't remember.

I remember pointing like this, off to the side.

And I remember I shot the gun and the powder hit her.

My first marriage, I remember,

I pushed her down in the dirt and I stomped on her hand.

And I hurt her hand, her hand swelled up.

Crap.

Just crap.

You can't take that stuff back.

You know, some guys think that's nothing, but it is, it's a lot.

In the end, it was a simple conversation

which motivated him to stop and start to examine his behaviour.

I was talking to my wife.

She had said, "You protect me from everybody but yourself."

When I recognised that...

..I said, "That's it. That's enough. I'm done."

And I'm still searching myself. Why? Why?

How can I say I love this person and I'm hurting her?

DEEYAH: So how much of your relationship

have you been violent, would you say?

80... 80%? 85%.

If we had to put it in a week-frame,

seven days out of the week, I beat her five.

I've... I kicked her in the face, punched her in the face...

..pulled out her hair.

I struck her nose, and she started leaking blood really bad.

I made her clean up her own blood.

I wouldn't laugh, I'd be like, "Ha-ha-ha-ha, how do you like it?"

Like, insane shit. Like, I would be insane sometimes, like...

Ah...

This is Shawn.

I met him through a project for domestic violence perpetrators

in Kansas, which he completed a few months ago.

He is still trying to understand why he acted this way.

With someone you have emotions with, when there's love,

I feel like it's like a dice.

You don't know what side it's gonna land on.

I just go from happy to just,

I wanna...

..beat you up, you know, so bad.

After arguing, and after the fights, did I feel...

ugh, did I feel superior, did I feel, "Yah",

like I just did some type of drug,

even though I'd just beat up my wife?

It made me feel the adrenaline,

and I don't know what caused me to feel like that.

But I felt like I was the man.

I'm in MY house.

So nobody's really gonna tell me anything.

I don't know.

It feels like... America's phrase, "land of the free."

Shawn says attending the Kansas classes

helped him realise what he'd done.

Oh, it's hard.

It was the first time I've ever looked into myself.

Never once have I said, "Why am I the way I am?

"Why did I do that?"

I just never knew it was so serious until now.

I never knew how serious domestic violence was.

You can't take back what you did, it's there.

You're a piece of shit for that.

For the rest of my life, I'll be that piece of shit,

but...

..it's the process of getting out of the beginning,

and moving to the end, I feel like.

I don't know if she got her licence or not.

The classes are co-run by Dorthy Halley.

I think we'll talk just right here in my office,

if that's OK with you?

She tells me that when she first started as a social worker,

her only thought was to save the women

from their abusers.

Get this woman and these kids away from the monster.

And that's how I saw those who batter.

And then Tina walked into my office.

And Tina was the seventh victim of the same offender

in a five-year time frame.

And when Tina walked into my office, I realised...

..seventh victim in five years,

I don't want to be working with his 20th victim.

What are we going to do with those who batter, to get them to stop?

What makes them tick? Why are they doing this?

She started to work with the abusers...

Many of them have had challenges in becoming non-violent.

..but soon realised that many of them were simply

faking their way through the classes.

If I'm not afraid of being with you...

As I worked with them,

I realised I was getting them to say what I wanted them to say.

And they can walk out of the room.

And I had no... erm, comfort

that they weren't going to be violent again.

And so I started thinking about

helping them access their trauma,

understand their trauma,

not challenging them on every belief they had...

..but humanising them.

I had to use what we know works - connection.

I sit in on another class run by one of the counsellors, Tish.

A high proportion of the men who attend these classes

report very traumatic childhoods.

TISH: What we've been doing the last couple of weeks

is we have been talking about how cruelty flows

from person to person, from generation to generation.

Who's ready to get us started

with just taking a look at that today?

Men such as Sean.

He competed the course some years ago,

but he still drops in to provide help and support to the other men.

What's the cruelty that you experienced,

that hurt you the most when you were growing up?

I would say the physical abuse,

or, you know, "You're stupid, you're not going to be nothing."

As well as violence in his childhood,

Sean says he also experienced sexual abuse.

Can you talk about that? What happened?

When he became an adult,

his relationships with women became toxic.

It went, honeymoon phase, and then it went to...

..control.

And then it was my needs, my needs came first.

You want that power and that control as a man.

So there were certain things within the addiction that I couldn't allow.

One day, he strangled his pregnant girlfriend

until she passed out.

It's more like your adrenaline jumps in, and hate and anger.

And everything that you want to release is coming out of your hands.

"I'm gonna kill this bitch." That's all I thought.

It's like a relief, in a way.

I know it sounds crazy, but it is a relief.

The violence is a relief? It is.

Because it's an addiction.

When you physically put your hands on somebody

that is arguing with you, your control,

the addiction of that control, is there.

It feels good. It's... I feel good.

I'm in control, you're never gonna talk to me that way again.

TISH: You did incredible, and...

These men are asked not to use their childhood to justify what they did.

What I heard you basically say was,

"I just learned a message that that's not who I can be as a man."

And the way out is to really understand,

"I have to do something different." Right.

Sean, thank you.

What are the feelings we're running from?

Because if we don't have to run from those feelings,

everything changes.

Instead of making excuses for themselves,

the men are encouraged to acknowledge feelings

that they may have buried.

Listening to Sean's story, I just started having flashbacks

to my childhood.

I'd be asleep and he would come and start beating on me.

I could be taking a shower,

he'd be drunk and attack me while I was in the shower.

And to this day, I still don't have a shower curtain.

Because I wanna know if there's anything on the other side.

HE GROANS, SIGHS

You know, I feel safe because he's been gone for 13 years.

But then again, if he was alive,

I would just love to be able to sit down and ask him,

"Why did you treat us kids this way?"

And so how did you see that playing out in your relationships?

I passed on this...

the same cruelty that I've grew up with.

Kenneth is another graduate of the Kansas classes.

He tells me about his childhood.

What do you remember your father doing to your mother?

I remember beating on her, hitting on her, hurting her.

Next thing you know, I thought I had a knife,

and I found out it was an ice pick.

Apparently, I stabbed him 27 times.

And the ambulance came and, as far as I know,

I killed my dad.

They took him away and they took us to foster homes.

How old were you? I was, like, five years old.

After attacking his father, Kenneth went into the care system

and was sexually and physically abused.

Do you remember what that does to a person?

It's a horrible feeling.

Um...

There's just some things that are inhumane...

that people do to people.

I've come a long way, but there's also been a lot of years

of a lot of verbal violence, hatred.

When I realised that, because I wasn't taken care of,

the women never defended me when I was a kid.

My mother, the foster carers,

those ones that beat me up and all these different things.

I was basically repeating the same things

that were done to me, continuing the abuse.

Many of the men say they've become trapped

in a cycle of trauma.

My biological father was in prison my whole life, you know,

and the way I felt about him because of that...

I've always thought I don't want my kids to feel about me

the way I felt about my father. And...

And it hurts that I put them exactly through what he put me through,

not being there for 'em.

When you would get abusive,

that was at times when you felt unloved or unlovable?

Unloved, unwanted. Um...

Just really any negative emotion that you can feel.

Sad. Worthless. Like a failure, worthless.

Like I'm nothing.

Do you see yourself as... better than them?

Or in need of them? In need.

You feel weak if you tell them that, you know, but inside,

at least for me, that's how I feel like.

You want to sound like a man and, like, feel all, like, strong,

and, like, I don't need you, but deep down, you do,

cos you don't wanna be abandoned. You know, you don't wanna be alone.

Over her long career, Dorthy has tried to understand

the complicated reasons why some men may become violent.

Some of them are sadistic,

they actually enjoy the torturing of their partner.

Fortunately, that's a small group.

There are some that have privilege

and believe they have the right to punish their partner

and be violent with them as a form of discipline,

or if they had a bad day.

There are also those who are in it for survival,

who are highly dependent,

who do not see themselves as better than their partner,

but they themselves see themselves as inferior.

And unfortunately, those are the ones

that can become the most dangerous when he believes it's over for good.

When he believes that she is gone, having a terror

and rage about them that is survival based.

"If this person leaves, I am nothing.

"She is either an angel or a devil, nothing in between.

"The thought that you could destroy me,

"gives me license to destroy you first."

All right, so, guys, let's go ahead and get started.

I appreciate you coming, Marshel.

Marshel was released from prison for drug offences a year ago.

The court sent him here to do the classes.

Just know there's always somebody out there

that can give you the wisdom or point you in the right direction,

no matter what it is.

As long as you look for it, you seek that help,

and you want that for yourself, you'll find it.

Don't you be a stranger.

You're welcome to come hang out with us any time.

Yes, ma'am.

Before he went to prison,

Marshel attacked his wife a number of times.

I would choke her, um, I'd push her down.

I would hold her down.

I picked her up and I choked her so severely, she soiled her clothes,

and was out, like a sleep sleep.

Why choking?

A lot of the men I've spoken to have said they would choke women.

She was very good with words.

So I would go straight to the source of the problem and cut it off.

I was addicted to that...

..dominance.

I know without a doubt that it's not OK to harm a female

for any reason, especially out of anger.

Even then, you knew that? Even then, I knew that.

You knew you were doing the wrong thing?

Absolutely. And you did it anyway, because...?

I mean...

Because I could, because she was weaker than I,

she was weaker than me.

Do you think there is a chance

you could go back to using violence again?

Erm...

There's always a chance... for a relapse, if you would.

But... with the right support group...

..the right kind of help that I have found here...

..it helps. It worked for me.

So the likelihood of recurrence,

I feel like, is slightly less than,

but it's still there because, like I said, it's an addiction.

And it's a recovery process.

My cappuccino. Yes, absolutely.

Is it all right?

This is Marshel's wife, Lori.

Dorthy has asked her to come in so she can talk to them together,

and hear Lori's side of the story.

He'll be like, "You brought your drink." "I'm sorry."

MARSHEL: You haven't brought mine, too? I was gonna share with you.

He's usually warm and I'm freezing. It's on your hair.

You do that every time. Don't you be poking Grandma in the eye.

She should get you.

What are your thoughts now about the violence that occurred?

Um, it was weird, yeah.

One of the worst incidents I remember

was as I was passing out from being choked.

He was looking down and I could feel the tears falling on my face,

just pouring off his eyes.

And he was saying, excuse my language, "I effing love you."

"I effing love you." I mean, that's all I could hear.

And it's the last thing I heard.

And I thought, "This is... this is not good."

This is sick, dependent, something's wrong.

It's despicable to kick someone who's weaker than you.

It is... it is the epitome of weakness, in my mind, not strength.

The DA even predicted, that I remember,

he's going to come out of prison. He's going to kill you.

And I thought, "We're going to prove him wrong."

And so far, of course we have, thank God.

Women need to have hope and men need to understand

they're not broken forever and they're not all monsters.

Some are, some women too.

But you're not a monster.

MARSHEL: I was.

So it sounds like, for you, you've learned to disengage

when you're... when you're feeling what?

Mad. Mm-hm.

Or even sad sometimes. And afraid almost every time.

What do you think the fear is mostly about?

Her being gone? Yeah.

You being alone? Because?

Maybe I would feel like I wasn't good enough?

Can you share with me where you got that?

When I was a kid, my mom and dad split up.

She just left. I woke up the next morning, Mom was gone.

From then on, I just felt like... I wasn't good enough for a woman.

So I would make myself be good enough

by making her have to do what I was wanting her to do. Mm-hm.

So what about now?

What if that happened now that you were alone?

I don't know, but I do know that my actions

or my choices won't be so much the cause for her being gone.

I'm thinking about Leonard Cohen's poem,

about there is a crack in everything.

And I'm wondering, when that crack shows up,

how are you going to stay safe?

That's a lot of risk.

I had suffered with that decision a long while before he got out.

The control issues that were there before

have to be tested because I need to know

that they're not gonna resurface because that's where it starts.

That's, kind of, in my mind.

It's not the hands they put on you, it's the isolation,

it's the grooming, it's the tactics,

it's the gas-lighting.

One of the things that we ask

before someone completes the programme

is that they write a letter

as a method of them acknowledging what they have done.

Never is it OK for a man to put his hands

on a female for any reason, especially out of anger.

Women are killed every day at the hands of men like me.

They don't want the help or didn't get the help they needed.

I am sorry, love.

I absolutely love it.

SHE SOBS Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sorry. I know.

I know.

THEY SOB

Thank you.

Thanks, Dorthy. It was nice to meet you again.

I'm going to be thinking about you.

I'll be in touch.

That sounds wonderful. Very soon.

Before they leave, I talk to Lori by herself.

CAMERAMAN: You're gonna clap. You wanna clap, actually?

Oh, am I doing this?

Yeah. OK. Ready?

I ask her about one of the times Marshel attacked her.

So you said something about his eyes changed?

Yes, I knew my life was in danger.

I did not know who that person was.

The eyes were black and blank, and terrifying.

And I thought, "He's gonna kill me this time. That person can kill me.

He kept choking me to the point where I knew

I was going out for, like, the third time, I blacked out.

And when I woke up, he was still applying the same pressure.

I'll never forget, he got up...

..and he reached down into my shirt pocket,

and took a pack of cigarettes out,

which is part of what he was mad at me for.

And he lit one while he stood over me...

..and threw one to his friend.

He flicked his ashes off, and he was still strangling me.

And, again, I saw that face, and I thought,

"I'm trash to him."

He did this to me, I hadn't even got off the floor yet,

and he's demonstrating my worthlessness or my weakness

to this asshole.

I can't die like this. He can't be my extinction event.

How did I not know?

And I wanted so badly for my weakness,

I saw it as, for my failure to defend myself,

I wanted to redeem myself, I was angry.

Instead of getting away from it, I decide, surely I can cure it.

I can love him better.

I ask Lori if she's certain she won't be abused again.

Oh, I'll know tonight...

..on the way home maybe.

But I don't think so, I don't think so.

I don't see that happening.

I want to see what happens.

Because I'm hoping, hoping and hoping, that it doesn't happen.

But, yeah, I guess I'm betting my life that he's a different person

and he's fixed something in here.

I have to believe that's fixable.

After the meeting, Dorthy asks Lori if she wants to leave Marshel now.

Lori decides not to,

so instead Dorthy puts safety protocols in place.

She says she'll stay in close contact with Lori,

and help her leave immediately if she wishes.

Are you worried for her, for Lori?

Am I worried for her? Oh, yes, I am very worried for her.

My fear is really that he is still...

..in large part...

..focused on saying the right things,

and you could feel his desire to control her.

It was palpable in the room.

She is in a very tight spot, trying to say the right thing...

at the same time that she's terrified.

He still has the desperation.

Sooner or later, he's going to get that feeling again of,

"Oh, my gosh, she's going to abandon me."

I cannot guarantee her safety.

All can do is say that...

..we've done some safety planning with both of them, and...

..hopefully, they'll reach out if things get difficult.

The vast majority do make positive change.

The reality is some won't, some will continue to batter.

Since I filmed with them,

Dorthy tells me that Marshel and Lori are still together.

Marshel is still taking the classes...

..and they're still working on their relationship.

DEEYAH: So was your wife afraid of you?

I think she was afraid of...

"What's gonna set Dave off today

"and he... flings into a rage?"

This is David.

He never physically assaulted his wife, but he did refer himself

to a domestic violence project in Massachusetts,

after years of verbally abusing her.

In the beginning,

I wrote off not doing anything physical as...

..I'm not bad as those guys, I'm better than those guys,

and then I finally realised after taking responsibility

that it didn't matter, it was all pretty much the same thing.

One final incident disturbed him.

She was at the stove. I was putting dishes away.

I think she was yelling, too, but I know I was yelling,

and I'm putting a sharp knife away.

Putting it away, thinking, "Boy, I'm really angry right now."

My wife was right next to me, and I have a knife.

This is a real bad situation.

If I go much further, I could just use it.

I felt like I could do it if I wanted to.

I could go further.

That I felt like I could cross that boundary,

scared the hell out of me.

And I put that knife away and stopped.

Before the rage, I always felt I was stressed out.

The job, the car, the traffic, the wife, the kids.

And it felt like I was in a cage.

You know, all kind of closed in,

nowhere to move, can't get out of this thing, um...

and the flip could be at home, the flip could be in the car,

it wouldn't be in a restaurant, it wouldn't be in a store,

so there's no witnesses, basically.

Um... You know, my wife and I have stayed together.

Things are good.

I know the wound is still there,

and it's probably still a large wound.

I would highly recommend for anybody...

..who has a spouse that is so full of rage...

..that they either get into a programme real quick

about domestic violence,

or leave,

walk fast in the other direction.

I'm travelling across America,

meeting men who have abused and even killed their partners.

I'm trying to find out why they do it

and how we can stop it.

The domestic violence programme which David attended

was run by a psychologist, David Adams.

He's spent years working with abusers.

He tells me he dedicated himself to this job

because of the events of his own childhood.

My father was physically abusive,

psychologically abusive to my mother.

It ended our family.

My father would get upset,

he would break something

or he'd yell or he'd hit somebody in our family.

And that was very powerful for me as a young man seeing that

because it was kind of like, "Oh, my God!"

You know, like, "He takes out his anger on other people.

"That's a thing that you can do." Right?

I think I was beginning to mimic my father's behaviour

towards my mother a little bit,

and I think that I probably would have started down that path myself

if my mother had not died.

So doing this work for me, um, has always been for my mother...

um... feeling survivor guilt.

When she was with me, I could not stop blaming her.

David has now arranged to give therapy sessions

to a man I've already met.

Daniel has been recently released from prison

after murdering his wife over 30 years ago.

Now he's going to undergo therapy to go back over his whole life

and try to understand what happened.

They start by discussing something they have in common -

a damaged childhood.

When I was growing up, my father never had a conversation with me.

And I started when I was five years old

cos I had so much fear of my father. Yeah.

At that time, he had put that much fear in me,

and by 12 years old, I'm fighting him.

I'm trying to fight him, you know,

because I didn't know what to do with my emotions.

And that was something that we didn't have in our house.

There's lots of people that have crappy upbringings, right?

Um...

They still don't kill their wives.

It actually makes them want to be the opposite.

So for me, my anger towards my father took the direction

of not wanting to be like him, wanting to be the opposite.

But... but I became like him.

Not respecting weakness, having contempt for people who are weak?

Yeah. I've cussed my mother out.

Um...

I even destroyed some things in the house.

Why were you angry at her? Because...

..she wasn't there for me when I was growing up. OK.

So you're angry at the person

who's easy to get angry at, right?

I know. You can't get angry at the person you're afraid of.

But I would say, Daniel,

that you have no idea what your mother was like.

She's doing things to appease your father. She's not her own person.

And you're judging her, or you're angry at her.

She's the easy person to be angry at. Um...

And then you extend that anger

towards the women that you get involved with.

Taking your anger out on women, right?

I mean, that's basically the most...

the way that you copied him.

I didn't know how to grow up. Um...

I didn't know what it took to be a man.

I'd always heard, "This is what men do."

But I didn't know how to do it.

Most important, I own what I did. I live with that every day.

One of the reasons I really wanted to talk with you

is because it's very unusual, you know,

to meet somebody who's killed his partner

that actually takes responsibility.

Just of the 51 killers I interviewed,

you know, in Massachusetts,

one, one of them took responsibility.

Every single other one was still blaming his ex-partner,

right, still presenting her as if she was some sort of a devil,

you know, and they still haven't learned a thing.

David puts me in contact with an organisation

which runs a refuge for women and children - Synergy, in Missouri.

Sara Brammer is one of the directors.

It's nice to meet you finally.

I'm Deeyah. Oh, hi.

We have all of their basic needs,

from toothpaste to tampons,

anything that they need when they come in.

So you can get in and out...

Synergy has the space and facilities

to keep some women and children safe from their abusers in an emergency.

I ask if I can meet one of the families staying here now.

The danger is so great that none of them want to take the risk

of sharing their story with me.

But Sara is catching up with a woman who she helped escape

from a very violent husband.

Because of the continued risk, she's staying anonymous.

Thanks for coming in today, I appreciate your time to talk to me

a little bit about your relationship with your husband.

Can you tell me a little bit about what brought you in?

Tell me the worst incident you can remember?

Oh, he used the firearm inside of you?

Sara says they're overwhelmed

by the sheer volume of requests for help which they receive.

The need far outweighs the amount of services that we can provide.

We don't have funding to provide more services.

Every day we turn people away.

Last year, I think the number is 1,600 people were turned away.

And all of those people who we turn away need things,

need our help, need a way out.

There are more animal shelters in the United States

than there are shelters for domestic violence survivors

and their families, so what do we value in this country?

It's impossible to make every woman safe,

so Synergy spends a lot of time helping male abusers

confront their past actions and try to reform.

My name is Billy, I am here

because I chose to physically abuse my ex-girlfriend Debbie.

I chose to abuse Debbie with a bat. I had struck her repeatedly with it.

How many times?

Oh, I would say eight to ten times, very nearly killed her.

It was actually a miracle that she didn't die...

Yeah, hitting somebody with a bat eight to ten times... Right.

..you're lucky she didn't die.

'The truth of the matter is, is that if we don't address the offender,'

he won't get better.

He'll just continue to be abusive. We see it time and time again.

They go into another relationship and do the same thing,

but faster because they're practised.

I've always known it's wrong, I just didn't care, you know,

but now I care that it's wrong.

Sara tells me that one theme often comes up in these meetings -

how lenient the courts can be.

The first time I ever got a domestic violence case - probation.

Second one - probation.

Third one - 90 days in jail.

And they were all physically... blood involved, violence.

After all these assaults,

Josh brutally attacked his partner one more time.

The incident that got me here

started in the parking lot of my apartment,

where I drug her out the car.

I forced her into my apartment,

forced her onto the bed and started to strangle her.

The more she would fight back, the more I'd punch her in the stomach

and strangle her even more.

For this sustained attack, Josh served just three years in prison.

What would have been a reasonable...

All the stuff? Yeah.

Ten years plus? Ten years plus? For sure.

How long do you think she'll suffer from the abuse? Forever.

She's gonna probably have ramifications for that,

for the rest of her fricking life.

She probably won't trust another guy ever.

There's a greater consequence in the United States

for killing a bald eagle than there is for assaulting your wife.

To abuse your wife, even if you abuse her so much

that she needs stitches,

you might get off with probation.

A certain number of our population or amount of our population

is saying, "This is OK.

"We're gonna give you a pass this time."

It should never be OK.

Everyone in our society should be on the same page.

You shouldn't ever abuse a female.

There are a number of reasons

why women may be unable to leave abusive relationships.

Managing childcare, managing finances, stable housing,

mental health effects, physical health effects,

the system not holding him accountable,

the community not providing the resources the survivor needs

to recover for themselves and their children.

The reason she goes back is there's no viable way to actually leave.

Nice to meet you. Take care. Thank you for coming.

Many former abusers I spoke to

agreed that the criminal justice system

had been very lenient on them.

Charles says he started being violent to women

after leaving the military over 30 years ago.

I think I've been arrested about seven times.

But on one instance,

I went to jail for domestic violence twice in one day.

I went to jail, then I went and found her

and beat her up for calling police on me,

and then went back again, all in one night.

So did any of the women get, like, restraining orders or protection...

Oh, that don't mean nothing to me.

A restraining order is nothing but a piece of paper

that ain't gonna stop you from doing nothing.

It ain't over till I say it's over.

Like many former abusers, Charles says he was violent

because he'd developed the view that men should be in charge of women.

I never considered myself a woman beater, per se,

because I didn't just hit women for nothing.

I figured if I had a reason, then it was just not being a woman beater,

it was justified, it was corrective action,

just... try to get some compliance.

How many women did you do this to?

I dunno, maybe a dozen or so.

What's making you feel... feel so much?

I dunno, just the whole...

situation of...

the people whose lives I've affected and all that.

That's not who I really am.

You know, in that, that was the way I was programmed

at that point in time in my life and that, um...

I wish I could change all that, but I can't,

but that's not the way women should be treated, you know?

If you could talk to them, what would you try to tell them?

If anybody shows signs of that in the future, leave them immediately.

You gotta go, and go.

Because there might not be no other time to call the police,

you might be dead.

This is Amir. He says before he stopped his violence,

he had absorbed the same message as Charles - that men are superior

and should instil fear in their partner.

Why did you used to think it was important for a woman to fear you?

Cos that's what I thought a man was supposed to...

That's how a man was supposed to behave in a relationship.

I think it's the sense of having some kind of power,

you have no power anywhere else in your life,

and then I guess when opportunity presents that, you...

you can display a little bit of power,

and I guess that's what I did.

And went too far, you know...

..but it is rough to feel like you have no control,

you have no say so over your life whatsoever.

Other than with her?

Other than with her.

That's terrible to say now.

Being taught a man is supposed to hide his emotions, not cry,

if you cry or show any emotion, then you're feminine, you know,

it's kind of sad to look at it right now,

but I guess that was the only comfortable way

I had to express myself.

When it comes down to it, our problem is not with our wives

or anyone we wanna display violence with, it starts within ourselves.

What does it mean to be a man in today's world?

It's a question we're asking our guests this week

and their answers might surprise you.

Dr Jackson Katz is an educator and activist against male violence.

For decades, author and educator Jackson Katz has called on men

to set the tone and speak out.

He's devised a number of programmes used by the US military,

corporations, and major sports organisations,

tackling the society-wide problem of male violence.

It's important that I say, and that men say,

when we do the work that we do,

and especially in the field of gender violence prevention,

that I'm gonna talk with you about,

I don't see these as women's issues that some good men help out with,

in fact, I'm gonna argue that these are men's issues first and foremost.

Hi! Hi!

How are you? Come on in. Welcome. Thank you.

All right.

Um...

So I think there's a tendency on the part of a lot of people

to think about these individuals who commit these murders

or these heinous acts as monsters,

and that way we don't have to be introspective,

we don't have to think about the ways in which our attitudes,

beliefs and behaviours contribute to a culture

that produces abusive behaviour,

because if abusive behaviour is just the product of

some crazy individual or some pathological individual

or some monster, then there's not much we can do about it.

So, the question is, how do we give men and young men

ways of being men that don't involve having to be dominant over women

but give them a sense of satisfaction?

I think we're kidding ourselves if we don't...

if we think we're gonna solve these problems

without trying to understand the complex mix of, you know,

shame, trauma, dependence, sometimes childhood issues,

and the cultural overlay of entitlement

and men's entitlement to women's emotional support,

because we have to challenge the idea that these men are leaning on

this old notion that "I'm supposed to be in charge.

"Dammit, I'm a man and she's not a man.

"She can't play football like me,

"and I got bigger muscles, and I'm stronger than her.

"I can dominate her if I want to", because that's a belief system,

that's not enshrined in human nature, it's not genetic.

We have to teach boys and men

that there are ways to respond to these complex human emotions,

including vulnerable emotions like disappointment, grief,

sadness, humiliation, that don't involve the traditional go-to,

which is violence, you know, so, "I've been humiliated,

"I'm gonna get back at that person through violence,

"I'm gonna reclaim what's been lost from me

"by taking it from somebody else."

Because some of these men claim that they love these women,

even while they're killing them!

Despite the stigma and the shame of domestic abuse,

all the men in this film agreed to speak to me

because they said they wanted to do some good.

I'd rather be talking about something different,

being interviewed about something different,

but...

if what I've experienced,

if that can be helpful to people, I think that's great.

Everyone I met said the process of talking with other abusers

had helped them confront their own actions.

First, it's accountability.

I have to accept that I had done these things.

What was it that was making me be this way?

If you see physical violence in your life at a young age,

you're more likely to use the physical violence later on,

and they don't teach you that in school.

You know, they don't teach you that stuff, which maybe they should.

Nothing can justify the violence of the men I met,

or diminish the damage their violence has caused to women.

But I did find that talking to them

can help us understand why they did it and what we, as a society,

can do to help stop it.

Time and again, I heard the same thing -

we need to change the way we think about women,

and the way we think about men.

The expectations that our culture puts on men are cruel.

We objectify women, we also objectify men,

and for men to feel like they're not measuring up to being manly enough

is... is a big deal in domestic violence.

I wasn't born violent, I wasn't born angry,

I wasn't born with hate in me,

it had to have been taught from somewhere.

It just keeps going on, generation to generation, if we don't stop it.

In high school, in families, we don't talk about

how should you be with a girlfriend, how should you treat your wife?

Somehow, the world, the country, the individuals in particular,

need to figure out how do we fix this, how do we end it?

They say that you're not a real man if you cry

or you're not a real man if you, you know, show your emotions.

Those are lies, those are lies, and I was taught the same thing.

Cos real men don't hurt women, real men don't hurt their kids,

real men help their kids, and they help understand their kids,

they hug their kids and they tell their kids that they love 'em.

If you are hurting who you say that you love, go get help.

And tell somebody that you need help.

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