659 Counselling for domestic violence offenders: an innovative program offered by a university laboratory in Greece, in collaboration with the justice system

<h3>Background</h3> A counseling-therapy programme for domestic violence perpetrators has been offered by a University Lab in Heraklion, Greece since 2021, under the national legislation (Laws 3500/2006 and 4531/2018) to persons who apply for the penal mediation process. Penal mediation is provided only in misdemeanors. If the conditions are met, the public prosecutor drops the case for a three-year’s period. The current paper reports on the profile of 130 individuals who were referred to the counseling program during an 18-month period within 2022–2023. <h3>Methods</h3> The program aims primarily at offenders’ behavior change and prevention of future violent acts. It entails 24 sessions including 3–5 assessment, 13–15 therapy (plus parallel individual or couple sessions, as necessary) and 3 evaluation (baseline, mid-time, post-therapy) with 6-month follow up for a 3-year period. Therapy is inspired by various therapeutic approaches (i.e CBT, narrative, trauma-focused), depending on needs assessment and goal setting. The sessions are delivered by trained psychologists/psychotherapists and social workers and psychiatric assessment is conducted by a psychiatrist. Evaluation employs self-administered tools, clinical assessment and police data and includes indicators relevant to recidivism and other individual, couple and family-related determinants. <h3>Results</h3> Offenders were primarily men(91.5%), with a mean age of 42.9 years (SD11.7), graduates of secondary education (25.4%), of Greek nationality (83.9%) and living in urban areas (66.9%). Physical violence was used in 12.3% of the cases and verbal aggression in 54.6%, and multiple forms in 46.0%.The perpetrator was primarily a partner (53.8%), a parent (16.2%) or a child (13.1%). In 10.0% of cases the perpetrator was a drug user and in 4.6% had a psychiatric diagnosis. More than half of the perpetrators were raised in violent families (54.0%) and had prior offenses(45.0%). Overall, it was common for perpetrators to have been emotionally neglected as children, raised in patriarchal families and lacking communication and emotional expression skills. Initial assessment indicates changes in stereotyped thinking and attitudes (85% of cases) and improvement in communication skills (75.0% of cases), although the therapeutic cycle is ongoing. <h3>Conclusion</h3> It is necessary to establish common protocols, tools and measurable indicators for perpetrators’ programs to generate comparative data of effectiveness.