Male "intimate violence" continues to plague society despite 30 years of trying to resolve it, a conference on responding to violence against women and children heard.
"We have all been conned," Don Hennessy, of the National Domestic Violence Intervention Agency (NDVIA), told the conference yesterday in Tralee, hosted by the Open Door Network .
Mr Hennessy said the response to the problem had often been to stay within well-defined parameters, taking the view the offender was angry or under strain, and using terms like "domestic violence" which made the offence sound somewhat acceptable.
However, having worked as a therapist with thousands of "skilled offenders", Mr Hennessy said he had come to the conclusion skilled offenders used the same tactics when beginning and maintaining an abusive and controlling relationship.
They always targeted "kind women" who were prepared to put other people's needs before their own. They isolated their quarry, where very soon the woman would blame herself for anything that went wrong in the relationship, whether a bad movie selection or a bad meal. Ultimately, they would ensure that she would blame herself for being beaten.
The tactics of "targeting and grooming" were common to all sexual predators. "The offender who manages to seduce an adult in this way is more skillful than most paedophiles," Mr Hennessy told the conference, chaired by RTÉ's Miriam O'Callaghan.
Psychological analysis over the past 30 years had never recorded the word "lust", but this was the root of the abusive relationship. "What is going on is evil," Mr Hennessy said, adding that unless this was recognised, the same problems would present themselves in 30 years.
"Sexual predators of children are seen as devils, but the rest of these men are understood and put into therapy when they should be put into jail," he said.
"We need to talk about sexual abuse and rape and sexual demands that are overbearing," Mr Hennessy said. Women did not give up their rights to bodily integrity just because they wore a wedding ring but old teachings of the church and so on were responsible for the prevalence of that belief.
NDVIA is calling for new forms of recording psychological and emotional abuse so this could be dealt with in the criminal process from an early stage.
The conference also heard about under-reporting of sexual and domestic crime.
Whereas 20 per cent of Rape Crisis Centre clients reported their attacks to the Garda in 2004, that figure dropped to 13 per cent in 2006.