"DON'T send me roses." This is the message men who beat their wives are getting in a US domestic violence project which has led to a tenfold increase in arrests and a significant rise in convictions.
Since police officers take the burden of prosecution away from victims, batterers are denied the chance to sweet talk partners out of pressing charges. Hence the slogan: flowers, chocolates and apologies will get the offender nowhere.
Ms Ellen Pence, who helped found the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, northern Minnesota, in 1980, is sharing her experience with agencies in Ireland, North and South, this week.
She addressed about 200 delegates at the first cross Border conference on domestic violence which opened yesterday in the Slieve Russell Hotel in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan.
Organised by the Northern Ireland Women's Aid Federation and the Federation of Refuges in Ireland, the two day conference will be addressed today by Ms Monica McWilliams, a senior lecturer in social policy at the University of Ulster who recently co published research on domestic violence and the North's criminal justice system.
The success of the Duluth model lies in its coordinated criminal justice response involving close work with the police, prosecutors and judges, and its mandatory rehabilitation programme for batterers, says Ms Peace.
The project, which began on a year long pilot basis, includes training police officers and changing the laws so they may make arrests without witnessing minor assaults. Previously, the onus to press charges was on women.
Officers are empowered to make arrests where there are injuries, even minor ones. They also write more detailed arrest reports and take photographs to help build a strong prosecution case.
The subsequent prosecution case works, says Ms Pence, on the assumption that the woman will refuse to testify.
"The woman would defend the man for a lot of reasons ... We had to walk a very narrow line between not punishing the victim and gaining the conviction.
"The solution was to build such a strong case so that even if she came in and said `I lied,' we could explain that to the court."
The criminal system is complemented by a fast civil law process which allows women to get protection orders.
According to Ms Peace, arrests have increased tenfold, from 21 during 1980 to around 230 in 1981.
They have stayed at 200 to 250 per year. In 1980, about 5 per cent of minor domestic assault cases resulted in a conviction: that figure is now around 80 per cent.
From 1984 to 1994 there were no domestic related homicides in the city. Previously, several women had been killed in the city every year, according to Ms Pence.
Once convicted, an offender may be sentenced to imprisonment, probation, or a suspended sentence with required attendance at the batterers' group.
For minor assaults, offenders can choose to spend 90 days in jail or attend a weekly batterers' group for 27 weeks. If they fail to attend the group, or hit the woman again, they go to jail.
The group's programme is based on the belief that domestic abuse is about power. Men are encouraged to confront their "controlling and abusive" behaviour and work on ways of coping with conflict. This behaviour may include the man taking the cheque book away from the woman, not allowing her to use the telephone or cutting her off from her friends.
The programme is used in at least 100 different cities around the US, according to Ms Pence who has trained more than 500 agencies in it.
About 50 per cent of the men who attend the groups never hit a woman again.
Ms Pence will be in Dublin tomorrow and Saturday for talks with community groups, Women's Aid, the Domestic Violence Project in Cork and Men Overcoming Violent Emotions, as well as representatives from the probation service, government departments and the Garda.