NEED HELP NOW?
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Call 111 if you or someone you know is in immediate danger.
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Phone It's Not OK on 0800 456 450 for support finding a service near you.
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Phone the Women's Refuge Crisis line on 0800 REFUGE (0800 733 843).
ECLIPSE Concepts
ECLIPSE has developed the Practitioner-Victim Insight Concept (PVIC) © as a model of practice to further help build awareness about family violence, drawing on a unique practitioner-lived experience perspective. Our training is based on the PVIC model which incorporates several components. Find out more about the components of the PVIC model.
Book into one of our upcoming courses or contact us to arrange an organisation training package to learn more about family violence and the PVIC model. Through our training you will enhance your understanding, knowledge, skills, and practice when working with whānau experiencing family violence.
The PVIC Components
ECLIPSE's Practitioner-Victim Insight Concept (PVIC) © consists of five components which help practitioners gain deeper understanding and empathy for victims of family violence. The five components are outlined in the graphic below. Click on each component to lear more about each one.
Coercive Control Equation
ECLIPSE believes every form of family violence is a form of coercive control because every form of coercive control is an ACTION that is perpetrated by a predominant aggressor towards their primary victim in order to get a calculated REACTION.
Very basic examples are - physical assault (ACTION) to gain submission (REACTION); or economic abuse (ACTION) to gain control (REACTION); or isolation (ACTION) to gain dependence (REACTION).
Rewards Based Phenomenon
The Rewards Based Phenomenon explains why predominant aggressors continue to perpetrate harm against those that they are supposed to love and nurture. Human nature sees us continuing to act in particular ways or engage in particular activities because there is a reward in it for us. If we engage in behaviour that harms or hurts us, we don't tend to go back to that activity.
Understanding coercive control as an umbrella tactic highlights that every act of family violence, in simplistic terms, is a perpetrated ACTION to get a desired REACTION. Achieving the desired reaction from the primary victim provides the predominant aggressor with a sense of REWARD, making it more likely they will continue to use similar strategies again.
Primary victims resist violence in many ways every day to reduce the risk of harm. It is important we recognise, identify, and honour their resistance.
Coercive Control - The Umbrella Tactic
Coercive control is an overarching umbrella tactic that ultimately seeks to isolate the primary victim and prevent them from leaving the relationship. Coercive control is often invisible and unseen and can be perpetrated without the predominant aggressor being physically present with the primary victim.
Layers of Consequence
There are multiple layers of trauma and consequence when primary victims and children are exposed to family violence. One act of coercive control by a predominant aggressor has more than one consequence for the primary victim. For example, a physical assault will not only result in physical injuries, but also unseen consequences - the hurt, shame, humiliation, confusion, fear, depression, etc. There are layers upon layers of consequences.
Invisible Walls
The Invisible Walls component of PVIC was developed by ECLIPSE to answer the question: “why don’t victims just leave?"
Invisible Walls highlights the cumulative impact of layers of consequence, and how these result in the construction of very real barriers to freedom. Whilst the coercive tactics used vary, with every individual threat or act of violence and layer of consequence creates barriers. These invisible walls create isolation and inhibit the freedom of primary victims. The walls also prohibit practitioners from safely engaging with whānau.
Although invisible to all but the primary victims and the predominant aggressor, these walls are regularly reinforced with each new threat. They present a very real barrier to prevent primary victims from seeking help and engaging with their loved ones or practitioners. It's important to recognise and identify the existence of Invisible Walls, and understand how they are constructed to carefully navigate and support whānau to live a life free of violence.
For survivors of family violence, the question "why didn't you just leave?" can be distressing as it implies the responsibility for harm reduction lies with the primary victim and creates an inadvertent sense of judgement. This can result in further Invisible Walls being inadvertently constructed by the practitioner.
Whole of Person Entrapment
When coercive control is used as a liberty restricting tactic, and the Invisible Walls are constructed the direct result of that is Whole of Person Entrapment.
Whole of Person Entrapment is when components of an individual are stripped away from them and every aspect of who they are/were is entrapped in a cycle of oppression and loss of autonomy. This results in an existence of isolation and trauma.
Access to freedom, freewill, high levels of self-worth, esteem, and identity have been systematically stripped from the primary victim by the predominant aggressor. The primary victim often no longer has a full sense of self and multiple aspects of their lives, if not all, are dictated and directed by the perpetrator of harm.
Whole of Person Entrapment consists of multiple layers of entrapment across multiple aspects of a primary victims existence, and can impact every aspect of the whole person. Whole of Person Entrapment can see a person being entrapped physically, sexually, emotionally, psychologically, financially, through the use of children, and multiple other forms of abuse.
No one ever wants to live in fear or entrapped in a cycle of degradation and restriction. The fear of leaving supersedes all else, and yet every primary victim wants to break free from the cycle of harm.
To achieve safer whānau requires practitioners and service providers to skilfully use their knowledge, empathy, and build genuine connections with whānau.