Paul Szmal: Welcome back to FLX Morning. It is 816. We're joined by a domestic violence victim advocate from Family Counseling Service of the Finger Lakes. That would be Mario Tallarico. Mario, good morning. How are you this morning?
Mario Telarico: Good morning, everybody. I'm really good. How are you?
Paul Szmal: I'm doing well. Doing well. We wanted to talk today about something, a concept that I actually haven't heard of. I've heard of domestic violence awareness. I've heard of domestic violence prevention. I've heard of domestic violence detection. But we're talking about a domestic violence accountability program today. Can you break down a little bit of what that's about, Mario?
Mario Telarico: Yeah. So it's not unsurprising that you haven't heard a lot of information about the accountability programs. It's not really talked about. But the accountability programs are typically court ordered. And they assist with teaching different skills about why this keeps happening. So that's kind of the idea of the program is to be real rehabilitative without being involved in prisons or jail.
Paul Szmal: I've got to imagine this can be a pretty tricky tightrope to walk.
Mario Telarico: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Paul Szmal: Tell me a little bit about how the program works, Mario.
Mario Telarico: So we have a current curriculum that's a 12-week program. That's a closed group where individuals, they don't change in or out. And they typically get referred to us through different sources, either courts or probation departments. And over the course of 12 weeks, we provide DV education as well as building on a lot of skills that we determine that they might have deficits in.
Paul Szmal: What do you find are some of the common causes for domestic violence?
Mario Telarico: A lot of it, what we see a lot of people who use violence as a way to establish control. It's a lot of hostile appraisal of events. They perceive these unrealistic threats. And they overvalue aggressive responses to those threats. So it's kind of threefold where you have the decoding where they perceive all different types of events as super hostile, which triggers a survival response. There's the choice or the lack of skills. So there could be some deficits there. And then the confidence to execute the appropriate skills, there's some deficits there. So all that can kind of culminate into utilizing aggression or violence as a means to control or regain control of a situation.
Paul Szmal: Now, you mentioned that this is often a court-ordered program or comes out of perhaps a mediation or something like that. But this is a little bit of a different teaching model, I think, than other people may be used to hearing about.
Mario Telarico: Yeah. So a lot of the current – that's in the curriculums out there, they utilize a different model. It's kind of based off the Duluth model, where it's kind of finger wagging and saying you should be ashamed and two hours of you did wrong, so change. This is kind of a motivationally interview-based where you really delve into what the specific breakdown was and find out, would you do anything different? Would you want to change? Is there a reason you have to change? So really kind of plumbing out where their motivation is there and building from there, establishing a rapport with them that's nonjudgmental. It's not really the facilitator's job to, I guess, exact justice or punishment or be punitive, but that's kind of the main difference is we utilize a motivational interviewing model.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. It sounds like you're trying to drill down to the root cause of what happened and then trying to modify the behavior and reaction to whatever it is that happened.
Mario Telarico: Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good assessment of it. It's really plumbing into what those deficits are. Do you want to change? Is there a reason that you have to change? Could you? Would you do something different in a perfect world? What would you do? And then having that kind of response, you know, it might not be the best response, but somebody in the group is going to challenge that and have feedback. Well, maybe you should do it this way. Maybe I would do it this way.
Paul Szmal: And that's interesting, too, that this, in addition to the interview-based option of this, this is conducted in a small group environment. And as you said, that group doesn't change over the course of the curriculum, shall we say?
Mario Telarico: Yeah. So you don't have all these, you know, faces that are changing. You kind of have this rapport where these guys who've been vulnerable with each other and been praised, you kind of cultivate this culture where we want to try to do better. We are always encouraging people to do better and find out the things. Hey, I really like that response that you gave. I would do this better. Oh, OK. Yeah, that sounds great. I'll try that next time. And yeah, let me know. And so like next week, this guy comes in. Yeah, I tried taking a time out. You're not going to believe what happened, guys. And it's kind of heartening to hear how excited they are to share the gains that they're making.
Paul Szmal: Are there some general principles that are involved with this program, kind of 10 points, if you will?
Mario Telarico: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of it is based on motivational interviewing. So we're trauma-informed, which means that we're not re-traumatizing the person. We're going to be empathetic to them. We want to build trust, self-esteem. We want to avoid things like shame. And that's really adhering to things that are empirically supported for interventions with people.
Paul Szmal: Do you find that this non-finger-pointing style has better benefits in the long run at the end of the course for people that are a part of it?
Mario Telarico: Yeah, because we've seen how the other model works, right, that's not working, that we're not seeing those changes. With the Strength at Home curriculum, you're seeing people with like a 66% reduction in the interpersonal violence. Also, this mode sees as a kind of side effect a reduction in substance use disorder symptoms. So there's a lot of, I want to do, it's more organically grown where the person's motivated to change their life.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Mario Tallarico from Family Counseling Service of the Finger Lakes here this morning. Is there a particular situation that maybe you could use as a case example without obviously naming names of a success story of the program?
Mario Telarico: Yeah, I can recall there was a journey one guy had and we kind of discussed openly whatever he was willing to disclose, but he ended up feeling comfortable enough to kind of disclose that he'd done some pretty violent things. And he had this hostile opinion of women in general and specifically his partner. And then I think it was like maybe midway through he goes, oh yeah, I tried the time out and I came back and we sat down and we discussed something and I could tell that she was very on edge because she wasn't sure if this was something that that was a trick or was this real and genuine. And I kind of broke down a little bit and realized that this is because of me. This is also because of her past trauma and it's not only just my trauma that's sitting at the table.
Paul Szmal: Ah, okay. So if people want to find out more information about the program, Mario, how can they reach out to you and to be a part of this perhaps?
Mario Telarico: So you can get a hold of us at our agency, which is Family Counseling Service of the Finger Lakes. You can reach Crystal Bram, which is our program director. And I didn't grab a phone number, but if you give us a call, it's 680-215-7212.
Paul Szmal: Right. And the website is FCFSL, Family Counseling Service, Finger Lakes, FCFSL.org is the web address.
Mario Telarico: Yeah.
Paul Szmal: So, all right, Mario, thank you very much for filling us in this morning. This sounds like a wonderful program. Continue success with it.
Mario Telarico: Oh, thank you very much. And thank you for taking the time to ask some questions. I appreciate it.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, not a problem. Not a problem. It's 825 on FLX Morning.
