Ed Ashley facilitates the Men of Compassion support group in Spokane, Washington. It is a program of the Women’s Healing and Empowerment Network, and it serves men who have experienced various forms of abuse in their childhood or adulthood.
See related: Abuse Of Men By Women – Our Interview with Author Ann Silvers [Videos]
There wasn’t originally support for men
This is a partial transcript of the video above
Ed Ashley [Teaser]: The domestic violence shelter is actually in Cheney, but it’s out of the way and if you don’t know where it is, it’s hard to find — and we want to keep it that way because the women who are in there are running from something. And one of the things we want to do eventually is get a home for men.
Blair Daly [Voiceover]: Ed Ashley leads a support group for men in Spokane. The program is called Men of Compassion, and interestingly it’s run by an organization called the Women’s Healing and Empowerment Network. I first asked Ed this question…
Blair Daly: When the Women’s Healing and Empowerment Network started in 2008, I’m guessing there wasn’t a program available to help male survivors of domestic violence. So how did that ultimately come about?
Ed Ashley: It started about three years ago. There were several of us involved.
I’m on the board of the directors for the Women’s Healing and Empowerment Network. We have a domestic violence shelter for women, but it’s not the typical domestic violence shelter. We teach women how to identify certain characteristics in men and stay out of relationships with those men. There were a few of us who were like, “We need something like this for men.”
One of the women who was in our program was bringing the material back to her husband, and he studied it with her. As a couple their relationship completely changed. She was healing from the violence she suffered growing up — she was massively sexually abused as a child. Her husband was also sexually abused massively. They found each other and got married, and it was really rocky. But she came to our program, and she took the materials to her husband and he started healing from what she was teaching him. Mable [Dunbar, the organization’s director] was like, “We need a program for men”. So then I was kind of volunteered for the job.
Men of Compassion
Blair Daly: “Men of Compassion” gives the impression of something where men will be offering compassion, but this sounds to me like something where men are experiencing, receiving compassion.
Ed Ashley: The meeting we had last night — I wish I could get into it with you. What we went through last night exemplifies the name. As this one brother was processing, all the other men were pouring compassion into that brother so he could process more. It opened him up to things he didn’t see before. We all benefited from that. And we know that when it’s our turn we’ll get that too. [Continued…]
See related: Female Professor in Vancouver B.C. Wins ‘Controversy Prize’ for Research on Male Victims of Domestic Violence