Emerge Wins $366,000 Grant from US Department of Justice to Help End Violence in Intimate Relationships

by Sarah Cortes -12/29/10 -
Susan Cayouette, Ed. D. and David Adams, Ed.D., co-directors of Emerge, a Cambridge organization which provides abuser intervention and parenting education groups, announced yesterday Emerge had won a major US Department of Justice grant. "The DOJ grant supports Emerge's work as the Coordinator of the National Domestic Violence Danger Assessment Training Project, which provides two-day trainings to police, prosecutors, victim advocates and other first responders on how to identify and respond to the most serious cases of domestic violence," said Adams. Cayouette and Adams, pictured here with Erika Robinson, Jim Morin and Chris Hall, have been the recipients of numerous DOJ grants supporting the http://emergedv.com mission to end violence in intimate relationships.

Founded in 1977, Emerge was the first abuser education program in the United States. Since its creation, Emerge has been a national leader in working to end violence in intimate relationships. The US National Institute of Justice (NIJ) awarded the grant under a US Department of Justice (DOJ) Program.

Emerge’s mission is to eliminate violence in intimate relationships. In working toward this goal, Emerge seeks to educate individual abusers, prevent young people from learning to accept violence in their relationships, improve institutional responses to domestic violence, and increase public awareness about the causes and solutions to partner violence. With the development of parenting education groups for fathers, Emerge has expanded its mission to include a goal of helping men to become more responsible parents.

Emerge teaches that domestic violence is a learned behavior, not a disease or a sickness. Emerge supports grassroots, institutional and cultural efforts to stop partner violence, sexual assault and child abuse. Emerge recognizes that other oppressive life circumstances such as racism, poverty and homophobia create a climate that contributes to partner violence.

Sarah Cortes is a technology writer and consultant specializing in complex application development, information security, privacy and security law, among other things. You can contact her through her YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/sarahcortes1, or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/SarahCortes.