She would yell, swear and call him names every time they fought.

He would respond calmly, sometimes with sarcasm, which only made her more angry. Periodically during their 20 years together, she reacted by hitting him.

For another couple, jealousy was the trigger. He refused to let her see friends or family and that possessiveness led him to attack her twice.

One approach has governed for decades how such domestic violence cases have been treated:

Hold the offender accountable. Get him or her treatment. Keep the victim safe by separating the couple.

The problem? The approach lumps together all types of cases and ignores the fact that many victims want abuse to stop, but also want to try to save their relationships.

That reality has given momentum to two new models for dealing with low-level situational domestic violence: couples counseling and Circulos de Paz (Circles of Peace). The first approach treats offender and victim, while the second brings an offender, family members and other supporters together to resolve behaviors that lead to domestic violence.

This spring, Cornerstone Counseling Center in Salt Lake City and New Hope Crisis Center in Brigham City will join a study comparing effectiveness of batterer intervention programs with the Circles of Peace and couples counseling, the latter a controversial but promising method.

The premise is couples who have experienced low-level domestic violence and for whom violence is a learned behavior "can learn other ways," said Annette Macfarlane, executive director of New Hope Crisis Center.

"We know that there is a really good chance that they are going to stay together, so if they can learn how to function in a healthy way, not only is their marriage going to be better, but the children aren't going to be contaminated by the idea that violence is an acceptable way to live your life," she said.

The four-year study is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Utah and New York University, where lead investigator Linda Mills is based.

Until now, the primary domestic violence model has held that there is only one person in the relationship -- the offender -- who wants and needs help, said Mills, author of Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse, co-founder of the Arizona-based Circles of Peace program and director of NYU's Center on Violence and Recovery.

"What we have consistently heard from victims of domestic violence is that they would like to participate in the treatment process and, as their partner changes, be at the forefront of that change," Mills said.

But batterer intervention programs leave victims out -- which may be in part why some research has found the programs have a high dropout rate and are not always effective.

The new approaches are designed only for offenders and couples who have experienced low-level situational violence -- confrontations that may have started with a verbal argument and escalated to yelling, pushing, hitting, slapping, etc.

"This would be an event rather than a pattern," Macfarlane said.

About 80 percent of domestic violence cases fall into this category, experts say, and are typically triggered by stress and inadequate communication skills. These conflicts are often exacerbated by substance abuse and anti-social attitudes. Generally, the offender is not intent on hurting a partner.

The new programs are likely to begin by summer in Utah, and other states may be added. Participants may be seeking help on their own but most will be opting into the program after the offender completes 12 weeks of a 16-week batterer intervention therapy, as mandated by the state after a conviction.

It is the second attempt at adopting a new approach for Cornerstone, which drew strong criticism from some domestic violence advocates last year when it offered a pilot couples counseling program for cases involving low-level domestic violence.

"There is a lot of belief out there that couples counseling should never be conducted in domestic violence," said Ron Llewelyn, a clinical psychologist and director of the center's mental-health and domestic-violence team.

Shaped by feminist theory, that perspective holds that sexism and patriarchy are the root cause of domestic violence. Also, threats of or actual violence are criminal acts that the offender alone must address. Programs that include the victim place blame and responsibility on him or her for the situation. Worse, they expose the victim to increased danger if an offender gets upset about issues raised in joint therapy.

In the new perspective, sexism is a "main" factor, but there are other factors -- such as anti-social attitudes and behaviors, history of trauma, substance abuse, mental illness, unemployment and stressful life events, said Moises Prospero, the University of Utah social work professor collaborating on the study and chairman of the Utah Domestic Violence Council.

"If we just want to talk about domestic violence, we are missing a huge, if not larger percentage, of what may be going on," Prospero said. "That is what Circles of Peace is trying to address. The focus is offender accountability and victim safety."

The model also is more inclusive of diverse populations, such as gay and lesbian couples, for whom approaches based on patriarchy may not fit. It also acknowledges that women also can be offenders and that in some relationships, violence is mutual.

But some advocates are wary of the new initiatives. Karla Arroyo is one of them.

Couples counseling is a "great tool" in conflicted relationships that don't include domestic violence and where both partners want to resolve their problems, said Arroyo, executive director of South Valley Sanctuary in West Jordan.

But when domestic violence has occurred, getting the perpetrator to accept responsibility and the victim the education and protection she or he needs to avoid abuse "has to be done individually," Arroyo said.

Victims are unlikely to discuss abuse honestly and openly in the presence of the offender, and the risk of additional violence increases "100 percent," Arroyo said. "Even when the abuse is emotional, verbal and subtle, I think it is still not a good idea."

For Ronda Gates, director of the Center for Women and Children in Crisis in Provo, safety has to be a "huge component of it."

"I just want to make sure it is done with safety in mind and that it is really a mutual decision, and the victim is not being manipulated into it," Gates said.

Prospero said no solution -- not even incarceration -- can guarantee a victim's safety, but both programs incorporate elements aimed at providing as much safety as possible. That includes barring offenders who have, for example, engaged in strangulation, have a history of violent offenses or who coerce a partner to participate.

"If allowed into a program, during the entire treatment [participants] are interviewed separately to ask safety questions," he said. A safety plan, created at the beginning of treatment, is implemented if any concerns surface.

As for Cornerstone, its extensive research of other couples counseling programs showed it was effective in some relationships, leading Llewelyn to conclude that "if this going to help, we need to look at it."

Llewelyn said many people he has worked with have been "severely traumatized, but they don't want to break up.

"And if they do break up, they want to be able to find a healthy relationship," he said.

In its first attempt at couples counseling, Cornerstone enrolled just two couples, due in part to stringent selection criteria. Therapist David Hildt also worked with two other couples individually.

Offenders first completed a batterer intervention program and then, after a thorough assessment of both partners, entered psycho-educational counseling, working first in gender-based groups and then in mixed sessions. The therapy began and concluded with individual assessments of victims' safety, he said.

Of the two couples in the program, the female offender and her husband completed 22 sessions before ending their counseling because of a pending job move. The other pair, with jealousy being a problem, dropped out after two months when they decided to end their relationship -- a result supporters consider a success if it allows a split to occur amicably.

"The purpose is not to save a marriage; it is to have a nonviolent relationship whether they are together or not, which is extremely relevant if you have children," Prospero said.

In the new study, Cornerstone, which works with 300 court-ordered offenders a year, will seek to enroll 30 couples. In the first year, the center will offer a traditional batterer intervention program and a Circles of Peace program. In the second year, it will add a couples counseling program.

New Hope plans to adopt only a healing circle program, an approach that has a long, successful tradition in American Indian culture.

Circles of Peace, which began in Nogales, Ariz., in 2004, brings an offender together with key individuals in his or her life -- typically a therapist, spiritual leader, community member, family members and friends -- for 26 weeks or more of group talks. Victims choose to participate about half the time, Mills said.

The circles philosophy, she said, holds that "the most important group to anyone in a process of change are the people he or she is most accountable to, and that is family and community."

It works, said Ruby Dean, who has worked as a volunteer community representative with the Nogales program for nearly two years.

"Forgiveness, communication and education, those are big huge parts of the Circles of Peace," Dean said. "Where you have willing participants, a family member, a support group, you have healing going on. You have behavior addressed."

Macfarlane, of New Hope Crisis Center, said her excitement about the program is driven by the couples who return for help over and over again and for whom the current "one-size fits all dynamic" doesn't work.

"We are certainly not suggesting the whole arena of domestic violence be changed," she said. "We're saying this is an area where we can probably help a lot of people and that is what we are supposed to do, that is our mission."

brooke@sltrib.com