Advanced Perpetrator Program Facilitator Training - Brisbane May 2025

The purpose of this workshop is to provide hands-on advanced facilitation skills training for perpetrator program facilitators. This workshop will be delivered in a highly interactive format. Participants will explore:

• how to address accountability of the violence while accounting for the humanity of the program participant;
• the ways that facilitators collude with perpetrators;
• how to account for the lived experience of survivors and the power differential that domestic violence creates in relationships;
• co-facilitation;
• the four pillars that keep widespread domestic violence in place;
• what makes an effective facilitator;
• the connection between the social, cultural, and individual experiences of power, families, and violence;a deeper understanding of dialogue.

Event Details

Workshop: Friday, 23rd May 2025
Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm AEST
Location: Novotel Brisbane Airport, 6/8 The Circuit, Brisbane Airport, QLD, 4008.

Please note: Participants are required to attend face-to-face .

Who should attend

This training for current practitioners who work directly with men using domestic and family violence (one on one, group work or case management), who have completed the 25 hour training, and especially for those facilitating men’s behaviour change programs.

About the facilitators

Melissa (Petrangelo) Scaia, MPA

Melissa (Petrangelo) Scaia has worked to address gender-based violence for nearly 25 years locally in Minnesota, nationally, and globally. She is committed to continuing to be a practitioner in work that she trains on internationally related to domestic violence/coercive control. In Minnesota, she works part-time for Domestic Abuse Project as an Intervention/Prevention Therapist for their men’s perpetrator program and as the Systems Advocate Coordinator of the Minneapolis Coordinated Community Response (CCR) (i.e. Integrated Response) to domestic violence. She works internationally as part of the Global Alliance for Women’s Safety and Equality (GAWSE). As part of GAWSE, she works for UN Women to provide training and technical assistance, currently in Greece, Moldova, and the Asia-Pacific region. She provides training and technical assistance on addressing women’s use of violence in an Integrated Response and in non-violence programs as co-founder of Domestic Violence Turning Points. She co-wrote a curriculum and videos for working with perpetrators as fathers entitled, Addressing Fatherhood with Men Who Batter. She is the former Director of International Training at Global Rights for Women, co-founder of Pathways to Family Peace, and former executive director of Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP), also known as “the Duluth Model.” Before working in Duluth, she was an advocate and the executive director of Advocates for Family Peace (AFFP) for 17 years, a local domestic violence advocacy program. She wrote her master's thesis on the effects of domestic violence on children and wrote her doctoral dissertation proposal on addressing the safety needs of adult victims of domestic violence and their children in supervised visitation centers. Recently, she authored Safe Consultations with Survivors of Violence Against Women and Girls, a UN Women global guidance funded by the Australian government on how to conduct focus groups and interviews with survivors. She serves on the steering committee for the US’s National Network of Abuse Intervention Programs for perpetrator programs, where she was also recently given the COMPASS award for her work, research, and innovation related to her work on addressing women’s use of violence. She has also served as a National Advisory Committee Member for Law & Order: SVU actress Mariska Hargitay’s Joyful Heart Foundation for survivor-based healing. She has conducted assessments and research on topics related to domestic violence: 1) women’s use of violence; 2) using videoconference software to conduct men’s batter intervention programming (BIP); 3) Minneapolis police response to domestic violence; and 4) a needs assessment on North Dakota’s response to domestic violence. She has also testified/consulted as an expert witness on domestic violence/coercive control in criminal and civil court cases since 2006.

Rosemary O’Malley

Rosemary O'Malley was the CEO of the Domestic Violence Prevention Centre (DVPC) from 2016 to February 2023. She commenced working for DVPC in 209 and was the Manager of the Men’s Domestic Violence Education and Intervention Program (MDVEIP) for seven years. Previously she worked for many years at Queensland Corrective Services (QCS) where she commenced facilitating the MDVEIP in 2005. Her academic background is in criminology, and she has written journal articles and contributed a chapter to the book Domestic Violence, Working with Men: Research, Practice Experiences and Integrated Responses. Rosemary sat on the Domestic Violence Death review Advisory Board and was the Convenor of the Queensland Domestic Violence Services Network from 2020-2022. She has travelled to the United States to investigate good practice regarding men's programs, fathering programs and integrated responses and she delivers workshops and speaks at conferences throughout Australia on the importance of collaborative practice between government and non-government organisations to improve the safety and well-being for those experiencing and escaping violence.

Rosemary now works in a consultative capacity in the DFV Sector and delivers workshops and training, as well as Professional Supervision across all levels of the workforce.