Stress at work, bills, alcohol or drug abuse.

They may be excuses for a man to beat his wife or companion but Physical Abuse Centre facilitator Rose Vickers doesn't care to hear the excuses. As far as she is concerned it should not be tolerated under any circumstances.

Next month Mrs. Vickers will facilitate a new programme called 'Abuse Free', Bermuda's first Batterer's Intervention Programme aimed at getting to the core of the problem. The 26-week structured programme will enable the Physical Abuse Centre to administer the required treatment for batterers and will be similar to intervention programmes already successfully in use in Florida.

"We don't break up families, violence does," Mrs. Vickers stressed.

"We, the Physical Abuse Centre, are here to help the victims. They have counselling and a lot of times become empowered and go on to a better life, but the perpetrator of the violence will go to the next relationship and will continue this pattern.

"The Batterer's Programme is to deal with the perpetrator, to make him accountable. A lot of times he's blaming this person or that, his partner, the job, the pressures but it's with himself and he needs to recognise that."

The vast majority of calls to the centre are from women in abusive situations... frightened and with nowhere to go. Sometimes, though rare, a man will call to get information for a 'friend', too ashamed to admit he is a victim himself.

"We have batterers calling up and realising they need help," said Mrs. Vickers.

"Either they have done something horrific or the partner will say 'I'm leaving unless you get some help'. Sometimes they will come in to appease the partner, but they feel there is nothing wrong with them, that they are okay. That they were just straightening the person out, teaching them a lesson.

"In the new year we're going to be working with other agencies tightly so that no one slips through the cracks.

This is a 26-week programme and hopefully at the end of the day they will emerge feeling better about themselves and won't have to try to control someone."

The centre regularly receives calls from women looking for a way out of an abusive relationship. And as the accompanying chart shows, the number of calls received on the Helpline is well up on figures from 1991, '92, '93 and '94.

Though 2000 figures of 627 were down on 1999 (775), they are still too high and a big concern for staff at the Centre, which has been in existence since 1979.

"It's all about power and control over a person," said Mrs. Vickers who stressed that abuse is more than just physical.

"If a couple is married there is such a thing as marital rape. But no means no, whether you are married or not!

"We had a case this week where the husband, when he goes to work every day, takes the phone with him so she won't make any phone calls. With the programme, hopefully they will understand that you don't have to rape, beat, take their money, intimidate. All these things are not necessary and it is abuse at the highest level."

The perpetrators are known to the Physical Abuse Centre and such abusers can come from any racial or economic background.

And the cases range from teenagers being controlled by a boyfriend to a woman in her sixties who wants to leave her marriage after years of torture.

"We have a support group and one of the people who came to support someone else has a daughter whose boyfriend gave her daughter a pager," explained Mrs. Vickers.

"Now, some of the young people get excited about this but it is a form of control. If it goes off I'm expected to call him right back or I'll get 'where am I, what am I doing, I paged you three or four times, you didn't call me back, where were you?'

"I know of an incident where someone was interested in another person and the girlfriend of the friend gave this person her pager number and he paged her about eight times in an hour. That sent up red flags and in her mind he could be a potential stalker."

Mrs. Vickers warns that women need to be aware of the warning signs early in relationships.

"If you feel uncomfortable, trust your instincts because something is not right," she urged.

Cases of abuse against women regularly go before the courts, some for harassment and assault, others for even more serious offences.

"We have protection orders with the power of arrest," she warned.

"When you get the protection order it means no contact...no flowers, no phone calls, no cards. A lot of times they may have children together but you don't have to contact that person, you can have a third person deal with that.

'A lot of times because there are children involved the perpetrator feels they have the right to harass, stalk, call them on their job three or four times."

"The Batterer's Programme is an alternative to prison. But someone may think, 'great, I'll go there instead of going to prison', but there are rules and there are regulations and you have to be accountable.

"If you break the rules we will report back to the courts or Probation Services, wherever they came from. If you think after two or three times you are not going to come anymore, well it doesn't work that way. There is no free ride."

Added Mrs. Vickers: "Sometimes a person who has been abused does not want to go to the hospital or the Police, but we encourage them that it needs to be documented in case something were to happen."

"It still has a certain amount of stigma to it," said June Augustus, chairperson of the Physical Abuse Centre.

"In some cases people were afraid to come forward but they are now thinking that since it's more common that they are willing to come forward and talk about it.

"The more literature we put out, the more knowledgeable they become and it makes them feel like they want to empower themselves."

There is a support group for battered women, designed at helping them cope with their ordeal and to know they are not alone.

"It's an 18-week programme and we've had women who keep coming back because they said they gained something each time," explained Mrs. Vickers.

"To see them when they first come to where they are now is just amazing. One particular person I knew to be a certain way...outgoing, active, vibrant and she was in an abusive marriage and didn't know where to turn. Her body language was so down when she came to our first session.

"When she walked into our third session she was the woman that she was before the relationship and she is getting stronger and stronger."

Added Mrs. Vickers: "It (abuse) is not their fault, whether they burnt the chicken or whether dinner was late. Some women try to be Mrs. Betty Crocker, but no matter what they try they still get abused.

"When they realise 'it's not my fault, I don't have the problem', that's the first step and it makes a lot of difference in people's lives.

"We always say 'love doesn't hurt' and 'don't settle for less'. There is no excuse for abuse."

Mrs. Vickers urges employers and fellow employees of abused women to treat their fears seriously.

"Domestic violence does not stay at home, it goes with you to work," she points out.

"There are things an employer can do. The employer and the other employees need to be aware."

Mrs. Augustus stressed that the charity operates very professionally and information is kept in strict confidence.

"We have to be very professional in order to gain people's confidence and for them to come back," she said.