When We Keep Hoping the Predator Will Change: The Cost of Living in Fantasy

One of the most dangerous assumptions we can make when dealing with abusers and predators is the belief that “this time will be different.” We see it in courtrooms, in families, in communities, and sometimes even among professionals: Maybe counseling will change him. Maybe prison will change him. Maybe losing his relationship, his children, his career, or his freedom will finally make him understand.

But hope is not a risk-assessment tool.

Research on batterer and intimate-partner-violence interventions does show that some individuals can reduce abusive behavior, particularly when interventions are appropriately matched to risk, needs, motivation, and responsivity. However, the research also demonstrates that treatment effects are generally modest, inconsistent, and difficult to sustain over time. Recent meta-analytic research found small but significant reductions in physical-abuse recidivism, while other systematic reviews have found insufficient evidence that traditional court-mandated programs reliably prevent re-assault.

This is where attorneys, judges, and society must become more sophisticated.

An abuser can attend every class, complete every assignment, say the right words, express remorse, and still maintain the underlying beliefs, entitlement, need for control, or interpersonal strategies that contributed to the abuse. Compliance is not necessarily change. Apology is not necessarily accountability. And the ability to perform insight in a courtroom does not automatically translate into safe behavior outside of it.

The question should not simply be, “Has he changed?”

The better questions are:

We also need to be careful with the belief that predators and abusers behave as they do because they simply “don’t know better.” Some genuinely lack emotional-regulation skills and can benefit from intensive intervention. Others demonstrate deeply entrenched patterns of entitlement, manipulation, coercive control, or antisocial behavior. Not every person who hurts others is waiting to be educated into becoming a different person.

That distinction matters enormously in family court and criminal justice.

Our responsibility is not to create a fantasy that someone will change. Our responsibility is to determine, through behavioral evidence, validated assessment, collateral information, treatment history, and demonstrated accountability, whether meaningful change is actually occurring.

We can believe in rehabilitation without becoming naïve about risk.

The goal is not to give up on people.