Fighting Gender-Based Violence: Eu-Vidacs – Violent Dad in Child Shoes

ViDaCS - Violent Dad in Child Shoes, a project funded by the European commission (Pic Number 810449), had as its objective to test and validate an innovative self-assessment tool to intercept perpetrators of violence and experimenting, with them, a serious game to bring them into the experience of the violence of those who witness it, the children. Fatherhood, as a motivating factor for treatment and facilitating element in promoting awareness, is assumed to be central in the proposal of the innovative tool created. ViDaCS serious game, thanks to the help of new technologies, allows perpetrators to experience their own difficulty in dealing with anger and strong emotions and to recognize emotions and thoughts of the children who silently and helpless witness to violent scenes. Thirty-seven fathers (aged between 25 and 61 years - M: 40.7; DS: 10.2), reported by local or voluntary services, experimented with ViDaCS SG, within a protocol structured in phases and tools built ad hoc for the detection of reactions and for the exploration of emotions and experiences. At the end of the ViDaCS SG experimentation, a Narrative Focused Interview (Arcidiacono, forthcoming) was conducted to explore the emotional experiences and thoughts aroused by the experience and the scenes lived and stimulated by the ViDaCS SG experience. A main result that emerged from the thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the interviews concerned the participants’ denial of their violent actions, that many men reported following the experimentation of ViDaCS SG and their experience of victims. Operational indications and future development lines will be discussed.