Call Me Dad

Call Me Dad follows a group of abusive fathers participate in a Men’s Behavioural Change Program. The Heavy M.E.T.A.L Group in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs is a sixteen-week course aimed at fathers who are perpetrators of family violence. The ‘M.E.T.A.L’ stands for Men’s Education Towards Anger and Life, but the program is about much more than anger. The Heavy M.E.T.A.L program seeks to educate and support men attempting deep and lasting changes in their attitudes and behaviours towards women.

Heavy M.E.T.A.L founder and facilitator David Nugent believes that women and children have the right to live their lives free from violence. David also believes that men can change if they have the will and opportunity to do so. David’s program focuses on making men accountable to women and children. He challenges men to take ownership of their abusive and violent behaviours, and shows them that they can make different choices, and in doing so, may rebuild trust with their family members, and intervene so that their own sons and daughters do not to repeat the cycle of violence.

David works alongside co-facilitator Jacqui Seamark, herself a survivor of domestic violence. Jacqui suffered first at the hands of her father, then at the hands of her partner. Jacqui sees it as her role to bring the voices of the women into the room, provoking the participants to consider how their own partners may have been made to feel powerless, frightened, ashamed or isolated by abuse.

The Heavy M.E.T.A.L program draws upon psychological and sociological research, bolstered by David’s extensive experience working alongside families battling to turn their lives around. It is a ‘psycho-educational’ course, which exposes the damage caused by different types of abuse and the pervasiveness of behaviours that maintain an abuser’s power and control. David also builds the participants’ emotional vocabulary, and works closely with them to identify strategies to cope with conflict and difficult emotions in safe and respectful ways.