In Memoriam: Ellen Pence
January 6, 2012
In Memoriam: Ellen Pence
April 15, 1948-January 6, 2012
“If you are living with a batterer, it is not cyclical.” – Ellen Pence
Domestic violence survivors, advocates, and programs across the world are remembering one of the battered women’s movement’s most influential and committed activities.
Ellen Pence (1948 – 2012) was a scholar and a social activist. She co-founded the Duluth Domestic Intervention Project, an inter-agency collaboration model used in all 50 states in the U.S. and More than 17 countries. She also founded Praxis International and developed the Praxis Safety and Accountability Audit.
A leader in both the battered women’s movement and the emerging field of institutional ethnography, she was the recipient of numerous awards including the 2008 Society for the Study of Social Problems Dorothy E. Smith Scholar Activist Award for significant contributions in a career of activist research.
Known for her generosity, quick wit, and sense of humor, Ellen learned from battered women and has worked with and trained thousands of professionals in the domestic violence field.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ellen graduated from the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota with a B.A. She was active in institutional change work for battered women since 1975, and helped found the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in 1980.
Ellen is credited with creating the Community Coordinated Response (CCR) Model of intervention in domestic violence cases, which uses an interagency collaborative approach involving police, probation, courts, and human services in response to domestic abuse. The primary goal of CCR is to protect victims from on-going abuse.
Ellen received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto in 1996. She used institutional ethnography as a method of organizing community groups to analyze problems created by institutional intervention in families. She founded Praxis International in 1998 and was the chief author and architect of the Praxis Institutional Audit, a method of identifying, analyzing, and correcting institutional failures to protect people drawn into legal and human service systems because of violence and poverty.
Ellen died of breast cancer on January 6, 2012.
Ellen Pence in the Media
Seeing shades of gray within domestic violence
The creation of the power and control wheel
Interview of Ellen Pence by Casey Gwinn
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What a huge, huge loss to the world. Rest in peace Ellen.