The six-bed Breathing Space Transition halfway house has just opened, and is an Australia-first When he was 10, she started to kick him. When he was 13, she punched him in the face after he lost the key to his bike padlock. "There was a lot of punching, a lot of kicking, she spat on me," he said. "I had always been scared of my mother. When I was 17 or 18, the physical abuse stopped and it became verbal.

"I was isolated as a child. I had trust issues. I was very [cold] to females – I was always chasing my mum's love and I always got shot down, and I thought every female would do the same." David began doing drugs at 14. When he was 22, he and his then-partner had a baby together. "She tried to stand by me and support me... but I still couldn't believe anything she told me," he said. "My mother was still in my head.

"I had a very violent record in general, but I had never hit a woman." In 2013, David said he had a fight with his ex-partner that reached such an explosive level of verbal abuse that police had to remove him from the family home. Afterward, he asked officers for a referral to a domestic violence prevention service. "I was worried it was going to escalate," he said. "I didn't want to become my mother."

Two days later, Breathing Space contacted David and interviewed him about his history of family violence, abuse of drugs and alcohol and his contact with the justice system. After he was deemed eligible for the program, they moved him into the facility by the next afternoon. He said he was so scared and ashamed about entering the facility he only told his father the truth about his whereabouts. After an "intense" induction process, he began group therapy which dealt with anger management, parenting and drug and alcohol abuse. For some of the participants, it is the first time they have ever spoken about their actions. Much of the therapy aims to help men realise the effect of their violence on their victims, through "mapping" past situations through their own and others' eyes. "Putting it down on paper - just seeing it with your own eyes - changes the landscape," he said.

"It kicks in, you realise what kind of a man you were. "I mapped an incident through the eyes of my child's mother. I had an argument with her, she split up with me, I went there and tried to see my child ... there was a lot of yelling and shouting and I threw a set of keys at her. "They hit her ... and hurt her, and she meant a lot to me, so when I wrote everything down about ... how she felt at the time and how scared she was, I thought about what a prick I was. I wanted to give in. [Parenting class], that is the one where you really want to give up ... while you're here, you don't see much of your children and you think about them a lot ... you want to give up and just go see your kids. "But there was a lot of help and support. There were a lot of women facilitators here, so you do connect ... one especially was Holly, who took me under her wing from the day I got here. She was the one that was working in outreach. I felt a connection with her because she brought me into Breathing Space. Every time I had a problem or I was feeling down or I needed someone to talk to I went to her, and I still do."

But three months of therapy was not enough to change lifetime habits. David left Breathing Space feeling good. He started his own brick paving business and got his own flat, but when his father got a new partner the fault lines were exposed. "My family started to fall apart," he said. "My sisters and I ... were trying to mend our family but it was too late. We hung round each other more than we ever had before but there were a lot of arguments and a lot of fighting. It brought back a lot of my past. I'd been on drugs since I was 14 so I knew where and how to get them so that was my way of numbing my brain." After the drugs returned, so did the violence, this time between David and his father, as well as other people "on the street".

By this time, he was homeless and faced an accumulation of 23 extremely serious assault charges in the courts. The judge who convicted him agreed to put him on an intensive supervision order and release him back into the Breathing Space program instead of jailing him. "It was hard to come off the meth," he said. "Holly went through that with me, she saw the withdrawals – a lot of shakes, sweating, anxiety." He has been back in the program for four weeks and clean for three months.

Crucially, the six-bed Breathing Space Transition halfway house has just opened. Here, men can stay for another nine to 12 months and continue to work with their case worker if they need to. The support level is gradually reduced until men feel they can continue controlling their behaviour on their own. David's first goal is to get through the program and qualify for the halfway house. "Long term, I want to have contact with my child," he said. "I want to stay clean, get my business back and have a normal life without anger.

"I'm more strong, more controlled, I'm speaking clearly, I've gained weight and I'm more clear-headed ... this is my chance. If I don't get through this ... I will have failed in myself, so it's head down, ass up." Family and employment services provider Communicare runs the facility, working alongside courts, police and the Department of Child Protection. If residents breach bail it notifies police, but this is rare. It supports family violence victims directly, including by running women's refuges, and often asks women entering its refuges for permission to contact their partners about Breathing Space. It also facilitates supervised contact with families so fathers have a chance at reconciliation with their children. Communicare chief executive Melissa Perry said working with perpetrators both gave women time to take stock and figure out their next move, and gave men time to develop self-control strategies.

"We have learned that by engaging with perpetrators, that is how we keep the women and children safe," she said. The Centre for Innovative Justice at RMIT University in Melbourne released a report in March, Opportunities for Early Intervention: Bringing Perpetrators of Family Violence into View. Australian of the Year and anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty launched the report, which identified a need for crisis services for men. It detailed family violence services' reports that men were more likely to take responsibility for their violence if basic needs - such as housing - were met. The report named Breathing Space as the only facility in Australia to address this need.

In New Zealand, the independent Glenn Inquiry instigated by businessman and philanthropist Sir Owen Glenn handed down its report, The People's Blueprint, in November. It called for a national family violence intervention, whose measures would include providing dedicated houses for men ordered to leave their home by police or those seeking to address their violence away from their families and communities, where they could live and work through 'stopping violence' programs. *Not his real name Men can ring Breathing Space directly to ask for an assessment on 9439 5707 or a community corrections officer, counsellor or other support worker can contact Breathing Space on their behalf. If you are, or are at risk of being, a victim or perpetrator of domestic violence call the national support line on 1800 737 732.