Like many children who grow up in homes with domestic violence—verbal or physical—O’Hanlon did not describe his father as violent. O’Hanlon fit the mold of the men I’d seen in David Adams’s group the night they discussed their fathers. He downplayed the violence of his father and talked more often about his mother’s behavior. “My mother was no angel,” he told me. “If she had been less provocative, more respectful of his position as a husband …”
