The Weekly Newspaper of El Segundo
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 110, No. 1 - January 7, 2021
Inside
This Issue
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.....................10
Classifieds............................4
Community Briefs...............2
Crossword/Sudoku.............4
Entertainment......................3
Food.....................................10
Legals.................................8,9
Pets......................................11
Police Reports.....................2
Real Estate.......................5-7
Weekend
Forecast
Friday
Sunny
64˚/50˚
Saturday
Sunny
67˚/50˚
Sunday
Partly
Cloudy
68˚/49˚
The El Segundo Fire Department
Training Hard to Keep Us Safe
ES Fire Department B-Shift getting in some ventilation training to start off 2021. Thank you for all your hard work. Photo courtesy El Segundo Fire Department.
Dr. Ellen Albertson Teaches Her
Clients How to Choose a Partner
By Kiersten Vannest
Ellen Albertson has always felt safe here in
El Segundo, a town where “everybody knows
your name,” she says. Indeed, El Segundo is
one of the not-so-secret secrets of the South
Bay, a hidden small town gem next to the
international hub of LAX. But behind the
closed doors of every town, things are not
always so pretty.
Dr. Albertson is a licensed marriage and family
therapist, a certified domestic violence counselor,
a certified alcohol/drug abuse counselor, and
she is experienced in trauma-focused cognitive
behavioral therapy for child sexual abuse
victims. At her practice, Options Counseling,
she provides court-ordered batterers’ intervention
and victim group counseling. Her clients
come from all over the south bay, often by
court order. At Options, they participate in a
psychoeducational treatment, typically fifty-two
sessions about once a week. Groups speak with
each other about domestic violence and anger
management, and she walks them through a
myriad of topics, from how to choose a partner
to parenting guidance.
“A lot of people don’t know the difference
between discipline and punishment,”
she explains. This is the difference between
an authoritarian approach to raising a child
versus having structure. She states that using
punishment can affect a child’s intelligence
and school performance, as well as cause
brain changes. “What they see at home, they
repeat,” she says.
In evaluating a relationship, she describes
something called the “cycle of violence.” It
starts with the event. Next comes the honeymoon
phase, which includes lots of apologies, flowers,
and kisses. After that, gradually, it cycles back
to walking on eggshells, escalating up to the
event again. Being equipped with information
and learning to recognize red flags are two of
the tools she provides in guiding clients on
how to better choose a partner.
An El Segundo homeowner for 48 years, Dr.
Albertson was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario,
Canada. She says she has spent a lifetime
reclaiming education. After a major personal
incident in 1993 involving alcoholism, violence,
and the suicide of her husband and the
father of her children in her home, Albertson
suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. This
led to twenty years of therapy, an interest in
domestic violence, and a career change. After
volunteering at a battered women’s shelter, she
became active in perpetrator groups in 1997.
During this time, she received a year of individual
training by the late George Thomas, a
pioneer in her field.
“Our society, in general, does not understand
the complicated dynamics of domestic
violence,” says Albertson. For example, law
enforcement focuses on crime and physical
injury and typically only reports on such
cases. However, studies focused on intent to
harm show that domestic abuse is committed
by about fifty-three percent of women and
forty-seven percent of men. Having written
her doctoral dissertation on female perpetrators
of domestic abuse, Dr. Albertson wishes
that police departments were better trained on
domestic violence and their assessment when
Dr. Ellen Albertson
responding to domestic violence calls. The most
frustrating part of her job, she says, is working
with the Department of Children and Family
Services (DCFS), children’s court, family court
attorneys and some judges.
Without specialists involved in assessments,
law enforcement often fails to identify the
aggressor, and when confronted with cocombatants,
are often reluctant to arrest both
parties. When working with children, she cites
an example of a child who confided in her that
he was sexually abused by a family member,
but when asked by law enforcement upon
her reporting the incident, the four-year-old
clammed up in the face of multiple officers,
DCFS workers, and a barrage of questions.
They deemed there was no proof and dropped
the case entirely.
See Dr. Albertson, page 8