The Knoxville Family Justice Center is sponsoring a conference today and tomorrow that will teach support groups of victims of domestic violence improved techniques in serving the Knoxville and Knox County community, according to officials with the center.

“This conference is bringing national presenters who are experts in the field of family and domestic violence and in the areas of advocacy and criminal prosecution and law enforcement,” said Amy Dilworth, executive director for the Knoxville Family Justice Center.

“It’s to improve practices, to improve services for those in need of the services.”

The conference, being held in the Knoxville Marriott, will host presenters from across the country, including retired Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith.

The center is a collaborative effort between different support and reference groups for victims of domestic abuse and will officially open its doors in May, Dilworth said.

The director for one of the groups participating in the conference and who will be under the umbrella organization of the center said that the center is an important addition to the support community in Knoxville.

“It’s an unprecedented opportunity for our community, not only to have this center to help serve folks in need, but to make this training available to those serving clients,” Jo Terry, director for the Community Coalition on Family Violence, said Monday.

“For us, it’s the fulfillment of a dream to have this center come about,” she said.

Dilworth discussed some of the warning signs of a potentially abusive relationship.

“First of all, it’s important to understand that abuse is about control. The warning signs are so much earlier than [physical abuse],” she said. “Often times, it’s the phone calls immediately after every date.”

The calls, she said, are a controlling measure to ensure that a woman does what she said she was going to do after the date.

“Some of those things can be a sign of control rather than caring.”

Dilworth said that the cycle of abuse, a build-up of tension leading to an explosion of violence and subsiding into a period of reconciliation, is a dangerous circle.

“That honeymoon cycle, that making-up period that feels good and that individual who is the victim tends to often times think of it as the reason to hang in there. That it’s what the relationship is all about,” she said.

Abusers share some similarities, she said, but the root cause for abuse is elusive.

“Low self-esteem, often times a lack of internal sense of control and, perhaps, in some but not in all, a history of abuse somewhere in their life.”

The abuse is usually incremental, she said, sometimes taking the victim by surprise.

“It starts very slowly, and you don’t know what’s happening,” Dilworth said. “What the abuser often times does is like brainwashing. It’s a very subtle thing that occurs … It usually starts out as seeming nice.

“It’s not until later that those actions [are recognized as] controlling actions. They appear like a positive motivation in the beginning, and you find out much later that their motivations are very different from what they look like on the surface.”

Victims of abuse can turn to support and legal advice centers in Knoxville and Knox County, many of which will now be incorporated into the Knoxville Family Justice Center building, Dilworth said. The center will not absorb the groups but will provide the operational structure for the agencies and streamline communications between the different groups, she said.

The most important thing for victims to understand is that they don’t deserve to be abused, she said.

“It is never, ever the victim’s fault, and that’s the key thing to remember.”