He was a self-confessed wife beater - now John has conquered his behaviour through a specialist-led programme, but with the threat of its withdrawal, he fears his cure my be short-lived. He talks to Women's Ediror Sarah Foster.

IT'S hard to see this quiet man as someone capable of violence. He sits sedately on the sofa, his wife Denise close by his side, and he is strikingly articulate - about as far from being a thug as it is possible to be. Yet underneath this calm exterior lies a different side of John. He burns with anger and mistrust, his temper ready to explode. There is a monster locked inside that always threatens to break out.

As things now stand, John's in control. He's just been on a specialist course designed to help him curb his rage and gives this credit for the fact that he no longer beats his wife. What made him seek professional help was seeing Denise end up in hospital.

"He split my mouth and I had to have stitches in it," explains Denise, John's spouse of four tumultuous years. "That was like the final straw." John adds: "I was desperate, basically because I thought the court system would intervene. However, Denise didn't pursue that. I looked on the internet, not realising there would be any programme at all, and found the Darlington Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programme."

When John referred himself to this he was accepted on a course. This had been planned for 32 weeks but didn't last for quite that long. "There was a mixture of people and a mixture of age groups and basically, for a number of reasons, the number of people attending was whittled down quite dramatically so it floundered," explains John. "When the group session failed, I had a one-to-one every week with one of the facilitators and this continued till last November, when I was offered another 32-week group session. By this time they had got new candidates and they ran it with the original four facilitators very successfully."

Each week the group was asked to focus on a different aspect of violence, such as knowing when to recognise the flash point in a conflict. John found the course a revelation and says it turned his life around. "This course has given me a short space of time to realise something is happening and step back from it," he says. "It was basically the whole gambit of a relationship going wrong - it gave us the chance to look at our own particular circumstances, see where we were going wrong and address that. It was life-changing."

Although the programme is complete John feels its work is not yet done. The one-to-one continuation he was promised at the start is now at risk of being abandoned in the wake of a review. If he is simply left alone he is afraid that he won't cope. "I do worry that the elastic band is going to snap and that I'm not going to come back again," he admits. "Three quarters of me is the human being I always was - it's the other quarter that I still can't come to terms with."

While John is worried that the pattern of his violence is entrenched, before his marriage to Denise he'd kept a lid on his behaviour. He cites his psychiatric problems - he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder - as the trigger for his rage, and says that this was caused by incidents at home as well as work. The bitter end of John's first marriage sparked a rapid downward spiral.

"Basically, for four to five years I was on my own," says the 61-year-old, who lives in County Durham. "When people got in my face I'd go into my flat, close the door and pull the blinds down. I came from that to a situation of life again and I basically couldn't handle it. What I perceived in Denise was abnormal thinking on my part. Because of my disorder I hadn't got the equipment to see me through any situation, so when small things happened between us, which they do with every couple, I saw it as the end of the world and reacted accordingly. I just exploded."

Denise got used to cuts and bruises from her husband's violent outbursts, covering up for his behaviour when the awkward questions came. She says the worst thing that she faced was when she feared that he might choke her. "He had his hands around my throat a few times and I did on one occasion lose consciousness, which I would say was the worst thing," recalls Denise.

"We wouldn't be together if there had been any more of it. The times I've said over the years 'why do they put up with it?' but it's only when you're in it and you really love the person and you see that there's a lot more good in them than bad that you understand. It's just like a vicious circle - there's no way out."

Denise admits to being sceptical when John first began the course but says it soon became apparent that it was helping him to change. She feels it's ironed out a lot of his deep-rooted mental issues and that the man she fell in love with has emerged as a result. "Our marriage was over bar the shouting and I didn't really think there was any way of going back from that but it's completely turned our lives around," says Denise. "I didn't think it would change the situation but it has."

Though John would like some more support to feel he's truly changed for good he seems a man who's faced his demons and is more or less on top. The way he talks is grounds for hope - he says the problem rests with him. He puts his arm around his wife as he describes how far he's come. "The course has made me realise that I can trust this lady here beside me, that she does love me with all of her heart and that she's not going to let me down," says John.

* The names in this article have been changed.