Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Stearns Mandel: Recent Episodes
Ruth Stearns Mandel & David Mandel
These podcasts are a reflection of Ruth & David’s on-going conversations which are both intimate and professional and touch on complex topics like how systems fail victims and children, how victims experience those systems, and how children are impacted by those failures. Their discussions delve into how society views masculinity and violence, and how intersectionalities such as cultural beliefs, religious beliefs and unique vulnerabilities impact how we respond to abuse and violence. These far-ranging discussions offer an insider look into how we navigate the world as professionals, as parents and as partners. During these podcasts, David & Ruth challenge the notions which keep all us from moving forward collectively as systems, as cultures and as families into safety, nurturance and healing.Note: Some of the topics discussed in the episodes are deeply personal and sensitive, which may be difficult for some people. We occasionally use mature language. We often use gender pronouns like “he” when discussing perpetrators and “she” for victims. While both and men and women can be abusive and controlling, and domestic abuse happens in straight and same-sex relationships, the most common situation, when it comes to coercive control, is a male perpetrator and a female victim. Men's abuse toward women is more closely associated with physical injury, fear and control. Similarly, very different expectations of men and women as parents and the focus of Safe & Together on children in the context of domestic abuse makes it impossible to make generic references to gender when it comes to parenting. The Model, through its behavioral focus on patterns of behavior, is useful in identifying and responding to abuse in all situations including same-sex couples and women's use of violence. We think our listeners are sophisticated enough to understand these distinctions.
Most AI in social services promises efficiency and speed. The Safe & Together Institute cares about something much harder: helping practitioners make behaviourally accurate, domestic abuse–informed decisions when the stakes are child safety, custody, and survivors' lives.
In this special episode, Safe & Together Institute cofounders Ruth Reymundo and David Mandel introduce what they've spent the past year building: the Safe & Together Digital Coach and Insight Engine. Developed through SafetyNexus—their technology development company and sister organisation to the Safe & Together Institute—this guardrailed, practice-first AI platform is designed to help professionals apply the Safe & Together Model long after the training ends.
The conversation begins with a moment many practitioners know well. You leave training energised and inspired. Then you return to a desk full of complex cases, competing priorities, limited supervision, and organisational pressures. Suddenly, applying what seemed so clear in the training room becomes much harder.
The Digital Coach is designed to bridge that gap. Acting as an on-demand Safe & Together–trained guide, it helps practitioners map perpetrator patterns, strengthen survivor partnership, document child impact, prepare court-ready communication, practice difficult conversations through private role-play, and work through challenging cases without losing sight of perpetrator accountability.
Ruth also shares the founder story behind SafetyNexus—what frightened her as she watched social-care systems rapidly adopt AI, and why, as a survivor, she believes technology must never reinforce victim-blaming, perpetrator invisibility, or biased decision-making. Together, she and David explain how the platform's guardrails, survivor governance, and practice framework set it apart from generic copilots, transcription software, and "shadow AI" tools.
The episode also explores the Insight Engine, which helps practitioners, supervisors, and leaders identify practice-quality trends, strengthen supervision, measure improvement over time, and better understand the real impact of their work—without replacing professional judgement or turning AI into the decision-maker. Along the way, Ruth and David discuss governance, ethics, worker wellbeing, and why responsible AI should support—not replace—the relationships, critical thinking, and accountability that good practice depends on.
If you're curious about what responsible AI can look like in child protection and domestic abuse practice, listen now, share the episode with a colleague, and let us know what you'd want a digital coach to help you do next.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Is working with your partner a recipe for exploitation or one of the healthiest ways to build a meaningful, independent, well-resourced life? Many people hear "family business" or "couples in business" and think nepotism, blurred boundaries, and women being taken advantage of.
Ruth and David are joined by Rigour and Flow hosts Aiwan Obinyan, filmmaker and founder of AiAi Studios, and Dr. Tamanda Walker, sociologist, researcher, and co-founder of research consultancy Roots and Rigour. These two couples who build businesses together talk candidly about what makes shared work healthy or extractive.
They dig into cultural differences in work: why family business is honoured in Nigerian, Botswanan, and Latin traditions rather than treated as a red flag and how social, family, and religious conditioning can turn work into identity, compulsion, or escape. They separate work that's extractive from work that's additive and question the "we're a family" language corporations use to mask power dynamics, abuse, and exploitation.
The four discuss how gender and sexuality shape how each couple is read differently. For a man and a woman working together, the suspicion is nepotism and a woman assumed to be there only because of her partner. For a same-sex couple, the calculus shifts: as two Black queer women, Aiwan and Tamanda expected heavy backlash but found it came more around race, colorism, and truth-telling about the exploitation of African people rather than gender. And they found that their partnership can sometimes be idiolised as the progressive representation people are hungry for. Underneath both is a shared commitment to telling the truth in partnership, even when it's uncomfortable.
The two couples close with the work-life boundaries that actually protect the relationship and the rest: living by agreement, renegotiating those agreements as life changes, staying free to change roles rather than being reduced to a role and a task, and even establishing safe words for shutting down shop talk.
If you've ever thought mixing love and business is dangerous, or you're building a mission-driven company, family business, or podcast with your partner and want healthy work-life boundaries, this one is for you.
Subscribe, follow Rigour and Flow, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Reproductive coercion rarely announces itself with a dramatic confession. More often, it shows up as a pause in the exam room, a quiet "I don't really have a choice," or a new mom who seems exhausted beyond what postpartum should demand.
Ruth and David sit down with LC De Shay (also known as the Digital Dominatrix), an international gender and migration psychosocial analyst, reproductive health specialist, and full spectrum doula, to name what so many families are living through and what too many systems still fail to catch. They dig into the behavioural landscape of coercive control around sex, contraception, pregnancy, and parenting, including why survivors may not recognise or disclose coercion without the right language and the right questions.
LC shares how clinicians can miss obvious signals when screening becomes a checkbox and why open-ended, concrete prompts can surface what "Do you feel safe?" never will. Ruth, David, and LC also talk about the perinatal period and postpartum window as a time of elevated domestic violence risk and how partner behaviour can shape maternal health, breastfeeding, infant feeding, and child development while professionals keep placing responsibility on mothers alone.
From migration-related vulnerability to workplace pressure, from school systems to child welfare responses, David, Ruth, and LC map the "whirlpool" of entrapment that keeps people stuck. They also confront how high-control religion, Quiverfull culture, and trad wife messaging can frame reproductive coercion as virtue, while "progressive" judgment can unintentionally shove survivors back into isolating communities. And they make space for a crucial nuance: Men's pain under patriarchy can be real, but it never justifies violence, and accountability means redirecting anger upstream rather than dumping it onto women and children.
If you care about reproductive safety, health, autonomy, trauma-informed care, maternal health, and practical domestic violence prevention, this conversation gives you language you can use today.
Share this post with a provider or advocate to spread the word.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
What if the most important fact about your partner’s violence risk is sitting in a police database you can’t access?
In this episode, David and Ruth dig into Clare’s Law, the UK’s domestic violence disclosure scheme, with researcher Dr. Katerina Hadjimatheou, and they get honest about what information sharing can do when coercive control runs on secrecy, grooming, and lies. They talk about why convictions alone rarely tell the full story, how serial perpetrators move from relationship to relationship, and why survivors often say a disclosure helps them finally see the pattern and stop blaming themselves.
Ruth, David, and Dr. Hadjimatheou also compare two very different real-world implementations: England and Wales, where the experience can be inconsistent and sometimes isolating, and South Australia, where a specialist domestic violence service wraps disclosure in a trauma-informed support process. That difference matters. Many people requesting disclosures have never contacted a domestic violence service before, so the moment of disclosure can either become a doorway to safety planning and autonomy or a terrifying information drop with nowhere to put it.
Then they name the hard part: systems can misuse a safeguarding tool. They unpack how child protection agencies can pressure mothers to seek disclosures and turn results into a “test,” and they discuss risks like mislabeling and perpetrators gaming the system. If we want disclosure schemes to improve survivor safety and perpetrator accountability, we have to design them around consent, support, and pattern-based understanding.
Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave us a review: where should disclosure sit in your community’s approach to domestic abuse?
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
A coercive control law can be groundbreaking and still leave survivors asking, “Why doesn’t life feel safer?”
David and Ruth are joined by Dr. Marsha Scott, CEO of Scottish Women’s Aid, to talk about Scotland’s hard-won reforms and the uncomfortable truth behind them: Legal change is only the beginning, and implementation is where domestic abuse reform succeeds or fails.
They dig into what makes Scotland’s coercive control framework so influential, including its course of conduct focus and why impact matters more than trying to read a perpetrator’s “intent.” Dr. Scott shares what the law has changed in public understanding and what has not changed yet in courts, sentencing, and survivor trust. Ruth, David, and Dr. Scott also get practical about what closes the implementation gap: infrastructure, better evidence, skilled supervision, and real accountability when systems keep defaulting to old habits.
Then they turn to family court, child protection, and child contact decision-making, where children’s rights can get lost and where poor documentation can make the perpetrator disappear while the survivor is judged through a deficit lens. They talk about reports, mental health models, and what it takes to pivot practice toward perpetrator patterns as parenting behaviours with measurable harm to kids.
If you care about coercive control, children’s safety, and systems change that actually sticks, hit subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
If your picture of domestic abuse is still “bigger person equals perpetrator,” that assumption can derail safety planning in minutes, especially in same-sex relationships and LGBTQ families.
In this episode, Ruth and David sit down with Dr. James Rowlands, sociologist and founder of the Dyn Project, to explore what actually helps practitioners identify abuse more accurately: tracking patterns of coercive control, listening for fear and entrapment, and documenting real behaviours instead of relying on identity-based assumptions.
Ruth, David, and Dr. Rowlands unpack the tension many professionals feel between maintaining a gender-based violence lens, recognising gendered double standards, and being inclusive of queer survivors and male victims. While “gender-neutral” approaches can sound fair, they can also flatten power dynamics, erase social context, and obscure the role gender norms play in abusive relationships.
Together, they examine the “public story” that often steers professionals toward proxies like size, presentation, or stereotypes instead of evidence-based assessment. They also discuss how abuse tactics can look different in LGBTQ relationships, where outing, community stigma, and questions around “who counts as queer” can become tools of coercion and control.
The conversation gets practical, too. David, Ruth, and Dr. Rowlands explore why LGBTQ survivors are often missed in MARAC referrals, how generic risk checklists fail without LGBTQ-specific prompts, and what domestic homicide and death reviews can get wrong when queerness is treated as the explanation rather than focusing on perpetrator behaviour and systemic failures.
They close with concrete questions practitioners can ask to build trust with survivors, along with guidance for navigating biased or unsafe professional responses.
Subscribe, share this with a colleague or friend, and leave a review so more people can find these tools. What’s one assumption you’ve seen cause harm in a domestic abuse response?
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Systems don’t just “break” on their own. They do what they were designed to do, and too often that means extracting money, labor, and dignity while claiming to keep us safe.
In this episode, David and Ruth sit down with Trisha McOrmond, a Red River Métis systems thinker, to explore what it means to navigate belonging when it’s been fractured by family separation, colonisation, and institutions. They talk about the tension of feeling responsible to advocate, serve, and tell the truth without speaking for an entire community. They dig into why speaking from “I” and lived experience isn’t selfish, it’s accountable, and how the “royal we” can obscure harm in leadership, training, and professional spaces.
Trisha shares what decolonising thinking means to her: shifting from a scarcity worldview—where you “arrive here wanting” and must prove your worth—to a relational one, where you “arrive here wanted,” and community organises around care, children, elders, and basic needs. That shift reshapes how we understand capitalism, business as service, and the subtle ways institutions protect capital, property, and liability over people.
They also connect these ideas to domestic violence and child welfare systems. David, Ruth, and Trisha explore how deficit-based frameworks get weaponised against victims and targeted communities, how DARVO shows up at scale, and why asking “what will make this better?” can sometimes open doors that “what will make you safer?” closes.
If you care about systems change, targeted communities, First Nations perspectives, institutional trust, and building safety through relationships, this conversation is for you.
Subscribe, share this with someone doing hard systems work, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Ruth and David are recording from Okayama, Japan, and the shift you’re about to hear is bigger than language.
Professor Kanako Masui of Nihon Fukushi University joins David and Ruth to explain why so many domestic violence and child protection systems get stuck asking the wrong questions and how the Safe & Together Model helps professionals see what’s been in front of them all along.
Kanako shares her journey as both a former practitioner and a researcher who has interviewed domestic violence survivors, including adults who grew up with domestic abuse in childhood. That experience led her to a hard truth: When we focus on “why she didn’t leave” or “why she didn’t protect the kids,” we blur accountability and miss the survivor’s real, often invisible protective efforts. Ruth, David, and Kanako dig into how a perpetrator’s pattern of behaviour as a parent drives harm to children, how to document those choices clearly, and how to work with survivors with dignity and respect while keeping child safety at the center.
They also talk about what implementation looks like on the ground in Japan—from cross-agency collaboration with child guidance centers and women’s support centers to large seminars reaching hundreds of practitioners—and the intensive work of translating the Safe & Together material and David's book into Japanese so teams can share a common model and language.
Kanako closes with a message to helpers who feel isolated and a direct message to survivors: You are not to be blamed.
If you want practical, trauma- and domestic abuse–informed ways to improve domestic violence intervention, child welfare decision-making, and perpetrator accountability, listen now. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review telling us what language you want to change first.
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Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
The most useful conference debriefs aren’t about highlights—they’re about what shifts in you when you listen closely. From the Sydney coast, Ruth and David wrap up a three-and-a-half-week Asia Pacific tour and talk through the moments that changed the temperature in the room at the Safe & Together Institute's 2026 Asia Pacific Coercive Control & Children Conference. They start with gratitude, acknowledgement of unceded Aboriginal land, and the reality that building safer systems means showing up with humility, not just expertise.
One of the biggest breakthroughs David and Ruth share is their commitment to localised training and culturally responsive practice. The Institute premiered a new Australia-based training film designed to teach coercive control as a pattern over time, centred in a perinatal scenario that follows a family before and after a child is born. With Australian actors, filmmakers, consultation from cultural experts, and survivor input, the film is built to help professionals recognise subtle tactics, see cumulative harm, and respond in ways that strengthen child and survivor safety rather than repeating harmful system habits.
Ruth and David also get into the harder conversations that practitioners can’t avoid: men’s health, masculinity, and accountability. They talk about why supporting men and boys can’t come at the cost of women and children and why we have to operationalise that promise instead of offering lip service. In the Australian context, David and Ruth connect family violence practice with the impacts of colonisation, racism, intergenerational trauma, and family separation, while staying clear that healing requires stopping abusive behavior. Along the way, they reflect on survivor voices, workforce wellbeing, and the need for non-extractive organisational cultures.
Finally, Ruth and David dig into the practical lever that can change outcomes in family law: pattern-based documentation. They share why judicial leaders describe this kind of documentation as “gold” and how the SafetyNexus tool supports workers with coaching, mapping, and better notes when stakes are life-or-death.
If you care about coercive control, domestic violence response, child protection, and safer systems, this conversation gives you language you can use tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review so more practitioners can find the work.
Send us Fan Mail
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Domestic abuse gets dangerously easy to miss when our systems can only imagine one story about who victims are and what abuse looks like. David and Ruth sit down with Luke Martin, a UK-based domestic abuse trainer, consultant, and independent victim advocate, to talk about the people most likely to be misunderstood in plain sight: LGBTQ+ survivors, including those in same-sex relationships, who face bias and system failures when seeking assistance for intimate partner violence.
They dig into why an incident-based approach can flatten the reality of coercive control, especially when LGBTQ+ survivors fear the very systems they’re told to rely on—for good reason. Luke connects the dots between familial abuse, child maltreatment, conversion practices, homelessness, and the long shadow those experiences cast over adult relationships. They also talk about isolation in queer communities, chosen family, shared friend groups, and the real-world barriers to leaving when leaving means losing identity, housing, or every safe connection you have.
Along the way, Ruth, David, and Luke challenge gender stereotypes that lead professionals to arrest the “more masculine” partner, ignore violence in lesbian relationships, or assume men cannot be afraid. They explore consent, kink, and chemsex risks, and they offer practical ways to ask better questions: how someone describes their gender, relationship, and sexuality and how to keep that door open over time without pressure.
If you care about domestic abuse–informed, trauma-informed practice, domestic violence services, survivor-centred safety planning, and LGBTQ-inclusive responses, listen through and share it with a colleague.
Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: What is the biggest change you want to see in domestic abuse systems?
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Artificial intelligence is already in social work and child protection, and its use is deepening. The question is: How safe, effective, and equitable is it?
In this episode, David and Ruth talk with Dr. LaSharia Turner and Dr. Helen Fischle from Alabama A&M University about what ethical, human-centered, AI-driven tech should look like in social work education and frontline practice.
As agencies face workforce shortages, austerity, high caseloads, and increasing complexity, technology is being introduced as a solution. But can AI actually support domestic violence–informed practice when child safety is on the line? Or does it risk automating bias, victim-blaming, erasing survivor context, and shifting responsibility away from systems and perpetrators as parents?
We explore:
- What “human-centered” AI really means in child welfare
- The risks of predictive tools and automation
- Why social workers must have a seat at the technology table
- How to prevent tech from increasing survivor and worker burden
- The future of ethical innovation in high-stakes systems
If you work in child protection, domestic violence services, family courts, behavioral health, or policy, this conversation is for you.
Technology should enhance professional judgment—not replace it.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
What if medicine is trained to see bruises and fractures—but misses the injuries that leave no visible mark?
In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor, David and Ruth speak with Dr. Norell Rosado, child abuse pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, about the limits of how child maltreatment is identified in medical settings. While bruises and broken bones often drive diagnosis, neglect remains the most common form of maltreatment—and many serious harms leave no outward sign.
Together, they explore how time pressure, fear of court involvement, bias, and incident-based thinking create dangerous blind spots. We discuss shifting to a pattern-based approach that looks beyond single events to identify ongoing harm—including domestic abuse and coercive control that disrupt a child’s health, development, and safety.
Dr. Rosado unpacks how perpetrators interfere with children’s care: undermining medical advice, disrupting therapy, restricting access to food or transportation, and sabotaging a protective parent’s ability to follow through. We ask a question rarely built into clinical assessments: Is anyone interfering with this child’s care?
From traumatic brain injuries without bruising to emerging research on epigenetics, this episode reframes child maltreatment as more than a clinical issue—it is a multigenerational public health emergency.
Send us Fan Mail
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
We start with a snow-bright morning and end with a sharper lens. We sit down with advocate and system analyst Valerie Frost to explore how systems built to protect families can become tools of coercive control—and how to change that trajectory with better listening, precise language, and survivor-centered practice. Valerie traces the everyday realities of child welfare, family court, schools, and law enforcement, showing where checklists fail, how jargon shuts doors, and why knowledge inequity forces survivors to learn a foreign language just to get help.
We dig into visible versus invisible harm and why non-physical abuse or coercive control often gets dismissed or misread, leaving anxiety and hypervigilance weaponized against the survivor. From “customer service” logic for public systems to the risks of records, we examine how police calls and protection orders can be turned against survivors, and how both over-engagement with systems and system hesitancy get blamed. The conversation moves from critique to action: validating protective parenting, centering context over compliance, and anchoring assessments in the perpetrator’s pattern rather than the survivor’s reactions.
Valerie shares practical tools—build a dated log, control your narrative with consistent documentation, protect your basics like sleep and hydration—and argues for policy shifts that mandate recognition of coercive control, limit unnecessary information sharing, and reward restraint over surveillance. We also talk about showing up whole: professionals who are survivors, survivors who lead, and creating rooms where the end user defines engagement.
The takeaway is simple and demanding: Systems don’t need more policies as much as they need better listening; survivors have already mapped where harm happens.
If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with a colleague or friend, and leave a review so more people can find survivor-centered guidance that actually helps.
Send us Fan Mail
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
What happens when David turns the tables on Ruth and interviews her—seven years into their shared body of work?
In this special anniversary episode, David marks seven years since Ruth joined the Safe & Together Institute by stepping into the interviewer role. This is a founder-level conversation about vision, values, the hard work of scaling, and how systems actually change when lived experience is treated as critical professional expertise—not an add-on.
Ruth traces her journey from working with medical practitioners to helping transform Safe & Together from a training organization into a systems-change engine. She shares the deeper vision behind that shift: embedding domestic abuse–informed, trauma-informed, child-centered practice into the real operating conditions of systems through values-aligned leadership, business rigor, and strong operations. A central theme is supporting frontline workers—how poor practice, rigid forms, siloed communication, and unrealistic mandates make ethical work harder, and how better systems design can reduce moral injury and make good practice more sustainable.
Ruth also introduces the Credible Expert approach, embedding diverse, system-literate survivors as compensated contributors to design, strategy, and decision-making. Together, they offer an unflinching critique of “reduce removals” initiatives and explain what meaningful reform actually requires.
Looking ahead, they introduce SafetyNexus, a technology platform designed to coach practitioners, map perpetrator patterns, strengthen documentation, and streamline workflows—without replacing professional judgment—while centering survivor governance from the start.
This episode is both a milestone and an invitation to keep building systems that save lives and save money.
Please follow us, share this episode, and send us your comments.
Send us Fan Mail
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
We are starting our 7th season and asking the question: "What if love wasn’t the soft side of this work, but the method that makes healing possible?"
We chat again with Nneka MacGregor—co-founder and executive director of WomenatthecentrE, survivor, advocate, and visionary—to explore how love, joy, gratitude, and community connection can transform responses to gender-based violence. Instead of centering punishment that rarely repairs harm or teaches nurturing protective behavior, we examine a path where boundaries are love, accountability restores dignity, and systems are redesigned to reduce violence at its roots.
Nneka shares the personal story of surviving an attempted femicide and the vow that shaped her leadership: to live with gratitude, choose joy, and build a world where women and children are safer. From there, we dig into transformative justice—what it is, how it works, and why carceral reflexes often disconnect people from community, dull empathy, and compound and reproduce harm. You’ll hear a clear case for accountability that tells the truth, makes repair, and supports real change without throwing people away.
Nneka also introduce three bold frameworks that flip misogyny and misogynoir on their heads: amourgyny (love of women, girls, trans, and gender-diverse people), amourgynoir (centering love for Black women, girls, and gender-diverse folks), and amourgenous (centering love for Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people). These ideas are already influencing policy in Canada, offering a practical language for institutions to move beyond retribution into more behaviorally grounded and care-centered design. Along the way, we redefine power as something you hold upright and share—strong, embodied, and unentangled from coercion, control, and violence.
If you’re a practitioner, policymaker, survivor, or ally, this episode offers a grounded blueprint: lead with love, pair it with firm boundaries, build accountability that repairs, and design systems that center those most harmed. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your take: where should love show up first in your world?
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Mist, wind, the volcanic island of São Miguel, and a hard look at the words and jargon that decide families’ futures. We begin in the Azores, Ruth’s ancestral home, where arguments for European westward expansion took shape after Bartolomé de Las Casas reported the finding of two “dead Amerindian" bodies—and where mainland-imposed poverty, illiteracy, and family separation set conditions that still shape domestic violence today.
From that grounding, we pull apart a label that quietly drives child removals, court outcomes, and professional blind spots: “denial.” Across child protection and domestic violence documentation, the phrase “mother is in denial of the impact of domestic violence” appears with alarming regularity—automatically shifting scrutiny onto women in records that determine custody and liberty, while the person causing harm fades from view. The result is compounded harm at both personal and system levels.
We trace how this term traveled from early psychoanalysis—where women’s reports of sexual violence were recast as inner conflict or sexual turmoil—into today’s case notes and court filings. Over time, denial and hysteria morphed into failure to protect and parental alienation, redirecting attention from perpetrators’ patterns of violence to mothers’ supposed deficits in “controlling” that violence or responding to it. Instead of centering victims’ reactions to harm, we argue for real behavioral evidence: name who did what, to whom, with what impact, and what has been tried with the person causing harm. This shift is not cosmetic, yet it changes documentation, supervision, and safety planning, and it guards against wrongful liberty removals and harmful system collusion with perpetrators.
You’ll hear practical questions that move practice quickly: What did she do or say that led you to that conclusion? What is your specific safety concern about that behavior? These prompts redirect focus from a survivor’s inner world to the perpetrator’s actions, choices, and behaviors—opening the door to mapping risk to children, cataloging incidents, and designing interventions that actually reduce danger. We also widen the lens to the ecosystem around survivors—family pressure, faith norms, small-island logistics, and economic traps—that make “just leave” dangerous or impossible for many.
The invitation is clear: try a week—or a month—without the word denial. Replace labels with behavioral pattern facts. Keep the person causing harm at the center of risk and response.
If this resonates, subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review telling us which label you’re dropping next. Your words help others find the show—and change practice for the better.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Rain on the windows, a century-old clock in the kitchen, and a plate of bacon by the coffee set: David’s 60th birthday set the scene for a raw, open conversation about vocation, love, and the future of domestic violence–informed systems. We pause to reflect on 40 years of David’s practice and what it means to be truly witnessed. Then we get specific about how to build safer families by changing how professionals see, measure, and respond to harm.
We dig into a strengths-first approach that starts with what’s going right and why that’s not soft—it’s real and nurturing of change. By centering survivors’ experiences and recognizing good practice in workers, we create solid ground for hard conversations about accountability. We talk candidly about the damage caused when systems remove children from safe parents because of a perpetrator’s behavior and how the Safe & Together Model reframes responsibility, documents patterns of coercive control, and reduces unnecessary removals. Along the way, we explore an ethic of care that holds multiple truths: refuse to demonize people, refuse to whitewash harm, and persist in naming impact.
Looking ahead, we outline three big moves. First, scale with integrity: more Safe & Together Model Certified Trainers, Partner Agencies, and outcomes data across child protection and community services. Second, bridge men’s mental health with male violence prevention—a silo-busting agenda that catches risk earlier, supports men in crisis, and protects partners and kids. Third, bring practice into the workflow with SafetyNexus, a model-guided technology that streamlines documentation, builds decision maps, reduces moral injury and burnout, and delivers real-time quality assurance. We also share how “credible experts”—survivors and cultural leaders—are paid, respected, and embedded in design so solutions are ethical, non-extractive, and truly useful.
If you care about domestic violence, child safety, survivor-centered practice, men’s health, or building humane systems that actually work, this conversation will give you tools and hope. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with one insight you’re taking back to your practice.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
What happens when men are finally invited to speak from the heart? We sit down with Kenneth Braswell, founder of Fathers Incorporated and author of Too Seasoned To Care, to explore fear as a learned behavior, anger as a secondary emotion, and why safety and healing must stand side by side. From Crown Heights to Sheepshead Bay, we trace how Brooklyn’s beauty and danger taught vigilance, how redlining and racial tension shaped daily life, and how those lessons echo through fatherhood, relationships, and community safety.
Kenneth shares the moment he shifted from powerless boy to accountable man and the simple progression that drives his work: Change how a man feels, then how he thinks, then what he does. We unpack the hard line that keeps families safe—no excuses for coercion or abuse—while still making room for men to tell the truth about abandonment, shame, and the fears that hide beneath control. This is not about shaming men. It’s about giving them an acceptable language for emotions, practical skills for conflict, and the courage to choose connection over domination.
We talk prevention that starts at home: more eye contact, softer touch, and everyday rituals that teach boys their feelings won’t cost them love. We also talk repair for adults: how to own fear without handing it to your partner, how to build trust after harm, and how to raise sons and daughters who know that boundaries are acts of care. Along the way, you’ll hear stickball and Scully, letters to a younger self, and the reminder that men need friendships that honor the grown man and the inner boy.
If you care about safer families, healthier men, and kids who thrive, this conversation offers a clear, compassionate path forward. Listen, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find the show. Then hit follow so you never miss an episode.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
The house looks perfect from the street—until you step inside and feel the air shift. We sit with survivor, campaigner, and author David Challen to trace the shape of coercive control through a child’s eyes: a mother’s world shrinking, a father’s rules governing every room, and a son trying to earn love by molding himself to a script that never fit. This is not a tidy true-crime arc. It’s the long echo of control on identity, mental health, and the stories boys are told about how to be men.
David unpacks how “small” acts—who can visit, when dinner is served, how money is spent—stack into a total system of power. He names what many miss: economic abuse as a lever, isolation as a tactic, gaslighting as the daily weather. We talk about the man box and the costs of belonging, from silence to self-erasure. We tackle the hard part too: accountability that goes beyond time served. Real repair means naming strategy and impact, especially on children who lived the consequences, and measuring change by consistent, relational behavior over time.
For practitioners, we get specific. Speak to children separately. Document patterns, not just incidents. See acting out, addiction, or stoicism as possible signals of exposure to domestic abuse. For schools, use relationship education to decode media, practice empathy, and give boys language without shame. For survivors—especially adult child survivors—claiming identity and community can turn a private burden into shared understanding and support.
Terms like coercive control, boys’ mental health, domestic abuse, economic abuse, restorative justice, and healthy masculinity thread through this conversation for a reason: They’re the keys to earlier recognition and real change.
If this resonates, share it with someone who needs language for what they’ve lived. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what does real accountability look like to you?
Find David's book here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93021229-the-unthinkable
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
The conversation opens with end-of-the-year reflections and personal milestones—international book releases, masterclasses, collaborations, and community work—and quickly moves to a timely, thorny question: Can we talk honestly about male violence without “shaming” men? We take a stand for courage, honesty, and clarity using global data, real cases, and practical frameworks to show how accountability, truth about behaviors and their impact, and compassion can live side by side. Our goal isn’t to score points; it’s to keep families safer, support children’s well-being, and help men find a way back into healthy connection.
We share insights from research in Australia, including applications of the Safe & Together Model in child and family services and in Aboriginal-led settings. That work underscores a core theme: organize around shared values, not shared trauma. We explain why labels and decontextual tags fail families and why pattern-based, contextual practice—mapping behaviors, impacts, and risk—succeeds. Along the way, we address restorative justice and carceral responses with nuance: Both can help or harm depending on how they’re used, and some people do require firm containment. The standard remains constant—what increases survivor safety, improves children’s stability, and creates the strongest opportunities for behavior change.
We also unpack the “shame” debate with care. Shame is a human emotion; the task is to guide it into inclusive responsibility, not silence the conversation. The facts are clear: Men are disproportionately perpetrators of serious violence, and boys growing up amid coercive control learn dangerous scripts about loss and power. Naming this is not man-bashing—it’s a necessary move toward balance, health, and prevention. We close with a story of loving confrontation that strengthened a father-child bond, offering a model for how accountability can deepen connection rather than destroy it.
If this resonates, subscribe and share the episode with someone who cares about safer families, effective practice, and honest conversations. Leave a review to help others find the show, and tell us: what does accountable love look like in your community?
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
A stadium’s worth of men—every year. That’s the scale of new intimate partner violence use suggested by Ten To Men, Australia’s landmark longitudinal study of male health.
We sit down with Karlee O’Donnell, a researcher with the Australian Institute of Family Studies, to unpack what the data really says about how depression, suicidality, paternal warmth, and social support shape men’s risk—and what actually works to prevent harm.
Across a decade of surveys, one in three men self-reported using some form of intimate partner violence. Yet within those hard numbers are practical levers. Men who strongly felt they received warm, respectful affection from a father or father figure were nearly half as likely to perpetrate IPV later. That’s not about father presence; it’s about the quality of care boys see and absorb. We translate that insight into real-world steps: father-inclusive perinatal care, concrete coaching on warmth and de-escalation, and programs that treat caregiving as core to men’s health.
We also dig into mental health pathways without reducing IPV to mental illness. Men with moderate or severe depressive symptoms were significantly more likely to use IPV later, and men with suicidal thoughts, plans, or attempts carried elevated risk independent of depression. We explore how anger, externalizing behaviors, and coercive control intersect with distress, and why services must protect partners while caring for the suicidal person. Clinicians get a roadmap: use screenings as early-warning signals, educate on escalation, build coping skills, and connect men to support before behavior hardens into harm.
Finally, we highlight the quiet power of social support, which lowered the odds of IPV onset, and we make the case for policy that rebuilds men’s community ties and includes fathers from day one. Healthier men mean safer families and stronger communities. If you care about preventing violence, ending loneliness, and improving men’s mental health, this conversation points to integrated solutions you can act on today.
If this resonated, follow the show, share with a friend, and leave a review to help others find it. Have a question or a story to add? Drop us a note and join the conversation.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
A woman calls for help after being strangled in her own home. He shows a scratch; she leaves in handcuffs. From that moment, the system that promised safety starts to mirror the control she’s trying to escape. That’s the hard truth we face with researcher and practitioner Lisa Young Larance, whose new book, Broken, gathers the long-view stories of 33 women navigating coercive control, wrongful arrest, child protection, court, and probation.
We unpack how the victim-perpetrator binary distorts reality, how funding and mandates reward incident-based thinking, and why context, intent, and impact must replace “a hit is a hit.” Lisa explains the “web of power” that connects first response to courtrooms and case plans, showing how misidentification robs survivors—especially low-income women of color—of liberty, employment, and custody. We contrast gendered patterns of accountability: women who admit and take responsibility even while surviving abuse and men who deny, deflect, and mobilize institutions against partners.
Amid the failures are bright anchors of repair. A child protection worker who gives the “whole layout” changes a family’s trajectory. A probation officer shifts dates, protects parenting time, and quietly engineers safe relocation when threats escalate. We dig into documentation as a long-lived force—how a single line in a case note can shadow a mother for a decade, and how behaviorally specific, pattern-based records can be a lifeline. We also ask the question systems avoid: Did calling the police make life better over six to 60 months? If not, what will it take to make a “yes” the norm?
Told in first-person conversation with warmth and candor, this episode blends survivor voice, practitioner insight, and practical steps: Center coercive control, measure impact on functioning, build cross-agency flexibility, and write records that reflect reality. If you care about domestic violence, child protection, probation, or community safety, this is a clear-eyed guide to doing less harm and more good.
If this moved you, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway—what would you change first?
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
A clear map beats chaos when lives are at stake. We sit down with Dr. Kate Fitz-Gibbon to draw a sharper line between “losing control” in life and being coercively controlled by a partner, and we keep children at the center where they belong. Through careful research and straight talk, we unpack why men’s and women’s experiences of intimate partner abuse often look different in impact, fear, and loss of liberty—and how that difference should guide courts, police, and service providers in mapping patterns and identifying who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.
We dive into male self-reports of coercive control, exploring cases that include humiliation, verbal abuse, and financial restriction, as well as accounts driven by entitlement to control over partners or children. Then we widen the lens: Pattern mapping across time exposes the primary aggressor more reliably than incident-by-incident thinking, prevents misidentification under new coercive control laws, and creates a direct line to child safety by holding domestic abusers, prevalently fathers, accountable as parents. If you work in child protection, probation, or family courts, you’ll hear practical ways to separate counter-allegations from documentable behavioral patterns.
The stakes rise when we talk about boys. Australian national data shows high rates of childhood maltreatment among both girls and boys, with domestic abuse often at the center. When boys’ trauma goes unrecognized or untreated, the risk of later violence, school disengagement, and mental health crises increases. We argue for prevention efforts that help boys navigate rejection, loss of control, consent, and emotional vulnerability—while unlearning coercive patterns used to manage relationships and life stress. This must be paired with services truly designed for children. Add culture change that dismantles the “man box,” and you begin to connect the dots between men’s health, family safety, and the prevention of future homicides.
Listen for a practical, compassionate framework that respects male victims, safeguards women and children, and helps systems stop guessing at who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague who needs a better map, and leave a review with one insight you’ll use this week.
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Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
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Blame doesn’t make families safer—clarity does. We sit down with Scottish survivors and practitioners from Equally Safe Falkirk to explore how a survivor-centered, perpetrator-focused, child safety–driven approach changes practice, confidence, and outcomes. You’ll hear how validation replaces tick-box culture, how naming protective parenting restores mothers’ confidence, and how raising standards for fathers reframes accountability as a set of concrete parenting choices.
Nicolla and Emma walk us through building a service with lived experience at its core—co-designing groups like Serenity and Women Unite, challenging harmful language. While survivors Steph and Lita share raw, powerful stories of experiencing moving from professional and system victim blaming and invisibility to being believed and partnered with. Their accounts reveal what happens when professionals consistently pivot back to the perpetrator’s behaviour, document survivor strengths, and stay curious instead of prescriptive. The result isn’t just better engagement; it’s safer children, stronger parenting, and more effective multi-agency work.
We also dig into the tough stuff: working with fathers who cause harm without colluding, addressing trauma and substance use without excusing abuse, and building the skills to challenge, contain, and guide change over time. Tools like Choose to Change help dads interrupt escalation, but the heartbeat is consistent messaging: your behavior is a parenting choice with consequences for your child’s physical and mental health. Leaders will hear a clear call to invest in rigorous training, align language across agencies, and normalize accountability for fathers as a core child protection standard.
If this conversation challenged you or gave you a new tool, share it with a colleague, subscribe for more survivor-centered practice, and leave a review with the one insight you’ll use this week.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Send us a text
The weaponisation of immigration status has become a powerful tool in the arsenal of domestic abusers. For migrant survivors, the choice between enduring abuse or risking deportation represents an impossible dilemma that traps them in dangerous situations.
Meena Kumari, a domestic abuse practitioner with 21 years of experience in the UK, shares how the situation for migrant survivors has deteriorated rather than improved over her career. Where once migrants needed to wait two years before applying for indefinite leave to remain, they now must wait five years—creating a dangerous window where abusers can exploit immigration vulnerabilities through coercive control. This pattern isn't unique to Britain; similar dynamics play out across the globe.
The conversation explores how "honour-based abuse" is often misunderstood and racialised, with certain communities facing heightened scrutiny while similar patterns of violence in white Christian contexts go unlabeled. This structural racism compounds the challenges facing migrant survivors who must navigate not only their abuser's tactics but also systems that may report their immigration status rather than prioritise their safety.
Most disturbingly, we examine how the recent rise in anti-immigrant sentiment and far-right activity weaponises concern for women's safety while ignoring that most violence against women occurs behind closed doors, perpetrated by someone known to the victim. These movements position themselves as "protectors" while creating conditions that make migrant survivors less likely to seek help.
The episode concludes with hope through Kumari's work with perpetrators from South Asian communities, demonstrating how accountability and cultural competence can work together effectively. Through programs that acknowledge cultural contexts while firmly challenging harmful behaviours, practitioners are creating pathways to meaningful change.
If you're working with survivors across cultural contexts or seeking to understand the complex intersection of immigration and domestic abuse, this episode offers essential insights for creating more effective, equitable responses. Share this episode with colleagues committed to survivor-centred practice that truly meets the needs of all communities.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
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Religious teachings wield profound influence over family dynamics and human behaviors, sometimes enabling abuse under the guise of spiritual teachings and guidance. This raw and revealing conversation confronts the troubling legacy of religious parenting methodologies that promote violence, rights removal, and coercive control rather than nurturing safe, consensual connection.
Ruth shares her personal experience growing up under the influence of James Dobson's parenting teachings, exposing how these "Christian" parenting strategies actually originated from eugenicist theories of the 1930s. David and Ruth dissect how these methodologies create detailed systems for child abuse by advocating for escalating physical punishment, demeaning, demanding affection after violence, and treating children as inherently manipulative or "demonic." Most disturbing is how these approaches specifically target vulnerable children, with neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ youth suffering disproportionately under these regimes of violence and control.
The conversation explores how religious justifications for violence extend beyond parenting into marital relationships, where men are positioned as divinely appointed authorities with the right to abuse and control women. This creates intergenerational patterns where violence becomes the primary coping tool for men and women for managing anxiety, fear, and situations where one feels out of control. David and Ruth challenge these distortions of faith, emphasizing that "coerced faith is not faith" and that true spirituality requires free will and personal dignity.
For professionals working with families, this episode highlights the importance of going beyond trauma-informed approaches to understand how religious values shape family dynamics and entitlement for coercion and abuse. For those currently practicing these methods because they believe them spiritually necessary, there's an invitation to question whether these approaches truly reflect deeper values and support healthy, long-term connections to partner, parent, and pastor or simply perpetuate trauma and harm.
Join this eye-opening discussion on how we can recognize, resist, and heal from religiously justified abuse while creating healthier spiritual environments for ourselves and future generations. Visit safeandtogetherinstitute.com to learn more about domestic abuse–informed approaches that create safety and dignity for all family members.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Send us a text
When a perpetrator targets a family pet, they're sending a clear message about what they're capable of—and revealing a dangerous pattern that threatens everyone in the home. This eye-opening conversation with Maya Badham, founder of the Centre for Animal Inclusive Safeguarding, explores the deeply troubling intersection of animal abuse and coercive control.
The weaponization of animals extends far beyond physical violence. Perpetrators systematically use pets as tools for economic abuse, stalking, isolation, and emotional manipulation. Maya shares striking examples of how abusers mirror their tactics across all family members (e.g., if non-fatal strangulation is used against human victims, similar methods often appear in their treatment of animals). This pattern recognition is crucial for effective risk assessment and intervention.
Most troubling is how our systems force survivors into impossible choices. "I can't leave you home alone with my dog," Maya explains, highlighting how perpetrators create entrapment through a victim's attachment to their pet. With limited animal-inclusive refuge options, many survivors delay leaving or return to abusive situations because they have nowhere to go with their beloved animals.
The conversation reveals a critical intervention opportunity: Survivors frequently disclose concerns about their pets before discussing their own abuse. By asking about animals in the home and showing genuine concern for their welfare, professionals can build trust and gather vital information about risk factors that might otherwise remain hidden. Yet these opportunities are often missed because domestic violence and animal welfare professionals operate in separate silos.
Maya's Animal Inclusive Safeguarding Practice Blueprint aims to bridge these gaps by integrating animal welfare considerations into existing domestic violence responses. This approach recognizes the human-animal bond as a crucial protective factor—especially against domestic abuse–related suicide—and works toward solutions that keep both humans and animals safe from harm.
Ready to improve your practice? Subscribe to our podcast for more insights on creating truly trauma-informed, domestic abuse–informed, whole-family approaches to domestic violence intervention that protect all family members—including those with paws, claws, fins, feathers, scales, and tails.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
Send us a text
When churches call clergy sexual abuse “moral failings” or “affairs,” they obscure the truth: Predatory pastors groom adult congregants using tactics that mirror coercive control and intimate partner violence.
Counselor and researcher Jaime Simpson joins us to dismantle myths about consent in faith settings, drawing from her study Broken, Shattered & Spiritually Battered: Groom Pastors Who Prey on Adult Congregation Members. Focusing on evangelical and Pentecostal communities in Australia, her findings reveal systemic grooming—romantic, therapeutic, and spiritual deception—layered with isolation, boundary violations, and theology-based coercion and systematic collusion with perpetrators to hide their criminal behaviours and shield them from accountability with the use of spiritually based forgiveness rituals.
Simpson shows how purity culture, male authority, and loyalty to leadership prime congregations for collusion, silence, and exploitation, while institutions minimize sexual violence but act swiftly on financial crimes. Her message to survivors: “You weren’t complicit. What happened to you was not your fault.”
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.
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Surviving trauma isn't evidence of brokenness—it’s proof of extraordinary strength. Yet traditional therapy approaches often miss this crucial reality, focusing instead on deficits and pathology while forcing survivors to relive painful experiences without first creating safety.
In this powerful conversation, therapist and trauma survivor Oli Doyle joins David and Ruth to challenge conventional therapeutic wisdom that keeps trauma survivors stuck in cycles of shame and self-blame. Together, they explore how true healing begins with recognizing the remarkable resilience that allowed survivors to endure seemingly impossible circumstances.
“How the hell are you sitting in front of me still alive, still breathing? How have you done that?” Oli asks his clients, shifting focus away from pathologizing trauma responses toward honoring the ingenuity that enabled survival. This perspective represents a radical departure from approaches that ask, "What’s wrong with you?" instead of, “What happened to you and how did you survive it?”
The discussion delves into how trauma lives in our bodies, requiring more than verbal processing for healing. Ruth explains, “You can’t talk your way out of a body response. You have to use body-based strategies to help the body get through that moment.” This embodied understanding of trauma recognizes that memories live in our tissues, manifesting as behaviors that once served protective functions but may now cause suffering.
Beyond individual healing, the conversation challenges the cultural narrative that personal choices determine outcomes regardless of context. As Oli notes, “What we’ve been taught in colonial cultures is that contexts and structural factors don’t matter. If you just make the right choices, you’ll have a good life.” This individualistic perspective serves systems of power while obscuring how structural inequities shape trauma and limit options.
For mental health professionals, this episode offers a powerful invitation to examine implicit biases and deficit-focused approaches. For survivors, it provides validation that survival itself represents an extraordinary achievement worthy of recognition and respect. And for everyone, it illuminates how honouring survivor strengths rather than focusing on brokenness creates pathways to genuine healing and post-traumatic growth.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
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What does it take to transform domestic violence practice in an organization? In this illuminating conversation with Safe & Together Institute’s Systems Change Champion Kyra Feetham from the Centre for Women & Co. in Queensland, Australia, we explore the power of language, values alignment, and relationship-building in creating sustainable change.
Kyra shares her journey of embedding the Safe & Together Model at the Centre for Women & Co., where a remarkable shift occurred through both top-down leadership support and bottom-up practitioner enthusiasm. One pivotal change happened at the documentation level: transforming intake questions from generic inquiries about children to specific examinations of “how the perpetrator’s behavior impacts family functioning.” This simple but profound shift refocuses attention on perpetrator patterns rather than survivor actions.
The conversation delves into the complexities of working with historically marginalized communities, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Kyra reflects on the importance of self-awareness when navigating systems that have caused intergenerational harm: “Anti-oppressive practice starts with you as an individual... understanding that as a white woman working in largely government-based systems, that equals danger for many communities.”
As coordinator for the Logan area’s High Risk Team, Kyra offers invaluable insights into how the Safe & Together framework helps practitioners critically examine prior system decisions and identify opportunities to repair relationships with survivors. She emphasizes how meaningful conversations with people using violence (“What kind of father do you want to be?”) create pathways to accountability that generic risk assessments cannot achieve.
For practitioners aspiring to become change agents themselves, Kyra’s advice resonates with wisdom: Build relationships throughout your community, understand what others have tried, and connect with values-aligned individuals who are ready for a better approach. Her message to survivors rings clear: I see you, I hear you, I believe you, and there are passionate practitioners working to improve safety and accountability, even if you’re not currently seeking services.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
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When Kelly Daley, Community Connection Practitioner at Upper Murray Family Care, stood to accept her Champion Award for case practice in the Asia Pacific region, she was not just celebrating professional achievement—she was honoring a deeply personal journey of healing and transformation. Working across three agencies to implement the Safe & Together Model framework with children and young people affected by violence, Kelly has pioneered practice that shifts focus from managing children’s behaviors to holding perpetrators as parents accountable for the trauma they’ve caused.
”It healed broken bits of me that I had no idea were broken,” Kelly shares about her own experience with the Safe & Together Model, revealing how recognizing her strength as a survivor now drives her passion for partnering with others. This personal connection infuses her work with authenticity and purpose as she helps both survivors and practitioners navigate complex family violence situations.
What makes Kelly’s approach revolutionary is her emphasis on documentation and collaborative practice. She demonstrates how properly documenting strengths, protective factors, and patterns of behavior transforms not just paperwork but actual outcomes for families. When child protection services can see a mother’s protective efforts clearly recorded, they’re more likely to hold perpetrators accountable rather than placing the burden on victims. This shift represents the Model’s principles in action: partnering with survivors while keeping perpetrators in view.
Kelly’s implementation work addresses practitioner fears head-on through toolbox sessions, phased learning approaches, and supportive supervision. She recognizes that many professionals haven’t been trained to engage with fathers at all—let alone those who use violence—creating a significant gap in family-centered services. By building practitioner confidence gradually, she ensures the model becomes embedded in everyday practice rather than dependent on her presence.
Whether you’re a practitioner seeking to improve your approach to family violence or a survivor looking for hope, Kelly’s journey illuminates what’s possible when we truly partner with survivors while keeping perpetrators in view. Join us for this powerful conversation about transforming systems from the inside out, one family at a time.
Upper Murray Family Care (UMFC) is a not-for-profit, authentically place-based community service organisation that operates across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory environments. UMFC provides support and capacity-building programs and services for children, young people, individuals, families, stakeholders, and communities throu
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
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Imagine a world where our most vulnerable babies are protected without automatically severing their connection to their family. That's the vision Lauren Seager-Smith brings as Chief Executive of the For Baby's Sake Trust, where they're revolutionizing responses to domestic abuse during pregnancy and early childhood.
The numbers are staggering: approximately 50,000 babies under two are referred to social care in England each year due to domestic abuse, with 2,000 entering out-of-home care. Each placement costs taxpayers £281,000 annually—but that's just the economic cost. The human toll is immeasurable.
Lauren shares how their innovative program works therapeutically with both parents from pregnancy through the baby's second birthday. Unlike traditional approaches that focus exclusively on mothers or default to family separation, they engage fathers who use abusive behaviors while simultaneously supporting mothers and protecting children. What makes this approach particularly effective is its recognition that pregnancy represents a critical intervention point where many parents are highly motivated to change.
The program reveals profound insights about intergenerational trauma. Among participating parents, 73% of fathers and 74% of mothers have experienced six or more adverse childhood experiences themselves. "For many of our fathers, they want a different story for their baby," Lauren explains. This motivation becomes the foundation for intensive work around emotional regulation, trauma processing, and building attunement with their infant.
Perhaps most striking is the economic case for prevention. At approximately £9,000 per year per family—versus £281,000 for a child in care—programs like For Baby's Sake offer a fiscally responsible alternative to our current crisis-response systems. Yet despite this clear math, governments continue prioritizing expensive reactive measures over prevention.
This conversation challenges us to think differently about protecting children. Can we create systems that hold those who use violence accountable while supporting their capacity to change? Can we recognize the profound connection between maternal and child welfare without placing impossible burdens on mothers? Most importantly, can we find the courage to invest in prevention, even when immediate crises demand our attention?
Join us for this thought-provoking discussion that reimagines what's possible when we truly commit to breaking cycles of harm and supporting healthy family connections from the very beginning of life.
Learn more at: https://forbabyssake.org.uk/
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
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What if ending violence against women isn't just about asking men to stop bad behavior, but inviting them to embrace a more meaningful definition of strength and leadership? This question forms the heart of our powerful conversation with Jackson Katz, Ph.D., one of the world's foremost male voices in the movement to prevent gender-based violence.
Katz joins us to discuss his groundbreaking new book "Every Man: Why Violence Against Women is a Men's Issue"—the first book published by a major publisher addressing men's violence with men as a primary target audience. With decades of experience pioneering bystander intervention training and educating on these issues, Katz offers profound insights into why this particular moment demands men's full engagement with ending violence against women.
Together, we explore how masculinity is "policed" through social mechanisms that keep thoughtful men silent. The modern lexicon of shame—terms like "simp," "cuck," and "beta male"—serves to isolate men who might otherwise speak out against misogyny or violence. Yet Katz argues persuasively that true strength isn't demonstrated through domination but through moral courage, resilience, and standing against injustice.
We delve into how traditional mental health approaches often fail to address violence, how some of the most prominent voices speaking to men today actively undermine healthy masculinity, and why institutional accountability must accompany individual leadership. Particularly riveting is Katz's argument that prevention work must be framed as a leadership expectation, not merely an optional hope.
This conversation doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths—including how patriarchal systems harm men themselves through what Katz calls "the triad of men's violence": violence against women, violence against other men, and violence against themselves. Yet it ends with an affirming vision of how men and women, with their fundamentally similar emotional makeups, can find connection instead of conflict.
Whether you're a survivor, a male ally, or someone seeking to understand these issues more deeply, this episode offers invaluable perspectives on creating a world where all people can live without violence or threat.
Read more about Jackson's work here: https://www.jacksonkatz.com/
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
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When Bruce Bieber's phone rang at 2:50 AM, his world shattered. Three deputies stood at his door with news that his daughter Abby, a dedicated police officer known for her compassion and professionalism, had been murdered by her boyfriend – a fellow officer with a documented history of domestic violence that had been systematically minimized by their department.
This powerful conversation exposes the deadly consequences of law enforcement's failure to address domestic violence within their ranks. Bruce shares how his daughter's killer had previously threatened another girlfriend at gunpoint, yet received only a token reprimand to "stop dating her" rather than facing criminal charges or meaningful discipline. This pattern of protection enabled him to continue serving while posing a lethal threat to those closest to him.
The discussion delves into what experts call the "data desert" surrounding officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV) – the deliberate lack of tracking and transparency that shields departments from accountability. With estimates suggesting 40-60% of officers may perpetrate domestic abuse, this creates a horrifying reality where victims call 911 only to have their cases potentially handled by officers who are abusers themselves.
We examine how well-intentioned policies like zero-tolerance rules and firearms restrictions for domestic abusers can backfire, sometimes discouraging reporting rather than promoting safety. Bruce advocates for pattern-based approaches that allow departments to address concerning behaviors before they escalate to violence, potentially saving lives like his daughter's.
For survivors trapped in relationships with law enforcement officers, Bruce offers hard-earned wisdom: recognize the warning signs, understand that leaving is the most dangerous time, and connect with experts who can help create a comprehensive safety plan. His message resonates with the urgency of someone who's lost everything and is determined that no other family should experience this preventable tragedy.
If you're concerned about domestic violence in your community or workplace, join us in demanding accountability, transparency, and change. Together, we can ensure that those who wear the badge truly protect and serve all members of society – including their own families.
Other OIDV Related EpisodesEpisode 27: “How much crime are you willing to let your police commit?”
Episode 26: Listening to the voices of survivors of officer-involved dom
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
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David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel share highlights from the 2025 Safe & Together Asia Pacific Coercive Control and Children's Conference in Melbourne, Australia. Listen in as they reflect on key moments and the impact of bringing together over 400 practitioners from across the region. Here are some of the highlights:
• Commitment to equity through a hybrid format that allowed participation from remote locations despite the technical and financial challenges
• First-ever family law track showcasing four years of work with the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia
• Launch of e-learning resources for independent Children's Lawyers that will reach over 1,200 practitioners
• Focus on decolonizing practice and centering indigenous perspectives through keynote speakers like Aboriginal lawyer Amanda Morgan
• Workshop on ethically including survivor expertise in organizations without exploitation or tokenism
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
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In this episode, David and Ruth speak with Dr. Annie Donaldson about her groundbreaking research examining domestic abuse in Scotland's rural, remote and island communities. Dr. Donaldson, an honorary research fellow at the University of Strathclyde and longtime expert in gender-based violence, shares insights from interviews with survivors and professionals about the unique dynamics of domestic abuse in small, interconnected communities.
Key topics include:
- The "paradox of proximity" - how physical isolation combines with close social connections to create unique challenges for survivors in rural areas
- How community connections can be both supportive and entrapping for survivors experiencing domestic abuse
- How perpetrators exploit small community dynamics and relationships to maintain control
- The incredible protective efforts of survivors, including maintaining children's routines and wellbeing despite multiple forced moves
- The impact of the Safe & Together Model in helping professionals challenge victim-blaming attitudes and better support survivors
Dr. Donaldson discusses how traditional social work approaches focused solely on "problem-solving" often miss the emotional realities and strengths of survivors including:
- Validating and building on survivors' existing protective efforts
- Recognizing how historical distrust of authorities impacts help-seeking
- Using technology and remote options to increase accessibility
This episode provides vital insights for any professional working with survivors in rural, remote or close-knit communities while highlighting the universal dynamics of entrapment that transcend geography.
Resources:
- Safe & Together Family & Friends Ally Guide
- Dr. Annie Donaldson's research blog on rural domestic abuse
- The story of Glasgow’s Magdalene Institution by Dr. Anni Donaldson
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a text
"Single mothers are essentially the unofficial reserve army of prevention agents in this country and around the world." - Jess Hill
In this episode, David and Ruth speak with Australian experts Jess Hill and Professor Michael Salter about their groundbreaking paper challenging current approaches to preventing gender-based violence. With Australia's commitment to end gender-based violence within a generation, yet concerning increases in sexual violence and domestic homicides, this timely discussion explores why traditional prevention strategies focused on changing social norms and attitudes have fallen short.
Key points discussed include:
- The limitations of measuring prevention success through attitude surveys rather than actual reductions in violence
- Why structural interventions and accountability are essential alongside education efforts
- The need to focus resources on high-risk scenarios and populations, particularly traumatized youth
- How systems often fail to provide practical help when survivors, especially young people, disclose abuse
- The importance of shifting from "calling out" to "calling in" approaches when addressing harmful behaviors
- Why prevention efforts must acknowledge the reality that most people have been impacted by violence rather than assuming a "clean slate"
Related episodes:
- Season 2 Episode 12: How Coercive Control Harms Child Safety & Wellbeing: An Interview With Jess Hill
Additional Resources:
- See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse by Jess Hill
- Childlight Research Centre - University of New South Wales
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a text
In this episode, David and Ruth explore why coercive control must be at the center of how we understand the impact of domestic abuse on children. Moving beyond just focusing on physical violence or whether children "witnessed" abuse, they discuss how perpetrators' patterns of behavior can devastate children's wellbeing in multiple ways.
David and Ruth examine how coercive control by perpetrators can rob children of vital resources including economic stability, healthcare, education, family connections, and safety. They discuss how these patterns intersect with systemic oppression and vulnerabilities, creating additional layers of harm that perpetrators exploit.
The conversation highlights how a coercive control framework helps professionals better assess perpetrators' harmful parenting choices, understand survivors' protective efforts, and make more informed decisions about child safety. The hosts emphasize the importance of documenting specific harms to children and challenging perpetrators who use culture or religion to justify control.
They emphasize that the costs of not addressing these issues - in terms of children's wellbeing and broader societal impact - are too high to ignore.
Related Episodes
Season 2 Episode 12: How Coercive Control Harms Child Safety & Wellbeing: An Interview With Researcher Dr. Emma Katz
Season 2 Episode 10: Trauma-Informed Is Not The Same As Domestic Violence-Informed: A Conversation About The Intersection Of Domestic Violence Perpetration, Mental Health & Addiction
Season 1 Episode 1: Coercive Control And Consent
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a text
In this thought-provoking first episode of 2025, David and Ruth explore how displacement-based responses to domestic violence reflect and reinforce gender double standards while often creating additional vulnerabilities for survivors and their children. Recording from the Azores, they examine how the expectation that victims must leave their homes to find safety places unfair burdens on survivors while failing to hold perpetrators accountable.
Key discussion points include:
- How displacement-based responses arose historically when women had limited legal and economic rights
- Why forcing survivors to leave their homes, financial assets, and support networks creates new vulnerabilities
- How displacement can enable post-separation coercive control and increase risks to children
- The limitations of defining "safety" only in terms of immediate physical danger or lethality
- Why systems need to expand their definition of safety to include stability, wellbeing, and survivor autonomy
- How child protection and other systems can inadvertently punish survivors who don't leave while failing to hold perpetrators accountable for creating unsafe conditions
David and Ruth discuss concrete ways to move beyond displacement-based practices, including:
- Centering survivor choice, autonomy and definitions of safety/wellbeing
- Holding perpetrators accountable for how their behavior disrupts family stability
- Creating a fuller range of intervention options beyond emergency shelter
- Reframing "failure to protect" to focus on perpetrators' choices that endanger children
Check out these related episodesSeason 5 Episode 12: Challenging the Gospel of Sacrifice: Faith, Domestic Abuse, and Institutional Transformation
Season 5 Episode 9: Partnering vs. Practicing: The Hidden Bias in Professional Crisis Work
Season 5 Episode 8: The Myth of the Domestic Violence Incident
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
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What if understanding power dynamics could transform the way we approach domestic abuse and trauma? Join us for this special live recording of the "Partner with a Survivor" podcast, where we invite you to explore the delicate intricacies of relationships alongside hosts David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo from the Safe and Together Institute.
Ruth, known for her "Cranky Survivor" persona, opens up about how this unique character serves as both a personal expression and a strategic response to the challenges faced by victim survivors when dealing with institutional behaviors & professional biases. Together, we navigate the critical importance of embracing survivor feedback—anger and all—while we unravel the deeply ingrained social and gender biases within professional practices.
Dive into the heart of coercive control and break down the complex layers of what is called "mutualized" violence, which we call 'acts of resistance' to a perpetrator's coercion & harm. Our conversation challenges the status quo by examining who truly holds power and control in relationships, especially in contexts riddled with bias against marginalized women. We don't shy away from the difficult but necessary task of confronting systemic issues and weaponized responses to survivor anger, urging professionals to recognize anger as a healthy and natural response to boundary violations. In this episode, we champion the importance of safe environments for survivors to express their emotions and set boundaries, particularly in the face of systemic challenges.
As we wrap up, we shift our focus to the evolving language within the Safe and Together framework. By moving away from North American-centric jargon, we aim to align with global conversations and maintain core principles through adaptable language. The episode concludes with a discussion on fostering healthy professional relationships, emphasizing collaboration across genders to ensure child and community safety.
Reflect with us on how these insights can be applied in your own life, and help us continue our mission by sharing your feedback and suggestions for future topics.
Listen to prior episodes about professionals, victim blaming, acts of resistance & power dynamics:
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/episode-2-partnered-with-a-survivor-podcast/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-3-episode-7-understanding-and-validating-survivors-acts-of-resistance/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-5-episode-2-womens-use-of-force-in-intimate-relationships/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-3-episode-3-minisode-on-worker-safety-well-being-when-workers-have-their-own-histories-of-abuse/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/episo
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a text
What if the institutions we turn to for solace are also be the ones trapping us in cycles of harm? That's the challenging reality we confront in our latest episode featuring Reverend Geneece Goertzen, affectionately known as Rev. Gen. A survivor of domestic violence herself, Rev. Gen brings a deeply personal perspective to the table, sharing insights from her book "Taking it Seriously: A Faith Leader's Guide to Domestic Violence." Her story is not just one of survival but also of transformation, as she navigates the complex role of religious institutions in both supporting and, at times, failing their communities.
The episode takes a hard look at the concept of institutional betrayal within faith communities. Often, religious institutions prioritize their preservation over the well-being of individuals, inadvertently perpetuating abuse. We explore the cultural dynamics that contribute to this betrayal and the severe impact it has on survivors' mental health and faith. By addressing these systemic issues, we aim to uncover how these institutions can evolve to offer genuine support and protection to those in need, rather than acting as barriers to justice and healing.
Finally, Ruth, David and Rev. Gen discuss how to challenge traditional gender roles and societal norms that can exacerbate domestic violence. Together we explore what a new reality might look like: What if these same institutions could shift their focus to how a domestic abuse perpetrators' behaviors threaten their own spiritual health, the spiritual health of the family, and their religious community?
Rev. Gen provides practical advice for faith leaders on how they can be allies to victims, highlighting the importance of comprehensive education and the integration of licensed therapists into faith communities. Through this episode, we envision a path toward transformation, where love, acceptance, and support genuinely resonate within religious frameworks.
Check out these resources from Rev. GenRead her book "Taking it Seriously: A Faith Leader's Guide to Domestic Violence."
Vist Rev. Gen's website
Check out these related resourcesThe Safe & Together Institute Friends and Family Ally GuideChoose to Change Toolkit
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a text
Unlock the secrets to supporting children affected by domestic abuse with insights from Dr. Asha Patel, CEO of Innovating Minds. In this episode, we explore innovative approaches like the Healing Together program, which integrates trauma-informed principles, neuroscience, and attachment models to help children manage their emotions. Dr. Patel shares her journey from working with high-profile offenders to founding Innovating Minds, with a mission to provide early support for children often mislabeled as "naughty" and excluded from education. Discover how digital access is pivotal for equitable scalability and the importance of training frontline practitioners to extend the program's reach.
We'll shed light on the complex challenges of providing timely support to children exposed to domestic abuse and the critical role of supportive relationships in their healing process. Misconceptions about waiting for the perfect moment to offer help are debunked, and the necessity of multiple pathways to access programs, beyond court orders, is underscored. The conversation also delves into the hurdles marginalized communities face with official systems and highlights the importance of trauma-informed and domestic abuse-informed approaches within mental health services.
Explore the profound impact of early intervention and prevention models across the UK, focusing on the integration of the Healing Together program in schools and children's homes. We examine the unique trauma children face when in contact with abusive parents and the potential for misdiagnoses. Understand the importance of recognizing trauma in the context of coercive control, beyond just physical abuse. Finally, we emphasize the power of fostering healing through mindful practices and how resilience and recovery can be significantly enhanced for both child survivors and their caregivers.
Learn more about Innovating Minds and the Healing Together programme
Related EpisodesSeason 5 Episode 7: Childhood Domestic Violence Exposure is “Pivotal”: An Interview with Professor Higgins
Season 5 Episode 4: Unveiling the Impact of Domestic Violence on Children: Beyond the Myth of the Child Witness
Season 4 Episode 10: Ensuring the Voice of the Child is Heard, and Child’s Best Interests are Considered in Domestic Abuse Cases
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a text
📝 In this thought-provoking episode, we explore the nuanced intersection of father engagement and domestic abuse-informed practice with Chris Brown, President of the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI). Our conversation examines how we can thoughtfully promote father involvement while maintaining high standards for men as parents, disrupting gender double standards and keeping the safety and long term wellbeing of children at the center.
🎯 Key Topics:
• The historical context behind NFI's founding and evolution of fatherhood programs
• Examining father absence through a domestic abuse-informed lens
• Balancing father engagement with survivor safety and well-being
• The importance of holding perpetrators accountable as parents
• Building community capacity to support safe, stable father involvement
💭 Notable Quotes:
"We need to acknowledge fathers as key caregivers while having high expectations for their behavior as parents. Supporting father involvement can't come at the expense of adult and child survivor safety." - David Mandel
"When we talk about father absence, we have to look at the whole picture - including how perpetrator patterns of coercive control contribute to family separation." - Ruth Reymundo Mandel
✨ Key Takeaways:
• The need to integrate domestic abuse screening and safety protocols into fatherhood programs
• How gender bias impacts our expectations of fathers vs mothers
• The importance of early intervention to develop parenting skills in boys and young men
• Strategies for practitioners to engage fathers while partnering with survivors
📚 Resources Mentioned:
• Safe & Together's Working with Men as Parents training
• Multiple Pathways to Harm framework
• NFI's fatherhood program resources
• Domestic abuse-informed engagement strategies
🔗 Connect with NFI:
https://www.fatherhood.org/
🔗 Connect with Safe & Together Institute:
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/
https://academy.safeandtogetherinstitute.com/pages/home
Join us next time as we continue exploring domestic abuse-informed approaches to strengthening families. Remember - meaningful father engagement must center the safety and well-being of adult & child survivors.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a text
🔄 Transforming Professional Standards
Join us from São Miguel, Azores, Ruth's paternal ancestral home, as we challenge conventional metrics of professionalism and explore how institutional practices, mandates, best practices often reinforce dangerous barriers between professionals and survivors of domestic abuse. We examine what true Partnership looks like when we step beyond traditional professional boundaries.
📊 Measuring What Matters:
• Evaluating professional success through survivor partnership outcomes
• Identifying KPIs, practices & policies that perpetuate professional bias & poor outcomes
• Tracking meaningful engagement and Impact versus procedural compliance, top down best practices not tied to end user experience
🚫 Confronting Professional Bias:
• Recognizing when "professionalism" becomes a barrier to authentic connection
• Understanding how institutional metrics can reinforce harmful power dynamics
• Examining personal and systemic prejudices in professional practice
⚖️ Institutional Accountability:
• Creating measurements for authentic survivor engagement
• Developing metrics that value survivor voice and choice
• Establishing KPIs that promote genuine Partnering
💡 Shifting Professional Culture:
• Moving from expert-driven top-down practice to Partnering and end user impact-based practice
• Redefining success in professional-survivor relationships
• Building institutional, training and policy support for transformative practice
🎯 Action Steps for Change:
• Implementing survivor-centered performance metrics
• Developing reflection tools for professional bias
• Creating accountability systems for authentic partnership
Join our global network as we work to transform how professionals engage with survivors and measure success in domestic abuse-informed practice.
🔗 Access our professional development resources at https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/
📱 Connect with our community of practice at https://academy.safeandtogetherinstitute.com/pages/home?preview=true
ProfessionalismRedefined #SystemsChange #Partnering #Professionalstandards #Bestpractices #SafeAndTogether
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events
Send us a Text Message.
In this episode, David & Ruth speak about the Myth of the Domestic Violence Incident chapter David's recently published book: "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform The Way We Keep Children Safe From Domestic Violence."
They discuss how an isolated incident lens:
- Focuses systems interventions & professional responses on isolated acts of physical violence rather than on patterns of violence & coercive control which blinds professionals and systems to the wider dangers created to adult & child survivors by a perpetrator
- Makes it harder to see the loss of liberty and entrapment generated by the perpetrator’s pattern
- Fails to document & address the danger & harm created by nonphysical acts of abuse & removal of liberty (coercive control) such as:
- ongoing control directed at the adult partner
- willingness to harm children as a way to pressure and hurt their partner
- the underlying attitudes and beliefs that entitle Perpetrator to control & violence
- the manipulations of systems and threats or actual use of systems like family court and child protection to continue fear and control campaigns
- How the Safe & Together Model helps identify entrapment, loss liberty and impact on child, partner and family functioning to increase the awareness of professionals as to the patterns, trauma & danger created by a perpetrator
Related Podcasts:Intro to David Mandel’s book “Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers”
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/podcast-interview-social-world/Want to
Unveiling the Impact of Domestic Violence on Children: Beyond the Myth of the Child Witness
Social World Podcast Interview with David Mandel about his new book “Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers”
**Want guided book discussions for your staff or community stakeholders?
Check out this free book Study guide:
https://share.hsforms.com/1D__YbFblQgqz8cTIgwXjvA3a1w1**
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Send us a Text Message.
The recently published groundbreaking, population-based study of child maltreatment in Australia found exposure to domestic violence is the most common form of maltreatment (39.6%). In this interview with Professor Daryl Higgins, one of the studies’ chief investigators, David and Ruth discuss the domestic violence specific results including how they intersect with other forms of maltreatments and other adverse experiences to produce health and other challenges in adults. Some of the key results discussed include:
- What was learned about childhood maltreatment, and its connection to health outcomes in adults, in this study of 8500 Australians
- How domestic violence is present in the 5 most common clusters of overlapping types of maltreatment
- How men were more likely to report smoking and cannabis use as result of childhood exposure to domestic violence
- How women were more likely to report self harm, suicide attempts and obesity as a result of childhood exposure of domestic violence
- How female and gender diverse children were more likely to experience childhood exposure to domestic violence
Read about the study: https://www.acms.au
Read more about resources and publications from the Institute of Child Protection Studies for adopting a public health approach to protecting children: https://www.acu.edu.au/icps/public-health
Other related Partnered with A Survivor episodes
Season 5 Episode 5: A Trauma History is Not An Excuse for Acting Abusively
Season 5 Episode 4: Unveiling The Impact Of Domestic Violence On Children: Beyond The Myth Of The Child Witness
Season 4 Episode 10: Ensuring The Voice Of The Child Is Heard, And Child’s Best Interests Are Considered In Domestic Abuse Cases
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Send us a Text Message.
Partnering with survivors is a sacred act. Listening to survivors, hearing their stories, and working with them as equals is uplifting for practitioners and their clients. In this episode of Partnered With a Survivor, David and Ruth speak with Beth Ann Morhardt, one of the first domestic violence consultants trained in the Safe & Together Model, about the spiritual aspects of the work with families.
The interview starts with discussion of Beth Ann and David's long history of professional collaboration, starting with her work using the Safe & Together Model with child protection. Drawing on those experiences, and her long history of advocating for survivors and working as a Safe & Together Institute faculty member, Beth Ann talks about the how she approaches her work with families as a sacred practice. She also talks about how she honors the experience of practitioners, and even perpetrators as she works to prevent domestic violence.
Beth Ann is also the creator of the Sacred in the System (SITS) philosophy & language which aligns with the Safe & Together Model principles of partnering & engaging the perpetrating parent
To learn more about Sacred in the System contact Beth Ann at Bamorhardt@gmail.com
If you like this episode:
Check out our Partnering with Survivors ecourse
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
In this episode of Partnered with A Survivor, David & Ruth have an intimate discussion about how we can be emotionally & behaviorally responsible even when we have been trained into fear & reactivity through violence & abuse. David and Ruth discuss:
- How we need to drop binary definitions in order to prevent abusers from using their history of trauma as an excuse for current behaviors of coercive control & violence.
- The importance of unlearning reactive behaviors that we came by 'honestly' through trauma
- The importance of considering context, patterns of behavior and impacts on functioning as part of the conversations about survivors' reactivity and use of violence
- The value of self-reflection on the impact of our behaviors when we are triggered back into a state of fear or defensiveness
If you like this episode you may be interested in:
Season 5 Episode 2: Women’s Use Of Force In Intimate Relationships: An Interview With Lisa Young LaranceSeason 3 Episode 7: Understanding And Validating Survivors’ Acts Of ResistanceSeason 2 Episode 11: “We Need A Revolution:” Integration Of Trauma Healing And Behavior Change For People Who Choose Violence Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Discover the hard truths about the impact of domestic violence on children, as we, David and Ruth Reymundo Mandel, discuss the "Myth of the Child Witness" chapter from David's book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence." We promise you'll come away with a deeper understanding and a sense of urgency to shift the way society responds to young survivors. Listen as we pull back the curtain on the often-invisible effects of witnessing abuse and how these experiences shape the lives of children far beyond what is visible to the eye.
Are children just passive bystanders in the face of domestic violence, or are they silent bearers of trauma? What happens when we do not name the perpetrator as the cause of the children's harm or highlight their responsibilities are carers? Our discussions traverse the landscape of this misconception, challenging the passive language that labels children merely as witnesses and advocating for a language that reflects their true experiences. We address the crucial need for systems to hold perpetrators accountable and prevent children from replicating harmful behaviors. Our conversation makes the case for recognizing the autonomy of children and the essential role of the non-abusive parent in fostering a child's emotional safety.
Wrapping up our insightful conversation, we underscore the critical role adults play in understanding and supporting children affected by domestic violence. Delving into the 'Safe Together' model, we stress the importance of an ecosystem that supports both the child and the non-abusive parent. Join us as we honor the resilience of children everywhere and strive to transform the dialogue around domestic violence, one listener at a time.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
In this episode, Ruth and David start with a round up of their March 2024 Safe & Together trip to Australia and New Zealand with highlights from the 7th annual Safe & Together Asia Pacific conference with it's focus on work with First Nation peoples, feedback from podcast listeners, and an update on how the Model is transforming the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. Then Ruth and David pivot to discuss the ideas behind David's first book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe " from Legitimus Media (2024). David talk about how the book outlines the interlocking myth structure that is the cause and effect of gender double standards around parenting. David shares how the book was written for both survivors and practitioners, with or without experience with the Model. This episode will be followed up minisodes focusing on other chapters in the book...stay tuned!
To order the book now: https://mybook.to/mK39V
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Both men and women can be violent and controlling. In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor, Ruth and David speak with international expert Lisa Young Larance about her research and clinical practice related to women’s use of force in intimate relationships. In the conversation, Lisa highlights the importance of context and intersectionalities in any analysis of women’s use of force in intimate relationships.
In recounting her work, Lisa shares about:
- The importance of a behavioral and life span lens when understanding the use of force in intimate relationships
- How practitioners need to remain curious about the specifics of situations related to use of force
- How to explore the relationship between trauma histories and the use of force
- The importance of seeing beyond the “victim/offender” binary
- What the work with women who use force in intimate relationships can teach us about the work with men who use force against their partners
Check out Lisa Young Larance’s work
Keep an eye out for her forthcoming book: Larance, L. Y. (Forthcoming, 2024). Broken: Women’s stories of intimate and institutional harm and repair. University of California Press.
You may also be interested in these related episodes of Partnered with A Survivor
Season 2 Episode 6: The Male VictimSeason 3 Episode 6: 7 Myths about the Safe & Together Model
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Sexual and domestic violence in the military challenges recruitment, retention, team cohesion, operational readiness, security and organizational health. Yet, most militaries around the world are still struggling to effectively address these problems. Gaps in the response harm military families, and allow the destruction of the careers and health of survivors. The Safe & Together Institute, through its work with the UK Ministry of Defence, has seen the positive impact of domestic violence-informed practice in this area.
In this episode, David & Ruth speak with Amy Braley Frank, founder of Never Alone Soldiers, and Joanna, a survivor who now advocates for others. Never Alone Soldiers advocates for the safety and wellbeing of military personnel and families affected by sexual or domestic violence. They assist victims, advise them and push for greater transparency, accountability and policy changes, leaving no one behind.
Ruth & David discuss with Amy & Joanna:
- Current problematic military attitudes & practices in responding to perpetrators
- Silencing of victim/survivors of sexual and domestic violence
- Never Alone’s advocacy for victims and drive for systemic change
- Retention policies enabling those with histories of criminality and violence
- Adverse career impacts for service members reporting abuse
- Links between unaddressed military violence issues and domestic violence perpetration in law enforcement
Joanna shares her experiences seeking safety from domestic abuse, and how policies, communication approaches and attitudes endangered her and others. She discusses how Never Alone successfully pushed for her perpetrator's removal.
Amy defines policy and cultural changes needed to support survivors over retaining perpetrators.
Learn more about Never Alone
You also may be interested in these related episodes
Episode 25: When police officers commit domestic violence
Episode 26: Listening to the voices of survivors of officer-involved domestic violence: An interview with Nanette Chezum
Episode 27: “How much crime are you willing to let your police commit?”
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Historically research hasn’t always involved or benefited the population being studied. Dr. Elizabeth Dalgarno, the Director, and Founder of the SHERA Research Group is staunch advocate of research that is undertaken by and with the people it concerns rather than “on” them. In this far-ranging interview, Ruth, David, and Dr Dalgarno discuss:
- SHERA’s research into health effects on survivors of their family court involvement in Brazil and England (Spoiler Alert: The negative health effects of family court involvement for domestic abuse survivors is significant!)
- What practitioners can do differently within the current context of family law environment to improve outcomes for child and adult survivors
- How to use research to help improve the social care and family court response to domestic abuse
- The need for greater accountability and transparency as it relates to systems that impact survivors
- The need for appropriate credentialing, training, and experience for evaluators in the family court context
- The need for adequate data on the impacts of family law policies & practices on victim survivors.
- The global need for domestic violence-informed training for lawyers, children’s representatives, and judges around family violence, custody, and access
The SHERA Research Group, a collective of multidisciplinary professionals with over 100 years cumulative experience of working in health inequalities, law, finance, social care and domestic abuse research and support organizations.
Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, the Director and Founder of SHERA Research Group and a Lecturer at University of Manchester England.Dr. Dalgarno has worked in public and private health and social care for over 20 years and specialises in challenging inequalities and systemic challenges in health and social care. Her work with women who have been through family court focusses on their health-related experiences and the harmful pseudoscience of so-called 'parental alienation' and has been featured in a documentary 'Mums on the Run' on the BBC iplayer, at the UN Human Rights Council and in multiple media outlets.
Related Podcasts
Season 4 Episode 10: Ensuring The Voice Of The Child Is Heard, And Child’s Best Interests Are Considered In Domestic Abuse Cases
Season 3 Episode 2: Perpetrators’ Weaponization Of Mental Health And Addiction Against Survivors
Season 2 Episode 19: Using The Concepts Of Collaborative Co-Parenting To Hold Perpetrators More Accountable In Family Court
Episode 29: Family courts are failing the “best interests” of adult and child abuse survivors: An in
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
- Domestic violence represent 27% of workplace violent events
- 1 in 5 victims take time off from work due to abuse
- 20% of victims of domestic abuse had taken off month or more in prior year
- 56% arrived late at least 5x/month
- 53% missed at least 3 days of work/month
- 65% of companies do not have domestic violence policy (SHRM)
These statistics only represent a fraction of the picture of how domestic violence perpetrators impact their partner's employment, but also how they impact employers and the overall workplace environment. In addition to the impact on the survivor's employment (poor performance, lateness, absenteeism, lost of income, lost of career advancement), employers face worker attrition, performance related loses and even liability.
In this podcast, David and Ruth discuss a range of issues associated with domestic violence perpetrator behavior and the workplace. Their discussion covers:
- The importance of consistent domestic violence-informed culture (inside and out) especially if your organization's work touches on families
- Different ways perpetrators harm a partner's employment including abuse at work, interfering with their ability to work and hindering career advancement
- Different strategies organization can engage in to make their human resource policy more informed including using the Safe & Together Institute Ally Guide as resource
Check out these related episodes Season 4 Episode 4: Being abused by a partner while advocating for othersSeason 4 Episode 2: Coming “Out” As A Survivor in a Professional Setting: A Practitioner’s JourneySeason 3 Episode 3: Minisode On Worker Safety & Well-Being: When Workers Have Their Own Histories Of Abuse
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
- Are children domestic violence victims in their own right?
- Are they co-victims with the adult survivor?
- What is the relationship between the child and the adult survivors’ experiences
- How do we hold domestic violence perpetrators accountable in their role as parents?
- How do we consider the child’s relationship to the perpetrator in decisions related to them?
- How do we make sure both adult and child survivors receive the support they need and deserve?
- How do we consider the best interests of child survivors as we craft our policy and practice response to domestic violence?
- How do we ensure that child survivors’ voices are heard in matters that are relevant to them?
These are some of the critical questions being asked around the globe as governments, through their courts, legislatures and agencies, work to ensure the safety and well-being of children impacted by domestic violence perpetrators’ behaviors. They are not just academic questions as they are central to decisions made every day by governmental bodies like child protection and family court. For governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a primary touchstone for these questions is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the most widely accepted human rights document in history.
From its inception the Safe & Together Model has employed a robust child-centered framework to keep the focus on children’s experience, needs and wishes in the context of domestic violence cases. Compared to other domestic violence assessment and practice frameworks which often treat children as an afterthought to the safety and well-being of the adult survivor, the Safe & Together Model has always focused on addressing the children’s distinct lived experiences. It differs dramatically from other approaches which assume that you don’t need to focus separately on the experience of the child but only need to keep the children safe by keeping the adult survivor safe — in essence making invisible the unique and individual experience of the child.
In this episode, David and Ruth discuss how the Safe & Together Model supports the rights of children through the lens of its alignment with the UNCRC. With a special focus on the "voice of the child" (Article 12) and children's best interest decision-making (Article 3), David Ruth talk about
- How domestic violence perpetrators' actions attack children's human rights
- How a literal interpretation of the "voice of the child" is not enough especially when it comes to the most vulnerable children
- How many of perpetrator's behaviors of coercive control happen outside a child's view but still impacts them
- How the Model helps listen deeply and understand children's experience and assists in best interest decision making in domestic violence cases involving children
Download the paper: Ensuring the Voice of the Child is Heard, and Child’s Best Interests are Considered in Domestic Abuse Cases: Safe & Together Model and the Rights of Children
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
The problem of dating violence and coercive control among young people has been sorely overlooked, and educational resources are hard to find...until now! In order make coercive control visible to youth & to fill a gap in professional education materials & intervention strategies for young people, we have partnered with the revolutionary new abuse prevention film, The Last Drop . In this Podcast interview, Ruth & David interview Adam Joel, the Writer & Director of the Last Drop Film.
In this interview we speak about
- how this film came to be, how a diverse group of Lived Experience Experts informed the film & what he hopes the films impact will be.
- Why the way we tell the story of abuse is vital to preventing & intervening with abuse.
- How messaging & advocacy about domestic violence needs to include a focus on coercive control, not just physical violence
- How youth populations have unique patterns of coercive control, often invisible to adults, like digital coercion related to the social media world that is so important young people
- Safe & Together Institute's role in as Executive Producer on the film including producing a Professional Ally Guide as a companion to The Last Drop to assist professionals working with youth populations with strategies & tools when working with youth experiencing or perpetrating coercive control.
Watch the TrailerPurchase the film for one year unlimited use https://www.instagram.com/lastdropfilm/
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
In this episode, Ruth & David speak with Lisa & Jack Bulman of Mibbinbah Spirit Healing about their work in community to facilitate healing from intergenerational trauma, support healthy relationship connections and strengthen the wellbeing of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander men and families. Mibbinbah uses a “whole of communities” approach which brings men & women together to heal in community. (From the Mibbinbah website: “The two words Mibbin meaning Men or Eagle and Bah meaning place come from the Eastern Yugambeh Language of South Eastern Queensland. Therefore placing the two words together gives us Eagle or Men’s place.”)
Jack & Lisa talk about the heart healing work they do within Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander communities to strengthen & support their families after generations of colonization which created family separation, violence & abuse.
In the interview the discussion touches on:
· Jack speaks about the origins of Mibbinbah Health in his need in University for a Safe Space for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander men to connect, support & heal together.
· Jack describes the negative police response to Aboriginal men coming together to heal in nature & how that helped him further develop his work with community
· How Lisa and Jack see addressing violence as separate from men's business & women's business
· How Partnering is critical when it comes to work with community
· The importance of deep listening to healing and how this differs from prescriptive approaches to addressing trauma and violence.
· How healing and combating family violence is important to the work of decolonization
· The importance of self-responsibility for adopting behaviors which heal harm to self & community.
· The pitfalls and limitations of how men’s behavior change is currently understood as Individual and reductionist rather than as familial & communal.
The interview also includes Jack and Lisa speaking about concrete behaviors professionals can adopt to culturally safely & appropriately support Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people in healing from family violence & the intergenerational impacts of ongoing colonization.
To learn more about Mibbinbah
To listen to Jack and Lisa Bulman on the Mibbinbah podcast
You may also want to listen to….
Season 2 Episode 17: Intervening With Domestic Violence Perpetrators: “We Can’t Leave Anything On The Table”
Season 2 Episode 16: “We Have To Remember Who We Are Advocating For”: Interview With Aboriginal DV Leader Ashlee Donohue
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
In this episode, David & Ruth talk about why the Safe & Together Institute focuses on survivor protective capacities and some of the research behind this approach. While assessments of harm and risk, and trauma frameworks are important, these approaches highlight danger and pathologies. But these approaches, while necessary, are not sufficient enough for true collaboration and partnering with survivors. In a world where there are gender double standards related to parenting, e.g. higher standards for women as parents than for men, it is essential that we don’t just focus on harms but also on survivors’ protective efforts and acts of resistance and parenting skills even in environments where the perpetrator is controlling so much. Assessment, and documentation of survivors’ protective capacities can make the difference between whether those children stay safely with that survivor, removed by child protection or placed with an abusive parent.
David and Ruth discuss some of the research behind this strength-based approach to survivors as parents like:
- The growing body of evidence to suggest many domestic violence survivors are good parents who actively take steps to promote their child’s safety and well-being.
- Multiple studies find that mothers who are domestic violence survivors are functioning similarly or even better as parents than their counterparts who are not being abused.
- Greater stress and negative effects of violence on the adult survivor does not always equal compromised parenting.
- A majority of domestic violence survivors, even those experiencing severe violence, do not experience depression or anxiety.
- *Most domestic violence survivors do not use drugs nor abuse alcohol to the point of drunkenness.*
- Despite barriers created by the perpetrator, many domestic violence survivors engage in a range of actions to promote the well-being and safety of their children including medical care, employment, and housing.
- Maternal warmth or “mothering resilience” may play a critical protective role for children exposed to perpetrator behavior.
David & Ruth will also talk about how assessing, validating and documenting survivors’ strengths can play an important role in Partnering with Survivors. When professionals assess, validate and document survivors’ protective capacities:
- The validation can combat the perpetrator's mental and psychological control– “you are not a bad mom but a good mom operating in a difficult situation”
- It can help systems and practitioners partner with survivors, e.g. identify strengths, validating them and making plans based on their strengths not just their risks
- It inoculates survivors from bad decisions based on failure to protect and parental alienation–the two major myths that shape how systems interact with mothers who are domestic violence survivors.
Read related Safe & Together Institute research briefing on survivors’ protective capacities
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Survivors, who are professionals, can live in fear that if they share their experience in the workplace, they will be dismissed and disregarded. In this episode, Ruth & David speak with Nneka Mcgregor, founder & Executive Director of WomenattheentrE, about the need to transform our systems so that professionals who are survivors, can safely share their experience to strengthen the response of systems to gender-based violence.
Nneka shares her journey as a survivor and a professional including how attempts by those in the domestic violence field to silence her made her even more committed to speaking out. Nneka outlines how survivor knowledge of systems and services failures is vital to making those systems more effective and responsive. Nneka, Ruth & David discuss how survivors are treated as “other,” reflecting cultural attitudes which see survivors as broken and biased. They dive down into the negative impact on professionals and survivors when organizational cultures operate from a place of demeaning, diminishing, controlling, silencing & dictating to survivors.
Nneka shares concrete strategies from her organization, WomenatthecentrE, about creating a professional, survivor nurturing, successful & supportive advocacy organization. Together, David, Ruth and Nneka explore how professionals and organizations can partner with survivors, and the importance of organizational performance markers for supporting survivors inside an agency.
Learn more about WomenatthecentrETake our ecourse Partnering with Survivors You may also want to listen to:
Season 4 Episode 4: Being Abused By A Partner While Advocating For Others: An Interview With Leah Vejzovic, The Safe & Together Institute North American Regional Manager
Season 4 Episode 3: The Silent Effects Of Non-Fatal Strangulation: A Conversation With International & Lived Experience Expert, Nneka MacGregor
Season 4 Episode 2: Coming “Out” As A Survivor In A Professional Setting: A Practitioner’s Journey
Season 3 Episode 7: Understanding And Validating Survivors’ Acts Of Resistance
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current caseload in real time.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
There are few intervention programs for fathers who use violence as part of their parenting. In this episode, David & Ruth take a deep dive into the work that needs to happen with violent fathers with Dr. Katreena Scott, the co-creator of the Caring Dads program. In this interview, David Ruth and Katreena speak about
- The importance of intervening with violent fathers
- What makes Caring Dads different than a traditional men’s behavior change programming
- How Caring Dads is different than traditional parenting programs
- How Caring Dads centers the safety and well-being of adult and child survivors
- The synergies between the Safe & Together Model and the Caring Dads program
- The research on the effectiveness of men’s behavior change programs
- How low expectations of men impact the work with families
- How important it is for fathers’ to act respectfully towards their children’s mothers
Learn more about Caring Dads Other relevant episodes of Partnered With A Survivor Season 3 Episode 9: Coercive Control in Children’s and Mother’s Lives: An interview with author and academic Dr. Emma KatzSeason 3 Episode 1: “This is a collective male problem:” An interview with international journalist Grant WyethSeason 2 Episode 19: Using the concepts of collaborative co-parenting to hold perpetrators more accountable in family courtSeason 2 Episode 17: Intervening with Domestic Violence Perpetrators: “We can’t leave anything on the table”
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Professionals working in domestic violence and related fields are not immune from being abused by their partner. In fact, their role as a domestic violence or related professional can create some unique vulnerabilities that perpetrators are willing and able to exploit as part of their efforts at control. In another episode in the series about practitioners who identify as survivors, Ruth and David interview one of their own colleagues at the Safe & Together Institute – Leah Vejzović the North American Safe & Together Regional Manager. In this intimate interview, Leah shares her journey of experiencing abuse & coercive control while working in the advocacy & the child welfare field. Leah speaks about the fear, shame & challenges professionals face when being harmed by a perpetrator & how it impacts disclosures to loved ones, family & to their own professional organizations.
In this interview, Leah shares about:
- How her perpetrator tried to manipulate her role as social worker to make her feel guilty and responsible for staying with him and “fixing” him
- How expressions of victim blaming by professional colleagues, when they were speaking about their cases, made her feel unsafe disclosing to peers
- How ‘expertise’ can be used by ourselves and others to victim blame those who are being abused by a partner by landing in a place of ‘I/you should have known better
Leah shares how she overcame her shame to disclose to a friend, and the responses which were helpful to her as she attempted to process and respond to the abuse she was enduring. She shares with Ruth and David about how the experience of being both professional and a survivor affirms for her the importance of partnering with survivors and focusing on perpetrators’ patterns of coercive control.
Together, David, Ruth and Leah analyze some of the unique vulnerabilities of domestic violence, child welfare and other professionals who are being actively abused including how perpetrators may be able to successfully target employment. They discuss how organizations can inadvertently collude with perpetrators through a lack of policies and unaddressed victim blaming culture. David, Leah & Ruth discuss how to better respond to professionals who are victims of domestic abuse as an ally & how to embed those behaviors in your organizational values and culture to guard against being manipulated by perpetrators and the revictimization of survivors who are also professionals.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Strangulation attempts are a common element of domestic violence perpetrators’ patterns of behaviors. Non-fatal strangulation has long been identified as a risk factor for domestic violence homicide. Less attention has been paid to the short, medium and long term effects of non-fatal strangulation on survivor functioning and well-being. In this interview with Nneka MacGregor, Ruth and David discuss her research into the injuries, impact and experiences of survivors who have experienced non-fatal strangulation. This co-written study is entitled “A fresh breath: Examining the experience of strangulation among women abuse by an intimate partner.”
In the interview they discuss:
- The specific impacts on non-fatal strangulation on like memory loss, traumatic brain injury and increased risk for stroke and other health risks
- How these symptoms and problems, when decontextualized from perpetrators’ assaults, can contribute to victim-blaming
- How perpetrators of non-strangulation need to be held more accountable as parents for the impacts of their behavior
- The siloed and often ineffective responses of professional responses to non-fatal strangulation
- How professionals need to be on the lookout for the signs and symptoms of effects of non-fatal strangulation and listen to the voices of survivors about their experience
Nneka MacGregor is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Centre for Social Justice, better known as WomenatthecentrE, a unique non-profit created by and for women, trans and gender-diverse survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) to champion survivor led innovations in the domestic & family violence field. She is a Black intersectional abolitionist feminist, international speaker & trainer, she is an expert advisory panel member of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability and sits on several advisory Boards and committees, including the Federal Advisory Council on the Federal Strategy Against GBV, and co-founded the Black Femicide Canada Council.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Listening to the voice of lived experience experts, AKA survivors of all forms of abuse and neglect, is becoming more and more a part of the domestic violence-informed professional landscape. At the same time, self-disclosure, in professional spaces, of being an abuse survivor can be a fraught for some practitioners. It can be associated with fears of judgment and marginalization. Even though those survivor experiences can positively inform direct work with families, enrich organizational culture and help guide policy, safety and support for practitioner survivors is often not the articulated norm in many organizations.In this episode, Ruth and David interview Aliegha Manski, the 2023 winner of the Safe & Together Champion Award for Systems Change in the Asia Pacific Region. Aleigha shares with them her journey as a professional and a survivor. She talks about how the Safe & Together Model impacted her self perceptions as a survivor and assisted her in improving her ability to engage with families struggling with domestic violence. Aleigha reflects on how the process of Partnering and the Safe & Together Model Principles assisted her in self-reflection on abuse she endured as a child & the organizational & system responses to that abuse.In this interview Aleigha, David & Ruth address the “Elephant in the Room,” how societal victim blaming and internalized shame can affect professionals, even ones that are survivors themselves. Facing that reality head on with a Partnering framework not only helps to separate out those personal realities from professional practice but assists in healing and improving responses to victims of similar forms of abuse. The Partnering concept can not only improve practitioner-survivor professional practice but also provide a pathway to healing, improve worker safety, satisfaction and retention. This is an important episode for any professional who struggles with talking about their own experiences of abuse and any agency that wants to be trauma- and domestic violence-informed. The Safe & Together Model Partnering process can offer a pathway to healing for professionals who are also survivors & are working with families experiencing domestic violence. Creating space in organizations for professionals to safely disclose, not be blamed or professionally harmed by the fact someone else chose to abuse them, is vital to having a truly domestic violence informed organization & to professional competency & worker satisfaction.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Working with domestic violence means professionals come into contact daily with complex & challenging trauma. Beyond the complexity involved with working toward the safety of the family, working with domestic violence survivors often confronts professionals with their own prior experiences of abuse and trauma. Partnering with survivors using the Safe & Together Model is powerful, efficient and effective. This very same process may reveal to practitioner where they were blamed for the abuse they suffered, where their own strengths or needs were not acknowledged and can even trigger their own memories of trauma.
In this Podcast Ruth & David discuss how latent in the concept of Partnering is a powerful way to support professionals who have experienced violence & who also encounter challenging & traumatizing dynamics in their day to day work. Many practitioners have reached out to express their own self revelations when learning the Safe & Together Model & how the six part process of Partnering helped in their healing.
In this podcast the six steps of Partnering are looked at from a worker supportive standpoint which improves worker wellbeing, safety, satisfaction & assures that organizations are responding in a Domestic Violence Informed way to the needs of professional victim survivors in their employ.Ruth & David leave the listener with a series of questions which may assist in the process of Partnering with Professional survivors & with ourselves when we are uncovering our own trauma.
Also listen to:
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-3-episode-3-minisode-on-worker-safety-well-being-when-workers-have-their-own-histories-of-abuse/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-2-episode-23-minisode-on-worker-safety-well-being-when-workers-are-survivors-themselves/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/6-steps-to-partnering-with-survivors/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-3-episode-7-understanding-and-validating-survivors-acts-of-resistance/
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
When we think about domestic violence only in terms of what is added - violence and danger - instead of what is taken away (safety, self determination, quality of life), we fail at naming some of the most profound effects of domestic violence perpetrators’ behaviors on survivors. In this episode, David & Ruth talk about what survivors' often "lose" at the hands of domestic violence perpetrators.
In this episode:
- Stories of recent successes of the Safe & Together Model from around the globe
- The importance of Perpetrator Pattern mapping to accurate documentation of harm including what has been taken away
David & Ruth also talk about how survivors describe perpetrators stopping them from being the parent and the person they could've been. They offer up practical tips for practitioners about how to explore these losses including how to go beyond the question "are you afraid at home?" They also offer validations for survivors' experiences of loss and limits.
Other related episodesSeason 3 Episode 12 Weaponize & Fabricate: How Domestic Violence Perpetrators’ Behaviors Intersect With Survivors’ Mental Health And Substance Misuse Issues
Season 3 Episode 7: Understanding And Validating Survivors’ Acts Of Resistance
Season 2 Episode 12: How Coercive Control Harms Child Safety & Wellbeing: An Interview With Researcher Dr. Emma Katz
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Toxic Trio. Triple Play. Trifecta.
**All over the globe, professionals working with families have shorthand jargon that reflects the prevalence of the complex mixture of issues that many families experience. Unfortunately these phrases do not usually enhance the ability to partner with survivors or intervene with perpetrators.
In this episode of Partner With A Survivor*, David & Ruth take a deep dive into the* Safe & Together Model’**s intersections offers a more powerful and accurate way to discuss the relationship between mental health, substance misuse and domestic violence. Point by point they explore how perpetrators' behaviors intersect with adult and child survivors’ mental health and substance misuse. They examine how perpetrators
- Cause
- Exacerbate
- Interfere With
- Fabricate
- Weaponize
these issues. They highlight the importance of contexualizing the survivors’ issues back to the perpetrators’ pattern and envisioning how perpetrators’ might be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Other Related Episodes
Season 3 Episode 2: Perpetrators’ Weaponization Of Mental Health And Addiction Against Survivors
Season 2 Episode 10: Trauma-Informed Is Not The Same As Domestic Violence-Informed: A Conversation About The Intersection Of Domestic Violence Perpetration, Mental Health & Addiction
Season 2, Episode 5: How Professionals Can Avoid Being Manipulated By Perpetrators
Episode 30: 4 Ways The Concept Of Trauma Bonding Works Against Survivors
Episode 18: Survivors Aren’t Broken! An Intimate Discussion About Support And Partnership In Relationships
Conversations about domestic violence often start from a victim blaming perspective: “Why doesn’t she leave?” or “Why does she keep choosing him over children?” or “I can’t trust her to understand the impact on children. She has a trauma history.” These victim blaming statements interfere with partnering with survivors and holding perpetrators accountable as parents. They also prevent accurate assessments and increase worker frustration with survivors.
In this episode of Partnered With a Survivor, Ruth & David discuss the Safe & Together Model practice of 'Pivoting to the Perpetrator' which offers specific steps to interrupt victim blaming, and to shift the focus on to where it belongs– the perpetrator’s behaviors. The practice helps professionals
- better assess whether interventions with perpetrators are helping or hindering survivor safety
- Better recontextualize how survivor “denial” or “non-compliance” is shaped by the perpetrator’s behaviors and the failures of systems’ interventions
- Be successful with their most challenging cases through better collaborations with survivors and more effective interventions with perpetrators
In this episode, Ruth and David lay out what Pivoting is, why it is important & how to do the three part practice in your work. They discuss the application of Pivoting and how it is an essential skill for domestic violence-informed practice.
Other Related Episodes
Season 3 Episode 7: Understanding And Validating Survivors’ Acts Of ResistanceSeason 2 Episode 22: Minisode On Worker Safety & Well-Being: The Connection Between Worker Safety And Victim-BlamingSeason 2, Episode 1: 6 Steps To Partnering With SurvivorsEpisode 2: Victim Blaming
With upsetting frequency, the news will report a story of a child murdered by their mother’s partner. Sometimes this murder happens in the context of separation. Other times it is part of perpetrators' overall pattern of violence toward multiple family members. Unfortunately, dramatic homicides only tell part of the story. There are strong correlations between domestic violence and neglect deaths. Child suicides also appear to happen in the context of domestic violence.
In this episode Ruth and David explore the connection between domestic violence and child deaths including:
- How males are three times more likely to murder their own children
- How domestic violence may be the single major precursor to child abuse and neglect fatalities
- The barriers to fully identifying pathways to child deaths in the context of domestic violence
- Actions professionals can take to improve the prevention efforts through identification of the risk of child death including better understanding of how perpetrators interfere with the care of children
Self-care note: The content of this episode may be very challenging for some listeners.
In this episode, David & Ruth discuss with Dr. Emma Katz in her new book, “Coercive Control in Children’s and Mother’s Lives.” Dr. Katz shares the story behind the development of this groundbreaking book, where she shares her learnings from interviews with 15 groups of mothers and their children. In this far ranging conversation, David, Ruth and Dr. Katz discuss:
- How she was inspired to write the book by identifying how the literature was ignoring the experience of children in homes impacted by coercive control
- The “magic” question that unlocked the stories of adult and child survivors
- How children and their mothers are impacted by perpetrators’ coercive control
- How an emphasis on physical violence can blind professionals to key aspects of the experience of children
- The similarities between the experiences of adult and child survivors
- How children’s agency is minimized and adult survivors are blamed through the use of the term “parentification”
- How mental health approaches are deficient in their identification of protective efforts
- How the use of the term “historic abuse” rarely useful
- How adult and child survivors heal from coercive control
To buy Emma Katz's book Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives (Oxford University Press, 2022) Use the discount code ASFLYQ6 to get 30% off
To buy Amazon Kindle of Emma Katz's book Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives (Oxford University Press, 2022)
Emma Katz's popular, free to download 2020 article 'When Coercive Control Continues to Harm the Children Post-Separation'
Emma Katz on Twitter
Emma Katz on ResearchGate
Emma Katz on Instagram
Emma Katz on Facebook
Emma Katz on LinkedIn
Emma Katz on Youtube
Emma Katz's previous podcasts
SHERA
SHERA on Twitter
Listen to these related Partnered with a Survivor episodes
Season 2 Episode 12: How Coercive Control Harms Child Safety & Wellbeing: An Interview With Researcher Dr. Emma Katz
Season 2 Episode 8: “I Spiraled Down To A Dark Place:” An Interview With A Young Survivor Of Officer-Involved Domestic Violence And His Mum
Season 1 Episode 1: Coercive Control And Consent
In this episode, David & Ruth continue their series on reproductive coercion as part of the cycle of intimate partner violence with an interview with Dr. Heather McCauley from the Michigan Consortium on Gender Based Violence MSU. Dr. McCauley discusses the newest research on reproductive coercion, the correlations to intimate partner violence, unwanted pregnancy, STI & health issues.
Reproductive coercion is part of perpetrator's patterns of coercive control, violence and abuse. Condom manipulation and pregnancy coercion are two commons way to entrap a victim in relationship. Survivors who share children with a perpetrator are often unable to extricate themselves because of societal support, religious beliefs, gender biases & institutional support for the 'authority' of the perpetrator over their victim. Family court, criminal courts and our systems of care often blame women for having children with perpetrators. Pregnancy is assumed to be in the control of the survivor even when domestic violence is known issue. Women in this situations can face tremendous judgement including be thought of as stupid, promiscuous , failing to understand the impact of domestic violence once again victimizing them & placing child survivors in danger.
In this interview, David, Ruth & Dr. McCauley talk about topics like:
- How important it is to identify common acts of resistance to reproductive coercion so we accurately assess survivors protective and safety strategies.
- How resistance to reproductive coercion often elicits violence - as does any form of resistance to a perpetrator of intimate partner violence.
- How a lack of professional awareness of the patterns & strategies of reproductive coercion is a danger to survivors & their safety & wellbeing.
- How reproductive coercion is much like the war time strategy of rape to enforce compliance, to frighten & to control.
- The need for men to be part of the discussion around consent, family planning & reproductive health & the need for further engagement & accountability for perpetrators.
With some governments moving to remove reproductive rights, bodily self determination, access to abortion & birth control it is vital to have a discussion of what reproductive coercion is, how it most often manifests as behaviors & what the impact is for survivors & how it is supported by our societal attitudes & institutional practices. The podcast includes positive statements on the dignity & autonomy of women & speaks about the prevalence of attitudes which support & normalize reproductive coercion.
For more information on Dr. McCauleyhttps://vaw.msu.edu/people/mccauley-heather-sc-d/
Further listening on this topicSeason 3 Episode 7: Understanding and Validating Survivors’ Acts of Resistance
Too often conversations about domestic violence define survivors as passive trauma survivors with the emphasis on the negative mental health and addiction consequences of the perpetrators' patterns of behavior. And while these impacts are real they only tell part of the story. On a daily basis, survivors engage in small and large acts of resistance to coercive control & domestic violence. Based in their knowledge of the perpetrator, their assessment of the system and available supports, survivors engage in targeted strategic actions that are important to their own safety and the safety and well being of their children. Not just passive recipients of abuse, survivors actively use a variety of behaviors to carve out physical and emotional "safe zones" a term coined by Dr. Evan Stark, author of Coercive Control. These acts of resistance can include:
- Lying the the perpetrator
- Defending their children from abuse
- Fighting back physically
- Standing up for what they and their children need
They can include ways to defy the perpetrators' rules or places in the survivor's mind where she fantasies about freedom or retreats into her mind when he is abusing her .
In this episode Ruth and David discuss:
- how these acts of resistance are often decontextualized from the perpetrators' pattern
- survivors acts of resistance, particularly survivors from Black, Indigenous and other marginalized communities, often criminalized
- the importance of professionals recognizing these acts of resistance as part of the process of partnering with survivors and avoiding failure to protect practice
David & Ruth also showcase the audio from a video produced by Orana House, a refuge in Western Australia, called "Warrior Women" that showcases survivors' acts of resistance. Watch the video.
In this episode David & Ruth go 'myth busting!" Like any effort to promote change, there can be misconceptions of what the Safe & Together Model does or is about. The Safe & Together Model is not immune to this mischaracterizations. In their conversations, David & Ruth tackle the following 7 mistaken perceptions of the Safe & Together Model and discuss how each myth plays into our current siloed thinking around survivors and perpetrators;
Myth #1: The Safe & Together Model is a perpetrator engagement model.
Myth #2: It only applies to men’s use of violence against women.
Myth #3: It only works in the child safety sector.
Myth #4: It promotes keeping families together when it’s unsafe.
Myth #5: It’s anti-male.
Myth #6 it is just training.
Myth # 7 It’s only for professionals.
In this short, special bonus episode, Ruth interviews Celine Donovan, a Safe & Together Model Certified Trainer, working for Tatauko Mai, the only Safe & Together Institute Partner Agency in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Ruth caught up with Celine in coffee shop in Christchurch. They spoke about about how the Model has changed her practice. Celine, who also works for Aviva in Christchurch, talks about the Model has transformed her practice, and the practice of those around her. She shares a story about how the Model helped transform practice in case where the survivor would've been labeled as "non engaging." Listen in as Ruth and Celine yarn over a cup of coffee.
In this final installment of the minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David discuss the importance best practice around the question of practitioners own fears about the safety of the family. Anyone who has worked with domestic violence cases has felt fear and worry for the safety of the adult and child survivors. Sometimes these fears are directly related to the facts of the perpetrator's pattern. In other instances they are artifacts of prior cases, overwhelm from crushing workloads, or lack of training working with perpetrators. In this minisode, Ruth and David explore the factors that can influence professionals' fears and some support strategies.
These factors include:
- Fears that that the professionals' actions might make the situation worse
- Being influenced by other cases where the adult or child survivors were seriously abused or murdered
- Being overwhelmed with a heavy caseload, making it more difficult to focus on the specifics of a case
- Feeling like the survivor is not acting as they "should"
- Being hampered by a lack of skill and confidence working with perpetrators
Strategies to help can include:
- Assessing perpetrators patterns-while it is no guarantee, getting history of patterns is one of the best ways to predict future behaviors
- Partner with the survivor who is the best source of information about the perpetrator’s pattern and give offer information on what on current protection efforts
- Get supervision from your supervisor or from peers.
- Bring the case to a Safe & Together Intersections Meeting or another collaborative meeting to discuss it
- Use the Safe & Together Institute Ally Guide to increase family and friend support for the survivor
- Use the Safe & Together Institute Choose To Change toolkit to increase positive support for the perpetrator
- Agencies should work to create an environment where workers feel comfortable talking about their worries about their case
To listen to other minisode of worker safety and health:Season 3 Episode 3: Minisode on Worker Safety & Well-Being: When Workers Have Their Own Histories of Abuse
Season 2 Episode 23: Minisode on Worker Safety & Well-Being: When Workers Are Survivors Themselves
Season 2 Episode 22: Minisode on Worker Safety & Well-Being: The Connection Between Worker Safety and Victim-Blaming
Season 2 Episode 21: Minisode Series on Worker Safety & Well-Being: When workers are targeted by the perpetrator
Season 2 Episode 20: Minisode Series on Worker Safety & Well-Being: Intro to the series
Reproductive coercion is part of a perpetrator's pattern of coercive control and is a common and powerful tool that is used to entrap & control victims using pregnancy & children. Forcing women to become pregnant & maintain a pregnancy has long term implications for women & children's lives.
Not only do adult survivors suffer the consequences, but children are used as pawns . In this way, reproductive control can be thought of as a form of child abuse and neglect. In many instances, domestic violence perpetrators do not become abusive until their partner is pregnant and unable to leave them easily or safely.
Against the backdrop of the recent leak of a draft United States' Supreme Court ruling attacking a women's right to autonomy over their own bodies, David & Ruth discuss reproductive coercion in the context of domestic violence including:
- coercion & pressure to become pregnant or maintain a pregnancy
- sabotage and manipulation related to birth control
- control over the pregnancy and birth
In a sometimes raw, far ranging conversation, David & Ruth examine the intersection of domestic violence and reproductive coercion; violence during pregnancy; history of the English Judge, cited 9 times by Justice Alito in his draft ruling, who instructed juries not to believe women's reports of rape; and the need for more work with men around pregnancy, reproductive respect and birth control.
In this fifth installment of the minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David discuss the prevalence of histories of abuse amongst professionals and how agencies can proactively shape their human resources, training and supervision to this reality. One of the main takeaways from this episode is that having staff who have abuse histories can be a real asset for an agency that addresses domestic violence in the families they serve.
Research shows that a variety of professionals include health and child welfare have significant prevalence rates for histories of domestic violence, sexual violence and child abuse and neglect. McLindon, Humphreys and Hegarty found in one study of female personnel at medical facility in Australia that at "....45.2% (212) of participants reported violence by a partner and/or family member during their lifetime, with 12.8% (60) reporting both. " A Spanish study found that a " total of 1,039 health professionals participated in the study. Of these, 26% had suffered some type of abuse. Among the men, this prevalence was 2.7%, while among the women, it was 33.8%." A 2003 United States study found that 1/2 of child protection workers had histories of intimate partner violence.
David & Ruth discuss the significance of this data including:
- the research suggesting that workers with histories of abuse may be more sensitive to the issue, including working harder to keep children with survivors
- But can also lead to victim blaming, collusion with perpetrators, lack of engagement with perpetrators, fears and stress
Keeping with their solution focused approach, David & Ruth discuss what agencies can do including:
- Build policies and training to reflect the assumption that staff includes survivors of domestic violence
- Review HR and Employee Assistance Programs to see if this is an identified issue
- Develop communications and supervision strategies that start with new workers around their own histories and how to take care of themselves
- Name indicators or areas of concern
- Fears and resistance around engaging perpetrators as part of job
- Victim blaming
- Symptoms of stress like self medicating
- Rigid views on issues of domestic violence
- Aggressive and abusive behaviors toward colleagues or client
- Name indicators or areas of concern
- Look to use lived experience experts on your staff as a resource
- Create an employee lived experience advisory group that allows survivors to provide input as both survivors and professionals into agency policy and practice
- Create a confidential peer support network—lived experience experts who are trained to help other survivors on staff, supporting each other to bring their "A" game to work
- Train supervisors to keep focus on professional behavior while supporting workers to get the help they need.
ReferencesMieko Yoshihama, Linda G Mills. When is the personal professional in public child welfare practice?: The influence of intimate partner and child abuse histories on workers in domestic violence cases. Child Abuse & Neglect, Volume 27, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 319-336.
McLindon, E., Humphreys, C., & Hegarty, K. (2018). “It happens to clinicians too”: An Australian prevalence study of intimate partner and family violence against health professionals. BMC Women’s Health, 18(1), 113. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-018-0588-y
Carmona-Torres JM, Recio-Andrade B, Rodríguez-Borrego MA. Intimate partner violence among health professionals: distribution by autonomous
communities in Spain. Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2017;51:e03256. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1980-220X2016049803256
To listen to other minisodes in this series
**Have you ever seen survivors’ mental health or substance use issues turned against them by a domestic violence perpetrator? Have you been concerned about a domestic violence survivor’s treatment being sabotaged by an abusive partner? In this podcast, David Mandel, Executive Director and Founder of the Safe & Together Institute and Ruth Stearns Mandel explore these questions. They also talk about how a perpetrator pattern-based approach can help protect survivors against these behaviors.
The show is broken down into three major themes:**
- What is weaponization of mental health and addiction?
- Why is systems are vulnerable to these manipulations
- How we can fix (or perpetrator proof) our systems
David & Ruth talk about how perpetrator's fabricated allegations can gain currency through sheer repetition. David breaks down emotional abuse into different types of abuse depending on who the perpetrator's audience is. They also discuss how perpetrators benefit from:
- the tendency to pathologize/psychologize survivors
- a lack of focus on strengths
- how mental health and addiction issues are automatically assumed to reflect on parenting capacity
- gender bias about mental health, addiction and parenting
- lack of universal coercive control assessment in mental health and addiction
**They explore strategies for improving clinical practice including assessing how current coercive control is impacting access to treatment. They discuss how important it is to recontextualize survivors' issues back perpetrator's patterns of behavior. David & Ruth examine the implications of documentation and reporting to family court and child protection.
If you like this episode you might also like:**
Season 2 Episode 19: Using the concepts of collaborative co-parenting to hold perpetrators more accountable in family court
Season 2 Episode 14: How to perpetrator proof custody & access processes
Season 2 Episode 10: Trauma-informed is not the same as domestic violence-informed: A conversation about the intersection of domestic violence perpetration, mental health & addiction
Episode 30: 4 Ways the Concept of Trauma Bonding Works Against Survivors
(Apologies the sound quality of this episode is slightly less than we'd like.)
In their opening episode of Season 3, Partnered with a Survivor co-hosts , David Mandel & Ruth Stearns Mandel, interview international journalist Grant Wyeth. Grant Wyeth is a researcher at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, and a columnist for the Diplomat. He has written extensively about men's violence against women. In this interview, Grant offers an international perspective on:
- The backlash against the advancements of women
- Male supremacist groups and their influence on politics
- how Richard Gardener's "ideology" of parental alienation was intended to influence the family court's position domestic violence
- how Gardener's influence has caused more harm than Leonard Warwick's violence against Australian judges, the family court and others who helped his ex-partner
- how journalists can do a better job covering male violence against women
To learn more about Grant and his journalism
Ask Graham Goulden about the Bystander Approach to violence prevention, he’ll talk to you about being a “moral rebel.” “Moral rebels” intervene to stop violence when others standby. “Moral rebels” act when others walk away. Graham, a former Scottish police officer and Chief Investigator specializing in criminal investigation, drug investigation, training and crime prevention, is a passionate advocate of the bystander approach. Graham focuses on teaching concrete behavioral strategies to safely intervene in the attitudes which promote abuse & sexual violence well before violence occurs. He speaks about concrete ways we can train our brain to intervene & hold our friends & loved ones accountable and become effective active bystanders.
In this episode, Ruth & David talk with Graham about his active bystander work within law enforcement where attitudes of organizational self protection and misapplied notions of loyalty often harm those reporting dangerous & criminal behaviors by co workers. David & Ruth discuss with Graham:
- His involvement with a recent Scottish National Police’s “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign focused on men’s sexually assaultive attitudes & behaviors.
- Concrete actions can bystanders take to safely intervene when they see men behaving in abusive ways
- Changing law enforcement attitudes around perpetration of intimate partner & sexual violence
Learn more about Graham Goulden’s Cultivating Minds UK
In this fourth installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore when workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator, and the implications for the workplace. In a just over 20 minutes , David & Ruth discuss:
- David's history with worker personal disclosures about their own victimization
- How workers going through the Safe & Together Model training are seeing their own experience reflected in the material
- How agencies are using the Safe & Together Model to identify employees whose performance is suffering due to abuse and provide them with greater support
In the middle part of the minisode, David and Ruth discuss perpetrator behaviors that target the workplace including:
- Behaviors that cause survivors to miss time at work like taking the car or stopping her from leaving or making her worried the children will be unsafe if she leave
- Unwanted, often repeated calls to the workplace, showing up at work
- Stalking and surveillance behaviors which may make it fearful for someone to be out in the community
- Accusations of affairs if she meeting alone with male clients
- When the professional works for agencies like child protection or the courts, threats of calling the police or child protection may carry with it extra shame and fear of losing employment .
As result, survivors may may present as with performance issues including missed days, lateness, being distracted or unable to focus at work; irritability with coworkers, and feelings of being overwhelmed.
In the final portion of the minisode, David & Ruth outline some strategies for agencies including:
- Ensuring that any employee safety policy explicitly recognizes the connection between coercive control and employee performance, and how perpetrators target workers at worker as a powerful form of control.
- Agencies needing to clearly articulates how it will support and respond to an employee who is experiencing domestic violence including how performance concerns will be handled sensitively and in context.
- Particularly important in agencies where a threat of a report creates fears for one's jobs and shame, any workplace policy needs to be clear about how survivors confidentiality amongst her peers will be safeguarded, e.g. specialized process for handling information
- When the perpetrator is a fellow employee, the consequences for abusive behavior must be clear.
- The agency policy must work to be responsive to the needs of survivors, e.g. reassignment to a different area or rotation of schedule to respond to threats of stalking that may impeding performance or safety;
- Communication of this policy must shared proactively on a regular basis so that survivors have the information they need to protect themselves from threats against their job
- Train supervisors, managers, and HR around handling these items consistently with policy, including training to always consider domestic violence victimization as one of the possible reasons for poor performance
- Institute a flex policy that supports workers in their ability to attend court for protection order hearings, criminal cases ,and family matters when domestic violence is involved.
About the worker safety and well-being minisode seriesThe goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence-informed systems. This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a series for human resources managers and organizational leadership. Setting policies and&
In this third installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore the connection between worker safety and victim blaming. In a just over 15 minutes , David & Ruth discuss:
- How a lack of knowledge of how fathers' choices impact families and engagement skills with men hamper work with violent fathers
- How these gaps can be worse for fathers from communities where racism has led to the further vilification of men, as being dangerous, irresponsible, or irrelevant
- How this lack of knowledge, skills and confidence can lead to workers feeling unsafe about engaging fathers who have been violent, which leaves the worker to focus on survivors' choices as means to keep children safe
- Victim blaming results when the survivor doesn't act in accordance with agency wishes
In the second half of the minisode, David and Ruth outline some steps agencies can take including:
- Training workers to have the skills and confidence to assess the influence of all father’s choices on the family functioning- not just seeing the mum as the responsible for the functioning of the home.
- Training workers in the skills and confidence to engage fathers , even ones with histories of violence
- Prioritize whole- of- family work including incorporation in to reflective supervision
- Require regular conversations about worker emotional and physical safety in domestic violence cases as a regular, proactive part of supervision
- Create a culture where workers know that expressing safety worries is normal, and that they will be supported around strategies for safety, not judged for disclosing fears
- Ensure that domestic violence case are explicitly mentioned in any worker safety policy
About the worker safety and well-being minisode seriesThe goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence-informed systems. This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a series for human resources managers and organizational leadership. Setting policies and procedures to address worker emotional & professional safety in the context of domestic violence cases is essential to creating a domestic violence-informed agency.
Topics in the series include:
- When workers are targeted by the perpetrator of one of the clients
- The connection between worker safety in engaging perpetrators and mother-blaming practice.
- When workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator (through the workplace and at home)
- When workers own experience of abuse are triggered by their work with families
- Managing your own fears, as the worker, about the safety of the family.
Listen to the introduction to the series
Read the Safe & Together Institute’s white paper on worker safety
Take an online course on worker safety related to domestic violence
In this second installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore the important topic of workers being targeted by domestic violence perpetrators. In a few minutes , David & Ruth discuss different ways workers are targeted including:
- Manipulation, intimidation and bullying
- Threats of or actual lawsuits and complaints lodged with managers, professional boards, or courts
- Implied or real threats against family members
- Stalking (online or in real life)
Ruth & David also discuss how misogyny, racism or other forms of discrimination can be factors in the targeting of workers.
David & Ruth finish the brief episode with specific suggestions about basic safety and support strategies that agencies can put in place to respond to the behaviors of perpetrators. These include:
- Explicitly widen out the concept of worker safety to include intimidation, manipulation, not just explicit threats or acts of violence
- Make this wider definition of worker safety a regular part, preventative (not reactive) supervision in cases
- Ensure that staff that handle client complaint or review boards are educated around coercive control and pattern based assessments
- Performance reviews and human resources procedures need to be consider the impact of threats and intimidation on a worker's performance
About the worker safety and well-being minisode seriesThe goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence-informed systems. This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a series for human resources managers and organizational leadership. Setting policies and procedures to address worker emotional & professional safety in the context of domestic violence cases is essential to creating a domestic violence-informed agency.
Topics in the series include:
- When workers are targeted by the perpetrator of one of the clients
- The connection between worker safety in engaging perpetrators and mother-blaming practice.
- When workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator (through the workplace and at home)
- When workers own experience of abuse are triggered by their work with families
- Managing your own fears, as the worker, about the safety of the family.
Listen to the introduction to the series
Read the Safe & Together Institute’s white paper on worker safety
Take an online course on worker safety related to domestic violence
In the kickoff of their first ever minisode series, David & Ruth will introduce the theme of worker safety and well-being in the context of working on issues related to domestic violence. The goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence informed systems.
Since the inception of the Model, it has been central to know the perpetrators pattern, not only as it related to domestic violence-informed work with the family, but also as it related to the safety & efficacy of the worker. A worker, who is engaging a family where there is domestic violence, needs to know if perpetrator has a known pattern of violence or intimidation toward others outside the family. This is a basic domestic violence informed practice related to worker safety.
Since then our understanding of the organizational importance of addressing worker safety and well being has only grown. Worker safety may impact
- attrition and retention
- worker mental and emotional health
- worker performance
- the safety and well-being of workers who are survivors themselves.
As the Safe & Together Institute's work and our collaborations with Professor Cathy Humphreys has shown, when worker safety concerns go unaddressed child protection workers may be more blaming of survivors and hold perpetrators less accountable as parents out fear for their own safety;
This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a series for human resources managers and organizational leadership. Setting policies and procedures to addresses worker emotional & professional safety in the context of domestic violence cases is essential to creating a domestic violence informed agency.
Topics in the series will include:
· When workers are targeted by the perpetrator of one of the clients
· The connection between worker safety in engaging perpetrators and mother-blaming practice.
· When workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator (through the workplace and at home)
· When workers own experience of abuse are triggered by their work with families
· Managing your own fears, as the worker, about the safety of the family.
We hope you join us for the other episodes.
Read the Safe & Together Institute's white paper on worker safety
Take an online course on worker safety related to domestic violence
Many professionals mistakenly believe that concerns related to domestic violence evaporate once a relationship is over. Survivors know differently. Their experiences help us understand the ways that domestic violence perpetrators’ patterns of behaviors extend beyond the relationship.
In this episode, Ruth and David explore the nature of post separation coercive control and related topics. Ruth and David discuss:
· How post separation coercive control distinguishes through a heavy focus on “remote control’ abuse, abuse from a distance, using proxies to maintain and extend control; targeting and use of children; efforts to control the survivors’ parenting, and the use and targeting of finances.
· How post separation coercive control often involves new avenues and targets for manipulation, often centered around family court and child protection systems.
· How the risk assessment frameworks used by many professionals fails to capture harm to children and the omnipresent influence of coercive control in the post separation period-regardless of whether there have been recent acts of violence or not.
· How one of the main factors used by courts for assessing the fitness of a parent-their willingness and ability to co parent-can be used to increase accountability for perpetrators as parents: when post separation coercive controlling patterns of behaviors are taken into consideration and mapped as parenting choices & are considered an impediment to healthy & safe co parenting.
Toward the end of the episode, Ruth passionately describes how systems take survivors’ disclosures and “hurt us with them”, and how this can be more harmful than the abuse itself. David asks professionals to reflect on the ways that survivors are vulnerable to post separation coercive control by virtue of our collective lack of awareness & appropriate responses to this form of abuse.
Listen to related episodes of Partnered with A Survivor
Season 2 Episode 14: How to perpetrator proof custody & access processes
Season 2 Episode 12: How coercive control harms child safety & wellbeing: An interview with researcher Dr. Emma Katz
Phrases like "child witness to violence" or "children exposed to violence" only capture a small slice of how domestic violence perpetrators' behaviors harm children. Assessment frameworks based on these concepts primarily emphasize the traumatic impact of the direct witnessing of acts of physical violence . Coercive control teaches us that it is patterns of entrapping & controlling behaviors which deprive adult & child survivors their basic human rights including safety, well-being, and autonomy. The Safe & Together Institute uses a multiple pathways to harm framework which brings assessment processes into alignment with a coercive control framework.
In this episode, David & Ruth discuss the multiple pathways to harm framework including:
- how it adds to the "child exposure" approach
- increases accountability for perpetrators as parents
- operationalizes improved gender equality
- makes wider impacts of coercive control visible
Related episodesSeason 2 Episode 14: How to perpetrator proof custody & access processes
Season 2 Episode 12: How coercive control harms child safety & wellbeing: An interview with researcher Dr. Emma Katz
Season 2 Episode 8: “I spiraled down to a dark place:” An interview with a young survivor of officer-involved domestic violence and his Mum
Intervening with perpetrators, who are the source of the harm to child, partner and family functioning, is essential for domestic violence-informed systems. In this episode, David & Ruth talk about the third principle of the Safe & Together Model which focuses on intervening with the perpetrator to reduce risk and harm to children. The conversation covers:
- the importance of a broad defintion of "accountability"
- how micro -practices around language and documentation are the foundation of accountability in a domestic violence-informed system
- how tradition definitions of perpetrator accountability can contribute to racial inequity in the response of systems
- how practitioners can increase their capacity to keep the focus on the perpetrator and change (and away from a "failure-to-protect" approach)
Read our white paper on perpetrators, change and accountability
Listen to these related episodesSeason 2 Episode 15: She is Not Your Rehab: A global invitation to men to end abuse of women & children through radical self-responsibility & healing
Season 2 Episode 11: “We need a revolution:” Integration of trauma healing and behavior change for people who choose violence
Season 2, Episode 5: How professionals can avoid being manipulated by perpetrators
Episode 21: Listening to the Voices of Children and Young People Harmed by Fathers Who Choose Violence
Episode 19: Nine Ways to Collude with a Person Who Chooses Violence
In this episode, Ruth and David yarn with Ashlee Donohue – a proud Dunghutti woman born and raised in Kempsey, NSW. Ashlee is an Author, Educator, Advocate and speaker around the anti-violence message. Ashlee is currently the CEO of Mudgin-Gal Aboriginal Corporation – Women’s Centre, which is for Aboriginal women run by Aboriginal women. Ashlee was a keynote speaker at the 2021 Safe & Together Institute Asia Pacific Conference on the burning question of coercive control criminalisation.
During the interview Ruth and David talk with Ashlee about:
- Her thoughts on the criminalisation of coercive control in Australia, and the the pros and cons of this for Aboriginal communities
- The need for one single defintion of domestic violence
- The decision making process for Aboriginal domestic violence survivors accessing services like calling the police can be very different than white or CALD survivors.
- The importance of listening to the stories of Aboriginal survivors
- The need for cultural safety in the responses to domestic violence in the Aboriginal community
Read Ashlee's memoir: ‘Because I love him’ a personal account of love, motherhood, domestic violence and survival.
Watch the video "Change Your Ways" : Australian Men Speak about Domestic Violence
Other related episodes you may be interested in:Season 2 Episode 15: She is Not Your Rehab: A global invitation to men to end abuse of women & children through radical self-responsibility & healing
Season 2 Episode 13: An Interview with Courageous Fire: Reparations & the Unique Experience of Black Domestic Violence Survivors
Season 2 Episode 7: ‘Radical Resistance to the Status Quo’: A Look Behind the Scottish Coercive Control Law with Dr. Marsha Scott
Season 2, Episode 2: Coercive Control Laws: A discussion with investigative reporter and author Jess Hill
3KND Interview: A global movement going forward to protect children from family violence
3KND Interview: The impacts of controlling behaviour, the hidden violence in relationships
3KND Interview: How Ruth Mandel’s podcast ‘Partnered With a Survivor’ is supporting healing all over the world
For men's violence against women to end, men need to talk to other men about change and responsibility. At the same time, many men who are abusive, have often experienced their own traumas at the hands of their parents or society at large. An emerging voice in the effort to invite men to healing is Matt Brown, co-creator with his wife, Sarah Brown of the "She is Not Your Rehab" global movement.
Matt believes that because so many boys & men are traumatized & wounded in relationship with parents/caretakers, taking radical self ownership of their own healing journey, their own behaviors is the best way to heal that trauma. This self ownership never excuses abuse even when it recognizes the trauma & learned behaviors of abuse which can be an attempt to protect from pain & fear by inflicting pain & trying to control others.
In this conversation with Ruth and David, Matt a barber, speaker and author of the best-selling book "She is Not Your Rehab," talks about how he translated his own healing journey into a message of personal responsibility, behaviour change and healing for men so they may step more deeply into connected, healthy, nourishing relationships which do not continue the cycle of violence.
Read the 7 Principles of the "She is Not Your Rehab" global movement 1. She is not responsible for your emotional rehabilitation.
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Your healing is your responsibility and yours to take initiative for and manage.
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Any healing needed for you, cannot come at the expense of her healing, health and wellbeing. (David & Ruth's personal favorite!)
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She can support you but she can never do more for you than you are prepared to do for yourself.
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Regardless of what anyone has done TO YOU, it is now time FOR YOU to take ownership of your own life and be committed to living it wholeheartedly enough to do any work needed. Your childhood trauma wasn’t your fault but your healing IS now your responsibility.
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True change comes from genuine growth. Growth happens once we heal. Healing starts when we begin to FEEL our pain.
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Hurt people inevitably hurt people because what we will not transform, we transmit on those around us and healed people do indeed heal people. The question is WILL YOU have the courage to heal?
Order the book "She is Not Your Rehab"
The barbershop where men go to heal | Matt Brown | TEDxChristchurch
Other related podcastsSeason 2 Episode 11: “We need a revolution:” Integration of trauma healing and behavior change for people who choose violence
Season 2 Episode 6: The Male Victim
Season 2, Episode 1: 6 Steps to Partnering with Survivors
Episode 21: Listening to the Voices of Children and Young People Harmed by Fathers Who Choose Violence
Building on the Safe & Together Institute's white paper on perpetrators' manipulate of systems (and the related podcast) and work with the national Family Court of Australia, David & Ruth take a closer look at how domestic violence perpetrators can continue to undermine child safety and well-being post-separation, manipulate systems regarding custody and access issues, and how they target professionals in order to extend their coercive control after a relationship has ended.
In this episode, Ruth & David talk about:
- How professionals can properly identify and assess coercive control in the context of custody and access matters
- How professionals can use a behavioral lens to identify how systems and professionals are targeted, post separation, by parents who choose coercive control
- How to inoculate yourself, as practitioner, against these behaviors
- How, by using a collaborative parenting standard as a lens for identifying the risks and harms created by domestic violence perpetrators, systems can increase accountability in custody and access situations
- How understanding patterns of pre- and post separation coercive control and actions taken to harm the children is essential for understanding, contextualizing, and validating the protective parents' behaviors
- How acknowledging differing cultural expectations of men and women as parents is essential to assessing child safety and well-being in the context of post separation coercive control
Essential listening for anyone who is interested in child safety and well-being in the context of post separation coercive control, their discussion includes practical steps and has implications for women sector workers and advocates, legal practitioners, child protection, family court, children's advocates, mental health practitioners and others. David & Ruth also hope that survivors can use this information to educate professionals who work with them.
Related podcastsSeason 2 Episode 12: How coercive control harms child safety & wellbeing: An interview with researcher Dr. Emma Katz
Season 2, Episode 5: How professionals can avoid being manipulated by perpetrators
Season 2, Episode 1: 6 Steps to Partnering with Survivors
Episode 29: Family courts are failing the “best interests” of adult and child abuse survivors: An interview with Joan Meier
Crafting a domestic violence-informed response to the unique experience of Black domestic violence survivors in the United States requires listening to the voices and lived experience of those survivors. Like other marginalized survivors in systems impacted by racism and colonization across the globe, Black women have to navigate systems that often have penalized and punished them instead of being a support. For example, due to systemic racism and stereotyping, Black survivors are more quickly labeled as 'difficult' victims. Distrust of formal systems, based on historic racism, can make it harder for Black survivors to reach out for the help they need. When survivors do not feel like their experience will be seen and understood, they will not avail themselves of those interventions. Harms become compounded, including the unnecessary removal of children by children protection, when Black survivors are penalized for not using those formal systems.
In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor, Ruth & David interview Courageous Fire, the Executive Director of Courageous Fire LLC , who is a domestic violence survivor and a leader in the movement to create culturally-specific responses to domestic violence in the Black community. Courageous Fire which works exclusively with Black victims & survivors of domestic violence in Iowa. Her model of community assistance is self sustaining, and community driven. She takes cues from the grass roots experiences of Black survivors within her community to bring holistic assistance which isn't 'cookie cutter' but that deeply meets those survivors on multiple levels. In an innovative adaptation of the concept of reparations, Courageous Fire believes that domestic violence survivors deserve to be compensated for their pain and suffering. She wants the abuse (not just the abusers) to "pay survivors back" in practical and financial terms.
Additional themes in this episode include:
- Why the Black community has typically resisted contact & reliance on formal services as a way to protect themselves & children
- Why calling the police is not safe for Black women
- How systems, which are supposed to keep us safe, have harmed Black women with impunity because of their bias, judgements, assumptions about victim behaviors through a culturally ignorant/arrogant lens
- How Courageous Fire LLC helps to bring bring holistic healing & a pathway to financial independence for Black survivors of domestic abuse
- How to recognize & see the dynamic resistance of Black survivors as a strength not a deficit.
If you want to know more about Courageous Fire & the work please go to: https://www.cfirellc.com/ and https://www.cfirellc.com/specialty
https://www.amazon.com/Empowerment-through-Arts-Ignite-Power/dp/B08JF2DDJG/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Empowerment+through+the+Arts%3A+Ignite+Your+Power&qid=1625084046&s=books&sr=1-3
For related episodes:
Season 2 Episode 9: Finally! A realistic feature film about coercive control: An interview with Chyna Robinson and Tracy Rector
Episode 22: When Culture, Religion & Domestic Violence Meet
For 15 years, the Safe & Together Model has trained professionals in the importance of centering coercive controlling patterns of behaviors if you want to understand the harm domestic abuse perpetrators create for their children & how that is parenting choice. Failures to link coercive control to child abuse & neglect make it easier to blame adult survivors, who are being protective, with failure-to-protect & parental alienation.
The Safe & Together Model's perpetrator pattern-based approach links coercive control in a number of different ways, creating a foundation for a domestic violence-informed practice that helps professionals to partner with survivors and intervene with perpetrators as parents while also mapping the adult survivors attempts to protect children which may not have access to formal services such as police, child protection or counseling because these interventions may not be safe & can create more danger for adult & child survivors.
New research is backing up this approach by exploring how coercive control impacts children directly via multiple pathways to harm. In this episode, Ruth and David talk with Dr Emma Katz, a leading research specialist in the harms caused by perpetrators to mothers and children in the context of domestic abuse. The topics of conversation include:
- How perpetrators of coercive control create danger & harm for their children within relationships & post-separation
- How professionals & systems are failing to assess the parenting of the perpetrator & how that increases the danger for child & adult survivors
- How the language of "child exposed to domestic violence" obscures the multiple ways perpetrators harm children & hides the choices of the perpetrator as a parent
- How coercive control impacts child safety, wellbeing & family functioning in the absence of physical violence
Access Dr. Katz's Research
Dr. Emma Katz BioShe is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth at Liverpool Hope University and has won multiple awards for her research, including the Corinna Seith Prize, awarded by Women Against Violence Europe in 2016. Emma has also written for the academic journal Child Abuse Review. Her most recent article, ‘When Coercive Control Continues to Harm Children: Post‐Separation Fathering, Stalking and Domestic Violence’, is now available to read and download, as is her 2016 article ‘Beyond the Physical Incident Model: How Children Living with Domestic Violence are Harmed by and Resist Regimes of Coercive Control’, which is one of the journal’s most viewed articles to date. Alongside these, Emma is releasing a book titled Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives which will be published in early 2022 by Oxford University Press.
The discussion of relationship between histories of trauma and the perpetration of abuse is often fraught. Many people are worried, as has happened over and over again, that any consideration of the trauma histories of perpetrators will become an excuse for violence. Others advocate for the need for a more holistic approach, especially for those perpetrators who are also survivors of intergenerational traumas related to colonisation and racism.
Following on from this season's Episode 10 "Trauma-informed is not the same as domestic violence-informed: A conversation about the intersection of domestic violence perpetration, mental health & addiction", David & Ruth turn their attention to the relationship between trauma histories and the choice to act in abusive, violent and controlling ways. They anchor the conversation to following three main points:
- Adult and child survivors' realities and stated needs should be reflected in our conversations about perpetrators' trauma & behavioral accountability.
- Trauma histories do not cause someone to engage in violence, and violent and abusive behaviors do not heal trauma (in fact impede healing).
- A perpetrator pattern-based approach to measuring behavior change can help make trauma and addiction work more domestic violence-informed.
David & Ruth also highlight how the work of the "She's Not Your Rehab" (Matt & Sarah Brown) is an example of how to bridge the conversations around behavior change and healing. (And Ruth does a shout out to Jess Hill, author of "See What You Made Me Do." )
In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor, David & Ruth tackle one of the most pressing issues in the domestic violence field: how to make mental health and addiction services more domestic violence-informed when it comes to interacting with survivors. While awareness of trauma and its impact continues to increase, it often is decontextualized from the dynamics of coercive control. Mental health and addiction professionals are often ill-prepared by their education and training to integrate coercive control into their assessments. Organizations that are striving to trauma-informed are not always committing to be domestic violence-informed. Domestic violence survivors are often harmed by these gaps.
In this episode Ruth & David, discuss
- How perpetrators' can cause and exacerbate existing mental health or addiction issues for adult and child survivors
- How perpetrators' can interfere with other family members' treatment and use their involvement with treatment against them
- How systems, like family court and child welfare, may more negatively perceive a survivors' mental health and addiction issues than perpetrators' coercive control
- How practitioners and organizations may have blindspots regarding how current coercive control dynamics may be impacting survivors' mental health and addiction treatment
David & Ruth also tackle how structural sexism, racism and colonisation dynamics are often ignored in mainstream mental health and addiction paradigms to the detriment of clients from oppressed communities. Ruth also shares about how she's been impacted by reading Judy Atkinson's book, Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia If you like this episode you may want to also listen to the following other episodes of Partnered with a Survivor:Season 2, Episode 5: How professionals can avoid being manipulated by perpetrators
Season 2, Episode 1: 6 Steps to Partnering with Survivors
Episode 30: 4 Ways the Concept of Trauma Bonding Works Against Survivors
Episode 18: Survivors aren’t Broken! An intimate discussion about support and partnership in relationships
Domestic violence has been depicted in feature movies before. "Enough," "The Burning Bed" and "Sleeping with the Enemy" depended on star power to draw in their audiences. "Once We Were Warriors," the dark, award-wining New Zealand classic, explored violence in an urban Maori family. Now the multi-award winning feature film "No Ordinary Love" (NOL) joins this pantheon of movies that glues viewers to their seats with view of intimate violence and abuse that is far too familiar to many of us. In this movie, coercive control, the topic of a current global conversation about how best to respond to domestic violence, is center stage.
Join Ruth & David as they interview Chyna Robinson (writer, director, producer) and Tracy Rector (executive producer), the powerhouse pair behind "No Ordinary Love,'' a movie about two families where status and power intertwine with coercive control. In one family the a pastor uses religion as tool of control. In the other family, a survivor struggles with a partner, whose job as a police officer, increases danger instead of safety and protection.
Watch the trailer
From the "No Ordinary Love" website:
"Lines between romantic ideals and control become blurred when Tanya's husband can no longer handle the stress of his career as a police officer. His warm kisses turn cold, and she is left fighting for her life. At the same time, Elizabeth's idyllic life is marred when her charming husband manipulates her into believing that she is going insane. As Elizabeth counsels Tanya, she realizes the signs of abuse in her own marriage. When both women decide to leave, they realize it isn't going to go as smoothly as they'd planned. The escape they seek, turns deadly."
David & Ruth talk to Chyna and Tracy about the mission behind the movie, the artistic choices associated with depicting coercive control, and the strong positive response the movie has already received.
Chyna Robinson, is the award winning writer producer, director, behind the short film, "Greenwood," about the struggle of WWI vet to protect his family during the 1921 racist massacre in Tulsa Oklahoma. Tracy Rector, a domestic violence survivor and veteran of the domestic violence movement in the United States. Chyna & Tracy brought their own personal experiences & cultural perspectives to speak to intersectionalities such as race, religion, the impact of cultural attitudes and systemic failures of entities such as policing & social services toward black women survivors.
Chyna and Tracy will be screening "No Ordinary Love" at many of the upcoming Safe & Together Institute events. We hope you join us and the NOL team for these events.
Check out the "No Ordinary Love" website
Follow "No Ordinary Love" on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
The voices of children impacted by domestic violence perpetrators are being ignored by professionals.
In this ground-breaking interview, a fourteen year old survivor of officer-involved domestic violence, and his mother speak openly about their experience with systems. Liam, and his mother Michelle (pseudonyms) share how the police colluded with their perpetrator, who was Liam's stepfather. They speak about how Liam and his sister were treated as after thoughts, and not victims in their own right. Alternately between sadness and anger Liam talks about the failures of the police, child welfare and other professionals.
Links to other interviews and stories with Liam and MichelleLiam’s Op-Ed in the Age
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/child-survivors-of-family-violence-need-to-be-recognised-20201206-p56kzq.html
Our interview with the ABC (radio) which caused complaints because a child spoke
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/melbourne/programs/mornings/victoria-police,-minister-apologise-to-woman/12363274
Sixty minutes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Clth5kpkiJc
An article about Liam and his sister https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/12335894
Two articles about our story published in the Age https://www.theage.com.au/national/hidden-crisis-when-your-domestic-abuser-is-also-the-local-police-officer-20201203-p56k6r.html
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/systemic-problems-ibac-uncovers-police failings-on-domestic-abuse-by-officers-20201206-p56l0d.html
Safety. Satisfaction. Self-Determination.
For decades, domestic violence survivors have shared that these are the aspects of their life targeted by domestic violence perpetrators. Until recently, it was primarily the attacks on physical safety that were reflected in the domestic violence laws across the world. Slowly , with the passage of coercive control laws in a few countries, survivors are seeing their wider reality reflected in legislation. Coercive control, as definition of domestic violence, is now being considered from Australia to the United States. Coercive control, which has been at the center of the Safe & Together Model's perpetrator pattern-based approach for 15 years, stresses patterns of behavior that lead to entrapment and restrict the fundamental rights of the adult and child survivors.
The laws that are being considered are far from uniform in their scope and sensitivity to the issues including preventing backlash against survivors, particularly survivors from poor and marginalized communities. Because Scotland's coercive control law is considered one of the most progressive in the world, David and Ruth interviewed Dr. Marsha Scott , the executive for Scottish Woman's Aid . The interview includes:
- A discussion of the framing and development of the law
- How the law differs from other efforts
- The importance of the inclusion of children and pets in the defintion of patterns
- How a "reasonable person" standard helps keep the focus on the perpetrator's pattern
- The importance of implementation planning
- The importance of getting input from survivors as part of the process of developing coercive control laws and
- How to avoid coercive control laws rebounding against survivors from all backgrounds.
Read the Scottish Law
Check out Scottish Women's Aid's website
Listen to our interview with Jess Hill on coercive control laws
Listen to our interview with Luke and Ryan Hart, major supporters of coercive control law
Listen our episode on coercive control and consent
Both men and women can be controlling. Both men and women can violent. Domestic abuse occurs in same sex and heterosexual relationship. This means both men and women can be victims of domestic violence. Yet domestic violence-informed practice requires a gender analysis and an understanding of coercive control. In this episode Ruth and David examine some of the controversies and challenges associated with identifying and providing assistance to male victims of domestic violence including:
- cultural understandings of masculinities & gender roles as barriers to disclosure and assistance
- perpetrators claiming the mantle of victimhood as means to manipulate partners, professionals and systems
- the need to recognize men's histories victimization and trauma without using it as excuse for abusive behavior
- how mapping patterns of coercive control can help identify male victims, protect them and inoculate professionals against manipulations by perpetrators claiming victim status
Check out the Safe & Together Institute's white paper on "Unraveling the Gender Paradox at the center of the Safe & Together Model"
Domestic violence perpetrators do not only target survivors. They also target the professionals & systems who want to want to help them. Many perpetrators, often using money, privilege and power, leverage systems to amplify their control. False allegations of substance abuse, mental health issues or child abuse are lodged with social services and family courts, often to devastating effect. Other behaviors include:
- Continuous litigation to exhaust the financial ability of survivors to resist
- The use of police wellness checks to intimidate a survivor
- The weaponization of survivor's mental health and addiction diagnoses, to gain control over children, even when those problems are the result of the perpetrator's abuse.
Survivors can feel trapped between perpetrators and systems that are not savvy to these behaviors. The effects of system manipulation on the safety & wellbeing of adult and child survivors of domestic violence is often long term, financially devastating, and harmful to child wellbeing and development. In some instances these system failures can cause MORE trauma than the initial abuse itself.
In this episode, David & Ruth discuss how domestic violence perpetrators target practitioners in different systems, and why those systems are so vulnerable to these tactics. They highlight the vulnerabilities of family court, criminal justice and child welfare. They discuss how to recognize when a perpetrator is manipulating your system to harm a victim, and how to resist these manipulations.
What do practitioners need to pay most attention to in domestic violence cases involving children? What kind of evidence do courts need to hear evidence if they want to make good decisions related to custody and access? The Safe & Together's Model 5 Critical Components is the foundational guide to domestic violence-informed assessment and decision -making. The Mapping Tool, Pivoting to the Perpetrator and other tools and techniques all derive from these Critical Components.
In this episode, David and Ruth dive into the each of those Critical Components including:
- the history behind their development
- how they can help drive systems change
- how their application can prevent victim blaming
- how they allow practitioners to consider important factors like cultural trauma without allowing it be an excuse for perpetration
Learn more about the Critical Components:
- Foundational Elearning: "Safe & Together: An Introduction to the Model"
- Comprehensive Elearning: "Safe & Together Model CORE Training"
Purchase Safe & Together Model Cards which include the Principles and Critical Components
In a recent article by Tracey De Simone and Susan Heward-Belle*, they describe the "cultural tsunami" triggered by the Safe & Together Model in Queensland Australia. In this episode, Ruth interviews David about the theory of change behind the Safe & Together Model and how Safe & Together Institute is attempting to remake the practice of systems. David outlines four goals that drive the work:
- Strengthening the safety, and well being of children and families
- Ending mother blaming in domestic violence cases
- Transforming how systems consider fatherhood
- Making statutory child welfare a driver of broader social and system change
Ruth guides the conversation to how all this produces better outcomes for adult and child survivors. David calls out practitioners to remember that professionals are not the arbiters of their own success--adult and child survivors are the arbiters of our success.
De Simone, T., & Heward-Belle, S. (2020). Evidencing better child protection practice: Why representations of domestic violence matter. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 32*(4), 403–419. https://doi.org/10.1080/10345329.2020.1840957
To truly understand the experience of many domestic violence survivors we need to understand coercive control. Coercive control, which is one of the key aspects of the Safe & Together Model, is as much about entrapment and the deprivation of liberty as it is about physical violence. In fact, the damage of coercive control can occur without any physical violence. Following the examples of England, Scotland and Wales, many jurisdictions are exploring updating their domestic violence laws to include coercive control.
In this episode, David and Ruth interview Jess Hill , an investigative journalist and the author of the award-winning book See What You Made Me Do,. In this far ranging conversation, they discuss her research into coercive control laws, how they are being applied, their impact on abuse victims and her evolution into an advocate for the criminalisation of coercive control .
Jess speaks also about
- Australian national movement toward criminalising coercive control and the cultural & system challenges in the application of that law
- The pro-contact orientation of family court as an example of the challenges coercive control laws face in implementation
- How we need to commit to full independence of women in order to address this insidious liberty crime
Her book See What You Made Me Do is being adapted into a 3-part series for SBS in 2021. To learn more visit her website: www.jesshill.net, and follow her on Twitter: @jessradio
Learn more about coercive control by listening to Season 1, Episode 1: Coercive Control and Consent
The Safe & Together Model is premised on the idea that child serving systems are natural allies to adult domestic violence survivors. In the Season 2 kick-off episode, David & Ruth explore the Safe & Together Model's principle of partnering and the six steps of partnering practice. The episode includes an examination of the obstacles to partnering and six practical steps professionals can take to improve their work with survivors.
Read more about survivors protective capacities
Download our Ally Guide
FAQs about challenges working with survivors
In this episode, David and Ruth look back over the highlights of the first season of Partnered with a Survivor. They talk about the genesis of the show, favorite episodes, and the value of survivor anger. The episode also includes a preview of 2021 episodes including an interview with author Jess Hill, and a new series that looks inside the Safe & Together Institute. See you in 2021!!
The last few decades has seen the dramatic rise of the criminalization of domestic violence perpetration across the globe. As a result, police have received a large share of domestic violence funding and partnerships between law enforcement and advocates have become the norm. But if only 20% of survivors feel safer after calling the police , then it is important to think critically about the relationship between survivors and their advocates, and the criminal justice system.
In this episode, David & Ruth explore the relationship between advocates and law enforcement with author and law school professor Leigh Goodmark and a team from Embrace, a network of Refuge's serving communities rural Wisconsin. The Embrace team shares the story of how funding was clawed back by a sheriff and local government council who objected to their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, racial equity and police reform. They discuss the realities of advocacy in the current atmosphere of calls for police reform, and how law enforcement's response sometimes has a chilling effect on victims of violence seeking assistance. Leigh Goodmark shares her insights into the history of advocacy within the context of the carceral system.
To learn about the Embrace program: https://www.embracewi.org/
To donate to Embrace: https://www.gofundme.com/f/embrace-loses-county-funding-over-blm-support
Read Leigh's New York Times op-ed on decriminalizing domestic violence
Purchase Decriminalizing Domestic Violence by Leigh Goodmark
In 2020, the Centre for Women's Justice filed a groundbreaking "super complaint" against all police forces in England and Wales. The complaint alleged patterns of "serious concerns about the way policing systems operate where police officers are accused of domestic abuse" and raising concerns of a " lack of integrity, of officers manipulating the system and acting in bad faith in a variety of ways."
In this episode, David and Ruth interview Nogah Ofer, the CWJ solicitor who filed the complaint and Amy (not her real name), who is an OIDV survivor whose story is included in the complaint. The interview covers:
- the genesis of the complaint
- the patterns of abuse and experiences of UK OIDV survivors
- the failures of the police system to respond effectively to these officers' behaviours
In the episode, Amy shares the details of her abuse and how the system failed to respond to her safety needs.
Listen to other episodes in the series:
Episode 28: “I have something I want to talk to you about...”: A conversation about the experiences of OIDV survivors with pioneering researcher Dr. Leanor Boulin Johnson
Episode 27: “How much crime are you willing to let your police commit?”: An interview with Lieutenant Detective Mark Wynn (Ret) and Police Chief Tom Tremblay (Ret)
Episode 26: Listening to the voices of survivors of officer-involved domestic violence: An interview with Nanette Chezum
Episode 25: When police officers commit domestic violence: Award-winning journalist and author Alex Roslin on the global problem of officer-involved domestic violence
The term "trauma bonding" was originally coined by Patrick Carnes, who was a proponent of the concept of sex addiction. He originally developed the term to describe "the misuse of fear, excitement, sexual feelings, and sexual physiology to entangle another person." A simpler and more encompassing definition is that traumatic bonding is: "a strong emotional attachment between an abused person and his or her abuser, formed as a result of the cycle of violence."
Problematically, the term is often misapplied to survivors rather than focusing on perpetrators and their choices and tactics. In this episode Ruth and David discuss 4 ways the concept works against survivors:
- Problem #1: It deemphasizes or ignores perpetrators' behaviors that keep survivors trapped in an abusive situation.
- Problem #2: It blames victims for the failure of friends, family, professionals, and faith leaders failure to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions.
- Problem 3: It focuses professionals on the survivor, not the perpetrator.
- Problem 4: It lets systems and professionals off the hook for how they are not responding well to survivors and perpetrators
David and Ruth also explore the connections between the concept of trauma bonding and Stockholm Syndrome, co-dependency and learned helplessness. They also examine the differential impact of this term on poor and indigenous women, women of color, and trans survivors.
Toward the end of the show David and Ruth talk about how the Safe & Together Institute's approach offers professionals alternative approaches to working with survivors including:
- Making sure that any discussion of trauma is contextualize to the perpetrator's pattern
- Actively seeking to understand behaviors of resistance and protection for self and others
- Working to ensure that the response that a survivor gets for disclosure is a positive experience (validation, partnership and consequences for the perpetrator)
- Respecting survivors unique needs
- Using tools like the Ally Guide to communicate to professional and kin
- Training professionals to recognize a) the patterns of manipulation by perpetrators, b) and b) their vulnerabilities to manipulation
Listen to other related episodes:
Episode 2: Victim blaming
Episode 3: Language and professional terms which cover up realities of abuse
Check out related ecourses on our Virtual Academy
Family courts' decisions related to domestic violence and child abuse have tremendous impact on the lives of adult and child survivors. These decisions are suppose to serve the "best interests" of the children in these families. Yet, as research indicates, reports of domestic violence and child abuse are more likely to be disbelieved than believed by family courts.
In this episode, David and Ruth speak to Joan Meier, an internationally renown author, researcher and attorney, about about her years of experience with family court and abuse, and her recent ground-breaking research study on US family court decisions related to abuse allegations. Highlights of her research, from an empirical study of ten years U.S. cases involving abuse and alienation claims, include:
- data that confirms that mothers’ claims of abuse, especially child physical or sexual abuse, increase their risk of losing custody, and that fathers’ cross-claims of alienation virtually double that risk
- Alienation’s impact is gender-specific; fathers alleging mothers are abusive are not similarly undermined when mothers cross-claim alienation.
Read the full paper: "U.S. child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations: what do the data show?"
Download infographic of key results of the research
Recommendations for domestic violence survivors involved in family court proceedings
**The first police spouse Dr. Leanor Boulin Johnson interviewed came in to the office, sat down and said: "I have something I want to talk to you about, and I really don't care what you want to talk to me about. I'm going to tell you what I want you to know about my stress." (p. 60 from Police Wife by Alex Roslin) She went on to tell Dr. Johnson and her colleague about how her police officer husband was beating her. More stories of police officer perpetrated domestic violence were uncovered as the research continued. With each disclosure, Dr. Johnson was thrown deeper and deeper into the hidden world of officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV).
Over more than thirty years, Dr. Johnson has done multiple studies and even testified to the United States Congress about officer involved domestic violence. Dr. Johnson, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University didn’t set out to research officer-involved domestic violence. As a professor in African-American and Family Studies, she was looking to research women’s roles in the workplace. After running into roadblock after roadblock, she landed on studying police officers’ stress including their families. In this conversation with David & Ruth, Dr. Johnson shares her insights and observations related to OIDV including her concerns for the health of police families, lack of support for police officers, and the connections between OIDV and police brutality.
During this interview Dr. Johnson talks about:**
- The connection between “authoritarian spillover,” OIDV and police brutality
- The gender and race differences in her research
- How police officers’ need for support and connection is central to addressing OIDV and excessive force problems
For those interested in learning more about her research you can email her directly at: drlbj@yahoo.com
To read more about how research you can read Alex Roslin’s book Police Wife
To listen to the other episodes in this series:
- Episode 27: “How much crime are you willing to let your police commit?”: An interview with Lieutenant Detective Mark Wynn (Ret) and Police Chief Tom Tremblay (Ret)
- Episode 26: Listening to the voices of survivors of officer-involved domestic violence: An interview with Nanette Chezum
- Episode 25: When police officers commit domestic violence: Award winning journalist and author Alex Roslin on the global problem of officer-involved domestic violence
Police have been fighting against officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV) for decades. In this episode, David & Ruth interviews two international law enforcement experts and advocates fighting against the perpetration of domestic violence by police officers. Mark Wynn and Tom Tremblay talk about how:
- Officer -involved domestic violence violates the public trust
- Police executives that don’t address OIDV are colluding with criminals
- Police officer stress is not a cause of OIDV
- OIDV is tied to male dominated culture in police forces
- Use of excessive force and OIDV are connected and need to be addressed together
To learn more about Mary Wynn’s consulting
To learn more about Tom Tremblay’s consulting
To listen to the other episodes in this series:
- Episode 26: Listening to the voices of survivors of officer-involved domestic violence: An interview with Nanette Chezum
- Episode 25: When police officers commit domestic violence: Award winning journalist and author Alex Roslin on the global problem of officer-involved domestic violence
Survivors of officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV) face threats and challenges not faced by other survivors. OIDV perpetrators are highly trained in violence, control and surveillance; have access to resources to surveil and threaten the survivor; can use knowledge of the system, including the location of confidential shelters/refuges; can use their relationships with other professionals to further their abuse; and often have access to firearms.
In this second in a multi-series of on officer-involved domestic violence, David and Ruth interview Nanette Chezum, an OIDV survivor about her experience of abuse. Nanette shares about:
- How her initial trust she placed in her partner was elevated because he was a police officer
- Her partner’s tactics of abuse and its relationship to his training and position
- The importance of getting support and validation from the partner from another officer
- The supportive and positive response she received from her perpetrator’s department
To learn more about Nanette’s public speaking
To listen to the other episodes in the OIDV series:
- Episode 25: When police officers commit domestic violence: Award winning journalist and author Alex Roslin on the global problem of officer-involved domestic violence
Survivors deserve a variety of options for support, justice and healing. In this episode, Ruth and David interview a survivor, practitioner and researcher involved with US-based survivor impact panels. Janette Barcenas is a survivor whose healing journey was strengthened by her participation in survivor impact panels and one-on-one dialogs with people who had chosen violence. She speaks about how much she gained from choosing to participate in these processes. Matt Johnston, a manager of these dialog programs, describes how the structure of these programs help both survivors and perpetrators. Our third guest, Dr. Kate Sacket Kerrigan shares the research results including the increases in empathy, guilt and greater understanding of partners’ perspectives by perpetrators.
In the show, the guest talk about:
- How the dialogs and survivor panels worked
- How survivors’ needs were at the center of the processes
- How perpetrators’ may have benefitted from the dialogs and panels.
If you want to learn more about this approach you can reach out to mattjohnstonlpc@gmail.com or ksackett@pdx.edu. Or check out the SCARS (Survivor Collective Alliance, Reaching Society) website.
To read about the intervention:
**Sackett Kerrigan, K. & Mankowski, E. S. (2020). How surrogate impact panels function in the context of intimate partner violence: A mixed-methods study. Victims & Offenders, DOI: 10.1080/15564886.2020.1764427
To extend your learning:**Episode 17: Choose to Change: Your Behavior, Your Choice’: A new community-based men’s behavior change toolkit
Episode 18: Survivors aren’t Broken! An intimate discussion about support and partnership in relationships
Episode 20: Partnering with Survivors Using Restorative Practices: An interview with Dr. Eloise Sepeda
In our Virtual Academy: Working with Men as Parents: Fathers' Parenting Choices Matter
When police officers commit domestic violence, it harms their family, the public, and the efficiency and effectiveness of police departments. Domestic violence survivors, who are partnered with police officers, face unique vulnerabilities and challenges. Officers who perpetrate domestic violence are often the same people who are involved in excessive force and altercations with their peers. It is believed that 2 in 5 domestic violence police calls are responded to by police officers who have a history of domestic violence perpetration.
In this first podcast in a multi-part series on officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV), Ruth and David have a far ranging conversation with Alex Roslin, an award winning journalist and the author of Police Wife, about:
- How he first learned about the issue of OIDV from a survivor who was participating in a support group that was one-half partners of gang members and the other half were partners of police officers
- How he began researching OIDV across the world
- How often police officers, who are known to commit domestic violence remain on the job, responding to domestic violence survivors’ calls for law enforcement assistance
- The lack of resources for OIDV survivors
- The linkages between OIDV and excessive force used against civilians
- How OIDV perpetrators use their position, power, training and relationships to engage in coercive control
- The need for improved policy and statutes to create better transparency, training, and consequences for OIDV perpetration
Often gendered and non-gendered frameworks for domestic violence are pitted against each other as if they represent two mutually exclusive universes. This does not need to be the case. To be useful, a domestic violence assessment and practice approach needs to be accurate, comprehensive and holistic. In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor, Ruth and David discuss:
- how practicing without a gendered analysis of parenting expectations and societal dynamics fails the test for accurate, comprehensive and holistic assessments and interventions
- how a behavioral focus allows you to assess danger and risk in diverse situations including men's violence against women, women's use of violence against men, abuse in same sex relationship and lateral violence
Also in this episode:
- The premiere of our Partnered with a Survivor theme song
If you like this episode you may want to check out the following:
- Episode 1: Coercive Control and Consent
- Episode 4: Gender Double Standards
- Episode 6: Gender, Power Dynamics and Abuse
- Episode 15: Coercive Control, Entrapment & Isolation: An interview with Luke & Ryan Hart
Systems often fail domestic survivors who are from religious communities. In the United Kingdom and other places, Muslim survivors can face racism from outside their community and intense pressure to conform to community norms around male entitlement and family honor. In this episode Ruth & David Interview Shana Begum, a domestic violence education coach who is a survivor of not one but two attempted honor based killings and two forced marriages. Shana speaks about
- Her experiences in being groomed for coercive control and domestic violence in her South Asian community
- How addressing the violence in her community was resisted because of fear of further marginalization and
- Adherence to religious principles manipulated to maintain power and control
- Her journey from being a victim to being an empowered survivor and professional educator
Central to her story is the notion that partnering with communities which are self protective because of cultural or religious beliefs or marginalization requires specific skills and understanding. Shana talks about how religion and culture played a role not only in her initial abuse but in her isolation via communal pressure and collusion with her perpetrators. She speaks about how certain closed communities create a pressure cooker of abuse by becoming 'communal abusers' which makes it very difficult for victims to report abuse and seek assistance. Ruth and Shana talk about how to not attack a culture or religion when breaking down coercive control and violence in order to assist survivors in those communities. David and Shana talk about professional curiosity in partnering with survivors who wish to be connected to their community, family and culture. Shana speaks about the dangers of honor based violence and the need for systems to educate themselves about cultural challenges in assisting survivors.
Shana is a professional educator in the UK for both systems and individuals and can be found: https://www.sthelensbestme.com/meet-the-team
For too long we have not listened to children and young people's experience of their father's violence. In their ground breaking research, Professor Cathy Humphreys and Dr. Katie Lamb interviewed children and young people about what they wanted to say to fathers who were violent to their families. This interview includes:
- one of the digital stories where a young person, in her own voice, shares her feelings about father and his behavior
- Katie and Cathy describing their interactions with the young people and what they learned from them
- David and Ruth exploring with their guests how some professionals struggle with confronting fathers who choose violence with the lived experience of their children
- a discussion of how aboriginal workers used the the young people's digital stories to help men change.
To learn more about the research discussed in this episode:
Website for digital stories
https://violenceagainstwomenandchildren.com/?p=540
Journal article about key research findings
Lamb, K., Humphreys, C .and Hegarty, K (2018), ‘ “Your behaviour has consequences”: Children and young people's perspectives on reparation with their fathers after domestic violence’, Children and Youth Services Review, vol 88 p164-169
Journal article about ethical challenges which arose in the work
Lamb, K., Humphreys, C. and Hegarty, K (2020) “Research ethics in practice: challenges of using digital technology to embed the voices of children and young people
within programs for fathers who use domestic violence”, Research Ethics, 1-17 (Full text available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747016120936324
Full Phd
https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/129319
During this time of reflection on law enforcement's role in communities, explorations of restorative justice practices are more important than ever. In this podcast, David and Ruth interview Dr. Eloise Sepeda, a national expert trainer and consultant of Restorative Justice, and the rigorous intersection of Child Welfare, Family Violence, and Race Equity. In this episode, the David and Ruth discuss with Dr. Sepeda:
- the importance of listening to domestic violence survivors, and asking them the question: What does justice look like for you?
- how to work with people who choose violence using restorative practices
- the need for practitioners to reflect on how they respond to survivors' stories
To learn more about Dr. Sepeda's work, visit her website: www.bethechange.tools
Follow her on Twitter & Instagram: @elosepeda
In this episode, David & Ruth outline 9 common narratives that support and encourage dangerous collusion with domestic violence perpetrators. They offer very practical tips for how to unwind and challenge those narratives. It is an episode for professionals, survivors, allies and people who choose violence.
In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor, David and Ruth offer a very personal look at relationship dynamics when one partner is a survivor. In response to a request from a survivor to explore this topic, David & Ruth share their personal challenges and rewards of navigating historical abuse. What does living with and partnering with a survivor really look like emotionally and behaviorally? How does one learn to honor and respect the emotional implications historical abuse has inside relationships?
Ruth and David talk about
- how David learned about and honored the impact of Ruth's earlier abuse in their relationship and co-parenting
- how Ruth's openness about her trauma and her advocacy for the voices of survivors has deepened and enriched David's work.
- strategies for both survivors and for those who live, love and work with them about how to navigate trauma, trauma content, trauma emotions and trauma behaviors in a healthy and responsible way that improves trust and collaboration.
- how David's personal internal work assisted him in learning the principles of how to partner with survivors
This discussion is truly the place where personal meets professional and is an intimate behavioral look at how partnering looks and feels in relationship and in practice.
About the Episode: Undiscussable On Talk RadioEpisode 4 When religious traditions are manipulated to abuse.
Really key conversations...with @abdulwahidstephenson & @ruth_stearnsmandel
If you haven’t caught the series so far you catch up on the podcast available wherever you get your pods.
To coincide with Father’s Day in the UK and USA we are pleased to launch our ‘Choose to Change: Your Behavior, Your Choice’ Campaign Materials. This is a time of significant disruption in service delivery, and reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of mainstream responses to domestic violence. Lockdown, loss of employment and social distancing are creating new and unique pressures on families. More men than ever are calling hotlines, reaching out for help with their violence towards loved ones. The "Choose to Change" toolkit offers communities, families and practitioners a new suite of tools to help interrupt violence. In this podcast, Ruth interviews David about the "Choose to Change" toolkit, the thinking behind and its applications. David outlines how these resources can help make real differences in the safety and quality of life for women and children, and offer men new, practical options for choosing to change their behavior.
In this episode, David interviews Ruth about the Safe & Together Institute's Family and Friends Ally Guide. This guide was created out of the direct experiences of survivors of domestic violence, coercive control and child abuse. It outlines what survivors wish their friends and family had known or done to assist them to safety and healing. David and Ruth discuss the ideas behind the guide including how
- How behaviorally identify coercive control and domestic violence in the life of their loved one
- It provides specific scripts to ease difficult conversations about abuse
- To decode coded disclosures about abuse
- Steps to practical support
You can download this guide at here.
Before he murdered their mother Claire and their sister Charlotte, Luke and Ryan Hart's father spent years justifying his control by telling them the world is a dangerous place. All the while, he was the one who was dangerous to their lives and liberty. During this time of pandemic, Luke and Ryan are worried that other abusive partners and parents are using the pandemic to justify their coercive control. In this podcast, Ruth and David conduct a transatlantic interview with the two brothers who have been on a journey to raise awareness about coercive control and how dangerous it is. Authors of the book "Remembered Forever," the Hart brothers tell their family's story with an emphasis on how their father entrapped and isolated their family. As always, they highlight that coercive control is best identified, not through acts of violence, but through the loss of choice. David & Ruth explore with them about specific parallels between their story and the current context of the pandemic. The Hart brothers share some of the ways they resisted their father's control and maintained their sanity through small rituals of connection. You can learn more about them on their website, or follow them on Twitter @CoCoAwareness.
Check out our Guide for friends and family on how to be an Ally to a Loved One Living in Abuse: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/5507857/Ally%20Guide/A4_AllyDoc_web.pdf
In this episode, Ruth and David have a discussion with Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, author and director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute. David, who has known Laura for a long time, has seen and felt the power, practicality and simplicity of her message. In this conversation, Laura discusses:
- how the current situation is impacting an already emotionally overwhelmed workforce
- the balancing the urgency of the moment with the need to take care of self
- simple strategies for self care that help your body metabolize stress
Laura is the author of two books: Trauma Stewardship: An everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others and The Age of Overwhelm: Strategies for the long haul. You also may want to check out her Tedx Talk: Beyond the Cliff
In this episode Ruth & David outline an emerging checklist for professionals and families to help them map perpetrator's patterns of behavior in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and our social response. The episode includes discussion of:
- How not collude with perpetrators who are using the pandemic as an excuse for their behaviors
- A checklist of things to consider when you are assessing for increased danger including changes in the perpetrators' levels of anxiety and depression and substance abuse
- A checklist of survivors' vulnerabilities that the perpetrator may be using against them
- How to continue to focus on survivors' protective efforts
- Steps to continue to partner with survivors in the current environment
This practical podcast is part of the free offerings that the Safe & Together Institute is rolling out during this period. Check out our COVID-19 specific page and our Virtual Academy.
In the first of a series of COVID-19 specific podcasts, David and Ruth talk about how the dynamics of domestic abuse are changing in the context of the COVID-19. Talking to both professionals and family members, Ruth offers insights from her own history related to being isolated with her abusers. The discussion about how we can best continue to partner with survivors and intervene with perpetrators follows with examples and practical steps. In this podcast:
- Specific resources for immediate support for survivors across the North America, New Zealand, Australia and the UK
- An exploration of how perpetrators may be using the pandemic to increase coercive control, including increased monitoring of family members trapped by social distancing
- How children may be impacted by the intersection of the pandemic and living with an abusive parent
- Specific practice tips for partnering with survivors and intervening with perpetrators in the context of COVID-19 and social distancing
The episode also includes a preview of the steps that the Safe & Together Institute is taking to help professionals and families including a COVID-19 specific page on their website, upcoming COVID-19 practitioner lived experience webinars, and their new Virtual Academy to increase distance learning options during the crisis. This episode was also recorded in two parts on facebook live on our Safe & Together Institute Facebook page.
In this podcast, David & Ruth get inside the mind of men who use violence and abuse. The Five Elements in the Profile of Abusive Men was developed to guide group interventions with domestic violence perpetrators. This "operational profile," which examines factors that sustain a perpetrator's pattern of coercive control, was developed during David's time with the Non-Violence Alliance and his work with perpetrators. David and Ruth look at how different forms of 1) Entitlement thinking that justifies coercive control. They examine how the emotional stem in abuse is not anger but may be 2) Avoidance of feelings of fear and powerlessness. They also examine how avoidance of 3) Acceptance of the damage done by abusive behavior keeps the perpetuating the behavior. They also discuss the role of 4) Structural inequalities and cultural forms of inequality in sustaining abuse. And how 5) Substance abuse and mental health issues need to be addressed but not used to excuse away the choices of perpetrators to harm their children, partner and families. David outlines how practitioners and even family and friends can use this profile to guide their interventions with perpetrators.
Ruth & David talk to the Lived Experience Experts highlighted at our third Annual Asia Pacific Conference in partnership with Berry Street. We were honored to hear and reflect on the experiences and recommendations for systems change by the Y Change Experts from Berry Street. Their insights bring depth, context, and keep systems accountable to the reality that child victims of abuse need to be heard by systems in order for true nurturance and safety to be met.
Our Survivor Keynote speaker, Ryan Hart, speaks about his experiences of coercive control and how it impacted himself and his family. He creates insight and clarity around the harm that non battering forms of violence do to families and individuals and gives us perspective on how society is failing to recognize the dangers of coercive control. Ryan and Luke Hart are tireless advocates for systems to recognize coercive control as a serious and dangerous crime. Ryan and Luke lost their mother Claire and their sister Charlotte when their father chose to shoot and kill them after they fled coercive control.
You can learn more about Y Change at Berry Street by following this link: https://www.berrystreet.org.au/y-change
And Ryan and Luke Hart and their story can be found here: https://www.cocoawareness.co.uk/
We hope you enjoy this lived experience podcast. Safe & Together honors the experiences and reflections of victims and survivors and believes that true systems change can only happen when we honor their voices and their experiences are reflected back to help systems do better.
In this episode, Ruth & David discuss how family and friends can be effective allies to loved ones living in abuse. Victims often first disclose to friends and family members. Even with the desire to be supportive, kin can respond with judgment and victim blaming. These responses can have the effect of silencing the survivor, increasing their isolation, shame, and sense of being trapped. David and Ruth offer practical tools, strategies and language for friends and family in how to partner and support a loved one navigating domestic abuse and coercive control. Definitions of Coercive Control and Domestic Abuse are outlined to help friends and family identify and understand non physical forms of abuse and the risk and harm associated with those forms of abuse.
Drawing from the Safe & Together Mode's partnering framework, used to train social workers and professionals in the domestic violence and child protection fields, Ruth and David discuss the importance of affirming, asking, validating, collaborative planning, and documentation. Ruth and David touch on diverse topics such the unique barriers to disclosure faced by survivors in same sex relationships, how cultural beliefs about gender encourage victim blaming and increase the ability of perpetrators to entrap survivors, and how to really listen to a loved one who is being abused while maintaining a behavioral focus on the Perpetrators choices to harm and abuse. Ruth speaks about her own experiences as a survivor who faced judgement and disbelief by friends and family, and how it impacted her and impeded her safety and healing.
***This podcast does not represent legal advice, and is not intended to replace accessing formal services.
In this episode of "Partnered with a Survivor," Ruth and David start their Sunday morning with a discussion of male parental development, a concept that David coined to help professionals work more effectively with men and families. Societies fail in many ways in home we prepare boys to be parents. Girls education and preparation for parenting may start with her first doll. How does our failure to address boys and men as a vital part of nurturing children harm men and harm families? How does this cultural blindness to the impact of men's behaviors both positive and negative affect the safety and nurturance of children? Our first discussion with boys about parenting usually comes much later and often is focused on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. The conversation ranges numerous topics including research from Yale University on the "mothering center" in the brain, the need for equal assessment of parenting across same sex and heterosexual relationships and the relevance of better work with fathers for women and children. David speaks directly to men around how to reflect on their preparation to be a father, and tips for professionals about how to engage males better around fatherhood. Ruth speaks to how stereotypes around men as violent is harmful to men, women and children.
If you like this podcast, you might also like our e-learing course "Working with Men as Parents: Fathers' choices matter."
In this Episode of "Partnered with a Survivor," Ruth & David speak about the common and normal trauma responses of victims and survivors and how those responses can be used against them by perpetrators and systems charged with safety. Ruth discusses more in depth particular responses to abuse which she experienced and witnessed growing up with over 55 other people in an abusive cult. They talk about how perpetrators use trauma responses to create a culture of fear around disclosure, how professionals turn normal and natural self protective strategies into pathology and how that is used against victims in courts and social services. She also discusses her 'A-ha' moment when she began to study about the Kubark Interrogation Methods used by the military in SERE training for the United States' Special Forces. Ruth discusses how domestic abuse and child abuse create a similar internal response as seen in torture victims to the perpetrator or to anyone who uses threats or force to coerce victims into safety. David gives his practice tips for how to view trauma and torture responses not as a deficit, but as a sign of protection and even strength. He speaks about where systems and workers got this right and where they did not. Specific language, strategies and tools are given in this podcast for greater and more effective partnering which honors and acknowledges trauma responses as being a normal physiological response to extended alarm and harm.
In this episode of "Partnered with a Survivor" David and Ruth continue their conversation about 'masculinities' and its relationship to power, gender and abuse. In this discussion they pick apart the concept of "toxic masculinity," explore how men's positive (and negative) impact on family functioning is underestimated, and the ways we may be failing in our conversations about gender. In this exploration of how culture has framed masculinity and femininity as dichotomous principles they discuss how to explore attributes considered classically male such as power, courage, progress without infusing a sense of power over or violence and control. Ruth and David also take a look on how men's behaviors and choices are important to their families, to their partners and to the culture at large, and how we operationalize understanding men as a vital part of the fabric of the health of society. They also discuss how we care for men's ability to nurture their internal emotional world in order to create a sense of stability and safety in their own self. Ruth discusses her pet peeve of that masculinity and violence often view, wrongly, as being innately linked and how that impacts us in our habituation of control and violence as the ultimate excuse of violence by sex, gender and bio-chemical reality. The e-course Working With Men as Parents is discussed as a resource.
In this episode of "Partnered with a Survivor," David and Ruth dive into the huge topic of professionals and their emotional safety and trauma as it intersects with working domestic abuse and child maltreatment. As professionals we all bring experiences and bias into our work, and some of those include our experiences of abuse and violence. Addressing the benefits, challenges and nuances that brings to our work is part of doing the work and increases safety and retention of workers. How does trauma and the judgements we make or the protective patterns of behaviors we adopt impact us in our daily work? Challenges for engagement, documentation, retention and the health and well being of workers are addressed from this lens of what we bring with our own experiences into our professional lives. How trauma needs to be addressed to create sustainability and safety for workers and better outcomes for victims and survivors. Ruth speaks about trauma overlaying on to our experiences both professionally and personally and that part of creating a safe and comfortable professional disclosure is creating a culture which keeps perpetrators and their choices in our view as the cause of that trauma. David & Ruth discuss how important it is to create organizational and system cultures that give permission for professionals to explore those experiences and their effects on their practice without judgement and with the acknowledgment that not all trauma impacts us negatively but can help us bring a sense of empathy and create a safe space for those who we work with. The book Trauma Stewardship by Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky is highlighted as a resource both for individuals, professionals and systems.
Ruth Stearns Mandel and David Mandel discuss gender double standards and how they impact the work with families. David shares some of his personal experience as male becoming engaged with the issue of male violence against women, and explores how the understanding of men's behaviors can help end victim blaming. The conversation also considers how marginalized men have been denied their importance as fathers.
In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor Ruth Stearns Mandel & David Mandel discuss professional and mental health terms commonly used which hide perpetrator responsibility for patterns of abuse. They discuss how this impacts victims moving through systems which are not grounded in a practice of pivoting to focus on the perpetrator's patterns of behavior. David & Ruth also discuss viewing the effects of abuse only as a pathology, a deficit in victims and how this does not honor the full reality of how bodies respond to abuse and harm, and how this leads to victim blaming. They examine mental health and psychological diagnoses which are commonly used by reporting agencies with the intent to help the victim heal but which is often used poorly by systems to the detriment of safety, nurturance and healing. Ruth shares her personal experience in navigating mental health systems for her own healing, as well how words can be used to hide the realities of abuse in personal relationship.
Victim Blaming is a constant element of the failure of systems and individuals to appropriately and effectively address violence and safety. We find victim blaming as a common element no matter where we train in the world, no matter what cultural context we encounter. Why is this so? How does victim blaming impact victims and survivors in their willingness to work with systems, how do systems engage in their own forms of fear based 'coercive control' to try and coerce victims into safety to the detriment of well-being, nurturance and parent child bonding? David Mandel and Ruth Stearns Mandel look at this issue from both a personal and professional lens and break down the different streams of victim blaming and offer concrete advice for how to Partner with Survivors rather than blame them.
Note: Some of the topics discussed in the episodes are deeply personal and sensitive, which may be difficult for some people. We occasionally use mature language. We often use gender pronouns like “he” when discussing perpetrators and “she” for victims. While both and men and women can be abusive and controlling, and domestic abuse happens in straight and same-sex relationships, the most common situation, when it comes to coercive control, is a male perpetrator and a female victim. Men's abuse toward women is more closely associated with physical injury, fear and control. Similarly, very different expectations of men and women as parents and the focus of Safe & Together on children in the context of domestic abuse makes it impossible to make generic references to gender when it comes to parenting. The Model, through its behavioral focus on patterns of behavior, is useful in identifying and responding to abuse in all situations including same-sex couples and women's use of violence. We think our listeners are sophisticated enough to understand these distinctions.
In this premier episode of the podcast, Partnered with a Survivor, Ruth Stearns Mandel and David Mandel, partners in their personal and professional lives, have a far ranging and personal conversation about the relationship between coercive control and consent. Touching on the defense strategy used by Harvey Weinstein, the re-victimization of a British national in a Cyprus rape case to the founding principles of the United States, David & Ruth dive deep into the topic of how coercive control shapes our understanding of consent, and harms our ability to support survivors.