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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
• 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. 

References
Mieko 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:

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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. 

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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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

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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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.  

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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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.

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

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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.

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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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 a common part of perpetrator's patterns of coercive control, violence & abuse.  
• Condom manipulation & pregnancy coercion are two common ways perpetrators entrap  victims in relationships.  
• 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 victims. 
•  Family court, criminal courts & 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 being thought of  as stupid, promiscuous , failing to understand the impact of domestic violence or choosing to continue a relationship with a perpetrator. 
• These attitudes  further entrap survivors,  victimizing them & placing them 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. Diving down into how reproductive coercion is supported by our societal attitudes, laws & institutional practices is key addressing the systemic nature of reproductive coercion. 

The podcast also 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. McCauley

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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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 

S

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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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.

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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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 Resistance

Season 2 Episode 22: Minisode On Worker Safety & Well-Being: The Connection Between Worker Safety And Victim-Blaming

Season 2, Episode 1: 6 Steps To Partnering With Survivors

Episode 2: Victim Blaming

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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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

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 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 episodes
Season 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

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

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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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

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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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

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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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

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

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 Katz

Season 3 Episode 1: “This is a collective male problem:” An interview with international journalist Grant Wyeth

Season 2 Episode 19: Using the concepts of collaborative co-parenting to hold perpetrators more accountable in family court

Season 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

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

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 WomenatthecentrE

Take 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 appr

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

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. 

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

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."

Send us a text

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 Trailer
  
  Purchase 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."

Send us a text

• 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:

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

• 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 others
Season 4 Episode 2: Coming “Out” As A Survivor in a Professional Setting: A Practitioner’s Journey
Season 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."

Send us a text

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

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

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."

Send us a text

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 Victim

Season 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."

Send us a text

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."

Send us a text

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."

Send us a text

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 Larance

Season 3 Episode 7: Understanding And Validating Survivors’ Acts Of Resistance

Season 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."

Send us a text

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."

Send us a text

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

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

🔄 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."

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📝 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/](https://www.fatherhood.org/)

🔗 **Connect with Safe & Together Institute:**
[https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/](https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/)
[https://academy.safeandtogetherinstitute.com/pages/home](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."

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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. 

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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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. 

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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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.  

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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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.  

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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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. 

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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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. 

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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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. 

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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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."

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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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.  

 

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

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. 

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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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. 

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

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. 

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

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

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

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. 

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

About the Episode: Undiscussable On Talk Radio

Episode 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.

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

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.

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

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. 

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

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

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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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

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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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

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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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

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

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

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

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 

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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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

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

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

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

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 v

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!

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

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

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

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 

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

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

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

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

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

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.    

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

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" 

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

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

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

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 Michelle
Liam’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

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

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

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

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

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

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." )

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

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 Bio
She 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.

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

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:

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

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 podcasts
Season 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

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

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.

2. Your healing is your responsibility and yours to take initiative for and manage. 

3. Any healing needed for you, cannot come at the expense of her healing, health and wellbeing. (David & Ruth's personal favorite!) 

4. She can support you but she can never do more for you than you are prepared to do for yourself. 

5. 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. 

6. True change comes from genuine growth. Growth happens once we heal. Healing starts when we begin to FEEL our pain. 

7. 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 podcasts
Season 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

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

 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

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

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 episodes
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 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

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

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 episodes
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

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

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

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

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

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 

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

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 series   
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. 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

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

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 series   
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. 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

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

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 series   
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. This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and

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

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 

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

(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

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

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

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."