Building on the Safe & Together Institute's white paper on perpetrators' manipulation of systems (and the related podcast) and work with the Federal and Family Court of Australia, David and Ruth take a closer look at how domestic violence perpetrators can continue to undermine child safety and well-being post-separation, how they 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 and David talk about how: 

• Professionals can properly identify and assess coercive control in the context of custody and access matters 
• Professionals can use a behavioral lens to identify how systems and professionals are targeted post-separation by parents who choose coercive control   
• Professionals can inoculate themselves against these behaviors
• Systems can increase accountability in custody and access situations by using a collaborative parenting standard as a lens for identifying the risks and harms created by domestic violence perpetrators
• 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 parent's behaviors 
• 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

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 and 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

Season 2, Episode 1: 6 Steps to Partnering with Survivors

Episode 29: Family courts are failing the “best interests” of adult and child abuse survivors: An interview with Joan Meier

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

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. 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 and David interview Courageous Fire, the founder and CEO of Courageous Fire, LLC and a domestic violence survivor and leader in the movement to create culturally specific responses to domestic violence in the Black community. Courageous Fire works exclusively with Black victims and survivors of domestic violence in Iowa, and her model of community assistance is self-sustaining and community-driven. She takes cues from the grassroots experiences of Black survivors within her community to bring holistic assistance that 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 and reliance on formal services as a way to protect themselves and children 
• Why calling the police is not safe for Black women 
• How systems that are supposed to keep us safe have harmed Black women with impunity because of their bias, judgments, and assumptions about victim behaviors through a culturally ignorant/arrogant lens
• How Courageous Fire, LLC helps to bring bring holistic healing and a pathway to financial independence for Black survivors of domestic abuse
• How to recognize and see the dynamic resistance of Black survivors as a strength, not a deficit

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

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 and how that is parenting choice. Failures to link coercive control to child abuse and neglect make it easier to blame adult survivors, who are being protective, with “failure to protect” and “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 abuse–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, who may not have access to formal services such as police, child protection, or counseling because these interventions may not be safe and can create more danger for adult and 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 and harm for their children within relationships and post-separation
• How professionals and systems are failing to assess the parenting of the perpetrator and how that increases the danger for child and adult survivors
• How the language of “child exposed to domestic violence” obscures the multiple ways perpetrators harm children and hides the choices of the perpetrator as a parent
• How coercive control impacts child safety, well-being, and family functioning  in the absence of physical violence

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

The discussion of the relationship between histories of trauma and the perpetration of abuse is often fraught. Many people are worried 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 colonization and racism. 

Building on their previous episode, Trauma-Informed Is Not the Same as Domestic Violence–Informed: A Conversation About the Intersection of Domestic Violence Perpetration, Mental Health & Addiction, David and 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 and behavioral accountability. 
• Trauma histories do not cause someone to engage in violence, and violent and abusive behaviors do not heal trauma (and 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 and Ruth also highlight how the work of the She Is Not Your Rehab 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.)

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

In this episode, David and Ruth tackle one of the most pressing issues in the domestic violence field: how to make mental health and addiction services more domestic abuse–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 abuse–informed, and domestic violence survivors are often harmed by these gaps.

Ruth and David dive into:

• 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 perceive a survivor’s mental health and addiction issues more negatively than a perpetrator’s coercive control 
• How practitioners and organizations may have blindspots regarding how current coercive control dynamics could be impacting survivors’ mental health and addiction treatment 

David and Ruth also tackle how structural sexism, racism, and colonization dynamics are often ignored in mainstream mental health and addiction paradigms to the detriment of clients from oppressed communities. Ruth also shares how she’s been impacted by reading Judy Atkinson’s book Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia.

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Domestic 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 Were Warriors, the dark, award-wining New Zealand classic, explored violence in an urban Maori family. Now the award-winning feature film No Ordinary Love 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 and David as they interview writer, director, producer Chyna Robinson and executive producer Tracy Rector, the powerhouse pair behind No Ordinary Love, a movie about two families where status and power intertwine with coercive control. In one family, the 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.

David and 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. Tracy and Chyna bring their own personal experiences and cultural perspectives to speak to intersectionalities such as race and religion and the impact of cultural attitudes and systemic failures on Black women survivors.

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

The voices of children impacted by domestic violence perpetrators are being ignored by professionals.

In this groundbreaking interview, a 14-year-old survivor of officer-involved domestic violence and his mother speak openly about their experience with systems. Using pseudonyms, "Liam" and his mother, "Michelle," share how the police colluded with their perpetrator, who was Liam's stepfather. They speak about how Liam and his sister were treated as afterthoughts and not victims in their own right. Between sadness and anger, Liam talks about the failures of the police, child welfare, and other professionals.   

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

ABC Radio Interview
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/melbourne/programs/mornings/victoria-police,-minister-apologise-to-woman/12363274

60 Minutes Interview
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Clth5kpkiJc

The Age Articles
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

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

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 is now being considered in the definition of domestic violence from Australia to the United States. Coercive control, which has been at the center of the Safe & Together Model's 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 issues like preventing backlash against survivors, particularly survivors from poor and marginalized communities. 

Because Scotland's Domestic Abuse Act is considered one of the most progressive in the world, David and Ruth interviewed Dr. Marsha Scott, CEO for Scottish Women's Aid. The interview addresses: 

• 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 definition 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
• How to avoid coercive control laws rebounding against survivors from all backgrounds

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 to our episode on coercive control and consent

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Both men and women can be controlling, and both men and women can violent. Domestic abuse occurs in same-sex and heterosexual relationships. This means both men and women can be victims of domestic violence, yet domestic abuse–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 masculinity and 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 of 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

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Domestic violence perpetrators do not only target survivors. They also target the professionals and 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 a 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 and well-being of adult and child survivors of domestic violence is often long term, financially devastating, and harmful to child well-being and development. In some instances, these system failures can cause MORE trauma than the initial abuse itself. 

In this episode, David and Ruth discuss how domestic violence perpetrators target practitioners in different systems and why those systems are so vulnerable to these tactics. Ruth and David highlight the vulnerabilities of family court, criminal justice, and child welfare. They also discuss how to recognize when a perpetrator is manipulating your system to harm a victim and how to resist these manipulations.    

Send us Fan Mail

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.