In this thought-provoking first episode of 2025, David and Ruth explore how displacement-based responses to domestic violence reflect and reinforce gender double standards while often creating additional vulnerabilities for survivors and their children. Recording from the Azores, they examine how the expectation that victims must leave their homes to find safety places unfair burdens on survivors while failing to hold perpetrators accountable.

Key discussion points include:

• How displacement-based responses arose historically when women had limited legal and economic rights
• Why forcing survivors to leave their homes, financial assets, and support networks creates new vulnerabilities
• How displacement can enable post-separation coercive control and increase risks to children
• The limitations of defining "safety" only in terms of immediate physical danger or lethality
• Why systems need to expand their definition of safety to include stability, wellbeing, and survivor autonomy
• How child protection and other systems can inadvertently punish survivors who don't leave while failing to hold perpetrators accountable for creating unsafe conditions

David and Ruth discuss concrete ways to move beyond displacement-based practices, including:

• Centering survivor choice, autonomy and definitions of safety/wellbeing
• Holding perpetrators accountable for how their behavior disrupts family stability
• Creating a fuller range of intervention options beyond emergency shelter
• Reframing "failure to protect" to focus on perpetrators' choices that endanger children

Check out these related episodes
Season 5 Episode 12: Challenging the Gospel of Sacrifice: Faith, Domestic Abuse, and Institutional Transformation

Season 5 Episode 9: Partnering vs. Practicing: The Hidden Bias in Professional Crisis Work

Season 5 Episode 8: The Myth of the Domestic Violence Incident

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

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