Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
This podcast is a series of conversations.
What started as a series of intimate conversations between Ruth and David that ranged from personal to professional experiences around violence, relationships, abuse, and system and professional responses which harm, not help, has now become a global conversation about systems and culture change. In many episodes, David and Ruth are joined by a global leader in different areas like child safety, men and masculinity, and, of course, partnering with survivors. Each episode is a deep dive into complex topics like how systems fail domestic abuse survivors and their children, societal views of masculinity and violence, and how intersectionalities such as cultural beliefs, religious beliefs, and unique vulnerabilities impact how we respond to abuse and violence. These far-ranging discussions offer an insider look into how we navigate the world together as professionals, as parents, and as partners. During these podcasts, David and Ruth challenge the notions which keep all of us from moving forward collectively as systems, as cultures, and as families into safety, nurturance, and healing.
We hope you join us.
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Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
Season 3 Episode 7: Understanding and Validating Survivors' Acts of Resistance
Too often conversations about domestic violence define survivors as passive trauma survivors with the emphasis on the negative mental health and addiction consequences of the perpetrators' patterns of behavior. And while these impacts are real they only tell part of the story. On a daily basis, survivors engage in small and large acts of resistance to coercive control & domestic violence. Based in their knowledge of the perpetrator, their assessment of the system and available supports, survivors engage in targeted strategic actions that are important to their own safety and the safety and well being of their children. Not just passive recipients of abuse, survivors actively use a variety of behaviors to carve out physical and emotional "safe zones" a term coined by Dr. Evan Stark, author of Coercive Control. These acts of resistance can include:
- Lying the the perpetrator
- Defending their children from abuse
- Fighting back physically
- Standing up for what they and their children need
They can include ways to defy the perpetrators' rules or places in the survivor's mind where she fantasies about freedom or retreats into her mind when he is abusing her .
In this episode Ruth and David discuss:
- how these acts of resistance are often decontextualized from the perpetrators' pattern
- survivors acts of resistance, particularly survivors from Black, Indigenous and other marginalized communities, often criminalized
- the importance of professionals recognizing these acts of resistance as part of the process of partnering with survivors and avoiding failure to protect practice
David & Ruth also showcase the audio from a video produced by Orana House, a refuge in Western Australia, called "Warrior Women" that showcases survivors' acts of resistance. Watch the video.
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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