Season 7 Episode 7: Coercive Control and Children: What Systems Miss | 2026 Asia Pacific Conference Wrap-Up

The most useful conference debriefs aren’t about highlights—they’re about what shifts in you when you listen closely. From the Sydney coast, Ruth and David wrap up a three-and-a-half-week Asia Pacific tour and talk through the moments that changed the temperature in the room at the Safe & Together Institute's 2026 Asia Pacific Coercive Control & Children Conference. They start with gratitude, acknowledgement of unceded Aboriginal land, and the reality that building safer systems means showing up with humility, not just expertise.

One of the biggest breakthroughs David and Ruth share is their commitment to localised training and culturally responsive practice. The Institute premiered a new Australia-based training film designed to teach coercive control as a pattern over time, centred in a perinatal scenario that follows a family before and after a child is born. With Australian actors, filmmakers, consultation from cultural experts, and survivor input, the film is built to help professionals recognise subtle tactics, see cumulative harm, and respond in ways that strengthen child and survivor safety rather than repeating harmful system habits.

Ruth and David also get into the harder conversations that practitioners can’t avoid: men’s health, masculinity, and accountability. They talk about why supporting men and boys can’t come at the cost of women and children and why we have to operationalise that promise instead of offering lip service. In the Australian context, David and Ruth connect family violence practice with the impacts of colonisation, racism, intergenerational trauma, and family separation, while staying clear that healing requires stopping abusive behavior. Along the way, they reflect on survivor voices, workforce wellbeing, and the need for non-extractive organisational cultures.

Finally, Ruth and David dig into the practical lever that can change outcomes in family law: pattern-based documentation. They share why judicial leaders describe this kind of documentation as “gold” and how the SafetyNexus tool supports workers with coaching, mapping, and better notes when stakes are life-or-death. 

If you care about coercive control, domestic violence response, child protection, and safer systems, this conversation gives you language you can use tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review so more practitioners can find the work.

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

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

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

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Transcript

From Sydney Coast To Conference Wrap

Ruth Reymundo 1:08

Hello.

David Mandel 1:09

Hi there.

Ruth Reymundo 1:10

Where are we in the world today?

David Mandel 1:13

Well, it's where we are, where we're about to be. We are wrapping up a three and a half week whirlwind Asia Pacific tour. We started in Japan and then we moved to Australia for our conference. And we are in Cuchi Beach.

Ruth Reymundo 1:28

Yeah.

David Mandel 1:29

Beautiful. The sun is out. I can see the shining water in the distance. And before we go any further, I just want to acknowledge we're on Bachigal and Gamigal land, both people of the Yora Nation, and just pay our respects to Aboriginal elders, past, present, and emerging. Yeah. This is land that's never been ceded, and it's beautiful land, and the people are beautiful. And we're just so honored to be here as always.

Ruth Reymundo 1:59

You know what? It's funny, because Australia always brings about these realizations for both of us, like these inflection points. And we've both kind of experienced that on this trip. And we were here for our conference, the coercive control and children's conference. It's the first time we've moved from Melbourne to Sydney. So we were kind of unsure of how that would go. And we were at the roundhouse at the University of New South Wales. And it has been a really energizing and connecting experience.

David Mandel 2:35

That's right. And we're just doing a little bit of wrap-up like we've done for the last few years. And before we go any further, just a shout out to our team and all the hard work that they did to make this possible. We have, and I think a lot of people don't realize this because this is a relatively new development, we've added four new Australian team members. So we have five employees. So about 20% of the institutions are. You know, is it's there. And because we really, really value Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, and we're investing here. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And local content. And we'll talk about that actually in a minute, because that's some of the highlights. But particularly want to shout out to Jackie Ruck. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Ruth Reymundo 3:14

Jackie Ruck is a rock star. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

David Mandel 3:16

Who is our Asia Pacific manager who was unable for personal reasons to attend the entire conference, but when she showed up? Okay, so I'm going to tell myself.

Ruth Reymundo 3:26

We were both kind of super sad she wasn't there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

David Mandel 3:29

And then when she showed up, can you tell them what happened when I introduced her on stage?

Ruth Reymundo 3:32

Oh well you started crying, you know,

Building The Asia-Pacific Team

Ruth Reymundo 3:35

you had a lot of emotion there. I know you're you're you're you're a beautiful human who shows their emotions.

David Mandel 3:42

But it was really hard for me because she people would talk about and in their words, the beautiful Jackie Rock, and I wanted to convey to people that they were right. And Jackie's, you know, does so much she was the anchor of our two new research projects with the University of New South Wales. I'm sorry, with the University of Melbourne, funded by the Ministry of Health of New South Wales.

Ruth Reymundo 4:04

Yeah.

David Mandel 4:04

Around one working in the Aboriginal context with two beautiful Aboriginal controlled organizations, Womenda and Catungle, and then our Christie project with the Univers God, okay. With DV New South Wales and Aqua, you know, as really our main partners.

Ruth Reymundo 4:22

We're a little tired folks.

David Mandel 4:24

But but Jackie was the anchor in both of those projects, and that's a tiny portion of what she does here. Yeah. And so anyway, just a shout out to our team in general for putting on an amazing event. Our biggest event. Online and in person.

Ruth Reymundo 4:37

We're both feeling pretty rested, actually, because we didn't have to do the organizing and the running around really seriously, and that freed us up to be able to pay attention to people, to relationships, to connect, to hear, to listen, to deeply listen. And that is amazing. That's amazing.

David Mandel 5:03

So for me, that there's so many highlights. But one of the things I do want to say, you know, we because we're talking about Australia's staff and Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, is Safe and Deather's really we've been here, I've been coming since 2013. We launched our trainer certification program here in Australia in 2017. And we started with five partner agencies and 12 certified trainers, and now we have 500 certified trainers globally and around 100 partner agencies. But we're not satisfied with just growth. We want to be localized, we want to be contextualized. So one of my there's so many highlights, one of my proudest moments was showing a video that

Local Film On Coercive Control

David Mandel 5:50

we filmed here in consultation with local certified trainers and other people who know local context.

Ruth Reymundo 5:58

And and cultural experts.

David Mandel 6:00

Cultural experts, survivors that is going to be the backbone of our core training going forward by later in this year, that shows a family, Australia-based, film with Australian actors, with award-winning cinematographers and directors, showing this perinatal scenario of coercive control over the first, let's say, first year of this child's life before they're born and after. White father, Aboriginal mother. And we got to premiere the first clip of it. And it I just really it's about a commitment for me. And it's really about reflecting back things so people can see themselves, can see the issues that are relevant. And we got all the feedback I'd hope we'd want. People saying, oh, this really addresses a lot of the issues. We love this. We even we even had people saying, oh, we wish it had this. And we could say, well, that's coming, and it's in the next video. Right.

Ruth Reymundo 6:57

That's in the next video.

David Mandel 6:58

It's already been shot and we're editing the last bits of it. So anyway, to me, that was a highlight. What was some of the highlights for you?

Ruth Reymundo 7:06

So that was amazing to see because the video was very subtle yet intense, and there's so many teaching moments in it, and the cultural aspects of it were really rough for me. Yeah. And you could really hear the a pin drop in the room afterwards. You could feel the emotion running through people. You know, the highlights for me were that I was able to connect so much with so many people and hear their stories, whether they're survivor stories, whether they're professional stories. And the program was such an amazing program. You know, we had Pacific community represented. We had the Polynesian and Maori community represented in our program. And we had judicial panels with really high-level judicial experts. The men's panel was was interesting. I think it was on the edge for a lot of people, but we're not afraid to do things that make people think or that raise issues within the industry. We really are committed and dedicated to seeing survivors, seeing community, seeing the impact of systems, assisting professionals in their context, speaking about these really tough issues around violence, family, children, and masculinity. And that raises a lot of a lot of feelings in people. But to me,

Panels That Stretch The Field

Ruth Reymundo 9:00

the program represented this all of our values. It represented those values. And you know, just to say out loud, you know, we got some criticism around the men's panel. We are not afraid to be a critical friend in these spaces. And that means sometimes people may feel outside of their comfort zone. We're not just repeating the same narratives everybody else is.

David Mandel 9:27

That's right.

Ruth Reymundo 9:27

And we and just to say we will always be that entity that wants to raise the issues, that wants to ask the questions and work together in the same value stream where we're all agreed we're committed to keeping children safe and together with their non-offending parent and to holding the abusive parent accountable together, collectively.

David Mandel 9:52

You know, there's there's two things, and I put that men's panel together, and I really appreciated Sean Martin and Steve Roberts and Zach Sidler for for being on it. And for me, there's two things I want to say about the importance of that, which was that we have a moment in time where there's a lot of attention being focused on men and boys' well-being and health. And that is so important, and there's a need to weave together that with how men's health and behavior impacts women and children.

Ruth Reymundo 10:22

Right.

David Mandel 10:23

And that to me is is critical. And it's both a risk if it's not addressed, and it's but it's an opportunity to kind of weave those things too. So that's the first thing. I'm gonna keep you know kind of pushing on that because I I feel so clear about that that risk and that opportunity. But something specific to Australia is I think coming here really listening as community has talked about the impact of colonization and racism and the trauma of that uh intergenerationally, the breaking up of families, the missions, the stolen generations, the and how men who also use violence in relationship carry that with them.

Ruth Reymundo 11:12

And teach it.

David Mandel 11:13

And teach it. Pass it on. That we can't we we if we're gonna be responsive to this context, we cannot have this siloed sort of only looking at those men as users of violence. We have to look at them as trauma survivors.

Ruth Reymundo 11:30

As fathers.

David Mandel 11:31

As fathers.

Ruth Reymundo 11:32

Right.

David Mandel 11:32

And we have to have the ability to hold all these things, the whole of family, the whole of community, and to operationalize and not give lip service. And sometimes I hear lip service, I think, from some people in certain groups, not in the Aboriginal community, but in people talking about men's health, that they say, well, we can't do this at the cost of women and girls. But I don't see them operationalizing.

Ruth Reymundo 11:51

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, this is where Matt and Sarah Brown and She has not your rehab really come in, you know, as that as that communal resource and that and the heart of, you know, we need to support the right behaviors in men if we want men to be healthy. And if we want families to be healthy, that's just the bottom line. It's all our responsibility. We don't silo that responsibility out to a six or twelve-week or a twenty-four-week behavior change program and then go, whoop, we did our thing. Right. That's not the way this works.

David Mandel 12:23

And I hope people will see the through line. Um, Matt and Sarah are, you know, are are friends of ours, uh and and I that was so meaningful that they came over for the day. Oh, just for 20 days. Yeah, and then but to have that Dr. Inez and Shane talk about HoloFamily and to have the Alfees Project talk about you know the need for safety that be contextualized to work with Aboriginal men.

Ruth Reymundo 12:47

Right.

David Mandel 12:48

I just to I hope people see these things are connected, the men's health panel, these things, because I don't think we move forward together if we don't have the language to say we can care

Men’s Health And Colonization Trauma

David Mandel 13:00

about the health and well-being of of men. And that's deeply tied to them stopping using violence, hurting other people.

Ruth Reymundo 13:10

And it's deeply tied to survivor safety.

David Mandel 13:13

That's right.

Ruth Reymundo 13:13

It's deeply tied to effective and efficient and safe co-parenting. That's right. Even in the context of separation. That's right. So, you know, I think that we're starting to make some headway around the world in understanding that we have to pay attention to the source of the problem. Right. And that is male violence. Yes, women are violent. Yes, we all know that. And we and we saw it. And prevalence says we have to deal with this critical issue.

unknown 13:43

Right.

David Mandel 13:44

And we had a presentation, not to digress too far, we had a presentation from Darrell Higgins that talked about the astronomical rate of domestic abuse and same-sex relationships. So again, the model encompasses that. People will know the model. But just so this creating this space around this men's health conversation has so many layers of importance to me.

Ruth Reymundo 14:08

So so that's the We can do two things at once, people.

David Mandel 14:11

That's right. That's right.

R 14:12

Okay. We can we can we we can assist survivors and victims and children with their safety and their trauma, and we can demand that people who are perpetrating, mostly men, behave differently, and we can assist them to heal so they don't continue on with those behaviors. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

David Mandel 14:33

I don't believe there's healing without stopping those behaviors. I just don't. I mean, it's it's in fact I think Well, I can speak as a survivor. Yeah.

R 14:41

I don't feel like I can completely heal because my perpetrators have not stopped their behaviors, nor have they acknowledged, nor have they remediated them. Trevor Burrus, that's right. So I'm stuck in this limbo as a survivor. And institutions are supporting that.

David Mandel 15:08

That when a perpetrator dies, there's another level of relief that happens. I would really say that.

R 15:14

But I would really love, and I think a lot of survivors would back this up. I would really love if my family healed. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. I would love to have contact with my father. Maybe there's some people who wouldn't, and with my mother. Sure. I would love to see the institution that I abused me held accountable because it means more children won't be abused. The the the the resonance and energy of knowing that that still exists in the world, that it's accepted and it's not seen means other people are going to be hurt. Right. And that deeply affects me.

David Mandel 15:49

Well, and this is, you know, and I I want to kind of pivot to some of the other conferences, but the parts of the conference, but I do think this we hear this from survivors so much, which is I don't want to be him, be with him, but I want him to be a better person. A better dad. I want him to heal because I know what he experienced as a kid.

R 16:05

Yeah.

David Mandel 16:06

And I want him to be a better dad.

R 16:07

Yeah.

David Mandel 16:08

And so if you ask me, do I think the majority of survivors want what you just said, I would say yes.

R 16:17

Yeah.

David Mandel 16:18

You know, that's my my working assumption. Maybe I'm wrong and people can correct me. So the conference had so much. And one thing I just wanted to say is you said something about the heart, and so the best version of ourselves. There was a presenter who was First Nation, who just didn't passing, and I think this is, I credited in part your speaking from the podium when you introduced Matt and Sarah Brown about your people, the islands you're from, the the the colonizing history of wiping out wiping out people there, yeah. Yeah, the Gouch people in in in Macronesia.

R 16:54

Yeah.

David Mandel 16:55

And so I I maybe that's not connected from, but I it was after you did that from the podium introducing Matt and Sarah, that he just walked past me and just happened to say, hey, you know, I want to let you know that I'm gonna give uh acknowledgement of country or welcome to country in my own language for the first time outside my family, outside my home. And I'm I that we could create a safe space that that would feel desirable and possible for him.

R 17:31

It's beautiful.

David Mandel 17:32

Is so important to me. And I I saw that kind of energy echoed over and over again through the entire conference.

R 17:42

Yeah, I heard some beautiful things too. You know, another person who attended the conference, who is, I believe, a certified trainer and a First Nations person said that they were comfortable disclosing to their workplace that they were being abused only because their workplace used the Safe and Together model. And previously they would have been terrified of being seen as less than, being blamed, losing their job. And people have to really understand how that energy feeds into the vulnerability of survivors and supports perpetrators in their actions. So that was really humbling for me. And we hear that a lot, actually, that people who go through the certified training realize in the course of the training that they are living in course of control, that they are being abused, and they themselves as practitioners are able to find safety, healing, and support by being engaged with the model, but even more so when their organization uptakes those values and actions them because it preserves their resources, their ability to work and to have meaning in their life and to be independent from their perpetrator.

David Mandel 20:40

We had another certified trainer who's a survivor speak from one of the, you know, one of the workshops about her own personal experience about being abused and her journey and felt again felt safe. And I and I think that for me that's deeply meaningful because I've always built the model and the approach about caring for the workers and the professionals and the organizations in the same way we care about families. And I, you know, we can't if we want to be non-coercive, non-controlling, true allies to survivors, healthy. Healthy, non-extractive to them, right, we have to also give value to being non-extractive to our workforces. And to really understand that I my working estimate, and again, I'm happy to be challenged, but that our workforces are made up of 80 percent at least of people who have experienced family violence. Now, if we talk about women who experienced abuse and violence against women, the number, unfortunately, may be closer to 100% if we're talking about harassment and other things and workplace, you know, and other forms of sexism. But really, I really, for me, it's a it's a mission at this point to stop getting people to stop pretending that their organization is filled with quote unquote professionals, and then there's the client base

Survivor Voices And Workforce Support

David Mandel 22:01

over here in a separate, separate category of human beings.

R 22:05

Oh hey, you forgot one big thing.

David Mandel 22:07

What?

R 22:07

You forgot that you demoed the Safety Nexus tool. The coach, the mapping, the well-being portion, the worker support portion.

David Mandel 22:16

Yep, that's right.

R 22:16

You you did that.

David Mandel 22:17

I did that at the keynote, and and it was it was beautiful. And we, you know, Ruth talked to people and we're doing demos to early adopter sites and that's part of our efforts at workforce support because yes, we want better documentation.

R 22:32

And there was an amazing quote from Justice Altebelly. Yeah, where he said that the pattern-based documentation that comes out of the model is gold. He literally used that word. That's right. That's because it's specific.

David Mandel 22:46

Right.

R 22:47

It's tangible. You can prove it and litigate it. And in places where people will be losing, potentially losing custody of their children, we should demand that level of evidence, quality.

David Mandel 23:00

And and we the panel was designed, and we had we were really appreciative of Justice Altebelli and Judge Beckhouse, who came in and gave their time and when they have very busy dockets to spend an hour with us on stage for a conversation with me. And one of my goals was to get them to say to a largely NGO audience that we having a growing family law audience, which we're going to keep nurturing, that you can influence my decisions, our decisions, by writing in this style, using the model to to help you write your notes, to write your reports. And you're not on the outside of the court process. He was really kind of clear, you know, you're not outside, you're you're part of it, and and what you can do is is do these reports in this style. And that was one of my goals. I was really happy to hear that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

R 23:49

You know, when I used to work and train medical staff, I used to say that medication doesn't work if people don't take it. Right. Document uh saving together model doesn't work if you don't document it. Right. Like really, I want that to go deeply into people. You gotta write down the documentation. So we're really trying to facilitate that with the Safety Nexus tool to happen more efficiently and to really help coach workers in really difficult situations, including, you know, they're standing outside the door, they're about to do a home visit, they're really anxious. They're gonna engage with the perpetrator. They don't know how, you know, including assisting supervisors and managers in understanding what the struggles of their teams are and the patterns of struggle and stress and how we can support them. So we are very, very worker supportive. We want a good quality of life for workers. We want them to have the tools that they need and the support that they need. Because we're dealing with people, their children and their families and life or death situations. And that is really rough stuff.

David Mandel 25:02

That's really rough stuff. And so I have one more kind of observation, I guess, to share the uh about the the event. I this is the 20th anniversary of the Institute. April 6th is when the

Safety Nexus And Court Influence

David Mandel 25:16

Institute was founded. I was a little bit older, but the Institute as an entity started in in 20 years ago. So we celebrated, we're celebrating our 20th anniversary. So my keynote was around that. And you know, as you can imagine, it's a chance for me to reflect and to see the presentations. I went and went to a lot of workshops and watched and listened and you know that it was really to hear people describe it who I'd never met before, who went through safety of the training, saying, I used the model to extend an AVO, a court order for five years to cover a kid to 17. And then this mom and this kid are gonna have safety through the story. Because they're saying their orders were working. We're gonna have safety for the next five years because the case could be presented in in a pattern-based way, for instance, or to hear another agency describe step by step how they mapped out points of influence with their non-safety-trained partners and how they were training their staff to use those touch points to consciously communicate using the model, how to how to talk to these folks, to get them on board, to help them make better decisions. And I just it's humbling, it's uplifting for me, it's energizing. And you know, I I say this all the time this is this is about creating a whole ecosystem together of transformational practice.

R 26:50

Right.

David Mandel 26:51

And to be in that setting with 400 practitioners, policymakers, there was a member of parliament that was there, you know, we had decision makers, we had people from Singapore there, we had people from New Zealand there, we had people from all over Australia, from from Tassie. A shout out to Tassie, because often they kind of get left out of these things. But people came from WA and just, you know, from from all over Australia, from New Zealand, from Singapore.

Twenty-Year Reflections And Closing

David Mandel 27:22

It's deeply moving to me in ways that I can't fully articulate.

R 27:29

Well, we are really grateful and filled up by our time here.

David Mandel 27:36

Thank you all.

R 27:37

Lots of things have already come out of this engagement, and Australia feels like a little bit of a catalyst in some ways. It it brings, it surfaces these things that we really want to support in the model and in people. And we gotta go home and head back.

David Mandel 27:59

To children.

R 28:00

To children and to the United States. Well, our children are old now.

David Mandel 28:03

Come on, they're they're not old. The youngest is each other. Yeah, they're not they're not. Legal adults.

R 28:13

They're not they're there are as Matt and Sarah Brown call their children, they're our broke roommates. So we're heading back, and we really are grateful for our time here.

David Mandel 28:24

Yeah. So thank you all. And as always, like, follow, share, you know, check out our website, you know, look for my book if you don't know it.

R 28:36

And I think that's a good thing.