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
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."
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
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."
Speaker 1: [00:00:16] OK, and we're back [00:00:17][0.8]
Speaker 2: [00:00:17] and we're back, right? This is partnering with a survivor. This is episode two. It's much easier now this season, season two, it's going to be much easier to keep count for a little while because we're the numbers are lower, easier for us. So we're super excited. In a few minutes, we introduce Jess Hill, who is an investigative reporter and author, and we're going to talk to her about her work around domestic violence. But but in case this, your first time tuning in, I'm David Mandel, the executive director of the Safe and Together Institute. [00:00:47][29.6]
Speaker 1: [00:00:47] And I'm Ruth Stearns Mandel and I'm the e-learning and communications manager, so I'm really excited about our next guest. And I started reading a lot of her work in her articles about domestic violence and coercive control, and was really touched by the depth that she went to the contexts that she applied to her reporting. That really was a pattern based assessment of how perpetrators are either slipping through the cracks. You know, in the legal system or any of the other topics that she she looks at. And so I was really excited to get her on the show. And you were also reading her book, [00:01:30][43.1]
Speaker 2: [00:01:31] Write her book See What You Made Me Do. Power control, domestic abuse. And I, you know, looking at that book, you know, I again was impressed with her ability to contextualize the gender nature of violence and domestic abuse, or focus on indigenous families and how they experience domestic violence at much higher rates and the context for them. So I'm super excited about having just how. So, Jess, thank you for joining us. [00:01:57][25.5]
Speaker 3: [00:01:57] Thank you for having me. [00:01:58][0.9]
Speaker 2: [00:01:59] And where are you? Where we actually didn't ask you? We did the blueprint of your Where are you joining us from? [00:02:03][3.8]
Speaker 3: [00:02:04] Well, I'm joining you specifically from Bondi in Sydney, Australia. It is the way to the beach. Like, that's totally an Australian idiom. Sorry for anyone who's not Australian. That means that it's walking distance that 10 or 15 minutes to the beach. And it's a beautiful day here with blue skies. And we have for May this year saying blue sky is incredible because last year, the entire summer the sky was cloud of smoke and and we were being told not to go outside. Go figure. So that's right. This year, we're being encouraged not to go outside so much, but at least we can actually go outside. [00:02:40][36.0]
Speaker 2: [00:02:41] And when you go out to exercise, you can breathe. But Bondi Beach, I bicycle once from Sydney to Bondi Beach, and then I was awestruck by the the. The saltwater pool is first time I've ever seen one of those in Australia where, you know, the waves crash over the side of the pool into the from the ocean, into the pool, right? [00:03:02][21.8]
Speaker 3: [00:03:03] And we're doing laps. I think [00:03:04][1.6]
Speaker 2: [00:03:06] that's right. And then I came to realize there's there's other places in Australia where there is pools like that. But Bondi was the first place I'd seen that. So I have an affection for Bondi Beach. And so anyway, so you're joining us from there. So thank you for coming on the show and talking about your book and and the issues around coercive control. [00:03:24][18.9]
Speaker 1: [00:03:25] So this this episode is really going to be looking at coercive control laws, how they're necessary and the danger that they pose to survivors via gender bias and incidents based practice within our systems. We know that we need these laws to come about in order to protect women and children. But you know, as David's operated in the field for over 30 years, we also know that the application of the law is not equal. And we know that there are many ways that gender bias and a focus on violence, just physical violence has really increased our danger. So we wanted to go over that topic today, and I think we should start off with just a definition of coercive control for people who don't understand it as a concept. [00:04:16][50.6]
Speaker 2: [00:04:16] Yeah. And then we'll turn just to you, to some of your your your research for the book and what you found because you you went out and spoke to so many people. So for folks who don't know, of course, control is really about a pattern of behaviors that that leads to entrapment isolation. It may not involve physical violence, but it can. And I think one of the things that distinguishes it from what is often this incident based focus or this focus on on physical violence is that it's it really is about looking at how that person who's perpetrating it is making the world of that survivor smaller and really changing the way they operate, the way they work in the world. Evan Starkel, who wrote the book Coercive Control, really talks about it as a liberty crime, that it's a human rights crime that's about it's about taking away things from people. And when we talk to Luke and Ryan Hart, you know about their situation in the UK, where their father murdered their mother and their sister. They they said, Look, if you look. Our dad, you wouldn't have seen physical violence, but if you looked close enough, you would have seen what he took away from us, what he didn't let us do, what we couldn't do. And so I think that that is so important and just you capture that. So wow, that context so well and you do it, you know, whether it's challenging family violence researchers who think there's gender symmetry or talking about the context for indigenous women around coercive control. So can you first start by talking about just what you've found and your approach to talking about domestic violence and through this coercive control lens? [00:05:51][94.1]
Speaker 3: [00:05:52] Yeah, sure. Yeah. And it was actually the reason I use the term domestic abuse was actually I read an article that was written by this woman, Yasmin Khan, who runs a Community Services sort of really a domestic violence response center for especially women from the subcontinent up in Queensland. And she just kept on having all these women, particularly from India, coming in and saying, Well, it's not domestic violence because he never hit me. And then I would just describe these campaigns of control that were just outrageous, you know, and in very much adhering to that idea of entrapment and torture, essentially. And the worst physical violence I might have endured was a cup of tea in the face. And then, of course, you dig a bit deeper in this sexual violence that they may not even construe as violence in their heads. And so Yasmin Khan was like, How is it that we have these women who are absolutely fundamentally being abused in their homes, but they don't they don't recognize themselves in the posters and they don't relate to the term domestic violence. And she went on a Winston Churchill fellowship over to the UK to sort of figure out how, how are they responding to domestic violence over there? And she was talking to the police and they were using the term domestic abuse. And she said, Why do you use that term? And they said, Well, because domestic violence really only captures a particular part of the violence, and domestic abuse can capture all of it. And so she made it her mission to change the language in Australia. And I read that article about two weeks before we were due to go to print on the book. The cover had been designed. Everything had been Typekit and I was walking my little girl along the street, writing my thought was pushing the pram. And I think in that last couple of weeks, I was just really feverishly trying to make sure that I hadn't missed something that I hadn't done, something that I would regret later, not not doing differently. And I just thought in that moment, like standing outside my house, I was like, Oh, I'm just going to have to change this time. I feel at a gut level that what she's saying is right. And it's not to say that I, you know, it's not to say that using the term domestic violence is wrong, necessarily. But I just thought for all those people have said to me when I was writing this book, how are you going to capture the fact that it's not always physical? And I gave long winded answers. Finally, it was like, that's how I'm going to capture it because we call it child abuse, not child violence, because it includes nonphysical abuse molestation, which is not thought of as violence, neglect, which is the absence of physical contact. You know, all of that. So I thought, Well, OK, how about I just change the term? And then I wrote this kind of little explanation right up front, sort of in the notes on my methods section. And it's amazing. Every interview that I've done pretty much has started with the question Why did you start calling it domestic abuse? It's been like this sort of a major thing, a major change that has made people really reassess it from the language point of view. So I'm so glad that I did that. So so that was sort of the starting point or the starting point that happened at the end for the language to just change around that. But for me, I think the what was just absolutely fascinating and brought this to my attention as something that I could spend years focusing on was the idea that the abuse in these relationships, as you will have seen time and again, is not only sort of patent, but it follows this plot line that is so predictable that you can pretty much finish what people are saying before they've they're halfway through saying it that it's like. And that's why I called the first chapter the perpetrator's handbook, because it's just like, what did these guys all get together and study this? How do they all do exactly the same thing? And what is it in us that in relationships, when we want to gain power of another person, we use the same behaviors and techniques. Time and time again, we use those same behaviors and techniques in political prisoner situations, in cult situations. You know, it is the method by which you gain power over another person. That's what coercive control is. And I think that when I when I talk about this pattern and this plot line, it's like this light bulb goes on in survivors heads and like, Oh, right. So. All those things that I kind of was just sort of like brushing aside and focusing on the really big ticket incidents. That was all part of it. And oh my God, all these other people have experienced the same thing. It's it's I think it makes them feel like they're part of something rather than feeling alone in what they experienced. [00:10:34][282.1]
Speaker 2: [00:10:35] It was really clear to me when I read the title of your book See what you made me do. You know that you were tapping and just from the cover to that repetitive pattern, because I've heard that statement, I used to do men's behavior change work. And so what I used to say about that was that the men were were boring in their repetition and their similarity, and that while we need to be sensitive to cultural differences and economic differences, which are real, that that this nature, of course, control and power over is boringly similar. Whether you're at the micro level of families or at the more macro cultural level and my background, my university training was in political economy or government, and so we studied power at the level of countries or social levels. And it's the same. It's the same right. Things are the rising and economic control and and then using violence punctuated by violence. And you know, it's it's it's very similar. [00:11:37][61.6]
Speaker 1: [00:11:38] Right? I think. I think part of the challenge has been is that because it was so consistent because these were behaviors that people would adopt with authority, with a badge, with the judge behind it, with the whole country behind it that we said, Well, this is normal. These are normal things. And so there's a whole cultural acceptance of a whole set of behaviors that controls another human being that's very powerful when it's tied to a story that as long as you don't hit somebody that you're still the good guy so you can remove their freedoms and take away their access to the internet, or take away their ability to get education or force them into a marriage, or force them to not use contraception and to have children. And you're still the good guy. And that's that's difficult for people to undo inside of themselves. It's a big lift because it means letting go of some beliefs that we have held that certain things are OK as long as they're done with a specific type of authority. [00:12:42][64.4]
Speaker 3: [00:12:43] Yes, absolutely. And you know, it's really interesting when I was sort of researching the history of coercive control and how it has been used in other contexts. And going back to that original research back in the 1950s and 60s that was done on the returned US soldiers from the Korean prisoner of war camps, you know, when they when Albert Biederman, the US Air Force sociologist who really found what the pattern was that would get a certain effect and and sort of really got the architecture of coercive control that was then, as you know, like in the 70s, Amnesty International basically put his chart of coercion, which is exactly what domestic abusers do. It basically outlines the techniques that are used in prisoner of war camps and by pimps and by domestic abusers as well. They put that in their report on torture and on really bizarre little side story is that when Guantanamo Bay was set up, the the military trainers who were training the interrogators, they found vitamins chart of coercion and they trained them in how to use it, even though it was known for being used against U.S. soldiers and actually eliciting false confessions and a lot of other behavior. That's not helpful in an intelligence way, but in a thought reform and getting people to come over to your side. It seems quite effective, but not in getting any actual intelligence. And yet they were training trainers to interrogators to use it. And when Congress found out what they were doing, they actually made it illegal. But I made it illegal to use coercive control techniques. And yet what we know about what was being done in Guantanamo is there was all level of torture being coercive. Control was seen as something beyond the pale. And so I think that's really telling that it was too much even for in Guantanamo. And so when people say like, well, is that it like they didn't, you know, you didn't hit her, you didn't. It's like, No, this is the main event. This is actually, I mean, the physical, the physical incidents, the sexual violence. All of that may be part of it, but it's all serving this basic framework of coercive control. And if it's not there, what the effect of coercive control without the violence. But just the believable threat of violence is still so dramatic and so like, think [00:15:07][143.8]
Speaker 1: [00:15:08] it's amazing because I think people have made violence the main event. It's like a main event with the big. But but in reality, it's just to punctuate the control and the power and to keep that going, and it's it's a side note, it's often a side note, even if it's very, very violent and very, very frightening, even when it rises to the level of strangulation or threats of death. The the the those are very alarming. But all of the things that came before it really are the depth of the abuse and the harm that's happening to families. [00:15:47][39.5]
Speaker 2: [00:15:48] It's it's wonderful in your book. You're really so clear when you're making that connection between vitamins work and the Korean War, P.O.W.s and how they were treated. Also, they were judged and they were put down and and then saying, wait a second. If hardened soldiers trained to resist and expecting to deal with this, you know, we're impacting the way they were impacted. How can we judge survivors, domestic violence survivors, you know, who are average human beings? You know, for falling prey to these things, for being impacted and especially when our response systems, law enforcement, courts, family courts, you know, child welfare, those systems really aren't naming those things and are not setting up a structure to say, that's real what you're experiencing and we're going to we're going to fix it. We're going to respond to. [00:16:43][54.8]
Speaker 1: [00:16:43] And many of those systems are not just not naming those things, they're they're they're giving up sort of a credence to them by saying, here's an abuser who's a coercive control or even a man who's battered, and we're going to give him custody of his children and not acknowledge that co-parenting with a domestic abuser is like living in a war zone and in a foxhole, you know, so I think it's it's bigger than that. And then you add religious leaders on top of veteran friends and family who all say, this is this is just how life is. So then we have this victim that's very triangulated. So we've gone through the importance and the bigness of coercive control, and we need now to talk about why we need or would be benefited by laws to criminalize. [00:17:34][50.6]
Speaker 2: [00:17:35] So you've become an to you kind of become an advocate for you talking about domestic abuse and the term domestic abuse, which moves us away from a focus on violence. But is it safe to say you've become an advocate for shaping systems, whether it's laws or practices around this concept? Of course, control, which we used to say put together institute with our model as well. So we're we're we're in alignment with that. But is that safe to say you're an advocate for that? And can you talk about that if that's true? [00:18:01][26.4]
Speaker 3: [00:18:02] Yeah. You know, it's something that happens. So, you know, it did happen purposefully. But as a journalist, primarily as I came into this as a journalist, not as an advocate or as an academic, I was nervous about taking this into a campaigning space because it's like, that's not really what journalists are supposed to do, right? You know, like supposed to retain a level of distance of of objective distance. I find that when you get really deep into the weeds of domestic abuse and you start to really understand not only its prevalence but its impacts and the and the fact of how it's dealt with through the system. As Ruth is talking about, it's impossible just to maintain that objective distance for me. So when I said in the book in In, there's a chapter called State of Emergency, which really goes through the the legal systems response, the justice systems response and police. And at the end, I look at coercive control on the laws that have been introduced in the UK and I and I sat there at my computer just wondering how do I finish this chapter? Do I say that we should make coercive control a crime? Because back then in Australia, it was not on the radar whatsoever? And very few domestic violence services I talked to actually use the term coercive control explicitly. So I felt it was still quite an esoteric term, even though it was well understood and I sat there at the computer. Do I say it? Do I just say it? And I'm like, Yes, damn, just say it. Just say it. And then and then in a in Australia, in in. I think it was at the end of February. In fact, you may have even been in Australia when Hannah Clarke and her three children [00:19:44][102.3]
Speaker 1: [00:19:45] were, yeah, we were. Yeah, they were in New Zealand. [00:19:47][2.5]
Speaker 2: [00:19:48] Yeah, we were. Yeah. So yeah, we knew about it. [00:19:50][2.4]
Speaker 1: [00:19:51] And he was a New Zealand footballer, was he not? [00:19:55][3.8]
Speaker 3: [00:19:55] I'm not sure. I think he was Australian. Maybe he was New Zealand. I'm not sure, but maybe not. [00:20:00][4.6]
Speaker 2: [00:20:00] But there may be another man in another. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, we were in Australia when when Hannah Cork and her kids were murdered. [00:20:05][5.0]
Speaker 3: [00:20:06] Yeah. And so essentially that was a massive watershed moment. We've had a few homicides in the last six years that have absolutely shifted the conversation on domestic abuse, and that murder was one of them, partly because it was witnessed, which always makes a huge difference. It was unmistakably brutal because it was, you know, sitting a whole family on fire inside the car, a beautiful family. And and because there had been no physical violence in the marriage and it was a textbook case of coercive control and to their absolute credit. Hannah Clarke's parents, who are shouldering grief that is just unimaginable, went into political advocacy pretty soon after the event, and they really started talking about criminalizing coercive control. And so then we had coronavirus literally, like two weeks later and I thought, That's it. That's the end of that conversation for a few years. But it started to gain momentum again suddenly in the middle of the year and and a big. Part of it was this group of women's magazines that run Marie Claire and a bunch of other magazines in Australia decided to start a big campaign to criminalize it. And it just came out of nowhere. They they'd been talking to Hannah Clarke's parents that read my book and they, you know, they just decided we want to be part of this. And suddenly it just became a mainstream issue. It was quite shocking. And sudden I think it was actually quite sudden for the domestic violence sector as well. And I think it's it's caught a lot of people off guard. And for that, I I don't I don't feel great about that because I think it's been a very difficult year for services and for them to have to get on top of this as a concept, not only just to understand it fully, but also then to apply it to the law and like, do we want this law? How would it look? What would the legislation read like? You know, it's a lot for for these services to take on in consultation with the government. But that said, you get these moments and they just happen, whether you like it or not. And that and this and the timing doesn't always work. It's like having a baby and and the moment is now. And at the moment, we've got four state governments because Australia, our justice system, we do it on a state by state basis. So you don't just have a countrywide like Scotland, England and Wales decision to criminalize it's got to happen state by state and we've got seven states, two territories got to hope that's true. And I think as an Australian like, you should know that anyway. But but we've got four states who are currently considering it. One state, New South Wales, where I live, is having a parliamentary inquiry into it. That's accepting submissions until the end of this month, January and other states are having their own consultations about it. So I decided when this all started happening, it's like, do I follow through with what I said at the end of that chapter? And do I back it now? Or do I just step back from and say, I said what? I said, I back it. I'll let you guys sort of take it from here. I thought the only the only, it's disingenuous for me to now back away from that. And so I decided to become an advocate for that system reform. So that's sort of yeah. And so it's an it's an uneasy sort of position for me to be in still. And I'm still constantly wracked with doubts about not so much about whether I think it should be criminalized, but how it should be, what would the effect be, etc. So I'm constantly engaging with people on Twitter with people privately just to hear their concerns. And how careful do we have to be in this piece of legislation regarding children regarding post-separation abuse? Family law is so much easier. But I just think in the end, it's like that is the reality of domestic abuse. We need to codify it and we need to move away from an incident based system. [00:24:07][240.4]
Speaker 1: [00:24:08] Well, the UK has criminalized coercive control, and that's been criminal for what about three or four years [00:24:14][5.9]
Speaker 2: [00:24:14] now, maybe even five, maybe [00:24:15][0.8]
Speaker 1: [00:24:15] even five or so. We do have some sense of how these coercive control laws have been applied. And as far as I could tell with my research, it is that they're not necessarily being efficiently applied because training of judiciary, police and other people has not concurrently occurred. You know, so there's that, there's that question and you've seen this before with laws that have have come about that looks really wonderful, but their application is very lacking. [00:24:44][28.5]
Speaker 2: [00:24:44] Yeah. And I think of two areas, you know, laws that get passed in the domestic violence era that rebound against against women, against survivors and particularly get used against black and brown and indigenous women. And you do a great job in your in your chapter, you know, really underscoring one the the the the outrageous the large number of of how large abuses in the indigenous community in Australia, you know, multiples of five, 10, whatever I don't remember, you know, 15, 20, just really just so different than the white community, the dominant white community, but also that that. They're calling the police would get women arrested for things like, you know, you have your dog not registered, I mean, that stood out to me, you know, as I was reading the book, you know that you that that the overpolicing and we have this the United States, obviously, you know, and this year has been about that as well. You know, whether it's it's Breonna Taylor or George Floyd, you know, I know that sparked international attention, overpolicing of of minority groups. But but I wonder if you could speak to your thoughts, you know, as you've been talking on Twitter and listening about about the backlash, potentially you have a course of control against women and and against, particularly against indigenous women. And you know what people are saying in Australia about this as they're considering this, this change? [00:26:06][81.8]
Speaker 3: [00:26:08] Yeah. And so that is that is a huge part of our discussion here. And just to go back to what Ruth was saying, I think it's really interesting to look at how it's happened in different jurisdictions. So England and Wales, they, you know, they were the first to criminalize and there was a lot of thought that went into how do we criminalize it? And being that there was no template. They they did so reasonably quickly in months, not years. And unfortunately, they weren't able to pair it with in-person training. So it was sort of like online training, bit by bit like modules that police could do at three am at the back end of this shift, they just wanted to get out of the way. And so there wasn't that thorough approach. And then I think what Scotland did was that very same year that England criminalized 2015, they started talking about it and thought, Yeah, this is something we want to do. But they didn't actually criminalize it til 2019. And I spent four years really with the women's sector and led and the lawmakers working very closely together with victims, survivors and including kids to not only make sure the legislation was written the right way, but that the training was going to be put in place from the very get go. So within a year, all of the police would receive, you know, face to face training, the judiciary, the sheriffs and even the call out operators. So the call out operators would be trained to not be telling the police to move on quickly because it's just a domestic that they know that they need to stay there to investigate the context of what's just happened around the incident or around the call out. So it's like they took a total system approach view on how to how to actually change the way that the police and the courts respond to it. And I think certain legislative changes, such as you don't have to prove the impact on the victim, that's different in Scotland. You don't have to in England and Wales, you do. And I think what they're finding in Scotland is because you're just focusing on the behavior. And that's and the test is, would you find the behavior of this of this perpetrator this offender would cause is it would cause fear, alarm or distress to this person? It doesn't matter whether that person change their behavior as a result, because they may come from Pakistan where this behavior is normalized, they've come to Scotland. This behavior is not normal here, but they act normal because that's what they're used to. Well, that should not mean that this is any more or less severe or taken seriously by the law. So it means also that I spoke to the specialist prosecutor in Scotland the other week that they are getting guilty pleas right up front, where actually then the victims aren't actually having to go through the court system because a there's so much evidence that's being collected to prove that coercive control and b, they're not having to prove that the victim there was an impact on the victims. So the victim is not having to give testimony and prove that this this caused harm to them. So there are you can see how what looks like just a tiny little change in the legislation can have a massive difference. And the other thing that's very interesting is that the 96 percent of the case, the charges that were brought to the court were being followed through with the prosecution. Eighty one per cent were getting a conviction. Like that's and that's about the same as they were getting four incident based abuse, so it goes to that question of like, can you prove this? Well, in Scotland, they're finding the prosecutors are finally actually it's easier for us to prove this because there's so much evidence that you can look at, from bank records to text messages to friends and family talking about how they were isolated, et cetera. Actually, these guys often leave their footprints everywhere. It's just that we're not looking for their footprints in these cases yet. So that's that side. The other side in terms of the blowback on survivors and any new laws we've known since the 1980s, when we started talking about progress through arrest and mandatory arrest policies where we saw what was seemed like an excellent idea really, really putting a lot of victim survivors in greater danger with the law because someone had to be arrested. And what we know is that, you know, for women who use violent resistance, particularly in their relationships, they often admit to it because they think it's obvious why they're doing it. So they say like police will turn up and they're like, Yeah, hit him. But like, do you know what he's been doing to me or, you know, he threaten my kids or whatever. And there's a perpetrator going like, I didn't do nothin. And so the police are like, Well, we got to arrest someone, and we've got to take this to court. So well, she's admitting to an offense. Let's take her, you know, we've got to find someone. So I think in terms of coercive control laws, what we've seen at least in across the UK, we're not seeing a large number of women being arrested, which is what you would hope for and expect given the nature of coercive control and the gendered nature of it. Saying about it was 99 per cent of convictions in England and Wales with men. And I think that was a percentage in the high 90s of the charges. So we haven't seen a large number of women being charged. We haven't. So and I think the reason is actually the incident based model that we have, it's far easier just to frame a victim for committing an offense on that day than it is for committing the offense of coercive control. [00:31:49][341.7]
Speaker 1: [00:31:50] And with these incidents, focus, you don't need context, you don't need history, you don't need a pattern of behaviors. Which is also very challenging, though, when you try to apply this across various systems. So for example, though, the criminal courts may be responding as we would hope they would respond in some instances in Scotland, more as it's more holistic that the Family Court, which doesn't allow for evidence to be submitted oftentimes about domestic abuse or domestic violence or coercive control, is going to be a concept to them, right? Which is, you know, so foreign. And then how do we address this as well when there's trauma involved and victims and survivors have mental health diagnoses or they have substance abuse diagnoses to contextualize the reason for that trauma as the perpetrators pattern of behavior has facilitated and encouraged it or exacerbated it. [00:32:50][60.4]
Speaker 2: [00:32:51] I still think my experience is it still works. And you know, this is, you know, just as you're talking, I'm thinking about when I developed the safe and the other model, it was in the context of child protection in a state in the United States where we had one of the highest dual arrest rates in the country, like 15 percent, which is which is off the charts because at that time, the average dealer, the average arrest rate in the US is around two or three percent, you know, so we didn't have primary aggressor laws. We, you know, whatever else was going on. And so in the context of my work with child protection, I'd often be presented with a case where the worker would say to me, Well, I've got both mom and dad are perpetrators. And and I was already applying a coercive control pattern based lands looking at the connections between adult to adult behavior and the perpetrators behavior to children. So trying to pull all that stuff together, which course you can do really well and using the language, of course, control and this is going back about 15 plus years. And what I would say to the the workers said, Tell me about each person. Don't tell me about the couple's history. Tell me about each person's pattern of control and actions taken to harm the kids. And so we would separate it out and move it away from a kind of a couples lens or a relationship lens to a individual parent lens, but tell me about both peoples patterns and what I would say is in the vast majority, I'm talking about 95 percent what was initially presented as I've got two perpetrators based on the facts that were known to that worker, that coercive control and differential situation became sort of crystal clear within sometimes like less than five minutes. They had the information, but they haven't been trained to use it outside of very simplistic. He said she said kind of perspective and and so so this is really a challenge, but it works. I mean, some kind of supporting what you're saying is in terms of this, that it works and that it it's it's it's something that really makes a difference. [00:34:49][118.1]
Speaker 3: [00:34:50] Yeah. And it's finalizing all the time. Yeah. Highlights the context in which the mother's behavior is occurring, you know, and it's like, that's what I mean again in the Scottish legislation is is so I think revolutionary is that part one of the behaviors that someone can be convicted for is using coercion to the extent where they actually coerce the mother to commit a crime against the child, abuse the child or even commit a crime like shoplifting or drug dealing, et cetera. So as to deter her from reporting his abuse to the authorities and to basically degrade her into that that total state of subservience. So having a law that actually recognizes how women may commit crimes and even abuse their own children in the context of coercive control because they are being forcibly controlled, Evan Stark tells a really illuminating story about a mother and son. He was he was working with, and they were telling him about the time that she held this mother held her son's hand to a hot stove. And basically, the father had said, if you don't do that, I'll do worse. And the mother and son both agreed that she had no choice. But you know, and I use this example when I'm talking to magistrates and trying to explain to them how these these various crimes that come before them in the courtroom may have a coercive control, Background said. Like, how would you like when you hear me say that? That makes immediate sense to you, right? She's like, she's been given an ultimatum and she's taking the most protective choice that she possibly can in that situation. But how would you feel if you're watching a video of her holding her son's hand to the stove and he's screaming, Right, how are you going to respond? Are you going to feel sympathy for her? You know, so that's that's what we have to be, you know, really understand this intellectually because emotionally, it doesn't necessarily up that way. [00:36:56][126.2]
Speaker 1: [00:36:56] Well, that's where some gender double standards come into the mix that we don't view the perpetrators mandate for that mother to hold that child's hand to the flame as being a parenting choice that he's the one who made that choice and made that mandate and without his behaviors, that child would have been safe. And that's where I think we really have put all of the responsibility on mothers in these impossible situations, and we've completely absolved and made invisible the choices of the person who's abusing and harming that child. [00:37:33][36.2]
Speaker 2: [00:37:34] I think this is where, you know, I look at this and, you know, a lot of work in this area, which is that we're working a lot in the child services here, child safety, child protection. And that's where a lot of our work has been centered on that. It's so apparent that we hold men and women to different standards around parenting, and none of these things are written down anywhere in a in a practice book or in statutes. But there's so built into the culture, and they're across cultures and communities and a lot of cases that that people really default to this value to protect when it comes to kids in domestic violence, they default to this value to protect approach. And and they hold men to such low standards of parenting that the perpetrators don't get held accountable formally for child abuse, neglect and and then in family courts, you know, you look at even in Australia, you look at the federal standards around Family Court decision making that a lot of it doesn't even talk about what the perpetrators done to the kids. It keeps it focused on the adult relationship. And so I'm just wondering in your in your in your investigations, are your conversations just what's come forward about this gender double standard? And you speak to it, I think, and you're looking at the Glass and Strauss work and a family violence research work, but can you talk about that a little more broadly? [00:38:54][80.4]
Speaker 3: [00:38:55] Yeah. I mean, it's interesting what you say about family law. That's been that's been a huge bugbear of mine for ever since I started reporting on domestic abuse about six years ago, seven years ago now. And it's something that receives little attention, especially in terms of how, how many people it impacts and and how backwards it is. I mean, literally, like we talk a lot about the criminal justice system and how badly it responds to domestic violence. But the family law system for me is like many times worse and an incredibly destructive and harmful to children. So it's interesting, you know, so many thoughts in my head, but one that comes to mind immediately is an email I got from a lawyer a couple of months ago, and she said that she did what felt radical to her in the courtroom in a family law case, which was when all of the focus was going on the mother's parenting. She just sort of turned the direction to the to what the father had done. And this goes this goes to show exactly what what goes on in family law courtrooms that this would be such a radical thing for her to do. She went to the the father's parenting and his coercive control and his abuse. And she said the whole tone of the case changed, and it was literally just a decision that a lawyer made. And she actually ended up getting custody for the mother, and he was going for full custody. It was looking really bad. And she said it was just something simple like, you know, having read your book and the fact of how often you put the perpetrator in the foreground, it sort of had changed my thinking about it and changed my approach. So I don't think that I don't think that the family law system is screwed forever in the sense that there are there are ways to change this, even in the culture that we have at the moment. But the problems with the family law system are very much that broken tech culture and the and the the overlying sense that that there is the good enough father is basically the father who bothers to show up to court so they don't see a father who's still trying to maintain control. His partner through the children, they say, a father who's doing his darndest to get contact with his kids so they don't see domestic violence and post-separation abuse as a type of entrapment. It's very hard for family courts to say that because they are looking through the contact lens, so distinctly so. And I think that, you know, there is unfortunately, a lot of the education that's going on for judges is based on this whole faulty premise and false premise that children are better off with both parents almost no matter what. And I've seen judges say that. I mean, in the book, I cite a judge who became one of the highest and most senior judges in the country talking about the fact that even if a child, a father abuses his child, that does not a priori mean that he cannot be a father to this child, but that it is not the worst part of his behavior is not something that he should be continued to be judged on, even if he sexually abuses the child. And you see this in judgment, not a judgment where it's like, well, he should be given a second chance or an end. But and if the mother resists and says no, I want no contact or asked for something is as radical as just wanting to protect her kids from from someone who's even got convictions for really serious abuse that all the attention suddenly turns to her behavior. Why are you trying to block the father's access to the child? And then she's mythologized, because that's the easiest and fastest route to disqualify her. It's like a borderline personality disorder anxiety. One woman I met at a similar wave pool to the one you were discussing, the other, the earlier David is, she said. She came up to me at a beach the other day, and she was saying that her ex-partner, who had forcibly controlled her for years, they had a three year old. They're currently in the family law system. He's going to full custody. He said she's unable to parent the child because she has PTSD. PTSD from what? Right from him, right? Literally from him? [00:43:07][252.0]
Speaker 1: [00:43:08] Yes, it's such a common it is and horribly frustrating scenario that anybody could, in their adult mind think that this is beneficial to children to be forced into contact with an abuser. [00:43:20][12.7]
Speaker 2: [00:43:21] Well, and you could substitute PTSD, addiction, mental health issues, anxiety and I've seen again over the course of my career decontextualized. And that's why when we do our work where we we've given survivors and family our mapping tool and that mapping tool is actually like what you said about that experience with the lawyer who turned the focus on the perpetrators parenting that that mapping tool does the same thing. Recontextualize connects the dots, tells the story about what the perpetrator did and what it meant for the functioning of the kids. You know, how to have this behavior change, the kid's life and the way they function, the way the family functions? And I think you're right. You know, these things work. We actually know that certain things can help and make things better. But this this idea and this is we've done shows on this and, you know, last year that this decontextualized looking at survivors and pointing the finger and saying, you've got an addiction issue, you're even the trauma initiatives have been hijacked or twisted. The really well-intentioned clinicians who said we need to be more trauma informed, you know, that's a really big discussion. But what I've seen happen is is when when you kind of put it into the meat grinder of a gender double standards and people's misunderstanding about domestic violence is now a sudden. At the end of it, trauma informed becomes no way to say, Well, you know, she has a history of being traumatized and and it has addiction issues. So we can't trust you to parent her kids or make good choices in the future about relationships [00:44:49][88.4]
Speaker 1: [00:44:50] that we can trust her ex-partner. [00:44:51][1.2]
Speaker 2: [00:44:52] That's right. Who actually chose to get violent [00:44:53][1.4]
Speaker 1: [00:44:54] and chose to be violent to parent the children? Well, that's something that we're believing [00:44:59][5.0]
Speaker 2: [00:45:00] because he doesn't have a mental disease. You have a mental health diagnosis. [00:45:03][2.2]
Speaker 3: [00:45:04] Because, no, because no one's looking at him. No one is actually looking at him. And he's got such an effective front a lot of the time that they don't look at him well. [00:45:11][7.5]
Speaker 2: [00:45:12] But I also think what you're point earlier and I'm glad this came around is because that if you're looking at the framework of power and power over and coercive control at the macro level and at the family level, that the mental health system wasn't designed to diagnose that. And so we ended up with there's things like intimate explosive disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. We've ended up with a focus on feelings. We've ended up with a focus on people's trauma histories, but we haven't the mental health framework. So people are being sent to psychologists or professionals to be evaluated by the court. Most folks don't have the domestic Muslim, aren't formally trained in domestic violence period. And so the Family Court is using professional psychologists or social workers who have been trained in domestic violence in their main part of the. Training to then assess a problem that's really actually almost outside their scope of work unless they've done specialized training. [00:46:12][60.1]
Speaker 3: [00:46:13] And they just like the disorder, that's not, you know, if you're having you just looking for a nail, right? And not that actually what you're looking at is the result of domestic abuse and trauma from the relationship. You're looking at, well, how was the DSM diagnosis and then borderline personality disorder is obviously is that is so common. Munchausen by proxy is again so common in these reports. When I first started reporting on family law, I did a hour-long radio documentary on the report writers particularly and the fact that so many of them were not only not trained to spot signs of domestic violence and trauma in adults and kids, but that they were coming from this total pro contact culture in a way that they were. They were pathologizing the mother by default, like it was literally almost these reports that I saw, particularly from one report writer. But it's across the whole system. But it was like a cut and paste. And actually some of the women who had had this one report writer said that they had the wrong name in their report. I think he literally had cut and paste, and I'll report it was so well. It was so paint by numbers and it was, you know, the mother is too enmeshed with the children because they were sleeping in her bed because they are suffering from ongoing effects of trauma. You know that the mother is projecting her anxiety onto the children, and that's why they don't want to have contact with the father. But the whole it was this huge gymnastic rigmarole to get around the fact of the father's abuse and construct the children's behavior as a result of the mother's psychology and pathology. And I just have lost count of the number of these reports that even in opposition to the mother's own psychologist who said there is no history of mental disorder, she does not have borderline personality disorder. The courts will accept a report that's written on the basis of an hour long consultation, of which there's not even the basics of a psychometric sort of assessment. Don't even do the checklist, which, as we know, is a flawed process in itself, but they don't even do that. They just take it from their conversation like, Yeah, OK, and she's got borderline, and I'm going to put that in a report to the court and the judge is going to read it. And and actually make a decision on custody. Based on my hunch, it's absolutely appalling. And I have so many people who come to me, women who say, you know, I'm a criminal lawyer or I'm a commercial lawyer, and they've just come into contact with the family law system and they just cannot believe how it runs. It's so different to any other area of law. There is so little expertize. There is so much magical thinking that it it makes them crazy. [00:49:02][169.1]
Speaker 1: [00:49:04] Yeah. Now we, we we see this in every [00:49:07][2.8]
Speaker 2: [00:49:08] country, every country. Yeah, I know you're talking about Australia, but but I think it's very similar in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in Canada. I think it's it's it's a lot of these same countries have very similar issues that you're describing, as in Australia. [00:49:23][15.3]
Speaker 1: [00:49:25] So so we can run the gamut. Yeah. And I've done that. We've we've described the problem and the challenges and impediments and the way that people are perceiving this. One of the things that I would want to talk about, though, is how to address coercive control in the framework of a lack of behavior change programs because primarily carceral. These focused solutions often are overlaid on indigenous, poor and black human beings who with some holistic interventions, depending on their level of control and violence, could safely be behaviorally rehabilitated. And actually, I love the Australian programs that exist. I feel like the programs that that I've seen in Australia and New Zealand, particularly the ones that bring perpetrators out on the land of their birth with their children, and they facilitate this holistic healing where the perpetrator really has to hear the impact of their violence towards their loved ones in their family. In this context, in the United States, we don't have necessarily a proliferation of those types of programs. But how do we do coercive control? Well, without fundamentally carceral solutions, which will further harm and not address the cultural issues behind coercive control and domestic abuse? [00:51:03][98.6]
Speaker 3: [00:51:05] Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You know, I think that I mean one of the the sticking point and the difficulty we have in that. When we talk about what are our alternatives to carceral solutions, which I think, you know, except for the most sort of hardcore offenders and repeat offenders. And, you know, especially those with who literally do have on that personality disorder spectrum, sociopathy, psychopathy that most of these guys will be will be better off engaging with a serious program. The problem that we have is that like in in Australia, particularly like 12 week programs going once a week for an hour, that's that's really just dipping your toe in. Right. And then it's kind of up to the guy as to whether he decides to take the extremely long and arduous path to actually reforming his behavior and changing that habituation. So, so the difficulty that we have in Australia is that do we have a proven model that we can say, yes, you know, as a as a diversion program, this really is the model by which a a good percentage of men will will stop offending. We've got some promising sort of trials and some promising models that are probably a little bit expensive, but we don't have something that we're like, Yes, just replicate this and we're done. And so and so then you get your head into the territory where it's like, Okay, this guy's done this behavior change program now he goes to seek custody. And the judges are like, Well, he's done this tick. He's done his behavior change program. He's a good father again. So this is the tricky part. I think if we were able to nail a model that that and not just one, but one that works the various different sort of cohorts, as you say, like indigenous men are going to need a particular approach. Men with with drug and alcohol are going to need a particular approach. Then what then would need to happen is we would need to persuade the domestic violence sector that it is reliable and worth investing in. So I think what governments and I've heard this from government ministers, they feel nervous when they invest money in men's behavior change programs because they think they're about to get like a huge amount of blowback from the women's sector. That is, there was one state minister who expressed those concerns when they just sort of I think they'd made a tens of millions of dollar investment into men's behavior change programs. They were going back home just expecting to have a barrage of emails, and they actually didn't get any blowback. And it was one of the first times they felt like this had actually been received quite well. But historically, it's been a real sticking point for the domestic violence sector like these programs don't work. It's there's no point trying to rehabilitate that. We just need safety for the victims, and that means the men in prison, right? [00:54:03][178.8]
Speaker 1: [00:54:04] So we had some similar issues here in the United States. You know, behavior change programs that are based off of attendance or, you know, poor measures which really don't measure behavior, nor do they verify with victims that the that the perpetrators patterns have ceased and they're no longer perpetrating coercive control or violence against them. So there's no confirmation. And you wrote about this in one of your white papers. Right? Certificates of completion are dangerous. Right? So it is something that we talk about. Do you want to talk about the models that we've seen that that have more promise? [00:54:42][38.8]
Speaker 2: [00:54:43] Well, I think, you know, there are some larger programs in the United States that some are 52 weeks, some or 26 weeks. I think there's been different attempts to kind of coordinate between probation and, you know, the programs. A lot of the research that I trust says it's not just the content of program, but it's the consequences of failing and behavior change. And I do think really some of it is really a general shift as we're talking, you know, and thinking about sort of the response I'm just thinking about. One of the big failures of systems is this compliance based conversation. You know, did he go, you know, did he, you know, not breach the order in a technical way? And how we really need to go? You know, is a survivor reporting that she saved her? Are the kids more free, you know? Is he, you know, even though he's not in the house paying half the rent because these are his kids and, you know, and he's still legally responsible for their well-being? And I think that we need a really broader campaign. And I'm curious, just because you had this chance to talk to lots of people and be thinking about this a lot recently. But but, you know, the focus on law changes one way to think about this. But, but but where's the conversation about in the wider community, about coercive control and and really what? What? What change looks like from that or what not engaging that looks like, because one of the challenges is, you know, we talk about sex offenders grooming their victims, right? And I've always said that domestic violence survivors get domestic rights, perpetrators, get their victims groomed for them by the culture. Like every song that says jealousy equals love, for instance, is a little bit of grooming to get somebody in [00:56:30][106.3]
Speaker 1: [00:56:30] 1980s movies coming out of the United States [00:56:33][2.6]
Speaker 2: [00:56:33] anyway. That's right. That, yeah, that's right. That sort of seemed to confuse rape and sexual assault with. But I'm just wondering what your thoughts about, you know, as your as you as you know, these these magazines and and these folks have stood up and said, we need to change the law. Changing the law doesn't guarantee a change of change in the community conversation. I'm just wondering, you know what you think about that? [00:56:56][22.6]
Speaker 3: [00:56:57] Yes, there's two angles to that, I guess. And one is the fact of coercive control and what it is. You know, there can be a conversation about that. And the other angle of it is like, what's happening with the men, you know? And so just firstly, just going back to the men just to begin with, you know, one of the chapters in the book that I wrote was on like the the destructive force of toxic male shame. And and basically, I mean, I felt really nervous about writing anything that that hope to explain at least part of what's happening to these guys because often that's seen or interpreted as an excuse. And there's no way there's no world in which I was excusing these guys. In fact, you know, for a long time, I couldn't even write about why they did it. And to be honest, part of me didn't care. I just wanted to frogmarched them off a cliff, you know, because if you're only dealing with the worst parts of their behavior, that's what you want to do. As soon as you start actually talking to these guys and seeing them as humans and seeing them as the humans that their partners or ex-partners see them ahead. Then you start sort of looking at, OK, like what is going on internally for this complex person who is just as complex as the rest of us and is not just doing it for power and control, and not just because he can. He's doing it because he feels like it gets his needs met. Why is his need to degrade and shame and overwhelm this other person? What? What part of his need needs that? And that's why I started looking at sort of, you know, toxic male shame and the effect that that feeling of being victimized never being good enough. Fear of abandonment. All these things you see so often humiliated fury. And so I think that when we're looking at like, how do we actually speak to these guys? How do we get them to move past this habituated response and this habituated way of meeting their needs? Then you've got to be incorporating male shame and you've got it. And obviously, you've also got to be incorporating any of the co-morbidities and treating those treating drug addiction, treating alcoholism, treating all the things that are sort of like coalescing to supercharge this system. So but having a conversation about that, and I have to say, since the book came out, the conversation about men, I feel like in Australia has has really emerged into something more nuanced and sophisticated in a way that's been great. So, and in coordination with the increased conversation around coercive control, I think we're getting a much greater sense of why these guys are needing to have this control rather than just writing it off as just a foot soldier of the patriarchy type of explanation as far as cultural change is concerned. I think what we've seen in the UK is that and what I'm really championing here is arts. The arts have taken on coercive control as a fascinating plotline. And, you know, so you've got long running soaps like Coronation Street and, you know, the arches, the radio for radio drama, and they are running these long coercive control storylines, which is, I think, incredible. And it's the best way you could possibly hope to do. This is in a long running sort of like soap opera because you see it like just gradually happened week after week after week and year in their lives. It's a movie. Can't do that. A one off television show can't do that, but these soap operas really do, and they have the education that's happened as a result of the arts. Taking this on has been far above and beyond what news can do. And so I've been talking to our public broadcaster here. I've done some training with their journalists recently. I'm like bringing your arts department. I would love to train them in how to include these storylines. That's great. That's great. That's happening right [01:00:56][239.4]
Speaker 1: [01:00:57] now because we can't remove victims or perpetrators from the ecosystems that they live in, and we have done that to the detriment of. Having these conversations about how we change the culture around them, and I really feel that in order for us to change, there has to be concurrent change. We have to educate family and friends and religious leaders and teachers and, you know, medical staff and mental health professionals about the behaviors of coercive control and domestic abuse so that they create a wall of reality check and protection for victims. Because what's happening is that we're going to our family and friends and being told this is normal, we're going to our religious leaders and they're saying, it's normal. We're going. And I always do this. I do this step by step thing because I think that we need to recontextualize the responses that victims are giving that normalize this. And that's part of why we stay. And that's part of why perpetrators feel that it's OK for them to participate in those behaviors because they're not being told no. Almost like a two year old child. No, you can't act like that. That's not OK. [01:02:12][75.8]
Speaker 2: [01:02:13] Well, I think this is where that the the coercive control lies and just the change in the conversation. Naming the behaviors and we talk again, that white paper talks about naming the behavior of some really being clear, because once you focus on a behavioral change versus a compliance based model versus you say, look, the goal is to change those behaviors. And the goal is, is that at the end of the day that the the adult and child survivors, they have more freedom. You know, the the antithesis of that entrapment is more freedom or choice. You know that, you know, not just safety, not just right. Not just I wasn't hit today, but but I'm not where I may hit tomorrow or the next day, and I'm going to go to work and I talk to my girlfriend and I go to my mom's and I'm going to do these things that are normal without fear of of consequence. And and so I think once you're clear on those behaviors and a lot of the way we work, that you can talk about a history of intergenerational trauma or the trauma of colonization or institutional racism and its impact and say, Okay, that's real, that's impacted you. It's not an excuse for these behaviors, but it needs to be addressed and may be part of what's going on inside you. But you can deal with those things without controlling your partner. You need help for those things and to be addressed. And and I think that we need that sophistication. We're good enough to do that at this point. So I understand the fear you have that that if I talk about men's interior worlds, it's going to be perceived. And I've seen this in my field over and over again. If we focus on the man, the fears were taking the focus off the women, but that focus on the men has to be really grounded in clear commitment to behavior change, understanding gender bias, not excusing the behavior. And so if that anchors, they are my experiences. You can talk to him about his addiction. You can talk about the the intersection of his addiction and his his abuse. You have to. Yeah, no, you have to. You can't pretend that he's not an addict and you can't pretend that he didn't use violence to get money for drugs. So you can't pretend that he may be different when he's not using or totally sober. You can't. Those are realities that the survivors living with in many cases, and if you negate those things, you're really negating our experience. So I think you said that, I think that's that's really important. [01:04:30][136.7]
Speaker 3: [01:04:31] Yeah. And I think that like culturally, you know, overall what we need to be really fixing our minds on, are we willing to vouch safe women's independence? Like are we actually willing to grant them independence? And that might sound like, well, yeah, of cause that's, you know, that's the women's rights movement as achieved that over the last 40, 50 years. But I don't think that as a culture, we've actually decided that's OK. Yet that's how we're still talking about abortion laws and we're still in the family law courts, you know, with the pro contact culture. And it's like, are we actually willing to say that, you know, women, you have the right to be independent, you have the right to make choices to be safe. That's what I don't think we've agreed on as a culture yet. [01:05:13][42.4]
Speaker 2: [01:05:14] I think so. I think that's a great place to start, you know, kind of punctuating and wrapping up because I think that's I think that's a really big thought and I agree with you. I think that we're not we're not there. And when you every time you say pro contact, I have to say it to me. I hear pro father and I'm going to get in trouble for saying that potentially. But I think it's a lot of time and again that gender bias that that really says we want to we want to have this man in this child's life, regardless of what kind of parent. And if we don't even have the language to miss the whole thing, we don't even have the language. This is my take on it. And Human Services and psychology and social work and culture to talk about men's parenting right in the same way we talk about the quality of women's parenting. And so we don't it's not even something that people talk about. [01:06:03][48.9]
Speaker 1: [01:06:03] It's amazing that, you know, we did. David wrote a train. Which was which was about menace as parents working with men, as parents. And he used a term male parental development. Well, you're one of two people in the whole world that's ever used that term. How does that not exist? That's the concept, right? That men are dynamic humans that develop via parenting and they're supposed to be nurturing, like, what is that? [01:06:31][28.2]
Speaker 2: [01:06:32] And their struggles and challenges about their fears about becoming a new dad and who's there to support them. And it's a whole other show. Who's there to support them when they learn to be a dad and they get afraid, you know, and they feel comfortable? Or are they supporting and moving into a stance? So I'm going to control, I'm going to do this to deal with my fear. Right? You know, my anxiety, which are real? And how do we really say no? My my anxieties don't aren't going to be culturally privileged over my partner's independence or safety, which is what you're saying. And I think that's where we that's the big idea. I think that's where we really need to grapple with gender and women's independence and and do it in a way that doesn't mean we're not just resting on arrested incarceration. Again, we've we've been I think I came into the field in the mid 80s in that wave of protest. And so I think of myself as sort of a reforming carceral domestic violence person, but really have tuned in more and more to the fact that that that personal approach has really harmed for men. You know, in the UK, black men are an ethnic man in Australia. You know, Aboriginal men are men from culturally diverse backgrounds. You know that we need to do better and we need to go wider. So. So, Jess, you know, we're going to ask you for a quick, you know, takeaways things. If you're speaking to a professional out there first and then to survivor, to professionals, what do you have to say about their practice and what kind of invitation or guidance or what do you want them to take away from your book or this this episode of our podcast? [01:08:12][99.8]
Speaker 3: [01:08:13] Oh gosh, so much. But I mean, first of all, that like just that, they're doing an incredible job, and just what an amazing job all professionals in this sector have done in 2020, just to cope with the with the landscape and the increase in demand for their services. But secondly, I think just if they are feeling in the states that are considering criminalizing cost control in Australia, particularly if they're feeling overwhelmed by it or if they're feeling like they just don't know where to come down it just I really, really urge you to, like, contribute to any of the inquiries that are going on if it's happening outside of your state. Still, write a submission, even if it's just a couple of pages detailing your concerns. Just get them on paper so that the lawmakers can really see the full spectrum of of potential problems that may arise with new legislation. And secondly, just as an addendum to that, if you're not already engaged in in the family law area, please, like there's there's a a tendency in the domestic violence like to see family law sometimes as separate or something that's not sort of about like immediate crisis response. And a lot of victims feel like they don't have any way to go to deal with this or to help them deal with it. So I know that the last thing you need is another thing to be thinking about, but we need more people speaking out about family law. It needs to be a much bigger and louder voice about what's happening in that system. You all know what's happening. You hear about it from your clients day in, day out. But we need to be speaking much louder about this and demanding much better. So that's that they're the two quite different messages. I would give rationales at the moment. That's great. [01:10:02][108.8]
Speaker 2: [01:10:02] And a message for survivors, you know, based on your research and your investigations, what do you have to say, the survivors as a takeaway [01:10:10][7.1]
Speaker 3: [01:10:12] just to hark back to something that you mentioned earlier, David, that, you know, if you're experiencing coercive control, which is those classic techniques of isolation, degradation, manipulation, gaslighting that you are not? You are not uniquely weak, codependent. The problem is not in you the fact that you are being so badly affected by this. This is a system that has overwhelmed trained soldiers. It's a system by which very successful and well put together. People are targeted and taken down and overwhelmed. This is a system that is incredibly hard to resist, and nothing you are doing in response to it is wrong and you are not to blame for how you are feeling. So I just say really that I think the psychic, the psychic and physical survival of people who go through this and who are subjected to coercive control is an absolute marvel. And there should be many more movies made about it. They are Hollywood stories in every suburb, you know, and I just I just take my hat off to anyone who's been able to maintain any type of psychic integrity or regain it after the relationship is over. You've done fantastically well under incredible stress. [01:11:30][78.8]
Speaker 2: [01:11:31] I love that. That's a great that's a great sentiment. Yeah. [01:11:34][2.8]
Speaker 1: [01:11:35] So so I want to make sure that we give your contact information just so you can reach just at WW W just held up. And then also she's on Twitter at at just radio. [01:11:48][13.2]
Speaker 2: [01:11:49] So and and I just want to say that, you know, people don't know and haven't bought the book read, see what you made me do. It's really well, it's powerful. And I've been in the fields 30 plus years, and it's a really powerful exploration of the experience of survivors. You know, like you said, it goes into perpetrators. It really highlights the differential experience of indigenous people in Australia and really also lays out a road map for change. And I think that's that's really important. And so I really, you know, see where you made me do power control and domestic abuse and and for people don't know, we just say this to sort of set us at the top of the show that I won that 20 2020 Stella Prize and the Booksellers Choice Awards, and it's being adapted into a three part series for SBS in in in 2021. So that's super exciting. So just thank you so much for being on our show. [01:12:44][55.5]
Speaker 3: [01:12:45] Thank you for having me. It was really, really great to speak to you. Next time I'd like to ask you questions. [01:12:49][3.8]
Speaker 2: [01:12:49] So yeah, we can do that as well. So you've been listening to partner with Survivor and David Mandel, executive director of the Safe and Together Institute. [01:12:59][9.9]
Speaker 1: [01:13:00] And I'm rooster and spend all the e-learning and communications manager. [01:13:03][3.1]
Speaker 2: [01:13:04] And if you like this show, please follow us. Share with friends. Subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. We're always looking for topics for people to interview. Ask us questions. You can find us safe and together in sitcom, [01:13:21][16.8]
Speaker 1: [01:13:21] or you can find us at Academy Nazif and Together Institute Dot for our trainings. And we have a smattering of free trainings as well as paid trainings, and I have made you a coupon code. In case you would like to use it, it is partnered all lowercase and that will give you 15 percent off any of the trainings. [01:13:40][19.0]
Speaker 2: [01:13:42] I think that's it. That's right. We're out. We're out. [01:13:42][0.0]
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