Season 2 Episode 17: Intervening with Domestic Violence Perpetrators: "We Can't Leave Anything on the Table"

Intervening with perpetrators, who are the source of the harm to child, partner, and family functioning, is essential for domestic abuse–informed systems. In this episode, David and Ruth talk about the third principle of the Safe & Together Model, which focuses on intervening with the perpetrator to reduce risk and harm to children. Their conversation covers:

• The importance of a broad definition of "accountability" 
• How micro-practices around language and documentation are the foundation of accountability in a domestic abuse–informed system 
• How traditional definitions of perpetrator accountability can contribute to racial inequity in the response of systems 
• How practitioners can increase their capacity to keep the focus on the perpetrator and change (and away from a "failure-to-protect" approach) 

Listen to these related episodes
Season 2 Episode 15: She is Not Your Rehab: A global invitation to men to end abuse of women & children through radical self-responsibility & healing

Season 2 Episode 11: “We need a revolution:” Integration of trauma healing and behavior change for people who choose violence

Season 2, Episode 5: How professionals can avoid being manipulated by perpetrators

Episode 21: Listening to the Voices of Children and Young People Harmed by Fathers Who Choose Violence

Episode 19: Nine Ways to Collude with a Person Who Chooses Violence

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.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Transcript

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Speaker 1: [00:00:15] And we're back and we're back. Yeah, you are listening to partner with Survivor, and I'm David Mandel, executive director of the Sabin Together Institute.  [00:00:25][9.6]

Speaker 2: [00:00:25] And I'm Ruth Stern's Mandel and I'm the e-learning communications strategic relationship manager.  [00:00:31][6.0]

Speaker 1: [00:00:32] That's right. That's great. And we are doing one of our chat episodes. And if you've been following us where we just hit about 60000 downloads since we started this in January, around 20, but right before it happened. Right. And you know, and and we're we're just so grateful for those you're listening and listening regularly. And, you know, joining us when we do interviews and and and fangirling, you just recently had an experience that somebody fangirling as  [00:01:00][28.1]

Speaker 2: [00:01:01] well just because I get cranky, which, you know, cranky survivor comes out. I'm sure some people love it. Some people hate it. But it's one of my intentions in in making sure that survivor's anger and dis disagreements with the way the system works is to inoculate professionals so that they do not re harm us when that anger is verbalized to them, that they have strategies around acknowledging that the system has harmed us, not personalizing it and learning how to do better. And and that's really important. So cranky survivor comes out both because cranky survivor lives in me. You know this this is real, but also because I really want professionals to learn how to be able to contain the anger of survivors. And that is part of their professional duty, actually.  [00:01:59][58.5]

Speaker 1: [00:02:01] And you get fan girls who like, like you who can't all over you who are like, I guess I asked people on my Twitter feed sacko on my Twitter feed about what they liked about the show. There are some people who said they love it when the cranky survivor comes out and then somebody else be recently and somebody to say, you're in a meeting and they did. They say, Oh, I need to have a fan your moment. Cranky survivor. Yeah. So anyway, so. And if you don't know the the podcast we we started about 18 months ago, this was Ruth's idea to really do a podcast based on her experience as a survivor and my professional experience and our dialogs. And now it's expanded to encompass these wonderful interviews and conversations with people from all over the world, and we've been really lucky to to to have those opportunities and we hope to do more in the future. But today to you and I with Tiberius the dog between us? That's right. All right. Yeah.  [00:02:56][55.3]

Speaker 2: [00:02:57] On a beautiful fall day here in Connecticut.  [00:03:00][3.5]

Speaker 1: [00:03:01] Yes. And we're on tunc this land. And you know, just like Keystone XL and here the Texas people pride, a large Algonquin nation and we're right in the beautiful Farmington River Valley. And just it's it's gorgeous and we're hitting that time of year in New England, where the leaves start changing and the colors come out and we get oranges and reds and yellows and and it's beautiful and not your favorite time of year because it's moving into winter.  [00:03:28][27.2]

Speaker 2: [00:03:29] Oh no, I love this time of year. It's beautiful, but because I'm a gardener and my genetics actually want more temperate to tropical environments. It makes me sad to know that there is snow coming in winter coming and that I must hibernate for almost six months in New England, so I will miss my plant babies and nature being awake.  [00:03:53][24.2]

Speaker 1: [00:03:55] Major will sleep and then it will come back alive and we'll have beautiful plant babies growing in our yard again. All part of it. So so this is a show about I say it's all things domestic violence related, but you know, that may not be the best term. But today's show is is one of our shows where we dove deep into the safety of the model itself. And I'm sure most of you who are listening are familiar with the model is that the heartbeat of the safety other institute? And it really is this perpetrator pattern based approach that is has become the driver of systems change efforts all over the world, and it's got a set of critical components and principles.  [00:04:33][38.2]

Speaker 2: [00:04:35] Why don't you name? Why don't you name the principles?  [00:04:37][2.0]

Speaker 1: [00:04:38] All of them?  [00:04:39][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:04:39] Yeah, through them. And also just to refresh people's memory and for people who are not familiar with those?  [00:04:45][6.3]

Speaker 1: [00:04:46] Right. And so so the principals, the name safe and together comes from this idea of trying to keep kids safe and together with that protective parent with that non offending parent. Usually the mom, but not always. And it's really this idea that that if we're looking through the lens of kids that that we want to be thinking about physical and emotional safety, what are we think about their healing from trauma? We want to be healing both stability and nurture it. And those things are very often deeply connected to their relationship and connection with that protective parent. And so this is a child centered model at its heart in that that's the first principle, you know, keeping child safe and together. Whether or not, if any parent you know is is the original language, you know, is what you'll see in our cards and everything else. And we we talk a little more about protective parent now. And that's just an evolution with the time, but the concept is the same. And we're talking about the adult domestic violence survivor and we're talking about that, that victim who is often engaging in very specific activities to promote that physical emotional safety, to be a vehicle for healing and to really be engaged in lots of things that are about stabilizing and nurturing the child. So that's the first principle. The second one is very connected to that, you know, which is partnering with that person and that being our default position. And you know, the language of partnering was was specific and intentional, and it was originally directed to child welfare and child sharing systems. But I think we've become to understanding in a much broader way, which is that the professionals really need to look to themselves. And so part of this is this our hashtag fix systems that survivors message, which is that partnering describes the behavior. Of the professional. I think that's so critical to our message and and our and our approach, which is it it's a it's a call to dropping professional arrogance. It's a call to listening. Is a call to thinking about what am I doing to build my half of the partnership, which I have control over right and and and and doing it in a way that one assumes that she's already been safety planning for herself and her kids before I've ever met her. So part of my job in partnering is is to is to listen and understand and be curious about what what she's done, what's worked, what hasn't worked. And then ultimately, what can I bring as a professional in that partnership? Right? To make the situation better?  [00:07:26][160.4]

Speaker 2: [00:07:27] Right. And that partnering that partnering position, you know, really runs through the Safe and Together institute, not just with survivors, but, you know, the same principles of being curious, of asking about other people's experiences in order for us to understand their needs and the dangers that they face is is real both for survivors. But it's also real for for professionals that, you know, when we partner with professionals, we want to understand their experience of the field of the limitations of the environment that they're in. You know, and I think that it's important to kind of put a pin in that right that the partnering stance runs through everything that we do.  [00:08:14][47.5]

Speaker 1: [00:08:15] And I use the word sometimes holographic. There's a lot in our work. It's holographic, meaning that it's present and in little ways, in big ways. It kind of gets carried through, you know, through the through the the different levels. And so, you know, when we do, like you said, collaborations with child welfare agencies or we do collaborations with criminal justice collaborations or we're going to partner with them as as the institute, we're going to partner with you right into two. But also we're going to be teaching you how to partner with that survivor. And part of the messaging around the partnering and those under each of the principles is as a as like a subheading, our series of subheadings. And so the words efficient, effective and child centered show up under under partnering and. One of my consistent messages to professionals is. Every time you don't partner with survivors around the safety well-being of their kids and their safety and well-being, that you were actually making your work less efficient, less effective, less child centered failure to protect as an opposition to partnering, you know, very protective of this whole kind of realm and paradigm where people see the survivors behaviors is even more problematic than the perpetrators be, right? That is is is an inefficient way to approach, an ineffective way to approach the work and dangerous. And we had Professor Kathy Humphreys, who's a good friend and colleague and collaborator at our Queensland Implementation Summit, do a presentation where she said, You know, failure to protect is is an ineffective. And unethical and unethical, right, unethical, unethical approach to the issue of domestic violence and kids and and I was really pleased to see that taped together as a social justice approach, which I was felt really chuffed about actually that she did. She was labeling it that because we are about justice and we about fairness, but also about practicality. And and if you're running an agency or you're looking at practice value to protect is inefficient, ineffective way to promote child safety. Period.  [00:10:32][137.5]

Speaker 2: [00:10:33] All right. Number three.  [00:10:34][0.6]

Speaker 1: [00:10:35] So, so the last one and and you know, we often talk about perpetrator pattern based approach and and people often simplify that to perpetrator engagement. And they forget that the perpetrator pattern based approach to both helps with partnering, but also helps us build interventions with perpetrators of people who choose or use violence or coercive control. So this whole podcast is about this intervening with the perpetrator reduce risk and harm to the child, which is the third principle. Mm-Hmm. And underneath it is the subheadings of engagement, accountability and courts.  [00:11:11][36.1]

Speaker 2: [00:11:12] OK. So that that third, that third principle where I think that most people are a little bit squishy, I think a lot of people would be like, Yes, of course, we want to keep kids safe and together with their non offending parent. Yes, of course, we want to partner with the survivor who's not the abuser and who's the non offending parent and who's not presenting a danger to child safety or well-being, like all of that is very, very logical, actually and pragmatic. But I think a lot of people are pretty sticky and even defensive and frightened, and there's a lot of history and baggage around the interventions that we have with perpetrators. Their effectiveness, their their consistency. And, you know, something that I think is really important to point out is that without having a really pragmatic discussion about where the industry is. Currently in holding abusers accountable, what practices are being used currently, which are either not successful or actually dangerous? And what practices we need to invest in and focus on in order for us to have more behavioral accountability. That's where a lot of conflict comes in the domestic violence and even the child protection world.  [00:12:44][91.5]

Speaker 1: [00:12:44] Sure. And I guess where I want to start talking about that is we have no choice. We have to get better. We cannot turn our eyes away from intervening with perpetrators. Whether people are unhappy with specific interventions or questioning which they have the right to be or they can be critical. I think the ground floor for me is that we cannot turn away from intervening and creating a wide range of interventions with perpetrators that work across cultures and communities that work inside castle settings in our own castle settings or the whole range of things. We have no choice. I mean, it's so clear to me and I've been quoting the CEO of Color of Change recently. I listen to him in an interview and his name is Rashad Robinson here in the United States and. And so there there's a major anti-racism organization in the United States, and he was talking about narrative and language. And he said, Look, there is a huge difference in saying that black people are having trouble getting mortgages. Saying that as compared to saying banks are denying black people mortgages unfair, right,  [00:13:54][70.3]

Speaker 2: [00:13:55] place the behavioral responsibility  [00:13:56][1.0]

Speaker 1: [00:13:57] because that the narrative directs you to the intervention. So he sort if you say black people have trouble getting mortgages. You think about financial literacy. You think about, you know, thinking about all these other options that could could help them. Right. But when you say banks are denying. Black people, mortgages unfairly, then then you immediately say, OK, the focus of the fix has to be on the banks, right? The whole purpose, one of the main purposes of the Safer Together model and our mission is to is to move away from this failure to protect approach to more focus on and perpetrators as the source of the danger and risk to children and to harm to partner and family functioning. And so you can't do that and say you can't do that focus and say, Oh, and then we don't need to intervene with the causes of the problem. I mean, it just doesn't. It doesn't fit so well  [00:14:48][50.8]

Speaker 2: [00:14:48] with a lot of people. To them, intervention and accountability simply mean incarceration. And that in and of itself has a lot of problems attached to it, whereas professionals may believe that incarceration is the solution to accountability. Most survivors do not agree that incarceration is the solution to accountability for a multitude of reasons. And that is is that no behavioral interventions have been attempted by anybody. No assessment has truly been made of that person's capacity to or willingness to change. No assessment has been made about the danger to the survivor and their kids, not based off of future predictive potentials, but based off of the pattern of behaviors that that person has experienced in an ongoing way, which is their present moment reality. OK, so you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of rancor in this conversation, as many people say are domestic violence perpetrators don't get long enough sentences, and so the solution is putting them in jail longer. And when we point out that the survivors who are reporting their perpetrator are inhibited from reporting their perpetrator if they believe that the father of their child is going to be incarcerated and their financial situation is going to be severely harmed by that, there is no solution offered up for that. If they believe that the that their partner is capable of behavioral change. But nobody has had any meaningful attempts at behavioral analysis or behavioral correction or assessment that involved that survivor being able to give feedback about whether those behaviors are actually changing right, if they so wish. If they want to be involved in that process. And so, you know, I think that there's a lot of confusion about what accountability means in the industry.  [00:17:03][135.0]

Speaker 1: [00:17:05] And I would say, you know, I would say that. Conversations about accountability, and that was that was the jargon that I kind of grew up with so, so to speak in the field, you know, perpetrator accountability and you hear it a lot, you hear it over and over again. And and one of the things that's super clear, if you look at this, this principle in the mouse's intervening with the perpetrator to reduce risk and harm right to to the child, you know, and it's very purposeful accountabilities in there underneath it as a subheading. But the headline being intervening was a very specific response to feedback I was getting from African-American activists in the domestic violence community who said, Look, you need to understand, and this is going back years and years ago that accountability in a racist criminal justice story society right, equals more arrest, more incarceration and more child removal, and more and more child remover for our families and communities, right? And and so for me, a sense that, you know, since early in my career when I doing men's behavior change program, I didn't want you to have to get arrested to come to our program. Even the courts kind of won the caps for our program, which was pre existing and make it to serve court based people. We always work to keep our that program open to people who could be self referred because it didn't feel just that people had to get arrested to get help if they wanted to get help, right? And so I think one thing is that that we need to be really using as the headline, the language of interventions and interventions being broad, being multi-faceted, being family base, being community based, being criminal justice based and not leaving that out big considering, you know, all these things and then those interventions have to be actively tied back to the state and situation of the adult and child survivors, right? Period. Because when people say accountability and longer incarceration, that that those conversations can quickly become disconnected from what survivors want, what they say is is important to them. Right?  [00:19:14][129.6]

Speaker 2: [00:19:15] Well, some people don't care what survivors want. OK, so let's just I'm just going to be cranky. Survivor just came out. Some professionals do not care what survivors want and basically assume that what they want is ignorant, that if they were an intelligent, rational person, they wouldn't be in a relationship with an abuser in the first place, which is an incredibly victim blaming stance to take, not understanding that a very rational, pragmatic person can be entrapped by an abuser and can be abused by them. So, you know, in the fatigue of working in the industry as it exists today, many people see the survivor as being the element which is controllable. And if child protection doesn't have a mandate to assess perpetrators as parents, it is. The natural and least difficult pathway is to control the survivor and their behaviors. So survivors are seen as being an easy target by these systems that don't feel that they have a mandate or a need to focus on the person who's being violent and causing the danger and the harm to the family. And they would rather deal with the survivor and mandate to them and control them and control their behaviors and tell them that they can never come into contact with that perpetrator yet make impossible situations. Yet put us in positions where we are impoverished, where we do not have a job because our perpetrator has, you know, we were fired because they were harassing us at work, you know, and they do not take into account the extreme harm that we are put in by that focus, which is all placed on us.  [00:21:07][111.1]

Speaker 1: [00:21:08] You know, you're speaking to this broader issue that I talk about all the time, you know, also, which is that that systems that that we really have to accept that we're not preparing particular are helping professionals to work with men in general and then to work with violent men in a meaningful way and then to work with with men who may be coming out of histories with trauma, intergenerational trauma, trauma from racism. Or, we're know,  [00:21:32][23.9]

Speaker 2: [00:21:32] working with a person that you know, is incredibly vindictive. If, for example, you're a mental health professional and you or you are working in a counseling situation and you document the way that you should document where you document the perpetrators patterns and you document the survivors protective behaviors and their capacity, their resiliency, you do put yourself in a position where that perpetrator may attack you professionally. And that's a real thing.  [00:22:01][28.4]

Speaker 1: [00:22:01] That's a real thing. And that's a whole other thing that we're spending more time on worker safety in the physical and emotional safety of workers. Because as soon as you start bringing up this, I. You have intervening with perpetrators that that people start having also to reactions. Yeah, and and and, you know, feeling some from their personal experience, some from cultural cultural experiences and  [00:22:22][20.9]

Speaker 2: [00:22:22] some from ignorance.  [00:22:23][0.4]

Speaker 1: [00:22:23] And so we're making the sound from  [00:22:24][0.9]

Speaker 2: [00:22:24] experience, quite frankly, right? Yeah. But the assumption that a domestic violence perpetrator is is going to be violence all the time or be violent towards you when their pattern of behavior doesn't speak to  [00:22:35][10.6]

Speaker 1: [00:22:35] them, doesn't speak to that. I think part of it, that grounding in the survivors experience to me is so important. And you know, again, we use all the times I use safety, self-determination and satisfaction. And that perpetrators target those things. And then if we are interventions with with perpetrators have to improve those things. And so again, this idea of is it? Is it a more arrest or is it that or is it this? You know, we have to keep remembering that those are strategies and we can't lose sight of the the underlying goals, which is did this make things better for that survivor in their particular context, in their particular culture, in their particular family circumstance, in their particular economic circumstance? Right. And how are they defining better? How are they defining just how are they defining safety and that we have to include kids in this? And so part of what I do these days is when I talk about interventions with perpetrators. I will put up the report from the Mirrorball research in the UK where where survivors were interviewed about what they want out of men's behavior change programs and so much of what those adult survivors said was respect. Better communication. They included safety from physical violence, but it wasn't the top item. High on the list was room to maneuver, space to maneuver. I forget the exact language, but it's really about autonomy and about about control over their choices because perpetrators were taking away their choices, right? And and so so for me that these debates sometimes become about strategies. Often the voices of survivors get lost and and and we need to keep coming back to those over and over again. And that's why the partnering is so important, because in the partner and you hear right, the voices of survivors, what are they telling you? And I remember a case example of of in one of the the projects we're working on with with Cathy and her team and in Australia. And there was a case where the social worker, the dad was violent, but he also had a drinking problem. The social worker was like, Dad can't drink. That's the plan, you know, and the mom and the kid said, that won't work. That might make it worse. Yeah, where exactly they were. That's not practical work. What we think will work is that he can drink, but that he agrees with us that once he gets to a certain point and we're worried that these are the specific steps that that that he will take to make us safer to move the risk. And that was a plan that the family thought would work. But again, the position of no drinking was was where the professionals started. They had the same goal the family had, which was safety, but they were as long as they were locked into their strategy and not listening to the family. They probably weren't going to get the outcome that anybody wanted, which was just  [00:25:29][174.0]

Speaker 2: [00:25:29] a poor assumption. It's just a poor assumption to begin with. The violence is going to end with cessation of an addiction and actually that withdrawal period can lead to greater violence.  [00:25:39][9.2]

Speaker 1: [00:25:40] It just it needs to be looked at our case by case basis. You need to listen, you need and see in the patterns. This is another example I think about when you think when you say about sort of people focusing on arrested, the answer not and is a member. This is years ago my career, a judge saying to me, You know, I'm really concerned because I issue orders, a stay away order, you know, whether it's a Devo idea or an order of protection, whatever it's called in your jurisdiction. And he said, And then the person of the house for six months and then and then the orders lifted and then what's been done to make the situation better, what is what's been expected? You know, he was speaking this judge. I think it was this idea that orders don't create long term behavior change, don't create healing and right. And we had Cathy and Katie Lamb on right, didn't we? Yeah. You know, last year they were talking about their article, Your behavior has consequences and they're talking about reparations again. I think that when we we talk about interventions with with people who are using violence that harm kids and partners and families, that listening to voices of kids they want, they're not saying Lock my dad up. They're saying, get him to change, get him to acknowledge he was wrong. Make him a better co-parent with our mom. Make sure he's treated my mom better. You know, the voices that come through in this research are super clear, right, and  [00:27:13][93.3]

Speaker 2: [00:27:13] yet again, the outrage in in in the in the industry is that, you know, those children are ignorant and unaware of the reality where we're not where we're landing so far on this side of, you know, the system failing to acknowledge where domestic violence perpetration is a danger to kids. And on the other side, with with advocates who really are aware of that extreme danger to women and children saying, no, these people are just dangerous. And and and you know, there's trauma bonding and the families are in denial in their care and love for their for their parents is is, you know, is being used as a manipulation without any rational plan for assessment of patterns of behaviors to evaluate whether or not that person is capable of behavior change and building, that's not happening.  [00:28:14][60.9]

Speaker 1: [00:28:15] Well, that assessment and the building capacity in the system to do again, to do what we think about our range of interventions. And I want to talk about those interventions and I want to talk about we've got engagement, accountability and accountability is in there in courts, you know? But but the data that I look at and I've seen is saying that, you know, 70 percent of of domestic violence perpetrators are going to remain in contact with their kids. Right. And we know that a lot of survivors want that contact if it's safe. Right? And it's positive, you know, so it sort of again, if it's some, it's the reality.  [00:28:48][33.2]

Speaker 2: [00:28:49] And just I you talked about how she she worked and her her partner was a stay at home dad, right? And he took care of the kids so that that meant that when she no longer had him as a partner, that she that the burden was all placed on her as the parent to both be the provider and the child care. You know, these practical realities about accountability, whether that accountability is incarceration and needs to be because that person is so violent or it's about behavior change, have to take into account the the self sustainability of that survivor and her kids. We can't be punishing survivors and their children under the guise of accountability and causing them greater economic and emotional pain.  [00:29:42][53.5]

Speaker 1: [00:29:43] Well, you you've been citing a study, you know, that looked at the early work of Sherman arrest stuff. Can you talk about that about?  [00:29:53][9.8]

Speaker 2: [00:29:53] But I feel like I need to re familiarize yourself with the material. But the the reality was there was a 10 year look back, particularly on incarceration and its impact on survivors. And it was found that mortality increased exponentially when there was long sentences, primarily because the thought was, and this is not this has not been fully researched, that there was extreme economic harm to that survivor and that they were in the  [00:30:23][30.1]

Speaker 1: [00:30:24] mortality of the survivor went down. Yes, and that was when their partner was incarcerated.  [00:30:27][3.3]

Speaker 2: [00:30:27] That's right. And it had nothing to do with the perpetrator, had everything to do with the hardship of their situation that we're not setting up those supports for people. You know, to me as a survivor, knowing that I should have been removed as a child right from my situation. There was extreme harm in that situation. There was, you know, just extreme violence. But I also am aware that removing me would have been traumatic to me because all I knew was my family that the situation that I may have been placed in in the system that we have currently may not have been better than the situation that I was in. And very well could have been violent as well, and I could have been, you know. I could have been harmed in the foster care system as well. And that forced separation of children. Without us attempting at least to assess the safety of parents to enact behavioral change and give financial support, housing support, behavior support, trauma support is not necessarily in the best interest of kids in the long term.  [00:31:49][81.4]

Speaker 1: [00:31:49] And you just, you know, you just really made another strong case for for this idea of intervening with people choose violence or perpetrators is if we're committed to keeping kids with families and we're committed even more greatly because of histories of colonization and stolen generation and kids being overrepresented from black and brown families in the child welfare system, that to leave anything on the table, right? You know, you're talking about so that wrap around support for survivors, right? You know, in the context of this principle of intervening with perpetrators to not to not to for for anybody listening to this professional that one of my invitations is any time you're sitting down to discuss a case of domestic violence, particularly one with kids, is that there should be dedicated time to review and discuss what have been the intervention attempts not been how many times the policeman called, not how many times this person gone to jail. Not even how many times have they gone or have they gone to men's behavior change programs, which are all things that should be included, but who has intervened, who has tried to intervene? If we're social workers, what have been our efforts? Have we tried to talk to him? How has the Family Court approached this person? How has you know other systems? How has this addiction worker tried to intervene with him around his, his violence that just by using this word more broadly, intervention versus accountability? I think accountability locks the conversation down in a very limited scope. We can include accountability, definitions of accountability that can talk about in a minute in that intervention framework. Could the intervention doesn't mean you lose a sense of high standards for change and you don't manage risk all the things we associate with accountability. But I think that that that that one of the biggest things you could do is just ask the question what have our what have been the interventions with this person? What have come from family members? What has come from professionals? And and then what's been the impact of that? Hasan, those things made things better. What is the survivor say about those interventions, right? What did he say? You know, and and for me, that really broad lens of interventions really can create really creative one conversation, but two could show where efforts have been made and failed and therefore kind of giving us information  [00:34:04][135.3]

Speaker 2: [00:34:05] or where no efforts have been made at all ever.  [00:34:08][3.0]

Speaker 1: [00:34:09] But right. And it could also help us understand the the situation of the survivor because oh, maybe this is why she didn't call the police this time. Because the last time the police call, they made it worse  [00:34:19][10.4]

Speaker 2: [00:34:20] or they arrested her or they threatened her  [00:34:22][2.1]

Speaker 1: [00:34:22] with this. I mean this and this is what we're hearing within say, for instance, the  [00:34:26][3.4]

Speaker 2: [00:34:26] OR they said, if you call us again, because we don't see any physical bruises on your or we're going to evidence of violence, we're going to arrest you and charge you with the  [00:34:36][10.2]

Speaker 1: [00:34:36] crime. And this is where you know we are. We're hearing from our friends and colleagues in the Aboriginal communities in Australia with they're saying, look, aboriginal women are calling up and they get arrested because there's an outstanding ticket against them for some minor infraction.  [00:34:48][12.0]

Speaker 2: [00:34:49] Or they engaged in acts of resistance, physical acts of resistance to coercive control. And they've been confused as the perpetrator because of the very incidents focus. The system has and the inability of professionals to properly assess and resist the manipulations of perpetrators. Recently, talking to a survivor who lost a loved one, talking about how the police were called when they went to go and assist their loved one and the police broke up the two, the couple brought one in the other room to do their assessment, and the perpetrator said, Well, she's cheating on me. That's why I have all these alarms around the house. And the police officer took it as being reasonable. Rather than stopping to say You are not allowed to take somebody's civil liberties away from them because you are upset or you suspect they may be cheating on you even if she was cheating on you. You don't have a right to control somebody's civil liberties and entrap them that way. And so that's a cultural problem.  [00:36:07][78.4]

Speaker 1: [00:36:08] That's about the narrative of patriarchy justifying men's control over women. And it's and it's and it's it's it's yes. I mean, just see,  [00:36:17][8.7]

Speaker 2: [00:36:17] that's a very simple intervention that if a police officer stands there and says that to a perpetrator, right? You know, very simply, you are not allowed to do this even if you think she has cheated on you, right? That's an intervention and we're  [00:36:33][15.9]

Speaker 1: [00:36:33] not doing and that's accountability and take that sort of when. What I think happens is there's this conversation about accountability as defined by criminal justice interventions and effectiveness or kind of compliance or successful implementation of criminal justice, you know, sentencing and arrests and progressive policies. That definition of accountability has crowded out our discussion of accountability. That's much more and I say micro practice, but part of again, to save it to other models, focus on. Describing, assessing, documenting the perpetrators pattern of coercive control and actions taken to harm the kids and the harm created to child partner family functioning. That is accountability in of itself because we are, we are, are validating, we are identifying, we are talking about, we are we are creating the foundation to say to somebody, you need to change us or having conversation. This is where the engagement part. So the first subheading is engagement. If you can't have that framework. Within which to have the conversation with them, then what you're going to do is for trap to their manipulation. Right, collude with them. But but if you're clear, these are the behaviors that we're concerned about. This is the harm. And then we get to say to this person, Well, what are you willing to do to change these things? Do you see these things as a problem? Accountability is right in that conversation, right?  [00:38:01][87.8]

Speaker 2: [00:38:02] I think we can't just discount the immense impact that people not speaking those behaviors as being problematic and abusive has had on the perpetrators sense of entitlement to engage in those behaviors. And just think about it from the standpoint of breaking any law, say you just have the habit of rolling through stop signs all the time. Well, if you're rolling  [00:38:35][33.6]

Speaker 1: [00:38:36] through, are you talking about me? No, I'm not. I used to write to you. David, doesn't my guilt just come? But did my guilt just come? You know, in  [00:38:43][7.2]

Speaker 2: [00:38:43] general, you as an example.  [00:38:44][1.0]

Speaker 1: [00:38:44] Oh, OK, all right.  [00:38:45][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:38:45] If you have a problem with stopping at stop signs or stop like somebody is going to yell at you, right? There can be like, Hey, yeah, dummy. Yes, supposed to stop, right? That's actually a behavioral boundary being drawn. We have this cultural expectation that you need to stop at that stop sign so that we can all be safe and we're willing to call people out for it. But why are we not willing to call perpetrators out when they beat their families? They coercively control them? Why are we not willing to look at them and say that behavior is harmful and you are going to harm your children and harm your relationship and harm your family? And that's not OK?  [00:39:30][44.3]

Speaker 1: [00:39:31] I just got to tell a story at our Queensland Limitation Summit, and there was a woman, a survivor, who shared her story with me and gave me permission to share at the summit because there was a. It was a story about how things had actually gotten better. She'd been involved with Tugwell for two different times, both because of the behavior of of this abusive partner. And her first involvement was very much a failure to protect approach. Right. And then the second one perceiving together being implemented by Queensland child safety was so different. And and what she talked about was how the the social worker articulated the issue understood and then was willing to write a letter that related to a domestic violence order being put in place to cover her and her kids. That articulated how the worker saw these behaviors by the data as a concern and that what she told me was because all these folks were using the same language of responsibility or accountable and responsible. In other words, people should think about it because I think accountability again kind of can lock us in. And we often it gets used as jargon. Yeah, I think responsibility sometimes is is is kind of clearer for a lot of people. It's more kind of layperson, you know, how is this person to take responsibility for what they did? I think reparations harm. He'll change. I think we again, we all have to kind of keep using trying out words and thinking about things, always keeping the survivors experience at the center. But what she said was what what was and felt like a potentially life threatening situation because there was constant clarity about this person's behavior. And it was it followed the the the the case as it moved through the child protection and Family Law System, as far as I understand is now, she says it and I think she used the word miracle and knock on wood. You know, that'll stay this way, but that he's actually a reasonably collaborative co-parent. I don't believe that would have happened without people being clear on his behavior pattern, right? Willing to speak it and and willing to kind of work together to figure out how to and to talk to him about it. And I've heard stories like this over and over again recently where that constant clarity about the pattern of behavior. Which could include.  [00:41:47][136.3]

Speaker 2: [00:41:47] And who's responsible  [00:41:48][0.4]

Speaker 1: [00:41:49] and who's responsible for. This is why I say to people that every time you use generic language about the family as domestic violence and you don't name the person doing it, you've opened the doorway to failure protect and you've made it hard to do interventions with that person.  [00:42:01][12.9]

Speaker 2: [00:42:02] You've also you've also offended the survivor because the survivor is not responsible for those behaviors, right?  [00:42:07][5.7]

Speaker 1: [00:42:08] So so I really want to encourage people to think about about it. When you think about engagement and accountability. Think about accountability. I want to tell a story about engagement in a second, but about micro accountability. You know, micro practice accountability is in the way you present the case to your peers. The way you talk about it, it's it's it's starting the case presentation with, you know, the person who did violence or abuse. This is who it is. This is their pattern. And this is where these  [00:42:38][29.7]

Speaker 2: [00:42:38] other specific behaviors.  [00:42:39][0.8]

Speaker 1: [00:42:40] That's right. This is the harm it's done. And this is the context for any other conversation we have about the family and about the mom's addiction. And because accountability, again, I can't say this too often. I think the criminal justice framework of the larger accountability conversation crowded out this very important conversation about micro practice accountability, engagement conversation.  [00:43:02][22.7]

Speaker 2: [00:43:03] Well, no matter. So no matter the desire of some in the domestic violence field to extend, you know, incarceration timeframes for domestic violence perpetrators. The reality on the ground is currently that domestic violence perpetrators do not serve long sentences, whether or not you want them to or not. OK. They just don't generally, unless they've done severe harm to somebody. And number two, they do not get meaningful behavior change. And so they leave that incarcerated status and they continue to abuse people. And the solution to that is not more incarceration. The solution to that is behavioral accountability in the sense of behavioral modification. Working with that person to to try to assess whether or not they're capable of change, if they're incapable of change. Having a plan for how that person is going to be evaluated and assessed in an ongoing way. Trying to limit and mitigate their contact with people that they have abused and are willing to abuse in the future. And we haven't done any of that. So in the face of not having done any of that, it's very difficult to say that interventions don't work because we haven't we haven't even appropriately intervened with people.  [00:44:36][92.6]

Speaker 1: [00:44:37] I mean, there's so many answers I think are thought to have about that one is that the other argument against that sort of letting the whole conversation about larger sentences or anything else kind of start the year of the conversation about accountability is that we believe the majority of of domestic violence behaviors never or perpetrators never get involved with the criminal court in the first place. Exactly. That's only a small percentage of those cases that get get get handled by the criminal court system. And again, if you listen to survivors and you listen from survivors, from marginalized communities, they're not saying, give us more more arrest,  [00:45:15][38.3]

Speaker 2: [00:45:15] more prison time, more prison. We want  [00:45:17][1.4]

Speaker 1: [00:45:17] more prisons. They may not be saying drop this completely. They may not be at abolition as they may be saying, No, we want we want safe and fair policing that treats as equally, that doesn't run the risk of death in custody. That doesn't doesn't run the risk that that my partners could be shot or killed by the police. Right.  [00:45:35][17.5]

Speaker 2: [00:45:36] And we want reasonable supports.  [00:45:37][1.5]

Speaker 1: [00:45:38] We want other supports such  [00:45:39][1.0]

Speaker 2: [00:45:39] as financial support, housing support. You know, we do not want our our reality to be so hyper pressurized that we then need to rely on that person later after they get out of jail and the family court mandates us into contact anyway. We need independence, right? We need that independence and that stability and the system is not creating independence and stability. If anything, it is pushing us farther and farther into emergency and alarm and poverty. And disenfranchisement as survivors in its effort to say that they are holding perpetrators accountable.  [00:46:24][45.1]

Speaker 1: [00:46:25] So part of what you're saying is is is is many of these kind of mainstream intervention, the perpetrators rebound against survivors. They do and and that we really haven't fully begun to explore interventions with perpetrators. I mean, this is part of, you know, so for instance, engagement, you know, Queensland again, top by mind that with this implementation summit, they've been doing great work there, you know? Oh, Brisbane is our biggest city in the world south of Brisbane. As I was getting ready to do this summit, Brisbane was the time  [00:46:58][32.5]

Speaker 2: [00:46:58] we kind of miss you guys.  [00:46:59][0.7]

Speaker 1: [00:46:59] Yeah. Top, top download numbers were from Brisbane. Yeah, but but that they child safety there has developed this walking with dad's program, which is a way to increase case management and engagement and skills, and expertize to work with fathers who have used violence, particularly Aboriginal fathers, right? And has been very successful. And they recognize we need to scale up a certain set of workers, give them the skills, the confidence, the support to spend time with these dads to help them become better dads and to manage safety and to manage risk with them. And and so I think that this issue about engagement for me, one of the big takeaways is that we are not preparing our workforce is. To have meaningful conversations with people who use violence about their behavior. Right. And the impact those behaviors are having on their families, on their children and their partner and on themselves. And I'm not just talking about specialist men's behavior change, right behavior, behavior change programs. I'm talking about addiction programs, therapist therapists. I'm talking about lawyers. I'm talking, I've been doing more work with the legal community. And you hear when you once you create space for it, where legal professionals are scared of working with these guys and confronting them. And so when you start talking about about engaging with perpetrators, you one is is do not listen to people who say we can't find them. Oh, that's B.S.. Right? Because in when I've worked, when I've listened to people, we did research based in Connecticut years ago that when we help systems commit to see the value guide their workers and that we could find like a job offer setting. In one study, 90 percent of the time we could talk to that person at least once and once they shared that research settings, people said yes. And when I feel like our staff is supported and and expected to do those contacts, they make those contacts happen. The issue is those workers need to have the skill, the supervision, the support, the resources for referrals,  [00:49:04][124.5]

Speaker 2: [00:49:05] and they have to have the support from their agency, from their supervisors and managers so that if you are working with a survivor and you hold that perpetrator behaviorally accountable and they're angry about that, and then they want to accuse that professional of all sorts of things, that that agency has the capacity to be able to properly assess that situation and not give in to the manipulations of a person who is highly controlling and manipulative and uses threats and bullying and the legal pathways for complaints to be able to harass anybody who holds them accountable. Anybody. We are giving in to bullies. On a big scale, and we're seeing the results of that more and more, even in our political sphere, where you can threaten violence against somebody, or you can accuse them without any evidence or patterns of behaviors of hating men or being against men's rights and that that will carry weight rather than the pattern of behavior, of perpetration, of abuse, of harassment. That is what should be given weight. The behavior should be given weight.  [00:50:36][91.0]

Speaker 1: [00:50:36] And I think again, part of the message here is that around accountability is the is that people don't lose sight of the foundation of accountability is naming the foundation of accountability is naming the behavior. So naming those targeting of systems, naming the the sort of use of pressure, the naming of weaponizing allegations of addiction or medals. And this is why I tell people, you know that that we are one of our top listen to. Two shows recently has been the one called trauma informed is not domestic. Violence for him is because, you know, in that conversation, if you boil down everything about domestic violence to being trauma informed, then you miss all these things, including the fact that domestic violence perpetrators make up fabricate allegations of mental health issues and addiction issues about survivors.  [00:51:25][48.8]

Speaker 2: [00:51:26] They are. They weaponize the PTSD. They cause, they cause the diagnosis. Right now, they say  [00:51:31][5.3]

Speaker 1: [00:51:31] you're not a fantasy. Those aren't the, you know, the weaponization of fake allegations of abuse are not mental health within the normal sphere of mental health professionals. Right. And so if you think about that, you can look at this solely through a traditional mental health lens. It will make it impossible for you to name these behaviors as being so critical.  [00:51:48][17.2]

Speaker 2: [00:51:49] Well, you know, trauma informed is supposed to be focusing on the impact of abuse. Right, right. Trauma is the impact of abuse. Right, right. So by very definition, it's not focusing on the behaviors that caused that  [00:52:05][15.5]

Speaker 1: [00:52:05] train the person, you're right and the person who did it. And so again, these are all very hyper about the models. Three principles about that. If you're not really deeply embedded in this conversation about accountability at this micro practice lenders level as well as the larger social ladder. I'm not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I'm not saying that we don't need to have important conversations about. Arrest policies or that we need to have conversations about sentencing and that that wouldn't happen, it just should be fair. They should be effective. They should be meaningful. I'm a fan of the Scottish changes in the coercive control laws because they were they were done so well and and I'm really interested in seeing how they play out. So I don't want people to hear, at least from me, that that those things are off the table. But I just think that and I got so much out of that  [00:52:55][50.5]

Speaker 2: [00:52:56] conversation, and I don't think that they should ever be off the table. But the reality is, is that the assessment aspects of arrest are really poor at this point. They are not necessarily tied to patterns of behaviors, but incidences. OK, so we already have a primary flaw in the system as it exists right now. They don't center around behavioral remediation or behavioral analysis to understand the the possibility for that person to re abuse or to continue to abuse. And also, as a survivor, what I would really want us to focus on is how survivors should be and feel. That they've got this safety, stability, self-determination satisfaction at the end of an engagement with any organization or with any intervention or service that they've engaged in. We should be at the end of the day as survivors of domestic violence and child abuse. We should be more safe and more stable financially, emotionally, physically than we were when that perpetrator was abusing us. But how often can we say as survivors that yes, that intervention may have geographically distanced us from our abuser, but our abuser is still abusing us via these different methods and. Those entities are super powering their ability to do that. We are financially drained. We are blamed for the ongoing perpetration. We are blamed for being in a relationship with that person, which is absolutely ridiculous. As if it's our flaw is if you can tell a domestic violence perpetrator well before you're really, truly in relationship or have children with them all the time and you really cannot. Most of the time, that perpetration does not start to happen until that person feels very secure in that relationship  [00:55:17][141.5]

Speaker 1: [00:55:18] or they are ignoring that you're actively. Once the abuse starts, you're actively trying to figure out what will make it better. You know what? How do you keep yourself safe? How do you help this person you love? I mean, that's sort of it. We we we quickly pathologize and demonize survivors. And again, the connection back to this intervention with perpetrators is if we keep seeing that, we can get away with that demonizing and pathologizing survivors and seeing them as the problem, then we have less incentive to actually work this other route, which is improving our collective capacities to intervene with perpetrators. They think they're connected, right?  [00:55:52][33.8]

Speaker 2: [00:55:53] And if if the survivor is put into a situation where they are more financially vulnerable, where they do not have assistance for child care, they will be more open to the manipulations of a perpetrator more  [00:56:07][14.5]

Speaker 1: [00:56:07] vulnerable, more and more and more vulnerable. So I think, you know, when we think about engagement and we think about interventions, you know, I want people to be thinking about really broadly about, you know, is there a hotline in your community where where men, you or anybody else who's using abuse or violence can call up and ask for help? Right. We've seen information that's being done in the U.K. it's being done in in Victoria and New South Wales, in Australia. There used to be one in Western Australia that was that, you know, that that would get calls. So you got to say, you know, where, where's that being done? We've got our Choose to change toolkit, which is meant to help men, you know, set up strong, safe networks in their community, in their cultural group, in their network, in their family of people who want to or will help them stop  [00:57:00][53.0]

Speaker 2: [00:57:01] stop their views of. And I'm and I'm saying that as professionals, if you are a counselor. You are a therapist. You are a lawyer. You are, you know, whatever form of professional you are that naming the behaviors and naming the outcome of those behaviors for the safety and wellbeing of children and that family and directly looking at that person who's choosing those behaviors and saying these behaviors are coercive control or their domestic abuse. And this is not acceptable, right?  [00:57:36][35.0]

Speaker 1: [00:57:37] And I think, you know, I always quote a colleague of mine who I haven't seen in a while. Mark Larson used to work with us, and he said when he ran men's behavior change in Vermont, in the United States, he said the moment he was liberated and his interventions and engagement with men was he realized that there was nothing they could say that would make him believe that it was her fault that he had got violent with her. And I think for every professional who wants to be around it and do safe engagement, want to do meaningfully engage with the perpetrators, they have to have that ability to listen and say, OK, I hear you have a trauma history. I hear you're depressed, I hear you're drinking, but I want to be really clear to you. None of those things is an excuse for you being abusive to your kids or your partner. So we'll help you get sober, and  [00:58:21][44.5]

Speaker 2: [00:58:22] none of those things will help you get sober, right? And none of those things will heal your trauma.  [00:58:26][4.2]

Speaker 1: [00:58:27] That's right.  [00:58:27][0.2]

Speaker 2: [00:58:27] And none of those things will give you safety and stability.  [00:58:30][2.5]

Speaker 1: [00:58:30] In fact, they will make it worse.  [00:58:32][1.6]

Speaker 2: [00:58:32] Is going to exacerbate them worse.  [00:58:34][1.7]

Speaker 1: [00:58:34] That's right. So I think that really that really people think broadly about where I said, you know, how can my agency, my system get better at intervening at the appropriate level? We're not suggesting that everybody become men's behavior change, especially right. But we are suggesting that that that the the way we all get better at this is by applying a perpetrator pattern based approach in the way we think, the way we talk, that we, we we get some appropriate support and training and supervision to say, Well, how do I talk to this guy on my caseload who has been abusive and he talks about it, actually? Mm hmm. Because the myth is, these guys don't talk about a lot of them. Well. Mm hmm. But they're so used to not being held accountable. They're so used to not being.  [00:59:17][42.4]

Speaker 2: [00:59:17] If they show a slight amount of remorse, people are going, Oh oh, he cried. Not acceptable, either.  [00:59:24][7.1]

Speaker 1: [00:59:25] Right now,  [00:59:25][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:59:27] I saw behavior change isn't  [00:59:28][1.2]

Speaker 1: [00:59:29] something that crying is that, you know, but that that be able to do that in different settings. So. So we haven't talked about the courts, and I want to talk about the courts before we we round. Up because the courts are that third subheadline and, you know. I believe courts, whether they're family law courts that are dealing with cost and access and divorce issues, whether their courts are dealing with child safety, and there are called different things all over the world, whether we're dealing with criminal courts, that those are critical parts of any intervention system with people who are using violence. I mean, bottom line is that some people will one will not respond to anything else, but sort of that kind of coercive intervention from the state, whether people  [01:00:14][45.1]

Speaker 2: [01:00:14] are  [01:00:14][0.0]

Speaker 1: [01:00:14] psychopaths or whatever, we're going to call them that that their their behavior pattern is so egregious that they're not willing to moderate it where they feel so entitled. That's right. That's right. And that they're so dangerous that we need those systems and we need those systems. You know, that's the thing about the criminal court, you know, but we need those systems in terms of family courts, you know, or children's courts that really have the ability to name perpetrators patterns of behavior and direct their orders towards real behavior change, not just compliance with the program, right, but real behavior change.  [01:00:52][37.4]

Speaker 2: [01:00:52] Well, I think that there's there's some challenges that we have to face and that is is that courts don't necessarily believe children and survivors about their experience. Number one, that there's much more weight given to the self-defense of of people who are abusing children and survivors. And that primarily has to start to shift where seen as adversarial in the criminal and and legal system. We are seen as the adversary and therefore we are treated incredibly poorly in that system. And I'm not sure that that's unintentional. You have to remember that the courts were formed and the legal system was formed during a time when I was considered property. And when children were considered property and therefore a reassessment. Of our standards of evidence and the way we treat, we treat litigants in that system needs to be looked at from a reform standpoint. But it is not lost on me that our legal system, the one that we operate in now that is supposed to protect me quote on quote was really formed during a time when I was considered my partners property. You can't get around it.  [01:02:27][94.7]

Speaker 1: [01:02:27] You can see evidence of this. I think the evidence in this, where you see women who get charged with failure to protect in child abuse cases where the abuse is physical abuse, is perpetrator sex abuse or perpetrated by my partner that they can get longer sentences criminals receive than actually the person who perpetrated the actual harm. Yeah. And and you also can see it in things where in the challenges that that have gotten a lot of attention over the years, you know, about women who are being abused, being charged with murder when they really it was it was a self-defense situation because of ongoing abuse. And but it didn't fit with what I think of as the barroom definition of self-defense that was really created for two guys who are fighting for fighting. Or you know or, you know, we're in a situation with, you know. And so again, I think you're right that there's that really reassessment looking at these things can be really useful and really important. And to be looking at these things where contact and status and privilege of a parent is being placed over the safety and well-being kids in custody and access cases, right? And I think courts are better on paper, identifying child safety as being a critical aspect of good custody and access decisions. Mm-Hmm. But I'm not sure we've caught up with that in actual practice.  [01:03:55][87.4]

Speaker 2: [01:03:56] Right. And it's problematic using the term child safety anyway. It should be child well-being, right? Because again, child safety is usually coming from the viewpoint of a violent incidents based framework. Rather, child well-being is about the collection of behaviors of that parent and how it benefits that child's stability and safety in multiple directions. Not just a broken arm, right? Not just a spiral fracture.  [01:04:30][33.8]

Speaker 1: [01:04:30] That's right. And you know, and just all the things around that, you know, the pattern of behavior, the other things, the denial of responsibility. Mm hmm. So so we've been having this conversation and they were getting towards wrapping up. So we've been talking about the third principle, the safety, other model. This is part of our ongoing series with everyone. So I says to me, Hey, we should talk about some of the really basic things of the model, like, share that for the podcast. I'm like, OK, well, we could do that. And so this is this is the intervening with the perpetrator to reduce risk and harm the child. Third principle, and I'm hoping that this has been a useful conversation for listeners to really kind of explore. Me too.  [01:05:09][38.7]

Speaker 2: [01:05:09] I just kind of feel like we ramble sometimes, but hopefully people find our rambling beneficial.  [01:05:14][5.3]

Speaker 1: [01:05:16] I love these conversations that we have. I love when it's just you and I love our interviews while our interview guests, you know, just know that I love doing those conversations with you. But I think because it's just you and I and Tiberius the dog, you may have heard him get up and turn around and around during the interview during that, during the conversation. But I because this is where we started, this is the genesis. And I love listening to the way your mind works and the way you think.  [01:05:40][24.4]

Speaker 2: [01:05:41] And I love listening to the way your mind works, and I love it when we go back and forth. You know, David and I don't agree on everything that's right. But good partners can disagree on things and work their way towards acceptable solutions. And I think that that's really important for us to model in the domestic violence field. I get super sad about having to see and watch behaviors of verbal and emotional abuse, you know, between professionals and between models and between theories of practice. As you know, people are saying that they're trying to work in an anti-violence space. And I think that it's super important to remember that partnering doesn't mean that you agree on everything. But that you can listen to and hear and acknowledge another person's experience and work towards a set of common values and goals. And in this case, our common value and our common goal. Here between you and I and then, you know, larger between all of these different entities that we work with is that we want children to be safe and to gather with their non offending parent. Right. And that is what we want, right?  [01:07:08][87.7]

Speaker 1: [01:07:09] Because we believe it's in the best interest of the kids and families and it could involve contact. You know, just wrapping up with this principle can involve having contact with that person, choosing violence as long as it's safe, as long as it's beneficial, as long as it's, you know, is is what everybody wants and they're free to choose what they want that done in a dress or under pressure. So I just saw anyway, I love our conversations. I love them too. OK. And if you've been listening, you've been listening to partner with the survivor. I'm David Mandel, executive director of the Safe and Together Institute, and I  [01:07:41][32.3]

Speaker 2: [01:07:41] was with by Mandel and the e-learning communications strategic relationship manager.  [01:07:45][4.4]

Speaker 1: [01:07:46] And if you, if you like this, please share subscribe. We're on all the platforms out there that people listen. The podcasts go to the website, save for the other inside.com to learn more about what we're doing. You go to our  [01:08:00][13.2]

Speaker 2: [01:08:00] Academy Academy Dot Saving Together Institute dot com and there is free trainings. There is paid trainings and I really encourage you to check out the partner partnering with survivors.  [01:08:12][11.5]

Speaker 1: [01:08:12] Cause that's right, brand new three years in the making. Yes. Yes. And and we've got brand new tools coming out in 2020. Very exciting. We will talk about and we've got a conference coming up. We'll be doing a recording of pre-roll after this. For that, and I think we  [01:08:29][17.1]

Speaker 2: [01:08:30] are  [01:08:30][0.0]

Speaker 1: [01:08:31] out.  [01:08:31][0.0]

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