Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
These podcasts are a reflection of Ruth & David’s ongoing conversations, which are both intimate and professional and touch on complex topics like how systems fail victims and children, how victims experience those systems, and how children are impacted by those failures. Their discussions delve into how society views masculinity and violence and how intersectionalities such as cultural beliefs, religious beliefs and unique vulnerabilities impact how we respond to abuse and violence. These far-ranging discussions offer an insider look into how we navigate the world as professionals, as parents and as partners. During these podcasts, David & Ruth challenge the notions that keep all of us from moving forward collectively as systems, as cultures and as families into safety, nurturance and healing. Note: Some of the topics discussed in the episodes are deeply personal and sensitive, which may be difficult for some people. We occasionally use mature language. We often use gender pronouns like “he” when discussing perpetrators and “she” for victims. While both men and women can be abusive and controlling, and domestic abuse happens in straight and same-sex relationships, the most common situation when it comes to coercive control is a male perpetrator and a female victim. Men's abuse toward women is more closely associated with physical injury, fear and control. Similarly, very different expectations of men and women as parents and the focus of Safe & Together on children in the context of domestic abuse make it impossible to make generic references to gender when it comes to parenting. The Model, through its behavioral focus on patterns of behavior, is useful in identifying and responding to abuse in all situations, including same-sex couples and women's use of violence. We think our listeners are sophisticated enough to understand these distinctions.
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Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
Season 5, Episode 9: Partnering vs. Practicing: The Hidden Bias in Professional Crisis Work
🔄 Transforming Professional Standards
Join us from SĂŁo Miguel, Azores, Ruth's paternal ancestral home, as we challenge conventional metrics of professionalism and explore how institutional practices, mandates, best practices often reinforce dangerous barriers between professionals and survivors of domestic abuse. We examine what true Partnership looks like when we step beyond traditional professional boundaries.
đź“Š Measuring What Matters:
• Evaluating professional success through survivor partnership outcomes
• Identifying KPIs, practices & policies that perpetuate professional bias & poor outcomes
• Tracking meaningful engagement and Impact versus procedural compliance, top down best practices not tied to end user experience
đźš« Confronting Professional Bias:
• Recognizing when "professionalism" becomes a barrier to authentic connection
• Understanding how institutional metrics can reinforce harmful power dynamics
• Examining personal and systemic prejudices in professional practice
⚖️ Institutional Accountability:
• Creating measurements for authentic survivor engagement
• Developing metrics that value survivor voice and choice
• Establishing KPIs that promote genuine Partnering
đź’ˇ Shifting Professional Culture:
• Moving from expert-driven top-down practice to Partnering and end user impact-based practice
• Redefining success in professional-survivor relationships
• Building institutional, training and policy support for transformative practice
🎯 Action Steps for Change:
• Implementing survivor-centered performance metrics
• Developing reflection tools for professional bias
• Creating accountability systems for authentic partnership
Join our global network as we work to transform how professionals engage with survivors and measure success in domestic abuse-informed practice.
đź”— Access our professional development resources at https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/
📱 Connect with our community of practice at https://academy.safeandtogetherinstitute.com/pages/home?preview=true
#ProfessionalismRedefined #SystemsChange #Partnering #Professionalstandards #Bestpractices #SafeAndTogether
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
and we're back and we're back hey, look at us look at us.
Speaker 2:it's been a little bit of a hiatus. Well, it is, you know, and is I miss doing it? But we have other things that have been happening and we're happy to join you today. This is an original podcast. We're just Ruth and I talking and you're listening to Partner with a Survivor and we are coming to you from.
Speaker 1:Well, let's do the land acknowledgement.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So we would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, past, present and emerging. And we, today, are coming to you from San Miguel, which is one of the nine islands of the Azores, in Macaronisia, which you may not be aware of, a lot of people are not of, and this is the home of my father's father's family.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:And so we are looking at the ocean and currently the sky is blue, but this is a very rainy, rainy place. It's a subtropical environment. It's a volcanic environment, still active volcanoes and fissures. It is a beautiful green island in the middle of the ocean.
Speaker 2:That's right, and if you want to find it on a map, you haven't seen the Azores. It's about 1,000 miles or about 1,400 kilometers.
Speaker 1:Nobody really knows, according to the official literature, west of Portugal, but mainly of Portugal.
Speaker 2:So anyway, so we are going to talk about professional partnering with survivors today and we're going to do a deep dive into a couple of themes. I think that's what we talked about. At least, we never know where we're going to go exactly when we do these.
Speaker 1:But really two big areas, which is about the struggles and challenges, but the need for professionals to be able to hear survivors' anger and criticism of systems and professional practice for survivors to know that it's part of professionals duties to respond to that fear and that anger at their practices and as well at system responses, in a way that does not harm them or make them more vulnerable as survivors, and there's a lot of bits to this because some of this can be very cultural and, you know, in lots of different ways, not just about safety but about connection and culture and other things that may not fit into some professional's view of sort of oh we've got to be talking with survivors as professionals.
Speaker 2:there's deep curiosity, especially when things don't always make sense to us from our professional or cultural perspective, to really dig in in some sense at that point and say wait a second, what might I be missing here? What do I need to be curious about? What do I need to?
Speaker 1:be curious about what I need to listen to. Well, to respond to that feeling of frustration, of not understanding a survivor's choices, of feeling like they're crazy, that you would never make that choice that they made. Learning as a professional to respond to that feeling with curiosity and asking more questions, and also with self-commitment to not superimposing or projecting your choices, your values, the way that you would respond onto a survivor in a way that demeans them, that makes them the problem or that further targets them for harm or makes them more vulnerable to their perpetrator.
Speaker 2:So I think I've got a story out of my professional experience that might kick us off to talk about anger and and from survivors and a professional response and and and also about choices. So I used to do as many. You know, men's behavior, change, work and and um, there's a particular guy in the group. Uh, I had contact with his partner already, which is part of the program, and a particular night where this guy really concerned me.
Speaker 2:I won't go into the details, but was worried about his dangerousness to me and also, as he went home, to his partner, and so I called her to warn her that I was worried. They left the group angry that I was concerned for her safety and I couldn't get her on the phone. So I called local law enforcement and and and said hey, I'm this person's counselor and I'm worried. Could you please go to the house, call the police, then try her again and I get her on the phone and I tell her. We know each other. I said hey, I'm worried. Your husband is was agitated when we left group and just want to let you know. When I couldn't reach you directly, I called the police.
Speaker 2:And she got so mad at me and she said so what are you doing? Calling me now, telling me to get ready for a beating? And now the police coming and the neighbors are going to see and it's going to be awful. And you know, in your mind I think you feel like you're doing the right thing, you're trying to do the right thing and I don't consciously expect to be given a parade or be praised, but you think you're doing the right thing. And then, boom, this anger came at me and I really had to dig in and take a deep breath and I said no, I'm not calling you to tell you to get ready for a beating. I'm calling because I'm worried about your safety, which was true, that's all I could say. I couldn't tell her anything else. I couldn't tell her she was safe. I couldn't tell her it was going to be okay. I could just tell her my intent.
Speaker 2:And he came home. The police were there, nothing physically happened to her. She actually talked to me and said what should I police are offering to send her away? What should I do? We talked through her choices and she was, as far as I know, physically safe that night. But the next day I talked to her and I talked to him and she thanked me for calling and she appreciated me, which again I didn't need or expect. But but it was really that moment of of stepping in, thinking, you know, if I sort of honest, you know, not that you're going to be the hero, but that you're doing something good, and I think a lot. You know, we get into this work because we want to make a difference and we want to do better, and what I got back was what did you do? You're part of the problem now by calling the police.
Speaker 1:Right, and this is actually where I think that the lack of really good communication in professional training about appropriate responses, consensual responses, having conversations about what to do in these really difficult circumstances is really important. Okay, because once a professional moves into a stance of I'm doing something good, especially if you're a special case You're a person who is really committed and dedicated to the value of seeing other people. But a lot of professionals move from defensiveness when they feel like they're trying to help, they're doing good, and they feel like a survivor impedes that, doesn't see that or doesn't appreciate that, and that's a real problem. And I just want us all to think about how that would play out if it was a doctor, because doctors are often doing good, right, but they don't approach their practice from the position of I'm doing good, therefore you have to take my treatment at least good doctors don't. And this is where professional practice within social services and family crisis services can really learn from the changes in medicine.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to keep pounding on the fact that the medical community, which started from a very top-down, authoritarian place of here's the diagnostic symptoms of what this patient has. You're the doctor, you're the expert, you diagnose them, you give them this medicine. Well, that became unacceptable, especially as women entered into medicine, because what was happening is doctors were not listening to patients and they had a God complex and they were saying we're doing good, and patients were saying, no, actually you're messing me up, you're not listening to me, you're making me go through treatments that are not working for me and you're not listening to how that's impacting my life, and this is where malpractice lawsuits came into the picture. So medicine has really had to adjust. It's very top down I'm doing good, I'm the professional and therefore I know what's best for you.
Speaker 1:I went to school for this period of time. I was trained in breast practices and therefore, what is wrong with you when you get mad at me if you get hurt in the course of my best practices treatment plan? What is wrong with you if you keep telling me that your symptoms are not alleviating and you're frustrated with me as a professional? This is where we really have to pull apart what is best practices, how to be a professional in the context of human well-being, where you may not actually be doing the right thing for that person in that moment and that person may respond in a way which is appropriate for their fear and for their discomfort and for the fact that they feel like their boundaries were crossed and as a professional because you're not supposed to be a pedestrian on the street how do you respond as a professional, without hurting them further or impeding their ability to self-determine or taking away their consent?
Speaker 2:So I you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about I think it's a great analogy about the medicine and about the listening and, as you and I have talked about before, the humility of doctors who have learned to apologize for mistakes and acknowledge that they're human has real-world constructive criticism because it reduces people's suing doctors because they feel like—.
Speaker 1:Research shows us this. That's what they needed.
Speaker 2:They needed that human acknowledgement.
Speaker 1:Some really basic things in medicine Eye contact, listening, feeling like the patient feels seen and listened to, apologizing when one has made a mistake. Now let's put that into the child protection space. How much of that is happening? Let's put that into the judicial, where people who have done nothing wrong but who are being victimized, are not being treated as humans and what they need is being discounted over and over again in a lot of different ways. Because not because we're bad people, not because we want that to happen, because our systems weren't set up to treat them in that way and medicine had to be retrofitted. And we can have all sorts of discussions about how far it's actually come and what's actually being done and who truly gets good medical care and who doesn't. To that research, because medicine has that money, that there's some very basic things that a professional does. That really is partnering. That's truly partnering that reduces malpractice, that improves the end user satisfaction who receives those services and also is better medicine.
Speaker 2:I think the example that I shared at the beginning of the show you know it's, for me it's one way to move through those moments. I think there's multiple ways to move through those moments in a way that's responsible, has humility, listens and partners.
Speaker 1:And is professional.
Speaker 2:And is professional, and I wouldn't change what I did that night, by the way. I mean, I really I want people to hear that I had an obligation, a duty to this person's safety. I needed to act. I couldn't ignore it. I couldn't just go home and say, oh, he's angry, I'm not going to call, or, after I didn't reach her or give up. You know, I felt like I had to pull on a lever that I had available and when she came back at me with her negative response, it was up to me to take that deep breath. It was up to me to listen, it was up to me to stay connected to my intent and not to make her wrong. And I think for me, you know the balancing act, just like even with doctors, doctors would also engage in malpractice if they didn't bring you their expertise and their knowledge, I mean.
Speaker 2:I think that's the other side of it, and so I think part of the marker is we don't move into a binary. I think sometimes professionals throw a ban on school. Okay, she's the expert in her life, we'll listen and do exactly everything she says, no matter how. It doesn't make sense, and I think for me, I've always coached people to say, look, even if you've got a survivor who's saying this time it's going to be different, this time he's promising he's going to be different. You listen to that and, to my mind, I think an example of this balance is if you're sitting there with information you're seeing there, with a perspective that you're not seeing the change, you're not seeing the difference in this person, in the person using violence. It's okay for you to say, hey, you feel confident, you sound confident that this time is different, even though he's promised this before. Can you tell me what you're seeing that I might be missing? That's making you trust him this time, when he's broken his promise? Three, six, 10, 15 times before.
Speaker 2:You don't have to become ignorant. You don't have to become I don't know what the right word is, but you don't have to give up. You don't disengage. Disengagement's just as much of a problem as anything else. And so, for me, how do you stay in that engaged? And as you and I talk about that I-thou relationship you were quoting Martin Buber the other day- it's my philosophical training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the importance of and the power, and this is I don't think we got to this the other day, but the power of when you can actually truly bring that equality of that I that our relationship into a system that may have set up a structure of powers where it wasn't equal you know, the professionals are always going to have power over us.
Speaker 1:That's the nature of the professional relationship. I think it's really important for professionals to remember that, unlike medicine, we're not often entering willfully into a relationship with you. As a professional, as a survivor, as a victim. We've been forced into that relationship by a perpetrator. You better remember that we don't really want to see you.
Speaker 2:We wish this wasn't happening, even the helpers, even the helpers, even the women's refugees in the program, and I think there's some similarity with doctors, though. I mean, if you're sick, Well you're sick, but there's a very specific thing to having another person cause you so much danger and trauma. That's true.
Speaker 1:And loss of movement, loss of choices, loss of freedom, that you now have to enter into a relationship that you didn't choose, with child protection, with the police, with mental health professionals, with all sorts of things. So, first of all, we didn't choose this, we didn't choose you. Please start from that place.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's a beautiful point, I think it's so foundational. Because it's so, I think there's so many things that make professionals or people think oh, you know, she's here because of her trauma history, her trauma history, and it's a subtle difference.
Speaker 2:No, she's here because somebody was abusing her and she has to be here, somebody else chose to do those things to this person, even if this includes childhood abuse or other things.
Speaker 2:And it's so critical to the Safe and Together model, which is this idea, that we approach these situations with a constant awareness that it's the perpetrators' choices and behaviors that are creating this situation, even if they're not your client, even if you're not in the room with them, they're not there with you, but you're working with the adult survivor.
Speaker 2:The child survivor is to remember and for that to infuse to me you're talking about how do we measure this? Use to me this you talk about like um, how do we measure this? This is one of the measurements that we're always articulating, that we're always documenting, that we're always approaching this person, like you said, as somebody who's already a victim of injustice right, and has already been um forced down a path that they didn't choose by the perpetrator's behavior and our involvement. If that's why we're there, is because of somebody else's behavior. And there's some basic I just wanna say this even as I say this now there's just some basic humility. When I really feel into that, there's this basic humility and compassion that feels like it just sits there as this solid foundation of the interaction, which is you didn't pick this. You didn't deserve to be treated this way.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine how powerful it would be if, as a response, let's walk through the world? Oh, I'm going to walk through the world with my I'm not going to claim this as everybody else's, but my perfect survivor scenario, Like heavenly music. Are you ready? Imagine if I was being coerced by a partner, theoretically, and I had called the police, and the police came and they said we know that you're calling us because you're in a situation which is really not good for you, so talk to us about that, right? You don't even need to admit what the evidence is. You don't need to admit what's wrong. You just need to say I know you're calling me because you're in a situation which is not good for you, right?
Speaker 1:If somebody is calling law enforcement, that's a safe statement to make. So tell me about that. What if, when they went to the family court and there was already evidence of domestic violence and there was a child lawyer that needed to talk to the children, that they said to them we know that you're here because things happened which were really harmful, and we know that this is really hard and we're going to do the best we can to make you comfortable, because this isn't something that you chose to happen. Okay, the children did not choose to have. That's a safe statement. And if there's evidence of domestic violence, all of those statements are safe. How does it change the dynamics for us to really walk into a space as a professional, knowing that we're engaging with a person who didn't choose any of this, and this is already uncomfortable and difficult.
Speaker 2:I think that fundamental fact is such a foundation of best practice in there in this area, which is really just to walk in and and we train people I've coached child protection workers particularly to say I'm here not because you and your partner got to a fight last night, but I'm here because your partner did something, was alleged to do something, that created safety concerns for you and the kids, and I'm here because we want to make sure you're safe or do what we can to support you, and it's just a fundamental fact.
Speaker 2:And then, going to this piece about the deep listening you know, and being able to hear anger, you know, is to be able to hear people say I didn't call the police, I don't want to call the police, I don't want to involve the police and not to move into a place of judgment. Or my favorite one is when somebody says well, I still love this person, to not not put any judgments on them. You know, I think there's sort of for me this want us to practice radical acceptance of diversity and difference and different values and perspectives and what's important.
Speaker 1:Well, and I want to frame that a little bit of a different way because that can be a little bit loosey-goosey. Like I want professionals to be professional. As a professional, you had better understand that what you would do is not the measure of best practices. Working with that. You may need to step back and be curious about their choices and even the ways that they express their danger without harming them. As a professional, you better have barriers to your own personal experiences and traumas and judgments, whether that be judgments that come from a religious place and you're experiencing a family who has an alternative family construct and you want to punish that family or judge them because they're not living in a way that you believe is right. There better be professional barriers to that, because the fact is is we live in a diverse world. Whether or not you've accepted that or not, we live in a diverse world and everybody around you has different ways of being and thinking and their perspective. And one of the things that professional practice did from a really patriarchal place and I'm going to name it was it said and remember professionals were men, doctors were men, lawyers were men, judges were men. These were all male. So they said we're the experts, we have the education. You know nothing, you're ignorant. We're going to tell you what to do, we're going to tell you when to do it, we're going to tell you how to do it, and if you don't do it the way that we tell you to do it, we're going to make you wrong and we're going to punish you. And so when professionals fail at this and they have a lot of power over our lives things become very dangerous.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to give an example from the United States. Recently in the news there was a story about a judge and a woman came to him. She was black and she was looking for protective orders from a domestically violent partner. He denied those orders. She was visibly upset. She left the courtroom after his judgment, visibly upset, and he chased her down the hallway because he was angry that she was upset. He grabbed her by the back of the neck, he dragged her back into the courtroom and he sent her to jail. This is what part of the problem is. Number one that was extremely unprofessional. That guy should be disbarred. He should never practice as a judge again. He should not.
Speaker 1:And so one of the problems is that we've created this environment where stuff like that is okay where it's okay, if you're a professional who dislikes the attitude or the verbalizations of a survivor about the danger and the practice that you're engaging in that is not working for them, that you as a professional have a lot of power to take away their children, to put them in incarceration, to find them, to have financial implications for all of those things. And I'm going to name a really good training by a woman. She's an American woman and I'm sure that there are trainings like this in your area, your cultural context. And if there's not, there should be and somebody should start that up. And that is Courageous Fire from the United States here.
Speaker 1:She has a wonderful program where she trains professionals in the ways that Black women express danger and the various biases that have been going around pretty prevalently in the culture about Black women's expressions, their truth-telling, their inflections, their inflections, their demands for assistance and for people to see the problem.
Speaker 1:And one of the reasons why she's training professionals in these is so that we can start setting the expectation that it is not professional and it is not okay for somebody to react from a place of power and control in a way that harms further, harms further, creates vulnerabilities further, punishes a survivor. Because they have unique and different cultural expressions of danger, they respond to that in different ways and this lands most heavily on victim survivors. When the professional is white and Anglo, not from that culture, and the person who is expressing that danger is more vulnerable, more melanated or more minoritized or has immigration challenges, that danger goes up and it gives it is a real, there's real implications for our safety, our wellbeing, our families, our security, our financial wellbeing. So this is really where we have to step back as professionals, especially if we're working with victim survivors who are of a different culture than us, and we have to learn how to listen in a way that doesn't make the way that they express their danger and their needs a problem.
Speaker 2:You know you talk about wanting, you know, a measure that we can put on professional practice for this, and I think one of the challenges is because there's so many different variations about how this can go off the rails, whether it's about racism or homophobia or other.
Speaker 1:Or religious bias, or whatever.
Speaker 2:For me, you know, or from a mental health trauma lens, even where people pathologize people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and that's one of the things I talked about in my book in the myth of trauma form practice chapter. But it really is this idea that if we baseline professors is assume survivors are engaging in rational safety planning and choices and are actively trying to keep themselves safe and their kids safe, and safe, really broadly defined well-being, not just physical safety, but they're trying to balance off values and religious values and cultural values, and they're actively trying to. They're actually active. I can't say this because I think there's so much. There's a binary here which we sort of like you're a good victim or you're a bad victim, you're failing to protect or you're actively protecting. And I think that if you walk in as a professional and say, okay, I must assume this person is making a series of choices that are trying to make their situation better within their cultural context, within the context of their partner's behavior patterns and what they know in terms of their hopes and dreams, their constraints, their desires for their kids, to all these things.
Speaker 1:But even something more material, even as material as housing, like if you're working with a survivor who's unhoused, you should assume that, within the context of them not having housing, that they're still trying to make safety, instead of centering the fact that they're unhoused as the ultimate problem.
Speaker 2:Or even if they're struggling with drug addiction or even mental health issues, and I think that to me, is again this radical commitment. We talk in professional circles about being strength-based, and I think strength-based requires a lot of, a lot of truly courage and commitment and listening. And so if you walk in and you assume this person is already doing those things and that part of your job is to learn what they're doing in their circumstance, not what you think they should be doing, that we should be able to measure that and see that and see where particularly professionals go, okay, I don't understand that.
Speaker 2:But, I ask the next question, or I listen a little bit harder and I go back to this experience I had. I didn't realize it at the time. It was in a meeting and somebody who was working with Survivor had just been assaulted recently, a day or two beforehand, came into the meeting. It was clearly this professional was agitated and she was like well, I don't understand this woman. So a lot of this is again. This is like what's wrong with this survivor right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes we say, why didn't she leave? But it's more insidious than that. What's wrong with them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that can be such an individual thing from the professional too.
Speaker 2:That's right, they could have some real personal judgments.
Speaker 2:And in this particular case what I remember is but it didn't register in this way until later she kept saying the survivor's in denial, there's something wrong with her. All she talks about she just got beaten up. All she talks about is she broke her computer. She broke her computer, she was persevering about the computer and she's focusing on the wrong thing and I just at that moment it just kind of washed over me Because that was kind of so common at the point. But only upon reflection later. So this is my own evolution. I noticed the lack of curiosity Because and I'm sure some of you listening out there will immediately understand that that computer I think of 10 different reasons why the computer was more important more important than the bruise or the or or the, or the or the physical violence, because it may be bank account information.
Speaker 2:Might have been there. Personal information Contact. Contact with the outside world social contact support.
Speaker 2:Maybe she worked on her computer I mean, we could list tons of things that would explain why this computer was important to this survivor Right and that she wasn't in denial or missing something or just fixating on this weird thing. And I just think this is an example of sort of where we need to hear those things and go. There's something here that I don't understand, and it's my job as a professional to listen, ask questions, be curious, be respectful. Right, listen, ask questions, be curious, be respectful.
Speaker 1:Right and it's more than just.
Speaker 1:I appreciate the personal professional commitment and I'm really grateful for professionals who really work hard at partnering, but that's going to be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of professionals.
Speaker 1:What I'm after as a survivor and as a Latina survivor who expresses things very strongly, as you know, because you are my partner is I want organizational and professional KPIs that create boundaries, that create buffers between the worst inclinations and biases of professionals and makes it unprofessional to impose that on survivors against the worst sort of diagnostic inclinations of professionals where they depersonalize a survivor and they don't actually partner with them and they're using just the mandates of the system and the focus of the system and the liability of the system as their best practices. I want professional barriers because I want professional barriers against the ability of that professional to remove our self-determination, to breach our consent, to take our children, to financially harm us, to institutionalize us and incarcerate us. I want professional boundaries. Until this point in history, professionalism has been defined by the people who were in power and control. I want professionalism now to be defined by the people who are receiving that service. That's revolutionary and I want it.
Speaker 2:I think that it is revolutionary and I think that, well, I think there needs to be greater envisioning of what those KPIs. Well, I think there needs to be greater envisioning of what those KPIs. It requires a what I do know is it requires a focus on measuring the how yeah, the how of the practice.
Speaker 1:And really believing people's experience, because if you don't believe somebody's experience, if you're able to say to them as a victim, survivor, you know you're mentally ill. Therefore, we don't believe your experience. You have a substance problem. We don't believe your experience. Oh, you're gay, you're trans. Therefore, we don't believe your experience of the services that we provided you that they were harmful oh, you're a woman, you're a slut. You that they were harmful? Oh, you're a woman, you're a slut. You're a woman who's had children with five different men. And I'm judging you as a professional and that's my context and therefore I don't believe you and you're worthy of having your self-determination removed, because that's what's happening.
Speaker 2:Well, it's that and it's behavioral judgment. So you think about the folks who say, well, I don't understand. She says she's so scared of him and worried about his behavior to the children, but then is agreeing to post-separation contact in the court and where people I always think about this where we have to again breathe into this and go okay, what's the answer?
Speaker 2:Well, the answer a lot of times is what the survivor will say if you ask them and you try to understand their experiences, because what he might do, or what I think he would do, if he gets no contact, if I win in court, which is I really want him to have no contact, but if that actually happens, the danger for myself and or my children goes up astronomically.
Speaker 2:He will kill them, he will assault them, he will kill me and therefore, yes, my actual management of this is to say, give him a little bit of contact, because that's better than us being dead. And you should feel, if you're a professional listen that you should feel frustrated, you should feel helpless, you should feel scared, you should. That's what it means to actually partner, to walk with her, because it's our, our desire to fix or make this go away or tie this up in a neat bow. That becomes the becomes part of what I think. The reason some professionals become judgmental because we're uncomfortable with this is a no-win, really scary situation, and I might do exactly the same thing she's doing if I was her C. And so now what do I do? And I think there are places I know as a professional where you literally dead end, just like the survivor does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and I think that's.
Speaker 1:Well, because society is not equipped, the choices are not equipped for dealing with the reality that the law is made so that we have to be harmed in order for us to get intervention or for that person to be seen as a problem, and professionals are not behaviorally equipped to work with men who are violent and they're not working with men who are violent. Nobody is working with that person to change their behavior or to assess it in an ongoing way. No one, no one.
Speaker 2:And I'll take it to another level, which is for me. You know hard, but some situations are.
Speaker 1:Intractable.
Speaker 2:Unresolvable. Yeah, and that's the thing that I think scares a lot of us and we really need to wrestle with.
Speaker 1:Well, ultimately, at the end of the day, what we should really be wrestling with is why it is that we are so ill-equipped to turn collectively and look at the person who is causing the danger. We all should be asking ourselves why it is that that's not an automatic response that we do as systems, as professionals, as services and as individuals, even in our own family. What is it? And I feel like I know what it is it's fear. I feel like I know what it is.
Speaker 1:It's unwillingness to deal with men and the fact that we've set up these systems that would require that we incarcerate a tremendous amount of men who are violent.
Speaker 1:If we truly addressed coercive control, if we truly addressed domestic violence and none of us wants to put that many men in jail because we can't actually do that, there's not the infrastructure to do that. So, in an absence of choices for professionals and also for victims, we become this blunt instrument where we're a hammer and it's a nail and we're just going to pound away at it in the same way we've done all of the time. But I really think that as professionals learn a better way, as we learn that in order for us to truly address this problem, we have to pivot to the people who are habitually causing the problem or who are serial abusers, and we need to deal with the way that that comes about in our families, the training that helps those people feel entitled to those behaviors, the way we're supporting that with our own institutions and systems. Because there's a lot of support for violence in men as a tool for societal protection that then gets meted out on the families and the children that those men are living with.
Speaker 2:So for everybody who's listening, this is, in some ways, we've come full circle because, as those of you who know the safety of the model, this is really the idea that you can't do the partnering without the pivot to the perpetrator. You can't. I think some of the siloed ways we work and we think we think, oh, we're working with a survivor right now. No, if we're working with a survivor right now, no, if you're working with a domestic violence survivor and that's who's in front of you, you're also working with a perpetrator. You need to keep them in view. You know, and so you know. Your point is that you know that we need to be talking about this, about this. I envision, as you were talking, this full like really this turning towards of everybody, all the professionals, turning towards the perpetrator, focusing that same amount of attention or more on them than they have in the past on survivors, and scrutinizing the perpetrator's behavior.
Speaker 1:But also ongoing assistance, behavioral modification, real assessment of how it is that these behaviors are being supported in our institutions. How are we not responding appropriately, for example, to interpersonal violence and relationship violence, even within our own schools? You know our own public, you know those types of things.
Speaker 2:Or our religious institutions. But that's one thing that's turning and I think that you know when you do that, it totally changes the equation because, again, if you're looking for well, if we help her through her trauma history, she's going to be safer. That's a very different approach than Okay, that approach reminds me of another news story that I saw
Speaker 1:which was put out as like a feel-good news story, but of course Ruth told me it was like, ah, what the hell? She went all Latino on it. But it was a news story about a child in the United States and people outside of the United States will immediately get the ridiculousness and the cruelty of this story about a kid who is being lauded as a hero for selling little key chain chains enough to pay the school lunch debt of children in six schools who were no longer going to be receiving lunches at school because they were in debt. So basically, this news story in the United States was oh, look at this child who labored. Look at who this child labored to pay the debt of these children who were not going to eat. How wonderful. This is kind of like that. It's a little bit like that. We need to retrain our brains a little bit here.
Speaker 2:Well, you're right about it. It turns into this individual achievement, away from the systemic issue about why were these kids in debt.
Speaker 1:Why are these kids hungry and not going to eat and why are we making children work? To get other children out of debt. This is really sick.
Speaker 2:Yes, so you know. So, to start wrapping this up on that happy note, you know we really want to support professionals in developing these skills and capacities and systems, like you keep saying, to measure, because I think, ultimately you're right that this is only going to become more consistent with actual organizational expectations and measurements.
Speaker 1:Institutional expectations and all these organizations.
Speaker 2:They have quality assurance procedures and they have training procedures and they have ways to measure effectiveness, and what we're talking about is this measuring and I want to invite people to comment on this and to write us if they have their own ideas about this but to really, how do you measure and set expectations that somebody is going to partner at this level? We're talking about where they have the capacity to hear somebody's anger and expect it. I think we need to be really saying organizationally expect anger.
Speaker 1:These are really, really traumatizing, difficult circumstances with a lot of danger. Expect people are going to react from that place.
Speaker 2:Expect and welcome and be humble with people's criticisms of your practice, of your organization's practice and the wider system's practice, and then really you know to really hold people account for being curious and going in with the expectation that this person is actively trying to keep themselves and their kids safe and promote their well-being and trying to manage the situation. And it is our professional ethical obligation, it's in our benefit from an efficiency and effectiveness point of view. It's part of improving safety, which is this ability to really deeply listen and be curious and understand and really approach this person with a sense of assumption that they're actively working to keep themselves and their kids safe. I think it's doable. Yeah, I think it is. I think it is too. I think it's doable, yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 1:I think it is too. I think it is doable. I mean, honestly, I can be a little bit of a person who, I know, I'm a pessimist, but I'm also quite an optimist and I believe that we can do this. Professionals respond to victim survivors by creating institutional and professional KPIs, by working with social work schools to really embed those in their training and to habituate people surgeons, by the way to really be able to respond to these crisis situations where there's a lot of emotion in the room and you're the professional you are supposed to be the calm center in the room. That's your job, so you know. So that's something that I think we can achieve and I think that people out there thinking of this, dreaming of this scenario, survivors saying what would be the perfect response, you know, and then verbalizing that is part of the way that we get there.
Speaker 2:So this is our first show from San Miguel, from the Azores. There may be more in the future. On another personal note, happy anniversary. Happy anniversary, love. If people wonder what David and Ruth do on their anniversary, they record a podcast.
Speaker 1:It's very romantic it is Anyway.
Speaker 2:so we hope you enjoyed this show. We hope you share and subscribe to this on whatever platform you're on. We have all these resources out there. Stop blaming mothers, ignoring fathers, which is really what we've been talking about in some ways how to transform the way we keep children safe and the Perpetrator. Pattern Mapping Tool. So go online, buy that book, Check out our Perpetrator Pattern pattern mapping tool. Like Ruth said, Go to our virtual academy academysafetydatainstitutecom.
Speaker 1:Do some learning.
Speaker 2:Do some learning. Go to our website safetydatainstitutecom. Follow our social media. We've been really active on LinkedIn lately. I've been very active. So if you like this, do that and we're out Out that. And, uh, we are, we're out out.