Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 6 Episode 13: Your Pet Is Not Safe When You're Not Safe: Understanding Animal Abuse in Coercive Control

• Ruth Reymundo Mandel & David Mandel • Season 6 • Episode 13

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When a perpetrator targets a family pet, they're sending a clear message about what they're capable of—and revealing a dangerous pattern that threatens everyone in the home. This eye-opening conversation with Maya Badham, founder of the Centre for Animal Inclusive Safeguarding, explores the deeply troubling intersection of animal abuse and coercive control.

The weaponization of animals extends far beyond physical violence. Perpetrators systematically use pets as tools for economic abuse, stalking, isolation, and emotional manipulation. Maya shares striking examples of how abusers mirror their tactics across all family members (e.g., if non-fatal strangulation is used against human victims, similar methods often appear in their treatment of animals). This pattern recognition is crucial for effective risk assessment and intervention.

Most troubling is how our systems force survivors into impossible choices. "I can't leave you home alone with my dog," Maya explains, highlighting how perpetrators create entrapment through a victim's attachment to their pet. With limited animal-inclusive refuge options, many survivors delay leaving or return to abusive situations because they have nowhere to go with their beloved animals.

The conversation reveals a critical intervention opportunity: Survivors frequently disclose concerns about their pets before discussing their own abuse. By asking about animals in the home and showing genuine concern for their welfare, professionals can build trust and gather vital information about risk factors that might otherwise remain hidden. Yet these opportunities are often missed because domestic violence and animal welfare professionals operate in separate silos.

Maya's Animal Inclusive Safeguarding Practice Blueprint aims to bridge these gaps by integrating animal welfare considerations into existing domestic violence responses. This approach recognizes the human-animal bond as a crucial protective factor—especially against domestic abuse–related suicide—and works toward solutions that keep both humans and animals safe from harm.

Ready to improve your practice? Subscribe to our podcast for more insights on creating truly trauma-informed, domestic abuse–informed, whole-family approaches to domestic violence intervention that protect all family members—including those with paws, claws, fins, feathers, scales, and tails. 

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.

Ruth Reymundo:

and we're back, we're back. Hello there, hi. How are you? Who are you?

David Mandel:

we always act as a surprise. It's like we're two strangers that met somewhere. And now people spend all their time together and enjoy it. So you are listening to Partner with a Survivor. I am David Mandel, CEO and founder of the Savings Together Institute.

Ruth Reymundo:

And I am Ruth Reymundo Mandel and I am the co-owner and chief business development officer, and today we are talking about a subject which is difficult for a lot of people to talk about. Well, we talk about a lot of difficult subjects, but this is about animal abuse and coercive control. So, really looking at how animals are abused by perpetrators, often in conjunction with abusing humans in their lives as well, and that that is both a terrible injustice and cruelty and a crime towards those animals, but also it is a really serious indicator of a perpetrator with a serious and dangerous pattern, of course, of control.

David Mandel:

And we're going to tackle, I think, really a powerful issue, which is sort of the different emotional feelings people have about harmed animals, how people struggle with that, sometimes even at a higher level, or with more feeling or more struggles, you know, than even with abuse to adult survivors, for sure, and for children.

David Mandel:

You know, then, even with abuse to adult survivors, for sure, and for children, and then, we're going to get into that, because I think that's something that needs to be looked at in order to really address this issue, and I know I've seen it in my career.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah.

David Mandel:

You know we talked about before that we're both familiar with in one way or the other, and it's such a powerful and important subject.

Ruth Reymundo:

So do you want to do the landing now? Yeah, and then we'll roll in to introduce it, yeah.

David Mandel:

I just want to acknowledge that we are coming to you from Misako, tunxis land, which is also known as Connecticut and the Farmington River Valley, and we just want to acknowledge the traditional owners of land in Tunxis and Misako people and this land has been colonized. It's beautiful land, it's powerful land. Ruth and I, we have a well in the backyard of our house and sometimes we sit out there and just feel the energy of the land and the animals have been amazing this time of year and the trees are amazing and we just want to acknowledge the land, the traditional owners of the land and any indigenous elders past, present or emerging who are listening in wherever you are listening in from awesome and we are zooming in.

Ruth Reymundo:

Maya, adam, did I say that correctly? Yeah, absolutely, oh, yay, um, and she is coming to us from the uk and may do you want to introduce yourself and your work a little bit to our listeners?

Maya Badham :

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So, yes, I'm Maya and I run the Centre for Animal Inclusive Safeguarding and we've been going for a couple of years now and our mission is really to encourage professionals to be more professionally curious around the issue of the use of animals within interpersonal violence and abuse generally. But we do focus a lot on domestic abuse and coercive control, um, and we do that through education, uh, research and consultancy work, um, and I have a bit of an interesting background in that um. I have frontline experience working with survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, um, and then I also shifted in 2019 alongside that to start kind of qualifying and become very interested in kind of canine behaviour, well-being and animal psychology. So what I did then was I mashed the two to kind of together to try and create this response which includes animals in a meaningful way because ultimately, if you want to protect, you know people.

Maya Badham :

we have to also acknowledge how animals fit into that and also animals as kind of victims in their own right.

Ruth Reymundo:

Right, you know there's a lot of research and there's a lot of conversation in the child protection, domestic violence fields about animal abuse and its links to coercive control and its risk factor indicators, which is really important for us to know, to understand before we started rolling into the questions.

Ruth Reymundo:

And that is just to say that animals themselves have a right to live lives so terribly, either physically or sexually, which is often what happens, is the ideology that also justifies abuse of children and of other people to control them, so that while we're having this conversation and we're talking about it in the context of their human owners, that indeed we want to acknowledge that this is a crime in and of itself and that it is impactful. It's impactful to the person who's perpetrating it, in their mental health and stability and their social ability and their behavioral ability, and it's impactful to the animal and it's impactful to the humans around that animal. So I just wanted to kind of give that level set. So you've spoken, maya, about the links between animal abuse and coercive control in domestic abuse cases. Can you talk a little bit about how perpetrators use harm to animals and threats as part of their pattern of control?

Maya Badham :

yeah, yeah, sure, and I think you made a really important point there in terms of um, it's not just about kind of the, the, the oppressions link together, so we can't look at this in isolation. That in isolation it really has to be looked at as an intersectional issue and therefore our responses have to also be intersectional. And it's really important to acknowledge, like you say, that animals first of all have emotions. So in the UK we have the animal sentience act now from 2022, which formally recognized under law that certain animals have emotions, um, but I think about my own kind of research and um a kind of, I guess, bond with dogs in particular, and we know that dogs have a cognitive ability, of an emotional capacity of about a toddler. So, depending on breed, age, it's around between two and four.

Maya Badham :

So, um, when we see animals living in an environment where there's domestic abuse occurring, whether they are directly kind of at the the end of that or living in that environment, they should be seen similarly to children under the domestic abuse act in the uk as victims in their own right um, not witnesses. Um that there will be directly or indirectly um affected by the that um environment, and I think also, you made a really good point that there's loads of research around the issue, and I think that's true. What I've come up against with, uh, professionals is they have like a surface level understanding of it, so that kind of oh, we know those who harm animals are more likely to harm humans, but when you, when they, they don't dig any deeper than that and the crossover is kind of you can't really detangle it. If there is an animal in that, in that home or interacting with that family in some way, they will be being used in some way, even if it's not physical abuse. And so that links to your first question, which is around the different ways in which animals can be used. And I think we do default, like we do with humans, a lot to the physical element use, and I think we do default, like we do with with humans, a lot to the physical element um, so physical violence and abuse, so you know, hitting, kicking, all of those kinds of things.

Maya Badham :

But we also see is um very similar to how children are used, so that kind of um, neglect element, so um, and that kind of interruption of parenting ability, so the non-abusive caregiver to the animal being unable to give the love and care they want to the animal, maybe feed the animal, buy food for the animals. That economic abuse comes in there. Are they able to take the animal to the vet? Can they afford to take the animal to the vet? Are they prevented from doing x, x, y and z? So and it's the abuse is never kind of in isolation, it's all layered. So it's likely to be if there is physical abuse of the animal, that is also going to be maybe some form of economic abuse, um, as well, um.

Maya Badham :

And then I also talk a lot about how animals can be used within stalking behaviors, so tracking, uh, where the they've gone with the animal, which is why it's so important that we start when I talk about animal inclusive safeguarding.

Maya Badham :

It's often we don't include animals in protection orders, and then you know, we don't say, we say, oh yeah, you can't go to this house on this street or this school, but we don't include the vet clinic, we don't include the park where they walk the dog, and it's like, well, there's this massive loophole then which they can and will exploit. Um, so, yeah, yeah, in terms of stalking behaviours, and especially for those who have animals of like non non cats and dogs, so those who have, say, livestock or horses, in the UK a lot of the people that have horses don't have the facilities to have those at their home address, so they they have rent a stable or they rent a field, and so people are obviously attending their animals in isolated places, rent a field, and so people are obviously attending their animals in isolated places. And in the UK we have a. We have a case.

Maya Badham :

It was the Gracie Spinks case. She was it wasn't technically a domestic abuse related stalking, murder case because they were known. He was a ex-colleague, he wasn't a partner, ex-partner or family member, but he did, and why I use this as an example is he found out where she kept her horse. He staked the stables out in the field out over a period of time and then he did end up murdering her at the stables in the field, and so what he'd done is he'd weaponized that environment and her relationship with that horse to ultimately then end up taking her own life.

Ruth Reymundo:

I think it's so important to know the various strategies and patterns of domestic abus, animal and an owner. There's a couple of different layers here, and that is is that a perpetrator who's willing to display violence towards an animal is often doing so in a similar way as when they display violence towards a child or an inanimate object, because sometimes they don't view that animal as anything more than that, and that is a way for them to frighten and show their victims what they're willing to do. So there's that you want to.

David Mandel:

Well, there's a twist I have on that that I saw in my work when I did work with men. I had one man I worked with who told me this. He said he raised dogs I think German Shepherds and he said he loved his dogs but he got physically violent with them. And he said they know how much I love these animals and so I know I'm communicating to them that if I'm willing to do this to my dogs, I'm quite willing to do this to them. It was an interesting flip on that. I do think I've also seen where the animals get privileged over other family members. When we look at this, we need to again look at all the different ways we look at coercive control.

David Mandel:

We need to look at it through the same lens, which is picking one kid over another, picking one family member over another, putting other people down.

Ruth Reymundo:

Treating humans like an animal, like treating them like a dog or neglect and the neglect goes back to entrapment.

David Mandel:

And I know May you'll talk about about this, which is I can't leave you home alone with my kids. I can't leave you home alone with my dog or my cat to take care. I can't go away for for a long weekend to see my mom because I can't trust you to care. And I certainly can't go to refuge. I certainly can't leave if I don't find housing, a flat, somewhere else to go that will take animals. So we have to recognize that, like other things, it's not just the behavior of the perpetrator, but it's the way entrapment gets created by the lack of options. I can't go to rehab, I can't go to a substance program because I can't trust him to to look after an animal that I love. In fact, I have to believe he's going to leverage it or hurt it or neglect it while I'm gone.

Maya Badham :

Yeah, yeah, and I mean Bruce, point around that mirroring is really interesting. So what, what or what I'm hoping um some of my research will find when I'm starting my phd in october is we often see a mirroring of the typology where we see physical abuse. So, for example, with non-fatal strangulation, what we actually see a lot with um animals is strangulation, not kicking and hitting and punching, which is what people normally think of in terms of physical violence. Um, and obviously we know that that's a very common tactic that they'll use with um human, uh victim survivors, as well as non-fatal strangulation, um, so you do see this mirroring of abuse and also that dehumanization. Um, you know, perpetrators, as you know, see themselves as kind of here. Everyone else is under them. So, uh, because society already has an attitude towards animals, for the majority have an attitude that animals are lower than humans generally, when we see, and lots of our kind of um expletives around women are rooted in animal-based language. So snake, bitch, uh, pigs, why?

Maya Badham :

you know they're all yeah, yeah so, um, you see that, um dehumanization, and then you know when they might, um might, take away kind of someone's name or make them um. I mean, I had a client who was forced to live kind of outside in the shed. Um, like you were saying, david, the dog was actually allowed in, so the dogs had lots of freedom and lots of kind of nice relationship, but the human was kind of treated as people think animals are. And I think your point around you know he loves the dog but he also hurt the dog is also a wider kind of context of how we interact with animals a lot of the time as well, even with with dogs. So I do as well touch on how perpetrators of domestic abuse are more likely to use what we call aversive training methods. So they're much more likely to use prong collars, e collars, lead pops, uh, alpha rolls, um, they love the dominance theory, um, so, and that's rooted in a lot of aversive dog training methods, which is a terrible theory which has been debunked so many times.

Maya Badham :

Yeah, I don't know how many times it needs to be debunked Like seriously. It just hangs in there. Well, it's very.

David Mandel:

Alpha male the dog, which was all false.

Ruth Reymundo:

And then it was stunning People who are abusing animals. So you know, you know, I think one of the things for me is that sometimes and I just want to say this as a survivor Sometimes it's actually easier for victim survivors, whether they're children or they're adults, to disclose their concern for their pet or their animal before they disclose it for themselves, and so I really want to put a pin in that for practitioners that you may want, as a way to ask for information about a perpetrator's pattern, you may actually want to open the door first about the treatment of the perpetrator to the pets in the house, because that is something that most human victim survivors will be willing to disclose because they're concerned about it, and I know that even with you, I disclosed a lot of animal abuse things that I experienced before I got into the very difficult very intimate information about my own abuse as a child, because, to be honest with you, being a person who has to watch those things happen is incredibly impactful.

Ruth Reymundo:

It really does impact you, and the person who's perpetrating those behaviors is showing a high level of intentional psychopathy and desire to harm and torture, and so we really have to work that in to our risk assessments.

Maya Badham :

But I really want to point out that a lot of victim survivors are willing to talk first about the safety and well-being of their pets before they're willing to talk about themselves yeah, which is why it's so important, so, so so it's why I have a slight issue with the animal question on the risk assessment on the dash rick that we've got, because people will. The most common things people say to me when I talk about this issue is well, it's on the dash rick and it's like well, it's one question. It's phrased quite physically, abusively. So you're gonna get people when they think about harm, they're gonna think that rather than this economic abuse, uh, you know, um, emotional abuse and those kinds of things um, I I talk about the need for us to ask about the animal on intake. So when we're doing, uh, so at least in the uk, you know, you do your intake and you have kind of the adult victim survivor details, the perpetrators details, the child details.

Maya Badham :

I would love there to be a tab asks about the animals and it doesn't have to be you know the animal's date of birth and whether you know, you know when they last I don't know eight or something like that, but just kind of their name, their species, not not least because that will help you if you have to go to refuge later on. Why are we not asking here? Why are we waiting until here to get that information. But it also recognizes that animals are part of that family unit and the most common thing that survivors will talk about is that they'll describe the animal as family and that's why dav talked about, you know, as a barrier to leaving, because they are family members.

David Mandel:

It's interesting because I've been writing about risk assessment frameworks recently and how we need to modify them, expand them, not take away from the concern about immediate physical safety and lethality, but expand to a whole other range of worries to bring them more in alignment with the lived experience concern of survivors. So, for instance, really like worry about kidnapping, losing your kid, to child protection. I mean there's a whole range of things very child-centered, for instance, that those typically I'm not saying I'm familiar with every single one of them, but typically do not really ask a lot of questions around it. And here you're adding another worry, like if we're going to be truly survivor aligned, we really want to know what her risk assessment framework, what her calculus, what she cares.

David Mandel:

I think that's one of the fundamental problems, I think, with systems and we can have a longer conversation about that but they impose on survivors their definition of what they should be worried about and what we care about in terms of your worry and what we're gonna ask you about. And by doing that we kind of signal to you what's important and what's not important. And what you're saying really clearly, maya, is that our risk assessment frameworks need to sort of validate through the process of intervention and that this worry for your kids, obviously, but worry for your animal are legitimate and are relevant and germane if we want to help you and your kids be safer and be freer, because this is an area of harm, it's an area of danger, it's an area of entrapment, exactly, and entrapment, sometimes from the start.

Maya Badham :

So you know, when you look at the conditioning stage and if you're someone who it has animals or is very animal, um, or like an animal lover, you really have this, this thing for animals, they will find that out and then they will obviously mirror it and that's that conditioning. Then they'll normalize their uh view of the world and you'll see that that kind of flips then. So that weaponization of you think those are you like those animals more than me. That's weird. They'll, you know, paint that as um, that strength of empathy and compassion for animals as a weakness, um. So you see it all the way along the entrapment process and also within the um domestic homicide timeline, um. So I so I wrote um an amended version which is how animals feature in the eight stages to domestic homicide. Because even in like pre-relationship, we need to start looking, asking questions about animal like. Do they have a history of animal abuse? And this is where the animal welfare world doesn't really meet meaningfully with in early intervention, prevention and response in the human, domestic and kind of violence world.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, could you say why you think that is why they don't talk.

Maya Badham :

Yeah, um, I think I mean david had talked about systems and I think it's because originally they they came as separate. They've siloed approaches, that and even still in our policing. I know it might be slightly different in the US and some of the other countries, but in the UK we have this quite strict kind of well, police deal with human stuff and then we'll pass to RSPCA, so animal protection for the animal stuff, and then the animal people go well, we'll take the animal stuff and you can take the human stuff.

Ruth Reymundo:

And again, we're going to divide them up, divide them up, and it's just not that simple. You're not looking at it as a whole, right? No?

Maya Badham :

which is where the animal-inclusive safe guarding blueprint comes in, which is what I'm developing at the moment, which is a roadmap for and it's not about saying now we need a whole new thing for animals. We already have a coordinated community response. We already have, say, safe and together model. We have loads of models. We just need a little bit here, a little bit there. So what I'm focusing on mainly is, for example, in our national occupational standards for domestic and sexual violence, can we not just even have a standard? I don't need a whole separate standard, yeah, just to have something included. So, um, that's what I'm kind of targeting at the moment. Is this cross sector, um, kind of relationship building, which we know is important, like a multi-agency response. But animals have just been left out of that conversation, for you know you know I'm going to encourage some research here.

Ruth Reymundo:

I love encouraging research, I love dropping little seeds in people's ears and hoping someday somebody does a research project about it, and that is is is that there is a lot of evidence that and I'm going to it's this is very specific, this isn't general, but I think it will give us really good information. There's a lot of evidence that farmers in the United States, people who work on factory farms and factory animal farms, have extremely high rates of suicide. Environment that dehumanizes, that gives men in particular the justification for using violence against animals and against other people to control them and for them. Control is what they're about, because they're dealing with thousands of animals shoved into these buildings. Then we really have to wonder what that is doing to the mental health and well-being of those people who are working in those industries.

Ruth Reymundo:

And that is a work-related problem, that is an industry-related problem, right, and we love, at Safe and Together, to come at things not just from the individual perspective but to really look at what large models and belief systems and industries are pushing these type of dehumanizing behaviors are not addressing that as a workplace issue, a quality workplace issue or a criminal issue as well and how that impacts the families of those people. Because there's no way for you to have a person who is consistently and all day long cruel to animals and dehumanizes them and uses violence and not go home and have mental health and wellbeing issues and potentially also be using those behaviors at home, and that's we're allowing that to happen as a society. So I'd love somebody to kind of dig into that. That's my side quest.

Maya Badham :

And it's really interesting because witnessing animal abuse is now. We now have the United Nations General comment 26 under the united convention, the un conventional rights of the child. We came in in 2023. Um, I know the us is not a signatory we are the only, I just used to be, used to be us in somalia.

Ruth Reymundo:

Now we're the only country. That's just how bad. We were a big advocate and so yeah, that's a whole other story go ahead.

Maya Badham :

Yeah, just just to say we know where we are it's a really it was a really powerful piece of like added legislation to that because it formally recognized it the first time in international law that witnessing animal abuse and animal cruelty has a negative effect on children and they should be protected from witnessing. So that has ramifications for taking your children hunting um, um, cultural practices such as running with the bull, bulls and things like that, and um, just just then also the application to witnessing animal abuse within a domestic abuse context, which is arguably the most common that they're going to see, is that kind of neglect or cruelty towards animal.

David Mandel:

Yeah, you raise up an interesting point that connects back to something I was thinking about a moment ago, which was about, you know, if we kind of look so much at the dynamics around perpetrator use of animals, much like their use of kids, right, and they're being tight connections not only connections, but tight connections between kids and animals. You know, I've seen over my career some of the most victim blaming professionals were child protection advocates. You know child advocates, you know like doctors who would be treating kids who had been physically abused, and I was just thinking about, you know, your work with vets or veterinary practices and I'm wondering if they have the same struggle where they can be victim-blaming towards the adult survivor. In the context of conversation about, course, control, animal abuse, I don't know if you noticed, yeah you're like yes

Ruth Reymundo:

no, no, no, yeah, okay can you say something about that?

David Mandel:

can you? Because because I want to we want to hear about your work with, with, with, with the animal practitioners as well, because you can work helping, train them to be aware. But I'm imagining, once you get into it, that a lot of the victim blaming, a lot of the myths, a lot of the collusion with perpetrators, a lot of that may come up in that thing too. So can you talk about all that?

Maya Badham :

Yeah, absolutely so. Generally, people in the animal professions, they don't have a good grasp on domestic abuse, coercive control, safeguarding generally. Um, they're very scared of gdpr breaches or data protection breaches. So, um, a huge part of the training that I do on that is I'm picking you know, at least you know our legislation here in terms of if you have a concern, this is kind of the process and it's okay to kind of breach data protection. But I think, um, they do often have an um a kind of entrenched judgment on a kind of like you know, the whole failing to protect yeah, that's what I would say so they absolutely have an entrenched kind of um belief that, uh, victim survivors are complicit or um, or um, you know, failing to protect the animal.

Maya Badham :

Yeah, um, absolutely, and and I train um as well. So I created the first qualification. It's the level two award in understanding safeguarding for pet professionals, and most of the people so far I've done that training are dog behaviorists, dog groomers and kind of canine physiotherapists, because, um, I was targeting also those professionals that go into homes, right, so, vets, they don't necessarily often go into homes, normally people go to them, but there are a whole realm of professionals in the animal sector that do go into homes. Normally people go to them, but there are a whole realm of professionals in the animal sector that do go into homes and so they're perfectly placed in some regards to um spot the signs in in, like the family, because they work with whole families as well. So, for example, the animal, the dog behaviorists, they will work with the children in the home, the adults in the home, and so, um, for example, and once you, once you turn their like eyes open to the science, they will tell stories for days. So you know, even as simple as um one of the behaviorists told me about. They've been called in to see a client.

Maya Badham :

The dog was jumping up a lot. So first of all that's an anxiety. A lot of the time it's a stress and anxiety thing and they'll often do it to the secure attachment. So what we're actually doing now is like taking a lot of child development stuff and looking at how it applies to our relationships with mainly dogs in my, in my, because they're my kind of special area and a lot of it just maps so easily. And dogs are not children I'm not saying that they are, but that they are very similar in lots of ways.

Maya Badham :

So that jumping up often is a, a seeking behavior. So they're seeking comfort and and support, um, and so she was calling because the dog was jumping up a lot, um, and so she would put you know, say you know, here's how to encourage the dog not to jump up, and the perpetrator or the partner would interrupt that. So in order for things, the behavior change to occur, has to be consistent, right? So everybody needs to follow the behavior plan, a modification plan, and so he would continually interrupt that. Um, and from a safety perspective, they, they wanted to.

Maya Badham :

She wanted the dog to stop jumping up because they couldn't have elderly visitors, they couldn't have people with disabilities, because the dog is a risk. Therefore it's additional isolation because they weren't managing that behavior. He knew that, so he was. So that is a classic example of that's not physical violence towards the animal, it's potentially not even emotional abuse towards the animal, but it's creating a, a barrier for the human from many, many different ways. And then the dog behaviours. Eventually they will kind of have this attitude of victim blaming so you're not following the behaviour plan, so you're the problem, so I can't help you anymore.

Ruth Reymundo:

Rather than seeing the perpetrator yeah, rather than seeing the perpetrator intentionally interrupting the behavioral plan just like we see perpetrators interrupting medical plans for children or mental health plans for the adult survivor or substance misuse plan.

Ruth Reymundo:

You know it's so funny because if you look at the way that that people who use control and use violence, they will use any tool around them. Anything that the victim loves, cares about, is attached to making, particularly around staying or leaving the relationship. And how can professionals and systems support them better without forcing them to choose between their safety and their pet, their animals, their family animals?

Maya Badham :

Yeah, yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, that's kind of at the center of what we do at the Center for Animal Inclusive Safeguarding. So I think, first of first of all, there's this almost like cognitive dissonance that lots of professionals have, because many professionals have animals so they know with their animal the strength of their bond they do, but they somehow come to work and that just fizzles away that kind of understanding and empathy and that that power of the human animal bond is just kind of just gone, which I've always found a little bit baffling. But it's why it's so important to acknowledge the depth of the relationship in that human animal bond, especially for those who have gone through adversity with their animal, because that bond is arguably 10 times stronger and it's reciprocal. So what our research also says now is is that, um, that non-abusive relationship is just as important to the animal because animals are emotional being as it is to the human, and we know that animals are a protective factor in terms of domestic abuse related suicide. So again, just coming just skipping forward a bit to your question around inclusion in systems, I've been doing a lot of work around why are we not including the human animal bond in, like suicide prevention.

Maya Badham :

Like you know, um, my good friend now, tim, um, he won't mind me saying he he did a massive piece of research and um, and he came up with like 66 ways to uh, prevent domestic suicide. Animals were not mentioned once. And so I contacted him and I said oh you know, did you think about animals at all? And now we're doing some joint training? But that's a classic example. That just not, and that's huge. That's massive it is.

Ruth Reymundo:

It's a massive barrier.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, you know it's.

Ruth Reymundo:

It's so common that that people who are first of all forced to flee their homes like I just want to really say this in the most reality aligned way possible that victims of crimes are forced to flee and abandon their homes and resources because we will not deal with the perpetrator barriers that are created, whether or not that be a family pet that cannot come, that they're afraid that that perpetrator will harm or will murder, or it is a male child who's a teenager who's not allowed to go to that refuge because they're a male child who's a teenager and that refuge considers all boys of that age to be some type of risk factor.

Ruth Reymundo:

We are putting a lot of impediments in the way with our practices and policies, which are often focused very narrowly.

Ruth Reymundo:

They are not pattern-based, they're very incident-based and we are not asking victim survivors about their reality. And that's where the partnering comes in, where we should be asking more open ended questions rather than just tick box yes or no risk assessment questions. We should be asking about if there's a pet in the home and if they have any fears about that pet and then letting them articulate what their fears may be and, if they do, you know, walking down that path with them and asking them more about the perpetrator's pattern of behavior and if they've ever displayed any type of those behaviors towards inanimate objects or pets or human beings, because that's going to give us a lot of information about the risk and danger that they have and the things that are important to them, which we need to directly address, because we're the professionals, we're the adults in the room. We need to be very brave and very much exploratory and directly uncover those things that are real attachments that the perpetrator would and could and does use.

David Mandel:

Yeah, so, meg, you know, on that vein of sort of reaching professionals and helping them support survivor decision-making and weaving in this idea of how do you partner with a survivor who has a pet that they're concerned about or care about, you know, and you know, just like you partner with somebody who has kids. Can you talk a little? We were talking a little about this before we came on the air about, and Ruth and I will talk about. We read something about human beings being complex and contradictory.

Maya Badham :

You know and we really love.

David Mandel:

We've adopted that as sort of a motto to some degree. You know that human beings are complex and contradictory and we were talking before we came on the air with you about the complex and so contradictory attitudes people, including professionals, may have to, how they struggle, maybe even more, with abuse to pets, or maybe they minimize the abuse to pets, maybe they elevate the abuse to humans, maybe they see the pets as innocent victims, maybe they don't see the humans as innocent victims. I mean, it's just, it's sort of this in my mind, when mind, when I start thinking about it, just feels like it requires a little moment to slow it down and pull it apart.

Maya Badham :

Can you talk about your experience of that sort of values, clarification maybe, and yeah I don't know how else to say it yeah, I think you know, arguably it's, it's, I can tell a story. So so I, I won't, I won't, I won't name the person, but I I met with someone. I connected with them through LinkedIn. I was really interested in their work and how it could be. You know, we could work together collaboratively to to to kind of think about an animal inclusive approach. And I met with her and she she admitted to me at the end because now we're good friends actually. But she said, you know, when you first reached out to me, I was kind of like not interested, I didn't want to meet with you, I wasn't kind of invested in what you had to say. I'm not really an animal person. She said, you know, I don't have pets. I never had pets. I don't really understand the pet relationship. The pet relationship, um, but once we'd had a conversation about how you can't protect people, adults and children, because she said something to me, like I'm too concerned with the children and like protecting them, to care about the, and I said, but you can't, they cannot be intrinsically separated from each other. And so once we'd had that conversation about, like you know, child mental health and how animals fit into that, and, um, you know pets as a protective factor and um, and risk, and just how closely it all aligns um, at the end you know she said she's completely, she didn't understand and uh, now she's one of the biggest champions of our work and in one conversation she'd gone from that to that and I would say a lot of the um. That's not an uncommon conversation that I've had and I think it's rooted partly in a species world, so speciesist world. So we, we live in a world where we, even those of us who love animals, still have a hierarchy. So, um, it's a bit of an offside, but I wrote something called the um, the compliance, the partnership planet model to living with dogs. It's quite similar to kind of power and control model, except that, um, it's mainly rooted in unintentional. So my model is rooted in people influenced how they behave with animals, but it's not an intent. They don't intentionally harm. That's separate to those who do intentionally harm. Um, but until we shift that and that links to that chart how we view children as well. So I really don't believe that until we see kind of children and kind of amplify the voice of children, we won't be able to voice the voice of animal, and so that's why it's so intrinsically linked. But, um, we absolutely do, kind of.

Maya Badham :

They either come of it from two angles one, they like animals and therefore they don't want to hear it, because they don't want to hear about animal cruelty and abuse and and violence towards animals. They're the kind of people that will say, oh, I'm the, I turn off the movie if the dog died. You know they talk about like that. And then you have those a bit like the woman I just talked about, where they don't understand or appreciate the human animal bond and so therefore they don't include it and a lot of it is unintentional not including it because it's not something that's entrenched.

Maya Badham :

If you look at your average domestic abuse training, your qualifications in domestic abuse and sexual violence, animals mainly feature in the risk as like one line in the risk assessment and really it's it's so much deeper than that, which is why you know our training um, we developed the pause champions program in the first place was mirroring that domestic abuse champions, wanting people to just have that professional curiosity about animals, um, and kind of ask in the same. So in the training week what you were saying, ruth. I encourage people to ask about the animal because you can get loads of kind of information about economic abuse stalking page as it links to the animal because it will um, so, so really, it's just a. It's just people will talk about. Someone asked me what's my, my biggest bugbear? Um, my biggest bugbear at the minute is people saying, uh, we need to use a whole family and a whole systems approach, and they're not including leave animals out, yeah yeah, that's my biggest bugbear I totally get that.

David Mandel:

So one more question before we wrap up, which offer this? Which is the, the other version of this, this complex and contradictory, which is people who. How you handle it when people get more angry at the animal abuse you know. You see online, like if an animal something happens to animal, there's public animal abuse, the outcry in the news or in the comments or the rage that you'll see from people. You will not see it when a woman is murdered. You will not see it with adult domestic violence. So can you tell me how you deal with the flip side, which is that sort of intense imbalance towards caring about the animal from the professional and appearing to care less about the human?

Maya Badham :

Yeah, well, I think it's rooted in victim blaming attitudes because, um, with animals, um, most people kind of understand or see them. I think you said before as like in a completely innocent they, that there's nothing they can do to warrant that the behavior, whereas in with humans, we have things like just world theory, which is you must have done something to deserve this and and I think it's rooted a lot of it in in that, um, and it's just the animal world and attitudes towards animals is so fascinating, I think. What did you just say? Complicated, complex, what did what?

David Mandel:

was the same, complex and contradictory.

Maya Badham :

That's not our phrase that's an indigenous phrase yeah you know, I mean, that is exactly if you look at kind of the animal, you've got people who do care about animals, people that don't care about animals, those who care about animals in certain contexts and not in other contexts, and it's just layered and layered and layered and and it it's. But on the whole, when you look at the kind of people that get really upset about animal abuse, it tends to be rooted in that, um, viewing them as kind of completely innocent, undeserving, vulnerable.

David Mandel:

Fully dependent.

Maya Badham :

Yeah, fully dependent which we don't apply a lot of the time as a society onto kind of adult and children, human beings.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, we're very willing to blame children and adults, especially adult women assuming that they have done something to warrant that violence.

Ruth Reymundo:

Well, let's, we're really grateful that you came on and, you know, lent us your expertise and I really hope that this helps our professionals all around the globe to really land a whole family approach, which means including the pets in the family as part of that. But what would what? Just really quickly, what would you want to tell professionals working across social care, child protection, domestic violence? You know, what would you want to tell them based on your expertise?

Maya Badham :

expertise. I think I always end um my training centering around the importance of critical thinking and professional curiosity. Um, because um and I think it links back to what david was saying is that sometimes we are so um boxy, so this is, this is, this is the neat little box and we expect women and children and survivors to fit into that. And it's kind of exactly the same with with animals is just widening in our lens a little bit and just being more um aware and inclusive and understanding um that you know, a fully trauma-informed approach, a fully whole family approach, cornea, community response, whatever you want to call it. If you really want to protect people effectively, risk assess, manage, perpetrators' behaviour, you have to also come at it from an animal inclusive perspective.

Maya Badham :

Just from a statistical point of view, you know, in the UK at least 60% of households have a companion animal, often more than one, of more than one species. Um, so when you cross that with the fact that you know there's well that the new statistics something like 12.3 million people aged over 16 that the crossover is just too large to be ignored. So my biggest kind of takeaway is, if there is an animal living in a home where there's domestic abuse, that animal matters. That animal is being affected, that animal is part of that family and we need to make sure that we are, you know, practicing what we preach in terms of of safety as much as possible and um, I'm not don't think we're going to get systems change overnight. Um, but the the you know that, which is why the animal inclusive safeguarding blueprint is so important, because you know we're looking at early intervention, prevention, housing, policing, social services. You know, every single element um needs to have an animal inclusive element included within it to to work yeah, that's great.

Ruth Reymundo:

And then you know, mayo, what would you say to survivors, uh, who maybe, maybe, have witnessed or have lost a pet, or who are afraid to leave you know their perpetrator, because they have nowhere to go with their, their pet?

Maya Badham :

um, I would say that don't let anyone tell you that your relationship with your animal doesn't matter and minimize it um, and that you're doing the best you can for your animal, just like people do with their children um, and it's not your fault if that animal gets um harmed or neglected um, whilst you're with that person, there are um, there are some avenues to escape with animals. So in the uk we have the pet fostering um system at the moment which we could talk about. Another whole um whole other episode in terms of like um separation, because it's still separation which I find so infuriating that these schemes are amazing. You know they need to exist at the moment, but it's still traumatic to be separated from your animal and for your animal to be separated from you. You know when when um you use the. You know those systems, but they do exist and it's an imperfect.

David Mandel:

It's an imperfect system in an imperfect world, um, but there are routes out there, there are support systems out there and we'll keep fighting to change that wonderful yeah, ma'am, thank you so much for you know, for everybody listening, we're having this great conversation with maya badham about safeguarding animals and integrating and families and families in an integrated, truly whole family, truly whole system way, and we'll be posting more links to Maya's work on our show notes. So thank you, maya very much, and you've been listening to. Partnering with a Survivor.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yep, and you're still David Mandel.

David Mandel:

You're still David Mandel and if you like this podcast, please share it, please subscribe to it on whatever platform you're on. If you want more information, go to safetyoftheotherinstitutecom. If you want more immediate access to e-learning or some more tools, like our Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool, go to academysafetyoftheotherinstitutecom and check out my book, which we haven't mentioned in a while Stop. Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers. And with that we are out.