Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
This podcast is a series of conversations.
What started as a series of intimate conversations between Ruth and David that ranged from personal to professional experiences around violence, relationships, abuse, and system and professional responses which harm, not help, has now become a global conversation about systems and culture change. In many episodes, David and Ruth are joined by a global leader in different areas like child safety, men and masculinity, and, of course, partnering with survivors. Each episode is a deep dive into complex topics like how systems fail domestic abuse survivors and their children, societal views of 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 together as professionals, as parents, and as partners. During these podcasts, David and Ruth challenge the notions which keep all of us from moving forward collectively as systems, as cultures, and as families into safety, nurturance, and healing.
We hope you join us.
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Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
Season 6 Episode 14: Violent Crime & Religion: How Religious Teachings Are Used as Justification for Child Abuse
Religious teachings wield profound influence over family dynamics and human behaviors, sometimes enabling abuse under the guise of spiritual teachings and guidance. This raw and revealing conversation confronts the troubling legacy of religious parenting methodologies that promote violence, rights removal, and coercive control rather than nurturing safe, consensual connection.
Ruth shares her personal experience growing up under the influence of James Dobson's parenting teachings, exposing how these "Christian" parenting strategies actually originated from eugenicist theories of the 1930s. David and Ruth dissect how these methodologies create detailed systems for child abuse by advocating for escalating physical punishment, demeaning, demanding affection after violence, and treating children as inherently manipulative or "demonic." Most disturbing is how these approaches specifically target vulnerable children, with neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ youth suffering disproportionately under these regimes of violence and control.
The conversation explores how religious justifications for violence extend beyond parenting into marital relationships, where men are positioned as divinely appointed authorities with the right to abuse and control women. This creates intergenerational patterns where violence becomes the primary coping tool for men and women for managing anxiety, fear, and situations where one feels out of control. David and Ruth challenge these distortions of faith, emphasizing that "coerced faith is not faith" and that true spirituality requires free will and personal dignity.
For professionals working with families, this episode highlights the importance of going beyond trauma-informed approaches to understand how religious values shape family dynamics and entitlement for coercion and abuse. For those currently practicing these methods because they believe them spiritually necessary, there's an invitation to question whether these approaches truly reflect deeper values and support healthy, long-term connections to partner, parent, and pastor or simply perpetuate trauma and harm.
Join this eye-opening discussion on how we can recognize, resist, and heal from religiously justified abuse while creating healthier spiritual environments for ourselves and future generations. Visit safeandtogetherinstitute.com to learn more about domestic abuse–informed approaches that create safety and dignity for all family members.
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.
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And we're back and we're back Hi. Hi, good morning Good morning. It is morning. Good morning it is morning it is.
David Mandel :We're outside today. This is a lovely fall day here in Tunxis Mossacco land, yeah, and we are just honoring indigenous elders and custodians of the land. Before we get started, I'm David Mandel, ceo and founder of the Safe
Ruth Reymundo :And I'm Ruth Ramundo Mandel and I'm the co-owner and chief business development officer.
David Mandel :Yeah, and today is an interesting episode. Why is that? Well, I think it starts with a little bit in the news.
Ruth Reymundo :It does and we'll see where it goes.
David Mandel :But in the news this morning, you and I start talking often as we do these podcasts, and you woke up.
Ruth Reymundo :Boy, howdy, you're going to get full on Ruth and David this morning.
David Mandel :Yeah, we're going to ramble. You woke up and you. I found out that somebody Dr James, we're going to say it.
Ruth Reymundo :I don't like using Dr James Dobson.
David Mandel :James Dobson.
Ruth Reymundo :Is dead.
David Mandel :Is dead and that had impact on you and it was a name I know as well because he was founder of Focus on the Family Right. But you had a particular experience and we're going to be talking today about a topic that some people may struggle with, to be honest, but I think is so important, which is the influence of what I'm going to say is so-called spiritual and religious teachings on parenting and our relationship dynamics, and I think, for me, one of the things that we're going to tackle is that there's a tendency to look towards psychological explanations when there's abuse and violence.
Ruth Reymundo :Right.
David Mandel :But what today's show, I hope, lays bare is there's often multiple factors, and one of those factors can be religious doctrine, religious teachings about relationship and parenting.
Ruth Reymundo :Yeah.
Ruth Reymundo :All right, well, let me set up for the reader what James Dobson's philosophy of parenting was. And James Dobson was influenced by a eugenicist in the 1930s who believed in white supremacy and was an advocate for sterilizing black, mexican and indigenous women forcibly to prevent them from procreating. And he also advocated for the use of violence to instill compliance in children and in women to men. And Dr James Dobson from Focus on the Family, who is an evangelical Christian, adapted these teachings to Christianity and created a methodology which is basically a handbook for child abuse and abuse and coercive control and domestic violence in the home and a lot of people who grew up in the 1980s his children, were harmed because of these theories and he's definitely not the only one.
Ruth Reymundo :But some of the basic tenets of his theories are that children are manipulative, toddlers are little tyrants and that parents have to discipline them physically, to have to discipline them physically to teach them obedience, christian obedience, and he directly advocated for the physical abuse of children, physical violence towards children.
Ruth Reymundo :He talked openly about animal abuse as a strategy for himself for training his dog into compliance, and he is a really big proponent of male coercive control and the right of religious men to use violence to instill faith-based behaviors and some of the really extreme pieces of his teaching were that if a child was to cry when they were being abused, that you were to re-abuse them, that there was an element of sexual demeaning to it because it was supposed to be done on bare skin, a bare bottom, taking down their clothes and making them bend over and abusing them. It was supposed to be done methodically, routinely and with intent, and the perpetrator of the violence was supposed to demand physical affection after the violence happened. And if the child cried or didn't give that physical affection or became cold towards their abuser, then they were to be beaten again.
David Mandel :There's so much in what you're saying and I'm going to back up to the beginning of what you said, which was that Dobson's teachings, which got formatted in a Christian parenting advice came from an atheist, originally Right, who is a eugenics, thinking that infected the world in the 20s and 30s and it was really the Nazis'. Look to the US to be honest.
Ruth Reymundo :And that's happening again.
David Mandel :You know, and so this has lots of ramifications and this sounds like some of the child-raising practices that I remember learning at one point in Nazi Germany, right, so that there's a connection between not only what happens in the home but possibly the wider political context as well.
Ruth Reymundo :Well, it's also in the institutional church, because in child care settings that are within these religious institutional settings, these methodologies are adopted. And one of the things I would like to say, because I am a neurodivergent person and I am a person who is bisexual, is that the Australian child maltreatment study really showed that children who are neurodivergent or may have non-binary sexuality experience all domains of child abuse at accelerated rates, and my body is reflective of that. I am a constellation of injuries from my childhood from being treated this way and that was very methodical, it was very systematic and that's called torture. To be honest with you, and especially when you have a neurodivergent child whose coping mechanisms, whose sensory sensitivities, whose neural pathways mean that they don't behave compliantly when there's violence or threats of violence that we shut down, or they become defiant or become silently resistant or may become overtly resistant, or when you're a toddler or a young child, you have a tantrum right, then those behaviors are targeted and those children are severely beaten, they're severely abused, they're severely isolated, they're severely denied food in those settings and I really this is just torture of children.
Ruth Reymundo :The United States that this has really become a global phenomenon, that if you have these religious circles in your country. They are adopting these parenting I don't even these child abuse methodologies for compliance and that we know that from such methodologies like there's a couple called the Pearls, similar to Dr James Dotson, and they teach that when a child is a small infant, you start putting them on a blanket and if that child crawls off the blanket or toddles off the blanket, you hit them, or toddles off the blanket, you hit them. You hit them first with your hands and then there's increasing increments of time of hitting and implements of hitting right up to them, recommending that parents use electrical cord to beat their children, and these methodologies have been linked to children's deaths. But it is just absolutely appalling that they continue to circulate in these spiritual and religious environments and they are not only giving justification for extreme child abuse and child maltreatment but they are giving a handbook for them.
David Mandel :Right For me. There's so much going on in my mind when I think about it. One is the depth of the conditioning right, because you're describing classical conditioning you step off or you crawl off the blanket, we're going to hit you. If you crawl off again, we're going to hit you worse. And so it really is this very basic conditioning that's trying to teach the child to act a certain way using violence, using force, escalating violence and force. And then the part you said earlier about dobson, which was demanding that the child show you physical affection afterwards and we can talk about gaslighting, we can talk about you know. I think it's so important to understand these patterns of these things, which is not only did I abuse you, not only did I demand your submission now.
David Mandel :You've got to successfully show that you're either grateful or that you love me, or you appreciate me.
Ruth Reymundo :I think it's actually much more insidious than that, because at least in Dobson's theories he centers, he literally calls children demonic.
David Mandel :Mm, hmm.
Ruth Reymundo :He does, and the victims of their demonism are the parents and religion. It's a real flipping of the power dynamic where you make a child the problem which justifies your overt physical violence, verbal violence, sexual violence and coercive control, but he makes a mandate that if you don't beat your child, that you're giving in to the devil.
David Mandel :Well, let's put this in context even further, which is that in a religion in this case we're talking about Christianity, but we could be talking about other religions as well yeah, that, not only is you saying the child seems demonic, but it's in the car, but the lack of violence is some type of sinful being Right. But also so it's the requirement of the parents. But let's make it even more pointed the head of the household in these situations is usually dictated to be a man.
Ruth Reymundo :It's always the man Right, it's always the man.
David Mandel :So the man's in charge of. So even if the woman's doing the behavior, it's the man who's in charge of the entire dynamic. Yeah, and we see that also in a lot of these guides to abuse. They're often aligned with misogynistic and sexist views of women.
Ruth Reymundo :Right theories, to Dobson's and the pearls, that also justify physical abuse to women because they're essentially property, morally subservient and spiritually subservient to men. And if you read about particular and this is in the United States, but this is also in every environment where these extreme religious beliefs exist, whether it be in Christianity, in Islam, in Judaism, you name it, whatever religion that women also must submit to men. There are whole chat communities of Christian conservatives that share both child addicted to violent pornography which a lot of these Christian men are very addicted to violent pornography, to child sexual abuse, pornography, to child abuse material online that they use religion as a justification for demanding their partners submit to violence and their children submit to violence from them and their partner. But it's really important for you to place in these methodologies that one of the things that felt revolutionary to people was Dr James Dobson and the Pearls very much encouraged men as parents to be the physical disciplinarians.
David Mandel :Well, the classic and I grew up with this even way to your father gets home. You know a lot of these things, you know kind of show up in popular culture. What I want to do is talk a little bit to my mental health and my professional colleagues for a second, because as you're talking, ruth, there's so much here, that's you know about this idea, that and I talk in my book about how we can't just be trauma-informed, we have to be domestic violence-informed, and in this case it means really understanding the, the values, the direction to behave in a certain way, the, the, the dangers, when I think we sort of look at things or look for things like child sexual abuse done by strangers and we kind of fixate on that or we fixate on the trauma right, I want to put a situation I want to just kind of put a pin in there, because a lot of people think of child sexual abuse as pleasure.
Ruth Reymundo :They're wrong. Most child sexual abuse that I experienced as a child was about violence to my genitalia and violent invasion of my orifices, right right Under the guise of religious discipline, religious education or quote-unquote medical treatments in an institution when there was other applicable medical treatments. So when you really need to bust the notion that child sexual abuse is some pleasure-oriented thing, it's actually very sadistic Right. There's a lot of pain involved because those men don't believe that giving pleasure is something that they can do and they don't actually want that. They may want to get sadistic pleasure out of harming a child's genitals.
David Mandel :Right, it isn't those things that we often think it is. And if you want to do a deep dive at some point, you know particularly about the US but other places, about the history around trying to control sexuality and sex and how it shows up. You know, oddly, I'm thinking about, like graham crackers, you know which is going to feel like out of left field for people. But there's this whole body of thinking that tries to prescribe and control pleasure through what you eat. For me, it's this idea of saying to folks who are really kind of looking to say well, I'm trauma-informed.
Ruth Reymundo :I'm trauma-informed.
David Mandel :Does your view of assessment and considering these families look at values and look at what is really going to present, or try to present as mainstream values and people may feel uncomfortable and we'll often think about well, do people go to Christian counselors or religious counselors?
Ruth Reymundo :Yeah.
David Mandel :Mainstream. Therapists need to really be comfortable exploring the values and behaviors associated with different religious organizations, groups.
David Mandel :And theories and ask questions, parenting methodologies and be curious Does your religion, teach you anything specifically about how to raise a child and to discipline them, and that's the word you need to start to use, even if the discipline is abuse, the way in is going to be discipline, or how you relate to your partner, or how you resolve conflicts with your partner. All these things are not what fit into the concept of trauma-informed, but they're very important if you're assessing for domestic violence, because we know that this abuse of kids, abuse of adults, control and the taking away of dignity and I think this is what's so important about coercive control as a concept and about a human rights perspective is you know that you're demeaning somebody, you're taking away their dignity, you're taking away their privacy You're controlling them at the most— You're taking away their ability to move through.
Ruth Reymundo :Taking away their privacy, you're controlling them, You're taking away their ability to move through the world freely. That's right. Their most intimate things are being invaded, and I have a whole historical perspective on this. But the belief that coercing compliance with faith-based behavioral concepts is going to bring about somebody's spiritual good and bring them to heaven is absolutely insane. Coerced faith is not faith. Faith is freely chosen. And even in the New Testament, right when you read about Mary consenting to God now we can have all sorts of debates about that power dynamic right there, but she had to say yes.
Ruth Reymundo :Right that she wanted to give birth to the son of God. So really, what has happened is that this theory of control has completely stripped people of their autonomy, self-determination and free will. And even if you go all the way back to the beginning, in the beginning was the word there was free will. To the beginning In the beginning was the word there was free will. Adam and Eve had in the Bible story, a choice they made Right. Do not have the right and we do not produce faith, we do not produce goodness when we remove the ability of a being to choose their own beliefs, how to embody themselves and how they're going to live their life.
David Mandel :That's very powerful to live their life. That's very powerful and I think this is uh so critical for for professionals to understand this, and we hope that that folks who grew up with this or in that environment now find this validating. And and um helps you feel seen, because I think there's a tremendous amount of gas lighting that really goes along with this. Be a good, whatever Christian helps you feel seen, because I think there's a tremendous amount of gaslighting that really goes along with this Be a good, whatever Christian, be a good.
Ruth Reymundo :Muslim be a good.
David Mandel :Jew be a good you know, this is how we do it, this is what God wants, this is God's plan, this is God's love. And again, you know, people have always asked me well, and again you know, people have always asked me well, how you know what's the grooming process for domestic violence? Well, this is part of it.
Ruth Reymundo :It's cultural.
David Mandel :It's cultural. You know that violence is God's will, that submission is God's will, that there's something wrong with you that somebody else has to fix or has to be your problem and you have to be fixed from the outside.
Ruth Reymundo :That somebody else has to fix or has to be your problem and you have to be fixed from the outside. Well, it's this very insidious belief that violence will bring about society which is functional, which is responsible, which is safe, and it won't responsible, which is safe and it won't. And over and over again we've seen, when there are governments that are violent, that harm their populations, that starve their populations, that use their populations to to enact these horrible domineering and domination agendas, that people flee those environments as soon as they possibly can, and those governments have to work really hard to keep people there and compliant, tremendous amount of effort goes into that. And so these type of behaviors do not bring about, they're not beneficial to us as societies or as families. But I think one of the things that I really want to put a pin in is that this is truly just torture.
Ruth Reymundo :People are torturing children methodically, systematically, without empathy, and particularly children who are not neurotypical are going to bear the greatest burden of this. They're going to have the most physical injuries and they are going to have the most incidences of sexual injury, most incidences of sexual injury. But if you think about that, training throughout generations and over time, that is our intergenerational trauma. We then emulate those behaviors of control because those are the strategies we've been taught, and the people who grow up in those environments have very little ability at emotional and behavioral self-regulation without violence and coercion, because those are the only two tools that they have to feel in control when they feel out of control to pacify their anxiety, when they feel anxious to control children who feel defiant to them and when they're afraid.
David Mandel :So maybe this is a good way to wrap up with a complimentary point to what you just said, because I think we're teaching. You're absolutely right. This gets handed down from generation to generation and this is intergenerational trauma and sometimes we know our parents and grandparents went through it and sometimes we don't and we just live with the effects. I'm thinking about that. There's another strand to pull on here, potentially, which is that if anybody's listening to this, who grew up in that environment and is replicating it or is being taught it now, because they believe and this is what I want to say that to be a good whatever a good Christian, a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Hindu, a good that you have to engage in these behaviors to your kids or your partner, but you are uncomfortable with this, that there's something inside you that says I don't agree with this, or I don't like this, or this doesn't feel good in my body and I don't like the pain it's causing somebody else. My invitation is listen to that voice inside yourself.
Ruth Reymundo :Consider the possibility that what you're being taught as values may not be the best thing for you and the people you love and know that. You will destroy your connection to your children, to your partner, to your family, and you will actually be the cause of the disunion, the divorce, the non-contact. You are the cause of it if you're doing that.
David Mandel :And this is a topic for another day, which is more and more I'm spending time and I'm writing about this. So if you want to look at my LinkedIn page, you know other places our blog posts about men and depression and men's suicide, and that's clearly tied to men's patriarchal attitudes and beliefs and disruption of relationships.
Ruth Reymundo :Male loneliness.
David Mandel :Male loneliness and that we know that there's a connection between perpetrating domestic abuse and violence and disruption of relationships and loneliness and therefore suicide.
Ruth Reymundo :And I'm not suggesting it's a one-to-correlation and that male loneliness is ill health. It's cardiovascular. It's mental illness, it's suicide. So men are being impacted by this deeply. That's cardiovascular, it's mental illness, it's suicide.
David Mandel :So men are being impacted by this deeply. That's right, and I really want to speak to both, because we need to get better at talking about both, never losing sight of the impact on victim survivors, but really saying that if we really address those behaviors, we're not only creating safety and better outcomes for people who've been victim survivors or might be, but we're also lifting up the people who are perpetrating or could be, and this is not a zero-sum game.
Ruth Reymundo :No, it's not, and governments should protect themselves against these extreme versions of religion being embedded in their schools and in their delivery of vulnerable care. They should really protect themselves against that leaking into their policy and into laws, because it is just overt, systematic support for violence and abuse so on that note, I know you and I discussed a different topic as an add-on, but this one line next time, put it, put a pin in it.
David Mandel :We're going to talk about prophetic anger. I love it. Prophetic anger is is a uh, a wonderful topic. I mean it doesn't sound like a wonderful topic, but a a wonderful topic. We'll be talking about that soon. I really enjoyed doing one of our OG kind of like.
Ruth Reymundo :I can't say I'm happy we spoke.
David Mandel :This is a tough topic. It's a tough topic.
Ruth Reymundo :Because my family did adopt this philosophy.
David Mandel :Yeah, I know it's just terrible. I know You're always sitting in the middle of it as we talk about these things. You're always sitting in the middle of it as we talk about these things and I really appreciate that and I know why you do it. You know you do it for our audience.
Ruth Reymundo :And you do it to speak your truth. I do it because it's reality and I'm just naming what's real and everybody else, I hope, will start to pivot to see what's real and what's not working and we move it out of our spaces.
David Mandel :Right, so maybe that's the subtitle of the podcast. It's not just Partner the Survivor, it should be called what's Real.
Ruth Reymundo :What's Real.
David Mandel :Talking about what's real. So I am still David Mandel, CEO and founder of the Safe and Together Institute.
Ruth Reymundo :And I'm still Ruth Ramundo Mandel, still David Mandel, ceo and founder of the Safe and Together Institute, and I'm still Ruth Ramundo Mandel, and you've been listening to, partnered with a Survivor, and if you'd like to learn more about the Safe and Together model, you can go to safeandtogetherinstitutecom. If you'd like to take some training to learn more about how to work with domestic violence perpetrators and children when the children are in the home, please go to academysafeandtogetherinstitutecom.
David Mandel :Okay.
Ruth Reymundo :And we're out Out, thank you.