Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 6 Episode 15: When Seeking Safety Makes You More Vulnerable: Migrant Survivors' Dilemma

• Ruth Reymundo Mandel & David Mandel • Season 6 • Episode 15

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The weaponisation of immigration status has become a powerful tool in the arsenal of domestic abusers. For migrant survivors, the choice between enduring abuse or risking deportation represents an impossible dilemma that traps them in dangerous situations.

Meena Kumari, a domestic abuse practitioner with 21 years of experience in the UK, shares how the situation for migrant survivors has deteriorated rather than improved over her career. Where once migrants needed to wait two years before applying for indefinite leave to remain, they now must wait five years—creating a dangerous window where abusers can exploit immigration vulnerabilities through coercive control. This pattern isn't unique to Britain; similar dynamics play out across the globe. 

The conversation explores how "honour-based abuse" is often misunderstood and racialised, with certain communities facing heightened scrutiny while similar patterns of violence in white Christian contexts go unlabeled. This structural racism compounds the challenges facing migrant survivors who must navigate not only their abuser's tactics but also systems that may report their immigration status rather than prioritise their safety.

Most disturbingly, we examine how the recent rise in anti-immigrant sentiment and far-right activity weaponises concern for women's safety while ignoring that most violence against women occurs behind closed doors, perpetrated by someone known to the victim. These movements position themselves as "protectors" while creating conditions that make migrant survivors less likely to seek help.

The episode concludes with hope through Kumari's work with perpetrators from South Asian communities, demonstrating how accountability and cultural competence can work together effectively. Through programs that acknowledge cultural contexts while firmly challenging harmful behaviours, practitioners are creating pathways to meaningful change.

If you're working with survivors across cultural contexts or seeking to understand the complex intersection of immigration and domestic abuse, this episode offers essential insights for creating more effective, equitable responses. Share this episode with colleagues committed to survivor-centred practice that truly meets the needs of all communities.

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David Mandel :

And we're back, and we're back Good morning. Good morning, how are you?

David Mandel :

Well, I'm going to do the land acknowledgement because we sit in the United States, here on on Mosaco Tunxis land, and I wanted to acknowledge the traditional carers of the land, the traditional custodians of the land, the Tunxis Mosaco people, who were terminated by United States policies and through legal aggression towards them. And I want to acknowledge elders, past, present and emerging. And right now it's fall time and my garden is beautiful and we have a family of red-tailed hawks that come and visit us and it's wonderful to be able to sit out there and feel them and listen to them and watch them. And we're at the bend in what is called the Farmington River, which was called the Misako River by the Misako people, and we're in fall time, which means that we've ended some of our fish runs and the river is gorgeous.

David Mandel :

It was gorgeous. I get out every morning kayaking. You see birds, Bald eagle, heron, kingfishers, all those things, yeah, Comerants. So here we are and we are going to be tackling a super powerful topic, really important to us, with a great guest from the UK. But while we're talking about the UK context, I just want to say that this is relevant. Unfortunately, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States you know the intersection of issues around domestic abuse, immigration, anti-immigrant sentiment. That intersection of those things is unfortunately very live and active.

David Mandel :

You know, and those words don't even convey the full story, because what we're saying is we're afraid of migrants, we're afraid of immigrants, we're afraid of people coming and taking what's ours, when ironically we're not saying that.

Ruth Reymundo:

Oh, we'll never.

Ruth Reymundo:

There's people in the country saying that, right, we're not saying that, but there's people in our country saying that when, ironically, most often those countries that are feeling the most burden of desperate migration are countries that went and colonized. Those countries took their resources and created this problem and now are complaining about the problem that they created. So I really want to land that in the reality of how this migration problem, as some people call it, arose, and we have a responsibility to acknowledge that history and to really double down on accountability and taking accountability for our own actions as countries and nations and the impact that they have on others and then on ourselves.

Ruth Reymundo:

So we started with impact of empire, Okay, but let's go down to you know, down to introducing our guest.

David Mandel :

I always like to go big, as you know he goes big.

David Mandel :

So I want to introduce Meena Kumari, who is expert, and Mina, you can give your background on domestic abuse, immigration, honor-based domestic abuse. You know a whole range of things I can't really even kind of do you justice, so just want to welcome you to Partner with a Survivor.

Meena Kumari:

Brilliant. Thank you so much for having me. In a nutshell, I'm a domestic abuse sexual violence practitioner based here in the UK. It's 21 years that I've been doing it. This year, I came into the sector not really knowing what to expect, as you can imagine, and never left, and obviously we don't stay in the sector for the money, do we? But it's taught me so much and I think, when we think about immigration and domestic abuse and migrant survivors of domestic abuse much, and I think when we think about immigration and domestic abuse and migrant survivors of domestic abuse, that's probably one of the first ever cases I ever picked up when I started 21 years ago and I thought it was bad then and we are in 2025. And I'm like, where are we now? And it is dire at the moment, it really is.

Ruth Reymundo:

Can you give us, since you went there, can you give us a little bit of that historical perspective? You know, I think it's really valuable because I think things get decontextualized all the time. What was bad then and what makes you say things are worse now?

Meena Kumari:

Well, one of my first ever cases around domestic abuse was supporting someone who was being, you know, sexually abused and domestically abused by her father-in-law and by her husband at the time, and she was a migrant who had come in on a spousal visa. So at the time you were allowed to be in the country two years before you can apply for citizenship, before you could apply for indefinite leave to remain, and then kind of British citizenship. Now, unfortunately, in that particular case, because she left because of the abuse and we were supporting her, her case got declined. She did have to leave the country and then I got to the stage where I was like, right, we need to do a lot of campaigning, we need to change this narrative of no recourse to public funds.

Meena Kumari:

Um, and then I kind of look 21 years on and I'm like why are we still there? Why is there still this notion that actually, because you are a migrant and you experience in domestic abuse, you are so restricted to what you can access? But on top of that, now it's five years before you can apply for indefinite leave to remain. So if you are with an abuser who is using your immigration status as a form of coercive control which we know they do, and they weaponizeize immigration status all the time. Where does that put you as a survivor? That's my question.

David Mandel :

Well, it really puts you in a position where you need to endure the abuse for that many years unless you are faced with leaving and going back to your country of origin, and we know that here in the United States, it's our Latin American migrants, who often are applying for visas based off of violence and both domestic and violence around them in their region, that are then often either pushed into violence here and fear being sent back to their country, where they're also experiencing violence, and the administration has directly said that they do not want to accept visa applications based off of fear of violence anymore, and that's particular to women and children often.

David Mandel :

So it's a terrible, terrible reality. Mina, I have a question because I know that the immigration issues are dire and we're facing them in every region that we operate, that there is a lot of women with, you know, tentative immigration status that's being exploited by a coercive controller, and that it's very difficult. Then, given what we've set up like I have to say that, given what we've set up as assistants to help them, we could set up other pathways. But also, a lot of times you're working with people who are enduring multiple risk factors. They have immigration status vulnerabilities, but they're also facing potential honor-based killing or abuse. You want to speak about those multiple vulnerabilities that come with those immigrants absolutely.

Meena Kumari:

I mean one thing we do know about. In the UK they use terminology like so-called honour-based abuse, honour-based abuse and one thing we do know is we don't have a statutory definition of honour-based abuse at the moment. It's something a number of UK charities are campaigning for, so in particular, national charity like Karma Nirvana, who have been set up for again over 20 years I've been saying to government you know we want to take this seriously but we don't have a statutory definition. We are basically where we were with domestic abuse a few years ago, where we didn't have a statutory definition. So the problem with that is those multiple disadvantages is I could ring someone from where I'm based in Leicester in the UK, try and make a referral, try and have a conversation about honor-based abuse, and I could be working with a police officer, a social worker who has all the good intentions in the world. But my deep understanding of HBA might be slightly different to your understanding because I'm kind of thinking of it from a real intersectional perspective. So when people say to me you know honor based abuse, are you telling me that 15 year old asian girl because she has a boyfriend, her parents are going to ship her off abroad to get married and I say, well, yeah, because that's your risk, because she's been told from a young age you don't date out of your ethnicity or your race or your caste. You've got caste-based systems, all of of those things, your faith, all of those things around it. And that's around my understanding of honour-based abuse. So it's really hard because we don't have a statutory definition and we are lobbying, we are saying to government, please give us one, and they're saying, yeah, definitely going to give you one. So the one that we have to adhere to at the moment is the one that the CPS, the Crown Prosecution, use. You know quite a bit.

Meena Kumari:

And when you think about the definition, it talks about an incident or crime which uses violence, threats, intimidation, coercion and abuse. But it's the second part of the definition that I'm constantly trying to explain to people, because the reasoning, the motivation behind it, what it to explain to people? Because the reasoning, the motivation behind it, what it goes on to say is the perpetrator is doing it in order to protect or defend the honor of that individual, family or community for alleged or perceived breaches. So another perceived breach could be. Well, she's not a virgin. How do we check that? So, again, we passed only in 2021 the banning of virginity testing yeah, which, again, I've read quite a bit about what they're doing about that in america and this notion of you need to be a virgin in order for you to be pure, because it's about upholding your honor.

Ruth Reymundo:

So this is massive from an intersectional perspective and I've been teaching on this for years it's absolutely huge, but it's getting people to understand the risk factors attached to it so, uh, listening to you, I am thinking about what to me feels like the uh, often unnamed structural racism, even built into the conversation, if I can just name that, because we know that there are faith-driven forms of abuse in Christian and other religions.

Ruth Reymundo:

And so there feels like within this there's, you know, and you know I mean the tension right, which is sort of wanting to listen, honor cultures, their own understandings, you know, kind of be respectful and then also not stigmatize them, not surveil them differently than anybody else. And often it's what I've started talking about is who we serve, who we don't surveil, as important as who we do, who we focus on, like, and so communities will say well, you need to really understand how this works for us and we want safety for our girls and women from so-called honor-based abuse, right, so there's that whole. But the other side is saying we're not paying the same attention to Christian-based patriarchal violence and naming it as Christian-based patriarchy.

David Mandel :

I believe that this happens in. Christian circles or Jewish circles.

Ruth Reymundo:

And so there's an occult. I mean, I'm sitting here and I'm appreciating your expertise and really kind of jiving, you know, and vibing with what you're saying about the nuances and the need to be clear and the patterns and how important that is, and I'm also having this dual experience where I'm like wait a second, why are we analyzing other forms of violence in other communities with the same lens?

David Mandel :

I would love to put a pin in this culturally, in the context of the United States of America. We know, for example, that in very conservative Christians and I grew up in a conservative Christian institution and I witnessed what you described violence against women for Christian principles, but we don't call that honor-based abuse. I watched women be beaten into marriage because they were not virgins or they were pregnant. I watched those things happen. And we also know that, for example, in extremely conservative Christian communities, closed communities I'm not going to name names but that there's a lot of incest, there's a lot of child sexual abuse, there's a lot of marital rape.

Ruth Reymundo:

And there's encouragement and instruction, and there's encouragement and instruction to do those things. By to men, to I mean, we were just reading about to this is how you chastise you are physically chastised your female partner.

David Mandel :

Or your child.

Ruth Reymundo:

Or your child.

David Mandel :

So when you spoke about the father-in-law and the husband both sexually abusing that woman, that happens absolutely in Christian context as well.

Ruth Reymundo:

So we want to open up space because we also don't want to take away from the UK context and what you're discussing. But this is one of the tensions, isn't it?

Meena Kumari:

Yes, but I also think it's quite interesting that you said you don't want to take away from the UK space. There's so many people when I'm sitting in training will say, like we're not like the Americans, we're not like the Australians, like we don't practice, and I'm like, hold on a minute. Let's have a look at certain states in America. Let's look at the age groups of when people are legally allowed to get married. Let's look at the UK. Let's look at domestic abuse. Let's look at statistics. Let's look at marginalized communities in the US and how they're being treated. Just because they're Latin American or they're originally from Mexico that are coming in, it's not that different to the treatment of people that are coming in from Pakistan, from Bangladesh, from Uganda, from different parts of Africa and India. Let's look at all of that Like we're not that different. Let's look at how certain things are being weaponized in other countries and does that then influence the UK? You cannot tell me on Saturday Just Gone how a far right rally in the UK managed to get a really well-known American provider up on the screen to talk about what the UK needs to be doing. We are massively influenced by what's going on kind of abroad and when we think about the thing with honor-based abuse and I'm going to totally agree, ruth, with what you just said the Equalities Commission when they did a report I think it was 2023, one of the first sentences they wrote in that report was victims of so-called honor-based abuse can be of any age, race, religion or sex.

Meena Kumari:

When I put that statement up in training and I say to multi-agency providers just look at that statement and hold onto it as we go through the training and I will give you you data. I will tell them about the focus countries the forced marriage unit have. Who's coming in. I'll talk about migration and why honor-based abuse. There tends to be higher rates of reporting from certain communities. But again, is that because they are certainly labeled like that? But when I remind them, even around intersectionality of, okay, what about men? When you've got a man going through honor-based abuse or forced marriages, give me some of the reasoning behind that. Think about the 87-year-old man who contacted the forced marriage unit and said to them my family are trying to get me married off to a girl in her 20s from abroad because they no longer want to care for me. Oh, they needed a caretaker.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, that's a great example and it's, you know it's. It doesn't fit the stereotype of what this looks like, but it's, but it fits the definition if it's the definition, but it also speaks to our societal failures.

David Mandel :

Yeah, if, if, if, if, that's, if those are the things that are coming out of the pressure for honor-based abuse. It means that we are socially failing to support people, and that's a real important piece of information.

Ruth Reymundo:

So let me ask you know you referenced coercive control earlier and obviously that's one of the centerpieces of the safety on the model of the work we do and is part of what we think of as domestic abuse-informed practices.

Ruth Reymundo:

It has to include that pattern-based thinking and, for me, one of the things when I try to explain to people who want to keep an incident-based focus and we even see this, by the way, in countries that are introducing statutes like England and Wales and Scotland that sometimes people will have the legal definition but still default to the physical violence and instance-based thinking in their practices that one of the values of coercive control one is the pattern-based and kind of tying it together, but the other big one or at least one of the other big ones in my mind its ability to weave together and make sense of intersectionalities, vulnerabilities and how perpetrators actively leverage them right.

Ruth Reymundo:

Like you said at the top, of intersectionalities, vulnerabilities and how perpetrators actively leverage them right. Like you said at the top of the podcast, I'm going to threaten your immigration status to control you and or and it's often both the system creates vulnerabilities or barriers that increase if we center entrapment or loss of liberty versus physical violence or an incident. So can you talk because this is your, as we say, bread and butter? Can you talk about the coercive control, entrapment and the intersection of all these factors?

Meena Kumari:

Yeah, and fundamentally, honor-based abuse, forced marriages and a lot of the harmful practices that are done under the umbrella of HBA actually fits into our controlling coercive legislation in the UK when you look at the actual definition and look at the evidence base around it and what you can do to capture that level of evidence. It talks a lot about what I do with survivors and victims all the time. So if I take a particular case of you know perpetrator in a relationship with victim survivor she's on a spousal visa. We'll just take a typical example. And if we take controlling behaviours and we think about the range of acts that a perpetrator does to make a person become very subordinate or dependent by isolating them, one of the things the perpetrators will do straight away is you don't need to hold on to your passport, you don't need your immigration paperwork.

Meena Kumari:

I'm your partner In the UK. I don't know how it is in America, but in the UK a lot of in particular South Asian communities and African communities they will put gold, money, jewellery, passports into banking safes so they don't keep it in their home, and gold into a safe and they'll pay that particular bank an annual fee and every time you want to go in. You need a card, you need a key, you need a password and it's in a vault right.

Meena Kumari:

Now that in a healthy relationship absolutely normal. A lot of people don't want to keep possessions in their home. Home insurance doesn't cover it, so people will put it in. It's a practice people in the UK have been doing since the seventies and eighties. However, if you're in an abusive relationship and you're being coercively controlled and if you think about the certain rules in that relationship, which is, you're not allowed to hold on to anything and I am your owner and I'm going to control everything, including your jewelry, which might have been given to you as a dowry as part of that relation. Part of your family giving it to you as a gift Remember, dowry, again, is very much a British system.

Meena Kumari:

Dowries were passed here as well. Where does that leave the victim-survivor? Because if you look historically at dowries and how they were given, you know, predominantly to women. When they were getting married it was very much about your security. So when you go into that kind of relationship, that marriage, it's kind of it's yours, because we all know our pension rights are a lot harsher than men. We don't have as much money as we're going in. Historically, all those things kind of attach to it.

Meena Kumari:

So I've had cases where people have been treated literally like second-class citizens. They've been isolated from their sources of support. You've got perpetrators regulating those who English may not be their first language or they don't know their rights. They don't know that they can go into a bank and open up a bank account. You don't need to open up a bank account with thousands of pounds in your account, you know. All you need is those ID documents. You just need a pound to go and open it in. But what if you don't have your ID documents? There's your controlling behavior, right, and that's the kind of thing I'm constantly getting practitioners to log and to record. And when we think about that coercive type, like you just said, there's patterns of acts, the assaults, the threats, the humiliation. If you've got a perpetrator constantly saying to that victim if you report me, all they have to use is use the word deportation. And because that word deportation is used in mainstream press, on social media, everywhere and anywhere, get them out of this country, deport them.

David Mandel :

If you are a perpetrator who is so manipulative and you know that word is going to trigger and upset and instill levels of fear in that survivor victim, of course you're going to use it right, so familiar to me that I've known people that, from whatever culture or religion, have experienced many of the things that you're talking about the control of their documentation, not being allowed to open a bank account, their coercive partner holding the bank account, you know card and they have to ask for it.

David Mandel :

These are all things that are patterns that underlie coercive control, that we can overlay a cultural experience onto. My fear sometimes and I know that it's really important to understand and be culturally responsive to different ways that cultures respond to relationship and violence but my fear sometimes is that we lose perspective, we become even more divisive in believing that it's only in certain countries, that people from certain countries and certain cultures that are engaging in these behaviors, and then we label it those populations are doing these things, when in reality this is very much across populations, it's across spiritual beliefs and because of that sometimes I fear that we're focusing on those victims in ways that may marginalize them further. I don't know if you want to comment on that, if you've seen that at all.

Meena Kumari:

I think the problem I have with a lot of practitioners in the training room it's not a problem, it's something that I can address like really clearly is they talk a lot about being very culturally sensitive towards communities and I understand they are not experts in every single community out there. I'm not an expert, but what I am is I try to be culturally competent so I try and talk to them about the competency levels of trying to understand if you're not aware of something, where do you go to find that information? But also about you know we all need to have a little bit of cultural humility. So where we know we don't have that knowledge and we're not getting it right, and, let's be honest, statutory voluntary sector organizations we don't always get it right. In the uk we don't get it right.

Meena Kumari:

We've had so many case reviews, domestic homicide reviews, learning from serious, you know, deaths around children or near misses. And what I keep seeing again is that information sharing people weren't culturally competent, people weren't of what the communities were trying to share. You know communities are not engaging, you know that word. They don't engage with us. And I just think to myself well, you know, if I was treated like that, I don't think I would engage with you particularly well. Well, so, and and all these things that just constantly keep coming out, and I and sometimes I read a domestic homicide review, or I will sit on a panel or I'll talk to an author that I know, and I just think I swear I read that five years ago. I swear that was learning from 10 years ago. Like, why are we still here? Like, why am I still retweeting all this information? Yeah, that we're constantly talking about over and over again, and I think the cultural competency comes with learning and experience and being open.

Meena Kumari:

The problem you've got, though, and you've got to remember this, and this is why, whenever I hear people say to me oh, I can't believe, police officers are being picked up for misogynistic language or racist language, or anti-semitic language or homophobic language in their system, and I will say, well, why wouldn't they be picked up for that? Because police officers make up, you know, society we're supposed to recruit from our communities Like, why wouldn't a social worker have an opinion about someone's particular race? I'm not saying all social workers are the same, but of course she would. So you've got people with their own biases and prejudices that are also working in the system. I'm sorry if this is too deep no, keep going.

Ruth Reymundo:

I want to go deeper actually, so keep going, keep going.

Ruth Reymundo:

You know you've got them working in the system, they're influencing the system, but they've also got power in the system yeah, yeah so what you know, I'm, you're going, that's wonderful and I and I would add, on the police, you know, and we've done, we've done um a series of episodes on police perpetrated domestic abuse, including highlighting the super complaint in england and wales about against police and domestic abuse perpetration and the failure to to kind of hold men uh, police officers mostly men accountable. You know, and and so you have no issue. I would take that even further. Not only do they reflect society, but they may, you know, they have a unique problem in the police force, especially as the pointy edge of the response to the public around domestic abuse. They have a higher standard. It's not the shopkeeper, you know, they're not the general public, they're actually our primary response to domestic abuse and therefore they need to be better at this. They can't be criminals themselves in this area.

Ruth Reymundo:

So that's, if you want to go deep, that's pretty fundamental which is being willing, and we're seeing retrenchment everywhere, and particularly in the US, around this, which is to really be what I would. You know. Basically, you know, and to admit that that's part of our history. That doesn't define who we are today, that doesn't define our character, doesn't define our personal responsibility, even because I wasn't there, you know, you know when X happened. But to say, like I said earlier, that certain people get surveilled and certain people don't.

David Mandel :

Yeah, I believe our response to that reality.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, to define, to define who we are, and to choose and and to be okay with saying you know, and this is where again I'll kind of point to the safer together model what we've really tried to do is is, one of the big things is uncover the invisibility of, of father's behaviors in families and families and how we kind of hold men accountable for the good and bad things they do, and then also how we punish women unevenly for and I think this is across race and community and class and all those things. So this is something that feels unfortunately very universal. But that's our job with the model. It's one of the main things we do is sort of to make visible the invisible, because privilege one of the ways privilege operates and I'm saying something I know, you know, but I want this for the audience say, one of the ways privilege operates is it's invisible.

David Mandel :

And it makes everything else invisible too.

Ruth Reymundo:

Or makes it highly visible, makes something else highly visible. Anyway, I wanted to go there with you.

Meena Kumari:

No, and I totally agree with you and I think, going back to that point, that you just really you raised one of the issues that we had recently and you know big up to all the buy-in-for organizations in the UK who do call out government, who do put in super complaints, just like you would have out in there in the US, that are trying to hold governmental figures, policy figures, you know accountable for what you're writing and what you're putting out. Because if you've got migrant survivors of honor-based abuse who are trying to report domestic abuse, which we already know is really hard to report anyway, like a lot of people don't recognize coercive control, a lot of people don't want to report it because the system doesn't always work for everyone. And then they're going into a system like marac. So multi-agency risk assessment conferences. Here we've got the dash that will record all the information, and then they're being told that their immigration status is being recorded and then reported by statutory services to other agencies which have got nothing to do with the da. Where does that then put them?

Meena Kumari:

So that is why you have to think about the usually charitable women's led black women's led organization, racialized women's led organization, who are saying hold on a minute. You're sitting at marac, supposed to be a safe space. You're supposed to be getting actions out of high-risk victims of da. So we're talking about homicide here. You've got children attached to these cases and one of the things you're telling me is that their immigration status is now being reported. It's going to be recorded in a certain way, like that fear of authorities is already there. So not only is the perpetrator reinforcing the controlling and coercive behavior and the state will never say we want to control these cases but indirectly the state is reinforcing controlling behavior yes, that's happening here as well.

David Mandel :

Um, and it's, it's a the result, what we're seeing, given the increased raids of immigrants with visas by the way, legal visas- is that domestic violence in areas where there is large Latino populations is rising is the trend because there's been a push to record immigration status and visa status. So children, women, men are now abandoned in situations where they cannot reach out for help. We've created that reality. You know, mina, I really wanted to ask about the recent rise in anti-immigrant marches and violence and how that may have created. That does not may, but that does create an additional pressure where a woman who may be living in domestic violence coercive control is now being told by her abuser that if she goes out to seek help, that's what's waiting for her the men who will rape her, the men who will beat and abuse her because she is brown skinned or she doesn't look like them and she's an immigrant. So can you talk about what you all are seeing because of that environment as well?

Meena Kumari:

There's two folds that we're seeing and it's definitely coming up in training for me. One of it is the weaponization it's the racist weaponization of VORG. So a lot of providers, the women's organizations, are now really speaking up and saying what you're doing is you're taking vogue, you're weaponizing it in the context of race and ethnicity and you're saying those that are committing rape offenses, really serious harm against women and girls, are basically migrants, or they're black and brown men in a nutshell, right. And then it doesn't help when you have new emerging them calling themselves you feminist women's rights organisations, standing there with placards and the Union Jack or the St George's flag saying you know, one in six or one in four rapes are committed by migrants or immigrants in this country.

David Mandel :

That means three out of. Come on, people, you just took it. Come on, you just took it, you literally just took it literally right, I'm bad at maths too. I'm bad at maths. Come on, guys, get with the program.

Meena Kumari:

But but even that narrative that we even have to go there like we're now trying to justify who our bloody perpetrators are, like the fact that we even have perpetrators doing this in the first place, is a no-no for me and I run perpetrator programs in south asian communities right and I'm like, no, I. Sexual violence, domestic abuse, is. It is not acceptable in any community, in any background, and that is my rhetoric and my message to perpetrators that I engage and work with. So you've got the weaponization of VORG and that's and it's harder, I'll be honest with you. When you've got what I'm seeing, you know white middle-class women who are standing behind or sitting behind agencies or charities that they're saying they're doing it for the community, by the community.

Meena Kumari:

It really hurts me as a South Asian brown woman in the UK because I am thinking well, actually, from an intersectional perspective, from a feminist perspective. You know all the work that I've done over the years. We're all on the same side. We're trying to stop domestic abuse and sexual violence. We want children to be safe. Like this really hurts me, like it has a massive impact on me as a practitioner, but just also as a human being. Like I'm married to a brown guy.

Meena Kumari:

Like what are you saying about brown men? What are you saying about my son, who's brown? Like it's hard, I'm telling you now the racial trauma I'm probably going through is really hard. Like the trauma is hard at the moment. And then you've got marches and I'm having to go into training and speak to practitioners about the saint george's flag, and you know what does that even mean? And I'm having to point out to people saint george, as a patron, actually was for good, as an immigrant himself, being linked to turkey, being linked to Turkey, being linked to Palestine. He was persecuted because of his Christian faith himself. Like if he knew how that flag was being used right now, he'd be writing himself.

David Mandel :

Yeah, I really feel that, Mina, I am a white Latina mixed. My I'm the history of whatever happened here in this country, but because the just any Latino at this point is suspect of being both a criminal or an illegal immigrant, I really feel the responsibility to be loud about who I am as a human being, my family's migrant journey and the fact that we've contributed so much to this country and that that's the reality of migrants the world over, that I know that your health system is being supported by migrants, that our health system is being supported by migrants yeah, and our health system is being supported by migrants. I know that our infrastructure and our daily operating is supported by migrants and we can debate the equity of that, the fact that those people are not paid as well, that they have a more tenuous reality, and that's real. And I'm just going to claim my Ramundo family did not have immigration papers to this country when they came. There is no record of their migration here.

David Mandel :

Yeah, that happened later when my great, great great grandfather married a white woman. Right, he got that, that status. So so we all have in our families these journeys. We're all human beings and it's really hard to feel this dehumanization rising and being pointed and the people that it's going to be pointed at and I really want people listening to this to hear If you are a black melanation in your skin, you are not going to be the obvious target. You will be the secondary target if you are Latino or you're a Muslim or you're some minority status. But we really need to stand up and we really need to be loud and speak about the injustice and the violence of what's going on. So I'm just going to stop for that.

Ruth Reymundo:

I think it's such a powerful topic and the part I want to add is the part about how masculinity is being framed, and there's a big discourse going on, I think, where there's sort of this one hand speaking to that we've not attended to the needs of boys and men, and you know, and economically, educationally, you know, and that also men are struggling with depression.

Ruth Reymundo:

Deaths of despair in the US will be talked about, and that also men are struggling with depression, deaths of despair in the US will be talked about, and that's a whole conversation of itself and I don't want to get into that right now. I think there are places which are easy for me to say so men and suicide. There are easy ones that we're afraid to say yeah, we need to pay more attention to this. Other ones are a little more, I think, complex, but I think, based on what you're saying, you know that I, what I hear, what I've tried to write about is is this idea, that of the um, that the, when we talk about. Well, the fix for men, for some of this being lost quote, unquote, I'm putting lost in quotes, cause I don't necessarily agree with that is is to help them really reown the protector lens.

Meena Kumari:

Yes.

Ruth Reymundo:

And I really want to send out like a red flag for anybody who cares about these issues that that language is heavily laden with issues around racism as we're talking about here and heavily laden with invisibility of danger in the home, because it implies it does not interrogate, it does not suggest that there's a big issue with. Look, I want to be protective of Ruth and our kids. I expect her and she acts protectively, looking out for us, you know, for me and for our kids and our family. Like it's yes, yes, protection is as part of my, my role as being part of a family and part of a community, right, so, like I, like I'm not saying men shouldn't be protectors or can't be protectors, but this idea of uninterrogated sort of men, let's help men reclaim the protector role, doesn't look at.

Ruth Reymundo:

Well, how do you hold men accountable for they betray that protector role in their own family, men, uh-uh. Or how it gets weaponized in this sort of racial anti-immigration. You know, to me. So there's a whole thing about, not only about race and class even Ruth, as you brought up and immigration status, but there's a whole thing about masculinity and what would be, you know, sort of people presenting it as what in the older days would have been called chivalry.

David Mandel :

Well, chivalry came with this whole, when that's such a British concept.

Ruth Reymundo:

But like, but status and power and and and Christianity, and I mean it's not like these words are very laden and have history to them. Yeah, anyway, so that's my soapbox.

Meena Kumari:

But, david, I think you're spot on, because what you're seeing with some of the marches around you know the anti-immigrant marches they talk about outside the asylum hotels, and even the language is horrendous, right, and I don't use it in that context. I'm just repeating what we're seeing in the press and what people are using online. You saw people say we're here because we're protecting women and girls and I'm like brilliant. So you're thinking about women and girls, right, brilliant, good on you. But actually you're more likely to be attacked or assaulted or abused by someone you know within your home, right, and we know this statistically and it's not taking anything away from attacks that happens by people that you don't know.

Meena Kumari:

And I was saying to you earlier, just last week, there's a sikh punjabi girl in in the uk who's been um. The allegation is she's been raped and it was a racially aggravated rape and the sikh community have come out and they said we're not standing for this and we want the perpetrators to be held accountable. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm seeing a lot of men coming out and I'm waiting for a lot of the women's voices, but you know good on agencies like Seek Women's Aid who have been talking out about it. So one of the things I posted last week was it's great because this is about holding people accountable, but now I want people to have a conversation around abuse that goes on in the home in the Sikh community or any community that's going on behind closed doors. Because I'll tell you what I don't remember the last time I ever saw the levels of marches, even within the Sikh community, come out when a man had murdered his wife in the home, or a son has murdered his mum which is what we had in Leicester.

Meena Kumari:

I've not seen communities do a vigil in that context. I've seen women lead those vigils. I've seen women go out and say where's the rule for femicide? Yeah right. I've seen some men talk about the context of men do need to speak out about femicide and women's rights.

David Mandel :

Yeah, I just want to say that underlying this is a pretty universal concept that women are chattel, that we are the cultural assets. We're assets. We reproduce children for the culture. We're things. You're supposed to put a little token in and we're going to pop out a little cultural asset and that is dehumanizing by harming women who forward and advance society and our families and make sure that we all keep ticking.

David Mandel :

So violence in and of itself as an excuse for cultural control is absolute insanity. Violence does not create cultural cohesion. In fact, violence will rip your family apart and your children will be taken from you is the most likely reality. In fact, that's my reality. I was separated from my Hispanic Latino family because of violence and the intent to do so, the intent to separate me from them for indoctrination.

David Mandel :

So I really want to knock the underlying belief system that somehow controlling women, taking away their autonomy, abusing and being violent to them and forcing them into reproduction is some type of cultural protection and benefit. It will not protect your culture and what happens is when men realize that it's not working, they double down on controlling women even more, because if women can get freedom from that level of violence, we will not go back, we will not go back. And then men will say there goes our culture. Well, if your culture is on the basis of owning and controlling other human beings, abusing them, being violent to them and forcing them into reproduction, then your culture is very detrimental and I don't think there's any culture that actually ascribes to those things. I think that there are people who use culture as an excuse to do those things and then, a lot of people who are biased say, oh, that's that culture.

David Mandel :

A lot of people who are biased say that's that culture. And ironically, the people who are biased who say that's their culture are some of the most historically violent people who have gone into other spaces, taken other people's things and killed them and their families. So I'm sorry, it's a ruse.

Ruth Reymundo:

What I would say is. I would say that we want to you know again. I want to put a flag in off of what you're saying, ruth. You know that to call this gaslighting, you know this is cultural gaslighting.

Ruth Reymundo:

This is cultural gaslighting. You know, we're going to protect you from those dangerous others, whomever they're being framed as. Don't call us to account for our own violence, our own betrayal of our own culture, our own values, the own destruction we're doing inside our own families, and this could be in any community. But I think at this point there's a real wider cultural dynamic around whiteness and maleness that I think is worth calling out. But that it's really. But it could be anywhere in some sense, depending on the structure and place, like that, because there's always another, there's always sort of a dominant group, but the sense of you know, don't look over here and don't call out in the home, yeah, but I'm going to protect you and that's what you know.

Ruth Reymundo:

When we say this, just you know we're talking about we're always talking about male violence. When men claim to be protectors of women, they're protecting them from other men. Quote unquote. You know, and I think again where a lot of times we'll talk about this issue without naming. So our issue is male violence, whether whoever's doing.

Ruth Reymundo:

Our issue is male violence against other men, against women and girls, and that, to me, is one of these gaps that I'm really trying to address, even in the men's health conversation, because people will say or will say, men's health is deeply impacted by their victimization from violence. And while there's a tiny section of people who want to point to women and domestic abuse, the reality is that's not true, that men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence and men are overwhelmingly the victims of violence from men, particularly at the level of homicide. But we're not talking about. We say men's health is impacted by their being victimized by violence. Well, there's another half to the equation, which is men perpetrating their violence. So I want to ask one last question, if I can, and kind of land us if we can.

David Mandel :

Man, because we could talk about this forever We'd be here all day.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, we've been doing this for decades, which is you know. You kind of alluded. You said you did perpetrator work in the South Asian community, which I really appreciate as somebody who did perpetrator work at one point. Really, as you and I both know, good perpetrator work is very grounded in outcomes for adult and child survivors. They're not separate, they're very connected. Not separate, they're very connected. Given your intersectional lens and given your experience and your great awareness of all these issues, talk to me about how you put together holding men accountable who are also marginalized, men who also might have their migration trauma, might have their cultural trauma of being have their you know their cultural trauma of being victims of race. I mean you kind of alluded to your trafficking trauma?

David Mandel :

Yeah, you know.

Ruth Reymundo:

And just so that you I trust that you're looking at these men through an intersectional lens but you're also holding them accountable. Talk to us, cause I think that's such a challenging issue in Australia, the United States, I mean. Talk to us, how you put that together, I mean cause.

Meena Kumari:

I think people could benefit from your wisdom in this area. So our program is called the Changing Harmful Attitudes and Behavior Program, chab, and it's a partnership between Respect, social Finance, drive, safe Lives, hope Training. We do it with the Halo Project and Seek Women's Aid and we've got Breaking the Silence which is Imran and we've got Sarah Wigley involved as well and a lot of the work wouldn't have even had happened if it wasn't for an academic in the UK called Dr Illumide Adisa. So shout out to all of them and I think the work is pretty much like you said every single module, everything that we've written, so everything's been co-produced by Bindforce. We spent about 18 months. They spent 18 months kind of writing the programme and then it was commissioned out and then Hope is now leading it with partners.

Meena Kumari:

But you cannot go into the programme without thinking that you are going to get those seeking asylum that are going to apply to come into your programme. So we do have an asylum seeker on our programme. He's not allowed to work. He experiences heavy levels of racism. We've had to move him from accommodation because it wasn't safe. He was homeless. There's an association with alcohol, can't see his children Link with social care. His first language is in English, but guess what? He's also a perpetrator of domestic abuse and he is using harmful behaviours. Right, that's the basics. That's the foundation to what we do. So when he's coming in and we are talking about, so what was your upbringing? Like you know, in the country of origin that you did settle in and then you came in from, it's going to be slightly different to mine. As someone who has been brought up in the uk. I've had the uk education system, all of those things attached to it. The difference is 200 of my facilitators are south asian. 100 of them can speak a second language. 100% of them have been taught and trained in cultural competency, cultural humility, motivational interviewing skills, understanding and working and engaging with South Asian perpetrators of domestic abuse. Our modules include things like let's talk about your heritage and culture.

Meena Kumari:

A lot of our men grew up in extended families. They weren't raised by their parents. They were raised by their grandparents. Yeah, you know they went to um. A lot of the kids, the lot of the men that we worked with, they went to school in their countries. They were taught in a different language. Yeah, a lot of them went to islamic teaching schools. You know, a lot of them grew up around hinduism as a religion. A lot of them are really into their faith and into their religion, you know. But what, all of those things we need to be mindful of.

Meena Kumari:

I remember talking to one of the men. One of the modules was around uh relationships. So tell me, you know how that relationship started. You deliver a western model. Most men I engage with that when I deliver a western model will tell me about the first date. This is how we met. This is how I felt. I've got men who've had forced marriages. I've got men who went through arranged marriages, so their level of coming into a relationship slightly different. I've got men who, growing up, you know, didn't have that conversation around sexual intercourse. They know what porn is because porn is everywhere in the world, right, right, yeah, but they didn't have that conversation with their peers. Porn was looked at very secretly.

Ruth Reymundo:

Mm-hmm.

Meena Kumari:

You know, stalking, non-fatal strangulation they see in Bollywood movies and it's kind of captured as this thing that you do constantly to harass that individual, is kind of almost romantic. It's romanticised. Yeah, you know they're the conversations that we're kind of almost romantic. It's romanticized, yeah, you know they're the conversations that we're kind of having, but also kind of thinking about the area around.

Meena Kumari:

You know what is your role as a man? So we do the South Asian man box. Yeah, we think about the man box, but we think about what is it like with a South Asian lens on it. What's your role as a father? And it is very much that protector, that provider, but also thinking about you know what key messages are you trying to give to your children? So I don't think I could deliver the sessions or the facilitators could do the sessions without that knowledge and also it's almost like our bread and butter. So it's nothing new to us without that knowledge and also it's almost like our bread and butter. So it's nothing new to us. 60% of our programs the men, are migrants. Most of our programs are delivered in a different language.

Meena Kumari:

We don't deliver it in English, but again, that's kind of the norm for us.

David Mandel :

Right, and I just want to say that it's really important for our organizations, if they're working with communities that have language needs, that have other cultural needs, that an investment in getting those culturally competent trainers and facilitators is really, really important, Really investing in that. And and I know that you are sort of naturally doing it because you're culturally competent and informed and you know that you cannot engage effectively with those men behaviorally unless they feel that that understanding, that connection, that ability to contextualize their behaviors in their own cultural language and realities. But a lot of times what we're seeing globally. I remember the first time that I went to Australia and I met with an Aboriginal organization no Aboriginal person was in that organization.

David Mandel :

I was very confused. I was like what is happening right now? Because I was new to this reality and I was like wait a second, this makes no sense. You know that would be like having a Latino immigration with no Latinos. What's happening right now? So that's a reality that we need to make sure that we address in our organizations, so, so focused on providing people with the stepping stones and information they need in a way that they can connect to it. That's really what this is about.

Ruth Reymundo:

Can I ask one more question? I love the description of the program, I love what you're doing, I love how you're doing, I love just the validating of all these pieces. I love just the validating of all these pieces. I know that many people we work with and again this is globally will struggle with validating and acknowledging, let's say, somebody who uses violence or uses harmful behavior, their trauma history, let's say in general, but not allowing them to become an excuse for their behavior. Can you just talk a little bit micro, even more micro, about in your context, in what you're describing, how that might be handled. If somebody in the group really, who you know is you just described, somebody you know has gone through all these things, has experienced these things, its impact, it may be implicated in their substance use, you know, maybe implicated in their mental health and maybe you know how they, you know they move through the world, how do you talk to us a little bit of how you put those things together in that framework of behavior change?

Meena Kumari:

And I'll be honest with you, david, it's not that different to when I work with mainstream groups, because actually, what both men are saying to me, regardless of their race, is it's not my fault there is a universe, there is a universal.

Ruth Reymundo:

I mean there's a, there's a tension there, right, because we want to be culturally competent.

Meena Kumari:

Like in a nutshell and I'm not saying like I wouldn't I challenge both sides. Right, I challenge both sides. I'm trained to challenge in an effective and can still be, can still show levels of empathy, create safe spaces. You know, we've not had a single person drop out of our 20-week program and we only started in May and I think what that shows what Alka, dilesh, imran and Rosie have been able to do with the men, whether it's on a one-to-one or in a group, is to have those really difficult conversations, still hold them accountable and you know what it's like. You'll have someone in week 12 who will be right at the bottom of your denial tree and you give that water and you keep giving that water and saying, right, I really need to get you through the roots, I need to get you on those branches. And what we are now is we're thinking about, you know, a ladder is universal in all countries and all communities. How do we get you up that accountability ladder? And what I've read in people's notes and when I debrief with the facilitators is this notion of Mina. I'm getting really frustrated with this kind of here.

Meena Kumari:

But now we're in that session 15, 16. You know, we're seeing. We're seeing tears, we're seeing people who didn't even understand the concept of trauma because their community never talked about it and they're men, so men don't really want to talk about their thoughts, be feelings and behaviors to now. I'm not excusing this, but I can kind of see where this has come from, that generation and why this kind of is sitting with me and I'm like that's brilliant, it's coming and that's what we wanted to show. So I definitely see similarities.

Meena Kumari:

But what we're really also mindful of is, you know, people that do want to change for different variety of reasons. You know that will come and we do see. We do see red flags and we are really, you know, acutely aware of kind of what's going on because you know we speak to victim survivors while the men are on the programme. We're engaging with the social workers. You know we're sitting at strategy meetings with children because it is a whole family approach. But I'm so grateful to be given this opportunity to do the South Asian Perpetrate Program and my colleagues April Dawn from Creating Equals is doing the same program to Black, african, caribbean and mixed heritage communities and my other colleagues from the Women's Center and the Brunswick Center are doing a similar program to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer communities, and what we are part of is national systems change. We are all about systems change and you ain't going to change no system without that infrastructure and that framework that we've all been talking about today.

Ruth Reymundo:

Just drop the mic right there. Yeah, that's it. We don't have anything else to say after that. So, but I will, by way of wrapping up, to say is is that? May be it. I don't know if we actually did that. I just sort of like normally we ask if you know if somebody say to survivors or professionals that was it. I think that was it. That was the mic drop moment, like Ruth said.

David Mandel :

So, really honestly, solidarity, respect, gratitude for all of those working in those spaces. I actually say that with a lot of emotion right now, because I know how dire it is, and I feel it because, though your community is not my community, our communities are experiencing similar pressures and dangers right now, and anyone working in this space, anyone working in this space who is furthering the ability of families to be safe, to be together, to be nurturing, to be truly protective truly protective of their beautiful families and their children and what protection means is not harming those beautiful children and your beautiful partner. It's nurturing them and pouring into them goodness, so that that furthers in the world. Just a lot of respect, mina. I have always respected your work. I love what you're doing, so keep going, keep going.

Ruth Reymundo:

And this is a conversation of hope, even though we've touched on some really difficult conversation topics. So thank you very much. Mina and you've been listening to another episode of Partner with a Survivor, and I'm David Mandel we didn't say the top of the show, we got so excited. I'm David Mandel, ceo and founder of the Safer Together Institute.

David Mandel :

And I'm Ruth Rumundo and I am the co-owner and chief business development.

Ruth Reymundo:

And if you want to learn more, check out safertogetherinstitutecom. Please, if you like this podcast, share it, subscribe, let other people know, and with that we are out.

David Mandel :

And violence is not culture.