Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 6 Episode 18: Broken: Women Who Survive and Cause Harm with Lisa Young Larance

• Ruth Reymundo Mandel & David Mandel

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A woman calls for help after being strangled in her own home. He shows a scratch; she leaves in handcuffs. From that moment, the system that promised safety starts to mirror the control she’s trying to escape. That’s the hard truth we face with researcher and practitioner Lisa Young Larance, whose new book, Broken, gathers the long-view stories of 33 women navigating coercive control, wrongful arrest, child protection, court, and probation.

We unpack how the victim-perpetrator binary distorts reality, how funding and mandates reward incident-based thinking, and why context, intent, and impact must replace “a hit is a hit.” Lisa explains the “web of power” that connects first response to courtrooms and case plans, showing how misidentification robs survivors—especially low-income women of color—of liberty, employment, and custody. We contrast gendered patterns of accountability: women who admit and take responsibility even while surviving abuse and men who deny, deflect, and mobilize institutions against partners.

Amid the failures are bright anchors of repair. A child protection worker who gives the “whole layout” changes a family’s trajectory. A probation officer shifts dates, protects parenting time, and quietly engineers safe relocation when threats escalate. We dig into documentation as a long-lived force—how a single line in a case note can shadow a mother for a decade, and how behaviorally specific, pattern-based records can be a lifeline. We also ask the question systems avoid: Did calling the police make life better over six to 60 months? If not, what will it take to make a “yes” the norm?

Told in first-person conversation with warmth and candor, this episode blends survivor voice, practitioner insight, and practical steps: Center coercive control, measure impact on functioning, build cross-agency flexibility, and write records that reflect reality. If you care about domestic violence, child protection, probation, or community safety, this is a clear-eyed guide to doing less harm and more good.

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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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SPEAKER_01:

And we're back.

SPEAKER_03:

And we're back. Hi.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello.

SPEAKER_03:

We are somewhere else today. This is not anything new. I would just say normally we're we're in beautiful, sunny Connecticut.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, we're in my home state of California. We're not in my home part of California.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

We we are down in Los Angeles County in the Del Rey area. And I just want to acknowledge that we are on occupied land originally still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, the Tataviam, the Serano, the Kis, and the Chumash peoples. And we honor and pay respect to their elders and descendants, past, present, and emerging, as they continue their stewardship of these lands and waters. And we acknowledge that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, and genocide, and multi-generational trauma. And I'd just like to say on the back of that land acknowledgement that the state of California has done a wonderful job in starting reconciliation, truth and reconciliation processes with uh the over 300 tribes, the indigenous tribes that were here in California. And I'm very proud of my home state for that fact.

SPEAKER_03:

So and that's actually a version of the LA County Council's uh website. So it's really kind of an official part, which isn't the norm in the United States. For those of us who are joining us from Australia, you know, there's much more of that formal recognition of First Nation people and colonization. Um, but in the US, it's it's much, much rarer. So it's great to see it as part of government.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, one of the reasons that that's so in California, just to give listeners who don't have that knowledge awareness, is that uh colonization occurred here almost 250 years after East Coast colonization and had started with the Spanish. And the Spanish actually worked to preserve information about tribal realities, um, unlike when the American government came in and their policy was termination, complete termination. So there is a lot of cohesive community in the state of California, and uh just a shout out to my home county of Sonoma County, which is one of the most community-centered places that I've ever experienced. And I really love them.

SPEAKER_03:

All right. So you are listening to uh a partner with Survivor, and I'm David Mandel, CEO of the Safety of the Institute.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm Ruth Ramudo Mandel, and I'm the chief business development officer and the co-owner.

SPEAKER_03:

And I just want to say that uh we don't always say this at the top of the show, but if you like this show, please share with others, subscribe, follow, listen on platforms. We were just um looking at reviews the other day of the podcast, and we just saw some amazing things, both from survivors who were really moved by some of our episodes, and and professionals. So, really, we want this to get around and want to hear from you. So reach us with comments and questions. So we actually um we'll be doing probably more of these returne-ear. It sounds so serious, like returne-e like interviews, but this is a this is a two-time interview person.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Um, we're gonna be talking to Lisa Young Lawrence. Um, we told her we'd bring her back on the show when her book broke in, Women's Stories of Intimate and Institutional Harm and Repair came out. And it's come out. And we've got Lisa on the show right now. So welcome, Lisa.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here and to see you both again. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03:

So we're we're gonna jump right in. Um, that's quite the title. Broken Women's Stories of Intimate and Institutional Harm and Repair. And as somebody who wrote a book and spent a lot of time on the title, I know that the titles are really important. So can you just kind of walk the audience through that just what's in that title and what what does it tell us about what the book is about and and your work? I know that's a big question.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So I need to take a step back to uh talk about the title. Um, of course, we know the title, you need to be able to capture, you know, the main premise of what's happening, what the main uh message that you want to communicate to people. I'm a longtime social work practitioner and also uh now a social work researcher. And the women that I worked with and that uh whose lives I was able to enter as a researcher describe themselves in terms of being or feeling broken for in their relationships, in their early adulthood and childhood relationships with parents and caregivers, and also in the systems that were supposed to support and serve them. So these women were often systems identified as offenders. And uh, for some of them, it was wrongful arrest. For some of them, they had harmed someone else. All of the women also had extensive harm experiences of being harmed. But rather than identifying themselves as victims, survivors, perpetrators, or offenders, they used the language of being or feeling broken and also significant shame for broke breaking or causing harm to other people. And in the midst of that, then those institutions really replicating the intimate harm that had happened to them.

SPEAKER_01:

It's such a common uh thing that survivors report is not only the inability to distinguish between aggression and in acts of resistance against the removal of liberties and rights and the ability to move about freely, um, but also um that these acts of resistance can be very muddled when you're dealing with a perpetrator or you're dealing with prior trauma or family members. Um and it really challenges people's binary understanding of being a victim or being a perpetrator. Um, can you talk about how those binary understandings of victimhood or perpetration really show up in and as practical realities in our systems?

SPEAKER_00:

My first exposure to this binary was as a master's level social worker at Jersey Gattered Women's Services. And this was in the late 90s, early 2000s, meeting the needs of people who were mainly women who had survived intimate harm, and they were not in shelter, but they were uh oftentimes uh living in the community and seeking that kind of support. And they um in groups, in individual sessions, were starting to talk about um, because nothing else was working, using some sort of force in their relationship or disclosing in a secretive way, uh, not only thinking about it, but having done it. And so bringing this information then to clinical supervision as a funded victim services support organization, there was real concern about well, what what do we do? Because we are funded to support victims, and this is offender behavior. So this was my introduction to this binary in a service provision setting and doing the best that we can with that, but also then funding sets up this binary, and then with a deeper understanding of the better women's movement in the 70s, 60s, 70s, that really the messaging around what a good survivor is really created and perpetuated this idea of who gets to be a survivor and then who's oftentimes um considered an offender. So that binary plays out in funding, service provision, sociocultural cultural messages, and then people absorb it in their own lives rather than holistically showing up for themselves or being able to holistically show up for someone else in a service setting. Because many of us are uh in a very difficult position of what does our funding say? What kind of support do we have clinically to do this and socially and policy-wise? So uh pushing beyond that binary is very much a goal of this book and of my work to hold understand people and not only the harm that has happened, but the harm that they've uh may have used in in their relationships.

SPEAKER_01:

So this is I I just want to dive a little bit down into what you just said because it's really important. Um so many of us are existing with mandates and missions and funding mandates which really support this binary understanding of perpetration and victimhood. I just wanna I just want to throw out an example for the for the listener and for you, because we see uh this example play out uh differently for male versus uh female victims of domestic abuse. And that is that there's many times where a man has had uh perhaps a prior history of incidents of violence and may get identified as a victim in the future. Do you see men being locked out of services for victimization if they have prior histories of domestic abuse or prior patterns of domestic abuse? Or is that something that's kind of exclusive to female victims? Where if there is a claim of them being a perpetrator anywhere in the pattern of their their you know their their documentation, is that woman to be more identified as a as a perpetrator than a man who has a history of perpetration?

SPEAKER_03:

You jumped right into it. You jumped right into that. I'm really into implications of this work for for men and and for and for women. And for women, yeah. So what are what about that, Lisa?

SPEAKER_00:

So for you to I want to make sure I'm understanding your question. So the claim of women as perpetrators, and as far as service provision or as far as the individual?

SPEAKER_01:

As far as service provision, because we we really are concerned about people receiving the appropriate care for wherever they're at in their business. Absolutely, right? That's so important.

SPEAKER_00:

What I found, because I've I've worked across settings with people of all different identities who have been who have served in survivor support, who have survived in, or excuse me, served in perpetrator support. And what is a phenomenon across all these settings, is that oftentimes women who have used any kind of force but also have a domestic and sexual violence survivorship history, they express shame in a way that they take on the system's label and immediately take responsibility for what they've done and everything that's gone wrong. And therefore, if you have, for example, first responders who are looking for the person who's harmed, and someone is saying, I did it, it's me, let's just get this over with. Well, that's um I've heard some prosecutors refer to that as a cut and dry situation. And however, the the problem and the the uh difficulty here is with anyone who is really good at exerting coercive control and being able to weaponize that shaming, the self-shaming against the other person, regardless again, regardless of identities. But in this book, this was 33 women who had um had contact reprobation, most child protection, and also court orders to anti-violence intervention, and a very um broad, but also specific experiences of experience of um service provision harm that people either get treated as in our systems in the US. And I know this also often happens in my work in Australia, as either a victim or an offender. And with the two never overlapping, when the when the the story is that actually it's much more complex than that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. You know, it's it's really interesting that you, you know, you're talking about this. We have an interview coming out with Kate Fitzgibbons, who I'm sure you know, um, and where she was looking at course control survivors and the their reaction to criminalization, and interviewed both men and women. And and what she said is that none of the men, this is all self-report, but none of the men, as opposed to some of the women, reported being afraid for their lives. And so, you know, so one of the implications, and I think at least last time we talked about this, we touched on now. We're here talking about it. And I I want to circle back to the women's stories themselves, but we're really into this very critical issue, which is you know what is this, what does the research say about we you looked at women in your research? You interviewed 33 survivors, you followed them for a number of years, or or women who use force, right? And again, the nomenclature kind of we can default, and it's really kind of right so into that binary. The binary is so powerful, and it's it's throughout my I know it's throughout the Safety Taylor Institute work. And but what does that mean? What does this mean for how we hold both men and women who use force and and how the systems interact with with both of them? Because it's hard not to go there. Because you're giving such a nuanced view of saying the the binary doesn't it may be not serving us, maybe a myth. And uh so what do you have, you know, what's your thoughts about that?

SPEAKER_00:

I believe and think uh from my practice and my research that if people fully show up in this work and what I'm saying here in this book and my body of empirical literature as well, that it will make us better in the work that we do across settings. And I think it's really important to recognize that I don't want to create another binary, you know, based on identity. And I think that's why it's really helpful and important if we're able to think about this intersectionally and socially, cross-culturally, historically, of entitled power and coercive control and how systems respond to people. And the women in my research and in my practice have very specific examples of these gendered, deeply gendered and cultural and racial phenomena in which they do fear for their lives, but they wouldn't necessarily put it that way. And I think that's another piece of it too. So around fear, and that that often seems to be kind of the implicit linchpin of what we talk about in this work. But these women, once they had started using force to resist in any possible way, they may no longer verbally identify themselves as in fear, but it's more of a self-defense mechanism of this is where I am, and this is what I have to do to protect who I am and my family and my children. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, I I I really it's very difficult to parse out behavioral issues without speaking about the gendered reality of how people expect um certain identities to behave, right? Yes, yes in a decontextual system where we're incident-based and where this identification is incredibly high for a lot of reasons, not just because practitioners and law enforcement are poor at pattern, behavioral pattern mapping and identification, but also for other reasons like bias, yeah, perpetrators being retained on forces and colluding with other perpetrators. I think it's really important for us to land ourselves in the pattern-based understanding of coercive control and domestic abuse, and there's a lot of things that put pressure on practitioners being able to do that, you know, not even just their own risk assessments, which are extremely decontextual, right? And they don't parse out power dynamics and patterns and escalation from that standpoint. So, what are some of the most significant ways in which institutional responses exacerbated harm for victims?

SPEAKER_00:

So when we think of individual systems, and I also think of how it's all related. So this project uh grew out of my dissertation, and my dissertation was a larger project that looked at arrest, experience of court, probation, child protection, anti-violence intervention. So when we think, right now I have this picture in my mind of institutional responses that exacerbate harm, I see that and refer to that as this web of power, where at arrest, there's such power in identifying who did what to whom in split seconds. And if someone is at all unfamiliar with police response, is traumatized and in shock, and there's also a very gendered response there and being coercively controlled. I refer to this the series of events that can happen as an arrest web. The policy, the gendered distinctions and behavior, and those split seconds when someone is being interviewed, but they don't even understand that. Many women I've worked with would say, I felt safer when I got to the car, or excuse me, to the police cruiser. And by that point, it was too late. They were arrested and they even didn't even understand. So these institutional responses, it's the policy, it's the gender dynamics, it's the socialization, the lens of the person who's there, and how this can then entangle across the system. So it's not just arrest, it then becomes court and their experiences there when they believe they're going to be able to tell their full story. But that what we see on TV around court is not what actually happens. And it's a mythology that you're going to be able to tell your full your full story and have justice served. And then with probation, the interactions with probation, it's the time, it's the having to pay for it, it's the bureaucratic failures and things like drug and alcohol testing that are so intrusive for survivors. One woman explained to me that her uncle had sexually abused her as a child, and going and having to uh give a urine sample with someone watching her take down her pants and the whole process brought all that trauma up again. And but she said, and this is also something that's that is found in my work and in my practice, she said, you know, I know what I did was wrong, but it did not. Why should the system then have the permission to abuse me all over again? She's taking responsibility for that. And then with child protection, what often exacerbated the harm was whether or not there was a formal investigation that women who were in relationships that were defined by domestic violence were seen as failures as mothers and felt that deeply. And then also then with the core orders that took time and attention and resources that they didn't have. So the institutional harm is the deep entanglement that can happen across, but also there's the opportunity for aspects of that to be a social safety net. If you have a particularly flexible probation officer, if you have a child protection worker who gives you the full layout and really shows up for you and tells you this is the way forward, these are the expectations. And it's really deeply saddening again and again to hear women say, Well, you know, actually, this was a great thing that happened to me because I finally got the help that I needed. You know, hopefully no one would have to be arrested in order to get resources. But this is what happened to many of the women. Well, we've made this system. Let's just be clear.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Yes, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. This is the real thing that we've done. This is the way we've stacked the deck. And I would I would really want to challenge listeners, especially here in the United States, to acknowledge that misidentification is very high, that the loss of liberty for women and the subsequent harms associated with contact with the carceral systems, especially for Latino, black, and First Nation women, is extremely dire. The loss of liberty due to misidentification is a massive injustice. And within our carceral systems in the United States, slavery is still legal in those contexts. And so we really have to take misidentification seriously in its vast injustices and its removal of people's human rights and liberties. And we do have to demand that our systems do better at identifying who is the person with power and control and is the perpetrator and who is engaging in acts of self-defense towards their physical self, towards their children, and towards their human rights and liberties, which should never be illegal. But here in the United States and in most countries, women who are misidentified have their rights and their privileges removed unjustly because of that.

SPEAKER_03:

Can you, Lisa, can you give some more examples? You talked, you know, earlier you said, you know, and these are women's stories, and you use the word empirical, you know, and you really want to ground this in the in, you know, um the realities, you know, and the experiences. And then you also talked about the the gender the theme of uh of gender, how it shaped uh the experiences that I brought up, so what the lessons are for for men and and and and and women's use of who are using force in intimate relationships. Can you give another kind of powerful example about the the role of gender in shaping these women's experience? You know, in terms of how the system responded to them or or their options that were available to them, or or the impact. Because one of the biggest themes is that for me, you know, there's a lot of people out there saying, you know, we'll look, and you know this research as well as I do, you know, that when we'll will sort of want to make the argument that men and women are equally violent. But they're not doing it in the context of gross control. They're not looking at those patterns, and they're not looking at the impact those behaviors have.

SPEAKER_01:

And they're not even looking at criminal data globally, which says that's not real.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that across men's use of violence across the board, but it in but there is data that people can point to to say incident-based violence, decontextualized. There are people who argue, say, men and women are are just as violent. And so what you know, what did you learn? What did the women teach you about this, about both the gender nature and the gender nature of impact around this?

SPEAKER_00:

I want to reflect for a moment when you stated that incident-based data that men and women are just as violent. And I think that it's really important that I quickly address that and that uh the gender symmetry folks who completely decontextualize and are looking at um, you know, a hit is a hit is a hit. And um we know that when narrative data enters in, we know that when we look at the motivation, the intent, and the impact, that uh it's much more complex than that. And as far as what women taught me throughout this work, there I refer to uh what women refer to themselves. It's their and the title is also a reflection again of their own words. Women referred to feeling heartbroken. So those are women who experienced misidentification, either by police or child protection. And then women who talked about feeling that they were at their breaking point. And these are women who they did break the law. They also had domestic and sexual violence survivorship histories and deeply unresolved trauma. And with those experiences, walking through, you know, I went to court with them, I went to child protection hearings with them, I went, I spent time in their homes. I went all kinds of different settings that I learned from them and were able to observe. And what struck me again and again was their deep responsibility taking. You know, the system we talk a lot in this work around accountability, but oftentimes we don't define it. In my work and research with women, it's rarely, if ever, is there a case where the lots say, yes, I did it. What do I need to do next? You know, how how can I make this better? When if it's a coercively controlling partner who are oftentimes men, in my experience in service intervention settings, there's not that same kind of responsibility taking.

SPEAKER_03:

It mirrors my experience when I was doing men's behavior trains work or behavior. We ran groups, my program groups were women, and the facilitators there reported that the level of denial was just completely different, was non-existent in terms of that women would admit to it, they might struggle with the impact or or or something else. But absolutely in running the groups of the men, that you you just had to account for tremendous resistance of even acknowledging the behaviors.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Um and that that was reflected in my work as well, like taking a call for an intake, having women say, Yes, this is what I this is what happened, this is what I've been arrested for. How can I make it better? And do you have any help for him too?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then men calling and the groups or our um program that I oversaw saying, Well, you know, it's her fault. I don't know why I'm here. And or her calling and trying to help him get uh involved.

SPEAKER_03:

My experience as well. And and just to just to round off just uh this this bit of the conversation, you know, I really appreciate you sort of, you know, wanting to give you a chance to talk about how context, intent, um, impact really matters.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, because I I you know that's my experiences, and it's often missed in that uh gender symmetry argument that the that's decontextualized, like you said, it's impact is ignored. And and if we're looking at coercive control, and Ruth used the word liberties and deprivation of liberties earlier, yeah. If we're looking at, and this is the safer together approach, we want to look at the impact on functioning.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

We can talk about fear, but we also can talk about functioning. And and there's a often a very profound asymmetry.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

Right? Does that is that consistent with your research and and your experience of that asymmetry in women's use of of force and intimate relationships with and men's use of force and intimate relationships in terms of the impact of on functioning of the other person?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm thinking of one um example that the book opens with the story of Essence, who was uh was her former partner and father of her youngest child who would who entered himself. I mean, he welcomed himself into the home, even though he was not living there, and something that he commonly did. And the series of events that unfolded was um he tried to strangle her. Uh, she was protecting herself. She called the police for help because there was a mark on him, it was a self-defensive scratch, she was arrested. Her, but still, and I see this across the board, trying to be the good mother and making sure that her children got to see him, making sure that she was taking, as she put it, you know, taking the kids out of what. What was going on between them? And there was an incident where she their daughter had asked to go visit her father after this. And so and it was late one night. So she dropped her daughter off at the house in her pajamas and thinking the daughter would come back the next day. Well, he called child protection with neglect accusations, saying she was dropped off without any clothes, without any socks, and without any shoes. And in the meantime, Essence is trying to do the right thing. And so this impact on her functioning, you know, he didn't have to raise a finger, where his functioning was an overdrive, calling the school and making false allegations against her, calling child protection and making all of these allegations. And she was becoming smaller and smaller and just struggling to get through with now all the legal system um obligations.

SPEAKER_01:

And this is where, you know, when we speak about the context, um, I I really want to bring into the conversation that exact example that you gave. And just to confirm that he was a non-resident of her home. Correct. Who is invading her space, yes, strangled her. Yes. So so really when we talk about that reality, and and and and this is a this is a growing problem that we see, especially here in the United States, where our economy and joblessness is becoming an issue, where women who are the heads of households and are essentially made responsible for children's well-being over more than sometimes fathers and men are not even able to defend themselves in their own homes. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03:

What about standard ground?

SPEAKER_01:

What about standard ground? But just to expand on that a little bit, you know, we have we see things like substance misuse and family violence as as behavioral issues intertwined sometimes with things like mental illness, right? But we treat them very differently. When we have somebody who has had a DUI or who has killed somebody in an accident or has a pattern of driving drunk or has a pattern of substance misuse and keeps coming back to the courts with that, though they have the right to not incriminate themselves, they often see more aggressive sentencing if they continue to deny that they have a problem and they did what they did. Because it indicates that they are not rehabilitated, they have not acknowledged, and they're at high risk for driving drunk again. And therefore, things like their driving privileges are revoked, you know, unless they attend a program and admit they have a problem, or they get probation unless they admit that they have a problem and go through a substance misuse program and complete it. So we treat family violence very differently than we do uh things like substance misuse when we're dealing with people's denial around their perpetration.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and Lisa, I don't know if you want to answer, but I I'm wondering if you when you do, they're just to weave in the gender piece here, obviously, because there's different, you know, part of what Ruth you're talking about is not only just the family violence piece, but it feels like the gender piece as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Does that feel oh, and it's so much more than gender. Yes, it's family violence, gender, race, culture, class, income, all of those. And I think that I'd like to connect a few of the pieces here. And we talked about impact on functioning and then institutional responses that exacerbate the harm. There are multiple things that women who describe themselves as being or feeling broken because of domestic and sexual violence survivorship histories do to navigate systems of power at the same time that they're navigating his course of control or their course of control. And this is a beautiful thing about the Safe and Together model in helping practitioners understand the strategic behavior that mothers will go through and that will use to protect themselves and their children from a deficit-based perspective, it may be referred to as resistance or lying, not understanding that what other tools do you have other than how much you decide to disclose or not disclose and how you're describing certain situations. How can she trust what the system is saying after having all of these different experiences? So those two things, the institutional response can and often does deeply impact her functioning. And then if you think of a low-income mom of color who doesn't have transportation, struggling with employment and food security, involved in probation and child protection, and she's given the opportunity to see her kids, to take the bus across town to see her kids in one day at the same time that she has a court date. Okay, which does she choose? Being probation compliant or being a good mother? She's going to lose either way, unless she has a probation officer who's going to be flexible and attentive to her needs, unless she has a child protection worker that thinks, okay, how can we make this possible? So I really believe that people show up in this work because they want to make a difference in people's lives. What they often don't see is how this web of power is so deeply connected that if you pull one strand of that web, all of them are meeting, and survivors are entangled and caught up and suffocated in the process. But if you can make it flexible and holistically show up for people, there's an opportunity to help people move out of these systems once and for all.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, right. And that is part of the problem with the siloing that we have between that we child protection and law enforcement and the court systems are not in consultation with each other to create their mandates for intervention. And often those mandates create tremendous time and money burdens on people who are already time and money poor and can't meet them.

SPEAKER_00:

And and at the same time, though, I just I want to extend this a bit more here, where survivors are entangled in these systems of power, so are the service providers.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. And that's what I want to go to. Thank that's a great lean-in because I know the book includes, and you referenced this earlier, you know, that um, and I've heard this from kids in foster care, by the way. Kids in foster care will say that child protection, their experience really mattered, the worker mattered. Yes, it you know, the system was was uh could be really beneficial if it was a good worker. And less dependent on the system than the worker in some sense. And you kind of implied the experience. Absolutely the same thing. Can you tell us? Because we've got a lot of practitioners listening, and they're embedded in just like you said, that they don't have a lot of control over themselves with mandates, as Ruth always says, and expectations. Can do a powerful story that that you can share out from your research and interviews about a transformational practitioner, you know, who or practitioner really made a difference in the lives of one of the women as you kind of walk through their life with them.

SPEAKER_00:

I do. I do have an example, and I also want to shart with how I start the book through my own reflection and transparency that I was not aware of the harm I had done as a practitioner. 15 of these 33 women had been in my groups years before. And now I was able to see them many years and learn from them many years later, and not understanding that my limited view of the system and their own caution and how much they told me meant that I couldn't always provide them the support that they needed because I didn't know. Now, one of the women that had been in my group uh years prior, uh, and it was her her abusive, coercively controlling husband and father of her four children would not stay out of her life. Kept stalking her, kept coming around, and her children were removed for her care because of that. And she referred to her experience with child protection initially with such frustration that these workers, she referred to them as recycled. She never knew. There were about five or six people, but they changed roles all the time. So it was very confusing to her and felt very undermined in that process. And people didn't tell her what the expectations were. And there was one point where her young son, I think it was two or three at the time, he told they she had just gotten to the point where she was having in-home visits and um with the kids and having that time getting closer and closer to reuniting. And her three-year-old son told the worker that daddy was hiding in the linen closet. Now, his father was a very large man. The linen closet was a very small space. There wasn't an attempt to interview the child, to know more. She just heard the next day through an email, your visits are terminated without further notice. We'll be in touch with you and we're in touch with you. She knew nothing and they wouldn't tell her anything. Yes. So through this process, then, and she did not, you know, surprise, surprise, she did not show up in a way that uh when this worker came to her door, that she seemed appreciative for the extra visit. She was very angry and uh felt everyone had betrayed her. Now, when she went moving forward and continuing to do what she needed to do, she got a new worker. And this worker I referred to as Gloria in the book. She gave her, in Tyra's words, the whole layout. What the expectations are, what the time frame is, what happens if I don't meet the expectations of the time frame. She said she got the instant feeling that Gloria had faith in her and she cared and she believed in her and made it possible over a period of time for her to get supervised parenting back, visits back, have the opportunity to ultimately really reunite with her children. And now, this is years later that after our first interview for this book, she's she called me and she said, Oh, there's one more thing I forgot to tell you. Um, there's this job that I really want, but I can't get it because my license is suspended. And of course, it was a result of um her abusive relationship. And if I could get a driver's license, then I could apply for this job. And the job, what was it? It was a contract worker for child protection to support women and their families at risk of losing their children. And long story short, she got the job. And she has it's an amazing quote about uh being able to sing her song of her story. And she just sent me actually a couple of weeks ago, texted me a picture of her her baby girl, new relationship, and just absolutely flourishing.

SPEAKER_01:

Good. That's wonderful. You know, and I I uh just a shout out to all the parent mentors working with child protection. Yes, amazing.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and and in and on the back of that, you know, that I I love you know that you're calling out the the good work of the social worker glory that you call Gloria. And yes, and and in some ways what you're describing is such basic practice, basic, and and we talk about partnering, but I want to say one thing though, but but props to to to the this woman who who however she and maybe you know something about this, so she was done harm by the system, you know. I mean, so multiple harms, but the this sort of you're you know, maybe the kid was expressing a fear, daddy's in the closet because daddy's, you know, whatever that was, whatever that was, right?

SPEAKER_00:

The old child's own trauma response, missing a father. Who knows?

SPEAKER_03:

I'm working right, but who knows what it was, but the the lack of investigation, the Samarile sort of lose, taking away this thing, which was her absolute lifeline, you know, to her kids, and and then that she went back in and allowed or actively worked to engage the system again, maybe because she felt like she had to.

SPEAKER_00:

She had to to get her kids back. She said her kids were everything to her.

SPEAKER_03:

But that hurt and pain and anger. You know, you use the word repair here, resilience. You know, you you talk about this in your book, but I'm always kind of really want to give women who are survivors of both institutional and domestic abuse credit for the extra work that like to make that tremendous work visible. The emotional work, the practical work, like you said, going to multiple visits, but the emotional work to say I'm gonna put aside my anger and give this next social worker a chance. Right? That's what she did.

SPEAKER_00:

And I think also with that, I mean, for her uh anti-violence intervention program, it was recognizing for her, it was life-giving, and then she got she became similarly situated. She had contacts with women who um she could receive support from. And it was recognizing also that her anger was natural, normal, healthy emotion, but she had the choice of how she then communicated that anger. And how could she be read by the system? There was one point where she said in court, she was so frustrated in court, she said, Oh, I'm just gonna go run in traffic. And then she got a psychological evaluation, and so realizing and getting support around how she showed up in different spaces, kind of translating for her and supporting her in that process was critical for her.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, there's there's so much rattling around in here because number one, you know, I really honed in on on your really beautiful admission that you didn't understand the full context and story when you're not at all with behavior change, you know, and and people who had used violence. And and I I I know that it's very difficult. We all work really hard to get our credentials in our area, you know, whether you're a medical practitioner or you are um a person who's a social worker who has invested in, you know, your degrees and your certifications, and we are taught that our system is this way and that it is meant to benefit people, but what we often not taught is how our collective actions impact people, and we don't take into consideration the fact that there are real differences in how the legal system engages with different victims of different identities, and that's on the system, that's the system's problem, yeah. And we're not putting that responsibility back on the system and saying, listen, you're removing a person's liberties, their custody, and access to their child and their parental rights. The burden of proof is on you to prove that this person is dangerous and is not a good parent and is a dangerous person to have contact. And that is not done through incidents alone. That is not done on the back of identity, that is done through patterns of behaviors that are tangible evidence that we can point to. And so, what we're asking people to do is actually to live our values of not accusing people of crimes that they didn't commit or making them responsible for acts of resistance and self-defense when they are having a crime perpetrated against them.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And so many of these women said to me, you know, the irony is that I was held constantly held accountable, accountable. But the system, who was accountable if probation didn't show up, or if child protection didn't give me the resources I needed, it was it was on my shoulders. No one, the system was not accountable to me.

SPEAKER_03:

This is this is my my current uh you know, effort in this area, which is we're working with high-risk teams and multi-agency risk assessment processes all over the world. And one of the things that I'm aware of is that risk assessment is a very particular kind of risk assessment. It's very narrow in some ways, it's very focused on lethality markers, recidivism markers in terms of criminal justice system, if that's what it is, or child abuse. And what is not included, and this is where it's not aligned with survivors, you know, experience, is the risk assessment doesn't include the risk the system represents to her.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03:

And that's that kind of brings together what we're talking about here, because if part of the risk in the risks are shaped by gender, they're shaped by race, they're shaped by class, they're shaped by um how child protection responds, how the you know, and it's it would be a multi, if we did that, it would be well, what systems are involved or likely to be involved, and what are the risks, and this is the reality women face because and this is what women's services do, right? If they're doing their work well, they're helping you navigate the system like you're describing, Lisa. But but I to me it's a marker of that failure, what we're just you were both just talking about, which is that the system is not self-reflective, the system is not taking responsibility, not taking not taking responsibility for yeah, there's there's there's very little professional and system and institutional accountability.

SPEAKER_01:

We put accountability on individuals, we do not put accountability on systems and professional practices. Um, you know, there is obviously uh a lack of ability to sue child protection and the court system for the removal of our rights and the breaching of due process and the misidentification and the use of their systems to remove parental rights and to remove personal liberties. So we're we're really in a bind, and the only way that we can truly impact this is to make more accountability and more reflectiveness within practitioners and within the individual organizations that interlock in these really large systems and better practice, better uh gathering of behavioral pattern-based evidence. I'm gonna keep saying that over and over again, can help us to mitigate the worst inclinations of these systems.

SPEAKER_03:

So, Lisa, could you know we're we're moving towards the end of the our time together. Well, do you want to say something? I could I want, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

I was also going to for the practitioners who are listening, and again, as that's my heart and soul and practice and advocacy and the good work that so many people do do. And I've I've brought attention to Gloria and the help that she gave to Tyra in the book. Also, Officer Phoenix, the probation officer that charted a way forward for women who were um had a whole range of histories, changing court dates, making it possible for them to go visit their children, uh, having a woman um gain safety by staying probation compliant, but moving her out of state. And this the victim, the quote unquote victim, was getting out of jail and was threatening to kill her and likely would have. So that's what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, no, I think those are powerful stories. And I I, you know, like Ruth acknowledged your vulnerability earlier. I can feel that you hold, talk about not getting caught in the binary. You you hold both the practitioner high regard and you you uh hold the women that you interviewed and worked with in high regard. And and that's something we try to do at the institute, that we want to create a system that works for for obviously uh you know, families that are impacted by family violence, but also the practitioners. Like we we you know, we the it has to work for both. You know, you you talk about repair. And I you know, I don't, you know, is what you're talking about, you know, in terms of the work of these uh systems actors, you know, Phoenix and and Gloria. Do you feel like they're act they're acting in in a way that's that's reparations or repairing? Or do you think of that in some other way? You know, when when you think about the system repairing, I don't know if it's you think about it as repairing it itself or you know, sort of um how you think about that.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's going to be different for each person, you know, how that person experiences the system, experiences their interactions with people. When I think of anti-violence intervention practitioners in this space, and that's why the um the visual images on the book are the Kinsugi hearts, kinsugi being Japanese, a kind of Japanese pottery, where rather than discarding a broken pot, the pieces are put together uh with precious metals. And so in a it's they're repaired, and the the finished product of that repair is more beautiful in a way that, and unique in a way that it wasn't before the repair. And the probation officer, the child protection worker, and the anti-violence intervention provider in their own settings had the opportunity to offer women the tools for self-repair, for healing, and for moving forward. The challenge is, though, in these systems that once people have even a misdemeanor conviction in the US, opportunities for repairing one's ability to work and support oneself and move through the world without the stain and stay, the stigma and shame of a domestic violence conviction are limited. So I point out these realities, and at the same time, there's got to be a balance and realize that when we are all grappling with what's happening in these systems, there are always avenues to see beyond binary ways of doing things and offer people the tools for healing and repair.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, it's such a it's it's such an emotional thing to hear um the breadth of the dysfunction. Let's just put it that way. Uh, the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability when we think that a misdemeanor charge can keep a woman who is trying to care for children and feed them and help them from having a job. Yes, we understand misidentification and its long impact on families and children and the primary care provider, it is a grave injustice. And I'm just gonna keep repeating that misidentification is so incredibly dangerous because not only does that mean that that child may indeed go to the custody of a violent perpetrator, but it also means that children are put into institutional care. And children put into institutional care, whether that's adoptive or foster care, have a much higher rate of being human trafficked, of being abused, and they have long-term health and life, employment and education, deficits and vulnerabilities. And we should really see child removal and the termination of parental custody as a last, a last intervention over us truly doing our due diligence to understand the dynamics involved in a family and who is perpetrating violence and how that may impact the children and their functioning and their stability and their safety and their well-being. We have to do our due diligence, we have to be behavioral pattern-based, because if not, we really run the risk of further endangering children and putting them into situations where they are in more danger in the long term than they would be if we had if we had done adequate intervention, investigation, and support for those parents.

SPEAKER_03:

Or actually, even more pointedly, maybe if even done worse than if the system had never gotten involved at all. You know, that's the that's the right.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's that's what Essence said, the woman who was wrongfully arrested when he had strangled her, that you know, I just sometimes I think maybe I should have just let him beat me up and then gotten help for it later because being involved in the carceral system has just literally just destroyed my life.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely just devastated me. That absolutely just devastated me.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, you know, it sort of let him do these things to me. Um, and this is the very definition. I remember reading years ago a definition of trauma-informed systems, which which stuck with me and I applied to domestic abuse-informed systems, which is that that victim survivors have a reasonable chance, reason have reason to believe that on balance the system's involvement is gonna make things better versus worse. It's a really very low standard because it's like a preponderance. It's like like can I really believe to more than 50%? More than 50% that can help by that. My life's gonna get it. I want to say this to practitioners, and this is at least your your exemplar of this, which is and um I believe that people get into the work that you know helping, whether it's law enforcement or something else, a lot of times it it's it's really this desire to help people. I know there's absolutely right, there's you know, other things that mixed in sometimes, and that um that to really understand that there's a difference between your intention and the results systems produce.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

And it's it's really reasonable to really look and say, from her point of view, from a from in this case, the women you interviewed, does this system look safe and helpful to me? And is it gonna make things really very basic, which is to be able to step out of your tent, step out of your desire to help, and really say, has I mean, and I would ask this by the way, all the time when I would I would do conversations, consultations, did her calling the police make things better? And I like this word better versus safer. Yes, better is much more holistic, right? As it gets to be defined by her. Did would she say that calling the police made her situation better? Well, maybe it made it better for five minutes when she got in the police car, but it was miserable for the next six months to 10 years, 20 years, you know. And so we have to be clear-eyed as professionals to be able to say that ask ourselves that question in a big level and at a case level. That's my that's my comment. We normally ask people for their we're gonna ask you in a minute for your takeaways, but that's one of my things I want people to take away from the show is that's real.

SPEAKER_00:

And also with systems contact, I so appreciate the work that you're doing around documentation and child protection. Documentation in these women's lives and in as a practitioner lived much longer than the contact with the child protection worker. It is an absolutely critical form of systems advocacy to be able to appropriately and correctly document cases.

SPEAKER_03:

It is, it is the it is, and and you and I both know that that that oftentimes the understanding of the worker themselves who's had direct contact with with that person is not bad. It's actually good, it's holistic. They they're holding a lot of their their head sometimes, they're understanding her context. But what they write down, even in those cases, that well-intentioned social worker looks dramatically different. I've read case files where I'm like, are we I'm reading a case? You just are we talking about the same thing you were just talking about? Because what you wrote down is so different.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Tyra, the woman that I gave you the example of losing her children and then having the um dramatic transformation and then working uh to support women and families at risk of losing their children. It was a decade. Kate's old child protection case note that said that they thought that she was the aggressor in the relationship. There had never been an assessment done. And that lived and lived and lived.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm a I'm a I'm so gonna go cranky survivor on people. The fact that that an allegation that is not backed by any evidence can form the basis of us losing our liberties and our contact and our parental rights with our child is absolutely insane.

SPEAKER_03:

And even an allegation might have been made by the per by the perpetrator.

SPEAKER_00:

It might have even been reader. That's why in any part of the system, when we put pen to paper or cursor to screen or whatever it may be, be very, very careful.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Very careful because you, the definers, we become the definers in defining other people's lived experience. And it is a tremendous power that we have.

SPEAKER_03:

So I think we've answered the question: what do you want, or what do we want? Practitioners take away from this conversation. I I think it's so important to ask you what do you what would you like survivors to take away from this? I we have a lot of survivors who listen to this this podcast across the world. What's the what's the big takeaway from this conversation, from your book that you'd like them to hear?

SPEAKER_00:

Centering your voices and your experiences must happen across all system settings. And thank you so much for everything that you do to survive. And when you have the energy and the opportunity, your voices are so absolutely critically important. And that was my goal with this book. As a practitioner, I had seen survivors' voices, women's voices drowned out or muted. And so to show up as a researcher, credentialed researcher, and do the rigorous research and center the women's voices, that has the capacity to change hearts and minds and policy and practices.

SPEAKER_03:

Great. Well, we Lisa, we you know, we thank you so much for your work and and and and um giving uh that written-down documentation of these women's stories.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for your work. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and for the practitioners who who those who helped them. So we've been talking to Lisa Young Laurence, uh author of Broken Women's Stories of Intimate and Institutional Harm and Repair. So thank you, Lisa. And we are still partnered with a Survivor. Yes, we are. And um, just if you want to um follow us, follow us on Facebook, on Instagram, yeah, on uh the web at safety of the institute.com.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And um I think is there anything else we should be saying? You're usually Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, cranky survivor is over here a little bit blown out, you know. And I just I just want to say to to all of the practitioners and to the survivors out there that um, you know, one of the things that we do not do well is telling people what they have a right to. And and as a victim of a crime, you have a right to not incriminate yourself. And you have a right to frame your actions as self-defense from the start, yes, and as defensive of your children. And we should all tell you about what your rights and privileges are, and we should be more accurate as practitioners in our documentation of the patterns and power dynamics and the behaviors that are threatening you and your children. And um, I'm just gonna keep encouraging us all to move towards that end. So that's right. Okay.

SPEAKER_03:

And with that, we're out.

SPEAKER_01:

We're out of the way.