Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
This podcast is a series of conversations.
What started as a series of intimate conversations between Ruth and David that ranged from personal to professional experiences around violence, relationships, abuse, and system and professional responses which harm, not help, has now become a global conversation about systems and culture change. In many episodes, David and Ruth are joined by a global leader in different areas like child safety, men and masculinity, and, of course, partnering with survivors. Each episode is a deep dive into complex topics like how systems fail domestic abuse survivors and their children, societal views of masculinity and violence, and how intersectionalities such as cultural beliefs, religious beliefs, and unique vulnerabilities impact how we respond to abuse and violence. These far-ranging discussions offer an insider look into how we navigate the world together as professionals, as parents, and as partners. During these podcasts, David and Ruth challenge the notions which keep all of us from moving forward collectively as systems, as cultures, and as families into safety, nurturance, and healing.
We hope you join us.
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Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
Season 4 Episode 4: Being Abused by a Partner While Advocating for Others: An Interview with Leah Vejzovic, Safe & Together Institute's North American Regional Manager
Professionals working in domestic violence and related fields are not immune from being abused by their partner. In fact, their role as a domestic violence or related professional can create some unique vulnerabilities that perpetrators are willing and able to exploit as part of their efforts at control.
In this episode, Ruth and David interview one of their own colleagues, Leah Vejzović, Safe & Together Institute’s North American Regional Manager. During this intimate interview, Leah shares her journey of experiencing abuse and coercive control while working in the advocacy and child welfare field.
Leah speaks about:
- The fear, shame, and challenges professionals face when being harmed by a perpetrator and how it impacts disclosures to loved ones, family, and their own professional organizations
- How her perpetrator tried to manipulate her role as a social worker to make her feel guilty and responsible for staying with him and “fixing” him
- How expressions of victim-blaming by professional colleagues, when they were speaking about their cases, made her feel unsafe disclosing to peers
- How “expertise” can be used by ourselves and others to victim-blame those who are being abused by a partner by landing in a place of “I/you should have known better”
Leah shares how she overcame her shame to disclose her abuse to a friend and the responses that were helpful to her as she attempted to process and respond to the abuse she was enduring. She talks about how the experience of being both a professional and a survivor affirms for her the importance of partnering with survivors and focusing on perpetrators’ patterns of coercive control.
Together, David, Ruth, and Leah analyze some of the unique vulnerabilities of domestic violence, child welfare, and other professionals who are being actively abused, including how perpetrators may be able to successfully target employment. They discuss how organizations can inadvertently collude with perpetrators through a lack of policies and an unaddressed victim-blaming culture. David, Leah, and Ruth discuss how to better respond to professionals who are victims of domestic abuse as an ally and how to embed those behaviors in your organizational values and culture to guard against being manipulated by perpetrators and the revictimization of survivors who are also professionals.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.
Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.