We sit with survivor, campaigner, and author David Challen to trace the shape of coercive control through a child’s eyes: a mother’s world shrinking, a father’s rules governing every room, and a son trying to earn love by molding himself to a script that never fit. This is not a tidy true-crime arc. It’s the long echo of control on identity, mental health, and the stories boys are told about how to be men.

The conversation opens with end-of-the-year reflections and personal milestones—international book releases, masterclasses, collaborations, and community work—and quickly moves to a timely, thorny question: Can we talk honestly about male violence without “shaming” men?

A stadium’s worth of men—every year. That’s the scale of new IPV use suggested by Ten To Men, Australia’s landmark longitudinal study of male health. We sit down with Karlee O’Donnell, a researcher with the Australian Institute of Family Studies, to unpack what the data really says about how depression, suicidality, paternal warmth, and social support shape men’s risk—and what actually works to prevent harm.

A clear map beats chaos when lives are at stake. We sit down with Dr. Kate Fitz-Gibbon to draw a sharper line between “losing control” in life and being coercively controlled by a partner, and we keep children at the center where they belong. Through careful research and straight talk, we unpack why men’s and women’s experiences of intimate partner abuse often look different in impact, fear, and loss of liberty—and how that difference should guide courts, police, and service providers in mapping patterns and identifying who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

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.

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

Counselor and researcher Jaime Simpson joins us to dismantle myths about consent in faith settings, drawing from her study Broken, Shattered & Spiritually Battered: Groom Pastors Who Prey on Adult Congregation Members. Focusing on evangelical and Pentecostal communities in Australia, her findings reveal systemic grooming—romantic, therapeutic, and spiritual deception—layered with isolation, boundary violations, and theology-based coercion and systematic collusion with perpetrators to hide their criminal behaviours and shield them from accountability with the use of spiritually based forgiveness rituals. 

What if ending violence against women isn’t just about asking men to stop bad behavior but also inviting them to embrace a more meaningful definition of strength and leadership? This question forms the heart of our powerful conversation with Jackson Katz, Ph.D., one of the world’s foremost male voices in the movement to prevent gender-based violence.

When Bruce Bieber's phone rang at 2:50 a.m., his world shattered. Three deputies stood at his door with news that his daughter Abby, a dedicated police officer known for her compassion and professionalism, had been murdered by her boyfriend—a fellow officer with a documented history of domestic violence that had been systematically minimized by their department. This powerful conversation exposes the deadly consequences of law enforcement’s failure to address domestic violence within their ranks.

In this episode, David and Ruth speak with Dr. Anni Donaldson about her groundbreaking research examining domestic abuse in Scotland’s rural, remote, and island communities.