Partnered with a Survivor Podcast
Hosted by Safe & Together Institute founder David Mandel, MA, LPC, and his partner and Safe & Together Institute co-owner Ruth Reymundo Mandel, who grew up in an institutional setting where she was subjected to family separation and abuse as a child, Partnered with a Survivor is a series of conversations. What started as intimate conversations between David and Ruth that ranged from personal to professional experiences around violence, relationships, abuse, and systemic and professional responses that 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 that 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.
Note: Episodes contain sensitive topics and occasional mature language that may be difficult for some listeners.
Check Out All of Our Podcast Episodes
Season 6 Episode 21: David Challen on How Growing Up with Coercive Control Warps Childhood and Manhood
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.
Season 6 Episode 18: Broken: Women Who Survive and Cause Harm with Lisa Young Larance
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.
Season 6 Episode 17: From Boys to Men: Dr. Kate Fitz-Gibbon on Coercion, Misidentification & Real Prevention
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.
Season 6 Episode 16: Centering Survivor Voices: How Scottish Services Shift Blame, Raise Fatherhood Standards & Heal Families
Blame doesn’t make families safer—clarity does. We sit down with Scottish survivors and practitioners from Equally Safe Falkirk to explore how a survivor-centered, perpetrator-focused, child safety–driven approach changes practice, confidence, and outcomes. You’ll hear how validation replaces tick-box culture, how naming protective parenting restores mothers’ confidence, and how raising standards for fathers reframes accountability as a set of concrete parenting choices.
Season 6 Episode 15: When Seeking Safety Makes You More Vulnerable: Migrant Survivors’ Dilemma
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.
Season 6 Episode 11: We Are Not Our Trauma: Exploring Post-Traumatic Growth Beyond Deficit Models in Therapy with Oli Doyle
In this powerful conversation, therapist and trauma survivor Oli Doyle joins David and Ruth to challenge conventional therapeutic wisdom that keeps trauma survivors stuck in cycles of shame and self-blame. Together, they explore how true healing begins with recognizing the remarkable resilience that allowed survivors to endure seemingly impossible circumstances.
