Season 2 Episode 5: How Professionals and Systems Can Avoid Being Manipulated by Perpetrators
About This Episode
Domestic violence perpetrators do not only target survivors. They also target the professionals and systems who want to want to help them. Many perpetrators, often using money, privilege, and power, leverage systems to amplify their control. False allegations of substance abuse, mental health issues, or child abuse are lodged with social services and family courts, often to devastating effect. Other behaviors include:
Continuous litigation to exhaust the financial ability of survivors to resist
The use of police wellness checks to intimidate a survivor
The weaponization of a survivor’s mental health and addiction diagnoses to gain control over children, even when those problems are the result of the perpetrator's abuse
Survivors can feel trapped between perpetrators and systems that are not savvy to these behaviors. The effects of system manipulation on the safety and well-being of adult and child survivors of domestic violence is often long term, financially devastating, and harmful to child well-being and development. In some instances, these system failures can cause MORE trauma than the initial abuse itself.
In this episode, David and Ruth discuss how domestic violence perpetrators target practitioners in different systems and why those systems are so vulnerable to these tactics. Ruth and David highlight the vulnerabilities of family court, criminal justice, and child welfare. They also discuss how to recognize when a perpetrator is manipulating your system to harm a victim and how to resist these manipulations.
Additional Resources
Safe & Together Institute’s domestic abuse–informed trainings
Safe & Together Institute’s upcoming events
David Mandel’s book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence