Ruth and David are recording from Okayama, Japan, and the shift you’re about to hear is bigger than language.

Professor Kanako Masui of Nihon Fukushi University joins David and Ruth to explain why so many domestic violence and child protection systems get stuck asking the wrong questions and how the Safe & Together Model helps professionals see what’s been in front of them all along.

Kanako shares her journey as both a former practitioner and a researcher who has interviewed domestic violence survivors, including adults who grew up with domestic abuse in childhood. That experience led her to a hard truth: When we focus on “why she didn’t leave” or “why she didn’t protect the kids,” we blur accountability and miss the survivor’s real, often invisible protective efforts. Ruth, David, and Kanako dig into how a perpetrator’s pattern of behaviour as a parent drives harm to children, how to document those choices clearly, and how to work with survivors with dignity and respect while keeping child safety at the center.

They also talk about what implementation looks like on the ground in Japan—from cross-agency collaboration with child guidance centers and women’s support centers to large seminars reaching hundreds of practitioners—and the intensive work of translating the Safe & Together material and David's book into Japanese so teams can share a common model and language.

Kanako closes with a message to helpers who feel isolated and a direct message to survivors: You are not to be blamed.

If you want practical, trauma- and domestic abuse–informed ways to improve domestic violence intervention, child welfare decision-making, and perpetrator accountability, listen now. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review telling us what language you want to change first.

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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.

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The most useful conference debriefs aren’t about highlights—they’re about what shifts in you when you listen closely. From the Sydney coast, Ruth and David wrap up a three-and-a-half-week Asia Pacific tour and talk through the moments that changed the temperature in the room at the Safe & Together Institute's 2026 Asia Pacific Coercive Control & Children Conference. They start with gratitude, acknowledgement of unceded Aboriginal land, and the reality that building safer systems means showing up with humility, not just expertise.

One of the biggest breakthroughs David and Ruth share is their commitment to localised training and culturally responsive practice. The Institute premiered a new Australia-based training film designed to teach coercive control as a pattern over time, centred in a perinatal scenario that follows a family before and after a child is born. With Australian actors, filmmakers, consultation from cultural experts, and survivor input, the film is built to help professionals recognise subtle tactics, see cumulative harm, and respond in ways that strengthen child and survivor safety rather than repeating harmful system habits.

Ruth and David also get into the harder conversations that practitioners can’t avoid: men’s health, masculinity, and accountability. They talk about why supporting men and boys can’t come at the cost of women and children and why we have to operationalise that promise instead of offering lip service. In the Australian context, David and Ruth connect family violence practice with the impacts of colonisation, racism, intergenerational trauma, and family separation, while staying clear that healing requires stopping abusive behavior. Along the way, they reflect on survivor voices, workforce wellbeing, and the need for non-extractive organisational cultures.

Finally, Ruth and David dig into the practical lever that can change outcomes in family law: pattern-based documentation. They share why judicial leaders describe this kind of documentation as “gold” and how the SafetyNexus tool supports workers with coaching, mapping, and better notes when stakes are life-or-death.

If you care about coercive control, domestic violence response, child protection, and safer systems, this conversation gives you language you can use tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review so more practitioners can find the work.

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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.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Domestic abuse gets dangerously easy to miss when our systems can only imagine one story about who victims are and what abuse looks like. We sit down with Luke Martin, a UK-based domestic abuse trainer, consultant, and independent victim advocate, to talk about the people most likely to be misunderstood in plain sight: LGBTQ+ survivors, including those in same-sex relationships, who face bias and system failures when seeking assistance for intimate partner violence.

We dig into why an incident-based approach can flatten the reality of coercive control, especially when LGBTQ+ survivors fear the very systems they’re told to rely on—for good reason. Luke connects the dots between familial abuse, child maltreatment, conversion practices, homelessness, and the long shadow those experiences cast over adult relationships. We also talk about isolation in queer communities, chosen family, shared friend groups, and the real-world barriers to leaving when leaving means losing identity, housing, or every safe connection you have.

Along the way, we challenge gender stereotypes that lead professionals to arrest the “more masculine” partner, ignore violence in lesbian relationships, or assume men cannot be afraid. We explore consent, kink, and chemsex risks, and we offer practical ways to ask better questions: how someone describes their gender, relationship, and sexuality and how to keep that door open over time without pressure.

If you care about domestic abuse–informed, trauma-informed practice, domestic violence services, survivor-centred safety planning, and LGBTQ-inclusive responses, listen through and share it with a colleague.

Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: What is the biggest change you want to see in domestic abuse systems?

Send us Fan Mail

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.