CCChat-Magazine_Issue-26-Trauma-Bonding

willingness of the perpetrator to harm
their family. Does that perpetration
cross over into potential harm and
lethality for a police officer? Does that
perpetration cross over into behaviors
indicative of threatening social worker
safety? Who comes into contact with
that perpetrator? What are the risk
levels? The other factor is that each of
our systems operate in silos. They
won’t talk to each other so the police
and the judicial system have their way
of talking about perpetration, but
criminal and family court have
different paradigms and different
mandates and then you have child
protection which again has a different
paradigm.
Child protection doesn’t see domestic
violence perpetration from the
standpoint of the perpetrator making
dangerous and harmful parenting
choices which endanger children.
What we have are fundamentally
flawed, siloed, victim-blaming, gender
double-standard industries which all
mandate to domestic violence
survivors and fail them horribly. Then
perpetrators wind up to become serial
perpetrators moving from relationship
to relationship and harming a new
family which keeps the cycle of
violence going. We have an obligation
to ask about what impediments to
seeking safety victims face which
include the ecosystem around them,
" The mental health industry, social works, child protection and
family court have no right to use term trauma bonded as a label
for victims who they are not properly supporting."
So not having a consistency across all
of the sectors that touch on domestic
violence and child wellbeing has
actually created more danger for
victims and survivors. Their siloed
nature means that many victims and
survivors fall through the gaps as
they’re being passed from system to
system and these systems are not
domestic violence informed, they are
very focused on their own mandates
and they ignore domestic violence
perpetration.
Oftentimes family court will not allow
that evidence of perpetration to be
submitted because they do not see
adult to adult perpetration as a child
wellbeing/best interest of child issue.
including their legitimate fears of the
system. What are they saying they
need, as a victim, what would be
supportive of them? The reality is that
sometimes that needs to be a process
where we start to support the victim,
acknowledge the failures of the system,
and give them the help that they say
they need to start to readjust their view
of healthy relationship so that they’re
very clear that the person they are
attached to is choosing violence and
that it’s not acceptable, there is no
excuse for their violence.
We should have people around that
perpetrator who call them up on their
behaviours but the fact of the matter is
that that’s not happening right now
and until that starts happening, the
mental health industry, social works,
child protection and family court have
Making The Invisible Visible