Mist, wind, the volcanic island of São Miguel, and a hard look at the words and jargon that decide families’ futures. We begin in the Azores, Ruth’s ancestral home, where arguments for European westward expansion took shape after Bartolomé de Las Casas reported the finding of two “dead” "Amerindian" bodies—and where mainland-imposed poverty, illiteracy, and family separation set conditions that still shape domestic violence today. From that grounding, we pull apart a label that quietly drives child removals, court outcomes, and professional blind spots: “denial.” Across child protection and domestic violence documentation, the phrase “mother is in denial of the impact of domestic violence” appears with alarming regularity—automatically shifting scrutiny onto women in records that determine custody and liberty, while the person causing harm fades from view. The result is compounded harm at both personal and system levels.

We trace how this term traveled from early psychoanalysis—where women’s reports of sexual and domestic violence were recast as inner conflict or sexual turmoil—into today’s case notes and court filings. Over time, denial and hysteria morphed into failure to protect and parental alienation, redirecting attention from perpetrators’ patterns of violence to mothers’ supposed deficits in “controlling” that violence or responding to it. Instead of centering victims’ reactions to harm, we argue for real behavioral evidence: name who did what, to whom, with what impact, and what has been tried with the person causing harm. This shift is not cosmetic—yet it changes documentation, supervision, and safety planning, and it guards against wrongful liberty removals and harmful system collusion with perpetrators.

You’ll hear practical questions that move practice quickly: What did she do or say that led you to that conclusion? What is your specific safety concern about that behavior? These prompts redirect focus from a survivor’s inner world to the perpetrator’s actions, choices, and behaviors—opening the door to mapping risk to children, cataloging incidents, and designing interventions that actually reduce danger. We also widen the lens to the ecosystem around survivors—family pressure, faith norms, small-island logistics, and economic traps—that make “just leave” dangerous or impossible for many.

We close by contrasting untrained AI use in social service settings—which often parrots victim-blaming narratives—with Safe & Together Model domain-trained tools that reinforce behaviorally specific evidence-gathering and perpetrator-focused practice. The invitation is clear: try a week—or a month—without the word denial. Replace labels with behavioral pattern facts. Partner with

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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.

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