Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / REBROADCAST: Domestic Violence in Family Law: Part 1
Transcript
- Megan Hunter: Welcome to It's All Your Fault, on True Story FM. The one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most difficult, difficult people. Those with high conflict personalities. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy: Hi, everybody. Megan Hunter: And we're the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In today's episode, we are joined by guests, Annette Burns and retired judge, Karen Adam, to talk with us about a new video series on domestic violence. But first, a few quick reminders. We want to hear from you. Have you dealt with a high conflict situation? Have you been blamed, experienced violence or abuse, or maybe you simply dread seeing that person again, but you might have to at home tonight or tomorrow at work? Send us your questions and we just might discuss them on the show. Megan Hunter: You can submit them by clicking the submit a question button at our website highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. Emailing us at podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or dropping us a note on any of our socials. You can find all the show notes and links at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast as well. Make sure you subscribe, rate and review, and please tell all your friends about us. Telling just one person that you like the show and where they can find it is the best way you can help us out and help more people learn how to address high conflict people. We appreciate your loyalty and your help. And now on with the show. Megan Hunter: Although our podcast deals with a pretty heavy topic, high conflict personalities, today we take a slight turn into one of the heaviest, domestic violence. And we'll refer to it as DV from here on out. DV impacts more people than just the two or sometimes more that are involved in it. It often involves law enforcement. In fact, these are some of their most dangerous calls. It involves criminal courts, DV courts, DV advocates, extended family, and the community as a whole. However, it is very often seen in family court, in divorce, child custody, parenting time and long term co-parenting. And that's our focus today. Megan Hunter: Myself having worked in a prosecutor's office, I've seen the police reports and the pictures. And back during my time working in judicial training policy in legislation in Arizona, I was part of a statewide tour for court personnel and judges on domestic violence. Leading the tour were the domestic violence specialist from the Arizona Supreme Court and a judge who handled a massive DV caseload. In the presentations we showed a video about people in our state of Arizona who had not survived the violence perpetrated by a loved one. So it it was a really difficult, difficult video, very hard to watch and absorb. But enormously impactful to everyone who watched and listened. Now, here's where it gets tough for me. That was 20 years ago, but despite our best efforts and the efforts of thousands globally to stem DV, it continues to devastate people and families. Megan Hunter: Now, let me introduce three people who have a whole lot of experience with DV. The Honorable Karen Adam, who retired from the bench in 2015 after 34 years of service as a Tucson City court magistrate, a superior court commissioner and a superior court judge. As presiding judge of the Pima County Juvenile Court, she led the effort to convert that court into a trauma responsive court. She's a member of the Self-Represented Litigation Network, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Arizona National Chapters of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. She is a board member and past president of the Center for Children's Law and Policy, and teachers and consults on family treatment, drug court, grants and programs. Also, with us is Annette Burns, who is an attorney and a certified family law specialist practicing in Arizona. She is past president of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, and she is a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Megan Hunter: She is co-author of the Thompson Reuters Publication, Arizona Family Law Rules Handbook, which is updated annually. And she served on every Arizona Supreme Court committee that created, adopted and revised the Arizona rules of family law procedure. She is also co-author of BIFF for CoParent Communication, published by Unhooked Books in 2020. And it just happens to consistently be the number one selling book on Amazon in divorce and family law for over one year. And last but not least, is my co-host of this podcast, Bill Eddy, who is also the co-founder at the High Conflict Institute and lead interviewer of this DV series. He's written over 20 books and created many methods and techniques for handling high conflict disputes. He's a lawyer, therapist, mediator, and has been on a gazillion airplanes to speak to over a half million people worldwide. I could say so much more about Bill and each of our guests, but we'll run out of time for the interview. So we'll put their bios in the show notes. Megan Hunter: So for this episode, we're going to talk domestic violence. And why is it important that we have these three particular people as our guest today? Well it's because together they interviewed 16 domestic violence experts and compiled those interviews into a six hour video series. That's what we're going to talk about today. So let's get going with our first question. Bill, what was the impetus behind this video series? Bill Eddy: Well, it really was wanting to get the big picture. And as a family lawyer now for 28 years, I had domestic violence cases off and on, but I never felt like I really understood the problem, understood what should be done and understood whether things are working even that we're doing. So, it started out really to educate myself and then my colleagues and Karen Adam. Megan Hunter: What's the overall objective of the series? And then follow that up with who it's intended for. Bill Eddy: It's really to give the big picture. And we already knew there were different parts of this. And so we have six one hour videos, really geared first of all, to family law professionals. So family lawyers, new lawyers, as well as experienced lawyers, mediators, judges, therapists, support people, et cetera. There're so many people involved and we wanted to educate all of us. And it's also okay for the general public. I found I learned so much from listening to these speakers. So the objective was to really cover several areas, understanding domestic violence, what to do in family court cases. Is mediation appropriate? What about the children? Treatment for offenders, et cetera. So we wanted to really cover the whole big picture in depth in six hours essentially. Megan Hunter: Did you find anything that surprised you? Bill Eddy: Well, I would say I learned many things and some things that surprised, yes. One was a term I wasn't familiar with and that was absent presence. And this came up in the mediation of video with when is mediation appropriate, when it isn't. And I think a lot of us think, well with video these days, you put at both people on the video, they don't know where each other is, that's totally safe. But then the idea of absent presence that a perpetrator of domestic violence may try to punish their partner afterward, may find them or do things that will punish them either physically or harm their relationships, et cetera, so that their presence is always there even if you're not seeing them. Even if they don't see each other on the video screen, what the person says they want in negotiations, what a domestic violence victim or survivor says, maybe held against them a week or two later. So, there's always things to be considered like that. Megan Hunter: Yeah. That's huge. I'm so glad that's included in the video. So, let's switch over to Karen. Karen, what motivated you and what was your interest in participating in this project? Hon. Karen Adam: Thank you, Megan. I have encountered, worked with, tried to understand, tried to get other people to understand domestic violence from my entire career since I began practice sing as a public defender in 1977, when I worked with a dear friend who was a prosecutor on having a diversion program available for domestic violence perpetrators. I went on to be a magistrate at Tucson City Court, and was there when the first violence statute in Arizona was adopted. Now, it's not that there wasn't domestic violence before, but it was the very beginning of the time when domestic violence was carved out as a separate offense with separate consequences and separate concerns. And so I was right at the forefront of that development. And none of us really knew what to do with these cases. And orders of protection sometimes called injunctions or safety orders, depending on where you're located, were brand new. Hon. Karen Adam: And there we were having to deal with the survivors and what to include in the order and what kind of information did we need. What didn't we have. We were dealing with folks who would come in, get an order of protection, be in a cast, or be covered in bruises and come back three days later to have the order dismissed. We didn't understand why, we were frustrated with that. We didn't have the knowledge and information that we needed to really be doing the best job possible for survivors. I went on to work juvenile court, doing child welfare cases, juvenile justice cases, domestic violence everywhere. Did family law, did probate, domestic violence everywhere. Took as much time being trained and educated as I possibly could. Read everything I possibly could, talked with people about the topic and ultimately retired in 2015, still incredibly interested in domestic violence as it impacts, especially family juvenile and child welfare law. But as it impacts the court system and communities as a whole. Hon. Karen Adam: And I got to write the curriculum for the new licensed legal advocate program in Arizona, which is a pilot allowing domestic violence advocates to give limited legal advice to survivors. So, I had just completed that project, which was very exciting and it's underway right now at our biggest domestic violence shelter in Tucson Emerge Center Against Domestic Abuse. And was invited to participate in this project. And it just seemed to me a perfect way to extend my quest to continue to learn about domestic violence, how it impacts children, survivors, families, and the community. And it was incredibly interesting and an amazing educational experience. Megan Hunter: Well, I've known both you and Annette for I don't know, a couple decades now. And I can say that both of you have done a lot in this area. A lot to help the field of family law. And in particular kind of advancing this topic of educating other professionals about domestic violence. One quick question, you mentioned the word survivor, and I know it was important throughout this video series that the term survivor be used instead of victim. Why is that? Hon. Karen Adam: Victim suggests helplessness and a lack of power and a lack of agency. And the word in the field that is preferred is survivor. And there is strength in that word. I've always believed that word are incredibly important. And words change all the time, no matter what area of the field you're working with. For example, when we're talking about drug court cases, we no longer say that someone has a dirty urine or something like that, we talk about positive for results, negative results. Words are important. They immediately create a picture in our brains. And so having survivors empowered themselves and having the people that are working with them and dealing with the cases, considering them as survivors, gives them and us the strength to move forward. Megan Hunter: Interesting. So another term then popped into my mind, and it's one I've heard many people use. And that's my abuser. What about that? When a survivor's talking about being in a situation and they reference the person who is perpetrating violence on them as my abuser. Hon. Karen Adam: I think that's also really powerful because that puts them in the position of identifying where the abuse came from and identifying the person instead of using a word like perpetrator or husband or boyfriend. My abuser is very clear and doesn't kind of let that person get away with, well, I'm related, or I'm a cousin or I'm a boyfriend and therefore there are certain things that I'm allowed to do. That is very clear by saying my abuser. Is very... Clarifies that relationship. Megan Hunter: So I wonder about using that term in front of one's children. I hadn't thought about that till now. Hon. Karen Adam: Neither have I, maybe somebody else has. Megan Hunter: Bill, Annette? See how my mind wanders. Annette Burns: Well, yeah. That's definitely a problem if you're going to be saying my abuser in front of the children. And personally, I have a little problem with the using the word, my then, it's certainly saying the abuser would be fine, but my abuser, I mean, that's like saying my cancer or my... I don't like bringing those bad words into personal possession. So, the abuser or an abuser makes more sense to me. But yeah, in relation to the children, you have to avoid that. It takes a great deal of personal responsibility to avoid doing that in front of the kids. Megan Hunter: Yeah. A lot of responsibility and discipline. So, Annette, thank you for that. And let's ask you. What motivated you and to do this project and what was your interest in it? Annette Burns: Wow! Well, the motivation was easy. I mean, when you're a professional and someone comes along and says, "Would you like to be in a position to interview a number of experts in a field that you practice in?" I mean, who wouldn't jump on that? The motivation was easy and the motivation to work with Karen Adam and Bill Eddy on this, I mean, it was over the... And with you, Megan. It was- Megan Hunter: Oh, thank you. Annette Burns: I mean, you'd have to be crazy to walk away from that when you're a professional in the field of family law. And my interest in it, I've been practicing law a long time, but I have felt and I think Bill has articulated this too. You can do this for a long time and still feel like I don't know what I need to know about domestic violence, family violence, to really help. And it's a helpless feeling. And I think anything we can do as professionals to improve. And it doesn't matter if you've already been doing this for 30 or 35 years. So, that was a huge part of my interest in motivation as well. No matter how long you've been doing this, you can learn more. Megan Hunter: That's a great point. And it made me think about when Bill and I first met way back in 2005, I believe. And we brought him to Arizona to train family court judges, and then brought him back again to train custody evaluators, mental health professionals, and thinking we'd have 30 or so people attending. And we called this seminar kind of, I think it was Understanding True and False Allegations of Domestic Violence, Child Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse. And we had to close the doors at almost 200. And it was really the... I think that just kind of validates what you're saying here. There's always something we can learn. There were so many people that attended and they were so thirsty for information. And that's really where High Conflict Institutes sprung from, was that day. Annette Burns: I don't know too many people who would look at that title of that presentation, Understanding True and False and look at it and say, "Oh, I already understand that I don't need to go to this." I don't know very many people who could walk by that. Megan Hunter: So, Bill picked a good title? Annette Burns: Exactly. Megan Hunter: Yep. It's a problem. It's a huge problem in our courts just trying to get our mind directed on that. So, as a family law attorney, Annette, what do you see as the biggest issues related to DV and divorce and co-parenting? Annette Burns: Oh, there're so many. I think a big one is distinguishing between long term pervasive, intimate partner violence, terrorism, coercive control that is I embedded in the relationship and long term. Distinguishing between that and what might be called situational violence. When the parties are at a very emotional point in their relationship, maybe someone's drinking too much, emotions get high, someone throws a telephone, things like that. And distinguishing between them and distinguishing between what needs to be done about each of the respective relationships. Trying to treat those two very different situations the same is a mistake I believe. And I think it's a mistake family law attorneys and professionals make. I'm not suggesting that anyone should ever be able to move on from this long term terrorism type domestic violence, but there are things that can be done to move on and work on the situational violence. Annette Burns: I think Dr. Websdale in our interviews talked about how anger management could be appropriate with situational type things, and we can do behavior modification and things like that. But the more pervasive IPV coercive control is going to take some much more serious remedies. So, I think that's a huge issue in talking about parents and domestic violence. And another is just simply recognizing that even where there is domestic violence, it's likely these parents are going to have to co-parent. No one's going to disappear. Unless an abuser actually goes to jail, which happens sometimes. These people are going to have to co-parent in some way, no matter how distant. And we can't just ignore it and say, "Well, someone needs to go away, we're not going to worry about it. We're going to keep them apart." It's just not possible. Megan Hunter: Right. Annette Burns: Those are the biggest things for me. Megan Hunter: Karen, as a judge you saw a lot in your many, many years on the bench. What did you see as the biggest issues related to DV? Not just in divorce and co-parenting, but also in juvenile? Hon. Karen Adam: A few things, first of all, there's not a consistent response, there's not a consistent level of education and training across the bench and across the bar. And so, unfortunately that translates for survivors to inconsistent results in court, not knowing what to expect. And court is scary anyway. And if you've had a terrific experience with someone who is empathic and listened and was respectful to you as a litigant and then the next time you're in court, you are disrespected and disbelieved and you are questioned or the abuser is allowed to run the show, which happens a lot, especially in the cases of course of control. Then it's very, very hard for the survivor to maintain the strength to continue on, to continue to ask what needs to be asked and to try to get the results that she is looking for. I will say she, because statistically, there are more domestic violence survivors who are women than men, although this happens across the board. Hon. Karen Adam: It's a huge issue in the LGBTQ community as well. And of course there's an over representation in the courts of persons of color. So, I'm saying now she, just because that's mostly what we talked about in the series of interviews and what we were able to save on the recordings. So, if there's inconsistency, then that leads to a lack of confidence in what the court's saying and doing, which is not helpful for anyone and especially not helpful for survivors. And people then give up. Don't pursue remedies, don't come to court, or default, they don't ask for what they are entitled to and so forth. So, consistent training and consistent education is important, but everybody's human and you bring who you are to the bench, you bring who you are to the attorney table, you bring who you are as a bailer, who you are as a clerk, who you are at the information desk. Hon. Karen Adam: And so we can do all the training in the world, and until people are really willing to understand the nuances of domestic violence, you may not be the expert that we among the experts that we interviewed, folks who have dedicated their careers to researching and working in the field and specializing in domestic violence. But you can know enough to at least try to do the right thing with every survivor who comes in front of you. So, I think that's one of the hardest and most difficult challenges. And there's not much difference in that whether you're at superior court or general jurisdiction court, or at a limited jurisdiction court where you're dealing with the criminal cases, as well as orders of protection. And in juvenile court, of course you've got child welfare cases, as well as juvenile justice cases. Another word that's changed used to be called delinquency. Hon. Karen Adam: And actually, we don't even use the word juvenile anymore now, the new preferred term is youth justice. So the rest of the conversation, that's what I'll say. And I just always refer to everybody as a child anyway, whether they were on the juvenile justice side or not. But on the child welfare side, it's a real dilemma for survivors because reporting that you are in a situation with your children that is dangerous, can lead to your children being removed from you. And the child welfare system taking the view that you are not a competent parent if you are allowing a perpetrator or abuser to reside in the home where there are children. So in that case, it's a huge dilemma for survivors. And there's just a paucity of education around domestic violence in general and child welfare. There's a huge turnover among case workers. Hon. Karen Adam: There's about a one year complete turnover generally. And so you have brand new case workers who may have very, very limited experience with domestic violence, a couple of hours of training during their initial education to take on the job. And all of a sudden they're having to assess these very challenging, potentially very dangerous situations. And their goal of course always is to ensure the safety of children. And so that may mean removing children even when it may be appropriate to leave children with the parent and ensure that the perpetrator is not in the home. So, the final piece of that of course, is the children who have observed violence in their homes and become themselves abusers of their siblings, of their significant others, of their parents. Hon. Karen Adam: And those cases are very complicated. And I think it's taken a long time for the justice side, the juvenile justice side, youth justice side of the juvenile court, to appreciate that if you have a child in front of you who's charged with some kind of domestic violence, then likely, there is violence in the home. And yet there you are in court with both parents sitting there and the child there and nobody is checking to see whether the mom has been abused by the father, whether the child has been abused by the father. And it's such a complicated set of family dynamics in a system that is set up to do one thing, which is essentially to try to effect positive change in the life of that child. So those are really, really big issues. Megan Hunter: They're big. And it's complicated, very complicated issues. And I think about the case workers who get blamed in the high turnover. And in the court world, the judges get a lot of blame in cases like these. Is the judge responsible to remove the children, protect the children? And like you said, judges come to the bench with kind of their own recipe, their own background, their own history. And some maybe may just be brand new on the bench and not have a lot of training in this. So, I think as society we're asking a lot of other humans to have to make these very difficult decisions. And the judges I've talked to in my many years working in the court arena is that the majority really do care a lot, a whole lot. And they lose sleep at night over these cases. And these situations involving domestic violence and child abuse, a lot of times they don't know what to do. Megan Hunter: So I think that's why this video series is so important. So thank you for sharing that. And now, Bill, I wanted to ask about, we heard, I think, Annette mentioned intimate partner violence. And so what is IPV and what is it compared to DV? Are they the same thing? Are they different? Bill Eddy: Yeah. So this is something that people may be confused by, and we hope that you're not. So, DV is the term. Domestic violence that people are really used to hearing. IPV is more accurate. It stands for intimate partner violence. So, some people think of domestic violence as including child abuse, all kinds that happen in a domestic family situation. And what we're really focused on is between adult couples, whether they're married, unmarried, or even dating. And so intimate partner violence really narrows it down like that. With that said, after interviewing 16 people, what we found is they go back and forth all the time with these terms. So, we don't want people to worry about the terms. You can use either one, people will understand what you're talking about. And to be honest, we probably use domestic violence the most throughout the series, just because that's the term we've been used to in family courts all these years. Bill Eddy: So we don't want people to worry too much about that. And while I'm at it, I want to just reinforce. We're just barely scratching the surface today. And that's why the six videos are really great to watch and listen to because there's so much more depth. And I'm thinking if the listeners today are wanting particular information and we don't touch on it, it'd be really great to get it from those videos. And you can get them individually or the whole set, but I'm just so proud of the information that we got from the experts and that they were willing to share with us. So all these little subtle differences like DV and IPV, are also explained in there. Megan Hunter: Yeah, exactly. And kind of along that same line, maybe new terminology is the term we've heard in this interview, coercive control. So, you want to talk about that Bill? Bill Eddy: Yeah. So this was a really important part I think of the whole series, especially early on. And that is coercive control isn't just physical abuse. That this can be controlling of a survivor's finances, controlling who they talk to, controlling what they eat. Coercive control just can be very intrusive in a person's life, very frightening, isolating, et cetera. And the experts really reinforce. This is the big problem that physical abuse might only occur maybe once a year or once in a couple years, whereas coercive control goes on every minute of every day in the couple relationship and keeps the survivor terrified because they know what could happen if they don't comply with this control. And what's interesting is in California, starting 2021, is coercive control itself became considered as a basis perhaps for court intervention. I'm thinking of a case, and this wasn't in the interviews, but a case I became aware of where a man was for forcing his wife to weigh herself, I think three or four times a day as part of his control. Bill Eddy: And there wasn't a history of physical abuse, and yet that was a basis to protect the wife. So I think that's an important aspect here. Now, I also want to say with that, that I think it was Annette, or maybe Karen was mentioning situational couple violence. And that's different from coercive control because the situational doesn't carry a fear and ongoing power and control with it, it's more likely pushing and shoving and a couple who both may engage at a low level of violence that isn't the danger that the coercive control presents. So, I just wanted to clarify that. Megan Hunter: Oh, yeah. Thank you for that. So, our entire podcast is called, It's All Your Fault High Conflict People. So let's talk about high conflict people. Are people who engage in domestic violence or in intimate partner violence, do they have high conflict personalities? Bill Eddy: Well, this is my view and my view only, I'm not speaking for my colleagues here. But my view is that high conflict personalities are preoccupied with blaming others of a lot of all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions and extreme behaviors. So, when it comes to coercive control, yes, I believe they have high conflict personalities. And this overlaps with some personality disorders and the research is showing that more. So you may have borderline personality and high conflict personality with targets of blame, they focus on blame. And so with coercive control, borderline personality, antisocial HCPs, narcissistic HCPs, I think is what you're dealing with primarily. And what's helpful to know about that, is that this is embedded in the person's personality and you're not going to turn it off of the court lecture or a lawyer talking to their client. This is an embedded pattern of behavior and only a consistent program of behavior change has a shot at changing this. Bill Eddy: And one of the experts we interviewed Dr. David Wexler, who does treatment for offenders or abusers, he said maybe 30% of the people just aren't going to be reached. And they need more controls from the environment from courts, from society. So understanding that you may be looking at personality based behavior will help you understand you need really strong controls and you're not necessarily going to get changed from a six session or a 12 session anger management program, which might be helpful for situational couple violence. It really depends on the specific case. Hon. Karen Adam: I remember one of the most powerful messages I ever heard was when I was working with the Battered Women's Justice Project, National Council for Juvenile Family Court Judges, and the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts project, trying to develop a format for accounting for domestic violence in custody and parenting time. And we heard from a lot of people, just like we heard from a lot of folks during these DV interviews. And I remember that a person who ran a batterer intervention group described giving the group an exercise where they were to list all of the advantages that they accrued by engaging in coercive control, essentially coercive control. They filled the room with those sticky newsprint pages that we all know about from doing breakouts at meetings. There are so many advantages to running the show. And they ranged from, I get my meal whenever I want it, I can see the kids when I want to or don't want to and on and on and on. Hon. Karen Adam: And it is just so intrinsic and so deeply embedded in the way that the family operates. What Bill was describing as a six or a 12 program is just virtually ineffective anger management. Anger management used to be, and probably still is in some places what some folks considered to be one of the items on a case plan. For example, in child welfare. When I was doing child welfare cases, we had like a template of a case plan, a pre-printed one page brightly colored document to show parents so they could see that some things ran for two months and some things ran for four months and you didn't have to get overwhelmed and do everything all at once. We were trying. It was developed by child welfare and anger management was on there. Hon. Karen Adam: It was hyped on there like a permanent part of the case plan for domestic violence. And I used to just write through it every single time and substitute certified batterer intervention program. And one of the problems is that everything is siloed just like the court system is siloed. So services are siloed. So there were great certified batterer intervention programs that were contracted with by city court, not by child welfare, not by family court. And so trying to get those systems to talk to each other so that everybody was having the advantage of at least a one year program, multi days per week to try to get at this deeply embedded, very challenging set of issues remains almost impossible. Megan Hunter: Yeah. That's really important. It's an imperfect system with a lot of people trying to deal with difficult topics and situations, and maybe not always having all the tools or having the systems talk to each other. So, before we wrap this episode up, Annette, did you have anything to add to that? Annette Burns: Well, on the issue of whether people perpetrating IPV have personality disorders, of course I'm going to agree with Bill that that is such a pervasive thing that often seems connected with personality disorders and not to disparage anyone on this podcast, but I think any of us on this podcast could probably be goaded into doing some emotional situational violence, like throwing a shoe at someone. Personally, I don't think anyone on this podcast has a personality disorder, but [crosstalk 00:39:47]. So, I do see that distinction between the situational and the pervasive coercive control and personality disorders. That's just my input. You guys can disagree with me if you've never thrown a shoe. Megan Hunter: Hey, they throw a shoe on that TV show, The Voice, the singing show. And it's a sign of respect. Annette Burns: Got it. Megan Hunter: Instead of losing your temper. Anyway. Yeah. Thank you for that. That was pretty good. Good way to end this episode. And with that, we do wrap up part one of this DV series, but I want to ask Judge Adam for a last word, for anyone who might be listening, who is in a bad situation. Karen? Hon. Karen Adam: We absolutely want you to be safe. If you have been able to listen to this podcast and you feel safe, that's terrific. But if there is anything about your listening to this podcast that causes you concern, or that leads you to believe you may not be safe at any time, please, please contact your hotline in the place where you are residing. There's a national hotline in the United States. The number is 1-800-799-7233. You can chat live by going to the website, which is thehotline.org, all one word, thehotline.org, or you can text 88788 start, and there will be help available for you. We want you to be safe and to feel safe and not to put yourself at risk because you took the time and are concerned enough to listen to our podcast. Megan Hunter: Thank you, Karen. And we'll also put those numbers in the show notes and some links, not just for the US, but other parts of the world too. As I know we have listeners all over the globe. You can listen to part two in the next episode where these same guests will continue talking about this very important topic, including DV and mediation, the impact of DV on children, parenting plans, treatment success, and lots more. You'll find the link to the DV video series and our guests bios along with some other DV resources in the show notes. Remember to rate and review us and tell all your friends and colleagues about us. It means a lot to us. And don't forget to email us at podcast@highconflictinstitute.com with your questions. Megan Hunter: Most of importantly, don't forget to enjoy every day as you work toward understanding humans, so you can find the missing P-E-A-C-E, peace. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran.. Find the show, show notes and transcripts at truestory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. 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