Addressing Cultural Differences to Support Victims of Gender-based Violence

Bob Davis

Patchwork is a podcast from the Office on Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. Patchwork offers a glimpse behind the scenes of a legal movement called the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA. VAWA provides federal grants to help women at local, state and national levels. Patchwork explains how VAWA awards are made, shows what happens after funds arrive in communities, and share stories of help and hope. Patchwork brings you the voices of people on the front lines combating domestic and sexual violence. Our efforts to serve victims and hold offenders accountable create stories that knit us together and propel us forward. Welcome to Patchwork.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

If you are not addressing cultural context, you’re not being trauma-informed. If you don’t know anything about the community you’re serving other than who comes into your agency, that’s not being trauma-informed. You have to understand who the person is, what they’re experiencing if you are going to meet their needs. Part of creating the safety necessary in a trauma-informed approach relies on that.

For students; if you are interested in the research side of this, we need you. For students who are interested in practice, we absolutely need you. I always say “I am trying to prepare for that day when I wont be doing this work the way I do this work and I want to know that there are a cadre of solid practitioners, researchers, practitioner-researchers who can go out there and do this important work. So, we need you, we need your voice.

Bob Davis

Today, we're talking about serving marginalized communities who often do not get the services they need to recover from sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. Dr. Patricia Goodley is a professor emeritus at Howard University School of Social Work and she's a graduate professor of public health at the graduate school there with more than twenty-five years of experience and mental health, she specializes in addressing trauma and violence with a focus on community-based interventions. Dr. Bent Goodley has held a number of leadership positions, including serving as a steering committee member for the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African-American community. Thank you for joining us today.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Hi, good morning, how are you?

Bob Davis

I'm well, thank you. I'm excited to talk to you. How did you get into this work? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up being where you are today.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

So, interestingly enough, I really started this work as a beginning social worker. I can remember in graduate school, there was a class offered on domestic violence and I thought, “you know, I'm not sure why I would take a class on domestic violence. Domestic violence doesn't really happen in communities of color because I had always heard that, you know, domestic violence doesn't happen in the black community.” So when it was offered, I did not take that class. And it's something I've fully regretted as I grew into becoming a professional social worker, because what I soon learned as a community social worker in Harlem was that so many of the clients that I was serving had experienced domestic violence, were exposed to domestic violence, and I was ill-equipped to help them. And that's what started my journey and really trying to better understand what domestic violence was and why it was impacting so many families and why I had learned what we now know is a stigma that domestic violence didn't happen in the black community. It challenged me. And quite frankly, I think that's what led me to just want to know more.

Bob Davis

What did you figure out about that stigma? That is that is a 360 degree lesson there. What did you what did you come to find out about that in your work in Harlem or just in your life?

Tricia Bent-Goodley

So I think the stigma is something that I continue to learn about. Even now, I'm doing research currently on domestic violence, homicide prevention in the black community specifically, and the stereotypes that so many of us, including me as a black woman, so many of us have about black women and black families, is part of the challenge. So, I had always learned black women were really strong and that we would never allow somebody to become abusive towards us. And I was woefully wrong. And interestingly enough, as I became more educated and started to challenge my own family about some of this, I soon learned that they would say, “wow, yeah, that was something that this person experienced or that person experienced”, and that because of the stigma, they, too, had not seen what was so visible. And so I think that that's part of the challenge that we have today, is that we have these perceptions and stereotypes of people and that informs how we serve them, that informs how we see them. And that's part of the challenge.

Bob Davis

And you're speaking of something that feels to me to be pervasive outside of the area that we're top our mission to help victims. You're talking about how we see each other in a broader way, it sounds like.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Absolutely from my perspective, as I've done this work for so long, I think the biggest challenge is how people see themselves and how they don't see the people around them. So I remember when I first started doing this work, people would say to me, “well, I don't see race. You know, I don't see that. I don't think it's that big of an issue.” I think that you have to serve that survivor because blood is blood. A broken bone is a broken bone. And so it's about addressing the violence. And the reality of it is that you can't address the violence if you're not addressing the context of how the violence is happening, why it's happening, why do certain communities have certain barriers that others do not? And how have we within those communities learned about some of these issues that then create further barriers? So I think being able to understand the context of people's lived experiences helps us provide support to them that honor who they are, that see them, and that become much more effective and much more inviting for them to receive the support that they need.

Bob Davis

So when you talk about barriers, one barrier that I'm assuming or wondering about is just the barrier that we enter to as an individual going into that encounter. So you're talking about am I seeing this person fully? Am I seeing them really beyond the traumatic event, it sounds like?

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Absolutely. Because we are not our trauma and the trauma is part of our experience. And so being able to see that full person in their lives, you begin to understand how do I best support them? This for me was important being on a campus. And so I developed our interpersonal violence prevention program at Howard University, which essentially was the advocate arm to intimate partner violence, sexual assault, stalking, dating, violence on our campus. And we served as the advocates on campus for students and others who were impacted by these issues. I had to relearn how to do this work on a campus because it was different than how I did the work in community. And I had to take a look at my own perspectives regarding different generations. So, I was once again confronted with my own ideas of who I thought this generation was and what they needed. And I had to challenge myself to think through, well, what do our young people need that might look a little different? What are the messages that they've heard that I did not hear? And what do we need to kind of do to help support them? So a lot of times we think about these issues within the context of race and ethnicity and sexual orientation. We don't always think about it in terms of development and age and other different variables that are really important. And so that's the long answer to say that if we're doing this work, we should constantly be challenging ourselves because there's always a client that presents that has a different experience. And if you can't see the fullness of their lives, then you're not going to help them really begin to work through either the trauma of their experience or their perspectives around how to address some of the different interpersonal violence challenges that they encounter.

Bob Davis:

You know, you were talking about seeing them fully and as you were describing that, I was thinking about the barrier and then as you open the door and removed that barrier because you created that opening for people. Boy, what a what an opportunity for healing to give another person that opening to be seen and heard and understood as they are.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Yes. And I think that's what that's what we as either service providers, as community members, we deny ourselves the opportunity to fully help people in their healing process. When we allow our own barriers to sort of be the lens that we are seeing, the person next to us around, right. So I think the way that I've tried to really better understand these issues is sort of how I learned to do what I call good old fashioned social work. When I first started doing social work, as is the incoming new sort of beginning clinician, I remember I used to just be in the community. So at the time I am a New Yorker, but I didn't grow up in Harlem. And so there's a different cultural context right within Harlem that I didn't have growing up in Queens. So the first thing I did was just I just kind of sat in that community. I mean, I would go to different faith-based celebrations. I go to different churches. I went to I would hang out at the corner store. I just made myself a visible presence. I hung out at the park. And so that was not part of my 9:00 to 5:00. But to know the community, I had to be in the community. And so even though I didn't live in Harlem, I spent a lot of time just kind of being present and being present. I learned about who the community was. So sometimes when people say to me, well, I don't know anything about this community, so I should just ask them and I would say, “no, you should do your homework first. You should show interest, you should show up, you should be present.” And I think as you do that and you do your homework, people allow you in so you can see more of who they are and better help them. And that's what allowed us to really better support the community just being present and being there.

Bob Davis

It strikes me, as you said, that a lot of that is about earning trust and creating that opening of trust so that people can share with you in a genuine way that you can help guide them.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Oh, yeah. And I would always say and I think this is so true to the work that we're doing now and especially today, especially today, it's OK for people not to trust me. You know, I think sometimes as providers, we get offended when people don't trust us. And what I would always say to a client is, it's OK that you don't trust me because my job is to earn your trust. The only thing I ask you to do is give me the opportunity to do that, but it's OK for you to feel like you don't know me, you don't understand what I may or may not be doing. Some of the institutions we work for have hurt people. And I had to understand that and acknowledge that and then say, allow me the opportunity to do this different right. And if I don't hold me accountable and I think that's important for us, a lot of times we don't want to be held accountable. We want to go out and save people. Saving people, gosh, that's loaded in and of itself. But you certainly can't help another person if you yourself have not done the work that you need to do to be able to show up for them.

Bob Davis

I would think that would be particularly challenging when you're dealing with another culture… the attack on Asian-Americans recently reminded me that we have so many diverse cultures in this country that have very specific needs. Talk a little bit about how, as a professional, you all need to shift gears to address those cultural barriers depending on who you're serving at that moment.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Right. And so I think a lot of times I've heard people say to me, “well, I can't know everybody's challenge. So it's just easier for me to understand this particular element. And then I'll just kind of serve everyone from that perspective.” And so the challenge with that is, first of all. Many of our diverse communities, having known these systems and structures and having experienced oppression and discrimination, anticipate it, so when that's your approach, you just affirm what they know, right? And so and so from my perspective, to do the work that we do well, that means you're constantly evolving. You're asking yourself, for example, if you have a group of survivors or members of the community and you don't really understand or know who they are, then your job is to go out and do the work to do to understand who they are. If you find you're not serving a particular pocket of folks in your community, your job is to figure out why are they not coming? Why don't they trust me, figure out what's going on. And to do that, you got to be willing to go into the community. You know, I find I find that sometimes we are afraid of the people we serve. And we have a fear of either what we don't know or what we think we know. And so part of part of what we have to do is be willing to to just do that tough work. And let me acknowledge this upfront. So many of the providers we work with, law enforcement, different professional groups that help and support communities, advocates are overwhelmed. I get it. I truly get it. And. I think our ethical responsibility is being able to support our full community. So to me, being culturally responsive is part of a solid ethical approach to the work we do. So, yes, I think we should be in a constant state of learning and willingness to challenge ourselves.

Bob Davis

Talk a little bit more about the overwhelmed part. Are you… my mind immediately goes to the covid challenges that are you. But we have a lot we have racial challenges in this country. Tell me about what do you see that overwhelming aspect?

Tricia Bent-Goodley

So, you know, it's interesting, I had an opportunity to actually conduct a good amount of our domestic violence homicide research during covid. So we did a lot of interviews of providers and then we did focus groups of community members from May of last year through October of last year, and really had an opportunity to hear what folks were saying. And so it's interesting for a lot of the direct service providers, they were going through the same challenges that the survivors they were serving were going through, which to me said something heroic about many of our advocates, providers who they themselves had family members with covid, were impacted with taking care of kids at home and providing education and serving survivors at the same time, and so I think that that that in and of itself, just being able to manage that was huge. The other thing that I think that that we kind of learned and saw is the profound isolation that people experienced because of covid and quarantining, required quarantining. And as we start to think about this even more, so many of our communities were already experiencing significant isolation. And I think some people got, respectfully, right, sort of a taste of what many communities were already experiencing. In terms of how isolated they are. I'm hoping that as we emerge to whatever this new space that we're going to be in related to covid becomes, we don't lose sight of the fact that we could see and experience the isolation that so many survivors are battling with. And I hope that some of what we learned we don't get rid of so the option to use the virtual platform to get a protective order, for example, the option of talking to a mental health clinician virtually. I hope that we don't lose some of those opportunities because there are still people, even as we are, quote unquote, opening up. They're not they're still in that space of isolation, and so my hope is that we don't forget them and this as we begin to move to whatever normalcy will start to look like.

Bob Davis

It speaks to one of the barriers and it kind of opens the door potentially for a new barrier, which is the technological barrier. So do you do you find is that an area that we need to focus on to make sure that people have the ability to make those connections? Or what has been your experience with different cultures taking advantage of that virtual connectivity? I've heard some people say that it's made it easier to get help. For some they can slip it in and, you know, especially if they're working or. But what's your what's your view on, you know, kind of the new the new normal in that area?

Tricia Bent-Goodley

A few things. Some people don't trust the technology. I find for many communities and I've heard this a lot because I am a practicing mental health clinician. People who have just said to me, “I can't build a relationship on a machine” and I get that. So I think we have to be sensitive to those folks who want to sit across from another person. And that experience provides some healing for them or they feel like they can build trust in a better way. Sitting across from another person. So we still have those barriers that we've got to deal with, whether those are transportation challenges, that people experience, accessibility and being able to get to us. We've seen a lot with gentrification that communities are moving further and further away from the transportation systems that they need to get to them to get them to services, so these are things we still need to work through.

I think the other piece of it is we cannot assume that young people are comfortable with the use of technology. I find that sometimes we make an assumption that because a young person has grown up with a tablet or a phone that they're comfortable using Zoom and all these other different platforms, that's not true. So that can become a barrier for a young person who wants to access support. We have to think critically about those things and not make assumptions that some people who we think might have more access do not. We have to think about our people in a safe space to have conversations with us and how do we really know that? So there are things that we have to adapt to. And I think that the field has done a better job than what they thought they would have done prior to covid.

Bob Davis

You talked a little bit about domestic violence, homicide prevention, and thank you for your work in that area. We are so grateful for that work at such an important area. How have how what's your view on how communities can deal with this if you've really taken the trauma, informed, cultural responsive approach, broadened out to the community level about some of these obstacles and some of these cultural issues that we need to address from that level?

Tricia Bent-Goodley

So I've also had the experience of being a member of my local communities domestic violence fatality review team since our team's inception in 2004, and I have chaired the team for a number of years now. So that's another lens that I've brought to the domestic violence homicide prevention work and thinking about communities. I believe communities are the key, we as community members are the key, why? Because in so many of our domestic violence fatalities, that victim did not go to a provider. They often turn to family and friends. And so as community members, we are the key. It's not going to, from my perspective, change solely if providers do what they do better. There's an opportunity to prevent domestic violence fatalities when communities are a part of the conversation. And so that means, from my perspective, many things. But I'll just listen to one is I think as communities, we have got to reduce the stigma around domestic violence. A lot of times we still are the ones as community members who are telling survivors not to get support or sometimes giving them excuses or reasons for why people perpetrate violence. We are often not holding perpetrators accountable. And so we have an opportunity to have those conversations in ways that a provider cannot have. The other piece of that is we have to understand what's high risk domestic violence. So as we were talking to folks in communities and asking them what's high risk for some of those communities, they really they didn't they didn't really know. And for others, they had their own ideas about what they thought it was. So I think, one, we have to provide more education around the red flags. And then I think that we also need to hear from communities about what do they define as high risk domestic violence, because that's where we're going to have more people in the community begin to take leadership and accountability for this issue. And that's really what's going to change it.

Bob Davis

Talk a little bit, go a little deeper on that, if you would, let's talk about those red flags for a minute, because in terms of community awareness, I hear exactly what you're saying. If someone is kind of glancing against a conversation about domestic violence and there may be a desire to. Say it's OK and, you know, whatever the reaction would be, other than looking for a red flag, knowing what high risk is and knowing what a red flag is. All right. What about that? If a friend tells you that they've had an encounter like this, what should a community member ask and say? And that's a that's a tough conversation if you're not aware of, you know what to look for.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Absolutely. So I think, for example, one of the red flags that we certainly know is a red flag is strangulation. And it was not abnormal for me to hear folks in the community and we've seen this in the fatality work and my research just in my own practice work and talking about some of these issues as an advocate. I’ll hear survivors or community members talk about, hey, this person choked me out or I was choked. So one, I don't correct people on the language. Eventually when we provide education, we talk about what's the difference between choking and strangulation and then educate the community about what strangulation is and what it means within the context of violence. I think, though, that part of our conversation is, OK, what happens when someone comes to you and they share that with you and they tell you hey, this person choked me out, what do you do with that information? So here's the challenge. If I'm in a community where there's trust with the local providers, it makes it a lot easier because then I can just connect them to the providers in their community. If that trust does not exist, that becomes a challenge, because now I'm having to suggest to them this person may need some additional professional support that you cannot offer to them that might help them in being safe. And so I know that you don't trust the law enforcement community in your local area or I know you don't trust the providers in your local area or I know you don't trust the medical system in your local area. However, we may need them to be able to provide support to this person. So it's helping them navigate the systems to get the help while acknowledging the trust and the mistrust that might still exist. I think providing people with as much information as you can about what the response should be and helping them so they can be sort of their own best advocates through these systems helps to empower them. But that's where we see how barriers can be so dangerous, because when people don't trust the systems that are supposed to support them, it creates another layer of risk for society and fatality. That's something we can change. Let me as we also educate communities.

Bob Davis

And let me stop you there to dive in, then I want you to go to the second red flag. But I want to just take a second and dive in there because you just you just made me realize and see much more clearly that barrier that exists when an encounter with the system is clumsy or ill-informed. Because then just to catch some of our listeners up, most of our listeners, I think, are in the business and they know that strangulation is a predictor of homicide. But for those who, you know, some folks who are listening, it's worth, I think, reminding people that the reason strangulation is such a red flag is because it is absolutely predictive of harm. And that's probably too strong a word for a researcher, it may be predictive is not the right word. You tell me you tell our listeners why it's so important. But it's a red flag because it tells us what.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

When a person can literally watch the life seep out of another person and not feel any level of remorse or desire to do something different than that tells you they can take that person's life. So that that is how I explain this to communities. If a person can watch that and continue to watch that and still berate you, then they are capable of killing you.

Bob Davis

Thank you. Well said. Well said. It's a sad fact, right, that we know in hindsight, as you do these reviews, these fatality reviews. And that's what I want you to feel a little bit more on to. So as you look at these cases, you must see a lot of lessons learned about encounters with the system that that lack of trust you were talking about its lack of trust with the health system, with law enforcement, whatever. Boy, if there is an attempt, you must hear that all the time. There's a reason we don't trust them because this, that, or the other thing.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Absolutely, and some of that is how our systems are organized. And this is this is the same what I've experienced and seen for survivors of sexual assault. I think one of the things that when we looked at, for example, the campus work. Was that in order to build in order for survivors to feel comfortable coming to us, let's build a system that makes sense for them. So before we actually, as a program started to do prevention, education and talk about what we were offering, we did our own work. We looked at what should the structure look like, who should be engaged, how should we be working together in a coordinated way? What is the trauma informed approach for our students, for our campus? And once that was developed, then we started to do more of the outreach to students. So I'm a you know, I know that we can't go backwards for some organizations. You're already there. So the question is, is your structure, your service delivery system, is it created and built out in a way that supports survivors? For example, are you structured in a way where law enforcement and the advocate are not really working together in partnership? Meaning is a survivor having to repeat interviews over and over, has law enforcement also been trained on the neurobiology of trauma so they understand what interviewing should and should not look like? Are we educating each other together so I understand what does the advocate, the educational advocate on campus or student services or camp the police, do I understand what their roles are and how we interface together, because the survivor shouldn't have to figure any of that out. That's our job. So I think that, for me was a very real perspective on how we sort of addressed some of the fragmentation in our systems. I always say that our systems are structured in ways that makes sense for us. They're not necessarily structured in a way that recognizes the wholeness of people. So they have folks having to go here, there and everywhere when they should be able to get supports and services in a coordinated way.

Bob Davis

I think if you were going to talk about a second red flag and I want to go back to that because the first one of that strangulation was so important. Was there another one you want to mention?

Tricia Bent-Goodley

One of the things that we heard a lot of I mean, we heard a lot about red flags. You know, I think about firearms as a red flag. This is a huge red flag. And it was so interesting to me how many people in the community didn't recognize firearms as a red flag. And so there's a culture around guns and a culture around firearms, and it looks different in different communities. So I think there's a lot of learning that we need to do in this area to really understand what is having a firearm mean in rural Alabama versus, you know, Brooklyn, New York, and understanding how people get firearms, why they have them, and what our perceptions are about them outside of intimate violence, intimate partner violence, and inclusive of intimate partner violence. So there's a lot of learning that needs to happen there. But another form of violence that people in the community talked about that I've not seen in any of our high-risk tools is public violence. So we heard a lot from members of the community who said when you're comfortable abusing someone in public and no one steps in, that is a high risk because that means not only are you OK with doing this, but the community affirmed it because they did nothing, and that creates a whole another level of risk. That for me was powerful because I've not seen that in any of our high-risk tools. But it clearly, clearly is something important for us to really begin to understand.

Bob Davis

Very, very powerful, because you my mind goes to that image where it's a little uncomfortable. You're at the parking lot or something, and you're this is this is a bad situation. What is my role? What is going to make it better? Worse. Very powerful, because you're right. What a what a message to the victim that this was in public and there is no help for me. It just as if it makes me feel desperate, thinking about their perception of, you know, being completely vulnerable and in need of help.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Yes. And the other piece of that is that you may have had a community member who witnessed this. And it wasn't that they were disinterested, they just didn't know what to do. And that's where bystander education is so important. You know, again, whether that is for domestic violence or sexual assault or stalking, which is another area that I think we've got to do more work around. It's important for us to educate communities because the more educated they are, the more of an opportunity to intervene, the more of an opportunity for survivors to know and perpetrators of violence to know that what's happening is not OK. We are not affirming your behavior. And so I think these things are really important for us to have healthy conversations around.

Bob Davis

I want to go back to Systems for just a minute, because you've worked with so many communities and you talked about how these are oftentimes fragmented. Talk about some of the barriers that we've inadvertently built into these systems.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

So even the what we consider is something as simple as having to go from place to place to place. You know, I always tell the story. I remember where I really understood this when I became a parent and my kids were young and I remember driving and my boys were in the back seat and they were fussing with each other about something or another. And the music in the car is going because I'm trying to entertain them and I'm driving. There's so much going on. And I remember thinking to myself in that moment, if I were a survivor and I was told that I needed to go to parenting classes or I needed to take the kids to counseling and I needed to navigate bus systems or trains, what would this feel like? And I just remembered my heart aching because I was one of those providers and it honestly had not crossed my mind in that way until I was in that situation. And so having to navigate and move through these systems is really tough.

The other piece of it is for some survivors, our systems are not familiar to them. And so we make assumptions. We'll say, well, here's what the process is. This is where you have to go. And we act as if it's so matter of fact to us because it is because we do it every day. It's not to that person. So now they're navigating their trauma, which in and of itself, again, because we know so much more about the neurobiology of trauma now. That in and of itself is presenting a challenge and then we're saying, here's the process, this is what you have to do, here's where you have to go. And we're making assumptions that it's so simple and it's not. So I think this is something for us to think through. I feel like in the area of sexual assault, we've learned more about the neurobiology of trauma. I don't think that we know enough about the neurobiology of trauma and domestic violence because so much of the violence is repeated for so long, we don't really understand fully what that means. There's more that I think we need to learn. But as a systems provider, if I'm talking with someone about, for example, getting a protection order. How am I talking about that? It might be simple or easy for me, but just walking through a court can be extremely confusing. So I think we have to begin to think through from just how we talk about our services to how we create our services and build them out. How are we doing it in a way where a person who's experiencing trauma and doesn't know our systems can get help, or you may assume they know the system because they've interacted with a lot of our systems. But that doesn't mean that they're comfortable with it. So there they are trying to navigate it, but in a way where they also are acknowledging that I don't trust the system. So it's super complicated. How do you navigate a system you don't trust? So there's a lot involved in that process. But that's on us to help people learn or figure out or support and how they do.

Bob Davis

And recognize when that's part of the problem, as you said, being trauma informed, recognizing that their reaction may be in part, frustration, feeling lost.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

And recognizing that if we're going to be trauma informed, we have to be culturally competent. And I think a lot of providers are missing that, to be honest. I've heard providers say, well, I am trauma form, OK, but you're doing nothing related to culture. So if you're not addressing cultural context, you're not being trauma informed. If you don't know anything about the community you're serving other than who comes into your agency, that's not being trauma informed. You know, you have to understand who the person is and what they're experiencing if you're going to meet their needs. And part of creating the safety that's necessary in a trauma informed approach relies on that.

Bob Davis

You have the great opportunity to work with young people coming into this field. What do you tell them as they're getting started? You know, the you talk you started this conversation by telling us about how you entered and what your perceptions were and how you've evolved since then. What's your message to young people who are starting this work?

Tricia Bent-Goodley

We need you. We need your voices, all of your voices, your diverse voices. We absolutely need your diverse thinking. I mean, we haven't even we haven't even talked about gender or sexual orientation. Right? And we need your voices at the table. I think the more that we have diversity and diverse voices at the table, the better we will become as a field. That's one message. The second message is for those young people. I know when I when I first started as a researcher doing research in the area of domestic violence initially. I remember someone telling me I wouldn't do that if I were you. This is not a topic people want to talk about. And so you will be limited in the work that you're able to do because nobody wants to talk about violence in their relationship. So pick something else. And I'm so grateful I didn't listen to that colleague I. Continue to want to learn how to better respond, better support survivors. How we come up with interventions for persons who harm people. How we create opportunities for there to be some form of justice and restorative justice for people, there's a lot we don't know. So for students, if you're interested in the research side of this, we need you for those students who are interested in practice. We absolutely need you. You know, I always say I'm trying to prepare for that day when I won't be doing this work in the way that I do this work. And I want to know that there are a cadre of solid practitioners, researchers, practitioner researchers who can go out there and do this important work still. So we need you. We need you. We need your voice.

Bob Davis

That's wonderful. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you joining us today. It's been a wonderful conversation. Love hearing from you. Thank you.

Tricia Bent-Goodley

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Bob Davis

And thank you for listening to Patchwork. We want to hear from you. Please let us know how you like this episode and what you'd like to hear on future episodes. You can email us at Patchwork@usdoj.gov, tweet us @OVWJustice or you can just give us a call, 202.307.6026.

From everyone at OVW, thanks for listening and special thanks to Minh Ha, who’s working the magic behind the sound machine to make this sound OK.

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