 Hello, I'm Rosalyn Satchel, I'm a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. I'm also the Blanche Thieber Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University. Today I welcome you to a conversation on an interesting topic that apparently you're interested in too. Over 25 years, I have worked with victims and survivors of violence as a community organizer, a pastor, a church elder, a guardian at Lightham, a policy advocate, and now as a scholar, researcher and professor. Today I invite you to join us in an ongoing conversation with marginalized women about their experiences with technology under COVID-19 policies in the context of intimate partner violence. Thank you to all who made this fellowship possible. I've been able to use my sabbatical to advance not only my scholarship, but also and more importantly, practical community-based interventions intended to disrupt systemic violence against the most vulnerable among us. Speaking of which, we begin by acknowledging that Harvard University is situated on the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Massachusetts people. They respect to our and their elders, past and present. We extend that respect to the Massachusetts, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag nations peoples who may be with us today. As many of us know too well, when a person loves another deeply, the last thing she wants to do is call in a firing line on her loved one, even if they are hurting her. Systemic violence is as much a concern for her as her own life because she's likely seen her community overpoliced, surveilled, and at least heard about Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Waukesha Wilson, George Floyd, Alton Sterling, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, names and lists that go on and on, back to Emmett Till as Alyssa Richardson and April Williams reminded us last week. And even those whose names we do not know, whose cries we've never heard as they were wrongly imprisoned and executed for more than 25 years. I stood on both sides of these issues in the tensions, like the ones we're discussing today because I reject false dichotomies and dualistic thinking. We can have accountability and justice while also extending compassion and restoration. Human dignity is the goal of human rights conventions and nation states ratify those to be the supreme laws of the land. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for us to ensure human dignity for all people. This framework has animated much of my work in underserved communities and so today I welcome you to join. Tama Bryant Davis, a professor of psychology at the Graduate School of Education and Psychology and director of the culture and trauma research lab at Pepperdine University. She is a licensed psychologist and ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church as am I. Dr. Bryant Davis completed her master of divinity degree at Pepperdine and she has a clinical psychology doctorate and really does represent marginalized women in this work in such an important way as an extension of even her postdoctoral training which occurred here at Harvard Medical Center with the victims of violence program. Dr. Tama Bryant, would you care to share with us now? Thank you so much for having me and for that warm introduction. I am so grateful for all of you being here on today. It says a lot for you to see a flyer to see a posting about intimate partner abuse and choose to show up. That there are many who would close their eyes that would shift their gaze would focus on any other thing. And so I am grateful for this community and for whatever it is that gave you the capacity and the desire to sit with those who have been marginalized, those who have been victimized, and those who are so much more than what they have lived through. As a clinical psychologist I come to you from a framework of decolonizing psychology and that requires us to look at the context and not just the individual. And so we recognize that there are different factors that increase our risk to intimate partner abuse. Those who are racially and ethnically marginalized experience greater risk, particularly Native American American Indian and black American survivors are at increased risk. Those who are LGBTQ face increased risk. Those who are impoverished and battling homelessness and lack of resources are also facing increased risk. We are living in a trauma within a trauma. And so I invite you in this moment to take sacred pause, because I know this is not merely an academic exercise of how can we serve those who are struggling and those who have been marginalized. But we ourselves are all living through a global pandemic, which is a medical trauma. The reality is that COVID-19 has also increased the risk of intimate partner violence. When we see the large number of people who are practicing physical distancing and social distancing. And so there has been less of a buffer, less of an opportunity to come outside of the home and to seek services. And so we are mindful of the urgency of this work, as well as the additional barriers that make help seeking difficult. And so not only do we come from a decolonizing psychology perspective, but also in indigenizing psychology and a liberation psychology perspective, which means that there are multiple ways of healing. There are multiple pathways to restoration, and we want to look at the ways in which our culture provides medicine. And what that means is psychology when we look at human history is a young tradition, but way before Western psychology was created. There are ways in which communities would rally together to support each other to protect each other to restore and to heal. And so we want to respect those and integrate those as we look at ways that we can interrupt the cycles of intimate partner abuse. We also want to name the very real realities of intimate partner abuse happening across religious traditions and happening across age from dating violence among the youth, all the way to intimate partner violence occurring within our elders. Partner abuse is not only physical, it is emotional, psychological, it can be verbal, financial, sexual, even spiritual. And so we want to really dismantle this false hierarchy around what counts and who really deserves our services or our compassion. We want to be mindful of also the realities that there are barriers that infringe upon the rights of marginalized survivors. And a part of that is the ways in which we have been mistreated, stigmatized, discriminated against by those who are supposed to help us. And we often think about police officers and that is important, but I also want to name judges and medical doctors, lawyers and mental health professionals, even case managers, who are supposed to be in a position of advocate are coming with their own biases. And so we really want to promote a liberation perspective that recognizes a part of our healing requires social justice. A part of our healing is an commitment to anti oppression that is in all of its forms. And so for us to combat transphobia, combat racism, sexism for us to combat heterosexism and able body ism in all of our systems and institutions, recognizing that intersectionality, belonging to multiple sex groups continues to silence and segregate even our healing process. And so a part of what we are mindful of in the midst of COVID is the need for technology to be utilized in order to reach survivors and in order to protect survivors and help us to heal and restore. And so many clinicians like me are currently practicing telehealth solely. And so working with people in their healing journey by phone and by internet with which has benefits and challenges. A benefit is people can reach us any time and anywhere, whatever location we are in and they are in so it removes that barrier of transportation, a challenge becomes if someone is trying to do their session, and the perpetrator the offender is in the house. And so we have the additional challenges when we think about confidentiality, safety, and seeking those resources that can benefit survivors and their children, as we try to really interrupt the cycles of partner abuse. There have also been a push toward creating communities online where survivors can connect and really push against this idea that they are alone, that they are by themselves because a part of what partner abusers do is to give you a message that no one will be there for you, and that no one cares. And so we rise on today with a collective agenda of creating safe spaces for survivors to be restored and to heal for us to also recognize the importance of empowerment. Because one of the differences between liberation psychology or social justice oriented psychology is we want to help people to not just cope, but to resist. And so our healing is an act of resistance. Our joy is an act of resistance. Community is an act of resistance and eradicating and transforming racist and oppressive policies are also a part of resistance. And so I would just lead with you in conclusion and echo from the beautiful group sweet honey and the rock. We are the ones. We are the ones. We've been waiting for. Thank you so much for being here. I'm excited for the conversation. Thank you Dr. Tamah. Absolutely we are the ones we have been waiting for and that is why we're here today right we're not waiting for someone else to do the work for us we are here as a part of a clarion call to action. And so our connectionality as Dr. Tamah pointed us to is a lot like interdisciplinary, interdisciplinarity. It has a way of broadening our perspectives, broadening our understanding and so today's conversation brings together experts in psychology as Dr. Tamah, but also experts in law, like Tanya Asim Cooper and Kendra Albert. Tanya will be here talking to us as one of my research partners as well. And she'll be talking to us about what it's like for her representing clients in courtrooms where the environment has totally shifted how has the pandemic changed the way that indigent clients, or even those who have economic means are represented in courtrooms around this country. Tanya Asim Cooper from Pepperdine University is the director of the restoration and justice clinic at Pepperdine's Caruso School of Law. She is an associate clinical professor of law, practicing with clients daily she and her students represent survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Professor Cooper's research focuses on domestic violence in the Christian church, and she has represented survivors from a variety of religious and faith traditions. Will you please tell us a little bit about how the COVID-19 policies and practices have changed the experiences in courtrooms around this country in the United States for intimate partner violence survivors and victims. Oh, yes. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. Thank you all for being here. Thank you to the organizers of this amazing event. In Pepperdine Law, where I direct a student run clinic, we represent victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, and I have personally observed how COVID-19 has impacted the most vulnerable victims of domestic violence black and brown women, especially studies show racial disparities in domestic violence for victims of color, predominantly women, and they are in the greatest danger. From my experience and based on my research victims of color generally are perceived as less credible victims, suffer more serious violence and require more concrete evidence of abuse, especially physical violence. They need photographs, they need not just medical records, they need medical professional live testimony. Victims of color face stereotypes like angry black women or welfare queens, among others. Victims of color are expected to be the perfect victims with no evidence that they fought back, even if they were defending themselves. Victims of color are less likely to call 911 and to seek traditional law enforcement sources. Victims of color are more likely to be treated as the abuser and arrested when they do call 911. Victims of color face scrutiny from courts than why they didn't call police or press charges. Victims of color are less able to access resources. Victims of color tend to lose restraining order hearings when child custody is in dispute. Victims of color are often offered less secure and not legally enforceable remedies like mutual restraining orders or temporary orders that lapse without a finding of domestic violence. And these have few legal consequences for future domestic violence incidents between the same parties, as well as future custody determinations. This pandemic has made everything worse and illustrate I want to tell you one of the stories from my cases, my former client whom I'll call Hope. Hope is a young black woman in her 20s. She was dating her boyfriend, and they got engaged Latino man in his 30s, and he began controlling her actions and then steadily got more violent. She quit her job, then made her get another job, made her cut off ties with her father, supervised her phone calls with her mother, locked her out of the apartment at night so she had to sleep in her car. Scared her with episodes of erratic driving while texting, once crashing the car and causing her to hit her head against the dashboard. She pressured her to get an abortion when she got pregnant, which she refused, then pushed her in the stomach so hard she fell to the ground and was hospitalized for premature labor on two occasions. She was released after a fight in their apartment, telling police she was the primary abuser, and she would have been arrested if the police officer had not found her in premature labor and called an ambulance instead. This led Hope to file a domestic violence restraining order request in December 2019. And by the time her case was ready for a hearing, a few weeks later, COVID-19 had shut down the LA courthouses. For several months and throughout the spring of 2020, her case was automatically continued by the courts. And when we finally appeared for a hearing, it was August 2020. The judge, who was white, was asking why there wasn't a pending criminal case, and why Hope hadn't allowed her abuser to visit the child, now a few months old, although these were beyond the scope of the domestic violence restraining order matter. This is what the judge previewed before hearing Hope's testimony, which he stopped immediately upon learning that Hope had snatched her fiance's phone during one episode of his erratic driving. The judge said her actions, which she called aggressive, couldn't negate his actions towards her. The best result we could hope for that day was to continue the case, keep the temporary order in place, move the case to a different LA courthouse, and a different judge, which we did. But a few months later, a different judge told Hope that her allegations were now stale, and she ultimately settled the case with her abuser. This story illustrates how COVID-19 now adds to the inequities that marginalized women face. Hope had few safe options to bring her case to court. She had to wait until the courts reopen, and even when they did for essential matters like domestic violence, she wasn't able to timely bring her evidence forward and overcome the baked in prejudices that survivors of color all too often face. While her case was pending, someone showed up at her mother's apartment, where she had been hiding with her newborn premature baby, and banged on the front door for 15 minutes. She hid in the closet with the baby, assuming it was her abuser. And even after that episode she was reluctant to go to a shelter because of COVID-19. Because of the coronavirus, my clinic has had to pivot our legal services online. We met with Hope on Zoom, where we prepared her for trial, made safety plans, and reviewed exhibits. We use secured servers and tools like DocuSign to prepare court forms. Twice I left paperwork outside of her mother's apartment and then immediately texted her so that she was able to retrieve them and we could remain socially distant. Because Hope was technologically confident, she was able to pivot with us to move our work to virtual platforms, but I worry for those survivors, especially black and brown women who have little to no access to technology, or share that technology with their abusers, or under greater surveillance because of COVID lockdown orders. Because of all of that, I wonder to whether greater outreach and accessibility of technology to these victims will help if they are understandably reluctant to engage law enforcement and courts for help. COVID-19 has shattered the physical, mental, and emotional health of many, and the effects of the pandemic demonstrate poor outcomes for marginalized women. We need to think more broadly about how to help these victims. Last month I participated in a four-part series on Zoom, training my local church on domestic violence, definitions, dynamics, warning signs, problematic faith responses, and how faith communities can literally save survivors. I've seen how faith communities can come together to shelter a victim from her abuser, give her safety and time to gather resources to safely and then permanently leave her abuser. If law enforcement and courts can't or won't assist, especially during the pandemic, let's equip faith communities and other online communities where marginalized women go, and let's equip them to help. Thank you. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you so much. It's so helpful to get some real-life information, you know, before we have to wait through actually getting the studies and the data back, right? We can actually go to the experts, and fortunately, we've had an opportunity to hear from a psychologist, a clergy person, as well as a lay leader, and a lawyer who's representing clients. Now we have the opportunity to hear from Kendra Albert, who is one of our experts here at the Berkman Client Center as an associate. She is also the clinical instructor at the Cyber Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, where she teaches students to practice technology law. She, they serve as the director for the initiative for a representative First Amendment, which provides funding and support to law students from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in First Amendment law. Kendra has served as a lecturer at both Harvard Law School and Harvard College. This is an important conversation for all of us to engage in as we look at this pandemic environment, because different questions are arising, Kendra, about what is appropriate and what is not in this environment. What is safe and what is secure? Is a church setting up a Facebook group for domestic violence victims and survivors actually safe? Or is it dangerous? We may not resolve all these issues in this webinar today, of course, but we're welcoming you to join the dialogue and Kendra is going to lead us in this part. Thank you so much. I'm really honored to be here, especially with this incredible panel. You know, I think Rosalind sort of gave my bio, but just sort of as kind of a background for this topic. I've worked with survivors of intimate partner violence as well as sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence and sort of does appear crisis line operator. So, you know, part of what I'm bringing to bear is both my sort of knowledge of technology and computer security and sort of its interaction with high risk populations but also sort of my experiences as like a trans person as a bisexual person and someone who is often working with folks who've experienced sexual all different forms of sexual violence, including intimate partner violence. So I think to sort of tee up the answer to Rosalind's question about like, is setting up a Facebook group safe? I want to talk about sort of two categories of problems I see about using sort of off the shelf technologies for high risk populations including folks who are experiencing intimate partner violence and I'm both talking about folks who are potentially in a home with an abuser but also folks who have left and might now have safety concerns about their abuser finding out where they are. And so I'm going to divide my set of two concerns and then one sort of reason for hope. And the first concern I want to flag is kind of that insiders often in intimate partner violence situations aren't safe people and I'll come back to that. And the second concern I want to flag is sort of that more connection isn't always better. And then I'll talk at the end just to make sure I'm not the most depressing about some reasons that I actually do think that there's really positive developments and building tech that is more responsive to the needs of intimate partner violence victims. So the sort of first category of problem that I want to articulate around using traditional technology solutions for intimate partner violence victims and survivors is as Karen Levy and Bruce Schneier pointed out in their paper privacy threats and intimate relationships, and many other folks before them they just summarize it really succinctly. The model that often people use to talk about securing digital technologies assumes that sort of that the threat is kind of to, to use a really terrible metaphor coming from outside right and this can be kind of very literal like whether it's not flagging suspicious activity because it comes from the IP address the same IP address as the normal user which would mean that they're and if you're co located with your abuser that's, you know, you may be on the same network and have the same or similar IP address. And when I say IP I mean internet protocol it's basically the number that you send to Google to say where you are. But I think the example that I want to draw on that I think for me was sort of most evocative in understanding how systems as a whole not just the literal technologies have to change to understand the risk of intimate partner violence come from comes from Emily saying at all his paper, where she and a number of co authors looked at the tools and tactics used in intimate partner surveillance and I'll throw some links in chat. One of the things that she and previous researchers have found is that one tool of surveillance is often used against intimate partner violence victims is actually the information that comes from a shared phone plan. So, you know, we're not even talking about people sharing devices although obviously that's a threat that people may experience or getting physical access devices, but the fact that you're family you're on a family plan with someone who's now abusive to you can get them information about sort of your, your usage and history, and they even document some people. Some of these are suggesting calling the phone company to get a list of numbers dialed, which can result in someone potentially finding out that for example you were contacting a shelter you were contacting a domestic violence hotline. So, that's enabled by the ways in which insiders are assumed to be safe someone who is also on the plan is assumed to be an okay person to release this information to even if the phone company wouldn't release call detail information to an outsider. Of course for some phone companies their security is bad enough that maybe they would but you know that's a separate problem. So, the thinking about how we model what safety looks like and what security looks like and who we assume is sort of safe is one of the first, I think components to centering victims and survivors intimate partner violence in sort of a digital in digital building safer and digital technologies, because you can no longer assume the same sorts of things are safe or okay that you could that people often do when they build, build these, build these technologies so that's sort of the first point I want to make about how technologies are built. The second goes to Rosalind's question about like is Facebook safe right and of course you know safety is relative right like there's no, there are no safe places in person and there are no safe places online. But you know, part of it is about the risks that people are running. And that brings me to a second point about using sort of large commercial platforms like Facebook. So, one of the documented features of Facebook that you may have encountered is this thing called people that we know. So this is a feature that suggests friends for you. And the, you know, it uses basically contact triangulation what it says is, Oh, if you are, if I'm friends with, if I'm friends with a and friends with see the media and see should be friends, right. And this has been shown to do things like potentially collect connect suggest connections between therapists separate clients, because the therapist could be like friends with her talking to both of them. And it often if someone uploads their contacts, it allows it uses contacts to sort of to just friends. So this has me concerned about the use of, for example, Facebook groups to bring together groups of domestic violence survivors, because there is the possibility that basically you could reveal it's called, you know, sort of leaking information about who's within the group by the friends, like by friend suggestions and people you may know this. This research I'm drawing from is mostly from Kashmiri Hills 2018 reporting, but it's just one example of these technologies that are often built on the assumption that more connection is better that you know we Facebook wants to connect all of us or you know, thinking about sort of sharing as a net good, while not considering the very real reasons that people sharing or engagement with these platforms might be deeply contextual, and have, they may have concerns about sort of this information getting shared more broadly. So I want to sort of those are the two specific examples I wanted to bring in about the ways in which we can think of how technologies are built and how that can inform our responses to those folks very reasonably for reasons of safety moving to use these technologies as a primary solution during COVID. However, I do think that like, as Dr. Thema highlighted, the we want I want to be careful around sort of suggesting this kind of doom and gloom narrative where like the creators of this technology control all of the systems and you know, marginalized folks use it because they're at risk, because the reality is marginalized folks have been using thriving and changing technologies that were built without them in mind forever for as long as we've had technologies right and that you know, we can think of examples of marginalized folks being and actually driving these technologies forward as the things that create change and in some cases create money for these platforms. So I think, you know, while still keeping in mind that, you know, divested violence victims and survivors, especially domestic violence victims and survivors that are women of Black and brown women could be much better served by these platforms and that their needs for contextual controls and control over one's information. I think that the ways in which folks use them to provide support whether it's, you know, providing each way through something like Venmo or cash, cash apps, or sort of sending each other support through sort of text message threads. All of these are incredible examples of using these platforms for actual positive change, even if they're not what they were originally intended for and we just need to make the platform serve those needs better. So with that, I'll stop. Thank you. Thanks Kendra I really appreciate that because, as we've talked about before, trying to create a safe space is always a challenge. So we're really talking about how do we create safer spaces right I mean this this question of safety and security is really animating the very core of this discussion and as a communication ethicist as a person who actually studies communication in a variety of contexts. I really value interdisciplinarity. Why, because it allows for conversations like this to happen. The beauty is that we're coming back to a common core marginalized women women who are marginalized by race, socioeconomic status, ability, gender, sexual orientation, language, ethnicity, immigration status, and many more cast markers have very unique experiences unique experiences that may very well cause them to call for different solutions and different options for justice. Teresa Fry Brown points us to the way that woman is thought uniquely grapples with what it means to place a black women's experience at the center of disciplinary activity and scholarly reflection. That is what we're doing here today. In the domestic violence or intimate partner violence context. In particular, for example, what does it mean when a black woman chooses to identify communally, rather than solely individualistically. It means that she may never call the police. She may purger herself she may even endanger herself to place the needs of the community before her own safety. We are not encouraging that that we're just pointing out that it's a reality for many women. It's a reality that often our feminist sisters slam us for black feminists and womanists, however, we still place black women's experiences and the experiences of all women marginalized at the center of intellectual activity in the center of scholarship. And when we look in this context at the fact that increasingly marginalized women are opting against calling the police in response to their abuse. Many report going to faith communities and online platforms to seek help, especially since the implementation of covert 19 policies. As experts in law, theology, ethics, psychology, technology, religion, communication. We're asking, is there potential for a public sphere online that could be safer and assist victims in surviving their unique suffering. Since 1964 scholars have been wrestling with Marshall McLuhan's famous quote the medium is the message and now here we are in 2021 finding ourselves in this changing digital public sphere of emerging media to which access is not equal. Democratic theorists argue that truth emerges as the marketplace of ideas flourishes and then we got to ask this tyranny emerge when certain voices are excluded. Today we use our privilege to bring this virtual table into the space of those marginalized, the women. My theoretical orientation is womanist. My methods are often participatory critical and historical, and I have an extensive list of research that I've done on this topic and others that talk about how we can prevent harm through right actions. This is my objective as an ethicist. Ultimately our research shows that domestic violence is more than an interpersonal offense in marginalized communities. It is also a systemic violation. Nearly 30 years ago, Dorothy Roberts chronicled and killing the black body the systemic intersections that historically have muted and abused black women. She concludes liberty guards against government intrusion but it does not guarantee social justice. So today we offer a snapshot a critical juncture, a beginning point for many of you to join the conversation, a conversation that all too often omits the voices and agency of those most affected. We are calling for better options victims and survivors want community based alternatives to 911 that lead to de escalation, not murder. We never see how health care and court and indigent defense systems interrelate survivor see the way that mental health treatment providers and structures intersect with courtroom systems and lawyers. We see the systems and the intersections between them in very distinctive ways, and yet their voices are omitted often from the scholarship perpetrators deny victims their liberty. So let's not also deprive their contributions to the scholarship. Shouldn't we hear from them together we aim to do something different in our research partnership. Ultimately, launching an archive of survivor stories depersonalized narratives that neither implicate the victim or the abuser but do help current victims to understand how the systems work from the perspective of those who've actually gone through it. In my book I argue that storytellers are cultural leaders. There I show how content creators perpetuate ideologies of victim blaming anti female bias, and even white male impunity. Here, we argue that survivors stories matter to. If we want to end violence against women, then let the women speak. Let women speak safely. Honestly, transparently about their experiences. With media's ubiquity and influence technology now presents new opportunities for censoring perspectives previously marginalized and silenced marginalized women are choosing to trust abusers, often over abusive systems, and we're saying that this is not a choice that they should have to make. We're making these choices, though, with harmful, often fatal consequences. So we're about to enter into the conversation part where we're looking to connect the dots between human rights and social justice, feminist thought and womanist thought, looking to talk about how do we create safer environments informed by what we know informed by what we know happens in in person environments, but definitely that could inform the potential of this public sphere for victims and survivors. I ask you Kendra if you don't mind. I want to come back to an issue that you raised about safer environments and how they might look. How do we make online digital online public sphere safer for victims and survivors. Well, I was going to ask Dr. Thema basically that question. So, I'm happy. I think that, you know, ultimately, I'll do a beat and then I'll move to Dr. Thema which is to say that I think that, you know, ultimately, I'm really, really struck Rosalind by what you said about, you know, people picking abusers over abusive systems and I think that you have really, you really articulated how a police or child protective services many of these systems can be the abusive systems that people are responding against, but I think sometimes the technologies are actually part of the abusive systems right, whether it's, you know, some things like stalkerware which is the term for tools that abusers use to spy on victims or survivors, or even sort of the ways in which everyday tech platforms obviate or just ignore users' consent and like sort of set up models where people don't feel like they have control over what they're doing online or feel like they don't understand what their options are. And I think that, you know, going in with a really sort of survivor-centric informed consent mindset into building these tools and understanding how they relate to users feels to me like an important first step. But I want to turn to Dr. Thema and ask like just in your experience what are the characteristics that define successful spaces for domestic violence victims or survivors to share their stories and get help, whether online or off. Absolutely. I'd love to jump into that dialogue and I would lean to you for the technology expertise, which I don't know, but I'll answer it from a mental health perspective, and I'll just say that the H in my name is silent so it's Tama, but no worries. Okay, so the kind of pieces that stand out for me about what make it safer psychologically is if a space is affirming, if a space allows for connection, and if a space allows for empowerment. And the part about affirming is if people are going to share, and others are going to be able to respond. In a lot of ways I think there has to be a moderated conversation, because there would need to be stops to or interruptions to keep people from coming on and saying and blaming responses. One of the qualitative studies with black women who have survived partner abuse. They were interviewed about how do you believe your community sees you as a survivor. And all of them that were interviewed separately the first word they said was weak, or a synonym for week. And so there is a lot of that messaging out there about why were you stupid or why did you cause it, or from a religious standpoint if you didn't pray things will be better. So that clearly is not a safe space that even if you don't identify me personally, the response is not affirming. So, we would want the responses to be supportive one. The second part is connection people are looking for the recognition I'm not in it by myself. And so a part of that connection can just be in seeing stories that are similar to your own. One is if people are able to be in dialogue with each other, as they are in different stages as you mentioned, some people are in it right now, and some people are in the recovery mode. And they're wondering, can it get any better than this is there, you know, are there stories of survivors who have now found love and it's good and safe, right and so wherever people are in that dynamic creating community is helpful. And then the next one is empowerment, when I was talking about this notion of liberation is where are the resources, right that yes I like to feel good, and especially as a psychologist, you know we're all in our feelings, but then it's about like transforming my life, right so what are the places that can connect me to time is law lab what are the places that can give me information about wrap around services and so resources and empowerment are important. And the last thing I'll mention that just muddies the waters a little bit is around moderating the conversation in some ways for it to be safe, we need to not have super graphic stories for the reader, because people who go to that site could be triggered by a really horrific stories or stories where people are currently in crisis and you we've all seen these on social media when people are like help me. And then everyone's like where did they go are they okay and then you're worried and you don't know how to find them and so that can create a lot of anxiety. And then on the other side as I said just to muddy the water, you'll have some survivors who will say, do not moderate my voice, do not censor me, why is what happened to me unacceptable, how come you won't post what happened to me. It's not a graphic but that's what happened right so it's a it's a hard line to find, is it safe for the reader, and then for the storyteller the narrative giver. How do we respond to their story in a way that's affirming, even if it's going to be limiting what it is that is shared in this space. Thank you for the question and I want to turn it over to Tanya and ask you touched on this summer you're in your narrative, but what are some of the myths that you have discovered judges or police officers or the general public believe about partner abuse, which many people refer to as domestic violence, what are some of those myths that need to be debunked. So the single biggest myth is why didn't she just leave. And if she didn't leave it must not be that bad, or she must be lying or she must be exaggerating and so it's that underlying myth, which for people of color for marginalized women, especially then stereotype types are layered on. And these prevent judges jurors, police officers, faith community leaders, the general public from really fully and truly listening to survivor stories. So how can we address this I think we need to point out when we see these stereotypes occurring. So, for example, when the police officers showed up at to hope's apartment, and he saw her in labor, that was the time to say, really, she's a primary abuser, she's obviously a labor you're calling an ambulance, and you're yet you're here to testify that she was the primary aggressor. So, bringing these inconsistencies to light. And this means a little bit of a different practice perhaps and this could be hard. I'm going to try this before but I would like to to write sort of a bench memo and to try to provide the client story, along with their allegations of abuse. So we can create a record, and build from it that she was not prevented from fully being able to tell her story. This is why she didn't call the police. This is why she didn't want to press charges, for example. Also, in faith communities, I think it's really important to to distinguish between those that are affirming, connecting and empowering with those that are not and those that perpetuate abuse as well. Because we know that survivors go to family and friends first, if they're going to report, and then faith victims go to members of their faith communities second. So we need to make sure that these faith communities are going to be safe spaces for them to go to, in addition to some of the online communities. I want to actually toss it back to Kendra, if I may, and ask, you know, how can we, especially now during this pandemic, how can we improve our outreach to survivors who may be trapped with their abusers who may be reluctant to call 911, or to go to court. I'm, you know, really hard question and I'm honored to even try it and answer. And I'm again you'll you'll see me leaning heavily on some of the fantastic research that folks have done because there are so many experts in this space, including the other folks on this panel and I want to want to honor their expertise. So I think one thing that has one thing I think that many folks have been doing during COVID that I think it can help do with outreach to folks who are marginalized upon any number of axes is creating spaces that ways to show up that are not sort of the, weren't the norm before right, you know, there's a lot of people who can be reached effectively by in person services and there definitely are populations where that's just the most effective way to reach people there's not really a contest. One thing also is that there are folks who are for whatever reason maybe more comfortable doing just phone calls or just a zoom or not sharing their an image of themselves or sort of doing something in a space where they, you know, if they're not currently living with an abuser rate, they have control over right something a space where they may feel safer and so this is an opportunity for all of us to consider what if our practices need to be tied to these particular locations. And just like you've talked about Tonya with your clinic like how can we use these technological tools to bring this work to folks who might not have previously had access. There's a really amazing paper by the team at Cornell including Emily saying and Nicole Adele, who talk about their experience doing computer security interventions for it during with victims of into mid partner violence during coven and sort of how that the the difficulties they've encountered and I think part of it is that, you know, we also need to be willing to have these conversations around safe communication and how what what folks risks look like and I think folks who do intimate partner violence advocacy. And, you know, lawyers who work with victims of intimate partner violence survivors often are very accustomed to having those conversations, but sometimes folks aren't and they need to need to sort of be starting with that. And with that I'll kick it back over to Roslyn to wrap us up. I really appreciate it though Kendra and Tonya and Tama because there's so much right there there's so many questions. There's so many ideas. We are clear that we're participating in a shift in the discourse. We're not claiming to be starting it or founding it. It is a shift that is occurring, and we want to be a part of it and so we invite you to to be a part of the conversation. This does not end today. It's just the beginning in fact, because ultimately what we've on earth here today is a variety of systemic issues that are influencing outcomes for the most vulnerable in our society. There's bias in the judicial system, as well as in our university systems or in psychology or in hospitals and medical treatment implicit bias often leads to disastrous disastrous consequences for those who are most marginalized in our society. Whether you are leading a faith community or leading a psychology practice, whether you are a lawyer in the court rooms or one who really focuses on transactional work, there's an opportunity here for all of us to make a difference. One of the things that I'm most proud of is that I get an opportunity to work with a lot of survivors who like me are struggling to piece their lives back together. One of the things I did recently was write a character witness letter for a survivor of partner abuse, who also was charged with the crimes committed by her partner. In this case, the ultimate ethical quandary I had was how do we avoid more harm? How do we prevent additional harm secondary and tertiary traumas to this family? How do we make sure that the community and systems that rely on this woman and this family are not left in a quandary? You're asking questions about how we support? How do we affirm? How do we stand in solidarity with and how do we empower victims and survivors with systemic remedies instead of simply individualized culpability? Whether in community journalism, policy advocacy or ethical public shaming, my work has centered protections for marginalized girls, women and their communities, just like many of you. I want to thank those marginalized. I want to thank the victims and survivors who've shared so openly their stories of violation and humiliation and often received scorn and condemnation for it. I thank you for allowing us to work with you and not just on your behalf. Thank you to the men and women who organize and activate communities to end violence against women. Thanks also, finally, to the cross school collaborative research program at Pepperdine University that has funded our research over the past five years. Thanks to the Berkman Klein Center, finally, and the Board of Directors and all of those at Harvard University, Sieber College. We want to thank Valerie Smith, Priyanka Harania, Boaz Sender and his colleague Sheila Musavi from Boku, and the many students who have worked as our research assistants over the years in advancing this project. Again, to Kendra Albert, Tanya Asim Cooper and Tama Bryant Davis. I'm sincerely grateful, and I am certain that we are starting. Well, no, we're being a part of joining a movement that will prevent harm to the most vulnerable among us. Thank you for this beginning.