Perpetrators of domestic abuse – the big picture

Jo Todd is the founding CEO of Respect, where for over 20 years she has been at the forefront of developments in the domestic abuse perpetrator sector.  She has been a key player influencing government and statutory sector agencies to improve responses to perpetrators, ensuring that they are held to account, offered the chance to change and stopped from causing harm.

Jo has worked in the domestic abuse sector for nearly 30 years, starting with a variety of frontline roles with survivors, as a Refuge worker, running women’s groups and supporting survivors whose partners were attending a Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Programme (DAPP).  This grounding has been crucial to Jo’s ongoing work at Respect, putting the safety, wellbeing and freedom of survivors at the heart of all responses to perpetrators.

As well as working with survivors, Jo also tried her hand at facilitating DAPPs, has worked as a supervisor and also delivered training across the UK and abroad, including in Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Mexico and Jordan. 

Jo has an MA in the Sociology of Gender from University of Essex (1992) and a diploma in counselling (1999).   She is co-author of a 3 volume practitioner manual, ‘Working Towards Safety’ (Iwi & Todd, DVIP, 2000) and has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Gender Based Violence since its launch in May 2017.  

Jo believes practice, policy, research and activism are all vital components to end domestic abuse and tries to keep a foot in all 4.  She is also solo mum to 3 teenage boys and a rather naughty border collie and is, unsurprisingly, perpetually busy.

This seminar is part of an online open seminar series, hosted by the Centre for Criminology.

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