About Rudi Doku

The coercive control didn't look like what most people imagine abuse looks like. There was no single dramatic incident. There was a pattern one that built slowly, that I minimised for years, and that I only fully understood in retrospect.

There was yelling aggressive, escalating, as though designed to provoke a physical response. There was the denying of things said minutes earlier. The constant deflection of responsibility. The refusal to honour boundaries I'd stated clearly and repeatedly. Letters addressed to me, opened routinely, despite being asked not to. Court orders treated as suggestions.

We had relocated overseas for her work, which meant I was on a dependent's pass. She knew what that meant and at times made sure I knew it too. The threat of having that pass cancelled was always there, quietly, in the background of every disagreement.

There were decisions made for our family major ones that I was excluded from. My childhood was used as ammunition: personal things I'd shared in trust, turned back on me as evidence of deficiency. When I was hurt, I was told I was moody. When I set a boundary, I was told I was trying to change her. When I described what was happening, I was told I was making it up.

And then came the line that I've since heard from so many men in similar situations:

She was right that it was hard to be believed. But she was wrong that it wasn't real.

What saved me or at least, what gave me somewhere to stand was the therapeutic work I had already been doing. When the yelling escalated and I felt the pull to react, I had enough self-awareness to feel the pain and attend to myself rather than take the bait. That doesn't mean I always got it right. I became emotionally reactive at times, often in front of our children. That still sits with me.

What I know now is that reactive behaviour under sustained coercive control is not a character flaw. It's a physiological response to ongoing threat. Understanding that really understanding it, in the body, not just the mind is a significant part of what the Reclaim program offers.

Why I Do This Work

The focus on male survivors didn't come as a single moment of decision. It evolved gradually, and 2021 was the year it crystallised. That year I began working with Dr. Paul Dunion, started attending men's groups, and attended the Maturing Masculine Soul conference through Mobius Executive Leadership. Something shifted. I began to see more clearly what men going through what I had been through actually needed, and how little of it existed.

I built this program because I needed it and it didn't exist.

Not a generic domestic violence service. Not a mixed-gender support group where my experience would be minimised or dismissed. Not a therapist who looked at me with confusion when I described what was happening. Something built specifically for men: for the shame that comes with being a male victim, for the legal and custody vulnerabilities, for the way coercive control exploits masculine identity, for the particular isolation of going through this without being believed.

When I think about what I wish had existed for me, several things stand out. First, support to identify the patterns while they were happening: the name calling, the blame shifting, the baiting, the gaslighting. Having a name for what was being done to me would have changed everything. Second, an environment completely free of judgment, where I didn't have to justify or minimise my experience to be taken seriously. Third, someone who would have told me plainly: expect lies in court documents. Prepare for it. Document everything. That knowledge, shared early, would have protected me.

I also wish there had been educational material available for my family — my siblings especially. They were on a different continent, with no framework for what I was describing. Resources they could have read, in their own time, that would have helped them understand what coercive control actually looks like and why it's so hard to leave. The isolation of going through something that the people who love you can't quite grasp is its own particular pain.

And I wish that the lawyers I approached had been better equipped. Not just willing, but genuinely informed about the psychological reality of coercive control — the trauma, the complexity, the tactics that play out in family court. A lawyer who understands what their client has been through can make better decisions about whether to take a case, and how to approach it. That gap costs men dearly.

Those things are woven into the Reclaim program. Not as afterthoughts, but as foundations.

I also built it because I know what the other side looks like. I know what it feels like to reclaim your sense of self after it's been systematically dismantled. To trust your own perception again. To stop managing someone else's volatility and start living your own life.

That journey is possible. I've made it. And I've spent years learning how to help other men make it too.