Violence Prevention: Key Takeaways from Volare’s Webinar with Cynthia Miller-Idriss

Violence prevention conversations often focus on what happens after harm becomes visible—after an assault, after a public act of violence, after a criminal threshold has been crossed. But during a recent webinar hosted with nationally recognized extremism scholar Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, one message emerged clearly: if we want to prevent violence downstream, we must pay closer attention to the cultural narratives, relational dynamics, and warning signs that emerge much earlier.

Hosted in partnership with co-sponsors the DC Women’s Bar Association and the Women’s Lawyers On Guard Network—organizations committed to survivor safety, community resilience, and violence prevention—the conversation explored the growing intersection between misogyny, coercive control, online radicalization, and violent extremism, and why these issues can no longer be treated as separate conversations.

Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a sociologist, professor at American University, and founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL), an applied research lab focused on preventing radicalization and strengthening community resilience. Her work examines how extremist ideologies become normalized socially and culturally long before institutions recognize them as threats.

The webinar brought together research, survivor advocacy, and trauma-responsive prevention strategies to examine how communities, legal systems, and institutions can respond earlier and more effectively to escalating patterns of harm.

Violence Exists on a Continuum

One of the central themes of the discussion was that violence rarely appears suddenly or without warning.

Too often, society treats gender-based violence as a “private issue” and extremist violence as a “public issue,” even though research and survivor experiences consistently show that many perpetrators of public violence have histories of domestic abuse, coercive control, stalking, harassment, or misogynistic behavior.

At Volare, this understanding shapes much of our trauma-responsive work.

As Bridgette Stumpf shared during the webinar, the dynamics underlying gender-based violence—entitlement, coercive control, humiliation, domination, dehumanization, and grievance—often mirror the same dynamics present in broader forms of violent extremism.

The conversation emphasized that misogyny should not be understood simply as prejudice against women. In many extremist ecosystems, misogyny becomes tied to identity, grievance, power, and dehumanization. Online spaces can normalize harassment, reward humiliation, and reinforce narratives that frame women’s autonomy or equality as a threat.

By the time violence becomes publicly visible, these beliefs and behaviors may have already been reinforced for years.

Why Lawyers, Advocates, and Community Leaders Need to Pay Attention

The webinar focused heavily on the role legal professionals and community leaders can play in prevention.

Warning signs often emerge long before conduct meets a criminal threshold. Patterns of escalating coercive control, fixation on rejection or humiliation, stalking behaviors, online harassment, dehumanizing rhetoric, threats framed as retaliation, and participation in communities that normalize violence may all signal increasing risk.

Survivors frequently report that people around them observed warning signs long before systems responded.

Yet many institutions still focus primarily on isolated incidents rather than patterns of escalation.

This gap becomes especially concerning in cases involving technology-facilitated abuse, online radicalization, and misogynistic extremism, where harmful behavior may escalate gradually across digital and real-world environments.

The webinar also highlighted how trauma affects help-seeking and disclosure.

Many survivors do not immediately identify coercive control, intimidation, or psychological abuse as abuse at all. Others may minimize danger because of fear, shame, economic dependence, concern for children, trauma histories, or repeated experiences of being dismissed.

That means initial responses matter enormously.

A survivor’s first disclosure—to a lawyer, teacher, healthcare provider, advocate, clergy member/faith leader, friend, or family member—can either deepen isolation or strengthen safety and connection.

The Need for Earlier, Trauma-Responsive Prevention

Throughout the discussion, both speakers emphasized that prevention cannot rely solely on legal intervention after violence escalates.

Communities need earlier education and stronger shared language around:

• consent and bodily autonomy,

• healthy relationships,

• coercive control,

• emotional regulation,

• digital literacy,

• online harms,

• empathy and respect,

• and recognizing escalating patterns of intimidation and dehumanization.

The conversation also explored the ways misinformation and online grievance narratives contribute to radicalization.

Many harmful online movements offer simplistic explanations for loneliness, anger, uncertainty, or social disconnection. Misogynistic narratives often become normalized through humor, memes, “self-improvement” content, or online harassment before escalating into more overt forms of violence-supportive rhetoric.

Participants discussed why trauma-responsive systems are essential to prevention.

A trauma-responsive approach asks:

• Are survivors being believed?

• Are systems recognizing patterns rather than isolated incidents?

• Are communities creating safe pathways for early disclosure?

• Are institutions responding in ways that reduce shame and increase connection?

These questions are critical not only for survivor safety, but for violence prevention more broadly.

Connecting Survivor Advocacy and Violence Prevention

A key theme throughout the webinar was that survivor-centered intervention is not separate from violence prevention—it is part of violence prevention.

Ignoring coercive control, stalking, harassment, and misogynistic threats means potentially overlooking some of the clearest warning signs of escalation.

Research discussed during the webinar highlighted the significant overlap between domestic violence and broader forms of public violence, including mass shootings, workplace violence, firearm violence, and homicide.

The conversation also examined the limitations of current legal frameworks. While meaningful tools exist—including stalking laws, domestic violence protections, cyber harassment statutes, firearm restrictions connected to domestic violence protective orders, and survivor protections under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)—responses remain inconsistent across jurisdictions.

Too often, survivors experience escalating fear, intimidation, surveillance, and coercion long before systems are able or willing to intervene meaningfully.

This is why earlier recognition, cross-system coordination, and community-based prevention efforts matter so deeply.

Building Communities of Hope and Resilience

The webinar concluded with a conversation about hope and prevention.

At Volare, this work is grounded in the belief that violence prevention is not solely the responsibility of courts, law enforcement, or crisis systems.

Prevention also lives in communities.

It lives in whether survivors are believed.

It lives in how children are taught about empathy, boundaries, accountability, and respect.

It lives in whether harmful narratives are challenged before they become normalized.

And it lives in whether communities are willing to intervene early—with compassion, accountability, and connection.

Bridgette Stumpf also shared insights from Volare’s Lawyers Action Plan for Hope, an initiative grounded in trauma-informed leadership and community mobilization. The Action Plan encourages lawyers to see themselves not only as legal practitioners, but also as educators, advocates, connectors, and trusted community leaders who can help interrupt harm before violence escalates.

The conversation ultimately reinforced a powerful idea:

Small acts of intervention matter.

Listening carefully matters.

Responding without minimizing matters.

Creating trauma-responsive systems matters.

And building communities rooted in dignity, empathy, accountability, and resilience remains one of the most important violence prevention strategies we have.

To learn more about Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss and the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, visit PERIL’s website and explore Dr. Miller-Idriss’s research on extremism prevention, misogyny, and online radicalization.