Why I Started Leave No Man Behind

Men suffer domestic abuse in enormous numbers. Society has decided not to believe them. That decision is killing them.

I've built almost everything I do around that one truth. Leave No Man Behind is the clearest expression of it. This is the story of why I started it, what it actually is, what's happened since, and how you can be part of it.

Why I Do What I Do

Before I built anything, I lived it.

I spent 20 years in the corporate world, four of those as CEO of a global software business. From the outside, that probably looked like a life that was working. It wasn't. Behind it was a relationship built on coercive control, the kind of thing you don't talk about at work, because you don't think anyone will believe you. Usually, you're right.

I stayed a long time. Not because I didn't see what was happening. Because I kept believing it would change. Because leaving felt more dangerous than staying. Because when you're a man in that position, there's no obvious place to go and say it out loud.

That silence is what I want to talk about here, because it isn't just my story. Men suffer domestic abuse in numbers most people would find genuinely shocking, and a lot of those men will never tell a single person. Not their friends. Not their family. Sometimes not even themselves, not in those words.

I got out. It took years to understand what had actually happened to me, and years more to write about it honestly. When I finally did, I found something I wasn't expecting. Other men, reading what I'd written, told me it was the first time they'd seen their own experience described by someone else. Not a headline about domestic abuse. Their experience, word for word, sometimes.

That's where Leave No Man Behind started. Not as a plan, as a realisation. There were men out there, right now, in exactly the position I'd been in, who had no idea a book like mine existed, because they weren't looking for it. Looking for it meant admitting something they weren't ready to admit yet.

Why I Started Leave No Man Behind

Here's the problem I was actually trying to solve.

A man in crisis doesn't Google "male domestic abuse." He doesn't walk into a support group. Shame stops him before he gets that far. If the only way to reach him is to wait for him to ask for help, we lose a lot of men waiting.

But those same men still go to the barbershop. They still sit in GP waiting rooms. They still walk past library shelves. They're moving through ordinary life, even while carrying something they've never said out loud.

So the idea became simple. What if the book found him, instead of the other way round? What if it was just there, in a place he already goes, asking nothing of him? No conversation to start. No admission to make. Just a book, sitting somewhere ordinary, waiting for the moment he's ready to pick it up.

That's Leave No Man Behind. One book. One place. One man at a time.

What It Actually Is

In practice, it works like this. People place copies of my books in spaces where men in crisis might genuinely find them: barbershops, GP surgeries, libraries, train stations, refuges, men's organisations. Anywhere a man might be sitting with ten minutes and nothing to do but look at what's around him.

It started in one country. It didn't stay there.

As it stands, Leave No Man Behind has placed 45 pins across 31 cities, in 8 countries, spanning 5 continents. Books are sitting in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, the United States, South Africa, and Turkey.

Glasgow City Libraries have formally catalogued the book. Men's organisations across multiple countries have placed copies in their own spaces, because they see the same gap I saw.

Every pin on that map started with one person deciding that one man's silence was one too many.

What's Happened Since It Started

This movement has grown faster than I expected, and it's picked up attention I didn't see coming either.

I sat down for a BBC radio interview to talk about this openly, on a platform that meant the conversation reached people who wouldn't have found it otherwise.

There's also been a steady stream of outreach to press outlets and media. I don't know exactly when the next big press moment lands, but every placement, every new country, every organisation that says yes, is building toward it.

And it isn't just me doing this anymore. People I've never met are placing books in cities I've never been to. That's the part that actually gets me. This stopped being one man's project a while ago.

How You Can Be Part of It

If any of this means something to you, here are three ways to actually take part.

Buy a copy and place it yourself. If there's a barbershop, a GP surgery, a library, or a men's group near you, buy a copy and place it there. That's the whole model, one book, one place, one man at a time.→ https://amzn.eu/d/0120OX3G

Grab the 10 Book Bundle. Ten copies at once, to place yourself or hand out to men who need them. This is the fastest way to start more than one pin.→ payhip.com/b/Q7JA4

Fund a placement through the GoFundMe. £10 places one book with an organisation that's already asked for one.→ gofund.me/18d970145

You can see the live map showing every pin, along with all three options in one place, under Leave No Man Behind.→ jaredwhitaker.com/leave-no-man-behind

Not a Rescue. A Door.

I don't know most of the men this movement will eventually reach. I'll probably never hear most of their stories. That's fine. That was never the point.

The point is that somewhere, in a barbershop or a waiting room or a library, on a day that feels like every other bad day, a man picks up a book that happens to be sitting there, and for the first time, reads something that sounds exactly like his own life.

That's the whole idea. Not a rescue. A door.

If this is the first time you're hearing about Leave No Man Behind, welcome. If you've been part of it already, thank you. Genuinely.

One book. One place. One man at a time.