The Second Punishment
How people who speak out about abuse are punished for doing so…
‘We’re all agreed that we’re against abuse of all kinds right? Like you’d wholeheartedly support any victim of abuse wouldn’t you? Yeah? Hang on, what? You wouldn’t if it was your brother/dad/mother/ friend/high status person being accused? Seriously?’
I’ve been working in the field of domestic abuse for nearly 7 years and in that time I have noticed that every woman I’ve supported has experienced a second level of abuse from some of her friends and family when she’s told them about the domestic abuse she experienced. Women have had their experiences challenged and negated, they’ve been silenced, ostrasized and in some cases have been the victim of bullying and abuse campaigns to get them to stop talking about what happened to them. I call this response “the second punishment”.
While the primary area I work in is domestic abuse I’ve also met people who have experienced this response when talking about childhood abuse and sexual abuse.
I spoke with Sarah about her experience.
“After years of not saying anything I publicly outed my mother as having abused me as a child. As a result my whole family, siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles all disowned me. I was so shocked. I thought they’d all support me and be appalled by what she had done to me. But no, they all blocked or de-friended me on Facebook and no one has any contact with me anymore. I’m a complete outcast with no family. All because she abused me. ”
The response of Sarah’s family is not unusual. I’ve heard many heartbreaking stories from people who’ve been told not to say anything about the abuse that has happened within their family. It is as if each member of the family is so egoically attached to being part of the family unit that they are willing to (almost literally) throw another family member under a bus in order to keep the ‘happy family’ pretence going.
Attachment to the person who perpetrated the abuse seems to cause people to react in this strange way to victims of abuse.
“My friend had been a victim of childhood abuse,” Suzanne told me. “She was so angry with how most of her family had disowned her after she took her father to court. Then a few years ago her brother was hitting his girlfriend and she just refused to believe the girlfriend, even though the cops were being called all the time to the house, he was clearly beating her up, everyone knew. And all the things she was saying about the girlfriend were the same things her family had said about her “She’s crazy” etc.”
Suzanne’s friend was both a victim and a perpetrator of the second level of punishment. Her own experience didn’t give her any empathy for her brother’s girlfriend when the person who was the perpetrator was her own brother. She fabricated the idea that the girlfriend was lying, even when there were police reports proving the abuse.
Only when we can give up our egoic attachment to other people will we be able to truly be compassionate and empathic to victims of abuse. There is a danger in connecting your own sense of identity to anyone other than yourself. If we can be non-egoic about other people then if say your dad abused your sibling you would not view that as a reflection on you — his actions would be seen by you as his actions alone, in no way reflective of you or your values. You would then be able to offer support to your sibling.
The other reason many people negate, silence and dismiss the experience of abused people is because of the monster myth and the unrealistic, Utopian ‘new cage’ idea of “choosing to see only the good in people”. I had a friend who was also friendly with the man who abused me. She was unable to recognise that my ex had abused me as she knows him for years and is unable to reconcile my experience with the guy she knows. She has a deep belief in the idea that only monsters are able to perpetrate such abuses. This stops her from being able to acknowledge what happened to me (and ultimately caused the demise of our friendship as I could not stay friends with someone who so deeply negated the abuse of me.)
There is a huge dissonance between the professed values of most people and their lived values. I’ve never met anyone who says that abuse is ok. However I have met a lot of people whose lived actions demonstrate that they actually do think that abuse is ok (even while these same people will claim that they do not!)
If you think you are someone who is against abuse then stop and ask yourself now, “How would I react if someone told me that my brother raped them?” “How would I react if someone told me my Mother sexually abused them?”, “How would I feel if someone told me my son was a domestic abuser?”
What would you do? Would your lived, actioned values align with your ideas about yourself as a good person who is against abuse? Abuse flourishes with the silence and complicity of the community. Only when enough people support victims will it stop.
People with abusive mindsets abuse. An abusive mindset is taught, usually by role modelling from one parent. The two indicators for an abusive mindset are:
- A core belief in inequality
- A deeply held sense of entitlement
*Please note that I am referring solely to domestic abusers in the above as family/childhood or sexual abuse are not areas I am as knowledgeable in (though I am a victim of both).
People with abusive mindsets (usually) consider themselves to be high status and crave status. They are very susceptible to the wider community and community leaders/high status people. If they feel disapproval from people they consider to be high status they will stop the offending behaviour.
That 1 in 3 women will be physically or sexually assaulted in her lifetime and 48% of women in Europe will experience domestic abuse shows how few are supporting victims by exerting the social pressure on abusive people. We know what will stop them but it is up to all of us to do a better job at supporting victims. To do otherwise is to continue supporting and colluding with the abuse of our fellow humans.
