By Emilie Trepanier
It’s happened again. “Accomplished person physically and emotionally harms another person whose achievements will not be discussed in this article” is plastered all over the news, your Facebook feed and Twitter.
Suddenly, I know all about an abuser’s “sad and lonely” upbringing, their favorite color, and how their next-door neighbor never imagined the nice person who keeps their garden so pretty could ever do such a thing. I know the abuser’s middle name, what their high school GPA was, and how their bright future is faded to a slightly less bright future because the media blew up their story. Suddenly I know more about a person who wants to hurt than I know about the person they hurt. I don’t even know the first letter of their victim’s name.
Human nature wants to understand why bad things happen. We want everything to have a purpose, reason, and meaning. It is ingrained in humans to be curious and seek connection. We seek connection through empathy. We feel empathy when we understand. Why would a pro athlete be a perpetrator of domestic violence? What happened in their life that triggered this in their psyche? Were they traumatized as a child, and do they not know how to handle their trauma?
We could spend our entire lives trying to understand why people do bad things.
The fact of the matter is, we are all traumatized by something. The majority of us don’t use that as an excuse to hurt others. Why do we make excuses for abusers?
Abusers come in all shapes and sizes. Abusers are attractive, witty, charming, and intelligent. They have pets and plants that they care for with maximum attentiveness. Abusers have blue eyes, brown eyes, nice teeth, glasses. Abusers cry at animal shelter commercials. They face hardship. Abusers have married parents, they have divorced parents, they have dead parents. Abusers have favorite movies and books. Abusers dress up on Halloween and hit the town. They stay up late studying for finals. They love their families and they are devoted to their friends.
Abusers are human.
The issue is that we are attempting to empathize with people who have moved past the point of being able to attempt empathy for others. It’s not so much an issue that society is showing us how abusers can be normal people we pass on the street. Understanding that abusers aren’t just the person dressed in all black, haunting side streets on motorcycles is actually helpful knowledge. The problem is that survivors simply matter more.
When we choose to highlight the incredible journey of “First Name Last Name, CPA” instead of focus on the signs of abusers that are easily missed when a person has a “good personality,” or on focusing on ways to help victims, we aren’t only hurting that victim but hurting all victims and survivors.
The media sensationalizes abusers. How many serial killers do you know the entire kill history of? Do you know the names of three of their victims? When we cross the line over to making the abuser’s story more important than the story of survivors at large, we are sending the message that survivors don’t matter. We are also unintentionally giving abusers a platform for fame and empathy.
Abusers are human, but who they are doesn’t matter; especially if it means we begin to feel sorry for them. That’s when the consequences of their actions become loose. That’s how they get out of trial. That’s how they walk free and hurt more people but become better at it because now they know how to be even more convincing to more people. This isn’t paranoia, it’s reality.
My grandmother told me an interesting story once. She was driving home one day when she noticed a woman walking home in some kind of extreme weather (intense heat or rain, I don’t remember). My grandma pulled over and offered the woman a ride. The woman accepted, but seemed to be taking my grandma in weird directions. The drive was getting longer, and the directions were getting weirder, and it started getting dark outside. “Turn here. Then there. Turn again. Again.” Finally, my grandma realized this could be a potentially harmful situation. She began talking about herself. She told the woman about her children, how she loved being a mom. She talked about her day and her future plans. Finally, the woman yelled “Oh, just stop right here. I’m getting out.” Before she got out of my grandma’s car, she turned and looked at my grandma in the eye and said: “Don’t you ever pick someone off the side of the road again.”
My grandma had humanized herself to this woman, who may or may not have wanted to harm her. It goes the exact same way when we hear about abusers.
Not only is it a slippery slope to familiarize consumers with abusers, but it gives the impression that somehow an abuser’s life is more ruined than the victim’s.
I don’t want to minimize the repercussions of those who have been wrongly accused. However, a bad reputation is very different from the effects of psychological, physical, sexual, and other kinds of abuse.
I have an acquaintance who was wrongly accused of sexual assault. His life is far from ruined. He is thriving in college, has had several romantic partners since the incident, is earning a double major, and has overall moved on pretty well. When the person who accused him didn’t go to court, she instead went for his reputation. He told me “Now when I visit home in another state, I can’t leave my house.” He can, however, choose to not go to that one place where his reputation has been tarnished. He can instead decide to go to any other part of the world and enjoy his life and reputation there.
For a victim, their mind is the prison. They don’t get a trial or a jury. Someone else put them in prison, against their will, and gave them 20 years to life. Their body remembers wounds the mind has long since forgotten. They can’t run away. My friend’s home is to a victim’s entire self.
When the media tells us everything we ought not to know about perpetrators of violence, and how they are facing backlash, the survivor’s own mental backlash gets put on the back burner.
The problem isn’t that we are humanizing abusers.
Victims. Survivors. Warriors. We are human too.
The problem is that we are choosing to empathize and understand the wrong people.
If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, there is help. You can visit the Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence website at www.breakthesilencedv.org or chat with one of our helpline advocates at 855-287-1777.
