Dear Editor,
The following is a quote from a recent letter in the Guyana media: “Nothing justifies abuse, except the victim who has become so comfortable within the environment, the victim who believes that without the abuser, there will be no way to have basic necessities for survival, the victim who thinks about the family unit and the destruction abandonment will cause to that unit or the psychological effects it will have on the child/ children. These factors among others are often the reasons why the victims renege on the decision to leave.”
There is one word that is misplaced in that quote – ‘justifies’. The simple fact is that nothing justifies abuse, absolutely nothing! Thus, while the quote suggests reasons why a victim may be unable to leave an abusive relationship, none of those reasons neither justify their abuse, nor support the contention that the victim is comfortable with the environment. Victims remain because they rely on the abuser to fulfill emotional needs and have formed trauma bonding – psychological response to abuse are conditioned to respond in certain ways, which reinforce the abuser’s use of controlling behaviours and use coping strategies that feud to be self-protective in nature, including denial, minimization, addictions, arguing, defensiveness, rationalization, compliance, detachment, and dissociation.
None of this means that the victim is, in any way, culpable for the abuse, or comfortable in the abusive situation. In writing/talking about social pathologies one must always be very careful about one’s language so that whatever is conveyed does not skew the reality and distort perspectives and reactions. In fact, it for this reason that in contemporary times, experts, activists and advocates are on a trajectory to re-engineer language relating to these social ills. Thus, for example,
to attribute an abuser’s actions as emotional neglect implies that the caregiver may not be aware that she /his behaviour or attitude is abusive, which is absolutely not the case.
Therefore, mental cruelty and psychological battering should be the language applied in this particular context. Or to say that a victim is ashamed of her/his abuse is to somehow suggest that the abuse is the victim’s fault. This particular word has no applicability in this context.
Sincerely,
Annan Boodram
