Why Doesn't She Just Leave? Abuse part 4

The above is a video starring a woman named Leslie Morgan Steiner about her book Crazy Love in which she discusses why victims of domestic violence don't just leave. It's about 15 minutes long and well worth your time to watch, and I'll break it down in text as well.

Leslie discusses the typical stages an abuser moves through in order to keep the victim on the hook, so to speak, using her own life as an example:

(Please note that for the sake of easy, consistent noun/pronoun usage, we're going to discuss the scenario of a heterosexual male abuser and a heterosexual female abuse victim. This is of course, not always the case. Abuse can and does happen in other situations as well, and in fact, over 40% of domestic violence victims are male.)

Step 1: Seduce and charm

(source)

Exactly what it sounds like. The abuser will present themselves as a charming, and typically somewhat damaged individual (this lays the ground work for violent behavior later ). Leslie's boyfriend told her how he himself was abused as a child* which gave him a sense of vulnerability and openness designed to further entice her. Abusers typically target young women in their teens or early 20s with little or no relationship experience and lavish attention on this person. The abuser will make his partner feel special and loved (and may even believe themselves that they do love her) in order to manipulate her into a long term, committed relationship so she will be reluctant to leave later without making some attempt to repair the relationship.

Step 2: Isolate

(source)

Also, pretty self-explanatory. The abuser encourages their partner to separate from family and friends, often presenting completely reasonable-seeming reasons why. Leslie provides the example of her now fiance (future abuser) telling her that he got a job offer elsewhere and finally felt strong enough to pursue it because she had helped him so much, pressuring her to move away from her known life to a small town some distance away. This step can refer to the use of emotional or geographical isolation, and often both. This way, when the violence starts, the victim feels she has no support system, no one to turn to except the abuser himself. (Of course, most of us have family and friends that would come to our aid in such a situation regardless of the distance, but we'll get to that in a second.)

Step 3 Introduce the threat of violence

(source)

In Leslie's case, she describes a scene in which her fiance held a gun to her head. At the time, he did not physically harm her (that comes later), but made it abundantly clear he could. The goal in this stage is to gauge the victims reaction to the threat, which informs the type and prevalence of violence later introduced. This is the stage in which emotional abuse begins, degrading the victim's sense of self-worth, convincing her - slowly, with oft repeated insults and verbal cruelty - that no one would find her worthwhile. This increases her emotional isolation and makes her less likely to turn to others for help. He blames his outbursts alternatively on her and his violent past so that she never really sees him as an "abuser," but someone who is damaged (remember how he laid the groundwork for this in step 1). This is also the stage of throwing things, breaking things, and making it known that there are weapons in the house, that violence may happen at any time.

Step 4: Violence

(source)

This is when what most people traditionally think of as "abuse" begins. Please take a second and note that it took us 3 steps and several months (if not years) in the relationship to get here. This is one part of the reason victims don't "just leave him!" If one met a man for the first time, or even the second or third, and he punched you, of course you would report him! But by now the victim has been in "love" with her abuser for the long term. They've established a life together. And similar to the way it took time to work up to violence, the acts of violence also slowly build from (relatively) minor transgressions to major harm. In Leslie's case, the first time her abuser hurt her was just days before their wedding. He choked her and then almost immediately apologized, blaming his actions (as we discussed above) on stress and his past experiences. She still walked down the aisle. Eventually the beating became more brutal and more frequent. And here we see the reason why women/men/whoever is suffering at the hands of an abuser stay.

Why does she stay?!
Because the victims of domestic violence/abuse don't know they're being abused. They don't know their partner an abuser. In Leslie's words: "I was a very strong women in love with a deeply troubled man, and I was the only person on Earth who could help [my abuser] face his demons." Hence her term "crazy love."

Step 5 : Murder/stalking

(source)

This is what happens when victims do finally leave, if they can. Here is the answer to the title question, but we'll come back to that. After the end of the relationship, the abuser will spend months to years stalking their victim. Social media, phone calls, email, text messages, all to prolong contact, often even after the abuser has entered into another relationship. If the couple had children, the abuser will take advantage of the family court system to prolong contact with his victim and torment her through their children. Finances can be manipulated to maintain contact as well. As I said, it can take years to fully escape them.

If you survive your escape.

So why doesn't she just leave?!
Because leaving is dangerous and often deadly. Over 70% of domestic violence related murders happen after the relationship has ended. As Leslie explains, at this point, the abuser has nothing to lose.

At the end of the video, Leslie comes to her point that initially inspired me to write this series. She points out that abuse thrives in silence, so we must break that silence and talk about it. Leslie got out when she told others about her abuse and they helped her. My situation was slightly different in that I haven't spoken about my experience with abuse much before (though I did cover it briefly and vaguely on my old blog), but I still reached out for help and got it. So talk. Talk about abuse. Spread the knowledge you've gained from my writing the the resources I've linked. And PLEASE, be considerate when you talk. Be compassionate. For so many people, the questions "Why did she stay?" and "Why didn't she just leave?" are code for "It's her fault; she should've just walked out." I hope you all understand now that it's just not that simple.

I leave you with one final PSA (in 2 parts):

*I want to clarify that this excuse is absolute horseshit. It's not impossible that someone who was abused could later in life become an abuser, I suppose, but it is not typical. It used to be considered likely, even one of the key contributing causes of abuse, that the abuser had been a victim themselves in childhood. Here is a great Upworthy post about it (please read, it's a short comic!) as well as the Wikipedia entry the comic refers to:

Causal factors of child sex offenders are not known conclusively.^[126] The experience of sexual abuse as a child was previously thought to be a strong risk factor, but research does not show a causal relationship, as the vast majority of sexually abused children do not grow up to be adult offenders, nor do the majority of adult offenders report childhood sexual abuse. The US Government Accountability Office concluded, "the existence of a cycle of sexual abuse was not established."

This is the part 4 of a multi-part series about abuse, addressing my personal experience, representations in media, and general information. Additions to the series will be published on Saturdays. Find part 1 here,  part 2 here, and part 3 here.

The next installment in the series will cover my personal experience with abuse, laid out with the general framework provided in this post courtesy of Leslie Morgan Steiner's work. Find part 5 here.