By Anonymous
“I don’t believe you”
“Sure, but you weren’t exactly blameless”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t that big of a deal”
You never explicitly said any of these words to me. You didn’t have to. The fact that you remained silent after your friend’s abuse became known spoke for itself. One by one, as more and more survivors stepped forward with eerily similar stories about your friend’s pattern of behaviour, your continued silence became more and more deafening.
You didn’t have to say it, but I still heard you loud and clear: “You don’t matter to me. I don’t believe you. You can’t be trusted”.
Can you imagine what that was like for me? Do you know how hard it was for me to overcome my fear of your friend the abuser, and come forward publicly about the harm he did to me? Do you know how scared I was those first few days, as the story broke, as I silently watched, a helpless mixture of horror and relief that I wasn’t alone in this shameful thing that he did to me? Can you imagine how much I wrestled with myself trying to find the courage and the words to come forward with my story too, with the faint hope that perhaps now that there were other descriptions of similar patterns, I might be believed?
You see, for the longest time, I didn’t realise he was an abuser either. Even after he and I stopped talking, I didn’t think he was the ‘A’ word. I made so many excuses for him, and I blamed myself for everything that he did to me. Because the particular flavour of his abuse was seasoned with gaslighting and manipulation, I was absolutely convinced that it was my fault; that my behaviour was the root cause of everything that went wrong. The mindfuck was so effective that for years, I truly believed his brainwashing narrative that an assault was an affair, that flirting meant I owed him a relationship. The shame of my ostensible complicity ensured my silence, and worse, his impunity. Even now, I am scared to say any of this because I know he will see it, I know he will deny it, and I know that some people, like you, will believe him over me.
It’s difficult for me to understand your public silence and tacit support for your friend the abuser, given how vocal you are about feminism and standing up against bullies. Your outspoken tweets following the election of President Trump particularly stung, because the hypocrisy of your words was made all the more obvious. What makes me, and all the other survivors of your friend’s abuse, so unworthy of your compassion and empathy? What is it about us that make it so easy for you to dismiss our experiences? Why do you find it so hard to believe us?
Have you even tried?
At first, I thought you just needed time to process the fact that your friend is an abuser. After all, it’s not easy to admit that your friend could have harmed so many people. Cognitive dissonance is very powerful, and I understand the instinctive urge to deny accusations against a friend you care for. I have seen first hand how much easier it is to be a coward and choose comfort over complications. But now, almost a year since this all blew open, you are still silent. As far as I am aware, you are still friends with him, you still don’t believe us, he still believes that we were the ones who wronged him, and I am unaware of any accountability on his part – and on yours for giving him a pass with your silence.
I write this not as an attack on you, or to berate you for your behaviour. I don’t expect my words to have any effect on you. But I wonder if you have ever paused to consider that by implicitly supporting your friend the abuser, you are signalling to other women that you too are not a safe person to be around. How? Because you have chosen to prioritize superficial politeness under the excuse of “we must be kind, people are complicated” over protecting the well-being of abuse survivors. Because even though it is hard, being kind actually means helping our friends break abusive patterns. You are essentially putting up a neon sign saying “Don’t expect me to believe you. Don’t ask me for help if you’re scared. I am not willing to put myself out there by saying anything negative publicly about an abuser. Your safety matters less to me than having a pleasant rapport with my friend”.
See, here’s the thing. When you refuse to ostracize abusers like him, or act to make them take responsibility and help with their public accountability, you’re helping them pull other people into their orbits. You may not want to admit this, but you are part of the problem. You are the leafy branches camouflaging the pit full of snakes and skeletons.
Because if there were more actual tangible consequences for abusing women, maybe someday we might actually see abusers stop abusing.