Judging Victims of Domestic Violence is Never Okay

By Britni TheVadgeWig | Published: February 28, 2009

“The question isn’t ‘Why does she stay?’

But ‘How can she flee?’

Unless you’ve been the victim

Of power and control

You may not ever sympathize

With the ones who will not go.”

-Anna Fisher, Stop the Silence-Break the Violence

I have refrained from talking about the Rihanna and Chris Brown incident. Considering I work at a domestic violence center, I deal with the realities of abuse on a daily basis. I hear the stories from women who come in and have been being battered and abused for years and years. I see the heartache that it causes these women. The physical scars, they heal; those emotional and psychological scars sometimes never do. But now that it seems that Rihanna and Chris Brown have reconciled, people that have no experience with the realities of DV are judging her for her decision. But the thing is, the average woman will leave her batterer 7 times before she leaves for good. And a woman is more at risk when she leaves than when she stays. Lethality is highest when a woman leaves.

There is a cycle of violence that occurs in most abusive relationships.

After an incident of abuse, there is a honeymoon period in which the abuser will say anything to get the victim back and to calm her down. He buys her presents, is very sweet, and tells her what she wants to hear. “If I didn’t love you so much, I wouldn’t get so angry.” “It’s just that I care about you so much that it makes me crazy sometimes.” “I’ll never do it again, I promise.” But the honeymoon period gets shorter and shorter each time, and the violence tends to escalate over time.

Also, the batterers have established a great deal of power and control over their victim. One of the best tools that shows the ways in which an abuser establishes that power and control is this wheel (I highly recommend clicking on it and reading the things listed. It’s really eye opening to see all of the ways in which batterers can establish their power and control).

These are all the ways in which power and control is established in an abusive relationship. And through this power and control, the abuser manipulates the victim and instills fear in her. We cannot judge the women that return to their batterers. They are not weak, they are victims. They will not leave until they are ready to. When people ask, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” what they are not understanding is this power and control aspect. “Leaving” is just not that simple. And until you have been in an abusive relationship, you can never really understand the control that the batterer has over that victim. You don’t understand the fear that the victim feels when she thinks about the consequences of leaving her abuser. He has probably told her that he will kill her if she leaves, and chances are, she believes him. Rihanna will hopefully learn from this relationship and move on eventually, but she can’t be pushed to do so until she is truly ready and no one should judge her for the decisions that she makes. The best the people around her can do is to love and support her, and be there for her when she is ready to make that break.

One of the most unfortunate things about this incident is that Rihanna has been thrust into the spotlight as some sort of representative for battered women without her consent. It is sad that this has to happen to her in the public spotlight. If, one day, she chooses to speak out against DV, that will have to be her decision. But what we CAN learn from this incident is that no one is immune. DV occurs everywhere. It happens to poor people, rich people, black people, white people, women, men. Your doctor could be an abuser; your child’s teacher could be a victim. You just never know.

But what I do know is that the judgement needs to stop.

“He hit me and it felt like a kiss

He hit me and I knew he loved me

Cause if he didn’t care for me

I could have never made him mad

He hit me and I was glad

Baby won’t you stay…”

-Carole King, He Hit Me (And it Felt Like A Kiss)