“I don’t know any abusers…”
When you work in anti-human trafficking like I do, difficult conversations are inevitable. It is not abnormal for me to hear gut-wrenching accounts of physical and sexual abuse on what for the rest of the world might be a regular Tuesday morning.
Recently, however, I was included in a discussion that has proved more difficult for me to digest than even the most graphic stories of trafficking… a conversation that has remained at the forefront of my mind for months.
During a conversation about certain types of abuse and violence against women, a man I was chatting with questioned the prevalence of abuse. His reasoning was that reports of abuse must be exaggerated because he personally, “did not know any men who were abusive to women.”
I continued to listen as he made his case. At 65 years of age, he couldn’t remember being friends with any abusive men. This logic, therefore led him to the conviction that certain types of abuse are likely not as prevalent as broadcasted.
His words resounded in my ears and I felt that old familiar knot in my throat begin to form. The same knot that I have swallowed down my entire life. The knot that grows like a stone when I feel small. The knot sits on my neck like a brick in moments like this when I want to shout out a truth but I don’t… or can’t… or won’t.
As women, most of us collectively hold this knot in our throats, one that is filled with the pain of the things we know but cannot always say. While not all women have been abused, all women do have a best friend, a niece, a mother, a cousin, a daughter, or a co-worker who has been abused. We also know that abuse is prolific and can happen to any of us at any moment, in any place.
What I wanted to do during that conversation was to shout out in rebuttal the long list of women in my life who have disclosed abuse to me. Then I wanted to spend the next hour explaining in detail the types of abuse I knew about and experienced… but I didn’t.
What I did say was a more sanitized version of that. Pushing past the knot in my throat I said, “Why is it so common for men to say they don’t personally know any abusers but we all know women who have been abused?”
What came next really gutted me. He said, “To that point, I don’t know of that many women who have been abused.”
I was gutted because I knew that he was wrong, that he more than likely did know many women who have experienced abuse.
After a beat I replied, “It is more likely, that women in your life have not felt safe enough to disclose to you the abuse they have experienced.”
Fast forward, months later I still cannot get this conversation out of my mind.
In our work at Epik Project, we operate with the ethos that, “if good men hold abusive men accountable, we could fix a lot of problems in this world”. But the conversation with the gentleman that day made me analyze the logic of that assumption.
For starters, how are good men supposed to hold bad ones accountable if they can’t identify the abusers right in front of their faces? Because trust me. Abusers are among us and we all know them. Or worse yet, what if good men aren’t paying attention to abuse because they aren’t posturing themselves in ways that would make the women in their lives feel safe enough to disclose abuse to them and go a step further to name their abusers?
I couldn’t get the problem out of my mind so I decided to put pen to paper and dedicate this article to the good men out there who, after taking stock of your life might realize that this statement resonates with you, “I don’t know any abusers and/or I also don’t know many women who have been abused.”
If this is you, here is your invitation to read on.
First, when looking at abuse, we have to understand that it lies on a spectrum. There is emotional abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, physical abuse, coercive abuse, spiritual abuse, verbal abuse… and the list goes on.
Abuse against women shows up in many different ways in many different relationships. Abuse happens in romantic and intimate partnerships, in the workplace, and even among friend groups. While abuse can happen to anyone, I am focusing on the violence and abuse perpetrated against women by men for this article.
Check out the Power & Control wheel to get a quick understanding of tactics used by abusers.
Next, let’s talk about the reported prevalence of violence against women. According to statistics, 1 in 3 women will experience sexual or physical violence (e.g. beating, burning, strangling) from an intimate partner in her lifetime. Over half of women will experience sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes. 1 in 4 women have experienced completed or attempted rape. More than 4 in 5 female rape survivors reported that they were first raped before age 25 and almost half were first raped as a minor (i.e., before age 18).
These statistics are astounding to absorb, no doubt. While I have read and re-read these reports and figures for years due to my work in human trafficking, I have always carried around a nagging feeling these figures are low… under-reported… inaccurate.
That feeling comes from a lifetime of being a woman, surrounded by other women, each of us sharing our stories of abuse with each other while also telling the painful reasons why we never reported that abuse to the authorities.
The conversation I had with the gentlemen coupled with this nagging feeling that abuse is underreported prompted me to dive a little deeper. I decided to take stock of my knowledge and experience by putting my own “knowing” on the line. So, I did what made sense to me… I created a spreadsheet.
I started by listing the names of the women closest to me. Included in the spreadsheet are 16 women, some are old friends, some are new, some are related to me, and others are not but one thing they have in common is I am very close with each one of them. After I compiled their names, I randomly assigned them a number for obvious privacy reasons. Next, I listed out what I know about them regarding their experiences with abuse and violence.
Keep in mind, that this is not some fancy peer-reviewed university study. This is one woman (me), sitting down at her computer and making a list of 16 of the closest women in her life and remembering back to a lifetime of hearing their stories. Some of these stories were spoken while cradling cups of tea at kitchen tables, other stories were shared while sitting, draped in blankets on couches. Some stories emerged during heart-to-heart conversations over long car rides, and the rest came during any one of the thousands of moments of truth and pain that often surface between women in conversations.
The 16 lines on this spreadsheet are represented by real women who have loved, supported, and stood by my side and to whom I have endeavored to do the same. While they are special to me, there is nothing inherently special about their situations. These women are a microcosm of people from all walks of life. They are located across the US, come from varied backgrounds and their ages span from 20 to 70 years old. These women have founded businesses, worked as employees, stayed at home to raise children, decided not to have children, graduated from college, not graduated from college, traveled the world, stayed close to home, and everything in between.
I took their stories and turned them into a spreadsheet in hopes of demonstrating the following painful point. We all know women who have been abused and because these abuses have not been reported, not all of them fall into national statistics.
Of the 16 closest women in my life
2 have never disclosed the abuse to me so they are in the “unknown” category
2 have not experienced abuse
6 were abused as children
8 were abused as adults
2 were abused as children and adults
1 of these instances was reported to authorities
Emotional and Physical were the most common types of abuse
The woman in line 2 was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused as a child by her father's “friend” and those abuses were never reported to authorities or agencies.
The woman in line 5 was date raped in high school and never told a single soul until her late 50’s, it was unreported.
The woman in line 11 was violently assaulted by her boyfriend on multiple occasions and it was not reported to the police.
The woman in line 13 was also beaten by her boyfriend, but not reported.
The woman in line 16 was beaten by her husband, she tried to report it, but the police did not file a report in hopes the issue would “resolve itself”.
You get the idea…
*** Due to the nature of my work, many of my closest friends are survivors of human trafficking. For clarification, I did not include any survivors of trafficking in this list, as this would obviously and greatly skew the numbers.***
Making this list was not easy to do. It was painful to take an in-depth look at the lives of the women in my life and remember the moments they recounted the awful and violent things they had experienced at the hands of male abusers.
And while I assuaged my nagging feeling that most abuse goes unreported, I do not feel better seeing how this plays out in my own life. The truth is, we all know women who have taken the brunt of violence from men, whether or not they have disclosed that abuse to you is another thing.
This ramps us right into the question posed earlier; why do we all know women who have been abused yet we don’t know any abusers?
Another thing to note is that none of these women were assaulted, raped, or abused by a stranger. Each woman knew her abuser, was often intimate with him, and had to exist with him for either the rest of their lives or at least over the course of many years. This is a common reason why most of these abuses were not reported to authorities. The women on this list did not feel safe enough to report to authorities the abuse from their dads, family friends, husbands, boyfriends, and boys from school. Can you imagine having to intimately recount the worst and most violent moments of their lives to authorities where they might not be believed, possibly have to testify and live publicly with the stigma of what happened to them? Not to mention overcoming the shame, humiliation, and pain associated with disclosing.
This prompted me to look at male counterparts in my spreadsheet. Who are the men who perpetrated the abuse of the most beloved women in my life? I looked some of them up on Facebook, some of them I knew from high school and some of them still exist in these women’s lives. It was eerie to see their smiling faces in family photos, wedding and engagement photoshoots, new home purchases, vacations with their kids, etc. knowing the harm they have caused to some of the people I love most.
Of the 12 abusers
3 are unknown to me
1 owns a restaurant, well-regarded in the community, is a father
1 is a teacher, well-regarded in the community
1 is a professional realtor, well-regarded in the community
2 are small business owners, fathers, well regarded in the community
1 is a well-known musician
1 is a decorated veteran and a father
1 is married now with children
1 is newly engaged
Some of these men physically beat my friends to bloody pulps, breaking bones, cutting through skin, and strangling them. Others viciously and verbally tore down my friends to the point of causing eating disorders, depression suicide attempts, and ideation. Others lied and stole family funds to support sexually illicit habits. Others were just straight-up pedophiles. None were arrested, prosecuted, or held accountable for the abuse. None are publicly known as abusers. Many are successful, celebrated people.
So to the men reading this, if you can admit that the women in your lives are not disclosing abuse to you, is it also fathomable to admit that the men perpetuating those abuses are also not disclosing that abuse to you?
Is it also safe to say that both of these truths don’t erase the abuse?
Abuse happens. It happens every second of every day to people across our communities. Until we can acknowledge the truth and prevalence of abuse, we will never get a handle on violence against women. Women know these abuses in our bones and we grieve every time we embrace our friends, sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, and daughters who have experienced it.
Proclaiming that abuse doesn’t happen because, “I don’t know any men who abuse,” is another way of pouring salt on the wounds left by the fists and words of the abusers that walk among us every day.
It is not enough that women have to endure abuse at the hands of the men in their lives, but women also shouldn’t have to beg for non-abusers to be allies in believing that the abuse even exists.
“It is not enough that women have to endure abuse at the hands of the men in their lives, but women also shouldn’t have to beg for non-abusers to be allies in believing that the abuse even exists.”
So, I leave you with more questions than answers…
How have you regarded degrees of abuse up until now? How have you spoken about abuse in front of the women in your lives? If, for example, you have a daughter who has overheard you diminishing the prevalence or seriousness of abuse do you think she will feel safe to disclose abuse to you if it happens to her? Have you taken stock of the men in your life? Have you stood up against “locker room” talk or misogynistic jokes? Have you really peered into your own life and looked at the places where you yourself might have caused harm? What steps can you take to become the type of man who is a safe place for the women in your life to disclose abuse if they choose to do so? And lastly, how can you make a difference in holding abusers accountable?
Stay tuned for Part II for a deeper dive into why the myths of abuse remain so prevalent and what we can do about it.
