Guest post: 'Why the government must make emotional abuse a crime'

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"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me."

It’s an innocent nursery rhyme that most of us sang when we were little, but it reveals a lot about why emotional abuse isn't taken as seriously as physical abuse. Thankfully we’re on the cusp of a shift in attitude, and it’s time for society – and the law – to recognise that coercive and controlling behaviour can be just as damaging as violence.

There are already laws in place which cover non-physical forms of abuse such as stalking and harassment, but the government is currently consulting on creating legislation that explicitly refers to emotional abuse within relationships. It is essential that they do - emotional abuse within intimate relationships must become a serious crime, punishable by the state.

Too many women are suffering at the hands and mouths of the men who profess to love them – and I was one of them. I survived, but over a decade on, I still feel the aftershock from the psychological terror I endured.

It’s hard to imagine what it’s like have your spirit worn down on a daily basis, to feel that you’re emotionally beaten. I’ll try my best to explain:

To begin with, the man who will become your abuser is your beloved. He woos and adores you. He’s your knight in shining armour. Life feels like a fairytale and you fall in love.

Once you’re smitten, he starts to change. Not straight away – that would be too obvious - but step by step, day by day. It starts with the odd remark and occasional put downs and then turns into endless questions and interrogation.

A few months down the line, you've gone from being the most adored woman on the planet to a woman who cannot do anything right. Everything you do, everything you are is wrong. You start to think it’s all your fault - he tells you it is - so you try and change for him.

You change your behaviour and the way you dress. You stop seeing your family and friends. You make yourself seem smaller, less clever, less attractive and less worthy. You do everything you can think of to make him happy, but nothing seems to work. You’re always longing for a glimpse of the man you loved – and you're hopeful that he’ll appear again – so you keep trying and you keep changing.

Once you've started to lose yourself and your confidence has been eroded, the abuse and control escalates.

Your heart starts to beat faster whenever you’re with him. Not in the way it did when you first met, because of flirtation or romance, but out of utter terror. You know if you don’t do as he says, you will be punished and you will suffer - physically, financially, sexually or emotionally.

You begin to doubt yourself and your thoughts become jumbled. He tells you that you’re crazy and you start to believe him. Any confidence you had has now vanished and you become jittery and tearful. Life is about pleasing him and keeping him calm, because that’s what you need to do to survive.

You are not the woman you once were, and find yourself completely alone. That beautiful, intelligent, confident and independent person has been replaced with someone who is insecure, frightened and confused.

This is how easily it happens. This is why women don’t ‘just leave’, and society’s perception of what this is has to change.

Earlier this year, a report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary found that the police response to domestic abuse is "alarming and ineffective". Including emotional abuse in legislation is essential to improving this situation. It will raise awareness amongst the police force and the public and challenge perceptions – no longer will anybody be able to say ‘she should have got out’, because the months and years of creeping, subtle, non-violent abuse will be recognised and punished. Domestic violence is rarely as simple as one punch, or one slap – and one objective decision to stay or leave following the incident. Coercion and control are at its centre, and understanding this is essential to tackling all forms of abuse.

Of course it will be difficult. Emotional abuse can be subtle and hard to pinpoint. There will be much wrangling over definitions, and test cases, and horror stories in the papers of ‘innocent’ men being charged. But isn't it worth it? We have the chance to legitimise the experiences of hundreds of thousands of women.

As a woman who was once emotionally broken and now continues to pick up the pieces, I'm waiting on the government to make the right decision.

Orangespeaker. What a surprise to bump into you again here. I'm sorry to see that your inner voyage hasn't yet led you towards integrating your fascination with the human spirit and the commonplace realities of life among humans. I hope it will do so, instead of luring you further astray with impressive but empty speeches and shallow answers to deep questions.

You've postulated that victims are victimised because they inwardly feel they deserve it, if you'll pardon my paraphrase. Yes - I think this is so. I, for example, was abused as a child. My understanding of my self, and of relationships, was perverted by my parents' training: I neither knew I deserved better, nor that mutually respectful and considerate relationships existed. The fact that I had been profoundly bullied, however, didn't give my subsequent abusers the right to bully me more. I knew no better: they abused this fact.

Other adults, with saner parents than mine, may grow up with the healthier knowledge I lacked - but that same innocence may be abused by the maleficent. Someone with every expectation of equal, respectful love would find it very hard to imagine the kind of relationship that's conducted as a war of attrition. They'd expect their partner to love them as well as they love, and they'd naturally suppose his criticisms to be well-meaning. Such victims are even more victimised than I was: they acquire the feeling they must deserve these erosions of their soul, because they believe their abuser has their interests at heart. That is, their abuser in adulthood puts them through the same 'training' my parents gave me.

The objective of any controlling campaign is to get the controlled to carry out the controller's wishes without prompting. On an interpersonal level this means elevating the controller to god-like status while viewing the self as deeply imperfect, striving endlessly and at great personal cost to satisfy the controller.

Once an individual has become entrapped in this dynamic, you can certainly say they feel they deserve their controller's abuse and that their self-perception is flawed. Earlier posters have referred you to Stockholm Syndrome and traumatic bonding. Following those lines of enquiry, you will find this principle expressed in many interesting - if chilling - examples.

The problem, then, is not some intrinsic fault in the victim. It is a created fault: a fault deliberately inculcated, by abusers, to keep the target under control and eventually perpetrating the controllers' abuse upon herself. It's remarkably successful because it exploits the most powerful human emotion: love. A campaign of abuse distorts the target's love, turning it into a weapon.

This is why your apparent exhortation to "love an abuser better" has fallen on deaf ears. We have tried it! Nobody understands an abuser better than his target does (cf: Stockholm Syndrome); the more successful he is, the deeper her understanding of him. She'd also tell you she loves him although, by then, what she's feeling is not love but enthrallment.

It's very sad.

GarlicOctopus...our definitions of love are different. That all.

What I am trying to explain (and it seems that I am not yet doing an effective job) is that in order to create a deep change we cannot use hate or fear towards the abuser or the abused.

I wish you best of luck on your journey! :)

Hi DD...I hope you are well today!

It's very difficult and indeed pointless to tell someone who is being abused to 'love' their abuser. This doesn't make any sense and won't work. For a start, they need to know how to love themselves.

We need to know what love truly is and the way it is portrayed in the media and in society is probably not the best example.

Discussion and debate is a start but what we must really do is examine ourselves and release all our own hate, anger and fear. This is the stuff that we suppressed from a very young age. The pain that we didn't want to feel, the tears that we weren't allowed to cry for fear of looking weak. Once we begin doing that only then can we help others do the same. The more fear we release the more loving we can become. Then we can make a change to the lives of others.

I don't know if that makes sense?
OS

For a start, they need to know how to love themselves.

I think a lot of people have left abusive situations and love themselves quite happily but that doesn't mean they have to forgive or love or in any way excuse the behaviour of their abuser.

Discussion and debate is a start but what we must really do is examine ourselves and release all our own hate, anger and fear.

Using hate anger and fear to bring abusers to justice is a very positive way to move forward and it helps to protect others and send a clear message out to those involved in abuse that they cannot continue to take advantage of people by effectively lying and cheating their way into power and control over someone else.

Perhaps you could tell us about your story OrangeSpeaker, it might help us to understand your rather unusual stance on abuse.

Have you been accused of being abusive? Have you been a victim of it?

I wish you best of luck on your journey!

It is quite clear from Garlic's posts that she has reached the end of her journey and is turning back now to help others along it. Your comment is dismissive and if I may say, patronising.

That is exactly the kind of comment an emotional abuser would use to take the upper hand following a period of drawing them into a discussion. Don't you see that?

DD...perhaps I said 'I wish you best of luck on your journey' and I meant it from a very positive point of view. Perhaps I wanted GarlicOctopus to experience plenty of peace and understanding? Unfortunately, my emotional state cannot be communicated on the computer :)

DD...if you really, truly, in your heart think that using hate, anger and fear can create a better world then please give that a go. Please understand I do not mean this with a negative energy as I now believe we need to find out for ourselves what really works and what doesn't.

I think by communicating with everyone here I have come to understand more fully that I have still not truly forgiven the person that abused me. Perhaps when I decide to let go of this anger and fear then I can come back and make a difference in a more positive way.

OS....

DD...if you really, truly, in your heart think that using hate, anger and fear can create a better world then please give that a go.

That's your interpretation not mine. Please don't tell me what I think. That's what abusers do.

Please understand I do not mean this with a negative energy as I now believe we need to find out for ourselves what really works and what doesn't.

Well it IS negative to assume that someone believes that hate creates a better world in order to be able to dismiss their views and to protect their own views. It is selfish, putting yourself and your own interests first and refusing to understand the other person. And that's also what abusers do.

I'm glad that you appreciate now that people deal with things in their own way, that's the most enlightened thing you have said so far however I hope that you don't simply mean that you are going to continue to believe that the abstract and subjective concept of 'love' will overcome the normalisation of abuse both within personal relationships and wider institutions such as families, religions and cults.

Only the law can protect those who are suffering in these relationships and the kindness of others like the many brilliant people on Mumsnet who have helped victims escape. That's where the love is.

Thank you, DD I wouldn't say I'm at the end of my journey! But, yes, like thousands of others who've been through the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) of abuse, I do what I can to help people still inside it find their way through.

Getting this slightly back on track: I have greater faith in our lawmakers than some here. As PP have said, the law's successfully negotiated abuses that looked impossible to legislate: marital rape; constructive dismissal; sexual harassment; racism; stalking; emotional neglect; lots of other things such as theft by conversion. Financial abuse and elder abuse are already crimes; people said these couldn't be legislated. What's more, the law continues to learn. Legislation, once written, isn't set in stone. Each judgement, each reconsideration, adds to the body of the law.

One of the most desirable effects of legislation is that it sends a clear message to society in general and to victims that certain behaviour patterns are unacceptable. It describes the patterns and gives power to victims' experiences. It says "It's not you, it's him!"

Anybody who can't understand the importance of this is unqualified to comment.

I hope that you don't simply mean that you are going to continue to believe that the abstract and subjective concept of 'love' will overcome the normalisation of abuse both within personal relationships and wider institutions such as families, religions and cults.

Only the law can protect those who are suffering in these relationships and the kindness of others.

Seconded, on both points :)

Perhaps I wanted GarlicOctopus to experience plenty of peace and understanding?

Thank you! I do! :) I want everybody to experience peace & understanding. That's why I offer it to abuse targets, whose current experience of 'love & understanding' is, in fact, making them unhappy.

To anyone who really thinks a victim sending love to their abuser helps, please consider the following:

Abuse is about power for the abuser - if they have no power over you they move on to another victim.

My grandmother was classic, she either had you squirming on a line or cut you out of her life (while slagging you off behind your back to anyone who would listen), that was what people were to her - slaves or effectively dead.

So, for instance my friend's abusive husband was told, by me, to get stuffed.
So she is no longer allowed to see me - her suffering continues, so if ONE victim walks away or stands up to the abuser that does not "cure" the abuser. the abuser finds another victim or further isolates their existing victim. And if it isn't human, it will be an animal: sadly, if someone wants to have power they want it and they pursue it.

If you offer love to someone incapable of receiving it, it is useless.

Sorry for spamming the thread ...

OS, you said "I have come to understand more fully that I have still not truly forgiven the person that abused me."

Compassionate forgiveness doesn't involve yielding acceptance. That isn't compassion; compassion is understanding and forgiving, but also self-compassionate and empowering. I think of it like the way we view animal predators. If you're swimming in a warm river and a crocodile turns up, you don't try to make friends with it. Neither do you hate it for wanting to eat your leg. It's a crocodile! It's what they do. You get the hell out of the water, then observe the beast with interest - from a safe distance.

There's no need to 'forgive' a crocodile for scaring the shit out of you and threatening your life. I don't need to 'forgive' my ex-husbands and my ex-boss for making mincemeat of my identity. They injured me. I'm sure they are injuring other people right now. My job isn't to fix or 'forgive' them, my responsibility is to heal & learn.

In making emotional abuse a crime, the law will support the learning & healing processes by removing the fallacy that victims are responsible for abuses perpetrated against them.

I don't think it's as difficult to gather evidence as people think. Nor do I think it can be "easily reversed" into a "she did the same to me.." scenario. The police will look for patterns and the patterns build up the evidence. Eg, my sister left an abusive relationship, and if asked by the police, I and other family members would have been able to corroborate that she stopped contacting us (which would have fitted with her story, because he prevented her from seeing her family, though we didn't know why at the time). The police will be able to piece together incidents like this, to build evidence. I'd always recommend keeping a diary of dates and incidents if you're experiencing intimate violence - could really help with evidence later.

The most helpful thing anyone said to me was that I could 'forgive' my abuser and let go of my anger but that forgiveness was not the same as letting them get away with it. Being able to recognise that what they did was wrong and not my fault, and draw a line in the sand and say 'this far but no further' allowed me to let go of my anger and pain but also refuse to take any more shit from them. But I had to be out of the situation for a long time and find sanctuary to restore my self worth and self belief before I was even able to recognise the abuse. For some people that might mean forgiving the past abuse but still seeking prosecution, not in anger or revenge but in pursuit of justice..

The police have warned that further cuts in police budgets will have a dangerous impact on the public. Savage cuts to legal aid mean that many women cannot get justice when they suffer physical or emotional violence which go hand in hand.

Which services are going to give emotional/physical abuse victims justice?

Domestic abuse services are reporting an increase in crisis cases. Women in the workplace with low status jobs have seen a rise in sexual harassment but in many cases are to frightened to come forward in case they lose their employment.

Women's Aid have said 'an entire network of domestic violence (support) providers in England is likely to collapse.' 30% of service providers had their budget cut last year.

I suspect that, much like the stalking laws, they'll be looking for patterns of behaviour, rather than a specific incident. Yes, it may be difficult to prove, but I remember that being talked about when talking laws came into effect as well. Just because it might be difficult, that doesn't mean we should just say "oh well, too hard, they'll just have to deal with his shitty controlling behaviour."

It also highlights that this behaviour IS wrong.. and IMO that is needed in today's society.