Quelle surprise! Rob hasn't FOTTFSOF and is in fact hiding in the bushes at Henwee's school. Discuss the latest unlikely Archers events here.

[PseudoBadger]

What do we want?
Realistic storylines!
When do we want them?
As soon as the writers see this!

I can't believe that there are still suggestions that a woman in an abusive relationship is to blame somehow

Sadly I see it every day.

I mean fgs a lot of these women are scared of being killed if they leave. Don't go thinking if they go to police everything is fine and they will be safe. They often aren't.

I'm not blaming her for the abuse. Nor Henry's current predicament (although I think she should get him counselling!!)

Actually thinking back, you can kind of tell that the moving in with him part was written before they came up with the idea of the abuse. It was very Helen though - jump in with both feet and sod the consequences.

I've always thought the salmon scene was to show he is a knob and once he's ended a relationship in his head then it is deadwood the intention for him to behave that way with the many lovers he was going to have once married to Helen (in the Brian scenario) and he doesn't care. Only in the hindsight of Helens abuse did it get pulled in as well

Hobby and Boop - I am not blaming her for her abuse.

If a friend of mine with a child said they were moving the new partner in that quickly, the kid was calling him Daddy, the finances were going to be joint, he was just out of another relationship, and the kid was going to need to get used to it that quickly, I'd think my friend was making a bad plan.

If it turned out the bloke was fine but the kid was taking a while to adjust, I'd think that was probably to be expected, because it was a bad plan.

If it turned out the new man was abusive, I would not be thinking 'ah well, you made a bad plan' - I'd think, shit, how awful for my friend.

The fact that moving so fast when you have a young child is not a good idea is not because the man might turn out to be an abuser - it's because young children shouldn't be subjected to such radical and rapid changes to their housing and their families just because a parent is madly in love.

If that reads as though I'm blaming women for being abused, then I don't think you're reading fairly.

Hobby we've had this discussion before. Yes, Rob is the abuser and the abuser is wrong. But Helen had a million chances to exit the situation and didn't take them.
And Helen is no innocent angel

Well it looks like TA has spectacularly failed at educating its listeners about abusive domestic relationships.

Well we already knew that. I can't imagine many people listened to the last 8 months and learnt much at all. Which is a shame as the run up to the stabbing was well done and very enlightening

I think they rushed it because soc knew he was leaving and he was desperate to have His celebrity jury

Tbh the aftermath hasn't been realistic either, with the whole village firmly on Helen's side and the abuser completely vilified

IRL that hardly ever happens.

"problems she volunteered herself for"

"Helen had a million chances to exit the situation and didn't take them."

"Do we think that Helen is so insensitive because sub consciously she knows that she's to blame for the whole debacle?"

"I think she can be blamed"

"Helen is no innocent angel."

No no, of course she's not being blamed

At what point Helen's bad decisions started being not wholly driven by Helen and more determined by her abusive situation is very hard to tell but is earlier than when the decision was taken to move in surely? At what point did she lose her perspective on what constituted a good rational decision?

I seem to remember that Rob was the one who made a unilateral decision that Henry would call him "Daddy". Helen seemed a bit unsure but once Rob had effectively called himself Daddy to Henry's face she was unable to turn it around. And that's because she was already in an abusive situation where questioning Rob led to her being called silly or being overridden by his seemingly calm and reasonable "tie you in knots" / "if you loved me you'd do it my way" methods.

In the same way that Rob clearly made the decisions on how they would get married and adopting (err no not adopting because he twigged it would dig up his past) / getting PR for Henry but she didn't understand at the time that it was all being done to suit his agenda. Because it was presented to her as being the best for us darling and again by this later stage she was so confused by the cognitive dissonance issue.

She continually made bad decisions but from within the ever tighter, invisible strands of Rob's abusive web. Which he had started to weave around her from the moment he identified that she was fragile and lonely and someone who could be separated from her family by the emotion of a grand affair and by being bombarded with love and attention in the early days. Which led to her feeling like she had to choose Rob or her family and then move in hastily with Rob when her family showed disapproval of how they got together. Which led to isolation, uncertainty, loss of confidence, lack of perspective and so on until she had no idea who she was any more ...

But BOOP the corollary of your argument is that Helen is not responsible for anything, ever. She has no agency. She is a piece of straw blowing in the wind.

Perhaps there's a difference between someone being blamed for what happened and them taking responsibility for it?

Again - responsibility for being abused lies at the door of the abuser.

I'm shocked so many don't get it. No wonder so many women still suffer.

I think Helen was becoming irrational about Rob before the salmon incident with Jess. Kirsty tried even then to give her some perspective. She hated Jess and wanted Rob. If she had listened to Kirsty then.....

After that she was very quickly doomed because she was so relieved he came back to her that she was easily led by his desires from then onwards.
I recall she had some hesitation about the adoption/PR but was steamrollered into it. She had very little will of her own by then.

He spotted a victim and groomed her.

I'm the last person to extol Helen's virtues - but she was a victim.

If a woman chose to go out for the evening and then took a bus home and was attacked on her walk from the bus stop would that make her responsible for the attack, because she chose to put herself in that position? I don't think so, and the situation is analogous to Helen's.
Yes, she made poor decisions but she is neither blameworthy nor responsible for the abuse she suffered.
I can't believe We are even having the his discussion on this thread.

I know a lot of people find Helen irritating but you can be irritating and still be a victim - the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Errol - Perhaps there's a difference between someone being blamed for what happened and them taking responsibility for it?
I don't understand your point.

I cannot say enough times that I do not think it's anyone's fault if they are abused.

In a way I think that's one of the better points about the story: that it could happen to a woman whose friends and family would be sure to say they weren't 'the type', that they were forthright and independent and strong ... that women who are abused aren't just weak, it doesn't matter who you are or what you're like.

The fact that it's not Helen's fault she was abused also doesn't mean that Helen hasn't fairly consistently been a selfish, righteous, often unpleasant and cruel character for all the many years before rob was on the scene.

I know a lot of people find Helen irritating but you can be irritating and still be a victim - the two aren't mutually exclusive

Exactly that!

SHe's not responsible for the abuse and shouldn't be blamed for it. SHe is responsible for trampling on another person's marriage,(even if Jess ended up thinking Helen had done her a massive favour!) and for lying and prioritising her desire to be in a relationship over her responsibilities to Henry. She is responsible for poor judgements, leading to the cruel treatment of Henry, in the teeth of evidence and everything her instincts, her friends and her family were telling her. She's also responsible for not, apparently, learning anything about her own limitations from her experience and continuing to think that she knows best, can handle Rob, can safeguard her boys and can, unassisted, pick up the pieces from the abuse. Louise P's delivery is quite weird these days - I think she's supposed to be signalling that Helen is drained, but she often sounds rather lofty and queenly, "Call them if you like," which is undermining sympathy for the character.

She is responsible for poor judgements, leading to the cruel treatment of Henry, in the teeth of evidence and everything her instincts, her friends and her family were telling her.

That's blaming her for the abuse. Why do you think women stay in abusive relationships? Stupidity?

I despair, I really do.

I'm totally with you Hobby.

It is not blaming her for the abuse. It's saying she made poor judgments. Helen has been a person of poor judgment long before Rob came along, often because of arrogance and self-righteousness. She did make poor judgments and she continued to insist that Rob was a loving father, in the teeth of the evidence.

I've been in an abusive relationship - and got out of it - and I'm perfectly aware that women stay for all sorts of reasons, stupidity not being one of them. Poor judgment, loneliness, fragility, arrogance, pride, not wanting to admit you've been wrong, fear, failure to respond to early alarm bells, not listening to yourself or others, lapse of normal moral standards, hope that it will somehow work out OK and you don't have to be the person to break up your family, gradual decline in your ability to judge, isolation ... you know as well as I the many reasons why women stay. Doesn't mean you can't look at the situation and say, that is where I went wrong. And there, and there. That's when I should have stepped up. I knew that wasn't right, and that and that. I should not have accepted that and I did. I am a person capable of making that poor judgement and I should watch that.

I can't believe we are revisiting whether or not Helen is responsible for being abused She is and always has been extremely irritating - that just made it harder to spot and took us longer to have sympathy with her. We all cheered when she won her court case, but she immediately went on to be irritating again - failing to report Knob for approaching her before she had even left the court building, failing to report his turning up unannounced and putting his foot in the door, sending birthday cards and forcing gifts on her. she is extremely irritating - she also a victim of abuse.

None of her previous 'poor judgements' led to her being abused. She had no idea what was to come and no expectation that things would turn out as they did.

She's not responsible for having been abused. But at this point, she may need to take responsibility for the ongoing consequences to Henry. (Did this discussion began with whether she was doing that?) She is not to blame for what Rob did to him, and she may need help herself before she can properly help her son.

Surely all of those points Cromwell are why Helen needs some counselling. Or to do the Freedom programme or whatever. I'm finding myself more and more irritated by the aftermath of this storyline.

Henry should be seeing a play therapist surely. I can't believe that children's services have apparently vanished from the scene. I can't believe that Haerison didn't mention Victim Support the other day. As if your child witnessing your other child being stolen from your car is all fixed by the perpetrator (temporarily?) leaving the country. As if Henry won't be forever hurt and lost and confused not only by the revelation that his Daddy didn't want him, but also by the fact that everyone else is telling him "it's okay Rob's not coming back" when actually his dearest wish is to see him again.

These children are being badly let down. Not by their family, who are muddling along in a naive slightly 1950s sort of way, but by the authorities and most of all by the scriptwriters. It makes me really cross when they mess up stuff like this.

Stab night was a farce. But this is a tragedy