A MESSAGE FOR SURVIVORS

As a human rights advocate for global peace, and a survivor of sexual assault, I stand with all those that have endured systematic traumatic irreversible abuse by another. Advocacy must take place on a global scale to ensure fairness, unity, compassionate empathetic care and assistance to those in need at every level within the realms of society to ensure good governance and the right to protect. The nature of abuse is asynchronous, does not abide by a linear nature, and operates within the conscious abnormal nature of hate projected against another. Sexual assault, domestic abuse, and the cyclical nature of abandonment or silence leads to an erosion of justice, ethicality, and morality within society. As a survivor, it is my greatest hope that my work brings to light the nature of abuse and progressive peaceful restorative resolutions which can restore peace, dialogue, diplomacy, and reformative compassionate empathetic care.

As a survivor of sexual assault, it is imperative that peaceful resolutions are achieved through rigorous dialogues and diplomatic measures and interactions through forms of communicative efforts, to counter a perpetrators legal and procedural weaponization of a survivors merit, legitimacy, and honour. All survivors must “View men not only as perpetrators or possible offenders, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers.” — Unknown. Within the realm of the imbalance of narcissistic abuse, there is an adopted internal mechanism to delegitimize the claims of physical, emotional, mental, and psychological assault against a victim, by accepting, condoning, allowing, permitting, or tolerating toxic repetitive behaviour. Failed leadership will often will deem a victim as vexatious in the context that they wish to silence or repeal awareness that an issue has become distressing, persistent, or represents a lack of justice. Disruptive behaviour caused by the projections of an abuser, seeks to dismantle, destroy, and cause fragmentation within the soul of the victim. When it comes to physical, mental, emotional, or acute levels of psychological harm, it causes a victim to lose faith and trust within the world, as many will seek to dismantle a victim’s credibility as a calculated tactic to distort reality, deflect accountability, and enable the maintenance of control by an abuser over the system which ought to reinforce justice. By reversing the roles of the abuser and victim, they dismantle a victim’s claim by claiming the victim is fragile and may not be credible, due to the nature of trauma. Disruptive behaviour caused by an abuser is abnormal, asynchronous, and atypical, and when a society shifts blame and deflection upon a victim, it validates the abusers abusive actions as condonable.

Within the legal stance, there is a precedence set, where the focus is placed on the victim’s reaction to the abnormal events, rather, than recognizing and realizing what is a survival based mechanism or natural symptomatic reaction to acute systemic abuse, rather than analyzing the “why” an abuser chose to seek out these forms of retaliatory behaviours, to subdue or cause duress or insurmountable harm to another, we must investigate the nature of complicity and allowance for such events to transpire within a democratic functioning society. By labelling a survivor as vexatious, they then cause the victim to adopt a narrative that their persistence in trying to seek help is pointless, as no accountability will be rendered for the initial wrongful actions of another. Perpetrators tend to shift attention, deflect responsibility, and divert justice from helping the victim. Reality distortion causes a victim to question their own perception of events, which aims to make the victim doubt if they are being unreasonable, or places the victim in a state of having to defend the need to have protection against an aggressive actor, who seeks to operate outside of the law. Pathologizing and othering, delegitimizes the victim by causing the society to view them as irrational, emotional, or operating within the sequence of trauma as they are labelled as dramatic. Victim’s of abuse deserve to have a platform to speak about what has become intolerable, unjust, or the nature of how actions have eroded justice or become unethical or immoral in nature. One has to recognize that to address the systemic role of the cyclical nature of abuse, we must look to what has become unreasonable, where a victim is then placed in a situation, of where their survival is dependent on intervention to preserve their safety and peace.

Perpetrators often give off the impression that they are calm and rational to the outside world, through the facade of a performative veneer, while making survivors or victims of cruelty appear unreasonable, when a victim finally decides that they want to reclaim their power, and do not want to engage in asynchronous acts of perpetual violence the perpetrator will tighten their grip. Victims and survivors seek to bring about enlightened awareness and unearthing to the systematic core wounds and rooted nature of abuse, as their lived experience serves as a valid truthful expression of the role of hatred cascaded onto another. When victims encounter proactive smear campaigns, by those they have considered safe or have confided in, they then see how the procedural intent of abuse can then reach a level of no return. Portraying victims of sexual assault as fragile, tormented, trauma induced, angry, or depressed delegitimizes their claims against their oppressor, as they become perceived as unstable unreliable narrators of their own existence, through re-framing and silencing mechanisms of others. When tactics are utilized to damage a survivors reputation, or cause further traumatic responses through isolation, silencing, or proactive campaigns to delegitimize a human beings worth, essence, or right to access to their own body, we then enter into a state of questioning, what is the life of a woman or man who has endured assault worth to the public sphere? Women are life givers, nurturers, and consistently demonstrate the love, compassion, and supportive nature which instills unity within a population through their compassionate initiatives, and nurturing responsive care. A woman who seeks to bring about attention to protect the greater public, does not deserve to be undermined or harassed, as her sole intent is to save the lives of others who may have encountered or may encounter the same form of abuse. When others utilize preemptive strikes to ensure that the perpetrators version of events are believed over the victims, it then undermines the justice systems role to seek support or exposure for behaviour which contributed to the cyclical nature of abuse. A victim does not have to justify, argue, defend, or explain, as narcissists seek to utilize one’s defences as proof that they are the problem because they no longer want to surrender their power, worth, peace, or body to their oppressor. Victims often have to learn to preserve their peace through the maintenance of firm boundaries or the act of reducing their communication or dialogue with the abusive party. Interactions must then become non-reactionary or non-emotional. A victim must not have to endure the unstable environment or violent interactions that a perpetrator consciously manifests for their pleasure. A victim must learn that they do not have to give away their power to another, as no one is their arbitrator of truth. Often perpetrators operate under a cloak and dagger routine, where it is concealed or hidden from the eyes of the public, to not face scrutiny or consequences for their actions. A perpetrators goal is a strategic attempt to flip the script, avoid accountability, and discredit the victim’s legitimate concerns. Perpetrators seek to undermine their victims by getting their legal claims dismissed, ignored, or attempt to portray the victim as unstable, harassing, or annoying. Perpetrators will go to the highest degrees to harm their victim to satisfy their insatiable need for power, dominance, and control. When a victim wants to seek reform or exit out of an unsuitable or unstable arrangement a perpetrator will then lose their sense of control and destabilize the victim’s life from the inside out. Victim’s claims are not frivolous, as the emotional toll of violence drains one’s mental health and causes irreversible damage to their honour, credibility, livelihood, and safety. Within the role of justice, legal and procedural weaponization against a victim must be addressed, as plaguing a victim for seeking reform or their right to their own autonomous body or civil liberties is not an unfair request in restorative justice.

A perpetrator will substantiate legal abusive tactics and techniques which causes further harm to a victim, by seeking to ensure that the perpetrators actions can continue beyond the role of legal proceedings, by setting and etching a precedence of hate for future generations to come. Victims should not be labelled as “being difficult” or seeking to be “vexatious” against their perpetrator, they are seeking to achieve to bring about legal awareness to endless harassment and harm perpetrated outside of the watchful eye of law enforcement. Perpetrators project their behaviour on innocent civilians which for a brief period of time enable their abuse mechanisms to be sustained, until it can no longer be tolerated, managed, or tolerable. The harassment or conflict, one consistently provokes onto their victim triggers a reaction of PTSD, trauma, withdrawal, depression, or even suicide in the worst context. Perpetrators seek to project their worst qualities onto their susceptible victims, till they essentially explode, shatter, or become fragmented or weak to not fight back. Perpetrators will then maintain the narrative that those that seek to counter their abnormal actions are crazy or reactive, to maintain their stance that they represent the levered interpretation of balance and alignment. Perpetrators seek to pathologize a victims emotions, and frame a victims legitimate anger or hurt as an incurable character flaw or deficit rather than a justified response to intolerable or abusive actions. When one discredits a victims credibility they systematically discredit the victims claims by smearing their good nature. A victim has endured or had to withstand insurmountable violent harm against their will. By portraying a victim as an unstable antagonist, it then creates a culture of indifference. Within my practice, I have witnessed many sexual assault survivors who have become delegitimized by their perpetrators, in their attempts to undermine their credibility, once they evoked discernment and protective boundaries to preserve their sacred peace. A victim seeks to protect their children and families, while trying to achieve restorative justice to counter the atypical and abnormal acute abuse that they have sustained within silence or ignorance. When a perpetrator or their supporters discredits a survivor’s claims, they consciously engage in apathy, indifference, and complicity by avoiding accountability for what has occurred. When a survivor is seen as an annoyance, the survivor then questions if their demands for truth or justice are just annoying as they are often met with silence or deceit. Survivors seek peace, refuge, and safety from harm, rather than wanting to encounter further endurance of persecution, deprivation, agression, or trouble, and often within their quest to seek to help, assistance, and support, are met with silent stonewalled approaches, mild ignorance, or apathy. Within the realm of remaining neutral or not engaging within the perceived labelling of “drama” that was perpetrated behind closed doors or silence, a victim loses hope for restorative justice. A survivor deserves the right to protect their sanity, their body, their essence, and their existence within a legal context beyond being judged by how “justified” their personal argument is.

Within the context of sexual assaults it is incredibly disheartening and destabilizing when some members, who are sworn to protect the public, end up validating the individuals that cause further harm by enforcing a culture of ignorance or “what do you want me to do about it?.” This phenomenon is a documented systemic issue, and it often stems from a combination of psychological manipulation by the abuser and institutional flaws within law enforcement. For the record, let me state, that I support law enforcement and the legal bodies they represent, as there are many law enforcement officials at all levels who consistently, constantly, and proactively protect those who have endured systematic violence, and with good faith, I honour those Guardians of the Light, who advocate diligently and persistently for the preservation of the civil rights and liberties of all. The core issue that needs to be addressed is the propaganda that misidentifies a survivor as the antagonist, as it is an indicator of the performance of the narcissist, rather than dealing with the matter at hand. Narcissists and abusers are often highly skilled at impression management. When the police arrive, the abuser may appear calm, rational, helpful, performative, or understand how to act to maintain the appearance of being balanced and within the context of an argument will demonstrate concern for the survivors mental health which secretly has become deteriorated by the abuser systemic tactics of abuse to fragment their sense of reality, safety, and boundaries. It is the storm within the calm, and the calm becomes an endorphin for the abuser, as they are exercising their misuse of power by shielding their monstrous intent. The survivor is often in an active state of trauma, where their sense of reality and safety has become jeopardized, as there is no safe avenue to turn to. Survivors in the state of abuse, will experience whimpering cries that will remain unheard, shaking, ptsd, yelling and pleading for the abuse to stop, and if pushed to their limit, will lose their sense of time, as they cannot document their story in a linear fashion as abuse is asynchronous in nature. Untrained officers will often believe the perpetrators that appear like they are the rational ones whereas, the victim will appear as an unstable aggressor who is “causing problems.” Within the state of reactive abuse, the perpetrator will seek to push a survivor beyond their breaking point, where they will provoke the survivor behind closed doors, for hours, days, or a lifetime. The police only see the aftermath of the survivors reaction, rather than how the incitement of violence was initiated. How does justice then protect those who encounter such abuse on a constant basis? What if there is an ingrained stereotype or reinforced beliefs that sustain these views of violence? Law enforcement is often trained to look for physical evidence (bruises, broken items) rather than the nuances of coercive control. If there are no visible marks, officers may default to a “neutral” stance to avoid paperwork or liability, which effectively sides with the abuser. Many officers are not trained to understand that fragmented memory (forgetting details or getting dates wrong) is a biological symptom of trauma, not a sign of lying. Lack of trauma-informed care determines whether a survivor lives or dies. Strategic discrediting creates a narrative for the perpetrator to frame the scenario before the police even enter into the situation. When a perpetrator then delegitimizes a victim by calling them unstable, they then seek to align their projection of performance to conform to what they feel authorities are looking or searching for. At the end of the day, a sexual assault survivor has to live with the debilitating degree of unseen scars, damages to their reproductive system, or even reputational damage as a perpetrator maintains a false facade that they are indeed the hero. It is important that survivors keep advocating for awareness within the institutional realms of law enforcement as perpetrators will try to achieve empathy that sometimes leans toward the person who appears more compliant or socially similar to the officer. If the abuser knows how to talk shop or act respectfully toward those in law enforcement, the officer may unconsciously build a rapport with them. Women or men that have experienced systematic abuse do not seek to cause further problems they want peaceful resolutions, remedies and reformative actions to counter the systematic abusive cyclical nature of perpetration. In the context of survival, it is essential that a victim document the history of abuse, keep a log of incidents, so that the police can recognize patterns of behaviour rather than forcing a victim to make a single argumentative statement where an abuser can undermine the victims credibility. It is imperative that new reforms and mechanisms unveil an abusers intent, and through support networks, assistance, and compassionate care, a survivor can request a domestic violence liaison who are specialized advocates who are trained to see past the abuser’s calm performative mask of deceit.

While vexatious is a specific legal term used to describe meritless actions intended only to harass, it is often weaponized by narcissists to manipulate authorities and silence their victims. Police may label a survivor’s claims as vexatious due to a lack of understanding of abuse dynamics, institutional biases, and the perpetrator’s ability to present themselves as the “rational” actor or party. Survivors must confront the mislabelling and narratives adopted through reinforced mechanisms of dismantling a survivor’s claims. Law enforcement at times often use their discretion based on immediate observations, which can lead to misframing the situation if they are not trained in trauma-informed care or the dynamics of coercive control. One must understand trauma responses vs. performance. Survivors in active traumatic events often appear emotionally unstable, fragmented, or confusing to outsiders. In contrast, narcissists often maintain a line of calmness, a veil of performance, where they remain calculated, while presenting a narrative that makes the victim appear to be the aggressor. Within the realm of reactive abuse, abusers often provoke victims into a violent or irrational reaction and then call the police themselves. Because officers only see the survivor’s reaction, they may wrongly judge the nature of the situation. Within the myth of the false accusation, one then uncovers if there are persistent myths in the legal system that survivors exaggerate or lie about abuse for vengeance or to gain an advantage in other proceedings such as domestic abuse or family law. One has to pay mindful acute attention to the lack of evidence for non-physical abuse cases. Many risk assessment tools used by police focus on physical harm. If an officer does not recognize patterns of non-physical coercive control, they may perceive a victim’s fear as unfounded or vexatious. It is key that we do not allow any level of government whether it is municipal, provincial, or federal, to reframe the lived experience of a survivor’s merit or narrative, as some wounds cannot be seen by the naked eye, as they were perpetrated behind closed doors outside of the realms of justice. Narcissists adopt strategic languages to delegitimize a victim’s claim. Perpetrators often use legal and procedural abuse to disempower victims, making them feel afraid, alienated, and ashamed. Narcissists may file false reports first, forcing the survivor to be on the defensive. When the survivor eventually makes a similar charge, the court or police may frown upon it as a retaliatory or a vexatious move. Pathologizing the victim, reinforces systematic abuse. Abusers portray a victim’s character as hypersensitive or irresponsible, to garner sympathy for themselves while “othering” the survivor. Perpetrators seek to surround themselves with allies who appear neutral in nature that further substantiate claims that the victim is the one causing trouble. How to address the systematic failures within law enforcement or the nature of abuse? Institutional issues can further silence victims which reinforces the abuser’s narrative. One-size-fits-all policies have sometimes led to the criminalization of survivors, as they may be charged alongside or instead of their abuser. One must examine, how institutionalized loyalty fits in within this framework. When the accused is a member of high social status, their status as a respected prominent member of the community is often given more weight than the victim’s testimony. At times, there are cases where departments have been too silent when officers are assailed by what they deem a frivolous complaint, leading to a defensive institutional culture that may be quick to label recurring reports from the same individual as vexatious. One has to always remain mindful of the difference between trying to bring about awareness and attention to a core issue due to ignorance, silence, or apathy, as opposed to causing trouble. Ignorance and indifference causes profound impact on survivors. Being labeled vexatious by the police, can be deeply re-traumatizing for some victims or survivors of abuse. Many survivors report that they experience repeated abuse within the reporting process as there is a re-introduction and reinvention of the same dynamics of abuse, through silence or inaction, which takes the power away from a survivors voice, internally making them feel irrelevant to their own case or life. This leads to widespread mistrust as some victims often will state that that they are blamed by the justice system, law enforcement, or representatives, for “doing nothing” or are often discredited or not believed or even blamed for the continuation of violence by stating “Why did they not exit the circumstance sooner?” or “Go to Trial?”. The answer, they were in fear. It is not about how many interactions the police have in regard to cases it is about the quality of care they afford.

One must examine and touch on the core root of why the justice system often fails survivors. One must examine the shift from protection to processing. When police prioritize clearing calls or maintaining neutrality over the quality of care, they ignore the reality that domestic abuse isn’t a single event as it is a long-term pattern. By focusing on the quantity of interactions rather than the context of those interactions, they essentially treat trauma as a nuisance or a paperwork problem. Lack of quality care leads to victims being silenced or labeled. If a survivor calls the police multiple times because the abuse is ongoing, untrained officers often see a frequency of reports as a sign of a problematic personality or vexatiousness, rather than evidence of a relentless perpetrator. The reality is, high frequency is usually a sign of escalating danger. Without quality investigative care, they see it as “drama” that wastes their resources. One must not disregard the imbalance of power within the nature of abuse. Quality care requires an officer to understand that an abuser and a victim are not equal participants in a conflict. When police provide low-quality care, they treat a domestic call like a lovers quarrel that needs time to remedy the situation. This forced neutrality is a gift to the narcissist, as it ignores the psychological warfare, financial control, and intimidation that led to the call in the first place. Because quality care involves deep listening and looking for coercive control mechanisms, a surface-level interaction favours the abuser. Narcissists are often polite and compliant with authority. If the officer’s care is based on who is easier to talk to at that moment, the abuser wins every time. The survivor, who is often hyper-vigilant or defensive (rightfully so), is viewed as difficult. Labeling a survivor’s claims as vexatious is often an administrative shortcut. It allows the department to stop investigating or responding to a difficult case by delegitimizing the person at the centre of it. True duty of care involves identifying the primary aggressor, understanding the history of the relationship, and connecting the survivor with specialized advocates. Instead of labeling a victim as vexatious or a problem, one must not allow the system to wash its hands of the responsibility to protect its citizens that it serves and protects. One must address systemic gaslighting. Law enforcement stands as the ultimate arbiters of truth and justice within society however, when they refuse to provide quality care and instead engage in campaigns which label the survivor or victim as a “nuisance,” it creates a secondary form of abuse. It validates the narcissist’s claim that “no one will believe you” and “you are the problem.”

When a narcissist or a biased system engages in pathologizing the victim, they are essentially turning a victim’s survival instincts into a medical or psychological disorder to discredit their truth. Instead of looking at the cause (the abuse), they focus entirely on the victim’s symptoms (the reaction) and label it as the problem. The abuser uses therapy speak or pseudo-medical labels to make the victim’s perspective seem unreliable to the police or others. By labelling the victim as unstable, paranoid, unreliable due to memory issues, or utilizing one’s natural emotional distress as proof of a unerlying mental health crisis, the perpetrator then labels the victims hyper-vigilience against them, which is a survival mechanisms, as a mere form of delusion or confusion. When a perpetrator claims that a victim’s memory is fragmented due to trauma, they then set the narrative that the victim is unreliable. Pathology causes a narrative of where high conflict situations are now reduced to hysteria vs. credibility. In some cases, courts or policing mechanisms may lack a quality of care lens, where pathology then is uncovered through administrative labels upon a victim of abuse. Legal pathologizing undermines the credibility of a serious situation, where the cycle of abuse has become out of control. A victim’s repeated requests for help is then seen as a symptom of a litigious personality disorder rather than a response to an ongoing threat. High conflict situations create precedences within the legal system. Systems often label these cases as high-conflict personalities which creates a false equivalence, suggesting both parties are equally responsible, which pathologizes the victim’s attempts to set boundaries or undermines their efforts to seek justice. If a victim is seen as crying or frantic which is a normal biological response to danger, the system may categorize the victim as hysterical, which automatically lowers one’s credibility in a report compared to the abuser’s “calm” (pathological) lack of empathy. Institutional gaslighting redirects the focus from what was done to the victim to what is “wrong” with the victim. If a victim is rendered as discardable, unstable, or frantic, the police may no longer investigate the claim. The goal of the perpetrator its to cause long term suffering to their partner to manage their response.

As mentioned within several of my articles, control is not love. A victim must relentlessly redirect the conversation to demonstrate objective behaviours. A victim must speak about how unwanted violence and violation of their human rights and safety has caused disturbance, violence, and abuse. A victim’s anxiety, despair, depression, state of powerlessness, or paranoia is a result of endured harm and violence. Within cases of where there is a documented history of a pattern of coercive control, these incidents are often not isolated disputes, but present a calculated effort by the oppressor to intimidate, surveil, control, or harm another financially, emotionally, mentally, physically or psychologically destabilize the victim into compliance to their willful ill intent or demands. The frequency of a victims reports, is a direct reflection of the relentlessness nature of the perpetrators conduct which has caused irreversible harm, injury, and destruction to the victim’s quality of life. A victim is only seeking duty of care from law enforcement, which recognizes this pattern of harassment, as not only a single event, but an escalated campaign, rather than a series of disconnected arguments. A victim does not willfully consent to the loss of their life, rights, or inherent power, they just want law enforcement to help them in their time of need. A survivors emotional struggles are a demonstration that they can not bear the weight of criminal intent cascaded onto them by a perpetrator who seeks to utilize coercive control within the legal frameworks of what is within the margins of a intolerable prosecutable offences or actions. When a perpetrator seeks to carry out these calculated efforts, its strips away at the framework of what the justice system and law enforcement seeks to enforce and uphold. A perpetrator acts out of conscious willful intent, to cause harm, as a strategic tactic which undermines the victim’s credibility. When a victim is then placed in a situation where they doubt their memory, or reality, they then feel powerless to exit a situation which has reinforced systemic abuse. Abuse is not a single confusing moment, it is calculated intent. To counter the systemic role of abuse, one must understand the legal and psychological dynamics at play. Strategic labeling and propaganda is often used to delegitimize a victim, which effectively pathologizes their presence and legal standing within all realms of society. We must not support those who undermine a survivors act to bring about awareness, human rights advocacy, or to ask for assistance which can save a life. While vexatious is a specific modern legal term, perpetrators will utilize various mechanisms and tactics by labeling victims as unstable, asocials, or undermine their role as legitimate good citizens within a society to justify their exclusion and persecution. Within the realm of violence, it is imperative that all stand with victims of domestic and sexual abuse, as the atypical nature of the dynamics of its hold, causes irreversible damage, not only to the victim but the justice system and law enforcement agencies which seek to persevere the rights and freedoms of all. We must all stand with law enforcement agencies who protect survivors and counter the embedded narratives of “it will resolve on it’s own,” or the “system will repair itself.” Systematic violence requires acute attention, support, education, assistance, and guidance to establish unity and diplomatic global peaceful resolutions to counter the bias and narratives surrounding the nature of abuse. Thank You to the Guardians Of The Light within law enforcement and the justice system, who advocate diligently and persistently for human advocacy and survivor’s rights. We must all, as a global community, stand by the side of those who have experienced grave injustice, irreversible harm, destruction, and devastation. Our support enables compassionate unity and care, which echoes beyond space and time, through our acts of solidarity, love, awareness, and enlightened support for restorative peace, recovery, and justice.