A 16-year-old girl is beaten by her father. Her hair is pulled, she is pushed, and hit on her back. Her stuff gets thrown out of her dresser and she is pushed to the floor to pick them all up. She is freaked out and wants to call the police. At this time her father stops and gives her his cell phone. Scared and knowing that he has done this before to his wife in an attempt to scare her from calling, the girl calls. The police arrive and see a 16-year-old girl in a panic, all scared, crying and rolled up like a ball in the corner of the room and a man on crutches who is calm and collected. They talk to him and he says to them that the girl is on drugs and that he did not do anything. His wife comes out of the car and backs him up. The police seeing that there were no bruises, only emotional distress walk away and send the girl off with her abuser.
The girl talks to her guidance counselor about this and the guidance counselor contacts children services. The social worker comes in and takes pictures, there were no bruises. She visits the father's house, the father calmly explains his concern for his child. He comes up with a story that the child is around bad influences and well all he wanted was her well-being. Looking calm and collected vs a girl who was scared to death of what he could do to her, the social worker goes back to speak to the girl and tells her he is just concerned, there are no bruises so there is no abuse. That is when the girl learned that no matter how hard she asked for help, or how scared she was of someone she should just stay down and keep quiet because help would never come unless there were bruises. The only thing left to do was to try and protect herself, all on her own and in order to do this she had to become just as calm and collected as the man who abused her. She had to be in control of her emotions because panicking only means people will not believe you.
4 years later, now an adult, she meets a man. Instinctively she knew she should stay away from him, but being that people will always say you should give people a chance to prove themselves she gives the man a chance. The guy was controlling and moving too fast, she never loved him and because of this she thought that she could leave at any time if things got bad. There wouldn't be a "ohh I can't leave because I love him" statement. It would be easy. But it wasn't, she got pregnant and that made her more vulnerable. Now with a child, her biggest concern was to make sure that the child was well taken care of. She stopped working and eventually her husband decided to ensure she had no control over finances, no access to money. He would make sure to ration her meals, if she ate too much he would get mad. She had no way of communicating with anyone if she was in an emergency because he isolated her as much as he could. Now it was hard to leave, not because she was emotionally attached to him but because she was in a position where all her power had been stripped out.
Eventually she left, but she left to go back to her other abuser because that was the only one who she thought could help her. Why? Because the second time around there were also no bruises, no bruises meant no abuse. When she spoke to a lawyer to see if she could get a divorce, the first thing the attorney asked was: Was there abuse? When she told her what he had done the attorney said: That's not abuse, that is neglect but he never hit you so he never abused you.
For years she thought that was the truth: no bruises mean no abuse. She always felt like she was over reacting, over thinking, that her fear was unfounded. When she finally got out on her own she would fear not having enough food, she would fear losing her home. Her husband had disappeared but the fears and emotional distress never did. Eventually he appeared again and with him all the emotional distress that she had worked on getting over came back. This time it was not just because of her but because the little girl they had together would be in the middle of it.
Their little girl was forced to go with someone she did not know only because they share DNA. The mother in an attempt to make it not so scary for her daughter showed up with her to the first visit. When an agreement was not reached, his mother (who was present) tried to snatch the child out of her car seat, and then went on to yell that she would physically hurt her mother and then put her in jail. There were no bruises so there was no abuse. After that the little girl would have nightmares of her mother being arrested, she would get scared every time she saw a police officer because she thought mommy was going to go to jail and she was not going to see her again.
In order to keep things calm, the mother would tell the little girl that everything would be ok, that all she needed to do is act calmly and be nice even if she did not want to be. Now the little girl is learning to not ask for help, to keep calm and that if she feel uncomfortable she should not even think about that, just keep it to yourself and hide your feelings. The mother always thinking because unless there are bruises there is no abuse and she sure as hell did not want her little girl to be hit and hurt.
Here is the thing though, ALL OF THIS IS ABUSE, abuse can come from anyone who is an abuser and it is often not in the forms of punches. There does not need to be any bruises in order for there to be abuse. That is the biggest mistake society makes now a days. It is never the bruises that cause the most harm, it is the trauma that someone is put through that causes it. We have come so far as to know the signs of an abuser, we know that they only escalate, we know that it is not the drugs or alcohol that make an abuser an abuser; yet we don't do anything until there are bruises. That is the problem with our justice system, even though we know that someone will escalate and that the escalation can come from just calling the victim names to hitting their victims so hard that they kill them in a matter of a second. Nothing is ever done before there is a blow, and even if there is a blow, hardly ever there is something done if there are no marks.
Emotional marks never count, but those marks are the ones that matter, they are the ones that make a difference. They are the ones who open up a circle of abuse victims. The one girl who was abused and never got help now teaches her daughter how she feels it is best to protect herself: by controlling her emotions and not saying when she is scared because it is hard to be heard and we don't want to be bruised up and hit or even dead in order to be heard so it is better that way. The system also tells this new child that it does not matter if she feels uncomfortable about someone, she must stick around that person because that person loves them and wants to spend time with them. Their feelings are not taken into consideration.
What is this teaching them though? It is teaching them to not follow their natural instincts, those we are all born with to protect ourselves, the ones who tell us that if someone is making us feel uncomfortable we should go ahead and walk the other way, only because this person says they love them. These kids are being conditioned to end up in abusive relationships, this is how love looks like and it does not matter if you are uncomfortable, they love you so you gotta stick around.
This story is not the only one, there are many just like this one. Millions of people being abused every day, a lot not asking for help because they do not think it is abuse. Others not asking for help because they asked for help once and since there were no marks there was nothing anyone could do to help. They have the choice of either let it escalate to a point where there might not just be a mark but where they will actually get hurt badly enough that they will end up dead or to just keep quiet and continue to secretly be emotionally abused.
The system needs to change some things, if there is enough data showing the signs of an abuser and it has been proven over and over that all they do is escalate, then why is it that we have to wait until they do before we do something? Why is it that we don't protect children more when there is a cycle of abuse and when the signs are pointing to a new cycle of abuse? A child who is not comfortable around someone has a reason to not be comfortable, so why don't we listen? Why do we diminish their fear to it being nothing? Why do we continue to promote this cycle rather than stop it?
Sometimes the world does not make any sense and one can only hope that eventually all those voices are loud enough that they are heard. That eventually we can prevent tragedies from happening rather than doing something after the tragedy has already happened.
