At a therapeutic farm in Georgia, troubled teens are possessed by demons, depressed because of technology—and allegedly mistreated by their caretakers.

This is the first in a two-part series examining the therapeutic Christian boarding school Shepherd’s Hill Academy. Read the second part here.

O n August 22, 2014, Trace Embry, executive director and founder of the therapeutic Christian boarding school Shepherd’s Hill Academy (SHA), wrote in the school’s monthly newsletter:

“It’s been awhile since we’ve dealt with anything overtly demonic here at SHA, but it appears ‘Old Dark Eyes’ has paid us another visit.”

Embry was referring to two boys arriving to SHA on the same day who, he said, brought with them “baggage from the dark side.” He solicited prayers so the team at SHA could properly minister to these boys, as “mere counseling and psychology will fall short.”

Little did they likely know that in coming to SHA, those boys would be relinquishing their basic human rights — and that no one would be around to defend them.

SHA, formerly known as Shepherd’s Hill Farm, provides year-long residential care for kids grades 7-12 on an 86-acre farm in Martin, Georgia. According to a December 2016 episode of SHA’s weekly podcast License to Parent (L2P), which is co-hosted by Embry, tuition is $88,900 per student per year. Licensed for a capacity of no more than 36 students, SHA is intended for teens who are “troubled,” the word the academy uses to describe those with ADD, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, reactive attachment disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, Asperger’s syndrome, anger management, and generally rebellious behavior.

Embry believes the demonic forces operating within contemporary video games and pop music, and in the media at large, are the root cause of many of the mental and behavioral health issues affecting today’s teenagers. Students at the academy are intentionally isolated from society and undergo a mandatory media and technology fast. They begin their first 10 months in the Outdoor Therapy Program, where they live in “structurally sound rustic cabins” without any electricity or running water. They are only allowed access to shower facilities, a cafeteria, and classrooms on the main campus. As Embry told Katherine Albrecht last November, when participating in this outdoor therapy program, the teens “don’t have access to technology. No electricity whatsoever except in the classroom from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.”

Students at Shepherd’s Hill Academy are intentionally isolated from society and undergo a mandatory media and technology fast.
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The boys and girls remain separated and under constant staff supervision throughout their stay, even after the intensive 10-month wilderness program. During this time, the boys “contribute to the maintenance, repair, and/or construction of” the campsites, while the girls cultivate a garden, learn beekeeping, sewing and quilting, and take care of the academy’s barn. Each student also takes part in the Equine Therapy Program. After the period of rustic living is over, the students graduate into the Next Step Program, where they live in houses on the main campus, designed to mimic the environment they will return to when they go home.

Established in 1994 by Trace and his wife Beth, Shepherd’s Hill didn’t begin enrolling teens in crisis until 2001, and it operated unlicensed for 10 years. It was not until September 2010 that Georgia’s Department of Human Services was made aware of the wilderness camp’s existence, when a social worker filed a complaint concerning SHA’s illegal operation. It took another 15 months for the school to become officially licensed; it stayed open and operating that entire time.

SHA is now fully licensed by the state of Georgia, but it has surfaced several ethical concerns, including the lack of appropriate care for teens with mental health issues, abusive treatment, and anti-LGBTQ practices similar to those practiced at conversion camps.

The Devil In The Details

Like many schools that specialize in care for troubled teens, SHA provides a checklist on its website for parents to consider while searching for help for their child. Among the more credible warning signs mentioned — like threats to self or others, drug addiction, and violent tendencies — are attributes of typical adolescent behavior, like opposition to the belief system of the family, not wanting to participate in family activities, defending peers, and general disobedience.

The Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment (ASTART) — a volunteer organization that works to protect children from abuse and neglect in residential programs—warns parents against relying on checklists like this. The organization also stresses the importance of considering all possible factors that may be contributing to a child’s change in behavior.

“If you are very worried, frustrated, angry, confused, or emotional in other ways, you may see behaviors as more extreme than they really are,” the alliance writes. Removing a child from their home environment and sending them away can amplify “strong resentments in your child,” and impair an already capricious parent-child relationship.

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SHA’s vaguely defined parameters for removal from the home also enable parents to punish their children for religious disobedience. If a teen no longer wishes to participate in church activities, or begins to openly question their faith and their family’s biblical principles, a parent or guardian could label that behavior as rebellion and subsequently send their child to a place like SHA. If the teen also began spending more time with friends who don’t share their parents’ belief system and started to act out at home in response to the unyielding and volatile environment, a parent could be convinced after consulting SHA’s website that their child needs a Christian wilderness atmosphere to return them to the path God has chosen for them.

If any of this sounds like an overreach, consider Embry’s own words.

During a three-part series on L2P, Embry and his podcast co-host Rich Roszel said that reading the Bible is foundational to healing the students at Shepherd’s Hill. When asked about the most important and effective method of therapy used at the farm, Embry said, “It’s the knowledge of, and a healthy submitted and committed relationship with the God who created them, through Jesus Christ.” He then boasted that the pastor from the pulpit of his church “said the best kids on the planet would do well having a year at SHA. It’s really a discipleship clinic.”

In its reliance on religion and technology-fasting to treat “troubled kids,” SHA has advanced dangerous ideas about mental health.

Embry has specifically written and spoken often about anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure that’s a common symptom of many mental illnesses — most notably, depression. According to Embry, most students who come to SHA, whether they were formally diagnosed beforehand or not, are struggling with anhedonia due to being overly dependent on modern technology, and the medication their doctor prescribed is, as he’s put it, “making it worse.”

Embry focuses on technology as a cause for mental health issues in teens, and Bible study as a treatment, despite scientific evidence contradicting his stance.
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In August 2013, Embry stated in his podcast, “Anhedonia is not ADD, ADHD, or even depression, although the symptoms are very similar. Anhedonia is a destruction of the pleasure center in the brain, which comes from unbridled multitasking on today’s popular electronic gadgets.”

The source for Embry’s views on anhedonia is Dr. Archibald Hart, former dean of Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Psychology. In an appearance on L2P in July 2010, Embry asked Dr. Hart what he thought of anhedonia being misdiagnosed by doctors. Dr. Hart replied, “Oh, 100 percent. They might call it depression, put you on an antidepressant, which is the last thing you should do.” Hart added, “There is no medication for anhedonia. It’s a lifestyle change.”

Unsurprisingly, the science doesn’t support Embry or Dr. Hart.

Dr. Jean Kim, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington University (GWU), confirms that anhedonia “isn’t anything accepted or recognized by the general medical community as an official illness. [Embry] seems to be misappropriating aspects of neuroscience that are partly accurate to serve his own pitch.” Dr. Ronald Pies, professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University, seconds this: “We know that serious psychiatric illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, long before ‘technology’ came about.”

Embry’s views on anhedonia, though discredited by science, are fundamental to how SHA operates. In 2010, he wrote, “We at [Shepherd’s Hill] understand that if an anhedonic troubled teen cannot think critically, constructively, or creatively . . . God becomes an abstract too difficult and boring for the anhedonic brain to conceive or desire.” He earnestly believes the effects of anhedonia are preventing today’s youth from comprehending Christianity, and is the primary reason these teens are put under his care in the first place, because “culturally-induced (i.e. technology) stimuli is affecting our teens through anhedonia.”

This is why Embry has also openly advocated for religion as a substitute for professional mental health treatment. He proudly advertised on his blog that 70% of the students at Shepherd’s Hill are weaned off their medication. In 2010, he wrote:

“Stimulating a kid with the love, training, nurture, discipline, and truth of God’s Word, will, over time, transform a troubled teen far more efficiently and effectively than medications . . . This is why so many kids who come to Shepherd’s Hill Farm on bushel loads of medication can leave medication-free at the end of a year.”

Again, Embry’s assertions contradict scientific evidence. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), “the results of a comprehensive review of pediatric trials conducted between 1988 and 2006 suggested that the benefits of antidepressant medications likely outweigh their risks to children and adolescents with major depression and anxiety disorders.” The experts at NIMH go on to stress that once a medication treatment is started, it “should not be abruptly stopped. Although they are not habit-forming or addictive, abruptly ending an antidepressant can cause withdrawal symptoms or lead to a relapse.”

Dr. Kim at GWU also warned of the potential harm that can occur from the methods used at Shepherd’s Hill:

“[Embry’s] advice/methods seem potentially harmful insofar as they don’t seem based in any sort of formal scientific or clinical evidence, or known medical-psychiatric neuroscience. Some general aspects of his treatment may still be helpful for some, but if it isn’t grounded in evidence-based research or scientific knowledge, it will be easy for him to veer into pseudoscience and even dangerous or harmful practices (like not giving someone with a serious psychiatric disorder who actually needs medication an appropriate diagnosis or treatment).”

While these views on mental health treatment are dangerous, Dr. Kim notes, “if [Embry] had a licensed professional screen clients and triage them for appropriateness into his program, that would be less worrisome.”

It’s troubling, then, that there are no clinical psychologists or psychiatrists on staff at Shepherd’s Hill; all personnel listed on the website under the Therapeutic Team are counselors, and it wasn’t until late last year that they all held a professional license by the state of Georgia.

Staff members oversee children with behavioral and mental health problems deemed severe enough to warrant year-round residential treatment with 24/7 supervision, but of the 21 members on the residential teams, according to their bios on the SHA website, fewer than one-quarter of them have completed educational programs related to mental or behavioral health.

More troubling than this lack of qualification, though, is SHA’s record of abusing its students.

Abuse Allegations

As part of its treatment plan, SHA has been accused of engaging in multiple forms of abuse. Kids who “act out” or defy God may be subject to physical punishment, humiliation, food restrictions, and more.

Angela Smith is the national coordinator for HEAL, an organization that works to expose abusive facilities designed to treat teenagers with behavioral problems. She confirmed via email that, “HEAL received a signed, under penalty of perjury document from a survivor of Shepherd’s Hill Farm.” The author of the statement has not returned our request for comment, but the full account is published anonymously on HEAL’s site. Within the testimony of the former student are specific allegations of abuse, the use of which Trace Embry has justified repeatedly, on his radio program, in newsletters to SHA’s community, and on the school’s website. All parents or guardians are required to sign a power of attorney document, essentially giving up their own rights as parents, upon enrolling their child at SHA.

Here are some of the abuses allegedly suffered by those who have attended the academy.

Corporal Punishment

In the statement, the survivor alleges that he was hit with a paddle by Trace Embry in front of other classmates for being disrespectful, an act of discipline for which Embry has openly advocated.

On L2P, Embry repeatedly dives into the topic of corporal punishment. For instance, on an episode dated September 18, 2012, he said parents should urge their local school boards to bring back paddling: “The [paddle] applied to the [posterior] of a disruptive and rebellious few, occasionally, might just make a better learning environment for the majority.”

A month later, Embry said, “I don’t feel it’s healthy, or wise, that a teen should feel that [corporal punishment] is ever out of the realm of possibility . . . There may be a circumstance that requires a parent to physically intervene in order to bring justice to a situation at home.”

Then, in April 2014, Embry stated, “Nowhere in Scripture is spanking, at any age when appropriately administered by a loving parent, ever condemned.” And in June 2015, he and his co-host Roszel interviewed psychologist and author John Rosemond on the topic of spanking; all three men advised parents to spank their children in private, where no one else can see them, so they do not have to worry about the Department of Human Services accusing them of abuse.

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On February 6, 2016, Embry declared spanking “an effective tool against foolishness and rebellion.” A week later, he argued that not considering corporal punishment as a form discipline is abusive, and because of Proverbs 23:13-14, punishing a child with a rod will save their soul from death. (Corporal punishment is technically legal in Georgia schools with parental consent, but it is in violation of the state’s Outdoor Child Caring Program [OCCP] licensure rules.)

Indoctrination

The survivor also claims in his statement to have interrupted a Bible lesson taught by Embry. “[He] raised [his] hand and said, ‘You are brainwashing us.’ Embry smiled and replied, ‘Yes we are! We are brainwashing you in the blood of the lamb!’”

In February 2014, Embry exclaimed, “It’s not uncommon for Christian parents to be accused of indoctrinating their own kids with dangerous ideologies and beliefs.” He then boasted that if training your children with biblical principles is considered brainwashing, “then I’m all for it.” On the December 29, 2014 episode of L2P, co-host Rich Roszel said, “[Shepherd’s Hill Academy] is a place where you can have kids’ brains reset to their original factory setting.” Embry replied, “I like that statement, too.”

On July 15, 2015, Trace Embry was a guest on Dr. Michael Brown’s radio program, The Line of Fire with Dr. Brown, where he said, “We brainwash [our students] with Jesus.”

Escort Service

During a school break at home, the survivor declared to his father that he did not want to go back to the farm; the next morning, “two very large men” came into his room. According to his account, they said, “We are bounty hunters to take you back to Shepherds [sic] Hill Farm.”

SHA advertises the use of a transport service to bring teens to the farm, using SafePassage Adolescent Services. The company writes on its website, “It is our experience at SafePassage that it is always better to wait until our Professional Transport Team is with you at your home to deliver the news through intervention that you have chosen to add a therapeutic component to their education.” To make sure the child remains unaware, the company advises parents to password protect their email and computer access, delete all cache history, and provide a phone number where a voicemail can be left without the child hearing.

Using these private “escort” or “transport” services is considered a warning sign for future abuse by the residential program by ASTART, which explains:

“The company typically sends two or more physically intimidating bodyguards to wake the child in the middle of the night, and force them from their bed into a waiting SUV — often in pajamas and handcuffs — while the parents look on…This is how the child learns [they] will be leaving home…This is a scene filled with tears and pleading and promises and begging. This is what many residential programs consider the first step in ‘healing family relationships.’”

This is “trauma, not therapy,” ASTART insists. This is harm, not healing. ASTART goes on to describe the trauma of those who have been escorted to a residential program:

“They experience years of nightmares, flashbacks, emotional ‘numbing,’ inability to concentrate, angry outbursts, difficulty sleeping or other symptoms — primarily, survivors say, because of the trauma of being forcibly taken against their will, by strangers, to a completely unfamiliar place, and kidnapped with the knowledge and permission of their parents — parents who are supposed to be the child’s trusted protectors.”

Special Meals And Clothing

On October 6, 2015, Embry released a video in which he argues, “One of the consequences we’ve found at Shepherd’s Hill Academy to be quite effective when a major offense takes place — is what we call a ‘special meal.’” He goes onto say it consists of unseasoned beans and greens and stresses, “There’s nothing mandating your child’s right to a gourmet meal every time he comes to the table.” He used the same script in a daily feature from May 2014 and then again, in December 2015.

In his statement, the survivor said he was put on “‘special meals’ for a month and a half.” These meals consisted of a can of beans or a can of vegetables, bread, a piece of fruit, and water.

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Dr. Kim expressed concern for this form of punishment, saying, “any sort of punitive or aversive conditioning isn’t a good thing for children or teens. And any sort of controlled meddling with dietary behaviors (other than something obviously medical, like a food allergy) can potentially exacerbate or worsen eating disorders.”

Over the years, a handful of former students have spoken out about abusive practices at SHA on various comment threads and blogs, most of which are no longer maintained. A young man by the name of K. Hicks told a similar story in 2010. (I reached out to Hicks, but he has not replied.) He claims to have enrolled in SHA in May 2005, during which time he and another student ran away. The local police department and Embry caught them and returned them to the farm. They were punished with “three weeks of orange jumpsuits, two weeks of sandals, and a week and a half of shackles.” They were also given “two weeks of special meals.”

Forcing students to wear these special clothes, rather than their own, is another form of punishment. In a newsletter from October 2015, Embry recounted an incident concerning a student who had run away while at home visiting his parents over a weekend. The local police department picked up the boy at a “restaurant after hours of hiding in a wooded area. He was then promptly returned to SHA, where he is now donning a bright orange jumpsuit.”

Physical Restraints

In June 2014, Embry wrote of a student in the SHA newsletter who “went berserk when the student couldn’t convince the parents that going home was the best option.” As a consequence of this episode, he said, some of the counselors were punched and scratched, and, “The wavering parents were a tick away from taking Junior home; but, were strongly advised to buck up and stand their ground.”

After the parents were encouraged to not allow the student to return home with them, Embry wrote, “An insightful parent understands that rebellion like this is a carnal desire fueled by succumbing to a spiritual battle — albeit an unholy spiritual victory.” He went onto say, “This student had to be physically restrained. It wasn’t comfortable; but, knowing that outbursts like this weren’t going to be tolerated, it sent a message of love to this student’s spirit that, in due time, is likely to be articulated in the flesh.” He later writes, “The real problem in most cases is not that parents take things too far; but that, often, they don’t take them far enough…”

In November 2015, Embry recounted an incident that occurred a month prior. During a chapel service, a boy who had only been in the program a few days was “triggered by something.” A counselor then escorted the student out, where Embry joined them.

“After the three of us exited the chapel, that’s when the boy began to shout a litany of profanities and other scary threats. When it looked like the boy was going to get physical, Frank was quick to secure everyone’s safety. That’s when the intensity and the volume of the boy’s displeasure increased…After talking the young man down, I put my hands on him and prayed for him as other staff arrived. Though I had already told him that we would meet him at every turn — and for as long as we needed to — I could feel his body go soft as I was praying.”

Embry has, not surprisingly, refuted claims of abuse; on SHA’s website, he states that the school is accountable to God, SHA’s board directors, and to state and federal regulators, and says allegations of abuse are false.

Conversion Therapy

SHA doesn’t just seek to mistreat kids with mental illnesses and non-religious beliefs; it has also targeted those who are LGBTQ via conversion therapy practices. On SHA’s application for admission, administrators specifically ask parents to, “Select the sexual orientation your child claims.” Included in the list among homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual are the options of “transgender” and “currently sexually active.”

The term “conversion therapy” often conjures stark images of forced institutionalization, castration, and electroconvulsive shock treatments being administered to helpless individuals. While these methods were more prevalent in the past than they are today, all forms of reparative therapies are incredibly harmful.

According to Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel—a publication endorsed by the American Psychological Association (APA), American Counseling Association (ACA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and 10 other prominent organizations — “reparative therapy and sexual orientation conversion therapy refer to counseling and psychotherapy aimed at eliminating or suppressing homosexuality. The most important fact about these ‘therapies’ is that they are based on a view of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major mental health professions.”

According to guidelines from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), methods of reparative therapies deemed favorable in these conversion programs include medication, hypnosis, sex therapies, and behavior and cognitive therapies. But these methods can produce dangerous effects — especially on adolescents who face rejection from their families. As noted by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), “Research shows that lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults who reported higher levels of family rejection during adolescence were more than eight times more likely to report having attempted suicide, [and] more than five times more likely to report high levels of depression…”

Despite the evidence to the contrary, Embry regularly discusses the immorality and sinfulness of LGBTQ people on License to Parent, often interviewing “doctors” who rely on pseudoscience to make their case against any sexuality and gender identity that rejects a cisgender, heterosexual criterion. Oregon, California, Illinois, and New Jersey have laws that ban conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors. In 2016, Embry interviewed David Pickup, a supporter and practitioner of conversion therapy and the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that sought to overturn California’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. In 2015, he talked with Christopher Doyle, director of the International Healing Foundation, a non-profit that’s “dedicated to helping people in their struggles with sexual orientation,” who Embry called a “key figure in the conversion therapy movement.”

Embry invites these anti-LGBTQ activists to the school as well, such as in May 2016, when he invited Ciara Leilani to speak to the students at Shepherd’s Hill. Leilani says on her blog that she “lived as a lesbian in a homosexual lifestyle for 20 years. A lifestyle of choices that kept [her] further from [God’s] truth.” Now she is a Christian blogger and founder of the religious non-profit Kingdom Asylum Ministries.

On an episode of L2P that aired after she spoke to SHA students, Leilani said that not long after she promised she would abstain from sex with a man outside of marriage, a “lesbian encounter” took her by surprise. She discussed her “radical deliverance” when she turned 34 and explained she “knew [God] was tangibly in the room” with her. When asked about the supernatural deliverance she referenced, she recalled, “I know I had many demonic spirits that occupied my body, my soul, and I had no control. I was set free from lust and perversion immediately.”

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This isn’t the first time students were exposed to sexual orientation fear-mongering—and exposure to the extreme views of guest speakers is the least of it. Embry has, on more than one occasion, publicly stated that he practices a form of conversion therapy at Shepherd’s Hill.

In a newsletter from August 2015, Embry wrote about a three-week series he did with SHA students on homosexuality. After this series, he wrote, three students approached him. “The result was that all three kids, two girls and one boy, renounced any future plans to pursue that lifestyle!” He stressed that despite what “liberal-minded people may imagine,” all he did was “share the truth in love” about the topic. “I never coerced or used shame or fear tactics to invoke these renunciations,” he continues. “There’s so much confusion about this topic; unfortunately, much of it comes from those who would call themselves ‘trained professionals’ and now unfortunately, from our own American lawmakers.”

He then writes about mental and behavioral health conferences he attended, where, according to his views, political correctness, lack of common sense, junk science, and the “spirit of the enemy” confound LGBTQ issues. He proudly deadnames and misgenders Caitlyn Jenner, writing, “After [Caitlyn] Jenner was hailed as a hero, I finally had to speak up. The Emperor’s New Clothes was exposed by little ole me. I asked why a conference full of well-educated people are now defining heroes and taking their mental health cues from an individual who is emotionally disturbed and on suicide-watch as I spoke?”

Ending the newsletter, he insists that the Supreme Court ruling that brought marriage equality to all 50 states has made it harder for SHA to do the work that they’re doing. “Already, secular associations are strong-arming SHA to agree to unbiblical policies in this area.” Finally, while referencing a now-debunked 23-year-old study that falsely predicted a shorter lifespan for gay Americans, Embry fears, “Without some drastic and immediate action, SHA may never be allowed to steer another kid out of a lifestyle” that is “proven” to be more detrimental to a person’s life expectancy than cigarettes.

Students have been exposed to sexual orientation fear-mongering, and Embry has publicly stated that he practices a form of reparative therapy at Shepherd’s Hill.
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A month after writing about his three-week series that convinced three students to renounce their queer identity, Embry raved about another student making the same commitment, writing, “[A]nother SHA student renounced any further pursuit of that lifestyle, making her the fourth student in two months to do so.” Two months later, Embry wrote, “While several students have renounced their homosexuality in recent months, yet another did so in October. This same student, along with many others, have come to Christ also.”

Students at SHA are persistently encouraged to renounce any part of themselves that does not align with a cisgender heteronormative identity. Current technology, the media at large, and the ways in which teenagers interact with their peers in the 21st-century are seen as demonically influenced and the root cause of the “troubled” students at the farm. Pseudoscience and the “experts” that propagate these dangerous concepts are exalted due to their claimed biblical origins, and religious indoctrination is seen as the most important and effective method of therapy. Meanwhile, allegations of abuse mount.

Most distressingly, all of this has been given the stamp of approval by the state of Georgia — and SHA is, in having its dangerous practices sanctioned, far from an anomaly.

At 2 a.m. on Sunday July 7, 2018, I awoke out of a dead sleep to the sound of a woman screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I don’t know how many times she screamed the word “help” or exactly how long it took me to come out of sleep, figure out that it wasn’t a dream, and realize that a woman really was screaming and I was hearing it.

It took another second of paralysis for that to sink in before my partner in bed next to me said, “did you hear that?”

“Someone’s screaming for help.”

It took several agonizing seconds for us to get our pajamas on. I ran outside while my partner fumbled with his shoes, but the screaming had stopped. I stood still, trying to listen, and realized with horror that I might be too late. A commotion finally came from an apartment three down from mine. That should give you an idea of how loud the woman was screaming. A man came out of the apartment and into the parking lot, followed by a very angry, but very alive, woman.

That was when my partner decided to call the police—a decision he now regrets, though he wasn’t the only one to call.

The two of us stood huddled in our jammies, watching the couple fight to make sure no one was hurt. It’s hard to say how long it took for the police to arrive—probably five to ten minutes. I didn’t hear any sirens, only the sound of cars approaching and doors slamming shut out of sight. Three officers then walked around the side of the apartment building and slowly approached the couple.

At the sight of the police, the woman turned around and started storming toward her apartment. The officers shouted at her to stop, placing their hands on their holstered firearms. They didn’t draw their weapons, but my mind flashed back to all of the video footage I’ve unfortunately watched of police shooting and killing unarmed suspects. My only comfort came from the fact that the couple was white, so they stood a much better chance of surviving.

The officers separated the couple and spent about five minutes interviewing them. After that, an officer walked over to the woman and handcuffed her. They informed her that she was under arrest. Stunned, I listened to the woman start to sob, and then a bit of hell began breaking loose.

People were angry. One neighbor, who had been watching through the window, started yelling at the police. “What are you doing?” he shouted repeatedly, “She screams for help, and then you come and arrest her?”

Another man approached from a different apartment building, having heard the commotion and also demanding an explanation. My partner yelled at the woman to stay quiet and get a lawyer. Meanwhile, my mind was racing. The woman was being led off by the one female officer, away from her apartment, in only her nightie. Stories about women being sexually assaulted by police and prison guards shot through my head. I started following her, terrified, but feeling that I couldn’t just do nothing.

My partner, being afraid of cops (as so many of us are), started yelling at me to come back. He regrets doing so. I regret listening to him. We both regret the entire night.

My partner yelled at the woman to stay quiet and get a lawyer. Meanwhile, my mind was racing.
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The detained woman had been led out of sight, back to the police vehicles. The two remaining officers were looking on edge, trying to respond to the few members of the community who had come out to voice their displeasure. I remember the female officer coming back to me and my partner, who was upset to the point of going into “say every word that comes into his head” mode. All I could do was ask the officer in a shaking voice, now crying, if the arrested woman was given anything to wear. It took two tries to get an answer to my question.

“She’ll be given something.”

Translation: No.

The officers started telling everyone to go inside. We refused at first, still afraid that the cops might do something violent to our neighbors. Eventually, it became clear that there would only be talking, and I went back into my apartment.

I had work the next day, but I couldn’t sleep. I felt both helpless and useless, my mind going over all the things I could have said or done to intervene. Instead of sleeping, I found a place online where I could submit a complaint about the local police. I wrote that the officers on the scene acted aggressively by putting their hands on their guns and telling bystanders to go inside, that they made an arrest in very little time without the aid of a domestic violence advocate, and that they hauled off a woman in a nightie without allowing her to put on some reasonable clothes.

Later that morning, in the light of day, I surprisingly got a call from an officer, who attempted to explain away some of my complaints. When I expressed that this was not good enough, he asked me if I wanted to come down to the station to file a complaint, which I thought I had already done.

My partner and I decided to go together, mostly because I was too scared to go alone. We’re both white, so we didn’t expect to be brutalized, but we were still afraid—of authority figures, of guns, and of the amount of police misconduct that goes on in this country.

Sergeant Collins was friendly and took the time to read through the police reports and the complaint I had made. I was a little confused as to why we were even there. I had expected to pick up an official complaint form to fill out either there or at home. Then he started talking.

He spent about the next half hour “explaining” why the police acted as they did. It felt as though he was attempting to talk me out of making a complaint. Then he admitted that it was “very unusual” for bystanders to an arrest to file a complaint against police. This surprised me. Were people not doing this? Were the bystanders who have personally witnessed all the nearly daily incidents of deadly police brutality not filing complaints against the offending officers?

Information on how many complaints are filed against police in any given area, whether by arrestees or by bystanders, is hard to come by. And where it does exist, it often seems fishy.

In Seattle, criticisms about how the police handle complaints go back decades. A news release by the Washington State ACLU from 2009 called for an Independent Office for Police Accountability due to the fact that people who file complaints against the SPD have been “ignored, dissatisfied, and even threatened with libel suits.” In the nearby suburb of Bothell, where I live, complaints are handled internally. The vast majority of complaints against the police that are handled by said police are thrown out, so that doesn’t inspire much confidence.

He admitted that it was very unusual for bystanders to an arrest to file a complaint against police. This surprised me. Were people not doing this?
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When it was found that the LAPD went through 1,356 allegations of biased policing without upholding a single one, the Police Commission president finally decided that they needed to look at how they handled investigations into these complaints.It seems utterly impossible that there were no incidents of “biased policing,” aka racial profiling, seeing as black Californians account for 17 percent of all arrests in the state while making up only six percent of the population. But according to the president and cofounder of the Center for Policing Equity at UCLA, racial profiling by police is “excruciatingly difficult” to prove.

The LAPD’s Biased Policing and Mediation reports include a description of the department’s adjudication process. It starts with the accused cop’s commanding officer, then goes through undefined “multiple levels of review” as the matter is investigated. There are multiple steps where higher authorities can “disagree” with the decision of the lower, ending at the Chief of Police. If that happens, it goes to whatever “officer director” applies in the specific situation.

What I can gather from all this as an average citizen without a criminal justice or law degree is that there are many ways to throw a complaint out and only one narrow path to sustaining the complaint—which brings the accused to a Board of Rights tribunal whose decision can be overturned by a court of law.

There is no standardization on how a police department should handle its complaint procedures. In New Jersey, for example, they just don’t bother to investigate 99 percent of brutality complaints. In Tacoma, Washington, not far from where I live, only 10 percent of complaints against police were sustained during a 12-month period investigated by Reuters. In Chicago, a recent and exhaustive report found 125,000 complaints against 25,000 officers from 1967 to 2014. Only 660 led to firings. Seven officers racked up over 100 complaints each over their careers, and were able to get away with this clear pattern of misconduct because this was the first report in the history of the department that made it possible to “to identify officers with a long history of complaints.”

How can you eliminate problem officers from a police department if you can’t even identify them?

Following the Chicago Tribune’s report, the U.S. Justice Department found “a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution” within the Chicago Police Department. It also found evidence of racial bias in the use of force, and that these problems are “largely attributable to deficiencies in its accountability systems and in how it investigates uses of force.”

How can you eliminate problem officers from a police department if you can’t even identify them?
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In a recent video by Truth Be Told, DeRay Mckesson pointed to police unions as the source of these problems. These unions have worked tirelessly for the past 40 years to codify protections for officers into department policy, union contracts, and even local and state law. Police officers often get a “cooling off” period in which they cannot be questioned by investigators after a complaint is made. Most get their disciplinary records erased after a set period of time. Others get special information about the case, including the identities of the individuals who made the complaint.

The last thing I would want a rogue cop to know is that I filed a complaint against them. If citizens aren’t filing complaints against police, maybe it’s because they think that it’s pointless at best and dangerous at worst.

It dawned on me that Sergeant Collins did not understand why I was there. He was probably hoping I would either withdraw my complaint or accept his explanation and go away.

Realizing this, I just wanted to get out of there, but I had no idea how to end the interaction. Then, as Sergeant Collins and my boyfriend were discussing why cops had to go for their deadly weapons any time anybody did something they didn’t like, the officer demonstrated the action by grabbing at his holstered firearm himself.

My partner couldn’t handle it. His fear of guns is worse than mine. We both left in tears. I held back long enough for Sergeant Collins to get me an official complaint form, and before I could leave, he again tried to “explain” what the cops had done. I finally managed to tell him that it wasn’t just about these individual cops and whether they had followed protocol.

My problem was with the protocol. It was about an entire system of policing that is failing to protect and serve those it claims to.

I complained because I have legitimate concerns. I don’t understand why cops have to grab at their guns all the time, and why they don’t understand (or don’t care) that doing so is literally a death threat. I don’t understand why they had to threaten to kill a tiny woman in a nightie. Being told that the cops were afraid of weapons in the apartment doesn’t alleviate my concerns that she could have been sexually assaulted or make me feel any better about the complete lack of dignity with which they treated her.

I know that women can be domestic abusers, and I don’t know thing one about that couple. But I don’t understand how you decide who to charge within five minutes of talking without the aid of a domestic violence advocate. What I do know is how often women are arrested and imprisoned for lashing out in self defense. What I do know, and can’t ever forget, is the sound of that woman screaming for help as loud as her lungs would allow her.

I finally managed to tell him that it wasn’t just about these individual cops and whether they had followed protocol. My problem was with the protocol.
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These are some of the things I said in an impassioned email I sent to my mayor, the Bothell Chief of Police, and the Bothell City Council after my meeting with Sergeant Collins. Again, to my surprise, I got a reply, this time from Mayor Andy Rheaume himself. To my disappointment, it was more of the same—an attempt to explain away the things I had complained about, ignoring the systemic roots of the issue. I wrote back, begging him not to brush me off.

I haven’t heard from him since.

I don’t know what came of the charges against the woman. I haven’t seen her or her partner since that night. I do know that she was booked at the King County Jail in Seattle on Sunday and set free on conditional release Monday afternoon. I hope she’s okay, and I hope her and the guy she was seeing stay away from each other.

What I did make sure to find out was whether my complaint had been filed into official record—and it has. I received an email from Captain Ken Seuberlich of the Bothell police, and he spoke on the phone with my partner. That conversation seemed to go well, and the Captain wanted to speak with me on the phone as well. But when we spoke, it was more of the same excuses.

This was a mild experience compared to so many of the violent and disturbing incidents of police misconduct that go on in the U.S. I feel traumatized from what I witnessed, and I didn’t see anyone hurt, beaten, sexually assaulted, or killed. But I know that happens daily, and that’s why I complained—because I could see the roots of the problem at work even here. Cops treating civilians in their pajamas like threats. Cops trying to talk bystanders out of making complaints. Cops refusing to look past the surface of the problem. Cops seemingly ignorant of the fact that many civilians are terrified of them.

Maybe some of my complaints were unwarranted, but I’m still glad I made them. And I’m glad I had the fortitude and the protection of my privilege to follow through and refuse to withdraw my complaint or let it go. Nothing will change if we’re not willing to constantly demand change at the core of the policing system that kills so many and is designed to allow killer cops to get away with murder. We’re facing a group of people who have given themselves special privileges, and are defended by the legal system every step of the way.

The police are supposed to protect their communities, not terrorize them. I’m not letting this go until I see real change.

At the long end of 1986, two households emerge and I absorb the remnants of the home that split four people open. After my parents’ separation, I am always looking around for the rest of me, making sure I am still there. I am several parts of one body, holding two homes and four people’s memories.

When the phone rings at my mother’s house, my father’s berating increases to make up for the fact that he can no longer yell at her in person. Instead of embodying different parts of myself with each parent, I begin to present all of me with my mother and a shadow of me with my father. When I am with him, I am a mistake to be corrected. Most of what comes out of my mouth is wrong, so I eventually stop talking.

In my sixth year I learn that I should never have to go to the bathroom away from home. When I need to, it’s very bad and it upsets my father, but I do not know how to stop. He asks me why I don’t go before we leave, but I don’t have to go then or I do and then I have to go again. I do not know why my body works this way, but it must be wrong because he gets very irritated and lectures me for a long time—whether we find a public restroom quickly or not.

Dinners at his house feel like sharp teeth on me. He picks at me for how I eat, how much I eat and the baby fat I gain in adolescence. I come to realize he is using meal time to poke at my brother and me; asking us questions that no kids could answer, only to laugh at us then lash out at us for getting them wrong. Eventually my brother loses patience with the picking and starts to respond back. This results in a Ping-Pong game of verbal confrontations that bounce back and forth between them and latch onto my skin, assaulting me. I want to escape to the basement or the attic but my limbs are stiff against me. My body is still though I am slowly floating away from me.

In my 13th year, my brother begins to taunt me. We are at my mother’s kitchen table when he smiles, insisting I am holding my fork wrong and people will shun me for it. I melt into my plate and realize I am being eaten down to the core of me. When I look for myself in my body, I can barely find a trace of me.

How old were you when your face fell through? Did you hold it in your hands? Did you catch it in your skin? Did you lose track of where they end and you begin?

In my 17th year, I am in my first year of college when I meet Daniela*—the older cousin of one of my best friends. She becomes part of our friend group and we’re envious when she starts dating the cute guy we’re all curious about, until we find out he pulls her hair by the root when he’s angry.

We are parked in front of the house Daniela grew up in when I notice my skin becoming heavy, as though I am falling out of myself. I feel a draft in my body as though a door has opened that cannot be closed. It is on this day that I learn from my friend, that Daniela’s brothers used to throw her down the basement stairs when they were angry. I look up and stare at the house, as if for the first time, and something cracks in my bones.

I am ripped open and that tear becomes the catalyst for my sociology project—women rappers using art to discuss gendered power dynamics and abuse. When I take the risk of telling my brother and father about it, I do not mention the door of the house, the staircase or the hair pulled from Daniela’s head. I do not tell them the focus is on Eve’s Love is Blind. I simply say that I did a presentation on women rappers using music to illuminate social issues. I explain that I worked really hard and I know my professor doesn’t care for hip-hop, but I have the sense that she might be able to look at the genre in a different light after this.

For a moment, neither of them are saying anything, but they’re both smiling and they eventually begin to laugh. They make fun of me for thinking I had an impact on my professor and I begin to disappear into the length of my hair. I sail away to all those nights at the dinner table, the staircase at Daniela’s house, and the distance from the top of that first step to the basement floor.

I imagine the door to my father’s basement, the safety of his attic and the way edges of houses hold some little girls together, but pull other ones apart. When I float back, they’re still laughing. I know how quickly they erupt when disagreement is present, so I draw a smile on my face too.

Were you tangled in your words, when your flesh fell to your ankles? Could you see yourself around? Were you stuck inside your own sound?

In the last week of my 28th year, my agoraphobia and sensory processing disorder spill out on either side of me. Preparing to get on a plane for the first time since high school, I am terrified. I am washing my hands in the airport bathroom when my mother appears, telling me it’s time to board the flight.       

I check my hair and make-up and walk back to where she and my brother are sitting, only to find him exploding at me. I try to figure out what I’ve done, but I am fading down to the seams of me. I am transported back to the ‘90s to the small apartment we shared with my mom. My skin snags on the image of him shouting in my doorway. I remember the shape of the bedroom door, the contour of his mouth, and the screams that shook my skin out. I think back to the day I found my room trashed and the way I held the damage like souvenirs. I recall the string of punches that came after I interfered with his business call; I remember the rhythm of his fists hitting my arm.

When I drift back to the airport he is still yelling, grating me down to my ankles. Apparently, my having to pee was very selfish and those two minutes I took to look myself over meant that the three of us could’ve missed our flight. As the screaming tapers off, I find the edge of my abandoned body, pick it up by the shreds and drag it onto the plane.

In the coming months I begin to wear my silence like armor. It becomes the protector of me. I find that the only way to be around my brother and father is to be a ground down version of me, an acceptable facsimile; it stands in for me as a way to survive. This makes me feel like I am not a real person or they are not real to me. I start to feel like I don’t really have a father or a brother. The two of them are essentially strangers to me, flaming things that mostly know how to rage at me.

Do you live inside the skin of you? Are you the girl behind the face? Did you find yourself in the shadow box? What’s left of you after the chase?

As my twenties begin to evaporate, I begin to part down the length of me. I feel enamored with men, but when they’re standing in front of me, it seems like there’s a wall between us. I think there must be something wrong with me that cannot be fixed or reconciled, so I eventually stop dating them—but the pull towards them remains.

When I tell my therapist about it, she asks if I am more attracted to men’s or women’s bodies. I tell her that is not the right question. I ask a friend for advice and they tell me that if I enjoy having sex with women, then I am queer. I know that is not the right answer. I feel drawn to men inside my bones, but when I get close to them, it feels like the best parts of me drop out of my body. I know there must be a reason why thinking about it makes me feel like I am holding my breath. I know there must be a reason why they light up so many parts of me, then leave me split up in messy piles.

On the raw edge of my 29th year, my long-term partner starts transitioning and something is pulled up and out of me. I begin thinking about the way people both transcend and encompass gender. I think about the way I am absorbing and categorizing gender and I begin to ask what I mean when I say I cannot connect with men. I begin to ask if I mean that I cannot connect with cis men. Like my other relationships at the time, there is unwarranted anger and an inability to show up for difficult conversations. But when I think about all the ways he is different than my recent partners, the most obvious difference on both a superficial and spiritual level is that he isn’t a girl.

I freeze into myself when I think about the way our relationship took shape. We are best friends and it is New Year’s Eve—one week after my 27th birthday.

He’s coming from work as a bartender, but I’m the one who’s been drinking. He starts a violent argument with me in the public hallway of my apartment building and I fall out to the edge of me. His words draw a fence around me, yelling that he can no longer play this “friend role.” I am confused and tired, but I understand he feels I’ve wronged him and now I owe him a right. I am drunk and drowning in this hallway. I just want it to stop. I cannot imagine losing him, so I have sex with him. When I come, it’s the kind of orgasm I wish I could take back.

I know there must be a reason why men light up so many parts of me then leave me split up in messy piles.
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Five years after the waves rush out and over our relationship, I read Jenny Lumet’s letter to Russell Simmons, and I am cut through to the other side of me. Her words are gentle but unapologetic and I am reminded of the intimacy that is having patience with Black men, even after experiencing harm at their hands. I wipe my face with my own hands and count how many years I’ve held on to things for fear that the men who have hurt me, would feel some of the same hurt if I use words to say what they have done to me.

She talks about making a trade—”just keep him calm, and you’ll get home” and I am yanked down to the tightest threads of me. I think about the way silence and sex turn into offerings when men decide you owe them something. My eyes spill out to my formative years and then back to adulthood. I remember the weight of being covered by flesh that never asked.

I think about all the times my eyes stood still while my body stiffened into a “no” because my words couldn’t do it. I’ve been making trades with trauma since I was 14.

Did you make oceans with your eyes, when your legs dropped out from under you? Do you recognize your body, when you split right down the length of you?

In the wake of 4:44, I awoke—30 years after I first swallowed my mouth closed. Three decades after one house became two, I widened out like unfolding fists. When I heard those words, “You had no father, you had the armor,” it felt as if they lived inside my fingers. When Jay Z says, “You got a daughter, gotta get softer,” I am holding both lines in both hands; I am holding the child me and the grown-up me in the skin of my palms.

I consider the way the world conflates hyper-masculinity with Blackness and vulnerability with femininity. I think about the way self-reflection is conceptualized as something men do in honor of daughters—but not wives. I remember my mother’s ability to hold my father’s rage. I think about the length of my emotional intelligence and how little I was when I learned to shut my mouth. I consider the way abuse patterns wrap around us like rope.

Of all the things that tried to split me, it was the juxtaposition of having a white mother and a Black father and the pain of being accepted by her and rejected by him that ultimately severed me in half. It was the confusion of not being Black enough for my father and feeling like I was supposed to partner with men who acted like him in order to prove that rejecting his abuse does not mean rejecting my Blackness. It was the cut of feeling so guilty; I would see his face in other people and believe I could undo what had been done to me by having it done again by them.

Feeling like men were in charge of me made me feel like my body wasn’t mine long before I knew what words like consent meant. So when it came time for me to say yes or no to a man, I would tighten into my mouth and fall out of my skin. I would later attribute it to my Selective Mutism, my Non-Verbal Learning Disability, and a confusion around my sexuality.

But my tendency to lose my words was born out of a trauma that developed from being unable to speak freely in my home as a child. And my difficulties with non-verbal communication were informed by a childhood that left me feeling like I was safer when I didn’t speak.

In my 36th year, I learn about the R Kelly sex cult accusations and several memories converge as if on cue. The idea of a man controlling women so much that he has power over their eating and going to the bathroom makes me fall backwards into my six-year-old self. I realize that I have spent my entire life being unsure if it is ok for me to speak, eat, go to the bathroom or do anything that reveals me as human around men.

You are not a shadow box, an after-thought or a vacant sketch of you.

My father did not get softer, as a result of having me. He simply reproduced what had been done to him as a child. And my brother’s ability to replicate my father’s abuse came from absorbing my parents’ dynamic and being able to identify more with losing yourself to a fit of violence, than being able to identify with the body that holds the scars after the fit.

I know now that people rage when they are disconnected from their person. Having so much rage projected onto me eventually resulted in my belief that I am too much of a person. Men regarded my most basic needs as something to get rid of. So I believed that if I wanted to be with a man, I’d have to get rid of myself.

When I was able to connect with queer and lesbian people, I thought it meant there was something queer about my attraction to masculinity. I started to think there was something inherently queer about me—something internal that exists outside of my attractions. But as my queerness became wider, it felt like the puzzle was being solved outside of me. The more I tried to grow into these understandings, the more I seemed to grow out of me.

When I learned I was dating a man, I simply thought the way in which I was attracted to men had revealed itself as a different shape. I thought my attraction to him could explain why my chemistry with cis men never translated properly. But I left the relationship still feeling like there was something wrong with me.

It is only now after spending years of my life depriving myself from relationships with all men and then cis men specifically as a way to protect myself, that I realize the only relationships I’ve ever had were replications of the abuse that led to the repression.

And most of the sexual experiences I’ve had with men reinforced that my body was theirs. So I became averse to the abuse and called it an aversion to men.

As I thaw out into the larger part of me, I know that the thing standing between myself and other people in relationships is not their gender. It’s the way my body viscerally responds to gender, since my early understandings of masculinity and intimacy were tied up in abuse. It’s about the way my skin translates injury, after years of experiences taught me to anticipate blood instead of love from men.

I am finally starting to ask if I am truly a poor fit for cis men or simply not attracted to men who act like my father and brother.

You are real raw love and gorgeous flesh. You deserve to be held like the entire shape of you.

In the aftermath of the home that broke open, I know that girls like Daniela* and I will have a steeper climb towards finding home in the arms of a man, because of what happened at the hands of men in our homes. I know that relationships aren’t about breaking somebody down or taking away their person, as a way to regain yours. I know that intimacy doesn’t feel like being trapped inside a house. I know that love doesn’t feel like the wrong side of the basement door.

When I look at the place inside me that split, I can see the wound and feel it closing. I know that people are neither good nor bad, but in a constant state of becoming. When they engage in harmful behaviors it’s because they’ve been profoundly hurt and they’re perpetuating that learning. I know unlearning is a process. I know I’ve survived both my child and adulthood due to my ability to read people who were so checked out from their person, they didn’t care if what happened next froze me out of my person.

I know that brain structure, systemic and familial post-trauma can complicate the ability to say or hear a no. I know that doesn’t make it a yes. I know the thing that causes people to control and rage is the same thing that allows them to keep going during a sexual act, after a face has gone blank. And I know I don’t owe it to anyone to be an emotional punching bag while they work through their trauma superficially through me.

On the long end of my 36th year, I figured out why that complex, primal, physical and emotional longing for men never went away. It is part of me, but it is no longer a gash on me. I am learning how to stop the blood. In the wake of my healing, I know that trying to love people in similar pain as me was an attempt to grow the skin over the cuts that once divided me.

I am not broken, but I have existed in pieces and I know that being deeply harmed during childhood is a particular kind of bruise. I have a higher level of empathy because of it and I know that empathy will translate into the highest level of love for myself as I continue to learn that I cannot love the rage out of a person. And if you are navigating that kind of trauma, you deserve to learn it too.

You deserve to be loved like survival, like the spelling of your name, like the softest whisper and the loudest yell that sounds like the entire length of you. And you deserve to hear it over and over again until you know it’s true.

Content warning: descriptions of emotional and physical abuse

When her husband held her over the balcony of their 16th-floor apartment, Natalia Tunikova knew fighting him off was a matter of life or death. Driven by desperation, she grabbed the first thing her hands could find on the kitchen table—a knife. In the process of fending him off, ultimately freeing herself, she stabbed him.

Reflecting on the history of her abuse, Tunikova, a 42-year-old lawyer and mother, said:

“At first he used to just slap me to ‘teach me a lesson.’ Each time it lasted longer. I would shake from the top of my head to my fingertips. I never tried to defend myself, I just froze. I couldn’t even shout. Before each attack, I would see his crazy eyes. Then he’d charge at me and grab my throat. That night I practically said goodbye to life.”

However, even though Tunikova managed to escape from her terrifying ordeal on the balcony, it turned out that she was far from free.

Dmitry, her attacker, called an ambulance, and the paramedics called the police—who proceeded to arrest the bruised and traumatized Tunikova. She was then detained for 48 hours before spending the following week in the hospital recovering from a head injury. Not only was her husband never arrested, the lawsuit Tunikova brought against him for abusing her was dismissed.

Meanwhile, Tunikova faced up to eight years in prison for fighting him off.

Not only was her husband never arrested, the lawsuit Tunikova brought against him for abusing her was dismissed.
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After a three-year-long legal battle, Tunikova was found guilty of causing serious bodily injury, using force in excess of the limits needed to defend oneself. She was sentenced to six months of correctional labor and forced to pay over $4000 as compensation to her abuser.

Unfortunately, Tunikova’s tale is far from unique.

Domestic violence is endemic in Russia, with an estimated absolute minimum of 40,000 women affected each year, and at least 12,000–14,000 women dying at the hands of their abusers annually—about 33 women per day, according to Russian government statistics. That’s 20 times the U.S. fatality rate. Worse, these official numbers are thought to be a very conservative estimate, since much of the abuse goes unreported.

According to the Moscow-based ANNA National Center for the Prevention of Violence, some 72% of women who sought assistance from a national helpline never reported their abuse to police. Worse still, many of the women who do report the abuse to authorities are simply sent back to their abusers, a function of authorities failing to take allegations seriously and the common cultural belief that domestic violence is a “private family matter.” Many women, in fact, shrug off domestic violence with the old Russian proverb, “If he beats you, it means he loves you.”

Divorce Court Favored My Abusive Husband & His ‘Men’s Rights’ Lawyer

The situation was already so bleak that in 2015 the United Nations took the step of stating its “concern” about the prevalence of domestic violence in Russia: “The state party has not taken sustained measures to modify or eliminate discriminatory stereotypes and negative traditional attitudes” that are “the root causes of violence against women.”

Given such a grim backdrop, it’s nearly impossible to believe that the Russian administration would make it easier for domestic violence to go unpunished. Yet, in February of last year, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law decriminalizing any violence that does not cause serious injury, defined as one that requires hospital treatment. Since then, beatings that leave bruises, scratches, or bleeding, but that do not cause broken bones or a concussion, are no longer a criminal offense. Now, perpetrators who are found guilty of such violence face only a minimal fine, up to 15 days’ administrative arrest, or compulsory community service. Criminal charges can only be pressed if there is a second beating within the same year.

The law was proposed by ultra-conservative lawmaker Yelena Mizulina in order to limit state meddling in the family and to “preserve the tradition of parental authority.” She told the Russian parliament that it’s ridiculous that a person could be branded a criminal for a “slap.” On another occasion, she stated publicly that women “don’t take offense when they see a man beat his wife” and that “a man beating his wife is less offensive than when a woman humiliates a man.”

The vote by Russia’s lower house of parliament on the legislation passed 380 to 3 before moving to the upper chamber of parliament, who also accepted the proposed legislation, before Putin signed it into law.

Beatings that leave bruises, scratches, or bleeding, but that do not cause broken bones or a concussion, are no longer a criminal offense.
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The softened approach to domestic abuse is part of the wave of conservatism that has swept through Russia since the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union 25 years ago. The ideological vacuum created by the collapse of communism has been replaced by traditional conservative values; according to a 2017 Pew study, more than 70% of Russians identify as Orthodox, up from about 30% in 1991.

The increasingly close partnership between the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church holds Putin up as a protector of the traditional values of Russia, in the face of the “decadent” and “wild” values of the West.

Last year’s domestic violence legislation did, however, spark criticism—both abroad and in Russia. The British government, for instance, released an official statement calling the law “deeply disappointing” and held that it “sends the wrong message.” And while the Trump administration officially remained mum, the law was widely covered by American media.

As for Tunikova, she was shocked. “It was already very difficult for women to prosecute their abusers, now it’ll be practically impossible.”

The new law effectively put an end to the criminal case that Irina, a mother of two children, had spent more than a year putting together against her husband Alexei. The violence started in 2007 when Irina was pregnant with her first child, and it only continued to escalate—in severity and frequency—over the years. By the time her son was three, Alexei had started to punch him; when Irina intervened, the violence turned on her.

In 2014, while laying in the hospital recovering from being punched over 40 times, strangled, and dragged across her apartment floor by her hair — all in front of her children — she decided she had to get a divorce, or she could end up dead.

“I did everything right: I collected evidence and wrote my testimony, but with the new law, I could no longer make a criminal case. The only punishment he got was 120 hours of community service for two episodes of beating during the marriage,” Irina told me over the phone.

“The law sends a signal that Russia doesn’t take domestic violence seriously,” Alena Sadikova told me. She runs Kitezh, a shelter in Moscow for women and children that tends to be a last resort for those who can’t find protection elsewhere.

A Letter To My Abuser

Maria Dovytan, a Russian lawyer specializing in cases involving domestic violence, added that women don’t see any point in going to the police now: “Before, there were measures to prevent the violence and protect victims, which are now gone. These are the two things they most need. As a lawyer, I see that it’s much harder to protect victims of domestic violence today.”

The law sends a signal that Russia doesn’t take domestic violence seriously.
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But, there is one positive consequence of the law: It has sparked greater conversation about women’s rights in Russia. “More and more women are discussing domestic violence and telling their stories on social media. This is huge. Before, women were too afraid to speak,” confirmed Sadikova. Many women are using the hashtag #небоюсьсказать (#NotAfraidToSay) to share their experiences—and while it is not nearly as widely used as #MeToo is in the West, many activists see reason for hope.

Indeed, polls confirm that social awareness of the problem is rising. In a survey from September conducted by the state-funded VCIOM agency, 77% of respondents said that they are sure that many cases of domestic violence go unrecorded, and almost half doubted that victims receive adequate official assistance or support.

As for Tunikova, she currently lives in Moscow with her daughter, who recently qualified as a lawyer and is now working to defend women who’ve suffered from Russia’s scourge of domestic violence — despite the path to justice being steeper than ever.

I found myself in the position I never expected to be in, echoing the words of countless women undone by the violence of the men in their lives: ‘But I still love him.’

flickr/jon madison

M y relationship with Anthony was like most relationships. It was good until it wasn’t. In this case, it was exactly what I’d always wanted until it turned inside out, became something so distorted it didn’t seem possible it was the same relationship.

I fell in love with Anthony. Because I’d never been in love before, I figured that he must be good. I couldn’t have loved him otherwise, right? I’d been through too much, was too smart, too vigilant, too feminist, to be with anyone but a kind, sensitive man.

I’d done my time with ungenerous men. I’d racked up a handful (or two) of questionable nights where I was too drunk or he was too pushy or my “no’s” dissolved as if they were never said. I’d done my time healing those wounds. Anthony seemed like the reward.

For a while, he was. But then, the relationship collapsed, irretrievably. He revealed a capacity for violence I never thought I’d see in my own life.

I found myself in the position I never expected to be in, echoing the words of countless women undone by the violence of the men in their lives: “But I still love him.”

#MeToo Has Made Me See Anyone Is Capable Of Sexual Abuse—Including Me

We started dating at the beginning of last summer. It felt like a balm.

Anthony didn’t care about being successful, popular, or traditionally masculine. He didn’t particularly care if I was pretty, smart, or nice.

His childhood was marked by violence and poverty, and when his peers went to college, he went into the desert to camp, heal, and figure out what mattered. What mattered, it turned out, was nothing except his cat, guitar, and climbing.

He didn’t even care about sex, which was a relief. I asked if we could wait, and we did. Lying in his arms, I’d dissect my fear of men and intimacy. He would listen and then say everything I’d always wanted to hear: “We don’t ever have to have sex. If we do, it will only make us closer. There’s nothing you could do to make me like you less.”

When we finally had sex, I knew, for the first time, that I really wanted it.

He offered infinite room that seemed able to hold anything. I filled up plenty of that space with insecurity and fear, until I realized that for the first time, I had drained myself of my self-loathing, and he had stayed, essentially unfazed. I was stunned by the feeling of stability and sure-footing. I liked who I was when I wasn’t trying to be the best, and was surprised to find that he did too.

One night, I got sick and threw up outside the car window and all over his bathroom. I was embarrassed and on the brink of tears, but he rubbed my back and told me not to worry: “I’ve chosen you and once I choose someone there’s really nothing that can bother me.” I wanted to build a home inside that sentence.

After a heady summer together, I went to Mexico for a month in the fall. The night before I left, we said we loved each other and held hands until morning.

I was stunned by the feeling of stability and sure-footing. I liked who I was when I wasn’t trying to be the best, and was surprised to find that he did too.

I left sure that I was in a loving relationship, something I’d feared I’d never have. I spent a month in Mexico pining for him.

The day I got back to the States, the collapse began.

I called Anthony, and an automated voice told me the number had been disconnected. I texted our mutual friend, Elle, and she told me he got a new number. I still felt unsteady, but he texted me from the new phone a few minutes later. “Deep breaths,” I thought, “don’t be paranoid,” but it felt like my stomach had slid from my body.

I saw him in person a few days later. It was then that he told me what had happened while I was gone. He’d cheated on me with Elle (first he told me it happened once, then maybe twice, then “a handful” of times).

Before I could absorb this news, he told me that after I’d been gone a couple weeks, he’d packed up his room, changed his number, ghosted his job, and drove to Oregon. He would still have been in Oregon when I got back, he said, except once he got there he “had a bad feeling.” He turned the car around and came home.

The following month was a blur of unrelenting pain and confusion. We mostly didn’t talk, but I couldn’t adjust to this new reality, couldn’t understand it. Hadn’t he said he loved me? That he was proud to be with me?

A Letter To My Abuser

At the end of the month, a fatal combination of events contributed to my dwindling emotional strength, and I texted him to hang out. I didn’t leave his room for four days. On the fourth, he kissed me goodbye and went to work. Three hours later, he texted me to say he’d walked out of work, again. He was leaving, again. If I wanted to see him for the last time, it would have to be soon.

I crawled through the day, feeling betrayed and abandoned all over again. Then, a few hours later, an acquaintance told me something that froze the edges of my organs.

He’d been threatening Elle over text and at their shared workplace. “He’s been manipulating everybody, especially you and Elle,” the acquaintance told me.

Hours before he left for good, we went to a coffee shop and I asked him about the threats, waited for him to tell me I’d misunderstood.

Instead, he told me he wished Elle would die of AIDS. He called her a filthy whore and said he’d punch her if she were a man. He wanted to push her off of a cliff. “I really mean it,” he clarified.

I forced myself to say his words were unforgivable, terrifying.

I Loved The Man Who Abused Me

His face folded with anger. “Good luck with everything,” he said, before standing up and walking out of the cafe. I ran after him and convinced him to get in my car to drive him home.

Once in the car, he said he might jump out.

I tried to keep my breath calm, my eyes even, but I was scared, like I was next to an unpredictable stranger. “Just get him home,” I thought. I’ll drop him off, drive away alone, and find a way to survive the knowledge that I was in love with a lie.

But when he calmed down, he cried. He apologized over and over. He didn’t mean to get angry. He wasn’t in control. I believed him.

He told me he didn’t know how to deal with Elle, but that he shouldn’t have done what he did. He loved me, I was the best woman he’d ever been with. He didn’t mean to hurt me. Maybe we’d be together one day, he said, if he could take accountability and if I could heal from him. I wanted to believe that, too.

He got in his car and drove to New Mexico.

He apologized over and over. He didn’t mean to get angry. He wasn’t in control. I believed him.

I’d entered the relationship eager and anxious, so happy to be in love for the first time. The way it ended — and ended, and ended — broke me.

“I’m a feminist!” I wanted to yell, “How could this have happened?” To me! An advocate for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, a sex-educator, a reporter on gender justice!

I recognized his threat to leap from my car from a pamphlet on domestic violence: “Red flags include threatening self-harm or suicide.” I recognized his apology from the cycle of violence wheel I’d passed out countless times — blowups are followed by apologies so that the cycle may continue. Calling Elle a filthy whore wasn’t a red flag, but a bloody banner proclaiming his disregard for women.

I remember a night I’d been called into the hospital to advocate for a woman whose husband had dragged her across their driveway. Her body was covered in scrapes and bruises. She cried for her husband and the only time she spoke to me was to beg me to find him. My training had told me this was common, but I struggled to understand how she could want someone who had hurt her so badly.

Now, I understand more. I understand how the black and white pamphlets articulating the bounds of a healthy relationship fail to register in the part of the heart that yearns for love, or what feels like love.

What My Own Abusive Relationship Taught Me About My Mother’s

I tell people what Anthony did — the cheating, the deserting town, the threatening Elle — and feel like I’ve done something wrong. When I try to talk about about how good the relationship had felt, people stiffen with the shadow of suspicion or pity. As if I’m temporarily insane. As if I don’t realize I’ve been manipulated. I become strange to myself — how can I miss a man who would do any of what he did?

Friends are quick to call him garbage, a psychopath, abusive. I understand why, but the words don’t resonate, don’t seem right. They cut me — what does it say about me if I fell in love with garbage?

The therapist I start to see when Anthony leaves town tells me to read Why Does He Do That?, the seminal text about abusive men.

“I’ve read that!” I want to scream. “I’ve given this book to women! You don’t get it!” But when I skim the pages, some bullet points are chillingly familiar. I slam it shut.

What does it say about me if I fell in love with garbage?

The truth is Anthony had said things that registered as red flags, but I was careful to qualify them, to add them into a larger narrative I had about him being a tortured soul healing childhood trauma and unlearning toxic masculinity.

He told me he struggled with anger. His car was dented from when he’d battered it with a shovel after a bad day. His life work was to contain the anger and not cause harm, he told me. He was always so gentle with me, and I thought that if he was self-aware then I needn’t be worried — you can’t hold people’s pasts against them, right?

I should have listened when he told me he’d escaped his childhood by leaving his family, town, and life completely, and that he’d been escaping like that ever since. Not anymore, not with me, I thought.

He also says I should have listened. The last time we spoke, I told him I was still stunned by what he said to and about Elle. He didn’t take it back. In fact, he was frustrated:

“I told you this is who I am. I tell people this is who I am, but then when it comes out, they can’t deal with it. Those things I said are minor. I don’t understand why it matters to you so much. I wouldn’t actually hurt her.”

No amount of screaming or crying could make him realize how badly he’d hurt me or Elle.

I realized with excruciating clarity that nothing could touch him. The love and vulnerability I’d shared so freely with him hadn’t touched him. I’d thought that in his unshakeability, he’d been holding space for me. Actually, he just was space. The trust and care I’d shown had floated away. When he told me he loved me, it wasn’t a lie, but it didn’t obey the rules of gravity. It slid into black space. Threatening to punch someone, wishing death on a woman — those words slid to the same place.

The trust and care I’d shown had floated away. When he told me he loved me, it wasn’t a lie, but it didn’t obey the rules of gravity.

Losing him was painful, but in the months following my return from Mexico, I felt like I was also losing myself.

I’d found the scrape of energy necessary to tell Anthony that I was on Elle’s side. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let the words “I wish she’d die of AIDS” slide. Words like that tend to wake a person up.

I found myself willing to forgive almost everything — the cheating, the lying, the abandonment. The only thing I couldn’t forgive was what he did to Elle. I was lucky that his most extreme violence was directed at another woman — I had more clarity about what she deserved than what I did.

The lessons I learned from the breakup are also burdens. I learned that resources, training, and feminist credentials didn’t stop me from falling for someone capable of violence. I learned that his violence was his, and that I neither provoked nor could have prevented it. I learned that I am not immune from the thoughts that I know are typical of people who have had unhealthy relationships — I feel ashamed for choosing the relationship and for struggling to move on. I feel embarrassed that I still sometimes miss him. I fear that I can’t trust my intuition or feelings in the future. Some days, I think maybe it wasn’t that bad.

Why We Must Walk Away From Destructively Dependent Relationships

I struggle to tolerate multiple truths — I loved him, and I think he loved me. He was also violent and unremorseful. I can’t choose just one of those truths without hurting myself.

The worst thing Anthony did was to put me in the position of nearly choosing him over what he knew I valued most — the safety and equality of women. Ultimately, it felt like choosing between myself and the memory of feeling loved. I chose myself, but barely.

Now I’m back in my life after months in a cloud of pain. I have hope for the future again, and feel proud of my resilience. But I’m hurt. Every morning since I got back from Mexico, I wake up and before I open my eyes, tell myself that I’ll be OK, that I’ll survive the day.

I had hoped to learn about intimacy, love, and sex with Anthony. But the greater, more subsuming lessons have been about healing from the emotional pain caused by the violence of men — these are lessons I’m tired of learning.

I become overwhelmed when I try to understand why everything happened, and what it means for my future, so I’ve liberated myself from thinking about either. I only know that I want to care and be around others who care. I want words to mean something. My internal world has rearranged since Anthony left — it’s more sensitive, more complex, more grounded. For now, I spend each day occupying more of my own body, my own life, exploring its contours and boundaries. There is more room now that I’ve been pulled apart.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/my-feminism-couldnt-save-me-from-staying-in-an-abusive-relationship-2943439cfc40/ Mon, 16 Apr 2018 16:19:25 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=1740 Read more]]> I found myself in the position I never expected to be in, echoing the words of countless women undone by the violence of the men in their lives: ‘But I still love him.’

My relationship with Anthony was like most relationships. It was good until it wasn’t. In this case, it was exactly what I’d always wanted until it turned inside out, became something so distorted it didn’t seem possible it was the same relationship.

I fell in love with Anthony. Because I’d never been in love before, I figured that he must be good. I couldn’t have loved him otherwise, right? I’d been through too much, was too smart, too vigilant, too feminist, to be with anyone but a kind, sensitive man.

I’d done my time with ungenerous men. I’d racked up a handful (or two) of questionable nights where I was too drunk or he was too pushy or my “no’s” dissolved as if they were never said. I’d done my time healing those wounds. Anthony seemed like the reward.

For a while, he was. But then, the relationship collapsed, irretrievably. He revealed a capacity for violence I never thought I’d see in my own life.

I found myself in the position I never expected to be in, echoing the words of countless women undone by the violence of the men in their lives: “But I still love him.”

#MeToo Has Made Me See Anyone Is Capable Of Sexual Abuse—Including Me
theestablishment.co

We started dating at the beginning of last summer. It felt like a balm.

Anthony didn’t care about being successful, popular, or traditionally masculine. He didn’t particularly care if I was pretty, smart, or nice.

His childhood was marked by violence and poverty, and when his peers went to college, he went into the desert to camp, heal, and figure out what mattered. What mattered, it turned out, was nothing except his cat, guitar, and climbing.

He didn’t even care about sex, which was a relief. I asked if we could wait, and we did. Lying in his arms, I’d dissect my fear of men and intimacy. He would listen and then say everything I’d always wanted to hear: “We don’t ever have to have sex. If we do, it will only make us closer. There’s nothing you could do to make me like you less.”

When we finally had sex, I knew, for the first time, that I really wanted it.

He offered infinite room that seemed able to hold anything. I filled up plenty of that space with insecurity and fear, until I realized that for the first time, I had drained myself of my self-loathing, and he had stayed, essentially unfazed. I was stunned by the feeling of stability and sure-footing. I liked who I was when I wasn’t trying to be the best, and was surprised to find that he did too.

One night, I got sick and threw up outside the car window and all over his bathroom. I was embarrassed and on the brink of tears, but he rubbed my back and told me not to worry: “I’ve chosen you and once I choose someone there’s really nothing that can bother me.” I wanted to build a home inside that sentence.

After a heady summer together, I went to Mexico for a month in the fall. The night before I left, we said we loved each other and held hands until morning.

I was stunned by the feeling of stability and sure-footing. I liked who I was when I wasn’t trying to be the best, and was surprised to find that he did too.
Click To Tweet

I left sure that I was in a loving relationship, something I’d feared I’d never have. I spent a month in Mexico pining for him.

The day I got back to the States, the collapse began.

I called Anthony, and an automated voice told me the number had been disconnected. I texted our mutual friend, Elle, and she told me he got a new number. I still felt unsteady, but he texted me from the new phone a few minutes later. “Deep breaths,” I thought, “don’t be paranoid,” but it felt like my stomach had slid from my body.

I saw him in person a few days later. It was then that he told me what had happened while I was gone. He’d cheated on me with Elle (first he told me it happened once, then maybe twice, then “a handful” of times).

Before I could absorb this news, he told me that after I’d been gone a couple weeks, he’d packed up his room, changed his number, ghosted his job, and drove to Oregon. He would still have been in Oregon when I got back, he said, except once he got there he “had a bad feeling.” He turned the car around and came home.

The following month was a blur of unrelenting pain and confusion. We mostly didn’t talk, but I couldn’t adjust to this new reality, couldn’t understand it. Hadn’t he said he loved me? That he was proud to be with me?

A Letter To My Abuser
theestablishment.co

At the end of the month, a fatal combination of events contributed to my dwindling emotional strength, and I texted him to hang out. I didn’t leave his room for four days. On the fourth, he kissed me goodbye and went to work. Three hours later, he texted me to say he’d walked out of work, again. He was leaving, again. If I wanted to see him for the last time, it would have to be soon.

I crawled through the day, feeling betrayed and abandoned all over again. Then, a few hours later, an acquaintance told me something that froze the edges of my organs.

He’d been threatening Elle over text and at their shared workplace. “He’s been manipulating everybody, especially you and Elle,” the acquaintance told me.

Hours before he left for good, we went to a coffee shop and I asked him about the threats, waited for him to tell me I’d misunderstood.

Instead, he told me he wished Elle would die of AIDS. He called her a filthy whore and said he’d punch her if she were a man. He wanted to push her off of a cliff. “I really mean it,” he clarified.

I forced myself to say his words were unforgivable, terrifying.

I Loved The Man Who Abused Me
theestablishment.co

His face folded with anger. “Good luck with everything,” he said, before standing up and walking out of the cafe. I ran after him and convinced him to get in my car to drive him home.

Once in the car, he said he might jump out.

I tried to keep my breath calm, my eyes even, but I was scared, like I was next to an unpredictable stranger. “Just get him home,” I thought. I’ll drop him off, drive away alone, and find a way to survive the knowledge that I was in love with a lie.

But when he calmed down, he cried. He apologized over and over. He didn’t mean to get angry. He wasn’t in control. I believed him.

He told me he didn’t know how to deal with Elle, but that he shouldn’t have done what he did. He loved me, I was the best woman he’d ever been with. He didn’t mean to hurt me. Maybe we’d be together one day, he said, if he could take accountability and if I could heal from him. I wanted to believe that, too.

He got in his car and drove to New Mexico.

He apologized over and over. He didn’t mean to get angry. He wasn’t in control. I believed him.
Click To Tweet

I’d entered the relationship eager and anxious, so happy to be in love for the first time. The way it ended — and ended, and ended — broke me.

“I’m a feminist!” I wanted to yell, “How could this have happened?” To me! An advocate for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, a sex-educator, a reporter on gender justice!

I recognized his threat to leap from my car from a pamphlet on domestic violence: “Red flags include threatening self-harm or suicide.” I recognized his apology from the cycle of violence wheel I’d passed out countless times — blowups are followed by apologies so that the cycle may continue. Calling Elle a filthy whore wasn’t a red flag, but a bloody banner proclaiming his disregard for women.

I remember a night I’d been called into the hospital to advocate for a woman whose husband had dragged her across their driveway. Her body was covered in scrapes and bruises. She cried for her husband and the only time she spoke to me was to beg me to find him. My training had told me this was common, but I struggled to understand how she could want someone who had hurt her so badly.

Now, I understand more. I understand how the black and white pamphlets articulating the bounds of a healthy relationship fail to register in the part of the heart that yearns for love, or what feels like love.

What My Own Abusive Relationship Taught Me About My Mother’s
theestablishment.co

I tell people what Anthony did — the cheating, the deserting town, the threatening Elle — and feel like I’ve done something wrong. When I try to talk about about how good the relationship had felt, people stiffen with the shadow of suspicion or pity. As if I’m temporarily insane. As if I don’t realize I’ve been manipulated. I become strange to myself — how can I miss a man who would do any of what he did?

Friends are quick to call him garbage, a psychopath, abusive. I understand why, but the words don’t resonate, don’t seem right. They cut me — what does it say about me if I fell in love with garbage?

The therapist I start to see when Anthony leaves town tells me to read Why Does He Do That?, the seminal text about abusive men.

“I’ve read that!” I want to scream. “I’ve given this book to women! You don’t get it!” But when I skim the pages, some bullet points are chillingly familiar. I slam it shut.

What does it say about me if I fell in love with garbage?
Click To Tweet

The truth is Anthony had said things that registered as red flags, but I was careful to qualify them, to add them into a larger narrative I had about him being a tortured soul healing childhood trauma and unlearning toxic masculinity.

He told me he struggled with anger. His car was dented from when he’d battered it with a shovel after a bad day. His life work was to contain the anger and not cause harm, he told me. He was always so gentle with me, and I thought that if he was self-aware then I needn’t be worried — you can’t hold people’s pasts against them, right?

I should have listened when he told me he’d escaped his childhood by leaving his family, town, and life completely, and that he’d been escaping like that ever since. Not anymore, not with me, I thought.

He also says I should have listened. The last time we spoke, I told him I was still stunned by what he said to and about Elle. He didn’t take it back. In fact, he was frustrated:

“I told you this is who I am. I tell people this is who I am, but then when it comes out, they can’t deal with it. Those things I said are minor. I don’t understand why it matters to you so much. I wouldn’t actually hurt her.”

No amount of screaming or crying could make him realize how badly he’d hurt me or Elle.

I realized with excruciating clarity that nothing could touch him. The love and vulnerability I’d shared so freely with him hadn’t touched him. I’d thought that in his unshakeability, he’d been holding space for me. Actually, he just was space. The trust and care I’d shown had floated away. When he told me he loved me, it wasn’t a lie, but it didn’t obey the rules of gravity. It slid into black space. Threatening to punch someone, wishing death on a woman — those words slid to the same place.

The trust and care I’d shown had floated away. When he told me he loved me, it wasn’t a lie, but it didn’t obey the rules of gravity.
Click To Tweet

Losing him was painful, but in the months following my return from Mexico, I felt like I was also losing myself.

I’d found the scrape of energy necessary to tell Anthony that I was on Elle’s side. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let the words “I wish she’d die of AIDS” slide. Words like that tend to wake a person up.

I found myself willing to forgive almost everything — the cheating, the lying, the abandonment. The only thing I couldn’t forgive was what he did to Elle. I was lucky that his most extreme violence was directed at another woman — I had more clarity about what she deserved than what I did.

The lessons I learned from the breakup are also burdens. I learned that resources, training, and feminist credentials didn’t stop me from falling for someone capable of violence. I learned that his violence was his, and that I neither provoked nor could have prevented it. I learned that I am not immune from the thoughts that I know are typical of people who have had unhealthy relationships — I feel ashamed for choosing the relationship and for struggling to move on. I feel embarrassed that I still sometimes miss him. I fear that I can’t trust my intuition or feelings in the future. Some days, I think maybe it wasn’t that bad.

Why We Must Walk Away From Destructively Dependent Relationships
theestablishment.co

I struggle to tolerate multiple truths — I loved him, and I think he loved me. He was also violent and unremorseful. I can’t choose just one of those truths without hurting myself.

The worst thing Anthony did was to put me in the position of nearly choosing him over what he knew I valued most — the safety and equality of women. Ultimately, it felt like choosing between myself and the memory of feeling loved. I chose myself, but barely.

Now I’m back in my life after months in a cloud of pain. I have hope for the future again, and feel proud of my resilience. But I’m hurt. Every morning since I got back from Mexico, I wake up and before I open my eyes, tell myself that I’ll be OK, that I’ll survive the day.

I had hoped to learn about intimacy, love, and sex with Anthony. But the greater, more subsuming lessons have been about healing from the emotional pain caused by the violence of men — these are lessons I’m tired of learning.

I become overwhelmed when I try to understand why everything happened, and what it means for my future, so I’ve liberated myself from thinking about either. I only know that I want to care and be around others who care. I want words to mean something. My internal world has rearranged since Anthony left — it’s more sensitive, more complex, more grounded. For now, I spend each day occupying more of my own body, my own life, exploring its contours and boundaries. There is more room now that I’ve been pulled apart.

It’s exhausting to remember him and even more exhausting to actively not remember.

Illustration: Sophia Foster-Dimino

By Carol Hood

Content warning: Descriptions of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse

Don’t think about him, don’t think about him. They tell me not to think about him. They tell me that thinking about him gives him power. Thinking about him makes him important. Thinking about him must mean I’m not over him, that I somehow still want him, that I somehow still miss him. Don’t think about him, don’t think about him, don’t think about him. Why do you still think about him?

It’s Christmas now and I try frantically to make Christmas fun. My mother is a Christmas monster. Since Dad died, she takes on Christmas like it’s a Leviathan. She claims she does it for me, but last year, when I was too busy thinking about him to get out from my bed, last year when her back hurt too much to put up the lights outside or finish the ornaments on the Christmas tree — she holed herself up in her own room and cried. My brother found her under her covers sniffling.

I never got over that gloomy Christmas Day, and when it turned 2017, I was determined not to think about him. I didn’t want to think about how he’d raped me. I’d been able to think of myself as something other than a rape victim, back when he’d just grow extremely angry and shout at me for hours and hours when I didn’t want him. Then after a day of shouting, he’d cry, say he was sorry, and then try again. If I resisted, the cycle would continue. Eventually, I learned to stop resisting. Eventually he would just do what he wanted to do and then be mad at me for crying through it.

If I resisted, the cycle would continue.

The last day we lived together, we were in bed and when he stirred, I froze tighter than a body in rigor mortis. If I moved then I would be awake and if I was awake, I had to acknowledge him. Not just acknowledge him but acknowledge him first. Don’t look at the dog or my phone or anywhere but him or it would be a fight. He’d say I cared more about the dog and Facebook than him and if he hounded me this morning, today just might be the day I’d wake up in an insane asylum, watching my mother sob at me from behind a one-way mirrored room — oh God, it was better to just pretend to be asleep. I remember feeling something tug down my sweat pants. I batted his hand away, stop. He didn’t care. And I remember my eyes popping wide open as the hand came back angry and ripped my sweats down. “Stop,” I muttered, but I was too afraid to resist or he might yell. I do remember thinking, please don’t do this. This will be rape. Not mental coercing, not blurry-line peer pressure bullshit that I’d been convincing myself was something other than it was, but legitimate rape.

Now it’s 2017 and I’m a rape victim.

And who the fuck wants to think about that?

I needed to forget, and maybe shedding the body he tortured would help me forget. I had gained weight from the stress, the depression, the eating. Two years with him had left my body crooked and weak. I couldn’t get up the stairs without being winded. I could not fit in any clothes but the stretchy ones. And I looked so sad, I looked so goddamned sad. It was a wonder I never got grey hairs. He had plenty.

I waddled into a small gym that did interval training. The boy teaching it, his name was Adam and he kind of looked like an exotic Disney prince? An exotic Disney prince surveying his people, an ocean of beautiful white people, fit and flying. The bell dinged and they dropped into mountain climbers — and it was all too much. I started to back out, but it was too late. Adam bounced up to me grinning, and his radiance stirred a small competitive edge in me that I forgot existed.

I could not do burpees or pull-ups; there was a time when I passed through both without hesitation. I missed my old self. The woman I was before I knew he existed. Tall, athletic, and fearless. Confident. Could do burpees and pull-ups. But she’s dead, he killed her. And whatever is left wakes up every morning and stares in the mirror confused like, who is this bitch?

But it’s 2017 now and I said I’d stop thinking about him.

By spring I could do one or two burpees. Pull-ups are still out the question. People say they can see the weight leaving, the stress melting and taking with it years off my once solemn face. They cheer for me, say yay! You’re no longer thinking about him! About how he’d look when he’d yell at you, sharp eyed, all gnashing teeth like a gargoyle. Don’t let his voice echo in your ears. Don’t remember his tonality, the way his voice would break when he wailed words like, you bitch, you spoiled little bitch!

Try and date, they tell me. Try and date. Have fun! I try frantically to date, to have fun. I try to do anything but remember his friend, a woman, who he confided in. He told her how I made him feel small. She told him through text: There’s a reason she’s as old as she is and still single.

I was 30.

Don’t think about him, don’t think about him, don’t think about him. Don’t think about how he smashed that door, left knuckle prints in your chest of drawers. Forget about how he’d rather be right and you be sick than he be wrong and allow you antibiotics. Don’t wonder if any of the awful words he called you are true.

It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to remember him and even more exhausting to actively not remember. It’s exhausting to not talk about him, but when I open my mouth and his name comes out, I see the groans and the side-eyes. I see their glances that silently demand I just get over it, and I feel the burn of shame.

Don’t wonder if any of the awful words he called you are true.

And if I speak through the shame, he comes for me. He always comes for me. “Keep your name out my mouth,” he warns in a barrage of texts and emails. Blocking him doesn’t matter; he just finds another phone to harass from.

Even as I watch women take down much more powerful men than him, I fear our voice. I fear seeing a 504 area code pop up on my phone or his initials in my inbox. Mostly, I fear that one day I say too many words that may compel him to wait for me at my front door with his fists clenched.

So, it’s easier not to think about him.

Maybe 2018 will be my year.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/when-youre-autistic-abuse-is-considered-love-84eea4011844-2/ Wed, 21 Mar 2018 21:23:05 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2638 Read more]]> The trend of allistic parents disrespecting, exploiting, and profiting off of books about their autistic children perpetuates painful stigma—and continued abuse.

In the excerpt from her forthcoming book, Autism Uncensored, that was recently published in The Washington Post, Whitney Ellenby tells us about the time she physically restrained and dragged her 5-year-old autistic son to see Elmo perform at a “Sesame Street Live!” show. She describes fighting off his fists, pinning him down, and inching — her son shrieking and flailing, trapped between her legs — toward the auditorium’s entrance, an effort, she claims, “to save him from a life entrapped by autistic phobias.”

While some parents of autistic children have celebrated the article for showing them that they are not alone, the response from autistic adults to the violent actions in the piece and her book more broadly, has been, deservedly, negative. As Eb, an autistic writer, tweeted, “Meltdowns like the one described in this article aren’t ‘problems to solve.’ They’re communication.” Through his, Ellenby’s son was communicating something important to his mother — and her response was to push him, literally, into doing something he didn’t want to do, completely disregarding his autonomy.

Sadly, this is merely the most recent high-profile example of an allistic (non-autistic) parent, disrespecting and dehumanizing their autistic child then exploiting them by publishing very private, personal details about their life. Judith Newman, author of To Siri with Love — a collection of supposedly humorous stories about her then-13-year-old autistic son — received similar backlash from actually autistic adults last year. Among her various repugnant views, she asserts that her son is unfit to become a parent because he is autistic, detailing her desire to have him sterilized. “I am still deeply worried about the idea that he could get someone pregnant and yet could never be a real father — which is why I will insist on having medical power of attorney, so that I will be able to make the decision about a vasectomy for him after he turns 18.”

As may already be clear, while these types of books and articles may be about autistic people (mostly children who cannot consent), they are not for them. Instead, they are authored by and for parents and other allistic adults — at the expense of the vulnerable and marginalized community they claim to be advocating for.

These books are authored by and for parents and other allistic adults — at the expense of the vulnerable and marginalized community they claim to be advocating for.
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And this trend keeps repeating. On smaller scales, as with Jill Escher, president of Autism Society San Francisco Bay Area, who wrote a cringe-worthy account of the financial and superficial costs her autistic son is causing her. Or larger ones like, Amy Lutz, author and outspoken critic of the neurodiversity movement who said that writing about her autistic son without his permission isn’t exploitation because he’s incapable of providing consent. There are “very few costs” to publicly writing about his life because he “will never go to college, seek competitive employment, or get married.”

Autistic writer Sarah Kurchak refers to this subgenre of writing as the “Autism Parent memoir,” which often overlaps with the realm of Autism Warrior Parents (AWPs) — a term that it is both embraced and rejected by parents of autistic children. AWPs, as Shannon Rosa wrote, “insist on supporting their autistic kids either by trying to cure them, or by imposing non-autistic-oriented goals on them — rather than by trying to understand how their kids are wired, and how that wiring affects their life experience.”

If that sounds like an exaggeration, take Marcia Hinds, whose author bio states that she and “her family survived their war against autism.” According to a review of her book, I Know You’re In There: Winning Our War Against Autism, “She openly writes what we have all felt at one time or another. We love our children, but we do not love the autism.”

Rather than unconditionally accepting her son and seeking to better understand his needs, Hinds believed an autism diagnosis meant “there was no hope” and, diving headfirst into the realm of pseudo-science and conspiracy theories, that “by treating hidden viruses and infection,” autism can be cured. For her, in order for there to be hope for her family and her autistic son, his autism needed to be destroyed.

How ‘Autism Warrior Parents’ Harm Autistic Kids

And Hinds isn’t the only parent latching onto harmful medically disproven theories linking vaccines to autism. Mary Cavanaugh, author and parent of an autistic child, states on her website, “I now know all three of my children have been vaccine injured.” She is a member of The Thinking Moms’ Revolution, an online community and book, where mothers share tales of fighting to rescue their children from autism. “Suspecting that some of the main causes may be overused medicines, vaccinations, environmental toxins, and processed foods,” the book’s synopsis states, “they began a mission to help reverse the effects.”

Terrifyingly, this is far from an obscure movement. Celebrities like Jenny McCarthy have helped bring these harmful conspiracies into the mainstream.

The cumulative result is that many, many autistic children grow up in environments rife with physical confrontations like the one that occurred in Ellenby’s article, or in homes that reject basic, peer-reviewed medical science, or with parents who demonstrate a complete and utter disregard for their autistic children’s autonomy — and all of it is framed as love.

But it is not love; it is abuse.

When I read Whitney Ellenby’s piece, the parallels between her and my psychologically abusive mother were too great to ignore. Just as Ellenby misinterpreted her son’s reluctance, disinterest, and outright refusal to engage in an activity as some sort of phobia to be overcome, my mother forced me into conquering my so-called fears — “for my own good.” She saw the way I interacted with the world as different from other children, and deemed that difference the enemy.

It has taken years to unravel and untie the clutter of psychological knots and trauma she left me with — and there are, no doubt, more waiting in the wings — but I can say with absolute certainty there’s a stark difference between a professed love and real, unconditional love. Failing to accept and trying to change or attempting to “fix” someone who is not broken — no matter the intent — is not the same as loving them. As writer and disability rights advocate Lydia Brown wrote to Judith Newman, “You may believe you love your son. But we, autistic people, hear what you have actually said, which is that you hate him. You love a version of him that does not exist.”

While I’ve not published a single piece of writing in almost a year due to hyper-empathy and burnout, I have been discovering and healing, coming to terms with the fact that I am autistic, and, contrary to the dangerous message AWPs continually insinuate, that it is nothing that should bring me shame or fear.

Memory and trauma are a mindfuck, but scenes flash before my mind’s eye — having my hands restrained at my desk in grade school, or instead having inside-out gym socks taped to my hands so I couldn’t fidget or distract others, but could still hold a pencil to do schoolwork. And now I’m angry, again, at my mother and all of her enablers for shaming and punishing me for things I couldn’t control or understand. I’m livid at her and my teachers for forcing me to put gross tasting things in my mouth whenever I did something that society deemed weird and unacceptable. I’m angry as fuck for crying and crying while telling the damn truth about not understanding something, not being able to stop doing something, or not being able to adequately articulate why I did something… And then being disciplined for my “rebellious attitude,” for disobedience, or for not trusting God enough because that asshole doesn’t give you any more than you can handle.

And I believed the lies, I believed it was my fault, I believed I was unworthy and failing God and my family every day — so I punished myself and stopped trusting those who professed their love for me and worked diligently to change myself.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In the wake of Ellenby’s piece, Sarah Kurchak interviewed her allistic mother, Jane, to get her take on this spate of high-profile Autism Parent memoirs. The interview highlights a wholly different model of autism and parental love. Where Ellenby described her exploitative book as “one woman’s story, my truth and my love letter to my beloved son,” Jane focuses on her daughter’s well-being in a world that too often punishes neurodivergent people for being who they are, advocating that she not read Ellenby’s work: “I see you try to function in a pull-up-your-bootstraps neurotypical world. And I know if you read this book, it will crush you. … So it’s a selfish motive because I don’t want you to hurt.”

Later Jane says to her daughter, “I have always said to you, to anybody that will listen to me, I have learned more about life in the world from you than from anyone or anything else… Watch your child and learn from them. Take your cues from your child.” For her, the relationship she has with her daughter goes both ways. “Just because I’m your parent doesn’t make me right… My reality is that my life is a better life because of you. And I just want you to know that I’m proud.”

Reading Jane and Sarah’s conversation brought me to tears and offered up a glimmer of much-needed hope. Without ever saying the words “I love you,” Jane demonstrated how very much she respects, accepts, and loves her daughter merely in the way she talks about her — and how they’ve navigated their life together, as a team.

By contrast, the only “uncensored truth” Ellenby reveals in her writing is that she sincerely believes her abusive actions are loving ones. But how do things change if the abusers, their apologists, and the exploitive industry that profits off of them, refuse to stop — let alone acknowledge that they are harming others?

We need to be able to speak for ourselves, but instead, #ActuallyAutistic voices are too often shunned and silenced, while the voices of allistic parents raising autistic children are lifted up and praised. A common retort to the autistic adults who condemn this genre of writing and alleged advocacy is that our viewpoint is inconsequential because we aren’t autistic enough. Our needs don’t compare to the mountain of needs their children require because we are able to raise our voices and organize, and by doing so, we are making things harder for autistic people — like their children — who require more care.

Ellenby herself made this argument in response to the backlash her article caused, writing, “You adults with Autism who are reaching out to me in brilliantly worded protest, you who are capable of self-advocating, organizing, who have children of your own — you in no way resemble Zack.”

This is not a new argument. Amy Lutz wrote in 2013, “So what happens to neurodiversity if its lower-functioning supporters are discredited? The movement is exposed for what it is: a group of high-functioning individuals opposed to medical research that, as Singer puts it ‘they don’t need, but my daughter does. If she were able to function at their level, I would consider her cured.’”

When Allies Say Tragedy Is The Only ‘True’ Representation Of Autism

Dr. Jennifer Sarrett, Lecturer at Emory University’s Center for the Study of Human Health, carelessly pontificated that broadening the definition of autism, “could divert attention and resources from the people who need it the most — the significantly disabled.” But this mindset only makes it harder for all autistic people, and further stigmatizes many of us as being not “autistic enough,” while doing nothing to counter the ableism we confront every day.

Whether we were diagnosed early and our guardians taught us how to hide our autistic traits (or force them out of us) through harmful applied behavioral analysis techniques, or we learned the concept of masking or practiced self-degradation on our own as a way to “appear normal” to everyone else — existing as an autistic person in a world that hates us is physically and emotionally debilitating.

And this is why the themes apparent within the ever-rising tide of Autism Memoirs are so infuriating. Autistic children are given little to no autonomy. Instead of being treated as living, breathing, beautiful, and complex human beings — they’re reduced to a plot device, a mechanism for their parents to exploit and profit from. And even worse, such memoirs frame autism as the thing that needs to be battled — rather than the unjust, ableist world we live in. These narratives center the parents, attempt to sever an important component of their child’s identity, and, instead of making the world a better place for them, force their children to change for the world.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Existing as an autistic person in a world that hates us is physically and emotionally debilitating.
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I believe that these allistic parents do love their children, just as I believe my parents loved me. But despite what they say, their actions are not those of love, which, by definition, requires respect and acknowledgment of another’s autonomy. I was told that I was loved every day, and yet I sincerely believed there were parts of me that I needed to destroy in order to be worthy of that love — and so I tried, and failed, and grew up traumatized, without ever understanding what healthy love looks like.

Now I’m almost 35 years-old and still recovering and unlearning the destructive messages I grew up with, as the effects of trauma don’t just disappear when you leave the traumatic environment. Those of us who have survived and are voicing our anger to these parents and their enablers aren’t “internet bullies.” We are survivors who don’t want autistic children of any age to be abused. Listen to us. Believe us. Your child does not need to be cured, they need to be respected, listened to, and above all, loved — truly loved.

‘FOSTA will make our lives exponentially more dangerous under the pretense of protecting us.’

In n 2011, New York City law enforcement officials were able to lure a serial rapist to a hotel room and successfully arrest him—all as a result of sex worker efforts. His phone number had circulated through a community of sex workers and escort agencies as part of a “Bad Date List”—jargon for the network sex workers use to pass along information, flag dangerous clients, and share the phone numbers that should never be answered.

Whether they utilize Facebook groups, other online forums, or even text group chats, sex workers’ ability to communicate with one another and screen potential clients is one of the only security mechanisms available to them — and one that will be further compromised, with assuredly fatal consequences, if the supposed anti-trafficking bill, FOSTA, passes the Senate this week.

The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)—a companion bill to SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act introduced by Ohio senator Rob Portman last April—passed 388–25 by the House of Representatives on February 28th. The bill, introduced by Republican representative Ann Wagner—in theory at least—seeks to fight sex trafficking by targeting online websites and platforms “that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution and contribute to sex trafficking.”

The reality, however, according to the bill’s critics, is that the proposed legislation will only hurt consensual sex workers and encourage internet censorship—rather than prevent sex trafficking or support its survivors. Many pro-free speech and sex worker advocacy groups, such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Sex Workers Outreach Project, all oppose the bill.

Per FOSTA, those who run platforms determined by authorities to be promoting sex trafficking would not only face up to 10 years in prison, but would be liable for lawsuits—both repercussions that effectively encourage platforms to delete any user content that could in any way be construed as promoting sex work.

Kamala Harris’ Whorephobia Is Sadly No Surprise

According to the sources I spoke with for this piece, the main issue with FOSTA is that it conflates all consensual adult sex work with sex trafficking — and many believe that this conflation is not accidental. “They want to get rid of all prostitution and sex work, but this is the oldest profession in the world and it’s not going away,” Allison Bass, the author of Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law and assistant professor of journalism at West Virginia University told me over the phone. “Opposing sex trafficking is as American as apple pie, but this law goes after sex workers who go into the field by choice, and it will make their work more dangerous.”

“I know I’ve only avoided dangerous clients throughout my career because I was able to advertise to my clients online and screen them,” says Savannah Sly, a sex worker and volunteer for the Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP).

If platforms and sites, under the threat of legal ramifications, began to police and delete the ads for and posts by sex workers, then research suggests these workers will be forced to move onto the streets, where they will face much greater rates of violence. One 2017 study found that the female homicide rate dropped 17% in various U.S. cities after Craigslist launched an erotic service platform. According to the same study, after myRedbook.com was shut down in 2014, sex workers who relied on the site to find jobs were forced to move to the streets—where they faced much higher incidences of rape and assault.

This law goes after sex workers who go into the field by choice, and it will make their work more dangerous.

As a volunteer for SWOP-Seattle, Sly remembers the chaos that ensued after RedBook was shut down. “Everyone was panicked and scared,” she says:

“They would say things like, ‘I was supposed to post online tonight and I have to pay my rent and now what can I do? Will I have to go to a bar or a hotel or the street?’ When people are pushed into corners, they are going to take higher risks. I’ve been there. When I’ve been financially insecure, I started going back to clients who made me very uncomfortable. FOSTA will make our lives exponentially more dangerous under the pretense of protecting us.”

On the street sex workers are far more likely to encounter violent clients or be exploited by pimps. By cracking down on any and all sex worker ads, then, the platforms targeted by FOSTA would effectively be excising low-risk clients from the client pool — that is, the type of person who wouldn’t mind chatting with a sex worker online, but who wouldn’t be willing or interested in trolling the streets. Online platforms, such as Backpage, enable sex workers to have greater control over their bodies and their safety, allowing them to screen clients, negotiate condom usage, and plan safe meeting locations.

“This is literally life and death,” sex worker Arabelle Raphael tells me.

“I like my job and this how I make a living and survive, and my survival and safety is dependent on online tools. Without these tools, people will force themselves into dangerous situations and be murdered. Sex trafficking is extremely complex [but politicians] do not care about sex trafficking victims—just about eradicating sex workers. If someone gives me a ride to a job or advice on a job, they can be charged with sex trafficking. Even sex trafficking victims themselves are often prosecuted.”

According to Bass, the link between consensual adult sex work and sex trafficking is tenuous at best. When countries such as the Netherlands and New Zealand decriminalized sex work, they reported no increase in the sex trafficking of minors and undocumented immigrants. In fact, not only were sex workers better protected from violence and sexually transmitted diseases, but they were also more likely to cooperate with police to target traffickers—all because they no longer feared legal ramifications or police harassment.

Such a dynamic highlights yet another problematic aspect of FOSTA—that it, and similar laws, can, far from reducing sex trafficking, actually exacerbate it. Platforms like Backpage.com have been known to cooperate with law enforcement by flagging users who appear underage or to be involved with sex trafficking. But if such sites are shut down, sex traffickers will simply move to offshore options: “The bill won’t get rid of sex trafficking, but instead drive it further into the shadows,” Bass confirms. “It will be more difficult for law enforcement to work with these sites and more difficult for these platforms to be subpoenaed.”

Legal Red Light Districts Don’t Keep Sex Workers Safe

In short, the law has entirely failed to examine how trafficking operates—or what type of services could help individuals who are experiencing or at risk for violence. According to Liz Afton, a counselor and advocate at the Sex Workers Project (SWP), there need to be bills that target the root causes of trafficking, such as isolation and marginalization:

“This law is clearly not in the service of actual trafficking survivors. There is no funding for survivor services, or for improving victim screening. People have their whole lives shattered by arrests. Many victims who are trafficked are arrested while they were being trafficked and yet were not recognized as needing assistance, leading to criminal histories that keep them from accessing different labor opportunities in the future and increased vulnerability to predators who could traffick them again.”

This is literally life and death.

Afton worries about how the law will affect organizations like SWP, which could be construed to be promoting sex work—merely for giving sex workers advice on how to stay safe. The people the organization helps are already strained by the impact of a number of intersectional vulnerabilities, including barriers to a legal immigration status, transphobia, mental health struggles, and exposure to trauma. One of the most important resources the organization can offer, then, is harm reduction.

“This has a huge chilling effect on us,” says Afton:

“This law aims to shut down basic information sharing. If our ability to provide safety advice were to be hampered and online forums where peers share survival strategies were shut down with the passage of this law, I can’t imagine how urgent safety needs could be met otherwise. It is a recipe for increased exploitation of those most vulnerable.”

“The public needs to be weary of any anti-trafficking campaign,” Sly adds. “It’s an excuse to launch an egregious attack on our civil liberties and rights. They are trying to silence us. Sex workers need a place where they can meet in order to address sex trafficking, as it impacts us the most.”

Even without FOSTA, there a number of laws in place to prevent platforms from promoting sex workers—and, as a result, such platforms are continuously shut down. In 2015, for instance, federal and state law enforcement officials in New York City shut down Rentboy.com, a gay sex work site, and charged its employees with promoting prostitution. Similarly, in 2016, law enforcement in the Seattle area seized Thereviewboard.net—a site where sex workers posted ads—and charged those who ran the site with promoting prostitution. On top of that, the operator of myRedBook.com was sent to federal prison. And Backpage.com—one of the sites that the bill claims to target specifically—shut down its adult section due to public pressure, its CEO arrested for pimping a minor and conspiracy.

The difference between FOSTA and our current laws is that FOSTA allows platforms to be responsible for their users’ content, a singularity that free speech activists believe will be “disastrous for online speech and communities.”

“Perversely, some of the discussions most likely to be censored could be those by and about victims of sex trafficking,” writes Joe Mullen for the EFF. “Overzealous moderators, or automated filters, won’t distinguish nuanced conversations, and are likely to pursue the safest, censorial route.” Many big names in tech, such as Facebook, IBM, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise support FOSTA. But while these mega-companies have the money and manpower to monitor traffic and fight lawsuits, FOSTA is likely to harm, if not totally decimate, the nonprofits and small community organizations that don’t have such resources.

“We consider the unbalanced policing of online adult-oriented websites as a direct assault against the sex worker community,” writes The Desiree Alliance, a national coalition of current and former sex workers, in a Sex Workers Rights Joint statement, signed by over 150 various organizations and individuals.

According to the Desiree Alliance, sex trafficking has never been an epidemic in the modern United States, and there are no statistics put forth by the U.S. Justice Department, FBI, or any academic institution that suggest such an epidemic. By contrast, statistics do show that hyper-criminalization and arrests disproportionately affect poor communities and communities of color.

Free speech activists hope that the Senate will reject FOSTA and uphold Section 230 of the CDA, which for the past two decades has ensured a free and open internet by protecting online platforms from liability for the speech of their users.

While FOSTA is unlikely to reduce sex trafficking, it is likely to lead to a greater number of lawsuits. The bill would allow civil plaintiffs to sue sites that “knowingly facilitate” trafficking, but critics believe that this language is too ambiguous, creating serious liabilities for websites that aren’t even aware that users are engaged in sex trafficking on their sites. “SESTA’s ambiguous language will create a new path for trial lawyers to bring expensive lawsuits against websites and social media platforms for quick settlements, fishing expeditions, and more,” writes Evan Engstrom, the executive director of Engine, for The Hill.

Put bluntly: the law will only help trial lawyers and those with the power to hire attorneys—while simultaneously harming sex workers and human trafficking survivors, and censoring marginalized voices along the way. According to Afton, advocates are bracing themselves for how to mitigate the harm of lawsuits already prepared and ready to launch as soon as FOSTA passes, all of which serves to divert much-needed resources from the trafficking survivors her program helps serve.

I’m A Sex Worker Who Was Raped, Here’s Why I Didn’t Fight Back

More disturbingly, FOSTA passed the House even after the Department of Justice sent a last-minute letter noting that the poor language of the bill would actually make it more difficult to prosecute sex traffickers, calling into question the constitutionality of passing such legislation. Despite this, the vote did not surprise Bass: “They don’t have the right information,” she says.

According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Republican caucus that the bill would be voted on this week, but did not specify exact timing.

As her future safety and security hang in the balance, Sly remains adamant that FOSTA will only serve to hide sex work and sex trafficking.

“They are sending a clear message that they want us eradicated, but we are one of the oldest and most resilient communities in history and we are not going anywhere,” she tells me.

“Sex workers have always been on the cutting edge of technology. We were some of the first to use video, DVDs, cell phones, and make our own websites, and we will continue to use new platforms and new modalities. If they begin to censor our language, then we will use different language. If they begin to close our sites, we will use other sites like Sugar Baby sites, and regular dating sites. They are just playing whack-a-mole—and making our lives more dangerous in the process.”

Content warning: descriptions of physical abuse and sexual assault

The memory that haunts me most is not being strangled until my body gave way to seizure. Nor is it the three days I spent being beaten in a motel by my lover. It’s not the day he raped me on the bed next to our three-month-old son, or the time he punched my head again and again into the cement floor of a garage until I had to prop myself against him, his arms wrapped around my waist, just to get home. These memories hold their share of terror, but the one that haunts me most begins with a bicycle.

It was evening, and already dark. A breeze traced the shiver of fall across my bare arms. We were riding BMX bikes up a long hill. I remember the endlessness of it, how my lungs felt like they would shatter along the way. He’d been my boyfriend four months already, though we became friends when I was 14 and he was 21. It was two years since we met, and I thought I knew him well.

He had more practice riding bikes. I watched, flush and panting, as he cruised ahead, lifting his lithe body over the seat and pumping the pedals with his long, strong legs. When he summited the crest of the hill, he disappeared from sight.

I was afraid there, alone in the darkness, but I was also determined. I’d catch him. He wouldn’t run off and leave me to spend the evening with some other girl, not tonight. I ignored the burning in my chest and forced myself the rest of the way up that hill.

Protesting Trump As A Survivor Of Abuse

When I reached the top, I found him waiting for me, smiling. He was sprawled across a couch someone had left on the side of the road, his bike toppled at his feet. I tossed my bike next to his and crashed onto him. We kissed deeply, before I lay my head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around my skinny frame. While the sweat cooled on my skin, and my heart settled into its resting pace, I was overcome by joy.

Anything is worth this moment, I thought, anything that happens is worth what I’m feeling right now.

That is the memory that haunts me most.

Ten years after the end of that relationship, I have told many stories. I have revealed that when I came home with a black eye, it wasn’t the result of a car crash like I had initially claimed, but because my boyfriend kidnapped me and beat me for three days. I’ve talked about the numerous rapes. I have disclosed the many times he strangled me to the brink of death. When people hear my stories of abuse, sexual assault, and coercion, they tell me I am brave. Strong. They thank me for speaking out. But the story that requires true bravery is the one I haven’t told yet: the love story.

I remember lying on the floor of an abandoned house with my boyfriend — my abuser — so close to one another our lips touched when we talked. I remember filling notebooks with love poetry, and devoting entire writing workshops solely to him. I remember meeting at my apartment and embracing midway on the stairs, unable to wait for the top. I remember kissing for hours at the park, ignoring onlookers who shouted at us to “get a room.” I remember making plans for our future together. I remember sitting on the hospital bed, holding our new son in our four collective hands. I remember kisses and kisses and kisses.

I loved the man who kidnapped me, and raped me, and nearly killed me more than once. It wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome — an affinity with the assailant that long-term abuse victims develop as a psychological defense. Because I didn’t start loving him after the fact. I fell in love with him with the pure intensity of someone who doesn’t know any better, the way that’s really only possible in youth. It felt like a fairy-tale, not a trick. Maybe I was manipulated into the feeling, but to me it was real. I loved him before any of the abuse happened, and I loved him for years after it began. It’s not so easy to let go of a love like that, even when it becomes obvious there will never be a “happily ever after.”

It is fair that I’ve blamed myself for the thought I had one night long ago when I went on a bike ride? Should I feel responsible for the four years of abuse I endured because in one moment of teenage joy I made a contract, the terms of which I could not possibly have fathomed? I had inklings of his real nature. There were signs — there are always signs — but “love is blind” is not a cliche for no reason. In that moment, when I lay catching my breath in the embrace of a man I knew was already cheating on me, all I wanted was for my love to be returned. I had no idea the price I would come to pay.

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I fell in love with him with the pure intensity of someone who doesn’t know any better.
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If you google “why people stay in abusive relationships,” hundreds of results pop up, in everything from Psychology Today and Ms. Magazine to small personal blogs. Our culture is obsessed with the question: Why do people stay with lovers who harm them? Though the language varies between publications, the answers generally revolve around the same themes. Control. Emotional and sometimes financial dependence. Fear. Very few articles contain a section on love.

Rena P. Elkins, a licensed clinical social worker affiliated with the University of Washington Medicine, who has worked with trauma patients for over 10 years, acknowledges that fear is a major factor in why women stay with abusive partners, but finds that love can be far stronger. “He says he’s sorry, he promised to change, he’ll never do it again, I hear that all the time,” Elkins reports, “and [abuse victims] believe it, because they want to. Love is a strong motivator.”

Control, dependence, and fear were all factors in my abusive relationship, but love was the quiet, persistent undercurrent. Like Elkins, I suspect the same is true for many abuse survivors. It is a hard truth to voice, not only because it hurts to admit, but because it’s the truth of a “bad victim.” It puts you in the same category as those girls and women who wear short skirts, drink booze, flirt at parties, stay out too late, take rides from strangers; loving your abuser makes you the kind of person who people think invited whatever bad thing happened. It makes people stop listening. It makes your hurt matter less.

Even still, it’s a harder secret to carry. And I hope that by sharing this, I help other survivors realize they are not alone. That their feelings are not wrong. Loving someone doesn’t bind you to them — you can still walk away.

What Responsibility Do We Have To Those Who Date Our Abusive Exes?

On an afternoon in midsummer, when our son was a few months old, I called the police and turned in my abusive boyfriend. Two days earlier, he had strangled me while I was holding our baby. I lost control of my limbs and dropped my son. He was okay, but just barely. The day I called the police, I sat on the steps of the cathedral down the street from my mother’s apartment, holding my cell phone in trembling hands. I considered not calling. I considered going home with my boyfriend, who had recently proposed. I imagined what it would be like for my son and I to continue our lives with him.

Either way I looked at it, there was suffering. I could turn him in, and be alone at age 20 with a child I’d been forced to conceive, struggling to finish college, alone with my harrowing memories. Or I could go home with him, and feel happy in the glow of reconciliation for a few days…until I told the wrong joke, or got a call from the wrong friend, or didn’t come to bed when he asked, or looked too long at the guy scanning my groceries, or whatever. And then the beatings would start all over again. This time, maybe I wouldn’t survive. Or maybe I would, but my son wouldn’t. So I dialed 911, and helped arrest the man I loved.

Yes, even while I gave his name and description to the police, I loved him.

Eventually, after his arrest, I would gain the distance I needed to outgrow my feelings for him. I would come to understand that he never cared about me, and that the man I loved did not truly exist. But when those sirens wailed past me on that midsummer’s day, while blue and red flashed across my face and toward where my boyfriend thought we were meeting, my heart broke. I had to break my own heart to break free.