Starting to notice a trend I wish I could research (but I didn't go into that line of work).

We're already aware that many people supporting Johnny Depp are themselves survivors, and easily recognize the patterns they experienced.

But notice AH defenders often mention parents.

That they saw their father abuse their mother, most often.

Perhaps there's something about intergenerational trauma at play here. Survivors know what it FEELS like. Witnesses only what it LOOKS like. They're similarly scared, but more easily fooled by the face value.

Think of the way European baby boomers learned frugality from their parents—who lived through war and hunger winter. They know the stress that has been placed on frugality, but they don't know why. So they can't make an informed call on when it doesn't apply.

If you saw someone you empathize with survive abuse, you're acutely aware of how horrible it is, but you don't know exactly what it was like. So you go by looks. And abandoning the one you've decided to protect feels like failing your mother all over again.

The problem is, of course, that looks can be very deceiving, and it's abusers who are more often than not wolves in sheep's clothing.

So, tragically, in their attempt to protect what they never could, before, they end up hurting a victim even more.

I want to stress that this is a hypothesis and I don't have the data to back it up.
If it's true, it goes toward showing the fruitlessness of arguing with someone like this. You hit the wall of their unprocessed trauma and effectively ask them to give up on their parent-by-proxy.

It's not gonna happen. What we can do is spread awareness of the fact that men can be abused, that narcissists and abusers hold smear campaigns, and prevent people from falling for the sheep with black tufts of fur sticking out of its wool coat.