CW: thread about personal experience with abuse and outing an abuser to community

When I outed my abuser as an abuser to my community I made it very clear that I didn’t want or expect everyone to cut her out of their lives, only that I hoped for community enforced accountability to interrupt a long chain of abuse.

I was still labeled a liar.

What I asked for is what many abuse survivors want, to be shown that people care about harm done to you enough to want to address it, and also take the harm seriously enough to want to put an end to it.

I did not want, still do not want, my abuser to lose all the relationships she has in the world. That would not end the harm, it would only create conditions for her to move on to a new community to do more harm.

What I want, and many survivors want, is for the harm to come to an end. I want my abuser’s friends to turn to her and say “we care about you, and we care about others, and this pattern of harm needs to end. We will do what we can to help you end it.”

I don’t want revenge (though I certainly don’t begrudge survivors that do). I don’t want anyone to be totally without support. I only want people to have support towards *change*, rather than a continuation of cycles of harm. I want those cycles to end.

But even in asking for this alone, survivors get labeled liars and slanderers. As if we have something to gain by it (in outing my abuser, I personally lost my entire community). Because abusers and apologists aren’t actually concerned about harm, they’re concerned about *power.*

They’re concerned in maintaining the status quo. They’re concerned about the possibility of losing power and control, bc that’s what abuse is all about: power and control. Were they truly concerned about harm, the first words out of their mouths certainly would not be “liar!”

As a result, the abuse continues. In my case, I have had multiple people who were in relationships with my ex after me come to me and share the similar ways they were abused by her. This is... literally always the case with abusers who aren’t held accountable.

And that continued harm after an abuser has been outed? That’s no longer (if it ever really was) solely on the shoulders of that abuser, but an indictment on the entire community that has made a safe harbor for that abuse.

(FYI you have my permission to rt any of the posts of this thread, even though they are more personal, if you think that they might help shed light on the dynamics of abuse and community response to abuse )