A New Miniseries
Over the next several weeks, I will be posting articles in a miniseries exploring common abuse tactics.
These include:
- The Use of Force
- Applied
- Implied
- Power Imbalance
- Social Manipulation
- Harm Disguised as Help
- When Abuse Makes You Feel Special or Chosen
- Framing Abuse as a “Good” Thing
- Wearing Away Reality
- The Role of the Social Environment
- A Common Justification
- The Victim Benefiting Somehow
- Abusers Evading Responsibility
- The Next Generation of Victims
All of the posts will use Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoir: Nobody’s Girl as a sort of spine to illustrate these common tactics.
Unfortunately, Virginia was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, yet, her abuse didn’t start- or end- with them.
As I read through her book, it struck me how formulaic the abuse often was. Predators, even those who had never met, used similar tactics. And repeat offenders often used the same strategy on multiple victims.
When victims of Epstein started to come forward, for example, many accounts went along the lines of:
vulnerable girls being recruited by an older female, asked to give a massage to an older man, the massage turned sexual, there was payment, then grooming, threats of harm if they ever told anyone, travel to remote locations, fear, degradation, a smear campaign if they ever spoke out, and threats of retaliation.
These events likely felt confusing to the victims individually- but in totality, they show an astronomical pattern of abuse; a voracious machine into which young girls and women were fed.
That pattern is what I would like to focus this miniseries on: the themes of abuse.
When victims are scrutinized over what happened to them, they are often blamed as an individual and held under a microscope in a way that abusers never are.
I’d like to train the microscope in the direction of analyzing the abusers’ behaviour instead of the victims’.
My (Humble) Role
I am an independent blogger- not a journalist, law enforcement officer, or therapist, and I never met Virginia, Epstein, or any of his associates. And I want to be clear about that.
But I deeply want to talk about these issues.
To me, this is a conversation that should continue.
None of the following articles are meant to be a deep dive, but rather an entry point to understanding these issues.
Who Was Virginia Roberts Giuffre?
Throughout this series, I will be dissecting the themes of abuse that Virginia suffered, but I shudder to only look at her through the lens of victimhood.
She seemed like such a colorful person, with so many facets to her: animal lover, healer, mother, activist, and more.
Yet, although I don’t want to reduce Virginia to her worst experiences, I want to honour her efforts to protect others from going through what she did.
I also want to acknowledge the ways that harm does change a person. It can destroy a person and shape their life in insidious ways; affecting their self-worth, relationships, identity, health, and experiences, and can lead to an ongoing cycle of abuse.
Abuse has real consequences, and trauma lingers.
Victims may get robbed of peace, opportunities, safety, individuality, and passions, sometimes to the point that much of their life and identity centers around their abuser and the abuse they suffered.
It can take years to untangle this distorted sense of self, and live a life which is truly your own.
The high cost of harm is why I decided to create this miniseries. I will echo Virginia in saying, even if these words help one person, I will consider it a success.
Messy Bun Book Lover
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