Misplaced

We ask why they stayed. Why the child didn't tell. Why the victim didn't recognize the warning signs.

But how often do we ask why someone chose to abuse another person? Why they exploited trust? Why, when the abuse finally comes to light, the person who caused the harm can still be protected while the person who endured it is left defending themselves—and often their children, too?

We lower our voices when we talk about child abuse and domestic violence. We soften the language. We change the subject. We say something happened instead of saying what happened—and who did it.

We may think we're being careful or fair. But too often, our discomfort protects the person who caused the harm while leaving the person who endured it to carry the shame.

I've seen this from more than one side—as a mom whose children have been abused by someone who promised to love and protect them, as a woman who left a violent marriage, and as an advocate learning to navigate systems so convoluted that understanding them can feel like learning a foreign language. I've witnessed how easily responsibility gets misplaced—and how difficult it can be to change the narrative once it takes hold.

How Shame Changes the Story

Shame often begins when a survivor starts questioning themselves instead of the person who harmed them.

A child given affection, gifts, and special attention may believe they somehow participated in their own abuse. An adult who was loved, promised a future, and made to feel chosen may wonder whether staying means they accepted the treatment they endured.

The question shifts from Why did someone do this to me? to What did I do wrong?

That shift can be devastating. When survivors begin questioning their own role in the harm, the person who caused it may face less scrutiny while the survivor carries the burden of explaining, defending, and making sense of what happened. Responsibility becomes distorted.

This is one of the cruelest consequences of abuse: the person who caused the harm may become skilled at deflecting accountability while the person who endured it struggles to let go of a shame that was never theirs to carry.

Abuse doesn't always begin with violence or cruelty. More often, it begins with love, affection, and promises that make someone feel cherished and safe. The good days can feel incredible, while the dark ones bring confusion, fear, and self-doubt. The highs feel so real, and the lows can seem like an anomaly—an exception to the relationship rather than a warning sign of what it's becoming.

This is why Why didn't you just leave? and Why didn't you just tell? miss the point. They assume abuse is obvious from the beginning and that leaving or speaking up is simple. But when love and harm become tangled together, recognizing what's happening—and finding a way out—can be far more complicated than it looks from the outside. Add children, retaliation, intimidation, and threats, and those decisions become even more difficult.

Staying doesn't mean consenting to abuse. Love doesn't give someone permission to cause harm. And trust should never become a weapon in the hands of the person you gave it to.

The Harm Doesn't Always End When the Abuse Does

Abuse doesn't typically end when the relationship does. It can evolve into extended control—through smear campaigns, financial concealment and abuse, stalking, harassment, damaged relationships, or relentless attempts to discredit a survivor. The tactics may change, but the control can continue long after a relationship ends.

A common thread many survivors don't recognize until later is that the discrediting often began long before they ever spoke up. By the time they find the courage—or even the opportunity—to tell their story, the groundwork has often already been laid. For many abusers, protecting their reputation becomes so important that they attempt to discredit the very partners and children whose well-being they should be protecting.

The pattern is deeply disturbing. What does it say when someone is willing to sacrifice their own family's well-being to protect their own image? That is not ordinary conflict. It is something far more troubling.

When someone exploits another person's vulnerability, trust, dependence, or desire to belong to a family or community, that is abuse. It doesn't always look like the monster people imagine. Sometimes, it's someone charming, seemingly successful, and wildly convincing. Someone a child looks up to, a friend confides in, or a partner believes would never hurt them.

The person causing harm may learn exactly what their chosen one longs for, what they fear losing, and how to use those things to maintain control. One tactic that can contribute to this dynamic is mirroring—reflecting another person's interests, values, desires, or emotions to build trust and connection. Mirroring isn't inherently harmful, but when deliberately used to manipulate trust or exploit vulnerabilities, it can create a disorienting mix of connection, doubt, and confusion, making the abuse harder to recognize and coercive control easier to establish.

Affection may alternate with intimidation, promises with threats, and tenderness with cruelty, leaving the person on the receiving end trying to reconcile two very different sides of someone they trust. From inside the relationship, making sense of those contradictions can be incredibly difficult.

From the outside, people see the trust, the affection, the shared history, or the person's public reputation. What they may not see is how that trust was cultivated—and ultimately exploited. When allegations surface, they may struggle to reconcile them with the person they believe they know, sometimes defending that image simply because the truth is difficult to accept.

Words Matter. So Does Accountability.

Language shapes responsibility.

Calling abuse a "domestic dispute" can obscure the difference between an argument and an act of violence. Describing an adult's exploitation of a child as a "relationship" can imply mutual responsibility where none exists.

Even the difference between they were abused and he abused them matters. One describes what happened to the victims. The other identifies who acted.

Passive language isn't always intended to excuse wrongdoing, but the words we choose can shape how we understand what happened, whom we question, and whom we protect.

This matters in our homes, our schools, our newsrooms, and our justice system. Accuracy and fairness are essential. So is naming harmful conduct clearly and holding people accountable for their choices.

We can take allegations seriously without abandoning fairness. We can ask questions without casting suspicion on the person who came forward. And we can recognize that a person's reputation, status, or place in a family or community does not place them beyond scrutiny.

Accountability should not depend on how much we like the person accused—or how uncomfortable we are with the truth.

Put the Blame and Shame Where They Belong

Challenging a culture that quietly shifts blame onto survivors while making excuses for those who cause harm can be both frightening and liberating.

Why should anyone have to carry the burden of what someone else chose to do to them?

That is the cycle we need to break: the unspoken expectation that survivors must carry the shame, guilt, and responsibility for harm they did not cause, while those who caused it are too often spared accountability.

There is power in a survivor speaking the truth. It challenges the silence, exposes the excuses, and confronts what abusers rely on to maintain control: the belief that their actions will remain hidden and the people they hurt will remain silent.

A person can love someone and still recognize that they were unsafe. They can have complicated feelings without owing anyone an explanation. What happened to them does not define their worth, and speaking up does not require them to prove they responded perfectly. Sometimes, being heard, believed, and supported is one of the most powerful forms of protection a survivor can receive.

Abuse thrives in silence, grows when it is hidden, and persists when people look away. Breaking that silence does more than give survivors a voice; it challenges the conditions that allow harm to continue.

I'm continually struck by how many people have shared their experiences of abuse with me simply because I've been open about my own. What's particularly striking is how often these disclosures come from people who work within the very systems meant to help—prosecutors, lawmakers, members of the law enforcement community, caseworkers, attorneys, and others whose professional lives bring them into contact with abuse cases. Even people who understand these systems from the inside can struggle to be heard when they find themselves on the other side of them. It's a sobering contradiction, and one that makes it difficult to ignore how deeply these problems run.

If someone trusts you enough to disclose abuse, just listen. Don't pretend to understand what they've been through unless you truly do. Lead with compassion and curiosity, not judgment. You don't need all the answers or the perfect words—you can't fix what's already been done. Sometimes, the most meaningful thing you can offer is the assurance that they matter, their pain deserves to be heard, and they don't have to face it alone.

And be honest with yourself about whom you defend. When people rush to protect someone accused of causing harm, minimize what was done, or dismiss a survivor's experience before taking the time to hear it, they risk becoming part of the very problem they may believe they oppose. These patterns can persist across families, communities, and generations.

If you work within a system meant to protect people, remember that good intentions are never enough on their own. Policies, language, and decisions have real consequences for the people living through them. Families don't need hard truths hidden from them. They need honest answers, meaningful support, and systems willing to confront what went wrong.

And if you are the person causing harm—the abuser—your history may help explain your behavior, but it does not excuse it. The pain you've experienced does not give you permission to inflict pain on someone else. Accountability begins when you stop making another person responsible for the harm you chose to cause.

There is no rewind button. As much as I have wished for one, I cannot change what happened in my life or in the lives of my children. But I can challenge the narratives that protect those who cause harm and leave survivors questioning themselves.

Turning pain into purpose doesn't mean being grateful for what hurt you. It doesn't make the abuse a gift or erase what it cost. It means refusing to let the harm have the final word.

The shame was never theirs to carry. The responsibility was never theirs to bear. And accountability should never be optional for the person who caused the harm.