Truly Frightening: the 4 kinds of DV abusers that keep me, a survivor-rights lawyer, up at night

Most domestic violence abusers are not scary monsters.

This is not to say that the things they did to their victims are not monstrous.

Rather, when I experience abusers as an attorney, I see them at the end of the natural end of the battle. They've been named an abuser. In ink. Called to a coutroom, in an ill-fitting suit, sweating, pale, rendered small and scared and cowardly. The judge- most often a woman, in my experience- in a nondescript local courtroom, has put them on the stand and the abuser looks as weak as they truly are. Sometimes the abuser tries to make the illusion of being bigger than they really are by being surrounded by supporters; however, they immediately regret it when those same supporters have to reckon with themselves when they see the evidence of abuse with their own eyes- photos of bruises, toddler tantrum-like broken property, text messages using some of the nastiest threats known to mankind. Run-of-the-mill abusers are focused only on their reputations, their custody, their jobs, their gun ownership, their wallets- and they look like soup, puddling. The Swamp Thing melting. The Scooby Doo villian getting his mask ripped off in the public square.

My clients, in comparison, emerge from the courtroom like the final girl before the credits roll. They are here, they have survived, and they will rebuild and have a life and freedom away from their abuser. They are 100-feet tall and standing in their own power. I get the same feeling from my clients in protection order court after having stared down their abuser to get the safety that they need as I do from my asylum-seeking clients emerging from immigration court, having fled their abusers for safe harbors after experiencing horrific crimes- Female Genital Mutilation, forced marriage, extreme domestic violence, or institutional r*pe. Telling the truth makes them heroes.

However, this rule-of-thumb applies to most of my cases. Most abusers are not scary monsters. DV is so normalized and everday. According to the CDC, approximately 41% of women and 26% of men in the United States experience intimate partner physical violence, contact sexual violence, and/or stalking in their lifetime. That means you know both survivors and abusers, right now. Abusers are dime a dozen- united by cowardice, low self-esteem, a lack of emotional intelligence, unchecked social relationships, anger issues, and opportunity.

However, a few categories of abusers I've come across in my legal career- from protection order court to immigration law with special visas for survivors of persecution, trafficking, or qualifying crimes- have given me true chills. Sharing about them is NOT to give them any kind of attention or power. It is to share both awareness that they exist out there and to understand how amazing my clients are for escaping and surviving them. They have taken away their abusers' power through sheer heroics.

Could I have been so strong? Could you?

The Stalker is sheer pathological. You know in Halloween, when Dr. Loomis is insisting to literally everyone that Michael Myers isn't human, and it took six gunshots ("SIX!") and a fiery sequel explosion for everyone to realize that nothing will stop this subhuman being? That is the Stalker. The Stalker is hollow. There is no real life built around them. They don't care about their jobs, their families, their stablity- they are singularly focused on the object of their obsession. There is no love, only hate. Hatred against this person to take away their safety, their normalcy, their mental and physical peace.

Stalking using the internet has become more than common place. AirTags, phone tracking apps, now even Flock. There is no institutional trust in the surveillance state- take the 5 Indy police officers who were just charged for using Flock to stalk partners and exes. The term that all the articles are missing for this crime- domestic violence.

For a true horror watch that will not leave your brain ever, watch Netflix's 8-part docuseries "I Am a Stalker" in which real inmates reveal their stalking and so-called motives. There is no real emotion in their confessions, and I'm sure their participation in the series is only due to the hope that it ties them back to their victim in some way. There is always a delusional reason- "we're in love", "this celebrity is sending me unique signals", "if only he'd let me talk to him, he'd understand why I'm doing this"- but it is meaningless to care about the why of stalking. The only thing that matters is the how to get it to stop, which cannot ever come with reasoning with a stalker. Only law enforcement and extreme security measures can stop a stalker- which is why it is so crucial that police and law enforcement take stalking concerns seriously.

Stalking is the sheer worst for a lawyer ((obvi obvi way worse for the survivor but I'm just speaking from my own experience here)). Yes, there is a treasure trove of evidence, where most forms of abuse do not have clear proof (like verbal and emotional abuse and coercion and control). It would literally be hours of my work day, just sorting through screenshots of hundreds of calls from burner phones, each one being blocked just for another many-headed beast to appear. It would be text after text of "I'm going to hurt myself if you don't answer" followed by photos of her car or house or parent's house. It would be Ring camera footage of the Stalker's car off in the distance, watching at all hours. It would be creepy handmade gifts left at her door, like a photo album or napkin poems or teddy bears, like a cat leaving a dead bird. Stalkers would call kids' schools, or apartment complexes, or jobs, pretending to be a relative to get information. Stalkers would have GoogleAlerts and scour the internet for the victim's locations, to send emails to anyone connected their victim.

Cops got there too late and would just say, "well, call us if he shows up again." Sometimes the Stalker would audaciously use the system itself- calling the police, calling in endless welfare checks against their victim, or CPS calls, or small claims lawsuits. It took sustained advocacy to get the system to side with our client and to lay down the law against the stalker to stop using the system against the client.

I once told a judge that the Stalker was using a motion to continue for "undue delay," as he clearly got off on forcing his victim to have to go to court and see him again. Just the thought sent my client into hysterics. The judge said that she didn't doubt it, but it was his due process right. The Stalker was downright gleeful until I requested that all future hearings be held virtually, so my client didn't have to be in the same room as the Stalker again. Most judges wouldn't allow this, unfortunately, as post-Covid rules encourage in-person hearings. However, hearing just a little bit of the case, the judge agreed and the Stalker was pissed, immediately yelling "that's not fair!" The Judge told him off but he had gotten what he wanted- more of my client's time and peace of mind. I told my client to wait with me until he left the building when the hearing concluded. As he walked around our table, he brushed a finger against the wood and started whistling a jaunty tune. The Judge and I looked at each other, each knowing exactly what this creep was doing. Fuck that guy.

Stalking survivors are the very strongest. Stalking, like choking, carries extreme risk of fatality. It takes the abuser being locked up or moving on to a new victim. Some survivors I know were never even in relationships with their abuser, who fixated on them after innocous interactions, and now have a strange forever tie to this weirdo. One survivor I knew was trafficked and it was a john who then stalked her- just crime on crime on crime; she is now thriving but it has taken her decades. Survivors move states, move countries, move mountains for their safety, and oftentimes, all for their children to know peace. I am in awe of every survivor I met, noting however, that they receive the least justice of all of my clients, as what they will never be given back the time and anguish they suffered.

The Twisted Romantic's whole pathology is contained in one single statement - "If I can't have you, no one can." This is clearly not love, but hate.

Some Twisted Romantics are Stalkers as well, however it is about the culmination of their pathology. Stalkers want to get their victim back in their grasp. Twisted Romantics, when they get to that point, do not want sustained relationships with their victims. They are not capable of it. They will inevitably force their victim to try to leave over and over again, and they know this. They know their victims want to leave. That's why they turn to the ultimate evil- they will inevitably kill or maim their victim in a disgusting show of power, so that no other man will ever have them or want them ever again. The Twisted Romantics don't care that they will go to jail, or be killed by police in a standoff, or they end up killing themselves. They wanted to do the ultimate harm at any cost.

Twisted Romantics will display every other form of abuse (physical, verbal, emotional, financial, control, etc) before getting to this point. They are extreme and talented lovebombers, who make their victims question their reality when their mask slips for the first time. By the time their victim realizes exactly who they are, they have become isolated, manipulated, and completely reliant. Twisted Romantics weaponize the patriarchy, using normalized themes like being protective, being stronger, being the leader, being jealous of other men to contextualize their actions. Their victims blame themselves and often go back to them, as many survivors do (it takes an average of 7 attempts to leave an abuser). However, these victims may not get the time to make these attempts.

Twisted Romantics use fatal force to stop their victims from leaving. The only survivors I work with who experienced these types are only alive because their abuser couldn't kill them, not for lack of trying. Faulty guns or missed shots, extremely long hospital stays reviving the victims from the brink of death, black and blue marks around their necks, and vein ruptures in their eyes. Extreme maiming, resulting in acid on their face, a permanent limp, cut-off toes, scars criss-crossing torsos. Survivors' bodies have kept the score of a "love" turned posessive, a hatred turned killer. One Twisted Romantic even killed himself in front of his victim, in an attempt to fuck her up forever. She will be okay, in time. She will survive this. Twisted Romantics need to be overpowered, they need to be in jail, and their actions need to be classified at what it truly is - attempted murder.

The Victim is an abuser in sheep's clothing. He is really not to blame- never to blame- for his actions. It isn't his fault his ex is crazy. It isn't his fault that she was acutally a cheater, always flirting with other guys, always making him feel small. She's the bad one. She's the one who is saying all this crazy stuff, when he's just trying to move on. His new girlfriend shouldn't listen to the rumors. The Victim weaponizes therapy speak, a mental health diagnosis, a terrible childhood, lack of life opportunities. These are real things, which makes it even harder to distinguish what reality is.

The Victim drives their survivors crazy. The survivors doubt what happened to them, because no one believes them. Or they believe that maybe they really are bad, and their abuser is really a nice guy, because everyone else seems to think so. This mindfuckery is best depicted in Cazzie David's movie "I Love You Forever." The movie is allegedly about her real-life toxic relationship with famous Nice-Guy-Who-We-All-Know-Is-Not-So-Nice-But-Still-Given-Commercial-Gigs SNL comedian Pete Davidson. In the movie, the lead girl is being kept up late in hours-long arguments, being screamed at for being so inconsiderate to him when all he does is love her, and even his therapist agrees that she is so manipulative to him, and her friends all hate him because of the lies she tells them, and as spit is flying in her face as she is sleep-deprived and just desperate for it all to stop, she is the one tearfully apologizing. When these survivors are brave enough to leave, it means everything to them to finally be believed about the abuse, because their reality had been so warped.

I put the Victim on this list not because he is big and powerful and scary. No, he is not. But the consequences to his actions are scary. He noramlizes the national narrative that domestic violence survivors are liars. They are weak women who stay. They are promiscuous women who had children with different men. They are r*pe victims who first said that it was consensual in the terrifying hours after the assault, who then understand what happened to them when the trauma settles in. They are the bitches who cause sweet, innocent college boys to write essays, or lose scholarships, or go to trial. They selfishly make a golden-boy athlete pay "a steep price for 20 minutes of action." It is the survivors' fault for these Nice Guys having an offensively small taste of accountability. They are imperfect and flawed, like Amber Heard, when Nice Guy Johnny Depp, who wrote the words "I will f--- her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead", is now starring in kids' Christmas movies.

The Victims I saw petitioned for Protective Orders against my clients- the real DV survivors. Retalitory protective orders are a nasty hidden secret in DV law. It's very common. The Victim shows a text from the survivor who said something in anger out of context, when the real abuse is like an iceberg under the surface. They use photos of injuries they sustained from their survivors fighting them off or protecting themselves. "Look judge, she scratched me!!" without saying...."after I took her phone and car keys and told her I would beat the shit out of her in front of her kids..."

I once knew a survivor whose abuser had been undocumented but got his citizenship. He had used his status as power over her undocumented status, threatening to call ICE when she tried to leave him. "How'd he get his citizenship?" I asked. Just the ultimate insult to injury. He had applied for a U-Visa, a special visa meant only for victims of certain crimes, after alleging DV from a relationship with an ex-girlfriend. He beat her, she hit him in his face trying to get him off of her, he called the police on her because he spoke English and she did not. He used the bruise as proof of abuse, and got his citizenship after many years. Now, he stays in this country, beating new partners.

I fought off many protective order requests by Victims for my clients. It takes the Judge a lot to understand the dynamics, to overcome the prejudice of my client being on the wrong side of a summons. I have asked tough questions of my clients in front of immigration judges to help the judge understand why survivors don't leave, why they can't go to police in their home countries who would just tell them that they are their husband's property to do with what they want and to go home.

I also think that the Victim, in his worst form, is a family annilator. He is the man who would rather his wife die than divorce her. He is not a Twisted Romantic, who doesn't think about his future. No, the Victim is worse. He is a plotter, a conniver. He has a new girlfriend and a new life he wants to pursue. His wife, or affair partner, or pregnant girlfriend, or his children- they are in the way of his wants, his future. He has no choice but to kill them off to build his new life, all while posing as the weepy widow who has survived the unimaginable, who benefits from casseroles, and TV specials, and donations. The Victim is not creative or self-aware enough to see that his act won't hold up forever.

The Victim makes the complicated reality of DV even harder to combat, which is why they make the list.

Female abusers are a hard pill for me to swallow. Domestic abuse is a gendered crime. This is true. It disproportionately affects women and is a symptom of patriarchial societies that subjugate females and LGBTQ+ folk with laws, social norms, and systemic violence. However, it is also true that women can be abusers, but society is way worse in holding them to justice and offering support to their survivors, either men or women.

There's a funny internet meme that goes something like "I Support Women's Rights and Women's Wrongs." However, it should be used for like, when a girlie hits a curb or something. I don't find it funny at all when it is used on a TikTok trend entitled "30 Day Challenge to Drive Your Ex Crazy" that essentially is just a heinous list of DV where a girl stalks and psychologically terrorizes an ex. It isn't heehee hawhaw if a girl drives over her boyfriend with her car, a 3,000-lb weapon. It isn't funny when a girl slaps her boyfriend, even if he's bigger than her, like Allie in The Notebook (it's crazy btw that the movie is an iconic romance- they both displayed toxic and abusive traits!).

I would say that my clients' gender and abusers' gender match national averages. About 20% of my clients are men. About 10% of the abusers were women. However, the services available to them are much more limited. The familial support and cultural understanding are often very limited. Of course, you may ask yourself- huh just above you said that some abusers lie and say that they are victims. How do you know? How can you tell when men are victims?

Well, that's just it. Men have a harder time being believed. That U-Visa mentioned above? There was so much fraud by people who were not abused exploiting the immigration process that now U-Visas and similar immigration paths like VAWA have a steeper bias against male applicants. I want to stop fraud. But I also don't want my clients to have discriminatory discretion just because of their gender. When you work in the field long enough, you learn quickly who memorized a story, and who lived it in their bones. Fear, lived in long enough, leaves its mark. Opportunists can't fake that.

My male clients suffer the exact same PTSD, the same anxiety and depression, the same financial struggles trying to leave. When they tell their stories, it follows the same patterns of behavior from survivors. Some things they don't even identify as abuse because it was so normalized, like sexual coercion or verbal abuse or weaponized cultural norms or control over food, social relationships, access to children. They involuntarily shake when they learn that they would have to see their abuser in protection order or divorce court. I have watched weeping men slap themselves to stop crying because it isn't "macho" or because it was embarrasing. I have shed tears with them because I know that the system will not show them empathy.

One male client called the police who told him "you can just hit your partner back" and didn't take it seriously at all. One male client bravely called the police and tried to press charges, but the prosecutors flubbed the case so,so bad, citing lack of evidence despite a sizeable knife scar still visible on my client's chest. He didn't even get an apology from them. The victim advocate from the prosecutor's office never contacted him. One client was essentially a sex slave while his abuser held his immigration status, lack of English, and lack of being able to earn income over his head. He had to recount being forced to engage in sex more times than he could count on the stand in front of a full courtroom to get his protective order; the opposing counsel asked him "but you were never physically harmed, right?" I stood up for that objection. In what world would a woman have been asked that question?

I once met with a male client who was supported by his friend there. They both laughed through the consult, like "remember how crazy she was?" and "she'd always take his phone and text like she was him" and "I couldn't hit her back when she hit me because I'd never hit a woman" and "she said she'd kill me all the time." I told them that I was glad that he had great support and a great friend but it really wasn't funny. It was abuse. It was a crime. Both of the men sobered immediately. My client said, "well, we laugh to keep from crying." His friend said "I watched him for months suffer, feeling so alone. I was so scared for him." Seeing how they both had suffered, they both started crying. I'll admit, I cried too...and then gave a discount.

I don't want to laugh about the Female Abuser. I want to stop her, and the costume she can hide behind of being pretty, or harmless, or just a girl.

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At the end of the day, these Abusers have karma coming for them- their biggest fright of all.