I have written and researched extensively at a graduate level over the past few years about abuse, trauma, and recovery. I have plumbed the personal depths of this source of human suffering, but I feel I have only scratched the traumatic Teflon surface of elite deviance.
We have a long way to go.
Victimization flung me out of my professional career into the academic study of abuse. I now hold the opinion that we must study the social, political, psychological, theological, and judicial spokes in the wheels that run over others through predation. If we can move but one cog, everything shifts. The pedagogy of predation and the abuse of power must become praxis in the pursuit of equity, justice, accountability, and liberation.
“Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.” –
As a child I barely survived polyvictimization by a low brow brute of a man. I ran ahead into my future with the plan to never look back. I naively assumed adulthood would bring liberty — what awaited me was more polished, high brow predators. Three years of trauma informed care and the grad school of human suffering was categorically not where I expected to be in my 40’s.
Yet, here we be.
I will graduate with my Masters in May 2020 from this academia of abuse and this school of suffering — with a new sense of self, the fresh capacity to self protect, we well as wisdom for the rest of the way. The pedagogy of predation, victimization, disclosure, justice, and restoration is profoundly complicated. Let us not simplify the path.
It’s complicated.
There are no easy answers in this swampland of victimization and predation. There is a map, but it is most definitely not the territory. There is no “one size fits all solution” — the rivers of run from crimson to ebony in this ocean of injustice. A diligent recalibration of the compass is required.
[Tweet “There are no easy answers in this swampland of victimization and predation. There is a map, but it is most definitely not the territory. There is no “one size fits all solution” — the rivers of run from crimson to ebony in this ocean of injustice. A diligent recalibration of the compass is required.]
Last year I attended the Courage Conference, a collection of strong survivors. Brilliant were the attendees — we are a deeply beautiful people. We must rise into our rightful places, stand in our spheres of influence, and be the change we wish to see.
Be the change.
This year I attended the American Academy of Violence and Abuse Global Summit on abuse. I listened face to face to some of the foremost experts on #abuse whose work I have been tracking from afar. A long private conversation with one of the conveners convinced me that it is insufficient to address one cog in the wheel of oppression—we must look at the whole of the problem.
Abuse is a ubiquitous problem — so must be the solutions.
While I have come to the conclusion that abuse is nothing if not complicated…. I do know this for certain:
There is no thing that oppressors will surrender; no confession; no platform; no power; no position; no concessions; no compassion; no education; no information; no liberty — without you and I collectively campaigning for it.
Be advised.
People who engage in abuse of power, wish to disarticulate forgiveness from justice, the end from the means, and humans from their own humanity. They wrongly divide — brutally amputating the bone of justice from the marrow of malfeasance and they call it good.
It is not.
People who abuse others categorically dehumanize them. The victim, their family, their vocation, their health, their body, their relationships, their future — none of that matters to the powerful and persuasive predator. You are a victim of a predatory power play; fresh flesh to fill their empty chests; a malfeasant meal along the way. They will eat you alive, wipe you out, then wipe their mouth, and proudly proclaim they have done nothing wrong. To defend themselves, the stupid ones cling to their illiteracy, the smarter ones can speak seamlessly, using their skewed but sharp minds. While the climate is slowly shifting — there are many who have a vested interested in remaining blind to the betrayal in their midst.
If that’s not enough elite deviants will silence their victims and detractors. They will force them into NDA’s, they will litigate to the point of incalculable loss, they will terrify victims into silence, and all the while they will ensure that anyone who dares to blow the whistle is demonized and definitively demolished. These are the actions of a despot — like him or not.
Be prepared.