What do you know on mutual abuse? I see so many people claiming now that they were both horrible, it was both of their faults, itâs their mess or whatever. And I just struggle to believe that since Amber has always consistently backed anything up with very believable self defence claims and other evidence.
hi anon! i know you sent this message a while ago, but i wanted to wait until i had time to give a good answer bc i feel like this is such an important question!
most domestic violence experts would say that mutual abuse doesn't exist, or that relationships in which there is mutual (sometimes called symmetrical) abuse are extremely extremely extremely rare.
this is really rooted in the definition of domestic violence (or domestic abuse, or intimate partner violence, etc.).
if you're working in the criminal justice system - a cop, a prosecutor, etc. - you might define domestic violence as engaging in specific actions. if on Monday night, Joey tells Anna he's going to kill her and dump her corpse in the ocean, he committed domestic violence. if six weeks later, Anna and Joey get into a screaming match and Anna slaps Joey in the face, then she committed domestic violence. those two incidents of violence were unconnected, and both could result in criminal charges (criminal threats & misdemeanor battery, respectively). a cop might look at this set of facts and say, "that's a mutually abusive relationship".
this, by the way, is exactly what I think happened in the depp v. heard case. AH admitted to things that she did (shoving, hitting, insulting). Those are specific actions that, in isolation, could be looked at as domestic violence. the jury seemed to believe that there were incidents in which depp abused AH, but they also seemed to believe that there were incidents where AH abused depp. therefore AH saying that she was a victim was untrue, or at least incomplete; the jury looked at her as both a victim and an abuser.
that's not the definition that domestic violence experts use. we define domestic violence as a pattern of behavior used by one partner to exert power and control over the other. experts define domestic violence much more broadly than just specific acts. to get a sense of the whole picture that a domestic violence expert would consider when evaluating a potentially abusive relationship, you can check out the Duluth Power and Control Wheel.
generally, in abusive relationships, one party has a greater amount of power and exerts a greater amount of control. some laws define that person as the "primary aggressor" or "dominant aggressor".
so, in the depp v. heard case, we have undisputed evidence that depp is significantly more famous. he has significantly greater financial resources. he is an extremely famous and wealthy straight white man who married an up-and-coming bisexual woman. there is video, audio, text message, email, and photographic evidence of him threatening AH, destroying her property, verbally abusing AH, accusing AH of infidelity (and using her bisexual identity against her as part of the infidelity accusations), limiting her ability to sign on to movies, take meetings, etc which combine isolation and economic abuse, etc.
in this context, when AH insults depp, or even slaps or shoves depp, even if she's the first person in a particular incident to slap or shove, domestic violence experts would say that AH is engaging in self-defense or reactive violence.
Here's what the National Domestic Violence Hotline has to say.
Almost all domestic violence experts agree that the concept of mutual abuse is an invented narrative, created by abusers as a way of shifting blame, and perpetuated by a society that - sometimes overtly and sometimes on a deeply subconscious level - doesn't believe women when they speak about their experiences. (X) (X) (X)
Mindy Mechanic, PhD, clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at California State University Fullerton who focuses on interpersonal violence: "What might be perceived as mutual violence is often violent resistanceâthatâs violence in response to violence, not violence used to control a partner. They donât initiate the violence, and they donât use it with the motivation of limiting agency or controlling a partner... Theyâre using it either defensively or preemptively. But it can look on the surface like mutual abuse if youâre not looking at whoâs initiating and whoâs in control.â (X)
Ruth Glenn, president and CEO of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) â argues that in every incident between two people, there is always a primary aggressor. A person who defends themselves against this aggression may appear to be abusive, but it is not the same as the pattern of power and control that is the hallmark of domestic violence. Similarly, people in a relationship may engage in situational violence. Without a pattern of abuse and control, however, situational violence is not considered domestic violence.
Charlotte Proudman, a prominent family law lawyer who specializes in gender-based violence: "These terms [mutual abuse] are commonly used by the defense to âminimize the domestic abuse by suggesting that they are both complicit in it, rather than that thereâs a victim and a perpetrator... The strategy is common because it can be effective â especially when the professionals involved, from psychologists to judges and lawyers, have not received specialist training in domestic abuse and trauma. It can be deceptively easy to characterize a violent incident as a âmatrimonial dispute that has got out of hand but once you understand wider context and the underlying power dynamic, you are usually able to identify a clear victim and perpetrator. What matters is not only the crude facts â what each party said or did â but the bigger questions, such as who holds the most power, physically and financially, or who might be especially vulnerable..." (X)
Sarah Davidge, the head of research and evaluation at Womenâs Aid UK: Terms such as âmutual abuseâ need to be understood in the context of gender inequality. Last year the domestic violence charity conducted joint research with the University of Bristol on how gendered narratives shape survivorsâ experiences of domestic abuse and attempts to seek justice. It found that sexist stereotyping leads women to frequently be described as âhystericalâ or âover-emotionalâ, which means that they are less likely to be believed when they come forward with abuse claims and are less likely to receive support. âWithout properly exploring that context, and the impact of fear and control, thereâs a real danger in using labels like reciprocal violence and mutual abuse, because it can mask harms and obscure who wields the power,â she said. âThat then serves to excuse abusers for their violence and abusive actions.â (X)
tl;dr: mutual abuse is a myth. the depp v. heard trial suffered greatly because there were no domestic violence experts testifying to contextualize the violence. when taking into account the power differential + depp's history of using both physical and non-physical abusive behaviors to exert power and control over AH, it is clear that depp is a primary, or dominant aggressor. it is clear that individual incidents of what appear to be verbal or physical abuse from AH are, in fact, common manifestations of self-defense and/or reactive violence, occuring within a broader campaign of emotional, physical and verbal abuse and patterns of coercive control utilized by depp.
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