SPOT THE REVERSAL

Most of us have seen it happen. When abusers are exposed, they switch the script and rewrite the narrative to make themselves the hurt ones. 

The example I’ll use here is the racist offender who works to convince their victim and any observors that they deserved the abuse somehow; that it’s the victim’s fault.

This tendency is documented widely and known academically as DARVO, introduced by Dr. Jennifer Freyd in 1997: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender is a three step behaviour that is classical and typical of an abuser.

DARVO is an incredibly effective tactic used by most racists and their supporters.  But it’s possible to spot it.  Here are the signs.

Denial:  Even if the proof of their racism is explicit, the abuser will either refuse to acknowledge it happened, or will minimise it.  “You’re being crazy.”  “How can you think that about me?”  “I’d never say something like that.”  “Can’t you take a joke?”

Here’s the wild thing: even when we have the proof in our hands, because we don’t like to take sides, the moment the abuser denies it, the easiest place to go is to “hear both sides of the story.”

The minute the abuser has you believing that their side of the story is just as valid as the victim’s, you’ve taken the first step down a rabbit hole of misinformation and deception.

Attack:  Now that you’re doubting the victim’s story, the racist can start tearing away at the foundations of support for the victim.  “As if you’ve never made a mistake before! Take a look at yourself.” 

This builds on our preference to believe that bad things don’t happen to good people. So, the victim can’t be perfect and they must have done something to deserve being abused.

The final step is to reverse victim and offender:  Now that the abuser has us potentially believing them, they flip the switch and start talking about themselves as the victim. “I’m being attacked.”  “This is a witch hunt!”  “I am hurt.”

Racists have been known, when challenged over their abuse, to burst into tears. 

As a society, we hate to believe that bad things can happen to people who don’t deserve it because that opens up the frightening possibility that it could happen to us.  So, we are predisposed to believe the abuser’s point of view and we are more likely to question or challenge the victim; ‘What did you do to deserve this?’  ‘What do you hope to achieve by talking about this?’ 

The thing is, innocent people don’t use these DARVO techniques. They’ll deny a false accusation, sure, but not in this over-exaggerated pattern of reversing the attack.

The three steps of DARVO are correlated, meaning that when a racist or their supporters do one, they tend to do all of them.   The good news is that it’s easy to spot it in the news and in real life and to call it out.