My Voice of Influence colleague, Rosanne Moore, is back on the show to break down destructive myths surrounding coercive control and abuse of power.

We’ve broken fourteen myths into two groups that will be split between this episode and the next.

In this episode, Rosanne shares what the dynamics of abuse of power and coercive control, the importance of understanding the myths around abuse of power and coercive control, the truth behind the seven myths below.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Free Resource Download and Lifeline Course Information (You can also text VOILIFELINE to 44222)
• Read Rachael Denhollander’s full victim impact statement about Larry Nassar

 

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have with me Rosanne Moore.  She is in the business with Voice of Influence.  She does a lot of incredible things, and we’ve had her on before where we’ve visited about your expertise, Rosanne.  We’re going to go a little bit deeper into that today.

And the reason why this particular topic is important is that the idea of having a voice is the foundation of what we do with Voice of Influence.  And when somebody comes across an abuse of power – in particular in their own lives – it takes their voice away.  It makes it very difficult for them to be able to have agency in their lives to make a difference and do the things that they want to do.

And so today, we’re going to start a two-episode series on the myths that are related to this abuse of power.

Andrea: So, Rosanne, thank you so much for being here again today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Rosanne Moore:  That is my pleasure.  I’ve been looking forward to this.

Andrea:  So when we’re talking about this abuse of power, first of all, can you just sort of give us a summary overview of what the dynamics of abusive power would look like in a relationship or in any particular setting?

Rosanne Moore:  Well, my background is a domestic abuse situation.  I came into that with a lot of the common misconceptions about what was involved in domestic violence, domestic abuse.  And what I’ve learned is the dynamics of abuse and abusive power are not necessarily about violence, physical violence.  They’re about coercive control.  And that can take place in a church.  It can take place in a business.  It can take place in a marriage.  It can take place between parents and children, and it can happen in a totalitarian regime if you look at what happened in Nazi Germany, for instance, or other totalitarian governments, North Korea.

And so when you learn about the dynamics of coercive control, there are a lot of different applications for them. 

So I guess, when we’re talking about abuse in a home, there are broad applications for what coercive control can look like in relationships.

Andrea:  So, today, we’re going to be tackling it.  You and I worked really hard on… you kind of sharing with me a lot of information, and then we distilled this into a bunch of myths that people believe.  And why is it important that we understand the difference between myth and reality?

Rosanne Moore:  Because a big part of coercive control is able to take place because of people who are decent, good people who believe wrong things.   And so they reinforce the power of the abusive person without even realizing it just by believing things that are not true that make it very difficult for a person who is being abused to escape the power of the abuser.

Andrea:  So a voice of influence is somebody who cares about this.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.

Andrea:  If you are listening to this podcast, you’re somebody who cares, and you want the people that you lead, you want the people that you work with, you want the people that have any kind of influence on to have a voice.  You want them to feel empowered and be able to make a difference in their own lives and in the realms of their influence.

And so the reason why we’re tackling this today is because we believe that it is fundamental.  It is absolutely imperative that voices of influence have a very clear understanding of what is myth and what is reality when it comes to these dynamics of coercive control as Rosanne was saying.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  And in any business or any group, it’s just important to know that a large percentage of the people that you’re dealing with, people in society have experienced some level of abuse at some point in their lives.  They may be currently in it.  It may have happened to them earlier, and it has long-term impact for them.

So, being aware of that and understanding the dynamics and the things that you can do to help a person recover their voice and bring all of who they are, and all of their gifts, and all the things that they learned; because people who come out of abusive situations are survivors, and they have a lot of gifts to offer.  And so understanding that and being able to help utilize their gifts and help them in the process of recovery is really valuable.

Andrea:  All right.  Now, we also want you to know that Rosanne has compiled a list of resources that, in particular, would be beneficial to a woman who is leaving an abusive relationship.  Is that right, Rosanne?

 

Rosanne Moore:  It is.  And because my experience, and the domestic abuse situation, in general, tends to be disproportionately applicable to women, that’s what we’re going focus on.  I do want to acknowledge from the outset that there are relationships where the woman is the abuser, and the man is the one who’s being victimized.  The dynamics of that are slightly different, and so I want to acknowledge that and the reality of that and the pain of that.

But I do want to say that today, the pronouns that we’re going to use are, you know, female pronouns for the victim and male pronouns for the perpetrator simply because that’s the most common in a domestic violence situation between intimate partners.  That can be different when there are parents and children involved.

But that’s what we’re going to be looking at today.  And the list of resources that we have, while it is primarily targeted toward women in abusive situations, there are going to be really good resources that will be applicable to anybody who’s coming out of some form of abuse.

Andrea:  So if you would like to download that list of resources, please, we encourage you to do so.  If you know somebody that needs them or if you need them… and if you know somebody that needs to hear this podcast episode, we want this to be a resource that is available to you and this list of resources to be available for further help.  And so, you can get that list of resources by texting to the number 44222, text the letters VOI – that’s for Voice of Influence – VOILIFELINE.  So you’re texting VOILIFELINE to the number 44222, and you can download that list of resources.  And we will also have it available at voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline.

All right, and then I want to also mention too that Rosanne is working on a very helpful course that would be not just a list of resources, but it is something that we will talk about a little bit more here at the end.  But I wanna just let you know that there is a very affordable course that is coming that could really help women who are just coming out of an abusive relationship.

Okay, Rosanne, let’s start sharing these myths that have to do with coercive control and the way that people kind of look at it.  So, today, we’ll share seven of them and then we will share seven more in the next episode.  Okay, so, first of all, the first myth that we identified was that, “People get targeted for abuse because they are weak or gullible.”

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

Andrea:  Rosanne, why is this not true?

Rosanne Moore:  You have to understand that an abuser is looking to make themselves large by breaking down someone else.  There’s no great thrill in destroying someone who is already destroyed.  Actually, what researchers have found is that abusers target people who have strength that they admire.  They are looking to dominate and to break down someone who is strong, who is independent.  For women in particular, the qualities that they look for is somebody who is kind, empathetic, and interesting.

So, essentially, it’s the very strength that a person has that makes them a target.  It’s not weakness; it’s strength.  And that’s true for cults.  I’ve done some research around cults because while there are people who just take pleasure in doing evil, period, you know – so they don’t really care who the target is, they just enjoy doing evil – most abusers get something out of the fight, out of destroying someone who is resistant to their domination, which means they have to have the strength to resist.

Andrea:  All right, so don’t believe the myth that people get targeted for abuse just because they’re weak or gullible.  So whether you’re the person that is in the situation where you’re being taken advantage of or abused, or if you are just society at large thinking about people, hearing stories, just don’t believe that myth.

Okay, so, number two; “If you are impacted by trauma, you are weak.”  First of all, what do you mean by that, Rosanne, and then explain why that’s not true.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  So when people are impacted by trauma, often those who are seeing them afterward are thinking, “Well, why did they respond that way?  Why didn’t they just do x, y, z?”  They should have just been able to see that the person was lying.”  They should have just been able to fight back in this particular way that the healthy person sees as a rational response.  What people fail to understand is trauma changes the brain.

A domestic abuse victim responds very much the way a POW does.  And now you stop and think about that.  A military prisoner of war has been trained for battle.  They’ve been trained to prepare for the possibility of being captured.  And yet the impact of trauma on the brain, on the body means that they typically respond in some very predictable ways.  The trauma is designed to break down the brain of the other person, the rational thought processes of another person.

We are made for healthy relationships.  We are not made to live closely with people who are trying to do us constant harm.  And so women who are in abusive relationships are basically in a hostage situation.  Whereas in a prisoner of war situation, you went into it knowing who the enemy was; in an intimate abuse situation, you went into it believing this was a person who loved you most and was going to be most for you in your life, and yet they’re actually out to destroy you.

And so it’s very common for people to misunderstand the response of somebody who has been injured by trauma and say, “Why don’t they just…” and you can fill in that blank many, many ways, when in fact the person is behaving in ways that are typical of someone who has been deeply traumatized.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Okay, and we talk about trauma again, I think, later and maybe even in the next episode, Rosanne.  But I think just the understanding that trauma changes you and it makes it difficult for you to think and rationally is so important, especially around anything that’s triggering.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  And you can’t just muscle your way out of it, and you can’t just rise above it in the midst of it.  There’s a level at which healing can’t really come until you’re outside of the thing that is harming you.  You can survive it.  There are many, many people who survive horrifically traumatic situations and they managed to, you know, pull out the strength that they need to survive that situation.  But for them to really be restored to health, they need to get outside of the traumatic situation – not still be under assault – to begin the healing process.

Andrea:  All right, number three; “If it’s really that bad then you could just leave, right?”  Rosanne, why is that not necessarily true?  And we’re not just talking about, you know, intimate partner relationships right now.  This definitely applies in many different situations.  So why is it not so easy to leave?

Rosanne Moore:  Well, in a marriage, you have legal things holding you into the marriage, for one thing.  It doesn’t usually become apparent what’s happening.  One of the things about abuse that people misunderstand is when you’re in a coercive control relationship, the abused person frequently doesn’t know they’re being abused.  They just know that something’s not right.  And so their go-to usually is, “What is it about me that I need to change for this situation to change?”  Which in general, if you think about it, is a healthy thing, you know.  The thing that you have the most control over usually is yourself.

And so it’s a healthy reality for a person to want to look at their own part and their own ability to change.  The problem in a coercive control situation, the victim is not the problem, and so no amount of change on their part is going to change the dynamic of the situation.  In general, though, there are many things; there are financial concerns, there are legal things that bind a person into a relationship, there are practical things like housing if you’re in a marriage. And a person who is abusing through coercive control systematically undermines the support system of their target.  And so they are removing options at every turn, so just leaving isn’t simple.

In an employment situation, a person can’t just leave.  I mean, they have to live, they have to have a job.  When we look at what happened with Larry Nassar in targeting elite athletes, in order for them to compete for the Olympics or for these top things for which they were training, they were in the midst of a system that was in itself abusive.  And it wasn’t just Nassar; it was the whole way that the Olympic committee was set up the way that they protected abusive coaches, et cetera.  And so just leaving is not simple.

For women who have children, just leaving doesn’t get their children out.   When you have a person who is physically violent, just leaving can escalate the violence and can end up getting you killed.  And so there has to be a recognition that leaving is a complicated process, and there are a lot of pieces to it.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t, but it means that instead of just assuming, “If it’s really bad, you could just leave…”  That’s not reality.

Again, back to the POW thing, “Why don’t POWs just leave?”  There are a lot of answers to that question and none of them are simply within the power of the person being victimized.  There’s need for outside help.

Andrea:  All right, so myth number four; “You really need to stick with it.  Be loyal.  You need to stick with it because for the greater good.”

Rosanne Moore:  For the greater good, yeah.  In the context of marriage, people are told, you know, “Our society is breaking down because of divorce and you made a promise,” and in some cases it’s, you know, “You made a promise before God, and you need to stick with it.”  If you are dealing with a coercive control situation, you are dealing with someone who is systematically seeking to do harm.  There is no greater good that is being served by protecting an abusive person.

People say that… you know, they try to silence a victim because they don’t want to have to deal with the discomfort.  They don’t know what to do with it.  And they don’t want to have to deal with the discomfort of finding out the truth and finding out that the world isn’t as neat and tidy as they’d like to believe it is, and it’s wrong.  What they’re essentially saying when they say that for the greater good is they’re saying, “My comfort in avoiding this is more important than the fact that you are at risk and you are being sacrificed.”

Andrea:  And how do you see that playing out?  I know that sometimes it has to do with maybe parents who feel shame about the fact that maybe their child is now getting a divorce, or people in a church or a religious environment where they don’t like the fact that somebody is actually thinking that they need to leave. “No, you need to stay.”  And why is that so important to people?  I mean, it’s comfort on one hand, but what else?  What else is that?

Rosanne Moore:  Well, I think we have to go back to what is true.  Does truth matter?  If the truth of the relationship is you’ve got somebody who is seeking to do harm, then to try to silence the person who is asking for help is enabling evil.  And I think part of the time, what happens is people don’t understand the dynamics of what’s taking place.  There are things, in a church setting that are said like, “You know, you’re harming the name or the reputation of Christ,” for instance, if a victim of sexual abuse comes forward and names a leader in the church or even just somebody who’s prominent in the church.  People don’t want to hear that, and they’ll frequently say, “You’re hurting the church.  You’re hurting the name of Christ.”

So there’s this idea that if the victim is silent, it’s going to serve the greater good of the community.  But the whistleblower is actually serving the greater good because they’re exposing what will be detrimental to the health of the whole.  And that’s true whether it’s domestic violence or whether it’s in a corporate setting, somebody who discloses wrongful practices, whatever.  We need to honor the whistleblowers instead of being so invested in our own desire for the boat not to be rocked that we’re willing to go along with things that are ultimately going to be damaging to the whole of the group, the wellbeing of the group in the long term.

Andrea:  And I think too, it’s easy to think that this could be about one person.  If you do have a situation where maybe it is a leader of a group of people, that leader might be abusive and there might be people in the group that see all the good that that person does and they say, “But look at all the good that they’re doing.  Yes, there’s maybe a few things that aren’t great, but we need, you know, to move past that and whatever, and stay loyal, and look at all the good,” and that sort of thing.  And I think that also is a part of what this means to be loyal, what people think that they need to be loyal to the leader.

Rosanne Moore:  And so my question for that person was, “If it were your child that had been harmed by that leader, would you feel the same way?  If you were the one who had been assaulted by that leader, would that still be your position?”  No, probably not; very likely not.  Now that does happen sometimes where a parent will silence a child because they don’t want to upset things.  But you’re essentially saying that one person is the sacrificial lamb because this other person has done good things.

What people need to realize is abusive people often do good things in order to allow them the credibility to continue to harm others.  That’s very common.  That’s part of the lie that is being presented.  And so, that’s not an anomaly.  That’s part of the dynamic that takes place.

Andrea:  All right.  So I’m going to move to the next thing then.

Rosanne Moore:  Okay.

Andrea:   All right.  So for five, six, and seven here we’re going to talk about some of the myths that are around forgiveness in particular.  As we’re looking at forgiveness, it became really evident that we needed to separate these three because there’s a lot of confusion around forgiveness.  So, Rosanne, we’re going to start with number five that, “Forgiveness equals reconciliation.”  So, forgiveness means that I need to bring this person back into my life.  Why is this not right?

Rosanne Moore:  There’s no basis for that.  Reconciliation requires that the person be safe, be healthy, that there be change.  You can forgive someone.  You can release them to God.  You can determine you are no longer going to carry the weight of their offense and the bitterness toward them anymore.  But that is not the same, and often people who push forgiveness do so in the name of God.  There is no biblical basis for forgiveness without repentance and even if there’s repentance…

Andrea:  And repentance is essentially change, right?  It’s an actual change.

Rosanne Moore:  Exactly.  It’s actual change.  And so what often happens is there’s a demand for immediate forgiveness and immediate reconciliation.  Abusers use this in a big way.  You will often see abusive people who make a quick confession.  When they’re actually caught and they can’t deny it anymore, they make a quick confession and then they immediately push for reinstatement of relationship.  And what they’re really after is number one, no consequences and number two, the opportunity to re-offend.

And so, it’s very important not to push reconciliation that is premature.  When a person has had their trust deeply violated, they need to be the one who determines if and when reconciliation is ever possible or appropriate.  That’s not to say that they can’t forgive.  They can, but that doesn’t mean that reconciliation is necessarily a good thing.  It could actually be a harmful thing.

Andrea:  So, essentially even if they forgive, they still don’t have to be in a relationship with somebody who’s not safe.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, and to pressure that… especially since the person who has been wronged has more intimate knowledge than outsiders do of exactly how that wrong took place.  If a person is resistant to being reconciled, other people should not press for that because instead of just assuming that they’re just hard and bitter and unforgiving, there needs to be a recognition, “No, this person intimately knows what went into drawing in their trust in the past, and so they’re going to be the first to know whether or not that dynamic is still at play.”

Andrea:  Hmm exactly.  Okay, number six; “Forgiveness can happen instantly.”

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, that’s not real.  In order to genuinely forgive, you have to grapple deeply with what was lost.  You know, if the offense is small, then you can forgive relatively quickly.  But when you’re talking about coercive control, you’re talking about systematic breaking down of another person and there’s an ongoing assault; it’s not a onetime offense.  And so for forgiveness to be real, a person has to grieve what has been taken from them, and they have to look at the implications for their life of what was lost and the long-term impact of what was lost.  You can make an immediate choice to commit to the process of forgiveness, but forgiveness is a process.

I know there were times when people would ask how we were doing, and I would talk about things that my children were going through on an ongoing basis, in terms of the impact of the abuse that we suffered.  And it didn’t take very long; people would get start to get uncomfortable, particularly if I showed any heat at all over what was happening to my kids.

Andrea:  You mean your personal anger, or what do you mean by “heat”?

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  That if there was any kind of emotional reaction or anger expressed over what was happening to my children, people would shift into, “Well, you know, you gotta forgive.”  And my response to that was, “I am committed to the process of forgiving.  I am also committed to justice for my children.”  And anger is part of that.  There are things that people do that we should be angered by.  They’re just wrong.  They’re harmful.  They do tremendous damage, and if you’re not outraged when you hear about somebody’s voice being taken away in injustice, somebody being harmed, an innocent person being harmed, there’s something wrong.  Anger should be a part of our response.

Now, it should not be the controlling response that we have.  Committing to the process of forgiveness recognizes that this is an ongoing thing.  And if you’re in a relationship with an abusive person, there’s ongoing assault.  So even after I left, because my children still had contact, there was ongoing injury that was happening.  And so, there in particular, forgiveness had to be a process that I committed to, but it was not a switch that I could flip.

Andrea:  Mhmm, I think that that is super important, super important for people to understand that it’s not instantaneous and it’s not simple.  Okay, and finally for today, Rosanne, number seven; “Forgiveness negates any need for consequences.”  “Hey, I’ve forgiven them.”  “So you need to just move on.  You’ve forgiven them, so just move on.”  Why is this not true?

Rosanne Moore:  Because if the person is dangerous, the rest of society needs to be protected from them, honestly.  I mean, that’s the bottom line.  And there are consequences to our choices.   Forgiveness says, “I am not going to carry the bitterness of your action with me any longer.”  It does not mean that there aren’t consequences for your choices.

Rachel Denhollander gave a beautiful victim impact statement speech in which she addressed both the need for forgiveness – she offered forgiveness to her abuser at the same time she was calling for justice and that she had made great personal sacrifice to seek legal justice and to make sure that he couldn’t harm other people and that he faced the consequences for what he had done.

Andrea:  He being Larry Nassar?

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  And so the idea that if someone physically assaults me that pressing charges is unforgiving is wrong.  If somebody crosses that line, they need to face the consequences for that.  If someone embezzles from a company, they need to face the consequences for that.  There needs to be accountability that’s given because it’s not just a wrong against the individual.  There’s also a social wrong that has to be addressed as well and protection for the innocent in the future.

Andrea:  I think that another way to look at that too is that when we don’t have consequences for behavior like this, this behavior becomes normalized.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.

Andrea:  We’re saying in effect, “This is okay, this is normal.  We should just move on.”  And then it just escalates.  It continues to become part of the culture, and it escalates.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  A good picture of that is the fact that most sexual assault crimes are not ever prosecuted.  Very few sexual offenders ever face any kind of consequence for the behavior.  And if you look at our culture, it’s rampant.  I mean, there are all kinds of sexual abuse that’s just rampant.  Sex trafficking in our country, there’s so many ways in which it’s just exploded.  And part of the reason for that is there are no consequences.  The consequences are for the victim who seeks justice rather than for the perpetrator.

Andrea:  And why do you say that?

Rosanne Moore:  I’ve walked closely with several friends who have sought justice through the legal system.  And what they were put through in order to bring it to light where they had to be retraumatized again and again in the process of telling their story, and proving it, and being treated as if they were lying… and they were just revictimized on so many levels, only to have the person come to a hearing where they simply got a slap on the wrist, where they had no significant sentencing.  It was just unbelievable to watch.

So, they paid the price of the original wrong.  I mean, they carried the wrong.  They still carry the impact of the wrong that was done against them.  They courageously tried to stop evil at the sacrifice of themselves only to have the system do nothing in response, which emboldens, of course, the abuser.  Yeah, it’s a terrible thing when you watch something like that happen.

Andrea:  It certainly is.  And I think that that is why it is so important that more and more voices rise up to help embolden the ones that need to be heard.  And Rosanne, I know that that is your heart here today.  It is our heart, collectively, at Voice of Influence as we have been working on this Lifeline course.  Can you tell the listener just a little bit about that so that they have an idea of what is coming… or perhaps by the time they listen to this, it may already be out.  But tell us a little bit about that Lifeline course that you’ve been working on.

Rosanne Moore:  In order for a woman to leave an abusive relationship, she has to leave in her mind first and there has to be a pathway for her to leave.  Again, you know, it’s not as simple as, “If it’s really that bad, you’d just leave.”  There have to be things in place; otherwise, she can actually escalate the danger.  I’ve walked closely with a number of women who have been through this process.  I’ve been through it myself, and so one of the hardest parts is trying to do something like that while you’re unraveling the impact of trauma yourself.

And so I wanted to provide a resource that would help women to make decisions step by step.  Not tell them what to do, but help give them parameters to think through their specific situation, understand some of the situation they’re stepping into as they go into the court system.  There are some really good resources, and they will be on the resource list about how to deal with the psychological impact of things.  Our course is going to focus more on the very practical things.  How do you get out?  On a practical level, what steps do you have to take?  What pieces need to be in place to get out and to minimize the risk as much as possible?  And that’s what our course is going to be.

Andrea:  Okay, so, again, if you are interested in either/or, the download… it’s just a free download.  It’s a list of resources that you can use right away, or you can offer to somebody else right away.  You can get that by texting the letters VOILIFELINE to the number 4422 and at voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline.  That is where you can find that as well, and it’s also where you can find out some more information about the Lifeline course.

For the price of a book, you can purchase this course and be able to have what you need at least to get going, and to have a friend, a guide who has been there before and has guided others along this path.  We don’t claim to have all the answers.  We don’t claim to have all of the information.  What we do claim to do is to provide some guidance and help you come to some clarity for yourself so that you know how to move forward and how to proceed.

Rosanne, thank you so much for today, and I look forward to sharing more of these myths and debunking these myths again here in the next episode.

Rosanne Moore:  Thank you so much, Andrea.