The NYPD And The Serial Abuser’s Oldest Trick

A dozen or so years ago, a friend told me his wife’s sister was on the run, seeking shelter and safety after her abusive, drunken husband had assaulted her–and threatened to assault her young child–again. She had spent a night at her mother’s place but was considering moving on to a ‘neutral venue.’ All too soon, she suspected, she would be forced to confront her serial tormentor, who would approach her, asking as usual, for reconciliation and forgiveness. The worst part of it all, she said, was that soon enough, she would find herself, the abused one, asking for forgiveness from her husband.

Come again, I said, to my friend. Why would your sister-in-law be the one asking for forgiveness?

I was not the first, and I won’t be the last, to be mystified by an all too common phenomenon in abusive relationships: very soon, after committing yet another offense, the serial abuser neatly turns the tables, going from a loud, blustering, abusive, violent maniac to being a sobbing, begging, whimpering, self-pitying whiner, one who points out that this abusive behavior was forced upon him, that he meant no harm, that his hand could  have been stayed, but it wasn’t, just because he felt so much pain and torment and anguish. And sure, he punched his wife, and threw a bottle at her, and smashed a hole in the door in his rage, but he’s just so sad and angry, he’s so tormented, don’t you know? And bizarrely, miraculously, the one with the black eye and the swollen lip, she would be the one asking her now sobbing husband to forgive her, to take her and her frightened child back into their house.

The oldest trick in the book of the serial abuser is to know when to play the part of the victim, to turn the tables on the abused and make them into the guilty ones. There’s so much pain in his heart that needs addressing–can’t the victim just put her pain on hold for a second and attend to this big blustering fool here, you know, the one that almost broke your jaw?

Think of this, when you think of the NYPD asking for kid gloves treatment, when it asks for a critique-free zone, for the #BlackLivesMatter marches and protests to end–which it offensively and cluelessly made responsible for the shootings of Officers Liu and Ramos–even as it insists its job is dirtier and dangerous than ever, that it wants to go deploying as much force as it sees fit, punching, choking, shooting, whomever, when and wherever it chooses. And if any of those punched, shot, choked, or humiliatingly searched ever dare speak up, ever dare protest, then well, aren’t you just being mean and unfair to the poor cops, who hurt so much, who are in such pain, who need your forgiveness and your love, because their hearts are so wide open to all the pain in the world. They are so hurt, they would rather declare war on the people and their elected representatives rather than hear one more hurtful word of criticism about their violent working out of all their job-related stress.

Get us a restraining order, please.