December 15, 2023 • 19 mins
Why didn’t she fight back? Why did she stay? For as long as abuse and sexual violence have existed, there have been questions about how victims are “supposed” to act in their aftermath. In our last episode, we explored the public vilification of Robin Givens but there was more to say. This week, Susie and Jess chart our national obsession with “perfect” victims — and why that obsession persists. Plus, Jess talks about E. Jean Carroll’s assault case against Donald Trump, which she covered for the Times.
FOR MORE:
- Why Didn’t She Scream? And Other Questions Not to Ask a Rape Accuser (New York Times, 2023)
- What People Misunderstand About Rape (New York Times, 2023)
- Robin Givens on Domestic Violence: 'Why I Stayed' (Time, 2014)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone. Before we start, just a note that we
discussed domestic violence and sexual assault in this episode. It's
easy from the cheap seats to be like, well, what
do you still love about someone who's hurting you? But
it's a really complicated relationship. I'm SUSIEVNACHERM and I'm Jessica Bennett.
(00:26):
This is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a
cultural moment from the past that shaped us and.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
That we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
So, jess, we just finished an episode about Robin Gibbons
and how she was treated publicly after she admitted that
her husband, Mike Tyson, the then heavyweight champion of the world,
was physically abusive with her, and what the reaction to
that was.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
There was a lot of backlash against her.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah, and if you haven't listened to that episode, you
can go back and check it out. Robin's story is
really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, And one thing I really thought about a lot
during the research for that episode was how often this
question comes up when women are in these domestic violent situations,
or when women are sexually assaulted, of why did she stay.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Or why didn't she leave, or why didn't she scream,
like that.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
We have this expectations of victims, like we have a
way we want victims to behave, and when they deviate
from that, that's used to somehow discredit their version of events,
like somehow they're not telling the truth. Or there's also
just kind of this weirdly embedded idea in that that
it's like women's weakness that causes their abuse, Like if
(01:33):
you were stronger, you would just get up and go,
or if you were stronger, you'd fight physically, whereas, like
you know, I don't know how much fighting back physically
if you're fighting with the heavyweight champion of the world
is going to like do for you, and in fact,
it probably means you're going to get hurt more. Right,
But we just have these really deeply embedded ideas in
us that if you don't fight, you somehow deserve the
(01:56):
thing that happened to you, or that if.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
You don't act a certain way, you're making it all up.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So, when I was thinking about this, I actually was
thinking back to that really excellent piece you did when
you were covering the Egen Carroll trial about why didn't
she scream? Which was a question that the defense really
put to her right as a way to discredit her. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
So this was a case involving Egen Carroll, who is
the former advice columnist and journalist who has accused Donald
Trump of raping her in a dressing room of a
department store in the nineteen nineties. But this case was
actually a defamation suit, and Trump was actually found liable
for battery under New York state law and defaming her
(02:38):
by calling her a liar when.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
She spoke about his sexual assault.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
But the line of questioning that the defense in that
case kept bringing up was why Egen Carroll did not scream?
If Trump had allegedly, you know, assaulted her, violently assaulted
her in this public dressing room, why did she let
him do it? Why didn't she out of the room.
Why didn't she pound and stop her feet and scream?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
And look? You know, the.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Reality and what I found when doing this piece is
that actually that's a really.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Common response people who are in a situation, a violent situation,
whether it's sexual assault or otherwise, it is common for
them to want not scream or two to actually freeze.
It's a common brain response to a trauma. So that's
what the scholars will tell you. And you know, I
called up all these.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Scholars, But what was actually.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Happening in the courtroom was Trump's defense attorneys were just
repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly asking again and again and again,
why didn't you do this?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Why didn't you call the police? Why didn't you tell
someone sooner?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Why didn't you go to the doctor and have it
reported that you were injured? Why didn't you scrap like
on and on on and on, And I think what
you're getting at is these are the incessant questions that
we ask of victims.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right, And it's so insidious, right, because we have these
are sort of arbitrary, very standards that have been set. Right, Well,
who decides that you have to behave a certain way
when you're being physically assaulted?
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I mean the.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
People that should decide are trauma experts, Yeah, but they're
not the ones being interviewed. And so it was interesting
when I was doing this research to learn that actually
a lot of these questions are.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Deeply baked into the law, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Which actually aren't arbitrary, like the question of screaming, and
many of these questions that are repeatedly asked of victims
by defense attorneys. Sometimes by the press and the public,
they're baked into the law. So what I learned in
talking to a historian, his name is John wood Sweet.
I want to give him credit because he explained this
(04:42):
all to me. But basically, the question of screaming can
be traced back to the first recorded rape trial in
US history, Oh Wow, which happened in seventeen ninety three.
It was a man named Harry Bedlow, and he raped
a seventeen year old seamstress inside a brothel. Now, in
his book on that case, this historian explains how the
(05:03):
defense of the rapist here relied on a series of
questions you were supposed to ask a woman, And these
were questions that had been created by Sir Matthew Hale.
If his name sounds from earlier, it's because he was
cited in the Dobbs anti abortion decision. So he's like
this old lawmaker and they had created this line of
(05:25):
questioning for women that was basically like, okay, one, did
she come from a good family?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Two?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Did she cry out for help? Did she fight back?
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Did she show signs of physical violence on her body
or clothing?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Did she report the crime in a timely manner, and.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
So these are the questions that defense attorneys are still
today relying on when they questioned victims.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I know what's crazy about that is I was thinking
recently about how in a lot of states with these
abortion bands, the only way you can get an abortion
is if you can prove you were raped, and that
these are the questions that are going to get asked
to actually qualify whether or not you can get an abortion,
Like how do you decide if someone's been raped or not?
(06:07):
And so these things do really have very real world implications.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
And I think they get at this.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Idea that we don't really understand trauma and how it
impacts people and how people experience terrible things.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I mean our common understanding of this subject is like, yeah,
why didn't she leave or why didn't she scream?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah? And I think actually one thing that I thought
was so interesting in the research about why women stay
is that a lot of the reasons have to do
with trauma bonding, which is this thing we talk about
very colloquially now, like I feel like everyone I know
it's like I went to work with this person and
now we're trauma bonding, and like that's I think just
like a very interesting thing that these things seep into
(06:51):
the culture and then get kind of reduced, because what
trauma bonding actually means is that when you're in an
abusive relationship, that cycle of abuse, the sort of like
tearrible thing that happens, actually draws you closer to the abuser.
There's this like bond that's created because the way your
brain sort of processes having this terrible moment and then
all of this seduction afterwards that's trying to convince you
(07:14):
that that moment was like not that important, actually bonds
you to your abuser.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
And to basically correct everyone on TikTok, actually I wanted
(07:39):
to ask you, Suz, so you've done all this research
into this, and when you were researching Robin, what are
the actual reasons that she and others have given for
why they did stay.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Well, so there's some general reasons that we kind of
just have a better understanding of now, and then I'll
get into sort of what she has said about her
personal situation. But look, I think for a lot of
women there are financial reasons. A lot of men, especially
if they have children, rely on their partner for their
financial means and for taking care of their children. There's
also a lot of issues around children. If you leave
(08:11):
your spouse and he is abusive to you, that doesn't
necessarily mean that you will get custody because it will
be seen as you having abandoned your children, or you
don't want to leave your children with an abuser.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
That's like a very obvious one.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I think there's also a lot of shame, right. I
think a lot of women, and Robin has talked about this,
don't want to admit to anyone what's happening. So if
they don't admit what's happening, how are they going to
explain or get help or the necessary kind of resources
they need. And most abusers have spent a lot of
time isolating their victims even before the physical abuse begins,
(08:44):
so often they don't have resources or friends or family
anymore they can rely on.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
They're sort of in an isolated position. Got it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
But I think the most interesting thing I learned is
that actually it's also extremely dangerous to leave your abuser.
It's the most likely time where a homicide occurs in
an abusive relationship because so much has left either right
before a person leaves and they're sort of declaring that
they're going to leave or right after, because what the
(09:12):
whole abuse is about is control, and so when the
abuser starts to feel like they might lose control, that
is an extremely dangerous period in the relationship. In fact,
there was a study where they interviewed men who'd killed
their wives, and either threats of separating or actual separations
were most often the precipitating events that led to those homicides.
(09:34):
So we know that it's extremely dangerous for women to
leave and also extremely dangerous.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
For their loved ones.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
There's also many cases where the abuser, when they no
longer have access to the victim, actually kills other people
in their lives, friends, family, et cetera, who they feel
are helping them escape.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So these are the reasons.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Experts sort of say, there's lots of reasons, but these
are the general ones that are mo off incited. And
then Robin Gibbons has herself talked a lot about the
fact that she really felt this bond, this probably what
would be defined now as a trauma bond with Mike Tyson.
She really felt like she could save him, She felt
protective at him, like every time one of these incidents
(10:16):
would occur, it would terrify her. But then he would
be so immediately remorseful and sad and really say to
her like I'm broken, and she would want to fix him.
And you know, I think it's easy from the cheap
seats to be like, well, what do you still love
about someone who's hurting you? But you know you are
deeply in love with someone they don't you know. It's
(10:37):
not just like some stranger who's abusing you. This is
someone you have a relationship with, you feel an incredible
tie to.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And who is sick and who is sick?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Right who you see as ill? So you're like, you know,
there's all sorts of ways that you can rationalize that, right,
Like you wouldn't leave someone who was sick. In another way,
why would you leave this person. It's a really complicated relationship.
And she actually talked to Oprah about it at some point.
So Robin Gibbs went on Oprah when she wrote her
book in two thousand and seven, and she said, you know,
I felt like I had a purpose. I really felt
(11:05):
like I had to protect him and love him and
convince him that the world could be an okay place.
What's fascinating is he's physically hurting her, Like there's really
harrowing passages in the book, in her memoir where she's
describing him holding a knife to her throat or him
chasing her around, like there's like definitely some sexual assault.
But what she says about it is that she wanted
(11:26):
to take his hurt and his pain away. Oh wow, right,
because I think it's hard to separate yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
From that person in some ways.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And she finally leaves, not because she has fallen out
of love with him, or even that she stops talking
to him or seeing him, because she does continue to
have a relationship with him even after they start going
through this very nasty public divorce. She says she leaves
because her family. She sees what it's doing to her
mom and her sister, right, and so she's like, I
can't continue to do this to them. And I think
that's just.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Like a human response. But we don't want our.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Victims to be human, we want them to be perfect, right,
And Rob is this like very composed, beautiful, smart woman.
She's not what we imagine when we imagine a victim.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Oh, it's so interesting because it's in her case, it
was like maybe she was too beautiful and too composed,
But then in other scenarios we want them to be
more composed, like they're not composed enough, or it's making
me think of the Amber Heard and Johnny dep trial,
which you know, whatever you think about that. There were
many questions around her behavior, and actually it was fascinating
talking to Egen caroll On to her lawyers about this
(12:28):
too when I was covering that case, because the question
of like do you cry on the stand?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Is it too much or too little?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Do you want to.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Look put together and composed or do you want to
look a little disheveled like you've been hurt, And like
how you present yourself all these tiny details from your
hair to the way you're sitting, to how much you cry,
to does your voice crack.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It's almost like you have to perform, especially if you're
on the stand.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I mean, right, but that's so crazy because you're like
a victim of trauma. You're actually going through this like
traumatic experience. Testifying is a traumatic experience. So then to
think like I can't even imagine what it must be
like to be on display like that, and then also
worry about every tiny facial movement or.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Just like how you're betraying to see too, because it's like,
where would I have gotten the idea of what a
good victim looks like?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I don't know. It's not something that I have thought
much about.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
But you're sitting there in the courtroom and you're like, oh,
is that believable?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Right? Like I think we think there's a common sense
reaction to terrible things happening to you. And like, as
someone who's gone through enormous grief my dad died when
I was young. One thing that I have really seen
a lot in my friends who are going through grief
is they feel really guilty if they're grieving in.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
A certain way or not grieving in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And one thing I can tell you is there is
no normal response to grief, Like sometimes the only response
is laughing. Sometimes the response is silence or shutting down,
and even that is often judged, Like when people lose
people in a public way, there's often this question of
like why are they so numb or why.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Are they crying?
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Laughing Laughing is a really big that came up in
this trial as well, where she laughed at different points
and she would joke about it and that was sort
of her way of making sense of it and trying
to show to herself that it hadn't broken her.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Right, It's a coping mechanism exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
But it's weird people don't understand it. And so to
the original point, I mean, I do think that we
may have some better.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Understanding of trauma now.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Like when this trauma expert got up on the stand
in this case, you could hear her describe how just
like you said, almost any response is an okay response
to something terrible happening, because people react in all sorts
of crazy ways. So the idea of asking why did
or didn't she do X is just a misnomer.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I have to say I was
really trying to think about how I came to have
these ideas about how people were supposed to react, but
also how I've.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Come to unlearn them.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, and I have to say that I genuinely think
this is going to sound a little out there, but
I genuinely think Law and Order SVU has changed the
culture on.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
A lot of this time.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That's so interesting, Like, so much of what I've learned
from that show is this idea that people react in
all sorts of different ways, like One of the things
I remember learning from that show when I was quite
young was that often people who are sexually assaulted will
continue to maintain some sort of contact with their abuser,
and that that's always used as an example of how
they weren't abused, but that that is actually just a
(15:17):
mechanism by which they're trying to keep things normal and
gain control of the.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Situation or feel like it's not as bad as it is.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, and I think that.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So there's like lots of ways in which I think
that show has.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Actually met I think you're so right, and so I.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Think we are just like as a culture, trying to
get a better understanding of these issues. But the fact
that that happened in Adrian Carroll, I mean, in that
piece you had so many quotes from judges and other
people asking these wild ask questions.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Well, this is the thing, I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
And you know, arguably, the more stories like this that
we write and the more we talk about this, the
more it normalizes that this idea that you can respond
in all sorts of different ways and actually stigmatizes the
idea that you would ask someone why they scream. So
I looked back at all these cases over time and
things like all right, there was a nineteen eighty three
case of a woman, Cheryl Royo, who was gang raped,
(16:10):
and the attorney questioning her in that case said, well,
if you're living with a man, she had a partner,
what are you doing running around the streets getting raped?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Like that's insane?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Obviously, wasn't there that judge who was like, why didn't
you just like lock your knees.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
There's also like in the brock Turner case, which was
one the woman who was sexually assaulted in twenty fifteen
at Stanford a college student, and the attorney asked, well,
you did a lot of partying in college, right, like
as if to equate that right.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And there was that crazy incident on Santa and where
Don Lemon asked one of Bill Cosby's rape accusers why
she didn't just like bite down on his penis like
there's just this wild cultural thing that hasn't shifted as
much as we'd like.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
But yes, and the end, it's almost like often when
these cases go to trial, which is when a lot
of these questions occur, at least said out loud, either
we may have stopped following or you're not getting the
trial transcripts, or you're not in the room, so you're
not actually hearing these questions asked. But even like in
the Weinstein case, the Harvey Weinstein case, his attorney asked
(17:14):
one of his victims who was raped in a hotel
room in twenty thirteen, well, why'd you stay in the
room where you were attacked after you allege this occurred?
And it's the same kind of thing. It's like, yes,
sometimes you will maintain some relationship to the person, sometimes
they stay in the room.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Well, sometimes you're just in shock, like you're not quite
ready to like move, or you're afraid. It's just a
reminder that even.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You know, there is no perfect victim.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And you know, if you've gone through something or you're
going through a traumatic experience, you do not need to
feel all this expectation for how you should be. You
get to process things the way you process them.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Is there a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about
and want us to explore in a future episode. Email
us at inretropod at gmail dot com, or find us
on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
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which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at susib NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist
Fight Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attiya is our researcher and
associate producer.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norvell.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Cosparelli, Sound
correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
We are your hosts Susie Bannacarum.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers. For even more,
check out in retropod dot com. See you next week.
Hi everyone. Before we start, just a note that we
discussed domestic violence and sexual assault in this episode. It's
easy from the cheap seats to be like, well, what
do you still love about someone who's hurting you? But
it's a really complicated relationship. I'm SUSIEVNACHERM and I'm Jessica Bennett.
(00:26):
This is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a
cultural moment from the past that shaped us and.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
That we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
So, jess, we just finished an episode about Robin Gibbons
and how she was treated publicly after she admitted that
her husband, Mike Tyson, the then heavyweight champion of the world,
was physically abusive with her, and what the reaction to
that was.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
There was a lot of backlash against her.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah, and if you haven't listened to that episode, you
can go back and check it out. Robin's story is
really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, And one thing I really thought about a lot
during the research for that episode was how often this
question comes up when women are in these domestic violent situations,
or when women are sexually assaulted, of why did she stay.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Or why didn't she leave, or why didn't she scream,
like that.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
We have this expectations of victims, like we have a
way we want victims to behave, and when they deviate
from that, that's used to somehow discredit their version of events,
like somehow they're not telling the truth. Or there's also
just kind of this weirdly embedded idea in that that
it's like women's weakness that causes their abuse, Like if
(01:33):
you were stronger, you would just get up and go,
or if you were stronger, you'd fight physically, whereas, like
you know, I don't know how much fighting back physically
if you're fighting with the heavyweight champion of the world
is going to like do for you, and in fact,
it probably means you're going to get hurt more. Right,
But we just have these really deeply embedded ideas in
us that if you don't fight, you somehow deserve the
(01:56):
thing that happened to you, or that if.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
You don't act a certain way, you're making it all up.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So, when I was thinking about this, I actually was
thinking back to that really excellent piece you did when
you were covering the Egen Carroll trial about why didn't
she scream? Which was a question that the defense really
put to her right as a way to discredit her. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
So this was a case involving Egen Carroll, who is
the former advice columnist and journalist who has accused Donald
Trump of raping her in a dressing room of a
department store in the nineteen nineties. But this case was
actually a defamation suit, and Trump was actually found liable
for battery under New York state law and defaming her
(02:38):
by calling her a liar when.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
She spoke about his sexual assault.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
But the line of questioning that the defense in that
case kept bringing up was why Egen Carroll did not scream?
If Trump had allegedly, you know, assaulted her, violently assaulted
her in this public dressing room, why did she let
him do it? Why didn't she out of the room.
Why didn't she pound and stop her feet and scream?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
And look? You know, the.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Reality and what I found when doing this piece is
that actually that's a really.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Common response people who are in a situation, a violent situation,
whether it's sexual assault or otherwise, it is common for
them to want not scream or two to actually freeze.
It's a common brain response to a trauma. So that's
what the scholars will tell you. And you know, I
called up all these.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Scholars, But what was actually.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Happening in the courtroom was Trump's defense attorneys were just
repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly asking again and again and again,
why didn't you do this?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Why didn't you call the police? Why didn't you tell
someone sooner?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Why didn't you go to the doctor and have it
reported that you were injured? Why didn't you scrap like
on and on on and on, And I think what
you're getting at is these are the incessant questions that
we ask of victims.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right, And it's so insidious, right, because we have these
are sort of arbitrary, very standards that have been set. Right, Well,
who decides that you have to behave a certain way
when you're being physically assaulted?
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I mean the.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
People that should decide are trauma experts, Yeah, but they're
not the ones being interviewed. And so it was interesting
when I was doing this research to learn that actually
a lot of these questions are.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Deeply baked into the law, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Which actually aren't arbitrary, like the question of screaming, and
many of these questions that are repeatedly asked of victims
by defense attorneys. Sometimes by the press and the public,
they're baked into the law. So what I learned in
talking to a historian, his name is John wood Sweet.
I want to give him credit because he explained this
(04:42):
all to me. But basically, the question of screaming can
be traced back to the first recorded rape trial in
US history, Oh Wow, which happened in seventeen ninety three.
It was a man named Harry Bedlow, and he raped
a seventeen year old seamstress inside a brothel. Now, in
his book on that case, this historian explains how the
(05:03):
defense of the rapist here relied on a series of
questions you were supposed to ask a woman, And these
were questions that had been created by Sir Matthew Hale.
If his name sounds from earlier, it's because he was
cited in the Dobbs anti abortion decision. So he's like
this old lawmaker and they had created this line of
(05:25):
questioning for women that was basically like, okay, one, did
she come from a good family?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Two?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Did she cry out for help? Did she fight back?
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Did she show signs of physical violence on her body
or clothing?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Did she report the crime in a timely manner, and.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
So these are the questions that defense attorneys are still
today relying on when they questioned victims.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I know what's crazy about that is I was thinking
recently about how in a lot of states with these
abortion bands, the only way you can get an abortion
is if you can prove you were raped, and that
these are the questions that are going to get asked
to actually qualify whether or not you can get an abortion,
Like how do you decide if someone's been raped or not?
(06:07):
And so these things do really have very real world implications.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
And I think they get at this.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Idea that we don't really understand trauma and how it
impacts people and how people experience terrible things.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I mean our common understanding of this subject is like, yeah,
why didn't she leave or why didn't she scream?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah? And I think actually one thing that I thought
was so interesting in the research about why women stay
is that a lot of the reasons have to do
with trauma bonding, which is this thing we talk about
very colloquially now, like I feel like everyone I know
it's like I went to work with this person and
now we're trauma bonding, and like that's I think just
like a very interesting thing that these things seep into
(06:51):
the culture and then get kind of reduced, because what
trauma bonding actually means is that when you're in an
abusive relationship, that cycle of abuse, the sort of like
tearrible thing that happens, actually draws you closer to the abuser.
There's this like bond that's created because the way your
brain sort of processes having this terrible moment and then
all of this seduction afterwards that's trying to convince you
(07:14):
that that moment was like not that important, actually bonds
you to your abuser.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
And to basically correct everyone on TikTok, actually I wanted
(07:39):
to ask you, Suz, so you've done all this research
into this, and when you were researching Robin, what are
the actual reasons that she and others have given for
why they did stay.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Well, so there's some general reasons that we kind of
just have a better understanding of now, and then I'll
get into sort of what she has said about her
personal situation. But look, I think for a lot of
women there are financial reasons. A lot of men, especially
if they have children, rely on their partner for their
financial means and for taking care of their children. There's
also a lot of issues around children. If you leave
(08:11):
your spouse and he is abusive to you, that doesn't
necessarily mean that you will get custody because it will
be seen as you having abandoned your children, or you
don't want to leave your children with an abuser.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
That's like a very obvious one.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I think there's also a lot of shame, right. I
think a lot of women, and Robin has talked about this,
don't want to admit to anyone what's happening. So if
they don't admit what's happening, how are they going to
explain or get help or the necessary kind of resources
they need. And most abusers have spent a lot of
time isolating their victims even before the physical abuse begins,
(08:44):
so often they don't have resources or friends or family
anymore they can rely on.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
They're sort of in an isolated position. Got it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
But I think the most interesting thing I learned is
that actually it's also extremely dangerous to leave your abuser.
It's the most likely time where a homicide occurs in
an abusive relationship because so much has left either right
before a person leaves and they're sort of declaring that
they're going to leave or right after, because what the
(09:12):
whole abuse is about is control, and so when the
abuser starts to feel like they might lose control, that
is an extremely dangerous period in the relationship. In fact,
there was a study where they interviewed men who'd killed
their wives, and either threats of separating or actual separations
were most often the precipitating events that led to those homicides.
(09:34):
So we know that it's extremely dangerous for women to
leave and also extremely dangerous.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
For their loved ones.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
There's also many cases where the abuser, when they no
longer have access to the victim, actually kills other people
in their lives, friends, family, et cetera, who they feel
are helping them escape.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So these are the reasons.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Experts sort of say, there's lots of reasons, but these
are the general ones that are mo off incited. And
then Robin Gibbons has herself talked a lot about the
fact that she really felt this bond, this probably what
would be defined now as a trauma bond with Mike Tyson.
She really felt like she could save him, She felt
protective at him, like every time one of these incidents
(10:16):
would occur, it would terrify her. But then he would
be so immediately remorseful and sad and really say to
her like I'm broken, and she would want to fix him.
And you know, I think it's easy from the cheap
seats to be like, well, what do you still love
about someone who's hurting you? But you know you are
deeply in love with someone they don't you know. It's
(10:37):
not just like some stranger who's abusing you. This is
someone you have a relationship with, you feel an incredible
tie to.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And who is sick and who is sick?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Right who you see as ill? So you're like, you know,
there's all sorts of ways that you can rationalize that, right,
Like you wouldn't leave someone who was sick. In another way,
why would you leave this person. It's a really complicated relationship.
And she actually talked to Oprah about it at some point.
So Robin Gibbs went on Oprah when she wrote her
book in two thousand and seven, and she said, you know,
I felt like I had a purpose. I really felt
(11:05):
like I had to protect him and love him and
convince him that the world could be an okay place.
What's fascinating is he's physically hurting her, Like there's really
harrowing passages in the book, in her memoir where she's
describing him holding a knife to her throat or him
chasing her around, like there's like definitely some sexual assault.
But what she says about it is that she wanted
(11:26):
to take his hurt and his pain away. Oh wow, right,
because I think it's hard to separate yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
From that person in some ways.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And she finally leaves, not because she has fallen out
of love with him, or even that she stops talking
to him or seeing him, because she does continue to
have a relationship with him even after they start going
through this very nasty public divorce. She says she leaves
because her family. She sees what it's doing to her
mom and her sister, right, and so she's like, I
can't continue to do this to them. And I think
that's just.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Like a human response. But we don't want our.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Victims to be human, we want them to be perfect, right,
And Rob is this like very composed, beautiful, smart woman.
She's not what we imagine when we imagine a victim.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Oh, it's so interesting because it's in her case, it
was like maybe she was too beautiful and too composed,
But then in other scenarios we want them to be
more composed, like they're not composed enough, or it's making
me think of the Amber Heard and Johnny dep trial,
which you know, whatever you think about that. There were
many questions around her behavior, and actually it was fascinating
talking to Egen caroll On to her lawyers about this
(12:28):
too when I was covering that case, because the question
of like do you cry on the stand?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Is it too much or too little?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Do you want to.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Look put together and composed or do you want to
look a little disheveled like you've been hurt, And like
how you present yourself all these tiny details from your
hair to the way you're sitting, to how much you cry,
to does your voice crack.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It's almost like you have to perform, especially if you're
on the stand.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I mean, right, but that's so crazy because you're like
a victim of trauma. You're actually going through this like
traumatic experience. Testifying is a traumatic experience. So then to
think like I can't even imagine what it must be
like to be on display like that, and then also
worry about every tiny facial movement or.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Just like how you're betraying to see too, because it's like,
where would I have gotten the idea of what a
good victim looks like?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I don't know. It's not something that I have thought
much about.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
But you're sitting there in the courtroom and you're like, oh,
is that believable?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Right? Like I think we think there's a common sense
reaction to terrible things happening to you. And like, as
someone who's gone through enormous grief my dad died when
I was young. One thing that I have really seen
a lot in my friends who are going through grief
is they feel really guilty if they're grieving in.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
A certain way or not grieving in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And one thing I can tell you is there is
no normal response to grief, Like sometimes the only response
is laughing. Sometimes the response is silence or shutting down,
and even that is often judged, Like when people lose
people in a public way, there's often this question of
like why are they so numb or why.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Are they crying?
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Laughing Laughing is a really big that came up in
this trial as well, where she laughed at different points
and she would joke about it and that was sort
of her way of making sense of it and trying
to show to herself that it hadn't broken her.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Right, It's a coping mechanism exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
But it's weird people don't understand it. And so to
the original point, I mean, I do think that we
may have some better.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Understanding of trauma now.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Like when this trauma expert got up on the stand
in this case, you could hear her describe how just
like you said, almost any response is an okay response
to something terrible happening, because people react in all sorts
of crazy ways. So the idea of asking why did
or didn't she do X is just a misnomer.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I have to say I was
really trying to think about how I came to have
these ideas about how people were supposed to react, but
also how I've.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Come to unlearn them.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, and I have to say that I genuinely think
this is going to sound a little out there, but
I genuinely think Law and Order SVU has changed the
culture on.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
A lot of this time.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That's so interesting, Like, so much of what I've learned
from that show is this idea that people react in
all sorts of different ways, like One of the things
I remember learning from that show when I was quite
young was that often people who are sexually assaulted will
continue to maintain some sort of contact with their abuser,
and that that's always used as an example of how
they weren't abused, but that that is actually just a
(15:17):
mechanism by which they're trying to keep things normal and
gain control of the.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Situation or feel like it's not as bad as it is.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, and I think that.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So there's like lots of ways in which I think
that show has.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Actually met I think you're so right, and so I.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Think we are just like as a culture, trying to
get a better understanding of these issues. But the fact
that that happened in Adrian Carroll, I mean, in that
piece you had so many quotes from judges and other
people asking these wild ask questions.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Well, this is the thing, I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
And you know, arguably, the more stories like this that
we write and the more we talk about this, the
more it normalizes that this idea that you can respond
in all sorts of different ways and actually stigmatizes the
idea that you would ask someone why they scream. So
I looked back at all these cases over time and
things like all right, there was a nineteen eighty three
case of a woman, Cheryl Royo, who was gang raped,
(16:10):
and the attorney questioning her in that case said, well,
if you're living with a man, she had a partner,
what are you doing running around the streets getting raped?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Like that's insane?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Obviously, wasn't there that judge who was like, why didn't
you just like lock your knees.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
There's also like in the brock Turner case, which was
one the woman who was sexually assaulted in twenty fifteen
at Stanford a college student, and the attorney asked, well,
you did a lot of partying in college, right, like
as if to equate that right.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And there was that crazy incident on Santa and where
Don Lemon asked one of Bill Cosby's rape accusers why
she didn't just like bite down on his penis like
there's just this wild cultural thing that hasn't shifted as
much as we'd like.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
But yes, and the end, it's almost like often when
these cases go to trial, which is when a lot
of these questions occur, at least said out loud, either
we may have stopped following or you're not getting the
trial transcripts, or you're not in the room, so you're
not actually hearing these questions asked. But even like in
the Weinstein case, the Harvey Weinstein case, his attorney asked
(17:14):
one of his victims who was raped in a hotel
room in twenty thirteen, well, why'd you stay in the
room where you were attacked after you allege this occurred?
And it's the same kind of thing. It's like, yes,
sometimes you will maintain some relationship to the person, sometimes
they stay in the room.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Well, sometimes you're just in shock, like you're not quite
ready to like move, or you're afraid. It's just a
reminder that even.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You know, there is no perfect victim.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And you know, if you've gone through something or you're
going through a traumatic experience, you do not need to
feel all this expectation for how you should be. You
get to process things the way you process them.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Is there a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about
and want us to explore in a future episode. Email
us at inretropod at gmail dot com, or find us
on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at susib NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist
Fight Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attiya is our researcher and
associate producer.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norvell.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Cosparelli, Sound
correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
We are your hosts Susie Bannacarum.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers. For even more,
check out in retropod dot com. See you next week.
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