A Lawyer’s Response to a Troll’s Misogynist Rant

The defense rests.

I am a survivor of long-term domestic abuse. I know what it’s like to feel like your life has been taken away from you. To have the person who promised to love and protect you steal your life and treat it as his own. To resign yourself to never being free. To be trapped in a life you hate, knowing that one day you will die, and when you do, you will die having never really lived.

I had more than two decades of my life stolen from me from the man who was supposed to share my life, not steal it. I have survived to tell my story. I do this for the primary purpose of helping other victims of abuse. I do this because I want to bring a story of hope.

I write because when I was in the midst of the abuse, I truly believed I was the only one living in the prison that is marriage to an abusive man, a man who hates women.

I did not understand back then that domestic abuse does not always involve fists. I didn’t know that emotional, spiritual and sexual abuse is as, if not more, damaging.

I am a mother. My only child is severely disabled. I love him more than words can possibly express. I’m a woman, a wife, a mother, a friend, and a sister. I’m a boss and a colleague. I’m a human being who has been broken by the person I should have been able to trust with my heart and my life.

Recently I published my most vulnerable piece to date.

And last night one of the usual misogynist trolls came out in force. That isn’t anything new. This bitter, angry man is on a self-confessed agenda to ‘comment on the many, many, MANY stories of women being abused by men and remind them to take responsibility and not make it about gender’.

It turns out that yours truly and this person, who for the purpose of this story, we will call Counselor, do have something in common.

We are both lawyers.

I don’t often mention my profession in my writing, it’s not really relevant.

But this man, in the space of three ranting comments, asked me no less than 8 direct questions. So, in the interest of professional courtesy to my learned friend, I am prepared to enter the witness box and face his cross-examination. Actually I have a few questions of my own.

But I’ll let him go first.

I do ask him to remember that we practice this noble trade on opposite sides of the planet so there will be differences in terminology and procedure. Let’s not get caught up in technicalities.

Are you ready Counselor?

Your witness

Counselor: How much property did your husband take from you?

We were together for 24 years. He got 80% of our assets. I didn’t fight. He got our family home, cars, and boats and kept his retirement accounts. I got $70,000 and the Tupperware (men don’t appreciate decent seals anyway). He also agreed that I could have the juicer his mother gave me but he changed his mind after 6 months and demanded it back.

I let him take back the dam juicer.

Counselor: How much child support and alimony have you been ordered to pay?

For the first 3 years after we separated, we shared our son’s care 50/50. During that time I paid $12,000 per year in child support and covered my son for health insurance. During this time I fed, clothed, and sheltered him for 50% of the time he was with me.

My ex had $460 of my money every fortnight, given that he bought Jack’s clothes from the second-hand shop, I don’t think much was being spent on him. I paid because I couldn’t stand the conflict, and he constantly threatened to stop me from seeing Jack if I didn’t pay what he demanded.

My ex bought a property, various new pieces of plant for his business, and did stacks of work for cash to ensure I’d have to pay as much child support as possible. He said this to my face. His annual income for child support purposes was declared at between $8,000 and $20,000.

I should have appealed, but I just didn’t have the strength. I was just so grateful to be free from his clutches.

18 months ago, my son (who was 17 at the time and weighed around 180 pounds) pushed through from the back to the front of my car and jumped on me while I was driving and we nearly had a head-on collision. We should both be dead.

My ex took over the full-time care after that (at my request). I knew I could no longer keep Jack safe. Child support increased to $20,000 per year.

Alimony (called spouse maintenance here) is not commonly awarded in Australia. My ex didn’t apply for it.

Counselor: Are you actually not allowed to see your son at all?

My ex has put conditions on me seeing my son that I can’t meet. My son is now 19, a fully grown and very strong man who functions at a 2-year-old level. My son can’t speak or wipe his own bum. I need support to spend time with him because I can’t keep him or myself safe.

When I’m with my son, I end up with bruises. He can’t talk but pushes me around to try to get me to understand.

Are you OK with that Counselor?

My beautiful son, who does not understand his own sexual urges constantly pins me again the wall trying to rub his penis on me?

Are you OK with that? Is it just something I should put up with?

If he runs towards the road, I don’t have the strength to stop him. I can’t save him.

Counselor, are you OK with that?

I have PTSD from long-term domestic abuse as well as the trauma of trying to manage my son on my own as a “brave single mother”. I cannot have any contact with my abusive ex. He is hell-bent on sabotaging what is left of my life.

I have re-married (I know, how selfish). My ex would like to destroy my marriage and career.

My ex’s conditions, which I must meet in order to see my son, are that I must collect Jack personally (from the man who abused me and almost put me in my grave) and then manage my son without support (because my ex handles Jack’s services and won’t let any of them communicate with or support me).

My ex is using my son as a pawn to continue the abuse, after all, he believes he owns me.

Are you OK with that Counselor?

My son is so much bigger and stronger than I am. I need help to spend time with him so that is safe for both of us. My ex says that my struggles with managing Jack are punishment for leaving him.

Are you OK with that Counselor?

My son has no voice in this tragedy.

Are you OK with that?

Counselor: You said men are ‘allowed to leave’. In what way are you not ‘allowed’ to?

Society does not allow me to leave without piling on unfair guilt and shame. Sure, I can leave my marriage. But I cannot prioritize my own welfare after putting my son first for 18 years. Not without raised eyebrows and direct judgment.

I cop the wrath of society for wanting to do all I can to avoid a full-blown breakdown.

I am persecuted for following the advice of my doctor and physiologist that I must, under no circumstances, have any contact with my abuser. I also can’t have my son in my care without help, because he is simply too much for me to manage (he towers over me by nearly a foot and is stronger than most grown men).

I have had no choice but to withdraw from many of my social circles because my ex has projected on to me his own behavior and painted me as the abuser. He has turned people I have known for years against me, he is furious that I have cut contact and have finally escaped his control. So he tells anyone that will listen that I abused him and that I don’t want anything to do with Jack.

And because it’s uncommon for women to be in my situation, to not be the primary carer, the gullible fall for his lies.

So allow me to re-phrase, I’m allowed to leave, as long as I pay the price.

Counselor: Men get treated so much worse, show me some harm?

Do you still think that? Now that you realize that your presumption that I took my ex to the cleaners and milked him for alimony and child support was wrong?

Does it shock you that there are women who pay child support to men?

You want to see some harm. The reality is that for most victims of abuse, the scars are invisible.

For 24 years, I was subjected to gradually increasing abuse, I was followed, controlled, and bullied. I was denied the right to make my own decisions. I was subjected to sexual violence. On numerous occasions, I woke to find him inside me. When I protested and pointed out that he hadn’t asked if I wanted it he would say ‘we are married, I don’t need to ask’.

I nearly jumped in front of a train to escape the life I was trapped in. I lived with a man who made no secret of his hatred for women. Women who think they are too good for certain men or who set their standards too high. This was his lament when his similarly misogynistic mate couldn’t get anyone to date him.

A man who threw a full kettle of boiling water across the room in rage when I dared to question him.

Who told me that one day he was going to take us all out and would veer the car towards a tree, just to frighten me.

A man who sympathized with the man in a murder-suicide situation, and declared that it was always the woman’s fault.

A man who threatened to kill himself if I left him.

Evidence of harm? I’m afraid I have none.

Counselor: Have you heard the term ‘deadbeat dad’ or ‘brave single mom’

Of course. Your point?

Counselor: What do you say to the statement that ‘men’s lives are financially and emotionally ruined by divorce?

I think the lives of everyone involved in a failed marriage are permanently changed by divorce but what is the alternative? Do we force people, men or women to stay in a miserable marriage? Should you have been forced to stay in a marriage in which you say you were physically beaten by your wife? I say unequivocally no.

Should I have been forced to stay in a marriage where I was tormented day and night, emotionally and sexually abused, belittled at every opportunity?

I say no.

Are you really regretting that your violent marriage ended?

I’m confused. Your wife beat you while you were together (which is totally not OK) but you have been emotionally and financially ruined by divorce? If she beat you, are you not happy to be out of the situation?

Was the divorce not a blessing?

Counselor: You haven’t described in your story what you mean by ‘crucified’, what do you mean?

Sure, I wasn’t nailed to a cross. Someone that was perfect has already done that so we could be free. But I trust our little chat has clarified for you what happens to women who cannot look after their own children.

They are painted as cold, selfish and uncaring. Not understood as frightened and unable to protect themselves against fully grown men. Not as mothers who despite giving everything are in danger from their own children, who need help so that both they and the disabled adult they love so much are safe.

Rebuttal

I believe I have answered your questions but in closing:

• I’m not trying to get away, I have escaped. I am a survivor.
• I won’t allow my son to be used as a weapon if that means I must let go of my end of the tug of war rope, I will. That is what love does.
• I’m not selfish, I desperately want a relationship with my son. I’m not prepared to let my ex continue to abuse me.
• I am no longer a victim. I ceased to be one the day I escaped.
• I love men. I stand against toxic masculinity.
• I also stand by my response to your initial comment.

Why don’t you try and get out more?

The defense rests.