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