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. This is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and.
That we just can't stop thinking about.
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.
There was a lot of backlash against her.
Yeah, and if you haven't listened to that episode, you can go back and check it out. Robin's story is really fascinating.
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.
Or why didn't she leave, or why didn't she scream, like that.
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 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 thing that happened to you, or that if.
You don't act a certain way, you're making it all up.
Right.
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.
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 by calling her a liar when.
She spoke about his sexual assault.
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?
And look? You know, the.
Reality and what I found when doing this piece is that actually that's a really.
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.
Scholars, But what was actually.
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?
Why didn't you call the police? Why didn't you tell someone sooner?
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.
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?
I mean the.
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.
Deeply baked into the law, yeah.
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
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 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 questioning for women that was basically like, okay, one, did she come from a good family?
Two?
Did she cry out for help? Did she fight back?
Did she show signs of physical violence on her body or clothing?
Did she report the crime in a timely manner, and.
So these are the questions that defense attorneys are still today relying on when they questioned victims.
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? And so these things do really have very real world implications.
And I think they get at this.
Idea that we don't really understand trauma and how it impacts people and how people experience terrible things.
Yeah.
I mean our common understanding of this subject is like, yeah, why didn't she leave or why didn't she scream?
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 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 that that moment was like not that important, actually bonds you to your abuser.
And to basically correct everyone on TikTok, actually I wanted 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.
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 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.
That's like a very obvious one.
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, so often they don't have resources or friends or family anymore they can rely on.
They're sort of in an isolated position. Got it.
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 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. So we know that it's extremely dangerous for women to leave and also extremely dangerous.
For their loved ones.
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.
So these are the reasons.
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
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 not just like some stranger who's abusing you. This is someone you have a relationship with, you feel an incredible tie to.
And who is sick and who is sick?
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 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
to take his hurt and his pain away. Oh wow, right, because I think it's hard to separate yourself.
From that person in some ways.
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.
Like a human response. But we don't want our.
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.
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 too when I was covering that case, because the question of like do you cry on the stand?
Is it too much or too little?
Do you want to.
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.
It's almost like you have to perform, especially if you're on the stand.
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.
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?
I don't know. It's not something that I have thought much about.
But you're sitting there in the courtroom and you're like, oh, is that believable?
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.
A certain way or not grieving in a certain way.
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.
Are they crying?
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.
Right, It's a coping mechanism exactly.
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.
Understanding of trauma now.
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.
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.
Come to unlearn them.
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.
A lot of this time.
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 mechanism by which they're trying to keep things normal and
gain control of the.
Situation or feel like it's not as bad as it is.
Yeah, and I think that.
So there's like lots of ways in which I think that show has.
Actually met I think you're so right, and so I.
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.
Well, this is the thing, I mean.
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, 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?
Like that's insane?
Obviously, wasn't there that judge who was like, why didn't you just like lock your knees.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
You know, there is no perfect victim.
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.
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norvell.
Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Cosparelli, Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith.
We are your hosts Susie Bannacarum.
And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers. For even more, check out in retropod dot com. See you next week.