12/24/2025
“If you see a person being abused, whether it is a fist, a threat, a glare, a constant put-down, a cruel joke that is not a joke, control dressed up as ‘care’, or fear hidden behind a forced smile, and you choose to stand with the abuser or say nothing at all, you do not stay clean. You join what is happening. You may not raise your hand, but you help hold the room steady while someone is being broken. You become part of the reason the abuser feels safe enough to continue.
Silence is not neutral when harm is taking place. Silence is a shelter built around the abuser, made from other people’s discomfort, politeness, and desire to avoid a scene. It tells the abuser, clearly and repeatedly, ‘There will be no consequences here.’ It tells the victim, just as clearly, ‘Even when you are hurt in front of others, you will be left to cope alone.’ That message does not fade when the moment passes. It follows them home.
Do not soften it by calling it a private matter. Abuse is not private when it spills into someone’s voice, posture, confidence, and safety. Abuse is not a disagreement between equals. It is one person deciding that another person does not deserve dignity, choice, or peace. It is a pattern of control, humiliation, intimidation, isolation, threats, and sometimes violence, and it is designed to make the victim doubt their own judgment until they can no longer trust what they see, hear, or feel. When you witness that and dismiss it, you help the abuser achieve their goal.
There is a particular cruelty in being abused in front of witnesses. The victim learns to read faces quickly: who looks away, who changes the subject, who laughs nervously, who pretends it did not happen, who stays friendly with the person causing harm because it is easier. They learn that their pain makes others uncomfortable, so they start to hide it to protect everyone else’s ease. They learn to swallow their words before they are accused of being dramatic, difficult, or oversensitive. And the abuser learns that the victim can be treated badly in public and still no one will step in. That is not just abandonment. It is training.
Siding with an abuser is not always obvious. Sometimes it is giving them the benefit of the doubt again and again, while expecting the victim to be patient, forgiving, and quiet. Sometimes it is saying, ‘They are under pressure,’ as if stress justifies cruelty. Sometimes it is telling the victim to be more careful, not to upset them, to keep the peace, to think about the children, to think about the family name, to stop making things awkward. Sometimes it is inviting the abuser to gatherings and leaving the victim out because the victim has become “too much”. That is not balanced. That is punishment for suffering, and protection for the person causing it.
Enabling abuse is also what happens when people treat the abuser’s public charm as proof of innocence, and the victim’s fear as proof of instability. Abusers often look calm because they are the ones in control. Victims often look distressed because they are the ones being harmed. When you judge the victim’s tears, anger, confusion, or silence more harshly than you judge the abuser’s behaviour, you help rewrite the story until the victim becomes the problem and the abuse becomes background noise. That rewrite can trap someone for years. It can cost them their job, their friendships, their family, their health, and sometimes their life.
It is easy to ask, ‘Why do they not just leave?’ It is harder to ask, ‘What have we done to make leaving feel impossible?’ People stay when they are frightened, when they are monitored, when they have no money of their own, when they have been threatened, when they have been told no one will believe them, when they have been worn down day after day, and when they look around and see that even obvious harm does not move anyone to act. Every silent witness becomes another reason to doubt that help will come. Every person who stays friendly with the abuser becomes another wall the victim has to climb before they can even begin to escape.
Doing the right thing does not require perfection, but it does require courage and clarity. It means naming what you are seeing instead of excusing it. It means checking on the victim safely and privately, listening without interrogation, and believing them without demanding they prove their pain. It means offering practical support: a lift, a place to sit, a phone, a plan, a record of what happened, someone to stand beside them when they speak. It means refusing to be used as cover. It means challenging cruelty, reporting violence, and choosing the victim’s safety over everyone else’s comfort.
So let this be the line you do not cross: if you witness abuse and you stay quiet to keep things pleasant, you are not protecting peace, you are protecting the person who is harming someone. If you watch a human being shrink under cruelty and you do nothing, your silence becomes part of the harm. Be the person who makes it harder for abuse to continue. Be the voice that breaks the isolation, the presence that says, without hesitation, ‘I see it, I will not excuse it, and you will not face it alone.’”
-Steve De'lano Garcia
