I’ve Finally Gotten My Freedom

Jacob met his perpetrator at College of DuPage in one of the many student organizations they participated in. They were a chapter president of this group, but to Jacob it wasn’t just any regular club.  “I’d spent years in there trying to cultivate a sense of community and shared vision.  By the time this went down, we were floating about thirty to forty members who were all friendly, if not good friends, with each other.  It was a network of friends, a support system, one member even called us a second family.” When their perpetrator joined, they did the same thing they’d do with any new member.  They tried to make him feel comfortable and were friendly. “I wanted him to know the mission, what we did, to make him feel invested in something greater than himself.”

“Now, along the way, he seemed like a bit of a cutie, so my interest in him grew to something more than professional.”

Jacob had to complete a project for their art history class where they had to go to the Art Institute in Chicago with another student.  They decided to ask him along to the museum because they knew that he liked art. 

They finished up everything they needed to do for their project, so Jacob spent the rest of the time getting to know him.  Eventually they ended up holding hands as they went through the museum. “By the end, it’s pretty clear we liked each other” so they decided to set up a date.  

“At that point, I could not have possibly foreseen what could have happened because I had known many people who had been in toxic or abusive relationships and I had kinda gotten the stereotype in my head of what an abuser looked like.  They were suave and charismatic, narcissists or psychopaths. He was none of these. He was a kinda small, vulnerable guy who was world-weary but seemed like he was trying to do something good in the world. He told me very early on that he was a victim of abuse at home.  That instantly brought my guard down. How could this guy possibly be an abuser? How could there be any red flags here? I had a very binary understanding of perpetrators of power-based violence at the time. I didn’t understand that abuse can be cyclical, and that people can come out of home environments like that with these destructive approaches to interpersonal interactions relationship management.”

They dated for about three months and during that time “there really wasn’t one incident that you could point to as being ‘the incident’, like some other stories.  It was a very slow burn of increasingly problematic and harmful behaviors on his part that eventually led me to say ‘no, this is not ok. He should not be acting this way. I should not be feeling that way.  I need to get out.’”

“The metaphor I used is at first there were yellow flags, then there were orange flags, then the flags were burning a bright crimson color.  I needed to book it to get away from this guy at any cost.”

During the relationship, he pushed sexual boundaries, he tried to control Jacob’s emotions by constantly putting them down from their appearance to identity to even sexual performance.  He tried to control who they spent their time with. He wanted Jacob to feel guilty being working late hours at night. “To be honest, even looking back now, I have trouble classifying what happen during the relationship in a vacuum as abusive, toxic and unhealthy definitely.  It was the reaction to ending the relationship that turned the tables that showed me his true colors in a way I couldn’t have pictured before.”

Jacob wanted to bring up the topic of a break-up out of the blue, not only for their sake but also for his ex-partner’s, like ripping off a bandage.  However, they were afraid he could do something dramatic in response to the break-up, so went to their mutual friends to let them know in advance of the break up and asked them to make sure he was safe and didn’t do anything destructive to himself or someone else.  “I just told them ‘I’m going to break up with this guy.  He’s going to be in a bad place. I’m sorry I’m doing this, but I need to get out and I need you to help him because I can’t.”

On what would have been the start of their fourth month together, Jacob went to a location close to his house and told him it was over.  They thought that he held his cool through most of it, but then became upset and left. It went better than Jacob expected. Or so it seemed at the time.

Back at School

The first day back at school after this happened, Jacob was with some of their friends at a campus Starbucks.  Their ex tracked them down and demanded to have a conversation. To avoid any conflict, Jacob went and was led to a more secluded location on campus.  “I was afraid he might want to fight or something.  He did in a manner of speaking, but it wasn’t physical damage that I was walking away from that interaction with.”  They hoped his intentions were only to talk, but were getting nervous that there might be an ulterior motive. He told Jacob to sit down and they complied.  He sat very close and said, “You need to look at this.”

He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.  He rolled up both his sleeves and said “Look at what you did to me” revealing signs of extensive self-harm.  “Your friends have had me on suicide watch for four days because of you.  Because you didn’t want to talk out our problems, that you didn’t want to try to fix things instead of running away, I have been an absolute wreck and it’s all your fault.”  The rest of the conversation was about how he only loved Jacob because he pitied them and that he was doing them a favor because they would never find love again. 

He continued to berate and insult them and then slowly shifted the conversation to try to get back together by saying “Oh do you think in the long term we could get back together?” Jacob told him that they didn’t think they were meant for each other.  “I didn’t tell him that I think he was developing into an abuser.  I never told him that to this day to his face. But I wish I did.”

Toward the end of the conversation, they told him that they wouldn’t accept responsibility for the harm that he did to himself and that “In spite of what just happened, I wanted to do what I could to play a role in his healing in this experience.”  At that point, he grabbed Jacob’s arms and made them comfort him and feel the self-harm scars in specific detail.  While their interaction ended soon after that, the experience had been very traumatic for Jacob and would continue to haunt them in every later interaction with their perpetrator.

Aftermath

After this, he would try to get them alone as often as possible, attending more on-campus events that Jacob was involved with, and even self-harmed in front of them when alone to try to drive the point home that Jacob had caused him pain by ending that relationship.  In addition to the verbal abuse and manipulation they were already experiencing, stalking was now becoming an issue.

Eventually, as the verbal abuse and bullying increased, Jacob finally confronted him via text and sent him a message that said something to the effect of “I know what you’re doing.  It’s not ok. It’s flat out abusive and it needs to stop.”  His ex-partner agreed to stop, but never apologized or tried to make amends, or even acknowledge the abusive behavior.  He continued to get even more involved in their shared student organization which Jacob didn’t understand until later.  

“There was a struggle for me.  I felt responsible for his pain, but do I need to put my own emotional needs to get away from this guy above the needs of the organization?”

Jacob became increasingly worried when their ex-partner began to insert himself into the same social groups and get to know friends Jacob knew.  Jacob never really talked about what had happened during or after the relationship due to how many friends they shared, and they didn’t want to make waves. As the perpetrator began to insert himself into more circles of friends, Jacob noticed he was being uninvited to events.  One that stuck out the most to Jacob was an open invitation to a house party run by another leader in their organization. On their way there, Jacob received word that the perpetrator had arrived first, and that he had asked the host that they be disinvited, though all other members and leaders in that group were still welcome.

Summertime arrived and Jacob decided to try to get involved in a subcommittee in their organization, that also doubled as a support group.  They were told that they couldn’t join. “Now the exclusion had changed from personal to my paraprofessional environment that we were in.  It was evident that he was, in my opinion, trying to restrict my involvement in the organization by becoming increasingly involved and then demanding we not be involved in the same things.”

Jacob met with the committee chair, Z, who told Jacob that he was concerned with Jacob’s involvement because the anger toward Jacob that their perpetrator was cultivating in that committee would escalate into further conflict that would hurt the organization and its mission.  When Jacob asked Z what was being said, they were told that the details weren’t important and it would be best to keep a distance and let the entire situation cool down. “To be honest looking back, I wasn’t the kindest to Z over this.  I projected my frustration with my abuser for creating the situation onto the guy who was just trying to manage it.  Actually, I’d say later on I got pretty combative about it.”  

Another leader in the organization, C, joined the conversation and added that, while C didn’t believe what was said, there was some mention of “trauma” by that person, and that if Jacob escalated this situation, it would give him a chance to say whatever he wanted about Jacob to the school, potentially compromising their participation in the student organization and even their enrollment.  C seconded Z, demanding Jacob not get involved and specifically asked them not to go to the group’s faculty advisor. “This seemed fishy, and something wasn’t adding up.”

After learning through social media and word-of-mouth that C was actually friends with their perpetrator, as well as more specifics about what the perpetrator had been spreading in the group, Jacob went directly to their faculty advisor.  Jacob mentioned the limiting of their participation and there being defamatory rumors, but did not, however, disclose the extent of the emotional abuse they were experiencing at the hands of their ex-partner. “After I told her, she asked only one follow up question: ‘After you broke up, did he become more or less involved in your organization?’  I said yes, and hadn’t considered the implications of that fact until then, but after I said it, all of the sudden the gears started clicking in my head.  None of these events - the disinvitation from parties, the rumors, the issues joining the subcommittee - were coincidences. The student group and all its social connections I’d invested years into had become the site of a propaganda war, revenge for standing up to the abuse, the bullying.  And it was a war my abuser was winning.”

Several Weeks Later

A few days later, the entire leadership team receives and email from the faculty advisor that said “Something urgent has come up.  I’m calling a meeting of all this group’s student leaders. Attendance mandatory.”  Before the meeting, Jacob went to the advisor’s office to ask what the meeting was about, and she said that the other leaders of the student organization were attempting to remove Jacob completely.  They had contacted the advisor privately with a list of allegations about their conduct as president, which the advisor relayed. “These claims referred to situations and events that didn’t happen, but had apparently been going on for months or even years.  The weirdest thing was, I had made mistakes in leading that group, things like spending $300 of our budget on an event that went nowhere, or falling behind deadlines on several past projects, and C knew that.  The fictitious claims had a theme though where my actual mistakes didn’t - they all attacked my honesty.”

The advisor opened the meeting and summarized the situation as she had understood it.  “The advisor, God bless her, spent a good few minutes talking about how inappropriate the entire situation was and how disappointed she was that things had come to this.  She strongly criticized their actions, from failing to notify her of any of these leadership-related allegations to removing her agency in solving the problem, and characterized it as the most hostile behavior she’d seen in 15 years of advising student groups.  In a move that surprised all of us, she then quit as advisor and introduced the faculty who would be replacing her.”  

When C was given the floor, they glossed over all of the leadership-related allegations and instead produced a memo written by Jacob’s perpetrator.  The memo was not read and all C said was that the memo was believed unconditionally by the rest of the leaders. Despite Z objecting, stating that he did not believe the memo and the memo had nothing to do with the hearing, C said that “this organization stands with survivors”.  C demanded Jacob’s resignation, under threat of them leaving and taking the entire leadership team with them, which would force the whole organization to disband. 

“At that point, I had no reason to hide anymore.  I had no point in lying or pretending that everything between us was amicable.  I came out with a very abridged version of my side of the story which was promptly ignored by my peers.  They’d all been given a handful of reasons I was dishonest by someone they trusted.”  

Jacob decided to leave the group in order to keep in running.  As a concession, the new advisor said that they could say a final goodbye both electronically and in person.  In an attempt to be civil, he chalked up the situation to “creative differences” when addressing the matter publicly.

“It was devastating emotionally.  I had lost everything at that point, this group I had put my free time into and all my passion and heart and soul.  Most of the time when I wasn’t working or studying, I was investing time in this organization or cultivating relationships with people in it.”

About a month later, Jacob had a grand total of three friends left who were students at COD.  “I had a few rock bottom points in my life where it seemed that nothing had gone right and this was definitely one of them.  That somehow against all odds, my abuser, a person who I loved and returned that love with trauma, had successfully turned my entire social circle against me.  It was such a textbook example of isolation that victims of power-based violence face and here I am in the middle of it where I never possibly imagined I would be.”

Finding Others

Jacob began to try to find out the specifics of their perpetrator’s rumors via their former friends. “I was at a low enough point that I could see my own behavior in some of these accusations. Oh. . . I was supposedly over possessive.  Well there was one time I asked him to do something politely. Or ‘wow, you really beat that guy up’, they’d say. Well, there was that one time I hit him in the elbow a bit too hard trying to joke around like a dudebro. In my state of mind, I was so ready to accept that these were the equivalent to the kind of behavior that had been inflicted upon me for so long.”

They spent a lot of time trying to sort through everything that had happened.  It was around that same time, they began to meet other folks at COD that said they were victims of power-based violence.  “Some of my first friends since all of this happened were people who were also hurt by the same person.”  They started thinking about stories their perpetrator had told them about his supposed stalkers, abusers and bullies.  In reality, this was the exact same thing that happened to Jacob. He had bullied or otherwise hurt these people, then cried wolf.  “It was chilling because it shattered a lot of assumptions about abuse narratives.  It’s very difficult in these kinds of communities and in this kind of environment to ask, ‘what if not everyone claiming to be a survivor is?  What if there are abusers and opportunists who exploit a pro survivor culture to cover up their own abusive of bullying behavior?’” 

From that point, Jacob knew they had to share their story.  “I published an eight paragraph write up on social media of the series of events up to that point.  Eventually, four other members of my old club read it, realized they’d been duped, and shared this adorable hashtag - which I didn’t ask them to do - #jacobwaswronged.  They not only joined me in solidarity, but they threw themselves under the bus too.”

In the meantime, they decided they would combine their newfound status as a student leader without a group to lead, and as a survivor of abuse, and rekindle COD’s Feminist Alliance club.  They have an emphasis on discussing and combating power-based violence. “It was through sharing my story with other students that I really started to heal.  I was reclaiming not only my own identity as a survivor, but also reclaiming my status as a student leader and servant of the college and community that I had put so much love into before.”

(Jacob would later learn from a College employee that C and other student leaders, on behalf of their perpetrator, tried unsuccessfully to remove their posts about the abuse from social media.  The leaders had also, according to Jacob’s source, tried repeatedly to have the Feminist Alliance disbanded, but this was shot down by College faculty.)

Epilogue

“As for my abuser, I suppose he got a big head after getting me thrown out that he just kept going.  A month after I got kicked out, he got into it with Z, said some disgusting things, then tried to paint him as the force behind a supposed suicide attempt to the other members of that committee.  Unlike with me, they didn’t buy it. My abuser was shown the door, left the committee and organization as a whole, and to my knowledge no longer attends COD at all.”

“The student group where this all went down was definitely worse off for it, too.  One by one, members came around asking for my side of the story, and many walked away once they got it.   The lack of a coherent plan for the group beyond ousting me meant projects were getting dropped left and right, and the old ‘family’ we made had little to hold it together anymore.  Plenty of old members asked me rejoin that group to try to get myself elected back to my old leadership role, even while I was leading Feminist Alliance. I tried it, but with most of the people still involved being my abuser’s friends, this was a losing battle.  And in hindsight, it really wasn’t healthy spending so much time around C and the others who had helped him achieve his revenge fantasy. I’m volunteering now with a nonprofit outside the school that does pretty much the same stuff, and I’m a lot happier for it.”

“I’m still leading that Feminist Alliance, and this year is showing some promise for us.  Between that and my nonprofit work, I’ve found a way to recreate the community my abuser shattered and rekindle my sense of purpose in something greater.  In serving others, I’ve finally gotten my freedom.”

Advice

“I would say to bystanders really that abusers, perpetrators, whatever you want to call them, they come in all shapes and sizes.  Part of the reason that, in my opinion, my abuser was as successful as he was in manipulating the people around him because he broke the mold of a typical abuser.  He was a survivor himself of domestic violence in his family growing up, he suffered from mental illness, but not the kind that makes someone violent, he had several check boxes of privilege that he doesn’t have, he was very much an underdog and he leveraged that for all it was worth to ultimately stop his victims from speaking out about it.”

School

“I mean it’s difficult because I don’t know what would have happened if I had been forthright with the faculty about how much this involved campus.  I will say that his friends and sympathizers in our shared group were very clever with how they did it, like how they ultimately helped him get rid of me because they did it in a way that it didn’t matter what the faculty wanted or did, or whatever other members who didn’t want to get involved, did. They were almost guaranteed to get what they want.  There is nothing that a school can really do proactively to guard against people like that other than, especially for coaches or club advisors to really have their eyes on the group and being proactive with conflict resolution.”

Word or phrase: 

 I’ve finally gotten my freedom.