Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
A Conversation About Victim Blaming

A Conversation About Victim Blaming

Last updated on: September 27, 2021 at 8:50 pm by Mary Pezzulo

A Conversation About Victim Blaming 2021-09-27T20:50:59-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I had hoped to write something more poetic about my daughter’s birthday, but first I’m going to have to address something that just happened to me on Twitter.

I had admitted to my friends that I was having a bad day, when a follower asked me an insensitive question. That’s all it was at first, an insensitive question. Someone called Ana DiCostanzo asked me why I hadn’t called 911 when I was begging the midwife to take me to the hospital. She later said I didn’t have “permission” to use her words, but in fact it’s legal for me to use everything she said in public as a matter of public record as long as I properly attribute them to her, so here’s the thread and here’s a condensed version.

Now, I’ve not made a secret of the fact that I’ve suffered a chronic illness for decades that was only diagnosed last December. I was dismissed and treated like a hysterical person by doctors for my strange symptoms. The only person who helped me for a couple of years in there was a nutty chiropractor who helped a little with my pain and put me on a fussy odd diet that accidentally worked very well, since it took me off of “processed grains” and it happens I’m very sensitive to gluten and carbohydrates. Also, in my teenage years and in the years leading up to Rose’s birth, I had been the victim of some medical abuse that I’m still not ready to talk about. Someday I will address it publicly. Between the chiropractor and the medical abuse, I was into “natural medicine” and I was terrified of doctors. I had nightmares about hospitals a lot. Michael’s good friend once visited our house bringing his medical school lab coat, and the lab coat triggered a panic attack, that’s how badly off I was. And in all the months leading up to my childbirth, I was teased and tormented by someone close to me who thought she was helping me, who would tell me horror stories about how hospitals under Obama were forcing women to get unnecessary surgeries and this caused me to be even more afraid. I shouldn’t have believed that, but I was a brainwashed conservative raised in the Charismatic Rewewal and I hadn’t really begun my deconstruction yet. I was also anti-vax and a score of other things I’m ashamed of now, because there was so much I didn’t know.

Then I was pressured into hiring a doula by another well-meaning friend who didn’t want me to get forced into a C-section. The doula was the abusive accomplice to the con artist midwife I told you about in my last post. She introduced me to the midwife. The midwife sweet talked me into accepting her services. I didn’t have many friends in Steubenville and the doula and midwife befriended me, or pretended to. I was raised to believe I was helpless and couldn’t make good choices, so I asked their advice on everything. They told me horror stories about babies born limp and without a pulse from the anesthetic, babies who had to be injected with Narcan to wake them up again. I legitimately thought that my Rosie would be abused or killed. I had nightmares about ending up in the hospital. I actually did see a doctor parallel to my midwife appointments up until the very end, but themidwife had completely taken me in and convinced me that the doctor was going to hurt me and I believed her because of my history of abuse. I’m not saying it was smart of me to do that. It was pretty dumb. But people can be tricked into acting dumb when they are afraid.

The midwives also convinced me that the only hospital in town that was halfway to decent and wouldn’t abuse me was the one an hour away, and that if I called 911 I would be taken to the local one where Rosie would surely be hurt.

I went into the birth very afraid and absolutely convinced that my midwife was going to protect me. And over the next 27 hours, I was unable to sleep, I was repeatedly raped, I was overdosed on labor-inducing drugs, until I was lying in the bedroom, not next to a phone, with an able-bodied midwife looming over me molesting me and telling me that I couldn’t give up now and call for help.

That was why I screamed at the midwife until she took me to the hospital. Because I was a victim of previous abuse, I’d been gaslit and conned, I was in agony I hadn’t slept in 27 hours, and I couldn’t think straight.

This wasn’t enough for my troll, who taunted me about not thinking clearly.

She actually believed I was lying, because she couldn’t believe that an iatrophobic woman in labor who’d been gaslit by a con artist for five months and was in the middle of being raped and abused while at an eleven on the pain scale wouldn’t act with cold reason and do the thing she’d been conditioned to believe would kill her baby. She also gaslit me by acting like I was the one overreacting to such intrusive questions, and messed up a very simple Shakespeare quote.

She apparently had no idea how hospitals work, how births work, or how being the victim of trauma works. I was appalled. She went on and on for upwards of an hour saying terrible things.

Anyway, Ana has blocked me now and this isn’t about her. I’m just using my experience tonight as an example to explain to everyone a very important fact about abusers. Abusers groom victims they know are vulnerable. They gaslight and manipulate the victims into viewing the abusers as their saviors. And they are good at it.

This is obvious when you think about it. How could an abuser like my rapist have gotten away with doing this to so many women in the Ohio Valley if she wasn’t an excellent manipulator? She had me on a string like a puppet. Even after my c-section, she actually visited me in the hospital and I thanked her and apologized to her for the inconvenience. It took two days and a lot of long talks with the mostly excellent hospital staff in Martin’s Ferry before I admitted to myself that I’d been abused. That’s how long it took the spellbinding to wear off.

And if you talk to someone else who’s been abused, more often than not they will tell you the same thing. Abusers know how to spot people who have been abused before– when I met another one of the midwife’s victims, they were exactly like me, an abuse survivor who was very wary of modern medicine and afraid of what would happen in a hospital. Abusers know how to manipulate victims into isolation and distrust of anyone who can help. Abusers know how to get victims into a place where they’ll do whatever the abuser says. And they know how to shame the victims afterwards so it’s very hard for the victims to admit that it’s not their fault.

This is one reason why rape victims so often don’t report the rape, or take a long time to realize they’d been raped.

This is one reason why people stay in abusive marriages for years or decades instead of just packing a bag and hitting the road.

This is one reason why people stay in contact with abusive relatives when it would be just as easy to leave.

This is one reason why people cower under abusive teachers, bosses and so-called “friends.” Because the abusers are great at what they do, and they know how to groom and manipulate victims.

If you meet someone who’s been raped or abused in another way, you’re looking at someone who was under agonizing stress and fear you can’t begin to understand. I hope you will approach that person with empathy. I hope you’ll consider that they got into that position by having their normal boundaries and defenses broken down until they acted helplessly. And I hope that you will respond with kindness.

I want to thank all the people who defended me in that ridiculous Twitter thread. I’m appalled that Ana was so offensive, but I’m glad for the example she gave. Because a lot of people don’t seem to realize how abusers function or why victims don’t defend themselves as robustly as we’d like.

There’s no such thing as a perfect victim who does everything right. There will always be something we can nitpick, something they could have done to be a little bit safer. And that’s not important, because abuse can happen anyway. Abuse is never, ever, ever the victim’s fault. Abuse is always the abuser’s fault. Always.

Now I’m going to get offline and spend tomorrow celebrating the birthday of my intelligent, empathetic, creative and wonderful daughter, Rose. Rose doesn’t know about the abuse I went through in my childbirth and I’ve kept a lot of things in my past from her as well. Rose may never know that keeping busy caring for such a wonderful and remarkable child is the sole reason I didn’t walk off a cliff sometime in the past ten years. She saved my life.

Happy birthday, my Rose.

I hope there aren’t any more questions, but you know where to find me if there are.

image via pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Abuse

victim-blaming

Previous Post

September 21, 2021

What Not to Say to a Rape Survivor on the Anniversary

Next Post

September 23, 2021 A Word On Our Treatment Of Haitian Refugees

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did David use to calm Saul when Saul was troubled by a harmful spirit?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Trumpet Harp Flute Drum