A Family Statement On People Who Call Survivors Liars

For a helpful resource on how communities can support survivors of stalking, click here

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from a fellow survivor asking for advice on how to navigate being harassed by a handful of men who are trying to justify their harassment of her by falsely accusing her of lying about her lived experiences & claiming she deserves to be “exposed” & “punished.” Sounds familiar… not just to me, but to virtually every fellow survivor I’ve ever seen share their story in any capacity.

When I was consistently active on social media, I got more messages like this than I could even count. This blog post is a statement of solidarity to every survivor who has ever gone through being accused of lying about their trauma, whether in person or online- & some advice on protecting your mental health & putting things in perspective while navigating this. There is so much to say on this topic & on other issues survivors face, & this blog post is likely not going to be a one-off.

One thing I want to say to start this off is that many people who have harassed, slandered, put me in danger, & even engaged in stalking behavior have come to me later with genuine apologies. I am even on good terms now with many people who have acted this way in the past towards me. I truly believe people can change & grow, & make amends.

The following is co-authored by myself & a fellow survivor who inspires me daily- my father, Ron ❤️

Dear survivor- If you’ve ever been accused of lying about, making up, exaggerating, or being at fault for what someone did to you- first & foremost- please know that you’re not alone. As stated above, we don’t know a single survivor- not even one- whether they are outspoken or very private about their lived experiences, who has not been accused of lying by at least one person. When a survivor shares part of their story online, that’s usually amplified.

One thing we noticed a long time ago, is that people who treat others this way seem to feel very threatened by survivors speaking out, they take it very personally & are very invested in silencing & trying to falsely discredit us. That in & of itself has some disturbing implications, because why would they benefit from such things? What do they stand to gain?

•Trying To Make Sense Of Chaos:

Many of these people try to convince the public that they’re helping “real” victims by weeding out “fake” victims to attempt to put a positive spin on the harm they are causing while also pretending they’re doing something to “help.”

We won’t pretend to fully understand why some people are so invested in creating an environment of hostility & intimidation & disbelief for survivors who come forward, meanwhile doing nothing to actually help the people they claim are the “real survivors” who they are “protecting” from the ones they claim are lying. However, we feel that speaking with so many other survivors as well as mental health professionals & seeing so many common patterns & behaviors among people who treat others this way has given us some insight.

The type of people who harass, slander, & stalk survivors will try to make their target(s) feel isolated. They will try very hard to make you like you’re the only one or one of very few not being believed, & that their supposed doubt in your lived trauma is because there’s something wrong with YOU.  Don’t fall for this isolation tactic. Almost all abusers try to isolate their targets in some way or another. They want you to feel ashamed & alone.

They try very hard to convince others (& possibly even themselves) that they are good people, but just going after you because YOU “deserve it.” But as we’ve learned over the years, these people often mistreat many other people too, even people in their personal lives. You did not do anything to deserve or cause their harassment or abuse. Once again- you are likely not even the only target of it, even if they try to make you feel that way. No truly happy, healthy person spends their life trying to cause pain to others & obsessively fixating on other people who they’ve deemed deserving of this abuse, & that kind of misery pollutes the “air” that they & the people around them breathe, too.

Often, these people will not stop at just accusing you of lying about your lived experiences. They will also often try to slander & discredit your character, to try to paint you as a person they can attempt to justify trying to harm. Unfortunately, some of these types will also escalate from harassment to full on stalking.

Stalkers will often try to harass & intimidate & stalk others in your life whether that’s people you know in person or even random people who simply talk to or about you online, to try to get to you through others & get around you blocking them or getting a restraining order.

Do you have family, friends, or community members who have been directly impacted by what you went through & witnessed some or all of it? This kind of harasser/stalker will often try to discredit your loved ones too, &/or slander their character.

I (Ron) have often had a difficult time wrapping my head around how a small but vicious group of out of touch people talk about the violence my daughter went through as if it is up for debate. As if our whole family didn’t suffer as a result. As if we don’t know the people who did this to my daughter. As if they haven’t had other victims too. There is so much the public doesn’t know and isn’t entitled to know because how much or how little someone shares about what they went through should always be their choice. The internet played a big role in taking away some of that choice, but my daughter and our family and any of our other fellow survivors deserve the right to privacy. No survivor owes anyone any kind of proof to try to plead their case to not be stalked and harassed and lied about. No one is forcing anyone to vocally support specific survivors but no one is justified to harass and torment someone for speaking out. It’s not normal or mentally healthy to spend years or any amount of time stalking and obsessing especially over someone you don’t even know and directing rage and abuse at them. As someone who grew up in a time before social media, it feels very sad to see this kind of behavior towards others become more and more common with the growth of the internet and I think people often forget the humanity we have in common.

Often, we have seen that these people attempting to discredit survivors will try to project a somewhat neutral or even journalistic vibe with their harassment & slander, to try to be seen as legitimate & attempt to gain credibility. They often purposely spread misinformation about you or your experiences, then try to turn around & say *you* are “changing your story” or have been “caught in lies.” They know exactly what they’re doing, & it’s very much in line with textbook tactics of other abusers such as domestic abusers. Their goals include but are not limited to isolating you, gaslighting you, convincing others that their treatment of you is justified, & often to get others to want to hurt you too. They desperately want other people to hate you as much as they do.

They often will also pretend to be crusaders for various causes, to try to act like what they’re doing to you is somehow okay or even noble. These causes can include “standing up for ‘real victims’” as we mentioned or pretending to care about free speech or the rights of various groups of people, whose struggles they try to weaponize to try to justify hurting others. We constantly see these type of abusers try to weaponize sex worker’s rights advocates against trafficking survivors. In reality, many survivors are or have been sex workers & most sex workers are survivors too, & most of us have a very strong sense of community with each other. We as a joint community are at our most powerful when we push back on anyone, whether that’s exploitive organizations or abusive stalkers, trying to pit us against each other.

Despite publicly trying to appear to care about the rights of others, the way these harasser and stalker types usually talk in private (or amongst other people who behave similarly to them) about those they claim to be “defending” tells a very different story. They tell on themselves so easily too, based on the way they talk to people who refuse to be roped into their harassment of survivors.

As far as being called a liar, I (Rose) have been harassed this way, & on the flip side I’ve also had people attempt to use my own trauma to try to justify harassing others- claiming other survivors are lying, & that they feel the need to “expose” them for my sake. Whenever this happens, I make it clear that I don’t consent to my trauma being used to try to justify trying to invalidate someone else’s trauma, & I vocally support & stand with the survivor being harassed this way. I make it clear that I do not feel “protected” or “defended” by people like this- I feel disrespected.

Sometimes these people become so obsessed with you &/or the story they’ve invented about you in their minds that they lose touch with reality in a big way & start to convince themselves that *you* are harassing *them* or intruding on *their* life because their obsession with you starts debilitating them/their life/their relationships in different ways & they project & blame you. When it comes to people who have escalated in this way, it’s crucial for your safety to not engage with them whatsoever on your own. In a perfect world we would be able to stand up for ourselves without hesitation, but when someone is this unstable it will not help- if they are committed to misunderstanding & maligning you, it just gives them the reaction they crave.

•How This Perpetuates Physical/Sexual Violence:

Whether or not these people realize it (& we believe many of them do & that that’s precisely their intention) - the message sent to abusers, traffickers & rapists is that they can hurt someone & that their victim will be the one “put on trial” & torn apart publicly, not them. Abusers & rapists & traffickers seeing their victims get torn apart publicly for speaking out, feel emboldened to commit further violences because they are counting on our silence, or us not being believed & supported.

Aside from sending this kind of message, this type of harassment also emboldens other abusive people to try to justify things that can lead to more violence, such as doxxing or attacking survivors or our homes.

Although this type of person often tries hard to downplay their harm as “criticism” or “just asking questions” that is not the case, & their harassment often has real-world impacts like this on not only their targets, but also others on a wider scale.

•Advice:

If you take away nothing else from what we’re saying here, please hear us on this- you can NEVER appease these people, so please don’t put your safety in further jeopardy trying to do so. Even some men who have openly admitted to watching the videos of my assault at age 14 have accused me of lying about it being non-consensual, saying I must have secretly wanted it or enjoyed it. Their goal post will keep moving. Always. If you show them things like your court or hospital records, they’ll likely try to contact your abusers or say it still doesn’t prove that you were the victim & it wasn’t consensual. Ditto with police or court records. Nothing will ever satisfy these people, & they often will try to bait you by claiming they’ll apologize publicly & stop harassing you if you “prove it” to them. People who are truly sorry will come to you on your own & apologize & consistently demonstrate changed behavior- without demanding you put your safety & privacy at further risk to “earn” their apology.

Once again; the ever moving goalposts of “I’ll believe you IF…” are never going to go away. Please remember that you don’t owe any of these people anything. You do not have to prove anything by showing abusive people private court documents, police records, communications, injuries/scars, or anything else. Doing so will almost always just put you in more danger, & you deserve better than that.

For me (Rose) I have had so many witnesses to varying degrees of my own trauma both in person & online, as well as loved ones who came to the hospital, police station, & court with me. None of this matters to someone committed to spreading misinformation about me & attempting to falsely discredit me. They do not care. Realizing this early on helps, as strange as that might sound. You cannot rationalize with people determined to be abusive & your mental health will deteriorate trying.

Also, these same types of people who are part of the reason survivors don’t speak up sooner, then have the audacity to try to grill survivors on why they didn’t speak up sooner. We don’t need to even bother trying to tell them that people like them are part of the reason why, because they most likely already know & just don’t care.

We know that it can’t entirely erase the impact of being subjected to this kind of harassment, stalking, & abuse but we have found some measure of peace when we stopped engaging with or responding to people like this or even addressing their wild claims.

Multiple things can be true at once- the impacts of stalking & rape culture can be devastating, & compromise our safety, mental health, physical health, & more. But it’s also true that we still have lives to live, & that at the very least we can sleep at night knowing that unlike those who seek to hurt us & our movements, we are not wasting our precious, limited time on this earth acting this way. We don’t waste time & energy stalking or hate watching people or obsessing over other people’s lives with malice in our hearts.

We genuinely can’t imagine a more miserable way to live, & we sincerely hope anyone living their life this way finds a better way.

I (Ron) see the people trying to gain some relevance by going after survivors and calling us liars or grifters, as being the real grifters themselves. They try to profit and gain relevancy from attacking others. They also have the biggest “ victim mentalities”  which ironically is what they claim to hate so much, because they act like THEY are victims if you don’t respond politely to their abuse.

•Fighting Back In A Different Way:

I (Rose) went hard defending myself in the past because although I very much doubt I’m the first survivor these people have attacked in this way, I hoped I’d be the last because I know not every survivor has the support I now do. & I felt like I was fighting for my younger self too who didn’t have the voice I do now.

For a long time, I even felt I owed it to my younger self to go hard protecting & defending her, & that translated into the way I responded to harassment, slander & abuse online especially from 2019-2021. But looking back, I wish I had never even given people like this a crumb of attention. The only reason for this regret is that that time & energy took away from the things I’m trying to accomplish in my own life & in my communities- & these abusive people are fully aware of that. We believe that is the goal or at least one of the goals of why they act this way. They want to drain our energy, time, resources & rattle our nervous systems to try to deter us. But we are allowed to reclaim our time, energy, & power. They don’t own it.

This next bit of advice applies to anyone, not only survivors-  you do not owe anyone making outlandish accusations or spreading misinformation about you an explanation. You are not “guilty” for not making a statement on it. People committed to misunderstanding (at best) &/or trying to invite further harassment or harm against you will likely condemn you whether you respond or address anything or not. If you do, they will probably twist your words & feel smug that they got a response out of you. If you don’t respond, they will likely try to twist your silence as somehow “confirming” whatever they made up about you. While what other people choose to believe about us can impact our lives & even safety- choosing not to respond can also be an empowering choice in its own way. I had people I deeply respect & trust try to tell me this a long time ago, but I didn’t want to hear it at the time for reasons I touched on above. But I realize now that they were right.

I still do feel I owe my younger self so much. But I know now that I owe her peace above all, & to live as full of a life as possible- & my happiness & health are very high priorities in my life right now, & that’s empowered me to show up for my loved ones on a whole new level ❤️

If you’re reading this & are a fellow survivor, please know that we believe you & we’re rooting for your healing & happiness ❤️ Although we wish we didn’t have this kind of trauma in common- or the additional trauma that can come from facing abusive backlash for speaking out- we want you to remember always that you are NOT alone.

Nobody’s hateful words can erase your lived experiences, & they also can’t erase all of the wonderful things that make you who you are. When they try to do so, it diminishes them- not you. Never you. You are never reduced by someone else’s abuse. You deserve a life full of happiness & healing, & we’re rooting for you always.

Sincerely, Rose & Ron

PS- You are not obligated to share the details of your trauma to have a place in community or movements. Keeping in mind that we are the expert on our own experiences, not other people’s lived experiences- that being said, your own personal lived experience expertise, personal development, professional development, & education (not only formal / institutional education but all types) are more than enough.

When or if you share your story, should be your choice alone. I know some of us have had that choice stripped away at one point or another through various factors, but we can reclaim it.

For some examples of ways to engage in anti-exploitation movements in ways that don’t require continually (or possibly ever) publicly sharing the details of your trauma, click here