They all seem to have the same playbook
DARVO on Wikipedia
Abusers all seem to have a copy of the same playbook and I don't know how they all consistently come up with the exact same solutions for how to intentionally hurt people and get away with it for years.
People talk about grooming victims and I NEVER really see that detailed as to what they mean. Perhaps people are worried that giving details amounts to giving instructions to predators for how to prey upon people.
They already seem to share tips. In practice, being too shy about what that means amounts to protecting a "trade secret" so only the bad guys know how this works and denying other people information that could protect them.
I can tell you what it means. It means they instruct people on how to be good victims and shape them into someone emotionally confused, convinced it's somehow their fault, they wanted etc.
And then abusers act like they have emotional issues they can't get over because someone hurt them FIRST so they are the real victim and they need compassion and understanding and forgiveness and second chances etc.
If you are in court because you forcibly RAPED someone instead of in therapy for your emotional issues, no, you probably don't need compassion.
Don't get me wrong. I would like to see more resources developed for male victims and I would like to see pilot programs in prisons for helping prisoners deal with their shit.
But that doesn't mean I want violent offenders to get a pass because they played the victim card.
A. If a CHILD is left alone with someone older than them who is inclined to force themselves on the child sexually, that child was raped against their will. Full stop.
Children typically do not have control over whom they are left alone with. Even a small age difference in legal minors can involve a huge cognitive difference. Predators typically have multiple victims and get to practice their technique for how best to make it easier to get what they want and less likely to get in trouble. The victim may only be getting abused by one person and have no basis for comparison to figure out "Oh, THIS SHIT! They all say the same shit!"
B. I've had relationships with older men. I'm not really interested in trash talking Tom Fejeran who was very respected in Guam and who did good things for me, but he had issues and about the time I was going "I'm NEVER getting involved with an older man AGAIN! I met someone two years older than him who went to pains to check if there was mutual interest.
If you are older than someone, even if you are both adults, you have advantages in terms of experience and understanding of some things. If you are not using that to try to make sure it's genuinely consenting, odds are good you are politely pressing that advantage.
I don't know how to establish social norms that pressure everyone to have mutually consenting relationships and stop this garbage of accepting that it's just normal for one person to be pressuring the other. But there's a reason we have the expression rape culture.
This is the norm that sex occurs because one person is pursuing it hard any way they can and their goal is sex, not enthusiastic agreement to it.
C. Probably most prostitutes begin as minors. Many are likely throwaways, not runaways. They are forced into as the only means they have to pay their bills and they have no place else to go.
And with multiple people rubbing up on them all day everyday, they likely stay hot and bothered. From what I have read, many prostitutes think it's a bad thing to reach orgasm with a client, so they likely are getting turned on and getting no relief and this contributes to them feeling trapped in The Life.
I'm for the decriminalization of prostitution and this is complicated because while they may be underage and may have been trafficked, age of consent is frequently lower than age of majority. If she seventeen, she may be legally entitled to agree to sex but not legally entitled to sign a contract for an apartment. It's possible it's technically not illegal to have sex with her though PAYING for it is illegal AND in some sense the only gun to her head may be the threat of starvation, not the threat of whatever her pimp may do to her.
The entire narrative of heteronormative culture is that virginity is important and precious etc because men expect to own her reproductive rights if they marry her and marrying well is the ONLY option we really want women to have for paying their bills.
I have no idea how you can make your life work some other way, but if you want to leave The Life, you probably don't have a weirdly high sex drive. You being turned on all the time is because people are rubbing on you all day everyday.
Dolores French, author of "Working: My life as a prostitute," became a prostitute by choice in her kate twenties and regularly had orgasms on the job and didn't understand why so many prostitutes believed that was a bad thing.
I'm not telling you you should have orgasms with clients. If you were forced into prostitution, you may not want to enjoy it. But if you came from a whack job family with a lot of ugly views about sex, you might also be unable to enjoy it if you married well to pay your bills.
The reality may be you just fundamentally don't believe women should enjoy sex at all.
So perhaps understanding that would help some people start the process of sorting it out.
D. Abusers and predators have weirdo definitions at times like consent after the fact. Like if they forced themselves on you and you reached orgasm, you obviously wanted it and needed it and agreed to it.
They frequently try to make you enjoy it and do all in their power to make statements that they try to get you to agree with to frame this like it's a mutually consenting affair, it's a beautiful thing, we're in love etc etc etc etc etc etc.
If you were a child being sexually assaulted by an adult and parroted whatever they demanded you say while physically hurting you and implicitly threatening to hurt you worse if you didn't do as you were told, that doesn't SOMEHOW make what you said true.
Get it straight in your mind that those words don't really count as a truthful statement about your feelings or mindset.
If you are a lawyer or judge, you need to try to parse details like that. If the defendant says "But they said..." Yeah, really? Was that with a literal or metaphorical gun to their head?
There is no consent after the fact. There is no meaningful consent with a gun to your head. There is no meaningful consent if it's a child being used by an adult. Full stop.
E. And just to muddy the water some more, I strongly suspect some people intentionally provoke assault because they are gay and don't want to admit it and for reasons like that.
I'm trying to put forth certain principles. I was molested as a child and spent years in therapy and read everything I could find on certain subjects trying to sort this.
I'm not promising that will make your job easier. It probably doesn't. It probably complicates the hell out of it.
But maybe you will be more confident in your decisions and sleep better.