I wrote something a while back about how we seem to expect people to just walk out in all abusive relationships like it’s TV or something.
I wasn't talking about abuse with a boyfriend or marriage
In those instances you have to get away because there is inevitably sexual abuse involved
I was thinking more in relation to abusive situations you can’t always avoid, like a really bad boss, or being overworked and underpaid, or having a horrible teacher or parent
You often can’t just speak your mind and get away from that person
look at your average teen in an emotionally abusive family.
One of my motto’s in life is to avoid jerks, but some jerks you have to put up with
I think much abuse happens because of monetary situations,
With women with abusive husbands and boyfriends
I think they stay with them for a while at least for two reasons,
One is simply money and not having the resources to afford to live safely and happily on their own.
with a long term boyfriend, especially when younger, resources get mixed up and it represents moving into a more unsafe neighborhood or something.
In marriages there is alimony but still often, unlike TV, not everyone has a million dollars to split up and when there are kids involved it is hard to go from a nice house and neighborhood to a small condo or something without dad, who mom has said was abusive.
I’m reading this book “Crazy Salad” by Nora Ephron, about women’s rights in the seventies.
It has some interesting stuff about how prevalent abuse in marriages or with boyfriends is.
Again, in the statistics book from work, the number one way female office workers die of non health related causes is by husband, boyfriend or stalker.
That’s pretty telling I think.
You would think it would be car crashes or something but nope.
I think the other reason women stay in an abusive relationship is because the people lie and perhaps believe themselves to not be as abusive as they really are.
If you point out abuse it is inevitably denied and turned around on you
The women believes somewhere that the guy is a good person, and likes, loves and trusts him
We can’t read each others minds, all we have to go on is what we see and this is most likely going to be denied.
It’s like that lame song we have all heard eight million times on the radio, “your no good”
It basically shows the point when the person realizes the abusive spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend sure, is not the person they pretended to be to earn your trust and that they really are no good, dangerous and abusive.
Although as far as that abusive girlfriend goes, the number one way male officer workers die is not by ex girlfriend, wife or girl stalker, Fatal Attraction aside because we know how the media never distorts things
In a non physically abusive relationship the line here can be even more difficult.
If there is a lot of yelling, “we were fighting” and “you made me yell at you” and so on.
If you suspect them of being unfaithful “you are paranoid.”
Often the women just wants things to be ok so they accept the lies until they are forced not to,
ie the secretary girlfriend calls.
Abusive people are notoriously hard to get rid of too, they don’t leave without more abuse, so I guess I found three reasons that women don’t just run off to the tropics with the cabaña boy or something.
Money, they are lied too and want to believe the person they care about isn’t an abuser, and abusive men are notoriously hard to get away from and you just might end up one of the before mentioned statistics.
Therefore, in the case of an abusive boyfriend or husband you really have to get away
I don’t think this is easy either though
In the case of a bad boss of scary parents,
Depending on how livable it is, finishing college is more important.
I read the work detail question.
We did it two or three days out of the week
It was back breaking
We carried around an enormous Gott that was our water supply in the cabins because they have no running water, everywhere.
We cross sawed logs with an actual old fashion cross saw and were timed and punished.
It’s really hard to cross saw a log with an old fashioned cross saw. We also mauled wood and dug stumps out of the ground. We did this a whole hell of a lot.
We had to cut enough firewood for the winter because the cabins have no electricity only a woodstove.
We had quotas which were ridiculously high, and we would be punished if we did not meet them
If you stopped working saying you were tired and felt ill you were consequenced or restrained.
We built things as well, and put in a big garden.
This was hard because the garden area was a mile or so away so we had to carry all the gardening tools and wheelbarrow full of manure and such out there.
We dug up stumps and did all the grounds maintenance.
On weekends, when we weren’t doing our normal forced labor schedule
We would clean everything,
Again we had no free time to read or relax or sleep in or any of that normal stuff.
we were made to exercise as consequences all the time, there are a lot of consequences in a day at the Village. Pushups a lot, over a hundred a day at least, on a good day.
I, a thin small boned girl had back muscles, pronounced scary back and neck muscles,
In between all this digging stumps out of the ground, turning over garden beds with pick axes, this was not your mothers gardening, and working like a roofer for no money, they had my group build a two story work shed building and tar and lay shingles in July, they had us do aerobics.
Really hyper nonstop aerobics for two hours until you felt sick as hell.
the aerobic were on weekends.
They wouldn’t let us go to sleep after working like this all day until we finished all our consequence pushups, I can remember standing against a wall with my knees bent till I fell over at like midnight. I also remember having to do 200 pushups before bed, and I hadn’t even done anything. Staff was just picking on me.
I was pretty cowed throughout, because I didn’t want to be abused.
The exercise hurt like hell. It was torture and they used it as such.
I was really really really exhausted the entire time there.
I used to fall asleep standing up and as soon as I sat down and I would get in all sorts of trouble for it.
Cleaning was top to toe carry all the mattresses outside scrub down the entire floor, cleaning, every weekend.
Everything is timed of course, getting from point A to B, with a wheelbarrow full of tools and manure or roofing tiles, or wood and so on.
It was really hard work and they made it as unpleasant as possible.
It wasn’t work therapy it was just work detail and it was horrible and abusive and it hurt like hell.
we were covered in dirt and sweat.
also when i say I was stalked i was really stalked.
if I had just liked some kid then I would say I just liked some kid
it's hard for teens they are young and lonely and sex happens.
"The Heart is a Lonely hunter" is a great book about this, and the truth I think.
if the guy was a nice person well then it would be a different story,
but he wasn't. It was out cold stalking. I think I would prefer honestly for it to have simply been a case of two kids,
what I dealt with was pure horror.
I can't believe I had to defend being abused to PV pigs.
there is a lot sexual abuse of young teens, teens in general that goes on.
I really think PV staff are evil monsters. Forced labor camps in America with Nazi thugs
Bob Pegler with his ropes course certification from the community college.
Jersey Girl I hope you kicked that pig in the nuts really hard.
What you wrote was great.
Just a question, what are your thoughts on suing PV?
Somebody needs to do it.
Zen what happened to your case?
What PV does can’t be legal, it isn’t legal.
You can’t present yourself as a place to help kids dealing with PTS or depression, anorexia, effects of trauma, sexual abuse, life in foster care and so on and then run a prison camp?
It’s illegal, they can be sued on all sorts of levels.
I don’t care if its been over a year, people out of PV have long term PTS effects.
I’m thinking about talking to a lawyer, and I think every survivor of PV should too.
