Host of Spouting Off, Karen Kataline has a piece in Town Hall on the Kavanaugh Hearings.
Democrats’ Emotional Manipulation of Abuse Survivors is Anti-Therapeutic
Karen Kataline
10/2/2018 12:01:00 AM - Karen Kataline
Sexual abuse, among other things, is a violation of boundaries. Many victims of rape and incest struggle in therapy to first understand the definition of boundaries, and then to learn how to develop healthier ones internally and with others.
If their perpetrator was male, there is a classic tendency among survivors to over-generalize their pain and anger to include all men. A good therapist should validate their client’s emotions, but then encourage them to direct those emotions toward their perpetrator rather than to men in general. This is an essential part of healing if the client is ever to build healthy relationships in the future.
In the travesty of the confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the privacy of their star witness was breached (a serious boundary violation) and her attorneys apparently didn’t tell her that she could have given her testimony confidentially and at any location she chose.
Those details made it painfully obvious that Democrats preferred, and likely planned the political theater of a public lynching. Their appalling slash-and-burn tactics have been deeply destructive to an already divided nation and their cold, indifference to that fact has been on display for all to see.
But why were they so intent on this public spectacle? Certainly, they thought it would help them in the weeks before the mid-terms, and they have thus far, been quite successful in their mission to delay the confirmation vote, but I believe there is much more.
The show is being used to organize and incite outrage, to endorse the notion that all women must be believed regardless of facts or evidence, and to demolish sane jurisprudence, and to validate the most dysfunctional thinking and behaviors. The message is that it’s not only okay, but preferable to over-generalize one’s personal traumas to an entire group of people to which a perpetrator might belong—especially if that group happens to be one that is acceptable to hate: White, Male, Republican, Heterosexual, and/or Christian.
This collectivization of dysfunctional thinking is disastrous for sexual abuse survivors and for the culture. It pushes survivors toward looser boundaries, rewards them for acting-out behavior and could undo years of positive healing and development.
If survivors want to press charges, they are led to believe that they shouldn’t have to present coherent facts or evidence, that to be questioned on these items constitutes “re-victimization.”
Democrats are brilliant at creating victim groups that are invulnerable to criticism. Even in a public hearing or a court of law, prosecutors and the public walk on eggshells if a person with victim status makes an accusation, no matter how preposterous.
The Democrats have been doing all of this and more, simply for their own political gain. That is unconscionable.
To be falsely accused of a crime, particularly one so heinous as sexual abuse, is another violation of one’s boundaries. It sends a message that one cannot trust the rule of law to protect all citizens equally and that anyone with a political ax to grind can destroy you if they have a big enough megaphone.
What a far cry from the Left’s previous cause celeb in death penalty cases where the main objection was to make sure that we were weren’t executing an innocent man. The execution of a man’s reputation is immaterial to the Left if it serves their political purposes.
Along with the stellar reputation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, sane jurisprudence is about to be destroyed. We don’t blame all people for the crimes of one person, we don’t convict a man with unsubstantiated charges, and we don’t allow mob rule.
If every person of conscience regardless of party doesn’t stand up for those principles with conviction, Democrats will continue to demolish our Bill of Rights piece by piece while destroying the healthy futures of yet another group which they have claimed to care so much about —and that would most certainly be unconscionable.
