By now I’m sure most of us are familiar with Andrea’s
story. I’m also sure most of us have gone from sad to enraged at the lack of
justice. We’ve all probably questioned why people stay in abusive relationships,
didn’t they see it coming? And some will even ask what she did to deserve being
burnt alive. Well I’m here to tell you it doesn’t matter what Andrea did or didn’t
do. Nobody deserves to go through what she did. It doesn’t matter whether or
not there were red flags and if she ignored them or not. What matters is what he
did. What matters is the justice she deserves and what matters is that we need
to do better as a society.
See for so long we’ve blamed the victim. Stories of
abuse are hardly ever about what the perpetrator did and mostly about the
victim. The comments are usually about what she could have done and what she shouldn’t
have done. Well not today! Today we are not going to tell Andrea how she could have
prevented this because even a restraining order didn’t save her. Instead we are
going to talk about Phillip and how to have less Phillips in the world. Let’s discuss how not to become an abuser
instead of how not to become a victim because clearly adhering to the latter doesn’t
work anyway.
Abuse happens when people are raised to be entitled. When
you live in a world where you are taught you own everything, you begin to think
you actually do. More often not the violence perpetrated is because the abuser wants
something they are not entitled to. And when they can’t have it, they take it anyway
usually with force. Be it love, attention or whatever, they feel as though they
must have it and can’t fathom why they don’t.
Instead of teaching people to notice signs of an
abuser, let’s teach people to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around them.
Let’s raise less narcissistic children and more sensitive children who grow up to treat others
with respect and kindness. Unfortunately there are a lot of Andreas and while
we fight for her to get the justice she deserves, let us also strive to have a
world where there are a lot less Andreas. For that to happen, we all need to do
and be better.
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