The Post-Separation Abuse and How Data Will Revolutionize the Court System
Ashley (Ash) Seinen is the founder of Executive Dysfunction, an humanitarian initiative to lessen the impact of cognitive bi-polarization caused by psychological trauma.
While there have been many consistencies identified in emotional abuse, the current institutional process to exit from high-conflict relationships fails miserably at echoing this. The blunt unfairness of the court system can and should be easily mitigated by consistent data.
The consistencies of emotional abuse
It was in group therapy that the consistency in post-separation abuse became apparent to me. I was sitting around a table with fellow abuse victims, telling my story, how I was left with all the marital debt while fielding an impossible level of harassment and torment, and then he took my car and sold it out from under me, leaving me stranded and terrified. The moment I piped up about the lost freedom, every other abuse victim confirmed that their vehicle had been taken too. Every. Single. One.
Every single one had their social system ripped apart by triangulation. Every single one was being harassed. Every single one was battling the impacts of parental alienation on their children.
The consistencies were so blatant that I know my abuser had help, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll get to the war of the apes later.
Inconsistencies of institutional separation
While it is very apparent that there are consistencies in the package of abuse suffered after departing a high-conflict relationship, this is not echoed in the institutional processes surrounding the formal dissolution of these matters. Most court systems deal with these issues via affidavits, which are basically promise notes, and judgments by humans with their own projections.
In no way is this even close to fair or impartial. It is quite the opposite, which is affirmed by the disturbing number of stories of parents having their children ripped from their grips after experiencing this abuse, ripped by parents unworried about the child’s wellbeing, driven only to win.
Victims and their children are left so psychologically traumatized and abandoned by society at large that many don’t recover. They are left to self-medicate while being blamed for the manipulation of their reality. It’s cruelty and has facilitated an environment wherein these manipulation tactics are supported, socially reinforcing this behavior. In that way, the institutions are basically breeding toxic people, it’s like a toxic person factory.
Consistent means measurable
The first epiphany when it came to metrics in this system came with harassment. Manipulation and triangulation were heavy hitters in my case, and thus I had already experienced my reality being twisted. I had stopped all in-person communications, so everything was on paper, piles and piles of communications, pictures, and screenshots. The data was immense and took over a year to fully work out.
When I finally reached out to the court system for help with a protection order, I went there with an armful of data, ready and willing to go over the numbers. How disappointing it was to me that they were uninterested and instead wanted a promise note. It was then that I realized the entire system was built to support manipulators and has been doing so for some time.
The metric for harassment is already a number, it already exists. If someone had the time or took the effort to calculate the metrics for each case, we would understand that this quantifiable line is already in place. All the cases together would make a dataset that would clearly have its own average and range. Someone simply needs to do the work.
We could calculate the ratio for harassment. Let’s say that the median for protective cases is a ratio (example) of 25:1 words. Now we have a line, lines have immense power.
Lines are where magic happens. The whole institutional process is streamlined. For example, if the median is 25:1, perhaps we determine harassment to be any more than 26:1. No more affidavits, no more unfair court judgments, no more “he said, she said,” just a firm line. All cases in which this abuse is present get automatically escalated within the system to facilitate proper protection. Victims get support and no more lives are lost.
The benefits don’t end there. Effective lines in these matters will impact behavior. While these manipulation tactics in the past have been largely ignored, putting lines in place with consequences will control behavior. Malicious actors will ensure that they stay within the limitations, sending perhaps 24:1 to avoid the consequences. In doing this, these actors will need to examine their own actions, thus forcing a level of self-reflection for malicious actors that has never been experienced before.
Forced self-reflection. A beautiful thing.
Quantifying abuse: Structure of emotional abuse
While harassment was where the benefits became apparent to me, it was far from the only component of my abuse package. Following my escape, I was left with hundreds of thousands of words of text and no structure by which to measure it. As a data analyst, I know that there isn’t much worth in bulk data without consistent lines, the data needs to be comparable for the system to be able to work.
After months of battling between an incomprehensible amount of data and random concepts like belittling, name-calling, and manipulation tactics, the trifecta started to crystallize in my head, which are Blame, Demean, and Threat.
As I worked on the data within these new categories, I found that they were completely comprehensive in terms of abusive language. The only items not included were things such as statements and questions. It encapsulated all the abusive text available within the bulk. The structure is perfect, a piece of art, a piece of art that will change the landscape for emotional abuse forever.
For access to the quantifying abuse report, please check out the website here. Be sure to check out the social links on the site and follow along. Quantifying Abuse was just the beginning.
Coming up next
Coming up next in the article series, we will be diving deeper into the trifecta of emotional abuse. We will examine what Blaming, Demeaning, and Threatening is and how these data points can be applied to current institutional processes to control behavior.
Read more from Ashley Ann Seinen
Ashley Ann Seinen, Founder of Executive Dysfunction
Ashley (Ash) Seinen is a domestic violence warrior and the creative brain behind Quantifying Abuse, a revolutionary structure by which emotional abuse can be measured in data, a system that can change the family court system and its impact on society forever. As a warrior and a mother, Ash has dedicated her life and every resource she has to fighting the impacts of emotional abuse.
