The Secrets in Their Eyes: What Reactive Abuse Means and Where the Idea Began – Part 1
Written by Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, PC, Founder & CEO
Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, is a licensed clinician, industrial-organizational psychologist, and communication coach. As the founder and CEO of Measures4Success Academy, she empowers individuals, leaders, and organizations to master communication through Kendall’s Life Languages™ Framework, also known as Communication Intelligence (CIQ).
Two people can live through the same moment and carry different accounts of it. Somewhere inside that moment is the truth of what each pair of eyes saw and felt. Facts are what a record can hold, such as a 911 call, a police report, or a clip from a body camera. When truth and facts drift apart, the secrets in their eyes live in the gap, and one reaction can end up speaking louder than the history behind it.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series for National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
If you are in danger now, call 911. For confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, contact The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
What is reactive abuse?
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a fitting time to look at a dimension of intimate partner violence that is easy to misread. Reactive abuse describes what happens when a person who has endured sustained provocation or mistreatment responds with behavior that looks abusive out of context, such as shouting, name-calling, or physical aggression. The person causing the harm then points to that reaction as proof of who the real abuser is. It is a popular term and a useful psychoeducational concept. It is not a formal clinical diagnosis.
The phrase is also contested, and rightly so. The word "abuse" can suggest that someone responding to provocation is an abuser too. Many professionals prefer "defensive reaction," "reactive response," or "self-defense," language closer to what researcher Michael Johnson (2008) called violent resistance. I use "reactive abuse" here because it is the phrase people type into a search bar when they are trying to understand what happened to them. I use "defensive reaction" when I mean the behavior itself. The distinction matters because a label shapes how a reaction is judged, and in a courtroom, the label can influence who is believed.
Violent resistance is Johnson’s term for violence used to resist a partner’s control and violence. One more term will come up in this series. Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO) is a response to being held accountable that Part 2 explains.
I first explored this topic in an earlier Brainz article on how reactive abuse can make victims appear as the aggressors. This series goes further into the data, the courtroom, and the cycle behind it.
Where did the term come from?
The roots reach back to the battered women's movement of the 1970s. In 1979, psychologist Lenore Walker described a cycle of violence with recurring phases, which helped advocates and clinicians see abuse as a pattern rather than a string of isolated blowups (Walker, 1979). Later researchers sharpened the picture. Johnson (2008) separated intimate terrorism, violent resistance and situational couple violence, and placed the reactions of many survivors in the middle category. Stark (2007) argued that the heart of abuse is coercive control, a pattern of domination that physical incidents only partly reveal. Jennifer Freyd named deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO) in 1997 to describe how those who cause harm respond when they are held accountable.[1]
"Reactive abuse" surfaced later, largely through online communities that discuss emotional and narcissistic abuse. Public attention spiked in 2022 during the Depp and Heard defamation trial, when some experts questioned whether the phrase accounts for the power dynamic between two people. Advocates at DomesticShelters.org raise a practical concern as well, abusers have been known to claim reactive abuse in court to build their own case.
What does the data show?
Intimate partner violence is common. The CDC's 2016/2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey measured lifetime contact sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner. It found that 47.3 percent of women and 44.2 percent of men had experienced it.[5]
Numbers on reactive behavior and its misreading are harder to find, and that gap is part of the problem. No national dataset counts reactive abuse as its own category. A reaction enters the record as an assault, a disturbance or a mutual conflict, and the context drops out at the moment of coding. What exists are studies of the systems that respond. Four of them are summarized here.
Hirschel et al. (2021) analyzed 10 years of incident reports from 5,481 jurisdictions in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Primary aggressor laws appear to make officers reluctant to make any arrest, although the study measures arrest decisions, not misidentification. It also bears on dual arrest, when both partners are taken into custody.
In England, Hester (2012) found that women identified as primary aggressors in police records were three times more likely than men to be arrested. The study covers one country. Reeves (2023) interviewed 18 legal practitioners in Victoria, Australia. They described courts as poorly equipped to catch misidentified women and said some clients consented to orders that should never have been made. The sample is small and qualitative. Swan et al. (2008) reviewed research on women's use of violence with male partners and linked it more often to self-defense and fear than to control. It describes patterns, not every case.
These findings describe patterns, not every case, and Part 2 returns to that point.
Key takeaways
Reactive abuse is a popular term, not a clinical diagnosis. Defensive reaction is more precise language. The idea builds on decades of work, from Walker’s cycle of violence to Stark’s coercive control, Johnson’s typology and Freyd’s DARVO. No national dataset tracks reactive abuse, so the evidence comes from arrest, court and credibility research. The research describes patterns, not every case.
In the United States
If you or someone you know is in danger, or you are unsure whether what you are living through is abuse, help is available now or whenever you are ready. In an emergency, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline offers confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or TTY 1-800-787-3224. You can also text START to 88788 or chat online at thehotline.org. An advocate can talk through safety planning with you, and you do not have to have it figured out before you call.
Outside the United States
If you are outside the United States, call your local emergency number. To find a domestic violence or crisis helpline in your country, visit here.
Next in the series
In Part 2, I look at how a courtroom, a police report and a body camera capture one minute, and how DARVO can turn that minute into proof against the person who was provoked.
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Read more from Dr. Veronica Powell
Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, PC, Founder & CEO
Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, is a licensed clinician, industrial-organizational psychologist, and communication coach. As the founder and CEO of Measures4Success Academy, she empowers individuals, leaders, and organizations to master communication through Kendall’s Life Languages™ Framework, also known as Communication Intelligence (CIQ). Dr. Powell is a Senior Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine and the creator of the Communication Matters Global Movement, where she teaches professionals how to build trust, empathy, and relational intelligence in every conversation.
References:
[1] Harsey, S., & Freyd, J. J. (2020). Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO): What is the influence on perceived perpetrator and victim credibility? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 29(8), 897–916.
[2] Hester, M. (2012). Portrayal of women as intimate partner domestic violence perpetrators. Violence Against Women, 18(9), 1067–1082.
[3] Hirschel, D., McCormack, P. D., & Buzawa, E. (2021). A 10-year study of the impact of intimate partner violence primary aggressor laws on single and dual arrest. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(3–4), 1356–1390.
[4] Johnson, M. P. (2008). A typology of domestic violence: Intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence. Northeastern University Press.
[5] Leemis, R. W., Friar, N., Khatiwada, S., Chen, M. S., Kresnow, M., Smith, S. G., Caslin, S., & Basile, K. C. (2022). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 report on intimate partner violence. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[7] Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.
[8] Swan, S. C., Gambone, L. J., Caldwell, J. E., Sullivan, T. P., & Snow, D. L. (2008). A review of research on women’s use of violence with male intimate partners. Violence and Victims, 23(3), 301–314.
[9] Walker, L. E. (1979). The battered woman. Harper & Row.
