Protecting the Person Using Violence: Understanding This Trauma Survival Response
- Isaac Bailey
- Apr 4
- 4 min read
One of the most misunderstood aspects of domestic and family violence is what happens after an incident, particularly when police involvement becomes possible. From the outside, it can be confusing. A victim-survivor may downplay what happened, refuse to make a statement, retract disclosures, or even present the person using violence as the “real victim.”
This can be misread as dishonesty, manipulation, confusion, or a lack of credibility. In reality, it is often a trauma-based survival response.
For many victim-survivors, protecting the person using violence is not evidence that the abuse did not occur. It is often evidence of how dangerous, complex, and psychologically entrapping the situation has become.
A survival strategy, not consent
When a victim-survivor attempts to shield the person using violence from police, this does not mean they are choosing the violence or agreeing with it. More often, it reflects a coping strategy developed in response to fear, coercive control, dependency, attachment disruption, and repeated exposure to harm.
Survival in violent relationships is rarely straightforward. Victim-survivors often have to calculate risk moment by moment. They may know, from experience, that police involvement could escalate the violence later. They may fear retaliation, threats relating to children, financial consequences, homelessness, community shame, immigration consequences, or the loss of support systems.
What can look like “protecting the perpetrator” may actually be an attempt to protect themselves and their children from what they believe will happen next.
Why this happens
Domestic and family violence is not only physical. It is often psychological, relational, and systemic. Over time, many victim-survivors adapt in order to survive the environment they are trapped in.
Some of the reasons a victim-survivor may present the person using violence as the victim, or avoid reporting them to police, include:
Fear of escalation
Many victim-survivors know that involving police can trigger further violence after officers leave. If the person using violence has threatened revenge, self-harm, child removal, financial punishment, deportation, or stalking, those threats may feel entirely credible.
Coercive control
Coercive control conditions the victim-survivor to anticipate the needs, moods, and reactions of the person using violence. Over time, protecting that person may become an ingrained safety behaviour designed to reduce immediate danger.
Trauma bonding and attachment complexity
Violence does not erase attachment. Many victim-survivors still love, care about, or feel responsible for the person harming them. This is especially true where violence is interwoven with periods of remorse, affection, promises to change, or dependency.
Shame, self-blame, and confusion
People subjected to repeated abuse are often told the violence is their fault. They may internalise this. By the time police become involved, they may already believe they are to blame for “causing trouble,” “breaking up the family,” or “ruining” the other person’s life.
Protecting children
Some victim-survivors fear that reporting will expose children to more instability, retaliation, court involvement, or further manipulation. Others are afraid they will not be believed and will instead be seen as failing to protect their children.
Cultural, family, or community pressures
In some families or communities, police involvement may carry enormous stigma. Victim-survivors may fear ostracism, dishonour, community backlash, or pressure to preserve family unity at all costs.
Previous negative experiences with systems
If a victim-survivor has not been believed in the past, or has experienced racism, ableism, child protection fears, visa insecurity, discrimination, or poor responses from police or services, they may have good reason to distrust formal reporting processes.
Presenting the person using violence as the victim
Sometimes a victim-survivor may go beyond minimising the abuse and actively frame the person using violence as the injured, distressed, or provoked party. This can be especially confusing for others.
This response can serve several protective functions. It may reduce the immediate anger of the person using violence. It may help the victim-survivor regain some control in a chaotic moment. It may align with the story they have been pressured to repeat. It may also reflect a nervous system that has learned that safety depends on appeasing, protecting, or rescuing the perpetrator.
In trauma terms, this can be understood as a defensive adaptation. It is not necessarily a conscious strategy. It may occur automatically, particularly in high-stress situations where the victim-survivor is trying to survive perceived threat.
Why professionals need to understand this
When services misunderstand these responses, victim-survivors can be further harmed. They may be labelled “uncooperative,” “unreliable,” “ambivalent,” or “not ready.” In fact, they may be doing exactly what they have had to do to stay alive.
A trauma-informed response requires us to ask a different question. Not “Why didn’t they just tell the truth?” but: What has this person learned they must do to survive?
This shift matters. It improves assessment, reduces victim-blaming, and supports safer engagement.
Professionals, family members, and support people need to recognise that inconsistent disclosures, minimisation, recanting, or apparent protection of the person using violence are common in contexts of abuse. These responses should prompt careful, sensitive enquiry, not judgment.
What helps
Victim-survivors are more likely to speak openly when they experience safety, dignity, and control. Helpful responses include:
believing that trauma can affect memory, disclosure, and behaviour
avoiding blame-based questions
understanding the role of fear, coercion, and dependency
prioritising safety planning over pressure
offering choices rather than ultimatums
supporting the victim-survivor’s agency while recognising the realities of risk
It is also important to remember that leaving, reporting, or naming abuse can be the most dangerous period in a violent relationship. Readiness is not simply about insight. It is often about survival conditions.
A more compassionate understanding
Victim-survivors do not always respond to violence in ways that others expect. Trauma rarely looks neat. Survival rarely looks linear.
Protecting the person using violence from police can be a defence mechanism, but more precisely, it is often a survival response shaped by fear, coercive control, attachment, and the need to manage danger in real time.
When we understand this, we move away from blaming victim-survivors for the ways they have adapted to harm. We begin to see the intelligence of survival, even when that survival strategy is painful, confusing, or hard to witness.
Compassionate, trauma-informed support starts there.
If you are living with domestic and family violence, or feeling confused about your responses to abuse, support is available. You do not have to have everything clear before reaching out. A trauma-informed counsellor can help you make sense of what is happening, strengthen safety, and support your next steps at your pace.
If you are in immediate danger, call 000.