Diddy performs onstage on the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards.
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This week, the federal trial towards Sean “Diddy” Combs started in New York. Combs is dealing with expenses of intercourse trafficking and racketeering, and he has pleaded not responsible to all expenses. Combs’ protection legal professional, Marc Agnifilo, is utilizing a well-known tactic to explain the hip-hop mogul’s relationship with considered one of his accusers, his former longtime girlfriend, singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura.
“There was hitting on either side,” Agnifilo mentioned in court docket. “We will take the place that there was mutual violence within the relationship.”
This idea, sometimes called “mutual violence” or “mutual abuse,” means that each events in an abuse case engaged in abusive conduct. This concept was additionally introduced up within the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial.
However Loyola Marymount College legislation professor Laurie Levenson mentioned “mutual abuse” is just not a authorized protection of abuse.
“You will not discover within the legislation books a mutual abuse protection. What you may see are defendants arguing, ‘Nicely, I actually thought that the sufferer was consenting as a result of they had been doing it to me, and due to this fact I may do it to them,’ ” she mentioned.
“[But] it’s not okay within the legal legislation world to abuse any person after which say, ‘Nicely, they’re at fault, too.’ “
Bev Gooden, creator of Surviving: Why We Keep and How We Go away Abusive Relationships, believes the concept of “mutual abuse” goes towards the very definition of abuse as properly.
“Abuse is a couple of sample of conduct designed to take care of management over one other individual,” she mentioned. “Abuse is about energy, it is about management, manipulation, not simply bodily violence or aggression. And so even when each individuals interact in dangerous behaviors, one is often the abuser controlling the state of affairs.”
Gooden added that it’s vital to know the ability dynamics at play to have the ability to differentiate between abuse and combating again, even when they give the impression of being comparable.
She mentioned, “I discover that what usually will get labeled as mutual abuse is extra precisely a trauma response… The factor that I at all times say is that trauma responses may cause hurt. And I feel that is what the general public is seeing after they see somebody lashing again or lashing out on the abusive accomplice – [but] that is not the identical factor as being abusive. Hurt is just not abuse. Battle is just not abuse. Abuse is about energy and management. It’s a sample, not simply messy conduct on either side.”
However why would Combs’ protection concede that his relationship with Ventura was violent in any respect? Levenson thinks that the protection is attempting to reframe this “mutual violence” as a consensual a part of the sexual relationship – a technique she noticed within the case of former Dodger’s participant Trevor Bauer.
“Trevor Bauer, again in 2021, he was accused of abusing [someone] with varied dangerous and bodily painful sexual actions. And his protection was, ‘Nicely, that is simply the way in which now we have intercourse,’ ” she mentioned. “And in reality, that case ended up being dropped.”
Gooden mentioned kink is just not abuse. Practitioners are adamant that enthusiastic consent is central to kink.
“Now [Bauer’s case] wasn’t as excessive as what’s being alleged right here towards Combs,” Levenson added, “however I feel the protection is attempting to reframe this as, ‘Gee, that is simply how the world of rock ‘n’ roll works, and these individuals wished to be a part of it, so they are not really victims.’ “
Gooden added that this narrative could be particularly palatable for the general public, who could be followers or admirers of a celeb like Sean Combs.
“We regularly have a tough time believing that somebody we maintain in excessive esteem may very well be abusive, that the identical arms that create artwork may create terror,” she mentioned. “That is actually onerous to sit down with, and I empathize with people who find themselves working by that, ‘trigger I have been there. I feel a more healthy approach to take care of that damage and confusion is to just accept that somebody may be good to you and nonetheless damage another person.”
