Freyd's work also led her to another concept with incredible value and usefulness today, DARVO. DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. It's a pattern Freyd identified in how perpetrators of violence respond when confronted. However, institutions also use this strategy, and they often have more power and resources, allowing them to be more effective than individuals.
Today, DARVO is a weapon wielded against the public by people and institutions meant to represent and protect us as citizens. The handling of the Epstein files, for instance, follows the classic abuser's playbook identified by Freyd: the obstruction, and then slow-walk, of selectively redacted release of information (Deny); the constant discrediting and threatening of survivors (Attack); the protection of powerful men's identities, reputations, and privacy (Reverse Victim and Offender). Asymmetrical power and the government's use of “transparency” have exposed victims' identities while masking those of the powerful. At various points, their names. Faces. Bodies. Addresses. Families.
This is what a system protecting itself does. DARVO, in the Epstein case, has consistently made victims the face of the crimes and ensured that the network that enabled Epstein remains an abstract force.
For many women, especially women of color who have never had the luxury of trusting these systems in the first place, the Epstein situation is confirming our worldview. The distress we are feeling isn't borne of surprise or even outrage, but deep grief and rage. It's the exhausting weight of living in a world that continues to tell women that we don't matter, not even as children. What the Epstein case is doing, however, is showing many more people that the men most likely to talk about protecting “their” girls and women are the ones most likely to feel entitled to do to girls and women whatever they please.