Post by Cat on May 29, 2018 19:58:24 GMT -5
Identifying Emotional Abuse in Private
Through text, audio, or video you are able to communicate freely with friends or other players in NationStates. Whether it's socializing about politics to personal details, it's open an space to discuss just about anything that comes to mind. And depending how close you are with this individual, they will most likely open up about how they are feeling personally or discuss matters with another player.
As a friend, and most importantly a listener, it's important to be able to identify any potential yellow or red flags. Whether if it's with your friend personally, or another player that approaches you. Down below are a list of signs that you can use to identify a potential severe situation. However, as discussed in the previous guide it's important to identify a clear pattern of intent from a potential abuser before you can claim a prospective victim.
Yellow Flags:
- The prospective victim comes to you and mentions that another player is making them uncomfortable in an OOC manner.
- The prospective victim asks you to keep the fact that they are online from another player on a repeated basis. If there is a history of IC conflict, this may not be a flag.
- The prospective victim expresses that they are frequently made unhappy by the potential abuser on an OOC level.
- The potential abuser comes to you and tries to bait you into giving them information about the prospective victim on a regular or frequent basis.
- The potential abuser demands that you tell them where the prospective victim is aggressively.
- The potential abuser threatens you to make you stay away from the prospective victim.
- An unassociated player comes to you with concerns about something entrusted to them by the prospective victim that indicates multiple instances that could denote abuse.
- Multiple people have come to you expressing concerns about what seems to be an unhealthy relationship between two players.
- The prospective victim comes to you and reveals that he/she is feeling like the potential abuser is trying to control their actions, particularly in an OOC sense.
- The prospective victim thinks that the potential abuser is watching them too much and refuses to let the prospective victim be somewhere without the potential abuser.
- The prospective victim displays alarm or fear when he or she discovers the potential abuser was in a chat they said something in and responds to their message.
- The prospective victim denies that the potential abuser is in the wrong, stating that they were the ones who made them upset, and argues that the potential abuser is just misunderstood or needs help.
Red Flags:
- The potential abuser explicitly threatens you for being “too close” to another player they have expressed interest in themselves. There is a known and proved history of possessiveness displayed by this potential abuser toward the prospective victim.
- The potential abuser repeatedly comes to you to see if the prospective victim is ignoring them or is online for a long period of time. This is most concerning if that prospective victim is actually hiding from them and you are aware of this.
- The potential abuser refers to the prospective victim as “theirs” and expresses that they know what is best for that prospective victim. They are referring to them clearly in a manner that denotes the person belongs to them in a way that is not protective or defensive, but aggressively possessive.
- The potential abuser refers to the prospective victim as “out of their mind” or “crazy” or “has issues” and thus states that the prospective victim needs a “keeper” or “support”.
- The potential abuser states that the prospective victim is incapable of taking care of him/herself and needs the potential abuser to make decisions for them.
- The potential abuser repeatedly expresses an OOC obsession, such as talking about weddings, when the prospective victim will finally agree to date them, or what (explicit) activities may happen when they meet in person.
- The prospective victim comes to you because the potential abuser is trying to pressure them into an IRL meeting, pressuring them for uncomfortable material, or trying to pressure them into a relationship.
- The potential abuser is actively trying to break up the prospective victim and his/her IRL partner with clear intent to claim the prospective victim once that is accomplished.
- It is known that a potential abuser has been asked not to speak to another player, but they come to you asking to pass a personal message to the prospective victim with clear intent to emotionally influence them to break the contact ban.
- The prospective victim comes to you revealing that another player is threatening them with IRL information if he/she cuts contact with them.
- The prospective victim comes to you asking you to help them hide from another player on frequent occasion.
- The potential abuser repeatedly attempts to make you tell them everything about your personal association with the prospective victim.
- The prospective victim comes to you and presents logs that validate claims of obsession, stalking, emotional abuse, threats on an IRL level, controlling behavior, etc.
- A potential abuser with a history of public flags comes to you and asks you to help them reconcile with the prospective victim because he/she is being unreasonable.
Thanks to Xoriet for allowing us to reference her piece when making this