On smear campaigns from the abuser…and victims speaking out

While revising my online college memoirs, I noticed that my ex Peter didn’t want me, yet conducted such a smear campaign against me that he must have wanted no one else to have me, either.  He even told lies about me to the Dean of Students, to get me into trouble; she never did believe me about anything after that, was often mean to me.

I finally found love again, someone whom he tried to “warn” with his lies, but this person (Phil) didn’t listen.  Then he told Phil’s mom lies about me, which Phil then had to deal with all the time.

There were people whom Peter knew, who didn’t want to date me; nobody asked me out at all on that campus between Peter and Phil; I suspect this was Peter’s work.  That he told all his frat buddies, who then spread the lies, just as he told Phil and Phil’s mom and brother.

I wondered if this was a narcissist sign, so I googled.  The following website came up: Psychopath/Narcissist: the Smear Campaign by Kelli Hernandez.  Some parts which especially struck me:

My ex’s smear campaign of his wife was not as successful as other predators who have attempted this. His ex wife was so angry, she told everyone she knew what he had done (GOOD FOR HER!), including all their friends and those in their church.

He didn’t leave her or the church without losing many of their friends. His wife was very well liked and a kind, faithful woman with a huge supportive family.

She got angry. She felt her power in that anger. She had done nothing wrong except marry this man and stay too long, like many of us. For many survivors, this is not the case and often  her own family can be turned against her with the psychopath’s attempts to isolate and undermine her from any support.

The one thing that I swore to myself that I would never, ever do, is to remain silent about my experience. My silence would mean my abusers still had control in my life, even after they have been long gone. I will not allow them to have power in my life anymore. The abuser’s greatest weapon, is silence.

I encourage survivors to speak out about their experiences, providing it is safe to do so.

If you are dealing with a stalker or some other very serious issues that would put you in danger, it’s best not to react in any way until you are in a safer place and some time has passed,

but when you reach a place where you can begin to speak out about your experiences and share them with others, it will be an incredibly empowering milestone and in doing so, you eliminate his power in your mind and in your life.

The more you talk about it, the more ridiculous the predator will look and seem to you.

This validates my decision to speak about what all my abusers have done to me: my brother, my exes Phil and Peter, Richard and Tracy.

Abuse victims are often made to feel like, if we speak about the abuse, we’re the ones conducting the smear campaign.  Richard and Tracy tried to make me feel this way when they discovered I was not silent about their abuses, then went to my priest and told him who knows what before I had a chance to speak to him.

One of the most painful things a survivor deals with during the smear campaign is that she loses people that she wholeheartedly believed cared for her. This can happen literally overnight.

It’s very difficult to put things into a balanced and healthy perspective when you are under a heavy burden of the distortions created by the psychopath and those who find him remotely credible. If people believe the predators narrative of you, you are better off without them.

It was painful to detect signs that a couple of friends of Richard and Tracy did not believe me, including Chris, and the friend through whose blogroll Richard and Tracy found my blog.  I thought they were my friends as well.

I did not use names on Facebook when venting, but eventually Chris vanished from my friend list.  I feared that Richard and Tracy had filled his head with lies.  [Update 12/9/14: Who knows?  Some time after I posted this, Chris re-friended me.]