Reporting Gender-Based Violence Is a Trauma of Its Own
Most people imagine that reporting gender-based violence is a straightforward act, you go to the police, you tell the truth, and the system takes over. But for survivors, the reality is brutally different. Reporting GBV becomes a secondary form of trauma, layered on top of the violence they have already survived. Survivors enter police stations shaking with adrenaline, grief, shame, or fear, often after years of psychological manipulation and physical harm. Instead of finding protection, many find interrogation, suspicion, indifference, and procedural coldness. They have to repeat their story to multiple officers, each time reliving the violence, each time hoping someone will hear the urgency in their voice. Some officers listen. Many do not. Some minimise the harm, ask why the victim stayed, dismiss the severity of emotional abuse, or insist on evidence that is impossible to produce. Victims walk in needing safety and walk out feeling exposed, embarrassed, or further traumatised. The reporting process itself becomes another obstacle to survival, not a gateway to protection.
The system does not prepare victims for how emotionally destabilising it is to revisit every detail of their abuse while facing officials who may not believe them. Every question, every form, every procedure is experienced through the lens of fear and vulnerability. The victim’s body reacts as if the abuser is standing beside them, not because they are fragile, but because trauma is activated by being forced to recount events that nearly destroyed them. When police question why it took so long to report, they ignore the years of psychological control that made reporting impossible. When they laser-focus on physical injuries while ignoring coercive control, they reduce violence to bruises and broken bones, failing to grasp that psychological harm is often more severe and more enduring. Survivors walk out feeling as if the system has echoed the abuser’s message, “You will not be believed.”
When the Police Become Another Threat Instead of a Shield
Policing is meant to be a frontline defence against danger, yet for many survivors, calling the police becomes a gamble. Some officers are compassionate and responsive, but others carry biases that shape how they interpret a victim’s story. Survivors of GBV quickly learn that the quality of help they receive depends on who is working that day, what mood they are in, whether they have personal prejudices about gender roles, and whether they view domestic violence as a “real crime” or simply a private dispute. This inconsistency terrifies victims because the response they receive can determine whether they ever reach out for help again.
In cases where the abuser is calm, charismatic, or articulate, the police often misinterpret the situation entirely. Abusers who control their public persona present themselves as reasonable men who are being unfairly accused, while the survivor, shaking, crying, hypervigilant, appears “emotional,” “unstable,” or “hysterical.” Officers may side with the calmness they perceive as rationality, ignoring the fact that trauma disrupts emotional regulation and often leaves survivors struggling to communicate clearly. The very trait that signals survival, heightened emotional distress, is misread as exaggeration.
In some communities, abusers have social ties to officers, which creates an even more dangerous power imbalance. Survivors may be dismissed, mocked, or treated as nuisances. Protection orders are not always enforced. Arrests are avoided because the officer “knows the family.” Victims are encouraged to “work it out” with their abuser, even when the situation is life-threatening. The message becomes unmistakable, the system will not disrupt social relationships or personal comfort to protect a woman from the person who harms her. She is expected to absorb the risk instead.
The Courtroom, Where Abusers Reassert Control Behind a Legal Mask
By the time gender-based violence reaches the courtroom, it has already passed through a series of failures. But the legal system brings its own unique form of violence. Courtrooms operate with a cold procedural rhythm that does not reflect the emotional reality of abuse. Survivors face strict rules, intimidating environments, and adversarial processes that force them into close proximity with the person who terrorised them. They must endure cross-examinations designed to tear apart their credibility. They must sit in the same room as their abuser and watch him present himself as calm, rational, and composed. They must listen as lawyers twist their trauma into inconsistencies, implying deception where there is only psychological chaos.
The courtroom dynamic rewards those who remain unemotional. Abusers understand this instinctively. They rehearse their lines. They soften their tone. They clean up nicely. They tell polished stories that reframe the violence as a misunderstanding, a mutual disagreement, or an exaggerated emotional reaction. Meanwhile, survivors struggle to articulate years of coercive control in the narrow language of legal procedure. Trauma compromises memory recall, verbal clarity, and emotional regulation, all of which are weaponised against the survivor in court.
Custody battles amplify the cruelty. Abusers who showed no genuine interest in parenting suddenly demand full custody as a means of punishing the survivor. They claim she is unstable, overly emotional, manipulative, or mentally unwell. They use her trauma responses as evidence of her unfitness. Courts often prioritise shared parenting, even in cases involving documented abuse, because they view the father’s rights as equal to the survivor’s safety. In this environment, survivors watch the legal system replicate the dynamics of their abusive relationship, discrediting them, minimising their experiences, and elevating the abuser’s narrative.
Healthcare’s Blind Spots
Hospitals and clinics should be places of refuge, yet many survivors encounter a different reality. Healthcare workers often focus exclusively on physical injuries, looking for bruises, fractures, or wounds, while ignoring the signs of psychological trauma, coercive control, and emotional manipulation. Survivors may downplay injuries out of shame, fear, or self-blame, but medical staff rarely probe deeper. Without visible marks, the violence becomes invisible. Without physical proof, survivors are treated as emotionally distressed rather than harmed.
Mental health assessments often fail to capture the complexity of GBV. Victims may appear anxious, disoriented, numb, or defensive. Instead of recognising these reactions as trauma responses, healthcare workers may label them as emotional instability. Survivors who use substances to cope with the violence are judged rather than understood. Their addiction becomes the focus, not the violence that caused it. They are dismissed as unreliable because they drink, even when they drink to survive the terror of their environment.
Women from marginalised communities face even greater challenges. Racial bias leads to minimisation. Linguistic barriers restrict expression. Immigration status deters reporting. Poverty limits access to private healthcare. LGBTQ+ survivors face providers who lack the training to understand same-sex or gender-diverse abuse dynamics. The healthcare system is built around a narrow understanding of what violence “should” look like, leaving countless victims unheard because their story does not fit the template.
Why Marginalised Women Face the Worst Outcomes
Gender-based violence does not impact all women equally. Marginalised women, Black women, immigrant women, undocumented women, disabled women, queer women, sex workers, and women living in poverty, face disproportionate danger and have far fewer options for escape. When they seek help, they encounter systems shaped by prejudice and exclusion. Their experiences are questioned more harshly. Their credibility is doubted more quickly. Their danger is dismissed more easily.
A Black woman reporting GBV is more likely to be labelled “angry.” An immigrant woman may be told she risks deportation if she presses charges. A queer woman may face disbelief that her partner could be violent because of harmful assumptions that women do not harm women. Disabled survivors may depend physically on their abuser, making escape almost impossible. Women in poverty are more likely to be judged for “the kind of men they choose,” as though economic vulnerability were a personal failing rather than a structural condition.
Marginalised survivors are trapped in intersections of violence, abuse from their partner, prejudice from society, dismissal from police, stereotyping from healthcare workers, and neglect from the justice system. Their survival requires navigating a maze built without their needs in mind. They are asked to trust institutions that have historically harmed people who look like them. The result is predictable and devastating, many choose silence because speaking puts them at greater risk.
How Abusers Weaponise the System
Even after survivors report, abusers do not surrender their power. They simply adapt. They use the system as another tool for control. Some file countercharges to appear like the victim. Others initiate custody battles to prolong the survivor’s emotional torture. Many use legal loopholes to delay proceedings, forcing survivors to relive trauma for months or years. Some bombard the survivor with legal demands, financial threats, or procedural complications, knowing she does not have the resources to fight back.
Abusers often exploit the system’s weaknesses. They violate protection orders because they know enforcement is inconsistent. They manipulate court sympathy by crying, apologising, or claiming mental health struggles. They use the slow pace of justice to pressure survivors into dropping charges. The system becomes a continuation of the abuse, only now it is disguised as legal fairness.
This dynamic forces survivors to fight battles on multiple fronts, emotional, physical, financial, legal, and psychological. GBV becomes an endurance test with no clear endpoint because the system rarely offers a decisive break.
Why Systems Mirror the Behaviour of Abusers
The most striking pattern in institutional responses to GBV is how closely they mirror the dynamics of abusive relationships. Abusers minimise harm, and so do systems. Abusers question the victim’s memory, and so do courts. Abusers blame the victim’s emotional reactions, and so do healthcare workers. Abusers reward silence, and so do police officers who prefer not to file reports. Abusers demand evidence for every accusation, and so do prosecutors who fail to understand the nature of coercive control.
This mirroring is not intentional, but it is real. Survivors move from one environment of disbelief to another, from one place of power imbalance to another, from one institution that prioritises the abuser’s perspective to another that does the same. The system feels familiar to survivors not because it protects them, but because it replicates the dynamics they are trying to escape.
Reforming GBV Means Confronting Institutional Violence
Gender-based violence cannot be addressed through slogans, posters, or speeches. It requires confronting the structures that fail survivors daily. Reform must begin with training that recognises coercive control, trauma responses, emotional dysregulation, and non-physical forms of abuse. It must include systems that prioritise victim safety over procedural convenience. It must develop justice processes that do not penalise survivors for the emotional chaos inflicted by abuse. It requires police departments that take GBV seriously regardless of the abuser’s social standing. It requires courts that understand trauma expertise as essential, not optional. It requires healthcare workers who treat psychological injuries with the same urgency as physical ones.
Ending GBV means dismantling institutional violence, not just interpersonal violence. Survivors do not need sympathy, they need systems that work. They need police who protect them, courts that prioritise their safety, and healthcare workers who recognise their pain. They need communities that demand accountability from institutions that have been failing them for decades.
Gender-based violence will not end through awareness alone. It will end when the systems that claim to protect survivors actually begin to do so.
