By David Simms, Senior Contributor
The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards
Today we proudly publish for syndication this week's installment of our featured columnist, Anna Kavanaugh, and her brilliant column, Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. This is Series Piece 8 and an excellent read in her column series. Anna's is a distinctive and ardent voice of expertise and wisdom in defining and describing what she rightly deems a global pandemic of virtual confusion whereby a societal breakdown of empathy and compassion confuse and pose serious threat to legal boundaries and civilised conduct. In this piece she discusses some of the pathology and psychological tactics used by cyber-abusers and also offers up some empowering advice to online victims. It is our honour to now present you with another perceptive and powerful installment of Anna's weekly column. Comments are open on the full article page for feedback and to encourage discussion.
Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. (Series Piece 8)
Written by Anna Kavanaugh, Syndicated Columnist
Published for syndication by: The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards (GICSS)
“Just get over it,” they say.
“Grow some thicker skin, you big baby” they taunt.
“Enough with your drama,” they sneer.
These are just a few of the dismissive remarks used by cyber-abusers to further degrade their victims. They use childish statements such as these as tools of manipulation in their mental warfare, to make a victim feel trivialized and ultimately silenced. Victims who try to resist or speak out against the abuse inflicted upon them can commonly expect to hear these juvenile barbs in response. This is only a predictable posturing measure dually deployed for both deflection and minimization. However, in the mind of a cyber-abuser, there is a pathological justification trigger that gives creed to the words they say. They cannot comprehend the severe ramifications of their brutal abuse or the repugnance of the defamation campaigns and false realities they create to deliberately destroy their target prey. Nor do they understand the calamitous aftermath their victims are left debilitated by in the physical realm. Only if a cyber-abuser were to experience the trauma, injustice, damage, and personal violation of a public assassination campaign, would they understand that “letting it go,” does not apply. A victim cannot simply “move on,” from a cyber-abuse campaign. This is because, in the public domain, a smear campaign can propagate indefinitely, making the resulting damages to a victim’s life a perpetual crisis from which they feel there is no escape and no recovery. And that is precisely why we see so many of them turn to suicide seeking desperate relief from the ongoing trauma they sustain.
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