Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
And thank you for writing a book that,
genuinely, I feel, is sorely needed.
The conversations around domestic abuse
-are generally oversimplified, in my opinion. -Mm-hmm.
You know, people will just be like, "Oh, you know,
-if he hits you, get out." Or, "If she hits you, -Yeah.
-then just leave." Or it becomes this really simple story. -Yeah.
But the title in of itself is a powerful commentary
on-on the idea of abuse.
No Visible Bruises. Why that title?
Because the worst part of domestic violence,
if you talk to any victims,
is the psychological abuse, the emotional abuse.
You know, there's a woman in my book--
I open, uh, with a woman whose husband, uh,
went to this area outside of the city they lived,
Billings, Montana, and got a rattlesnake,
and brought it home and kept it in a cage,
and just kept her in line
with the threat of putting it in bed.
And I don't-- I don't know what you call that.
I don't think that's called domestic violence.
-It's not physical violence, -Right.
but it's certainly a kind of terror.
-It's an emotional abuse, definitely. -Absolutely, yeah.
And when you-- when you read through this book,
one thing that is intriguing
is how you've taken the conversations
-and made them human. -Mm-hmm.
For instance, you spend time with a family
that deals with physical abuse.
Um, you speak to men who are abusers,
and you talk to them and try and get into their minds.
Why did you go for that approach?
Because, I mean, most people would just speak
to the abused, but not the abuser.
But you-you really take an interesting approach
where you speak to those who are the perpetrators.
Yeah. I mean, I guess I would answer that two ways.
The first thing I would say is that we have, like,
450 years in this country of not caring about domestic violence,
so I was like, "How do I make people care?"
You know, that's the one-- the first thing.
And the second thing was if you leave out any voices,
then you're not gonna make any hope of progress, right?
You can't-- You have to talk to those people,
otherwise you're dealing all the time
with events after they've happened,
-rather than trying to change the outcomes. -Right.
The first part of the book specifically deals
with the commonly asked question, and that is:
-"Why didn't she just leave?" -Why...
-Why don't they just leave? -Why don't they just leave?
Why don't they leave? Let's put the impet--
You know what I like to say?
It's like-- Think about like if a burglar came into your house,
and then you called the police and the police were like,
"Oh, my gosh, it's so terrible
"that your house has been burgled.
"Well, you're gonna have to leave your house now,
but we're gonna leave the burglar there."
Right? Like, that's what we do with domestic violence victims.
Like, "How unfortunate that you didn't--
you know, why don't you just leave?"
The fact is, they do leave, and they leave all the time.
But leaving is a process, not an event.
It takes years for them to leave.
The woman in my book with the snake,
she was putting all kinds of things in place to leave.
She had put the house, secretly, in her name.
Um, her father owned the house and so he had done that.
She was taking nursing classes to try to get a job
so that she could support her children.
But these things take years to put in place.
Right. A lot of the time, unfortunately,
-many of these women leave by dying. -Yeah.
That's one of the saddest facts in and around domestic abuse.
-Not just in America but around the world. -Right.
You have a system where men abuse women
and oftentimes kill them in these families.
What is really, um, I think, heart-wrenching about this
is how so many states and so many countries have rules
that almost soften the idea of what that crime is, you know?
-There are people who call "crimes of passion" -Yeah.
-or-or people will try and soften that. -Yeah.
Do you-- do you think that's something we have to change?
And, more importantly, how do we begin changing that idea?
I-I think, absolutely, we need to change.
I mean, to me, it starts with changing the language around it.
Like, it-- "Crimes of passion" is a great example, right?
Or you hear jail calls of guys who are like,
"If I didn't love you so much, I wouldn't be doing this.
-It's my love for you that's making me do this." -Right.
And I think that is a dangerous narrative.
Um, there's just a ton of coercion that happens
in a domestic violence situation.
And if you listen to these calls, it's really stunning,
'cause they all follow, like, a very similar dialogue.
And there are countries where there are laws
against coercive, um, control.
-Now the UK has one, France has one. -Right, right.
California and New York are looking at them.
Um, I don't-- I don't know--
I don't have a sense of whether or not the United States is
in a place to have those conversations.
I think the fact that-that, like, I'm out here right now,
I-I just don't think this would have happened five years ago,
-really. -Right, right.
Just a conversation in and around that.
-Yeah. -As a journalist and-and as a writer,
you-you took us on a journey.
You take us on a journey in this book
that connects with the human side of everything,
including the men who have done something extremely horrible.
Um, what's really fascinating is how you find yourself
-thrown off by how normal they are. -I know.
-Why is it important for people to know that? -Oh, my God.
Uh, you know, I have four brothers, so I'm like,
-"Oh, yeah. I know how men are. Like, yeah, yeah." -Right.
I got in the first batterers intervention group
I-I ever sat in on. I was like,
"Oh, my God, they're-they're just like people
I'd go out for a beer with."
Like, we have this vision of a rageaholic
or somebody that we'll somehow be able to recognize.
And you-- and you can't, you know?
But the other thing is, the--
once those guys were in a safe place,
meaning they didn't have, like, someone kind of egging them on,
they didn't have their friends who were sort of expecting them
to behave a certain way,
they showed not only real vulnerability
but, like, a desire to not be violent.
-Right. -It was really quite moving.
It really is a-a powerful exploration
into a topic that many people are uncomfortable with.
Because many people, including myself,
have lived in homes where we're experienced this.
If somebody reads this book
and somebody is in an abusive relationship,
what do you hope that they will take out of it?
You know, the first thing, I think,
is people need to share their stories.
When you share your story, you give some-some truth to it.
Like, you start naming what it is.
Um, but I also think that we need to press a little bit.
Like, I-I've been telling people at readings, um,
this little journalistic tool that you probably know
'cause you interview people all the time,
but I say to them, like, "Just press.
"If you have a coworker or f--
"or a friend and they say something like,
"'Well, things aren't so good at home,'
use their own language back to them."
I mean, journalists do this all the time, like,
"Oh, things aren't good at home?
-Like, well, t-tell me more." -Right.
And then you just automatically go deeper.
I think we need to sort of take away the stigma
of talking about this kind of stuff.
I hope people read the book.
I hope we have more of these conversations.
-Thank you so much for coming on the show. -Thank you.
Really wonderful having you.
No Visible Bruises is available now.
Rachel Louise Snyder, everybody.