The Wrong Question: Why Are We Blaming the Victim Instead of the Abuser?

For far too long, the conversation around domestic abuse has centred on the wrong question.

“Why did you stay?”

It’s a question survivors hear far too often—sometimes from well-meaning people, sometimes from those looking to blame. It’s a question that implies weakness, complicity, or even guilt on the part of the one who was harmed. It places the burden of explanation on the victim, as though their endurance or entrapment is the real issue we must solve.

But that question is a distraction.

The real question is this:

Why did the abuser abuse?

Why did someone feel entitled to dominate, manipulate, control, and harm another human being? Why did they weaponize love, faith, or trust to break down the person they claimed to care for? Why did they believe they could act with impunity—behind closed doors while smiling in public?

Asking, “Why did you stay?” ignores the power dynamics, fear, manipulation, isolation, financial dependence, trauma bonding, and very real danger victims face. It fails to acknowledge that abuse is designed to entrap and erode a person’s ability to leave. Victims often stay because they’re trying to survive. Because they love their children. Because they’ve been threatened. Because they’ve been brainwashed. Because they have nowhere else to go.

Abuse is not a relationship issue. It’s a choice. A repeated, intentional pattern of behaviour meant to control another person. And the responsibility lies solely on the one who chooses to abuse—not the one who tries to survive it.

When we ask why the victim stayed, we reinforce silence and shame. But when we ask why the abuser abused, we shine light on the behavior that needs to be confronted. We hold the right person accountable. We begin to change the system, the culture, and the narrative.

So, let’s start asking better questions.

Let’s ask:

• Why do abusers manipulate and gaslight instead of taking accountability?
• Why do they maintain a double life—charming in public, cruel in private?
• Why are survivors disbelieved while abusers are defended?
• Why is image more important than integrity in so many communities?
• Why do churches, courts, and families often protect the perpetrator over the victim?

If we want to stop abuse, we have to stop normalizing it. We have to stop explaining it away, minimizing it, or dressing it up in religious language. We have to stop placing the burden of proof on the one already carrying the weight of trauma.

It’s time we stop asking, “Why didn’t you leave sooner?”

And start demanding answers to: “Why did they think abuse was acceptable in the first place?”

Because that’s where the healing begins; that’s where justice lives. And that’s how we rewrite the story—not with shame, but with truth.