DARVO

My colleague Paul T Horgan wrote a piece last week about The Sun’s exposé on the BBC Presenter (‘not another one!’) Huw Edwards. In his article’s title Paul referred to the term DARVO.

DARVO is an acronym that stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. It describes a manipulative tactic often used by abusers to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and shift the blame onto their victims.

Sometimes the victims are the accusers (but they do not know it yet).

So, let us presume that a man gets exposed for fraud by a journalist. The man hates the journalist. So, the man takes the journalist through a cash-and-carry-justice court and gets the fraud allegations silenced, meanwhile accusing the journalist of fraud and hate. That is a DARVO.

As the acronym suggests, the common steps involved are:

1. The abuser denies the abuse ever took place.
2. When confronted with evidence, the abuser then attacks the person that was abused (and/or the person’s family and/or friends) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and finally
3. The abuser claims that they are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the positions of victim and offender. It often involves not just playing the victim but also victim blaming.

DARVO’s tend to be a tactic used by those on the Left but they are not the exclusive property of leftists, as right-wing populists like Donald Trump have also been known to smear valid opponents similarly.

To be effective the DARVOist needs to have greater social currency than the DARVOee.

The only problems DARVOists face are a free press, incorruptible authorities and the somewhat major obstacle of Truth, which has a habit of emerging later and, like a Weeble man, rarely gets knocked over permanently. The other major problem DARVOists face is when they occur simultaneously with legal actions, as the DARVOee will know when the DARVOist is lying and perjury is a most serious criminal offence.