What. The. Hell?!?! (Or Wherein Lupo is offered shelter from domestic violence...?)

[lupo pazzesco]

But yeah, that guy started-out seeming to mean well, then went too far! Hope he doesn't come back and keep trying to 'save' you!

Oh, sweet jeebus, I didn't think about him possibly coming back!

With my luck, he'll call the police, and get them involved, too. I can see it now...

Please dogs, fewer crazies at work this week. Pwweeeeease...?

[Seshat]

Another thing a lot of these white-knights don't seem to understand: until a person who is being abused is emotionally ready to get the hell out, he/she won't!

With rare exceptions, it's a combination of factors. The abuser targets a victim with the right set of emotional weaknesses. The victim gets kind-of sort-of 'trained' to accept the abuse. (massive oversimplification here, but it gets the idea across)

Until the victim is ready to learn and realise that they don't deserve it, even if you DO get them out of one abusive relationship, they'll be vulnerable to the next abusive creep who comes along.

So ... the correctly helpful thing to do for a victim you don't know, is to give the victim the information they need to get out. If they're ready or nearly ready, that can be the thing that gets them out.

You only 'argue the case' with a victim you know well - and if you know them well enough to do that, you probably know that the only time they come home with bruises is when it's law-book-setting-out day. Or SCA practice. Or whatever.



Heh. Wouldn't it be ironic if your 'white knight', Lupo, kept coming back so much you had to slap him with a restraining order!
Um, yeah. Ironic and also awful. But it does strike me as funny. In a sad way.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

You should see the bruises a friend of mine gets on her arms (back, thighs, ass, you name it).

You see, she's a heavy fighter in the SCA (www.sca.org)http://www.sca.org which means that she puts on armor and attempts to bash some other poor sucker into submission with a Rattan stick-sword replacement...all the while trying to keep from having herself bashed in.

In fact she's at the Pennsic Wars right now quite likely doing this very thing as we speak.

Now the funny thing about my friend is that she is a bus driver and is built like a tank. She has arms that out arm wrestled a member of the steam fitters union who has arms the size of my thighs.

Some twit saw the massive bruise on her back (actually put there by yours truly when she was trying to get me authorized in heavy fighting - lucky shot with a halberd) and was trying to explain that with her size, there are damn few men on this planet that she fears being clobbered by. Secondly due to her sexual orientation, there are even fewer partners she would hook up with that could even possibly be a threat to her.

Sadly, like the twit in the OP, they didn't listen and attempted to get her to a shelter.

They didn't know that the shelter was also the same church that we got permission to practice in every Wednesday night.

What was classic was seeing this twit coming out of a Church meeting and seeing my friend take off her helmet wearing full plate mail armor and wielding a pair of war hammers.

I think they got the idea finally.

[stucksb]

What I find insanely ironic is that there are so many anecdotal experiences of people trying to "save" supposedly abused people but in my personal experience truly abused people are rarely so easy to spot.

Abusers aren't necessarily so stupid as to allow their girlfriend/wife to go to work bruised to hell and back if it means they might be caught. Many times women that abused aren't allowed out very much anyway.

Bruises can be anything. It's behavior patterns that are the true indicator of an abused person and you can't determine that until you know a person at least a little bit.

[Hyena Dandy]

What I find insanely ironic is that there are so many anecdotal experiences of people trying to "save" supposedly abused people but in my personal experience truly abused people are rarely so easy to spot.

Abusers aren't necessarily so stupid as to allow their girlfriend/wife to go to work bruised to hell and back if it means they might be caught. Many times women that abused aren't allowed out very much anyway.

Bruises can be anything. It's behavior patterns that are the true indicator of an abused person and you can't determine that until you know a person at least a little bit.

Indeed. And abuse isn't just physical either. It can be verbal, too, or emotional... You can abuse someone without touching them.

[Fox One]

What I find insanely ironic is that there are so many anecdotal experiences of people trying to "save" supposedly abused people but in my personal experience truly abused people are rarely so easy to spot.

Abusers aren't necessarily so stupid as to allow their girlfriend/wife to go to work bruised to hell and back if it means they might be caught. Many times women that abused aren't allowed out very much anyway.

Bruises can be anything. It's behavior patterns that are the true indicator of an abused person and you can't determine that until you know a person at least a little bit.

This. Society for the most part teaches girls to use make-up at some age, and that knowledge is easily applied to bruises on the arms, etc. The only time you see a woman covered in bruises is if they're innocent in origin. It's sad, but the victims tend to become very skilled at hiding the marks of their abuse. Both to protect their abuser (twisted, eh?) and because of the embarrassment that comes from having your life run completely by someone else.

[tamezin]

Honestly, the guy should have taken your word for it and left it alone. If he was really in doubt, he should have quietly left you the card with the information. No one wants to admit to being in a sticky situation, and if you had been in a bad spot, would you admit it to a stranger, not likely.

I think you are right he wanted to be a hero, with the white hat and key to the city.

[ADoyle90815]

I've had that happen, since not only do I bruise easily since I tend to walk into things such as coffee tables, I also do heavies fighting in the SCA. The only reason I'm not at Pennsic right now is that I save my vacation time for another big war in October, the Great Western War.

[calulu]

Some people just think they know it all too, he sounds like he was emotionally invested in being right always and you didn't play along.

[gremcint]

I had a friend with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome among other things. This would cause her to sometimes literally fall down the stairs. Authorities thought her wonderful husband (literally nicest guy in the world) was abusing her. She had to show them the holes in the wall from her hitting it while falling to get them to stop bugging her.

[mariamousie1]

He misunderstood and offered to help you- which was nice. But when you told him the bruises were job related, he should have backed off and stopped trying. He should have been kicked out of the store for that "gene pool" comment. What makes people think they can say something like that? Even if you were being abused, it's your business and it's incredibly rude to keep pushing.

[jerkface11]

Sounds like he watches too much Lifetime.

[calulu]

Next on Lifetime, Movies for Women.... "Rod" starring Meredith Baxter Birney as a woman beaten with a rod by a man named Rod.

[mharbourgirl]

Heh. I am so pale I glow in the dark and incredibly thin-skinned (you can see my veins like a roadmap, folks, it's creepy), and like a lot of y'all, I bruise if you breathe on me too hard. Once when the Hubster and I were sort of tickle-wrestling (he was trying to tickle me, I was squirming like a snake), he grabbed my upper arm to keep me from falling off the bed. He's got incredible grip strength, let me tell you. Next morning I'm getting dressed for work and he goes "What the hell is that?" and he's pointing at my arm. Clueless, I look at it, and there's a row of four round bruises just the size of his fingertips. I laughed and said something like "Hey, cool!", because I knew how easily I bruised and he hadn't known me long enough to really get it. Poor guy fell all over himself apologizing and was practically in tears thinking he'd hurt me. I just wore a long sleeved shirt for a couple of months until they faded away because I just KNEW that people would ask awkward questions if I didn't.

I agree with others here, Mr. Hero didn't give two shits about Lupo, he wanted to be a hero and get recognition for it, and when he was denied his 'fix' he got angry and, dare I say it, abusive himself. Doing the 'right thing' in hopes of a reward is doing it for the wrong reason.

[Record Store Tough Guy]

Followed by "A Dog Took My Face and Gave Me a Better Face To Change the World: the Celeste Cunningham Story."