When the System Becomes the Weapon

This article does not constitute legal advice. It is educational content backed by published research. For legal representation, see our Finding Legal Help resource.

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Most people assume that when someone is being harassed, stalked, or targeted, the solution is simple. Call the police. Report it. Get help.

For thousands of victims, that assumption falls apart the moment a false police report enters the picture. What follows is not protection. It is a second injury, one inflicted by the very system that was supposed to help.

There is a name for this. It is called Institutional Betrayal Trauma, and it is backed by over three decades of peer-reviewed research.

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What Institutional Betrayal Trauma Actually Is

Institutional Betrayal is a concept developed by psychologist Dr. Jennifer Freyd, referring to wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution, including failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings committed within that context.

Betrayal trauma occurs when the people or institutions on which a person depends for survival significantly violate that person's trust or well-being. When that institution is law enforcement, a system people are raised to trust for safety, the betrayal carries a specific and well-documented kind of weight.

The victim is not just ignored. They are often treated as the problem, investigated instead of helped, and left in worse shape than before they ever picked up the phone. The institution that was supposed to protect you becomes the source of the harm. That is not a metaphor. That is a clinical finding.

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DARVO: When Abusers Use the Police as a Weapon

Before understanding what happens to victims inside the system, it helps to understand the tactic that puts them there.

Some abusers call the police and make a false report against their victim, accusing them of doing what the abuser actually did. Researchers call this pattern DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It is a way to shift blame away from the abuser and make the victim look like the one at fault.

It is not a random move. It is a strategy. And research confirms it works.

Studies show that when people are exposed to DARVO, they perceive the victim as less believable, more responsible for the violence, and more abusive, while judging the perpetrator as less abusive and less responsible. (Harsey & Freyd, 2020)

When this pattern involves an institution acting with complicity, such as when police treat a victim as the offender based on a false report, researchers call it Institutional DARVO. It is considered a particularly aggressive form of institutional betrayal.

"The abuser files the report. Law enforcement acts on it without scrutiny. The victim is now flagged. Every future interaction gets filtered through that lie."

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The Numbers on Secondary Victimization

Once a false report has poisoned the record, the victim faces something researchers call Secondary Victimization. The data is striking.

90%

of victims report a negative reaction from authorities and describe it as a second assault

>50%

of survivors rate the criminal justice system experience as more harmful than the original incident

Research confirms that victims subjected to secondary victimization by police are more likely to withdraw from the process early, and that most victim attrition occurs right at the beginning, influenced by careless and insensitive treatment by officers. (Campbell et al., 2001; Patterson, 2011)

This is why victims go silent. Not because nothing happened. Because the system taught them that speaking up makes things worse.

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The Piece Nobody Talks About: Sleep Deprivation

When harassment is targeted and sustained, meaning someone is being approached, followed, disturbed at home, and denied any relief even at night, the psychological damage compounds in ways recognized under international human rights law.

Sleep deprivation is considered one of the most prevalent and widely used methods of psychological torture and carries serious documented health consequences. Prolonged sleep deprivation is recognized as a method of psychological torture under international human rights frameworks. Even methods that may not seem harmful in isolation can amount to inhuman or degrading treatment when applied cumulatively over time. (Cakal, 2019)

Beyond 24 hours of deprivation, people suffer significant drops in cognitive functions including accurate memory, coherent speech, and social competence. Now consider trying to file police reports, respond to false accusations, and defend your own reputation while operating in that state.

That is not a coincidence. That is the point.

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Why Victims Stop Reporting Entirely

The combined effect of DARVO, Institutional Betrayal, Secondary Victimization, and sleep deprivation from sustained harassment creates something researchers call learned helplessness around the institutions meant to provide safety.

The victim is not weak. The victim is not paranoid. The victim has been systematically conditioned, by repeated institutional failure, to expect more harm every time they ask for help.

This has consequences beyond the individual. When false reports go unpunished and victims are re-traumatized by the systems they turn to, abusers are emboldened. The system signals that their tactics work.

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What Accountability Actually Looks Like

Addressing Institutional Betrayal Trauma requires more than officer sensitivity training. It requires structural accountability.

• ✦False reports must be prosecuted. In Utah, filing a false police report is a criminal offense under Utah Code 76-8-506. That statute exists. It needs to be enforced.
• ✦Law enforcement must scrutinize complaints before using them to build a narrative against someone.
• ✦Victims must have accessible, independent channels to report misconduct, including Utah POST complaints and DOJ Civil Rights filings.
• ✦Departments that demonstrate patterns of this conduct face potential liability under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and the Monell doctrine. That is established federal civil rights law, not theory.

Victims are not required to absorb this harm quietly. There are legal pathways. Documentation is the foundation of all of them.

You Are Not Crazy. You Were Failed.

If any of this resonates with you, if you have been targeted, lied about, and then mistreated by the very people you called for help, know this:

What happened to you has a name. It has been studied. It is real.

You were failed by a system that had an obligation to protect you, and that failure caused documented psychological harm. That matters. And it is worth fighting for accountability.

References & Further Reading

1. Freyd, J.J. Betrayal Trauma Theory and Institutional Betrayal. University of Oregon. dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineBT.html
2. Freyd, J.J. DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. jjfreyd.com/darvo
3. Smith, C.P. & Freyd, J.J. (2014). Institutional Betrayal. American Psychologist, 69, 575-587.
4. Harsey, S. & Freyd, J.J. (2020). DARVO: What Is the Influence on Perceived Perpetrator and Victim Credibility? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma. tandfonline.com
5. Patterson, D. (2011). Secondary Victimization by Law Enforcement. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20237390
6. Campbell, R. et al. Qualitative Study of Sexual Assault Survivors' Post-Assault Legal System Experiences. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
7. Sleep Is a Human Right, and Its Deprivation Is Torture. ResearchGate, 2024. researchgate.net
8. Cakal, E. (2019). Sleep deprivation as torture in international law. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31670701
9. Why Sleep Deprivation Is Torture. Psychology Today. psychologytoday.com
10. WomensLaw.org, Emotional and Psychological Abuse: DARVO. womenslaw.org

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