Earlier this year, a video was uploaded to YouTube called ‘One Photo A Day In The Worst Year Of My Life’. It features a young woman taking a picture of herself every day, for a year.
‘Oh cool, another one of these videos,’ you think, as pictures of a happy, beautiful and smiling girl flick across the screen. Then, things take a dark turn.
First, there’s a few pictures which show her with light bruising, then some with marks around her neck, then a black eye. By the end of the video, her face is unrecognisable from her injuries.
It ends with the girl holding up a sign saying, ‘Pomozite mi. Ne znam da li ću doćekati sutra’ or roughly translated: ‘Help me. I do not know if I can wait for tomorrow’.
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Despite being a few months old, the video resurfaced today on the TwoXChromosone subreddit – and with it brought a whole new slew of comments on YouTube. As far as we can tell, the video is (thankfully) not real and is instead a PSA (public service announcement) to warn Croatian women of the dangers of domestic violence.
Depressingly though, many of the comments were only concerned with why the woman hadn’t just up and left.
‘Why didn’t you just move away or go to the police? Sorry, but in my opinion you shouldn’t take pictures every day and wait for a miracle... Just run away from this asshole. I don’t want to be rude, but if you wanna die that’s okay.’
‘I know it’s probably harder than it seems to just get away from that person but come on a whole year of taking pictures and you’re still with the same person who obviously isn’t changing? At some point it’s the persons fault for not realizing that some people in this world are terrible and will never change.’
‘I know this isn’t real, but there’s a simple solution... Leave...’
Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that ‘just leaving’ isn’t that simple. For starters, most domestic abuse murders are committed after a victim leaves her partner.
Other than that, there’s a whole slew of reasons why staying with someone who abuses you can seem like the more viable decision. Earlier this year, BBC3 drama Murdered By My Boyfriend went some way to highlighting this.
Georgina Campbell, who played the film’s lead character, told us: ‘Often the men are so charming at the beginning that the first time [he’s violent] it seems like it’s just a one-off – “He’s stressed, I’m pregnant, everything’s too much for him.”’
TV presenter Stacey Dooley, who made a documentary on the subject for the BBC, which is due to air in the near future, agrees. ‘This one lady told us: “My fella keeps hitting me but I can’t leave him because I live with him and financially I’m dependent on him.”
‘They might be homeless if they leave, they might have kids. It’s a very complex issue and I think fundamentally the most important thing is that the perpetrator is absolutely the one that should be blamed and should be held accountable.’
Domestic abuse charity Refuge has a whole page dedicated to why women often just can’t ‘leave’.
Statisics show that young people aged 16-24 are the most likely to suffer from domestic violence, so it’s terrifying that as a society, we still look towards the victim and hold them partially responsible for what is essentially an ongoing campaign of abuse.
The only person to blame is the attacker themselves, while the victims need all the support they can get.
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Follow Jess on Twitter @jess_commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.