Everyday Victim Blaming

challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse

BBUK’s Daley – snapshot of an abusive relationship

Big Brother showed some awful scenes last Sunday where Daley threatened Hazel. It started out innocently enough, with a bit of drunken play fighting. But lightening-quick the mood turned sour – Daley’s mood that is. From laughing and hitting with pillows and slaps, suddenly it turned to angry swears, “do you want me to f**cking go mad?” put-downs “listen little girl…” threats “I’ll nut you one” and physical abuse - his hands around her throat, pinned to the bed.
As a victim of domestic violence myself, it was all very familiar. And I couldn’t help but feel satisfied that a third party – big brother – immediately pulled him up on his behaviour. A very rare occurrence in the real world – normally the isolated woman is left to fend for herself.
What was even more familiar was the abuser’s self-righteous indignation ”Aggressive?! I never did anything aggressive to her”, minimising “just play-fighting”, victim-playing and victim blaming “I’ll tell her not to do that again”. “I’d never do anything to a woman — never ever.” Well, mate, you just did- and in this rare circumstance it’s all on camera.
The rage that flared on his face when Big Brother told him the next day how Hazel felt – threatened and cornered – spoke volumes. He now had an outlet for all his indignant rage, a target. You could see in his eyes how he changed the story – he was mucking about, and then this terrible woman came and played the victim and pointed fingers at him.
In fact it was sad to see how the victim in this case minimised what she went through. She even said she may have over-reacted, when she hadn’t reacted at all – it was Big Brother who did that.
The fact that it’s all on camera but he denies it anyway highlights the extreme denial of abusers.
“If it was threatening, how comes we was cuddling after it happened?” – good question Daley. The answer is victims of domestic violence do whatever they can to contain the rage and attempt to control the situation. If you’re cuddling, you’re less likely to start getting aggressive again.

Since being rightly evicted from the show, and since there was video evidence, he was compelled to publicly apologise. His apology included the following excuses: he was hungry, he was tired, he was drunk.

For me and other survivors, these incredibly lame excuses are oh-so-familiar. Sometimes the excuses change, but the behavior is always the same.

In his apology his hatred for the woman was still palpable. He refused to waste his “breath by saying her name”. If this had happened in the real world, he would have taken this aggression out on the woman, and the cycle would have continued.

For other women, women without a ‘big brother’, the cycle continues.

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2 thoughts on “BBUK’s Daley – snapshot of an abusive relationship

  • UncommonOpinion says:

    Eloquently put. The victim blaming going on is incredible, but I guess tarts like her should know the score, it takes two to tango and it’s not domestic abuse if you flirt, you deserve to be ‘nutted one’ #Sarcasm

  • Cheryl says:

    I haven’t watched any BBUK so this is the first I have heard about this, but from reading above it appears obvious that Daley does have a problem, he likely has many, but his main one being that he lacks self control. I am always worried when people come out with ‘I was hungry, tired etc’. To me that is what parent says of their troublesome tot, not a fully fledged ‘grown up’. It doesn’t matter how tired, hungry or whatever other excuse he can pull out of the bag is, it doesn’t give him the right to be aggressive to others. His ‘apology’ sounds like he was trying to normalise this and that sets off alarm bells in me. He needs to watch the vt back and accept responsibility, whilst realising, as you have said above that just because hazel cuddled him does not mean she was ok. If anything like my own experience she was likely trying to placate him, while her heart was racing. Also she was probably in shock. I hope that any therapists working on @bbuk will give aftercare to hazel and suggest anger management to D so next time he is tired or hungry he has a sleep/gets a sandwich rather than do what he did here