Disclaimer: I have lived sexual abuse myself and am looking at this storyline from that perspective.
On the British Soap Opera, there is a character, Bethany Platt, who was manipulated by a narcissist and groomed to be a sex slave at parties and she slept with some of the guy's friends, not by choice, some of whom assaulted her. She was also psychologically abused in the process.
It was a powerful storyline and it hit a lot of triggers within me. The actor who played the abuser spoke in certain tones that were so similar to how Narcky used to talk to me. And that storyline was handled very well. It's the aftermath that I don't agree with a lot that they're doing.
So while our stories are very different, they are still quite similar. I was not forced to sleep with other men, but I was groomed to be a sex slave and I was for a time Narcky's slave.
Coronation Street decided that in the aftermath, Bethany becomes a lap dancer.
All right, so, first of all, this part I can understand, even if I don't fully agree with it. Bethany wants to take back her power but has not yet discovered how to take it back internally in ways that will fuel self-love. She is rebellious towards men, she wants to show them that they can't have her while flaunting herself in front of them. It's a defiance-denial stage. While I never became a lap dancer, I wanted all the guys around me to want me, even the ones in whom I had absolutely no interest. And I flirted with everyone. However, I did not do it maliciously. I was rediscovering my sexuality. I was seeking validation of the opposite of all the things Narcky had brainwashed me to believe about my body. I was looking for compliments because of how I felt about myself. Still, I understand that everyone deals with these things in their own way. And I respect that completely.
Coronation Street is also showing Bethany's angrier side, kind of bitchy side. It's a bit annoying at times, but I can understand that too. Sexual abuse is a very difficult ordeal to live with and to come to terms with too. All that anger and rage inside has to come out somehow. It's healthier for Bethany to be a bit bitchy than to fall into self-harm like I did.
Where I REALLY DON'T agree is when they make Bethany partake in immoral acts.
If you don't watch the show, to sum it up briefly, her mother's ex cheated on her; he had a one night stand and got the woman pregnant. The guy's a decent bloke, but this is a Soap Opera we're talking about, everyone cheats on someone. He was wanting to patch things up with Sarah, Bethany's mother. Bethany voiced her disagreement of a possible reunion between the two. That's fine. Bethany orchestrated that her friend flirt with him as though they knew each other so that her mother thinks he's got another chick; that's typical of a Soap.
When Gary, the guy, saw Bethany enter a car with the very same chick who had flaunted herself on him, he followed, concerned and suspicious. That brought him to the lap dancing club. Bethany is under age to be dancing there, and he was worried about her safety, having been her step-father for some time. He demanded that she go home, he wanted to take her home to her mum, expressing his concern. Bethany pretended that she did not know him and security got involved.
This is what I don't agree with. Security was forceful and began punching him. Gary pleaded with Bethany, NOT to make them stop, but to come home to her mother, to allow him to take her home, his tone making it clear that he was trying to protect her since he thought she would be in danger. Instead she cried out that she didn't know him, that she was scared of him, and watched as they beat him to a pulp. The security officers then took him outside to finish their beating (implied) and Gary had to be taken to hospital, with a bloodied face.
How is that an immoral act if she did not beat him up herself? She instigated it. She could have easily said that he was bothering her and to escort him out, but that a beating wasn't necessary. Thus keeping the guise that she doesn't know him, BUT not encouraging the harmful behaviour. She did not just encourage it, she gave the word that told them to beat him up, that confirmed to them that they should beat him up. The secret code, the command phrase. She watched and was glad of it, more worried about losing her job than of his well being. THAT is immoral.
Immorality is anything that causes malicious harm onto someone else that one does with the intent to cause harm, physical, emotional or psychological. And it disappoints me to see the show portray this character like this, while she uses the excuse that it's okay, given what she went through.
We don't all become bitches, those of us who have suffered sexual abuse. Perhaps I'm missing something because I don't have a full perspective, since I only know what I lived and what I went through and how I dealt with it. But I never, maliciously, with intent to harm, encouraged or caused harm on someone else, not even to the man who abused me. I once knew some sketchy people who offered to go to his place, as a favour for me, and beat the crap out of him, steal from him for the money he still owes my mom, break a knee cap or two, disfigure him, etc. I said no. It would not heal me. It would have been immoral for me to initiate it by giving them the okay to do it (and his address at the time).
If the Soap wanted something to happen so that Gary and Sarah begin to want to get back together, then Gary finding Bethany at the club and telling Sarah about it and how we was "forced" out of the club because of Bethany would have been enough. They didn't need to have him be beaten up like that, they didn't need to have Bethany be the instigator and act in such an immoral and out of character way. She used to be sweet-natured, even with a tough attitude. Abuse doesn't turn another being into a monster. It happens rarely (like in the movie Monster, or when a child grows up to be a secondary psychopath or narcissist, it's caused by trauma and abuse). So unless they are going that route and turn Bethany into a psychopath, they should NOT portray her in this way. And I doubt the show will turn her into a psychopath. Then again, with a show like that, you never know.
Anyway, just saying.
If I'm wrong and you have experienced sexual abuse and dealt with it more like Bethany has, then enlighten me and explain the psychology behind acting immorally so that I can get it. In my mind, I just don't get it. To me, you don't act immorally just because someone was immoral with you. But maybe what I lived doesn't allow me to see the nuance, maybe my view is a direct consequence of how I lived the abuse and the kind of abuses that were done to me, that may prevent me from understanding how someone could behave in this manner. I'm open to learning, because I want to understand. But all I see is a show that wants views and high stats and that is not handling the aftermath of sexual abuse with the care and sensitivity it needs.
It's not sensitive enough and it gives the wrong message to people who have not lived abuse that we who have suffered it are going to act in a bitchy and immoral way and I fear that it might add to the stigma that already exists around sexual abuse CPTSD.
Images are from Pexels.com.