If I’m Good, It Will Stop

A child in a violent home can neither run away nor win. To survive mentally, he invents a kind of power for himself: “If I am quiet enough, obedient enough, convenient enough — the storm will pass.” This is magical thinking: it creates an illusion of control where there is none, and that illusion once kept him sane.

Adult Simon carries the same formula into university: endure, and one day they will get bored. But submission does not switch violence off — it feeds it: a predator reads it as an invitation. The victim is not “asking for it”; he is using the only tool that ever worked for him. That is the whole tragedy of this hope.