[Image contains the acronym DARVO on the left, descending vertically, and with each letter spelled out: D for deny, A for attack, R for reverse, V for victim, and O for offender. On the right is a cartoon image of a tornado.
Underneath the image is the quote: “Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO) is a tactic a person may use to deflect responsibility onto an individual they have abused. It is a form of manipulation a person may use to discredit a survivor’s experience” from Anna Haghighi, Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-is-darvo#summary.]
DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, and it is a manipulation tactic often employed by the perpetrator of harm in intimate partner violence and domestic violence, but you may notice it shows up in other areas of life as well.
For a seemingly low-stakes example, say two cohabiting partners agreed they would switch off doing the dishes every night and do them together on Sundays. Partner A has been doing the dishes on their nights and noticing that Partner Z never seems to finish the dishes on their nights. Perhaps tonight, Partner Z hasn’t touched the dishes and it’s almost bedtime. Partner A approaches Partner Z and says, “Hey, I thought we agreed we were going to switch off doing the dishes every night, but I’ve noticed you didn’t do them tonight and haven’t been finishing them some nights you do them.. Do we need to adjust our agreement?” Partner Z responds in an angry tone, “What? I do the dishes. Can’t I get a break sometimes? Why are you always nagging me! You never let me have free time to myself. You’re so controlling it stresses me out. That’s why I need a break from the flipping chores!”
In this example, Partner Z first denies Partner A’s observation of both their behavior and doesn’t address their agreement about the dishes. Partner Z then uses verbal attacks via sarcasm and always/never statements to try to put the responsibility for their anger on Partner A. After that, Partner Z tries to reverse engineer the situation by attributing their choice of behavior as an unavoidable reaction to Partner A’s attested (possibly true, possibly invented) behavior.
What Partner Z does not do is take ownership of their behaviors, choices, or feelings. If Partner Z had said: “Oh snap. Sorry, I did totally forget the dishes, and honestly I didn’t even notice I hadn’t been finishing them. I’ve been so stressed out at work and afraid I won’t make the deadline that honestly I’ve been struggling to remember or finish some of the household things we agreed to. Maybe we do need to adjust our agreement for now. I could use a little help at least for a while.” …the conversation would probably go very differently.
Medical News Today has a helpful extended article about DARVO in the context of intimate partner violence: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-is-darvo#summary.
DARVO is a behavior pattern that doesn’t just show up in intimate partner violence, though; there is evidence to show it correlates with sexual harassment behavior and with rape myth acceptance (convincing a victim that what happened to them was their fault). There are also recently studies examining the use of DARVO tactics in defamation cases - for example, as the #MeToo movement grew, the percentage of defamation cases brought against the victims by their abusers, in some cases by ten times the pre #MeToo numbers. While there are certainly legitimate defamation cases, it seems that it has become more common for both abusers and their lawyers to weaponize DARVO, because in a defamation suit, of course the abuser/plaintiff must prove damages (attack) the defendant. This article by Harsey and Freyd (2022) goes into more depth about DARVO and defamation cases: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2022.2111510?src=recsys .
Unfortunately, that’s not all: Handelman (2024) explores how institutional DARVO shows up in politics and policy. It would be disingenuous of me to ask if anyone can think of examples of institutional DARVO recently. Instead I’ll say that being able to recognize DARVO as a manipulation tactic helps us all be less susceptible to it. Stay tuned for later posts exploring why anyone would use DARVO and how to respond to someone using this tactic.
References
1. Haghighi (2024). What is DARVO? Definition, effects on mental health, and more. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-is-darvo#summary.
2. Freyd (1997). Violations of Power, Adaptive Blindness and Betrayal Trauma Theory. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0959353597071004
3. Harsey and Freyd (2022). Defamation and DARVO. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2022.2111510?src=recsys
4. Handelman (2024). From book bans to affirmative action: DARVO as a political tool against Critical Race Theory. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10852352.2024.2398898?needAccess=true