Freyd, J.J. coined the term DARVO in “Violations of power, adaptive blindness, and betrayal trauma theory” published in the journal Feminism & Psychology (1997).
DARVO refers to a reaction that perpetrators of wrong doing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. DARVO stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.” The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim — or the whistle blower — into an alleged offender. This occurs, for instance, when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of “falsely accused” and attacks the accuser’s credibility and blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.
- Jennifer J. Freyd
Thor employs DARVO heavily in Thor’s Defense and the Final Conversation.
The core difference between Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender is that Attack is an attack on the victim’s character and credibility, while Reverse is a shift in the narrative where the perpetrator claims to be the victim of the situation.