Diddy trial and Macron shove reveal our blind spots about domestic violence

USA Today

2 days ago

Diddy trial and Macron shove reveal our blind spots about domestic violence | Opinion The Diddy video perpetuates one of the most harmful stereotypes about domestic violence: that abusers are people who simply 'lose control' in moments of rage.
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Former stylist for Cassie testifies of more alleged abuse by Combs
Deonte Nash, a friend and stylist of Cassie Ventura Fine, testified in Sean "Diddy" Combs' federal trial of more alleged abuse by Combs against Fine.
In March 2016, hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was caught on camera violently assaulting singer Casandra "Cassie" Ventura Fine in a Los Angeles hotel hallway – kicking, dragging and throwing objects at her as she tried to escape.
The video, which surfaced amid federal investigations into Combs, validated years of allegations that many had dismissed or ignored. But recent trial revelations have exposed something even more chilling: the extensive web of control that kept Ventura Fine silent for years.
Meanwhile, cameras recently captured a different moment: French President Emmanuel Macron apparently being shoved by his wife, first lady Brigitte Macron, while preparing to leave a plane in Vietnam. Social media erupted with jokes and memes, treating the incident as amusing fodder.
These two incidents – one undeniably violent, the other dismissed as trivial – reveal our dangerous blind spots about domestic violence.
As a lawyer who represents survivors and their children, I see how these misconceptions play out every day in courtrooms across America, with devastating consequences.
Abusers don't simply 'lose control'
The Combs video perpetuates one of the most harmful stereotypes about domestic violence: that abusers are people who simply "lose control" in moments of rage. But watch that footage again. Notice how he checks for witnesses. See how he methodically prevents her escape. This isn't someone out of control – this is calculated dominance.
Domestic violence is never about anger management. It's about power and control.
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Abusers are extraordinarily in control, employing a deliberate pattern of behavior designed to dominate their partners. The violence we see – whether it's a kick in a hotel hallway or a shove on an airplane – is just the visible tip of a much larger iceberg.
Most physical violence also experience economic abuse and emotional manipulation. The Combs trial has illuminated just how comprehensive his control seemed: He allegedly monitored the movements of the singer known as Cassie, controlled her singing career, isolated her from support systems and made it clear that defying him would have consequences not just for her but for anyone close to her.
In 2019, the singer entered contracts to end her business relationship with Combs and married trainer Alex Fine.
When Ventura Fine dated rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, Combs didn't just express jealousy, Mescudi testified May 22. Mescudi accused Combs of having a Molotov cocktail thrown at his car.
This would be part of a pattern of using terror to maintain absolute control. It is the abuser's playbook: Create dependency, erode self-worth, eliminate escape routes.
Physical violence is merely one tool in a comprehensive strategy of control.
Why the singer Cassie couldn't just leave
The inevitable question always emerges: "Why didn't she just leave?"
Ventura Fine, who at 19 met then-37-year-old Combs in 2005 and soon signed to his music label Bad Boy Records, stayed for more than a decade.
The answer lies in understanding how abusers systematically trap their victims. Her silence wasn't weakness; it was survival. She understood what many critics don't – that leaving an abuser with unlimited resources and a proven willingness to terrorize isn't just difficult, it's dangerous.
For most survivors, the barriers are just as real if less glamorous – shared children, financial dependence, immigration status or simply having nowhere safe to go.
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The most dangerous time for a victim is when they try to leave. Women escaping abusive relationships face a 75% greater risk of severe violence or death. Abusers escalate because leaving represents the ultimate loss of control. That hotel footage? It was captured as Ventura Fine was apparently trying to escape. The pattern is heartbreakingly predictable.
The Macron incident highlights another critical issue: our failure to recognize that domestic violence can affect anyone, regardless of gender, wealth or status. The footage has become comedy material, with countless memes treating potential intimate partner violence as amusing evidence of a "normal" marriage.
This response reveals how poorly we understand the dynamics of intimate partner violence when men are victims. Male victims face unique barriers: societal expectations of masculinity, fear of not being believed and a support system designed primarily for women. When we mock or minimize potential violence against men, we reinforce the shame that keeps all victims silent.
Perhaps nowhere is our misunderstanding of domestic violence more dangerous than in family courts. Despite everything we know about the patterns of abuse, family courts award joint or sole custody to fathers accused of domestic violence approximately 70% of the time. Judges, operating under the presumption that children need both parents, often minimize or dismiss evidence of abuse.
The consequences are deadly. Since 2008, more than 900 children involved in contested custody cases have been killed, most by fathers who had previously abused their mothers. Search 'murder suicide' in your local news website and you will find a shocking number of children and mothers slain by fathers who had full or shared custody of their children each year. But most stories are less headline-worthy.
Research confirms what advocates have long known: Abusers use children as tools of continued control. They seek custody at twice the rate of nonabusive parents ‒ not out of love, but as a means to maintain power over their victims.
Yet courts, clinging to the ideal of "friendly co-parenting" and often, the law requiring it, force survivors to maintain contact with their abusers. We also know that children who have experienced domestic violence in the home – in any form – have outcomes as poor as children who have been the direct target of the abuse. Yet we continue to perpetuate the myth that once parents separate, the abuser transforms into a healthy co-parent.
Domestic violence is about so much more than visible bruises. It's about the systematic dismantling of a person's autonomy, the calculated destruction of their support systems and the weaponization of love, children and financial security.
The Combs case shows us what validation looks like – video evidence that confirms what Ventura Fine said all along, and trial revelations that suggest the calculated nature of his control.
Her years of silence weren't complicity; they were strategic survival in the face of credible threats to herself and those she loved. But most survivors don't have surveillance footage or high-profile trials. They have their truth and a system that too often fails to believe them, or believes them but issues paradoxical custody orders.
As these cases fade from headlines, the real work continues in courtrooms and shelters across the country. We need judges trained to recognize coercive control, not just physical violence. We need custody laws that prioritize safety and healthy parenting over the fiction of "equal parenting" with an abuser. We need supervised visitation services that don't force victims to coordinate with their abusers. And we need a society that understands domestic violence as a pattern of power and control, not isolated incidents of anger.
The camera caught Combs in that hotel hallway. Another one caught a shove on an airplane ramp that was turned into a joke.
But for every moment captured on video – whether it's met with horror or humor – there are millions happening behind closed doors.
Until we fundamentally change how we understand and respond to domestic violence, those victims remain trapped – not by locked doors, but by a system that fails to see the bars.
Dale Margolin Cecka is an assistant professor of law and the director of the Family Violence Litigation Clinic at the Albany Law School.