Beth Stelling Speaks Out About Domestic Abuse
Comedian Beth Stelling broke the silence on Instagram about her abusive relationship. (Photo: Getty Images)
We’re seeing this happening more and more: Women are speaking out about their experiences with abuse and rape. This week, comedian Beth Stelling shared her experience on Instagram, including photos of her bruised body and a harrowing story about staying with an abusive boyfriend.
(Photo: Beth Stelling/Instagram)
Below is her statement to accompany the photo.
“Same girl in all of these photos (me). I’ve had an amazing year and you’ve seen the highlights here, so these photos are an uncommon thing to share but not an uncommon issue. You may be weirded out but do read on. I have a point. There are many reasons not to make an abusive relationship public, mostly fear. Scared of what people will think, scared it makes me look weak or unprofessional.
“When I broke up with my ex this summer, it wasn’t because I didn’t love him, it was because of this. And I absolutely relapsed and contacted him with things I shouldn’t have, but there are no ‘best practices’ with this. When friends or comics ask why we broke up it’s not easy or comfortable to reply; it doesn’t seem like the appropriate thing to say at a stand-up show, a party or a wedding. It’s embarrassing. I feel stupid. After being verbally, physically abused and raped, I dated him for two more months. It’s not simple. After I broke up with him he said, ‘You’re very open and honest in your stand-up, and I just ask that you consider me when you talk about your ex because everyone knows who you’re talking about.’ And I abided. I wrote vague jokes because we both live in L.A. and I didn’t want to hurt him, start a war, press charges, be interrogated or harassed by him or his friends and family. I wanted to move on and forget because I didn’t understand. I don’t want revenge or to hurt him now, but it’s unhealthy to keep this inside because my stand-up is pulled directly from my life. It’s how I make my living. My personal is my professional. That is how I’ve always been; I make dark, funny.
“So now I’m allowing this to be part of my story. It’s not my only story, so please don’t let it be. If you live in L.A., you’ve already started to hear my jokes about this and I ask you to have the courage to listen and accept it because I’m trying. Already since talking about this onstage, many women have come to me after shows asking me to keep doing it. Men have shown their solidarity.
“An ex-girlfriend of this ex-boyfriend came to me and shared that she experienced the same fate. Then there was another and another (men and women) who shared other injustices at his hand that …”
Stelling’s statement got cut off due to Instagram caption size limitations, so she later posted the following to the social media platform:
(Photo: Beth Stelling/Instagram)
It takes a lot of courage to publicly admit to being in an abusive relationship, and Stelling notes that she was afraid to tell people because it was embarrassing to her. But it’s important to all women that she did — because the only thing that will remove the stigma around being abused is to talk about it.
Related: One Woman’s Story of Surviving Domestic Violence as an Undocumented Immigrant
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, one in three women and one in four men will be a victim of some kind of physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime, with one in five women and one in seven men being victims of severe physical violence.
The stats surrounding rape in the U.S. are even more shocking — nearly half of people who are raped in the U.S. are victimized by an acquaintance; among those people, 45.4 percent of women and 29 percent of men are raped by an intimate partner.
And often, the abuse continues to escalate, either with the same partner or new partners. Domestic homicide is one of the most common types of murder in the U.S., with one-third of all murdered American women killed at the hands of their male partners, current or former.
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence or abuse, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE).
Read This Next: The Number of Male Domestic Abuse Victims Is Shockingly High — So Why Don’t We Hear About Them?
Let’s keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Health on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Have a personal health story to share? We want to hear it. Tell us at YHTrueStories@yahoo.com.
