The word "abuser" is correct in written English.
It is used to describe someone who mistreats or harms another person, often in the context of relationships or substance use.
Example: "The court issued a restraining order against her abuser."
Alternatives: "mistreater" or "oppressor."
Often deformed, dwarfed, or crippled, fools may have been kept for luck as well as for amusement, in the belief that deformity can avert the evil eye and that abusive raillery can transfer ill luck from the abused to the abuser.
In trolling cases, for example, by protecting the abuser, you are discouraging the abused from entering public debates.
On June 20th a jury in New Jersey upheld the death penalty for a child abuser who had himself been abused in childhood, rejecting the argument that a man's boyhood trauma diminishes his responsibility for his behaviour as an adult.
Even if Rihanna and Brown actually do start up a relationship again, this is in no way evidence that Brown is magically 'reformed', and could end up being quite the opposite - the average domestic abuse victim will leave their abuser only to return to them seven times before managing to leave for good.
"If a big name star was to come forward and talk about the abuse they suffered and name the abuser that could be a game-changer, but at the peak of his career and earning millions a film he would probably have to forfeit his career to do so," says co-executive producer Matt Valentinas.
However, forgiveness may also go awry, deliberately or inadvertently serving more dubious ends, as when a victim of domestic violence routinely but without good reason forgives her abuser, thereby fueling increasingly violent cycles of abuse.
Under this model, an abused woman is excused from killing her abuser either because she did not realize that she was violating the law, or because she could not prevent herself from breaking it presumably because she was under the sway of her emotions.
Many now wonder whether the abused child, nourished on bitterness, must necessarily become an abuser itself; or whether, now that it is rich and strong, China will learn to be at peace with itself and the world.
Earlier this week it emerged that a prosecuting barrister described a 13-year-old victim of sexual abuse as "predatory", during a sentencing hearing for her abuser.
But the system for dealing with these crimes was the same everywhere: swear the victims to secrecy; send the abuser to be "cleansed" in a clinic; shift him to another parish (or in extreme cases like Smyth's to another country); and, above all, do not tell the police.
To be treated as though you are the abuser when you're trying your best to help is incredibly difficult.
