Modern civilized society condemns domestic violence at the legislative and declarative levels. Yet, on an everyday level, attitudes toward victims often include judgment. Alongside sympathy and horror, the question is often voiced (or implied): "How could she/he have allowed this?" How could a person allow such treatment, why didn’t they seek help; or perhaps they enjoy it, or have a "slave-like nature." Those ready to "cast the first stone" at the victim are sincerely convinced that something like this could never happen to them. Never.
In her novel *Only the Innocent*, Rachel Abbott guides the reader through the journey of her heroine—from a loving woman who turns a blind eye to all the "red flags" in her relationship to a psychiatric patient and a reluctant murderer.
The circumstances of how the protagonist, Laura, meets her future husband and tormentor are laced with bitter (or cruel?) irony. She meets him at an event where she receives an award for her film about domestic violence. Laura is the film’s producer. Here’s how she describes herself at the time: "bright and light as a butterfly, carefree, flitting through life, happy because she had her beloved work, family, and friends. How did everything end up this way?"
This happy Laura worked meticulously on her film. In a letter to a friend, she writes absolutely correct things: that violence isn’t necessarily physical; it’s more about emotional and psychological abuse—humiliation, insults, controlling behavior, and so on. It raises the question of how people allow themselves to be treated this way. Victims of violence turn out to be nothing like the stereotypes. They can be "intelligent, educated people with good jobs." The producer quotes the words of one woman who was a victim: "This gradual, methodical destruction of self-confidence is impossible to explain."
The jury almost unanimously awards the film a high prize. Only one journalist, known for her sharp films and programs on sensitive topics, does not vote for it. Laura is confused by her feedback and asks for an explanation. The journalist responds with high praise for the film’s technical aspects but says, "Unfortunately, it has one major flaw... You have absolutely no idea about this topic."
Her words act as a "cold shower" for the reader, setting the tone for what follows. Unlike the novel’s Laura, the reader reacts sharply to the criticism of her awareness of domestic violence. Laura, however, is euphoric from the recognition of her work, the attention of a handsome stranger, and the anticipation of wonderful changes in her life.
A status-obsessed and handsome man—this is how Hugo Fletcher, Laura’s future husband, is portrayed. Above all, the domestic tyrant is an excellent manipulator. Usually, those around him don’t suspect what he’s capable of behind closed doors. It’s important to him to maintain an attractive image in public. This means that a victim who dares to "air the dirty laundry" risks facing disbelief or even accusations of lying.
At their first meeting, Hugo Fletcher embodies all the classic traits of a manipulator: attractive appearance, a significant age and social status gap, societal recognition of his success ("for his significant contributions to charity, Hugo Fletcher was granted a title"), outward dignity, and good manners. He begins breaking down Laura’s personal boundaries—physically and in conversation—while making it seem like a friendly and attentive gesture:
"Hugo walked around the table. — Welcome, Laura. I hope you don’t mind if I call you by your first name?"
He continues with a classic manipulative tactic: severing ties with friends and family. Hugo never directly tells Laura he doesn’t want her to communicate with her mother, a friend, or colleagues. He doesn’t order her to abandon them. A manipulator never states their goal outright. Later, in a letter to a friend, Laura writes that "honest violence" is much better than such psychological conditioning.
Laura’s circle of communication, behavior, style of dress, views on marriage, sex life, norms, and deviations from them—everything must change once she marries Fletcher. All demands are presented as concern for his wife. Punishment for deviation is inevitable. The penalty takes the form of silence, ignoring, cutting remarks, demonstrations of offended dignity, reminders of belonging to different social circles, and lamentations about Laura’s inability to understand the rules of life in her husband’s circle due to her upbringing and cultural level.
The contrast between Hugo’s dissatisfaction and his behavior when he approves of Laura is excruciating. The halo of flawlessness and dignity surrounding Fletcher is blinding! Each of his remarks initially seems perfectly reasonable. Especially since the young woman wants to be worthy of her gorgeous lover and sincerely believes she must "rise to his level." Soon, Laura begins justifying all of Fletcher’s demands. If she feels dissatisfaction, she suppresses it, telling herself she must have misunderstood. That Hugo will surely appreciate her efforts. That he expresses his feelings differently than she does. That she must help her husband. That if she tries just a little harder, everything will be fine.
When Laura still has the opportunity to communicate with her usual circle, her loved ones try to point out the "red flags" they notice in her fiancé’s behavior. Though these signs are vague, a professional manipulator never provides concrete evidence of his ill intentions.
His unwillingness to meet his fiancée’s mother until the wedding, the too-short time from their meeting to the marriage, his avoidance of communication with Laura’s friend, his negative remarks about her and their behavior, his exclusion of Laura’s family from wedding preparations, his silence about future plans, his criticism of her style of dress and life, his desire to control everything, his absolute certainty—these and other points are pointed out to Laura before the wedding. They don’t have specific objections to the marriage, only a feeling (which is typical when under manipulative influence: the sense that something is wrong). So they simply urge her not to rush. But Laura is in love and looks up to Hugo. And he is in a hurry—creating an artificial time crunch for the victim is another effective weapon of a manipulator. Step by step, the man destroys his wife’s personality. This is what the woman who was a victim of domestic violence once told Laura the producer. At the time, Laura thought she understood the problem.
Laura doesn’t find Hugo’s flaws irritating. For her, they are proof that her husband is a real person. That she can reconcile herself to some things and help with others. She doesn’t yet realize that, in sports terms, she’s playing for the team of psychologically and mentally healthy people. Meanwhile, Hugo Fletcher is playing for the opposing team.
As their relationship develops, Laura is puzzled by his attitude toward sex. Despite the sexually charged attention he showers on her and despite both being adults with sexual experience, Hugo makes no attempt at intimacy. When she cautiously "pushes," he responds with respectful and chaste explanations, as if filled with respect for Laura and their relationship. Their first wedding night also passes without sex. Moreover, it turns out that Hugo and his wife have separate bedrooms. They are to have sex not in one of them but in a separate room. The time for this will be determined by Fletcher himself. Their sex life does begin eventually. Laura encounters inexplicable behavior, her husband’s anger, insults, accusations of impropriety and lying (Hugo "discovered" that she dyes her hair). The act itself is unpleasant, brings Laura no pleasure, and reveals her husband’s physiological difficulties. Instead of fleeing, the woman once again justifies Hugo Fletcher to herself. She sympathizes with him, wants to help him overcome the problem, and prepares to tell him so. Instead, she hears from Hugo that the problem is with her—she has complexes. That he is confident everything will improve once they return home. That he will help her overcome any problems. In a letter to a friend, Laura writes: "You know, until this moment, it never occurred to me that Hugo might sincerely believe the problem is with me! Maybe it really is?" This is how gaslighting works—a way to make the victim doubt the reality around them.
Isolated from her usual social contacts (communication with colleagues is also absent since the heroine quit her job), the victim struggles to preserve herself under the refined emotional and psychological pressure. Laura resorts to self-deception: "I react too sharply." She endows her husband with superhuman qualities: "It seems to me he’s always right."
In this state, the revelation that her husband married her only because she resembles a woman he adored provokes a paradoxical reaction. "I expected to feel outraged, to rage and storm. But, to my surprise, all I wanted at that moment was to save our marriage."
The manipulator never relents. The desire to earn approval and the painful reaction to criticism become the victim’s normal state in an abnormal situation. "It felt like I was being flogged," Laura describes her reaction to her husband’s displeasure—a reaction expressed without raising his voice, let alone using harsh words.
At the same time, the victim is convinced that everything is done for her own good, cultivating a sense of guilt—the manipulator’s faithful ally. "I hope you appreciate that I put your wishes above all else. I know what’s best, even if you don’t always agree with me." As a result, instead of rebelling, the heroine thinks: "I must just try harder." Laura’s friend, recounting this period of her life, says that she "blamed herself for everything that happened around her."
The detective investigating Hugo Fletcher’s murder forms this impression of Laura’s photos from their wedding to the end of their married life: "In each subsequent photo, she looked less and less sexual, despite the expensive clothes. She was still beautiful, but she had lost weight and seemed dimmed... She appeared constrained and slightly nervous..."
Psychological exhaustion manifests in physical changes. This is one of the consequences of domestic violence and another obstacle to the victim’s escape. The taste of freedom Laura experienced in her pre-marital life, along with her personality traits, saves her from total self-loss. She recognizes the "something’s not right" feeling and tries to see reality. The horrifying discoveries she makes about her husband, instead of breaking her, set her on a path to fight back. Perhaps if Laura were fighting only for herself, she would have allowed herself to give up. Fear for another person turns out to be stronger than her own weakness. The disgusting truth about the nature of Hugo’s relationship with his young daughter transforms the victim into a fighter. One who has no right to lose. Who knows their life is worthless. Who is ready to endure anything and forget about honorable means of struggle.
Laura endures stays in psychiatric clinics—twice. The first time after seeing Hugo with Alexa (his daughter from his first marriage) and threatening to tell a friend about it. The second time after trying to find out what happened to the girls Hugo’s foundation helped—girls he claimed to assist in leaving prostitution. Both times, Hugo Fletcher "arranges" her mental illness with drugs. To outsiders, it appears to be a situation involving a severely ill wife and a caring, noble husband.
But manipulative relationships poison not just the victim. The manipulator himself is also at risk. Laura realizes she cannot turn to the law for protection. There’s no material evidence of the nightmare. She uses the weaknesses and specific needs of her perverted husband to strike deals with him. These deals protect her and Alexa from Hugo’s sexual advances and ensure the illusion of a perfect family. One of the aggressor’s and manipulator’s key traits is his inability to stop voluntarily. The deals only temporarily restrain Hugo. Soon, he tells Laura that he won’t need her much longer. Alexa will reach adulthood and replace his disobedient wife. And Laura will die—her death won’t surprise anyone, given her "diagnosis."
In this situation, Lady Fletcher sees no other way to protect Alexa than to kill Hugo Fletcher. Laura prepares and carries out the murder, following Hugo’s manipulative traditions—she manipulates her friend into thinking she’s helping expose the pervert, manipulates Hugo into believing his wife has surrendered, and even manipulates Alexa, who adores her father. The girl believes what happened between them is a secret all daughters and fathers share.
Laura manipulates for the best of reasons. To ensure no one close to her bears the burden of guilt. She takes full responsibility and moral weight upon herself. Yet manipulation remains manipulation, and murder remains murder.
The author focuses most on Laura’s story as a victim of violence and the detective plotline. The tyrant’s personality is sketched more schematically, but this outline provides insight into Hugo Fletcher’s development, his perception of the world, and the danger he poses to others. The Fletcher family history aligns with the idea that every crime has two victims: the victim and the criminal. This applies most to the moral or even spiritual aspect. Committing a crime is a crime against one’s own personality and its potential growth. In Hugo Fletcher’s case, we can add a legal aspect. In his parental family, the "tradition" of seducing children and incestuous relationships was maintained. The parents’ actions occurred without violence; the children accepted it as normal. The adult Fletcher is utterly amoral by societal standards. For him, everything he does is moral (and justified). Relationships considered normal don’t exist for him. In adulthood, he seeks to recreate the psychological comfort of his past. Thus, his partners must resemble his mother. The sexual technique must recreate incest. Discovering that his wife’s hair isn’t red triggers an emotional outburst. Later, he demands she wear a red wig. His refusal to acknowledge reality manifests in a desire for purity (in both senses) and demands for purity from his victim. In demands for honesty and accusations of lying over trivial matters. In considering himself a normal and moral person.
Like every manipulator, Hugo Fletcher senses who might be his victim. Fletcher has this sensitivity too. He selects his victims from a specific group. The foundation is his hunting ground. A characteristic trait of criminals is their development. Thus, it’s crucial to recognize and stop criminal activity as early as possible. Also, to ensure they face adequate punishment. Nothing and no one ever hindered Hugo Fletcher’s development into a perverted and criminal individual. The author demonstrates the range of Fletcher’s actions beyond morality and the law—from paying off the girls he used as substitutes for his mother to their murders.
The book doesn’t end with a happy ending of wedding bells. Laura’s punishment for the murder is impunity and the impossibility of a loving relationship. A mutual feeling begins to develop between her and the detective, Tom. He says she did the right thing and has already served her "ten years of torment." But he’s a police officer. No matter what he feels for Laura, he can never accept murder. Perhaps the novel answers the reader’s question of how people allow themselves to be treated this way. Yet it leaves others unanswered: about our readiness to believe the victim and not judge her. About justifying taking the law into one’s own hands. About whether murder can be a preventive measure. About how to live on.
