When a person is held publicly accountable, the response sometimes follows a recognizable pattern. Psychologists call it DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. This page explains what the research says about it, so readers can recognize the pattern if they see it.
DARVO describes a pattern of behaviour. It is not a clinical diagnosis, there is no test for it, and this page does not make findings about any individual. Readers can compare any public statement with the documents linked below and draw their own conclusions.
What DARVO stands for
The behaviour is denied outright, or minimized as unimportant or misunderstood.
The person who raised the concern is attacked: their honesty, character, mental health or motives, rather than what they actually said.
The person held accountable presents themselves as the real victim, and casts the people who spoke up as the aggressors.
What to watch for
These are general features of the pattern as the research describes it. Any one of them can occur for other reasons. What matters is whether they appear together, and whether what is said matches the record.
- Denying or recasting documented findings, such as describing a court outcome as something other than what the court record says.
- Responding to the people who spoke up by questioning their sanity, morality or motives, rather than addressing what they said or what the evidence shows.
- Presenting the person held accountable as persecuted, targeted or harmed by those who came forward.
- Shifting attention away from the documents and onto the people who spoke up.
Related tactics
DARVO often appears alongside other ways of deflecting attention. The research behind these varies, so each one notes how well established it is.
Overwhelming with confusion (often called “word salad”)
Long, shifting or contradictory statements that never directly answer the question, so that listeners give up trying to follow. How established: this is a widely used descriptive term, mainly from recovery communities, rather than a research finding. In clinical settings, “word salad” refers to something unrelated.
Gish gallop
Rapidly piling up many claims, faster than anyone can check them, so that the volume itself seems persuasive. How established: a recognized debate tactic. It works because refuting a claim takes far longer than making one.
Gaslighting
Trying to make people doubt their own memory, perception or judgment. How established: studied academically, including in sociologist Paige L. Sweet’s 2019 article in the American Sociological Review.
The same advice applies to all of them: set the noise aside and go back to the documents. If a statement is long or confusing, ask one question: does it change what the court record says?
What the court record shows
Any public response can be compared with these sources:
What the courts ruled
- May 22, 2026: A federal judge ruled that one of her statements about a defendant, that the defendant had abandoned her child, was defamation per se. Read the ruling (ECF 92).
- May 22, 2026: In the same order, the court excluded the “Sourced Intelligence” draft report, titled “Attribution Investigation: Working Product 1.0,” and its author’s opinions. The draft had been produced in 2022 for a third party, not for Wilson. The court found that Wilson’s side never disclosed its author as an expert and that the draft could not meet the requirements for an expert report. It added that his opinions would have been excluded as unreliable in any event: the author described his approach as coming only “from experience,” and admitted one of his observations was “pure . . . speculation” (ECF 92 at 4, 13–19). See the Courtroom File.
- July 10, 2026: In the lawsuit she brought, the court excluded her death-threat evidence under the federal spoliation rule, because she had not preserved the voicemail and its metadata. The recordings were her own evidence, offered in a case she filed, and the ruling came after a long fight in discovery: defence counsel formally requested the recordings’ metadata in August 2024 and had to file a motion to compel that October. Asked at her January 2025 deposition whether she still had the phone the voicemails arrived on, she testified: “No. I’m like two phones past that now” (Wilson Dep. Vol. II, 228:14–19). Her stalking evidence was excluded unopposed. Both are claims she had made publicly since at least November 2022. The Death Threats That Disappeared.
- August 13, 2026: After a two-week trial, a unanimous federal jury rejected the case Liana Shanti (Liane Wilson) brought and awarded the people she sued US$40.1 million. Read about the verdict.
What she said vs. the record
- 2023 vs. 2026, the website: On Jan. 8, 2023, her own Instagram story promoted EXPOSINGFAMILYCULTS.COM: “I will have an ENTIRE PAGE devoted to each of these two criminals/frauds.” On Aug. 2, 2023, answering former members’ letters to her sentencing judge, she filed a Position Statement in her criminal case saying she created the Exposing Family Abuse website (criminal Dkt. 125-1 at 23). In a declaration filed in this civil case on Jan. 28, 2026, she stated that she had “never created, authored, controlled, or published” a website by either name (ECF 70 ¶ 16). The court called this a “diametric inconsistency” (ECF 92 at 22–25). In fairness, it declined sanctions because the 2023 statement was not sworn, and said it was not for the court to decide which statement was false. See the full timeline.
- The “psychic” claim: In June 2022 her own website introduced her as “Psychic since childhood” (archived copy), with a “Schedule a Session” page for sessions “paid in full at time of booking” (archived booking page). CTV News W5 reports it verified numerous Instagram and Facebook posts in which she claims to be psychic, yet when questioned in court she testified, “I don’t use the word ‘psychic.’” (CTV News, Nov. 5, 2026).
- Private sessions (criminal case, 2023): These two documents were filed with her sentencing judge in her federal criminal case, not in the civil case. A booking page dated July 13, 2023, submitted by a former student, lists a “One on One Messenger Session in Signal App” at “15 minutes @ $300.00” (Doc. 110-2). In a written statement to the court in July 2023, not made under oath, she wrote “ZERO PEOPLE HAVE PRIVATE ACCESS TO ME” and said one-on-one sessions “were stopped YEARS ago” (Doc. 123-1, pp. 8–9). See the full private-access timeline.
- Before trial: Her damages had included roughly $70,000 for a service dog. Asked to back it up, she produced a single sales agreement, redacted even to her own lawyers, and withdrew the claim during her own deposition rather than produce an unredacted copy. Read about the verdict.
Since the verdict
- November 6, 2026: CTV News W5 reported that she had posted about the three Canadians by name 207 times since the verdict, and that some of that content is similar to statements the jury found defamatory. See the W5 coverage.
For her public statements set side by side with the documented record, see What She Said vs. the Record.
What the research found
It can lead people who were harmed to blame themselves. In a 2017 study, Sarah Harsey, Eileen Zurbriggen and Jennifer Freyd asked people about times they had confronted someone over wrongdoing. The more DARVO they encountered in response, the more likely they were to blame themselves afterward. Freyd has noted that this self-blame can lead people to go silent.
It changes how observers see both sides. In a 2020 experiment, Harsey and Freyd showed participants an account of abuse. Participants who then saw a DARVO response from the person accused rated the victim as less believable, more responsible and more abusive, and rated the person accused as less abusive and less responsible.
Knowing the pattern weakens it. In a second 2020 experiment, participants who first learned about DARVO rated the victim as more believable and the person accused as less believable. The researchers concluded that DARVO reinforces distrust of victims’ accounts, but that education can reduce some of its power. That finding is the reason this page exists.
Where the term comes from
Psychologist Jennifer J. Freyd introduced the term in a 1997 article on betrayal trauma theory. Freyd and her colleagues have since studied it in controlled research.
She described DARVO as a reaction that people accused of wrongdoing may display in response to being held accountable for their behaviour.
For survivors and families
If you have spoken up and found yourself doubting your own memory or blaming yourself afterward, you are not alone. Research shows that this is a known effect of being on the receiving end of DARVO. It is not evidence that you were wrong.
You do not have to respond to attacks or explain yourself publicly. Connecting with others who understand can help. Find the support group and recovery resources.
Sources
- Freyd, J. J. (1997). Violations of power, adaptive blindness, and betrayal trauma theory. Feminism & Psychology, 7(1), 22–32. doi:10.1177/0959353597071004
- Harsey, S. J., Zurbriggen, E. L., & Freyd, J. J. (2017). Perpetrator responses to victim confrontation: DARVO and victim self-blame. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 26(6), 644–663. doi:10.1080/10926771.2017.1320777
- Harsey, S., & Freyd, J. J. (2020). Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO): What is the influence on perceived perpetrator and victim credibility? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 29(8), 897–916. doi:10.1080/10926771.2020.1774695
- Sweet, P. L. (2019). The sociology of gaslighting. American Sociological Review, 84(5), 851–875. doi:10.1177/0003122419874843
- Jennifer J. Freyd’s overview of DARVO and the research: What is DARVO?