Indirect threats of credible violence are oftentimes uttered in public and private by individuals who use the threat of bodily harm or social humiliation to extort their victims and anyone who might show any form of social support for that person. Indirect threats, meaning a threat of harm or social damage will be done to a target if they tell anyone about being harmed by or having witnessed abuse, are used to keep a targeted person under biological duress.
Indirect threats are oftentimes referred to as veiled threats. They are also referred to as implied threats and or threat by implication. In many cases of Witness Tampering, they are used in conjunction with direct — meaning overt and target naming specific threats.
An indirect threat can be spoken, implied by eye contact and body gestures, written, or left as some sort of ominous warning. A cross left burning in the yard of the home of a person a Cluster B person or group wants to drive out of town is an extreme example of a veiled threat. The threat is that whoever resides in the home has been targeted for physical harm if they refuse to submit and flee is implied.
Indirect or veiled threats are a form of social abuse that allows whoever is choosing to do the threatening to garner biological, meaning physiological, domination over their abuse target’s mind, body, and physical emotions. By making an IMPLIED threat, the verbal abuser is likely in most instances to be able to skirt the letter of the law while technically following the letter of a law by not issuing or uttering a threat directly.
In high conflict divorce cases, someone in a position seeking to dominate an abuse mate might make public threats saying something like they would really hate to see something tragic or violent happen to (for instance) a co-parent seeing custody rights or rights to visitation with a child if the person seeking to avoid alienation from the little one does something like go to the police about a crime the abusive co-parent is routinely commuting in some other area of their life. Career criminal personality types — especially WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS and peers racketeering — are famous among victims for having used social and domestic terrorism tactics and implied threats to actively engage in things like Witness Tampering and Obstruction of Justice.
Fort Refuge described INDIRECT VIOLENCE as follows as it relates to someone using words to cause potential witnesses in criminal, civil, or social cases threatening whoever might talk or act in any way to protect themselves from an Abuser or an abusive peer group as follows. They write:
“[Implying threats] means violence that isn’t directed at you [by name specifically], but [credible implied threats are knowingly made by someone seeking] to intimidate [and or to] manipulate you. Common examples are damaging property (e.g. punching holes in walls) and violence towards pets. Watching your favorite possessions be destroyed, or your pets hurt (or even killed) is a traumatic experience, and makes you fear for your safety, since the person is clearly out of control and you can’t know who might be their next target. And yet you can’t complain of domestic abuse/battery since you were never touched.”
Think of the person who goes on a talk show — slut-shaming a person who has information about a crime… humiliating them in public then challenging them to testify in court about the truth of the civic hospitality abuser’s lies. The victim is threatened by implication that if she (or he) goes to court and testifies under oath truthfully that they can expect to be further regressed, dehumanized, socially terrorized — all in an attempt to ensure that if the victim of a crime testifies or shares the fact-based truth about reality with anyone that incredibly social, stress-induced physical, complex emotional harm will be intentionally done to them.
In the most extreme cases of indirect or veiled threats, a perpetrator might say something like…
If I was going to kill you (or do you bodily harm) then I would do it this way — followed by a graphic violence description. The threat is legally considered an indirect threat or IMPLIED threat because the abusive speaker never said I am GOING to do deplorable XYZ to you… they used an If-Then Hypothetical to cause their Narcissistic Abuse target to feel fear that is heightened by the Abuser sharing a vivid description of the harm they are fantasizing about theoretically causing.
They might say something like…
You know I could murder you, get rid of your body, take the child, and tell everyone that you ran away with some man, woman, or in order to avoid your social responsibilities. The implication is they have already premeditated a violent crime, have used Machiavellian reasoning to divine how to dispose of your carcass, and that the implied threat is meant to let you know exactly how much they think you are personally, socially, and spiritually worth. Namely, in their eyes and the eyes of people who they are likely to tell you directly or to imply will not only never even miss you or notice you vanished but that everyone will be better off when you are erased from the planet.
Or the might say something like…
They would HATE to see you harmed IF you try to leave them or to testify. The implied threat is that if you try to assert yourself in order to flee or to protect yourself from abuse by them in any way, expect for there to be all H E double hockey sticks to pay.
They never actually said they INTEND to harm you. They tell you they want you to know if you do something… anything.. to displease them that there will be profound social, emotional, psychological, and physical consequences if their mark refuses to submit to their unlawful demands abuse or criminal’s secrets be kept from the general public, someone of importance who needs to know truth, or from authority figures (depending on the personality type of the disordered person or threatening peer group.
The trick causes fear in victims that is heightened because unless they are directly threatened and have recorded proof of the person uttering the threats is likely to feign innocence and to say their abuse victim is a kook.
A direct threat is saying if you do X I will do Y.
An implied threat involves a social predator and listener hospitality abuser that if they wanted to harm someone, this is how they are likely to do it — without ever committing to owning the action or threat except in the quasi-legal hypothetical.
Hearing a Cluster B person say something like if they wanted to that they could do considerable violent social or physical harm to a targeted mark is never — and we do mean NEVER — something to be ignored by law enforcement, anyone aware of implied (or direct) threat utterances, by mental health care service providers, or by the courts.
Choosing to believe the old adage “sticks and stones may break my bones” but being called names and being threatened verbally will never hurt me could not put targeted victim’s health or the safety of themselves and their loved ones anymore in the path of harm’s way intentionally. Enabling abuse (like allowing someone with Anti-Social Personality Disorder of the Sociopath variety) is high-risk behavior.
Medically speaking, the person made to feel fear is likely to suffer such profound emotional distress from being taunted that life-threatening illnesses are likely to either exacerbate or to develop.
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