Epistemic justice means treating people as credible knowers of their own experiences. In abuse and violence cases, epistemic injustice often happens when victims are dismissed, doubted, ridiculed, or blamed instead of being listened to.

Some well-known examples include:

The case of Stephen Lawrence and witness Duwayne Brooks

After Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in London in 1993, his friend Duwayne Brooks witnessed the attack. Later inquiries found that police treated Brooks with suspicion rather than as a credible witness, failing to properly act on the information he gave. Philosopher Miranda Fricker uses this as a classic example of testimonial injustice — a person’s credibility being unfairly downgraded because of prejudice.  

Amber Heard and domestic abuse debates

Regardless of where people stand on the legal outcome, the public reaction became a major discussion about epistemic injustice. Many academics, domestic violence organizations, and commentators argued the case demonstrated how abuse allegations are often judged through ideas about the “perfect victim” — expecting survivors to behave flawlessly in order to be believed.  

Survivors before the #MeToo movement

Before terms such as “sexual harassment,” “coercive control,” and “gaslighting” became widely understood, many women struggled to explain experiences that felt wrong but lacked accepted language. This is known as hermeneutical injustice — when society lacks the concepts needed for people to make sense of and communicate their experiences.  

The case of Alex Reid

Alex Reid repeatedly sought help before her death, but warning signs of abuse were not adequately recognised by institutions around her. Her case has become part of discussions about how victims’ accounts can be minimised or misunderstood, leading to serious consequences.  

Historical domestic violence cases

For decades, many victims reporting abuse were told:

• “It’s just a marital argument.”
• “He didn’t mean it.”
• “Think about the children.”
• “Go home and work it out.”

These responses often treated victims as unreliable narrators of their own lives. Research on domestic violence shows that isolation, manipulation, and social myths about abuse can make victims’ experiences difficult for others to recognise and believe.  

The wider pattern

Epistemic injustice is not only about individual disbelief. It also appears when:

• Victims are labelled “hysterical,” “crazy,” “vindictive,” or “attention-seeking.”
• Institutions give more credibility to powerful, wealthy, famous, or socially respected people.
• Survivors are expected to provide impossible levels of proof.
• Society lacks language to describe what victims are experiencing.  

A simple way to put it:

Violence harms the body and mind. Epistemic injustice adds another layer of harm by making victims fight to prove that the harm happened at all.  

If you’re interested in domestic abuse specifically, the concepts of gaslighting, coercive control, and DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) are closely connected to discussions of epistemic injustice because they involve undermining a person’s confidence in their own knowledge and experience.