When Love Turns to Hate: Why Justice Must Stay in the Courtroom and Not Online

Working with couples and individuals whose marriage is on the brink of dissolution, a therapist by name, I have personally witnessed the full emotional journey of love, from intimacy and connection to disappointment, betrayal, and sometimes, rage. It is at these points of rupture that some serious allegations form: domestic violence, sexual harassment, parental alienation, coercive control. These are not abstract terms — these are actual, lived experiences — but the ways we act on them as a society are very important.

In recent years, public platforms — TikTok, podcasts, Instagram — have emerged as the new courtrooms. Abuse and betrayal stories are not normally disseminated through legal avenues, but online. At times the person accused is never interrogated by police, much less charged. The public, without much information, is required to take sides, and many do. But in making these claims, we take a great risk: we confuse emotion for proof, popularity for truth.

And it’s important to recognize this: Being wronged is not feeling wronged. Emotional pain is real, too, and often well deserved. Yet justice requires more than merely injury, real justice. It requires verification. And that is why societies have, over centuries, developed courts: to remove personal biases and apply consistent rules to emotionally laden situations.

When we circumvent this process and attempt to bring people to trial in social media posts or at one-sided interviews, we aren’t giving justice; we’re giving performance. In such a performance, the accused have no right of reply, no opportunity to contest claims nor a place in which context can occur. That is not fairness. It’s public judgment disguised as advocacy.

It would, of course, be profoundly unfair not to consider why people choose to go public in the first place. Survivors, particularly women and those on the margins, commonly describe feeling unheard, invalidated, or retraumatised by formal systems. Others see cases dropped for “lack of evidence”, despite the veracity of their circumstances. Still other people have practical barriers to reporting: fear of retaliation, and complicated family dynamics.

The Me Too movement and others have taught us that public storytelling can be potent. It can reveal patterns of harm, change culture and enable others in the community to speak. Thus have these platforms plugged a gap that has been left by slow, sluggish or historically dismissive institutions.

But this doesn’t mean every public accusation is evidence of guilt — or that we should give up searching the facts with respect to the context and fairness we require. We may have flawed justice systems, but we ought not to throw these away entirely.

In high-conflict divorces or custody battles, therapists and other law professionals have observed how language about abuse can sometimes function as a tactical tool. Parental alienation, for instance, is not a myth, but it is also sometimes abused to mask legitimate fears and concerns. It’s the same way with allegations of harassment or emotional abuse: valid for many cases, if exaggerated or distorted in ways that go against the principles of due process and the rights that real victims have.

While the false allegations are the exception and rare to the rule, they do irreparable damage on the web and beyond. A man accused of abusive behaviour in a podcast may never be able to redeem his reputation, irrespective of whether a reported incident to police occurs and although it has not led to a conviction at court, the person may not get the credit. Here the tragedy of the two is both the disintegration of one person and the actual victim of a community now feeling less and less taken seriously in future, as the public becomes increasingly mistrustful of its credibility.

Podcasters and “influential” sources like Forbes, but just like media outlets, they’re not immune from getting caught in the ethical line as they put it. Even telling one side of a story — especially one that involves serious allegations — without providing any right of reply can wreak havoc in the real world. Audience engagement is crucial, but it should not be at the expense of justice.

And people have to have more media literacy. When interacting with emotionally charged content online, do ask:

Is the police or a court investigated this claim?

Why is one side only on the offensive?

Did the accused have the advantage of getting an opportunity to explain?

What might I not be seeing?

Listening to someone’s story matters, but when it means reputations, careers, families and futures, so does asking the right questions.

Justice is not a feeling. It’s a process that needs to protect both the accuser and the accused. To believe in justice is to believe in balance, scrutiny and fairness, not in blind faith in the first version of the story we hear.

It’s not a call to shut up victims or not believe painful stories. It is a call to the defense of the way truth is constructed for it.

References.

We can take refuge in survivors, listen deeply and ask that our institutions do better — without assigning social sentences before establishing legal facts. We need to navigate complexity in an age when stories travel faster than facts. The court of public opinion may believe itself righteous, but only real courts are created as a means to ensure justice.

Let’s not forget that. Fidler, B. J., & Bala, N. (2020). High-conflict custody cases: Protecting children and promoting resolution. Journal of Child Custody, 17(1), 1–28. Harcourt, B. E. (2020). Critique and Praxis. Columbia University Press. Johnston, J. R., & Sullivan, M. J. (2020). Parental alienation: In search of common ground for a more differentiated theory