THE INVISIBLE
by Kathie Mathis, Psy.D
I believe victims are unseen—
not because they don’t exist,
but because they have been made invisible.
I was one of them.
But not anymore.
Survivors of abuse and crime move through this world
unseen—
not because they are hidden,
but because they have never truly been seen.
They are filtered through eyes
blinded by bias, fear, and denial.
Their invisibility is not accidental.
It has been carved—
stroke by stroke—
into their bodies, their minds, their hearts
for generations.
Not hundreds.
Not thousands.
Millions of acts of erasure.
Perpetrators make victims invisible
because exposure threatens them.
So they distort the truth.
Control the narrative.
Rewrite reality.
And families—
whether through fear, shame, or discomfort—
collude.
They dismiss.
They minimize.
They label:
“Liar.”
“Dramatic.”
“Unstable.”
They call for therapy, prayer—anything
that avoids truth.
And in doing so,
they erase.
They erase the abuse.
They erase the voice.
They erase the person.
Communities follow.
Silence becomes agreement.
Denial becomes protection.
And victims?
They are pushed into the shadows—
alive, speaking, breathing—
yet treated as if they do not exist.
Society reinforces this invisibility.
Through cognitive dissonance.
Through systems that demand proof from the wounded
while requiring nothing from those who harm.
In courtrooms and conversations alike,
truth is not enough.
Because bias—
both conscious and unconscious—
distorts what is seen.
So when someone stands before you
telling their truth—
You are not just hearing them.
You are judging them
through everything you’ve been conditioned to believe.
Victims are not invisible by nature.
They are made invisible
by a culture that has learned to:
Unsee abuse.
Unhear cries.
Unremember truth.
And uninvite discomfort.
You see no-thing.
You hear no-thing.
You say no-thing.
And that silence
is where invisibility lives.
So I ask you—
Why do people refuse to see?
To speak?
To stand beside those who have been erased?
The invisible are not hidden.
They are standing right in front of you.
Waiting—
not to be saved—
but to be seen.
So bring what has lived in the shadows
into the light.
Look again.
Listen differently.
Speak with courage.
See them.