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musingsofalovelymillenial · 2 months

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Non and Kru Keng!

Dead Friend Forever Ep 7 - extended opinion ( long-ish post)

Trigger Warnings : Sexual abuse, sexual coercion, grooming, etc.

Since episode 7 aired I have been appalled at the number of posts I have seen regarding Non and Keng and Non’s behavior. Before I dive into ( and yes this is me letting out my anger regarding things I have seen) I want to provide some background that is also a basis for my personal opinion. I also want to state that while I truly believe everyone is titled to their own opinion there are certain things that are wrong and should not be romanticized/glossed over.

My professional background is in psychology, social work and human service ( dealing with abuse and domestic violence)

My personal background also makes what is happening to Non even harder to watch. Episodes 5, 6 and 7 took me a while to get through and resulted honestly in needing to detach for a while. I grew up attending middle school and high school in an area where most of the students attending my schools were wealthy. During that time I and my friends experienced severe bullying for being poor and for not living the way everyone else did. For context we lived 20 minutes away from our school where almost everyone lived surrounding the school and we lived in a trailer park and even though our bus was overcrowded all the trailer park children rode one bus. We as a group were constantly in trouble even when we did nothing wrong, our vice principal called us trailer trash to our faces on our bus and the kids at school were cruel and treated us like we were disgusting and not good enough. When we were “lucky” enough to be invited to their houses we were watched more than the other kids and we were not treated the same way by the parents compared to their fellow friends from the same income level. We were taught by everyone around us that we should be and were inferior ( we were not!). During this time there was also one of my bullies who everyday would not only verbally harass me but sexually harass me at my locker and the worst part at the time was that there were either the kids that ignored that it was happening or the kids who laughed. I can't speak for my few friends at the time but what made all this worse was because school was not the only place I had problems. At home my father was an alcoholic and on any given day my house was a cocktail mixture of verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and domestic violence. After a while I not only started feeling sick a lot but I eventually stopped going to school and would stay home “sick” to avoid school ( both my parents worked so I would be alone during the day). Around this time was really when I developed anxiety, depression and for the first time battled with suicidal thoughts. This went on for a long time. When things finally had their culminating point of me finally opening up at least about what was happening at school. My mom was the first person to ask me and later as an adult in therapy my therapist also asked why did I never tell anyone what was happening to me? The answer was truly simple, complex but simple. I did not want to burden anyone. I told my mom she already dealt with so much because of my father and how he treated us that I did not want to add one more burden to her already full plate. I felt that if I could just handle it on my own it would be fine, eventually it would stop or these people who were cruel would just give up. I also felt ashamed and disgusted by what was happening. I also told my therapist (as an adult looking back on that time) that why would I tell anyone when the kids in the hallway made it clear they did not care and the adults ( teachers and office staff) who I should have been able to trust made it clear they did not like us either simply because of where we live and our income level.

Now back to Dead Friend Forever

Here are the definitions for Abuse of Power, Sexual Coercion and Grooming.

Abuse of power is when someone misuses their authority or higher position in a hierarchy to take advantage of, coerce or harm other people. And it can lead to different types of abuse, such as psychological, physical, financial and sexual abuse.

Sexual coercion is using pressure or influence to get someone to agree to sex. People can knowingly coerce others into sex, such as learning manipulative pick-up artist strategies, or unknowingly, such as assuming the other person is OK when they're not.

Grooming is a tactic where someone methodically builds a trusting relationship with a child or young adult, their family, and community to manipulate, coerce, or force the child or young adult to engage in sexual activities.

More information about grooming:

Because they were groomed, children and teens who were abused often feel that they were in some way responsible for the abuse. This is especially true for teens who feel that they went into the situation willingly and thus in some way it was their fault. This shame and guilt then prevents them from reporting, as they fear that no one will believe them. In fact, many teens who have been groomed are confused as to whether what happened to them actually constituted abuse as it didn’t follow the stereotypical pattern of a violent rape. In many cases this confusion can prevent or delay reporting for many years.

Non was groomed and then sexually assaulted regardless whether it seemed like he consented. Let me say it louder for the people in the back!

Kru Keng sexually assaulted Non! He did not ”cheat” on Phee. Did he lie to Phee yes, but he did not cheat in the stereotypically what we as a society view cheating.

the signs or steps of grooming with examples from the episode:

Make you feel like you owe them. Because you are in a relationship, because you’ve had sex before or because they give/spend money on you or because you go home with them they are owed for these behaviors.

We see Keng offer Non a ride home and he then offers him money to get out of his situation. We don’t see him doing these things with other students.

Victim Selection: abusers often observe possible victims and select them based on ease of access to them or their perceived vulnerability.

Keng clocks that Non is vulnerable the first time he is in the study class and even looks back at him after scolding Top and asking Non for his name. We see this through the several times he brings up how Non is having friend problems or how he doesn't want to work with Tee, and Non unfortunately mentions how just knowing someone cares makes him feel better which makes Keng even more aware of how alone Non seems to be.

Gaining access and isolating the victim: abusers will attempt to physically or emotionally separate a victim from those protecting them and often seek out positions in which they have contact with minors.

Keng has perfect access as a math tutor/teacher to have contact with minors. Also he always has Non come to his office or meet him alone despite the fact that his office is in a seemingly more isolated place than the classrooms.

Trust development and keeping secrets: abusers attempt to gain trust of victims through gifts, sharing secrets, etc.

Keng not only praises Non as a student but also then tells him things like I want to help you anyway I can, I noticed that you are sad, I can give you money to help you because I view you like a brother, I now know your secret regarding Tee and the money so I am someone you can trust.

Desensitization to touch : abusers will often start to touch a victim in ways that appear harmless and later escalate to increasingly more sexual contact.

Keng touches Non’s shoulder seemingly to comfort him, the next time he is holding his hand, then he is holding his hand on his knee and rubbing the back of his hand. All these on their own could be innocent and seem like comfort or being friendly. Until Keng kisses Non crossing that line and leading directly to assaulting him.

Attempt by abusers to make their behavior seem natural: to avoid raising suspicions. For teens who may be particularly close in age to the abuser it can be hard to recognize grooming tactics.

I feel for Non because we see how he is not happy and is actually crying when he hugs Phee the first time when Keng kisses him and then we see him come down to meet Phee. Also Non is trapped in a situation where he is being manipulated and being taken advantage of and sees little to no way out of this financial mess with the money laundering. We, as an audience, saw the fight with his family after where his mother says she is embarrassed because of him and says to Non’s father that if he weren’t a loser then Non wouldn’t be one too. Non very much is receiving a message whether she meant it or not because emotions were high is irrelevant. Non is receiving the message that he is a burden and an embarrassment. Non is aware of his family's financial situation as well. We see him say it to Phee several times about how he wants to solve his own problems and he does not want to burden people. I do not think Non lied to Phee because he wanted to, I think he did it because not only would it put another thing on Phee’s shoulders after he already went to his dad once for Non but also puts Non in a vulnerable position. I personally was asked many times by people oh are you okay? Are you sure everything is good because you look upset? And everytime I lied because I didn't want to be a burden but I also never wanted to look at myself as a victim or admit that I was a victim because that bit of fragile control on my life was one of the only things I could control. And as an adult I have had the chance to talk to some people I knew at the time and they all told me they knew I was lying about being okay or even though I cried and then would say I was fine, I wasn’t. But they all felt like if they pushed me to talk I would never tell them and my one friend said point blank at least I could make you forget about it for a while even if I didn’t really know what you wanted a distraction from. I 100% feel this is exactly what is Non’s perspective. He cannot control how Por, Tee, Top, Fluke and even Jin treat him. He cannot control how his parents view him. He cannot control Phee or Phee’s decisions to love or help him. He cannot control Keng. He cannot take back getting involved with Tee and the money laundering or the consequences of that. What Non can control is how he feels or what he takes control of. Non can control whether he views himself as a victim. He can also control whether he finishes the movie that he wrote the script for. The movie and script are something he did, they come from him and are something at the end of the day regardless of anyone else he Non can be proud of. I think while we may not view his staying with the group healthy and it's not, or his lying to Phee about things that are happening good cause it’s not; it makes sense to Non. Because again he is a teenager who is vulnerable and easily exploitable and has very little control and teenagers whose brains are not fully developed are making not only decisions they think are best or worst at the time but also making decisions based on what they know at that moment. Seeing people who are watching this show and who are hating on Non or do not understand what happened between Non and Keng infuriate me. Should we all feel bad for Phee? Yes. He wants to be there for Non, he loves him and wants to care , on top of knowing that Non is being bullied and seeing what Keng did has to be heartbreaking and frustrating. Also without context to their conversations Phee as a fellow teenager may not be aware or understand fully what Keng did to Non is not on Non.

You can feel bad for Phee without victim blaming Non.

Non made poor choices regarding his trust with Phee or his ability to trust Phee but none of those things mean that he deserved what happened or that because it seems like he consented that it is all just fine and he cheated on Phee and had sex with Keng.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk!!