DARVO: What It Means, Examples and How to Respond

What does DARVO mean?

DARVO is an acronym for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. Jennifer Freyd, a psychologist and professor emerit at the University of Oregon, introduced the term in a 1997 peer-reviewed article. She describes it as a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, particularly sexual offenders, may show when they are held accountable: the behavior is denied, the person confronting it is attacked, and the roles flip so that the person who did harm becomes the "falsely accused" victim.

Freyd also describes institutional DARVO, when an organization does the same thing to someone who reports abuse, and anti-DARVO: ways to reduce its impact and to respond to allegations more constructively. According to her research page, the term was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2026.

The three steps of DARVO

The steps often arrive in a single breath, which is part of why the person on the receiving end ends up confused.

Deny

"That didn't happen." "I never said that." The behavior itself is disputed, sometimes in the face of clear evidence.

Attack

The focus moves to the person raising the issue: their motives, honesty, stability or past mistakes. "You're just looking for a reason to be angry."

Reverse victim and offender

The accused presents themselves as the injured party: "I can't believe you'd accuse me of that after everything I do for you. You're the one hurting me." The original concern disappears, and the confronter is now the one apologizing.

What it sounds like

What the research says

DARVO has been studied directly. In a 2017 study, Harsey, Zurbriggen and Freyd found that DARVO was commonly used by people who were confronted, that women were more likely than men to be exposed to it during confrontations, and that more exposure to DARVO was linked to more self-blame among the people who did the confronting.

Later experiments by Harsey and Freyd found that a DARVO response made observers believe a victim less and blame them more. The encouraging part: participants who had learned about DARVO rated the perpetrator as less believable. A 2024 study in PLOS ONE found small but significant links between using DARVO and both sexual harassment perpetration and acceptance of rape myths. In short, the tactic works on bystanders, and naming it helps.

DARVO or ordinary defensiveness?

Almost everyone gets defensive when criticized, and a heated "that's not fair" is not DARVO. Defensiveness is a common and fixable conflict habit: excuses, a counter-complaint, a wounded tone. It slows the conversation down, but the original concern usually survives and gets addressed eventually.

DARVO is the full reversal. The concern is denied, the person raising it is put on trial, and by the end they are the one accused of causing harm. The term was developed to describe responses to abuse and serious wrongdoing, so it is worth using carefully. If you call every disagreement DARVO, the word loses its force where it matters most. It overlaps with gaslighting and with blame shifting, but its focus is specific: what happens when someone is held to account.

How to respond to DARVO

Because DARVO moves the conversation onto you, the most useful thing is to keep bringing it back:

• Restate the original issue in one sentence, and return to it calmly each time the topic shifts.
• Do not spend your energy defending your character at length; that is the debate DARVO invites.
• Name the reversal without heat: "I raised a concern, and now we're talking about what's wrong with me."
• Keep a written record of what happened and what was said.
• Get an outside perspective from someone you trust. Bystanders are influenced by DARVO too, so it helps when they know the pattern.
• If the original issue is abuse or you feel unsafe, prioritize your safety and confidential support over winning the conversation.

When you're the one being confronted

Being accused of something hurts, especially if you think it is unfair, and the urge to hit back is human. The non-DARVO response is slower: listen to the whole concern, say what part you can see, and ask questions before defending. "I hear that you felt I went behind your back. I don't think that's what happened, but tell me what you saw." If you did cause harm, our guide on how to apologize walks through an apology that does not turn into a counterattack.

What to say