In Youngstown, Ohio, where I teach, two stories have recently attracted national attention. In one, a woman attending Donald Trump’s MAGA rally was assaulted, reportedly after wearing a “Release the Epstein Files” shirt. In the other, a political ad featuring Donna Stearns Arthur, the estranged mother of gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, has become the subject of controversy. The ad, promoted by Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign, uses Arthur’s accusations to portray her daughter as a liar.

The descriptions of the assault at the rally were painful to hear. Someone I know was working security at the event. They wondered how any of it made sense. Hadn’t releasing the Epstein files been a campaign promise?

In conversations with coworkers, we have also wondered whether publicity and public pressure might lead to charges for the assault we all watched. Pressure appears to have gotten the case involving the Cornell 57 reopened (the group of fraternity members connected to a group chat containing degrading and abusive messages about women), in particular the blind eye to consent in the alleged sexual assault. The question is not only what individual men did, but what the others knew, what they tolerated, and why so few intervened. When abuse becomes a group activity, silence is not an incidental detail. It is part of the story.

Does a person eventually become numb to the pervasive reality of gender-based and sexual violence?

Trump has openly bragged about grabbing women without their consent. The men involved in the rally assault reportedly bragged about what they had done. The fraternity members bragged, too. And the political consequences of such behavior are often negligible compared with the harm inflicted on its victims. The controversy surrounding the Epstein files has only deepened the public’s questions about power, accountability, and whose interests the powerful are willing to protect.

Rarely does a news cycle end without another disgusting reminder of what women and girls must endure and survive.

And yet, somehow, the Ramaswamy ad feels worse.

Maybe it is because hearing people recall her as homecoming queen resonates in my connective tissue. That memory connects a national political fight to a person from the place where I live and teach. Or maybe it is because the word mother carries a meaning that the ad asks us to accept without question.

In 1978, Arthur had already chosen to remain with the rapist over her daughter, whom she was supposed to protect, and she subsequently lost custody. The history is complicated and painful, but not this part. Accusations do not become credible simply because she contributed DNA. Nor does the word mother erase the responsibility to ask what happened, what a child endured, and what the adults around her chose to do.

Words like abhorrent and vile come to mind. But what troubles me most is not simply the mother’s role in this story. It is the decision to turn that history into a political weapon.

Ramaswamy’s campaign is not merely reporting a family dispute, which could be fair game or relevant. It is choosing which parts of a woman’s life to expose, whose testimony to elevate, and how to make private pain serve a political purpose. With millions of dollars in campaign advertising and Trump’s endorsement behind him, Ramaswamy’s resources have pushed this narrative far beyond Ohio.

This is what platforming abusers looks like when it becomes political strategy. It does not always mean celebrating a man who boasts about assaulting women. Sometimes it means elevating a story that humiliates a woman, exploiting a child’s painful history, or treating allegations of abuse as useful ammunition against a political opponent.

These are not identical acts, and they should not be confused. But they raise a common question: What kind of culture rewards people for turning another person’s suffering into power?

Vivek and Trump refuse to back down from the ad, and I want it to stop, can the public finally use its collective might to say enough is enough?

The men who boast about abuse depend on more than their own willingness to be cruel. They depend on the people who laugh, the bystanders who remain silent, the institutions that look away, and the audiences who keep watching. Political campaigns can exploit that same indifference, converting cruelty into attention and attention into votes. The chants of “USA! USA!” show that cruelty has been confused with patriotism.

In Youngstown, these two stories should not be allowed to disappear into the next news cycle. A woman was assaulted. A family’s painful history has been turned into campaign material. In both cases, we should ask who is responsible, who benefits, and who is expected to bear the consequences.

Abusers do not need everyone to approve of them. They need enough people to look away, enough institutions to accommodate them, and enough powerful people willing to give them a platform.

The real test is whether we will keep providing one.