Silence Helps No One – Survivors Need To Help New Victims More!

For most scam survivors, the experience is not a catalyst for altruism but a profound wound that they wish would scar over and disappear.

The journey to recovery is so exhausting, so humiliating, and so all-consuming that once a semblance of normalcy is reclaimed, the last thing they want is to be pulled back into that world. To “help” means to actively re-engage with the very pain, shame, and vulnerability they fought so hard to escape. It means listening to the stories that mirror their own, which can trigger traumatic flashbacks and unravel the fragile peace they have built. Wanting to put it behind them is not selfish; it is an act of emotional self-defense. They have already paid the scammer’s price once, and they are unwilling to pay it again by sacrificing their hard-won peace to help a stranger.

This is where the consequences of not helping become more complex.

For the individual survivor who chooses to walk away, there may be no immediate negative consequence. They may move on and live a perfectly happy life, their scam experience becoming a distant, muted memory. However, there is a potential long-term cost to their own sense of wholeness. By never revisiting the experience to help another, they may leave a part of their healing incomplete. The trauma remains an isolated, difficult event, even though they have moved past the shame; they abandon their learning rather than turning it into something that can be ultimately integrated into a stronger, wiser self. They miss the opportunity for post-traumatic growth, the profound sense of purpose and strength that can come from transforming one’s deepest pain into a source of healing for others. They remain a survivor, but they never truly become a thriver.

For the select few who choose to bend down and help another victim up, a profound and unexpected act of self-healing often begins.

In reaching out to guide someone through the maze of their own trauma, the seasoned survivor is forced to articulate the very emotions and events they themselves have worked so hard to put behind them. They must give language to the shame and blame they had, deconstruct the manipulative tactics that controlled them, and validate the confusion they once felt. In doing so, they are no longer just a victim who survived; they become a guide who understands. This process of externalizing their experience allows them to finally see it with objectivity through the eyes of another, separating the facts of the crime from the fiction of their self-blame. By helping another, they inevitably confront the unresolved issues they didn’t even know they still carried, any lingering hypervigilance or triggers, the subtle distrust, and the fear of still being judged. In the act of providing a safe harbor for another’s pain, they are allowed to see and shore up their own, and in explaining to a newcomer that they are not to blame, they finally, truly, absolve themselves.

This is how helping another becomes the final, necessary step of integration and growth, transforming a traumatic wound from a private scar into a source of shared strength and wisdom.

The most significant consequences, however, are communal. If the majority of survivors remain silent, the ecosystem of support collapses, as it has done. New victims are left to fend for themselves in a landscape of judgment and misunderstanding, full of amateur “experts.” They are more likely to be isolated, to be re-victimized, and to suffer in silence. The collective voice of sane, well-supported survivors is needed to help the ever-growing number of victims. In this silence, the stigma surrounding scams flourishes, shame, blame, and guilt grow, and scammers continue to operate with impunity. The choice of the majority to remain silent ensures that the painful path for the next victim will be just as dark and lonely as their own was, or more so.

This collective silence has catastrophic, measurable consequences.

It creates a vacuum of wisdom and experience that scammers are ruthlessly exploiting. In fact, the lack of widespread, survivor-led advocacy and education is a significant factor allowing the scam industry to flourish, with reports indicating that scam losses have increased by over 140% in just the last year alone.

New victims are not hearing the real lessons learned from those who bear the scars; they are not getting the street-level insights into both the manipulative tactics that only a former target can provide or the real solutions for recovery. Without this critical peer-to-peer warning system, potential victims remain ignorant and vulnerable, and new victims are forced to turn to poorly equipped providers for their recovery.

Those who do fall for the scam are left to navigate the aftermath alone, unable to find the authentic recovery support that only a fellow survivor can offer. This dual failure, prevention through lived experience and support through shared empathy, creates a perfect storm where scams proliferate unchecked, and a growing population of victims is left to suffer in isolation, fueling the very cycle of shame and silence that allows the problem to worsen.

Will you step up and speak up? We hope you do.

Prof. Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
December 2025