I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower’s credibility, and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. The offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. The bully suddenly starts pretending to be the wronged party, which creates confusion in the mind of the true victim. The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.

Dr. Jennifer Freyd, clinical psychologist

This passage beautifully encapsulates a lot of behavior we have encountered over the past two years. In blogging about Indonesia’s abuse-ridden TEFL industry, we have butted heads with a horrifying number of abusers, liars and con-men of various stripes, and it is amazing how often they have behaved in exactly the fashion described by Dr. Freyd. Disturbingly enough, this is a sign that the industry is infested by a large number of sociopaths, bullies, fraudsters and abusers. The largely unregulated nature of the industry (at least until DIKNAS started getting strict around 2010) meant that it was possible for just about anyone with enough pluck to arrive in Indonesia and re-invent themselves as a “TEFL teacher”. On the school owner side, the fact that Immigration was a very prone to corruption also played into the hands of rogue operators.Here are some reflections on the “victim-bullies” of Jakarta’s TEFL industry.

                                         Frendy Horas: A Classic “Victim-Bully”

In so many ways, Frendy Horas matches the classic description of the “bully turned victim” abuser which Dr. Freyd describes. There have been complaints from customers, teachers and former staff about broken promises, unqualified teachers and refusals to refund courses which haven’t started months after the scheduled date. Numerous people have come forward claiming to be the victim of Frendy Horas and demanded that he be held accountable for his actions. Sadly, in the initial phase these attempts by Horas’s alleged victims to attain justice were met with threats, intimidation and threats of legal action, just as Dr. Freyd warned us.

For example, two days ago we received a comment to this blog, written by a supposed woman named “Dina Wahyuni”. Yet look at the ISP number for the comment below: 180.250.172.202. It is exactly the same ISP number for the comments received from Frendy Horas. So Frendy is just pretending to be a woman called Dina, but really “Dina” and “Frendy” were writing from the same computer. Just like Colm O’Mahoney and Luke Preece from TBI before him, the offending bully has created female aliases to try and make their attacks appear more “representative of public opinion.” But Dina is Frendy, and she is using the intimidation tactics of the abuser. Here Dina is threatening a customer that she can “going to the jail” if she asks for a refund! Dr. Freyd warned us that abusers often threaten “law suits” against people who try to hold them accountable. TBI and Rumah Bahasa go one step further. They threaten to get their own customers thrown in jail.

dina wahyuni sc.com/id x dina@sc.co.id 180.250.172.202

Submitted on 2014/03/21 at 2:46 pm Rumah Bahasa is opened right now. Please kindly to get promotion if you are a sc bank. scb will not make a relationship with the organisation that the organisation has trouble with government. This web is suck , Please be carefully if your statement is not true , you can going to the jail

Frendy, pretending to be a woman, is terrorizing his own customers with threatens of “going to jail” one minute. In this shameful phase he is a classic abuser, terrorizing trusting people for the sake of a few dollars. But then by the following day, Frendy Horas is dramatically changing his tune, and pretending to be the “victim” of an unfair vilification campaign by the people who complained about him. Here Pak Horas is, playing the professional victim:

Jadi saya berharap pihak Anda berhenti untuk menjelek –jelekkan Rumah Bahasa. Rumah Bahasa selama ini berjalan dengan semestinya di mana guru yang bukan warga negara Indonesia berjalan berdasarkan hukum yang berlaku.

Here he accuses his accusers of trying to “vilify and besmirch” (menjelek-jelekkan) the name of Rumah Bahasa. He might have been making threats the day before behind his alias of “Dina”, but with no shame he accuses others of being unfair to him. Now switching into victim mode, he claims to be the unfair victim of a vicious smear campaign. He tries to turn the tables on his accusers by accusing them of unfairly blackening his name. Just as Dr. Freyd warned us:

The offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender.

The bully is trying to force his accusers onto the back foot by making them question themselves. It is just another trick in the toolkit of the sociopath or emotional abuser, but it is effective. The normal person has a conscience, so they pause to self-question whether there is any truth to the accusations. They will then start defending themselves, which makes them look like guilty party. But at the end of the day, it is very clear that it is Frendy Horas who is making threats while pretending to be a woman named Dina. It is Frendy who has broken promises to pay wages, employ qualified teachers, refund courses that don’t start on time, and open Rumah Bahasa Season City and Baywalk. It is Frendy who is clearly the abuser, and his accusers who are the wronged party.