OylerGate: Believe Survivors

Believe Survivors

Believe survivors, we’re told. But, what about when the survivor is adamant she is not a survivor? What happens when the survivor recants? This is the situation in the domestic abuse case of At-Large Peoria City Councilmember Zach Oyler. His survivor, wife Heather Oyler, has now come forward with a full recantation of events. She says she wants charges dropped against her husband and the July 30^th incident was a complete misunderstanding that blew out of proportions. She now insists she is not a survivor of domestic abuse but is a survivor of mental health issues, which she says were at the heart of the July 30^th incident when her husband was arrested at their home.

“There have been a lot of people saying that this is a cycle of domestic abuse, or I’m being coerced, or I’m being threatened and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Heather Oyler said.¹

Heather Oyler says she’s long grappled with issues of mental health, and she’d had issues with changes in her treatment at the time which might’ve affected how she reacted that night. She had talked through her recollections of that night with therapists and a psychiatrist before speaking to the Journal Star.

“Zach was trying to calm me down,” Heather Oyler says. After having had a couple drinks earlier in the night, “he knew he couldn’t drive, and he knows that if I take my medication I take before I go to sleep for my diagnosis that I can’t drive either,” she says. “I can be walking and talking and not even realize it after I take some of this medication. And it was the time of night where I would’ve taken it by that point. I hadn’t taken anything — I told the police that. But Zach didn’t know that because he’d been in and out of the room for the majority of the night.”²

Oyler discussed at length her history of mental health in a WMBD interview. She was diagnosed with bipolar in 2006 and also has PTSD and anxiety. “The night in question was a PTSD related symptom when a flashback hit me when something was said during a fight we were having. I completely lost control.”

She went on to state that the incident report and 911 call to police should be discounted as evidence because, “I was not in the right mind when this happened; I went into a space where I didn’t exactly know what was going on around me.”

Predictably, many social media commentators immediately called for her to be charged with filing a false police report. She was immediately denigrated as a liar with some advising Zach Oyler to leave her otherwise this would happen again.

I have to push back on this interpretation. A distinction needs to be made between saying something which is untrue and telling a lie. On the one hand, a lie is a false statement spoken by the speaker for the purpose of deception. On the other, if someone tells you something false but with the belief it was true, that’s not a lie. When one is experiencing a severe mental episode, one’s very perception is fundamentally altered. In philosophy, this is sometimes referred to as one’s disposition or “the state in which one is found.” Dispositions are a fundamental and constitutive part of who we are as humans. Dispositions attune us to the world around us and structure the types of meaning we encounter from objects around us. For instance, if one is suffering extreme depression, the world will seem to lack any fulfilling meaning. The world recedes from us, and we feel lost without anything meaningful to grasp on too. Fear is another disposition. When one is fearful, objects which are normally innocuous appear threatening to us, and this disposition fundamentally alters the way we interpret the world and the way we react to objects or people in the world.

I have a lot of sympathy for Heather in this instance. I too suffer from bipolar, and many times have done things during an extreme manic phase that later reflection causes me to regret. With time & reflection, we interpret past actions differently–in a new light. Yet, none of this means she lied to police or prosecutors the night she called the police. The night this occurred she was in a disposition of fear; her own actions & the actions of her husband appeared threatening to her at the time and she truthfully revealed her situation to authorities. If, as Heather wishes, we are to de-stigmatize mental health then we have to realize that dispositions fundamentally ground our interpretations of the world; and, extreme dispositions alter our interpretations in extreme ways. But, that does not mean these interpretations are lies; she really did experience that interpretation.

Other armchair commentators have attacked Heather by calling on her to be removed from her job. She currently works at Quest High School. There is a belief she might falsely accuse some student of misbehavior. Again, this assumes that she was lying. We’ve already pointed out that false accusations of assault are exceedingly rare. But, what is the type of person who lies or deceives about being assaulted? Unlike survivors of sexual and domestic abuse who cross gender, racial, & economic groups, accusers who deliberately lie are usually a very specific type of person. “Adult false accusers… have a previous history of bizarre fabrications or criminal fraud. Indeed, they’re often criminals whose family and friends are also criminals; broken people trapped in chaotic lives.”³ This certainly does not fit the description of Heather Oyler, who owns her own real estate business and was likely vetted by her employers before she was allowed to work around children.

Some might point to people with mental health being liars, but this also doesn’t hold up under scrutiny and is actually terribly stigmatizing to survivors of mental health problems who are often disbelieved about the seriousness of their symptoms. In fact, studies show that bipolar, anxiety, and other common mental health disorders are not associated with false rape or abuse allegations.⁴ There is a mental disorder typically associated with false allegations and that’s factitious disorder: “a personality disorder related to (and often accompanied by) Munchausen’s syndrome, which compels them to claim they’ve been assaulted.”⁵ Once again, this does not fit the description of Heather Oyler or the description of anyone who lives a successful professional career.

Despite her recantation, State’s Attorney Judi Hoos has vowed to continue the prosecution against Zach Oyler. Heather believes the State’s Attorney is using her as a pawn to go after a powerful elected official. Mike Mendola of Wenona, wrote a Journal Star op-ed calling for charges to be dropped. “Peoria County State’s Attorney Jodi Hoos needs to back off on the Zach and Heather Oyler case… Hoos, the state’s attorney newly appointed as a replacement for Jerry Brady who died this summer, is trying to make a name for herself by opportunistically prosecuting a case against a rising member of the opposing political party… the biggest misfortune would be for Hoos to stubbornly insist on prosecuting this case, further hurting both of the Oylers.”

There may be some truth to the continued prosecution of Zach Oyler being politically motivated. Politically motivated in the sense that–with the rise of the #MeToo movement–there is a vigorous desire among society right now to punish alleged abusers.

Jodi Hoos said she has seen similar situations before. “Unfortunately in domestic violence cases this is not uncommon a lot of times victims either want case, charges to be dismissed, for the case not to proceed forward or sometimes are just not cooperative at all. We have to look at the message that sends if somebody can simply come in and say we want the case dismissed even though there is evidence to prove it that’s just a terrible message to send to the public.” said Hoos

While she wouldn’t speak about this case specifically, she said as long as evidence exists a case will proceed.

“If they are not going to testify or if they are going to change their statement, then what other evidence do we have that still supports going forward with the case. 911 calls, physical evidence, pictures, body camera footage or statements that may be on a body camera.” said Hoos.⁶

Why is Hoos taking this position despite the survivor turning 180 and desiring all charges be dropped? While political & electoral motives are certainly involved, there’s also the fact that 70%-80% of domestic abuse survivors recant. It used to be that if a survivor recants & refuses to testify, that was the end of a case. “Authorities in many jurisdictions still believe that without victim cooperation, there’s no reason to prosecute. If a victim doesn’t care, the logic goes, why should anyone else?”⁷ Considering recantation rates this means most abusers go unpunished. Perhaps some of the State’s Attorney’s motives are to be sure: to be safe rather than sorry.

Domestic abuse does not just have negative effects to an individual’s private life but very real societal consequences. “Society as a whole is further impacted by the demand domestic violence generates. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 1995, the cost of domestic violence against women exceeded $5.8 billion. Of this cost, $4.1 billion were directly attributable to medical and mental healthcare costs with almost $1.8 billion attributed to the indirect cost of lost productivity. On average, victims lose about eight million days of paid work. When converted to today’s dollars, the cost of intimate partner violence (IPV), rape, physical assault, and stalking is more than $8.3 billion. Domestic violence is not, and cannot remain thought to be, a private matter.”⁸

Around the mid-1980s, prosecutors began looking for other ways to hold alleged abusers accountable. Using evidence-based prosecution, prosecutors attempted to justify prosecutions without requiring survivors to testify. This means using photos, interviews, 911 calls, spontaneous admissions, medical records, etc. “Evidence-based prosecution is an approach whereby prosecutors build a case based on available evidence irrespective of the victim’s willingness to participate in the case or testify against their abuser… Fundamental to the evidence-based prosecution approach is the principle that domestic violence cases that are provable should be prosecuted irrespective of whether the victim is cooperative or willing to participate in the case.”⁹This does not mean prosecute domestic abuse allegations with no evidence. Most legal groups do not recommend a no-drop policy with domestic abuse indictments, and in fact believe mandatory arrests and mandatory no-drop policies actually do more harm than good.¹⁰ However, “the combination of mandatory arrest with an evidence-based prosecution approach proved effective in reducing recidivism and lethality.”¹¹

In the Oylergate case, there is evidence–independent of the survivor’s testimony–to support the original accusations. I’ve already described at length the allegations in other posts. As much as I hate agreeing with Phil Luciano¹² of the Journal Star, it is true that Oyler’s survivor’s recantation does not 100% agree with the evidence collected by law enforcement.¹³ This inconsistencies will have to be hashed out in court.

Ultimately, prosecuting domestic violence cases where evidence is prevalent are not just about winning political points or winning cases. It’s about changing the culture & norms that insist domestic abuse incidents are merely private matters. Because the overwhelming majority of survivors recant (despite the abuse continuing), it’s imperative that prosecutors take the incidents & claims seriously.

Heather Oyler now says her and Zach Oyler are back together and happier & stronger than ever. If this is the case, all the better. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the mere fact that the accused is an elected official means the people are due a fact-finding investigation.

“We have to look at the message that sends if somebody can simply come in and say we want the case dismissed even though there is evidence to prove it that’s just a terrible message to send to the public,” said Judi Hoos.

Zach Oyler is due in court on charges of domestic abuse & preventing the reporting of a domestic incident. The charges were temporarily put on hold when in November the judge in the case, Judge John Vespa, recused himself because of perceived conflicts of interest (both Oyler & Vespa are members of the Peoria Republican party). Now, Oyler has a court date of March 16^th under Democrat Judge Kevin Lyons. As always, Oyler is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

UPDATE (10/23/2021): On October 16th, 2020, Councilmember Zach Oyler took an Alford plea to disorderly conduct as part of an agreement to have other charges stemming from a July 2019 domestic incident dropped. Oyler & his wife have reconciled.

UPDATE 2 (03/27/2024): Zach & Heather Oyler are in divorce proceedings. She has reported new allegations of abuse.

This article was originally published on Strangecornersofthought.com.

1. Rodriguez, Stephanie. “Councilman’s Wife Says Mental Health Issues Led to Domestic Abuse Claims.” HOIABC, 17 Oct. 2019.
2. Kaergard, Chris. “Heather Oyler Offers Details on July 30 Incident, Seeks Dismissal of Charges against Husband Zach Oyler.” Journal Star, Journal Star, 16 Oct. 2019.
3. Newman, Sandra. “What Kind of Person Makes False Rape Accusations?” Quartz, Quartz, 12 May 2017.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Weber, Andy. “Councilman Oyler Back In Court One Day After Wife Asks for Charges to Be Dropped.” HOIABC, 16 Oct. 2019.
7. Snyder, Rachel Louise. “We Prosecute Murder Without the Victim’s Help. Why Not Domestic Violence?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 May 2019.
8. National District Attorneys Association Women Prosecutors Section. NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROSECUTION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE. 17 July 2017.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Reading Luciano’s ramblings is like listening to a cantankerous fossil yell at a brick wall about issues that no one but geriatrics and the most reactionary cave-dwellers care about.
13. Luciano, Phil. “Luciano: The Truth Is, Heather Oyler Can’t Demand Husband’s Domestic Case Be Dropped.” Journal Star, Journal Star, 17 Oct. 2019.