Leslie Morgan Steiner's Speech Summary

Leslie Morgan Steiner is telling her story of being in a domestic violence relationship in a speech, given at Ted Talks. The man who she thought was her soulmate, her one true love, turned out to be a man who has pointed a gun at her head multiple times. While telling her personal story, she is pointing out the different stages in any domestic violence relationship, creating a very clear structure. The domestic violence victims in this speech are represented as not the typical victim of domestic violence, to show that anyone can be a victim of an abuser.

Firstly, the structure that Leslie Morgan Steiner created in her speech is very important. She is telling her own, personal story while also discussing the four steps that are mostly seen in a domestic violence relationship. In the following sentence, we see the first step: “One of the smartest things Conor did, from the very beginning, was to create the illusion that I was the dominant partner in the relationship” (lines 38-39). She is combining her personal situation, by referring to her abusive boyfriend, Conor, and the first stage in any domestic violence relationship, which is to seduce and charm the victim, by speaking about who the

“Why did I stay?” is the question that keeps coming back and seems hard to answer. Steiner makes it easy. “Why did I stay? The answer is easy. I didn 't know he was abusing me” (line 96). However, the question also has a very different answer, which is shown in the last part of the speech “To me, this is the saddest and most painful question that people ask, because we victims know something you usually don 't: It 's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser. Because the final step in the domestic violence pattern is kill her” (lines 103-105). Steiner tells us that 70 percent of the domestic violence murders happen after the victim has gotten