The Presumption Problem
Every time a tragedy happens, we ask the same question. What assumptions did we make along the way?.
Why the story begins long before the end
Every time a tragedy happens, we ask the same question.
What happened?
Sometimes we ask another.
Why?
What we ask far less often is:
What assumptions did we make along the way?
At Bridge to Justice, we’ve investigated cases involving suicide, coercive control, elder financial abuse, workplace bullying, domestic abuse and safeguarding failures.
On the surface, they all look different.
Dig deeper and the same pattern keeps emerging.
Not just the pattern of abuse.
The pattern of assumption.
The danger of believing we already know the answer
Human beings naturally look for explanations.
Sometimes we find one and stop looking.
“She had mental health problems.”
“He was addicted.”
“She lacked capacity.”
“He was just difficult.”
“She was vulnerable.”
“It was suicide.”
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
The problem isn’t asking those questions.
The problem is allowing the first explanation to become the final explanation.
When that happens, curiosity ends.
Investigation narrows.
The wider picture disappears.
Human difference has always been normal
For generations, society decided there was one “normal” way to think, learn, communicate and behave.
Children who didn’t fit that mould were expected to adapt.
Sometimes they were punished.
Sometimes they were labelled.
Sometimes they simply learned to hide who they really were.
History gives us countless examples.
Left-handed children were once forced to write with their right hand. Some had their left hand tied behind their backs. Others were struck with rulers until they conformed.
Today, that seems absurd.
Not because left-handedness changed.
Because our understanding changed.
Perhaps future generations will look back and ask similar questions about how we understood neurodivergence, trauma and psychological difference.
The problem was never difference
Every person experiences the world differently.
Some differences are obvious.
Others are invisible.
Some arise through personality.
Some through trauma.
Some through neurodevelopment.
Some through life itself.
None of that is abnormal.
The difficulty begins when systems are built around one narrow idea of what “normal” looks like.
Anyone outside that expectation risks becoming the problem instead of the system asking whether it needs to respond differently.
Children spend years trying to fit in
Adults often spend years recovering from it.
A child who struggles at school may be labelled:
- disruptive
- lazy
- emotional
- attention-seeking
- difficult
Years later those labels often change.
Now they become:
- anxious
- depressed
- personality disorder
- addict
- frequent attender
- non-compliant
- repeat caller
The labels change.
The person often hasn’t.
The distress that was misunderstood as a child simply grows up with them.
The spaces between services
Many reviews conclude that no single organisation failed.
That may well be true.
One service saw anxiety.
Another saw attendance problems.
Another saw bullying.
Another saw self-harm.
Another saw family pressures.
Each piece looked manageable on its own.
Nobody held the whole picture.
The greatest risk often exists in the spaces between organisations, where information isn’t brought together and patterns remain hidden.
The Event Trap
By the time someone dies, reaches crisis point or enters the criminal justice system, the final event often receives the greatest attention.
Yet the event itself rarely appeared overnight.
There may have been months or years of subtle change.
Confidence eroded.
Relationships changed.
Isolation increased.
Debt accumulated.
Trauma deepened.
Hope diminished.
When we investigate only the final event, we risk missing the journey that led there.
Replace assumptions with understanding
This isn’t about assuming every suicide involves coercive control.
It isn’t about assuming every vulnerable adult has been abused.
It isn’t about assuming every professional has failed.
It is about resisting the temptation to stop asking questions too soon.
The first explanation is not always the complete explanation.
A different way forward
Imagine if, instead of asking:
“What’s wrong with this person?”
we first asked:
“What’s happened to this person?”
Imagine if systems measured patterns instead of isolated events.
Imagine if schools, healthcare, families and communities worked from one shared chronology instead of separate files.
Imagine if difference wasn’t treated as something to correct but something to understand.
We cannot prevent every tragedy.
We can become better at recognising the pathways that lead to them.
The Presumption Problem
Perhaps the greatest danger isn’t that we sometimes reach the wrong conclusion.
It’s that we reach one too quickly.
Because every assumption we fail to question closes a door.
Every question we continue to ask opens another.
At Bridge to Justice, we’ve learned that understanding rarely begins with certainty.
It begins with curiosity.
The story doesn’t start on the day someone dies.
It starts long before that.
If we truly want to prevent harm, we need to stop investigating only the ending and start understanding the journey.