HealBridge works with women and children leaving domestic abuse in Nigeria. Safe shelter, counselling, legal help, and a route back to work.
Nothing in this article makes anybody safe, and none of it is your responsibility. What happens is done by the person doing it, and there is no correct behaviour that prevents it. What is true is that some decisions made
Read MoreAlmost everything on this list is said with good intentions, usually by somebody who genuinely wants to help. That is exactly why it is worth naming, because nobody corrects a sentence they think is kind. Why did you not leave
Read MoreThis is one of the most common things women tell us, and it is almost always said in a particular tone. He is a good man. He is not like that normally. It is only when he has been drinking.
Read MoreHousing is where leaving most often fails. A woman can have a job, a lawyer and a protection order, and still return to a violent home because no landlord will take her. Why she gets refused No guarantor, because the
Read MoreWork is often the only place a woman being controlled goes alone. That makes colleagues unusually well placed to notice, and unusually likely to say nothing for fear of interfering in something private. What you might notice Frequent calls or
Read MoreTwo things get confused constantly, and separating them makes everything easier. Child maintenance is money for the children. It is owed because they are his children, and it does not depend on the marriage, on who left, on whose fault
Read MoreAn emergency bag is the difference between leaving with your life and leaving with your life plus the ability to prove who you are. Women who leave without documents spend months rebuilding an identity while also trying to stay safe,
Read MoreThe problem this solves is narrow and very common. Something is happening, or about to happen, and you can make a call — but you cannot say anything that sounds like asking for help, because he is in the room,
Read MoreAlmost everything written about leaving assumes a body that can walk out of a door, a voice that can make a telephone call, and a route that does not depend on anybody's cooperation. For a great many disabled women none
Read MoreThe most disorienting thing about the first months is not the practical difficulty. It is that the symptoms frequently get worse once you are safe, which nobody warns anybody about. Women describe it the same way: I coped for years,
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HealBridge works with women and children leaving domestic abuse in Nigeria. Safe shelter, counselling, legal help, and a route back to work.
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