Almost 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 of that holds, and services built on those assumptions quietly exclude them.
This page is about the forms abuse takes when the person harming you is also the person you rely on, and about what is actually available.
What it looks like
Alongside everything that happens in any abusive relationship, there is a category that only exists here.
- Care withheld as punishment. Not being helped to wash, to dress, to eat, to use the toilet, or being left for long periods to make a point.
- Medication controlled. Doses withheld, given wrongly on purpose, or over-given to keep you asleep and manageable.
- Equipment taken. A wheelchair moved out of reach, a stick removed, a hearing aid hidden, glasses broken, a prosthesis withheld, a charger taken.
- Communication cut. A phone put where you cannot get it, a communication device removed, an interpreter refused, somebody insisting on speaking for you.
- Appointments controlled. Not being taken, or being taken and never left alone with the clinician.
- Money taken through the caring role. Benefits, family contributions or your own income handled on your behalf and not accounted for.
- Your credibility attacked. Being told, and having others told, that you are confused, that you exaggerate, that your condition makes you unreliable. Where the condition affects memory or speech, this is devastatingly effective.
- Threats about care itself. That you will be put in an institution, that the children will be taken because you cannot manage, that nobody else would do this for you.
That last one is the load-bearing threat and it is often the only one needed. Control does not require violence, and where somebody depends on another person for the basics of a day, very little force is necessary.
Why it is harder to report
Not because disabled women are less capable of reporting, but because the specific route is frequently blocked.
The person who would drive you to the police station is the person you would be reporting. The phone is in the other room. Interpreters are scarce, and the interpreter available may be a family member. The clinic asks the person who brought you what the problem is. A police officer takes a statement from the carer standing beside you. And the more your condition affects speech, memory or movement, the more readily everybody in the room addresses the other person.
There is also a specific fear that stops women who could otherwise act: that reporting ends the care, and there is nothing behind it. That fear is not irrational, and any service that does not address it directly is not offering anything real.
The caring defence
You will hear a version of this, from him, from relatives, and sometimes from professionals. That he is under enormous strain. That caring is exhausting. That anybody would lose patience.
Caring is genuinely hard, and carers who are struggling deserve real support. Neither of those facts makes it acceptable to withhold medication, remove a wheelchair, or leave somebody sitting in their own waste to teach them a lesson. Strain explains shortness of temper. It does not explain a pattern, and it does not explain anything that is done only when nobody else is present.
The test is the same as everywhere else. Force, one-sidedness, and fear. If it only happens when you are alone together, and it stops when a visitor arrives, then it is being controlled.
What to do
The standard advice needs adjusting, so here is the adjusted version.
- Get one appointment alone. This is the single most useful thing, and it is a reasonable thing to ask for. Any clinician can be asked to see you by yourself for part of a consultation, and a good one will do it without being asked. If you cannot ask aloud, a written note handed over works.
- Have a second way to communicate. A cheap phone kept where you can actually reach it from where you spend your day, not in a bag across the room. A neighbour who will answer a knock on a wall. Anything that does not depend on him.
- Keep a spare of what you cannot do without. Medication for a few days, a charger, a spare hearing aid battery, a copy of your prescriptions, held by somebody outside the house.
- Know your medication list. Names and doses, written down, kept with you. If you ever leave suddenly this is the thing whose absence causes real harm within days.
- Documents copied and held elsewhere. Disability documentation, prescriptions, clinic cards, identity documents. Where to keep them applies here with more force than usual.
- Tell one professional. A doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, a physiotherapist, a teacher. Somebody who sees you regularly and can notice a change.
A safety plan still applies, with the difference that yours has to answer three extra questions: how you get out, what you cannot leave without, and who is doing the care afterwards.
What we can and cannot do
Being straightforward about this matters more than sounding encouraging.
We can arrange legal advice and go with you. We can hold documents. We can help with an account in your own name and with a route to work where you want one. We can help with transport, and transport is frequently the thing that unlocks everything else. We can talk to a clinic or a school on your behalf if you ask us to.
What we cannot promise is accessible emergency accommodation at short notice. Very little of it exists in Nigeria, and pretending otherwise would waste your time at the worst moment. Where we cannot house you we will say so quickly and work on the other routes, including family, a supported arrangement, or getting him out of the house rather than you. A protection order can require a person to leave the home even where the property is his, and for a woman who cannot easily move, that is often the more realistic route. What applying involves is set out separately.
If you are a clinician or a carer reading this
Two things change more than anything else. See her alone for part of every consultation, as routine rather than as a response to suspicion. And address her, not the person who brought her, even when answering is slow.
What to look for and how to ask is written for you, and the disability-specific signs are worth adding to it: missed appointments, equipment repeatedly damaged, medication requested early or late, and someone who will not leave the room.
Questions people ask
He says caring for me is exhausting, and it is. Is it still abuse?
Strain explains shortness of temper. It does not explain withholding medication, removing equipment, or leaving somebody without help to make a point, and it does not explain behaviour that stops the moment a visitor arrives.
If I report it, who will care for me?
That is the right question to ask first and it should be answered before anything else happens. It is worth saying to any service at the very start, including to us, so that nobody sets something in motion that leaves you without support.
I cannot get to a phone. What can I do?
One appointment alone with a clinician is usually the most reachable route, and a written note works if speaking is difficult. A neighbour who knows to check on a signal is worth arranging while things are calm.
Can he be made to leave instead of me?
Yes, that is possible. A protection order can require a person to stay away from the home even where the property is his, and for someone who cannot easily move it is often the more realistic route.
Do you have accessible accommodation?
Rarely, and we would rather tell you that immediately than promise it. Where we cannot house you we work the other routes quickly, including legal ones that remove him rather than you.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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