Every piece of advice about getting help assumes a private moment. Call this number. Send a message. Have a look at this website.
A great many women have none of that. The phone is his, or is checked. There is no hour of the day when somebody is not present. Every person they know is connected to his family. The advice is not wrong, it is simply written for a life they do not have.
This is the version for that situation. It is more practical than sympathetic, deliberately.
The moments that already exist in your week
You are almost certainly alone at some point, and it does not feel like an opportunity because it is routine. That is exactly what makes it useful — a routine absence is not questioned.
- A clinic or hospital appointment. The strongest one, because you can ask to be seen alone. Any nurse or doctor can be asked, and a good one will do it without being asked. If somebody insists on coming in with you, that itself tells a clinician something.
- The pharmacy or the patent medicine shop. A short, ordinary errand nobody accompanies you on.
- The market. Long enough, and nobody can account for every minute of it.
- The school run. Ten minutes at the gate, with other adults and a staff office behind you.
- Church or the mosque. One of the very few places a woman can attend regularly without explanation, and one of the few with a room and a closed door.
- Work, if you have it. Frequently the only place you go alone all week.
- A relative’s compound, if there is a woman there who is not close to his family.
- A business centre. Ordinary, everywhere, and nobody remembers anybody.
You do not need a long window. You need five minutes and a plan for what to do with them.
What to say in thirty seconds
Prepare it in advance and keep it short, because the moment arrives without warning and there is no time to explain a marriage.
Something like: “I am not safe at home. I cannot talk long and I cannot be called back. Can I take a number, or can you tell me where to go?”
To a clinician: “I am being hurt at home. Please write it in my notes and please do not tell the person who came with me.”
To us, on a borrowed phone: “Do not call this number back. This is what is happening, this is where I am, this is when it is safe.”
Say when you can be contacted and when you cannot before anything else. That single detail is more important than the details of what has happened, and it is the thing people forget under pressure.
Borrowing a phone
People lend phones far more readily than most women expect, and it is an unremarkable request.
A market woman, a shopkeeper, a colleague, a nurse, a teacher at the school gate, a woman at the mosque or church. Ask to make one call, make it, then delete the call from the recent list before handing it back — both for you and for them.
If you cannot speak freely, a message is often better than a call, and a message can be sent from a shop counter while somebody is serving.
Where a phone is genuinely impossible, a business centre will let you send an email for very little, and the person at the desk is not paying attention to what you type.
The written note
This is the most underused route and it works when nothing else does, because it needs no privacy at all — only a hand.
Write it in advance and keep it somewhere you can reach. Your name, what is happening in one line, when it is safe to contact you, and how. Then hand it to a clinician, a pharmacist, a teacher, a colleague or a woman at your place of worship.
A note passed across a counter takes two seconds and cannot be overheard. Several of the referrals we receive begin exactly this way.
The phone that is not yours
Assume that a phone he bought, set up, or has had in his hands may show him your messages and your browsing, and that deleting something does not always remove it.
If you must use it, use the browser’s private mode, and know that it is imperfect. Clear the history afterwards. Do not save our number under a name that means anything — put it under an ordinary woman’s name, or memorise the last four digits and store the rest as something else.
How to cover your tracks and what to check on a device are both worth reading on somebody else’s phone rather than your own.
Being watched at home
A few things that cost nothing and help.
Do not write anything down and keep it in the house. Do not leave a browser tab open, ever, including a tab you will “close in a minute”. Do not save our number in the phone he handles. Do not tell one person and ask them to tell another inside the same family, because information travels back along family lines faster than anybody expects.
And if a call from us would be dangerous, tell us that first and we will not call. We contact people only in the way and at the times they have set, and what happens after you get in touch is written out so there are no surprises.
What to do with the five minutes
If you get one window and can do only one thing, do one of these. In order.
- Tell one person outside the family that it is happening. Not for a plan — just so somebody who is not connected to him knows.
- Get a number into your memory, not your phone. 112, and one other.
- Hand a note to a clinician and ask for it to be written in your records. It creates an independent, dated account that exists whether or not you ever use it.
- Move one document out of the house. A birth certificate photographed at a business centre is a real step.
None of these commits you to anything and all of them are reversible. That matters, because the reason women in this position do nothing for years is usually the belief that the first step is also the last one.
If you cannot do any of it yet
That is a real answer and it is not a failure. Some situations genuinely offer nothing this week.
Keep two things in your head instead. 112, for the moment when it is an emergency. And the fact that a service exists that will not contact anybody without your permission, will not ask for his name, and does not require you to be leaving. When a window comes, it will still be there.
Questions people ask
I have no phone at all. Is there any way to reach you?
Yes. A borrowed phone for one call, a message sent from a shop counter, an email from a business centre, or a written note handed to a clinician, a teacher or a pharmacist. Notes work when nothing else does.
What is the most important thing to say?
When it is safe to contact you and when it is not, and whether we may call back at all. Say that before the details of what has happened.
Can I ask to see a doctor alone?
Yes, and it is a reasonable request that any clinician can accommodate. If somebody insists on staying in the room, that in itself tells a good clinician something.
Is it safe to save your number in my phone?
Not under anything meaningful. Save it under an ordinary woman’s name, or memorise part of it. If the phone is one he handles, assume he may see anything on it.
If I contact you, will someone ring me back?
Only if you say we may, and only at the times you set. If you tell us not to call, we will not call.
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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