You have known him since university. He was at your wedding. He lent you money once without being asked. And now his wife has told you something, or you have seen something, and you cannot make the two versions…
She tells you he threw her phone at the wall, that he does not let her see her sister, that she has to account for every naira. And then she tells you every marriage has its problems, that he…
Tell him I was with you. Say you have not heard from me. If he calls, say I am at the shop. Most people helping somebody in this situation are asked for something like this eventually, usually at short…
Almost everything written about supporting somebody in an abusive relationship is about her. This is about you, because the most common way support fails is not that the helper did the wrong thing. It is that the helper ran…
You helped her leave. You made phone calls, you lent money, you had her in your house, you argued with people on her behalf. And she has gone back. This is the moment most helpers stop. It is also…
For a great many Nigerian women, the first person told is not a police officer or a doctor. It is a pastor or an imam. What happens in that conversation very often decides what happens over the following ten…
Almost 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…
Work 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…
When we ask a woman what is keeping her where she is, the answer is very often her mother. Not a husband's threats, not money, not the police. Her own parents, telling her that every marriage has difficulty, that…
People who suspect something usually do one of two things. They say nothing for years, or they say leave him and are never told anything again. There is a middle path, and it works considerably better than both. Ask…
