Where you sleep tonight is a different problem from where you live next year. Confusing the two is why some women refuse a perfectly good short term option, and why others accept a bad long term one because it was offered first.
Deal with tonight. Then deal with the month. Then deal with the year.
The options
A shelter
A confidential address, staff who understand the situation, and usually a short stay. Good for the first days and weeks, which is exactly when the risk is highest.
Places are limited. Most have rules about visitors and about not disclosing the address, which exist for everyone’s safety. Some cannot take older boys, which is worth asking about before you arrive rather than discovering at the door.
A relative or friend
Free, familiar, and often the right answer, particularly for children who are already frightened.
The risk is that it is the first place anyone looks. Prefer somebody he has never met, or does not know is close to you. A cousin he has met twice at weddings is a better bet than your sister.
A rented room
Independent, and hard to arrange quickly. Advance rent and the need for a guarantor are the two obstacles, and in much of Nigeria a year in advance is the expectation.
This is usually the second move rather than the first. What we ask of landlords explains how that gap sometimes gets bridged.
A hotel or guest house
Expensive, and sometimes exactly right for one or two nights while something better is arranged. Do not rule it out because it feels extravagant. A safe night is not extravagant.
Questions to ask before you accept a place
- Can I bring my children, and is there an age limit for boys?
- Is the address confidential, and what happens if somebody telephones asking for me?
- How long can I stay, and what happens at the end of that?
- Is there a cost, now or later?
- Can I come and go, or are there hours?
- Is there help with school places?
- What do I do if he finds out where I am?
A service that cannot answer these clearly is one to be careful with. A service that is offended by the questions is one to avoid.
What to do about school
Try to keep the same school. It is usually the most stable thing in a child’s week, and a change of school removes their friends, their teacher and their routine in the same week their home has changed.
Where the school is too close to be safe, or where you have moved too far, tell the new school in writing who may and may not collect the child, and give them a copy of any protection order. Ask them to record any unexpected contact rather than handling it informally.
What else to think about with children is set out separately.
If you have nowhere tonight
Call 112 if you are in danger. Then call us on 2348025170267.
Arranging somewhere the same day is one of the things we do. It is very much easier for everyone if the call comes before you leave rather than at midnight from a junction, which is why planning the day in advance matters so much. But if it is already midnight and you are already at the junction, call anyway.
What to take
Documents first, because they are the hardest to replace and the thing that unlocks everything afterwards. The full list includes the four things women most often forget.
If you can take nothing, take nothing and go. Documents can be replaced and we do that routinely.
What we arrange
Safe housing is one of our six programmes. In practice that means a place to stay that the person who harmed you does not know about, arranged the same day where it is needed, with transport to get there, and with the school question dealt with rather than left to sort itself out.
Where a woman is ready to hold a tenancy in her own name, we act as guarantor in some cases, because the guarantor requirement is the single most common reason a woman with a job and a plan still cannot rent a room.
Questions people ask
Can I take my sons?
Usually, though some shelters have an age limit for boys. Ask before you arrive, and tell us if it is a problem because it changes which options we look at.
Do I have to pay?
Not for what we arrange. Be careful with any service that asks for money up front for a place.
How long can I stay?
It depends on the place. Ask at the start rather than at the end, and plan the next move before you need it.
What if he finds the address?
Tell whoever is running the place immediately, and tell us. Moving quickly is usually better than hoping.
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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