Leaving used to mean going somewhere he did not know. Now a woman can move across the country and still receive forty messages before breakfast, be tagged in a photograph that reveals which street she is on, or discover…
Ask a woman why she has not left and money is the answer more often than fear. Not because fear is absent, but because fear has an answer and rent does not. Financial abuse is deliberate and it is…
Economic abuse is one of the most common forms of domestic abuse and one of the least recognised. It runs almost entirely through financial institutions, which means bank staff observe it regularly without having a name for what they…
Two reasons to keep a record, and the second one is the one people expect. The first is that it is for you. Living inside this pattern does something to memory: the calm weeks erase the bad night so…
A very large number of the women we work with stopped studying because of a marriage. Some were withdrawn from school for it. Some passed examinations they were never allowed to use. Some were part way through a course…
A woman who has had every naira accounted for by somebody else for eleven years is suddenly responsible for all of it. Nobody teaches this, and the assumption that it is obvious is one of the reasons the first…
Women are warned about danger, about money, about the courts and about the children. Almost nobody warns them about this one, and it is the reason a significant number go back. You leave, and within a few months you…
Organisations describe what they do. Almost none describe what they do not, which means people find out at the point of asking, usually at the worst moment. This is the list. It is here so that you can decide…
Schools see this earlier than anybody. Before a police station, before a clinic, usually before any relative outside the house. The child is in front of you five days a week and something changes. Most teachers notice and do…
Abuse abroad carries an extra layer that is hard to explain to anyone who has not lived it. You may be thousands of miles from family, unsure of your rights, dependent on his immigration status, and genuinely afraid that…
