Most Nigerian websites on this subject carry a long list of hotlines. A large proportion of those numbers do not answer, and some have not answered for years. A dead number is worse than no number, because it is…
Most people, including many health workers, treat hands on the throat as one violent act among others. It is not. Of everything that happens in an abusive marriage, this is the one that changes what we say to a…
Ask a woman in a customary marriage what stops her leaving and quite often it is not the beatings, the money or the children. It is that her father would have to find the bride price, and her family…
Very few women marry a man who frightens them. They marry a man who is attentive, certain and quick to commit. The controlling behaviour arrives so gradually that there is never a single moment to point at, and by…
Two things drive this article. Some treatment only works if you get it quickly, and a medical record made at the time is the strongest evidence that exists in this whole subject. You can act on the first without…
A bed for the night is the easiest part of this work to fund, the easiest to explain and the easiest to photograph. It is also the part that changes the least. Ask a woman who left and went…
Ending a marriage in Nigeria depends on how the marriage was contracted. Statutory marriages, customary marriages and Islamic marriages are dissolved through different courts under different rules, and the differences are substantial rather than technical. This is an outline…
Almost every legal question a woman asks us — can I divorce him, what am I entitled to, who gets the children, can I claim maintenance — has the same first answer, which is another question. What kind of…
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…
Clinicians see women experiencing abuse years before a lawyer or a charity does. Very often the presentation is not an injury at all, which is why it is missed. What to look for Injuries that do not match the…
