Children in a violent home already know. Parents almost always underestimate this, and the underestimate is understandable, because the alternative is unbearable to think about. Children who were supposedly asleep describe arguments in detail years later. Children who were…
Most women who contact us begin with a version of the same sentence. I am not sure this counts. Other people have it worse. He has never put me in hospital. Sometimes he is the man I married and…
It usually starts as something that can be read as flattering. He minds who you talk to. He wants to know where you were. People say it means he cares, and early on it is genuinely difficult to tell…
Some women describe a marriage in which almost nothing dramatic has ever happened, and in which they nonetheless cannot make an ordinary decision without first calculating the consequences. There is a name for that. It is called coercive control…
Most writing about Nigerian family law describes the High Court. Most women never go near one. They end up in a Customary Court or a Sharia Court, because that is what governs their marriage, and because those courts are…
Abuse in a first relationship is routinely dismissed as drama, on the grounds that it is not a marriage, there are no children and nobody is trapped. The patterns are the same, the harm is real, and it sets…
This is the hardest article on this site to write honestly, because the truthful version contains a sentence nobody wants to read. The period around leaving is when women are most often seriously hurt or killed. That is not…
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…
Nothing in this article makes anybody safe, and none of it is your responsibility. What happens is done by the person doing it, and there is no correct behaviour that prevents it. What is true is that some decisions…
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…
