Almost everything written about domestic abuse is written for the day somebody leaves. That is a small fraction of the actual problem. Most women in an abusive marriage are still in it, many will be in it next year, and a good number have decided quite deliberately to stay.
The reasons are usually sound. Children, money, family, faith, a house that took fifteen years to build, and a well-founded belief that the most dangerous period is the one that follows leaving. None of that is denial.
So this is safety planning with the leaving taken out. Nothing here commits you to anything, and every item on it is useful whether you stay for another month or another twenty years.
Start with the geography of your own house
Most people have never thought about their home this way, and it takes about ten minutes.
Which room has a second way out. Which door can be locked from the inside. Which room has nothing hard, heavy or sharp in it. Which window faces a neighbour who would hear.
Then the rooms to move away from. The kitchen is the worst room in any house for this, because of the knives, the gas, the hot oil and the hard surfaces. Bathrooms are the second worst: tiles, porcelain, no exit and a door that locks the wrong way round. Stairs are worse than either.
Deciding in advance which way you will move costs nothing and takes no preparation anybody could notice. What to do in the moment itself goes through this in more detail.
The neighbour conversation
This is the highest-value thing on the page and almost nobody does it.
Pick one neighbour. Not the most sympathetic one necessarily, the nearest one who is usually at home. Tell them as much or as little as you want, and give them one instruction. Something like: if you hear shouting from my house at night, please knock and ask to borrow something.
A knock at the gate stops more incidents than any other single intervention available to you, and it works because it is public without being a confrontation. Most neighbours want to help and have no idea whether they are allowed to.
If you cannot say anything, agree a signal instead. A light left on, a curtain, a particular pot outside the door. Even a person who has been told nothing can be told to call the police if they see it.
Money that exists somewhere else
You do not need a large amount. You need an amount that is not his and that he does not know about.
An account in your own name at a bank the family does not use, with no statements coming to the house and alerts going somewhere he cannot see. Add to it in amounts nobody notices. Small and regular beats large and occasional, because large and occasional gets discovered.
Keep some cash as well, somewhere in the house that is genuinely yours: inside a sanitary pack, sewn into a hem, in a child’s schoolbag lining, with a relative. Bank access can fail at night, and the night is when it is needed.
If money going missing would be dangerous, this is worth talking to us about rather than risking it. Why economic control works so well explains what you are up against.
Documents out of the house
Your identity documents, the children’s birth certificates, immunisation cards, school records, certificates, the marriage certificate, land or property papers, medical records.
You do not need the originals to be gone, and their absence would be noticed. You need copies somewhere else — with a relative, a friend, at work, at your place of worship, or held by us. How and where to keep them covers the practical detail, including doing it digitally where a physical copy is not safe.
Documents are the thing whose absence stops women most often. Everything else can be replaced faster than a birth certificate.
A phone that is actually yours
Assume that a phone he bought, set up, or has had in his hands for an evening may be monitored. That is not paranoia; software sold for exactly this is cheap and easy to install, and it is frequently given as a gift.
What to check and what to change is set out separately. The short version is to have some way of contacting somebody that does not depend on the device he can reach — a second cheap phone, a neighbour’s, a work extension, a friend who will pass a message.
And clear the browser, or use private browsing, before and after reading anything like this page. How to do that properly matters more than the Quick Exit button does.
The children
One instruction, not a plan. Children cannot execute a plan and will freeze if given one.
The instruction is: if there is shouting, go to a named place and stay there. A specific neighbour, a specific room, a specific relative’s house. And explicitly, do not come and help, because children who intervene get hurt and they will try.
Teach the older ones how to call 112 and what to say: the address first, then what is happening. More on this is set out separately, including what to say to a child who asks why.
Know what the escalation markers are
Deciding to stay is a decision made with the information you have. These are the things that should make you revisit it, because they change the risk rather than just the misery.
- Hands on your neck, at all, ever. Why this one is different is the most important page on this site.
- Threats to kill, whether or not you believe them.
- A weapon produced, or acquired, or mentioned.
- Violence during pregnancy.
- Threats to harm himself if you go.
- Violence towards the children, or towards animals.
- Sexual violence.
- Incidents getting closer together, or happening in front of other people, which usually means he no longer fears consequences.
None of these obliges you to do anything. They are the point at which it is worth talking to somebody, and you can talk to us without committing to a single thing.
Keep the people
Isolation is what makes everything else work, so it is the thing worth defending hardest.
One relationship kept alive, even at a low level, is worth more than any other item on this list. A cousin you call. A friend from school. A colleague. Somebody who will notice if you stop appearing, and who knows enough to know why.
If several have gone already, get one back. It will feel harder than it is.
What you can have from us while staying
All of it, apart from the bed you are not asking for.
Somewhere to keep documents. Help opening an account. A lawyer to tell you where you actually stand, which is often better than you have been told. School fees. Counselling for you or for the children. Work, if you want it. And somebody to think out loud with who will not tell you what to do.
Nobody will pressure you to leave, nobody will contact anyone without your permission, and nothing you say is a commitment. What happens after you get in touch is written out step by step so there are no surprises in it.
Questions people ask
Is it wrong to stay?
No, and we are not here to judge anyone’s marriage. Most of the women we work with are staying, at least for now, and the help available to them is the same.
Will you push me to leave if I contact you?
No. Nobody will be contacted without your permission and nothing you say commits you to anything. A great many conversations end with a woman deciding to do nothing at all for now.
What is the single most useful thing on this page?
The neighbour conversation. A knock at the gate interrupts more incidents than anything else available to you, and it costs nothing to arrange.
I cannot move money without him noticing. What then?
Then do not risk it. Cash in small amounts, held outside the house, is safer than a transfer he can see. Talk to us about it rather than testing what he notices.
Does having a plan mean I have decided to go?
No. A plan you never use costs you nothing, and it is much easier to build during a calm period than during a bad night.
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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