Why Don’t They Just Leave?
*Domestic abuse will affect 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in their lifetime.
*Abuse leads to, on average, 2 women being murdered each week and 30 men per year.
Domestic abuse of course relates to a variety of forms of abuse including physical, emotional, sexual, financial, and psychological. All will have a significant impact on the victim.
The majority of us have probably been guilty of blaming the victim for their poor choices, myself included. My experience of counselling survivors of domestic abuse with Bolton Women’s Aid however, and the opportunity I had to work with groups of survivors in facilitating the ‘Freedom Programme’** gave me a valuable insight into life within an abusive relationship and opened my eyes to the reality of the turbulent and challenging situation.
So why don’t they just leave? The relationship is recognised as toxic and potentially dangerous and some victims are genuinely scared for their own safety and sometimes the safety of their children yet continue to stay.
Allow me to paint you a picture. Imagine….
The prolonged manipulation and control that led to your situation has left you feeling the abuse is somehow your fault.
You are led to believe after each violent incident that if you just change one thing about yourself, you will find harmony in your relationship and things will be better.
You’ve come to believe that you aren’t good enough for anyone and that the love that is sometimes displayed in your relationship is more than you’ll find with anyone else.
You’ve come to doubt your own instincts and your own mind and have been made to feel you’re psychologically unstable.
You’ve come to believe you’re a bad mother/father and that you’ll never cope without your partner if you left and took your children with you but you don’t want to leave without them.
You are protecting your partner’s children and don’t want to leave them behind. You’re all they’ve got. Or you feel guilty about taking your children away from their mother/father because they have what appears to be a good relationship with them.
You are financially dependant on your partner who controls all the household finances.
You haven’t had the opportunity to understand what it means to be financially responsible and worry you won’t know what to do and won’t cope.
You’ve been isolated from your family and friends and don’t believe they will support you if you leave, or you’ve been moved away from your family and friends and have no local support.
You’ve been unable to work because your partner has insisted on supporting you financially whilst you stay at home with the children so you have a lack of confidence in yourself and no colleagues to turn to.
Your partner has threatened you with social services involvement if you try to take the children from them, and you know they will try to have them removed.
Your partner has threatened to hurt or kill you or the children if you leave and you believe them. You are scared.
Your partner will never allow you to be alone, particularly with all of the children at the same time.
Your partner physically locks you inside of your home or in a particular room.
Your partner has other people involved in your abuse, making it difficult to know who to trust and who to look out for if you leave.
Your culture or religion condones the abuse and reinforces the belief you are in the wrong.
You have tried to leave before and been manipulated or forced into returning, leaving you feeling it’s not worth the fight as you’ll end up surrendering again. You don’t have the strength.
You have nowhere to go and may face homelessness.
You have a physical illness or disability that prevents you from leaving.
As bad as the abuse may be, it’s familiar and you can manage this to an extent. Leaving makes the abuse uncertain, it leaves you open to nasty surprises and these are far more difficult for you to consider and plan for in order to keep yourself safe.
You have lost all hope that things can be different.
This is not an exhaustive list and a large extent of these issues will be very real considerations for anyone wanting to escape an abusive relationship.
A recent study by The fourth Femicide Census found that 61% of murdered women in the UK had been killed by an abusive partner or ex-partner. Leaving doesn’t always mean safety, in fact it’s recognised that this potentially increases the risk of harm as the ex-partner attempts to regain control or exact revenge.
It’s not a pretty picture that’s been painted is it? Could you leave?
*British Crime Survey Statistical bulletin
**Freedom Programme – www.freedomprogramme.co.uk
