Ellere, of course it’s true that you can’t FORCE anyone to leave if they don’t want to, but the comment that originally started this was clevername’s – she basically said if the dude smacked his wife and she didn’t leave then she probably didn’t mind being smacked, which displays a shocking lack of understanding of the dynamics of abusive relationships and human behavior in general. Billy was just trying to clear that mess up, if I understand correctly.

The point being that nobody should watch abuse and do nothing. People being abused whether they are a child, animal, adult, man, woman, etc often cannot help themselves due to the severe nature of the abuse on a person’s psyche.

Personally, I find it very selfish of you to value your friend’s relationship with you over your friend’s life as a whole. In fact, I find it pretty disgusting that you stood there watching friends getting physically, emotionally, and mentally abused and did virtually nothing to try and help them. I will gladly lose a friend if it means they have a shot to gain their life back.

Having had friends who were in bad relationships, there really are times where you can’t do anything. They won’t leave. They are not 8 year old children, you can’t phone child services and have them intervene.

You can support them (but never say a bad word about the boyfriend or they will cut you out of their lives) and hope they come to their senses, but adults are adults and phoning all the police in the world isn’t going to change that.

Anyway, I’m excited for the what story we get next month…

Your opinion exemplifies exactly why domestic violence is unreported, and completely ignores the fact that there are people out there that are manipulative and cruel enough to break what may have started as a reasonable, sane person, into someone unable to “help themselves”. Not everyone who’s a douchebag enough to beat up their wife is stupid enough to do it in a public place, and unfortunately very many of them are model citizens, making it even harder for the victim to prove that s/he was being abused. Not everyone who commits domestic abuse does so physically, making the proof even harder to obtain — not that that makes a difference, as there are ways of causing immense pain without ever actually causing a mark. And not everyone who’s in that situation is “okay” with being slapped around.

I think domestic abuse goes a little bit beyond “wanting to be helped”. Most of the times the abusee fully belives that there is no possible help available to them.