what would you do? Stay out of it? Call the cops? Or try to talk her into leaving? And what if getting involved might put you in danger too?
Been there, ..done that. It's very hard. In my case, the abuser happened to be a friend, the son of a very prolific director. If I mentioned some of his films you'd freak because they are household names. There wasn't really much I could do, ...she needed to make that decision on her own. I never saw any of the abuse, but she told me of it, and I saw how controlling he was. The problem for her was, she didn't have the money to leave him. As it was, she was dependant on him for everything, ...actually more so dependant on his parents, because it was his parents who were footing the bill for his luxury harbourfront condo, as well as all his bills. He was 16 and I'm not so much sure if it was a matter of him wanting to live with his girlfriend, or if it was his parents just didn't want him to live with them. In any event, they paid for him to have his own place. All I could do was simply gave her a safe place she could come to when she needed to get away from him. Finally one day she decided she had had enough, and when he came home she was gone, ...so were all her clothes.
I didn't see the guy for another 5 yrs. Then one day, while working on the set of "Queer As Folk" I look up, and there he was. He'd grown up a bit... or so he claimed, he'd moved to BC with his family, finished University and was engaged to a new girl. He was back in the harbourfront condo with a new fiancé. Sure enough, in the fall of 2001, he calls me up crying his eyes out. Seems he came home and his fiancé wasn't there. She'd packed up all her stuff and moved out that afternoon. Seems to be a re-occurring pattern with him.