When I was 18/19, I ended up in a similar situation as your DD, OP - and it took me a year to break free of it. He isolated me from my friends, talked me out of starting university (I went at 22 with a toddler DD), beat me and raped me. I almost failed my 'A'-levels because of his abuse, and years later, my friends all told me that they were worried sick about me - although because we were still pretty much kids, and coercive control/abusive relationships weren't as talked about in the 1990s..., they didn't know how to help me. I wasn't as fortunate as your DD, though, in that my parents? Thought my ex was wonderful... and couldn't understand why, when I managed to walk away, not realising that I was pregnant with my own DD, I refused to have him anywhere near me/my daughter. If it weren't for my friends (one of whom I ended up falling for, had my son with, and who raised my DD as though she were his own child), I honestly think that she and I would have been seriously harmed, if not indeed dead at his hands one day.
Then my own daughter, when she was 19, ended up in a 3 month emotionally (I don't know about physically, but... I do suspect she was talked into doing things she didn't want to) abusive relationship. I knew the warning signs from my own experience, and I spent hours talking to her and trying to "get her to see sense". It didn't end, however, until he and I had a very passive-aggressive "chat" about how things would turn out if he stayed in my daughter's life. He was trying to talk her out of starting university (already a year later than her classmates), into marrying him, into moving into his parents home... and like your daughter's ex, he cut her off from her friends, and did his utmost to cut my son and I out of her life, too. When he ended it (the cowardly shit ghosted her!), she was suicidal - and it triggered a whole load of MH issues, which we're still reeling, somewhat, from (which I've posted about on here, before). She went to university, she made new friends, she found another boyfriend - who treated her with the utmost of respect, looked after her, and unknowingly reinforced my constant refrain of how she was worth so much better than the creep she'd briefly been with.
So I understand both sides of this - I can see it from your point of view as a mother, and also from your daughter's point of view as a victim. To those who are saying "5 months is nothing!"... I suspect that they're the fortunate few who haven't ever been involved in a relationship where your own sense of self is literally taken away from you, and you don't see it happening until it's too late. Your daughter's ex controlled every waking moment of her life. And she is struggling to realise that (a) that's not happening any more, and (b) she's got to be strong enough to prove that she is worth so much more than a coward's bullying tactics. Because ultimately? That's all her ex is. A coward and a bully. She has to change her way of looking at this, though - she has to choose to be a survivor... and not his victim. And with your support, and perhaps that of her university's guidance/welfare staff members, but more importantly I think that of her friends, she can get through this. She can be a survivor. Not a victim.
It would be worth deferring for the rest of the academic year, though, if she can do that. Because even though it was "just" 5 months - she's possibly not strong enough to cope on her own just yet. It took me until my daughter was a year old, so 18 months or so, until I was able to reclaim my own sense of self-esteem and confidence fully (and that was only with my friends support, one of whom used to 'e'mail me every other day from Thailand when he was travelling, he was so fretful that I'd fall back into my ex's arms!). It took my daughter a year, but her recovery was exacerbated, as I've said, with other issues. But your daughter does need time to recover, I'm afraid. Would you send her back if she was desperately ill? No. I'm sure you wouldn't. In one... in many ways, this "relationship"? Was a sickness. She believed his lies, his manipulations, she allowed him to control her... because she truly believed that he loved her. That, as you say, they were going to be together forever and a day... Her heart was not only controlled, but trampled on, and now broken. Plus, she's probably quite embarrassed by the fact that she "allowed" this to happen in the first place.
I had counselling for years after, to help me to work out that I was a survivor and not my ex's victim. It helped me work out what a healthy relationship actually was, and that enabled me to move on with my son's father (now also my ex, but he encouraged me to be myself, not his puppet on a string)... and also to deal with my emotions healthily when that ended a few years later. My daughter has had counselling, too, and whilst I still worry about her ending up in another abusive relationship, I'm confident that she'll be able to recognise the red-flags herself if that should ever happen. Like your daughter, mine is also afraid of being alone, of never finding love, of being (and considering this is 2019, this is horrific to my way of thinking) "left upon the shelf". I'm still not entirely sure how to change her way of thinking, and can only trust that she's old enough now, at 23, to recognise a decent bloke from an abusive one (although, sometimes they mask themselves as decent ones, so...).
It's a minefield. But your daughter will get through this. Just keep supporting her, allow her to cuddle your family's dogs (whom she probably confides in during the hours of darkness when it seems the loneliest time of day), and encourage her to believe that she can be a survivor, and to seek counselling. Work on her sense of self - which she's temporarily lost - and just be her Mum.
