To think people who stay in abusive relationships long-term and expose their kids to it are complicit in harming them?

[WildHazelCritic]

We all say “they need support” and they do but if someone stays with an abuser for years while their kids witness the chaos, doesn’t that cross into neglect? AIBU to think sympathy has limits?

As one of those children, I have a great deal of anger towards my mother for not getting us out. She absolutely was complicit in our abuse. In many ways she became an abuser herself. She put far too much responsibility on me to protect my sister and to protect her. She asked things of me that should never be asked of a child.

I understand intellectually why it was hard for her to leave. She had the financial resources, but there were significant societal pressures telling her to look past the bruises and broken bones.

I tried to get her out repeatedly as an adult, but she refused to leave even with my help. She told me she was too afraid to change her life so I stopped asking. She died relatively young. There is zero doubt in my mind that the stress of her life was the underlying cause of the cancer that ravaged her body.

Women absolutely are victims, but the reality is that they are the only ones that can save themselves and their children. It isn’t fair, but it is a harsh reality. The mother acts as a shield that prevents the police and social services from intervening. Unless she decides enough is enough and wants her children out, they will continue to live in hell.

You're right of course. Children should be left in abusive homes having the shit kicked out of them or watching their mum having the shit kicked out of her.

Yet the narrative stays the same, and people forget that a victim can also be an abuser (in various ways) which is particularly grating when the child posts here as an adult and is told to “think of your poor mum” and “she did her best”.

I always thought I'd protected my children from the abuse I was dealing with. Turns out, now my eldest is prime witness in the upcoming trial as shes 18, I didn't.

I feel like the worst parent in the world. HTH

Same if you stay.

Well yes I agree, but there are often deep-seated reasons why these women are in, and stay in, those relationships. Unfortunately it's unrealistic to expect them to just shake off their trauma and act as though they are rational, well-balanced people with healthy boundaries. Hopefully many will get out, but lots can't really see that their dc are being damaged, as it feels like a normalway of living to them.

It can be really hard if you’ve nowhere to go but if you do have somewhere then you really should go if it’s feasible. I left my alcoholic ex, with two young children in tow. I only had one option and that was my mum’s sofa 200 miles away but I took it without hesitation. Never regretted it (even though my mum was not at all easy to live with). Luckily he did go into recovery a couple of year’s later. My kids have a good relationship with him now but they would have hated growing up with him and I couldn’t let that happen. I really feel for those who can’t leave as I felt very trapped for a while.

The fear of 50:50 must be horrific. I knew without a doubt my ex would not go for any kind of custody and would not have got it, the state he was in. But I would have been very frightened of that if it had been a possibility.

But would you guide them out knowing you’ll die and they’ll be left forever in the care of an abuser?

I spent years in an abusive relationship believing that I was the problem. He was wonderful, a saint, had an extremely ‘big job’. Pillar of the community. People constantly told me how lucky I was. He told me that I had unreasonable expectations. Everything I did was wrong. I became depressed. All my problems were down to my depression. Work was too stressful. It would be better for me to give up my career and stay at home for the sake of the children and my mental health.

I had no money. I had no interaction with anyone outside the home. If we had visitors, he was the doting husband. My family adored him. They didn’t witness the constant criticism. He never shouted at me or raised his voice. He was lovely to me in front of the children but as soon as they left the room he would start. I never knew what would come next. He would demand a list of my ex partners and interrogate me on what I’d done in bed with them, asking me a million questions and trying to catch me out. Then he’d stonewall me for weeks, tell me what a dirty slut I was and how I repulsed him. That’s just one example.

I genuinely believed for YEARS that it was just me being weak and mentally ill.

Eventually I confided in my Mum that I wanted to leave and needed her help (she had room for us and I had no money). I told her how he treated me, the mental torture, how he would suggest I commit suicide. How he stayed out at night (I suspected correctly that he was with other women). How he’d sexually assaulted me numerous times. All of it.

She told me that I was ungrateful. Didn’t exH stay out because he was working so hard to give me the wonderful life that I have? Isn’t being sexually available the least lucky women like me should do for their husbands? (This was after I’d just told her about him anally raping me). She couldn’t understand why I was telling lies about him. She rang exH and they had me put in a psychiatric unit.

Once I got out, I felt I had no option but to put up and shut up. None of my family were talking to me because I was a wicked, evil bitch. I lasted 4 years until I had gathered enough proof of his behaviour and kicked him out.

He had 50:50 custody to begin with. He alienated my eldest (who was 8) against me and got full custody of him. I got full custody of the younger children. I lost everything, but losing my son was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. He didn’t speak to me for around 15 years.

Abused women need support. It is impossible to leave without it, and for most women that support isn’t there. It’s all well and good for a friend to tell you to LTB, and consider that ‘support’. Are they going to offer you a home? Or be there when he’s coming round breaking your windows and threatening to torch your house? And then the police don’t believe you because of his glowing reputation?

So judge away, you’ve got no idea.

it is incredibly complex for all the reasons already discussed. But I do think sometimes the children’s safety must come first - even if that means removing them from their mother who is failing to protect them.

I was listening to a podcast with Tina Nash recently. She survived horrific abuse from her partner (who was not the father of her two children). She eventually got free of him after he gouged both her eyes out with his bare hands while trying to kill her. Somehow she survived and managed to get help.

Obviously she deserves nothing but sympathy for having had to endure such a terrifying attack that left her blind.

However, I found myself getting so frustrated with her when she said that once her abuser was in prison, she started another relationship with a man who then attacked her with a knife. At that point in the podcast I think I actually groaned out loud.

If I’m remembering the timeline right, she’d moved this man in to hers and her children’s home within a year of the attack where she nearly lost her life. And she had two young kids in the house. I mean, for fuck’s sake?

She was slagging off children’s social services for taking her youngest off her. But there didn’t seem to be any self-reflection on why she kept putting herself and them in harm’s way.

When she was describing her relationship with the man who nearly killed her, there were lots of references to being out down the pub or out at clubs, how she got wasted on vodka one night, even though she ‘only drinks beer’, etc. Talked about going out clubbing with her cousin and leaving her children alone in the house under the care of this man who had already hit her and had a previous conviction for giving a man brain damage after assaulting him.

I mean, of course no one deserves to have their eyes gouged out of their head. But she didn’t seem to have any insight into how her own chaotic lifestyle impacted her children’s safety and led her to keep making really poor decisions.

I could completely understand why CSS eventually intervened. And I was amazed that she couldn’t see it.

At some point there is a need for some accountability for protecting your children. And if someone else has to step in and do that if you can’t or won’t, then that’s the right thing to do.

Why are some men like this (I know some women are but by far it’s men). Why is there so much hate and brutality in their hearts? My dad had a tough upbringing in poverty but he never hurt a fly, was never abusive, didn’t drink, never even swore. I just don’t understand how abusive men live with themselves without feeling deep shame. It’s shocking that it still goes on, no better than Victorian times.

Children should always be protected, but when one parent is an abuser and the other is worn out by life it makes things difficult.

For me it was someone kindly pointed out that my children would grow up to think it's normal and therfore be in relationships like that it was like a smack to the face I didn't think that far ahead. When I left the abuse sky rocketed he was trying to break into the house while I was at work and the kids was with a trusted adult in said house.

I eventually got a non molestation order for a year and moved 3 hours away but he's now sapping all the money I have through a lengthy court battle. He's been granted supervised visits for a while with it heading to unsupervised and I'm terrified.
He found our address through the court we moved again without telling anyone. I'm trying my hardest to keep the children safe but court wants me to hand them over what else can I do?

He's also with a new woman who has had her kids already taken and adopted out. When the kids have unsupervised visits I won't be there to protect them. I can just hope and pray.

There's no excuse as to why I stayed for as long as I did but zero confidence and been brainwashed really messes with your reality.

Yes, children are harmed by growing up in an abusive household, without a doubt. It fucks them up.

What's needed is real support for people to leave. Help leaving. A safe place to live. Money. Ongoing support to adjust.

This is where the system and society (including their own family and friends) fail women and their children repeatedly. No lessons are learned.

See it’s all very well saying that women find it hard to leave, that they have no agency, infantilising them to the extent that they can’t possibly be complicit in the abuse of their children.

But the thing is that these women have chosen to have these children. Often not once, but several times. And then they turn a blind eye to the abuse they’re subjecting them to.

If a woman is being abused then the man is absolutely at fault.

But if she fails to leave to protect her children then she absolutely is complicit.

People talk about victim blaming, but who is protecting the children here if the woman isn’t prepared to.

I don’t think posters know what “complicit” means the way they are bandying it around. Complicit means participating in or supporting abuse. It doesn’t apply to a victim of DV that is just trying to survive. They often do not even have control over contraception or pregnancy, so it’s laughable that all of a sudden they are being castigated for “choosing” to have children. The word should be “coerced” into having children imho.

I also think posters have no idea the power of coercive control over a person and it isn’t infantilising to point out the very real affect it has on a woman’s options and agency.

It varies greatly from family to family. You could argue that if the children haven't witnessed the DV, and the father has committed to stopping the abuse, engaged with services etc, then to break up the family may cause the children far more stress and trauma. They get taken from their home, often to a refuge, spend years in grotty temp accommodation, grow up without a father or with a step father and often step siblings. Some couples do manage to save their marriage after DV, usually with therapy and anger management courses etc. I believe if children are raised with their parents, they have a more stable upbringing than those from a broken home or blended family.

Obviously if the DV happens in front of kids, or the husband declines therapy and keeps on abusing his wife, the safest option is to leave. Sadly there's a lack of support for women in this situation, who often return to the husband due to the trauma bond or hold he has over her. Yet many women are so scared, confused and exhausted they don't have the confidence to leave and start over.

Abusers make their victim totally dependent on them in most cases. Financially, emotionally, and tend to cut them off from family and friends. When a woman has experienced this trauma and abuse, she often needs support to leave and support to live independently. Sometimes victims are so deoressed, anxious and worn down, they believe the abuser when he says they aren't capable of living alone. She's not actively enabling him, because he's brain washed her to accept the abuse.

Taking children away is generally a last resort eg if they are being neglected, exposed to DV, missing school, or in danger themselves.

Rather unfair to blame a woman who may have been coercively controlled and conditioned before the physical abuse started. These women need intensive help not blame.

My take on custody

i used to recognize the sound of my father’s car coming down the street. I would jump up from whatever I was doing, clean so there was no sign of me, and then disappear. I lived in a state of fight or flight mode every second he was in the house.

even if the abuser gets some custody, your children at least get a part of their lives where they get to relax. The adrenaline can stop coursing through their bodies. The neural pathways that tell their brain to always be in a state of anxiety can be balanced by healthy neural pathways from days of quiet and joy. .

It's more complex than "just leave".

My mother tried to leave several times and got pulled back in each time with the level of control increasing every time too. He would do things like drive her into the middle of nowhere and show her the spot where he'd bury her body and our bodies if she ever did leave along with the spot where he'd kill himself immediately after. One of the times she left and he had a contact day with us, he abducted us and gave her the choice of take him back or he'd kill us and then himself (ditto if she rang the police). Another time she left, he bided his time and made it seem like he was fine about it so that she would let her guard down, when she did he attempted to murder her and us. Sometimes it just the lesser of two evils to stay.

Children also lose their lives.

Or they are abused themselves rather than witnessing the Mum going through it.

Or the Dad gets full residency and then the child is alone with them all the time.

Or the Dad takes the child and buggers off never to be seen again.

It's really not as easy as "oh it's fine you, get a bit of a break from the abuse if your Mum leaves".

Exactly this.

From my experiences, it wasn't a period of peace because he wasn't in the house and an opportunity to relax. It was constant harassment, following me around, letters through the door, emails, phone calls, enlisting friends and relatives (who all thought he was a Nice Guy) to plead his case for him, constant requests for us to "hear his side" alongside rants about how ungrateful we were for not forgiving him and giving him a chance to redeem himself. Then there's the constant fear of reprisal and revenge, the fire brigade coming out to fit an anti-arson lock to the letterbox, the police say that they can't really do anything because he hasn't quite crossed the line yet and police involvement will escalate it.

It's all a balance of risk because you're never really free.

even if the abuser gets some custody, your children at least get a part of their lives where they get to relax.

Do tell me what part of his life did my son get to relax when our abuser got full custody of him? He has thankfully been back in my life for the past ten years (now in his 30s) and is NC with his father but he went through hell because I couldn’t protect him by staying. Saving myself and our other children was the worst thing I could have done for our eldest. I have to live with that guilt forever.

I know what you mean, OP but coming from a family where my df abused my mother relentlessly for decades, I intimately understand how complex it can be. If it was as easy as waking up one day and leaving, no one would be in abusive relationships. There's also a sense of victim blaming in the idea that the victim (almost always the woman) should be the one to be strong enough to leave. The men are to blame for any damage done to the children. In my experience the guilt the woman then lives with if she eventually breaks free can also ruin her, so even even free, she's still trapped. The men move on, seemingly unscathed yet it haunts the lives of the mum and children forever. I never judge anyone for "staying", as much as I hope no one ever does.

It's complex.

I "did the right thing" and left. But cafcass were certain my ex was a wonderful lovely father so now my children have to go and stay with him and I am not there. And he can still financially abuse me (us) as CMS has no teeth. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

People shouldnt be judged for staying while we have a family law system that prioritises the rights of fathers over the mental /physical safety of the children

Abusers also gradually alienate people from their families and friends , and drain their confidence and resources, so that what may seem "simple" from the outside is nothing like as simple from the inside