It's all so easy for judges to see after there's been a murder. But what if she had succeeded in fleeing? What would she have been left with apart from the clothes she stood up in? How would the matter have ended up if she had got away and had to go through divorce from this man? She with few resources with which to hire a lawyer to secure her rights, and he a businessman with a family behind him. Not to mention the after effects of years and years of being told you are worthless, which can make you very meek and timid and not inclined to push the abuser in any way.
Would any divorce court judge have believed her about the abuse, and most importantly, would any divorce court judge have taken the constant monitoring (it could have been passed off as a measure taken to prevent burglary after all) and the insane jealousy (proof of love or evidence that there are always two sides to domestic violence in many people's eyes) seriously if the matter of child custody and visitation had come into play in divorce proceedings?
If she had had children with this man, he would have had a very unquestioned right to have a relationship with those children no matter what he had done to her. It is really hard to establish that a man is unfit to be a father even after years of abuse (especially if that abuse has been emotional, psychological, sexual, financial, and 'only' the odd incident of physical violence and that is only believed if it was reported). The end result is a woman is tied to an abuser through the children.
So while I applaud the detectives for wearing their ribbons, and while I applaud the idea of the ribbons, there is a serious amount of blindness to the true nature of domestic abuse that must be overcome, and a reluctance to infringe on the rights of fathers that is extremely frustrating. Even the judge said it was inexplicable why the victim here had stayed. There is a huge need for education here.