Abusive relationship. Victim being called a liar. Your thoughts please?

[theworldaccordingtome]

Hi All
I am posting on behalf of a friend. They have recently left an emotionally, sexually and psychologically abusive marriage. The marriage had been that way for a number of years culminating in the abusive party emotionally bullying the other into having unprotected sex to fulfil their desire to have a child. A child was conceived as a result of this. There has been alleged infidelity so a paternity test was needed to confirm the Father of the child.
It took my friend a long time to come to terms with the fact that they were a victim of such horrific abuse and as a result of this agreed to the abusive party being the petitioner in the divorce and attended mediation. They have since begun treatment to deal with the impact of the abuse on their mental health.
Child Maintenance and contact are in the process of being resolved, obviously my friend strongly desires this to happen without contact between Father and Mother. However, the abusive party's solicitor is stating that her client denies any abuse and the fact that my friend attended mediation will be used as evidence that the abuse did not happen.
Furthermore, other mutual friends of the parties are refusing to believe that the abuse occurred and backing the view that my friend is lying.

So my question is this, how can I best support my friend? Do you have any advice for what they should do next? (obviously they are getting qualified legal advice, but I meant more on the emotional side of things).

Thanks for listening.

For clarification, is your friend the husband?

What a kind friend you are.

Emotional abuse is insidious and hard to prove; I would concentrate on understanding the effects (lots of resources online, plus Lundy 'why does he do that?').

I wouldn't waste precious energy trying to prove anything to anyone. Those who support your friend will believe him/her and those who don't aren't worth the effort that should be concentrated on helping your friend heal and move on.

Don't get caught up in proving things and let the legal people deal with that side. You can only listen and 'hold space' as they say - give them somewhere to unload and process.

silverbangles66 Thank you. Especially for the info about resources.
They're really struggling with the fact that people don't believe that they were bullied into the sex, no one held a knife to their throat and they did the deed. But to me, that's not true consent. Not if you were emotionally bullied into it. I want to give them someone to talk to and tell them their life will get better.

Minus2seventy3 I didn't really want to reveal that yet as it might colour the advice given.

There has been a recent case where a man was inprisoned for forcing sex without contraception..

It's par for the course for abusers to deny that they were ever abusive. That's not a battle anyone can win.

However, you are both doing all the right things already: your friend, by getting legal advice, and briefing a legal team who will fight his corner, and you, by being a kind and caring friend who is there to listen and provide emotional support.

Keep doing just that.

Clearly the Ops friend is male, as they / he asked for a paternity test because of alleged infidelity

If the man had been unfaithful, the women wouldnt need a paternity test to know the identity of her childs father

Most women who have sex they don't want in a relationship are not Forced to with a knife at their throat. So I'm guessing it's similar for men

OP , why don't you support your freind to go for couselling? And otherwise just be there for him and listen . Just be careful you don't get too emotionally involved , don't give more of yourself than you can afford. And be open with your own partner ( if you have one ) about what is happening and check he / she is ok with it .

It's fairly obvious from the opening post that the friend is an abusive man trying to claim that he is the victim and therefore duck out of paying child support.

theworld, I'm guessing your friend is male. If so, please tell him to look for a website called Shrink4Men, which was set up by a psychologist for male victims of all kinds of domestic/emotional abuse. Reading the stories of other men on there may give him courage.

SolidGoldBrass, how is it 'obvious'? Christ. Or are you the friend's 'D'P?

Ok so it is more obvious than I expected that my friend is the husband in this scenario.

She is alleging to anyone who will listen that he left because she got pregnant and he is trying to escape responsibility. She also made false (I believe) accusations of cheating to cover up her own infidelity.
Honestly, she is a nasty piece of work.
I do wonder if his solicitor will advise contacting the police, as surely if he had done this to her we would be calling it "rape"?

Thank you everyone who has said I am doing the right thing. Do let me know if there is anything else you think of that I should be doing/am doing wrong.

SGB either you are posting that tongue in cheek or you should be ashamed of yourself.

theworld, I know someone so like this woman, it makes me think we know the same person.

Your friend NEEDS to come forward and be honest about the abuse he's experienced. The double standards regarding DV need to stop. Women are just as capable of abuse as men. It's a man's rotten bad luck that they're rarely taken seriously when THEY are the victim.

Why are you wondering what his solicitors will suggest?

Just be a friend, which means listening and providing emotional support.

Let the legal team do their work, and let your friend make any choices about what authorities he chooses to involve in this. Those things are not your responsibility.

SolidGoldBrass I can 100% guarantee that my friend is not trying to duck out of paying child support.
This is exactly the kind of victim blaming and abuse he has come up against. It makes me deeply sad that victim blaming like this still goes on.

Or she's right... after all we're only getting the story second-hand here. Obviously some women do emotionally abuse men, I don't think anyone would deny that happens.

The important thing, though, as the court will see it, is that there is a child in this case and it will need support.

I asked for clarification because I believe there remains a stigma about male victims of abuse - either a reluctance on the part of the victim to admit it is abuse (pride, fear that friends will tell them to perhaps "man-up", etc), or a reluctance from those outside to believe that the man can be the victim of abuse (aptly demonstrated by one response upthread...).
Another thread on this board today (since deleted) had a response pointing to "ManKind" - a charity for male victims of abuse. Perhaps, OP, there'll be something constructive on there?
I'm afraid I have little affixed to offer, other than support your friend - he's going to need it.

GoatsDoRoam I wonder because I wonder about the legal position and what I see as the double standards of it all.
Of course it is his decision who he involves. I will support him whatever he decides about this.

Oh well, let's see. The man is alleging that the woman both forced him into impregnating her and got pregnant by someone else. He 'agreed' to let her divorce him on the grounds of his behaviour, attended mediation and is now insisting that she's the mad, abusive, unfaithful slut and it was All Her Fault.

Abusive men often try to portray their victims as the 'real' villains. However, it's up to a court to decide what's actually going on.

How exactly does a woman force a man to get and sustain an erection and ejaculate inside her on a number of occasions?

Women forever post on these boards about being in emotional abusive relationships, and sometimes it takes fellow posters to make them actually realise or recognise the abuse - and they have been victims for years, coerced by various bullying techniques into doing things which ordinarily they wouldn't want to.
OP has said their friend has long been a victim of sustained bullying and abuse. Is it so inconceivable, that when subject to such behaviours, a man cannot be in a position to do things they wouldn't have were they not being abused?
Why the reluctance to take the OP at face value?

He should contact Respect which is a domestic violence agency for men. respect.uk.net/work/male-victims-of-domestic-violence/mens-advice-line/

They should be able to point him towards support services and advise him on the best course of action.

Normally, the OP in those situations gives examples of the sort of behaviour she's been experiencing and posters say that it's abusive.

We have had no examples of the abuse from the OP in this thread. Just second hand information of allegations that no one except the OP believes. And I'm afraid many men badmouth their former partner to their new one.

OddFodd No where in the OP do I say that I am the man's new partner. That is not the case.
Furthermore, the main point of the OP was to ask how best to support my friend. I know the behaviours are abusive. I have witnessed it. I don't need to ask you whether there is abuse. Perhaps that explains the difference?

How exactly does a woman force a man to get and sustain an erection and ejaculate inside her on a number of occasions?

OddFodd what a disgusting and ignorant thing to say, and exactly the kind of attitude that keeps male rape victims from coming forward.

Next you'll be telling us "She can't have been raped if she didn't need hospital treatment afterwards"