It's interesting. About 2 years ago I left an abusive marriage. I'm not perfect, but I'm a basically honest and decent and kind person, and I did my best to make the marriage work despite being mistreated. After I finally left, my ex-husband launched a campaign of stalking, harassment, menacing, threats and property destruction against me. I successfully petitioned for a Civil Protection Order, which he violated within 24 hours by sending me threats, at which point they gave me a Criminal Protection Order. He was charged with 5 counts of various crimes against me, all with DV enhancers. During this time, my behavior was impeccable. I did not so much as say an angry word to defend myself. People said I had the "restraint of a saint" but in truth I was just terrified and exhausted. We had been married for a long time and friends before that, so we had lots of mutual friends and family. Occasionally one of these people would reach out to my former mother-in-law and brother-in-law and beg them to step in and try to convince my ex to stop his reign of terror against me, if not my sake for our kids. Every single time, instead of listening to these mutual friends and maybe realizing their family member's criminal behavior was a problem, they would say the EXACT SAME THING as CW's mom: "Well, you just don't know the whole story. There are things you don't know. She's not perfect either." There was no defense for my ex's criminal behavior, and they weren't willing to hold him (or themselves) accountable, and I hadn't done anything to "deserve" that level or retaliation, so all they had was vague insinuations that there were horrible things about me that people just didn't know. It's amazing to me how alike these generationally abusive families are.