One of my points, though, is that we may not know. There are so many people out there who do not ever call law enforcement or hire a lawyer. Their situations are not known. There are so many women who hide abuse, sometimes lifelong. They have friends, the friends try to help - but keep silent, because the situation is almost always "in repair" and the abuser is almost always "not going to do it again." The abuser is often successful for a year or even two.
But with many abusers, there are major relapses and the stunned and newly trusting partner has little to fall back on. It's the long haul that's so hard, IOW.
I bet if we knew the truth about Scott Peterson's relationship to his wife, there'd be a couple of notebooks worth of emotionally difficult details. Many women do hide it so well.
Most evidence of abuse (and a lot of evidence of rape) never becomes evidence, in the sense that no one shows up in court or the charges are negotiated downward. But we do have diaries, journals, SM, academic studies that show women are in fact abused while still acting as if everything is fine. Perhaps Coles and Coles "Women of Crisis" books were the first to show this, but there are certainly many works - often autobiographical or thinly disguised autobiographical fiction that show us all how hard it is to know, from the outside, who is abused. I no longer make assumptions. I will say that my current friends and family try to be frank and open with one another, but still - surprising things can happen.
