I agree with your comments about the reasons why people fail to leave abusive situations. In many ways, a long-term abusive situation (especially the familial kind) is much like torture in its effects. Captives, POWs, and battered children and women have a lot of the same psychological scars. One of torture's key effects is the disruption of normal cognitive processes. If you live under these kinds of conditions long enough, you can start losing all sense of personal boundaries. You can't tell friend from foe. You can't make sense of basic human emotions like fear and safety, love and hate, trust and distrust. Your personality and identity get destroyed - not just damaged, but pretty much shattered from the foundation up. You become totally objectified, so you lose the sense of identity you once had. You lost all sense of individuation. All the sense of self, self-determination, individuality you once had get transfered to the perpetrator. And poof - Stockholm syndrome, anyone? This, in many ways, explains why women and children alike back away from litigation, go back to their abusers, over and over and over again. It's an issue close to my heart. The more people like Tom and others speak out, the more victims will come forward, the more people will be able to prevent their return to abusive conditions, the more there is hope for the next generation.