Telling battered women 'if you don't like it, JUST leave'

Again you are proving you know NOTHING.

She made the money, Mickey TOOK it all, how hard is that to figure out? that's you getting your pay for the week and your ex TAKES it and leaves the house with his drinking buddies and doesn't come home until the next morning when it's all gone. What're YOU going to do? You going to go after a dozen drunks and say 'please give me the money back'?

Also, if a woman has to just LEAVE, LEAVE does not mean go into hiding, HIDING means go into hiding where nobody can find her LEAVE means just LEAVE. Learn the difference in words before declaring what somebody should do, 'oh but that doesn't mean that, that means to do this instead'. You say JUST leave, then that means she doesn't have to drop off the face of the earth, but NOW you're saying if you don't want your ex to stalk you, JUST hide, JUST do everything to prove he still has all the control and can do whatever he wants.

And yes, in the 70s going to a crazy hospital DID mean you're crazy, just like back then a battered wife was only being beaten because she wasn't working hard enough to please her husband, just like back then men could rape their wives and there were no laws against it, go back 40 years and you'll find it was a different world entirely. No shelters, no safe houses, very few options for women in those positions because until the world saw this woman who set her husband on fire, nobody really cared what was going on behind closed doors, that was THAT person's problem only.

And here is another piece of food for thought. You say 'JUST leave', well unless YOU go in with her and escort her out holding a shotgun on the husband saying 'I'll blow your brains out if you take one step towards her', WHAT is going to stop the husband from doing exactly what Mickey did and moving into her new home that she buys AFTER her divorce and AFTER getting a restraining order on him? He knew the cops would never do anything with him, what're you going to do, call the cops and tell them 'do your job for once?' Think they'll listen to you? Have you EVER called the cops because your life was in danger and had them call you back in 10 minutes saying 'do you STILL need us?' Or have you ever called the cops because somebody was threatening to kill you and they say 'well it's YOUR fault for not being nice to them, next time don't make them angry'? When you do, then you can talk about options and easy.

Oh and a final thought, next time you want to talk about JUST, JUST do this, JUST do that, you think telling a person who is handcuffed and tied up and thrown into the river 'if you don't want to drown, JUST swim' would do any good? I guess if they drown they JUST didn't try hard enough, eh? Or maybe they were just 'comfortable' with the arrangement, hm?

Yeah, sure. Francine could just up and leave (from a house that she owned at that) after Mickey threatened to kill her if she tried. Domestic-violence counselors say that a woman is most at risk when she does try to leave, because abusers snap when they realize they no longer have control over their punching bags.

There were no hotlines and no shelters to help her. She could count on no help from her family or Mickey's, since for them domestic violence was the norm. She had neither the money nor the wiles to plot her own escape, much less an escape with children in tow.

It's been many years since I saw this movie, so I can't remember if it's as detailed as the book about the many ways she tried to force Mickey out of her home. No one helped her, not even the DA's office.

In any case, why was the onus on her to leave? I'm reminded of a time when Golda Meir was prime minister of Israel and a serial rapist was terrorizing Tel Aviv. When members of her cabinet recommended that she impose a curfew on Israeli women for their own safety, Golda said that since a man was committing the rapes, it would make more sense to impose a curfew on men.