A woman appears in a disturbing video, visibly injured.
Another video involving her child being brutally assaulted circulates.
There is outrage, as there should be.
Then, almost inevitably, the questions turn towards her: Why did she stay?
Why didn't she leave earlier?
She is successful.
She is a public figure. She should have known better.
Notice what has happened.
How dare he hurt her? becomes: Why did she stay?
We stop interrogating the violence and start interrogating the victim's response to it.
This is one of the most persistent misunderstandings about domestic violence: that leaving is a simple act of will and staying is evidence of poor judgement.
It is neither.
Abuse is a complex reality.
By all means, encourage a woman experiencing abuse to leave.
Help her leave. Empower her to move towards safety.
The destination must be safety and freedom from violence.
But urging a woman towards that destination is very different from condemning her for not having reached it yet.
Ghana has a painful example of why.
In 2025, Harriet Amuzu had already left her matrimonial home after what she described as repeated abuse.
She had reportedly been separated from her husband for about five months when he contacted her to say that their young child was ill.
According to her account, reported by Graphic Online, she returned to the Ofankor home because of the child.
The child, she said, was well; the illness had allegedly been a pretext to bring her back.
What followed was a brutal assault, part of which was captured on video.
Police subsequently arrested her estranged husband, and the case went before the courts.
Harriet had done what we so casually tell abused women to do.
She left; she was still not safe
Her experience is not an argument for staying. It exposes the inadequacy of treating physical departure as though it automatically ends the danger.
Research supports that caution.
A landmark study of intimate-partner femicide in 11 American cities found that 44 per cent of women killed by an intimate partner had separated or were in the process of leaving.
Other research has documented continuing violence and harassment after separation.
These findings should not frighten women into staying.
They should caution the rest of us against giving simplistic advice.
What staying tells us
The judgement becomes harsher when the woman is educated, accomplished or financially successful.
We imagine that a woman who appears powerful in public must possess equal power in private.
But a successful career is no protection against coercion, threats or fear.
A woman may be considering dangers invisible to everyone else.
What has he threatened to do if she leaves?
Can she take the children safely?
Does she actually control the household money?
Does she have somewhere he cannot reach her?
Has she been isolated from the people who might help her?
She may be securing documents, saving money, finding accommodation or waiting for an opportunity to leave with her children.
None of this makes staying desirable.
Abuse should never be romanticised as endurance, sacrifice or commitment to marriage.
But neither should the time it takes a woman to leave be treated as evidence that she is unintelligent, weak or somehow responsible for what is being done to her.
For someone living under credible threats, deciding when and how to leave can itself be a calculation of danger.
That distinction matters.
The woman who has not spoken
It matters, too, because many women experiencing violence remain silent.
The 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey found that among women who had experienced physical or sexual violence, 51 per cent had never sought help and had never told anyone.
More than half.
Consider, then, what our reaction communicates to the woman who is still silent.
She learns something about the reception that may await her if she watches another woman finally speak and sees her asked: Why did you stay?
Why did you go back? Why didn't you leave the first time?
Victim-blaming does not merely punish the woman whose story we already know.
It can make disclosure harder for the woman whose story we do not know.
The better question is not: Why hasn't she left?
It is: What would make it possible for her to leave to live safely?
Leaving should not be moral test
Ghana has the Domestic Violence Act, 2007 (Act 732), the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) and other mechanisms intended to protect people experiencing domestic violence.
But protection is tested not by the existence of institutions on paper, but by what happens when someone needs them.
Can she and her children find somewhere safe to sleep?
Can threats be assessed quickly?
Can she obtain legal and psychosocial support?
Can she support herself while rebuilding her life?
If the person she fears knows where she lives or works, what protection follows?
These are not excuses for staying.
They are the practical conditions that determine whether leaving is merely advice or a realistic route to safety.
Families, friends and religious communities have a role too.
Reconciliation should never be pursued at the expense of safety.
Endurance should not be confused with virtue where violence is present.
And if a woman leaves and later returns, support should not disappear.
The door we keep open may be the door through which she eventually escapes.
We should stop treating departure as a moral test that an abused woman must pass before she qualifies for our compassion.
By all means, encourage her to leave. Help her prepare.
Protect her children.
Help her find somewhere safe to go and secure the money, documents, legal protection and professional support she may need.
But if she has not yet managed to leave, do not turn the violence committed against her into an indictment of her judgement.
And when she finally reaches for help, do not ask first: Why didn't you leave earlier?
Instead, as Oheneyere Gifty Anti recently urged in a Facebook post, ask: How are you?
How can we help you become safe?
The destination is not endurance. It is safety.
Our responsibility is to help make that destination possible without blaming the woman for how long it takes her to get there. Leaving is not always safe.
Staying is not always foolish!
The writer is the Founder and Executive Director, Girls Excellence Movement, GEM.
