My best friend engages in domestic abuse. What do I do now?

Friendship be damned. Call the police. His wife and kids don’t deserve this.

I am so sorry for your pain in this situation. You probably need to lose him as a friend to do the right thing and report it. Think how you will feel if he injures his wife or kids even more than he already is.

You heard her scream and didn’t call the police? You are telling your friend that he can do anything and you will stand by him.

Oh my gosh, what an awful situation! I’m so sorry for you and your friend’s family. First up: Make sure his family is safe. If that means calling the cops, do it. You must. Be prepared to lose the friendship, but do what you need to do.

Does he realize he’s wrong? Does he hate that he’s doing this? If so, urge him to get therapy and/or anger management training. He may be open to maintaining the friendship if he at least knows he’s in the wrong.

“If it was anyone else, I would have called the police in a heartbeat. If I had done so that night, he would never have forgiven me.”

His forgiveness of you is more important than protecting a woman and her children from being terrorized and beaten? Why is this even a question in your mind? You should have called the police immediately. What are you supposed to do now, wait until he hits her again and then call them? Or creep away and hope it all works out?

It sounds like you are in some kind of crazy denial. This man is not going to decide to be nice. He will likely kill her if someone doesn’t intervene. No one else is going to step up and do it for you.

1. You seriously told her she should “stop provoking him”??????

2. You haven’t already called the cops on him???????

3. What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Thinking??????

And just FYI, watching him abuse his wife and neglecting to report him makes you an accessory.

This makes me sick to my stomach.

“Now, I wonder if I want to be friends with someone who beats his wife.”

Are you nuts?

How can you justify your behavior, never mine his. A screaming woman, beaten children?

What happens if when he severely injures or kills them?

I realize the bind that you find yourself in, but it’s time for you to face facts.

The friend you thought you knew for twenty-odd years is not who you think he is. You have to face and realize this fact so that you can start to take the correct action here. The correct action is to call the police.

You can’t be a go-between or a mediator, because you’re still stuck in the past of “best friend” and “twenty-odd years”. You think that “it’s her fault for provoking him” and that he’s just “old school”. That makes you, despite your nominal good intentions, a flack for him, an enabler, and not a trustworthy protector, again despite your stated hopes, to his family. (Taking her to your home would have subjected the kids to his full fury, and might have gotten her killed upon her return. It might have gotten you killed, too. That’s why she went back into the house with him. She’s been living with this herself for who-knows-how-many years. She’s sacrificing herself – again – in order to stay between him and the kids, and in order not to provoke him into a murderous state he may never have reached before.)

In addition to the foregoing, the police these days are trained to understand how dangerous these domestic situations can be. You still don’t have a clue. That’s not such a bad thing, that you haven’t been exposed to this. Don’t beat yourself up over your ignorance.

You’re also still in shock somewhat that your observation was lacking, or your decision not to observe was selective. Call the police and have them do their jobs.

@drdoombot You are very brave to discuss such a difficult situation for you.

For me, this would not be so difficult. I would have called the police on anyone. They all deserve better, even your friend. He deserves to treat his family, his best friend and himself better.

He didn’t treat you like a very good friend at his house.

There is good advice and a lot of judgement above. Please listen. And then google Ariel Castro and read all the interviews of people who “could never imagine” that he would hold three girls/women captive… even though he had held his former wife and children captive and abused/terrorized them.

I agree with @CWOTUS. Please stop being therapist/mediator. Leave that to the professionals. Your friend and his family need help. You might need help too.

Best wishes for a sad, sad situation.

I feel for you but your friend already made the decision about what you should do for you. He did that as soon as he physically abused his children and wife. Now it’s time for you to act and take things out of his hands and call the police.

As much as you have seen him as a friend, his behaviour here isn’t that of a friend or a father or husband. He’s an abusive man and you can’t help him. You can help his family.

I think this is far beyond anything that we can help with—please call in the professionals. Here is a domestic violence help line: http://www.thehotline.org/

^^^ It’s all been said. Take heed. You are willing to look away from serious abuse because YOU are afraid of losing this friend? You need to man up, and fast bud.

Clinging to a friend with these kind of issues speaks volumes about your own mental health.
I dumped a female friend a few years ago who was a gold digging bitch and actually said one day when her husband was sick in bed, that ” B….. better get his ass out of bed and go to work because they needed the money.”
I was floored! Yeah, SHE needed HIS money to keep gas in her Hummer and her mega bucks horses stabled at the Horsey Hilton.

Bah….go away evil woman.

Wow. That’s an awful story.
You need to do the right thing and call the police. You also need to lose him as a friend.
Having been in an abusive situation myself, I can say with quite a bit of certainty that you trying to step in and protect his wife and children probably made it worse for them. Abusers do not think rationally and there’s a good chance that he viewed that as some kind of betrayal on your part, her part, or both. My ex’s mom tried to step in and help me once, for that she got a nearly broken hand because he slammed it in a door. Anytime his brother tried to intervene I got accused of having sex with him.
There isn’t going to be a good outcome for your friends wife or children if you don’t get the police involved. They can protect them, you can’t. I’m not saying it’s not honorable that you’ve tried, because it is, it’s just not a situation that you can improve.
I would hate for somebody to leave that house in a body bag because you didn’t want to lose your friend. Women and children are fragile, it only takes one blow to the wrong part of the body and it’s all over.
Think about it this way, what if it were your mom or your sister or your daughter that were being abused. What if somebody knew what was happening and didn’t do anything about it because that person was afraid to lose a friend? How would you feel?

Abusers are manipulators of the highest order. That’s how they keep people around them after events such as you recounted above. The cycle is: abuse, charm, abuse, charm and on and on.

If you’ve known about this behaviour for a while then you should do a LOT of soul searching as to why you didn’t call the cops or CPS a LONG time ago. Do you have any idea of what kind of long term emotional damage he is doing to everyone in that house?

Personally, I’d rather be alone than have this guy as my friend. That you put up with this screams to me that you should get some therapy and find out why.

Call the police, call child welfare and give a DETAILED statement as to what you saw. It is the moral and right action to take.

THEN go and get new friends.

And just so you know: I had a situation where I had to call CPS on my SISTER understanding that I was probably saying sayonara, adious, goodbye to my relationship with MY SISTER.

But it was the RIGHT thing to do.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with the following: I’m not making excuses for my friend and I’m not justifying his behavior.

Despite what I described above, he is a good person. He genuinely cares about the well-being of others (myself and his family first and foremost). I’ve never met another husband who was so dedicated to spending time with his wife, including her in all of his activities, making a constant effort to take her out on dates, arranging vacations without the kids and generally trying to keep her happy. He loves his kids and spends more time with them than many other fathers I’ve watched from afar.

Now that I’ve had more time to think about it, I believe his main issues are being impatient and unable to control his anger. He gets frustrated and doesn’t know how to deal with this frustration, and lashes out at those close to him (something I’ve been guilty of, something many people have succumbed to). Being a traditional, “old-school” type of guy, he doesn’t believe in therapy or that it can help him. I’m from the totally opposite school, because therapy has drastically improved my life and my issues with anxiety and depression. Convincing him of the importance of learning to deal with these issues is the hardest part.

He is not totally unaware of his issues. In recent years, he’s become a heavy marijuana user because it calmed his rage and made him, as he called himself, “a better father and husband.” He found that when he smoked, he was more patient, thoughtful and less stressed when interacting with his family. The flip side is that he became acutely aware of his difficulties in interacting with them when he wasn’t high. This tells me that he has an awareness of the issue; he simply took the wrong route in trying to deal with it.

Although part of me is disgusted with this behavior, I have to ask myself: what kind of friend am I? The kind who immediately drops a friend because of his behavior, or one that sticks by him and tries his hardest to get him the help he needs, for his own sake and the sake of his family? If he categorically refuses to do anything about his behavior, then yes, the former option is justified. But if he genuinely wants to fix his behavior and relationship with his family?

He and I haven’t spoken for a few days. I do believe he took advantage of our friendship by putting me in that difficult situation and not backing down. I’m still mad at him about that. But, knowing him, he’s probably mad at me and believes that I betrayed him. I don’t know when or how we will get into contact again. When (or if) it happens, I think the two main points I will have to say to him are:

1. That if I hear about or witness any more abuse, I’m calling the cops (this might be enough for him to stop the conversation and end the friendship.)
2. That he must start seeing a therapist or family counselor immediately and I won’t let up until he goes.

At this point, it’s hard to predict when we’ll talk and how he’ll receive it. I’m going to give him and me a few more days to cool off before deciding if I’ll contact him first.

Why are you making excuses for this guy?!

??!?!?!?!?!?!?!

What @nikipedia said.

He’s neither a good husband nor a good father. He’s a bad man.
There is no way to justify his behavior. He’s a narcissist and the worst kind of abuser.
Even with therapy he probably won’t change. He most likely thinks that he’s doing nothing wrong.
This man sounds like my ex, right down to the bullshit excuse about marijuana keeping him calm. I don’t buy that for a minute. True my ex was a bigger monster when he wasn’t high, but he was still evil to the core even when he was high.
You should read up on narcissism. I’ll bet he fits perfectly with the descriptions given.

<deep breath> DUDE: The reason this guy beat his wife in front of you is because you justify his behaviours. He knows you have his back. And that is fucked up. You are, at best, a bystander at worse complicit.

From what I’ve read so far I don’t think you are going to change one damn thing and that family is going to keep get the shit kicked out them.

NEWSFLASH: ANYONE who beats up people is NOT a nice decent person.

” I’ve never met another husband who was so dedicated to spending time with his wife, including her in all of his activities, making a constant effort to take her out on dates, arranging vacations without the kids and generally trying to keep her happy. He loves his kids and spends more time with them than many other fathers I’ve watched from afar.”

Let’s look at this another way… perhaps he is so involved and always around because it’s his way of watching everything they do and being controlling. That’s actually typical behavior for some abusers. Some abusers don’t want their victims out of their sigh.

You need to step up and do the right thing for this woman and her children. That means you need to speak up about what you saw and not waiting for it to happen again. Next time, she/they could be dead.

Every abuser will tell people they are sorry and they will get help and they even may…for a while. But most just keep on abusing if, and until, the authorities get involved.

From your own post: he has been doing this for YEARS! Why would he change anything now? Why have your all-powerful discussions with him in past been so ineffectual?

All the lovey dovey you see is the honeymoon phase of abuse when they feel guilty about what they did and try to make up for it…only to slip back into the violence. Rinse and repeat ad nauseum.

Jesus…okay….I left an abusive marriage 10 years ago, to a raging narcissist, and to this day my ex hates me. Why? Because ALL abusers blame their victims. He hates me because I divorced his lying, cheating, mentally, emotionally and occasionally physically abusive ass!
This B.S. song and dance about him being so involved with his wife smacks of CONTROL, not love and devotion.

Dude..EDUCATE yourself about the nature of abusive people.
Abusers are very adept about presenting a FALSE front to outsiders, friends and family.
Nobody believed me when I started talking about what was/had really gone on behind closed doors in my marriage.
They also are great at making their victims look like the crazy ones.

My ex is the classic snake in a suit, high end upper management job, big bucks, “charming” facade and everyone thought he was such a nice guy! Classic set up, wake up and smell the bullshit behind the roses dude! This is the nature of the narcissistic sociopathic beast.

The Collective has spoken. It’s up to you to do the right thing. You know what that is as well as we do.
Could you live with yourself if something happened to his wife or children? Knowing full well that you may have been able to stop it??

We have an abuser in our extended family. He’s been cut out of most of our lives but it floors me how some members of my extended family still miss him and talk about what a great guy he is. Extreme and effective sociopath.

I repeat: a nice, good family man DOES NOT BEAT HIS FAMILY.

@drdoombot Shame on you.

Good Guy (equality wheel)

Abusive Guy (power and control wheel)

Your friend may have many good qualities, but he is not a “good guy”. He is abusive. He (and his family) needs help. And as long as you defend him, you need help as well. This is not normal or acceptable behavior… not your friend, not his wife and not you.

Please go back to your therapist and talk this through.

I wish you all the best.

I seriously hope you’re not about to post another “But he’s a good guy deep down and maybe if I just talk to him he’ll stop” comment.

Lots of judgment and harsh criticism here, directed at me. My reluctance to act is partially my history with him and partially the community we are both from, which does not tolerate people getting involved in the internal affairs of someone else’s family.

I’m not justifying my friend’s behavior. He is 100%, inexcusably wrong and at fault. But when I was at my worst, at my lowest, he helped me get back on my feet. Shouldn’t I try to do the same for him? I’m not saying I’m going to stand by him no matter what; I’m saying that I should give him a chance to work on his issues and redeem himself. If he refuses or simply can’t do it, then I’ll cut my ties and do what I can to help his family.

If a person commits an atrocious act, is it a total lost cause? Is there no hope for redemption? Does one reprehensible act erase every other good and selfless act that a person has committed?

I just don’t see the world as being so black and white. I used to beat on my little brothers when I was younger, with too much force at times. I’m sick to my stomach and wracked with guilt about it all the time; I make every attempt to make up for it by being the most helpful and best older brother I can be right now. But reading the replies in this thread, it seems I am a monster who can never hope to change and deserve nothing but punishment and pain for the mistakes I made half a lifetime ago.

On a side note, I explained the situation in detail to my other really good friend, a former CPS (called ACS in NY) agent. His job was to visit families with domestic abuse issues and help resolve them. His opinion on the matter is to direct my friend to a counselor and/or therapist, rather than call the police, and make a judgment call based on his subsequent actions after that.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

We’ve led the horse to water, if he wishes to continue through the desert in his dehydrated state, well….we’ve been through the desert on a horse named @drdoombot . lol
Nobody is berating anyone….just trying to talk some sense into your stubborn little donkey brain.

@drdoombot While you have certainly gotten some pointed comments, I find it interesting that you minimize your friend’s abusive behavior and maximize the criticisms here.

But reading the replies in this thread, it seems I am a monster who can never hope to change and deserve nothing but punishment and pain for the mistakes I made half a lifetime ago.

We are strangers on the internet expressing concern for you, your friend, his wife and their children. Please put it in perspective. No one is wishing you punishment that I read, anyway.

We all hope for change. More importantly than change, however, is safety.

The reason opinions are so impassioned is that we are all powerless in what we see as a very dangerous situation. You, @drdoombot, have the power to affect change and instead you seem to be fairly busy minimizing the situation which in turn alarms us all.

@drdoombot: Your past and present behavior towards your younger brothers is a red herring in this discussion.

But reading the replies in this thread, it seems I am a monster who can never hope to change and deserve nothing but punishment and pain for the mistakes I made half a lifetime ago.

That is melodramatic and completely unrelated to your issue with your sadistic and frightening wife-beating and children-terrifying friend.

You asked, “What can I do now? ” We, 32 separate and unrelated people, responded essentially with one voice.

Tick, tick, tick, tick…BOOM!!!
This cowardly bastard is no friend, hitting his kids & his wife immediately qualifies him as shit on your shoe which needs to be wiped off with due haste.
Personally, i’d tear the cunt’s head off & shit down the hole in his neck & then alert the relevant authorities.

Seriously, man, call the cops TODAY. I couldn’t sleep last night because of this. We are all honestly concerned for this woman’s safety. DO SOMETHING NOW, before it’s too late.

@drdoombot you are living in fairyland and falling for this man’s bullshit. He genuinely cares about the well-being of others (myself and his family first and foremost). I’ve never met another husband who was so dedicated to spending time with his wife, including her in all of his activities, making a constant effort to take her out on dates, arranging vacations without the kids and generally trying to keep her happy. That’s because he beats her up at other times. This is the ‘charm’ tranquilsea mentioned. Not only does it keep his wife totally confused. Beat her today, love her tomorrow and he’ll never do it again. It keeps you confused too. You saw him do something that seemed abusive, but then he took her out to that special place she always wanted to go.

I used to work with this woman and her husband would call in to see her at work and he was so, so attentive. We all thought he was just amazing! He would send her big bunches of flowers when our husbands would be lucky to remember our birthdays! Then she came in with a black eye and told us he had gone after her with a shotgun and she had to leave. She told us it had been going on for years.

Don’t buy his bullshit.

No, he is not a good man. And if you continue to make excuses for him and do nothing, then you are not a good man,either.

I’m not justifying my friend’s behavior. He is 100%, inexcusably wrong and at fault. But when I was at my worst, at my lowest, he helped me get back on my feet. Shouldn’t I try to do the same for him? I’m not saying I’m going to stand by him no matter what; I’m saying that I should give him a chance to work on his issues and redeem himself. If he refuses or simply can’t do it, then I’ll cut my ties and do what I can to help his family.

@drdoombot, I don’t see you trying to justify his behavior. You know what he is doing is wrong. What I do see is that by not involving the authorities when you witnessed the abuse, you are tacitly approving his behavior. Now he can even justify it to himself by thinking “well it can’t be that bad, maybe even normal squabbling, if drdoombot didn’t call the authorities.”

This is not something you can let go. Maybe he does need to be given the chance to learn to control his anger. Maybe he does need to learn the true way to be a good man and dedicated husband. But the reality is that unless you speak up (because it is clear his wife will not – probably because she is terrified for her own safety and the safety of her kids), he will never get the chance you think he deserves. An even more harsh reality is that unless someone is brave enough to advocate for his victims, there is a very real chance that rather than rehabilitation he will receive a prison term for murder. Please contact someone on behalf of this woman and these children. He may deserve a chance to learn to do better, but these victims do not deserve his abuse.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke

” I’m saying that I should give him a chance to work on his issues and redeem himself.”

You did that already. As you mentioned in your question:

“When he told me he hit his wife a few years ago, I lectured him incessantly on how wrong it was to do so. He listened carefully and seemed genuinely thoughtful about it. I believed I had made an impact on him.”

and

“Some time later, when he told me that he smacked his wife for one reason or another, I guess it felt too far removed for me to do anything about it.”

He’s already had 2 strikes against him (just for his wife) prior to this incident that occurred over dinner.

I completely understand your desire to help your friend without jamming him up and if this was the first time it ever happened, I could see talking to him and recommending counseling. The fact remains though, that you’ve tried talking to him, you’ve tried letting it go, and it still continues. It’s time to take the next step.

How would you feel if this woman was your mother/sister/daughter? What if these children were your nieces/nephews? Would your thoughts change if the woman and children meant more to you than just being the wife/children of your friend?

I completely understand wanting to stand by your friend and help him with his issues. Yes, he needs help. Yes, he needs support in overcoming these issues. No, he is probably not 100% evil. This, however, is completely separate from the immediate concern, which is the safety of his family. That must come first. Call the cops now.

In the long run, this will also be the best thing you can do for your friend, too, you know. He’s not able to stop on his own, even if he wants to: HE CAN’T. He will end up losing his family, either because they leave him or because he kills one of them. Getting him arrested puts him in a position to get the help he needs.

As a true friend, you must be willing to lose his friendship in order to do the right thing for everyone involved.

@drdoombot Abusers have been known to be kind one moment and abusive the next. He is not going to stop and one day he may actually kill his family. He sounds very unstable. He has been doing this for years and by now he probably doesn’t really see it as his problem but rather his family is to blame for what they make him do. Abusers like to put two faces on. The one for the public (who he knows will not see things as he does), so he takes them out and shows them favor. Yes, in their mind they love their family but sometimes they aren’t deserving of all the good things he gives them. Least that is what probably goes on in his mind.

Then there is his real face. The horrible monster face his family sees and they never know when it will show. So they try their best to act happy and not anger the beast within. They walk on eggshells everyday. After so many years of abuse, his wife is probably to terrified to leave because he has probably threaten to kill her, and her self esteem is non existent. She probably fears most for the children.

I would think she too is your friend. They invite you over for dinner and you ate a meal she prepared. Don’t look at it as betraying your friend. By turning him in you will probably be saving her life and that of the children. You will also be saving his life. It can be that he needs to be medicated. That is what he is doing with the marijuana. He is self medicating because he knows he has no control. But in his good moments he probably is fooling himself into believing he is ok. He needs help and turning him over to the police will be the first step to his recovering. He may not appreciate it at first but with the right treatment and diagnosis maybe he can have the family he really wants to have by being mentally healthy.

The last I read was the last of @drdoombat’s response. I want to explore the situation where now @drdoombat is also a victim.

He has been saved, he owes his friend, and he is conditioned to defend him. So why doesn’t he call CPS or the cops, same reason the wife and kids don’t.

He even got involved and yelled and hit by his rageaholic friend. Now he is being ignored and feels compelled to go against his moral values and feels torn to protect his friend. He also is isolated. His only real friend…

Next comes the make up and honey moon stage then the return to violence. Yup, he is also now a victim. IMO anyway it is a possibility.

So dr doom it is up to you. The nex act is you, and no one will come and save you. The longer you play this the harder it will get.

Explore life and get involved in something maybe you can make new friends.

I just wanted to add this is extremely personal to me. I had a father just like you described.

My father every gift whether asked for or appreciated was a tool. A way owning us. And he would try to do it others too.

By the time I was 7 I had learned how not to cry I thought hope was vile a curse. I never wanted to feel emotion again. I thought emotion was weakness.

I visuallized walls going up around me every time one cracked I would repair it and put up another one. I had no friends no heroes no adults I respected. My biggest dream was that my parents would seperate. Or that I would escape my prison. I never trusted one person until I was 19 when that person failed me I went through a crisis so large.

As adults saw and ignored the truth of my situation I was paranoid and had very dim view of humanity.

My biggest skill was walking on eggshells and faking smiles anticipating what would set him off.

I also learned not to flinch when I was hit to laugh when I was beat. I came close to pushing him over the edge twice. I saw my sister attempt suicide at 7. I walked over my pregnant sister on the floor getting kicked and pulled up a cast iron staircase by her hair. Because I was hungry and she they were in my way. I remember feeling like my sister might kill him and hid the revolver that night. Sure enough she went looking for it.

I also pay for the frostbite I got while running away from my dad several times even when I had no place to go. Thinking about just sitting out there until I died. I remember being dragged to the by my hair while the few church people left quickly to pray through and apologize for being such a sinner and disrespecting my father the rightful head of the house whom I should always obey.

But yes he kissed and hugged us and called us sis. Took us places and gave us gifts. My first memory was them fighting.

And made us be held and hugged while he prayed that we would not be such terrible sinners so he wouldn’t have to do what he did. That he was doing it for our own good and he loved us and we had to apologize for our behavoir and kiss and hug him and tell him we loved him or he would continue… So many more stories…

Why I am telling you this. Because this and more is what I will dream about tonight. Because those kids don’t deserve that kind of love. Please, please if you can’t do this for yourself for the wife. Please do this for the children.

^ @Unbroken your story just breaks my heart. I’m so glad you have survived and that the strong, intelligent person you have shown us glimpses of here, that was obviously buried inside the child you describe above, is now able to forge a better life for yourself.

@Bellatrix Thanks for your kindness. I know for a fact there are worse stories out there. Saying all that makes me feel melodramatic and selfish.

But no one addressed the children in a tangible way. I couldn’t ignore that. I have to make him see the damage he is doing by proving to those kids that no one will help them.

You shouldn’t feel melodramatic and selfish. You didn’t come across that way. Your story came across as being honest and from the heart. Yes, there are people who have been through tougher things. That doesn’t minimise your experience though. What you went through was tough and you’re right, it was something no child should have to experience and I hope your story does provide more insight for the OP. I thank you for sharing. I think it was brave.

Now I understand your chosen name here, @Unbroken. That was hard to read. Thank you.

And a good insight into what may be happening in the OP’s head now, too.

@Unbroken Your story reminded me of stories my best friend tells of his childhood. I am so sorry you had to go through that.

Thanks all. Now I just hope we get an update from the OP. I don’t care if it was what I posted or not.

So many very good points and arguments, something has to sink in.

@Unbroken You brought up an extremely valid point, one I almost adressed myself. Yes, he too is a victim of the abusive friend. It is so clear…..brilliant deduction Watson! :-)

@Coloma I knew I couldn’t be the only person to arrive at such a conclusion, My dear Sherlock.

Though upon consideration my conclusions should have been handled with more grace and tact. Sigh it is what it has become. Though if future situations do occur it might do well to take a page from your book and find a way to round out the rough edges. Live and learn, eh?