I mean hind sight is 20/20, so I’m not saying anyone at the time would know she was for sure being abused to the point of being in danger. But independent pieces of evidence are pointing toward a guy who was dangerous and getting more dangerous. He took her things when angry, things that gave her freedom or security (her phone, her license), she escaped to a friend’s house to take shelter from him, he didn’t like that they had apps on their phones to let them track each other and told gabby to delete hers, he made her cry in very public places, on two separate occasions that we know about, in less than a two week period, she died somehow when on a trip with him, and then he used an ATM card that was not his and probably was hers, even after she was dead, and so I am feeling 99.9% comfortable in my deduction that he abused her/attempted to control her and that others knew it. On that huge list, I have forgiven my husband for doing exactly ONE of those things (making me cry in a public place) and if he dared to do any of those other things I would leave him so fast his head would spin.
Those are messed up, totally unacceptable, totally abnormal behaviors that signal contempt and lack of agency for the abuse, and I just feel the need to spell that out, because it seems like we are getting used to hearing he did things and that we might be slipping into thinking they weren’t that bad, probably seemed different. No. We need to call those behaviors put when we see them in Brian and when we see them in anyone. Not acceptable.
