I first started covering domestic violence as a reporter. When the first articles ran, battered women started finding my personal phone number and calling me for help. I was astonished. Thank goodness, a battered women's shelter had been started and I could refer them. I was just a reporter on the topic, not a counselor.

My first interviewee was the wife of a wealthy CEO. Like Fayerody writes, it occurs at all levels of society.

Things have improved a lot in terms of social recognition of the problem, training police, social workers, and counselors, having shelters, even getting the research into textbooks.

A woman with low self-esteem will still struggle with it. The batterer can be charming and chooses someone he can control emotionally. Cutting off contact with relatives and friends is a typical technique and the woman absorbs the belief that she is worthless and helpless through and through. Young women can be educated and warned about the cycle of abuse and still get trapped into it during the early period of intense hormonal attraction and falling in love.

So glad that things have improved in terms of social recognition.