My now EX-wife got into a minor bicycle accident when we were married, ended up with a few scrapes and a black eye. I was shocked by all the dirty looks that EVERYONE gave me when we went out. The day after the accident we went out to dinner the first time we were in public together and the first time I was exposed to all the dirty looks nobody said anything but their looks told me that they had already made up their mind on what happened. I wanted to leave, the idea of the waiter/waitress spitting in my food really didn't appeal to me, but fortunately our waitress was the daughter of our neighbors so she knew what really happened.

If I had been the one with a black eye nobody would have thought that my wife had hit me, but she used to hit me often, I spent years as the victim of physical, verbal and emotional abuse, but nobody really took my reports (when I finally did tell people) seriously.