Family loyalty and collective denial of family problems are powerful binding agents. The abuser shapes his relatives’ views of his partner over a period of years. They have perhaps seen with their own eyes how she “overreacts” to certain things he does in public, because with no idea of what he has been doing to her behind closed doors, they can’t accurately judge her behavior. So they oppose abuse in the abstract, but they fight fiercely for the abuser when he is their own.
