friend with abusive parner
I just learned something very worrying about a friend from my home country and I can’t stop thinking about it.
We’re not extremely close, but we share friends, and some of them are close to her. I moved abroad years ago, and sadly my country has a very poor justice system and a high rate of violence against women/feminicides.
From what I’ve been told, she has a boyfriend that basically all her friends hate because he’s extremely abusive toward her. I don’t know all the details, and apparently her closest friends know worse things that haven’t been shared widely.
Recently she attempted to take her own life. Afterward she got psychiatric help and was prescribed medication. Apparently her boyfriend took her medication away, replaced it with who knows what and drugged her. After that, nobody could contact her for more than a day.
She says she knows she should leave him, but I fear she may be threatened or psychologically trapped. He tells her nobody else will ever love her and that she must have a low self-esteem at this moment.
Her friends are desperate because local authorities usually don't do anything, unless there’s overwhelming proof, which I guess they don't have it either. Some people want to publicly expose him, but they’re also afraid of retaliation. There are even rumors/suspicions that he killed someone’s dog after a conflict.
I’m thousands of km away and feel helpless. I know you can’t force someone to leave an abusive relationship, especially if fear is involved, and I know she’s probably already been told many times to leave.
But there must be something to help her with her self love and to make sure she knows she's loved, right? That she doesn't need a man's validation.
Is there something, even if it's small, that I could help her with?