My sister is afraid of leaving her boyfriend
Hi All, so this is a very very long story, as their relationship has been going on for over 10 years. My (32F) sister has been with her (36M) boyfriend since high school. Recently in the past year or so, he has shown extremely concerning behavior and continues to do so daily. They own a business together and he constantly holds it over her head. He is controlling, tracks her location to the point where if she stops at a gas station he has to be informed. tracks her text messages incoming yo our phone so he knows if she tells us about the abuse and we have to be careful what we say or keep it to phone calls. she is experiencing extreme emotional abuse, he is threatening physical harm to their pets, to her, telling her to leave, she leaves, then blows up her phone and tells her to come back to “talk.” and this cycle repeats and repeats. he has no income other than the money she makes that he profits off of. he sits in their apartment while she goes to the business location and does the manual labor. Now today she calls me that she feels unsafe and wants someone to go with her to get her belongings to leave. (this is not the first time this has happened and that I have done this for her.) This all started because she decided last minute to get her nails redone in-between working and their dog grooming appointment and he got mad that she “cant stick to a schedule” and it “ruined all his plans.” he makes her feel horrible for just existing. So i go there with her and he is acting extremely unhinged and scary and threatening her and telling me i need to leave or “things are gonna get worse.” I reluctantly after fighting to stay for 5-10 mins and just drive my car down the street. I call our mother and she called the police. Before the police come, my sister rushes back outside, I see a massive red print on her face and ask if he hit her. She told me he did hit her and rushes back inside. Then the police come and my sister is so manipulated by this man she and him deny everything to the police that happened, the threatening remarks, the physical abuse, all of it. During the earlier argument I recorded him verbally threatening her life, and most of the argument. I told the police in my statement about the physical element that happened and showed them the recordings. But the cops couldn’t do anything bc she was refusing to charge him with anything. So after the police leave apparently her boyfriend wants to “apologize to me” for what happened and is putting on this whole act of crying and says he is sorry and its his fault. Then we leave and go back to my apartment to get away from him. But now shes sitting on my couch and hes blowing up her phone asking “whats for dinner” “when are you coming back” “you should just move out”. nothing with him makes sense. he has threatened her, my family, and I need advice to give her on the first steps to leaving safely. I am so scared for her safety everyday, I don’t know what to do. I know she wants to leave but she feels so trapped with him between their business, their pets, their apartment and for some reason still has sympathy for him. They have been together since she was 16 (growing up, yes she was a minor and he wasn’t, she lied about his age to my parents.) He is all she knows and I am at a loss at what to do to convince her that her life is so much more than living this everyday in fear. What are the first steps on how she can she safely remove herself from his life?