When someone you love is a victim: SouthFlorida.com

It's been over six years now since I gave the eulogy at the funeral for my best friend of 30 years. As young girls we shared secrets, helped each other through the ups and downs of high school, and I was maid of honor for her first wedding. We often talked about growing old together and becoming a couple of feisty old ladies. I never imagined that our friendship would end so soon. My friend was dead at the young age of 43, murdered at the hands of her estranged husband.

According to author Jeanne Warren Lindsay: "One-third to one-half of all American women are, at some time, beaten by their husbands or lovers. Somewhere in the United States a woman is beaten every 18 seconds." These are cold and hard facts -- ones that came into focus for me after my friend became a domestic-violence statistic. And none of these facts can reflect the huge toll domestic violence takes on the lives of the victim's family and friends.

As I recall many telephone conversations with my friend, who had moved across the country, I now hear clues and warning signals of what was going on in her life. She was giving me hints about the horror her second marriage had brought. I just wasn't aware enough to pick up on the signs she was sharing as best she could.

I wish I had understood that victims of domestic violence feel ashamed, even guilty for the abuse they are suffering, and that my friend probably felt embarrassed and damaged in some way. For this reason, it was difficult -- if not impossible -- for her to tell me exactly what was going on in her life. In the end, she had received help from a domestic-violence assistance program in the area, obtained a restraining order on her soon-to-be ex-husband and was beginning to put the pieces of her life back together.

My friend never got the chance though. Often, the time a woman and her children are most at risk is when she leaves the abusive relationship. I still wonder if I had been more aware of the warning signs and mentality of abuse victims, whether perhaps I could have made a difference in the outcome. It is much too late to help save my friend, but if there is one life that's made better by understanding the devastation of domestic abuse, then perhaps the loss of her life won't be totally in vain.

Some 30 percent of us know someone who has suffered some form of domestic violence within the last year. Take time to learn about the patterns of abuse and the warning signs of domestic violence. I hope you'll never need to know this information. But the truth is, I didn't realize I needed to know these warning signs until it was too late.

Claire Yezbak Fadden is a San Diego-based freelance writer.