A bad thing happened today

I was reading through the newspaper and I started reading an article about a woman who had been shot in the head by her exhusband in front of her children and was killed. She apparently had been abused by him for a long time, finally, she went to a woman's shelter and got a divorce. But she did something wrong. She never filed charges against the her husband - partly because her son begged her not to put daddy in jail and partly because she was embarrassed about her family problems. I flipped the page, and there was a picture of her. It turns out she was a checker at a local grocery store that I frequented for the last 10 years and I often saw her in the check out line and had many conversations with her. I went to the store and talked to t he employees, everyone was broken up. She was the sweetest person and would never hurt a flea, but she was too nice for her own good. I think this is a problem with our character, we are too afraid to hit life head on when it throws us curves. It's so sad, and the loser husband was such a coward that he killed himself too so that he wouldn't have to face the consequences, and all in front of his son begging him not to hurt mommy. I cried for those children and for all the abused women in the world that suffer because they are too afraid or too embarassed to take their abuser to court. I talked to a woman's shelter hot line and they told me that typically it takes a woman 7 times of being abused before she will make the decision to leave.