I remember growing up and watching princess movies depicting the perfect prince and the cliché happy ending. However, as I am getting older I am beginning to realize that those movies are unrealistic. In certain instances there is an evilness that hides behind the "perfect guy" façade. Last year, my twin sister, Justice, was dating a boy named Nick. Like all teenagers, they were infatuated with each other and had people fawning over their "perfect" relationship. However, what nobody knew was behind closed doors that "perfect" relationship consisted of jealousy, manipulation, and physical abuse.

Movies don't teach you how to handle yourself when your boyfriend starts to control every aspect of your life. Nick would not allow my sister hangout with me, she could not go a class period without an angry text from him asking what she was doing, and she was not allowed to hangout with anyone other than him. I had one class with her my senior year and she would arrive to class with a new bruise everyday. I began to catch on to the type of person he was and my parents were as well. He turned her into a person we did not recognize. She was sneaking out to see him, texting him every second, and was constantly in a bad mood because he was starting fights with her and accusing her of being unfaithful. Eventually, she would choose to move out of our house after not agreeing to my parents wishes for her to stay away from him. This gave him the impression that he could do whatever he wanted to her without any interference from my parents or myself.

Under his control, he convinced my sister to skip class which quickly escalated to skipping school all together, in an effort to keep her with him at all times. We had one class at the same time and she would usually leave in the middle of it to see Nick and check in. He did not trust her when she said she was in class and used this time to check in with him. He had this idea in his mind that she would meet with guys in the bathroom during the school day. Unbeknownst to me, he would also use this time to abuse her in his car when she did not answer his texts fast enough. This continued throughout most of the year until one day he became enraged after she tried to leave is car in order to get to her next class on time. In his haste to reprimand her for wanting to leave, he forgot that he was not hiding behind the privacy of their apartment as he was accustomed too. As he slapped my sister and pulled her hair, he was unaware that parents and students were watching in horror. I learned of this incident four months later despite having various "friends" who witnessed this attack or heard about it from other people. Everyone knew my sister and I had drifted apart during this time, and did not feel it was appropriate to share with me the fact that my sister was being abused every time she left the class we shared early. His actions that day resulted in our high school filing a police report on top of the police report previously filed by my parents. This incident would be the final nail in his coffin and ended up costing him: six months of freedom, five years of probation, being a convicted felon, loss of firearms, and random meetings with a probation officer. Not to mention losing the respect (however little it might have been) from the select few of his friends who are not blind to the fact that his actions were inexcusable.

People are so quick to say she "threw him in jail because she was mad that he cheated on her". For the record, I was the one that told on that monster and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I did it because I knew she would not have been able to do it herself. I watched enough Dateline episodes to know what the outcome would have been for her had she stayed with him. I was in the car with my mom, my heart racing knowing that what I was about to tell her would mean the end of the close relationship Justice and I had. I remember the look of disgust on her face when she realized I told. She kept saying how much she hated me and how she loved him and did not want him to get in trouble. I wanted to hate her in that moment for choosing him over me, but deep down I knew that at a certain point in her life she would thank me for getting her out of that relationship.

I find it appalling that people would be so quick to judge her actions when many of them knew the abuse was going on and did not report it. The students in my grade who witnessed Nick hit her in the parking lot knew she was not speaking to me. Everyday they would watch Justice leave in the middle of class, knowing she was being abused during that time. In fact, she called Nick's mother right after Nick beat her one day and she told her that it was an issue between her and Nick. People judge her actions without knowing that she use to run to different houses on nights he was beating her. She would run down the street screaming "help me! Help me please!" and not one person ran to her aid. Cars were parked in the driveway, lights were turned on in their houses, and yet not one person came out to investigate why she was screaming.

Detectives later described her ordeal as the worst case of domestic abuse that they had seen for kids our age. It is imperative that people understand that the judgement and harassment victims of abuse endure after their ordeal, is the reason why so many victims do not come forward. Men and women are suffering silently at the hands of their abuser because they are under the impression that no one will believe them if they told. Before you judge a domestic abuse survivor, you need to ask yourself one vital question. What would you do if someone you loved was in this situation? Would you want someone to message them saying the things you are now? I did not think so.