After reading some comments that were extremely judgemental of Sarah, I would like to share a story with you all (but perhaps especially with @Carlos Hazday and @Timothy M.). Mind you, this is not the only story from my life regarding abusive relationships, as I have known far too many people who were preyed on by people like Jim, and worse, but it is perhaps the saddest.
I went to school with a girl whose boyfriend beat her. And by beat her, I mean he locked her in a room tied to a chair and proceeded to abuse her both physically, emotionally, and sexually for a whole weekend. She was seventeen. She was going to be an opera singer, but she sustained injuries that permanently damaged her vocal cords, shattering her dreams in a moment. I had known her for about a year and a half at the time, and the things she had told me about her boyfriend had raised red flags for me even then, but she had always defended him. I thought perhaps after all this she would see him for the psychopath that he was. I was at the time the person she felt most comfortable talking to about this as, already at seventeen, I had known other people in similar situations to hers.
But she did defend him. He had spent over two years breaking her down, crushing her self-esteem, telling her that she was nothing without him. That's what abusers and psychopaths do. She believed that he loved her, really, and that it was all her fault for questioning that, that she made him crazy because he loved her so much that he couldn't stand the thought of losing her. She believed all this. And now, nearly fourteen years later, she still believes it. She knows, rationally, that she's a victim of abuse. She knows rationally what he did. But last year, he got in touch with her and she was ready to leave her fiancé to be with him, because after all that time he was still inside her head. He hacked her Facebook account, made a post saying that they were getting married, sent messages to her friends and family. She was finally persuaded to press charges against him after that, but even on the day she was going to testify in court she had second thoughts because 'he loved her, really'.
It's been frustrating, trying to help her. But that isn't her fault. My friend is not stupid or selfish. She does not deserve further punishment. She has been punished enough. Her trauma does not make her a bad person. He is a bad person. He is a psychopath. He is an abuser. She is a victim of physical, sexual and, most importantly, psychological abuse. And many, many people (both women and men) have been preyed upon by similar psychos. And nearly all of their stories are the same at their core; they refused to leave because their abuser 'needed them', because they themselves were nothing without their abuser. Because their abuser had convinced them that no one else would want them. These psychos find people at their most vulnerable and use and abuse them. They brainwash them. It's the epitome of what most bullied kids have at one point or another experienced: The thought that maybe it's me there's something wrong with. Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I'm the one to blame for my own abuse. And they hurt them until they believe it.
So when returned to Jim so many times despite the abuse, when she defended him and resented Grant and Elliot for landing him in prison, it's because he's inside her head. She needs therapy. She may need years of it in order to fully realise and understand what kind of person he is. Because he preyed on her and made her believe that he was the only person who would love her and want her, that she was nothing without him, that it would be better next time, that he was sorry and loved her and wouldn't do it again, that he needed her and if she left him she was the abuser.
TL;DR: Stop blaming victims of abuse for the psychological responses they have been conditioned to experience by the psychos who prey on them. There's a lot of literature about this phenomenon that can easily be found with a quick google search, but here's an example: http://theconversation.com/abusive-relationships-why-its-so-hard-for-women-to-just-leave-93449
