Concerned Friend sez: "This is a person of great personal dignity, very professional, very knowledgeable--since she is the "expert" even the people who employ her must defer to her. She speaks softly, but what she says goes ...even others in her profession talk to each other with deference ...the degrees, her position, really isolate her-- "

Or she's isolated herself. Sounds like she doesn't let ANYONE get close to her... except the guy who you think is hitting her. If he is abusing her, he's certainly taken advantage of being inside the wall she's built around herself. "In the arena", so to speak.

If this lady is on the verge of tears and has NO ONE to cry to because EVERYONE walks a wide circle around her, deferring to her, I wish SOMEONE would talk to her!!!!!!!!! My God, how sad this is to read! Doesn't she have ANY friends she can confide in?? C'mon, now, you're calling yourself her friend; do you at least know a CLOSE friend of hers who knows how to get inside her armor, some non-deferential person with whom she can discuss this?

SharonA

P.S. – The reason I'm advocating doing SOMETHING is because I once had a neighbor in an adjoining apartment who had a terrible problem with drugs, left her baby daughter alone till all hours to go get high... and I chose the "hands-off, none of my business" non-approach. One day, she baby-sat her cousin's infant; she set him on a mattress on the floor next to an electric baseboard heater, with no pillows to keep him from rolling. Then she turned the thermostat ALL the way up, and passed out. You guessed it; the baby rolled off the mattress and against the heater, burned and died. I still hear that young woman's screams and cries, and I still wonder: What if I'd at least TRIED to get help for her when I saw the warning signs?????????????????