'He was my best friend.' What happens when you realise your brother is a domestic abuser.

The author of this story is known to Mamamia but has chosen to remain anonymous for privacy reasons. The feature image used is a stock photo.

"We had no idea."

"There weren't any signs."

"He seemed like such a great guy."

You hear quotes like these after almost every horrific abuse case comes to light. But what happens when you do have an idea? When you saw the signs clearly and knew he wasn't a great guy at all? What happens when you know your brother is a domestic abuser?

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In my experience, nothing good. 

There is constant guilt. A low-level dread that never fully leaves. Fear. Not so much for myself (though a little for myself, if I'm being honest), but for the women in my brother's life. The women who will be in his life. The women who have already been there. 

I've chosen my words carefully in this essay, and I won't outline the abuse itself. That is not my story to tell, and it shouldn't be. Detailing harm would not make this truer, only more invasive. 

The question that loops endlessly in my head is this: if we know abuse has happened in the past, could be happening now, and will happen again in the future, how can we do nothing meaningful about it? 

My brother has always had issues with rage. He was my best friend when we were little, but even then, he scared me. After every "episode", he would win me back onto his side. Charm his way back. 

As he got older, he decided his little sister wasn't "cool" enough anymore. That part was normal. What wasn't normal was how obsessed he became with the idea of being cool.  He was tall, handsome, intelligent. It wasn't hard for him to fit the mould he'd decided on. 

He had long-term girlfriends. Some relationships seemed volatile, but nothing that set off alarm bells at the time. 

Then he left school and things deteriorated. He partied constantly. Drugs socially.  Drinking heavily. Going out every night. He had a girlfriend and they screamed at each other for hours, first in his bedroom, then in his car after my parents tried to set boundaries and told him he could no longer keep the entire house awake at 3am with their fights. 

One night, after he'd been yelling at his girlfriend on the home phone, my dad had enough and unplugged the landline. The call cut out. The situation escalated immediately. My mother tried to physically hold my brother back from my dad. He was tall, fit, furious. She was trying to put her body between them. 

I sat on the couch and watched this happening. Wondering what I should do. Mostly wondering who this man was, because he wasn't the brother who had once been my best friend.

There was a brief lull. I remember saying his name and telling him to look at himself. To look at what he was doing. I told him he was being an arsehole. 

I wasn't trying to provoke him. I wanted him to step back and see the situation for what it was. Instead, the moment I criticised him, everything else disappeared. That night, he threatened to come into my bedroom and kill me. 

The guilt is never-ending.

After that, our relationship effectively ended. He believed he was justified because I had dared to call out his behaviour. I did not want to be around someone who thought it was acceptable to threaten my life. 

I'm telling this story to excuse myself, if I'm being completely honest. To explain that we no longer had a relationship, and that I didn't have visibility into what was happening inside his romantic relationships. But even then, I knew. 

I knew enough about who he was to imagine what could be happening behind closed doors. So as much as I would like this story to lessen my guilt, it doesn't. It only proves that I understood exactly what he was capable of. 

In the years that followed, when people asked why I was estranged from my brother, I told them the truth. I often thought about how unbearable it must be to be in a relationship with him. At family events, we stayed away from each other. He ignored my partners. I was polite, though distant, to his. 

One or two of his former partners contacted my mother or my oldest brother and told them about how he had treated them. As far as I know, there were no reports of physical violence. There was sustained emotional and psychological abuse. 

After one relationship ended, he trashed an apartment. When my mum tried to talk to him about that incident, he accused her of betraying him by believing someone else over her own son. He told her she was a horrible mother and cut her off for six months. It was clear that he also emotionally manipulated and abused her. He still does. By that point, she was desperate to keep him in her life. The conversation ended there. 

I didn't know these women. I don't think I ever met them. They didn't contact me. For all reasons, I told myself it was acceptable to do nothing, despite knowing exactly who he was. To look from the sidelines, shaking my head, waiting for someone else to step in. To do something. 

He moved from one failed relationship to the next. I don't remember hearing more about his treatment of women then. 

Years later, I had a baby. My family had already experienced several estrangements, and I didn't want my daughter to grow up believing that cutting off family was normal or inevitable. When I told him I was pregnant, he was excited about becoming an uncle.

But a few weeks after my daughter was born, he took a weekend away with a partner close to where I live and did not come to meet her. Still, I said nothing. I bit my tongue. I didn't rock the already precarious boat. 

After that, we met several of his partners. He made more of an effort to attend family events, though we're not really that kind of family and they were few and far between. 

He has a type. The women he dates are incredibly smart, very successful, and beautiful. They are usually small in stature, outspoken, and personable. Not the kind of women you would expect someone to choose if they wanted to dominate them. 

And yet, over time, I have begun to wonder whether that contrast was the point. Whether the dynamic was not about who these women were when they entered the relationship, but who they were reduced to by the end of it. 

We met one partner in particular, who was especially lovely. For clarity's sake, let's call her Jane. It was early days, but they seemed happy. She was wonderful with our two daughters. 

Later, we heard that they had broken up, reconciled, and then broken up again. My mum was pulled into the aftermath. She was told about how he had treated Jane. He denied it. He told my mother he was not a monster. 

The situation was deeply uncomfortable and upsetting, and I felt for Jane. I reached out to tell her how sorry I was that she was going through this, and that she could contact us if there was anything we could do. 

Three months later, Jane called me. She had just been contacted by another woman who had been dating my brother. This woman described an evening of verbal abuse and, after she managed to leave, being harassed across multiple social media platforms. She wanted to know if she was going crazy. He had been kind, loving, and attentive at the start. 

Jane was desperate to know whether this was a pattern, or whether the problem was her. I immediately told her everything I could remember. I could not allow another woman to believe that she was responsible for what had been done to her. 

Knowing the truth helped her understand what had happened. It also made it more frightening. She tried to have him charged. The police were not helpful. My brother was careful not to put anything explicit in writing. When they spoke to him, he denied everything, and that was the end of it.

I was furious. I had heard about online spaces where women quietly warn one another about men who have harmed them, and I went looking for those. He was already being discussed in one. I shared what I knew anonymously in others. 

I couldn't help the women he had already hurt. But I could try to help the next one. 

After that, Jane and I said goodbye, in a way. She needed space to heal. I needed room to breathe, for my own mental health. By then, my brother knew we had been in contact. He has refused to speak to me ever since. The man who couldn't travel 12 kilometres to meet his first niece was enraged that I would speak to one of his former partners, because, apparently, that is not how family treat each other. 

A short while later, I learnt more about another of my brother's former relationships through a series of overlapping connections. 

What I heard confirmed what I already knew and then some. Hearing it again pulled me straight back into the anxiety, the spiralling, and the constant fear for the next woman. I found myself asking the same question I had been circling for years. What could I do? 

What happened when I decided to act.

This time, I decided to act in the only way that still felt available to me. I contacted every dating app and site I could find and submitted third-party safety reports. I was careful to state that I was not a victim, but that this person had a repeated history of abusive behaviour toward women he dated. 

I did not include the women's names. I did not share private messages. I did not describe incidents in detail. I asked that the information be considered in the context of user safety. It was not justice or accountability, but it was an attempt to interrupt the pattern and make it harder for the next woman to be caught off guard. 

I also made a report to Crime Stoppers. I checked the box indicating that I was willing to be contacted if further information was needed. As of writing this, no one has contacted me. 

I contacted 1800RESPECT and Mensline as well. Both were kind, careful, and generous with their time. They listened. They validated my concerns. But they did not have any further advice for me beyond what I had already done. There was no additional pathway available to me as someone outside the relationship. 

It became clear that while there is support to help women leave abusive relationships, and that support is vital, it does not solve the problem. When one woman leaves, the man does not disappear. He moves on. The pattern continues with someone else. 

What seems to be missing is any clear mechanism for addressing the person causing the harm before it escalates further. There is no accessible way to report patterns of abuse. No central place for concern to land if you are not the one being hurt. We are told to see something and say something in so many other areas of public safety. When it comes to domestic violence, knowing often leads nowhere. 

Perhaps this is about infrastructure. Responding to patterns rather than incidents would require systems to assess, store, and follow up on information that does not yet meet a criminal threshold. That takes time, training, and sustained funding. Our legal systems are built to respond to events that can be proven, not trajectories that can be predicted. 

Fear of false reports also looms large, I assume. A false allegation is a single, identifiable event. Its consequences are immediate, visible, and legally actionable. The harm it causes is easy to point to. The harm caused by inaction, by contrast, is slower, cumulative, and diffuse. It unfolds across time and across relationships, and is often framed as tragic but unavoidable. When forced to choose, institutions tend to protect themselves from the risk they can see. 

There are also clear funding priorities. We know that rates of domestic violence rise around major sporting events. This is well documented and predictable. Alcohol consumption increases. Emergency services prepare for it. And yet public money continues to flow freely into elite sport and spectacle, while prevention and early intervention remain comparatively under-resourced. That is not an accident. It is a choice. 

What I find disgraceful is not just what he has done, but how effectively denial protects him. Because he refuses to admit any wrongdoing, there is nothing more to pursue. No pathway forward. No mechanism that forces accountability. 

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I have reached the edge of what I can do. I have reported, warned, documented, and spoken. There are no further steps available to me that do not cross ethical or legal lines. He has suggested that speaking about this could have legal consequences. And still, nothing meaningful changes. 

I do not have a solution. I only have a question that refuses to leave me. How can there be no answer to this? How can knowing be so clear, and responsibility so diffuse? 

If you know someone who harms the people they love, I am not asking you to fix it. I am not even saying what I have done is the correct route. I am asking you not to do nothing. Silence is not neutrality. It is the space abuse relies on. 

Do something. Anything. Even if it feels inadequate. Even if it costs you.

Feature image: Getty.