How the internet is helping women to ‘out’ toxic men
It sounds like a nightmare. Or a horror film, maybe. The idea of sitting in an abortion clinic, frightened and overwhelmed, and realising that your partner – who said they’d just gone to find the toilets – isn’t coming back.
This is precisely what happened to British writer Chimene Suleyman in 2016. Her then boyfriend left her without a word, then went straight to her New York apartment to remove all of his belongings – something she only discovered later from watching CCTV footage. The only explanation he gave was a message telling her she was “ruined”, that no one would ever love her again, that she shouldn’t attempt to contact him or his friends. After that, she was blocked.
“It’s one thing to break up with someone – it’s quite another to be abandoned in that way,” she tells me. “I was in shock; I remember everything felt manic. It just seemed incomprehensible. I couldn’t make sense of what had happened.”
His behaviour left Chimene, 33 at
