Why do people tend to turn a blind eye to domestic violence?

“…even in the face of facts that people understood to be evidence of abuse, no one helped. Why? Because (Sheila) did not ask for help? Probably not. Because these (family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors) are uncaring people? No. Help did not come because domestic violence is an awful thing to know about. And when we know about it, we do not know what to do. Domestic violence invites what we might understand best as willful blindness, an unwillingness to discover the facts that will force us to confront the reality that we want to avoid.”*

*Excerpted from Self-Defense and the Battered Woman, Ogle and Jacobs, 2002, in the matter of People v. Beasley