Nigella Lawson: the best way to end abuse is to shine a light on it | Barbara Ellen

After Nigella Lawson had her throat seized and nose twisted by her husband, Charles Saatchi, outside a Mayfair restaurant, one of the things that struck me was when Saatchi said he accepted the police caution to avoid "this hanging over all of us".

Who is "us" – himself and Lawson? At which point did this shabby little assault, so casually done it turned my stomach, become her shared responsibility? I must have missed the photograph where she throttled her husband. I fail to see any "us" about this upsetting spectacle – it all looked distinctly one way to me. Which is a key point. At least we can look. It can't be dismissed as hearsay. There are actual photographs recording the event and amen to that.

Part of the media whirlwind has concentrated on condemnation of the paparazzo. What rot: if someone photographs something, does that make them responsible for it? Do we blame war photographers for the situation in Syria?

I'm not claiming that anything noble was going on, but inadvertently that snapper may have done Nigella a huge favour. I would go further and say there's an argument for many women needing a pap around to record such incidents.

Away from this particular case, it would be good generally to see abuse flushed out into the open. Far too often, it's kept hidden away in the shadows. Abusers don't tend to wear badges, saying: "Hi, I'm an abuser!" Crucially, victims hide too. A major facilitating factor of abuse is the embarrassment and denial of the abused.

Victims suffer in silence and become expert at coping, making excuses, covering up, pacifying their abuser – to the point of "enabling" their own abuse.

At the same time, it's about keeping the big bad secret. If "it" gets out, never mind the upheaval many ordinary sufferers face (children, finances, loss of home), there is the terror of stigma. Stigma exerts an all-powerful influence, wherever you might be on the social scale. Stigma is no respecter of wealth and class.

Add the fact that victims are usually exhausted (a rarely aired facet of abuse is how knackering it is) and this explains how victims become groomed: ground down to the point where they don't want to admit what's going on, even to themselves.

Isolated too. It's as if they are stuck in a dense fog and only their abuser is in there with them, forming a sick alliance, a co-dependency of "us".

This is as true of a woman (it's usually women) being physically beaten and dabbing make-up on to her bruises, as it is of another woman "laughing off" yet another vicious public put-down from their spouse with the "what a character!" denial mechanism.

The abused are great at denial mechanisms – everything from "He doesn't mean it" to "He's under pressure at work", to what I'd term the "Heathcliff" (a couple so passionate there are bound to be fireworks). Is this what Tracey Emin meant when she talked about people not understanding how "in love" Saatchi and Lawson are?

But what is love if it doesn't involve respect, boundaries or common courtesy? If Saatchi spent his career knowing not to grab advertising cronies by the throat, as let's assume he did, then perhaps he should have done the same for his wife.

The fact he didn't, and was photographed in the act, was, I hope, revelatory to the only person who matters. Who knows what Nigella will do? I'm sure she's mortified by the furore, to which I'm contributing. However, maybe sometimes, people need to be shocked out of their private denial zone, admit to themselves that what they're experiencing is abuse (experience that relief and release) – more people than who'd care to admit it. The same people who'd benefit from receiving the kind of relationship wake-up call that can't be ignored, even if it is from an opportunistic pap.

Sam's little grey cells clearly aren't working

Pity Sam Taylor-Wood being selected to direct the film version of EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey. That's got to be akin to filming the readers' letters pages in Penthouse circa 1979.

What a nightmare translating all that "I'm too sexy for my shirt!" drivel for the big screen, with cinema-goers falling about laughing at the first sight of creepy "business magnate" Christian Grey approaching with the furry handcuffs and gag.

Taylor-Wood would be better off standing aside to let some director from the blockbuster action movie genre take over.

Anastasia could be played by any actress in possession of a bra and pants set (matching, mind!). Steven Seagal could play Grey and they could introduce a terrorist plot where, stripped to the waist, wearing a bandana, Seagal/Grey gets blasted into orbit, thus doing all womankind a huge erotic favour.

Anything would be better than staying faithful to the text, thus being stuck with the artistic equivalent of filming the spiritual journey of a pair of discounted Ann Summers' love balls. If Taylor-Wood does take this on, best of luck to her – she's going to need it.

Barack's colour still matters for some

The FBI has foiled a Ku Klux Klan member's bizarre-sounding plot to assassinate Obama with a ray-gun blast of radioactive poison. To make matters even odder, the plotter, Glendon Crawford, approached a Jewish organisation to help fund the gun. I'm confused – is there a branch of the KKK that isn't antisemitic? In the event, the Jewish group and the KKK both told the FBI and Crawford and his accomplice, Eric Feight, were arrested.

An unnerving story, but what initially took me by surprise was, well, my own surprise. Later, reading about the failed attempt at Jewish funding, it became clear that this particular insane plot may have been more anti-Muslim than anti-black. Still, my original reaction was to be taken aback. I'd forgotten about Obama's skin colour as well as the notion that it might be a factor in placing him in danger.

Of course race was all important when Obama was elected: it was wonderful to have a black president; distressing to think that his skin colour might make him more of a target. Since then, maybe one of Obama's achievements is that, while race would always be a major factor in any US presidency, he's also come to represent so much more.

Which is how it should be: any president, black or white, should ultimately be judged on their policies and integrity. Perhaps the greatest compliment you could pay the first US black president is for race to have become less of an issue within the space of his two terms – at least to a white Briton. But then a story such as this comes along, illustrating that, while some of us no longer register the US president's skin colour, we have to be mindful that there are plenty out there who still do.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/23/nigella-lawson-domestic-abuse