I'll preface things by saying I personally dislike Jian Gomeshi, I think he's a slimeball and an opportunist. I don't think I'd find him guilty though. I think he's likely got a bdsm fetish and maybe thought something was going on that wasn't. The post 50 shades of grey world is one where you have to take the strangeness of female sexuality where it comes to force into account in a sexual assault case. Everything I've heard of the testimony would lead me to think this guy thinks he was in a consenting bdsm relationship. That may not be the case at all. The women may have been just as you say, trapped in the cycle of an abusive relationship. But there's a lot of doubt poured all over that by the defense.

I understand the cycle of abuse reasonably well after watching my Mother in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship for over 20 years myself. She left him many times, but they were married to the bitter end when he died eventually and they were miserable up to the last minute. She never shed a single tear that I know of when he died, I think she was happy, but she still took care of him while he was dying anyway.

Abuse of women was pretty much the way of the land in the area I grew up in. The worst one was one family in the area where the husband would beat his wife in the head with a fence post, and taught all of his sons to beat her as well. She was completely addled, possibly brain damaged from being beaten. No one ever did anything about it. It was just talked about as more or less a local horror story to curl your toes. My dad's best friend beat his wife their whole life together. I'm reasonably certain he still does and they're retiree age. Everyone knows he does, they talk about it, no one ever does anything about it because she would never leave him and would defend him to the death. To my brothers credit he actually tried to do something and sat down with the guy and said what the fuck are you doing, stop hitting her.