tonight, danger behind closed doors. the successful hollywood therapist -- >> in this video we're going to talk about relationship jealousy. >> a former boyfriend behind bars. accused of years of abuse that ended in murder. now spotlig silent crisis in america. >> there's hundreds of women being killed that don't make the news. >> how the lockdown's intensified a breeding ground for domestic violence. >> as a victim you feel totally trapped plus finding help and fighting for change. >> what would you say to somebody who's in the thick of it, feeling there's nowhere to turn in the middle of this pandemic? >> you do not have to do that

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murdered after accusing a former lover of abuse. here's abc's marci gonzalez. >> the shocking and brutal murder of a popular hollywood sex therapist. >> dr. amie harwick was killed at her hollywood hills home after a fall from a third story balcony. >> reporter: amie harwick's death making worldwide headlines, a tragic end to an inspiring life lived in the spotlight. she was engaged for a time to drew carey. >> she was like quirky, fun, interesting. w successful , smart, sex and relationship therapist. >> gender is a socially constructed idea. >> she was an incredible influence in modeling healthy relationships, appropriate boundaries, empowerment. she, in my opinion, was a strong, fierce feminist. >> reporter: in public she seemed to have it all. but in her private life, she would tell friends and

talked and harasd by gareth pur. >> she definitely was concerned because he was actively harassing her. >> reporter: her worst fears apparently came true last february when gareth allegedly strangled her and threw her off a third floor balcony. he's now charged with her murder. >> in this video we're going to talk about relationship jealousy. it can even lead to violence, or for example, the o.j. simpson case, it can lead to death. >> reporter: the devastating irony of amy's own words haunting her friends and family as amy became an apparent victim of the very brutality she worked to help women escape. >> really successful and accomplished women can still be the victims of domestic violence and intimate partner violence. >> reporter: across the u.s., preliminary data suggests that intimate partner violence has only increased during the covid-19 pandemic, with millions confined at home and tensions running high. >> there are a lot of stressors

that are adding to the volatility in households. and all of those factors do increase the likelihood of intimate partner violence, particularly if you add on top of that the isolation and knowing that there's nowhere for your partner to necessarily escape to. >> if we can update the lawson more women can get help, more women can get out of these situations, and more women are safe from further violence, i think that's the best legacy for what's happened. >> this is dr. amie harwick -- >> reporter: amy became a therapist with one goal in mind, helping others. offering advice on youtube, she worked to empower women, especially those in abusive relationships. on her path to becoming a therapist, she lived a while, eclectic hollywood life. >> she would gogo dance at big nightclubs, like in a cage.

she would do fire performances. >> reporter: paying her way through grad school by working as a model and dancer, landing gigs like this, seen on "the real housewives of beverly hills." all the while earning her master's inyam w whr best frien she returned home around 1:00 a.m., unaware, according to police, someone had kicked in a door and was lying in wait inside. >> she encountered him somewhere in the house. he choked her with his hands, apparently. >> reporter: her screams waking up her roommate, who called 911. but before police arrived, amie was thrown from her third floor balcony. police finding her on the ground, gravely injured. she later died at the hospital of blunt force trauma and strangulation. >> i talked to police, they said, you know, is there someone

that you know that could have done this? i was, oh, yeah, gareth. >> what made you think it had to be him? >> because she'd been talking about how, if anything happened, it would be gareth. >> reporter: gareth pursehouse was amie's ex-boyfriend, the 41 photographer, sofcomic. >> hello, everybody! >> reporter: dated amie on and off nearly a decade earlier. >> she said he was abusive and a terrible person. >> reporter: she ended the relationship but friends said he wouldn't let her go, reportedly stalking and threatening her long after the relationship ended. amie getting a temporary restraining order in 2011, describing their relationship in court documents as violent. "he has suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground, kicked me." telling friends gareth tried to intimidate her. >> whenever she applied to jobs, somehow gareth would know, would send the employer theseud phos

after amie said gareth threatened things would get worse, she got another restraining order that expired in 2015. did she ever consider going to reapply? >> she'd said there was no way that she could get it because she didn't document it. >> if you have a restraining order against anybody, chances are that person has really traumatized you. even after the expiration, that trauma doesn't go away. you're always going to be looking over your shoulder to see if that person's there. >> reporter: through all the torment she was enduring, amie maintained a confident exterior, helping patients like model emily seers. fr t ft that stalker myself qui long time ago. and it was somebody that i had had quite an abusive relationship with. so it's just hard to think that, like, the whole time you're sitting across from her, like, you would never think that it

would end up happening to her. >> reporter: but privately, amie's friends say she was constantly on alert. her worst fears may have come true last january after eight years of avding cameras on the red carpet at an awards show in hollywood. as she goes over to talk to the press, you see pursehouse, who was there photographing the event, pass by. friend and fellow therapist, hernando chavez, was there with amie that night and says the situation quickly devolved. >> i didn't know who it was at the time, but i did hear a couplef things like, you broke my heart, what are you doing here, how could you be here? >> reporter: amie left the event, telling her friend she was scared. >> she shared with me how she was trying to de-escalate the situation, that according to her, she said that he started yelling, that he was calling her names, that he was really sort of scaring her. the next day, she texted me and

said, he found my number online, he's contacting me. >> reporter: less than a month later, amie was dead. police arrested pursehouse, charging him with murder and first degree burglary. so many questioning if getting another restraining order could have made a difference. >> even this last time she ran into m, he was acting all crazy. i said, can you re-up the restraining order? she said, he didn't actively threaten me. >> i think people don't realize how common this is. i mean, for every time it makes the news with somebody like amie, there's hundreds of women being killed that don't make the news. >> reporter: experts say getg o emotionally and legally challenging process. now more than ever. >> it requires that there be a face-to-face interaction between the victim and the offender in court. that can be terrifying and traumatizing to a victim, particularly if they've just broken up with somebody and

they're being stalked. >> reporter: amie's friends started a petition that has nearly 300,000 signatures calling for new laws to protect women, including one that would keep restraining orders active until the victim requests it to be canceled. >> why are we trying to better, police the behavior of the stalker, instead of putting responsibility on the woman, or man in some cases, who's being stalked? >> reporter: amie's friends hope new laws would prevent another tragedy. >> protective orders aren't long-lasting. you have to keep going back and showing there's a threat, immediate threat to your personal safety. they should be long lasting if not permanent for a serial stalker situation. >> reporter: pursehouse is being held without bail after an escape attempt. he's pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, facing the death penalty or life in prison if convicted. but the life he's accused of taking continues having a far-reaching impact. >> we'd like this to be a legacy

for her, because she did so much to empower women to leave toxic relationships that this should be something we can do for her. >> this was a strong, empowered, feminist woman who was going to change the world. and i thought she was going to change the world throughout her life. but it may be that she's going to change the world through her death. >> our thanks to marci. coming up, breaking the cycle of abuse with a call for help. what's it like to hear the emotion in a survivor's voice? find your breaking point. then break it. every emergen-c gives you a potent blend of nutrients so you can emerge your best with emergen-c. ♪ ♪

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disturbing reports of domestic violence abusers weaponizing the coronavirus itself, taking advantage of stay-at-home orders to isolate and brutalize. you're about to meet several women helping others find a new reality. >> i just felt like, there's a reason -- i know it sounds so corny, but there's a reason that i'm alive. it was by the grace of goodness that i am -- i call it the grace of goddess, that i am here today. >> reporter: grateful to be alive today, but ruth glenn remembers the abuse of decades ago like it was yesterday. >> i was shot twice in ad when fellut oe real i wasn't so i the arm. >> reporter: ruth wants you to hear her story, not because she

fears for herself. she's afraid for the others who are suffering in silence in the pandemic. what ways, all these years later, continue to inspire you? >> survivors' voices are important to making sure we have a national reckoning and awakening around domestic violence, understanding it's a public health crisis, making sure that survivors' voices are center to this. >> reporter: ruth is now an activist and ceo of the national coalition against domestic violence. she says today's quarantine intensifies the danger. >> as a victim, you feel totally trapped. then when you're trapped in a home with somebody who now has another tool and another means of control, it can be very, very frightening. and then on the outside of the other door metaphorically is this pandemic. even if i had made up my mind now that it's no longer safe for me to be in this situation, now what do i do? >> reporter: when lockdowns began last march and victims were stuck at home with their

abusers, unable to safely reach out, calls to the national domestic violence hotline decreased by 6% compared to the year before. but as shelter-in-place orders lifted, contacts in april increased 15% from the previous year. hotlines turned into lifelines. >> we hear from people dealing with the pan19irs pt their abuse. >> reporter: rosemary runs the team that answers calls to the national domestic violence hotline. she says they receive more than 21,000 calls that referenced covid-19. >> i heard from a survivor that was dealing with their partner who had contracted covid-19 and who didn't tell them about it. >> as someone who's been on the other end of that phone call, what's it like to hear the emotion in a survivor's voice? >> terrifying. it's terrifying. a lot of times you wish that you had a magic wand to make it better. but oftentimes you're just the one that is going to be there

with them in that moment when they reached out, and you're hearing them, and you're understanding. >> reporter: leaving a violent relationship can be fraught with danger. abusers can be emotionally manipulative. >> it's constantly being off kilter. the first sense of abuse was pretty physical and pretty bad. i went for many, many more years before understanding what domestic violence is and what was happening to me. >> reporter: after 15 years of escalating physical and emotional abuse, ruth thought she'd found her way out. >> so it wasn't until six months or so after i left that he attempted to kidnap me, then i got a protection order. he called me immediately and said, a protection order does not stop a bullet. >> reporter: a cold-blooded threat that led to that fateful moment. >> and i left the apartment, he followed me. i couldn't outrun him in my car. and so he backed his car up to me, got out of his car, shot me twice. i fell out of the car, he came

back around and shot me again. i actually did think i was going to die. >> how did he end his reign of terror? >> my son and i then had to be in hiding for about four months. and i remember telling law enforcement, i said, you're going to have to find him, because if you don't sneak up on him, he's going to kill himself. and he did ultimately kill himself. which was in itself tragic. >> reporter: situations like ruth's made even more challenging and tragic in the midst of this pandemic. katie ray jones, ceo of the national domestic violence hotline, says covid is adding a crisis on top of a crisis. >> any time in our country where there's been a natural disaster or even during the recession, victims of domestic violence reported that the abuse in their home increased, not only in frequency, but also in severity. >> reporter: the pandemic recession has been deemed the she-cession, american women losing more than 5 million jobs

in 2020, creating for many greater financial dependance. >> so we've heard stories when stimulus checks were issued, the victim survivor didn't have access to those funds or the abusive partner took those funds from the victim. we've also heard stories of survivors who lost their job and returned to the partner who used violence because they didn't have anywhere else to go. >> reporter: ruth says it's not only the survivors they're hearing from that she'd worried about, it's those they're not hearing from. what would you say to somebody who's in the vehicle of thick ot right now and feeling trap? >> the first thing i would say is, i'd encourage you to feel it's not healthy, and that's okay. i'd encourage you to assess your own safety. we tell victims and survivors they should just leave and i would say to you, let's be careful about that. the best assessor of their own safety is the victim and survivor. once you do feel it's safe to

leave, there are resources out there for you, you can get help. >> if you or someone you know is in danger, just know there are hotlines out there ready to help. up next, honoring the life and legacy of a hollywood legend. rd. you get advice like: get a hobby. you should meditate. eat crunchy foods. go for a run. go for 10 runs! run a marathon. are you kidding me?! instead, start small. with nicorette. which can lead to something big. start stopping with nicorette we do it every night. like clockwork. do it! run your dishwasher with cascade platinum. and save water. did you know certified dishwashers... ...use l fscycl iling sink use did you know certified th, every two nutes., it with. the surprising way to save water.

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journey. you're home. it's only natural for him to want to be with you now. >> that was a scene from the 1972 film "sounders" starring cicely tyson as rebecca, wife of a sharecropper. that performance earning the actress an oscar nomination. cicely tyson died tonight. for more than six decades, cicely tyson broke through on stage, screen, and television, playing strong black women. from the mother of a man sold into slavery in the miniseries "roots." >> a strong son. >> to the legendary coretta scott king. >> martin, you can't besior demonstration that goes wrong in this country. >> refusing to take roles that belittled black americans. >> who's to say that a film that projects images tcks

thatre positive, that and elega well into her 90s, seen here just a few years ago on "how to get away with murder." >> you're my baby girl. you don't deserve to be in jail for something i did. >> honored with a tony, three emmys, and an honorary oscar. cicely tyson was 96. what a legacy. that's "nightline." you can watch our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you right back here at the same time tomorrow. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america.