I USED to tell friends that I would divorce my husband at the drop of a hat if he did the slightest thing wrong . I would not wait for any explanations, I told them, I would just leave. They all nodded their agreement and vowed to do the same.

That was before any of us knew what a real relationship was like and just how much women are willing to put up with to save their relationships. Years later I would stay with someone who cheated on me repeatedly. Once, when I complained about his philandering, he told me he was a package, and to "take it or leave it". I took it for a while.

It wasn't until my daughter was born that I realised just how destructive this relationship was. I did not want her to grow up under those conditions, so I wanted out. Still, it was hard to leave because I just couldn't imagine my life without him. I didn't think I was strong enough to handle a break up. My GP, who had grown tired of my weekly visits to his rooms where I would spend an hour crying my eyes out, referred me to a psychologist. She helped me move on with my life and regain my self-confidence.

And so now, at 34 ,I know a lot of things that 16-year-old me didn't know, one of which is that leaving a relationship is not easy. However, there are just some things that are instant deal breakers.

Cue Dottie Sandusky, wife of Jarry Sandusky, the 67-year-old former assistant football coach at Penn State University who is accused of molesting 10 boys. On Thursday Dottie broke her silence to say the accusations were false and believes him innocent.

I can, on some level, understand the wives who stand by their men through extramarital affairs. Some people can handle their husbands cheating on them and some would rather turn a blind eye than leave the security they have become accustomed to. It doesn't make it right and it makes me sad, but that's their prerogative.

But 10 people accusing your husband of molestation and you decide to stay? Come on.

The young men say Sandusky molested them when they were boys in his home, at Penn State and elsewhere. One of the accusers testified that Dottie was home when he screamed for help while her husband sexually assaulted him in a basement bedroom where the coach kept him during overnight visits, forced him to perform oral sex and attempted to anally penetrate him on at least 16 occasions, sometimes successfully.

In response to the accusation, Dottie said: "I am so sad anyone would make such a terrible accusation which is absolutely untrue."

The Sanduskys raised six adopted children and say they would never do anything to hurt a child. Dottie may be in denial about the abuse, but the truth is that anybody is capable of anything. So many times we hear of the unlikeliest person committing one crime or another and their families realise they didn't know them at all.

In interviews with the media, Sandusky says he showered with and "horsed around" with the boys he met through his nonprofit organisation for troubled youth, The Second Mile, but never sexually abused anyone.

But a grad assistant says that in 2002 he walked into a shower where Sandusky was raping a boy who appeared to be 10 or 11. A janitor says he saw Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy.

And I am willing to bet we will be seeing more young men coming forward .