I have a lot of experience with relationship violence -- unfortunately from both sides -- so I hope my perspective might shape your thinking (: Here I will use "abuse" to mean "relationship violence"

I'm guessing here we mean that situation where an abuser says something verbally violent, and the victim says "oh he was just angry" "oh he had a bad childhood" "forgiveness is important so I'll forgive him" without ever confronting the behavior or setting a boundary.

I don't consider this kind of "empathy" short-term thinking empathy in the zen sense because 1) the victim sacrifices compassion for themselves to allow the abuse to continue and 2) it can never be compassionate to allow an abuser to continue abusing you, for when an abuser harms you, they also harm themselves.

IME It is quite difficult to maintain this high level of empathy during abuse because the instinctive drive to maintain existing relational bonds -- or the drive to defend onesself in a (verbally or physically) violent way -- supercedes any NVC desires unless you've done a lot of personal work.

Just my unprofessional thoughts, feel free to disagree (: