I can help get these isolated and logged.  Before I can do so, I need one
very important piece of information, and that is a well defined sequence of
steps to reproduce the problem.  
In your note, you talk about using the find dialog.  Although this is a
good start, could you save a document, bring up the find dialog, and then
choose to search for a string which will always crash AbiWord?  If so, you
can send me that document, and I can obtain a huge amount of debug
information and work toward getting the problem fixed.  
Feel free to mail me personally, and I will help you to help me track this
down.  
Robert Sievers
Open Source Evangelist