The Church's Response To Abuse

The abuse of women is one of the most tragic social problems of modern society and is found both outside and inside the church. The following article describes the staggering proportions of this problem and offers guidelines for the church's response to it.

Before you finish reading this article, twenty-four women in the United States will be battered by a husband, father, boyfriend, or uncle (i.e., one every fifteen seconds). One-fourth of those battered women are pregnant; their batterers typically attack the woman's abdomen, whereas non-pregnant women are most commonly beaten on the face and breasts. Physical violence by family members is the single largest cause of injury to women in the United States. A study in a Connecticut hospital found that almost half the women in the emergency room were treated for beatings by male companions or family members. Estimates are that somewhere between three and four million women each year in the United States are beaten by their husbands, ex-husbands, or boyfriends. By the end of the day, four women will have died of their injuries. Before you finish this article, a woman in the United States will be raped, most likely by a friend, an acquaintance, a date, or a family member (i.e., one every six minutes). At this rate, almost one-half of the women in the U.S. will be raped in their lifetime. Many of these rape victims are children. Researchers estimate that one out of three girls in the United States will be sexually assaulted or abused by the age of eighteen. Ninety percent of the abusers know their victim: father, stepfather, uncle, grandfather, family friend, babysitter, teacher, minister, priest. One out of seven married women are raped by her husband. A Fear That Changes Everything No woman is exempt from the threat of personal violence. We as women all learn to adapt to this reality at the habitual level. We lock doors, check the back seats of cars, and avoid going out at night alone. We avoid making eye contact when walking on public streets. We monitor how we dress, how we move, how we sit. By a thousand such small, deeply internalized habits, we constrict ourselves, restrict our movements, limit our lives out of fear. Many of us learn, to our everlasting pain and rage, that in reality these measures do not protect us. We are not safe. The lesson that our self-protective behaviors serve us about as well as throwing salt over our left shoulder is a painful one. We learn it by personal experience of violence, by the violation of someone we know, or by intentional confrontation with the literature on the subject. We feel angry; we feel betrayed. It is especially painful for us to think that men we know or love commit this violence. Nor do we find that our religion or our church protects us from this violence. Difficult as it is for us to believe it, these statistics are true for our church, our parish, our congregation. Violence against women takes place at every socio-economic level, at every educational or professional level, across racial and ethnic lines, in all religions. In every congregation, every parish, are survivors of sexual violence and rapists, women and children who are beaten regularly in their home, and violent men. Yet the church and its leaders are, more often than not, silent. Pulpits do not thunder with denunciations of violence against women and children. Church leaders do not write pastoral letters crying out against woman-battering and sexual violence. There is no commandment that says, "?Thou shalt not rape.?" It is more common for batterers to quote Scripture to justify their abuse and to claim that their authority over women is God-given. Religion often silences battered and raped women through instructions from leaders to submit to male authority, to suffer in silence and make no protests, to find spiritual value in their suffering, and to forgive their persecutors. Religion often blames women by associating women with sin, sexuality, and evil. This makes us responsible for violence inflicted on us by someone else. For faithful Christian women, this use of our own spirituality against us is unspeakably painful and provokes a deep crisis of faith. What change of heart, of life, is needed? True repentance requires the acceptance of responsibility of one's sin. First the batterer or rapist is to be held accountable for his violent behavior and its consequences. This in turn means that it is the church community's responsibility to hold him accountable by a process of repentance and reconciliation. Studies of battering men report that the most effective response to battering is to call the police and file charges. Any other response increases the likelihood that the abuse will be repeated. Therefore, church processes of repentance and reconciliation should not short-circuit legal processes, nor should they offer easy forgiveness. The church should refuse to protect the violent man from the consequences of his actions, demand he make restitution to his victims, and require his participation in intensive training to help him learn a non-violent way of life. On the institutional and the personal level, the church must be an advocate for women. It must make clear in a variety of ways that any form of violence against women is unacceptable and contrary to the teaching of the church. It must reinforce these pronouncements with action by training church leaders to recognize and deal with violence against women; by providing and supporting shelters for women and children; by insisting that the use of violence by one partner in a marriage (including rape) breaks the marriage vows; and by refusing to protect men who batter or rape from the consequences. Friends or ministers of a woman who has survived physical or sexual violence can make themselves available to her for support and help. They can encourage her to take care of her safety and support her if she decides to report the assault to the police. Both clergy and laity need to be informed about the legal rights of battered and raped women. They need to be prepared to support women through the often grueling legal processes. Local congregations can provide safe temporary housing among their members for a woman who chooses to leave an abusive man.