On Friday, April 1, our urban ministry class traveled to St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Redbank (a suburb of Chattanooga), to hear a presentation by Dr. Charlotte Boatwright on domestic violence. Charlotte was originally a nurse (RN) and her husband was a physician. Later in life, her husband became an Episcopal priest, and she became a counselor and educator around domestic violence issues.
Charlotte's presentation was sobering and disturbing. She gave us all kinds of statistics about domestic violence and interspersed graphic images of battered women throughout her PowerPoint presentation. She said she uses the images to make sure people realize that this is a serious issue, dealing with real violence, not just a "lover's quarrel," and that women aren't "making these things up" -- but after a member of our class objected, saying he had difficulty with seeing such images, she sped past the remainder of them in the presentation.
It's so important for clergy to be educated about domestic violence, Charlotte told us, because we will have families in our congregations who are abusive. The statistics are too high for that not to be the case: one in three women will be victims of domestic abuse, compared to one in eight women who will get breast cancer. And yet, domestic violence is often hidden and unreported -- and because of the power and control of the abuser, many abused people will never speak about their abuse to anyone.
One of my classmates asked a question about gender issues and domestic abuse, pointing out that Charlotte kept referring to the abuser as "he," and talking about abused women. Aren't men abused as well? Yes, Charlotte said, but in about 90 percent of the cases, the victim is a woman -- so for reasons of statistical majority, she said, she uses the male pronoun in reference to "the abuser." We discussed, however, that the lower statistics around abused men are likely due to the fact that men are less likely to report abuse due to the perceived social stigma around a man being abused by a woman. And overall, it is estimated that only about 20 percent of domestic violence cases are reported.
There are 2,000 deaths annually in the U.S. from domestic violence, and 300,000 hospitalizations. 3 million women are abused each year, and 3.3 million children will witness abuse -- and often learn to be victims or perpetrators themselves from observing this behavior in their home.
One of the things Charlotte stressed to us was that domestic abuse and domestic violence are learned behaviors -- it is not caused by mental illness, substance abuse, or stress (all things that are often cited as "causes" of domestic violence), but it is learned behavior -- the abuser has learned that he or she can behave this way and get what he or she wants from the other person. Certainly, mental illness, substance abuse, and stress can exacerbate a domestic violence situation, but they do not cause domestic violence in and of themselves: not all mentally ill people, addicted people, or stressed people abuse their spouses. The behavior is learned: abusers often have abuse in the family of origin, and 80 percent of males who observe abusive relationships will become abusers themselves.
Charlotte told us that if we learned only one thing that day, she wanted us to learn that domestic violence is not about anger. It's about power and control over another human being.
People often think domestic abuse and domestic violence result from people acting out of anger, that their violent behavior comes out of a place of anger and is uncontrollable. On the contrary, Charlotte said, people who are truly abusers do not have poor impulse control. They are not angry. They do not simply "lose control" in the "heat of the moment" of an argument and lash out and hit their spouse. They know exactly what they are doing and strategically plan ways to exercise control over their spouse, down to controlling when and how their spouse can leave the house, how much money they are allowed to have access to and to spend, and how much contact they have with friends and family. It is an overarching, calculated system of control, not a matter of a "hot temper." Victims of abuse are literally "living in a war zone," Charlotte said, never sure of what to expect from the unpredictable behavior of their spouse.
In the past, courts often sentenced abusers to anger management classes. This kind of treatment is entirely inappropriate for domestic abusers, Charlotte stressed. Instead, they need a different kind of treatment centered on addressing their needs for power and control and conditioning them to find alternative ways of meeting the needs that they have previously met through exercising control over their spouses and families.
Because of the link between power and control and domestic abuse and violence, Charlotte said, you find higher percentages of abusers in vocations that are about power and control: doctors, lawyers, military, police -- and clergy -- are often abusers.
This last point was a very sobering one to me, as we sat in this group of clergy and future clergy. Certainly, ordained ministry gives one a great deal of power and control over other people -- if not physically, certainly mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Those of us in the ministry would do ourselves a favor to be tirelessly introspective about our own tendencies to abuse our power and be in constant contact with a support system -- professional counseling, spiritual direction, etc -- to keep ourselves in check.
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