More than 30 local faith community leaders from Washburn, Rusk and Price Counties gathered on November 29th and December 1st for an all-day event at which they asked themselves how they could do more to end sexual and domestic violence and how they could better serve those who turn to them in an hour of need.
The event was sponsored and hosted in Ladysmith and Phillips by Embrace, a nonprofit organization which provides services to end domestic and sexual violence.
“Our communities’ faith leaders play a fundamental role in people’s well-being, health and spiritual life. They frequently meet people at very critical times in their lives and are often the first to hear of violence within a person’s relationship. If our faith leaders are given the tools to support survivors and are willing to raise their voices condemning domestic and sexual violence in their faith community, lives will be saved and our wider communities will become a safer place,” said Embrace Executive Director Katie Bement.
The workshop was led by speakers from Boston’s Safe Havens Interfaith Partnership Against Domestic Violence, a non-sectarian nonprofit that works to bring together survivor advocacy and communities of all religious faiths.
Safe Havens’ missions are to provide training for faith leaders and congregations, connect religious leaders with service providers and law enforcement, and advocate for religious communities to take the lead in ending domestic and sexual violence.
Over the past 25 years, Safe Havens has earned many awards — and grants from the U.S. Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women to provide training around the country.
NEED FOR TRAINING
Co-presenter Anne Marie Hunter, a Methodist minister and the founder and Executive Director of Safe Havens, noted faith leaders are often the first place survivors turn for help.
“Research shows that … they’re more likely to turn to their faith leaders than they are to call the police or call the hotline,” she said. “So that means that faith leaders are first responders. You wouldn’t send someone into a burning building as a first responder without training. So in the same way, faith leaders shouldn’t have to respond to victims and survivors without critical training.”
Yet few seminaries, Hunter said, teach faith leaders how to work with trauma victims, and that lack of training can prove dangerous for those who turn to them.
For example, she said, an untrained person might elicit a confession during couple’s counseling and not understand how a beating might follow, or encourage the abused person to leave without a safety plan and not know that leaving is often the point of greatest danger for the individual and their children.
Hunter added an untrained faith leaders might not hear carefully guarded clues that alert an experienced listener that an individual could be suffering abuse, or might unintentionally use language that shames, blames or silences the victim.
Hunter also addressed the ways that religion has been at times used to keep people in abusive relationships and the ways that faith leaders themselves have abused their positions of trust and authority.
Bement said that Washburn, Rusk and Price Counties’ faith communities have been important partners for Embrace, and the training was intended to strengthen referrals and faith leaders skill sets in identifying and taking a stand against the violence in their communities.
WIDER APPLICATION
Safe Havens’ Associate Director Alyson Morse Katzman joined Hunter in addressing such topics as:
- Defining domestic violence.
- Learning more about trauma.
- Understanding why people stay with abusive partners.
- Countering “boys will be boys” and “locker room” stereotypes.
- Building bridges between advocates and faith leaders.
- Learning how best to respond to abuse disclosures.
- Understanding the safety challenges with joint-marital counseling when violence exists in the relationship.
- Connecting survivors with advocacy groups, so they can access additional services and counseling.
Hunter and Katzman urged attendees to lead not only their congregations but also their wider communities.
“We believe that the key to broad social change lies with faith communities,” said Hunter.
The group brainstormed on the issue of how violence and abuse affects people and created lists sorted with labels such as trapped, shocked, nauseous, frozen, alone, betrayed and defeated.
At one point, Katzman read a monologue that recounted a “composite survivor’s” journey from meeting a “really great guy,” through first experiencing physical abuse, to finding herself married with three kids and saying, “Everyone thinks he’s perfect, so it must be me. I’m going crazy. I just hope this relationship isn’t the death of me.”
At another point, the presenters explained to the attendees how survivors often sanitize the language they use to disclose abuse and how the code can be broken. They provided a handout detailing the destructive statements used by perpetrators to subdue intimate partners.
Faith leaders offered up their own questions and suggestions, including ideas about how to let survivors know that it’s “OK” to ask for help, such as putting up posters in bathrooms, using sermons, addressing instances of abuse in scripture, teaching healthy sexuality through youth programs, and distributing Embrace materials.
Pastor Matthew Arneson of First Presbyterian Church in Phillips described the training as “a meaningful day of reflection, learning, and planning in regards to the sinister secret of domestic abuse/violence in our local community and congregations”.
Victory Christian Center’s Pastor Carol Gabrielsen said the whole experience was “very eye-opening”.
Last Update: Jan 06, 2017 10:31 am CST
