Today I participated in a Church Women United event in Mesa, near Phoenix. Church Women United is an organization committed to seeking justice (particularly for women) and for doing so across denominations. Today at the event, we participated in several different workshops.
The first workshop focused on domestic violence. A long table was set up with various stations, labeled things like: Friends & Family, Hospital, Shelter, Forgive and Forget, Job, Funeral Home, Court, Religious Advice, Abuse Happens, and Return to Home. Each station had cards of different colors. At the beginning we would choose a color and follow that character through the various stations, sometimes returning places more than once and sometimes having choices. (For example, you could either go to the hospital or to a friend's house.) When we went to the Shelter, we had to flip a coin to see if we would be admitted, since often not enough space is available for everyone who seeks protection. Whenever we visited Abuse Happens, after reading our card we would put on a band-aid to represent that we had been abused.
I found this to be a very powerful exercise. I think it helped us to better identify with these stories. Instead of reading about something that happened to someone else, we read the cards as if this was something happening to ourselves. It also helped us realize how difficult the situation can be.
For instance, some women were saying, "No matter what we did, no matter what we chose, we always ended up back at Abuse Happens." Others were saying, "We're being accused of violence by the courts, and that isn't what happened at all. We are innocent; we are the victim!"
My character was an immigrant, and every time I went somewhere I had to "wait 5 minutes for a translator." (Though in reality this wait would probably be longer, or I would not be given a translator at all, despite what the laws might be.)There was also the added fear that I would be deported or face some other kind of struggle since I was an immigrant. At the end of my story, I was living away from my abuser and I had two band-aids on my left hand. Some of the women were not so lucky; their stories ended in the Funeral Home.
After we finished the exercise, one of the women present confided in me that she had a daughter who had gone through this situation. Other women were not able to participate due to the emotional stress.
One of the most difficult things to think about was how common this issue is and yet how little it is talked about in the church. And, as our presenter said, our silence gives consent. When we say nothing, when we allow these things to continue happening, we encourage the violence to continue. This is especially troublesome when we consider the epidemic of misplaced blame: telling women that they deserve to be abused or that the abuse is somehow their fault. But there are no excuses for violence. It is a choice made by the abuser, and we cannot be silent. We cannot let women continue to believe that they are inferior or that this is their fault they are abused.
Our presenter provided some resources on how to address this issue. These were a few of the suggestions:
- preach sermons on the topic in Sunday service
- teach youth (and others in the church) what healthy relationships look like
- put resource cards in bathroom stalls (where women can take them without anyone else seeing), called "Shoe Cards" because they can be kept in a shoe--so an abuser would not find it in the victim's purse
- learn how to support someone who is experiencing abuse
- become educated domestic violence and what shelters/other forms of support are in your community
The statistics regarding the prevalence of domestic violence are heartbreaking. As the presenter said, "If domestic violence was the flu, we would be mobilizing."
