Spousal Abuse and Clergy Response

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. It is also Breast Cancer Awareness month, of which you hear more about than domestic violence in the media. I want to share my personal experience in the hopes that it will help someone else and wake up the clergy in the churches.

I was 19 and very naïve when I first met my husband, “M”, 49. I was working as a cashier in a local Salvation Army thrift store, and he was a truck driver with the same organization. He would go pick up donations and make deliveries to the various thrift stores on his route. I had moved to Colorado from the Bible Belt in Florida about a year before that. I was born and raised in a very conservative, morally upright Christian family, very sheltered. I had two younger brothers and two younger sisters. At the age of eight I accepted Christ as my Savior and dedicated my life to following His teachings as I understood them at the time, and the way my church taught me. The family attended a Southern Baptist church regularly and actively participated in church activities. I had dated a little starting at 16, but had had my first boyfriend in band in middle school, though my parents made me break up with him because they said I was too young at 13 to have a boyfriend. It was a pretty platonic relationship actually, and we never went anywhere except on band trips and activities. Very few guys were interested in me because I was pretty homely, shy and conservative. I was so skinny. My parents were poor and could not afford to dress me fashionably either. I wore a lot of hand me downs from my aunt and gifts from other people. My family changed churches the last year in Florida, and the new pastor, a real country preacher/farmer, had a son the same age as me who I went out on a few group dates with. One day, while we were waiting in a car for his younger sister to come out and go with us to meet her boyfriend, this boy suddenly grabs me and smacks a big smouchy wet kiss on my lips. My first kiss, and it was disgusting. I tolerated him, but I did not really care for him. I just wanted to get out of the house away from my parents and go do something. My parents did not take us out much to do anything or see anything except church. We went on our date to the movies and dinner that night, but I did not go out with him after that.

The only other guys I was interested in were much older than me, like about 10 years. They were more mature acting, I thought, than the ones my own age. But I was never their girlfriend. They all liked and dated “S”, the pastor’s daughter who was a year or two younger than me, so she was around 15 then. She would go out and meet these older men, and sometimes I would go with her, letting my parents think I was just going somewhere with her, and get a chance to talk to them. I later found out she was also having sex with them. She was very wild, the opposite of me, very obedient to my parents most of the time, staying out of trouble. I liked to be around her though, because she was so different than me, and adventurous.

When I first met “M” in the thrift store and was introduced, he immediately started flirting with me, and singing to me. But at the time I was not interested in him, but his trucker helper, “K”, around 23. “K” was staying at the Salvation Army rehab center, which were mostly alcoholics. “K” didn’t seem to really be much of a drinker, though, and was very gentlemanly in his behavior towards me. He was more of a drifter, not staying in one spot for very long. He wanted to go to church with me, though, and so my mother would go pick him up and take him to church with us, still a Southern Baptist church. (I did not have a driver’s license, and do not to this day. I don’t like to drive.) Also, residents of the center and Salvation Army employees could not date. From being in Colorado Springs, I was transferred to a more remote store further away in a nearby neighboring town of Security. The other one was situated in the Salvation Army local headquarters. “K” left and moved on out of state somewhere a few months later. I was heart broke, but “M” was glad. He had asked to be transferred to a different route that included the new store where I was working at. He started flirting with me even more outrageously, and trying to grab my hand. He and my female manager were friends, so she did not mind it at all, even with the age difference. She encouraged the relationship. “M” at first invited us, including my manager, to go play pool somewhere after work occasionally, then he and I started going out alone. I would take the city bus on the weekend and go meet him somewhere. I was fascinated by him. I loved the attention, and he was so much more mature than any guys I had met, even at church, and so experienced with women. It didn’t matter to me that he was even older than my own father.

It turned into a romantic relationship. He eventually began kissing and touching me, but I wouldn’t let him have sex with me like he wanted. I was still a virgin and he knew it. I started staying out late with him, and he would give me a ride home, past my curfew my parents had set for me, even though by this time I was 23. My parents did like me going out with him because of his age. He was not a Christian, and had different morals than me, but I was so fascinated by that wild side, like nothing I had ever encountered before. Dangerous. I began to fall in love with him, and was hurt when he told me he was having sex with a female friend of his who was not so morally conservative, who did not love him, but would give him sex when he wanted it because I would not give it to him. He claimed to love me. I made him feel so young, and he said I was different than any other woman he had known. And he had known plenty of them, all way younger than he, had been married and divorced previously seven times, but had not married the woman, also named Linda, who had born him a daughter, but he believed she was not his because he had gotten injured while in the Army as a young man and was told he was sterile. This other Linda was no virgin when he met her, and he said she was cheating on him when she became pregnant. They were living together at the time, and she had an infant son when he met her from another boyfriend. He broke up with her and took the two children when he came home from deer hunting one day and found the children, around two and four years of age, alone, crying, and hiding under a bed. She had left them alone to go drinking at a bar. He waited for her to come home, they got into a fight, and he beat her up for leaving the children alone and he thought to meet another man also. He would go camping out in the woods for several weeks when he went deer hunting, sometimes with male friends, sometimes alone. He beat her up and left with the kids.

He also would get into fights in bars, only occasionally getting drunk, though he did drink some. I never did drink alcohol and don’t now, though I tasted it a few times. Even at a bar I would have soda with him. Violence was a way of life for him, though I did not realize how much until much later. The signs that he was an abuser were there, but I did not recognize them at the time. I never thought he would hit me because I would never leave the children home alone unless they were old enough to be left alone unsupervised. I just thought it was an isolated incident with his ex-girlfriend.

However, I jump slightly ahead. One night before we went dancing I gave in and had sex with him, though I knew it was wrong. I wanted all of him, not just his heart, and I was jealous of that friend of his he was having convenient sex with. Shortly after that I became pregnant. After a couple of months of missed menstrual cycles and nausea and tiredness, “M” began to suspect I was pregnant when I told him my symptoms, and took me to his doctor to get tested. I was pregnant, and terrified of what to do now. “M” had said he loved me, but had decided not to marry me even after he had sex with me, was going to break up with me and wanted me to start dating men closer to my own age. He changed his mind after I became pregnant with his child. He had been told by Army doctors that he could not have children. This time he knew the child was his because I was a virgin before I became intimate with him, and I was not seeing anyone else. I was afraid of being left alone, an unwed mother. In my church, my family, the whole culture I was raised in, it was a horrible disgrace and shame to bear a child and not be married. “M” did mention an abortion as a possibility briefly, but I told him I was against abortions, and would not do it, and why. He wanted the child, but was hesitant about marrying me. Still thought I should marry someone younger, but because it was his child that he thought he would never have, he decided to marry me. I was afraid to tell my parents, but eventually I did. I knew they would be so upset with me, their firstborn, ever before obedient, honor student in high school they had such high hopes for. I told my mother first, and she made me tell my father alone. My father was a very angry, abusive man, and we kids were scared of him. We always asked for things or permission to go places through our mother, who then would ask him. Never directly. My father did not hit me, but he broke down and cried. I was crying. He then said that “M” and his two children from a previous relationship would never be allowed to come visit at the house. Only our baby and I could come visit them. The baby could come because he was a part of me, my flesh and blood.

A few months later, before the baby was born, I got married in a cold civil ceremony before a justice of the peace. Not the beautiful romantic wedding and white dress in a church that I had always dreamed of. Only one of my sisters and a lady friend from church attended on my behalf. My best girlfriend, supposedly a devout Christian, refused to attend because of the circumstances. We did not remain friends after that. My husband’s best friend and his girlfriend also came.

Sometime before I got married, my pastor found out I was pregnant. I forget if I told him or my mother did. By that time my father had stopped attending church altogether because of a dispute involving my youngest brother with a pastor at another church where we first went when we moved to Colorado. Even after I became pregnant I attended church regularly, but I dropped out of choir and I stopped teaching the pre-school Sunday School class I was teaching. I resigned immediately when I found out I was pregnant without giving a reason to the Sunday School Director, but it was because I was so ashamed of what I had done, and felt I was no longer the good example to the children that I should have been as one of their teachers. I think “M” would come to church occasionally with me, but not often. I had previously introduced him to the pastor. After I became pregnant, and when I would meet the pastor or choir director in the hallway, they would greet me, but not as friendly as before, kinda cold, with a frozen smile on their lips. It was a very uncomfortable meeting time. I was uncomfortable and ashamed, wishing I had never done what I did, and their attitude made me feel worse. I had trouble looking them in the eye. Some of the choir ladies, including the pastor’s secretary and another secretary in the office I had done volunteer work with, gave me a baby shower to help me out. My husband was a poor truck driver working for a rock and gravel company that he had just started working with after he was let go from the Salvation Army for stealing stuff from the donation bins several months before I became pregnant. My job had ended at the Salvation Army, too, sometime before this, because it was a federal job training program job, and when my year of training was up, they would have had to pay all my wages, instead of being responsible for half, and they said they could not afford to do that. All in all, I had known my husband for 2 years before I married him.

“M” moved his family to a trailer even further from the city of Colorado Springs, to Fountain. The city bus did not go out there then. A Greyhound bus did, several times a day, but I could not afford it. So I became even further isolated from family and what few friends I had. My husband worked during the day. His two children were in school except for the summer. They were teenagers by then, so they spent a lot of time at friends houses except when it was time for their dad to come home from work. I was home with our infant son. Occasionally, my mother would come out to visit, or take me into the city, but not often. My husband would take me and our son and drop us off at church. My step daughter started going with me a lot of times, and was eventually baptized after she allegedly accepted Christ, her own choice. No pressure from me. But she was still a rebellious, disrespectful girl.

After about a year of marriage, my father relented and allowed my husband and his two children to visit as well. They accepted them as their own flesh and blood grandchildren. We spent part of the holidays there, and all of my new family were given presents as well at Christmas.

However, it was not a happy marriage. I experienced verbal and in the last year of my 3 1/2 year marriage, physical abuse. About two years into our marriage, the whole family was ordered into court ordered counseling because he had physically abused his daughter with a belt buckle for stealing. I did not know how bad he hurt her. I was not in her room where it happened. I was afraid of him by that time. Punishment with a belt was normal in my own childhood. I don't approve of it. Afterwards he took me and our baby son and dropped me off at church. After he left, his daughter ran away and called her mother, who lived in town and she called the police. They took her and her older half brother away in group homes for several months, but left our baby in the home amazingly. The daughter lived in several group homes and kept running away, occasionally being allowed to visit for a day or two after several months of being kept away. The family was in court-ordered therapy for a year with a secular therapist, but it was a joke. My husband refused to even acknowledge to the day he died years later that anything was wrong in the home, and he refused to say anything during counseling sessions. During that year in counseling, he started being abusive to me, physically, and even more verbally. I stayed home sick one day and called the counselor while he was on his way to the session and told her about it, but nothing happened. After he started slapping me to the ground, I sneaked out the next morning while he was asleep and left with our almost 3 year old son to my parents. That last night before I left, a voice told me "Get out now. Otherwise, in a week you will be dead". I later have come to think of that voice as God's. The law in Colorado Springs, Colorado was such that in that time a husband would only be arrested if he hurt the wife so much that she had to be hospitalized for her injuries. Otherwise nothing was done to the husband, so the law was no help then. I knew from a girlfriend who, along with her children, was slammed against the walls by her new husband, and got bruised, but not hospitalized. I still divorced my husband for abuse, though the official reason was "irreconcilable differences" by the judge and my do nothing lawyer. I got full sole custody of my son. The step daughter became emancipated and the stepson stayed with his father. The step children and I never got along. They totally disrespected me with their father's approval. As to what my pastor thought of all this, he thought I should have only been separated from him, but not sought divorce, even though therapy had not worked and he was not going to change. Also, in the law, the police would arrest a divorced spouse for some other charge, not domestic violence at that time, probably some kind of assault charge, but not if one was just separated. And you had to show the police your divorce papers.

My mother was verbally abused by my father, but stayed with him because she could not support herself and us kids enough financially on her own. We kids were abused by our father as well, I know now. During that time my mother sought counseling and help from an associate pastor at her current church, where I last was, a professionally trained Christian counselor, but not trained to recognize signs of abuse. He never helped my mother. My mother got freedom and relief after my father died 3 years ago, though he did get better the last 15 years he was alive. My mother has never sought counseling elsewhere and only understands a little what the lingering effects of abuse are on herself, much less a child.

I first became aware of what domestic violence while married, when I was home alone with my baby one day and watched a movie with Farah Fawcett, “The Burning Bed.” It was about a married woman who was beat and hit a lot by her husband. When she tried to leave him, he brought her back and beat her up again. She tried several times. One day, so sore she could barely move, bruised all over, including her face, she could not take the abuse anymore. She and her husband were in bed. He was sleeping. She got up and found some gasoline in a can. She brought it in and poured it over the bed and him. He woke up about that time and she threw a lit match onto the bed, lighting it on fire. She screamed at him that he was never going to hurt her again, or something like that. He screamed at her and tried to get away off the bed, but he was already on fire and burnt to death. She just watched him and did not call a fire truck or the police. A neighbor called a firetruck though. She was arrested by the police, and told them of her abuse. I don’t remember what happened to her after that, but at the very end of the movie, it told of how shortly after that domestic violence shelters were started and were available to women who were abused like her. It talked about what domestic violence was. That’s when I learned I had a way out, and that what was happening to me was wrong also, and it had a name. Even if the police would not protect me, there were shelters available that I could flee to, and the police were not even supposed to know where they were. I could call someone and they would pick me up or meet me somewhere, and take me to a secret location.

I know others have been abused way far worse than I was, but I know what it is to live in fear and walk on eggshells all the time around an abuser, never being able to please them. I was able to leave my situation before I got so badly abused I had to be hospitalized or permanently injured physically. Many are not so lucky. Though most of the victims are women, there are some men, too, who are abused by their spouses, even physically. I know of one man who brutally beaten by his wife so bad he saw his own blood spattered on a wall of his home, then she raped him. I learned later how abuse affected me emotionally, mentally and more recently, spiritually.

I personally know the legalistic attitude of Southern Baptist clergy who seem to believe that the only reason for divorce is infidelity. But I believe God does not want a woman to endanger her life and stay with an abuser when the abuser shows no signs of remorse or won't even try to get help to change himself. If he wants to change, and makes a sincere effort, fine, then give the marriage a chance.

However, a verse was pointed out to me by a Christ follower, who has studied Jewish beliefs, customs and culture, that even the Jewish rabbinical commentaries in biblical times recognized abuse as a legitimate reason for divorce. This is the verse they were basing that on: Malachi 2:16

For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for [one] covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

Putting away = divorce
garment = wife

I left the Southern Baptist church several years later, and joined another denomination. Since then, I have come to see the corruptness of the church system, how far away they are from the true love and compassion of God, and have since left all churches. I no longer belong to any church. I still believe in Yeshua HaMachiach and his teachings, study the Bible, and still strive to be ever more like Him.

If you are scared and you need to talk, call the
NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE at:
1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY)