Of faith and violence

If it takes a village to raise a child, perhaps it takes a spiritual village to tend the wounds from domestic violence in a family and a community.

At Safe Nest's annual Interfaith Domestic Violence Conference, participants met at Mountaintop Faith Ministries to look at the age-old problem with an eye for the ways faith and religion can help heal. Speaking from the pulpit, Seattle-based conference leader and keynote speaker the Rev. Marie Fortune led the approximately 100 participants step-by-step through the world of domestic violence -- what it does to victims, families and a congregation.

"We have a tremendous potential to help," said Fortune, who is the founder and senior analyst at FaithTrust Institute (formerly the Center for Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence).

And the potential to reach out and help is precisely the point of the faith-based conference, says Kathleen Brooks, Safe Nest's associate director.

"I think it's critical [to get the faith community involved]. It could save lives," Brooks says.

Brooks got the idea to bring a faith-based domestic violence conference to Nevada about seven or eight years ago when she went to a similar conference in another city. She then launched the local Domestic Violence Interfaith Council, which invites leaders from all religions to participate.

"We work very hard to invite everyone to the table," Brooks says. "It's hard to get faith leaders to a conference like this."

What makes it so hard to get faith leaders to a domestic violence conference, much less talking about the issue to their flocks? The same things that make it hard in any community.

"They don't know what to do," says Brooks. "Some still blame the victim -- that still happens an awful lot. When we're saying, 'It can happen here.' And they're saying, 'No. It can't.'"

This denial that domestic violence can touch those who are church- or synagogue- or mosque-going folk is a hard one to get over. It's something Fortune addressed right up front on May 25, the first day of the two-day conference.

"When someone gets sick, we [in the faith community] immediately spring into action with prayers and support networks. But we are not always a safe place for victims to find support," Fortune told the crowd. "We have to be part of a community who holds perpetrators accountable. ... If this is affecting 50 percent of people, we need to do more to address it."

Fortune outlined for the participants -- faith leaders, health-care workers, law enforcement and victim advocates -- how spirituality and religion can be used to help victims as well as hold perpetrators accountable. Her main tips were to offer victims safety above all else, hold the perpetrator accountable and to help restore the relationship only if possible and appropriate. She explained that many religious leaders are trained to reinforce marriages staying together, but that might not always be safe in domestic violence situations. Likewise, Fortune pointed out that suggesting couples' counseling to spouses in cases of domestic violence is the wrong thing to do because either the victim will not feel safe disclosing the abuse or after disclosing will pay painful consequences.

In fact, Safe Nest coordinator Tamara Utzig said reaching religious leaders with information about domestic violence is important because of the role they play in many people's lives.

"If someone's faith is very important to them, you need to back that up," Utzig said, adding that many victims who seek help from Safe Nest say their religion is very important to them. "A lot of victims feel they are to blame for the violence in their lives."

A recognized leader in the national faith community's response to domestic violence, Fortune says many of her colleagues simply don't connect the dots between reports on the news and abuse within their congregation. And she does run into those who think the best advice to victims is to pray and to endure the abuse. Fortune gets irritated at the use of religious texts to back up the idea of women as property or condoning the beating of women and children.

"I'm afraid it's more common than we'd like to believe. It is a misuse -- of teaching that is based on taking things out of context and usually justifies whatever it is that they're doing. It's like when they used it to justify slavery. ... Since I am a Christian, I believe that the scripture can't be legitimately used to justify [domestic violence]."

In her seminars, Fortune used real-life examples and made-up scenarios to illustrate her points. In one story she told of her true experience providing spiritual counseling to a court-mandated incest perpetrators group.

"I learned a lot in three hours. The one thing they all told me was, 'Don't forgive us so quickly.' ... If they had a message to us today, they would be saying, 'Don't forgive us so quickly,'" she said.

But there was more to the conference than guidance to faith leaders. The second day had sessions about human trafficking, police responses, immigration and tips for medical workers on how to spot a victim. Utzig said it was a goal of the conference to not only educate but open the doors of communication between faith leaders, medical workers, law enforcement and others.

"The partnership thing is so important because no one can do it alone," Utzig said.