6. HOPE LIES IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Toward Healthy Communities

"At their best, healthy communities practice the right use of powers of life and lead people to experience wholeness, right relationship, and beauty. When this happens, such communities teach us to know ourselves and the world as sacred and sustain an ethic of appreciative care for life." (Brock and Parker 2001, 9)

If "human experience is both the starting point and the ending point of the circle of interpretation," then the experiences of all ­ not just half ­ of God's creation must be given weight and voice. (Ruether 1985, 111) Without women there would be no men. Within community, the church and its various traditions must commit itself to the full participation of all of its members, including women. "The intent of liberating ethics is to transform the tradition itself into an inclusive, hospitable tradition sufficiently enlarged to welcome those it previously disempowered. The more inclusive any community is of persons, perspectives, and life experiences, the better chance it has of rendering a truthful account of our common humanity." (Ellison 1996, 66)

Communities and their residents share collective trauma. For instance, several Maine locales have been hit recently by mass unemployment after the Great Northern Paper Mill in Millinocket, the Eastern Fine Paper Mill in Brewer, and Lincoln Pulp and Paper shut down. Even those residents who did not work at the mills cannot escape the pain their neighbors endure as they attempt to rebuild lives, many of which have been spent working at the mills. Some millworkers were nearing retirement age when they were laid off, with few prospects for successful job retraining. While municipalities and labor unions have been holding spaghetti supper fund-raisers for the displaced workers' families, and while calls for food to pack pantries, fuel oil donations, and other supplies have been generously answered, the extent of the trauma experienced by individuals depends largely upon that person's family environment. Trauma response is greatest for those families and individuals whose relationships are broken.

Stress may lead to family violence, and already established domestic abuse may be exacerbated. Experiencing this extreme level of stress, however, should not be accepted as an excuse for battering an intimate partner or children. We are better served by attempting to understand where the messages that affect batterers' thinking come from since many instances of family violence have no particular connection with such extreme community trauma as mass layoffs. Solutions may arise when communities open their hearts and minds to think of how domestic violence affects the entire population, not just couples in distress.

Though much good work has been done to frame domestic abuse as nothing less than a public health and safety crisis, more work is needed to change the culture that germinates seeds of abuse, that empowers men to dominate women.

Collective change in how we think about domestic violence is called for. We must change the culture together. To begin, practicing good sexual ethics may be in order. Marie Fortune's book Love Does No Harm: Sexual Ethics for the Rest of Us, offers a guide to forming healthful relationships between equal partners.

How does this wisdom get communicated widely enough for all to hear? Who will be the messenger? How do we train our ears to hear? Pastors with churches and rabbis with synagogues certainly have before them a captive audience, at least on Sundays and Saturdays.
One Bangor pastor speaks out about the importance of church in everyone's life, whether that church takes the form of a "synagogue, a cathedral, an ocean, a mountain, a goddess or bank, everyone worships something somewhere."(BDN, March 2004.) The Rev. Elaine Peresluha said she does not believe in the separation of church and state. '"Church" and state are inexorably linked in our country. As they should be."

While it is true that many of this nation's early immigrants arrived to escape religious persecution, in search of freedom to worship as they pleased, when it came time to craft nation forming documents, the men in charge aimed to avoid creating a theocracy and endorsing a state religion, not to ban religious diversity. In fact, many of those men professed to be very religious. To this day, the United States Congress opens its sessions with prayer.
"Rather than protecting an illusion of separation, we need to be honest about our connections between church and state. Why don't we have it all out on the table to incorporate in our democratic process rather than pretending it is not there? Our places of worship are the dominant environments for value formation and clarification." (Ibid.)

On Tuesday, March 16, 2004, one such place of worship became an environment for value clarification and confirmation. Grace United Methodist Church in Bangor joined the First Congregational Church, UCC, in Brewer, Spruce Run and the Penobscot County Domestic Abuse Task Force to sponsor a community candlelight vigil to remember victims of domestic abuse and affirm the goal of peace in all homes. This vision, though it is wrapped in hope, recognizes the terrible odds that militate against a solution to injustice and against healthful relationships.
Women and men must muster their best selves and join in the battle to seek true equality for themselves and their heirs. They must push for criminal justice system and social reforms and lobby for legislative changes that ensure safety for women and men in non-violent relationships.

This vision charges policy makers to activate empathy, to show mercy and to seek justice.
The story of Hester Prynne and the scarlet letter may also offer a new vision of women's own power to effect change and resist oppression in their lives. Rather than cower behind a tiny scarlet letter, Hester instead wore a large, embellished badge. As she testified when the commonwealth threatened to take her child, "This badge hath taught me ­ it daily teaches me ­ and is teaching me at this moment ­ lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better."

But while Prynne, in true Puritan form, dismissed any profit that she herself could gain from what she had learned, women today must use the lessons society forces upon them and turn them upside down to their own benefit. "We can resist and redress violence by acting for justice and by being present to one another, present to beauty, present to the fire at the heart of things, the spirit that gives breath to life." (Brock and Parker 2001, 10)

Legal Shifts: Does Mandatory Arrest Add Insult to Injury?

According to Linda Mills, her book Insult to Injury is "an attempt to become conscious of the pervasiveness of violence, its role in our intimate lives, and the judgments we make about it." (2003, 2) To clarify Mills' thesis, she is actually attempting to become conscious of the pervasiveness of violence, its role in her intimate life, and the judgments she makes about it. Mills uses her book to exorcise her own violent demons that readers may only suspect until the last chapter.

The book begins with Mills recalling a scene she and a friend witnessed between a mother and her five-year-old son. The boy was demanding his mother's attention and trying her patience, so she slapped his face. Mills recalls feeling "sad for the child and angry with his mother." Then the boy punched his mother. "In that split second, we had witnessed the genesis of intimate abuse," she writes. "The little boy would grow up to become a man, and he was already being taught to respond to women with violence." (Ibid., 1)

As the mother of two adult children, I bristled against Mills' judgment on this incident. Not being a mother herself, Mills is not in a position to properly assess the situation she stumbled upon on a London sidewalk. In my view, Mills unfairly and unreasonably places blame for the situation squarely on the mother. Ignoring her own admonition, she judged the situation before attempting to understand it. I do not condone violence in any manner, but I know I join legions of other frustrated, exhausted parents when I admit to times when the temptation to warm my young children's behinds was nearly overwhelming.

Mills writes, "It was only when I started to write this book that I realized that I, too, was engaged in a dynamic of abuse." (145) This study, though, is about women victims of violence, not about Linda Mills' recovery and discovery.

On to the topic at hand, every state, except Arkansas and Washington, D.C., has mandatory arrest policies in cases of domestic violence. According to Mills, "strong evidence suggests that mandatory arrest may actually increase the incidence of violence in some women's lives." (2003, 37.)

A self-described feminist and veteran activist, Mills uses her book to reflect "on where some feminists went wrong" in relation to domestic violence and to promote the need for other feminists to pursue a different agenda. She comes out swinging, however, and attacks those whom she calls "mainstream feminists" for failing to understand intimate abuse and the choices women make when they are involved in abusive relationships. (Ibid., 5)

Among other issues, Mills argues that "continued advocacy for an almost exclusive focus on punishment in response to domestic violence represents [feminists'] fear that if they capitulate in any way, or recognize any limitations to their approach, they will lose the benefits they have gained." (Ibid., 4) Central to her criticism is that though some life-threatening cases of domestic abuse might call for arrest, prosecution and imprisonment, "in most cases a woman should be free to choose her own destin[y], with or without criminal sanctions, and after the state has provided options that respect her specific needs while also offering her methods that would help her be safe."

While Mills should be commended for her serious consideration of how we think about and respond to domestic abuse, unless and until society can rethink its norms, beliefs and sexist attitudes that sanction men's power over women, her suggestions about the "right" way to handle incidents of violence in the home are at least premature and at most dangerous to women.

Money Matters: Domestic Violence Costs Employers

In this state and nation, where capitalism may be likened to religion, we should not be surprised that money is behind one of the latest means suggested in the struggle against domestic violence. If this new idea continues to work as well as it has recently, businesses may be able to contribute more than a few bucks a year to the cause. Their efforts will help eradicate domestic abuse, one employee at a time, when it affects their bottom line.

Maine officials including Governor John Baldacci, Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman, and Attorney General Steven Rowe are guiding the state in that direction. Rowe's ingenious initiative frames domestic violence not as private pain, but as a work hazard. Rowe paid close attention to a February 2004 report by the Maine Department of Labor showing that domestic abusers cost employers money through lost work time and on-the-job accidents.
Fortman, the former director of the Maine Women's Lobby, said the study is the first of its kind in the nation to correctly reframe the story and force batterers' accountability. "There have been studies regarding the impact that domestic violence has on victims' work performance, but this is the first to study the implications to businesses because of the offenders' actions," she said. At a press conference heralding release of this groundbreaking study, Governor Baldacci pledged that his administration was tackling the issue in a comprehensive way, involving several state departments.

Maine cannot afford the costs incurred as a result of domestic violence. Attorney General Rowe knows only too well that more than half of all homicides committed in Maine are related to domestic violence. According to the Kennebec Journal, Rowe's office itself adopted a policy in which the workplace assumes some responsibility for addressing domestic abuse in employees' lives. With the help of the state's ten Family Violence Projects, Rowe's office provides three hours of training for all his staff on the issue.

After the report's release, Rowe said in his speech to a Rotary Club meeting in Waterville covered by the Kennebec Journal, "Over half of homicides in the state are related to domestic violence. It's in our communities." Rowe himself has undergone eighteen hours of training to become a responder, charged with providing support and information to victims.

However, the message the Rotary members heard went beyond the damage that battered women endure to spell out the economic damage wrought by domestic violence. He exhorted employers to meet the issue head-on. "If you don't have one already, I'm going to challenge you to implement a domestic violence workplace policy. Domestic abuse is not throwing tantrums or workplace stress, but a pattern of coercive behavior that seeks power or control through violent threats or actions."
He referred to a recent federal study that showed that domestic violence costs the nation $133 billion a year. In Maine, Rowe said, this translates to $1,000 per person. Alongside substance abuse, Rowe said, domestic violence is one of "the two big evils of the state."

Domestic violence and abuse haunt the victim at the workplace, Rowe said. Invoking memories of Leslie Ann Bullock, the Fairfield mother of three killed by an abusive ex-husband in May 2003, Rowe sent a sobering reminder that women ­- the victims in 95 percent of domestic violence cases ­ are most often killed when they try to leave the abusive relationship. "Survivors are heroes," he said. "It's not easy. What you can do is try to be supportive, and make sure they understand they have choices."(Ibid.)

A good ethic envisions healthy communities where abuse victims have choices about their lives.