Introduction

Manual Overview

BOOK I: Faith Community Curriculum for Clergy and Lay Leaders
- Curriculum Outline
- Instructions
- Supplies Checklist
- Room Checklist
- Educator Qualities
- Key Issues and Points
- Course Objectives
- Part 1-A: Introductions
  and Opening Comments
- Part 1-B: Elements and Dynamics
  of Domestic Abuse
- Part 1-C: Barriers
- Part 1-D: “Broken Vows” Video
Part 2-A: Awareness Raising
- Part 2-B: What to Say and Do
- Part 2-C: What Congregations
  Can Do
- Part 3: Closure
- Handouts list

BOOK II: Family Violence: Helping Survivors and Abusers
A Manual for Faith Communities

BOOK III: Pastor’s Packet: Family Violence Awareness Materials for Pastors

BOOK IV: Curriculum for Laity

Appendix

Part 2-A: Awareness Raising

Desired Time:

• 15 minutes

Purpose:

• Provide a genuine sense of the survivor perspective
• A subtly impactful physical demonstration of the effect of multiple violations upon a person’s self-esteem and the isolation survivors experience

Strategies:

• A reader
• One of the presenters sitting in a chair
• 8 blankets

Tips:
The person sitting under the blankets must not be claustrophobic!

Content

Why People Stay Audience Exercise
read by one and demonstrated by one or more volunteers.

Janet’s Story: A Case History
The purpose of this presentation is to help participants visualize the way in which the circumstances of a battered woman’s life limits her options. This is the most graphic way to answer their persistent question, “Why does she stay?”

Be prepared with a pile of eight blankets, quilts or bedspreads. One workshop leader or planner reads the script of Janet’s story. Another workshop leader sits on a chair in front of the group. The reader asks the participants to listen to each statement from Janet’s story, giving the instruction that, after each statement, one participant is to come forward and place a blanket over the person seated on the chair in front.

Script:

Janet is thirty five years old. She has been married for sixteen years. She grew up as a member of the church and is a committed Christian. She has four children ages seven to 15.

[Pause.]

When Janet was a child, she saw her father hit her mother. He did it once or twice a week. Several times, Janet recalls, her mother had to go to the hospital.

[Pause. Wait for one person to come forward with a blanket.]

Janet’s uncle molested her for five years. She was eight years old when it started. She was afraid to tell anyone.

[Pause. Wait for an second person to come forward with a blanket.]

When Janet was in high school, her pastor taught a course for the church youth group on marriage. He emphasized that marriage is forever, that it is sacred.

[Pause. Wait for an third person to come forward with a blanket.]

Janet quit school in her second year of college in order to marry Bob. He had a good job and he didn’t want her to have to work outside the home.

[Pause. Wait for an fourth person to come forward with a blanket.]

Bob began abusing Janet the first year of their marriage when she was pregnant. She threatened to leave. He told her to forget it, saying that no one else would have her. She nearly lost the baby.

[Pause. Wait for an fifth person to come forward with a blanket.]

Five years and two children later, Janet went to her mother for help. Her mother said that this was just the way marriage was. It was her cross to bear and she had to accept it.

[Pause. Wait for an sixth person to come forward with a blanket.]

Janet thought about going to her minister. But her minister knew and respected Bob, who was an active lay leader in their church. She didn’t think her minister would believe her stories of beatings, humiliations, and rapes.

[Pause. Wait for an seventh person to come forward with a blanket.]

Janet left once and went to stay with her best friend. Bob found her and told her that he had a gun. He said that he would use it if he had to.

[Pause. Wait for an eighth person to come forward with a blanket.]

[Address the person playing Janet.] “Janet, why do you put up with this? Why don’t you just leave him?”

[The person under the blankets replies nonverbally by attempting to move but cannot get up because of the weight of the blankets.]

When you pause after reading each of the next statements, ask a participant to come forward and remove a blanket.

Janet remembered that her ninth grade Sunday school teacher taught her that she was a child of God and that God cared about her.

[Pause.]

Janet read in the newspaper about a new law that said that husbands could be arrested for beating their wives.

[Pause.]

Janet remembered that Mrs. Jackson, the mother of her best friend in high school, had divorced her husband and moved away. Janet knew that her friend’s father had been abusive.

[Pause.]

Janet read a story in Good Housekeeping magazine about a battered woman who was her age. Until then, she had thought she was the only one.

[Pause.]

Janet read in her Bible: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” (1 Cor. 3:16-17)

[Pause.]

Janet saw a newspaper ad for a battered women’s shelter. She realized that there was a place to go and be safe.

[Pause.]

Janet read in the church bulletin that there was a presentation at her church about battered women. She was afraid to go, but she thought that maybe this meant that her pastor would be willing to help her.

[Pause.]

Bob hit their son and threw him across the room. Janet decided that she could not let her children be hurt any more. She knew that she had to protect them.

[Pause.]

[Address the person playing Janet.]  “Janet, remember that ‘for freedom Christ has set you free.’ Go in peace.”

Ask participants to take a few minutes to react to the presentation either in conversation with the person next to them or as a group.

The idea for this presentation was derived from an exercise developed by Ellen Penz and the Duluth Abuse Intervention Project, Duluth, Minnesota. Reprinted with permission 8/31/01