‘‘What people do not understand is that
divorce doesn’t end the abuse; it merely
changes it. The verbal abuse no longer
happens in your living room, but in the
driveway, or on the phone, or at the kids’
soccer games.”
Rates of abuse, by the people..
Rates of abuse are about the same in religious and
secular families. The difference: Religious women
may stay in abusive marriages longer. “The myth
of the happy family puts a lot of pressure on reli-
gious women to stay, even if it’s risky,” says Nan-
cy Nason-Clark, Ph.D., coauthor of No Place for
Abuse: Biblical & Practical Resources to Counter-
act Domestic Violence. Most religious leaders don’t
minimize abused women’s suffering, she adds, “but
many don’t know how to help and are not aware
of the resources available in their communities.”
It wasn’t until Katie Rogers, 40, sought counseling from
a pastor outside her own church in Ohio that she was
able to leave her husband of almost five years. “My ex
would always tell me, ‘God gave you to me; you belong
to me and you need to do as I say,’” she recalls. “I was like
his slave, sexually and physically. But I hid it because I
was embarrassed and I didn’t want the marriage to fail.”
Katie suffered in secret until she told the pastor’s wife
at a nearby church what was happening. “She gave
me pamphlets about abuse, and that’s when the light-
bulb went on,” she says. Strengthened by counseling
she received at that church, she told her parents and
her pastor that she was preparing to file for divorce.
“One evening, I dropped my sons off at my par-
ents’ house after Bible study and told my hus-
band he had 30 days to find somewhere else to
live and that in the meantime I’d be at my parents’
home,” she says. “He left that night. I know God
was with me. God is love, and love is not abuse.”
For 11 years, off and on, her husband told her she
was stupid and incompetent and terrorized her by
letting her sleep only a few hours every night. “He’d
jump on the bed and blare music and threaten to
wake up the kids. He insisted I make eye contact with
him and answer his questions. The only way he’d let
me go to sleep was if I had sex with him,” she says.
“Because I was so sleep-deprived, it was easy for him
to distort my reality. Once he held a gun to my head
and played Russian roulette. Later, he told me it nev-
er happened — and I thought maybe he was right.”
Lucy grew up in a troubled home, with a father who
verbally abused her mother, and that early exposure
may have put her at increased risk for later abuse.