Domestic violence within our plain culture?

[Josh]

The topic of mental illness is fraught and well worth discussing, but in my view it is mostly irrelevant to the topic of domestic abuse within Anabaptist churches for a simple reason: the overwhelming majority of Plain abusers, like the overwhelming majority of abusers in general, do not abuse because of mental illness and thus do not come across as "strange" or exhibit any kind of obvious tell to the greater community that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of abusers will never be diagnosed with mental illness of any kind, although their victims, after years of trauma, often will be.

While I defer to the OP, I would move to keep the focus of this thread on domestic abuse in Anabaptist circles, rather than getting sidetracked into the tangentially-related issue of mental illness and stigma, which if it isn't already being discussed in an existing thread, would be an excellent and worthy subject for a new one.

... except that in the examples I gave, half of them were people who were obviously mentally ill. So yes, it is relevant.

You seem to have zeroed in on a very specific person, namely, the sociopath. Perhaps it would be better to talk about that specific kind of person, instead of using the foil of "domestic abuse".

[Josh]

n addition, mental illness is also not associated with violence. Or to put it another way, people with diagnosed mental illnesses are not on average more violent than anyone else. There are indeed some types of mental disorders that do lead to violence but they are rare.

I gave two first hand examples where mental illness was very much involved. Certain mental illnesses certainly do result in inexplicable violent behaviour and that always needs to be explored first if someone is inexplicably violent. (In the one case of a man who had a head injury, it was rather obvious that was the cause.)

Most mental illness tends to be issues like chronic depression or bipolar disorders that aren't associated with violence.

Bipolar disorders certainly do lead to inexplicable violence - that's why such people end up hospitalised in the first place, because they were either a threat to themselves or others.

[Josh]

If things are at this point, I can't imagine church leaders who are aware of the situation not doing anything about it.

I know my wife well enough to say that if I was cursing at her, criticizing her, and physically hitting her, she would be talking to somebody about exactly what is happening, stat. It would likely be her sisters or her friends, and for that level of severity it would almost certainly escalate to church leaders. I don't know my church well enough to know precisely what would be done, but I suspect there would be immediate repercussions including involvement of law enforcement if a crime was committed.

I can't imagine church leaders not being involved, and in the stories I've heard of, they certainly have ended up being so. (One of my sources is women who are very good at gathering and compiling various sources of gossip in church circles, which is a more effective way to find out about abusers than probably any other I can think of.)

Of course, the usual result of that is that the abuser announces he no longer respects church authority and he goes off on his own - in one case I listed above, demanding his wife go with him, and she did so, against the advice of her family, and then since he decided to adopt a no-electricity no-telephones lifestyle in another state, became rather hard to keep in touch with.

Maybe things are different in Holdeman circles (and apparently different in mike's circles too), but it wouldn't matter if things were very off from the wedding day. That also happened to someone I know (not physical abuse, which I should emphasise is rare, but other forms). She eventually told her parents what was going on and it resulted in church intervention - which resulted in the scenario above.

[jahertz]

... except that in the examples I gave, half of them were people who were obviously mentally ill. So yes, it is relevant.

You seem to have zeroed in on a very specific person, namely, the sociopath. Perhaps it would be better to talk about that specific kind of person, instead of using the foil of "domestic abuse".

Mental illness is relevant to the issue if the examples you gave are representative, or typical, or common. They are not. Having been been personally acquainted with dozens of domestic violence cases in multiple states and a broad range of Plain church groups over the past several years, and having rubbed shoulders with many who have done the same for much longer, I can state categorically that in Plain circles domestic abuse associated with mental illness (in the abuser) is the rare exception, not the rule.

My purpose in this discussion is to make people aware of the thousands of cases that fly under the radar, not the three that everyone has heard about. Those thousands of silent cases are the ones represented by the typical scenarios I have sketched previously.

I gave two first hand examples where mental illness was very much involved. Certain mental illnesses certainly do result in inexplicable violent behaviour and that always needs to be explored first if someone is inexplicably violent. (In the one case of a man who had a head injury, it was rather obvious that was the cause.)

Of course mental illness must be ruled out if someone is "inexplicably" violent. But the overwhelming majority of domestic abuse in Plain circles is not "inexplicable." It happens only when and where it serves as a tool to get the abuser what he wants. It is protected by a skillfully cultivated wall of silence maintained by fear and shame. And it is virtually never displayed around coworkers, at church, when the preacher visits, or any time someone outside the household is looking. Nor is the abuser ratted out by the victim at sewing circle.

The highly covert, hypocritical nature of most domestic abuse in Plain circles has been a key point I've attempted to highlight throughout this discussion. The fact that you, Josh, have never heard of a case in what I am arguing is the classic pattern simply confirms that the classic pattern is not flashy and easy to identify, nor does it make the rounds of the local gossip networks you say you rely on, as the rare case of acute mental illness associated with overt violence often does.

I can't imagine church leaders not being involved, and in the stories I've heard of, they certainly have ended up being so. ...
Maybe things are different in Holdeman circles (and apparently different in mike's circles too), but it wouldn't matter if things were very off from the wedding day. That also happened to someone I know (not physical abuse, which I should emphasise is rare, but other forms). She eventually told her parents what was going on and it resulted in church intervention - which resulted in the scenario above.

Your claim here is, in summary, that you and Mike have heard of almost no stories of serious domestic abuse in Plain circles. I have stated before that I have no trouble believing you, as I was in the same situation a few years ago. My ignorance of the scale of a covert problem was no evidence that the problem did not exist. Neither is yours.

If everyone already knew the seriousness of this scourge, I would be wasting my time here raising awareness. I also would not have felt driven to found a nonprofit on my own time to address the problem and work for change.

The ignorance on your part which you keep citing as proof that I am full of it is the reason I am here.

[Josh]

Your claim here is, in summary, that you and Mike have heard of almost no stories of serious domestic abuse in Plain circles. I have stated before that I have no trouble believing you, as I was in the same situation a few years ago. My ignorance of the scale of a covert problem was no evidence that the problem did not exist. Neither is yours.

You are making claims that require us to rely solely on your word, and whilst I believe you, many of us remain sceptical that there is really a widespread domestic violence problem. Fortunately, we have ways to find out what the rate of incidence actually is. (And I wish you'd talk about the real problem, which is covert sociopaths, not "domestic violence".)

Sociopaths run around 1% of the population. That means about 1% of people in a typical congregation are going to be abusers, tax cheats, serial liars, crooks in business, etc. - the only question is how many of these get caught and are known about. But 1% is not a "chronic problem", although it's very, very awful if you get stuck dealing with one of these 1%.

I spent my first few years in plain circles being targeted by a domestic abuser, including to the point I gave up on conservative Anabaptism for about half a year. But I also have the maturity not to claim that this is "common". It is, indeed, quite rare.

If everyone already knew the seriousness of this scourge, I would be wasting my time here raising awareness. I also would not have felt driven to found a nonprofit on my own time to address the problem and work for change.

The ignorance on your part which you keep citing as proof that I am full of it is the reason I am here.

Firstly, I don't appreciate you lambasting me as "ignorant"; may I remind you of the large amount of support I have lent to your cause, including to your nonprofit at its founding? I simply disagree with some of conclusions, which are based on nothing but your own sampling and a "trust me". Could it be that your method of sampling is a bit biased?

I have talked about this issue extensively with my business partner and my wife, and one of the things they have said is that "It's simply impossible there is this much abuse, because otherwise I would know about it." And I think that's true: certain people deeply embedded in the plain culture tend to know about basically every bad thing going on, including things that are very much kept secret. (Of course, both of them have an opinion that other Amish groups have this problem, and indeed have some first hand stories to tell, but I mostly disagree with this as being badly affected by personal bias.)

But more to the point, they do have stories of abuse happening, and even of it being mis-handled by church leaders. But the rate of incidence seems to be around 1%, not the "really high" levels you are claiming. And more to the point, I would like to hear what your solution is. I am not encouraged that your nonprofit organisation continues to display Duluth wheels, and would not appreciate the influence of your organisation in my own church circles because of that.

[Josh]

Your claim here is, in summary, that you and Mike have heard of almost no stories of serious domestic abuse in Plain circles. I have stated before that I have no trouble believing you, as I was in the same situation a few years ago. My ignorance of the scale of a covert problem was no evidence that the problem did not exist. Neither is yours.

I would like to directly address this. I have a library of absolutely hair-raising tales of domestic abuse within plain circles, and I have indeed been quite public about them since the time frame of around early 2015. I would appreciate if you would withdraw your assertion that "I ... have heard of almost no stories of serious domestic abuse" and that I am in "ignorance of the scale of a covert problem". Indeed, I would ask you what you were doing about these problems back in 2015; I was busy getting my reputation tarred and feathered for being willing to speak up.

[jahertz]

Your claim here is, in summary, that you and Mike have heard of almost no stories of serious domestic abuse in Plain circles. I have stated before that I have no trouble believing you, as I was in the same situation a few years ago. My ignorance of the scale of a covert problem was no evidence that the problem did not exist. Neither is yours.

I would like to directly address this. I have a library of absolutely hair-raising tales of domestic abuse within plain circles, and I have indeed been quite public about them since the time frame of around early 2015. I would appreciate if you would withdraw your assertion that "I ... have heard of almost no stories of serious domestic abuse" and that I am in "ignorance of the scale of a covert problem". Indeed, I would ask you what you were doing about these problems back in 2015; I was busy getting my reputation tarred and feathered for being willing to speak up.

Josh, I am genuinely grateful for your concern about these problems. You played a part in my initial awakening to the issue of sexual abuse coverups in particular, and I take no pleasure in being at odds with you on any of this.

I did not intend in my last post to imply anything about you beyond what I understood you yourself to have asserted in this thread: That you knew of only a few cases; that we should treat mental illness as a leading cause of the tiny amount of domestic abuse that does happen in Plain circles, since "half of the examples" you offered up were such cases; and that you could think of no "more effective way" than gossip networks to learn how much domestic abuse is happening in Plain churches. If I wildly misunderstood what you intended to say—and it appears I must have, given the sudden assertion in your last post that you have "a library of absolutely hair-raising tales of domestic abuse within plain circles," I sincerely apologize for that.

A prime objective of mine in every discussion, especially the controversial ones, is always to represent the views of others as faithfully as I can. In return I request only that others try to do the same.

As it happens, I can think of a way to find out about Plain abusers that may be significantly more effective than "women who are very good at gathering and compiling various sources of gossip": to wit, advertising oneself and one's associates as a resource of last resort for Plain victims and churches seeking help with DV crises. That's the chair where I've sat for a couple of years now, not as an expert but as a learner, filling the role out of an urgent sense that someone needed to fill it and I thought I might be able to take the flak.

My perspective, on both scope and solutions, is informed by the unique window into the Plain world offered by this role, plus the direct interaction this role affords me with other Christian organizations doing DV work in conservative churches. I am as candid and constructive as I know how, and I leave it to others to draw their own conclusions on my competence and integrity, and weight my words accordingly.

[Neto]

n addition, mental illness is also not associated with violence. Or to put it another way, people with diagnosed mental illnesses are not on average more violent than anyone else. There are indeed some types of mental disorders that do lead to violence but they are rare.

I gave two first hand examples where mental illness was very much involved. Certain mental illnesses certainly do result in inexplicable violent behaviour and that always needs to be explored first if someone is inexplicably violent. (In the one case of a man who had a head injury, it was rather obvious that was the cause.)

Most mental illness tends to be issues like chronic depression or bipolar disorders that aren't associated with violence.

Bipolar disorders certainly do lead to inexplicable violence - that's why such people end up hospitalised in the first place, because they were either a threat to themselves or others.

We have friends who adopted two boys, at very young ages. I think the younger one was still an infant. He is in a care facility, because he tends to be violent, and unpredictably so. I see him and his older brother occasionally, and while they don't seem quite normal intelligence wise, they are friendly and congenial.

I have mentioned this man before, but one of the Banawa men, easily the tallest and biggest, is a very soft-spoken man. As I said before, this is all behind him, because he became a Christian, but before that, when he got drunk, he became very violent. Others, when intoxicated, became very sedate. I think that mental illness can have the same differing effects on people. A friend from college worked nights in a mental institution for children. There was a young teen boy there who was severely limited in intelligence, and he sometimes became very physically aggressive, especially toward girls and women in general.

[Grace]

Ten years ago I would have sincerely said the same thing. And I would have said that, even while living in close proximity to the household where I grew up, where severe verbal, emotional, and occasional physical abuse had been a fact of life for me, my siblings, and my mom since before I was born and was ongoing for her and the siblings still at home.

It's a paradoxical fact that many women in even physically abusive relationships, if surveyed, will state confidently that they are not victims of abuse. Their own experience is normalized, especially if it reflects the dynamics of the home in which they grew up, and they internalize the abuser's gaslighting to such a degree that they genuinely believe most of the unpleasantness they experience is their own fault.

Reinforcing the self-blame and silence of these Anabaptist women is the consistent refrain of most conservative Anabaptist preaching for wives, which comes across as much in what is omitted as in what is said: Be a sweet, responsive wife, a joy to come home to, learn to always have the house tidy, the children calm, supper steaming on the stovetop, and your own person smiling, good-smelling, and ready to listen to his stresses and problems.

What to do when one does one's best to achieve this nearly impossible challenge and finds it is never good enough to win one the approval and love one craves from the spouse it is meant to please? If this possibility is even acknowledged, the "solution" offered tends to be to "wife harder"―wake up earlier, offer more sex, work harder, submit to every indignity in even more silence, "that you may win him without a word." (Never mind that this counsel of Paul was given to Christian wives married to known unbelievers, not to couples supposedly mutually subject to the oversight of the church and the principles of Matthew 18.)

The result of this blithe, watered-down 1950s-housewife-advice-column approach to marriage teaching is that a wife subject to chronic abuse is never introduced to the recourse the Gospel offers the downtrodden in the context of a mutually accountable redeemed society, the church. She believes God expects her to bear and accept silently every kind of cruelty from the man who vowed at the altar to cherish and support her. It never occurs to her that the process of confrontation and appeal described in Matthew 18 could be for her―that the husband at her side is also her brother in the church, whose callousness toward her destroys the symbolism of Christ and the church, defies God's clearly revealed will for his spiritual growth, and jeopardizes his eternal salvation.

Because the abused wife recognizes none of these things—because the church has left her spiritually ignorant of them, while emphasizing at every turn her responsibility to support, cheerlead, defend, and burnish the reputation of her husband—she may suffer horrific abuse for decades without revealing a hint to her closest friends, much less to the church leaders, who will thus be free to continue in the sincere belief that their marriage teaching has produced a weed-free meadow of flourishing godly marriages.

But suppose a wife does begin to question the paradigm? Suppose she grew up with parents who modeled godly love and respect and had a mother, say, who happened to tell a story of a new wife who put her foot down against her young husband's cruelty and selfishness, who refused to be treated like a barnyard animal, and who saw him repent and grow into godly manhood? This woman is increasingly certain that the patterns she is experiencing are not normal, not Christian, not like the mutually supportive and nurturing model of marriage she saw in her childhood home. She is sure this is not what Christian marriage is supposed to look like, and her best efforts to play the sweet obedient wife have made no discernible difference.

Tentatively, she approaches her husband about the problem, and he reacts, say, by calling her a filthy four-letter word and telling her he doesn't know why she expects to be treated like the Queen of England if she serves beans fifteen times a week and is always like a wrung-out dishrag at bedtime. She's crushed and vanquished, and the next day he's in a better mood and shows a flicker of affection and kindness, which she gratefully soaks up, and for many months she does her best to be the perfect wife and bears all kinds of indignities without protest. But eventually she is at her wits' end again. The new baby has arrived and is keeping her up nights, she is exhausted and struggling with post-partum depression, and her husband, far from understanding and supporting her, escalates his insults and demands.

After an especially bad episode, in which he loomed over her and clenched his fists after she failed to get the baby quiet when he wanted to sleep, she feels things can't go on like this, and she drops a hint to the minister's wife that married life has been "pretty hard sometimes." The minister's wife is kindly, asks a few questions about the baby, and gives some tips that helped her when she was a new mother. The young wife hints a bit more, asking "Did your husband help much with the children when they were small?" The minister's wife takes the hint and probes a bit into the marriage dynamics, and the wife, embarrassed but desperate, spills a little more of the struggles she is facing―not the fists or the cursing, of course, but more than she's ever told anyone before.

The minister's wife is concerned, and says she will talk to the minister and have him check in with the young husband and see how things are going. The young wife becomes alarmed and says she doesn't know if that's a good idea. "I'm sure it will be better when the baby learns to sleep through the night. Just keep us in prayer, especially that I can learn to be a better mother."

The minister and his wife discuss it, and he decides to call the husband the next day when he knows he'll be on lunch break. After a bit of small talk, he mentions the conversation between their wives and asks how things are going. The husband chuckles apologetically and admits that the arrival of the baby has been "a big adjustment," and he "isn't proud of" some of his responses when the baby keeps them up all night and he is forced to go to work sleep-deprived. To make matters worse, his wife, he says, is like "a different person" since the baby came, and he's still learning how to support her in this new stage of life.

The minister offers some reminiscences of his and his wife's own early family rearing challenges and a few tips for supporting a new mother and baby. The husband thanks him, and requests prayer for both of them to be able to adjust to their roles in the new normal. They hang up and the husband goes back to work.

When the young husband arrives home that evening, he throws the entry door open and closed again with a viciousness that makes his wife jerk up her head in alarm. In two long steps he crosses the kitchen to where she stands at the stove, her mouth hanging open in puzzlement. He pulls her face to within inches of his, and she can feel him shaking.

"HOW DARE YOU go gossiping around to all the ladies about me, you b****! I work myself to the bone to get you a nice house, I put up with your whining day and night, I eat your burned dinners, and THIS is what I get???" He hurls his lunch box into the sink, turns on his heel, and heads to the bathroom for a shower, slamming the bathroom door on the way in.

Later that night, he slaps her for the first time.

A month or so later the minister is at a regional minister's meeting and someone mentions that there's been a lot of talk about domestic violence in the church lately. The minister agrees. "Terrible that such things should be happening in the church. May God have mercy. We are so blessed that we've never had that issue at home. I trust if we ever do, the Lord will give us the wisdom to handle it well."

You project the women who are subjected to abuse, as meek and demur, who only want to please their husbands. Although I agree, there NEVER is an excuse to physically or verbally abuse anyone, there are women who can be very abusive, especially when it comes to verbal abuse and gaslighting their husbands. And when the husband snaps ( which is very wrong) instead of seeking help, he hits the woman. The man then is seen as a pariah and the verbally abusing woman is seen as the poor abused wife.

I never heard of the counseling organization you co founded and wish the best in working for them. However I do know the one lady on the board and was shocked to see her there, beings, in the past, she fit the description I described above. Hopefully she repented.

[jahertz]

You project the women who are subjected to abuse, as meek and demur, who only want to please their husbands. Although I agree, there NEVER is an excuse to physically or verbally abuse anyone, there are women who can be very abusive, especially when it comes to verbal abuse and gaslighting their husbands. And when the husband snaps ( which is very wrong) instead of seeking help, he hits the woman. The man then is seen as a pariah and the verbally abusing woman is seen as the poor abused wife.

I never heard of the counseling organization you co founded and wish the best in working for them. However I do know the one lady on the board and was shocked to see her there, beings, in the past, she fit the description I described above. Hopefully she repented.

Grace, it takes a lot to startle me at this point in my life, but I confess I'm taken aback by your decision to open your participation in a public thread by launching vague abuse smears against unnamed board members of an organization you just learned about, regarding a person you admit to not knowing in the present. I think good taste at the very least dictates that you should retract your unsourced public smear and replace it with something helpful, such as documentation of the historic abuse you allege happened, sent directly to the organization you suspect is being duped by said abuser.

As vice-president of LifeRing Ministries, I would be as good a choice to receive such intelligence as anyone. PM me through the Mennonet message system if you like and we can exchange contact info. But please refrain now and in the future from casually smearing Christian ministries in public without evidence. That's unprofessional, irresponsible, and destructive.

As for the claim that men routinely hit women because they "snap" and can't help themselves and are then unfairly blamed, this is pretty much a recitation of the default cover story of every wife beater who ever got caught, "Christian" or otherwise.

If there's one thing all conservative Anabaptists agree on, it's that men are called to be spiritual leaders in the home. I can think of no circumstance in which the Gospel definition of Christian leadership can be stretched to shift or reduce a man's responsibility for a physical attack on his wife, under any provocation whatsoever.

Christian leaders don't get to bask in all the status of "headship" and then suddenly claim helplessness when we feel so "henpecked" or worn out by our wives that we are simply overwhelmed by the urge to slug them a good one. That's not Christianity, that's old-fashioned unregenerate heathen buck-passing, and we men have proven quite capable of doing it for centuries without additional cheerleading from women, thank you very much.