The following story first appeared in the Autumn 2001 Glenmary Challenge.
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Keeping Women Safe in Rural America
By Father John S. Rausch

This true story from a safe house in rural Appalachia demonstrates what many women fear, and some face, when a horror movie turns real. The husband comes home drunk carrying a gun. Frustrated with the world, he wields his power over the people he can more easily control—his wife and family. In a display of mountain machismo he shoots the phone off the wall then threatens to kill his family and commit suicide. Time to think fast.

The wife calms her husband somewhat, then asks to beg some cigarettes at the neighbor’s. Without purse or coats she and her three children dash into the cold January night before he changes his mind. The neighbor drives the getaway car. At the shelter the woman continues crying and shaking hysterically, and in her panic she has even wet herself.

Slowly the care and warmth at the shelter—the cup of herbal tea, the hot bath, the clean clothes—soothe her. By 2 a.m., six hours after the ordeal began, she and her family settle in for the night. The next morning she starts from scratch knitting her life back together.

In the United States a woman is physically abused every nine seconds. Women are more frequently victims of domestic violence than victims of burglary, mugging or other physical crimes combined.

The statistics indicate no assurance for a woman’s safety even among kith and kin. Two-thirds of the attacks on women are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, frequently a husband or boyfriend. Forty-two percent of murdered women are killed by an intimate male partner. Nationally, 50 percent of all homeless women and children became so because of domestic violence.

Glenmary Father Dave Glockner, the pastor of two West Virginia missions, began working with domestic violence programs 17 years ago when two women attended a prayer meeting after being beaten by their husbands. The black eye and facial bruises shocked him.

“They were frightened and the experience prompted me to become more interested in the problems of spouse abuse and family violence,” he recalls. “I then helped found a shelter for abused spouses.”

Why so much violence against women? Why the frequency of assaults? Sister Mary Kay Drouin, an Adrian Dominican with over 25 years experience in spouse abuse ministry, believes society allows violence against women to continue. “Men must realize that family violence is a serious problem and not a joke. An assault is a crime, whether the assailant is a stranger or your spouse.”

Domestic violence reaches across all socio-economic classes, gripping victims in different ways. Well-educated middle-class victims with marketable skills often remain in an abusive situation longer than necessary because verbal abuse reduces their self-esteem. They also fear losing custody of their children. But abuse escalates, it never lessens. Many victims seek help only after violence reaches the children.

Poverty limits a victim’s options. Lacking adequate education, starting a family at an early age and being abused as a child narrows the possibilities for a victim in poverty. Add the extra constraints of few available jobs and no public transportation in rural areas.

“We can no longer blame the victims,” says Sister Mary Kay. “The question is not why she stays, but why he abuses and why we as a society permit it.”

The U.S. Catholic bishops in their 1994 pastoral Confronting a Culture of Violence suggest the Church must do more: “We can incorporate ways to handle family conflict in our religious education and sacramental preparation programs. We can work for public policies that confront violence, build community and promote responsibility.”

Over the years in various parishes, Father Dave and other Glenmarians have supported family violence prevention efforts and programs. But the programs targeting perpetrators frequently meet with mixed results. Success demands the offender take responsibility for his actions and modify his behavior, many times a long process.

Father Dave reflects somberly, “Group counseling is sometimes helpful, but the success rate of changing the patterns of family violence remains poor.”

National Domestic Violence hotline: 1-800-799-7233.