The statistics are nearly too jarring to be true: globally, one-third of women report being physically or sexually abused by an intimate partner, according to the United States Department of Justice. Another one-third of all female homicide victims are killed by their intimate partners.
The data on domestic violence and its impact reveals these and other horrifying truths about abuse within relationships.
And, in the face of such traumatic events, each year more victims, perpetrators, and family members seek help—though not always from law enforcement officials or even from a violence prevention shelter. Instead, people seek help from clergy and religious leaders more than from all other helping professionals combined.
It is no wonder, then, that Anne Marie Hunter, MDiv '86, has devoted nearly three decades of her life researching issues around domestic violence and helping victims and survivors by building bridges between faith communities and domestic violence service providers to end violence in the home.
The founder and director of Safe Havens, a Boston-based, interfaith partnership against domestic violence, Hunter's passion for helping abuse victims began its steady crescendo when she was a student at HDS in the mid-1980s.
She recalls enrolling in every course she could that Diana Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, taught, and the classes she took on women and religion and on world religions have been, she says, especially helpful in her work. Yet, one of the most formative experiences of her time at HDS came from her field education requirement at HarborMe—now called HarborCOV—a domestic violence shelter in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
"Back then, I would go to the shelter and hear things like: 'I turned the other cheek and turned the other cheek until I ran out of faces.' Or, 'I told my priest 27 years ago about this abuse and he told me to pray harder. Now my husband still hits me, and I have calluses on my knees from praying.' "
At HDS, Hunter focused her senior project on domestic violence and faith. She created a survey and sent it off to United Methodist clergy members in New Mexico, where she is from. The survey asked such questions as: "Have you ever been trained on domestic violence? Has anyone ever reached out to you for help? If so, what did you do?"
Hunter received a positive response rate and a few things, she says, became clear from the survey: There was a group of church leaders who said that domestic violence was happening somewhere, but not in their congregation. There were a few leaders who had some training around domestic abuse. And, consistent in all the responses was their distancing from the issue.
"They thought that abusers could not possibly look like us," she said. "So when we started Safe Havens, we were overcoming all of that denial and distancing."
After graduating from HDS in 1986, Hunter followed Karen McCarthy Brown, who was then a visiting scholar at HDS and Professor of Sociology and Anthropology of Religion at Drew University, to New Jersey for her PhD in sociology and religion. It was there that Hunter began to look even closer at violence against women.
While at Drew, Hunter worked as a court advocate at a battered women's shelter, where she began to see problems with the legal system and its handling of cases dealing with domestic violence. She thought that more training for court personnel and judges was needed on matters of domestic abuse, so she came back to Boston in the early 1990s, hoping to start an agency that provided that type of training.
"Instead, I realized that the people who were not being trained at all were members of the faith community," she explained. "So, I had to admit that it was my own community that was further behind everyone else on understanding domestic violence."
Hunter, who was ordained as a deacon in the United Methodist Church in 1985 after her second year at HDS, was also doing parish ministry in Saugus, Massachusetts, when she founded Safe Havens in 1991.
"I think the reason I was able to start Safe Havens was because I was so ignorant and didn't realize that this was going to be so hard," she explained from Safe Havens' offices in downtown Boston. "We decided we were going to start talking about faith and domestic violence, because at that time nobody talked about it. So, I listened to people talk about what was going on, and one of the things I noticed again and again was finger-pointing among the various conservative, liberal, and orthodox congregations."
Hunter's passion for these issues comes from personal experience, having been a victim and survivor of domestic violence. Yet, even as she was becoming an important resource for a growing number of voiceless victims and survivors of domestic abuse, she was battling her own doubts about whether she could continue to shepherd Safe Havens. She was not simply the director of a growing nonprofit; she was also the leader of a parish and mother to two young children.
"I thought, 'I simply do not have time for this.' And every time I went to speak or preach about domestic abuse, I thought that it would be the end, but what kept me going were the victims and survivors who would catch or call me afterward. I even got letters from people who would say, 'The whole time you were talking, I wanted to stand up on my chair and say, that it's right here; it's happening to me!' "
The organization received initial seed money from the United Methodist Church and from the Coolidge Foundation, whose funding allowed Hunter to relinquish her post at her congregation and to become the full-time director of Safe Havens.
"It was a very difficult decision, because I loved parish ministry," she said. "I went to my bishop for help with the decision making. In the Methodist church, you are appointed by your bishop to do whatever it is you are doing. So I am now appointed to direct Safe Havens as my ministry."
The first few years at Safe Havens were about raising awareness and fostering relationships with congregations. When Safe Havens staff decided that more in-depth training was needed, they developed the Family Violence Prevention Project, which was, in its original form, a 22-hour, interfaith training program that incorporated a team approach for each congregation that participated. Each team consisted of at least one clergy member or senior staff member and lay people.
At the beginning, Safe Havens mostly served churches, but it quickly began to branch out to include synagogues and, recently, mosques. One of Safe Havens' beliefs is that the faith community can address the spiritual and faith issues around domestic violence, but often, victims and survivors need service providers, such as a sexual assault response center or a domestic violence shelter.
"What we are trying to do is help faith community leaders and members and to be that bridge between victims and helpful services. This is one of the best proactive services—to get a victim or survivor to an advocate somehow," Hunter explained.
Since conducting the training associated with the Family Violence Prevention Project, the organization has been noticed on a national level and has been asked to provide technical assistance to chaplains at family justice centers around the country. Even though family justice centers often have chaplains, those ministers, Hunter says, may have little knowledge about how to respond to domestic violence. As a result, Safe Havens has developed protocols for faith-based persons who are in that role.
"A large part of that is figuring out what we should say to victims and survivors of domestic violence," Hunter said. "We cannot preach that sermon anymore that broad forgiveness is a wonderful thing, because we now know that forgiveness can hook someone into a domestic violence relationship that just goes on and on."
As the organization's impact has risen, so have its challenges. In recent years, local funding has dried up. Safe Havens is no longer supported by the Department of Public Health and the Executive Office of Public Safety, which provided the organization with key operating funds. At one point, Safe Havens had six staff members, but today, on the heels of the economic collapse, there are just two: Hunter and Alyson Katzman, director of the organization's Family Violence Prevention Project.
Hunter and Katzman have weathered these rough times, however, and are looking toward a bright future. They are still doing outreach and training, and the Family Violence Prevention Project has transformed its extended training into a shorter, nine-hour session for faith congregations.
Safe Havens is now receiving most of its funds on a national level, having secured two major contracts with the United States Department of Justice. One will look at faith and elder abuse, and Hunter and Katzman have been working for a couple of years on resources for service providers, as well as for faith communities, around this issue. Safe Havens has also been partnering with the National Clearinghouse on Abuse in Later Life and the Office on Violence Against Women, which have been major funders for coalitions and local services to address violence against women.
Working with the National Clearinghouse on Abuse in Later Life, Safe Havens conducted focus groups across the country and met with service providers and faith leaders and survivors and asked what resources each needed and how they are connecting. Hunter is getting ready to launch this initiative with a webinar. She will then send out resource materials, such as a special bookmark, booklet, and checklist, to people nationally.
"Say you are a domestic violence advocate and you need to reach out to your faith community but you have no idea where to start. This checklist will help you figure out what to do. What are the sacred texts of a particular religion called? What are its basic beliefs? It would help, for example, when I'm talking to a victim or survivor if I know that she's Catholic, because often Roman Catholics have a hard time encompassing divorce."
In addition to its work with the elderly, Safe Havens is also engaged in a project that has taken the staff out to rural areas in Massachusetts, where they have been able to help by talking to faith communities about domestic violence.
According to Katzman, breaking the silence is one of the best ways that faith leaders can help victims of domestic abuse, but they also need to understand the importance of confidentiality and safety for victims.
"Preaching about domestic violence is great, but if you do not understand some of the issues around safety and confidentiality, then the victim could be in terrible danger," she said.
Faith leaders can sometimes find it difficult to go beyond the walls of their congregation for help, and reaching out to service providers can be, according to Hunter, a tough but necessary step. Another challenge for ministers is to be nondirective—to avoid telling someone what to do. This can be especially difficult because, when a victim approaches a faith leader, she often wants to understand decisions in terms of her faith, and is seeking guidance. But, Hunter says, "It's all about laying out options and resources and helping victims and survivors decide for themselves."
Another issue for faith communities is how to deal with the abusers.
"Say it is safe, somehow, to talk to the abusers. How do I help them connect to their own spiritual roots and to their own faith in God at the same time that I hold them accountable for the abuse and make sure they know this has to change?" Hunter asks. "What could separate you more from God than abusing your partner?"
When she arrived at Harvard Divinity School and then began working at HarborMe, Hunter kept hearing the same stories of how a person's faith was being misconstrued to hold her in an abusive relationship. Nearly 25 years later, she is still motivated to help victims and survivors of abuse.
"I have always said that I started doing this work for me. I've continued doing it for all the people I have met at my congregation and at shelters, and now I'm doing it for my daughter—for the next generation. It's not just abusers who need to know what a healthy relationship is or what resources are out there; everyone needs to know. Any of us can be victims; abuse is equal opportunity. But as our slogan reads: No one should have to choose between faith and safety."
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of Harvard Divinity Today.
—by Jonathan Beasley