CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

abuse

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What Constitutes Abuse?

SOURCE:  Taken from an article by Leslie Vernick

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse is characterized by hitting, slapping, spitting at, punching, kicking, yanking (such as by the hair or limbs), throwing, banging, biting, restraining, as well as any other acts of physical coercion or violence directed at another person regardless of the person’s age. In addition spanking children could be considered physically abusive if it is done in anger, leaves marks on a child’s body, or is excessive.

Many people who abuse others through physical force or threats of force attempt to control and intimidate others through violence as well as create an atmosphere or environment of anticipated violence. They might punch a wall; wave their fist or gun in someone’s face.

These kinds of behaviors are abusive even if they do not result in visible injury to the victim. Abusive actions demonstrate profound disrespect for the well being of the other person. If someone did these same behaviors to a stranger or in public, his or her conduct would unquestionably be considered abusive and the perpetrator might even be arrested. Sadly many of these actions are done to people in their closest relationships behind closed doors.

Wherever there is physical abuse, there is always verbal and emotional abuse. Often sexual abuse is part of the overall abusive pattern.

Verbal and Emotional Abuse

Words and gestures are often the weapons of choice to hurt, destroy or control and dominate another person. We often underestimate the power of words to harm others and as Christians or people helpers we can be unsympathetic to those trapped in verbally abusive relationships.

We say things like “Don’t let it bother you.” Or “Just let it roll off your back.” We all remember the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But God knows how words affect our emotional, spiritual and physical health.

For example, Proverbs says, “Reckless words pierce like a sword” (Proverbs 12:18), and “Wise words bring many benefits” (Proverbs 12:14). “Gentle words are a tree of life, a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit” (Proverbs 15:4). “Kind words are like honey – sweet to the soul and healthy for the body” (Proverbs 16:24).

Most often we think of name calling, cursing, profanity and mocking when we think of verbal abuse. However, verbal abuse can also be more subtle or covert. Constant criticism, blaming, discounting the feelings, thoughts and opinions of another, as well as manipulating words to deceive, mislead or confuse someone are also abusive. Proverbs warns us, “The words of the wicked conceal violent intentions” (Proverbs 10:6b).

Emotional abuse can also be characterized by degrading, embarrassing publicly, or humiliating someone in front of family, friends or work associates.

Nonphysical abuse is more than using words to hurt another. Emotional abusers systematically undermine their victim in order to gain control. Abusers weaken others in order to strengthen themselves. They know what matters most to their target (for example, her children, his work, her appearance, her family, his pet, her friends) and they seek to destroy it.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse occurs whenever a person forces an unwilling party into having sexual relations or perform sexual acts, even within marriage. While teaching a class on domestic violence at a seminary, a student challenged my definition.

The seminary student argued that 1 Corinthians 7 was biblical proof that forcing a wife to have sex with her husband could not be considered abusive because it was biblically wrong for a wife to refuse her husband. From his perspective, it was man’s God-given right to force his wife if she denied him.

It is true that the apostle Paul cautioned husbands and wives not to deprive each other of sexual relations except under special circumstances. However, Paul also wrote that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25). Paul describes what that kind of love looks like: it is a giving and cherishing love, not a coercing or disrespectful love (Ephesians 5:1, Corinthians 13).

If a wife refuses her husband, whatever her reason may be, a loving husband would never respond to his legitimate disappointment by forcing his wife to have sex against her will. At most he might try to gently change her mind but likely he would accept her decision and try again another time.

If his wife regularly denies him, ideally he would pray for her as well or ask her what the problem is, encourage her to work on the problem herself, or ask her if she is willing to go for help together. Forcing his wife to have sex against her will reduces her to an object for him to use as he sees fit regardless of her feelings. That is not only degrading and disrespectful to his wife, it is abusive and in some circumstances considered to be rape.

Other forms of sexual abuse are touching someone sexually without their permission, pressuring someone to view or participate in pornography, talking to someone in sexually derogatory or humiliating ways, taking sexually explicit pictures without a person’s permission or making uninvited suggestive comments.

Financial Abuse

At the heart of abuse is an inordinate seeking of power over someone else. Money can be used as a powerful weapon to control another person. In marriage, couples ideally decide together on a budget and both parties share power and responsibility for the management of the family funds. When a wife (or a husband) is given no voice or no choice in the family finances, it’s abusive. When a wife (or husband) must be accountable for every penny spent but the other spouse is not, then there is an imbalance of power. The spouse that is accountable is being treated as a child instead of an adult. In addition, financial abuse occurs when one spouse (usually the wife who is staying home with children), has no idea how much money her husband earns, nor does she have any joint access to that money. She is given an allowance, much like a child instead of an equal partner.

Financial abuse serves to keep a spouse overly dependent upon the breadwinner or controlling spouse. If she displeases him, he punishes her by withdrawing financial support. It also can be used to keep her from getting necessary medical attention, counseling support, or educational advancement.

Spiritual Abuse 

We read about leaders of cults who brainwash their members into subservience and unquestioning compliance. This brainwashing process creates people who cannot think for themselves or make independent choices without incurring the wrath or rejection from the group. When an individual, whether he be a cult leader, a pastor, or a head of a home requires unquestioning allegiance to his authority as the “voice of God” spiritual abuse is taking place.

In addition, spiritual abuse is misusing Scripture to get one’s own way, to shame and judge others, who do not do things your way, or to threaten and intimidate someone into compliance.

The important component of abusive behavior whether it is physical, emotional, sexual, financial or spiritual is control over the mind, will, and feelings of another person.

Abuse treats someone as if he or she were an object to control and use rather than a person to love and value.

Abuse of any kind is not only sinful; it is emotionally destructive and negates the personhood of the victim. Having a healthy relationship with another person is impossible when there is any kind of ongoing or unrepentant abuse.

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Sexual Abuse Conference in Katy, TX – Saturday, April 16, 2016

Date of Event
Apr 16, 2016
08:30 AM–04:00 PM
Location
Living Word Lutheran Church
3700 S. Mason Road
Katy, Texas 77450
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Katy Christian Ministries Crisis Center will host a workshop that showcases the services available for sexual abuse victims.  Sexual abuse happens from a variety of situations including adult sex crimes, human trafficking, child sexual abuse, and much more.

The conference is a free community event for professionals, parents, and anyone in the community with a goal to raise awareness of sexual assault and human trafficking.  It will allow participants to gain knowledge of the resources available, strategies for prevention, and current interventions.

Make plans to attend on Saturday, April 16 from 8:30 – 4:00 pm. It will be located at Living Word Lutheran Church located at 3700 South Mason Road.

Click here to register for the event.

Contact Glenn Lerich for more information.

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Abuse Changes a Child’s Brain

The brains of children raised in violent families resemble the brains of soldiers exposed to combat, psychologists say. They’re primed to perceive threat and anticipate pain, adaptations that may be helpful in abusive environments but produce long-term problems with stress and anxiety. “For them to detect early cues that might signal danger is adaptive. It allows them to react, to try and avoid the danger,” said psychologist Eamon McCrory of University College London. However, “a very similar neural signature characterizes quite a few anxiety disorders.” In a study published Dec. 5 in Current Biology, McCrory’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure blood flows in the brains of 43 children exposed to violence at home as they looked at pictures of sad or angry faces. Previous studies have shown that abuse affects kids’ brains; as they grow up, abused children become adults with high levels of aggression, anxiety, depression and other behavioral problems. But according to McCrory, the new study is the first to use fMRI to study the form of those changes. “Understanding the neural mechanisms might give us clues as to how someone’s future might be shaped by their experience,” McCrory said. His team compared fMRIs from abused children to those of 23 non-abused but demographically similar children from a control group. In the abused children, angry faces provoked distinct activation patterns in their anterior insula and right amygdala, parts of the brain involved in processing threat and pain. Similar patterns have been measured in soldiers who’ve seen combat. Another recent study found that depression in people who were abused as children is especially difficult to treat. McCrory hopes future work will give a more complete picture of abuse’s neurological effects — and, perhaps, the effects of interventions that help children heal. “Can children change in response to an act of intervention? To a better home environment? We’re quite optimistic that’s the case, that this is reversible. But that’s something we need to test,” McCrory said. By Brandon Keim http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/neurology-of-abuse/

“The difficult child is the child who is unhappy. He is at war with himself; and in consequence, he is at war with the world.” – A. S. Neill

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Physical and Sexual Abuse

Posted by James Browning on April 29, 2013

Abuse: Touching someone’s body without their permission, hitting, punching, pinching, slapping, tickling, pulling hair, hitting with objects, banging the head, so that marks are left on the person…Punching someone to the point of knocking them off their feet, slamming them into walls or hard objects, strangling or choking someone…Intimidating someone with the threat of violence, punching walls or throwing objects. …you might think that because some other member of your family was receiving the blows you are not a victim of physical abuse, but (you were) if the underlying fear is, “When will it be me?” Physical sexual abuse is bodily sexual activity with a child or touching in a sexual way. It includes: intercourse, oral sex, anal sex, an adult masturbating a child or having a child masturbate an adult, sexual hugging, sexual kissing, and sexual touching. Many people who have been molested or incested feel responsible for what happened, feel that they caused it to happen or wanted it to happen. I have also heard clients express acceptance since it was the only kind of attention that they received. You are not responsible and it is not acceptable behavior. A child will not seek out sexual encounters except what may be age-appropriate sex play with other children. It is the adult’s responsibility to set appropriate boundaries and protect the child. Taken from “Adults Abused as Children” by Licia Ginne, LMFT http://www.latherapists.com/articles.html

“The consequences of your denial will be with you for a lifetime and will be passed down to the next generation. Break your Silence on Abuse!” – Patty Rase Hopson

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Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Part 6

Effects of abuse on children, part 6
By Paul Irby Special to the Abilenian
Abilene Reporter-News
Posted June 10, 2009 at 3:25 p.m.

Over the last five months we have examined the possible effects of childhood sexual abuse on its victims. These effects were considered with regard to the impacts on cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions. In this article bringing a close to this series, I would like to address some common myths or misconceptions prevalent in our society.

The first misconception to be addressed is the narrow definition often assigned to sexual abuse. A complete conception of sexual abuse should also include exposure to graphic sexual material. Exposure can include Internet, magazines and video, as well as witnessing adults engaging in sexual acts. It should be clarified that a child who accidentally wanders in on parents having sex one time will not be forever psychologically damaged. Exposure becomes damaging and abusive when sex and sexual material is available frequently, without discrimination and/or purposely targeted to the child.

The second misconception to be addressed is the notion that victims of sexual abuse are somehow destined to perpetrate the abuse on other children. While it cannot be denied that the vast majority of abusers were abused themselves, it cannot and should not be assumed that the majority of abused children will become abusers. It is understandable how this misconception can be perpetuated given the increased likelihood that most abuses (physical, emotional and neglect) are handed down intergenerationally. Physical and emotional abuse are most likely to be handed down from generation to generation because they are usually impulsively expressed through anger and modeled frequently. Neglect is a more passive abuse, and is usually intergenerational because of lack of education and intervention. Sexual abuse is different in that it usually requires premeditation and incremental “grooming.” It is this premeditative nature of sexual abuse that decreases the likelihood of intergenerational transference compared to other abuses. It should also be noted that no victim of any form of abuse is destined to repeat it.

Lastly, I would like to offer some insight to parents who might be wondering how to best respond to their child who has been sexually abused. Typically there are two extreme responses parents can have, both of which are not best for the children. The first extreme is to “sweep” the abuse “under the carpet” after the initial disclosure, the family seeks to reduce the anxiety and awkwardness of talking about the abuse modeling an unwritten rule that this subject is now somehow taboo. The other extreme is when parents begin to define their child by the abuse, and consistently bring up the subject either in direct conversation or by initiating new rules for the child, such as not being alone with friends, going to friends’ houses and not being able to spend the night with friends. The best response parents can have is to resume normalcy in the routine at home and to let the child know that the parent is concerned about how the child might be dealing with being abused and is willing to listen if the child ever desires to talk about it.

I would like to personally thank executive director Kirk Hancock and the Mental Health Association of Abilene for allowing me to contribute these articles that I hope can be used as part of the healing dialogue in our community.

Paul Irby, M.A., is a licensed professional counselor with the Ministry of Counseling and Enrichment. Mental Health Matters is facilitated by the Mental Health Association in Abilene.

Original article found here:
http://www.reporternews.com/news/2009/jun/10/effects-abuse-children-part-6/