Healing the Wounds of Trauma

Lesson 6A DOMESTIC ABUSE

1. Ann leaves Joe “You need to leave him!” Mary said. She was tying a bandage on her neighbor Ann’s arm after Ann’s husband had beaten her yet again. Ann had been married for three years. For the first year of their marriage, Ann and Joe were happy together. They were both Chris- tians—Joe having come to Christ in recent years out of a troubled past. As a child, he saw his father beat his mother all the time. Prob- lems erupted for Ann and Joe when two things happened at once: Ann gave birth to a baby boy that cried all the time, and Joe lost his job. Joe chose to respond to these problems by going out and drinking with his friends. When he came home, Ann smelled perfume on his clothes. He also became angry more easily, especially as he had to deal with the difficulty of finding another job. Ann tried to do things to please Joe, but whatever she did just seemed to irritate him more. He began to shout at her a lot. There was littlemoney coming in for food, so Ann found a part-time job and someone to care for the baby, but this only seemed to make things worse. He kept telling her that she was a bad wife and mother. One night, Joe came home drunk and hit her so hard that she fell against a table and broke her arm. Joe was beside himself as he took her to the hospital. He said over and over, “I didn’t mean to do that! Please forgive me and don’t tell the doctor!” Ann still loved Joe and thought that maybe now he would change, so she told the doctor that she had tripped and fallen outside the house. Then for a fewweeks, Joe didn’t hit Ann, but his anger came out in harsh words. He said, “You’re so stupid. You can’t even look after the baby properly!” She began to think she should leave him for the sake of the baby, but then she thought, “How could I live without Joe? I’m so stupid. How could I earn enough money to survive? Besides, our

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Domestic Abuse