Monthly Archives: June 2020

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Why We Need to Understand Trauma and Coercive Control with Dr. Debra Wingfield

Episode 147

Dr. Debra Wingfield Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Dr. Debra Wingfield is an Author, Speaker, and Trainer for family abuse prevention and intervention treatment.  She practiced counseling for 25 years with domestic abuse victims, offenders, adults, and children from all types of dysfunctional family systems. She’s also provided family court advocacy since 1993 and would love to be able to train those within the court system about trauma.

In this episode, Debra shares what the courts miss in cases of domestic abuse due to not being sufficiently trauma-informed, the societal impact that misconceptions about abuse can have, what it means for the rest of society if we don’t actually address these misconceptions and have the correct understanding about trauma, the difference between parenting with coercive control and parenting in a healthy way, and so much more.

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

All right, so today I have with me Debra Wingfield.  She is an author, speaker, and trainer for family abuse prevention and intervention treatment.  She practiced counseling for twenty-five years with domestic abuse victims, offenders, adults, and children from all types of dysfunctional family systems, and she’s provided family court advocacy since 1993.  She would love to be able to train those within the court system about trauma.

So, in our conversation, one of the things that we talk about is what the courts miss in cases of domestic abuse because they are not sufficiently trauma-informed.  She also talks about the societal impact that misconceptions about abuse can have; so what it means for the rest of society if we don’t actually address these and have the correct understanding about trauma.  And then we also talk about the difference between parenting with coercive control and parenting in a healthy way.

There’s a lot to be gained from this episode, and I really look forward to you hearing.  Enjoy!

Andrea:  All right!  Debra Wingfield, it is great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Thank you, Andrea.  I’m honored to be here.

Andrea:  Would you tell us a little bit about what you do and why you do it?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay.  Well, I have been working in the field of abuse and working with trauma survivors for over forty-five years now in my career.  And I’ve worked with children.  I’ve worked with adults.  I’ve worked with teenagers.  And in all of that work what I found is that the dynamics that are connected with domestic abuse and coercive control have lifelong impacts on the individuals involved in that.  So, I have, over the years, gone from actually being a therapist and doing the groundwork there to now being more of an educator.  I have an online training center where I actually train people to understand the dynamics of domestic abuse and coercive control as well as how to actually help people – whether it’s survivors or it’s the abusers, how to work with them and help them go through a change process that will help them heal.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Who tends to be the people that you help with that?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Right now, I’m partnered with a program called Called Peace Ministries.  I’m training advocates for their program to work within the church system as well as in the community to actually be there and available for survivors who are coming out of relationships where they’ve been abused or they’ve been coercively controlled.  And to help them get through the court system as well as they can based on a very broken court system that we’re working with right now, to protect their children, to keep their children as safe as they can.

And I know you have some questions about the court system.  So one of the other things that I do is I actually serve as an advocate for survivors that are going through the family court.  And as I’m doing my work with them, I’m also teaching others to do that same work because that’s a legacy that I want to be leaving behind is that we’re creating an army.  And that army is to go out there into the communities around the world and we are international at this point and educating so that people understand more about, not only the dynamics, but the impacts and how that impacts us in society and how it can have lifetime impacts on those who are abused.

Andrea:  Do you do some of this training with professionals within the court system somehow?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  That’s my dream.  I would like to be working with some of the professionals that work in the court system.  At this point and time, they consider their training that they get through their degree programs as sufficient for the work that they’re doing.  And we know that through the research, we’ve been able to show that their lack of training in their degree programs actually contributes to more harm to children on down the line.

Andrea:  There are a few different questions that come to mind.  Well, first of all, you’ve been in this, it sounds like you said for forty-five years; you’ve been working with children, adults, teens in various ways.  How have you sort of sustained that work, that mission and the energy that it takes to continue that mission?  I’m sure it has to be somewhat discouraging a lot of times.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  You’re right, Andrea.  There are times when it is discouraging.  However, when I see someone who is able to come through their healing and get on the other side and really make a solid life for themselves, that keeps me moving forward.  We had a tragedy the first of this year.  My granddaughter overdosed, and I had gotten into working in the family court system because she had lost her son to her abuser, and that’s what took her down that downward spiral into using drugs because she just never felt like she had an opportunity to be a part of her son’s life.  So, I have dedicated the remainder of my years that I can do this work to her and her legacy and for my great-grandchildren.  She left two children behind.

Andrea:   I’m really, really sorry to hear about your granddaughter, Debra.  Yeah, that is tragic, and I’m so sorry to hear about the disservice, the harm that the court system ended up causing for her life and the lives of the people in your family.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Well, thank you.  It’s not been easy.  We’re making adjustments as we go along.

Andrea:  Yeah.  So, when it comes to the court system then, what are some things that you feel like need to change?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  I really think the courts need to be trained in trauma-informed processes because they miss what’s going on with the survivor in courts.  Survivors tend to have a lot of anxiety in court and over an abundance of anxiety to what the courts are normally used to when someone comes in before a judge.  First of all, they know nothing about the court system.  They’ve never been, for the most part, involved in anything like this.  So, it’s very unfamiliar, and not only the courts but the attorneys really need to have a strong understanding of the kind of clients that they’re working with, who don’t know how to express what’s gone on in a marriage where they have been coercively controlled by their partner.

And as a result of that, very often what we see is judges will discount what mothers say.  They won’t believe them.  And mothers tell the truth 98% of the time in court, and judges tend to just gloss over that and buy into the charm of the abuser.  And the abuser convinces the judge that, “Oh, I was involved with the children’s lives and I did all these things with the children,” when in fact it’s the opposite.  The mother has been left to do all of that.  And then the father comes in and says, “Well, I should have at least 50% custody of my children or 50% parenting time.”  And we are changing; the language is changing across the country from custody to parenting time.

Custody actually implies a sense of ownership, and abusers capitalize on that.  That’s what they’re looking for is to own the victim, to own the children.  They’re property to them.  And when children are with their abusive parent, they may be being covertly abused, which means it’s just kind of under the surface or they don’t understand how they’re being manipulated.  But then they go back to their mother who is trying to continue to maintain the discipline, to maintain the family rules that have been set up for how their family works.  And the children balk at that because they’re basically with the other parent 50% of the time who’s playing the Disneyland parent.

So, let’s put in a couple of statistics here, so I don’t have to try to keep this gender-neutral because it’s not gender-neutral.  We know that one out of every four women has been abused by their partner at some point in their relationship and that abuse is very off and ongoing.  So, children are also experiencing that.  The research now that talks about how children experience the coercive control that’s being exerted on their mother actually has long term impacts on them as well.

Andrea:  Like what?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Like, we see health impacts in middle age.  And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the ACE study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study.

Andrea:  No, I’m not.  Please, tell us.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay, the ACE Study was developed by Dr. Vincent Felitti in San Diego.  He was a physician in Kaiser Permanente out there, and he had set up a program for his patients who had problems with obesity.  And what he wanted to do was he wanted to make sure that they were losing weight, and keeping that weight off, and getting healthier because he comes from a prevention standpoint.  And over time, those patients who had enrolled in that program started dropping out or started regaining their weight, and he was concerned about what is causing this. And with that, he brought in their social scientists to interview the patients.  And what he found was there were ten factors that happened during their childhood, and of those ten factors, one was witnessing mother being treated violently.  Seven of those factors have to do with physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect.

Andrea:  That they personally experienced?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  That they personally experienced.  And we’re talking about a population of people that are middle-income people; they’re not low-income, they’re not higher income.  They tend to be more middle income.  And he repeated the study in other states and then around the world and kept getting the same results, that history of one to four or more of those ten factors actually resulted in midlife onset of chronic physical illnesses.  So, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, having had a teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and the list goes on.  And you can actually look at the ACE study on the Centers for Disease Control website.  And on that website, there are multiple research studies that have come about.

And it was such a phenomenal study and opened up the eyes of the Centers for Disease Control so much that they changed their whole focus on how they address child abuse.  So, instead of addressing child abuse as, “We’ve got to stop the abusers,” what they saw is you’ve got to start when children are in the womb, actually, and moving forward and create safe, stable, nurturing families.  And the effort of the CDC in their violence prevention unit now is completely the opposite of what it was prior to this study in 1998.

We’re still having people catch up with the fact that this study is out there.  We’re having people still needing to catch up with all the research that has come as a result of that study that helps us understand that we have to stop children from witnessing a parent being abused.  We have to stop children from being abused.  We have to teach empathy skills when children are young enough that it carries over into adulthood so that for them hurting someone else is no longer an option.  And whether that hurt is an emotional hurt or a physical hurt, we have to stop that.  And the way that we do that is we have to do education.  And part of what I do as an educator is I talk about the prevention side as much as I talk about what is the problem and how do you identify the problem.  So, I know that was a long answer.

Andrea:  That’s okay.  This is really interesting.  I’ll be back in just a second.

Okay, so we have to catch up with this.  So it makes sense.  We’ve got to catch up with the research that’s already been done on this.  So, there’s health impacts, long-term health impacts.  What other kinds of societal impacts are there that kind of stem from the fact that the court system isn’t taken care of, as it isn’t trauma-informed that children are seeing and experiencing abuse?  How does that really impact not just those people and the people around them but then also society at large?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  So, from the standpoint of society, what we’re looking at is some of these children who do not get the help that they need from the courts – the courts do not operate very quickly and very timely – and I have seen children who have basically thrown away their education.  They coast through school, and the schools get upset and schools suspend them, schools exclude them permanently from a school district and they have to be moved into another school district because they have never learned emotional control.  So, we actually have literature that talks about children who are emotionally dis-controlled or dysregulated, and what we need to do to help them with that.

And children who come out of situations where they’ve witnessed their mother being abused or coercively controlled, where they’ve also been abused themselves, they get into trying to address their own trauma and trying to heal from it, and instead they act it out.  So, they end up in our juvenile court system.  They end up never going to college, working at jobs way beneath their intellectual capabilities.  They become abusers.

And one of the things that we do know is that boys who are exposed to witnessing coercive control, witnessing domestic abuse, actually have a greater chance of becoming abusers in their own relationships and continuing this intergenerational cycle of abuse in their families.  What we see between the ages of six to ten is they’re learning from the abuser how to treat women and beyond that.  Then they turn that around and they start treating their mothers that way until we run into situations where the guardians ad litem in the court system say, “Well, maybe this child needs to just go live with dad.  Maybe that’s the problem.  The problem is that they just aren’t getting along with Mother.”

Andrea:  And Mom can’t control them at this point, probably.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Right.

Andrea:  Because they’re trying to control the mom.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Mhm.  And then they go and live with Dad.  Well, Dad just teaches them to be better at their abuse.  And then these children start blowing off their lives because Dad doesn’t hold them to the same level of accountability that Mother does for getting their schoolwork done, for staying involved in activities, for doing the things that build good, strong, healthy adults.  What they do is Dad says, “Oh, I got a buddy.  Let’s go play video games together.  Let’s go hang out together.  Let’s go do…” whatever Dad believes is going to keep that child locked into him and be the fun person, the fun parent, and then portray the mother as the rigid, structured parent when all she’s doing is carrying out what they had agreed to do during their marriage as far as how to raise their children.

And at that point in time, he’s undermining everything that Mother is doing to where, finally, Mother goes to the court and says, “I can’t keep this child in my home, and he’s gonna have to go live with his dad.”  And the court says, “Okay, we’re gonna let him live with his dad and he needs to go to counseling so that he can learn to be a better person because that is supporting whatever he’s doing.”  When they’re with Dad, Dad undermines the counseling or never gets them to counseling.

I have a case like that where the court has ordered the father to put the son in counseling.  He had a psychological evaluation that the dad put off and put off and put off for well over a year that the court had ordered.  And now he’s about to age out of the high school system and probably will drop out on his 17th birthday and never complete high school.  And his therapy that he’s been in has only been happening for maybe three to four months now.  Dad is facing contempt of court with the judge to the point where he’s facing jail time and fines.  And the dad says, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen.  I don’t think the judge will do this to me.”

And so, what is the message to this child?  What is the message to multiple children in these situations when Dad doesn’t hold them accountable because Dad wants a buddy?  Dad is going to do whatever he can to take the children away from Mother because he’s mad because she had the audacity to leave him and to stop being abused.  That’s the bottom line.

Andrea:  Debra, what can we do or what do you feel like it would take to really…  If we were to move forward in an idealistic way, what would it take to disrupt the way that things are in the court system so that we actually see the impacts lessen – the impacts of trauma lessen – and people in more healthy environments?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  It’s going to take a huge revamp of the court system.  And I know that the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges is slowly chipping away at this.  It’s going to take a much more massive movement to have something happen dramatically.  I know of a judge in California who actually was following the dictates of what the judges taught her to do in these cases and sent the child to live with the abuser.  And when the child was murdered by the abusive father, she felt so harmed as a judge by what she had been taught that she actually resigned her judgeship because she could no longer carry out what her fellow judges were teaching her and saying she had to do.

So, there’s movements across the country to make these kinds of changes in the court system.  The Center for Judicial Excellence out in California, Kathleen Russell has led them a very strong movement in California where they’ve done audits on the courts out there to show where the courts have not done a good job.  But we need millions of dollars to do audits across the country on the court system.  Joan Meier with DV LEAP out of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has just completed a study of cases that were available where Mother claimed domestic violence or child abuse and Father gained at least 50% custody or more.

So, you know, we have little pockets.  This issue gets pushed underneath the surface because many people think domestic violence is physical abuse, is a physical injury – and that’s incorrect.  Domestic abuse is coercive control.  And if you look at the Power and Control Wheel that was developed by the Duluth Project out of Duluth, Minnesota, what you will find is there’s a wheel – it’s called the Power and Control Wheel – and there are eight spokes inside that wheel.  And every one of those spokes inside that wheel are coercive control – whether it’s financial abuse, using the children, using male privilege, threats, intimidation, emotional abuse – and on the outside of that wheel is physical and sexual violence.

So, what everyone goes through is, “Oh, well, there was no physical abuse.  You didn’t file a police report.  There’s no medical reports.”  And, so, therefore, the judge determines that there’s no domestic violence and does not use that part of the statute to make their ruling about parenting time.  When in actuality, what the judges need to be looking at is all of those spokes inside that wheel and addressing how all of those spokes inside that wheel were used as a way to coercively control.  I’m going to use the women because we know more women are abused in relationships than men.  The women are cut off from expressing that.

So, one of the things that I teach is stay away from saying the word “abuse” in court.  Instead, describe the behaviors of the abuser.  Describe how you were pulled out of your educational program when you became involved with a relationship with this abuser and that he convinced you that you wouldn’t need that because he was going to take care of you.  Describe how you were the parent who had to stay home with the children and homeschool the children instead of pursuing your career because someone had to do it.  And so he said you were to do that, so he isolated you from your home, sometimes even isolating from the homeschool community.

And as we go around that wheel, we can find examples of that happening on a very frequent basis in that relationship.  And then because I’m working with Called to Peace Ministries now, I’m getting more and more people coming to me who have been spiritually abused by the way that the abuser uses the church against her.  And I’m not going to do the quotes here.  I’ll just stay away from that because I come from a secular perspective.  But we do know that the churches are creating great harm to women in these relationships by saying, “Oh, you have to reconcile.”  “You have to forgive.”  “You can’t divorce.”  And that in itself is coercive control.  So, how do we change all of this?  We have to change our whole mentality around domestic abuse and coercive control.

They’ve done it in the United Kingdom and are working on it, I know, in Australia.  But in the United Kingdom in December of 2015, a law went into effect that actually criminalized coercive control.  So, all these dynamics inside that Power and Control Wheel have been criminalized.  And they have made arrests.  Yeah, they have made arrests and convicted people, and there’s a five-year prison sentence that goes with that.  So, we have to look at coercive control as a captivity crime in this country.

Andrea:  That’s a huge shift.  That is a huge shift.  That would be disrupting to not just the court system and churches but even schools.  I mean, I looked it up while you were talking about it because I’ve not seen this before, but using coercion and threats to get somebody to comply…  I mean, that can happen in a school pretty easily.  It’s using intimidation, you know, things like that.  It makes a lot of sense that we would be careful around these things and not use them and that we would criminalize them.  It is such a huge, huge shift.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  It is, and that’s why it takes so long to create that kind of shift.  Evan Stark put this together so well in his book on coercive control.  And he explains exactly what it is – it’s a condition of unfreedom.  The abuser has taken away the freedom of choice, the freedom of being their own person from the victim.  So, in our program, we teach empowerment.  We teach our advocates how to use empowerment with trauma-informed processes with the survivors and that’s so important because survivors need to finally take back their personhood, to take back their identity that has been stolen from them by the abuser.

Andrea:  How do you help people to see the difference between empowerment and helping people to take back their identity, that sort of thing… or maybe not even a difference.  I’m going back to the idea of schooling or parenting, when of course there is a certain amount of needing to kind of guide a child to make the right decisions and things like this.  So, what’s a healthy expression of parenting and schooling and that sort of thing versus the unhealthy way of approaching it with coercive control?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay, so a healthy way of parenting – and this is how I parented my daughter – is using logical and natural consequences.  This comes out of some of the early research in parenting, and one of the things that is the hallmark of that is giving children autonomy to make choices.  So, I’ll give you an example, and this is a true story with my daughter.  I had called her in, she was out riding her bike, and I called her in to set the table for dinner.  And she comes to the door and she, you know, in that whiny voice that kids use, “Oh, Mom, I just want to be outside riding my bike with my friends.”  And I said, “Well, you can do that.  However, if you choose to do that before you set the table, then the bike is mine for a week.  Now what do you want to do?”  And she said, “I’ll set the table.”

Now, I have been doing that with her from the time that she was very young.  She was about three or four years old, and I stumbled across this whole piece about logical and natural consequences.  And as a result of that, she learned that she had to make good choices.  That’s an empowerment piece.  When we work with survivors, we help them look at different options so they make the choice.  We don’t tell them what to do.  That’s what abusers do.  We say, you know, “You can look at it from this standpoint or this standpoint or even a third standpoint, if it’s there.  What do you want to do?”  And that helps them make their own choices.

The other thing is that we believe the survivor.  We don’t question her story about what happened to her.  That’s her experience, and we want to be there for her.  So, if it’s okay with you, I want to give a little plug here for our training program.

Andrea:  Oh, yeah, absolutely.  So, tell us about where people can find information about you and your trainings.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay.  I have a website.  It’s called houseofpeacepubs.com, and there are links there to the advocacy training program where someone can find out information about the program.  We start a class about once a month.  We do a class over four weeks.  So, it kind of comes out over every month.  Sometimes, it rolls over into the next month.  But we end about mid-December with our twelve courses so that everyone has the holiday season off, and then we start usually the first full week in January again.

Andrea:  And this is a series of twelve courses, is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Yes, there’s twelve courses.  People can join the course at any time and go through the sequence of twelve courses.  So, we are in our second year now.  And we are close to having 200 people who have taken one or more of our courses.

Andrea:  That’s great!

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  So, another thing to look at on my website if people want to know more about coercive control and the impacts of coercive control and how to work with that in the family court system, I have a book that I’ve written that can be found on the products link on that website.  It’s called Eyes Wide Open: Help! with Control Freak Co-Parents.  And it explains all the different types of coercive control that I’ve identified through the research, through talking with survivors and through working with survivors.  So, you know, people are welcome to go and check that out and see if they have questions.  They can contact me through info@houseofpeacepubs.com if they have any questions, they want to know more.

Andrea:  That sounds great.  Debra, we’ll make sure to include links to everything you mentioned in our show notes on our website, too, so that would make it easy for people to come and find at voiceofinfluence.net.

Debra, thank you so much for sharing your experience and expertise with us here and your passion to see things change.  I hope that in the midst of all the unrest that we’re all experiencing kind of right now that perhaps some good will come of this for race relations but also for just this issue of coercive control in general, and specifically also for people who are experiencing it in the court systems and in their families.  So, thank you for all the work that you’re doing and for being a Voice of Influence our audience today.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Oh, you’re welcome, Andrea, and thank you for having me on your show!

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Finding Her True Voice After Domestic Violence with Naghmeh Panahi

Episode 146

Naghmeh Panahi Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Naghmeh Panahi is a speaker, a Bible teacher, and an executive director for the TAF Foundation; an organization that helps abused women escape and recover religiously motivated violence, both in the form of domestic violence and in the form of religious persecution.

Naghmeh made national news when she publicly advocated for the release of her then-husband and pastor at the time, Saeed Abedini, who was imprisoned in Iran for his Christian faith. Unfortunately, her story is not an easy one to hear because it turns out that she was in an abusive marriage, and eventually they got divorced.

In this episode, Naghmeh shares her story, the complexities that go with what it’s like to be in a situation of oppression, the complex reasons why it’s so hard to get out, the importance of siding with the oppressed instead of staying silent, and her advice on being a voice of influence in a diverse setting.

Mentioned in this episode:

 

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

Well, I am really honored to share with you the story of Naghmeh Panahi.  She is a speaker, a Bible teacher, and executive director for the TAF Foundation – she’s going to pronounce it for you in a little bit.  It is an organization which helps abused women escape and recover religiously motivated violence, both in the form of domestic violence and in the form of religious persecution.

Naghmeh made national news when she publicly advocated for the release of her then husband and pastor at the time, Saeed Abedini, who was imprisoned in Iran for his Christian faith.  She’s going to tell us all about the story.

But, unfortunately, it’s not a story that is easy to hear because it turns out that she was in an abusive marriage, and eventually they got divorced.  I’m really looking forward to hearing her story and understanding the complexities that go with what it’s like to be in a situation of oppression and the complex reasons why it’s so hard to get out.  So, she’s going to share with us her story.  She’s going to talk about the importance of siding with the oppressed instead of staying silent and then her advice on being a voice of influence in a diverse setting.

I think that you are going to really appreciate this conversation with Naghmeh Panahi.

Andrea:  All right, Naghmeh, it is such an honor to have you here with us on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Naghmeh Panahi:  Well, thanks for having me.  I appreciate it.

Andrea:  So, you stepped into the international spotlight when your husband was imprisoned in Iran.  Would you mind sharing with our listeners how that unfolded and kind of how it led to what you’re doing today?

Naghmeh Panahi:  Yeah.  My husband had traveled to Iran, and I got a call that he had been arrested because of his faith and my whole world crumbled.  My husband was literally my world.  I’d come from a very hard marriage, but I guess my marriage had become my everything where my husband actually controlled everything from the way I thought, the way I dressed, who I saw, who I didn’t see.  He became the center of my world.  And so at that time, it just felt like I couldn’t even function without him.

And, so, I did everything I could do to get him out and started with being on the news a few times a week – Fox News, CNN – and then people start seeing me on TV, and Congress started contacting me.  I spoke in front of our Congress three times.  I traveled the world.  I spoke at the United Nation.  I spoke at human rights groups.  President Obama actually flew to Boise, Idaho where I lived, and I met with him.  I met the heads of states.  I mean, just three and a half years I did everything to get him out of prison.  And, you know, I had two small kids at that time.  They were toddlers – they were four and five – and I really believed they needed their father and tried to do everything to get him out of prison.

And interesting enough, his imprisonment is what set me free from my abusive marriage, and that’s a story in itself.  But it was through him being separated from me for so long that I started gaining confidence.  Because before he went to prison, I really believed that I was worthless, that I couldn’t think properly, and that I was crazy, “the crazy-making” as he would call it in domestic abuse.  I believed all of that, which is interesting because, when I met him, I was a very independent businesswoman.  I had no self-image issues.  The marriage had really brought me down to a place of complete destruction where I had no self-worth.  I believed all the lies.

And, so, when he went to prison, it gave me space and time and a lot of prayers and reflections, self-reflection, and I know as a Christian, my time with God that really set me free to say, “Wait a minute, that’s not what God says I am.  That’s not who God says I am.”  And it really set me free and it was an interesting journey.

Towards the end of his imprisonment, my husband got a phone – a Smartphone – inside of the Iranian prison.  Before he went to prison, there was beating; me getting beat up, my dad, my dog destruction of property, possible infidelity, even though I didn’t want to face it.  Very clear… I closed my eyes to a lot of things.  I didn’t want to believe that.

But I believed that if I fought and I proved to my husband that I loved him so much, he would love me back.  And towards the end of his imprisonment, he got a phone and I noticed he had not only changed, he was different.  He was even an angrier person.  He definitely had PTSD.  He had paranoia.  But he was angry that I was traveling the world and he was calling me the same names, “Worthless,” – I’m sorry to say, but – “ whore, Jezebel, don’t think you’re valued. Don’t think just because you’re traveling the world and people are clapping, they’re clapping for you.”  He would say, “They’re clapping for me.  I’m the hero.  I’m the one in prison.”

And, so, I was shocked because I had literally laid down my life to get him out of prison, including putting my kids’ wellbeing after him.  I was a single mom of two kids.  I got death threats because I traveled, because I spoke out against Iranian government and their abuse of human rights issues, and I continued to do that to get him out.  I had serious anxiety getting on airplanes.  I grew up in Iran where there was war, and airplanes meant bombs and war.  And, so, I had always struggled getting on an airplane, but I would get on airplanes every single time with anxiety and I would say, “I’m doing it for my husband.”

So, I knew I was laying down my life and loving him to the best of my ability, and to have him still call me those names from prison just was a wake-up call that this marriage is not going to get any better, no matter how much I try.  It’s just not, and that’s when, really, I was set free.  I didn’t know it was abuse.  I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I knew I had a hard marriage, but I couldn’t figure out…  I felt dark.  It felt foggy, but I couldn’t figure it out until on a last trip, I was speaking at a church and I finally, for the first time, shared everything with this pastor and his wife.

Now, as someone who comes out of domestic abuse, you’re groomed to hide your spouse’s flaws.  You wouldn’t dare tell anyone about your issues or that he had any flaws.  So, I had learned to do that to kind of cover-up for him.  For the first time, I shared it with someone and this pastor looked at me, and he said, “Do you know I’m a doctor?”  And I said, “No.”  He said, “Yeah, I got my doctorate in psychology.”  And he looked at me and he said, “You’re an abused wife.  And it’s like getting a cancer.  You know there’s something wrong with your body and you don’t know what it is, and a doctor says, ‘Oh, it’s cancer and it’s deadly.’”

And for the first time it had a name and it made sense, because then I googled about abuse and all the signs of how a person tries to control another person, he pretty much met every single checklist.  And I was shocked because I thought I was the only one experiencing the isolation the being put down, the… just everything, the deflection and the gaslighting, all of that.  And I thought I was the only one experiencing it.  And then when there was a name put to what I was going through, it just all came together and I realized, “This is not an incident after incident.  This is actually a diagnosis of bigger issue called abuse, called cancer, and this is deadly if I don’t do something about it.”

I was already a dead person before he went to prison.  I was a robot.  I did everything he said.  I couldn’t show any emotion.  If I cried, he would say, “You’re trying to manipulate me.”  If I showed anger, he would say, “You’re the abusive person.”  So, I had learned to become a robot with no emotion and just do everything he told me.  I was a slave, a servant.  And, so, when it got a name, when the name abuse came, I was like… It just all made sense.  And I knew that I couldn’t just close my eyes to it anymore.  And that it was not only deadly for me, it was deadly for my kids.  I would not want my son to know that this is okay to treat a woman like this, to treat another human being like this.  And I didn’t want my daughter to know that it was ever okay to be treated that way.

Andrea:  Hmm, so, at what point… I mean, this is so poignant, and I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to this, and the feeling of, “Oh gosh, I didn’t even realize this is what it was.”  But what point did that really hit you, in what point in your story and in the arc of your husband coming back and all of that?

Naghmeh Panahi:   Well, actually, before he came back, I drew my first boundary.  And even before the pastor told me it was abuse, I was traveling the world three or four times a month, trying to get him out, and he would call me all sorts of names.  He was controlling everything from where I went, what I said, and money that was coming in.  He was controlling everything from prison towards the end.  It was pretty amazing that he had a Smartphone in an Iranian prison.  Like, he could actually FaceTime me.  It was shocking to me, but I think that was a good thing for me.  At first I was like, “If he didn’t have access to me, I would fight hard for him.”  But every time he would poison me, I had to be like, “I’m gonna be a bigger person.  I’m gonna still fight for him even though he’s, like, kicking me from prison, verbal abuse and emotional abuse and control.”

But I’m glad I got to see who he was from prison because it was my wake-up call to say, “Oh my goodness, he’s not getting any better.”  So, before he came out, I actually drew boundaries.  I said, “If you can’t be nice to me then I can’t talk to you.  Because I want to be able to fight to get you out of prison, and every time you spew out these hateful things to me, I get bitter.  And I have to work through that bitterness and I have to work through forgiving you, and then I have to put on a front and try to do an interview to try to get you out.”  I said, “I can’t talk to you if you can’t be nice to me.”  And he never called again, never.  All it would have taken was him to call back and say, “I’m sorry, I want to be nice to you,” and he didn’t.

So, he didn’t actually call me at all, even when he got released from prison.  State Department contacted me, and I’d heard on the news he was released January 16th, 2016.  And State Department told me… I called them and I said, “I heard he’s released from media.”  It was all over media, BBC, CNN, Fox, everything.  And they said, “Yeah, but they’re still in the country,” these Americans that were taken hostage, including my husband, “So, we don’t want to really say anything until they’re out because last minute the Iranian government could pull back and not let them leave.”

Long story short, they got out, took about a day and they flew into Germany where he was evaluated, you know, mentally and physically, which I never found out what that evaluation was because he wouldn’t allow me to have access.  He didn’t call me then.  And here I was seeing all over the news, he was talking to all these big names like Franklin Graham, and everyone was sharing how they talk to Saeed, to my husband, and he hadn’t called me.  And because that had been my boundary was like, “If you can’t be nice to me, don’t call me,” and he didn’t.

So, I told him that in October of 2015.  November is when I went to that church and the pastor told me I was an abused wife.  And in my, I guess, mental breakdown, I wrote an email in November of 2015 saying, “I’m an abused wife.  I’ve had access to Saeed in prison.  He’s still abusing me.”  And then this went viral, and then there was news that covered it… Washington Post covered, Fox…  I mean, there was a lot of media covered it.  And so he heard about it, of course, he had access to the Smartphone.  So, he was mad at me, and that was another reason, you know, when he got out, he didn’t call me.

Finally, his sister messaged me and said, “This is his phone number in Germany.  He doesn’t want to talk to you.  He just wants to talk to the kids.”  I was like, “Okay.”  So, I called him, he was very angry at me.  And it was an interesting phone call, to say the least, but that was our first phone conversation.  And you know what, the first thing I was accused of when I drew boundaries with my husband was that I was cheating on him.  I was throwing him under the bus, because I was with another man, which was ridiculous, because to this day my husband was the first man I ever kissed, I ever held hands with.  And we’ve been divorced for three years now, I still haven’t dated.  So, to be accused of that was just really painful.

And, so, he asked me, he said, “Have you cheated on me?”  And I said, “No.”  And I asked him, because now things have come to light that I was sure he had cheated on me in our marriage, and he said, “Well, I’m not gonna answer that because you’re gonna use it against me.”  And long story short, he got out.  He still ignored me.  He ignored me for months.  It took a court order in order to have him communicate with me because when he got out, I was so scared.  He had serious paranoia, serious PTSD.

He was an abusive person who had already almost beat me to death early on in our marriage and I was scared of him, of what he was going to do.  And he had threatened me when I called them in Germany that he was going to come and take the kids from me.  I called a lawyer and they said, “Oh, yeah, they can do that.  He’s still their father.  Unless you have a protective order and legal separation…”  I didn’t want a divorce.  I was hoping that our marriage was going to heal.  But the lawyer said, “Unless you do this, he can come and take the kids.”  And, so, I did that.

About a week, I was told I should go to a marriage counseling – which again, for abuse, you do not encourage women who come out of abuse to go to marriage counseling because their abuser is so manipulative, so deceptive.  It’s dangerous for them to be in the same room with them and going through marriage counseling, but I was kind of being forced to do that.  It was all over the media that I was going to go to the Billy Graham Center and do marriage counseling and make it up with Saeed, and I just didn’t.  I ended up talking to abuse counselors, and it was not a good idea.  So, I didn’t go.  I ended up staying in Boise.

One morning, I got a call from Reuters, saying, “Oh, how do you feel?  Your husband’s flying to Boise.”  And I was like, “What?”  So, it was about a week after his release, it was late January.  He’d been released January 16th.  He’d kind of stayed in Germany a few days, and then he’d gone to the North Carolina at the Billy Graham Center for about a few days, about three or four days.  And then he surprise-flew into Boise, with Franklin Graham’s private jet.  And I was like, beside myself, I was so scared.  I didn’t know when he was going to land.  I didn’t know what was going to happen.

And I called my lawyer, she said, “He can come now.  He’s on a private jet.  He could just put the kids on the private jet and leave, and you would have to fly to wherever he’s at and then try to figure out how you’re gonna get your kids back.”  So, that day, I filed for a protective order for me, not the kids – but supervised visits for the kids – and legal separation, hoping that it was going to prevent him from taking the kids and that I was going to be safe until we could talk through it for our marriage and make it work.  And that was the best thing I did because that’s exactly what he had planned.

But unfortunately, the media just went with it, and they made it sound like this poor persecuted Christian comes home and his wife files for divorce, which I didn’t.  I filed for a legal separation.  And no one really understood what I was going through.  This man was after me.  He had suffered a great deal in prison as well.  He had severe PTSD.  He saw me as his enemy, and I became the bad guy who had to file for legal separation and protection order for a hero that was coming back home.

It was heartbreaking because people were making judgments without knowing what had happened throughout our marriage.  So that’s how it unfolded.  Basically, I asked that he would get help on the abuse.  And the moment he realized that I wasn’t going to submit to any of that behavior anymore, he filed for divorce and he divorced me April of 2017, which was heartbreaking.  I had people around me say, “Well, you’re free!  You’re free!”  You know, because of my religious views, I thought God hated divorce so bad that I was willing to stay in that marriage and be separated for as long as possible – even if I grew old – until he repented, until he changed his behavior.

But he divorced me, and at that time I saw it like, it was very painful because I felt like, “I fought for you for three and a half years, day and night to get you out of prison, and you come out and you divorce me when all I’m asking you is let’s talk and you can’t beat me anymore and you can’t cheat on me anymore.  And you’re not even willing to go see abuse counselors, try to work on our marriage a little bit after your wife literally laid down her life.”  It was painful that he didn’t even want to fight for our marriage.  He’d lost his slave.  He’d lost someone who had been completely obedient to him, and he could walk all over me.  He could cheat on me.  I wouldn’t believe anyone but him.  If he said, “I didn’t cheat on you,” I’d say, “Oh, I believe you.”

He had complete control over me, and he had lost that and he was done with me.  It was painful to feel that.  There was no love.  He didn’t even want to fight for our marriage.  You know, that was a shattered dream.  I turned 40 and then a month and a half later, my divorce became final and I’m like, “Here I am at 40, two kids, broken home.” I was devastated.  I was still trying to get my mind around what was happening with the abuse, and then all the travels I’d done.  It just felt like I was sitting down in the middle of this destroyed building with rubble around me, and I didn’t know how I was going to get back up.  But I did.

And today, I am a much stronger, happier person than I was even in my twenties, you know.  Sometimes you think back, “What if I could go back in my twenties and I made a different choice and I had a better marriage?”  And I look back, I’m like, “No, I love this journey I was on because it helps me understand what abused women or actually, anyone who’s gone through abuse or oppression goes through, and it has given me a heart for those who are abused.”  The people who are supposed to serve them are abusing their power and oppressing them.  And it has given me a heart of compassion instead of heart of judgment, and it has made me a better person.

I would say, it’s transformed me from a caterpillar to a butterfly, and I couldn’t be happier.  So, I wouldn’t go back and I’m actually at a much better place, but I couldn’t see that three years ago.  I couldn’t see how I was going to get out of this rubble.  It just seemed like destruction, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.  That’s how I felt three years ago.

Andrea:  Hmm, devastating.  It’s so devastating, and to think that he would betray you like that.  And not only him, but then everybody who had been applauding you and cheering for you.  And as you are going on this campaign to get him released from prison, I can’t imagine the devastation you must have felt to realize that people weren’t believing you.

Naghmeh Panahi:  Yeah, and you know, women who’ve gone through sexual assault or abuse or anyone that kind of we saw with #MeToo movement, usually when you’re at the forefront of that and you’re calling out someone with a big name or someone who’s in the place of power, people question you, question your character, and don’t believe you.  And so at first, it was hard that people did that.  But then I was like, “You know what, I’m so glad because that’s how every woman who has come out feels.”  And I’m glad I felt that.  Now, I know how painful it is for people to judge you and to question you and say you’re a liar and question your character.  And also, it actually helped me get free of people-pleasing.  I needed to have the whole world turn against me to go, “Okay, it does it matter?  Does it really matter that much, or does it matter that I do the right thing?”

It was really hard because I am a people-pleaser.  And I think, you know, a lot of women who are people-pleasers stay in these abusive marriages because you want to please.  And so God just got rid of all that for me and said, “What matters to you?  Do you care what people say or you’re going to live your life the way that’s truth, that’s right even if the whole world thinks you’re a bad person?  Does that matter?”  And I had to come to the decision of, “Nope, you know, it doesn’t matter.”  And, you know, I would have probably cried and told you that three years ago we’ve talked.  It was hard.  People abandoned me.  People judged me.  Not only did they abandon me, they kicked me.

It’s like the Good Samaritan story where there was a bleeding person.  People passed by; not only did they pass by, they kicked me and threw all sorts of stones and hurled all sorts of accusations against me.  But again, I’m thankful because now I understand how other people feel when they come out, and people just throw stones at them instead of being compassionate and loving.  And also, it really helped me get over the people-pleasing that was destructive in my life.

Andrea:  And really, that people-pleasing, you know, to lay that down, to have that leave or for you to leave it seems to have really empowered your voice for you to be able to speak up now and do what you’re doing with the TAF Foundation.  Can you tell us some about that?

Naghmeh Panahi:  Yeah, it did.  It’s interesting because I was silenced in my marriage.  And to have been given a microphone because he was in prison, and then for God to really give me a microphone for women who are oppressed and abused has been pretty amazing.  So, I do want to say, just to clarify, I had to learn – it was through my relationship with God – that God hates what’s happening to the person in abuse more than he hates the divorce.  So, when I realized that God hated what was happening to me, He was not happy about me submitting to abuse and oppression and all of that, it really changed my view of God.  And it was so eye-opening that a high view of marriage includes divorce.  It’s okay.  God is actually more concerned about the person.

You know, as a Christian, I believe Jesus came to save us, but He didn’t come to save the marriage, He came to save a person.  One person matters to Him.  So, the wellbeing, the mental health, physical health, wellbeing of a woman or whoever is being abused, oppressed, is more important to Him than the institution of marriage.  And it was so eye-opening for me to learn that.  But when I came out of it, women started contacting me about what they were going through.

And my co-founder, Mariam Ibraheem, contacted me – and I’ve shared her story – and she had come out of prison in Sudan.  She was on death row because of her faith, and she had come out to only end up in a very dark, abusive marriage.  Well, I had met her in 2014.  She had just come out of prison in 2014.  I was traveling to get my husband out, and then in 2018, she contacted me.  So, we’ve been talking back and forth over the years for four years.  Well, 2018 she contacted me and she said, “I need help.”  She said, “What I’m going through in my marriage right now is worse than being on death row and tortured by radicals in the Sudanese prison,” where she actually gave birth to her daughter under very hard conditions in Sudan.

She said, “The domestic abuse I’m going through right now is worse, because it’s from within.  The attack is from within, and it’s so hard to see.”  And, so, I ended up helping bring her out of that, and then our foundation was formed.  We didn’t want to share our story.  I mean, people knew about mine, but Mariam didn’t really come out about her domestic stuff until recently.  So that’s how me and Mariam got together, and then we have another colleague that kind of joined us.  But around the time I was talking to my colleagues, you know, we hadn’t formed TAF yet, which stands for Tahrir Alnisa Foundation; which tahrir means freedom, liberation, and then alnisa in Arabic means woman – so liberating woman.

And before we started it, I had a group of women contact me from Iran.  One of them had been thrown in prison, few had fled to the country of Turkey because of their Christian faith, and so, I really wanted to help them.  And I reached out to my friend, Mariam and I said, “What can we do?”  And she said, “Well, come to DC and let’s see if we can get some politicians involved, see what we can do for them.”  I went to DC and pretty much everyone told us, “Why don’t you guys start an organization?  You can have a more powerful voice having an organization.”

Reluctantly, we started it, and it’s been about almost a year now.  And, you know, the focus is woman – alnisa means woman – but to help woman who have dealt with abuse of power, whether it’s in a home or in a government that has abused its power.  So, we address any abuse of power that a woman has gone through, whether it’s religious freedom or domestic abuse.  Actually, a lot of these women who come out of religious persecution have also gone through domestic abuse.  Unfortunately, a lot of these women that we work with in the Middle East, they have similar stories as me.

So, we help many, many women who are broken, who’ve come out of, you know, again, places of abuse of power, whether in a home or country.  And we help them get back on their feet, find their true identity, their true value and become productive and help others to come to a place of healing.  So, we have counselors.  We work with different counselors, and we help them figure out how to get back on their feet with their kids and really be productive members of society.

Andrea:  Hmm, that’s fantastic.  So, can I ask you, would you mind sharing what are some of the systemic issues, the big issues that kind of keep a woman in an abusive situation within a religious culture?  You mentioned one, which is this idea that divorce is the worst thing.  If people believe that, then they’re going to stay in it.  But other than that, what other kinds of things are involved in religious culture that keeps people in those abusive situations?

Naghmeh Panahi:  I think, at large when there’s oppression and abuse, there’s something called reactive abuse where the person reacts and misbehaves also, and so that brings a lot of confusion.  I have a lot of churches… and I think in society, they’re like, “Well, this person behaved badly, too.”  You know, where they’re confused, they’re like, “We don’t know who to believe.”  So, they don’t know who to believe.  “Well, the wife was yelling too, and who’s the abuser here?”  And, you know, we see in society, there’s oppression and then people behave in a bad way.  So, they’re like, “Both parties are at fault.”  No, there’s usually an oppressor and an oppressed.

Now, I did a video recently with Leslie Berg Vernick, who talks about abuse.  And there’s something called reactive abuse where the person is being abused.  That means there’s one person in place of power trying to control…  Abuse is not just about physical abuse; it’s an imbalance of power.  One person trying to control another person or, you know, there’s oppression and the person that’s being abused, oppressed, acts out.  And, so, there’s confusion.  Who do we believe?  Who’s the abuser?  So, because of lack of education of how abusers work and because they’re seeing both parties get angry, both parties throw things, people take their hands off.  They’re like, “We don’t know whose fault, that person…” you know.

So, education of what does abuse really look like, what does it mean, and how do abusive people operate because they operate in such a way that you get confused, that you don’t even step in to defend the oppressed.  But when you don’t step in, silence is actually you siding with the oppressor, you siding with the abuser.  So, it’s kept a lot of churches silent because they’re like, “Well, God hates divorce.”  So, as soon as a woman divorces, they walk away from that person.  They don’t say, “Okay, why did you divorce?”  “Okay, we can give you grace for that,” and try to understand what she’s going through.  But also they don’t know who to believe because I don’t think we – as a society – we’ve really fully understood what an abusive person is and how they operate, whether at a larger in society or smaller in a home.  So, we get confused because we see bad behavior on both sides.

So, education is key and then accountability because there’s always going to be abusers in society, whether in a home or outside of a home.  So, you can’t really stop that.  You can’t really stop… not have abusive people around.  They’re always going to be there.  But in a society or at home, where there’s accountability, where they’re like, “This is not allowed and there will be consequences,” then that’s when you can actually protect the oppressed.  So, there has to be consequences where the police, our court systems understand abuse. They protect the woman and children.  And because a lot of times abusers, really, they go to the churches and they say, “Well, my wife’s being abusive.”  A lot of times they call the abused the abuser so that causes confusion, and then they call them crazy.  Like, “My wife is crazy,” and people believe that.

So, I think a lot of why there’s inaction is because there’s confusion of, “Which side do I choose.?”  You always choose the side of the oppressed.  That’s the heart of God.  You choose the side of the one who’s being oppressed, you know, and you call their oppressor to accountability and repentance.  That’s the most loving thing you can do to them.  You are accountable for your action.  And that was my goal when I did that for my husband that when I drew boundaries and I called him to accountability, I was out of love.  I still loved my husband.  I still wanted healing.  But that was the most loving thing I could do.  I stopped being an enabler, and we need to first have clarity of who’s the oppressed, who’s the oppressor and what’s the right thing to do.

There’s no “two sides to every story” in a marriage where there’s abuse.  There’s no “two sides of the story” when someone’s being oppressed in the society.  There’s the oppressed that needs to be defended.  That’s what Jesus did.  The woman that was being accused of adultery, He didn’t say, “Oh, well, she did… yeah, she’s sinned too.”  He protected the oppressed and then after everyone left, after everything was quiet, after she was protected, He said, “Go and sin no more.”  So, you protect the one that’s being oppressed first.  You don’t go, “Well, you’re a sinner too, so I don’t know who I’m gonna side with.”  You protect the woman and children.  You know, at times there’s men who are oppressed.  You protect them and then you say, “Well, this area, don’t do this anymore.”

For me, the reason I stayed for so long and the area that I had to change and repent of was idolatry.  I put something above God, and I was bowing down to it in fear and in my marriage, and I had to say, “You know what, I’m not gonna bow down to people-pleasing anymore.  I’m not gonna bow down to this anymore.  I need to change in that area.”  But I had to be protected first.  So, anyways, I think it’s really education of what does oppression mean, what does it look like, what does abuse look like, how does an oppressor or an abuser behave.

There are so much similarities of how they behave, and a lot of what they try to do is bring confusion, gaslighting, and deflection.  Because they want confusion so people take their hands off and go, “Well, I don’t know who to trust.  I don’t know who to protect.”  That’s exactly what they want because when you take your hands off and you’re not protecting the oppressed, then they get their way.  So, confusion is the biggest thing of why churches don’t get involved with domestic abuse.  And one of the things we do is try to educate them that, “Here’s how you can see clearly and you are called to act.”

You know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.”  Like, just because you’re silent, it doesn’t mean you’re blank.  You’re actually siding with the evil when you’re silent, when you’re not acting and so that’s a big issue.  And why people are silenced is because they’re confused.  They don’t know who to believe and once that confusion’s removed and they see that actually they have to act, not acting is siding with the oppressed, is siding with the evil then they get educated on that.  Then they can act in a positive way of helping a system… create a system within a marriage, within a church, within the court systems where woman and children go for, you know, legal actions or divorce or whatever, where they can educate those systems and say, “Here’s how you see and this is how you keep the abuser accountable and protect the people that are being abused.”

Andrea:  So, this is all so powerful and good, and you’re articulating it so well for us.  Your ex-husband came back, and he was paraded around as a kind of a champion for the faith.  I know that when somebody is kind of in that hero positioning, or they’re in a position where they’ve done so much good for your cause and yet they’re accused of abuse or you find out that… the people push back on that because he’s a hero, right?  He’s a hero.  What do you want to say to people who say, “But he did so much good?”

Naghmeh Panahi:  You know, that’s the trap.  I think over the years in history of humanity, we’ve submitted to dictators and abusive leaders and people because they’ve done so much.  You know, you look at Hitler who’s doing so much for Germany and it’s the same way, you know.  As a Christian, what really woke me up was God didn’t care.  He doesn’t care about people doing so much.  God cares about the character, you know.  We read in the Bible that says in the last days many will say to Jesus, “But I prophesied in your name.  I did miracles in your name.  I did this.”  And Jesus says, “Get away from me.  I never knew you.”

And we get deceived by big actions and big things that are being done, and that was my trap.  That’s how I was trapped in this marriage.  My husband was very charismatic.  And he was doing great stuff for God, but he lacked the character.  And I turned off all the alarms that was saying, “Wait a minute, that’s not a good character.  That’s off.”   All the alarms that were like coming inside of me was saying, “Careful, careful, back away,” I was shutting them down, saying, “But look at all the stuff he’s doing.”  And that was the trap.

If I have to warn anyone about anything is really, over history of humanity, we’ve fallen into this trap over and over again as people, as in marriages, and people end up in abusive marriages.  It’s not because they’re dumb and not educated.  There are a lot of educated people that fall into it is because we look at someone who does great things and we don’t look at their character, their humility.  That’s a really dangerous when you do that.  And abusive people are drawn to a place of power.  They’re usually charismatic and in a place of power, and they usually do a lot of great stuff.

But as a Christian, I realized as my husband was in prison that God was like, “I don’t care about that.  I can change a nation within a moment.  I don’t look for people that can do great things for me.  I’m looking for a humble, kind, loving person.  If you don’t have love, nothing matters.  It doesn’t matter what you’re doing.  If you can have love and compassion for your fellow human being, who cares [about] all the great things you’re doing.”  All the dictators of the world have done amazing things for their people in their country, but they also killed millions, you know.  Look at Russia; they killed the most voiceless, the most weak people of their country.  Look at Germany, the Jews.  I mean, they do great things, but they also do much evil.

Again, as a Christian, I look at the Bible and God doesn’t care about people that do great things.  He cares more about the character of the person at home – are you loving your wife and children well?  Are you humble?  Are you reaching out to your neighbor?  Are you being a person of peace instead of someone who causes rift and hatred and anger?  What are you doing as a person?  You might never do great things in your life, your name may never be known in society, but that doesn’t matter in God’s eye.  If you’ve been faithful to where you’ve been, if you’ve been in Boise, Idaho, loving your neighbor, that’s what matters, even if you haven’t done “great things” for the world.

And I think that’s a deception we really need to be careful of.  That’s what had me end up in an abusive marriage is the great things.  I focused on the great things versus the character, versus is this person a loving, humble person?  And I turned off all the alarms that said, “Nope, he’s not showing compassion here.  He’s being cruel here.”  And I closed my eyes because he was doing great things for God, you know?

Andrea:  Do you think the people that were applauding him have had their eyes opened to any degree in the last few years?

Naghmeh Panahi:  Yeah, I’ve had some people come back because at first, I tried to defend myself.  I tried to explain, and then I really felt God telling me, “Just be quiet, let me defend you.”  And as years went by, he showed his true colors and people were shocked that he was not the hero that he made out to be, and they came back and said, “We apologize, we judged you.”  But there are people that are still following him and supporting him.  And over time, it didn’t matter anymore.  I didn’t really have to prove anything anymore.

But yeah, it was hard at the beginning because he was on the news, and he was a hero that had come out of prison, I was the bad person.  I didn’t do a good job of shutting my mouth.  I tried to explain to people that I was telling the truth, but then after a few months, I said, “You know what, Okay, I’m done.  I don’t need to explain to people.  People-pleasing needs to be out of my life.”  You know, it’s a struggle all the time, but I got rid of that.  God got rid of that in me a lot.  We all still struggle with people-pleasing and how people view us, but I just had to let it go and say, “Okay, people are gonna worship him no matter what.  There are some people that are gonna do that.”  But I’ve had a lot of people turn around and say, “We see what you’re saying now.”

Andrea:  Now, you and Mariam, you guys seem to have some diverse background in terms of cultural context, and the people that you work with.  Is that true?

Naghmeh Panahi:  Yes, it’s just beautiful.  I love it.  She grew up in Africa.  I grew up in the Middle East, and totally different cultures, different worlds.  Her mom is Ethiopian, they went to Sudan, I think as refugees.  She grew up as a refugee and her life experience is just so powerful, you know, and then she came to America in 2014.  But most of her life was spent in Africa.  And for me, a third of my life, you know, a fourth of my life now was spent in Iran.  And we come from two different cultures, but she’s a sister.  And our other co-founder, she’s American with a European background.  We just get along.  We love each other.  We support each other, and that’s been the most beautiful thing I’ve found through this journey.

When I was in my marriage, I couldn’t have any friends.  I was isolated.  And when I came out of it, God has given me so many good girlfriends, and to think we were all raised…  Like, our other colleague who co-founded this with us, she was raised in America, I was raised in the Middle East, and Mariam was born and raised in Africa.  And for us to get together and really enjoy our differences… I mean, we’ve had to learn to communicate because we just communicate differently because I was born in Iran and raised, you know, in a different culture.

But as we learned, we’ve really enjoyed our differences.  They’ve really enriched my life to talk to women that are different.  We have another colleague working with us, she’s Hispanic.  And that diversity has been so beautiful.  I’ve enjoyed it so much and to just be friends with other women that are not like me and we can learn from each other and we can grow with each other, and we can just love each other.  And we all come from different political backgrounds, political ideas, but it doesn’t bother us.

I mean, we have super conservative, we have liberal, we all stand on different issues in a different way, but we can just talk in a very, you know, peaceful way and we get along.  We love each other.  There’s no resentment because one person believes, you know… I guess, leans towards a certain party and the other leans towards another party.  It’s just beautiful, because we’re so different, but we really enjoy that difference and I think that’s what America is about.  That’s what I love about America.  When I came to America, it’s like, there’s so many people of different backgrounds and you just can go, “Oh!”  I love learning the Chinese culture and going to Chinatown, eating there.  I didn’t have that in Iran.  I just had Iranian, Iranian, Iranian.

Here, I came here, there was, like, Hispanic and Chinese and this.  I love that.  In Iran, it was just Iranian.  There were some Afghanis that would come here and there, but the culture… and then, again, this organization, we’re all different women with different backgrounds, different political thoughts and ideas, and we just get along and we’re really good friends and I just love that.  It’s so beautiful.  It really enriches my life.

Andrea:  So, when you think about those who’d like to be a Voice of Influence, to want to have a Voice of Influence – and perhaps with people who are being oppressed – but they’re from a different background, they’re from a different perspective, or they’re from a different culture, do you have anything that you would like to share with us about how we can best be a Voice of Influence in that kind of a situation?

Naghmeh Panahi:  Yeah.  I’m not an expert, but the way that has worked in my life, I’ve gotten my hands dirty.  I’ve gone into communities.  I remember, I’ve mentored people of low income, whether they were refugees from Middle East or African from Africa.  I have always been in those communities.  And the more I have been in them, the more it has changed me to see the world in a different perspective and not be afraid.  I’ve actually brought people reluctantly into these refugee groups where there’s a lot of Muslims, and they’ve been afraid.  But it’s been beautiful to bring them and say, “Okay, see, they’re not scary.”  And it’s actually so beautiful there.  You sit with them, the culture, they bring all sorts of food and Syrian…

Here in Boise, there are so many cultures.  You wouldn’t believe that.  It’s one of the refugee cities.  But when you go into these neighborhoods and you see them for who they are, and they’re all sorts from all over Africa – from Sudan, from Ethiopia, from Eritrea, and you have Middle East – you have all over the world and you see how they interact, how they’re in each other’s houses.  They eat together.  So, I think it starts with to be able to influence you really need to understand and it’s just hanging out with them.  It’s okay if you mess up culturally.  I’ve messed up.  I come from the Middle East, and I’ve made some really crazy mistakes with someone of a different culture, even Syrian culture.  And I’m like, “Oops, sorry, I didn’t know that.”  Just laugh it off, and they understand.

So, don’t be afraid of messing up or offending.  They understand you weren’t born in their…  I mean, I was born and raised for the first nine years of my life in Iran.  I make cultural mistakes with Iraqis and Syrians all the time, and we’re with same region.  So, you really need to get your hands dirty.  You really need to be in communities.

When I was in college, I helped mentor some black kids and I would bring them to my college.  I just went into the black communities.  And at that time, you know, Tacoma, there was some racial tension.  So, as someone from Middle East, I really put myself out there and really went into those black communities and made some really, really good friends, and it changed me as a person.

So, I think for me, being a Voice of Influence is you really have to be willing to get your hands dirty.  You have to be willing to kind of mess up your schedule a little bit, you know.  I think coming from a European background sometimes, as Americans, we can be like, “I have an opening right here.”  Like, set up your time where it’s everything’s like lined up, but it’s like, what if you spend half a day in a refugee neighborhood?  It might mess up your schedule, but if you want to be a Voice of Influence, just let your schedule be ruined for one day and just go hang out with these people and get to know them.  It’s going to change you, and it’s going to change the way you interact, and it’s going to change the people around you.  That’s what I think.

Andrea:  I love that.  Okay, so, Naghmeh, would you share with us how can people connect with you and TAF, and how would you point them to your resources?

Naghmeh Panahi:  I have social media under Naghmeh Panahi – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.  And I think it’s harder to find our organization, but if you find me, you can kind of link into what our organization does.  It’s Tahrir Alnisa Foundation, but if you type in Naghmeh Panahi, it’s going to all come up.  I share stuff on social media quite a bit.  I think we talked about a while ago about Leah, a girl who was abducted in Nigeria.  We’ve done a prayer vigil for her.

So, we kind of focus on different things whether it’s religious freedom, women who’ve been oppressed in that way, or domestic abuse.  And being a voice for them and not just through social media; we take actions, we have an advocacy.  Part of what we do where we actually reach out to government officials and ask for change, and that’s one of our passions and goals is to see change in the way our government addresses domestic abuse and oppression.

So, over the year that we’ve started, we’ve met with many government officials and had very good talks.  And we’ve had talks with our government, with the Vice President’s office, with the White House and a dialogue of how can we have a system that protects the oppressed and abused, and women can be believed and they can be protected and so can the children.  So, you can look me up and hopefully you’ll learn more about what we do.

Andrea:  Great, thank you so much!  And we’ll link to that in the show notes too so that people can find you easily.

All right, thank you so much for being with us today, Naghmeh.  You have a beautiful story.  It’s tragically beautiful, but it’s so beautiful with such a redemptive ending…` and not that there’s an end to it yet, but a redemptive story that you have, that you’re telling.  And I’m grateful that you could be a Voice of Influence for our listeners today.

Naghmeh Panahi:  Thank you, Andrea.  It’s just wonderful talking with you, and I appreciate you giving me this opportunity.  Thank you!

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Deceptive Myths About the Abuse of Power (Part 2)

Episode 145

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

My Voice of Influence colleague, Rosanne Moore, is back on the show for part two of our series on breaking down destructive myths surrounding coercive control and abuse of power.

In part one, we went over the first seven myths and, in this episode, we’ll be going over the next seven.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have with me again, Rosanne Moore who is on the Voice of Influence team.  This is episode 2, part two of a two-part series around abuse of power and how coercive control, people who are trying to take coercive control, what the kind of myths are that people believe about that.

And so, we’re debunking some myths today and last week about this abuse of power and understanding situations like this is so important.  I’m so glad that we are doing it, Rosanne.  It is such an important thing for people to understand, not just people that are going through it, but even leaders, people who want to have a voice of influence.  Why does it matter to that person?  Why should they understand these myths?

Rosanne Moore:  Because you really can’t leave an abusive situation without help.  You need help on some level, something outside of yourself.  One of the dynamics of coercive control is to eliminate outside support systems.  And so, if we can get society to understand the myths and we challenge those so that people respond differently, we have a better chance of providing an outside support system for people who are trying to leave abusive situations.  Truth matters and wrong belief systems have terrible consequences.

Andrea:  Not only for that one person, but for the people that are around them for their work environment, for their church environment, or for their family. 

Rosanne Moore:  Yes, absolutely. 

Andrea:  All right.  And we want you to know on the outset, first of all, you need to go back.  If you haven’t listened to the last episode, please go back and listen to it.  You can listen to this one first.  That’s fine, but you do want to hear both episodes if you’re interested on this topic and if you really do want to be as somebody who is informed about this as a voice of influence, somebody who is informed about abusive relationships, coercive control, and how to really empower and bolden others that need it.

And we want you to know that there is a list of resources, a free download available for those who are seeking to get out of in particular an abusive marriage or intimate relationship.  And you can find that list of resources by texting to the number 44222 and text the letters VOI for Voice of Influence, VOILifeline all one word.  So, VOILifeline, text it to the number 44222.  You can also find information about that and a course that we are going to be offering and perhaps are already out depending on when you listen to this episode.  And you can find all that information at voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline.

OK, Rosanne, we’re going to tackle some more myths.  We’re going to debunk some more myths.  So number eight, this is something that the people say.  They hold it deeply.  They hold it deeply inside their heart, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard it or even like I remember thinking it and it’s almost embarrassing to say that but you think to yourself, “That can’t be true of so and so. They are such a good person.”

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

Andrea:  Why is this a myth?

Rosanne Moore:  OK.  Abusive people work very hard to present a persona that is trustworthy so that they can gain access and so they can be very generous.  They usually put on a very convincing, very charming, or very generous.  They are nice.  Niceness is not a character trait.  I think it was Boz Tchividjian who said it, “It’s not a character trait, it’s a personality presentation that you can choose.”  Niceness is a choice.  It’s not a character quality.

A person can choose nice behavior.  They can choose to do something that looks generous, all for the goal of gaining trust in order to betray.  People who work as spies in other countries do it all the time, you know.  We talk a lot about sleeper cells or whatever.  The whole idea of many horror movies is that the person that seems the most trustworthy is the one that turns out to be a serial killer or whatever, right?

And so the idea that we know, we just absolutely know that this person couldn’t be capable of what’s being accused, that that is a reason in and of itself not to investigate, not to seek further information, not to look at something as a possibility.  That’s what abusers count on.  That is what people count on.  I don’t know how many times that I have heard people say, “Well, you know, a person is innocent until proven guilty.”  No, that’s not true.  Legally, they are presumed innocent until proven guilty.  But if they did it, they did it whether they ever get proved or not.

People frequently say that “Well, a person is innocent until proven guilty.”  And the actual legal term is a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  In other words, you’re not supposed to face, like legal charges unless there’s evidence that you are guilty.  But the reality is if a person is guilty, they are guilty whether anybody else recognizes it or not.

And so the unintended effect of that, I will say this too, one of the hardest things for people who are in an abusive relationship is, although I’m not negating the need for there to be a presumption of innocence, the same presumption of innocence needs to be offered to the person who is coming forward with an allegation of abuse.

Andrea:  Wow.

Rosanne Moore:  Because what happens to them typically is they are treated as if they were a liar and a manipulator, and that they have ulterior motives.  The same presumption of good motives needs to be given to the person who’s coming forth with an allegation because statistically, it’s far more likely that they’re telling the truth and they’re paying a heavy price to do it.  And so that’s just something, I’m not saying that there’s not the need for investigation.  What I’m saying is there needs to be a willingness to be open-minded and to not assume we already know the facts because this person looks good on the surface.  Because we haven’t personally run into any treachery with this person does not automatically mean that somebody else hasn’t.

Andrea:  You know, Rosanne, as I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking in an abroad kind of way, people who have done really amazing things.  You look at the Harvey Weinstein’s case.  You look at a number of people.  We’ll just leave it at that, you know Bill Cosby. 

Rosanne Moore:  Bill Cosby.

Andrea:  Yes, exactly.  You look at these gentlemen and you think to yourself, “gentlemen,” you think to yourself “funny.”  You’re thinking to yourself “brilliant,” you know, because of the amazing work that they’ve done in the world, whatever they’ve produced or whatever.  And so it’s a great loss to actually say that they could actually be wrong.  Maybe they’re not such a good person.  Maybe they’ve done some amazing things, but people are complicated.  They’re not just evil or good.  They’re very often have done good things in the world but have done very bad things.  And unfortunately, those bad things have consequences that have to be dealt with; otherwise, they’re going to just keep going and going.

Rosanne Moore:  One of the most chilling things I’ve ever read is the account of a young German woman who talked about, she worked as a waitress at a hotel that Hitler frequented during the war.  And she talked about how kind he was and how he would ask after her mother and sisters and the things that he did that went out of his way to, you know, do nice things for her family.  It was just unbelievable the account that she gave of him and of his top generals said that the same people who are systematically torturing and murdering thousands of people, if you hear her account, were also capable of doing generous things, you know, for her and her family.  And it was chilling to read.

I mean, there was a level of denial even with all of the evidence to the contrary because she had had a good experience with them that she felt like they’re being made out to be worse than they are.  And as she said, “People are complicated and we are made in the image of God,” which means we are capable of great good, but we are capable of making terrible choices.  That image has been impacted by our separation from God and we’re capable of doing terrible things and justifying those to ourselves.  That’s something we have to grapple with deeply.

Andrea:  Hmm.  And then I know that another myth that we’d talked about has to do with when a victim comes forward you think to yourself, “The victims of abuse should be able to accurately account details.  They’re confused.  Why are they confused?  Well, they must be lying.”  Tell us why that’s not right.

Rosanne Moore:  Or yeah, they changed their timeline.  Their details changed or whatever.  Trauma impacts memory, memory is malleable to begin with but trauma impacts the brain.  And it doesn’t mean that you’re coming up, like you’re just creating things in your mind, but you can be piecing together things from different incidents and putting them together so that they’re not really accurate.  They happened, but maybe not at the time that you’re thinking they both happened, things like that.

So often, abuse victims are expected to behave in ways that they would only be capable of behaving if they had not actually been honest.  If you think simply about anybody who’s involved in law enforcement who’s been trained in taking witness statements.  If you have four witnesses to something and their story is exactly alike, that’s a sign that they’re lying.

They’ve planned a story because in reality, if you have four witnesses to the same crime or the same incident, they’re all going to be noticing different things.  Their perceptions are going to be different.  The core truth of what’s there may overlap, but they’re all going to be seeing something somewhat differently.  And so, often there’s this great burden of expectation that somebody who has been deeply traumatized should be able to give a very clear, cohesive, you know, organized account of what happened.  And in fact, that’s not true.  That would be an indication that they were making it up, not that they were telling the truth.

Andrea:  Very important to know.  All right, number 10, this is 10 of 14.  We did the first seven in the first episode.  Don’t forget to go back and listen to that.  All right, number 10; “She’s the one who is harming everyone.”

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Now, wait a second.  In what context are we hearing this, Rosanne?

Rosanne Moore:  OK, so all right.  There’s a woman that I have walked closely with who she discovered her husband was having an affair and she made known that she was going to be taking legal steps to protect herself and her children and he didn’t pay child support and alimony when he was supposed to.  And so she followed through with court system and he ended up going to jail for not paying what he was supposed to be paying.  He withheld funds for the provision of children and he went to jail.

And her mother-in-law said, “You put him in jail.”  

No, he made all of those choices.  He chose to be unfaithful.  He chose to shack up with somebody else and to spend money on drugs and other things.  He chose not to provide for his children.  He put himself in jail.  She didn’t do that, she just asked the court to address the behavior that he chose.  And yet you see that happen constantly, you know that kind of thing.

The abused one who comes forward in a church setting and is told, “Well, you are harming not only him but his family and you’re harming the name of Christ.”  

No, he chose all of that by choosing to behave in unhealthy ways, in wrongful ways.  

In a situation where there’s a whistleblower in a corporation, “You’re harming our bottom line.  Our stock has dropped because of you, because you made this known.”  

No, whoever did the deceitful or unethical thing; they’re the ones who created that situation.  It’s not the whistle blower, it’s the one who did the wrong that created the situation and yet has fallout for other people.  Be mad at the right person, not at the one who calls the abuser on it but for the one who makes the bad choice.

Andrea:  Hmm, so important.  OK, number 11; this really shouldn’t impact you that bad “Why do you have to make such a big deal of this sort of thing?

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  I can tell you that when you live with somebody who is seeking to destroy you and who’s constantly playing mind games with you, who is constantly attempting to distort your perception of reality, one of the impacts of that is that it makes you distrust your own judgment.  Another reason, just to kind of go back a little bit, why is it difficult to the whole thing of accounting details in a timeline or whatever.  This plays into that as well.

Often an awareness of what’s happening dawns over time.  You see things that don’t add up, but then there’s a plausible explanation that gets given and so you accept that because you don’t want to be hard-nosed and so an awareness of what’s happening unfolds over time.  But then in retrospect, when you look back and you realize, “I saw signs of this, I should have figured it out sooner.  I should have known.  I should have somehow like recognized what was going on and protected myself and then I could have escaped being through all this pain or having my children go through this pain,” whatever.  All of that happens in your head.  It takes time to uncover that.

The reality is we’re built for trusting healthy relationships and when those are violated and violated at a deep level the way that they are in a domestic abuse situation; it’s not just your trust in other people, it’s trusting your own judgment that gets violated.  And that’s what keeps women in that or keeps going back for so long.

So this kind of goes back as well to the whole issue of that there should be a sequential account that can be given and a cohesive narrative and all of that.  The reality is a person who’s in an abusive situation, they see things, but then they’re given a plausible explanation for them and so they go on.  And the awareness of what’s actually happening takes place over time.  And so when the clarity about what has happened finally comes enough so that they start to take steps to get out of the abusive situation, they’re looking back and they’re thinking, “Oh, I should have seen this sooner.”  I mean, when and such and such happened, like, “Why didn’t I get out?”  Or “What didn’t I do something differently then?”  So they’re actually their own sense of being able to trust their perceptions have been undermined over time.

So, not only do they have to learn to trust other people after having their trust deeply violated, and that’s a big part of health is the ability to trust again, trust other people again.  But first they have to learn to trust their own perceptions again.  And when you have your own sense of your ability to know who is safe and who’s not and what’s right and what’s not right and all of that, when that gets taken from you, when that gets violated that takes time to recover that.  It’s like having the floor fall out from under you and just be in free fall for a long time.

And there are also physiological changes that take place.  A lot of times, women who are in abusive relationships get accused of being codependent and what they actually are is trauma bonded.  Codependency has to do with behavior patterns that try to manage somebody else’s addiction, unhealthy caretaking patterns that try to manage somebody else’s addiction.

A trauma bonding is actual changes in the brain of someone who’s being abused where they’re trying to figure out in the relationship what’s causing the person to behave badly sometimes and be kind other times.  It’s not necessarily a cycle, but there’s usually some reward delivery system that’s intermittent that takes place in an abusive relationship and the person is being told something that you did caused the punishment. 

And then the person will be nice, and so they’re trying to figure out,  “What was it that made the relationship work?” at that point where they’re regaining your trust.  And not only does it draw you back in emotionally, but there are actual physiological changes that take place in trauma bonding in the brain where it’s almost like an addictive chemical release in the brain, and it’s one of the most difficult things to overcome.  And so it takes time and it takes proper understanding with a therapist, working with therapist who understands trauma to be able to get through that.  You can’t just flip a switch.  Just because you’re out of the relationship doesn’t mean all of that goes away.  It takes time.  It takes safety.  It takes safe people to be able to recover from that.

Andrea:  Hmm.  OK, so, here we are at number 12.  This myth that “The victim must be exaggerating.” 

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  Usually, actually, in a domestic abuse situation and coercive control situation, the person is not exaggerating.  They’re minimizing.  They’re actually minimizing, and that’s because denial while it has its negatives, it also serves the function of only giving us as much information as we can deal with in a highly traumatic situation.

Andrea:  And you said that’s denial that does that.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.

Andrea:  So denial serves both purposes.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

Andrea:  Denial for the person who is being abused is what you’re talking about right now. 

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  For the person who’s being abused, denial is both friend and foe.  When you’re living in that kind of intense trauma, there’s only so much reality that you can handle at a time without being completely destroyed by it.  And so when you take that little part that you can bear to talk about and you take it to another person and their response is to say, you’re exaggerating, that person’s actually being gaslighted by society in general.  Gaslighting comes from a movie, an old movie where there was a deliberate attempt by an abuser to drive his wife insane in order to get her money.

Andrea:  And to make her think that she was wrong all the time and that she wasn’t thinking correctly.

Rosanne Moore:  That she was losing her mind, where he would adjust the gaslights in the house to make the lights flicker and then tell her that that wasn’t happening.  So she would think she was losing her mind.  So when someone takes that piece of information that they’re able finally to address and they go to someone else and they’re being told, “You’re just exaggerating, it’s not that bad.  You should be able to cope.”  It’s incredibly damaging, incredibly damaging.  The reality is most of the time that’s the tip of the iceberg, and what’s happening underneath in the dynamics of the relationship is far, far worse.

And when someone in that situation takes that little piece of information and is finally heard and is brought to a safe place where they can start to unpack it, usually you’re looking at a huge process of having to look at what the depths of the reality that they were living with actually is.  And so it’s adding insult to injury to say, “Oh, you’re just exaggerating.”

Andrea:  Hmm.  So number 13, “I couldn’t possibly be deceived by this person.  Surely I know that this isn’t true.”

Rosanne Moore:  Well, the reality is all of us are vulnerable to deception if we’re given the right circumstances.  All you have to do, again, go back to Nazi Germany, you had an entire nation, there were a few people who stood out as being people who didn’t buy into the lie, who saw what was happening and spoke out against it.  But the vast majority of the country was not Nazi.  They didn’t agree with the ideology, but they were impacted by it.  They were party to it.  They helped make it happen because they didn’t see the dynamics of what was happening for what they were and they minimized, and all it took was being afraid to speak up or looking the other way or collaborating in various ways.  So, you didn’t have to be the spearhead that was doing the actual abuse, all you had to do is collaborate by not speaking out.

Andrea:  OK.  And just this idea of not speaking out, I think, it’s tough for people to know, Rosanne, when they should speak out and when they shouldn’t, especially on behalf of somebody else. 

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

Andrea:  It’s hard to know and yet when you see somebody being targeted for abuse or you see these negative behaviors to not stand up and say something…

Rosanne Moore:  Empowers the abuser.

Andrea:  It certainly does, it certainly empowers the abuser and so silence, unfortunately, is consent.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  Yes, yes.  You know, part of this is when I say that everybody is vulnerable to deception given the right circumstances, part of the protection against this is being really honest about what motivates you. 

Andrea:  Oh, that’s so good.

Rosanne Moore:  You know, you’re going to be less likely to be open to hearing from someone about an abuse situation if the person that they’re accusing is someone that does something for you or you’re somehow a member of the tribe that they help lead. That can be political.  I mean, we see it all the time in both political parties where they’ll point to something in the other side that they are giving a blind eye too in their own camp.  That’s true in churches where they’ll criticize something that’s outside, but they won’t deal with it when it’s in their own myths.

So, there has to be an awareness of what am I getting out of choosing not to listen, not to see, and not to be willing to investigate.  That’s a big part of it is we’re most vulnerable to deception when we have our own motives that are being served, our own agenda that is being served.

Andrea:  And that’s a toughie because people want to believe that their tribe, that their people are good people and that anybody that would come and attack their people are bad people.  And so we do this dualistic kind of idea in our minds about good and evil and assume that we’re on the side of good and that those who are with us are on the side of good when we’re all very much more complicated than that.  And if we can’t recognize that, if we don’t humble ourselves to recognize that we could also be deceived – it’s humility.  It’s the honest humility that’s saying I might not be right.

Rosanne Moore: Right, right.

Andrea:  And if we can’t say that we’re going to end up inadvertently possibly, very sadly helping abusers.

Rosanne Moore:  I would say that’s the early stages of it, is that the humility to recognize that I could be deceived and be willing to humble myself and investigate.  But then the backside of that or the deeper implication is when we lack that and we’re challenged with evidence, then there’s a hardening that I’ve seen take place where that unwillingness because now I have something to defend.  Not only do I not want to admit that I’m not capable of being deceived, but I have decided that I have to be on the right side already.  Therefore, anything further challenges not just my perception, but my rightness.

Andrea:  Uh-hmm, my identity.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes, my identity, exactly.  And so then not only am I willing to look at the possibility of being deceived, but now once I’ve chosen not to go there and I’ve taken steps that have proven to be wrong then I have to face that I actually was the bad guy.  I was not the hero.  I empowered evil, and a lot of people are not willing to recognize that, I mean, all of us.  I will say this myself, I have journeyed with abuse survivors for over 30 years, and I did not do it well early on because I had a lot of these myths that I believed, and I was not good at listening appropriately early on.

And so part of my own journey has been having to humble myself and recognize I was at times part of the problem, not part of the solution.  The only way I can be a good guide now is to be willing to acknowledge when I’m wrong.

Andrea:  Yeah, absolutely.  And that’s really hard.  It’s really hard to do when you feel so strongly about a topic, and the person that you’re defending cares about that topic too.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, right.

Andrea:  But I think that’s just the idea of keeping in mind that everybody is complicated and that we’re not all just good or evil and that we could also be wrong about things.  This is being a mature person, and if you’re wanting to have a voice of influence in the world, you have to cultivate these things in yourself.  You have to be able to confront some of the really hard things in life and kind of take a really hard look at yourself in order to be able to move forward so that you can actually be an advocate, be a support, be a positive impact on the culture to minimize the power dynamics that are at play and be a part of good.  And I say good – it kind of sounds like we’re the good ones and they’re the bad ones – I guess, and I don’t really mean that, but you know, to be furthering good in the world.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, there is good and evil that is absolute.  And at times we join it and at times we don’t.  And so instead of trying to see ourselves in terms of us being good or evil, we need to acknowledge that we’re a mixture and that we need to be constantly looking at where we’re giving place to evil in our lives so that we can move away from that. 

Andrea:  So good.  OK, and this last one is a toughie.  It’s a hard one to swallow Rosanne, and so I hope that you can leave us on a positive note in some way.  But the last myth that we’re talking about is “If I tell the truth, the system will bring me justice.”

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.

Andrea:  And why is that not necessarily true?

Rosanne Moore:  And the social myth being that if what the woman is sharing is true, then the system will protect her.  It’s not true because the laws are written by fallible people, and they’re executed by fallible evil, and the same things that can be social myths in the greater society also play out in the court system.  I have frequently heard it said that the courts favor women.  If they accuse abuse, the courts automatically assume that that’s true.

A study was recently done that shows absolutely, that is not true.  Actually, if a woman comes forward with allegations of abuse, it doesn’t really matter how much evidence she has that her children are being abused; the court will actually punish her for trying to protect her kids.  And so you just have to understand that the court is flawed.  And while I do not advocate doing anything illegal – you definitely want to utilize the court system to the degree that you can.

One of the things I had to come to terms with, I went into a very naive thinking that I will just tell the truth, and I’ll present evidence of the truth, and the legal system will protect me.  And that was not the case, at least not to the degree that I expected that it would happen.  And so that was a bitter pill. That almost as bad as the whole situation I was facing, was the sense of betrayal that I felt by the legal system.  The courts tend to assume that women exaggerate the abuse to use it as a weapon to get back at somebody that they’re just fed up with for lesser reasons.

This isn’t true, but that’s the mindset.  That’s the myth that the court is operating under.  Often the boxes that the lawyers are ticking off basically in terms of building a case,  lawyers build a case looking at the laws and these are the parameters for how we build a case.  Those boxes often don’t fit the reality of what an abuse situation looks like. 

And so you may have a good attorney who’s able to take enough of your situation and put it in a box that they can protect you.  But if your situation is kind of outside those boxes, then your solution lies outside of those boxes.  That’s not suggesting that you should thumb your nose at the law, but one of the things that we’re going to address in the Lifeline system is what do you do, for instance, when you have a partner who is an abusive parent without engaging in criminal behavior.  So your children are having to deal with abuse, but it’s not the kind of abuse that the law views as criminal and therefore will take action on.

There are things you can do but your help is going to have to come outside the legal system.  It’s not going to be from the system itself.  Like I said, I had a very naive view of the justice system, but what I’ve come to realize is the legal system can restrain evil, but it cannot provide justice.  God has to do that.  And it doesn’t come on our timetable, unfortunately.  I mean, no, ultimately, fortunately, because He knows more about what we need than we do.  But the legal system can only restrain evil.  It can’t provide us ultimate justice, and that’s an awareness we have to come to the system with so that we’re not asking it to do something it’s not capable of doing.

Andrea:  Or expecting it to save us in a way, like, there’s a lot of responsibility that you still have to sort of understand how to make it work, how to navigate it.  And in hearing, Rosanne, the content of the Lifeline course and working with you on that, it has helped me to have a way better idea of the importance of so many different kinds of support that women need and how they can get that support and then how they can navigate all of the changes that they’re going through navigate the legal system.  Not that you’re a lawyer, we’re certainly not lawyers, though there some counseling background and spiritual direction background in Voice of Influence, we’re not claiming counseling or, you know, legal advice in this course; however it is a guide for someone to help gain clarity that they know how to proceed with the right people.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes, and how to choose the professionals that can help them in those areas.

Andrea:  So if you don’t have a friend that has been down this road before and can help you make those decisions then this course would certainly be a benefit to a woman that is going through that process. 

Rosanne Moore:  You asked about, how do we look at that last one with hope?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Rosanne Moore:  The system can’t bring me justice, but God is a God of justice.  God is a God of justice. He is always on the side of the oppressed.  He’s always against oppression.  And so when we feel trapped, I mean that was the point that I had to keep coming back to.  I’ve worked this past week with a woman who is in an extremely dangerous situation, and we are trying to get her all of the people on her team that can help her get out of that safely and preserve her life.  This is probably the most escalated violent situation that I’ve worked with to date, and we got some bad news earlier in the week.   That night, my prayer was, “God, evil cannot be stronger than you.  It just can’t be stronger than you, so we need you to step into this because evil cannot be stronger than you.”

And the next day, the resources that she needed came into place.  And so that I would say is while the system is flawed, like every other man-made thing, God is on the side of the oppressed.  And so there is hope.  There is hope, and if anybody hearing this feels absolutely trapped in your situation, there is a way of escape, and you want to proceed carefully, we want to help you get resources.  You don’t want to act precipitously, we want to help you put things in place to keep things as safe as possible for you.  That’s our goal.

But just know that there is hope.  You do not have to believe what you’re being told by your oppressor, which is that there is no way out.  That’s not true.  There are things that can be done to help rescue you.

Andrea:  Yeah, I mean it’s so complicated.  I just want to say too that there’s no promises, there’s no guarantees in life.  Even with prayer, there’s no guarantee that something will just come.

Rosanne Moore:  But I will say, I have seen again and again and again and again with the women that I’ve worked with – I’ve seen again and again and again because one of the lies that women believe that there is nothing that they can do, that they are completely helpless.  And they stay in that situation for a long time believing that there is no way out, but when they art to come to terms with the possibility of escape, I have seen things lined up that were not readily visible.

So are there bad things that happen?  Yes, there are.  But I would tell you that there are options that may not be immediately visible for you and we want to try to get you the resources that you need, get you plugged in locally or wherever, to things that can help make that path of escape for you.

Andrea:  Thank you so much for sharing this.  I don’t know your passion for this Rosanne, your wisdom that you have gained through walking very difficult path.  And I want to remind everyone that you can download the list of resources by texting, VOILifeline, Voice of Influence Lifeline, VOILifeline, all one word, no spaces to the number 44222.  And you can also find that information there as well as information about the course at voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline.  We hope that this is helpful for a lot of people.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.

Andrea:  All right.  Thank you so much for spending your time with us today.  Rosanne and I are glad that you have stuck it out and listened and are so grateful that you’re open to learning and growing and, you know, finding even more humility within yourself to be able to recognize that some of these myths might even be things that you have thought in yourself.  So let’s go out and know that…

Rosanne Moore:  I was going to say just a word of challenge.  Next time you watch a crime drama, pay attention to how many of these myths are voiced in it because they’re very common in television.

Andrea:   Hmm.  Perfect.  OK, so just know that your voice matters and you can make it matter more.  Thanks, Rosanne!

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How to Talk About Racism Online and with Kids with Lucretia Berry

Episode 144

Lucretia Berry Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Last week, we brought you part one of a two-part series about the myths around abuse and coercive control.

We had originally planned to release the second part of that series this week, however, we decided that given the events of the past few weeks, in particular, how things really escalated this week around the issues of racial injustice, we decided instead to release this interview with Lucretia Berry.

Lucretia is the creator of Brownicity, an anti-race/ism curriculum specialist, a writer for in(Courage).me, the author of What LIES Between Us Journal & Guide: Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing, a TED Talker, and a Senior Consultant for The American Dream Game. She received her Ph.D. in Education (Curriculum & Instruction) from Iowa State University.

In this episode, Lucretia shares why she created Brownicity and how it helps those at the beginning of their anti-racism journey, how the protests are about more than the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, how racism and racial injustice extends beyond police brutality, her response to those feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what to say or how to show up for others right now, why you can just jump on the bandwagon and follow along with things you see happening on social media, how she is discussing racism and anti-racism in her own multi-ethnic family, and more.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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Transcript

Hey there!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Last week, we were set to kick off a series on understanding power structures.  And we began that series with a conversation that is actually a two-part conversation about the myths around abuse and coercive control.  So, we offered seven myths, and then we have seven more to share.  But we decided that given the events of the past few weeks – in particular, how things really escalated this week around the issues of racial injustice, social injustice, and the rioting and everything – we decided that we were going to go ahead.  

We had this interview with Lucretia planned, and rather than pushing it to where we were going to put it in the series, we decided to pull it right up to the front.  So, the rest of those myths will be posted next week as our next episode.

And today, I have with me Lucretia Berry from Brownicity.  Lucretia, well, she’s going to tell you a little bit more about herself and how she started this organization and what she does with it, but I love their tagline and I want to share it with you; “Many Hues, One Humanity.”  In researching for this interview with Lucretia, one of the things that I ran across was her example of just how everybody is just a different shade of brown.  It’s not like we’re, you know, white and brown and black, but we’re really all a different shade of brown and we are one humanity.

So, how can we, as voices of influence, have some sort of impact in this conversation?  What should we be doing?  What should I be doing with myself?  What should I be saying online or with others?  How do we have this conversation in a way that it’s really productive and not hurtful?  I know a lot of times we get frustrated because we’re wanting to contribute to a conversation like this, and we try but then we find out, “Oh, shoot, I said the wrong thing.”  And then we feel stupid, and we go hide back under our shell.

Well, I want to encourage you that Lucretia is going to have some words for you today that will be very helpful.  And the main thrust of this conversation is that it’s not just about jumping on a bandwagon right now.  It’s not just about declaring that we’re not racist.  It’s about going on a journey of deprogramming the inherent racism that we grew up with, the way that the world works, and understanding how we got to where we are now.  Instead of writing it off, taking it in, listening, admitting that maybe, I don’t know everything.  Maybe my perspective is limited and it’s important for me to listen.

So, I’m really, really honored to provide you with this conversation with Lucretia Berry.

Andrea:  All right.  So, Lucretia Berry is the creator of brownicity.com, a contributor for incourage.me, and a TED and Q Ideas speaker at TED Charlotte.  As a wife, mom of three and former college professor, her passion for racial healing led her to author What LIES Between Us:  Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing.

Lucretia, I’m really, really grateful that we had this conversation scheduled and that we’re here today.  I’m honored to have you, and would you tell us a little bit more about what you do with your organization, Brownicity?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Well, thank you for having me in.  Oh, my goodness, what timing this is because we scheduled this a while ago, a long time ago.

Brownicity – our tagline is “Many Hues, One Humanity”.  And as you said, I think because I am a former college professor – my doctorate is in education, curriculum, and instruction – I think I was literally designed to be a teacher, even though I didn’t want to become a teacher because of… we don’t really pay teachers or appreciate teachers.  I think after COVID, we do now.  But we didn’t before so I didn’t have aspirations to be a teacher, but just naturally, you know, I do love to teach.

So, Brownicity is more heavily focused on equipping and liberating people through making quality education around anti-racism literacy accessible.  So, for example, currently, you know, you can probably take a college course if you’re a college student.  If there are organizations in your community where you can do a workshop or something like that, those are available.  But what I was finding with lots of my friends, especially parents, moms, and regular everyday people are not policymakers or working at a corporation where they would get some type of diversity training… they didn’t have a touch point or access to some structured education.

And for the most part, it’s left up to people to educate themselves.  So, the good thing about that right now is that there are a lot of books now.  I would say like five years ago or so, not really.  Not a lot of like, you know, read it yourself and you can maybe figure this out yourself.  So, I put in… you know, like scaffolded education in place, and I started teaching… or I should say we, because it’s a group of us – so we just started teaching like in our communities.  Our first official “we’re doing this” type of… it was a woman who lived in a neighborhood who said, “I have a big house, I have lots of neighbors, and I’m going to invite them into my house.  Can you please come and teach my neighborhood?”  “Yes!”

Andrea:  Right.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  So, we go into churches.  Ultimately, I was asked to come into a school.  So, I packaged this curriculum or this kind of foundational course; it’s called What LIES Between Us, Journal & Guide: Fostering First Step Toward Racial Healing.  Because in my experience of doing this work, and attending workshops and meetings and kind of community-organized efforts is that people who are new to the conversation and even the idea of, you know, anti-racism… there weren’t a lot of resources for people who are new.  And so much of the good content, I believe, is for people who are already kind of on the journey.

So, there’s already this understanding that what race and racism actually are, like, they’re constructs, they’re not biological.  Well, the beginner, you know, doesn’t really know that and hasn’t been immersed in that understanding.  So, I wanted to create something, or I did create something that kind of takes the beginner and gives them a foundational understanding – here are definitions, here are terms, here’s how race was created as a construct and it’s not biological.  And then this is how the narratives been shaped and formed and fit into policies or policies shaped narratives.  This is how we’ve cultivated this over the years, and then this is the lens you have to have to be able to analyze these structures and institutions, and then here’s the lens you have to have to analyze yourself.

So, when people start there, then they’re able to move forward with more clarity and more urgency and wherever they decide to take their, you know, fundamental anti-racism education.  So, I am African-American.  My husband is white American.  We actually met doing this type of work together in a church, and we became great friends and then ultimately got married.  So, we’ve always been kind of immersed in awareness and consciousness, and have been active and intentional and hungry to learn more, to be a part of disrupting and dismantling kind of the systems, policies, behaviors, and beliefs that are in place that continue to move us…  They continue to keep us in the flow collectively, in the flow of racism.

So, we’ve been intentional and active about how to disrupt that flow or how to create an anti-racism flow, and therefore we’ve just been very vocal with our children.  And even before we had children, we talked about, “What is our framework for talking about racial dynamics in this country with our multi-ethnic children,” because it’s going to be a different education or different conversation than what my husband had growing up in Iowa in a white family.  And it’s going to be different than what I had growing up in the south in North Carolina in a black family.  So, again, we’ve had to do the work and figure some things out.  And yeah, I just told you all those things.

Andrea:  Thank you!

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  And here we are.

Andrea:  That’s perfect!  I think that lays a really solid foundation for the rest of our conversation because everybody has a better idea of where you’re coming from.  And I really appreciate the fact that Brownicity focuses, at least, gives the beginner the opportunity to understand this perspective and to understand the dynamics that are at play right now – not just right now, but all the time.  And because I think that, you know, we are having this conversation… usually, you know, it takes us a couple of weeks, at least or sometimes a couple of months after we have an interview before we release it.  And we’re having this conversation a couple of days before we release it because of everything that’s been going on lately.

I mean, the response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, have certainly spotlighted injustice and triggered a national or international conversation about systemic injustice that people of color experience.  So, I want to ask you, from your point of view, what is the message that we all should be hearing right now?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Okay, so what we should be hearing is we have a deficit and we have been complicit with our deficit in loving, caring about, and offering opportunity to all of our citizens equally or in a way that treats everyone with the humanity in which they deserve to be treated.  So, you know, it’s unfortunate that it takes these types of tragedies to see the kind of the perpetual, ongoing, rampant systems that have been set in place, right, and secured and sustained for a long time because these are just like some outcomes and it’s just a few outcomes.  But, you know, we have people dying every day.

And I don’t mean dying, like, at the hands of police brutality.  I’m saying like, you know, African-Americans get less significant healthcare, or ghettoized – pushed into ghetto housing or displaced.  And, so, I think what we should be hearing now is there is a problem and it’s not going to go away until we actually address it, until we actually fix it and correct it.  And I hope people are hearing that it’s time to really understand the problem because it’s real.  So, it’s not made up.  This isn’t like an anecdotal, you know, every now and then this happens.  We have just been flowing in this stream and so fish have been dying.  And, so, I hope people are understanding, “Okay, now it’s time to look at the water and not simply look at the fish.  Let’s take a look at this water, let’s sample this water, and then let’s begin to detox this water.”

And many of us have been taught that the water is fine, you know, and our frameworks for even perceiving the water… it’s like you have a framework that allows you to perceive that the water is fine.  So, again, we need to look at the water and we also need to look at our lenses, through which we are offered this reality because our lenses have been skewed and our water is toxic, so as a result, you know, we see…

And now, in this day and age, we can film all of these things versus a few years ago, when something would happen that was overt like this… because again, racism unfolds and it impacts every single day in institutional ways, and in representation and exclusion, and all those things.  These are just cases that we are seeing that are so overt and flagrant that it grabs you and makes you see what has been happening for hundreds of years, or the seeds we’ve sown for hundreds of years.

Andrea:  And the protests have certainly grabbed.  I mean, it makes sense to me that it has taken even these voices rising up, even though, you know, nobody wants to see destruction.  At the same time, there’s been this awakening too, “Oh my gosh they’re really serious.  What’s going on?”  I think that there are people that are saying, “Okay, so what are we supposed to do here?”  And there’s this post kind of being copied and pasted and going around Facebook about, you know, “What am I supposed to do?  Like, if I’m silent, this happens; if I speak up, this happens; if I am trying to spread positivity, this happens,” and so on.

And I know the other day, the Blackout Tuesday, you know, there was a lot of concern about the hashtag.  If we use the #BlackLivesMatter with that particular picture then all of the other things that are being talked about with BlackLivesMatter gets pushed down in the newsfeeds and whatnot.  And I think that people are confused and frustrated thinking, “Wait a second, I’m trying to help.  Oh no, I screwed it up again.”

So, when people are wanting to help, they want to be good fellow humans, but they’re feeling caught off-guard and not really sure what to say or do.  What do you want to say to us?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:   I think, of course, people feel the pain or they are feeling the pain.  Like maybe they haven’t before to this degree, but I am realizing that people are feeling the pain of this time right now to a greater degree and saying you know, “What can I do?”  So, what happens is we want to react and, of course, social media is created for that, right?  It’s inherent in, you know, its design to say, “This is what I’m doing right now, and this is what we should be doing right now.”  So, what I would suggest – and have been suggesting for like five years – is that we don’t have these reactions that haven’t been thought-out, but instead that we become or we start or we maintain a journey that is anti-racism or anti-racist.  So, we make it a way of life and you begin by learning.

So, if I could have my way, I would say, “Okay, the rest of 2020 is canceled,” right?  And can everybody just make some time, take some time – maybe it’s not all day every day, but maybe it’s an hour a day, or thirty minutes a day, or fifteen minutes a day, an hour a week – to build your anti-racism literacy, to build your muscles and get immersed in anti-racism and anti-racism literacy.  Like, become a part of the movement because things are going to happen.  But that way, you already have things in your toolkit, you know, you already know how to flow.

So, here’s an example.  I woke up on Tuesday, and I kept seeing all these black squares, and I’m like, “Uh, what is happening?”  So, I go and figure this out, research this out, like, “What is this?”  And sure enough, of course, I have teachers, so I went to a person that I follow and then she explained why we shouldn’t be doing that because, yes, it was the hashtag interfering with the actual information that the BlackLivesMatter hashtag needed to be communicated.  So, I’m like, “Okay.”  So, immediately then I go and tell people that I knew, and I’m like, “Okay, you can do the blackout, but don’t use the hashtag.”

But you see that’s because I’m more, you know, immersed and on this flow, so I’m like, “Okay, careful, you know, carefully tread.”  Especially if it’s something that’s new like that.

Andrea:  Instead of jumping on with the bandwagon, whatever it might be, do a little research make sure you’re doing it right.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Right, you want to do that, but yeah, when you say jump on the bandwagon, so again, that’s not really anti-racist work, right?  That’s just, you know, reacting.  And yes, we can react, but I would like people to put more time into like the deeper work.  I saw that as well with the safety pin, and someone said, “Oh, should I wear this safety pin to show, you know, my allyship?”  And I’m like, “No, that’s performative.”  To me, it feels like you wanting to put on that safety pin is more about you being, like, seen as safe, but it really doesn’t do anything for black and brown bodies.  It really doesn’t do anything to then counter the flow – I’m going to keep going back to that analogy – it doesn’t do anything to counter the flow that we’re in.

And I want to do things or put my time and effort into what will actually disrupt this flow.  And that’s how I’ve led or that’s how I’ve moved in what I do, like, “Well, I don’t want to, you know, just do this.  Yes, I can do some things that show my support.”  So, as an educator, I’m like, “Okay, wherever I can possibly go to educate and to get people to turn their brains on and to be activated.”  That’s my activism is to activate these brains.  

So, we’re not just mindlessly participating and going in the flow.

Andrea:  So, what I’m hearing you say is that it’s not so much about this very moment… it is about this moment in that, you know, if we can be more sensitive to what’s going on and try to join the conversation in a very thoughtful and you know, somewhat researched way.  That’s a good thing, to share your heart and that sort of thing, maybe.  But the bigger issue here is that we should all be really going on this journey in committing to going on a journey of anti-racism in our own kind of reflecting, I would assume.

I mean, it seems to me like a lot of the work is on our own awareness and self-reflection on how this all has really been integrated into our own lives without us even realizing it.  Because I think part of what’s going on and what I’m hearing and certainly what I felt at times is, “Well, I’m not racist.  I don’t want anybody to think that I’m racist.”  And so we put up our black square, which I think that’s good and I did too.

But I can see, though, that it is so important…  This is how I’ve been in imagining it, and I want you to tell me if I’m right or wrong here.  But it seems that if I’m going to post something, I should also or if I’m going to say, “Wow, that was really thoughtful.”  I mean, I posted something from a friend, reposted her reflections on white privilege, and she’s also an interracial marriage but she’s white.  And it was just so powerful, and it really helped me to understand a new level of white privilege.

So, instead of just reposting and saying, “Wow, this is really powerful,” the real things I should be sharing or the thing that’s more powerful is if I share why it was so powerful to me.  What is changing in me when I read this?  Because if I’m vulnerably saying, “I didn’t understand this part,” then that’s allowing other people to be able to say, “Oh, wait a second, maybe I don’t understand it either.”

Okay, talk to me.  Tell me, Lucretia, am I anywhere close on this?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  That is so good, because when white people are showing vulnerability in terms of this transformation, like if something moved you, transformed you, you didn’t know or it’s like, “I thought I knew, and then I learned.  I thought I knew and then I learned, please come learn with me.”  Being, “I’m not racist,” isn’t good enough.  I’m not racist either, you see, what I’m saying?  I’m not racist either, but there are still racist systems in place.

So, we have to do this work of dismantling these systems, the outward systems and the systems inside.  We still have racist wiring in our brains.  And the whole, “I’m not racist,” it needs to be thrown out, like throw that out.  And what people need to say, “I’m becoming anti-racist,” or “I am on a journey,” or “I am on an anti racism journey,” because that means there’s a constant, like, peeling back the layers and questioning everything.

So, I’m just going to view it just simple.  You know, so when you really understand that there are systems and forces and influences in place and it’s not just, “Well, I’m a product of my heart or whatever, you know, or my morals.”  I know there are things that that are in place – forces and narratives and stories – that have shaped how we see ourselves in relation to how we see people who are not, maybe, in our same racial category and social economic class, all of that.

But when you understand that, then you can be an active part of changing the narrative or speaking up.  Like, for example, I know right now the focus is on the violence committed by police officers.  But I, as an educator, would dare to say that, you know, of course, the violence starts early on.  How much violence do we teach in American history that is approved violence against native peoples, you know?  Even violence against the British because, you know, Americans or the United States or the colonies wanted to be free.  Now, that is kind of an approved violence; they wanted liberation.

So, you know, we have to look at what we’ve been taught and what the stories are depositing, you know, in us and how these stories are shaping us.  We needed racial categories so that we can be okay with the violence against enslaved Africans.  Oh, but again, you know, we have holes in history.  So a part of that, you know, doing this work is committing to this journey so you begin to, like on a daily basis, you are challenging what you thought, what you know, you know, this whole neutrality of everything and you know, racial inequality is just normal.  And, you know, that’s not the case.  It’s all been very intentional.

Andrea:  So, Lucretia, you’re really an expert, especially with talking about race and anti-racism, this journey with children, and I’m looking forward to looking at your materials on that.  But how are you talking about the current issues in your own family right now?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Right.  So, again, the beauty of already being on the journey… and I just want to encourage everyone like, you know, racism is going to spew things at you.  You can pretend that that’s not the case, but I need people to see anti-racism literacy or anti-racism education is like parenting preparation.  Just like something else you would put in your toolkit, just like a parent would prepare themselves to be able to talk to their children about sex and things like that.

And anti-racism education and literacy is not an accusation that you’re racist or something like that.  It means that you understand where we are and the opportunities that we have to equip our children and ourselves to do better.  So, I say all that to say, in our family that is a multi-ethnic family, we went about addressing… first giving our children, of course, permission and normalizing conversations about skin tone because children see color, right?  I know people say children see race, but really because they don’t know the racial categories when they’re babies or when they’re little, they see that people are different colors or skin tones.

So, that’s how we talked about it in our family because talking about people specifically, or only I should say, only in racial categories would feel like our family was two parts or three parts of a whole and that’s not the case.  We are one whole; you know, our children have mom and a dad like everybody else, and so that’s how we chose to frame our conversation.  And actually, it was my daughter at four years old who said it.  She was like, “Mommy, you’re dark brown.  I’m medium brown. Daddy is light brown.”  And she is correct and we talked to her about melanin, and why Daddy’s ancestors had less melanin, why Mommy’s ancestors had more melanin.  Yeah, so we give them language, and we give them permission.

And so talking about what people look like is already normal.  So, there’s no discomfort there.  And then maybe about five or six, as they’re about to, you know, head out to kindergarten and to be out in the world more than they’re with me.  Then we explained race, how racial categories were constructed, and you know, people will put in this hierarchy and why historically.  And I know some people, you know, especially white people, think that that’s going to destroy their child or it’s taking away their innocence.  It is actually equipping your child, and you shouldn’t deprive them of the reality that we live in.  That’s what my TED Talk is about, actually.  So, if people want to listen to the TED Talk, you just google Lucretia Berry TED Talk, and I talk about that, how our Children Will Light Up the World If We Don’t Keep in the Dark.

Andrea:  Love that.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Thank you.  So, once they already understood race and the history of race, and yes, like they got upset, but that just means that they’re healthy because they should.  It means that they’re hardwired for love, so injustice pained them and it should.  I would be concerned if I told them that and they go, “Oh, okay,” and walk away.  Like, “Oh my gosh, we need to call somebody,” right?  But that’s okay, that is totally healthy.  And then as things come up on the news… and we don’t turn off our television, you know.  They know everything that is happening, and they watch me and my husband, you know, me and their dad talk about it.  Like we literally talk about it at the dinner table, we show our sorrow, they see that.  Like, it’s okay to be upset.

When they’re upset about certain things that happen at school, you know… they go to a school that is predominantly white and yeah, they know that their peers, their white peers, their parents aren’t having these conversations with them.  And they are not obligated to parent their peers, but they at least are way ahead in terms of understanding racial dynamics and in our world.

So, when they say something like… like one of my children, she was upset that there was only one brown boy in her class.  And she said, “That’s not fair.  There should be more brown boys in the class.”  And she’s our little outspoken one, and so I think she would probably go to school and stage a revolt.  But because it’s a normal conversation, I just explained to her about redlining and housing historically, and how people, schools, where they’re situated and depending on your neighborhood, and that’s who attends your school.  I said, “We can move someplace else in our city where the neighborhood or the community have more African-Americans or people of color or brown people,” I said, “then there’ll be lots have brown boys in the class.:  But she just said, “Oh, okay.”

She just needed that understanding, and then she was fine and went on about her day.  You see, children are not simply sponges, they are negotiating and meaning-making on a daily basis about everything.  And by seven years old, they have already observed how racial hierarchies work in the United States.  You might not hear them talking about it at your home, but that’s because you haven’t been talking about it at your home, and you haven’t given them language.  Oh, but when they go to school, they do.

Andrea:  Then they’ll get the language.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Well, they talk about it, and they don’t talk about it in healthy ways.

Andrea:  Right.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  So I have loved the school where my kids go to.  They have hired me as a consultant for the teachers.  And I get to go in and give the kids language, and then it’s amazing how the kids who have the language and understanding have healthier conversations.  And then I also teach a high school course on anti-racism literacy, it’s an elective.  And again, people have conversations with my students and they are blown away how they can articulate what has happened, what is happening, and how to create something better.

Andrea:  Lucretia, how can people connect with you in your work and actually, you know, have that be a part of their own journey in this process for themselves and their own families?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  So, I have created… well, first of all, I would love to come everywhere and teach and talk to people.  But I’m a mom, I have smaller kids and so I’m staying put for now.  So until then, I created a… Brownicity has an online learning community.  And we just launched it in the fall, so it currently now has, I want to say, six or so courses in there.  We do the courses live so if you can attend live, you do.  If you can’t, it’s recorded, and then it’s just in there for when you can get to it.  It’s a membership, so currently, it’s $10 a month or you can pay $110 for the whole year.  But it’s for people who need ongoing support and who need the education.  We have… like, I teach there, we have guest teachers and authors.  It’s a great space for people who want to be on the journey.

And, so again, you enroll and it’s there for you.  Currently, we have a class – one of our starter classes – called What LIES Between Us.  So, we’re going to do that virtually live on Tuesday, June 16th through July 14th.  So, they can go on the website and all that information is there.  But you know, when people want resources from me, I put everything there.  The resource library is free; you don’t have to be a member to access the resource library.  If you want to do What LIES Between US study on your own, you can buy the guide book from Amazon.  And that resource library is free, but other than that, everything is in the online membership.  We have schools use it for professional development.  I just have created a space because I care about people’s learning journey, because I know it can be traumatizing.

Andrea:  It can be tough, for sure.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Yeah, it’s traumatizing.

Andrea:  Anytime you look at what’s underneath of whatever we are and whoever we are and the way that we interact in the world… I mean, anytime you look underneath that it can be a little difficult.  So, thank you for providing that space, Lucretia for your voice of influence in the world, and for being here and helping us know as Voice of Influence listeners how to really respond in this moment of the world.  And we appreciate your voice of influence here today.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  I am so honored to be here.  Thank you so much for inviting me.  Thank you for making this space available, and thank you for amplifying my voice and Brownicity’s voice

Andrea:   Hmm, absolutely.  And just so everybody knows, everything will be in the show notes.  So, any links or things that Lucretia mentioned, we’ll definitely have those there all in one spot if you would like to be checking that out.

So, thank you so much, Lucretia!

Dr. Lucretia Berry: Thank you!

Posted on

Deceptive Myths About the Abuse of Power (Part 1)

Episode 143

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

My Voice of Influence colleague, Rosanne Moore, is back on the show to break down destructive myths surrounding coercive control and abuse of power.

We’ve broken fourteen myths into two groups that will be split between this episode and the next.

In this episode, Rosanne shares what the dynamics of abuse of power and coercive control, the importance of understanding the myths around abuse of power and coercive control, the truth behind the seven myths below.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have with me Rosanne Moore.  She is in the business with Voice of Influence.  She does a lot of incredible things, and we’ve had her on before where we’ve visited about your expertise, Rosanne.  We’re going to go a little bit deeper into that today.

And the reason why this particular topic is important is that the idea of having a voice is the foundation of what we do with Voice of Influence.  And when somebody comes across an abuse of power – in particular in their own lives – it takes their voice away.  It makes it very difficult for them to be able to have agency in their lives to make a difference and do the things that they want to do.

And so today, we’re going to start a two-episode series on the myths that are related to this abuse of power.

Andrea: So, Rosanne, thank you so much for being here again today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Rosanne Moore:  That is my pleasure.  I’ve been looking forward to this.

Andrea:  So when we’re talking about this abuse of power, first of all, can you just sort of give us a summary overview of what the dynamics of abusive power would look like in a relationship or in any particular setting?

Rosanne Moore:  Well, my background is a domestic abuse situation.  I came into that with a lot of the common misconceptions about what was involved in domestic violence, domestic abuse.  And what I’ve learned is the dynamics of abuse and abusive power are not necessarily about violence, physical violence.  They’re about coercive control.  And that can take place in a church.  It can take place in a business.  It can take place in a marriage.  It can take place between parents and children, and it can happen in a totalitarian regime if you look at what happened in Nazi Germany, for instance, or other totalitarian governments, North Korea.

And so when you learn about the dynamics of coercive control, there are a lot of different applications for them. 

So I guess, when we’re talking about abuse in a home, there are broad applications for what coercive control can look like in relationships.

Andrea:  So, today, we’re going to be tackling it.  You and I worked really hard on… you kind of sharing with me a lot of information, and then we distilled this into a bunch of myths that people believe.  And why is it important that we understand the difference between myth and reality?

Rosanne Moore:  Because a big part of coercive control is able to take place because of people who are decent, good people who believe wrong things.   And so they reinforce the power of the abusive person without even realizing it just by believing things that are not true that make it very difficult for a person who is being abused to escape the power of the abuser.

Andrea:  So a voice of influence is somebody who cares about this.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.

Andrea:  If you are listening to this podcast, you’re somebody who cares, and you want the people that you lead, you want the people that you work with, you want the people that have any kind of influence on to have a voice.  You want them to feel empowered and be able to make a difference in their own lives and in the realms of their influence.

And so the reason why we’re tackling this today is because we believe that it is fundamental.  It is absolutely imperative that voices of influence have a very clear understanding of what is myth and what is reality when it comes to these dynamics of coercive control as Rosanne was saying.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  And in any business or any group, it’s just important to know that a large percentage of the people that you’re dealing with, people in society have experienced some level of abuse at some point in their lives.  They may be currently in it.  It may have happened to them earlier, and it has long-term impact for them.

So, being aware of that and understanding the dynamics and the things that you can do to help a person recover their voice and bring all of who they are, and all of their gifts, and all the things that they learned; because people who come out of abusive situations are survivors, and they have a lot of gifts to offer.  And so understanding that and being able to help utilize their gifts and help them in the process of recovery is really valuable.

Andrea:  All right.  Now, we also want you to know that Rosanne has compiled a list of resources that, in particular, would be beneficial to a woman who is leaving an abusive relationship.  Is that right, Rosanne?

 

Rosanne Moore:  It is.  And because my experience, and the domestic abuse situation, in general, tends to be disproportionately applicable to women, that’s what we’re going focus on.  I do want to acknowledge from the outset that there are relationships where the woman is the abuser, and the man is the one who’s being victimized.  The dynamics of that are slightly different, and so I want to acknowledge that and the reality of that and the pain of that.

But I do want to say that today, the pronouns that we’re going to use are, you know, female pronouns for the victim and male pronouns for the perpetrator simply because that’s the most common in a domestic violence situation between intimate partners.  That can be different when there are parents and children involved.

But that’s what we’re going to be looking at today.  And the list of resources that we have, while it is primarily targeted toward women in abusive situations, there are going to be really good resources that will be applicable to anybody who’s coming out of some form of abuse.

Andrea:  So if you would like to download that list of resources, please, we encourage you to do so.  If you know somebody that needs them or if you need them… and if you know somebody that needs to hear this podcast episode, we want this to be a resource that is available to you and this list of resources to be available for further help.  And so, you can get that list of resources by texting to the number 44222, text the letters VOI – that’s for Voice of Influence – VOILIFELINE.  So you’re texting VOILIFELINE to the number 44222, and you can download that list of resources.  And we will also have it available at voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline.

All right, and then I want to also mention too that Rosanne is working on a very helpful course that would be not just a list of resources, but it is something that we will talk about a little bit more here at the end.  But I wanna just let you know that there is a very affordable course that is coming that could really help women who are just coming out of an abusive relationship.

Okay, Rosanne, let’s start sharing these myths that have to do with coercive control and the way that people kind of look at it.  So, today, we’ll share seven of them and then we will share seven more in the next episode.  Okay, so, first of all, the first myth that we identified was that, “People get targeted for abuse because they are weak or gullible.”

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

Andrea:  Rosanne, why is this not true?

Rosanne Moore:  You have to understand that an abuser is looking to make themselves large by breaking down someone else.  There’s no great thrill in destroying someone who is already destroyed.  Actually, what researchers have found is that abusers target people who have strength that they admire.  They are looking to dominate and to break down someone who is strong, who is independent.  For women in particular, the qualities that they look for is somebody who is kind, empathetic, and interesting.

So, essentially, it’s the very strength that a person has that makes them a target.  It’s not weakness; it’s strength.  And that’s true for cults.  I’ve done some research around cults because while there are people who just take pleasure in doing evil, period, you know – so they don’t really care who the target is, they just enjoy doing evil – most abusers get something out of the fight, out of destroying someone who is resistant to their domination, which means they have to have the strength to resist.

Andrea:  All right, so don’t believe the myth that people get targeted for abuse just because they’re weak or gullible.  So whether you’re the person that is in the situation where you’re being taken advantage of or abused, or if you are just society at large thinking about people, hearing stories, just don’t believe that myth.

Okay, so, number two; “If you are impacted by trauma, you are weak.”  First of all, what do you mean by that, Rosanne, and then explain why that’s not true.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  So when people are impacted by trauma, often those who are seeing them afterward are thinking, “Well, why did they respond that way?  Why didn’t they just do x, y, z?”  They should have just been able to see that the person was lying.”  They should have just been able to fight back in this particular way that the healthy person sees as a rational response.  What people fail to understand is trauma changes the brain.

A domestic abuse victim responds very much the way a POW does.  And now you stop and think about that.  A military prisoner of war has been trained for battle.  They’ve been trained to prepare for the possibility of being captured.  And yet the impact of trauma on the brain, on the body means that they typically respond in some very predictable ways.  The trauma is designed to break down the brain of the other person, the rational thought processes of another person.

We are made for healthy relationships.  We are not made to live closely with people who are trying to do us constant harm.  And so women who are in abusive relationships are basically in a hostage situation.  Whereas in a prisoner of war situation, you went into it knowing who the enemy was; in an intimate abuse situation, you went into it believing this was a person who loved you most and was going to be most for you in your life, and yet they’re actually out to destroy you.

And so it’s very common for people to misunderstand the response of somebody who has been injured by trauma and say, “Why don’t they just…” and you can fill in that blank many, many ways, when in fact the person is behaving in ways that are typical of someone who has been deeply traumatized.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Okay, and we talk about trauma again, I think, later and maybe even in the next episode, Rosanne.  But I think just the understanding that trauma changes you and it makes it difficult for you to think and rationally is so important, especially around anything that’s triggering.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  And you can’t just muscle your way out of it, and you can’t just rise above it in the midst of it.  There’s a level at which healing can’t really come until you’re outside of the thing that is harming you.  You can survive it.  There are many, many people who survive horrifically traumatic situations and they managed to, you know, pull out the strength that they need to survive that situation.  But for them to really be restored to health, they need to get outside of the traumatic situation – not still be under assault – to begin the healing process.

Andrea:  All right, number three; “If it’s really that bad then you could just leave, right?”  Rosanne, why is that not necessarily true?  And we’re not just talking about, you know, intimate partner relationships right now.  This definitely applies in many different situations.  So why is it not so easy to leave?

Rosanne Moore:  Well, in a marriage, you have legal things holding you into the marriage, for one thing.  It doesn’t usually become apparent what’s happening.  One of the things about abuse that people misunderstand is when you’re in a coercive control relationship, the abused person frequently doesn’t know they’re being abused.  They just know that something’s not right.  And so their go-to usually is, “What is it about me that I need to change for this situation to change?”  Which in general, if you think about it, is a healthy thing, you know.  The thing that you have the most control over usually is yourself.

And so it’s a healthy reality for a person to want to look at their own part and their own ability to change.  The problem in a coercive control situation, the victim is not the problem, and so no amount of change on their part is going to change the dynamic of the situation.  In general, though, there are many things; there are financial concerns, there are legal things that bind a person into a relationship, there are practical things like housing if you’re in a marriage. And a person who is abusing through coercive control systematically undermines the support system of their target.  And so they are removing options at every turn, so just leaving isn’t simple.

In an employment situation, a person can’t just leave.  I mean, they have to live, they have to have a job.  When we look at what happened with Larry Nassar in targeting elite athletes, in order for them to compete for the Olympics or for these top things for which they were training, they were in the midst of a system that was in itself abusive.  And it wasn’t just Nassar; it was the whole way that the Olympic committee was set up the way that they protected abusive coaches, et cetera.  And so just leaving is not simple.

For women who have children, just leaving doesn’t get their children out.   When you have a person who is physically violent, just leaving can escalate the violence and can end up getting you killed.  And so there has to be a recognition that leaving is a complicated process, and there are a lot of pieces to it.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t, but it means that instead of just assuming, “If it’s really bad, you could just leave…”  That’s not reality.

Again, back to the POW thing, “Why don’t POWs just leave?”  There are a lot of answers to that question and none of them are simply within the power of the person being victimized.  There’s need for outside help.

Andrea:  All right, so myth number four; “You really need to stick with it.  Be loyal.  You need to stick with it because for the greater good.”

Rosanne Moore:  For the greater good, yeah.  In the context of marriage, people are told, you know, “Our society is breaking down because of divorce and you made a promise,” and in some cases it’s, you know, “You made a promise before God, and you need to stick with it.”  If you are dealing with a coercive control situation, you are dealing with someone who is systematically seeking to do harm.  There is no greater good that is being served by protecting an abusive person.

People say that… you know, they try to silence a victim because they don’t want to have to deal with the discomfort.  They don’t know what to do with it.  And they don’t want to have to deal with the discomfort of finding out the truth and finding out that the world isn’t as neat and tidy as they’d like to believe it is, and it’s wrong.  What they’re essentially saying when they say that for the greater good is they’re saying, “My comfort in avoiding this is more important than the fact that you are at risk and you are being sacrificed.”

Andrea:  And how do you see that playing out?  I know that sometimes it has to do with maybe parents who feel shame about the fact that maybe their child is now getting a divorce, or people in a church or a religious environment where they don’t like the fact that somebody is actually thinking that they need to leave. “No, you need to stay.”  And why is that so important to people?  I mean, it’s comfort on one hand, but what else?  What else is that?

Rosanne Moore:  Well, I think we have to go back to what is true.  Does truth matter?  If the truth of the relationship is you’ve got somebody who is seeking to do harm, then to try to silence the person who is asking for help is enabling evil.  And I think part of the time, what happens is people don’t understand the dynamics of what’s taking place.  There are things, in a church setting that are said like, “You know, you’re harming the name or the reputation of Christ,” for instance, if a victim of sexual abuse comes forward and names a leader in the church or even just somebody who’s prominent in the church.  People don’t want to hear that, and they’ll frequently say, “You’re hurting the church.  You’re hurting the name of Christ.”

So there’s this idea that if the victim is silent, it’s going to serve the greater good of the community.  But the whistleblower is actually serving the greater good because they’re exposing what will be detrimental to the health of the whole.  And that’s true whether it’s domestic violence or whether it’s in a corporate setting, somebody who discloses wrongful practices, whatever.  We need to honor the whistleblowers instead of being so invested in our own desire for the boat not to be rocked that we’re willing to go along with things that are ultimately going to be damaging to the whole of the group, the wellbeing of the group in the long term.

Andrea:  And I think too, it’s easy to think that this could be about one person.  If you do have a situation where maybe it is a leader of a group of people, that leader might be abusive and there might be people in the group that see all the good that that person does and they say, “But look at all the good that they’re doing.  Yes, there’s maybe a few things that aren’t great, but we need, you know, to move past that and whatever, and stay loyal, and look at all the good,” and that sort of thing.  And I think that also is a part of what this means to be loyal, what people think that they need to be loyal to the leader.

Rosanne Moore:  And so my question for that person was, “If it were your child that had been harmed by that leader, would you feel the same way?  If you were the one who had been assaulted by that leader, would that still be your position?”  No, probably not; very likely not.  Now that does happen sometimes where a parent will silence a child because they don’t want to upset things.  But you’re essentially saying that one person is the sacrificial lamb because this other person has done good things.

What people need to realize is abusive people often do good things in order to allow them the credibility to continue to harm others.  That’s very common.  That’s part of the lie that is being presented.  And so, that’s not an anomaly.  That’s part of the dynamic that takes place.

Andrea:  All right.  So I’m going to move to the next thing then.

Rosanne Moore:  Okay.

Andrea:   All right.  So for five, six, and seven here we’re going to talk about some of the myths that are around forgiveness in particular.  As we’re looking at forgiveness, it became really evident that we needed to separate these three because there’s a lot of confusion around forgiveness.  So, Rosanne, we’re going to start with number five that, “Forgiveness equals reconciliation.”  So, forgiveness means that I need to bring this person back into my life.  Why is this not right?

Rosanne Moore:  There’s no basis for that.  Reconciliation requires that the person be safe, be healthy, that there be change.  You can forgive someone.  You can release them to God.  You can determine you are no longer going to carry the weight of their offense and the bitterness toward them anymore.  But that is not the same, and often people who push forgiveness do so in the name of God.  There is no biblical basis for forgiveness without repentance and even if there’s repentance…

Andrea:  And repentance is essentially change, right?  It’s an actual change.

Rosanne Moore:  Exactly.  It’s actual change.  And so what often happens is there’s a demand for immediate forgiveness and immediate reconciliation.  Abusers use this in a big way.  You will often see abusive people who make a quick confession.  When they’re actually caught and they can’t deny it anymore, they make a quick confession and then they immediately push for reinstatement of relationship.  And what they’re really after is number one, no consequences and number two, the opportunity to re-offend.

And so, it’s very important not to push reconciliation that is premature.  When a person has had their trust deeply violated, they need to be the one who determines if and when reconciliation is ever possible or appropriate.  That’s not to say that they can’t forgive.  They can, but that doesn’t mean that reconciliation is necessarily a good thing.  It could actually be a harmful thing.

Andrea:  So, essentially even if they forgive, they still don’t have to be in a relationship with somebody who’s not safe.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, and to pressure that… especially since the person who has been wronged has more intimate knowledge than outsiders do of exactly how that wrong took place.  If a person is resistant to being reconciled, other people should not press for that because instead of just assuming that they’re just hard and bitter and unforgiving, there needs to be a recognition, “No, this person intimately knows what went into drawing in their trust in the past, and so they’re going to be the first to know whether or not that dynamic is still at play.”

Andrea:  Hmm exactly.  Okay, number six; “Forgiveness can happen instantly.”

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, that’s not real.  In order to genuinely forgive, you have to grapple deeply with what was lost.  You know, if the offense is small, then you can forgive relatively quickly.  But when you’re talking about coercive control, you’re talking about systematic breaking down of another person and there’s an ongoing assault; it’s not a onetime offense.  And so for forgiveness to be real, a person has to grieve what has been taken from them, and they have to look at the implications for their life of what was lost and the long-term impact of what was lost.  You can make an immediate choice to commit to the process of forgiveness, but forgiveness is a process.

I know there were times when people would ask how we were doing, and I would talk about things that my children were going through on an ongoing basis, in terms of the impact of the abuse that we suffered.  And it didn’t take very long; people would get start to get uncomfortable, particularly if I showed any heat at all over what was happening to my kids.

Andrea:  You mean your personal anger, or what do you mean by “heat”?

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  That if there was any kind of emotional reaction or anger expressed over what was happening to my children, people would shift into, “Well, you know, you gotta forgive.”  And my response to that was, “I am committed to the process of forgiving.  I am also committed to justice for my children.”  And anger is part of that.  There are things that people do that we should be angered by.  They’re just wrong.  They’re harmful.  They do tremendous damage, and if you’re not outraged when you hear about somebody’s voice being taken away in injustice, somebody being harmed, an innocent person being harmed, there’s something wrong.  Anger should be a part of our response.

Now, it should not be the controlling response that we have.  Committing to the process of forgiveness recognizes that this is an ongoing thing.  And if you’re in a relationship with an abusive person, there’s ongoing assault.  So even after I left, because my children still had contact, there was ongoing injury that was happening.  And so, there in particular, forgiveness had to be a process that I committed to, but it was not a switch that I could flip.

Andrea:  Mhmm, I think that that is super important, super important for people to understand that it’s not instantaneous and it’s not simple.  Okay, and finally for today, Rosanne, number seven; “Forgiveness negates any need for consequences.”  “Hey, I’ve forgiven them.”  “So you need to just move on.  You’ve forgiven them, so just move on.”  Why is this not true?

Rosanne Moore:  Because if the person is dangerous, the rest of society needs to be protected from them, honestly.  I mean, that’s the bottom line.  And there are consequences to our choices.   Forgiveness says, “I am not going to carry the bitterness of your action with me any longer.”  It does not mean that there aren’t consequences for your choices.

Rachel Denhollander gave a beautiful victim impact statement speech in which she addressed both the need for forgiveness – she offered forgiveness to her abuser at the same time she was calling for justice and that she had made great personal sacrifice to seek legal justice and to make sure that he couldn’t harm other people and that he faced the consequences for what he had done.

Andrea:  He being Larry Nassar?

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  And so the idea that if someone physically assaults me that pressing charges is unforgiving is wrong.  If somebody crosses that line, they need to face the consequences for that.  If someone embezzles from a company, they need to face the consequences for that.  There needs to be accountability that’s given because it’s not just a wrong against the individual.  There’s also a social wrong that has to be addressed as well and protection for the innocent in the future.

Andrea:  I think that another way to look at that too is that when we don’t have consequences for behavior like this, this behavior becomes normalized.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.

Andrea:  We’re saying in effect, “This is okay, this is normal.  We should just move on.”  And then it just escalates.  It continues to become part of the culture, and it escalates.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  A good picture of that is the fact that most sexual assault crimes are not ever prosecuted.  Very few sexual offenders ever face any kind of consequence for the behavior.  And if you look at our culture, it’s rampant.  I mean, there are all kinds of sexual abuse that’s just rampant.  Sex trafficking in our country, there’s so many ways in which it’s just exploded.  And part of the reason for that is there are no consequences.  The consequences are for the victim who seeks justice rather than for the perpetrator.

Andrea:  And why do you say that?

Rosanne Moore:  I’ve walked closely with several friends who have sought justice through the legal system.  And what they were put through in order to bring it to light where they had to be retraumatized again and again in the process of telling their story, and proving it, and being treated as if they were lying… and they were just revictimized on so many levels, only to have the person come to a hearing where they simply got a slap on the wrist, where they had no significant sentencing.  It was just unbelievable to watch.

So, they paid the price of the original wrong.  I mean, they carried the wrong.  They still carry the impact of the wrong that was done against them.  They courageously tried to stop evil at the sacrifice of themselves only to have the system do nothing in response, which emboldens, of course, the abuser.  Yeah, it’s a terrible thing when you watch something like that happen.

Andrea:  It certainly is.  And I think that that is why it is so important that more and more voices rise up to help embolden the ones that need to be heard.  And Rosanne, I know that that is your heart here today.  It is our heart, collectively, at Voice of Influence as we have been working on this Lifeline course.  Can you tell the listener just a little bit about that so that they have an idea of what is coming… or perhaps by the time they listen to this, it may already be out.  But tell us a little bit about that Lifeline course that you’ve been working on.

Rosanne Moore:  In order for a woman to leave an abusive relationship, she has to leave in her mind first and there has to be a pathway for her to leave.  Again, you know, it’s not as simple as, “If it’s really that bad, you’d just leave.”  There have to be things in place; otherwise, she can actually escalate the danger.  I’ve walked closely with a number of women who have been through this process.  I’ve been through it myself, and so one of the hardest parts is trying to do something like that while you’re unraveling the impact of trauma yourself.

And so I wanted to provide a resource that would help women to make decisions step by step.  Not tell them what to do, but help give them parameters to think through their specific situation, understand some of the situation they’re stepping into as they go into the court system.  There are some really good resources, and they will be on the resource list about how to deal with the psychological impact of things.  Our course is going to focus more on the very practical things.  How do you get out?  On a practical level, what steps do you have to take?  What pieces need to be in place to get out and to minimize the risk as much as possible?  And that’s what our course is going to be.

Andrea:  Okay, so, again, if you are interested in either/or, the download… it’s just a free download.  It’s a list of resources that you can use right away, or you can offer to somebody else right away.  You can get that by texting the letters VOILIFELINE to the number 4422 and at voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline.  That is where you can find that as well, and it’s also where you can find out some more information about the Lifeline course.

For the price of a book, you can purchase this course and be able to have what you need at least to get going, and to have a friend, a guide who has been there before and has guided others along this path.  We don’t claim to have all the answers.  We don’t claim to have all of the information.  What we do claim to do is to provide some guidance and help you come to some clarity for yourself so that you know how to move forward and how to proceed.

Rosanne, thank you so much for today, and I look forward to sharing more of these myths and debunking these myths again here in the next episode.

Rosanne Moore:  Thank you so much, Andrea.