The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church's Response, Second Edition

Introduction to the Second Edition

1 Introduction to the Second Edition I n the almost two decades since The Cry of Tamar was first written for clergy, pastoral caregivers, and religious leaders, numerous changes have occurred in the fields of advocacy, prevention, and intervention to stop violence against women. Thanks to a movement begun at least two decades before the book’s first publication in 1995, there have been significant advances in awareness and the creation of social networks and institutions for the support of victims and the empowerment of survivors of sexual harassment and assault and intimate-partner violence. Religious communities and congregations have become more informed about their role in education, prevention, and responding to both victims and perpetrators of violence. Significant partnerships have been also forged across earlier divides of suspicion and mistrust between secular agencies and religious communities. At the same time, although some government reports show declines in certain crimes, especially sexual assault,1 largely due to political advocacy by women’s organizations over the past three decades, violence against women and girls continues at epidemic proportions.2 Literally millions of women are sexually assaulted, abused, stalked, or harassed every year. Awareness of this violence and its causes is still dim in many religious congregations and traditions. And more sophisticated responses by religious bodies in collaboration with advocates in the wider community have still not stopped the epidemic. Consider the following recent statistics:3 A large-scale survey sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund estimates that 39 percent of women have experienced some form of abuse and/or sexual assault, and approximately one third of American women are victims of intimate-partner violence (also known as domestic violence).4 Statistics continue to show domestic violence as the cause of death of close to half of all female murder victims.5 In the “NVAW Survey ,” the most comprehensive survey of the prevalence of intimate partner violence conducted to date, published in 2000 by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes found that “intimate partner violence is pervasive in U.S. society.”6 They calculated that 25.5 percent of U.S. women have been raped, physically assaulted, or stalked by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and close to two million women were subjected to intimate violence in a twelve-month period.7 Forcible rapes reported to law 2 The Cry of tamar enforcement, while having declined somewhat since 1992, continued at a rate of over 90,000 per year,8 but an estimated 60 to 70 percent or more of all sexual assaults go unreported.9 For example, without even counting rapes by strangers or nonpartner acquaintances, Tjaden and Thoennes found that over 200,000 women are raped by an intimate partner each year (with an average of 1.6 incidents per year), resulting in over 322,000 rapes annually and 7.75 million women having been raped by a husband or partner in their lifetime.10 And although the therapeutic community has clearly recognized sexual abuse and assault as traumatic, at least in recent decades, “actual or threatened sexual violation” will only appear for the first time in the official clinical definition of trauma in the DSM-5 in 2013.11 In addition to sexual assault and intimate-partner violence, numerous other sexual and gender-based crimes disproportionately affect women. In the year 2006, approximately 3.4 million adults were victims of repeated stalking (11 percent for five years or more), approximately 75 percent of them women.12 Only about 40 percent of stalking incidents were reported to police.13 Reports of human trafficking are increasing in the United States. According to law enforcement, 90 percent of all trafficking victims and 99 percent of sex trafficking victims (which comprise the majority of all trafficking victims)14 were female, and roughly two-thirds of all victims were age seventeen or younger.15 The Congressional Research Service estimated in 2006 that as many as 17,500 people were then being trafficked into the United States each year,16 and as of this writing, the State Department estimates that 12.3 million adults and children are forced into labor worldwide, mostly for the sex trade—including prostitution—and forced marriages.17 The Internet, because it affords perpetrators low-cost, easy access to victims and virtual anonymity, has become a vast arena for sexual exploitation, “cyberstalking,” extortion, and abuse.18 Within the church, the issue of clergy sexual abuse and professional ethics...