A SPIRITUAL RESPONSE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

BY EDWARD W. GONDOLF

Domestic violence in the United States substantially declined during the 1990s thanks in part to expanded police action, battered women's services, men's counseling programs, and increased public awareness. Now, however, increased economic pressures and cutbacks in social services have led to a rise in violence, even the murder of their female partners, by men.

Recent studies argue that physical violence against women is only the tip of the iceberg. Coercion, control, and verbal abuse are much more widespread and may be just as detrimental as physical violence in their psychological toll and the undoing of human potential. In recent years, women's abuse of and violence toward their male partners has received more attention, along with the back-and-forth fighting between partners. But crime surveys show that men still are overwhelmingly the perpetrators, and various reports expose a broader backdrop of men's abuse and violence against women.

One example is the increased use of women as commodities for "sex trafficking" especially in Eastern Europe, according to a recent United Nations study. There's also widespread rape in the civil wars of Africa, serial kidnapping and murder of young women across northern Mexico, persistent "bride burnings" of wives in India, and harsh subjection under the purdah customs of the Middle East.

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