Read an Excerpt
BREAKING THEIR WILL
SHEDDING LIGHT ON RELIGIOUS CHILD MALTREATMENT
By JANET HEIMLICH
Prometheus Books
Copyright © 2011 Janet Heimlich
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61614-405-0
Chapter One
WHAT IS RELIGIOUS CHILD MALTREATMENT?
A religious upbringing can be a wonderful experience for a child. I have spoken to many people who are very happy that they were raised with faith. For example, a friend of mine named Mary Ann, who grew up Catholic, told me that as a child, she felt at peace in church and loved the rituals. Even as an adult, she said, hearing a hymn can bring her to tears. I also spoke to a young woman named Devora, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. Devora told me how important it was that her family observed the Sabbath. When telephones were turned off and no one drove vehicles, her family had lots of uninterrupted time to visit with relatives and friends.
A missionary with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who asked to be referred to as Elder Budge, said he loved going to church when he was young, describing the environment as "a place of refuge." He added that the feeling of safety stayed with him later in life; for example, he said he felt God's spirit while he was traveling on mission. Sam, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), talked about appreciating the sense of community while growing up in the polygamous sect. When he was a child, he said, "I could pretty much walk into any of my neighbors' houses, and they would treat me like I was one of their own kids."
Religion can offer comfort to children in distress or crisis. Joanne suffered bouts of rheumatic fever throughout her childhood; each time, she was confined to her bed for months. To escape the boredom and loneliness, she turned to the Bible and read its "uplifting and promising" passages. David suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of his father. One night, when David was in his room, he believed he saw Jesus standing at the foot of his bed. The vision brought David peace. "I had a sense that somebody loved me. I knew I was going to survive after that," he told me.
More often than not, religion is good for children. In an essay in Handbook of Parenting: Theory and Research for Practice, psychosocial professor Stephen Frosh of Birkbeck College at University of London chronicles numerous studies that show how religious activities are good for families: "There is some evidence that religious parents are more likely to have harmonious family relationships rather than the converse, and less likely to use physical punishment against their children." Similarly, an article in the medical journal Pediatrics states that children's sense of spirituality or engagement in a religious community "may provide a structure for positive coping strategies," such as when children are faced with difficult experiences like illness, psychological problems, substance abuse, disability, or the death of a loved one. The article goes on to say that religious involvement can help children withstand emotional trauma caused by sexual abuse, racism, and isolation from their homeland. In addition, write the authors, religious activities have been associated with health-promoting behavior, better adolescent decision making, less delinquency and violence, increased academic and social competence, less stress, lower suicidal ideation, and reduced sexual aggression among male teens. Conversely, low religiosity tends to be related to higher rates of smoking, drinking, drug use, and adolescent pregnancy.
Considering all this, it seems ludicrous—perhaps even blasphemous—to conclude that religion can be harmful for children. But the fact is, faith can both help and hurt.
RELIGION AS HARMFUL
There is, indeed, a dark side to religious belief—one that many people would rather not examine. For as long as humans have worshipped deities, we have been abusing and neglecting children in the name of faith. In ancient times, young ones were sacrificed to pagan gods, and there is evidence of children having been sacrificed in pre-Columbian cultures. For centuries, worshippers have believed that the severe physical punishment of children was necessary to please gods or expel evil spirits. Children with epilepsy were once beaten to drive out the devil, since the convulsions were believed to have been caused by demonic possession. Until the seventeenth century, children in Europe were whipped on Innocents' Day to remind them of Herod's ordered execution of all young male children in Bethlehem. Even with the advance of medicine, parents have continued to refuse their sick children medical care, believing instead that prayer will cure them. Religious authorities the world over, enabled by beliefs that they could do no wrong, have sexually abused children.
While most believers praise religious texts for their ability to inspire, others see that scriptures can also be a tool for victimizing children. In an email sent to me on October 4, 2010, Episcopal priest and pastoral psychotherapist Sarah M. Rieth explains that a religious text can be a source of hope, consolation, and joy for children who have suffered trauma, including abuse. But, Rieth adds, depending on how religious texts are interpreted,
scripture can also be a source of sorrow, confusion, oppression, and retraumatization. Abusers sometimes distort scripture and use it as a rationale for abuse, as if God is on the side of abuse and the abuser but not, as scripture promises, in solidarity with the brokenhearted and oppressed. Abusers sometimes use scripture to heap shame and guilt upon an already-traumatized child in order to maintain control over the child and strengthen the trauma bond.
Rather than honoring children as important members of society, theology has largely given children short shrift. As Marcia J. Bunge writes in The Child in Christian Thought,
Until very recently, issues related to children have tended to be marginal in almost every area of contemporary theology. For example, systematic theologians and Christian ethicists have said little about children, and they have not regarded serious reflection on children as a high priority.... Theologians have not offered sustained reflection on the nature of children or on the obligations that parents, the state, and the church have to nurture children.
Similarly, in Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore states, "Mainstream congregations have not seemed too interested in current child-rearing dilemmas. Meanwhile, contemporary theologians mostly neglect the subject." Like many critics, Miller-McLemore points out that many conservative Christians proclaim themselves as parenting experts and, through Internet sites as well as for-sale books and DVDs, advise parents about child rearing. However, much of this advice leans toward promoting authoritarian parenting and the use of corporal punishment.
Just as many adults have discussed with me how much they adored their religious upbringings, many others have contrasting stories. For example, one man who wanted to go by the name Matt explained how his Catholic mother regularly physically abused him in her attempt to "beat the devil" out of her son. When Russell was ten, he was placed in a Church of Christ orphanage after his alcoholic mother was no longer fit to take care of him. The orphanage staff seemed more invested in indoctrinating Russell than in offering emotional support; Russell said he was made to kneel in prayer, even though he did not believe in the faith's dogma, and was baptized against his will.
Rose spent much of elementary school hiding in the bathroom and suffering from stomachaches. A shy child, she was terrified at the prospect of carrying out her Pentecostal Christian parents' stern wishes that she "save the souls" of her classmates and teachers. Her failure to convince others to "give their lives over to Jesus" led Rose to develop fears that God would be angry at her and that demons would possess her. Cheryl was molested by her Seventh-Day Adventist minister when she was a teenager. As most sexual abusers do, the man began psychologically manipulating Cheryl to first gain her trust. After that, he sexually abused her until she was twenty-five. Kelly was betrayed by Jehovah'sWitness elders, who, though aware that Kelly's stepfather was physically abusing her and her sister and emotionally abusing them and their mother, refused to report him or excommunicate him from the church. Instead, they "disfellowshipped" Kelly's mother (a form of shunning that can precede excommunication) for drinking too much and talking about having an affair.
After Joel's family confronted his former yeshiva (Orthodox Jewish school) about the principal having allegedly molested Joel when he was eight, school officials said they would investigate and probably fire the man, a rabbi. But that didn't happen. Once Joel turned twenty-three—at which time the statute of limitations on prosecuting child sexual abuse in the state had run out—the school claimed that the rabbi had done nothing wrong and kept him on the payroll.
These anecdotes represent only a small sampling of stories told to me by abuse survivors. There are many, many more that have been documented by researchers. For example, the authors of the aforementioned Pediatrics article point out that religious or spiritual traditions can emphasize guilt and thus cause low self-esteem in children. Other potential negative effects, note the authors, include the promotion of religiously sanctioned prejudice, hatred, and violence, including homophobia. Furthermore, the authors write,
children may be susceptible to abuse resulting from parental religious beliefs about discipline and corporal punishment, or from some religious therapies. Adolescents who come out as gay or lesbian may encounter their religious communities' censure, and/or violence from peers who have been taught that homosexuality is a sin. Adolescents may also suffer psychological and emotional harm resulting from involvement in a group that proves to be a cult.
Most tragically, some children have died from religious child maltreatment, such as from the type of corporal punishment just mentioned. In addition, children have suffered long-term health problems and died from religiously inspired medical neglect, which is often committed by parents who believe that divine intervention through faith healing is more likely to cure their sick children than modern medicine. Children are also denied vaccinations for religious reasons, which has led to disease outbreaks.
Empirical studies on the subject of religiously motivated child maltreatment are lacking, but the little research that has been done reveals potentially serious problems:
• A 1984 study reviewing the "health status" of children in religious cults shows that these groups have unusually high incidences of physical abuse, sleep deprivation, and medical neglect. Another 1984 study on cults details appalling abuses, leading researchers to conclude that "there is a primacy of ideology over biology" in that "childcare may be seen as a disposable superfluity." • A 1984 survey of Quaker families reveals that Quaker fathers reported more acts of violence toward their children than did fathers nationally, and Quaker sibling violence was significantly higher than sibling violence rates reported nationally. • A 1995 study examined surveys sent to mental health professionals asking about patients' allegations of childhood abuse involving ritualistic, ceremonial, supernatural, religious, or mystical practices. In the findings, abuses largely fell into three categories: torturing or killing a child to rid him or her of evil, withholding needed medical care for religious reasons, and abusing a child under the cover of a religious role. • A 1998 study that looked at 172 child deaths occurring in church groups that strongly promote faith healing found that most of the victims would likely have survived had they received timely medical care. • A 1999 study shows that Christian fundamentalist parents hinder their children's efforts to go to college if those children do not subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs. • A 1999 study shows that individuals who are extrinsically religious are at greater risk for being perpetrators of child physical abuse than those who are intrinsically religious. • A 2002 report detailing physical and sexual abuses that took place in a missionary boarding school in Africa—a school overseen by an American religious institution—notes that the long-term psychological effects of those abuses were "of staggering proportions." • A 2003 study shows that adults who experienced "religion-related" abuse (defined in the study as abuse by religious authorities, denial of medical care on religious grounds, and beatings to rid children of evil) in childhood suffered from more serious psychological problems than those who experienced abuse that was not "religion-related." • A 2008 paper published in the Southern Medical Journal concludes that conservative Protestants, particularly those who believe in biblical literalism or inerrancy, spank and/or physically abuse their children more than other Christian denominations. • Most of the approximately twenty states that have laws permitting corporal punishment in schools are located in the southern United States, an area commonly called the Bible Belt.
CHILD MALTREATMENT
To understand how these tragedies take place, let us define some terms. For starters, what is child maltreatment? According to the federal Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003, it encompasses abuse and neglect, which is defined as "any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm." In crafting child abuse laws, most states break down child maltreatment into at least four categories: physical abuse, psychological (emotional) maltreatment, sexual abuse, and neglect.
Child maltreatment is a big problem in America. In 2009, the last year statistics were available, child protective service agencies received more than three million reports of alleged abuse or neglect. Of those reports, more than 60 percent warranted investigations, involving nearly 700,000 children. That same year, an estimated 1,770 children died from abuse or neglect, a figure that represents an average of nearly five children dying every day.
The negative effects of child maltreatment are staggering. In addition to physical trauma, abuse and neglect can interfere with brain development and lead to serious mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety disorders, psychotic experiences, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological trauma stays with an abuse victim "long after the external bruises have healed," reports the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "Often the severe emotional damage to abused children does not surface until adolescence or even later, when many abused children become abusing parents."
In his memoir detailing his own abuse as a child, Spare the Rod: Breaking the Cycle of Child Abuse, Phil E. Quinn states, "Child abuse does more than cause hurts. It damages. It leaves scars that never go away, damage that never heals. It is permanent. Severe and prolonged child abuse usually results in perpetual physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional limps in an already troubled and desperate life."
The societal harm caused by child maltreatment is illustrated by the fact that a high percentage of criminals are themselves former victims of abuse. Child maltreatment also presents an enormous economic burden. A 2007 economic impact study estimates the yearly cost associated with abused and neglected children to be nearly $104 billion.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from BREAKING THEIR WILL by JANET HEIMLICH Copyright © 2011 by Janet Heimlich. Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
