Clergy among the weakest links in fight against GBV

The recent testimony by Kemunto Nyakundi (Saturday Nation September 26, 2020) raises a critical issue on why women stay in violent relationships. Luckily, there is a theory to explain it.

This is what she said.

“We did not even stay for a year before wrangles began. By the time I was giving birth to my first born son, I had already been abused… We couldn’t agree on anything unless he abused me. Sometimes I would walk out and go back after he profusely apologised.

His manipulative and controlling nature always got me back to his arms. He ripped me off my self-esteem and I was always at his mercy. My parents found out about the abuse, but I denied assuring them that I was okay. Since I was the one who had decided to stay married, I was ashamed of asking for help”. After several futile attempts at a solution, Kemunto ‘stopped becoming bothered’.

Power imbalance

This is a perfect illustration of the traumatic bonding theory, which explains how women get stuck in abusive relationships. Developed by Donald Dutton and Susan Painter, the theory states that the abuse is rooted in a power imbalance where the batterer exercises his dominance over the target through violence.

The first episode of abuse is sudden and anachronistic. It arises from a trivial disagreement and often when the couple is at the peak of romance, such as honeymoon. Though minor, it signals worse things to come.

There are then repeated episodes with lulls in-between. The periods of respite sedate the abused into thinking that normalcy has returned. This is enhanced by the extreme remorsefulness and apologies by the abuser, including declarations that the violence will never recur.

Bound to the abuser

The abuser even showers the target with gifts to lure her back. This is the opiate principle with the abused getting anaesthetised from the actual pain and bound to the abuser.

As the violence continues, the abused becomes kind of addicted. In Kemunto’s case, the abuse became the precondition for them to agree on anything.

This is like an alcoholic who cannot function without a drink in his system. The abnormal has become normal.  The abused adopts paradoxical behaviours by defying the abuser yet knowing well the consequences.

This is evident in the times when Kemunto would stand up to the husband.   What this does is to prick the abuser’s ego and make him more vengeful in stamping his authority. The abuse becomes more intense, frequent and severe. The power imbalance is magnified, the dignity and autonomy of the abused are lost and she feels inseparable from the abuser.

Blaming herself

This is the essence of Kemunto’s statement that his manipulative and controlling nature always got her back after he had pulverised her self-esteem. At this stage, the abuser and the victim are like Siamese twins, except that one is choking the other.

Another element of the theory is that of the victim rationalising, blaming herself, justifying that she deserved the abuse, apologising for the abuser and defending him against external intervenors. In Kemunto’s case, she felt that she was to blame by getting into the marriage willingly and declined her parents’ help.

In other words, she perceived herself as having created her plight hence deserving it.  With the bonding secured, the abused adopts the abuser’s perspective, like a parasite meshed with its host, and even starts to imagine that she has similar power to his that she can unleash on other people. This sense of deflected power leads to glorification of violence.

Solace in religion

Psychologically, the victim reincarnates the abuser in the same way that the dog of the king imagines that it is the king of dogs. The situation ends up in the Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition in which victims develop fondness for and get attached to their abusers, resign to fate and are psychologically and emotionally entrapped. 

Kemunto sought solace in religion and friends who only blamed her. Stories of battered women repeatedly show that the clergy are among the weakest links in the fight against gender-based violence by turning the abused into the accused.

They also enslave people into abusive relationships through such edicts as “what God has put together, let no man put asunder”.

Violent marriages look more like they were put together by the devil hence, should be put asunder urgently. By not doing so, we become perpetrators of violence by omission. It is gratifying that Kemunto extricated herself from the abusive marriage. Women in similar situations should use the signals in the traumatic bonding theory to take decisive action before it is too late.

The writer is an international gender and development consultant and scholar. ([email protected])