From Shame to Peace;
counselling and caring for the
sexually abused
ISBN 978-90-5719-038-4 / 292 pages / PaperbackAuthor: Teo van der Weele
Publisher: Importantia Publishing
Price: € 14,95 / US$ 19,95
Walking in the Shadows
by Teo van der Weele, M.D.
Clear blue eyes stared into an infinite distance beyond me. I already knew Helen’s story from my co-worker’s notes.
Helen shared some pretty gruesome facts without much show of emotion. As a preschooler, she had been abused for the first time by her father. Then, as her mother divorced and remarried, the step-father just took over and used her too. One of the step-brothers also got involved. By the time she was fourteen, she ran away from home and found shelter, but always at the same price. She cursed her beautiful body and decided it was time to get fat. Then somehow, somewhere, she met a friendly lady who did not ask questions, but gave her a room at a very low rent. But she added a moral tax, ‘No boys here, OK? I want you to have one place where you can be safe.’ That last sentence triggered off something in Helen. She actually dared to start thinking about security, safety and love. This friendly lady invited her to church. There, Helen met yet more warmth and love. Shortly after this, she became very depressed and suicidal. This shocked her deeply. ‘Just when I’m starting to live and experience some warmth and security, my world seems to be collapsing. How can this be; where is God in all this?’
Building on frozen soil
For sometime, I had been asking myself the same question. Others, who seemed to do well for a time, experienced something similar to Helen’s experience after opening up to the gospel. I discovered that a group of Christian psychiatrists was wrestling with this issue as well, and they asked me for a pastoral viewpoint. The invitation had been quite provocative: ‘Can personal faith be dangerous for your mental health?’ In my preparations to speak on these professional questions, a picture grew which seemed to be a good metaphor for the situation:
Many survivors of serious abuse somehow make it. Their survival system often seems to function well. But it is as if they are building on frozen ground. Personal faith introduces a new warmth, both directly between the Creator and his creation, as well as through developing relationships in a new and safe environment. The rock-like foundation becomes soft as the frozen ground thaws. The house starts to shake. Yet this is not bad news; it means that new foundational values are needed for the rebuilding work.
My co-worker told Helen about this explanatory model. It made sense to her and she asked if she could meet me. Up till then, she had been almost paranoid about any man coming close, including during church meetings, so she always sat at the aisle end of a row of chairs, with the landlady next to her. We had already felt it was time for her to meet male helpers. Part of her healing would be to get used to ‘safe men’ first, to learn to respond in a relaxed way to the opposite sex. Thus, her request for my help showed she was indeed ready.
I deliberately arrived after her at my colleague’s office. This was to give her a greater sense of control over the room and thus increase her awareness of security. She was sitting in her favourite place, with a fluffy stuffed animal – a monkey with a broad grin – on her lap. I knew that she disliked shaking hands, so I greeted her from the other side of the room and sat down.
After repeating the picture in my own words, Helen nodded thoughtfully and asked how she could work on new foundations for her life. It was then that I suddenly seemed to lose her as she stared into the distance beyond me. I didn’t hurry with the answer, but started to share my admiration for the way she had coped in life, in spite of all that had happened. I also thanked her for allowing me to be involved, and with a straight face I suggested that I should start with my introductory course: ‘How to survive Teo’s counselling.’ Her eyes lit up with a smile and she was back. After her question about ‘new foundations for life’, Helen had just split off from reality and experienced a fleeting moment of not even being in the room with us. This often happens with seriously abused persons, as a way to survive the stress. Her question, or the answer I might give, or just the fact of being so open with me, all could be reasons for this ‘splitting’ moment. At the same time, she had listened vaguely to what I had said and the implied joke about my survival course made sense to her. So I explained how her emotional batteries might sometimes give a ‘low-power’ signal or that she might just feel like walking out. That was acceptable behaviour right from the start. She should be in control of what happened in our sessions at all times. I also told her how she could indicate if she felt the sessions were becoming too tense or if she felt it was enough for that session. This approach relaxed her quite a bit. That gave me courage for the next step, to be selectively open about my feelings on what men had done to her. The key would be to be honest without becoming too intense. Still from a safe distance at the other side of the room, I opened up with:
I am ashamed of what men have done to you. I have wondered what I, as a man, can do to respond. The best thing I have come up with so far is that I would like to suggest that perhaps at some time I could pray for you and bless you.
Pastoral prayer was not something unusual to Helen. I knew from my coworker that she expected it, so I knew I was not forcing an issue. As a safety measure, I added ‘at some time’, to give her a way out. She smiled, shaking her monkey as well. We all laughed. Then I told her that there are several ways to pray. One way was just to sit there and pray, but there was also the kind of prayer whereby a hand was placed ceremonially on a shoulder or head. Now I knew that this was normal in her church, but I wanted her to be sure there were various options open. Finally I suggested that there was one form of prayer which perhaps fitted the situation best: to pray like Jesus did as he washed the feet of the disciples. ‘Because of all that men have done to you, I would like to kneel down and touch your feet as I pray.’ She stiffened at first and then blurted out, ‘That’s about the only thing you are allowed to touch.’ Then she started to weep quietly. As I knelt down and asked for God’s mercy, her sobbing increased. Suddenly she slipped from the chair, threw her arms around me, put her head against my chest and sobbed, ‘Mamma, where are you?’ A silence followed, then she remarked that she could feel my quiet heartbeat. After a while, I gently slid her into the arms of my lady co-worker. I knew that after such expressions of emotion, great embarrassment could arise later, which might hinder her searching for relaxed responses to men. We let her go on sobbing quietly, as the sun seemed to stand still and actual minutes turned into hours.
It was in that silence that my colleague and I realised something had happened to the atmosphere in the room. A new lightness, a sense of the presence of God. Later Helen commented on the tranquillity and peace of those moments. She affirmed how this began something new in her, an emotion for which she had longed, but never known before. That incident opened new doors which my co-worker and her assistant could walk through. Later, Helen wrote, ‘Teo, you were the first man I learned to trust. Thank you for coming into my ‘valley of darkness and death’ and being a light to help me find my way.’
Light through the cracks
With Helen’s letter in my hand, I wondered about my own involvement in counselling and remembered the words of a Scandinavian film director. He attended one of my seminars and made an interesting observation:
Whenever I interview actors, I try to get to know them and find out if they have suffered in some way during the struggles of life. If not, they won’t act well. Suffering creates cracks through which the real self can come forth. Then, their acting is not wooden, but life itself.
I know about Helen’s ‘valley of darkness and death’ through personal experience – painful memories, as well as the lasting results of them, in the shaping of my own personality. Dark events in my own life had taken on the shape of shadows which refused to go away. It seems at times as if the sun shines from behind and we are walking in our own shadow.
Looking back, I see how amazing it is that a child can learn to adapt to a life of gloom and coldness at an early age. Like many others who suffered traumas, I went into a psychological hibernation, passively waiting for the darkness to break. But that incredible spark of life which separates humans from animals did not give up. The hibernation was not total; some parts refused to sleep and dreams of hope kept calling me not to give up. That’s how I learned to create my own ‘quiet country’. Those around me did not know about that part of Teo and I did not know how to communicate it either. This secret inner country was rather elusive; I couldn’t just enter it whenever I wanted. That inaccessibility caused perhaps more pain than the real shadows of the past. But I had other solutions to this problem; a secret fantasy life which helped me to evade painful realities. These fantasies would work addictively and keep me out of touch with the outer world. At times I sensed that danger. The only answer left then was dark, silent, wordless despair.
When my parents changed from nominal Christians into believers with a personal faith, a new horizon opened up. I saw the reality of God’s power, both as he healed my mother from a severe rheumatism with crippling deformities, and as he brought a new kind of peace into the family. Reading the Bible for myself, I discovered that Jesus was not just a distant figure, but real and alive. Experiencing new life myself at the age of about eighteen, I also became aware of a kind of emotional pain. It was like an emotional leprosy3 starting to heal. The long periods of darkness from the past were hurting more because I was now starting to live. I discovered what I had been missing.
At the same time, the leadership of my very traditional church had increasing problems with me. There came a time when I reflected often on Malachi 4:2: ‘But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.’
I felt like one of those calves escaping confinement. Then I discovered what it meant to be rejected by religious leaders. My involvement in Youth for Christ and my personal expressions of faith were unacceptable to our church. When they refused to allow me to partake in the Lord’s Supper, my world collapsed. In utter agony I raced into the dark November night, while the storm lashed my face and soaked me to the skin. That’s when death appeared as a friend, waiting … As I screamed into the night ‘God, where are you?’ there was no answer except for a growing, rather strange pregnant silence within. Then the message to the church in Laodicea flashed through my mind: Jesus, knocking on the outside of the church door, asking to be let in. I realised Jesus was inviting me to a meal better than the church could ever give (Rev 3:20). There on that night, I had communion with God without bread and without wine. There and then I learned that there was yet another option for escaping trauma: not the fantasy world, nor despair, nor death, but worship. I shook off the lie that death was a friend and chose to live. I also discovered that worship could lead me so much more easily to the secret silent country within, where Psalm 23 became a reality, a rest in God.
As I learned how to respond to other trauma survivors, I saw how important this discovery of the quiet green pastures within had been. Initially, my skills in helping abuse survivors were mostly intuitive. In time I became aware that our human personality is like an onion with many layers. I kept searching beyond the layers of trauma to the untouched core of a survivor. While other helpers seemed to concentrate on the time when traumas started, I looked for the unspoiled beauty. In a sense, I became a passionate explorer of unknown countries, a treasure hunter, a pearl diver. When I met Sarah, this approach took a new turn.
‘Now I know how beautiful the trees are …’
Sarah had been a long-term inmate of a psychiatric institution as a result of the diagnosis that she was suffering from a severe form of schizophrenia which had not responded to treatment. A pastor, with the help of some volunteers, had somehow convinced parents and medical authorities that they were able to provide her with a protected environment in a family atmosphere. The pastor also told me that he had a deep conviction that somehow there was another girl inside, waiting to be released.
I was asked to help and saw her at weekly intervals. Initially she was very unresponsive. Especially at meal times or during other family activities, she seemed to freeze emotionally. Through a trust which developed, she would open up a bit at times. Thus I saw glimpses of a very strange world. It struck me that she seemed like a one-woman-country with a very strange and private culture. That’s when I decided that I should perhaps try to use my missionary gift to see if I could, somehow, enter into Sarah’s world view. I attempted to learn her language, imagery and indirect speech. Finally she confided to me that she knew there were microphones in the walls which recorded all she said. So it was wiser not to talk, rather than to let the whole world know what she was really like. Taking her seriously, I suggested that we should take a walk outside in a nearby park. ‘There are no microphones there and even if there were, if we walk fast enough, they won’t catch what we’re talking about.’
I still remember the amazed look, the recognition of being understood. That walk became a very remarkable one. As I commented on the beauty of the environment, she lamented her loss of a sense of beauty. I sensed that she needed hope that life could be different and I felt secure enough to tell her how I became sensitive to beauty again at about the age of twelve. I shared with her how, until then, my life had been only black and white with many shades of grey and how that at times it had caused hilarious moments. For instance, my mother would point to my feet and somehow I would have put on one green and one red sock and never noticed the difference. Yet tests showed that I was not colour blind; I prefer to call it ‘colour-indifferent’. Then in the early spring of 1948, my mother suggested we take a bike ride. We lived in one of the most ‘Dutch’ parts of Holland. The willows on the banks of a small stream were just about bursting with pale green leaves. The sun was about 15 degrees above the horizon, shining in our faces. Then it happened. As we went around a bend, the sun slipped behind the trees, producing a near-fluorescent green haze. ‘Look Teo, how beautiful,’ was my mother’s delighted cry. ‘Look at the trees.’ It was then that I looked, and consciously absorbed the colours around me. From that time on, my awareness of beauty was slowly woken up and I became much more conscious of colour.
As I related my story, Sarah asked some very intelligent questions about my emotions and my life now, and left me wondering what was really inside her. A few days later, she stormed into my office and shouted, ‘Teo, I have seen how beautiful the trees are.’ The others in the room wisely decided to leave us alone and for nearly half an hour, there was a radiant, beautiful, totally normal girl sharing what she had seen, how she felt and showing glimpses of her personality we had never known before. We were elated. For the next few hours she still functioned quite well. Then the crash came, as she relapsed into her old twisted world. It took many months before we saw glimpses of the inner Sarah again. Yet the short selfexposure had given everyone hope that there was someone else there; we just needed to find her. After a period of time, she recovered enough to live her own life, in a somewhat protected environment. I have lost track of her, but I will never forget the image of that radiant girl who broke through the walls of outer indifference.
Walking in the shadows of others does have a dark side to it. To be invited inside also means being confronted with untold horrors, and discovering what people can do to each other. It affirmed to me what others have observed, that ‘the only beasts are humans’. It is incredible what people can do to each other. Yet we must face up to this painful reality. I discovered this more as my ability to deal with this pain increased. It seemed as if people would smell the difference and dare to open up in ways I had not known before. The capacity to enter into these shadows is linked to a capacity to face reality.
William Glasser (1965) has explained how a sense of reality is needed for mental health. But how can; one look into the burning fire of cruelty, devastation and endless pain without being blinded?
Staying sane in a crazy world
Mental health work can be dangerous for one’s own health! As someone has suggested, perhaps job advertisements in this field should carry a sticker similar to the warnings to smokers on a packet of cigarettes! This warning seems to make even more sense, working in the twisted world of sexual abuse. When I share with students what I have learned from helping several hundred incest victims, the obvious question is always asked, ‘… but how do you stay sane?’ I admit that there are times of despair. I believe that I have only been able to go on by focusing on my initially instinctive search for this unspoiled inner beauty in the survivors, rather than the blinding flames of demonic cruelty.
My own life ‘in the shadows’ was one part of the training in communicating with seriously hurting persons. One of its consequences had been a nearly constant despair on two counts: firstly, that I could not express the feelings which were inside, and secondly, an inability to observe accurately the emotions of others. I had a serious communication problem. Looking back, I have come to the somewhat paradoxical conclusion that my inability to communicate verbally has been a key in becoming a counsellor! Not understanding what people were really trying to tell me, I often found myself praying, ‘Lord, what is really going on?’ The intuitive responses, often triggered by what I can only describe as ‘help from above’, repeatedly set me on the right track.
My initial formal training had nothing to do with counselling. After secondary school I became a medical technician and went to Bible school for a two-year practical training as a missionary. I met my wife, Wil, during this time and we realised we would have to wait to get married until she had finished nursing training. To bridge this time span, I was able to turn my military service into a volunteer assignment as an army medic in Surinam, a former Dutch colony between French and British Guyana. There, I also had my first missionary experience. When Wil had finished her training, I returned home for our wedding. Soon after this we enrolled in a three-month intensive course in the Summer School of Linguistics, outside London, before being assigned to work among the poorest of the poor in north-east Thailand. As we worked with leprosy patients we learned about despair and hope in a totally different culture. We were also invited into the private fears of these animistic, rural people: the dread of ghosts and demons. I learned about the ugly ceremonies they conducted to escape from the grip of evil. This showed me the lengths they would go to in order to seek peace. But I also observed the tender love of a familybased, private ceremony. Close relatives would gather around someone who had undergone a severe shock, to comfort and encourage, and to call back the fragile personality which might have fled in the process.
This caring for each other, in times of need, was very evident in the church family as well. I had the privilege of learning from Thai church leaders who were Christians long before I developed a personal faith in Jesus Christ. For them, prayer to Jesus replaced the call on the spirits. The desire for inner peace was answered by the encounter with Jesus, who is our peace. I discovered also that I could use this method to help people who were gripped by fear of demons.
In time, I was asked by fellow missionaries how to relate practically to the animistic Thai. Several missionary doctors also encouraged me to develop my budding gift for counselling missionaries. They introduced me to helpful literature to answer my probing questions. In 1972 I was asked to speak at a missionary conference on ‘emotional healing’. It was a new expression in the evangelical world, which I had never heard before. Someone gave me a book about it. I had planned several days to prepare my talk. My office was a tiny storeroom in which we had installed air conditioning. Locked away from the outside, it was as if an inner curtain was drawn. But there was also a Presence, which took me by the hand and helped me consciously face my past. For three days I wept through my life history. As layer after layer of my emotional onion was peeled off, there was also that Presence which comforted: Jesus, an experienced specialist in pain and trauma himself.
Even as a child, the fear of death was not something new to me. Several times, I had faced death directly. As a refugee fleeing various areas of battle, we had been shot at indiscriminately, machine-gunned and bombed. Once a crazy pilot saw some children playing in a meadow, and decided to do some ‘rabbit hunting’. My friend was shot in the hip, my brother hid behind a birch tree, which caught the bullets. I ran home screaming. Bullets were flying all round me, but miraculously I was not hurt.
Some time later, when the fighting became worse, we were in the middle of a bombing raid. My mother was too ill to go to the bunker again and she told my brother and me, ‘Come and sit on the bed, then the bomb will hit us all at the same time.’ I still remember how we huddled together. I was shivering. Then my mother said, ‘I will pray.’ I remember that prayer in our family was only in standard formulas, before and after meals and when we went to sleep. I don’t recall any expression of a personal faith by my mother before this bombing raid; perhaps that’s why this scene made such an impression. As she started with the Lord’s prayer, she suddenly switched to normal talk, sharing her heart’s cry for us, pleading for safety and committing us to him. Suddenly a total change of atmosphere took place. My shivering stopped. I calmed down. Looking back, I realise that this was my first encounter with the ‘Hiding Place’. The God of peace touched an area deep within, which shielded me through the ordeals that soon followed. One short crazy moment in particular has been indelibly etched in my mind.
A towering soldier looks down at a seven-year-old boy. ‘Where is your father hiding?’ He pulls a pistol and places it against my head. ‘Speak up, or I shoot!’ Seconds of silence turn into an eternity. Inside me an icy resolve erupts: ‘I’d rather die …’ Then I scream at the top of my voice. My mother races out of the house, sees what is happening and lunges at the soldier with a hail of words. He turns around and walks away, head down, ashamed. The icy cold inside me remained, however, and from then on I knew what death was.
This calm exterior and a totally different inner world lasted until I was eighteen. Then, all alone, just reading the Bible, that same peace which I experienced during the bombing came again. A slow process of healing started, as Jesus became alive for me.
Little did I know then that these traumatic events not only deformed, but also produced great beauty. Once I saw an artist look at a twisted piece of wood. He described the beauty inside, waiting to be released. It was then that the analogy struck: that’s me! Twisted wood can have beauty! In spite of the onion-like layers of abuse which covered my life, there was a precious protected part waiting to be released. Looking back now, I believe the wait was too long. With just a little competent help, I could have recovered so much earlier. As I meet other trauma victims, my own past makes a bit more sense. Perhaps this is the fire behind my passion to help, to go just one more mile. There are moments when even those closest to me find this intensity hard to understand.
At times I still come across another onion-layer of unresolved pain. I am not specifically looking for it. I have decided not; to look for wounds, but to live in the present, to accept that healing is a process. It is ‘life from above being poured into us’.5 I need co-workers (volunteers and professionals), who give me input on how I am functioning and growing. Above all, I need relationships with a variety of other believers. Normal church life is also a place of restoration for abuse counsellors!
Churches involved in healing
William Glasser who, as a secular helper, attempted to include community life in the treatment, stated that mental health depends on three R’s: a clear view of Reality, personal Responsibility for one’s behaviour, and solid values about Right and wrong. The wisdom of this is self-apparent. To face reality, to have courage to take personal responsibility for one’s behaviour and to have solid values, is quite a challenge. The apostle Paul in his pastoral letters about church life stressed that one needs to learn this from and with others in community. He points out how churches can be involved in healing by providing a healing atmosphere. The church has a potential which secular services cannot provide; people meeting, not because of their problem, but from a desire for relationship irrespective of what one’s problem or background is.
Many of the counselling services which mental-health programmes offer are either on the basis of individual treatment, or given to groups of people with the same problems. The use of group therapy for abuse victims, for instance, gives them a chance to meet others who have also been through the same ordeal. They learn to open up and communicate that which was previously taboo. Churches can offer that, but also something else: the availability of ‘community’. If nothing else, abuse victims need a social network in order to learn how to make and maintain healthy relationships, and I would hope that churches can provide a healthy family to those who have never had that before.
I also believe that churches can co-operate with local mental-health authorities. The increased cultural diversity in western Europe affords better opportunities for this. If Muslims can request a culturally-sensitive approach, then Christians can also be seen as a cultural group. I have found that such a presentation of the Christian faith – as Christian culture – avoids a discussion as to whether that faith is true or not. That is not the task of secular helpers to decide. By accepting the reality of Christian culture, secular workers can avoid violation of our values, even if they differ from their own private views.
Churches should also co-operate with mental-health authorities or professional Christian counsellors outside their own circle for their own survival. I observe how some church leaders, who seriously want to serve their members with good pastoral care, at times have to devote most of their energy to some of the toughest counselling situations. If they are also very evangelistic, then much time will have to be spent ministering to the emotional problems of those they attempt to reach. An increased ability to help pastorally will also attract more people who need help. This then becomes a vicious circle. It is also a reason why some pastors become rather edgy when individual pastoral care takes the central place in a church. There are other tasks and functions that are just as important, such as the need to share the art of Christian living to whole groups through preaching and teaching.
When our pastoral help seems insufficient and counsellees do not progress as we expect, we need to be honest and refer them to others. After all, God has more gifts than those that are available locally or even inside the church. The God of creation has given gifts, even to those who do not acknowledge him personally.
Healing communities
In a community which aims at helping abuse survivors, there must be a place where painful realities can be faced; this is the key problem. Abuse survivors often do not know how to talk about it, because of the consequences. The abusers often discredit the victim in such a way that they can be sure the victim will not be believed. So what can one do?
One approach that a sensitive church leadership can take is to invite trusted outsiders, who are available to hear ‘confession’. I have often served in such a capacity and at times will take along teams of trained and trusted counsellors whose only task initially will be to listen and encourage anyone who needs it to follow up such a confession with more pastoral or professional psychological help.
The opportunity to ‘be close to others who are strangers’ might be one reason why some young people join an international youth organisation such as Operation Mobilization or Youth With a Mission (YWAM). The new relationships often give them a chance to unburden their need, to find understanding and to leave the past behind! I met David at a YWAM Discipleship Training Course. Twenty young people aged between eighteen and thirty were eager students. They came to this course to be trained in evangelism. ‘To know God and make him known’, was the motto which someone had painted on the wall of the lecture hall. I was asked to teach basic counselling skills. ‘They will go for about six weeks to bars, nightclubs and parks to meet young people,’ the letter of invitation had stated. ‘They will work with the only church which is left in the area; all the other churches have fled that part of the inner city.’ The participants were a lively group of young people. Laughter and seriousness went hand in hand. On the second day of the course David asked to talk privately. He had understood the practical reasons for writing a letter to speed up the counselling process, so he already had one in his hand when he came in.
David was ten when a good friend of the family seduced him for the first time. It lasted until he was thirteen. Then one day he felt such revulsion that he literally kicked the abuser when he once again tried to touch him. Several years later he discovered that his father knew all about it, but that he had been blackmailed. The ‘good friend’ had made a loan, which they could not pay back. David was angry with the abuser, and with his parents (Where was mother in all this?). He told us that it had taken him time to learn to understand his parents and to learn to forgive them. He was still struggling with that ‘uncle’ who had, in the meantime, disappeared from the scene. ‘I will deal with that in time as well,’ he wrote, ‘but my immediate question is a practical problem. Before I came to the course, I fell in love with a girl. When we became more physically involved, I usually got a tight stomach and became nervous. I have gone through therapy and understand the link with the past. I still like the girl, but realise that I have to deal with this before I can go on.’ David’s willingness and ability to talk, the sense of commitment to God, and his openness to the small prayer group of fellow students all worked together.
Reflecting on what I did to help David, I can only say that I came into the harvest of what many others had prepared, including secular counsellors. I explained to David how our body remembers what has happened, and how there is a link between body, soul and spirit; how our bodies can acquire new memories of love, power, life, and of fire as well as tranquillity. Then there was a worship time in a small Lutheran chapel. David came to the altar and knelt down. Several of his friends came along. Then we prayed. I still find it hard to express all that happened; it was so personal, so fragile. The only thing I can say is that the presence of Jesus became very real. For a long time, David lay silent in front of the altar. Later he shared how something physical happened to him, as if streams of life washed him clean. ‘I literally felt like Isaiah who had fire touch his lips. You know what he forced me to do orally. Well, for the first time now, I know my mouth is clean.’
The type of help David needed was probably best given in a committed community where he not only experienced the warmth, love and understanding of counsellors, but was also exposed to an intensive retraining in social interaction with the community of students and staff. This community life also forced David to face some traits he had developed, which were good for survival in the past, but detrimental for keeping friends in new settings! It took several months of honest evaluation, a lot of patience and loving confrontation, to show him what he was doing and how he could change these patterns. It was a joy to hear how he joined a team of young people to work in refugee camps in Asia.
Into all the world
Amnesty International, Norway’s Redd Barne, Foster Parents, World Vision, TEAR Fund and other organisations have done much to alert us to the level of physical and sexual abuse which is going on around the world. There are simply not enough professionals to help the millions of refugees, the tens of thousands of torture survivors. But we can teach them to reach out to others. There are many ways in which abuse survivors need to be helped. The encounter with the Holy One, the healing of spirit, soul and body from the evil of the past, is a dimension which secular forms of helping can’t provide and where the church is challenged to overcome our revulsion to the stories described above, to get in there and to heal in Jesus’ name. To enter into the different world of the abused, we first need to learn more about some of its realities.
In the following chapters I will work out more of what I have learned, as a pastoral counsellor, about sexual abuse, and how to help from the perspective of the Christian culture. Not many pastoral counsellors in Europe have done this yet. What I am writing is, I hope, just a starting point for further discussions and new studies. In order to encourage such a discussion and cultivate new skills in helping, we should first give attention to some basic definitions and concepts of the lives of the people who live in the ‘world of the abused’.
The text of this article is taken from From Shame to Peace - Counseling and caring for the sexually abused
Content
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The memory problem.
Chapter 2 - Walking in the shadows
Chapter 3 - Starting Points and Definition of Concept
Chapter 4 - The Culture of Child Sexual Abuse
Chapter 5 - Missionaries in the Culture of Abuse
Chapter 6 - Why God?
Chapter 7 - Captives of a Culture
Chapter 8 - The Church and the Culture of Abuse
Chapter 9 - From Victims to Skilled Survivors
Chapter 10 - Powerful Peace
Chapter 11 - From Shame to Peace
Chapter 12 - Powerful Peace through the Church
Chapter 13 - 'Please God, not in the Church...'
Chapter 14 - 'Please God, not my Child...'
Epilogue: Biblical Realism
Bibliography
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