Lakewood’s Religious Institutions Can Make A Significant Impact On Reducing The Effects Of Domestic Violence On Our Children

In my opinion, any grants allocated to a faith-based outreach program that enhances knowledge on human developmental psychology and family law to the general public would help prevent the scourge of domestic violence in our communities.

According to the American Psychological Association, children and adolescents who were exposed to abuse, or have been physically or sexually abused in the home can suffer a range of psychological and behavioral problems, from mild to severe, in both the short and long term. These problems typically include depression, anxiety, guilt, fear, sexual dysfunction, withdrawal, and acting out.

An UCLA study indicated that some Northeast Ohio high schools and middle schools suspend about one out of every four students each year - or more - according to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. East Cleveland is highlighted as having one of the nation's highest elementary school suspension rates, at over 20 percent.

Ohio has some of the highest gaps between its black and white suspension rates in the nation, the researchers reported, for both elementary school students and older students. While Ohio schools suspend just 1.7 percent of white students in elementary school, they suspend more than 11 percent of black students. That gives Ohio the fifth-largest difference in suspension rates by race in the country. That pattern continues at the high school level. More than one in four black students at older grades in Ohio - 26 percent - are suspended each year, compared to seven percent of white students. That 19-point gap is the 10th-highest in the United States. (Patrick O'Donnell/The Plain Dealer, February 24, 2015) In addition, according to the African American Policy Forum, black girls are suspended at a higher rate than all other girls and white and Latino boys. (The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the politics of Race in America, 2016, pg.23).

According to the National Center for Victims of Crime: Black Children Exposed to Violence and Victimization (2012), black youth ages 12 to 19 are victims of violent crime at significantly higher rates than their white peers (U.S. Department of Justice, “Criminal Victimization in the United States—Statistical Tables, 2005,” (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006),

Youth exposure to victimization is directly linked to negative outcomes for young people, including increased depression, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, homelessness, and poor school performance. (Michell Nunez and Madeline Wordes, “Our Vulnerable Teenagers: Their Victimization, Its Consequences, and Directions for Prevention and Intervention,” (Washington, DC: National Center for Victims of Crime and National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2002).

Youth who are victimized during the complicated transitional period of adolescence may experience serious disruption of their developmental processes. These effects are worsened when youth perceive institutions as unwilling or unable to help or protect them, and adults’ failure to intercede confirms youth victims’ sense that they must cope with an unsafe environment by themselves which leads to delayed reporting and recovery for youth. (Mitru Ciarlante, “Disclosing Sexual Victimization,” Prevention Researcher, 14 no. 2 (2007): 11-14). Moreover, losing their sense of safety at this critical stage affects victimized teens’ struggle to integrate into and become pro-social members of the community; they may respond by displaying aggression, withdrawal, school problems, and various high-risk behaviors, including offending. (Wordes and Nunez, 13; and Jay Silverman, Anita Raj, Lorelei Mucci, and Jeanne Hathaway, “Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Use, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy, and Suicidality,” Journal of the American Medical Association 286, no. 5 (2001): 572–579. Menard).

Children who were both abused and exposed to domestic violence had higher levels of emotional and behavioral problems than did children who had only been exposed to domestic violence. Thus, children who are both victimized by violence and who witness domestic violence may be particularly vulnerable to developing psychopathology symptoms. Effects of Family Violence on Psychopathology Symptoms in Children (Child Dev. 2008 Sep-Oct; 79(5): 1498–1512).

According to DomesticViolenceRoundtable.org, the long-term effects on children who witness domestic violence, whether or not the children are physically abused, include suffering emotional and psychological trauma from living in homes where their fathers abuse their mothers. Children whose mothers are abused are denied the kind of home life that fosters healthy development. Children who grow up observing their mothers being abused, especially by their fathers, grow up with a role model of intimate relationships in which one person uses intimidation and violence over the other person to get their way. Because children have a natural tendency to identify with strength, they may ally themselves with the abuser and lose respect for their seemingly helpless mother. Seeing their mothers treated with enormous disrespect, teaches children that they can disrespect women the way their fathers do. In addition, most experts believe that children who are raised in abusive homes learn that violence is an effective way to resolve conflicts and problems.

According to "Criminal Justice: Domestic Violence Among African Americans," culturally competent interventions with African American victims of interpersonal violence should be consistent with a client’s culture, including themes and topics most directly relevant to African American women, particularly religion and spirituality. This culturally sensitive treatment and incorporation of religion and spirituality should not include challenges to women’s religious beliefs, but rather should provide a safe place where women can explore and critically examine their own beliefs. Treatment of religious women may also include referrals to or collaborative work with religious leaders who have been trained in dealing with domestic violence issues, allowing women to explore their religious and spiritual issues. (Bell, Carl C., and Jacqueline Mattis. ‘‘The Importance of Cultural Competence in Ministering to African-American Victims of Domestic Violence.’’ Violence against Women 6, no. 5 (2000): 515–532.

Based on Jack Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory, I think a community of faith-based outreach programs that are structured on the centrality of experience, critical reflection, and rational discourse will help guide adults, parents, and caregivers in their own meaning structure transformations to reduce violent behavior in their lives. In other words, transformative learning attempts to explain how our experiences, framed within cultural assumptions and presuppositions, directly influence the meaning we derive from our experiences. It is a model of adult learning by explaining the process of how personal paradigms evolve and expand in adulthood. In essence, it offers an explanation for adult development, that of developing a greater adaptive capacity to capitalize and act on prior knowledge and experience through critical reflection.

Mezirow believed that transformative learning is “the very essence of adult education, such as the goal of adult education is to help the individual become a more autonomous thinker by learning to negotiate his or own values, meanings, and purpose rather than uncritically acting on those of others.” The program’s goal is to move the individual towards a more inclusive, differentiated permeable (open to other points of view), and integrated meaning perspective, the validity of which has been established through rational discourse, (all of which) aids an adult's development. (Mezirow, 1997, p.11)

“This is the potential of transformative learning; how learning sometimes transforms people’s perceptions, enabling them to see things differently and act differently in their world. Transformative learning involves change in the frames of reference that we use to make sense in our lives. Frames of reference structure the ways that interpret the meaning of our experiences, and therefore our action and provide the rationale for our action (Mezirow 2000).

This type of faith-based outreach program would consist of a team of professionals licensed in the areas of education, psychology and law who work under a framework developed to guide reflection and to identify particular challenges that might arise throughout a learning process. Apte, J. (2003). “The facilitation of transformative learning: A study of the working knowledge of adult learners, doctoral thesis, Sydney: University of Technology Sydney.

The philosophy is that by integrating both the disciplines of human developmental psychology and family law when resolving domestic issues, family decision-making skills in effect will make family choices more productive and at the same time help with avoiding common decision traps and thinking errors that may lead to domestic violence. It will also ensure real-life family-oriented scenarios that will inspire and motivate commitment and action on how to critique and solve family disputes through problem-solving strategies like collaboration, communication, and negotiation that are needed for successful, decision making.

The primary goal of this type of faith-based outreach program is to prevent domestic violence in our families and educational institutions by learning and applying skills needed that help manage emotion and perception issues while increasing objectivity in stressful family decision situations that occur often in impoverished communities.

In recognition of the fact that the safety in our educational institutions and homes play a significant role in our communities, I believe faith-based outreach programs that integrate and support those programs, projects, and activities related to human developmental psychology and family law will help reduce domestic violence in our communities.