Close to the Brokenhearted
Former victim of domestic violence counsels both the abused and their
abusers.
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At the center where Murphy
first sought domestic abuse counseling, she counsels a woman,
her granddaughter and her grandson (right photo).
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NANCY MURPHY ’90 WAS a divorced mother
of three — and
all four were living out of her car — when she first heard
the words “domestic violence.” In a class at Seattle
Pacific University, a guest speaker described the continuum of
violence in a relationship. The scale began with subtle put-downs
and pinching. It progressed to pushing, kicking and hitting, eventually
ending with murder-suicide. As Murphy recalls, “I looked
at those behaviors and felt confused. I raised my hand and announced, ‘All
those things have happened to me in my marriage, except the last
one — murder-suicide — but I’m not a battered
woman.’”
Her classmates laughed aloud at the contradiction. But the speaker
looked at Murphy and asked, “All those things happened to
you?” When she nodded, the speaker’s eyes filled with
tears. Keeping eye contact, the speaker simply said, “I’m
sorry.”
The two met for lunch after class that day, and Murphy learned
more about the cycle of domestic violence. “For the first
time,” she
says, “I was given a name for my most painful experiences
as a married woman.” Today, she is president of the Global
Institute on Violence and Exploitation, and the executive director
of Seattle’s Northwest Family Life Learning and Counseling
Center, a private organization that helps both victims of domestic
violence and offenders find healing. It is the same center where
she first went as a client, a victim of past spousal abuse, in
1990.
“Finding my voice and being able to put words to my experiences,” says
Murphy, “has unearthed opportunities.” That’s
putting it mildly. Within the past two years, she has spoken out
on issues of domestic violence at the United Nations in New York;
for the Helsinki Commission in Washington, D.C.; and for the U.S.
State Department in Warsaw, Poland.
During SPU’s Homecoming Weekend in February, Murphy was given
the Medallion Award for her work as an advocate for abused women
and children worldwide. Seattle Pacific Alumni Director Doug Taylor
notes, “At the awards ceremony, people sensed what great
Christian humility Nancy has. Some of them were crying as they
came up after her talk and told her their own stories.”
The international human rights advocate has come a long way, she
admits, from a tiny town in British Columbia. “Having grown
up on a remote part of Vancouver Island, accessible only by boat
or plane,” Murphy says, “this is a bit of a stretch
for me.” But the truth needs to be uncovered, she says, because
the problem is so widespread.
According to Murphy, domestic violence is a leading cause of injury
and death to women worldwide. One in five women around the world
is physically or sexually abused in her lifetime, and gender violence
causes more death and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than
cancer, malaria, car accidents or war.
“Regrettably,” she adds, “the church is not immune
to this problem.” When Murphy found out at SPU that she had
been a victim of spousal abuse, she was the Christian daughter
of a missionary and a nurse. Divorced and living in her car with
her three young children, she had fled a husband who was increasingly
violent, but she refused to think that domestic abuse was the issue.
There had to be other explanations. “Domestic violence was
what happened to ‘other people’ — poor people,
unsaved people, alcoholics, uneducated people with low self-esteem
and few
opportunities,” Murphy rationalized. “I attributed the
difficulties in our marriage to my own inability to be a ‘perfect’ wife
or ‘good enough’ woman. I was convinced that something
was so wrong with me that my husband had no other choice than to
lash out.”
The following years were spent learning and healing. A community
of friends took in Nancy and her children. For five years, says Murphy, “They
encouraged us, provided safety and living space, listened over and
over to some of the same stories, prayed often, and offered childcare
and lots of good food and laughter.”
During that time, she worked on her bachelor’s degree at Seattle
Pacific. Kenneth Tollefson, professor emeritus of anthropology,
found Murphy to be a great student. “She could take things
and run with them,” says Tollefson. “When she was going
to SPU, she was taking care of her kids, getting counseling for herself
and working at the Indian Cultural Center writing a manual for Native
Americans on how to adjust to urban life when they got out of jail.
She was getting and giving at the same time.”
Murphy went on to earn a master’s degree in counseling. In
1994, she remarried, this time to a “wonderful man and father
of two,” and became executive director for Northwest Family
Life. Most of her work at the center focuses on community development,
training for professionals, and fund raising for a $2 million annual
budget.
Sometimes, though, Murphy sits down and counsels abusive spouses.
These male — or, rarely, female — offenders choose counseling
over jail time. “First,” she says, “I tell them
how thankful I am that they’ve come, because they are precious
to us and to God. Then I ask them to tell their whole story.
“They have to plumb the depths of what they’ve done,” she
says. “For forgiveness to happen, they need to understand
and take responsibility for the pain they’ve caused. When
you go to the depths, there’s the process of forgiving yourself,
too.”
It is one thing to help those who are victims of domestic abuse,
but it is a much different thing to help hold accountable and bring
restoration to those who are the offenders. To explain why she has
not run as far as possible from domestic abusers but prays with them
instead, Murphy says, “If ‘God is close to the broken-hearted,’ then
I want to be close to the broken-hearted. That way, I won’t
be too far away from God.”
Editor’s Note: For more information about services and
volunteer opportunities offered by Northwest Family Life Learning
and Counseling
Center, call 206/363-9601 or visit www.nwfamilylife.org.
— BY BY MARGARET D. SMITH
— PHOTOS BY
JIMI LOTT
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