As I read the accounts of Judy and Rachel's abuse, I became sick
to my stomach, as I have witnessed and experienced first-hand the
demeaning treatment of women in the Assembly.
I feel that God's Spirit is telling me to tell my story--not to be
dramatic, not to shame the memory of my beloved husband Tom, who died in 1990) or to gather sympathy. The truth needs to be told,
so that marriages and families may be spared the trauma of living in an
abusive cycle, and those that have been broken (spiritually,
emotionally, socially, and physically) can receive healing for their
wounds. Some are so sick and deceived, they may not even realize yet
that they are the walking wounded!! We need to pray.....
My husband Tom was good friends with David Geftakys because they shared
a love of surfing and fixing up old cars. David always made a point to
spend time with Tom when he and Judy visited Santa Barbara. Tom often
went to David for counsel on family matters.
Once Tom and David tracked sand into the house from the beach when they had been surfing all
morning. I made a mild comment about having to get a broom again. David
said, "You are lucky to even have a husband to sweep up after." In one
way these words were prophetic, for Tom passed away six months after we
left fellowship and I truly did repent of any complaints I had made
about serving my husband prior. But I was bothered by the severity of
David's comments.
I do believe that Betty is in competition with most of the Assembly women for the
attention of the brothers' admiration and despises the sisters, using them to fix her
juices and do her housework. I never heard her say a kind word about any
of the Santa Barbara wives, especially those who were allowed to work or
had aspirations to go back to school. In fact, when Tom died, Betty told Melany
M. that it was a positive change for me, because I always
wanted to be a career woman anyway.
Tom and I had quietly left fellowship in 1989 after he was counseled to
quit his job and he disagreed with the brethren. Tom never spoke poorly
of the brethren in public, but refused to meet with them to discuss his
situation. He knew it would be pointless and cause more damage. In
retrospect, I am so thankful to Tom for the way he handled this, as so
many others have suffered condemnation and ex-communication for
disagreeing with the Leading Brothers of the Assembly.
The abuse escalated when I returned home
from my parents' home in the Bay Area, and I had trimmed my long hair
without getting his permission first.
Tom yanked my wedding ring off of my finger, and said I was not worthy
to be called his wife for my rebellious act. He threatened to throw my
ring down the toilet and slapped me hard across the face as I cried.
With this, I waited until he went to work, gathered my 3 babies and
loaded up the car with our clothes and essential belongings. We drove up
to San Luis Obispo and stayed in a hotel overnight. I did not contact
David Geftakys while in town because I already knew what his response
would be.
My parents called Tom in Santa Barbara that evening and pleaded with him
to work out our marital problems without violence. I was 5' 7" and 108
pounds--emaciated, exhausted and scared. Tom coaxed me into coming home
and for awhile this incident was put behind us. I told Tom I wanted to
talk to the brothers about our marital problems and he forbade me to do
so. He said he would kick me out of the house if I breathed a word of
the abuse. I obeyed him.
A month or two later Tom and I were at a Goleta Beach outreach for the
4th of July and it was very hot. Everyone was in short-sleeved tops and
shorts except for me. I was wearing pants and a long-sleeved top. Why?
Because Tom had repeatedly socked my upper arm that morning and I had
black and blue bruises all over one side of my body. I debated whether
or not to show another married sister, but decided against it.
When will Christians stop
killing their wounded and show the true testimony of grace and mercy
towards the victimized?? Only then will the world find us honest,
genuine, sincere, and an attractive choice among many alternatives.
I am praising God for all of you who love the Lord, who are either in
the Assembly or not and are seeking God's direction for your lives,
marriages and families. GOD IS FAITHFUL!!
Several brothers from the Santa Barbara Assembly have called me to
apologize because they said they didn't notice anything was wrong while
Tom and I were in fellowship. (i.e., they were unaware of the physical
abuse). My reply was gracious to them, because I suffered in silence
while examining myself (as I was instructed to via Betty's counsel), and
I did not specifically go to them with my complaints--they didn't know
the dynamics in my home and did not witness what was going on. I can
honestly say that I have no hard feelings toward any of them personally.
But, had they seen my bruises and confronted Tom, I am not confident
that the outcome would have been positive for me or our marriage, for the
following reasons:
1. I may have been blamed by the brothers and/or Tom for being a bad
wife and deserving to be harshly disciplined. It is one thing to
disagree with your spouse about your relationship patterns, quite
another thing to let the dirty laundry out of the closet and risk being
ganged up on by people who spoke as God's authority over you and your
family.
2. The universal prescription for these types of personal problems was
more Bible reading, shallow admonitions to just trust the Lord and to
obey the advice of the leaders. (No matter that some of them giving the
advice had
unhealthy marriages and dysfunctional situations themselves--or
childrearing issues--or they weren't even married and didn't even have
their own kids! - But of course, they were authorities on the subject
because they had been trained by George and Betty as their "surrogate
children", etc.)
3. "Brother, get your home in order or you can't be a doorkeeper... "
Throughout the years I heard Leading Brothers brag about how they had
put their wives in their places, or they were condescending when they
spoke of the women, "Oh, you know, sisters are more emotional and more
easily deceived.... remember Eve. You've got to be strong and lay down
the law. Sister, you need to be completely obedient. Your resistance shows a
rebellious spirit. When you married, you gave up that right to (fill in
the blank)."
3. The prohibition against seeing psychologists, psychiatrists and other
mental health counselors outside the fellowship not only prevented
common sense and legal rights from entering the picture, but the hurting
couple was left to their own attempts to fix the problem (with the
counsel of the leadership prescribing the solution).
4. The code of silence makes it unsafe for both men and women to tell
the truth. All churches and organizations have this dilemma (it is human
nature to avoid embarrassment and to downplay our wrong actions), but the
way people are confronted in the Assembly made it especially hard to
"come clean." Would you be kicked out? Publicly ostracized? Have
privileges taken away? Lose your chance to move up the leadership
ladder? Have to endure more lectures about how bad a Christian you were,
how you weren't overcoming, how you weren't capable of making decisions
for yourself, etc.? And if you were a wife, would you have to do your
"consequences" and your husband's if he told you to, even if he was in
the wrong?
No wonder both men and women were afraid to speak up;
the culture of the Assembly propagated this insidious problem.
The issue of how far to get involved in one another's lives, especially
when relationships seem to exhibit unhealthy symptoms, is a complex and
difficult one. We could start by "speaking the truth in love".
There
are many other Bible verses that would give us wisdom and boundaries to
follow.
What is clear is that the leadership's practice of playing Holy Spirit in other's lives is in direct opposition to the way Jesus exposed and treated sins.
If the only prayer and effort made on my behalf was to
exhort me to conform to the "Assembly's standard", I do not feel
individually respected, "heard" or for that matter, loved.
One of the greatest opportunities we have through this website is to be
reconciled to one another and to Christ. It takes tremendous courage and
humility to avoid the prescribing judgments so characteristic of
Christian groups and give room for the real Holy Spirit to move,
correct, and heal in the individual's life.
Editor's note: For more information on domestic violence, see Domestic Violence: Excerpts from The Domestic Violence Sourcebook, Couple Counseling in Domestic Violence, and other resources recommended in Collusion in the Assembly.
March 15, Dave Sable: I remember meeting Tom and Susan and they were a
clean-cut, cheerful, “top of a wedding cake” type of couple. I had no
idea.
In reflection, I can see why the Assembly in general and the SLO Assembly
in particular would be a perfect climate to grow spousal abuse.
Many of us were attracted to the Assembly and didn’t see through its
inappropriate practices because we already had baggage in our lives. In
some cases this baggage was unresolved anger issues ready to boil over.
Men moving towards leadership were encouraged to manage their wives. Part of this management involved the consequence system. I remember a particular couple’s meetings where Danny and Kimber Edwards were set forth as a model couple. They gave testimony as to how Danny would give Kimber consequences for such items as back-talking or not following through with what she was told to do. Though the consequences were relatively minor (run a half hour errand, for instance), this was certainly the entry-drug for worse manifestations of heavy-handed control.
The tying of position in the Assembly system to successfully having your family in submission added pressure to the man that could push an unstable man over the top. If the man happened to be a good manager of his family or had a wife who fell easily into the submissive/martyr role, the couple may be able to produce the desired external behavior without much problem. On the other hand, if the man was already unstable with emotional baggage and the wife demonstrated a natural reaction to the demeaning mold she was being placed into, then the man’s sense of losing control and privilege could create panic, precipitating harsher and more-violent behavior.
The fact that male domination over his wife was encouraged, and the fact
that David Geftakys had a vested interest in promoting such behavior,
removed the natural checks that a healthy community should provide. As
Susan observed in her years as VP of Human Resources, even non-Christians
would intervene if they caught wind that a friend was beating his wife.
In closing, an anecdote:
On our second anniversary (as of writing we have been married twenty
years), my wife and I were driving to the Knott’s Berry Farm restaurant
for breakfast. Our infant son was in the back seat. At this time, the
mom-trainers had converged upon my wife to instruct her how to be
meeting-ready.
In the typical animal-training approach, her assignment was to ten times a
day tell our son to “come”. The infant was to come lest he be swatted and
made to repeat the exercise until he got it right. I was to enforce her
doing this ten times a day. To me, it was a simple, objective, check-list
task. To my wife, it was an inappropriate external intrusion that bothered
her to the core.
On the way to breakfast, I asked her, “Did you do ‘come’ ten times
yesterday?” (A simple “yes” or “no” was all I was after). Her response was
an evasive, side-stepping, justification. I tried to zero in again – did
she do it or not? Or at least how many times did she do it? Her reaction
was like a fearful animal being zeroed in on by a predator.
The more I tried to nail her down, the more she reacted (not to me, I
later realized, but to the whole process of intrusion in her natural
mothering intuition). Before long, we were yelling at each other and
saying nasty things. By the time we got to Knott’s, she stormed out of the
car and I drove around the parking lot with my infant son thinking, “This
isn’t working”.
Over the years, we processed this situation and we learned healthier ways
of raising our kids and relating to one another. But if I had been a more
competitive type of person, I could have easily reasoned, “If I am going
to be used by God in the Assembly, I am going to have to work harder and
win in this situation, no matter what it takes.”
I think it is more my weakness than virtue that caused me not to take that
position. But if I had, I shudder to think of where it would have led and
what state my wife and kids would be in today.
-Dave Sable
outdeep@yahoo.com