This week on Flip Your Lid, we’re discussing domestic violence with survivor and expert in the field, Julie Owens.
If you are experiencing or think you might be experiencing domestic or intimate partner abuse or violence, please feel empowered to reach out for help today. Please know that we believe you, we stand with you, and we support you in your decision about how to handle your situation.
NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE
1.800.799.SAFE (7233)
TTY 1.800.787.3224
ABOUT JULIE
Julie Owens is a survivor of domestic violence. In 1988, during a post-separation attack by her estranged husband, she was kidnapped, beaten, stabbed and forced to watch the attempted murder of her father, a prominent pastor. When Julie and her father received no help or advocacy while hospitalized, she decided to leave the field of special education to devote her efforts exclusively to victim advocacy. She co-authored a proposal to the state legislature and her vision of developing a community-based on-call hospital crisis team for battered women became a reality. Julie developed a training manual and curriculum for health care professionals, began training medical facility staff, then trained and directed the survivor-led on-call crisis team. Since that time, she has provided hundreds of trainings and served as a frequent guest lecturer addressing professionals in the health, mental health, victim advocacy, criminal justice and counseling fields on topics related to domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking. Julie’s work has also involved facilitating support groups for victims, authoring journal articles, serving on numerous boards and committees, and lobbying for passage of state and federal laws. She has assisted in the establishment of a number of efforts including memorial domestic violence vigils, a coalition of religious groups responding to domestic violence, an activist organization for domestic violence survivors and routine memorial marches after domestic violence murders.
Over the years, while working in the private and public sectors, Julie has also been extensively involved in educating faith-based organizations. With her father and his congregation, a free transitional shelter for domestic violence victims and their children was founded. As the manager of this and another similar shelter, Julie worked closely with families to assist their transitions into a new violence-free life. Her personal story has been featured in several documentaries including the Emmy-nominated documentary, Broken Vows: Religious Perspectives on Domestic Violence. the television documentary series, When Love Hurts, and the documentary short For God’s Sake. Julie is a member of the National Training Team for the FaithTrust Institute in Seattle, WA and served as one of the four North American site coordinators for the development of the web-based, Lilly Endowment funded RAVE project, a comprehensive research-based website, “Religion And Violence E-learning”. www.theraveproject.com. Her many publications include chapters in four books for faith leaders.
Much of Julie’s work has been focused on best practices in victim advocacy and she has provided numerous 3 day Domestic Violence Counselor certification training programs and 2 Day Advanced Mental Health Issues trainings for those working with victims and survivors. In the 19990’s she served on a statewide team working with the National Women’s Resource Center to develop resources, provide conferences and cross-trainings for those working in the domestic violence, sexual assault, substance abuse and mental health fields.
Another extensive focus of Julie’s has been addressing the psychological and biological trauma in survivors, as well as vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue in helpers. She was Project Director of the Trauma Survivors Project at the National Center for PTSD (U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs) where she and her colleagues developed various trauma assessment instruments and examined the relationship of trauma-related guilt to depression and PTSD severity among survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and childhood sexual abuse. She conducted research in Ob/Gyn settings, screening and interviewing patients for previous traumas and domestic violence. As the Project Director and one of the trained cognitive behavioral therapists on another 3-year VA study, the Violence Against Women Trauma Therapy Initiative, she helped develop and conduct the first controlled clinical trial of a trauma therapy for formerly battered women with PTSD. The research established that comprehensively trained victim advocates could provide cognitive behavioral coaching for survivors resulting in equivalent reductions in anxiety, PTSD and depression to those produced by doctoral level clinicians. During this period Julie also assisted with research at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu utilizing PET scan technology to study the biological mechanism of PTSD in the brains of domestic violence survivors.
In 2001 Julie relocated to North Carolina to fill a newly created position, Domestic Violence Coordinator for Area Mental Health Authority of Mecklenburg County, where she provided training, consultation and technical assistance to a variety of professional groups and agencies. She worked for three years with pregnant and/or mothering women in full time residential substance abuser treatment, providing parenting support, domestic violence counseling and staff training. From 2005-2014 Julie served as the Regional Director for the NC Council for Women/Domestic Violence Commission (N.C. Department of Administration) where she monitored grants, participated in policy development, oversaw, trained and assisted crime victim program staffs and boards of directors in a 20 county area.
In 2012 the U.S. Department of State sent Julie to Kosovo to provide two weeks of nationwide training and consulting. From 2014-2016 she developed a pilot project for underserved domestic violence victims who are disabled, older, immigrants or non-English speaking. Julie now focuses exclusively on consulting, training and providing expert witness services. She is an Expert Consultant and trainer for both the Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center, the DHHS OTIP National Center on Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center, and the Bank of America’s domestic violence team. She can be contacted via her website contact form www.domesticviolenceexpert.org
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Julie Owens grew up in a wonderful home with wonderful parents. Her father was a pastor and there were five kids in the family. She was not aware of domestic violence growing up even though she had traveled and been to college and thought she was sophisticated, but when she got married at 32, she became suddenly aware of this pervasive problem.
She experienced psychological abuse from her new husband who was in recovery. It began as soon as they were married, as did her pregnancy with her son— only two weeks after the wedding. She spoke with a number of professionals, all of whom failed to name what was happening as Domestic Violence (DV). With all the jealousy and violent behavior escalating quickly, she was unable to remain in the relationship after only three months. Julie escaped to Hawaii to stay with her parents and even there she spoke with pastors and counselors who failed to tell her that she had survived DV.
They reconciled briefly, but the abuse began to escalate again quickly, especially after the baby was born. He was using alcohol again and at night he would harass her, accuse her of things, and torture her with sleep deprivation. She felt she had no choice but to file for divorce and when she told him, he held her at knifepoint all night long threatening to kill her and her father.
This led to a violent attack where she and her father fought for their lives, suffering stab wounds and other acts of violence. When Julie’s abuser saw what he had done to them, he fled and she was finally able to get away from him. Even at the hospital where she was taken with her father, even the emergency room staff were unable to connect Julie with resources, leading her to begin a crisis response team for victims in emergency rooms.
When Julie joined a support group she found that each woman, all from very different walks of life seemed to be telling the same story, as if they were each married to the same man. The facilitator of that group remains one of Julie’s closest friends and her book, Keeping the Faith: Guidance for Christian Women Facing Abuse, remains a powerful resource. Julie learned so many things about abuse and as a Christian, there were so many misconceptions about the marriage covenant, the socially constructed hierarchy within the family that was supported by the church in the south where she grew up.
She then became an activist to get laws passed, began working in the field with victims, and eventually opened a shelter for survivors. She and her father were able to repurpose their pain and serve others.
ONE IN THREE WOMEN HAS EXPERIENCED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND ABUSE.
Though Julie’s abuser is in jail, there are many who go free because they have not committed physical acts of violence. Victims live in a hostage situation, fearing for their lives. Julie is now working to get laws passed against forced coercion that focus on what is taken from survivors, which is their freedom and autonomy.
When Julie’s former husband and abuser was dying in prison when her son was 25 years old, she felt compelled to give her child the opportunity to meet his father. They went to visit him and spent two days with him at the prison. While she was there she realized that while everyone deserves justice, everyone deserves mercy, too. She found that he had experienced a spiritual renewal in prison and that he had repented. He accepted responsibility for what he had done and apologized for the pain he had caused. The visit was clearly providential as it brought healing and reconciliation to all involved.
As a young survivor, Julie resented the word forgiveness because her abuser hadn’t repented or apologized, but as she experienced post-traumatic growth and was mentored by other survivors, she came to learn that forgiveness wasn’t what she thought it was. Forgiveness set her free from her abuser’s control. Julie has found that the Church, and people in general, are overly eager for victims to forgive.
VICTIMS ARE INNOCENT AND THEY SHOULD NOT BE MANDATED TO SAY OR DO ANYTHING.
Victims and survivors are re-victimized by the advice of well-meaning people. Our role is to believe, support, and refer them to resources. The unintended consequences of unsolicited advice and intervention are impossible for outsiders to anticipate.
Women, and mothers in particular, face bias as survivors of crime because people like to believe that they would have done things differently. Victim blaming is so endemic in our society because others feel safer in the world if they think they would do things differently so that it wouldn’t happen to them. Victim blaming is as ludicrous as asking what Pearl Harbor was doing in the Pacific that day.
Guilt is one of the lynchpins that keeps survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and sex trafficking in a trauma response, particularly if they are mothers. Julie conducted two studies at the National Center for PTSD that centered on dismantling trauma-related guilt, which has many facets. For example, hindsight bias, which encompasses the would’ve/should’ve/could’ve mindset. She found that when survivors come to grips with the fact that they were not responsible for what happened to them, they can begin to heal.
Kim asked Julie about her opinion of how co-dependency is involved in domestic violence. Julie asserts that it has no place in DV and should be left in the realm of substance-use, where it was created. Julie speaks to trauma-bonding resulting from fear in the ways that victims are brainwashed into being attached to their abuser because they’ve run everyone else off that’s the one person left. They have to see the world through their eyes or they’re going to get hurt. They might defend them or lie for them out of survival dynamics, not co-dependency.
Julie also asserts that not all abusers are narcissists and that we have to be careful about conflating narcissism and the violence that domestic abusers do because a lot of times when victims focus on narcissism, they are more focused on the abuser than themselves. Julie feels like survivors shouldn’t focus on why their abusers do what they do. Survivors need to be focused on themselves and their safety and act in the long-term interest of their safety.
Focusing on the abuser is probably the biggest stumbling block in a survivor’s healing because it is so difficult to let go. For a victim, losing the abuser means losing yourself because he’s taken everything from you and you have nothing left. You can only see yourself through his eyes and so losing him is losing yourself, so even if you can leave, you don’t. The biochemical reactions to the constant anxiety and chaos begin to feel normal and when you don’t have them anymore, you can feel not normal. These physiological reactions feel normal. There is so much to unlearn in order to get back in touch with our bodies and ourselves.
Julie’s greatest advice for survivors is to get in a support group that is facilitated by someone who has a strong grasp on DV and will help victims maintain focus on safety. Having a safety plan for what to do when a crisis arises is imperative. Survivors don’t always want to focus on safety because it’s scary to think about being in danger and sometimes admitting they’re in danger makes them feel weak. But the reality is that only the survivor can be in full control of their own safety.
Abusers abuse because they believe they have a right to do it. It’s all about entitlement. It’s not because they have an anger problem, it’s not because they use substances, or because they had a bad childhood— those things are correlates, they’re not causative. A person makes a decision that they are going to treat their victim in that way. We know that abusers are not out of control or sick because they don’t treat everyone that way all the time. They choose when, around whom, and where they will act out.
One way to identify an abusive partner is that they always push for quick sex. It is inevitable. If you are wondering if someone is an abuser, withholding sex will reveal it. You can also create a harmless conflict and see how they behave when they don’t get their way. People who believe that they are dominant and superior believe that they have a right and responsibility to keep their partner in line. The abuser is always having to get their way and they can’t fake it for long. It’s important to set boundaries early in a relationship to identify dysfunction or potential for abuse.
Again, if you are experiencing or think you might be experiencing domestic or intimate partner abuse or violence, please feel empowered to reach out for help today. Please know that we believe you, we stand with you, and we support you in your decision about how to handle your situation.
NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE
thehotline.org
1.800.799.SAFE (7233)
TTY 1.800.787.3224
While you’re here, why not check out Kim’s book?
But Your Mother Loves You is the witty and candid tale of how a renowned psychotherapist moved from “not good enough” to “the right person” despite childhood neglect and a toxic relationship with her mother.
Everyone knows at least one person who demonstrates toxic love, someone who consistently jabs a straw in others and sucks the life right out of them. Without an in-depth understanding of how to navigate these relationships, most people continue to emotionally regress and remain paralyzed in familiar, pain-soaked patterns. But Your Mother Loves You helps readers overcome this cycle of toxicity.
Kim Honeycutt shares the real-life experience of how a shame-based, self-destructive little girl grew up to be a recovered alcoholic, entered the world of psychology as a professional, and created her own strategies to address and conquer toxicity.
This story, both witty and practical, is told through the lens of personal life experience and expert psychological strategies combined with Godly intervention. Readers learn how to either walk away from or walk with a toxic loved one without losing themselves. Covered in both vulnerability and clinical information, But Your Mother Loves You provides a step-by-step approach on how to stop toxic love and the subsequent self-abuse.