No Justification

Once upon a time, a former school mate of mine called me to counsel her. Her husband was physically abusing her.  For reasons you just wouldn't even believe. One day he came back from work, and instead of her regular bum shorts, she was wearing a pair of long pants, a Jean trouser.

"Amaka, Why are you wearing jeans and not shorts like you usually do? Where did you go to?"

And that was how she earned herself that day's beating .

So as a Christian, I went to ask my Pastor the best advice to give to her.  Till today, I still get faint when I remember his response.

"What is it that she does that brings about the beatings? Let her stop! In fact, let her pre empt the beating sef.  She should wake very early in the morning, heat up his bath water,  get his food ready and not talk back at him..."

"Ehh? Pastor...you say what now? But I told you he usually has no reason for beating her!"

"No. The man is not mad. He must have a reason."

I concluded that maybe the myopic view was because I had a local Pastor; One who needed more exposure. Afterall men of God are infallible... They have to be na. The way people believe in them more than the actual scripture.

Then a friend relocated to Canada. As a very serious Church goer, she located a parish of the same church that we both attended. One Sunday evening,  she called me sounding very traumatized.

"Nne, do you know this our church is the same everywhere in the world? The same nonsense dey everywhere. Someone during sunday school asked the teacher what a friend that was being used as a punching bag by her husband should do and the teacher told her, 'Let your friend search her conscience. There must be something she does that makes him beat her.' "

WHAT. THE . LITERAL. HELL?!

Another incident. A Church folk called the Pastor to report that her husband beat her.  His first response, " What did you do?'
Not "What happened?" but "What did you do?"
Hm!

What is wrong with these folks? The sad thing is that these battered women meet these so called men of God for therapy and inadvertently get blamed for one man's madness.

There is no justification for a man to lay his hands on anybody much less the woman he took an oath to love and cherish.
How in God's name does a woman end up with the blame?!
Please! All these 'counsellors' and 'teachers' should face the issue. A violent man is violent, Simple. He is the issue. He needs to get help for self control. No one should be made to walk on egg shells for a badly brought up man. Call him and counsel him or better still,  register him in a boxing school. That way, he gets to actually spar with his peers.

There is no justification for domestic abuse. Period!