2025 RBB Thriver Award

Karen’s story is a clear and potent case of deliberate toxic control by church leaders and a “Christian” husband. The primary mission seemed to be enforcing male headship while ignoring Karen’s real and normal needs. She explains:

Shirley Fessel’s book is a wonderful source of help for those trying to make sense of a senseless relationship. She guides you through steps and helps you to understand the dynamics of what has taken place, and she gives hope to those who are hurting. If I had had access to it, I could have spared myself years of agony.

As it is, I had to take the long, hard road to enlightenment about the smokescreen some church leaders use to enforce women’s bondage in marriage.

I had met my “Christian” ex-husband at a “Christian” university, trusting that the label was safe. In fact, they were using “Christian” to ensnare victims.

Any coercive method used by an individual can be used by an organization to enforce social status pressure. Methods were both overt and subtle, involving disparaging statements and attitudes, group embarrassment and condemnation, disregard, group exclusion and isolation, and shaming normal behavior with misused faith ideas. My awakening to the classic tactics did not keep pace, left me physically and emotionally ill, and bereft of any support.

My Physical Needs Disregarded, Attacked or Worsened

A few weeks before we were married, he hit me over a game of RISK. Red flag: physical attack. My coping tactic: I can handle it.

After the first two years of marriage, we found a church where my he ex-husband had known the pastor. My ex-husband was chosen to be a deacon. The nursery needed help, but I explained I didn’t want to be in the nursery for at least three months after the baby was born. He ignored me and put me on the nursery schedule every Sunday. He slowly became more demanding. Red flag: ignoring my needs. My coping tactic: I thought he would change.

While I was isolated far from town without a car, my health worsened. I fell into a deep depression. Church members bashed me for not being able to function. I stopped playing the piano.

After I had my third child, a boy in 1986, I needed surgery for gallstones two weeks after he was born. The depression continued. Red flag: needs disregarded; my coping: feeling trapped

His Way or No Way- Abandoning Reciprocal Relationship- Extreme Self-Centerness

A week or two after our marriage in July, 1978, he said if I gave him a divorce, he wouldn’t sign it, and he wasn’t going to give one. He listed small “infractions” as his reasons. Red flag: no regard for my needs; my coping: shelving my misgivings.

Our first child was born in December 1980. He angrily complained that the light was keeping him awake and harangued me. After feeding the baby, I laid on the floor over the heat register in the baby’s room with a blanket over me and the baby, Red flag: emotional outbursts not proportionate to situation: my coping tactic: trying to make sense of it

At one evening service, the pastor had my ex-husband and I pray for those who wanted prayer. We held a deacon’s hands and prayed; he went down in the spirit. When he got up, he said that he felt the power of God come from me. I could feel my ex-husband’s jealousy so thick I could have cut it. Red flag: his resentment of my strength; my coping: ignoring the degree of his envy

Attempts to Isolate and Enforce Dependency

One year we went to my family’s family reunion. He took me aside and said he didn’t like my family because they swore, drank, and smoked.

We were approved for a HUD home and moved 10 miles from town and we only had one car. He refused to buy a second one, and so it was difficult to get around. If I needed to take the baby for a well check, for example, I had to get the baby ready, drive him to work, go to the appointment, and then pick him up after work.

We had another baby, a girl in 1983. My friends didn’t want to come and visit me as I was too far out.

Red Flag: ignored; my coping tactic: not seeing this as part of larger plan to isolate me.

Church Collusion

Every time we had a disagreement, my ex-husband would go the see the pastor.

One Sunday morning after church I was talking with some in a small group and a deacon came up, bumping me with his hips to push me out of the conversation. Red flag: body disrespect; my coping: bewildered (confusion).

Another Sunday morning I needed to sit down during worship, which my ex-husband despised. The same deacon put his arms under mine and lifted me up. He snarled at me: “You need to stand while worshipping!!!!!” before he released me and I sat down again. I knew my ex-husband had spoken to him.

I found out my ex had been regularly talking to the pastor about my not being a submissive and obedient wife, seeing him as head and the leader of the family. Church meetings were weaponized to degrade me. The pastor brought deacons and their wives as deaconesses in but excluded me. Being publically excluded hurt. Red flag: slander My coping: why didn’t the pastor talk to me? (confusion, trying to make sense of it)

Another time the pastor came to visit, talking about marriage and what I should do. God reminded me of Matt 18:15-17, which told us how a church should handle issues. This cleared confusion for me. The pastor wasn’t authorized to kick me out of the church. We were married. Red flag: covert attacks; my coping: fear, pain, and shame. (effects of emotional abuse)

Then the pastor called a deacon/deaconess meeting and included me! We all gathered in the living room and the pastor began the meeting with prayer. But the first order of business was his telling me I needed to apologize to my husband. My ex-husband turned to me with an element of surprise on his face to hear an apology.

I just said I was sorry as I didn’t know what I was apologizing for. Pastor said it wasn’t a true apology and that I would need to give a true apology to my husband.

After the meeting one of the deaconesses came to me and said she had seen my ex-husband talking to the pastor before the meeting, crying on his shoulder saying he didn’t know what to do with me. The pastor told him that he would take care of it.

Red flag: group scapegoating; my coping: flabbergasted, embarrassed, ashamed, my gut fell, a lump in my throat, and my mind spinning (emotional abuse)

In 1987 the pastor held testimony time on Sunday evenings. It had been about two and a half hours, and the pastor spoke up and said, “There are only two left.” I said, “I don’t have anything to say at this time.” I could tell he was angry. He sat for two to three minutes. He got up, gave a testimony, and began to close the service.

The lady I spoke to before church stood up and said something on my behalf but the pastor immediately cut her off and stated, in front of the congregation, “Karen has a willful spirit she needs to take care of!” I was sitting on the floor nursing my baby, on the other side of the church. Red flag: public shaming; my coping: convincing ex-husband to leave the church.

Glimmers of Light, Efforts to Escape

Shortly after the testimony disaster, I asked him for a divorce. I just wanted out. He said nothing but a few months later he said, why don’t we go to Bible school? Even though we had baby No. 4, a boy, he promised we could move back to Oregon afterward. We packed up and went to Dallas, Texas, the worst place for my allergies. Red flag: love-bombing; my coping: believing in a geographic change and a second chance.

I had pleaded to God for understanding and clarity and if I couldn’t, I was going to take my life. I made a futile attempt and the school referred me to a professional counselor. I was scared but I wanted what God had for me. If I wanted to graduate from school I needed to continue with the counseling and we were both required to take the marriage course. A medical doctor prescribed medication. The ex-husband was livid that I hadn’t kept problems secret and gone only to him for guidance.

The counseling helped me begin to deal with childhood sexual abuse. When we graduated, it had been eight months since I remembered the abuse. One day on his way to work, he handed me a note and walked out the door. His stipulations were he did not plan to pay my medical bills or for medicine; 2. I needed to get a job. and 3. We aren’t going back to Oregon.

These represented 1. Lack of support, 2. Unreasonable demand, and 3. Betrayal of my trust.

In psychological crisis, memories were still coming back. I tried to look for work but his cruelty was taking its toll.

The ex-husband began to work on his credentialing. After he finished his worker’s certificate, he began to abuse the children, spanking them and leaving bruises from a stick, He justified it by calling it discipline,

The abuse became more frequent and severe. One night, after he hit one of the boys very hard,I told him he better not do that again. His response, “The kids are going to do what I tell them to do when I tell them to do it!!!”

I had no one I could confide in but my gut said I needed to get out with the kids. I couldn’t move back home with a verbally abusive mom, so I decided to stay in Dallas.

Red flag: changing the game to keep me off balance; my coping: treading water until I could find solid ground.

For the second time he feigned concern for me, saying he needed to not work in order to help me. After I returned, he intensified the discard -and- devaluing game. He sabotaged every effort as I tried to complete remaining hours toward a degree to be financially sufficient. Red flag: crocodile tears; my coping: recognizing the ploys

He checked out of life. He was neither father nor husband. But I did not have the language to explain what had happened, for the behaviors, and why nothing was working.

I had to have surgery and was laid up for a time. God said, “Research narcissism.” That was my wake-up point. The mental checklist I had kept for all those years 26 and a half years was finally checked off. I had answers for so many of my mom’s and husband’s behaviors and there was hope. It was not my deficits that were responsible for chaos and tormenting cycles.

I was finally able to leave in January 2005. I went home to care for my ailing mother. It took fourteen years for me to understand what had happened to me. I lived in a confused mental fog for years.

My mother was very verbally, emotionally, and psychologically abusive and controlling and religious. I am an empath and dearly seek to help others. This combination developed patterns of behavior, attitudes and beliefs that fed into marriage to a narcissist and religiously abusive groups later.

I learned to ignore certain things the ex-husband said or did. I didn’t understand the different denominations’ teachings, but marriage as legal control for women was one belief held in common by fundamentalist, evangelical, patriarchal, and many misogynist churches. I saw that in marriage I was to be totally obedient and submissive, letting the husband be the “so-called” head and leader of the family, making all decisions while the woman was to cater to the privileged and entitled man, forgetting our needs to serve him. I am not Jesus Christ! The men must go to Jesus just as everyone does. They aren’t exempt and women are not the gap fillers.

Spiritually my eyes have been opened to the structure and beliefs of most denominational churches. I can walk as a free woman and I can have an opinion, and I can say no to a man or a church authority, and I can ask questions.

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Published by Fessup