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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Lets support a domestic abuser

30 replies

Gingerkittykat · 13/05/2020 16:36

After I read this sob story about the Reverend Paul Parks and how unfairly he had been treated being sacked as a vicar for domestic abuse I decided to do some digging.

I found the [[https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/Parks%20-%20Tribunal%20Decision%20-%2010.01.20.pdf] tribunal decision here and it is clear he abused his wife for many years including calling her a fucking whore, controlling her movements, threatening her with a knife, driving towards a brick wall with her in an armlock in the passenger seat and managing to blame her for whatever has gone wrong and making out she is an abuser.

The Daily Mail are clearly sympathetic towards him, a poor veteran is now facing homelessness due to his PTSD after being failed by the church. His go fund me is trying to raise 90 000 to pay his legal fees and secure housing.

There is a lot of talk about his PTSD and the help he has had, I wonder what help his wife and children are getting for the trauma inflicted on them?

I am utterly shocked at this, painting him as a nice charitable guy who just lashed out a few times when he is actually a serial abuser.

In 2011, Lois was ill following the birth of her youngest child. The respondent refused to
allow her to leave her bed for a period of some hours. He threatened to kill her and called
her Jezabel. When he finally let her go, he blamed Lois for making him a monster.

Is an extract from the tribunal report.

OP posts:
quixote9 · 13/05/2020 23:34

I'll believe it's sympathy for past suffering that caused someone to "lash out" when the same standard is applied to women.

In Canada (?) there was a woman jailed for 30 years for killing her abusisve husband. In the news because she died of covid-19 in jail.

Cyntoia (sp?) Brown, pimped out and tortured for years as a teenager, jailed forever for killing her pimp. It took a goodamn governor's pardon to get her out. No talk of "stand your ground" stuff for her. Practically nothing about trauma. Self-defense? Extenuating circumstances? Nope. (Among feminists, yes, but regular media, no.)

The list goes on forever. So forgive me if I can't believe that it's actually sympathy for past trauma they're expressing here. Himpathy, more like.

OneEpisode · 13/05/2020 23:17

Thank you hooda your posts are always really interesting!

hoodathunkit · 13/05/2020 20:26

There is a fundraiser about this man

au.gofundme.com/f/help-a-crushed-veteran-with-ptsd-and-his-family

You can find out quite a lot about the therapy he has had from clicking on the "more information" tabs

I'm in a mad hurry as usual but some things for readers to be aware of

He is claiming, and is backed up by his therapist, that he committed the assaults on his wife while in a dissociated state.

While dissociation is real, I know having experienced it myself, there is a tendency for some mental health professionals to encourage clients to avoid taking responsibility for their actions by attributing their misdeeds to "split off" parts of themselves that they claim are a symptom of dissociative disorders.

I have bitter personal experience of witnessing this in a therapy group where women who had harmed children were invited to feel better about themselves by recovering memories of abuse and encouraging them to believe that their abusive or negligent actions were the result of dissociative states, thus rendering them not culpable.

These split off parts, sometimes referred to as "alters" or just "parts" feature in the iatrogenic condition known as dissociatie identity disorder formerly known as mutiple personality disorder.

The multiple selves featuring in DID/MPD have many similarities to the multipe selves that feature in discourses around non-binary and gender fluid identities, where people claim to be a man one minute, a woman the next and a child on another occasion.

As I have written about here before some of the same mental health organisations promoting DID/MPD also promote gender identity narratives that feature multiple selves.

I do belive that we let down our service men and women by not providing adequate therapy when they suffer from ongoing trauma.

I do appreciate that some traumatised service men and women can develop challenging and violent behaviour if they are not given adequate therapy of a high quality.

The fact is that the current provision of mental health services to traumatised people, including rape survivors and current and former service men and women is inadequate and, when offered it is often dangerous and comes with a significant risk of memory contamination.

Obviously I cannot comment on absolutely all the services everywhere in the UK, but there is a very significant problem in my experience.

This is a complex issue, however I am extremely sceptical about using split off, dissociated parst of the self as a way of obtaining a "get out of jail free" card for abusers.

Gingerkittykat · 13/05/2020 17:36

All the quotes from her are also minimising the level of abuse saying that it really wasn't that bad.

OP posts:
OneEpisode · 13/05/2020 17:14

The Daily Mail do include quotes from her.