Abuse the Church Didn’t See

Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in identifying vulnerable groups in churches who need support through targeted safe ministry programs. However, the hardest groups to provide support to are those who have needs that can’t be visibly seen.

Twenty-five years ago, I experienced emotional abuse and unfaithfulness in my first marriage. To the outside world, including our church, my husband was charming, capable, and helpful. He had close friendships with men at church and said all the right things. But behind closed doors, he was belittling, cruel and neglectful. At the time, I didn’t have the words to describe what was happening. “Domestic violence” sounded too dramatic. “Emotional abuse” wasn’t something people talked about. And “coercive control” wasn’t a term I had even heard of.

I lived far away from extended family and was young, so I wasn’t sure if behind closed doors everyone struggled with difficult marriages. For a long time, I stayed and tried to be a better wife and a more forgiving Christian. Because I thought that’s what faithfulness looked like.

Eventually, after years of being gaslit about my “paranoid” behaviour questioning his faithfulness, I found concrete evidence of an affair and decided we needed to separate. This was a difficult decision as I had been taught that a good Christian wife doesn’t give up on relationships. I was encouraged by the church to reconcile, but I was free from abuse, and I was safe. He demonstrated no repentance or sorrow for the harm he had caused, and no commitment to become faithful or desire to change, so for us there could be no relationship restoration.

Years later, I remarried a man who treats me with kindness and respect. He’s someone who has demonstrated that love doesn’t control or manipulate, and that Christian marriage can be a partnership where love is shown through faithfulness and commitment to serving each other.

Through the past decade in my work as a Children’s and Family Counsellor, and now as a volunteer Court Chaplain, I’ve walked alongside a number of women who have been suffering quietly in their marriage. They’ve also been met with silence or unhelpful advice when they have reached out to their churches.

Reflecting on what went wrong in my first marriage, I began thinking, what would it look like if the Church got it right?

What if a minister or pastor had seen what was happening?

What if someone had wisely confronted and challenged him?

That wondering became the seed of a novel: Restoring Hope.

When Words Open a Door for Healing

The book is fiction, but it flows from real experiences, both my own and those of other women I’ve walked with. Its purpose is to demonstrate the complex nature of hidden abusive relationships and what can help in the path towards healing. I felt that writing a fictionalised account of recovery from abuse could incorporate elements of real-life stories but protect the privacy of people’s lives.

In the story, a woman named Hope begins to rebuild her life after spiritual and emotional abuse in her marriage. She authentically struggles. She questions God. She wrestles with forgiveness. She doesn’t trust easily. And she learns that healing after abuse in relationships isn’t a certainty.

At one point in the story she is told,

“Forgiveness without wisdom can become another kind of harm.”

Like many Christian women in harmful marriages, I had been told to “just forgive” and “reconcile.” But no one in my church helped me to understand that genuine repentance and behaviour change are required for forgiveness to allow movement towards relationship reconciliation. I wasn’t counselled about the wisdom of safe boundaries or told that God’s love didn’t require me to stay in a place of harm.

In the novel, fictional Pastor Tom confronts an abuser not just with Scripture, but with courage. He shows what it looks like to be a shepherd who protects his flock, not just spiritually, but practically and emotionally.

I found myself wanting to stand up and cheer after finishing that chapter because it was what I needed, years ago. And it’s what many women still need now.

The Church I Still Believe In

This book is not a criticism of the Church. I serve as a warden in my local church parish, and I know that many church communities are faithfully seeking to follow Jesus in loving and serving others.

But I also believe that we need to grow as a Church to face hard truths, to listen more effectively, and to become safer places for the wounded and wary.

While fiction doesn’t solve problems, it can open our eyes and can start conversations we’ve too long avoided. For small groups and church leadership teams who would like to talk further about themes from the story, I have developed free discussion guides to spark these conversations.

For the Woman Reading This Quietly

If you’re reading this and thinking, this feels familiar, I want you to understand that you are not faithless for questioning abuse.

You are not unloving for setting boundaries.

And you do not have to feel alone.

Jesus does not coerce. He does not shame. He does not manipulate. He honours truth and is gentle and humble in heart. He cares more about your safety than someone else’s reputation.

Your healing matters.

Alongside a safe and trauma-informed community, your hope can be restored.

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Philippa Cleall is a Children’s and Family Counsellor, volunteer Court Chaplain, wife, mother, step-mum, and proud grandmother. As committed Christian for over 30 years, Philippa’s walk with God has been shaped not only by faith, but also by personal trials and seasons of deep testing. These experiences have instilled in her a compassionate heart and a desire to bring encouragement and restoration through her writing. Her debut novel Restoring Hope (Ark House Press, 2025) explores faith, abuse recovery, and the call to protect those who are hurting in Christian communities. She has a heart for seeing churches become places of healing, wisdom, and truth. Free discussion guides and a Bible Study series Healing with Hope are available at www.philippacleall.com .