Fear not, there is help against violence in an authentic and enduring Christian love

The 2020 Netflix series, Stateless, tells a powerfully uncomfortable story about people connected by lockdown in an Australian detention centre for asylum seekers.
There is help for you if you are subject to violence in your homeThere is help for you if you are subject to violence in your home
There is help for you if you are subject to violence in your home

We are confronted by how fear and racial hatred steadily corrodes the lives of the staff who run the centre, and the civil servants responsible. They are not free to live a fulfilling life. The violence that drives their work also wrecks home life and relationships.

The manager is sacked for incompetence. His parting shot is to broadcast Schubert’s Ave Maria through a PA system that normally announces news, like the withdrawal of detainee facilities. The impact of the music on the inmates, irrespective of their religion, is one of the most moving moments in the series.

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I’d already started watching Stateless when there was an item on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about domestic violence in Britain during the lockdown.

It was painfully clear that the impact of fear and violence depicted in Stateless is not very different from what many, many people are living with at home in Britain today. For them, the Covid-19 lockdown is real imprisonment. It is about life controlled by fear and violence.

I have been aware of the corrosive effect of domestic violence all my life, through friends, family and work. Overwhelmingly, it is women and children who suffer. But men can also be victims, as can people in same-sex relationships.

That report on the Today programme prompted many responses. Among them a question in the House of Lords and discussion of the Government’s Domestic Violence Bill, addressing the 2.4 million known victims of domestic violence, aged 16 to 74, two thirds of whom are women.

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If you are reading this and you are the victim of domestic violence, or know someone else who is, you do not have to remain silent. There are people to help you.

In East Sussex, The Portal, Freephone 0300 323 9985, [email protected] will respond, as will Rise, 01273 622 828, which is based in Brighton and Hove.

In West Sussex, Worth Services, 07834 968539, www. worthservices.org are there for you. And there is a national domestic violence helpline on 0800 2000 247.

As a Christian, I fundamentally believe that fear and love are polar opposites. Fear expresses its inadequacy in violence. Authentic and enduring love, seen most fully in Jesus Christ, is the remedy for our deepest fears.

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