Photo credits: Photo depicts tearful woman featured in IDVRM’s official trailer. The trailer did not feature actual survivors but actors.
In November 2020, a terrible conflict erupted in Tigray, Ethiopia, that was characterised by the systematic use of sexual violence by Ethiopian and Eritrean Defence forces and other militant elements against women, girls and, even, men and boys. Documented actions included gang rape, sexual torture, reproductive violence and ethnic targeting—often described by survivors and observers as acts of genocidal intent or as ‘using rape as a weapon of war’ (EEPA, 2021; Project dldl, 2021). Survivors’ stories and accounts invariably suggest that sexual violence was used with the intent to destroy an ethnic group through biological warfare fought on the bodies of women and girls (Birhan Gebrekirstos and Mulu Mesfin, 2023; Rita Kahsay et al., 2024; World Peace Foundation, 2024). Many survivors were infected with HIV deliberately, sterilised or left without access to life-saving reproductive care due to the destruction of medical systems (New Line Report, 2025). A recent investigative article by The Guardian lays bare not only the bodily destruction caused on survivors but the state-enabled silence and impunity that continues to surround these crimes today (The Guardian, 2025). It is important to add that acts of sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, were perpetrated against women and girls even in sacred spaces, such as churchyards and, in some instances, inside monasteries. For many observers, such incidents reflected an intentional effort to desecrate the religious values of the local people and to erode the victims’ and communities’ sense of faith, identity and perception of moral order.
The scope of the sexual violence has yet to be established for the entire region, but some sources estimate hundreds of thousands of victims and survivors based on medical, journalistic and investigative reports. The Commission of Inquiry on Tigray Genocide, which conducted house-to-house census with close to half a million women and girls across the region (excluding Western Tigray) found that rape was reported in 52.9% of all the accounts of violence collected. A randomized study that involved 52 districts out of 84 districts in the 6 zones of Tigray and a total of 5171 women of reproductive age (15–49 years), found that 9.7% had experienced sexual violence (Fisseha et al, 2023). This could suggest that about a similar percentage of the female population of Tigray was sexually violated during the war, bringing the total number in the hundreds of thousands. It should be recognised, that many cases of rape go unreported due to a combination of trauma, fear and stigma (Seifu, 2024) and a hesitation among Tigrayan society, especially more conservative rural parts, to speak about matters of the body and sexuality (Istratii, 2019).
Despite a ceasefire agreement signed in 2022, Tigray has been left to grapple not only with the aftermath of the destruction and trauma left by the conflict, but with on-going violence, impunity and political volatility that make it difficult for survivors to find justice (UNHR, 2023; Seifu, 2024). Despite the November 2022 ceasefire, the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia had found a minor number of pending military court cases, highlighting a deep culture of impunity and a lack of accountability (A/HRC/54/CRP.3). Crucially, the Commission was never granted access to conduct on‑the‑ground investigations and its mandate expired in October 2023 without renewal, ending its work without fulfilling its mandate.
In the aftermath of the war, the scars of conflict are not only physical and psychological, but also deeply spiritual. Given the significance of the Orthodox tradition and faith for the Tigrayan community, most survivors of sexual violence grapple with profound spiritual anxieties and consequences that complicate their healing, exacerbated by their frequent exclusions from religious life and sacred spaces. Sadly, not all priests and religious teachers across Tigray have the theological acumen and pastoral training to respond to survivors’ concerns grounded in a solid knowledge of Orthodox theology, often making the situation worse, putting blame on survivors and pushing them away from religious life. Community bystanders also contribute to harmful attitudes towards survivors by engaging in derogatory name-calling and their further stigmatisation. Survivors of rape often end up seeing themselves as ‘sinners’ due to the violence committed against them, feeling helpless and unable to reintegrate in society. These realities increase the likelihood of suicide and mental health illnesses and have led many survivors to abandon their hometowns.
The Institute of Domestic Violence, Religion & Migration (IDVRM) in collaboration with the St Frumentius Theological College (SFTC) in Tigray have launched a project to produce a training manual for Orthodox clergy in Tigray that will build their preparedness to respond to survivors’ spiritual needs grounded in Orthodox theology, trauma-awareness and good safeguarding practices. As a first step, we have sought to collect survivor first-person accounts and testimonials to better understand the survivors’ concerns and anxieties, as well as barriers to coping and healing, where the latter is even possible. To avoid the need for conducting research with survivors and risking their re-traumatisation, we have consulted accounts collected by doctors, nurses, nuns and activists (represented in our team), which consistently point to the centrality of spiritual anxieties in survivors’ rationalisations of the violence and coping, and stress the urgency for a more systematic response by the Church and the clergy on the ground.
We discuss the current challenges and the project’s approach to start to build some awareness about these issues and to start to redress harmful understandings and attitudes. The essay does not seek to provide a thorough theological response, as this is what the project will focus on, requiring extensive coordination and study, but a mere first delineation of the issues and some key positions we think need affirming.
Survivors’ Spiritual Anxieties and Questions
Survivors in Tigray have voiced deeply troubling spiritual anxieties, questions and concerns that appear to interfere with or raise challenges for coping and healing, where this is even possible. These include:
- Was the sexual violence I experienced a punishment for past sins?
- Is this God’s way of showing that He doesn’t love me?
- Does God exist at all?
- Am I not pure/clean anymore?
- Do I deserve to go to Church or take part in the Sacraments?
- Can I pray? Is my prayer even valid?
- Should I desire another child after such trauma?
- Can I recover from the current state I am in?
These are not abstract theological queries, but real and embodied expressions of spiritual distress. Such questions, reflect a widespread, but erroneous, perception among survivors that the violence they endured is either divinely sanctioned or indicative of their past sins, reinforcing their sense of unworthiness, trauma and lack of hope.
The accounts that we have examined show that faith is not absent from survivors’ experiences; on the contrary, survivors invariably speak of their faith, including when they speak of coping. However, without proper theological and pastoral guidance, this faith-based framework often becomes a site of confusion, self-condemnation and prolonged trauma, instead of a pathway to spiritual and psychological healing.
Clergy Responses: A Mixed Landscape
The role of the Tigray Orthodox clergy on the ground is critical. In their capacity as father confessors, many priests are the first point of contact for survivors and their families, especially in marital disputes where a husband seeks divorce due to his wife’s experience of sexual violence. Yet, without centralised Church directives, the clergy on the ground have responded in ways that have ranged dramatically. Some priests, drawing on pastoral theology, offer comfort, affirming the survivors’ lack of blame and God’s unchanging love towards them. Such clergy are theologically grounded when they explain that the blame lies with the perpetrators, who—like everyone else—were created free to choose their own actions. Hence, the violence that the survivors endured was the will of free-acting men and not God, who is Love. Other clergy, however, respond with ignorance or informed by culturally informed or personal beliefs, which can reinforce confusion and survivor trauma, such as:
- Blaming survivors by suggesting that the violence they experienced was due to past sins and imposing on them penance or ‘Qänona’ (ቀኖና) as would typically happen when someone committed a sin
- Urging silence and resignation without regard to the survivor’s trauma
- Denying survivors access to Holy Communion or other sacraments
- Refusing baptism to children born out of experiences of sexual violence
- Refusing survivors entrance to churches and religious spaces
- Requesting survivors to undergo ‘Qʷädär’ (ቄደር), a special prayer and process that was originally established in the Ethiopian Church to re-accept a convert who was previously Orthodox and later changed religion or denomination.
Particularly painful are the cases of wives married to priests and nuns who were violated in monasteries or other sacred spaces. These women face not only trauma but spousal and institutional rejection, expected to dissolve marriages or abandon their monastic calling, with no or little sympathy shown to them as female victims, and no theological reflection offered in their defence. For instance, men’s decision to divorce survivors may be hastily condoned (with some priests divorcing their own sexually violated wives) without any acknowledgement of the Orthodox understanding of marriage as a ‘God-ordained bond’ based on the relationship of Christ and the Church, one founded on love, mutual support and even sacrifice.
A Theological Framework for Healing
The manual we are developing begins with a commitment to addressing the theological questions and spiritual anxieties expressed by survivors. These anxieties are not peripheral; they are central barriers to survivors’ long-term and comprehensive trauma healing because they affect the survivors’ ability to live fulfilled, spiritual lives. The testimonials we have already collected suggest that if these are not addressed, they hinder psychological, and even physical healing, evidencing the importance of spirituality in survivors’ holistic wellbeing.
The Orthodox tradition, when properly understood, provides profound resources for answering these questions to offer survivors a path back to religious life and spiritual restoration if they feel distanced from God. First, we must correct a distorted view of God as a remote punisher—a view that sadly still prevails in many survivors’ and communities’ discourses. The Orthodox Patristic tradition affirms that God is Love (1 John 4:8) and does not will evil given that ‘evil’ is essentially humanity’s selective rejection of love. Sexual violence is not divine will or punishment; it is a human sin enacted by the perpetrator(s), and one that scars the soul of the perpetrator(s) first and deeply. Survivors need to hear that the experience of sexual violence is not a rejection by God—rather, God fully sees them in the injustice they experience and embraces and consoles them in their suffering, promising them eternal peace in the afterlife through a steadfast faith, and eternal torment to the unrepentant perpetrators on His final Judgment Day.
Second, an Orthodox anthropology recognises that all humans are created according to the image (i.e., Christ-like) and to the likeness (spiritually) of God. Sin and suffering experienced in the world are not the telos – Eternal Life is. We are all, in our human weakness, struggling towards deification (theosis) in order to become God-like; the restoration of our relationship with God and our eternal union with Him. Survivors’ sexual violence experiences do not make them ‘unworthy’ of this spiritual journey, which in the teachings of St Maximus the Confessor has three broad stages: spiritual purification or catharsis (አንጽሖት), enlightenment (አብርሆት) and theosis (ሱታፌ አምላካዊ). Survivors of sexual violence, and any violence committed against them, remain fully worthy of an eternal union with God and are invited to continue to walk on the pathway of spiritual purification, enlightenment and theosis through participation in the Holy Sacraments, prayer and a life in the Church.
Third, we must reframe theodicy in pastoral terms. The question should not be “Why did God allow this?” but rather “How does God meet us in our suffering?” to redirect attention to the significance that prayer and a relationship with God can have for healing. The Orthodox tradition speaks of purification and enlightenment as stages on the spiritual journey, both of which are grounded in prayer and a continuous, productive and honest relationship with God. The survivors’ suffering, though not divinely willed, can transform into spiritual strengthening, aiding psychological healing, but only if it is met with compassion, truth and acceptance in the Church and the community.
Another powerful theological point that may be emphasised is that even if earthly justice is obstructed, spiritual justice is ever present. This can offer survivors some reassurance that even where impunity might prevail or accountability be lacking, acts of evildoing and injustices committed by one human against another are not invisible to God. The damage on the perpetrator’s soul is an immediate and tragic consequence of going against God’s Word and the perpetrator’s choice to harm another. The Orthodox faith is a soteriological faith that understands that where there is no genuine repentance and consistent action to reverse the consequences of one’s evildoing (where this is possible), the outcome will be eternal separation from God and eternal suffering.
Clergy as Trauma-sensitive Spiritual Guides
The project does not seek to train clergy as therapists and counsellors, but rather to strengthen their spiritual discernment and provide them with a pastoral language grounded in Orthodox theology and an Orthodox ‘mindset’ or phronema (ኦርቶዶክሳዊ ሕሊና or መስተኃልይ) that can facilitate, rather than hinder, the survivors’ spiritual healing. This includes:
- Understanding the survivors’ existential and spiritual anxieties and associated suffering and engaging with these with heightened theological acumen;
- Re-enforcing correct canonical rules to reintegrate survivors in Church life and facilitate their participation in the Holy Sacraments;
- Acknowledging that stigmatisation and derogatory language deepen trauma and hinder healing and re-invigorating the clergy’s sense of pastoral mission towards survivors of sexual violence;
- Affirming that survivors are made according to the image and to the likeness of God and condemning any positions that present them as ‘sinful’ or in any way ‘lacking’ due to the sexual violence they experienced.
- Enforcing the Orthodox understanding that God is Love and the soteriological aims of the Orthodox faith that see all humans as children of God who are equally valued, loved and supported in their spiritual journeys.
The testimonials we have collected already suggest that when clergy are informed, survivors are more likely to report abuse, seek medical care and feel sufficiently ‘empowered’ to begin their journey to healing. Where clergy lack training, however, spiritual and psychological re-traumatisation is often inevitable, and survivors’ holistic healing becomes unlikely.
Toward a Spiritually Mature Response through the Local Church Tradition
In line with the Project dldl/ ድልድል Model of co-creation and locally-led responses that IDVRM’s practice is grounded in, and in accordance with the Orthodox ethos guiding the activities of SFTC, the current project will aim to proceed from within the theological tradition of the local Church and the religious experience of the people of Tigray. As theologians, domestic violence specialists, sexual violence activists and doctors, we do not claim to hold the answers but rather seek to share our knowledge and experience to build more integrated responses and better support systems for survivors in Tigray. We consider ourselves students of the Orthodox tradition, seeking to apply the Orthodox phronema to respond to the suffering of our fellow humans, not only in Tigray but across Ethiopia where survivors express spiritual anxieties and are obstructed from reintegration in religious life. Our hope is to offer both theological clarity and spiritual consolation to survivors by enhancing the theological acumen and responses of clergy on the ground who, despite post-conflict realities, still act as influential spiritual guides and teachers in local communities.
This post has been authored collaboratively by Dr Romina Istratii (IDVRM), Memher Mengstu Aytegeb (SFTC) and Memher Yheys Yohanns (SFTC) with contributions from Birhan Gebrekirstos and Dawit Kassa
