Month: October 2015

Family was my Everything: Alida’s Story, Conclusion

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Alida” is a pseudonym.

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In this series: Part One | Conclusion

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Sometime during that first semester away, one of my Facebook friends shared an article from Homeschoolers Anonymous. I’d heard the name Cynthia Jeub before in the speech-and-debate social circle, so I clicked.

I read a lot of things on HA. It was a really empowering experience. Some of it made me thankful that my family wasn’t as extreme as those in the stories I read. Most of it made me furious, especially the stories with strong themes related to courtship, purity, and financial independence, all of which are important parts of my personal journey.

I started doing my own research.

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t trading one set of evils for another. The first time I had heard about HA, it was by overhearing a conversation a few years ago between another homeschool mom and my own. They were talking about some kind of online forum founded by angry former homeschoolers who had been ‘seduced by the lies of the world’ during their time at secular college. The people behind HA, they said, wanted to bring down homeschooling and turn our young people against their parents. I was told never to visit the site.

I’m a communication major, an editor for my university’s newspaper. A major theme in our department is the importance of a journalist’s role in truthfully telling a stranger’s story. The journalist must set aside their own thoughts and opinions, focusing on what happened in their subject’s life. The journalist must truly believe in the concept that every person’s story is inherently valuable and worth telling. These ideas really resonated with me. I focused on learning to listen to someone else’s narrative. Developing a more generous, more open-hearted attitude helped me expand my ability to love people.

As I learned more and more about the broken systems and frameworks of the culture I had been raised in, I started to feel more and more at ease in society.

The strangeness of being in a different world wasn’t as bad once I learned that my little corner was the strange one after all. I learned about feminism, race relations, and LGBTQ issues in American culture. I decided to educate myself on American subcultures I had previously been shielded from.

Learning about others allowed me to learn about myself.

Discovering who I am helped push me a little closer to fearlessness in many ways.

Learning the truth about my sexuality was a big turning point for me. For a long time, I had suspected that either the entire rest of the world was lying about sex being so exciting and being the first thing on their minds or that there was something very wrong with me. I had always assumed that my lack of sexual attraction to people was some kind of unfortunate result of the way I was raised, that maybe after trying for so many years to not think about sex (because that’s “wrong”), I had somehow gotten really good at doing so and lost the ability to function normally. But as I got to know myself more, I came to be at peace with the fact that I just have a different sexual orientation. I’m Asexual. (check out http://www.asexuality.org/home/?q=overview.html to learn more).

As I struggled to understand more and more about the details of myself and the people I was meeting, I tried to decide if it was worth coming out to my family. I knew what they would say. All my life, I had been told that no other sexual orientations existed aside from being straight. Everyone who “said they were gay” was just confused and “lost in the ways of this world.” So I said nothing.

The research hours I was putting in toward learning about everything from religious cults to feminism to minority relations and beyond was all starting to take shape. My views on social issues shifted, and I found myself re-considering the anti-LGBT systems I had been taught to believe. I’m now pro-marriage equality. How had I believed for so long that it was OK to legislate the behavior of our entire country’s population based on the religious beliefs of one sub-group? I channeled all the Libertarian arguments my speech-and-debate friends had repeated over and over and decided to really follow up on my belief that everyone should have the right to pursue happiness on their own terms as long as it doesn’t harm others.

By second semester, I had started dating someone, and after a while, we discussed that we were both interested in forming a longer-term relationship. So I told him about my sexuality. For me, deep emotional and intellectual intimacy was not inherently linked to sex, I said. I wanted to make sure that before we made a bigger commitment, he knew I didn’t want to have sex with him, and my desires probably wouldn’t change. He told me that sex was really important to him in a relationship, and he just couldn’t see anything long-term working out without it. It hurt, but I guess I knew what I was in for. We decided to stay friends. As time has gone on, our friendship has somehow managed to persist; I even slept over at his house once when I was having roommate trouble. We are affectionate and still kiss, but my feelings toward him are platonic now. And we still never have sex.

My dad called and said he was worried about my moral conduct. Through my brother, he had found out about the time I slept over at the guy’s house. He demanded to know if I had had sex, and I told him the truth. No, no sex was had. To myself, I wondered for the first time — was it really any of his business? He kept pressing me for answers, so I came out to him and did my best to explain asexuality as I sobbed on FaceTime. I don’t think it was fair that I wasn’t able to have this conversation with my family in person, in my own time, and on my own terms.

The academic year ended, and for athletic reasons, I spent most of the summer away from home. I wasn’t near my family when Marriage Equality became legal on June 26. I was so happy, but knew it was important to pick my battles, so I didn’t post anything on Facebook about my support for the ruling. I hardly even commented on my friends’ posts.

All I wanted to do was have a peaceful relationship with my family.

But they knew.

By the time I came home with just under three weeks of the summer left, one of my siblings had already told me that I “didn’t belong in this family anymore.”

It hurt so much, especially after having sacrificed what felt like everything, over and over, in the name of family.

I didn’t know what to do. I noticed that living at home was different than it had been. Early on after my arrival, we had a confrontation about our now-differing political opinions. Even though the confrontation sucked, I was glad we had clearly articulated our differences and could move on. But we couldn’t move on, apparently.

My mom found ways to make so many daily interactions and normal tasks into opportunities to remind me how wrong my opinions were. I felt so trapped, like I couldn’t take a step in any direction without setting her off. Within the week, my parents and I got into yelling matches that covered everything from suicide rates in LGBT kids (who are up to 400% more likely to attempt taking their own lives as straight kids), to the Facebook incident from the year before.

I remember so clearly the moment one of those nights when my mom told me that I didn’t have a right to privacy.

I hate the way I screamed back at them; I hate the way I had absolutely no control over my response to the situation. I felt like a separate person. I was out of control. Something about being cornered, not being accepted, being talked down to over and over had triggered intense anger problems I thought I had gotten over years ago. “You need professional help,” they told me. They wanted to take me to see a pastor for counselling.

I immediately said no to that. I was open to getting help from a professional psychologist for my anger, but there was no way I wanted to sit down with someone who would speak with me from only a religious perspective, trying to ‘correct’ the fact that I had a different political opinion than them. We compromised and found a psychologist who was a Christian but also had a formal education in mental health, etc. Talking with her was really good for me.

We talked more about my anger and sadness. She didn’t tell me that I was evil or give my any of the fear-mongering rhetoric I somehow expected.

She listened to what I was feeling and affirmed that I wasn’t crazy for thinking things on my own.

She said it was ok that I was mad when my mom said I didn’t have a right to privacy. She said I was correct in having switched my Facebook password last year. She said it was ok that I have my own opinions, and while it was nice that I was still was on board with Christianity as a whole, my family still would have no right to make me feel like shit if I wasn’t. It felt so good to have someone say that I’m not crazy or a bad person for doing and saying and believing and acting the way I choose to.

And that’s where I’m at now. With one year of school left, I’m doing my best to figure out how to become financially stable as quickly as possible so I can complete my transition to adulthood by living on my own after graduation. I still believe that my family is the most important thing in my life, and I want to find a way to live at peace with them. But I think all this stuff I have to experience is a good thing. I’m ok with it.

Doug Wilson Continues to Twist the Truth About Child Molester Jamin C. Wight

HA Editorial Team17 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Natalie Rose Greenfield’s blog My Naptime Journal. It was originally published on October 1, 2015.

For background information about Doug Wilson, Jamin C. Wight, and Natalie Rose Greenfield, see The Jamin C. Wight Story: The Other Child Molester in Doug Wilson’s Closet.

Once again the spotlight is being taken from the only place it has ever belonged.

Once again accusations against my parents for allowing a ‘secret courtship’ to occur between my 14 year-old self and my abuser have been plastered all over the Internet. Comments about my physical appearance as a young teen are being used to redefine the nature of the criminal activity. A severe and dangerous contorting of my story by people who were not there is taking place and while this means a very uncomfortable re-shaming for myself and my family, the deeper concern is what it means for future victims. The marginalization of a serious and devastating crime does not bode well at all for others who will suffer abuse in the future.

The church’s lack of acknowledgment of mishandling the situation and causing further devastation to myself and my family and to the individuals my abuser would go on to hurt is disheartening and deplorable. It is tarnishing not only Pastor Wilson’s reputation but the reputation of every pastor in the CREC denomination and every last member of those churches, for that matter. Another such pastor reached out to me earlier this morning, one removed from this particular situation, and he expressed his severe disappointment in how I and my family were treated and are continuing to be treated. He wanted me to know not everyone in the CREC feels this way and that there is serious questioning happening from within.

I have heard from myriads of others, some within the denomination and some not, who are appalled at the way sexual abuse within the church is handled. Personally, I have experienced a wide range of emotions concerning all of this but the overwhelming emotion recently has been sadness – sadness that a pastor’s gross misunderstanding of abuse, consent, and criminal behavior has resulted in such harm and shaming and will inevitably result in harm to others who are abused. I am sad that he cannot humbly admit wrongdoing and begin to rebuild a system which is broken, a system which perpetuates abuse and marginalizes victims, which in turn creates a ripple effect of devastation and pain.

Doug was not in my home when my parents discussed allowing Jamin to court me.

Doug was not in the room when they spoke about whether or not we should be allowed to hold hands. I imagine he may have something in writing from them, perhaps asking advice or seeking guidance on the situation and this may shed light on the foolishness and naivety of some of my parent’s choices. The fact that my parents trusted a dangerous and conniving criminal to respect the boundaries they had set is no secret and yes, it’s embarrassing. They have sought my forgiveness heartily over the years and I have unconditionally given it. But I would like to also point at that neither was Doug in the room when my father said, No. I am not comfortable with this. There will be no courtship. There will be no hand-holding. Do not touch my daughter and do not foster a relationship with her. Doug was not with my father as time dragged on and he began to become suspicious of Jamin. He was not in the hallway with my father where he sat on a chair in the middle of the night watching my bedroom door to make sure I was safe and protected. If only he had known my father’s heart, and yet he is quick to place blame on two parents who were deceived and manipulated by a calculated criminal.

The fact that my parents were deceived does not change the nature of Jamin’s crime.

The fact that my parents had moments of naivety does not merit letters from a pastor requesting leniency for a man who the prosecuting attorney called ‘a textbook pedophile’ and place a massive amount of blame on a father already broken by the news of his daughter’s abuse. The fact that I was beautiful and stood taller than my abuser does not lessen or change the sickening nature of what he did to me. The fact that I was infatuated with him and lived to please him does not mean that I was asking for it. Nobody asked for it.

In a response published on the widely viewed Christian publication, The American Conservative, earlier today, Doug calls what happened ‘sexual behavior’. A conveniently softened term for the abuse that took place.

Doug says about he and the elders, “we wanted him (Jamin) to pay the penalty for that criminal behavior, which was a species of statutory rape.” What Jamin did was severe far beyond statutory rape, though it did include that. Jamin targeted, groomed, and molested me for several years while manipulating and deceiving every other person around him in order to cover his crime. Jamin is a sexual predator in every sense of the word.

Doug writes “The reason we did not want it (the crime) treated as pedophilia is that her parents had bizarrely brought Jamin into the house as a boarder so that he could conduct a secret courtship with Natalie. So Jamin was in a romantic relationship with a young girl, her parents knew of the relationship and encouraged it, her parents permitted a certain measure of physical affection to exist between them (e.g. hand-holding), Natalie was a beautiful and striking young woman, and at the time was about eight inches taller than Jamin was. Her parents believed that she was mature enough to be in that relationship, and the standards they set for the relationship would have been reasonable if she had in fact been of age and if the two had not been living under the same roof.”

This paragraph is so full of untruths it makes my head spin.

I’m not sure if Doug is deliberately twisting the truth or if he is basing his version of events on incomplete information (my sincere hope is that it’s the latter), but these allegations are simply false. As I said before, he was not there for any of this. There were discussions of this nature but the truth is that Jamin and I did not develop and maintain a romantic relationship under the encouragement of my parents. It is false, and from where I stand it is dangerously close to slander. Additionally and most importantly, why the hell does it matter? These grandiose and desperate attempts to take the attention away from what matters and place it where it does not belong is truly frightening and it’s hurting real people.

Doug is spending an awful lot of time and energy saying things like this “But please note well: Things like her height, apparent maturity, and parental knowledge of the fact of a relationship are simply irrelevant to the morality of Jamin’s behavior. They are irrelevant to the criminality of his behavior. They are irrelevant to whether Jamin was selfishly manipulating a young girl, preying on her for his own selfish ends. They are irrelevant to whether it was statutory rape or not. But such things were not irrelevant to whether it was pedophilia.” when he should be spending time and energy saying “We messed up. We defended a really bad guy. I wrote to a judge and an officer on his behalf and it directly effected the outcome of the sentencing. We failed the victim, we didn’t extend to her the love of Christ and offer her the resources she so desperately needed. We blamed her parents disproportionately, we talked about her physical appearance and said it changed the nature of Jamin’s crimes. We are deeply sorry and we want to learn how we can educate ourselves and how we can do things differently in the future so that more innocent people are not hurt and shamed and subsequently driven away. We want to learn from this mishandled situation.”

Will that ever happen? I hope so very much that it will. I hope we can stop talking about the things that don’t matter and start talking about things that do, like how we can spot potentially abusive situations before they escalate and destroy lives, how we can educate our youth to have strong voices about their own bodies and sexuality, how we can create a system in which criminals are not readily trusted and given opportunities to re-offend, how we can foster an environment in which victims feel as though they are unconditionally supported and cared for, free of suffocating judgement and blame…This what truly matters.

Doug sums up the way he feels about his role in my situation “…it is also a snarl where it is possible to look back with a clean conscience.”

He has no regrets and clearly no intention of apologizing. He has twisted the truth. He has shone a light in a place where there is nothing of relevance to see, and in so doing has pushed into the shadows a hideous truth that promises to grow and swallow Lord knows how many more innocent victims.

That is the story we need to listen to. That is what we should be talking about.