He was a bit older than I was and his family was in ATI too. He was cute, but the best part for me was that he was “sooo godly.” We chatted online a lot, and I developed a crush on him. In other words, I didn’t “guard my heart” like I was supposed to. I went on a Journey to the Heart (IBLP speak for going to the woods and learning how depraved you are and what you need to do to be acceptable before God for ten straight days). I convinced myself that this crush was wrong and I need to stop talking to Mark. I took a “vow” of single service for a year, until I was 18. Then I would be “old enough” to get married and it would be okay to have feelings for a guy.
Of course, Mark, who still had a crush on me, didn’t take this very well and we still ended up talking a lot. He wanted to come to visit and meet my family. They told him no. He was going to ask to court me.
Eventually I got over him, but not before he called my dad and apologized for “stealing my heart.” That just proved to me how perfect he was. Now I realize if I had married him I would probably have several children by now and would still be part of everything that I now eschew.
I guess I have my parents to thank for that.
A couple years passed. I had a few crushes but nothing substantive, and I had yet to hold a guy’s hand. Then I met Elisha. I dated him for six months behind my parents’ backs. As soon as they found out, they forced us to break up. I was heartbroken, so we kept in contact…a little here, a little there. In reality, even though he said he loved me, he just wanted to see what he could get out of me. He preyed off my innocence.
A few months after the forced break-up, I went back to him, and he raped me.
He raped me, and I didn’t know it was rape because he used his finger. I bled for days and I didn’t know it was a crime. He told me never to come back because I’d refused what he wanted. I didn’t realize that I shouldn’t feel guilty. I thought it was all my fault, so I suffered the trauma in silence.
A few months later I found out Elisha was a pimp. He was a pimp who abused and manipulated me, and I had no idea. I thought it was all my fault. I felt guilty for something that would never have happened if I’d been taught to recognize abuse instead of living in it. I felt guilty when I should have been feeling free for finally being away from him. I was drowning in despair because I thought I was worthless to any other man because of what I’d done with Elisha, even though I had never consented to any of it.
But I wasn’t taught consent, so I didn’t know any better.
After Elisha I met Brent. Ours was a long-distance relationship and my parents controlled every second. They wanted to know about every text and phone call so that things wouldn’t “move too fast.” But then when I wanted to go visit him, they insisted on meeting him too. Instead they scared him off by their intensity and he broke up with me in an email. My parents had interfered with my past three relationships.
Surely once I turned 21 they would let me be an adult and make my own decisions.
What follows is mostly just story, with very little commentary. All memories are mine, aided a little by Luke for parts he was there for. Everything I wrote is true as far as how I remember it. I didn’t try to make anyone look any better or worse than how I remember them acting.
When I turned 12, my parents threw me a dance party for my birthday. I was in the sixth grade at the time, for what would turn out to be my last year of public school. At the party, my best friend, who was a boy, asked me to dance. We stood at arms length, awkwardly holding hands and swaying to the music.
That boy and I never went out, although I had a different boyfriend later that year. I think we ‘dated’ for about a week (talked to each other once in that time period), then the last day of school he sent me a note saying we needed to break up. I was crushed — even more crushed than when Mikey dumped me in the second grade for a girl because she was taller.
The following summer, my parents decided to homeschool us starting the upcoming school year. My parents had been reading and listening to a lot of new material. I think maybe they’d gone to a homeschooling conference by then. They became convinced that the way we had been living was not as pleasing to God as it could have been, and that meant changes were coming, but mostly for their children.
One evening that summer, my dad told me, “You’re not ever going to date.” I assumed this was a joke, along the lines of his “You can’t get married until you’re thirty” jokes.
I laughed, and he looked at me seriously, almost angrily, and told me he wasn’t joking. I was stunned. I didn’t know how I would ever get married if I didn’t date. The answer, I soon found out, was courtship.
What exactly courtship is, I wasn’t sure. It’s not a well-defined term, and people use it many different ways, but my basic understanding was that it’s a relationship that is intended to end in marriage, and in which the families, especially parents, are intimately involved.
Why I would be courting, my parents (and books they gave me) made very clear in the weeks, months, and years to follow. It was the only way to keep my heart safe for my future husband. I learned all the typical things here and there: dating was practice for divorce; giving away your virginity (or even your ‘emotional virginity’) would make you like a rose with petals torn off, a wadded up piece of paper, a candy bar that someone had licked. My dad told me that when you date someone, you knit your heart together with their heart, and if you break up, it’s the same as divorce – it tears all the knitting apart and breaks the yarn. It leaves you broken, and not whole for your future husband. Many marital problems, they said, were caused by people being broken by dating.
I didn’t want my heart to be broken.
I felt guilty for the boyfriends I’d had in grade school; I wondered if I had already ruined my future marriage.
Seeing as I was only twelve, I was far from marriage, so for the next few years, nothing much happened that’s relevant to the story. I just felt happy that my parents were going to protect my heart. I had a few crushes, which consisted of me wondering if THIS was the person I was supposed to marry, but nothing very serious. (I tried very carefully to ‘guard my heart’ which basically meant shutting down the romantic part of myself as best as I could.)
(Libby Anne talks about her crushes here, and I expect many formerly homeschooled women have had similar experiences.)
HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Pearl” is a pseudonym. Other names have been changed to obscure identities.
Content Warning: Descriptions of emotional, physical, sexual, and religious abuse.
Part One: Background
I am the youngest daughter of a homeschooling family.
Somewhere around my tenth birthday, my parents joined ATI. Up until that point, we were a pretty typical evangelical family. However, in the last few years, my parents had seen their older children rebel and walk away, and they didn’t want that to happen to the younger ones. They wanted guaranteed success stories, and they fell hook, line and sinker for the polished picture of bright-eyed obedient children becoming perfect adults. What my parents didn’t realize was that none of us would ever turn out like they wanted. Their dream family has fallen apart.
I’m not blaming them for how things turned out, but at the same time, they do bear responsibility for what happened under their roof.
I had a special relationship with one of my brothers. We were pretty young, so everything that happened was pretty innocent. I loved my brother and wanted to marry him and do what married people do. I found comfort hugging him for long periods of time. I liked to hid in the pantry or the attic and fondle his private parts. One day my mom found us hugging in the laundry room and, after much prying, convinced us to tell her everything we had done together. She put all the responsibility on my brother and wouldn’t let us near each other. She made me feel ashamed of what I had done and afraid of my brother. Not once in all this time did I realize that it was impossible for either of us to feel any sort of sexual pleasure because we were both prepubescent.
I simply wanted love and was desperate to feel close to someone.
My mom stayed at home and homeschooled us, but much of the time we were left by ourselves. My dad was a workaholic, and my mom, still undiagnosed, suffers from major depressive disorder and is possibly bipolar. She was emotionally manipulative, and would proclaim her love, feign sadness, or even disappear for hours or days in order to get what she wanted. In our house, it was always about making mom happy.
Another one of my brothers would act out so severely that even as a teenager my dad would whip him with a belt. I don’t know how severe it was because I usually managed to avoid whippings, although the wooden spoon still got used with frequency until I was thirteen. So, my brother, who was constantly angry, would often be left in charge whenever my mom went out. Then the brother I loved and I would be the subject of his abuse. My brother and I still have scars from what he did to us. We never said exactly what happened to us when my parents were gone, but we did tell them that we didn’t want him in charge because we were afraid of him.
I always wonder why they never pursued finding out what he had done, but I suppose it’s just their way.
And so, my abusive upbringing continued. I got a purity ring when I was sixteen, but never received sex education. I read all the “right” books: I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Passion and Purity, The Bride Wore White, Before You Meet Prince Charming, Captivating, etc. I was told to “stay pure,” whatever the hell that meant.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on January 14, 2015 under the title “Well Then, God is a Shitty Author, Part 5.”
And then we ran away and lived happily ever after, right?!
Well….
After I got up to Maine my parents began this routine where they were suddenly super nice! Sent me my clothes, told me I could come back…and then would also be really mean. Back and forth, back and forth.
I had just escaped an extremely traumatic…decade, and suddenly I was so tired. I did a lot of sleeping. Alex made sure I was able to get as much sleep as I could. I stayed between my in-laws house and their pastor (the pastor I had been talking to). At the time it was exactly what I needed, they gave me space and let me talk, let me sleep, confirmed that what I was experiencing from my parents was not okay. My dad even called the pastor and when the pastor got off the phone with him he came to me and was like, yeah, you were not remotely exaggerating about your parents.
In April Alex proposed to me, and thus began another round of drama.
But before I get into that, I want to say. I was 18 and Alex was 20. I do not recommend getting married this early. It worked out for us, yeah, but I am not going to extrapolate that to everyone. We got married because we love each other and wanted to just be together (still do) and that was the only way we knew how to do it. The concept of bounded choice applies here. We wouldn’t have been able to just move in together – legally, yes, but not….while retaining relationships with people we needed support from at the time. So it worked out, but the fact that it worked is a combination of magic, that Alex and I had a strangely healthy relationship given our backgrounds, and a lot of work.
At the very least, wait until you can actually legally buy the champagne to have at your wedding.
And I do recommend living with the person before hand, because seriously, it’s smart.
Alright, now that’s out of the way…
Within like a month or so of courting my mom took me dress shopping (I told you they rushed it!), and we found the PERFECT dress, ON SALE, so we got it, and it was in my closet. I got engaged and my parents had been nice and so I asked if they’d send it, and they said no – that they didn’t support my marriage and sending my dress would be like giving money to a homeless person (who would spend it on booze). Needless to say they didn’t offer to pay for it either. They then began to sabotage my wedding. Sending my pastor a tome of papers, emails, with notes in the margins, about why Alex and I shouldn’t be married. The pastor did his due diligence and read over the tome and was like, dude, I don’t see anything here. My parents were pissed. They pleaded, begged, tried to garner as much sympathy as they could from everyone. The only family on my side that came to my wedding, were my grandparents, even though I’d sent invites to everyone else.
Honestly though, I’m happy my parents didn’t come. I could do without the sabotage and backbiting and expressing their loathing for me and Alex. I definitely didn’t want to deal with that on my wedding day.
My entire goal for my wedding was for it to be over. I got a dress at a used dress shop, the seamstress also did the photography (she took pictures with a DSLR and gave us the SD card, she’s….not really a photographer), I basically didn’t plan much of my wedding. We chose the vows that were the shortest, I told my Mother in Law that I wanted the colors to be red and white and that I’d like to have roses for the wedding party, but that was basically all I had decided. We had a morning wedding with Hors d’oeuvres and Cream Soda and tea and coffee, and our cake was vanilla with strawberry filling and chocolate covered strawberries as a cake decoration. I walked down the aisle solo, to Concerning Hobbits, and we did not include any room for people to object.
Because I am my own, and no one else can give me away
Like 30 people came, we had a small wedding party, and I made a playlist for the reception. Tablecloths and plates and silverware were from Walmart and I didn’t give a shit. I was just happy to have gotten this far.
During the reception the pastor asked me how I was feeling and I told him: relieved.
The funniest part is that my Mother in Law was talking to people about how it was our first kiss (it wasn’t), and romanticizes that we had cream soda instead of champagne. But nothing is more lame than having champagne on your wedding that neither you nor your spouse can drink. Seriously. It’s not for lack of wanting it, just lack of ability to acquire legally.
Which is why I said you should wait until you can drink to have a wedding, you will need it.
Told you it was small 🙂
Alex and I work because we both know we’re human, we try not to invalidate each other’s experiences, and we listen. We are equal.
But that we work that way is fucking magic. There are many broken hearts and casualties in the wake of courtship and purity culture. When you start with people who have no business or ultimate involvement in a relationship having the most authority in it, it’s always bad. Just don’t. okay. Just don’t do it.
Date. Have Consensual Sex. Move in together. Get married if that’s what you want. Ultimately, be honest with yourself and your partner. Communicate. Know you’re both human.
But don’t give your autonomy to other people because “authority”. Only you know what’s best for you.
Eleanor Skelton blogs at eleanorskelton.com, is the news editor of the UCCS student newspaper, and is majoring in English and Chemistry.
I don’t have a courtship story.
But I believed in courtship. I desired that lifestyle, wanted my dad’s approval of the man who asked for me.
I loved the cultural symbolism in Jewish bethrothal ceremonies as a teenager, and I’m still sentimental about Fiddler on the Roof. I never got as far as the Maranatha story and child marriages, but it was part of my dream.
But it was the dream of one in a cage.
While living at home going to college, as a disillusioned 20 year old, I wrote this journal entry:
6/1/2010
Feeling better to some extent. [the last entry, I’d had suicidal thoughts.]
Yesterday, a thought hit me that I really can’t shake. It makes me so sad.
I realized that if I ever married, no husband would really like having Dad as an in-law. Which sort of means I shouldn’t get married. (Since in-laws are a major cause of divorce.)
I had sort of wondered if I would ever marry because I don’t know if I could ever trust someone so deeply (since I have been hurt so many times by different people).
But…that means no children. Ever.
None of my own at the very least. Probably none at all. And that hurts so much inside. It makes me cry so hard. I didn’t realize how much I wanted children one day until I realized I probably can’t.
I can’t know a ‘normal’ life of motherhood / womanhood. Probably I’ll never know what it’s like to be cherished, loved, thought beautiful (by a man).
I mean, I haven’t met any guys I really like at school, and those I do like I couldn’t really love in that way. But still, I had sort of been hoping in the back of my mind, though I hadn’t been ‘looking’ or flirting at all. But maybe this is why God hadn’t ever brought anyone across my path anyway.
Maybe I’m not meant for it – though a part of me desired it deeper than I ever knew.
My friends are growing up and thinking of marriage and getting to know some young men – not me. I have my nose in schoolbooks (though I really enjoy school)…still…
It’s not that I don’t want to rest in Jesus’ love for me – which is perfect love – it’s just that I had expected certain things would happen to me.
And now the wisdom of ever getting married doesn’t look good. I know I shouldn’t give up hope. God can change anyone’s heart and anyone’s situation, but facing the prospect of never having children and growing old alone someday is difficult.
And yet getting married really isn’t a requirement for being fully human (I read something about this in my Bible study notes). Jesus went through his whole life without being physically married – he was celibate.
So I know I wouldn’t be alone in that…it’s just hard to face all of a sudden like this.
Eleanor
Nearly five years later, it still hurts to revisit how the cage crushed me.
How these doctrines set up an unattainable ideal in adolescence that I later realized would never work in my family. So I tried to kill my desire for companionship, made myself ineligible.
I still want to be a mother. Now I think of being a foster mom if I never “find someone.” Now I know how many iridescent possibilities the world holds.
I can appreciate the significance of Jewish tradition without letting courtship and purity culture hijack it, without being obligated to follow it.
Courtship and purity culture were never mandatory, and they didn’t make me better than anyone else.
They were just another part of the fundamentalist box that I left.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on January 13, 2015 under the title “Well Then, God is a Shitty Author, Part 4.”
I went a couple weeks listening to my parents and not talking to Alex. Making sure they weren’t monitoring me, etc. As they became convinced I had moved on (apparently cutting my hair in an effort to defy them = moving on) I went into planning mode. Alex and I had figured out ways of communication my parents didn’t know about. Living in the basement does have it’s perks.
One of our friends from TeenPact was running for congress in NH that year and asked me to help him campaign, my parents agreed, though were worried I’d see Alex, I convinced them that wouldn’t happen, and so I flew to Boston and took the bus to NH (my parents also didn’t know about the bus part). Alex met me at the airport. He took the bus from Maine to Logan to meet me, and we put our faces together and smushed our lips into each others for the first time, because fuck it.
He rode with me until the last 30 minutes of the trip to NH, and I went on my way like nothing happened. He met me at Logan on the return trip too and waited with me until I had to go through security to fly home. He told me he didn’t hate me and I wasn’t damaged and he still loved me and it was good.
Came home like nothing happened, no one asked questions, although I did have to lie while I was on the bus, about the bus, which was exciting.
In November I also started carrying my messenger bag around with me (stuffed with a jacket) so my parents wouldn’t think anything of it when I left with it on my birthday. My mom had ordered me to send my promise ring back and I hid it in a drawer and told her I lost it, until Nov/Dec when I started wearing it on a chain around my neck tucked into my bra so they wouldn’t notice. They weren’t overly observant, or didn’t care once they had decided I was over it and they could continue to use me as they had for the last decade.
Meanwhile, I still had a hope chest full of supplies for my future. A hope chest that was in my bedroom as a constant horrible reminder of everything that went down in flames. A hope chest full of things I bought that I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring when I moved out. A hope chest, ironically, full of dashed hopes and broken dreams. I had about $1k of supplies in there, everything from pyrex glass measuring cups to towels and linens, and suddenly I needed a way to get rid of it. I told my parents I wanted to get rid of it because having it bothered me (which wasn’t completely untrue), but mostly, I wanted to have that giant, valuable, loose end tied up before I left.
There was a family at our church who had just moved to the area and apparently had nothing and were sleeping on towels on the floor. This was perfect. I immediately offered them everything (save for one bedding set and keepsakes) in my hope chest and they took it. Everyone was so proud of me and my generosity and I was told I would receive what I had given up 10-fold (yay christianity).
Only a small portion of what I actually had. Also I only took pictures of the kitchen stuff. 😛
But I didn’t care, and didn’t count on it. I actually felt a little guilty because I wasn’t giving my hope chest away out of the goodness of my heart, I was giving it away because of practicality. I would rather have had it go to someone else than my family be able to keep it and use as some kind of bargaining chip. I don’t tell this story often, because people tend to attribute philanthropy to something that I still feel was an entirely selfish move. I wish I had been able to keep my hope chest, but I knew it wasn’t possible.
When your entire teen life is spent hearing about how having a hope chest is so important, and it’s such a good idea, and then you don’t have one when you need it, it’s hard not to feel judged. It’s weird. The feeling of being an example for everyone you know because you’re the first to embark on the journey they’ve all been waiting for is intense too. Something I’ll need to talk about more I think, but back to our story.
I broached the subject about meeting friends at the mall by myself for my 18th Birthday in November too, to give them time to get comfortable with the idea and not flip out about it. It took a lot of work but I managed to convince them to let that happen before January, and in January, I went to Florida to get my driver’s license.
I only had one shot at getting my license. To my parents and grandparents, it was no big deal if I didn’t pass the first time, but I knew if I didn’t get it done in January, I wouldn’t be able to again, I’d have to start all over with a new permit at age 18 because I would be living in Maine at that point. So I worked really hard and I passed the test in January, much to my relief. In order to get my license, I needed my vital records (convenient), so I grabbed my birth certificate and SS card to take to the DMV. When I got back my mom asked me where they were, I said I had brought them with me and they were in my room and that I’d put them back….but I actually just hid them away safely, along with my diploma, and thumb drive with my “transcript”.
My mom was due any time in February and I hoped beyond hope that she would have the baby before my birthday. Before I left.
My birthday approached and no baby. I knew I only had one shot at leaving too, and if I missed it…….my life was over in more than one way. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but that was my reality. I needed to leave, or I wasn’t going to make it. The toxic hell-hole of my existence was becoming all too clear. I had even spent several months talking to a pastor who didn’t know my parents about the situation and they agreed it was unhealthy, so I felt like it was okay, as far as god was concerned (because I was still christian at the time) to leave.
There was this problem though: I was my siblings primary caretaker at this point, and if the baby wasn’t born before my birthday…who would take care of them?
My grandparents came up the week before my birthday, took me to get red highlights in my hair and were around to help with the new baby, so my plan was still a go. I knew if I left without the baby being born, then at least other adults would be around to take care of my siblings, and I wouldn’t be leaving them completely alone. I had some amazon money from christmas, I divvied up my stuff to my siblings and I bought them each a toy and left it in a backpack by my bed. It was, and is still, important to me that my siblings know I didn’t leave because of them, that I love them, that I didn’t want to abandon them, but I didn’t really have a choice.
I don’t know if they’ll ever know that. But leaving them tore me apart. I almost didn’t leave. But I had to.
One of my friends had joined the military and was stationed in GA and graduated the day or two before my birthday, so Alex came down for that (and to get me), and a couple other friends of mine picked me up and we went to his graduation and more relevant to my interests, I got to chill with Alex for a while. As a group we agreed not to post any pictures or anything on Facebook until Alex and I were safely away.
–aside– my online friend community was THE BEST and I wouldn’t be here without them, they were supportive and understanding, and I am so happy I know them –/aside–
Alex, me, and Jake – also, our best man, but he was in his dress uniform for that.
On my birthday, I convinced my family to celebrate it early because my plan was to go to a movie and I wouldn’t be home until the kids were in bed. So they grudgingly obliged, and my presents were all conveniently travel sized, so I could throw everything in my messenger bag along with a change of clothes, my laptop, and my vital records. Then I hit the mall and my friend and I took pictures outside of Olive Garden while we waited for everyone else to get there, we were adorable.
She was my maid of honor, she’s pretty rad. ❤
So everything was going to plan, but instead of going to a movie, Alex and I booked it out of GA and called my parents when we crossed the border.
They…..lost it. Threatened to call the police (thankfully, a police officer already knew, and also I was an adult and wasn’t kidnapped, so :P) and even wrote up a fake police report on Facebook, went between love-bombing guilt trips (“we would have helped you pack!”) to calling me a liar and deceiver and otherwise horrible person. The trip up the coast was intense, but finally, finally we were alone and had privacy and could just fucking be.
HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Achsah” is a pseudonym.
I remember attending a wedding. I was maybe eight or ten at the time and the pastor’s oldest daughter was marrying a young man in the congregation. The only real detail I can conjure up is that they made it a point to let everyone know that the couple had saved their first kiss for the wedding.
As I sat watching this first kiss, I remember thinking that it was a beautiful thing and decided to save my first kiss for the marriage altar.
I grew up in a church that was affiliated with Joshua Harris’s church. His books were at our little bookstore, in our homes, and taught like gospel truth. Couple that with my parent’s odd obsession with Vision Forum Ministries, and you have a young girl that knows nothing other than courtship.
When I was about seventeen, my mom realized that I was old enough for the boys to come after me. Or something like that. So, she bought three brand-new copies of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. She kept one, gave one to me, and one to my younger sister. For a few weeks, we would meet in the living room and discuss a chapter. I don’t remember much about the book, looking back. I remember that my younger sister hated everything about it and tried to push back against it all. But I was the example. I had to be the one that agreed with everything my parents believed.
Besides, it sounded good. My younger sister liked guys. But they terrified me. I didn’t want to have to try and navigate a relationship with one of them. Courtship promised a formula that would keep everything in neat little boxes. If I didn’t have sex and saved my first kiss for marriage and made sure to cover up then I would not get my heart broken. If I let my parents lead our relationship, then I would have the perfect marriage. And I wanted it. My life plan consisted of children and my world revolving around them, and, by default, that included a husband. But a man in the picture was just a minor detail in the grand scheme of things.
And then.
Well, then I fell in love with my best friend. Suddenly, all of the songs made sense.
The skies were bluer. I walked on clouds. Everything made sense. But me falling for a girl was so confusing. There was no formula for this new development. I wasn’t able to talk to my parents about it. My heart, it seemed, was not something I could hold on to. It gave itself away before I knew what was going on. And it wasn’t only that. I never knew what attraction was. Or consent. Or that I would actually want to engage in sexual activities. Honestly, the thought had never occurred to me.
My wife and I began dating the month after she came out to me, which prompted me to come out to myself. By then, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with this woman and that it would be good and full of happiness.
Neither of our parents were thrilled. I remember my dad saying that if I had only talked to him about what was going on, he could have talked me out of it.
We moved shortly after that.
In the year-and-a-half since we married and moved across the country, I have been slowly extracting myself from the conservative mindset. As I am trying to figure out how to be a wife, I am realizing how much I don’t know. I have found that instead of wanting me to be self-sacrificing for our family, my wife wants to pamper me and ensure my happiness. I found that instead of demanding my respect, my partner gives me hers. I found that instead of worrying about lines and how far is too far, my wife and I have been able to communicate our thoughts, concerns, worries, and desires. Previous crushes were supposed to be a big deal; part of my wife’s heart was supposed to be missing. But past crushes didn’t take something from her; they gave her something.
To me, courtship was about putting on a mask and conforming to a list of rules. It was giving someone else complete reign in my life. When we stripped away those rules and took off the masks, I found that I could finally breathe. I understand the concern our parents had when they decided to raise us with courtship in mind.
HA note: The following is written by Kathi and reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published on March 3, 2015 with the title “Is there a correlation between sexual abuse as an adult and homeschooling?”
About Kathi: Kathi is a Bible-belt midwest transplant to the beautiful Pacific northwest. After homeschooling her kids for 10 years (she decided that high school math and science were not her strongest subjects), both kids are in public school. She is a former church goer and finds herself in that unstudied demographic of middle-aged Nones. She has a B.A. in Urban Ministry and a M.S.W. (Master of Social Work). Her goal is to work with children who have been abused or are in foster care. She loves to knit, cook and read (not in any particular order). Kathi blogs at Moving Beyond Absolutes. Also by Kathi on HA: “Kevin Swanson, Child Abuse, and Dead Little Bunnies” and “A Closer Look at Karen Campbell and Lisa Cherry’s Podcast Series on Sexual Abuse Prevention.”
On February 6th, Christian homeschool leader Kevin Swanson and Steve Vaughn did a radio broadcast entitled, “1/3 of College Women Sexually Abused.” Swanson fails to mention the name of the study referencing this statistic and states that he received an email from his father with a link. The Oregonian reported in September 2014 about a survey done by the University of Oregon in which 35% of the female respondents indicated they had at least one non-consensual sexual contact event. I can only assume that this is the survey to which Swanson is referring.
The title of the radio broadcast is a bit deceiving because it seems that Swanson’s primary purpose was to discuss the findings of the Gen 2 Survey. The discussion of college women being sexually abused occurred in the middle of the broadcast.
Swanson starts off this part of the broadcast by discussing the findings of child sexual abuse in his Gen 2 Survey. Based upon self-report, 6% were primarily homeschooled, 18% were primarily public schooled, and 16% were primarily Christian (private) schooled.
The obvious conclusion of the study was that there is a greater chance of a student being sexually abused if he/she is in (or primarily educated by) public or private school.
Swanson continues by acknowledging that there is anecdotal evidence of child sexual abuse among homeschoolers because of recent stories being told. However, he warns that anecdotal evidence is not equal to statistical evidence, therefore, anecdotal evidence should not be a strong basis for change in public policy. Swanson’s hope is that the Gen 2 Survey will play an important role for family and parental rights in the future.
Moving on, Swanson then talks about the University of Oregon survey. At this point he states, “You wonder why anybody would want to send their daughters to a university like this. They’ve got a 1 in 3 chance of being sexually assaulted.” I fully understand the concern regarding the statistics from the University of Oregon survey. I have a daughter getting ready to go to college in the fall and I find myself feeling like it’s one more thing I have to worry about.
However, Swanson doesn’t end there, he says, “Homeschooling numbers are more attractive to parents who want to protect their daughters.” At this point I see where the conversation is heading. Swanson blames the college culture of sexual revolution, the grey line between consensual sex and rape (huh?), fornication, and students “having sex like rabbits” for the high number of sexual assaults. He compares sending daughters off to college to cohabitating prisons where there is no separation of men and women. In an environment such as this, surely bad things are going to happen. Right? He then suggests that a good way for daughters to attend college is by taking online classes from home. Vaughn chimes in and promotes College Plus, which is a program that is promoted and talked about by a lot of proponents of Patriarchy and the Stay-at-Home Daughter Movement, including Doug Phillips and Voddie Baucham. You can read a little bit more about Voddie Baucham’s daughter and College Plus in this article, Jasmine Baucham, CollegePlus, and Leaving Things Out.
Getting back to the original question related to the correlation between homeschooling and sexual abuse as an adult, Swanson makes one of his generalized statements that makes me so fond of him. In relation to the University of Oregon study he says, “This kind of thing was not happening 20 years ago.” It just so happens, Mr. Swanson, that the Department of Justice issued a special report, “Rape and Sexual Assault Victimization Among College-Age Females, 1995-2013.” (psssttt…1995 was 20 years ago.) This report found that “the rate of rape and sexual assault was 1.2 times higher for non-students (7.6 per 1,000) than for students (6.1 per 1,000).” The report also found that “most (51%) student rape and sexual assault victimizations occurred while the victim was pursuing leisure activities away from home, compared to non-students who were engaged in other activities at home (50%) when the victimization occurred.”
It is interesting that non-students reported that half of the incidents happened at home. How does this look for the stay-at-home daughter movement?
So, Mr. Swanson, it does not seem that there is any correlation between your child sexual abuse statistics for those who were homeschooled and adult college women who are sexually abused. Apparently college-age women can be sexually assaulted whether they are in college or not and whether they are living at home or not. What is comparable, though, is that like most children who are sexually abused, most college-age women who are sexually assaulted know who their offender is.
While I applaud your effort in encouraging homeschoolers to protect their daughters, I’m not buying your push for stay-at-home daughters.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on January 12, 2015 under the title “Well Then, God is a Shitty Author, Part 3.”
Spring Break was tense, and tension just kept rising. In May, something broke. I cannot remember what it was in specific. As much as I’ve tried to block off most of these memories, that one was just….I can’t get to it. I know it happened, I know I felt betrayed by my parents in a way I’d never felt betrayed before, but I can’t give you the context for it, because there is a wall there. I hope you’ll indulge me in taking my word for it. I decided in May that there was no way I would be able to trust my parents in the future, that nothing they told me was trust worthy. In essence, May 2008 is when I really started seeing their bullshit for what it was. I basically decided I wouldn’t tell them anything personal, anything that could hurt me, from there on out. I knew they weren’t safe and I knew that everything in my life was going to come to a screeching halt, and then crash, and then burn.
I wasn’t wrong.
My parents had started trying to make me doubt my relationship with Alex.
I feel like I should point out here, at any point my parents could have tried to get to know Alex and his family beyond just a casual hello. They chose not to. They would rather just run off of their unfounded assumptions about people than ask questions and believe the answers. They live for conflict.
Still talking to him every night for hours on end, and actually asking questions, and paying attention….none of their issues were founded. Their issues weren’t actual problems with our relationship itself, their issues were with his beliefs and his family’s beliefs being ever so slightly different from theirs!
–aside– At some point shortly after we started courting, this family we were home-churching with gave me The Courtship Series, to help me with my courtship, as I was the first in our group to start courting (and I wasn’t even the oldest). This series encouraged women to be quiet and not say anything or express any preference beyond what their suitor expressed. I’m still angry about that to this day. I’ve always been outspoken, and trying to fit inside The Courtship Series, and Josh Harris’ boxes only hurt our relationship. Eventually we were just like, this isn’t working, this isn’t us, lets go back to just being ourselves, and that was much better. –/aside–
Somehow, and I don’t remember how, my parents agreed to let me visit Maine again in June. I think this was their last-ditch effort to get me married and if he didn’t propose this trip (spoiler alert: he didn’t), then clearly he wasn’t interested.
It was that June trip, however, where we both knew things were heading south and made a plan. We took a walk for an hour – the only way we could privacy of any kind – and decided that if my parents broke us up, because that’s what it felt like was going to happen, that we would wait, and when I was 18, he would come get me, and we’d run away together. We both sincerely hoped it didn’t come to that.
Barely two weeks after I got back, mom told me she was pregnant. I was devastated. I knew it was only a matter of time before my life ended again. I wasn’t wrong.
My parents couched it in terms of losing their faith in Alex’s commitment and gave me three days to break up with him before they did it themselves. I refused. They offered me money and a car. I still refused. So I woke up one morning to an email from my parents, to me, Alex, and Alex’s parents, saying they are breaking us up and they forbid Alex and I from speaking to each other again. It was August. I was 17 and a half. I only had 6 months.
rewind One day in July my parents cornered me and were arguing with me about Alex and how he really should have proposed by now and disappointed them and whatever their other problems were, I can’t remember now. And I told them the plan we made in June. Because they were like, we don’t want to, but we will break you up if we need to. And I was like, well you can try, but it won’t work.
THEY CONVENIENTLY FORGOT THIS CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED.
When I got the email I let out a scream like Wesley in The Princess Bride. Inhuman, guttural, the sound of a broken heart. I knew I couldn’t trust my parents. I saw that they were using me now that they were pregnant again (though they would never admit it).
I ran outside to yell into the wind and my mom ran out to tell me to go back inside or the neighbors would think something was wrong (no shit).
She tried to tell me she knew how I felt (nope). The only thing I managed to say to her was “Only for six months“. She rolled her eyes, told me not to talk like that, and left.
I was depressed. I was borderline suicidal – by that I mean, I ideated A LOT, but I never tried anything. I spent 6 months with my life on hold, yet again, being the broom, doing my mom’s job, while she was in her chair being pregnant. I don’t remember saying more than a sentence to my parents on any given day for those 6 months. I didn’t talk except to get orders. I kept my head down and stayed quiet.
I thought about cutting, I thought about killing myself. I had a gun (16th birthday present), I knew where it was, I knew where we kept the ammo but I was terrified of the kids catching me on my way out (there was this empty lot a few houses down that I would go to cry alone and was away from everyone who could get hurt) and also dooming myself to hell. I had a few friends who knew I was thinking about suicide, who told me it would defeat the purpose, and if I went they’d go with me, which staid my hand at the time. First, good point, Second, well, that wouldn’t be okay, so. I didn’t cut because I thought I had a low pain tolerance, and I didn’t want to be caught or noticed. My #1 goal was don’t be noticed. So, I didn’t do anything to cause alarm (read: more lectures).
I was not okay. And no one cared.
I felt so worthless. So so so unbelievably worthless. My parents, having broken us up, left me to pick up the pieces and they moved on with their being pregnant and shit. Didn’t try to check in on me besides this attempt at comfort: Well, you got to experience love, so.
Because of purity culture, I was sure that even Alex wouldn’t love me still/anymore. Because I was damaged. I knew for sure no one else would. I had loved. I had given my heart away. Therefore, even to return to the person who loved me, I would still be tarnished and unwanted. I would be the glass of water with a drop of milk in it, turned into this disgusting murky substance.
As a teenager and into my mid 20s, I was surrounded by courtship doctrine.
Swimming in it. Drowning in it. I not only owned a copy of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, but was also on Joshua Harris’ mailing list to be notified when it was published. I purchased his following book “Boy Meets Girl”. My shelves were also full of titles such as “Passion and Purity” by Elisabeth Elliot, and pretty much everything written by Eric and Leslie Ludy – even the early books that are now out of print. At the age of 22, I would go to a weekend retreat for young women hosted by the Ludys.
Until the age of 13, I had it in my head that I would wait on dating until I had reached 16. Anything younger than that was too young. I had heard things like “don’t kiss on the first date” and waiting until marriage for sex was pretty well solidified in my mind. The big mystery to me why people acted like waiting was so hard. Then again, my reaction to “The Talk” was pretty much nausea and contemplating a life of celibacy. I had never heard of anything so gross.
At 13 years old and just months after I was clued in to the workings of a marriage bedroom encounter, I attended one of Josh Harris’ early conferences with my mom and a group of homeschool friends. This is where I first heard the concept of courtship in modern times even before the publication of Harris’ first book.
My heart was presented to me as a fragile piece of china that could be damaged and would never be worth as much once given away.
While I don’t remember this specifically coming up at the conference, it’s not uncommon for girls who have had sex get the degrading comparison that says “no one wants a piece of chewed gum”. My feelings were apparently in just as much, if not more danger of losing their value.
I bought into the whole thing. No kissing until marriage. Guard my heart so I don’t “give away pieces of it I’ll never get back” to men other than my mysterious future husband. I have to admit, my ready adoption of this way of thinking was not so much because I really thought it through, but because I had defined myself from an early age by being the “good girl” that never caused any trouble and made my parents proud. This could put me at a level above most of the other good kids. In short, I was just as arrogant and self absorbed as many other 13 year olds. It just manifested itself differently.
Unfortunately, I had hormones and feelings because I wasn’t a robot. Of course I fell for a couple of guys before I met my husband. I felt like I’d failed because of it. I got older and tried to get away with more form fitting tops, which resulted in bad conflicts with my mom because boys are visually stimulated, unlike me, apparently. Yet, there were cute, physically attractive people around me and I noticed. That made me feel like there was a deviant freak just under the surface of my good girl veneer. I had older female relatives outside of this restricted culture who were definitely checking out Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman’s boyfriend, which did give me a clue that there was maybe something normal about noticing someone physically attractive. They were the worldly ones, though, so it didn’t really count so much.
There was a huge romantic void in my life. My desires and feeling were growing naturally and my circumstances weren’t keeping up. I tried to get into the habit of writing letters to my future husband and telling him how I was praying for him to fill that gap until I met him. I managed a grand total of 3 because it felt so forced. After we got married, I don’t think we decided to keep them. They were a lot more of a disturbing window into what kind of crazy system I’d bought in to than they were remotely sweet or romantic.
I got older and into my 20s my parents were still telling me I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I should work on being ready, which was an odd, vague concept that never got remotely clarified when I asked. My life was in a frustrating loop. My fantasies revolved around a Disney-esque escape thanks to a man who would rescue me from the dead end of my life. That was never going to happen; so then I fantasized about a successful career, leaving home, and adopting a child to raise as a single mother. That scenario was almost equally likely to come out of my circumstances.
The doctrine fell apart because I was human.
I had wants and needs and feelings. I started dating (yes, real dating) my husband within two weeks of my relationship falling apart with my family. I was out of the house, 24 years old, the expectations were gone, and I had a minor inkling that the relationship methods I’d been taught weren’t quite spot on. What I didn’t know is how long it would take to undo that much programming.
The first time he kissed me, I couldn’t sleep that night and cried the next morning. I was a failure. In truth, I was robbed of the joy of my first kiss by the toxic mentality that placed my value on how shiny and new everything was about me. I wondered if I had ruined our future marriage. The voice of Bill Gothard spoke in my head reminding me that wives who went “too far” with their husbands before marriage ended up resenting them for it. Of course, this is based on the premise that the men were the ones that actually wanted any kind of physical connection.
Fast forward to marriage and a surprising lack of resentment toward him. Yes, we were technically virgins when we said our vows, but we weren’t exactly models of purity culture by that point.
We’d been through the ceremony, but now what happens in the marriage bed after this much fear, indoctrination, and taboo regarding sex? While we had the impression from the culture around us that this was supposed to be fun, for me the concept had only progressed from “gross” to “clinical”. There are pairs of teenagers that have done better on their first attempts. I’ll steer away from the TMI, but we were seriously poised for failure. It takes some time to undo that damage.
What’s worse is what happens when your sexuality has been the property of some mystery man your entire life rather than your own.
When this person does show up, in your mind, it’s all still his. Sex is not something you can say no to when you’re just not into it at the moment when it never belonged to you to begin with. As we re-evaluated our beliefs from the past together, I realized that my body is actually my own: this is something my husband had not realized I wasn’t on the same page about. If anyone doubts that men need feminism, just imagine what it’s like to be a good man who respects his wife to find out she hadn’t been telling him when she didn’t want to be intimate. It’s an incredibly disturbing moment.
For the first few years, I still dressed pretty conservatively. I even checked with my husband when I was worried an outfit might be too revealing because he would possess an insight into a man’s mind that I don’t have. At least, that’s why my dad used to check my outfits. That was incredibly confusing to my husband. If I was happy with it, he didn’t think it really mattered what he thought of it or what any other man might think of it.
Gradually, I learned it wasn’t my job to control what men thought. What that left me with was shame. The reason to cover and hide myself so completely was missing, but the impact it had on what I thought of myself remained. My body was something to be hidden. It was dirty. It was wrong. I’m still working on getting over that.
While there are still some remnants from the past that have to be filtered out of my mind, overall I’m in a much healthier place. This summer will mark my 6 year wedding anniversary to a man that wants me to respect myself and hold my own. My view of my body is getting healthier all the time.
The best part, though, is knowing I’ve taken charge and that I’m not just waiting on the actions or approval of someone else to take the next steps in my life.
Homeschoolers Anonymous 