HA Editorial Team

The Legend of the Bitter Alum: Hope’s Story, Part One

September 22, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team1 Comment

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Hope” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author. All other names herein have been changed as well.

Part One

The story of my admission into PHC is an odd one, starting from the first moment I heard of the college and culminating in interviews between the admission counselor and both of my parents. I’m convinced the admissions counselor only let me in because it was easier to do that than it was to answer my dad’s questions.

It was my mom who wanted me to go to PHC. When she first made the suggestion, in my junior year of high school, I told her, as diplomatically as possible, that it was a perfectly horrid idea. A college full of would-be politicians out to change the world sounded like something straight out of Dante. Why would anyone ever volunteer as a tribute (I mean, student) for a school filled with ego-maniacs and egg-heads? I was pretty sure the students were all going to be arrogant jerks, not at all worth knowing.

Unfortunately, I soon learned that one didn’t have to be a would-be politician-in-training to be an arrogant jerk.

I don’t even know how to explain what happened that next year, because it was so unexpected and so devastating. Nobody ever saw it coming.

“Joseph” was such a close friend to me that I called him my brother and people believed me, even though we didn’t look anything alike. His mother, Jackie, was a second mother to me. She was a bit… intense and somewhat tempermental, but I never thought much of it. I mostly just laughed off her oddities and moved on with my life. She had this thing where she loved to mock people who had y-chromosomes. Joseph was her favorite target.

Anyway, Joseph started dating this girl, Emily Schmidt, and, when things started getting serious, Jackie started getting even more demeaning and bullying than was normal for her. She didn’t like the girl or the girl’s family because they weren’t about to let Jackie dominate them the way she dominated Joseph. Or at least, that’s what I heard after the fact. I hadn’t been paying attention.

Then came the point Joseph had enough. He decided he was moving out of the house that very day and he called his future in-laws over to help him. Jackie flipped out. She called the police and my parents and then, when neither group proved able to stop things, she called everybody else. Everyone in the county heard all about how Joseph had been duped and stolen away from her by a sinister cult family who were out to steal brides and grooms for all their freaky cult kids from the good homeschool families of our tight-knit community. The Schmidts had been well-respected and liked up until that point and I’d enjoyed their company as often as I had opportunity. But now, friendship and openness was replaced with suspicion and confusion.

After ten years of reflection, I can be flippant and matter-of-fact when telling the story, but, at the time, I fell into a depression so dark that I had no idea I was even sad. I thought I was merely bored as I flopped on my bed and imagined how it would be if I fell asleep and never woke up. I looked at the vitamins on my shelf and wondered if it was possible to overdose on them and whether it would be obvious and whether it would be like falling asleep. My SAT results came back and they were good (even though I’d refused to study for it). A torrent of college flyers followed in their wake, but I didn’t care. They bored me to pieces. I threw most of them away without looking at them.

The only thing I was good at, the only thing I enjoyed, was writing. But even at that, there was nothing to write about except for school. I had no life apart from my homeschool group and simply couldn’t think of the future enough to contrive a plan.

The summer after high school graduation, I reconnected with Dave, a childhood friend I hadn’t seen since his family moved away ten years earlier. I remembered him as the happy-go-lucky person with whom I’d reconnected, but his other friends and his senior picture testified to a very recent bout of deep depression. Like myself, he was a homeschooler, but, by this point, he’d spent a year at PHC. To hear him tell it, PHC was all that was good and worthwhile in the world – hard work, lots of study, prank wars, and good friends.

Between PHC and self-reflection, there was no better cure for depression. For me, it was worth a shot.

There was no way I could attempt to live away from home at that time, but, fortunately, PHC had a distance learning program and the enrollment process was less arduous than the one for on-campus enrollment. I spent two years in the program, recovering my good spirits as I built up my friendships. Finally beginning to feel optimistic again, I tackled the “real” application, which included numerous essays, including one on cultural engagement.

I still thought “lead the nation and shape the culture” was a silly, egotistical motto. There was no way I had any intention of running for office. And while I could probably have gotten in by writing about how being a wife and mother is “shaping the culture,” the thought never occurred to me. Instead, I wrote about the need for respect in public dialogue and how we needed to try to understand people even when we think they sound ridiculous. I used the examples of Christians who hate Harry Potter and atheists who search for extraterrestrials because I figured that way I couldn’t accidentally insult the unknown reader. I sent it in, feeling that this at least was an important issue and one that I did care about passionately, even if it wasn’t one of the big issues like pro-life.

I managed to score an interview, but the admissions counselor had a hard time believing I was ready for higher academics. She asked to talk to one of my parents, so I had my mom call. My mom felt that she did a horrible job of representing me, so she had my dad call. According to my dad, the conversation went something like this:

Counselor: do you feel that your daughter is ready for the challenge of higher academics?

Dad: what criteria are you using to judge that?

Counselor: what do you mean?

Dad: if you’re asking that question, you must have some criteria in mind, some standard that makes you think my daughter isn’t ready. If I’m going to answer your question, I have to know what you mean by asking it.

I think my dad was actually disappointed that her only answer to the question was to accept my application.

In hindsight, my timing was hilarious. I sent in an essay about the need for respectful dialogue during what would later be called “the Great Schism.” This was the horrific breakdown in communications and tempers that led to a high turn-over among the professors, the replacing of the school president and most of the deans, and a mass exodus of students. The aftershocks were felt for years – in fact, I am convinced that they are still being felt in ways that are not always obvious.

Although it is often called the Great Schism, I prefer the term “the Tragic Meltdown,” which I picked up from one of the professors who left the next year. As a nuclear physicist’s daughter, I find the comparison to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island to be satisfyingly exact.

Of course, I didn’t know about any of that at the time of my application. The campus-quake didn’t hit the online forums of the Distance Learning community until late in the semester. I read everything I could find about it. There were two items in particular; I think it was the Faith and Reason lecture by one of the professors, and an article for the Herald (the school newspaper) by someone from the Administration.

If I was hoping those would explain the commotion, I was disappointed. From a conflict standpoint, these made zero sense.

The lecture was completely orthodox Christianity. The article was completely orthodox Christianity. The school is supposed to be a completely orthodox Christian institution, so how in the world two orthodox Christians even managed to be in conflict on a point of complete orthodoxy was a mystery to me.

The only cause of conflict that I could scrape out between them was that the article interpreted the lecture in what I considered to be one of the most unlikely ways possible. The lecturer said that the Bible isn’t a how-to manual for building a house. The writer of the article said that the Bible isn’t a how-to manual, but it does require that a house-builder build his houses in an ethical and moral fashion. Perhaps if I’d been the lecturer, I’d have been insulted that something so basic wasn’t inferred from the text.

Maybe the whole problem was just a stupid insult war?

Dave told me to be very careful and to seek to be informed. He liked the professors and distrusted the official line. Said this was the worst time to start at PHC. I agreed, but I wasn’t going to delay any longer. Anyway, it couldn’t really affect me, could it?

It probably wouldn’t have either, but my first semester didn’t go as planned.

Part Two >

I Am a Homeschool Alumna. I Care.

September 19, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on September 8, 2014.

You know what I’m growing really tired of? Comments like this:

There are vastly more kids in public school than are homeschooled, and abuse and educational failure are widespread in those institutions. More kids are affected by the incompetence of the public schools, yet you have devoted quite a bit of time and space here to homeschooling failures. Your interest in homeschoolers seems disproportionate to the problem.

I’m sorry, what? It reminds me of Heidi St. John’s comment:

The relevant excerpt being:

Kids are being beheaded in Iraq and Syria right now because their parents profess Christ. That might be something you could “move on” to . . . . frankly, we’ve got bigger problems in this world right now.

What I’m hearing in these comments from homeschool parents is that the only possible reason homeschool alumni could possibly want to protect homeschooled children from abuse and neglect is to “get back at” their parents.

That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Of course, these homeschool parents claim—with absolutely zero evidence—that homeschool alumni like myself are not interested in protecting homeschooled children but rather in taking down homeschooling. I’m having troubles finding words for how angry this complete unwillingness to actually listen makes me.

What I also see, though, is a lack of interest in the needs of current homeschooled children, which is odd given that most of this is coming from homeschool parents. Those who say that it is illegitimate to worry about homeschooled children until the problems in public schools are fixed are suggesting that the interests and safety of homeschooled children are secondary to those of public schooled children. As a homeschool alumna, this is really insulting. Yes, public school children matter. And so do homeschooled children. All children (and all people) matter. All children have an interest in a safe upbringing and a basic education—including homeschooled children.

I am asked why I should care so much about the wellbeing if homeschooled children, as opposed to some other cause. The answer to that is very simple. I was homeschooled. Aren’t alumni expected to care about their alma mater? For me, that’s what homeschooling is. I have sympathy for homeschooled children because I was one. I am a homeschool alumna.

Homeschool alumni have created a variety of organizations in the past year and a half. There is Homeschoolers Anonymous (HA), where homeschooled alumni who had negative experiences share their stories. There is Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO), which focuses on awareness raising and support for alumni. There is Homeschooling’s Invisible Children (HIC), a database of documented cases of child abuse or fatality in homeschooling settings. There is the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), which focuses on research, resources, and policy.

Homeschool parents can say what they want, but they can’t make us go away.

Failing to Understand the Dynamics of Abuse: Focus on the Family on Adrian Peterson and Corporal Punishment

September 18, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on September 17, 2014.

Yesterday, Time Magazine’s parenting section featured an article by Focus on the Family’s Jared Pingleton. The article, titled “Spanking Can Be an Appropriate Form of Child Discipline,” addresses the controversy surrounding Adrian Peterson’s suspension from the Minnesota Vikings on pending child abuse charges after leaving open lacerations on his son. In his article, Pingleton makes a case for corporal punishment while clearly calling Peterson’s actions abuse.

Pingleton begins his article with this stand-alone sentence, in bold:

We won’t go wrong if we exercise a firm and consistent hand with a soft and loving heart.

The problem with this statement is that Peterson was exercising a “firm and consistent hand,” and he was disciplining “with a soft and loving heart.” After being taken to court for injury to a child and then suspended from his team, Peterson apologized for causing his son harm, but he was very clear initially that he did not see anything wrong with his actions—and for good reason. After administering corporal punishment to his son, Peterson texted this to the child’s mother:

Never do I go overboard! But all my kids will know, hey daddy has the biggie heart but don’t play no games when it comes to acting right.

This is exactly what Focus on the family and other groups that advocate corporal punishment promote—the argue that a parent should act from a heart full of love, but exercise a firm hand when it comes to obedience and doing what is right. Is it any wonder that Peterson felt he had done nothing wrong? Many Americans were outraged by pictures of Peterson’s son—and for good reason!—but it makesabsolutely no sense to respond to this case by stating that corporal punishment should involve “a firm and consistent hand” and “a soft and loving heart.” In Peterson’s case, it did.

A parent can have “a firm and consistent hand” and “a soft and loving heart” and still abuse their children.

Before I go on, a few words of background. My parents used corporal punishment and did everything “right,” but my experience was nevertheless negative. Today I practice positive parenting and gentle discipline with my own children. Based on my experiences and a wide array of research, I would like to see corporal punishment phased out. I consider all forms of corporal punishment ethically wrong, though it’s worth noting that I do understand that not all are equally harmful. Slapping a child on their clothed bottom in an attempt to make a point is not the same thing as striking a child with an object and leaving bruises or welts. I dislike the term “spanking” because it erases these sorts of distinctions and everyone seems to define it differently. Finally, to avoid confusion I tend to adhere to the guidelines generally followed by social services and reserve the label “abuse” for corporal punishment that causes bodily injury (i.e. bruises, welts, and worse). That is the definition I will be using throughout this post.

My concerns with Pingleton’s article are twofold. First, Pingleton others child abusers to the extent that he makes it impossible to consider that seemingly normal, loving people could be child abusers. The reality is that child abusers often get away with their actions because they can fool those around them into seeing them as kind, loving people who would never harm their children and thus can’t be child abusers. Second, Pingleton reinforces the many justifications child abusers use to defend their actions. Child abusers are rarely malicious or sadistic. More often, they believe that they are just trying to do right by their children, and that pain is how children learn. Yes, Pingleton condemns child abuse, but he seems to lack any understanding of the dynamics of abuse. If he actually understood these dynamics, he would see that his words also serve to make abusers invisible and reinforce their justifications.

Here is an example of how Pingleton others child abusers:

There is a giant chasm between a mild spanking properly administered out of love and an out-of-control adult venting their emotions by physically abusing a child.

In creating this dichotomy between abusive and nonabusive parents, Pingleton is clearly putting Adrian Peterson’s actions in the “out of control adult venting their emotions by physically abusing a child” category. But there has been no indication that Peterson was out of control (i.e. that Peterson was not in careful control of his actions the entire time) or that he was venting his emotions (Peterson has been clear that the punishment was administered to teach his child to not shove other children). Pingleton is trying to shove Adrian Peterson into a child abuse box he has fashioned many sizes too small, because he doesn’t understand who child abusers are or how they operate.

The reality is that there is no “chasm” between “mild spanking properly administered out of love” and “an out-of-control adult venting their emotions by physically abusing a child.”

Instead, there is a sliding scale. There is also no clear and obvious line between a “spanking” and a “beating.” This is what corporal punishment advocates like Pingleton miss. Adrian Peterson was not on one side of this scale or the other—he was somewhere in between. Different people put the line between acceptable parental behavior and abuse at different points on that line, as is made obvious by the fact that some Americans have defended Peterson’s actions as not abusive. This idea that there is a “chasm” between reasonable discipline and child abuse is nonsense.

We often have this caricature of a child abuser in our mind—out of control, angry—and while some abusers do fit that profile others do not. But when we believe abusers look like this caricature we have created, we create a situation where Adrian Peterson can still insist that he is not a child abuser—because he does not look like that. But the reality is that child abusers often don’t look like that at all. In fact, sometimes they look like this:

This idea that child abusers are some sort of monsters and that normal, loving people do not abuse their children a serious, serious problem.

It allows us to miss and overlook very real abuse because the perpetrators are nice, and smile, and say the right things. The reality is that abusers are very good at fooling others and looking picture perfect, and if we don’t understand that we will be likely to brush warning signs under the rug when they do appear.

Pingleton goes on:

It is vital, however, that spanking be administered within proper guidelines. The reports about the punishment meted out by Peterson to his son, and the consequent injuries his son suffered, indicate his behavior on that occasion was far outside those boundaries.

If this is what he wants to argue, Pingleton needs to drop his whole “we won’t go wrong if we exercise a firm and consistent hand with a soft and loving heart” schtick, because Peterson followed that short line of advice and did go wrong. Does Pingleton seriously think that parents who abuse their children don’t believe in being firm and consistent and administering discipline out of love? Does he not know that most parents who abuse their children say things like “this is for your own good” and “I’m only doing this because I love you”? Is he unaware that child abusers say things like “children need a firm hand” and “we have to be consistent”?

I’m glad that Pingleton recognizes that Adrian Peterson abused his child, but I’m troubled by his total lack of understanding of why it happened. He seems completely unaware that what he thinks is a caution against abuse—”we won’t go wrong if we exercise a firm and consistent hand with a soft and loving heart”—is in fact the very argument Peterson used to insist that there was nothing wrong with what he did when he left his son with open lacerations. If Pingleton wants to protect children from being abused, he needs to stop making abuse-enabling statements like that.

That Pingleton has no understanding of the dynamics of abuse is bizarre given that he is the director of Focus on the Family’s counseling program.

Pingleton goes on to give some guidelines for appropriate corporal punishment. He says that it should only be used in “cases of willful disobedience or defiance of authority,” and that “a child should always receive a clear warning” first and understand why they are being punished. The punishment should take place in a private area and should be “lovingly administered” and should not involve “the potential to cause physical harm.” Afterwards, the child should be told once again why they were punished, to ensure that they understand and have learned the intended lesson.

From what I have read, it appears that the only point where Peterson did not follow Pingleton’s advice was in causing physical harm—the open lacerations. But once again, the line here is less obvious that Peterson thinks. My own mother carefully followed the guidelines Pingleton laid out, but she did on very rare occasions leave bruises or welts, and on one occasion she drew blood with a switch. She nevermeant to leave bruises or welts, and certainly never intended to draw blood that one time. But when you’re hitting your child’s soft, bare bottom with a wooden paddle or a switch cut from a tree (my mother used both), it’s harder to make sure you don’t leave bruises, welts, or cuts than one might think. And as Peterson has said many times, he never intended to leave open lacerations—he did not realize that the switch he used would do that much damage to his son’s skin.

What I’m trying to point out is that while Pingleton thinks he is drawing an obvious and simple line between abuse and appropriate discipline, the line he is drawing is not nearly as obvious or clear as he thinks. A parent following Pingleton’s guidelines for administering corporal punishment can leave marks on a child completely unintentionally. After all, striking a child naturally involves some risk of harm. Lydia Schatz’s parents used a plastic switch to administer corporal punishment. This switch broke down the girl’s muscle tissue, and when fragments of muscle tissue entered her bloodstream it caused liver failure.

Lydia’s parents never intended for this to happen and in fact had no idea it could happen, but Lydia still died.

Later on in his article, Pingleton makes it very clear that corporal punishment should hurt. After explaining that parents have a responsibility to discipline their children, Pingleton quotes from the Bible:

No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on however, it yields the fruit of peace and righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11)

Pingleton argues that teaching children right from wrong should hurt—even that it must hurt—but that it’s for the child’s own good and will yield longterm fruits. This idea that discipline has to hurt, but will pay off in the long run—this was also part of Adrian Peterson’s justification for his actions. Whether Pingleton realizes this or not (and given his understanding of the dynamics of abuse it is likely that he does not), this is yet another argument commonly used by abusers—what they’re doing should hurt, they say, because that’s the only way the child will learn their lesson.

In his texts to his son’s mother, Peterson explained that the reason he went on for so long was that the child did not cry. He took that as an indication that he wasn’t hitting hard enough to get the message across—because getting the message across had to involve pain. Because of his belief that correcting his child’s actions must involve pain, Peterson denied that he had done anything wrong.

Pingleton ends his article with this paragraph:

Parenting is a hard job. None of us do it perfectly. And to make it even more challenging, none of our kids come with an instruction manual attached. But our children need us to do it to the best of our ability, with all the wisdom, love, gentleness and strength we can muster. We won’t go wrong if we exercise a firm and consistent hand with a soft and loving heart.

Pingleton finishes with the same sentence with which he began. He clearly wants to emphasize it. Pingleton says over and over again that abuse is a tragedy and is wrong, wrong, wrong, but he does not seem to recognize that his own words are inadvertently reinforcing child abusers’ justifications for their actions. Does he not realize that child abusers say things like “I’m only trying to make them a better person“? How is he unaware that child abusers say things like “pain is how children learn“?

Ultimately, this is one of my biggest problem with the arguments made by advocates of corporal punishment. Most of their arguments in favor of corporal punishments are the same arguments used by child abusers to justify their abuse. Their only caution against abuse appears to be clarifying that corporal punishment should be administered out of love rather than anger, but this plays into incorrect stereotypes about what child abuse looks like and is less helpful than they seem to think. Suggesting that parents use their own judgement to make sure they don’t go to far is equally unhelpful.

Most child abusers tell their children they are doing this because they love them, and most would deny that they’ve gone too far, or that they ever intend to harm their children.

How can Pingleton not see how his own words can be used to justify not only corporal punishment he considers appropriate but also actual child abuse? How can he not see that child abusers are not all evil monsters venting their anger on their children, and that suggesting that there is a huge “chasm” between child abusers and other parents serves to keep parents from self reflection and prevent people from seeing child abuse right in front of their eyes? How can he be Focus on the Family’s head of counselingand not see this?

I Am a Survivor: Elizabeth W.’s Story, Part Two

September 18, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

< Part One

Trigger warning: graphic descriptions of physical and verbal abuse.

Part Two

Looking back, I can see that after we moved and no longer had immediate neighbors to hear the screaming when she beat me or my brother, she felt much less restrained and the violence increased in frequency and intensity.

If I was quiet and withdrawn (which was pretty much always) and mom decided my quietness was “rebellious” or “disrespectful”, or if I forgot to say “ma’am” after addressing or answering her she would begin screaming at me, calling me a disrespectful whore/slut/tramp/bitch, while simultaneously slapping me across the face hard enough to knock me down. She began to use bigger and better weapons than her hands and the bristle side of a hairbrush. I was beaten with length of copper pipe, pieces of two by four, a thick wooden yardstick (which broke on me eventually), thrown down stairs, had my wrists twisted until she forced me to my knees, screaming in agony, was dragged around the house by my hair and my head bounced off any and all hard objects. She tried to suffocate me several times, held me down and forced a pillow onto my face with all her weight, while screaming she was going to kill me and she wished I would die. I had my head and face forced under a pouring tub faucet and held there until I thrashed my way out of her grasp.

These things happened at least several times a week, sometimes more than once a day, interspersed with the verbal abuse, and her refusal to address me by name, but rather as “bitch” or “slut’. I was regularly told I was “ugly”, “fat”, “disgusting”, “crazy”, and “stupid”.

For those who think I may have been a “difficult” teenager from 11-16 or so when this pattern really took off – I never raised my voice to my mother, never cursed at her, never had friends over or snuck out, never wore anything other than black, baggy clothes (which is hardly slutty), never disobeyed a direct order, never did an illegal drug, smoked or drank, and only ever argued by politely stating I didn’t want to do something, or I thought she was mistaken. The latter two always resulting in a beating or several, so rarely did I dare say no to anything.

In public, my siblings and I were always perfectly behaved, rarely speaking, never making noise of stepping out of line. Mom only had to give us that angry glare that promised later retribution for us to think twice about doing anything at all. There was no one around who knew us beyond the brief homeschooling afternoons with the LEAH group who could have possibly known that anything was terribly wrong in our house. We were so isolated, there was no one I could have spoken to, even had I found the courage to do so.

We’d been trained to fear the authorities and Child Protective Services and had no friends or family to speak of.

Mom “volunteered” me to go work at St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen once a week to win points with the local Catholic church she dragged us to once in a while. At first I was furious that she had volunteered me without even asking me, but after a while I realized it was a few hours a week out from under her thumb and grew to enjoy it. Mom also signed me up for confirmation classes at the local Catholic church, after she had begun attending workshops run by a fundamentalist Catholic homesteading family who also homeschooled their twelve children.

Mom decided it was time for all of us to get more “spiritual”, and began three times a day “prayer circles” where we would all be forced to sit and read aloud from the Bible and sing hymns that the “Fahey’s” (the Catholic family she was imitating) sang. She instituted a clothing change, head-coverings for the girls (I refused), she began making ankle length dresses for herself and us (I also refused), and only long sleeved button down shirts for the boys. She threw out our shorts and t-shirts, started getting rid of her college feminist lit, and any and all of our books she found too “worldly”. Mom sold the computer my grandparents had bought for us, got rid of our tiny video and cd collection, and began instituting even stricter rules for us to follow. So during these changes I attended confirmation classes at the local church, which I despised and between the forced Bible study there and the forced Bible study at home quickly grew to despise Christianity and the confining, narrow-minded tenets the Bible espouses. I never spoke my thoughts aloud, but my mother could tell from my face when I wasn’t agreeing or complaisant enough and my face invariably led to new beatings and verbal abuse.

Mom began to use the Bible as an additional weapon, quoting the “Thy shall honor thy father and mother”, and telling me that God said I must be obedient and respectful to her. (Even though I was always obedient and never voiced any disrespect.) This just furthered my disgust for the Bible, although I now see that, like homeschooling it was simply being used by my mother to her ends, not necessarily bad unto itself.

I was falling deeper and deeper into a depression that seemed like it was swallowing me whole. I started sleeping really late every day, shuffling through my duties with my head down and my mouth shut. I began snapping at my siblings when mom wasn’t looking, I had no patience for their demands for my attention or their quarrels. My brothers began fighting viciously with each other, first when mom was out, later even when she was home, resulting in beatings for them as well as me. I knew my mother hated me, I didn’t know why.

I tried so hard, for so long, to be what she wanted me to be, obedient, respectful, responsible, but never seemed to find her approval or even a respite from her rage.

I am, at my core, fundamentally an honest person, having no talent for acting, for pretending to be happy when I am not. This was my downfall. If I had only been a better actress, perhaps I could have fooled her into thinking I was, in fact, what she wanted me to be, rather than merely doing whatever I was told with my face betraying my misery and despair.

I tried to kill myself twice.

Once, at summer camp, I stepped in front of an oncoming semi truck with a feeling of exultant freedom and calm. A boy who liked me happened to be standing nearby and turned around and yanked me out of the road as the truck went by. The second time, my brother Alexander and I were coming home from the paper route and I decided the easiest way to end my misery would be to poison myself. I picked a handful of deadly nightshade berries and was about to throw them down my throat when my brother jumped up and slapped them out of my hands and started screaming and crying hysterically.

I felt sad, resigned, and guilty for terrifying him so, and didn’t try to kill myself again.

1997, was the last year of my paper route as mom decided it was allowing me too much freedom and she wasn’t making enough money off of it/me to be worth the trouble, so she called my boss and “quit” for me. I was devastated by this, as it was among my last outlets for momentary respite from the hell that was my home.

The following year I got my first real job, washing dishes at a local pizzeria for minimum wage. I was ecstatic at being able to get out of the house a few evenings a week and being allowed to save a little money to buy a puppy for my sixteenth birthday. After about six months, my mother called and told my employer that I could no longer work there because I was sleeping with a married 30 year old man who was a coworker there. All this because I had spoken to him on the phone (about a dog) while she was listening in, and she said she could tell we were having sex by the tone of his voice. Really. There was no other evidence for her accusation, that was it. Mom convinced herself that this was true even though both he and I told her she was mistaken and crazy. She then beat me, off and on, for the next two days for this delusional belief until I could stand it no longer.

I packed my things and lived on the streets of Buffalo for next three weeks.

I camped out in the basement of an abandoned apartment building, slept in a refrigerator box when I could, and mostly just tried to process what on earth to do next. Going home was not an option, if I stayed another minute I knew I would kill myself, I felt as if I was being slowly crushed by my life and there was only a spark of life and spirit left. After a few weeks, I found a runaway shelter who helped me track down my biological father who came and got me.

My mother’s insults and degradations became ever more creative and hateful, designed to wound. They did. To this day, simply recalling these things makes me shake uncontrollably and I do not believe that my littlest sisters should have to wait until things get as bad as they were when I was driven to the streets before someone should step in. I have only waited this long because I had hoped that mom had changed her behavior as she claims, and because she is still my mother and I was, (and still am) hesitant to speak the truth and have her never speak to me again.

Contrary to what I’ve been told by DCS when I made a statement regarding my two sisters still trapped there, physical abuse is not the only threat to a child at home. Emotional and verbal abuse leave damage far deeper, with myriad consequences to a child. Emotionally fragile, sensitive teenage girls do not need to have what little self confidence and self respect they have destroyed by the one person in the world who is supposed to support them, believe in them, and give them strength to take on the struggles of life. My mother does not, and never has provided any of those things.

On the contrary, her words tore me down to the ground and I have spent half my adult life rebuilding my self image and confidence solely because of the things she said every day of my childhood.

End of series.

We Are Not The Threat

September 17, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Darcy’s blog Darcy’s Heart-Stirrings. It was originally published on August 28, 2014.

There’s a new threat to homeschooling, folks! That’s right, and it isn’t the evil government or liberal feminists or Satan. The homeschooling apocalypse will be ushered in because of….*drum roll*…..

The Homeschool Alumni.

Yup. Those pesky people who just won’t keep silent about their upbringing. Who dare to tell their not-so-happy stories, the good, bad, and ugly. Who dare to paint big, bold, dark colors on the beautiful Thomas-Kincaid-like portraits of homeschooling. Who dare to stop pretending that everything in their world was beauty and light and are exposing the ugly darkness.

Their stories of abuse and neglect and confusion are apparently a threat to a way of life that is upheld as God’s Ideal Plan for all mankind. (Looks like “God’s Plan” had a few unexpected loose ends.)

What I’d like to know is this: what, exactly, are we a “threat” to?

If people telling their stories is a “threat” to your way of life, you should really re-evaluate your way of life. It says a lot about who you are and what exactly you’re trying to protect and preserve when the very people that lived as you do are merely telling their own stories and you’re quaking in your boots because of it.

If our stories of real-life experiences as homeschooled children, and the real-life effects of those experiences on us as adults, are a threat to you, then perhaps instead of trying to silence us, and instead of trying to discredit us, there should be some extreme makeover-type remodeling being considered within the homeschooling community.

Do you know who the real threat is here?

Because it isn’t me or my friends. It isn’t those of us brave enough to speak out and fight for the rights of people who have no voice. It isn’t my friends who were beaten, raped, neglected, deprived, and put down; it isn’t the victims. To point fingers at us and call us the “threat” is either extremely ignorant or extremely cruel.

The real threat is the abusers.

The self-proclaimed leaders who steal, kill, anddestroy the lives of the vulnerable. The men and women who cry “Parental rights!!” then turn around and trample on the rights of their children. Who fight tooth and nail to keep their victims powerless.

And the second greatest threat are the people that defend them, support them, and fail to call them out on their abuses.

The folks who stick their heads in the sand and deny, deny, deny. They seem to no longer care about the very real faces behind those stories, but only that the image of Almightly Homeschooling is preserved intact. Their institution has become more important than the people that comprise it. THEY are their own worse threat. THEY are doing more to cause the implosion of the homeschooling movement than anything my friends or I could say.

If you point at victims and call them “threats”, you are telling them that protecting their abusers and the environment that facilitated their abuse is more important to you than truth and healing.

Victims are only threats to the prospering and perpetuating of abuse.

Homeschooling parents, we are not your enemy. How could we be? We were once your children. We are the products of your movement. We are just no longer voiceless and if that is a threat to you, then maybe you should rethink what and who it is you’re protecting.

“An entire generation of homeschoolers have grow up and they are telling their stories, the good, bad, and ugly. Most of us have lived our whole lives under crushing standards, expectations, and facades, and we are done. So done pretending. There a lot of successes and a shitload of failures that came from the conservative homeschooling movement and we will talk about all of them. Because information is power, empowering the next generation to help avoid the awful parts of ours. They NEED to know what went wrong, from the perspective of the guinea pigs. We alone can tell that part of the story, paint that part of the picture, speak from the very darkest places in our hearts about the parts that went so desperately, terribly wrong. What do people think? That we share the worst parts of our stories to billions of strangers on the internet for the heck of it? We share because WE FREAKIN’ CARE. We care that others not go through what we did. We care and desperately want to save others from needless pain. This isn’t some joyride we all decided to take part of. This shit hurts, and the derision we experience from family and friends is daunting, but staying silent while others suffer is a far worse pain than honestly exposing our own wounds. “

~On Homeschooling, Stories, and Dismissal

I Am a Survivor: Elizabeth W.’s Story, Part One

September 17, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

Trigger warning: graphic descriptions of physical and verbal abuse.

Part One

My name is Elizabeth and I am a survivor.

I am the oldest of seven children, two of whom are still trapped in the isolated, abusive world created by our mother. My mother began “homeschooling” in the fall of 1993, immediately after three of her four children were returned to her by the state of New York. I had been placed with my biological father for the previous nine months, while my siblings were in a foster home as both their biological father and our mother were in jail.

Our mother had been charged with child endangerment and was mandated to attend counseling.

I am unsure whether she did or not, however, her abusive and violent behavior continued only to escalate after this time. I had been miserable being placed with a father who was virtually a stranger to me, and over a thousand miles away from my brothers and sisters. In October of 1994, I finally convinced my dad that I wanted to be with mom and my siblings, so he took me back. A decision I would live to regret in many ways, but looking back, would not have chosen differently at the time.

My mother informed me that from now on we were all going to be “homeschooled” so that no more nosy teachers would be interfering in “our” (her) lives. One of my youngest step-siblings had made some mention to a teacher of the rampant domestic violence that routinely rampaged through our home. (Thus the subsequent investigation and arrest of both our parents.)

Homeschooling was the first step my mom took to make sure no one could get involved through children’s loose tongues ever again.

While mom had always been explosively violent with me I didn’t remember quite so many constant beatings and verbal abuse before this all happened. After my return from my dad’s house, mom began to turn on me with sudden and unpredictable rage. She slapped me across the face multiple times, knocked me down and dragged me around by my hair, repeatedly slamming my head off the floor or walls. All the while screaming that I was lazy, stupid, ungrateful, “just like your father”, “you’re a traitor, you’ve betrayed me”. Often the attacks seemed to be triggered by her simply looking at me, and not liking my facial expressions, she would look at me and say that I was looking “rebellious” if I happened to be unhappy and withdrawn that day. I often heard that I looked just like my father, which also seemed to set her off. We stayed in the new apartment for another month or two before mom and my stepdad got back together and moved into a new place in Buffalo, New York in December 1993.

Mom and my stepdad together were a volatile mix, two different kinds of mentally unwell and two different kinds of violence. My stepdad beat her and she in turn beat us, mostly me. She often told us that if we ever spoke to anyone about what was going on that we would be separated and sent to foster homes and juvenile detention centers for bad children where we would be beaten every day.

She also taught us to fear the police and whenever she saw one or they were called to the house to investigate all the screaming, she would freak out and tell us to hide and keep our mouths shut.

Once in the new apartment, mom continued to “homeschool” us, which consisted of buying a few textbooks (sometimes grade appropriate, sometimes not) and telling us to go to our desks and “do school”, for a few hours a day. Many, many days I was interrupted by mom telling me I needed to “watch” the newest baby for several hours while she talked on the phone or went and did errands. I spent so much time caring for my newborn sisters that two of them actually called me “ma”, until mom heard. This was one of many things that set off her punching, kicking, pulling me by the hair and trying to break my face routine. I can honestly say that was the extent of my “schooling” for the next six years until I left. Mom did the New York State required “quarterly reports” on our progress, usually late and always false. We also took the mandatory annual CAT tests and usually scored fine on some subjects and poorly on others. Mom officially enrolled us in the Clonlara Homeschool Association that year, which meant she bought “curriculums” from them (which we never used) and we went to their annual conferences a few times.

Spring of 1994, my mother arranged for me to work a large paper route that covered 12 city blocks on our street. I worked that route for the next four years, eventually adding another 12 blocks. I was robbed twice in two years, first when I was thirteen and a guy in a football helmet jumped out of the bushes and held a gun to my back and demanded I hand over the money (paper route money). My mother took all of the money I earned except for what I needed to buy dog food for my dog. She also pushed me to take other jobs. I mowed people’s yards, did landscaping, house cleaning and babysitting. I was never allowed to keep any of the money – this was how she was supplementing the family budget, as she never worked.

Soon after we moved to Buffalo, Mom joined a local homeschooling chapter of born again Christian homeschoolers, LEAH (living education at home). Aside from the one or two weeks a year I was allowed to go to a local YMCA camp, and the occasional summer soccer games with the kids on our street, LEAH was the first regular social interaction I’d been allowed since I left public school in 1993. None of us kids were thrilled with the group, being very religious and preachy and we were not (yet). However it was a few hours a week that we got to leave the house and be out from under mom’s constant supervision and iron rule, so we made the best of it.

The winter I turned 14 our car was repossessed and mom began sending my little brother and I to do all the errands during “school” time.

We walked miles through the Buffalo snow to get groceries and the mail (at the post office) every few days. I was also expected to do nearly all of the housecleaning, mopping every room, sweeping, dishes, folding laundry (for seven people) as well as most of the babysitting. There was very little time I could have done “school” even had I been brilliant enough to teach myself a sixth thru tenth grade school education. As it was I spent my free hours immersing myself in books I borrowed from the library, ranging from fiction to history, anthropology, classic literature to feminist studies. I credit the natural inclination of my curious and inquiring mind combined with my access to a library with my ability to survive any and all later academic pursuits.

Before long the constant screaming of our mom and my stepdad echoing through our apartment drove our neighbors crazy and they asked the landlord to evict us. Winter of 1996, we moved a mile down the road into a HUD (low income fixer upper) house, the first my parents had ever owned. Outwardly, things continued much the same, I had my myriad jobs, housecleaning and babysitting duties and mom sat at home and talked on the phone or did “bills” all day. We still attended the LEAH group, though not regularly, and often escaped for a week or two of summer camp.

After the move, we didn’t make new friends, so spent even more time in the house, and grew gradually ever more isolated. Mom slowly alienated her family although her parents and sisters made a valiant attempt to stay in touch long distance. Mom had an unparalleled ability to say cruel and hurtful things and make people recoil and stay away. My stepdad’s family was not accepting of the biracial aspect of our family and with the exception of one uncle, made no attempt to be part of our lives. Neither mom nor James had a single friend that I knew of, no one ever came to our house. We weren’t allowed to have friends over, talk on the phone, use the computer, listen to music, or even have uncensored mail.

This quickly put a stop to any attempt on our parts to have even casual friends.

Part Two >

Fault and Educational Neglect

September 16, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on August 28, 2014.

I don’t usually post about things Kevin Swanson says, and I usually try not to pay attention to it, but a recent week’s broadcast…hurt more than usual. For a synopsis/highlights that will keep most of your eyeballs intact, you can read this post from HA.

One of the highlights, and…what’s sort of turned me into an odd little puddle, is this bit (emphasis mine):

Kevin: when someone says, I could have had a better education than that provided by my mother or by my father, that’s really, really, really hard to prove. How, how, how do you know that? Maybe it was a character problem on YOUR part. Maybe you didn’t obey your parents! Maybe you didn’t study your books like you were told to! And to think that you could have had a better education if you had done it this way versus that way is extremely hard to prove.

Steve: Right!

(laughter)

Kevin: Extremely hard to prove!

Steve: Because you can’t go back and do it that way!

Kevin: You can’t! (laughter) You can’t… and even if you could have, you would have dragged your same old person, with your same old character flaws, with your same old slothfulness issue, into the public school or private school setting or other setting ‚ and you could have done worse…

Steve: Yeah.

Kevin: …than you did with your parents — trying to do whatever they could have done with you, even with all of your character issues that you’re dealing with. It’s fun to blame your parents for your OWN lack of character!

And then there’s this charm (emphasis mine):

Kevin: I’m talking about Christian homeschool families. Their values are primarily first and foremost not to get their kid into Harvard or get them a good job.

Steve: Right.

Kevin: That’s not primary. It’s not being sure that the kid can read Plato before he’s 12 years of age…

Steve: Yeah.

Kevin: …and get really messed up with the wrong worldview. (laughter) That’s not the goal. See, homeschoolers bring in other values: like relationship building, character building, work, worship. These are important.

What struck me is my parents have said essentially the exact same thing that Kevin did in the second quote. Multiple times. I remember in no uncertain terms hearing that the most important thing educationally was that we were able to read and understand the bible, write just enough to communicate, and do basic math. NOTHING ELSE MATTERED. This is what Kevin Swanson advocates, this is what my parents believe, and importantly:

This is not a full, well-rounded education.

He talks about how fake educational neglect is, makes fun of the people who have pushed through it, pretends the people living in it don’t exist, and blames the (current and former) students with little to no power over their own education, for their own neglect.

He talks about how children should be learning “work, relationships, character, and worship”….

Well sir, that was my entire childhood, and you know what, I was educationally neglected! I taught myself and my parents bragged about it from the age of 10, I did everything I could possibly do, everything I knew to do, and it doesn’t change the fact that my education was neglected. It was not my fault. I’m not lazy, and wasn’t a lazy student – I was an over-worked student who’s parents cared more about being served and looking good than their children and the quality of their education.

Swanson is advocating for educational neglect, and then turning a blind eye to the people who say, no, my parents did do what you said and that’s the problem, and instead labeling them whiners, traitors, and Benedict Arnold’s.

Well if talking about my lack of education and working to put regulations in place so my siblings and other kids have a chance means I’m a traitor, so be it.

But don’t you tell me that my lack of education was my fault as a child.

That was out of my control, it’s not blaming my parents for my flaws, it’s abuse.

P.S. I would have done amazing in a traditional school setting, before my parents took me out of pre-k, it was amazing and I loved it. No one asked me if I wanted to be homeschooled, they just said “we’re gonna homeschool you from now on” and being the ripe age of 3 or 4, I just wanted to make sure I could be picked for Show-and-Tell still. I don’t remember doing show-and-tell after leaving school though.

On Crushes

September 16, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team3 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on September 14, 2014.

Growing up on the conservative Christian homeschooling culture of courtship and purity rings made a lot of things about boy-girl interactions different. Everything was ramped up, accelerated somehow. Our mothers jumped straight from simple attractions on our part to the possibility of marriage. We did too.

I still remember my first crush. I was seven. He was nine. I was homeschooled, but he wasn’t. My mother and his mother knew each other from church. Finally, I got up the courage to ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up, to see if our life visions were compatible. He said he wanted to be a basketball player. I knew that almost certainly wouldn’t happen, and that even if it did, the longterm prospects were slim. This declaration on his part made him seem unwise, and thus definitely an unsuitable partner. How would I be able to submit to his headship when his life ambition was basketball player? I still thought he was cute and all, but my crush was for all intents and purposes over, because I knew there was nothing there for us.

We were told we shouldn’t date until we were ready for marriage. Well, they told us we shouldn’t date at all, that we should court, but that those relationships should not begin before each party was ready to marry. In other words, guy-girl relationships were intrinsically tied to marriage. Guy-girl relationships that weren’t marriage-oriented were wrong and would have all sorts of consequences.

In this context, it’s not surprising that we children would immediately jump to thoughts of marriage upon even the slightest crush.

Were there prospects? Could we possibly end up married, someday? If no, attraction must be crushed. If yes? Well, one can dream, right? I mean, I might be 14 and he might be 16, and we may not be ready for marriage and I might be too afraid of the opposite sex to talk to him anyway, but the most important pressing question is whether maybe, someday, we might be compatible and in a position to marry, right?

There was one young man whom I had always found gangly and awkward and unattractive, but when I headed off to college I learned that he was headed off to university to study engineering. Hmm, I thought. That’s good prospects. Maybe I should reconsider how I felt about him? If I played my cards right, perhaps there might be something there. After all, we had the same beliefs and background. Like me, he was from a large homeschooling family, even more conservative than mine if anything.

Reading that now, I’m struck by how mercenary it was. But that was my reality.

I don’t think it’s helpful to ramp the pressure up to 100 and insert the marriage question into the slightest childhood crush. Most people will have multiple relationships before they meet the person they marry, and that’s actually a good thing, because it’s how we learn and grow. I was taught growing up that we give away “pieces of our heart” every time we have a relationship. The ideal, I was taught, was for my very first relationship to lead to marriage. But the truth is that we learn and grow through our relationships. My husband wouldn’t be the person he is today if he hadn’t dated the two women he dated before me—and I like the person he is today. Far from depriving me of pieces of his heart, those two relationships improved him.

But perhaps what I find most unhealthy about this whole pieces-of-your-heart/your-first-relationship-should-lead-to-marriage ideal is what it means for young men and women who begin a relationship and find it turning south, only to feel that leaving the relationship is not an option. I know women today who found themselves in abusive relationships—yes, good evangelical homeschooled girls who followed the rules and courted good evangelical homeschooled boys—only to feel trapped. Leaving was out of the question—leaving meant not simply relationship failure but comprehensive life failure, and things lost that could never be retrieved.

I know what I’m going to tell my children: It’s okay. It doesn’t have to mean more than you want it to mean. Enjoy the moment. Focus on building healthy and fulfilling relationships rather than trying to force things toward marriage.

Oh, and also? Sometimes a crush is just a crush. And that’s okay.

Raising Godly Tomatoes: Book Review By Sarah Dutko

September 9, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team20 Comments

By Sarah Dutko, member of the LaQuiere Group (1991-1999). This review was originally posted on Amazon September 2, 2014, revision re-posted on September 9.

I feel that I need to write this review because as someone who knows Mrs. Krueger personally, and lived out the methods she teaches in her book, I feel I need to warn any parents considering buying this book or using her methods. This is the second time I’ve posted this review, because Amazon removed my review the first time, after someone apparently complained about it. I’m not sure why Amazon feels the need to censor negative reviews of Mrs. Krueger’s book, but no matter, I will keep posting it if Amazon removes it again, because I am determined to reach parents who are considering Mrs. Krueger’s methods and tell them the truth.

I not only know Mrs. Krueger, I grew up with her and her children: for 8 years I (and my family) were a part of the same fundamentalist cult that she and her family still belong to. I’d like to provide some valuable perspective on what it is like to grow up under this kind of child “training”, and the kind of damage it does to children.

Mrs. Krueger’s child-training methods are not original to her, or just “common sense”, as she claims: they come directly from a man named Joe LaQuiere who was the leader of our cult up until he died this past year (she mentions him and his wife in her book as a “godly older couple” who gave them advice). This cult to which Mrs. Krueger and her family still belong is an insular, legalistic group with neo-Jewish practices, such as eating no pork products, celebrating the Sabbath (Saturday), condemnation of Christmas trees for being “pagan”, as well as using emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse to control its members. Having lived through it from age 6 to 14, and having family members who are still a part of this cult, gives me a unique insider’s perspective, which will hopefully provide you with enough information about the damaging and evil results of this method of “child-training” that you will help in warning against it, as it has become far too popular in the ultra-conservative, homeschooling movement, which is beginning to see a whole generation of survivors speak up about the abuses they’ve experienced, and give warning to the dangers inherent to the homeschooling community.

I am going to quote here both from Mrs. Krueger’s book, and from an article she wrote at the same time as her book.

Here is the first quote from her book. Mrs. Krueger writes:

“Let me share my experience with my third born…One day we were visiting some close friends and he decided to exert his new found power. He blatantly refused to come to Dad when Dad called him. He ignored Dad and continued playing with our friend’s telephone instead, about six feet from where my husband and I were sitting. The friends we were visiting were excellent parents and offered their advice, which we readily accepted. They coached us to outlast him, instructing Dad to keep calling him. When he didn’t budge, Dad was directed to go over to him, administer a little swat on the bottom (over clothes and a diaper), then return to where he’d been sitting and call him again. We were encouraged to repeat this, pausing appropriately between repeats, until he obeyed us…Finally, after approximately an hour and a half, he began to cry and take a few steps toward us, but he still refused to come all the way. He still did not want to totally give up the power he had enjoyed exerting over us. Each time he took a few steps toward us then stopped, we would replace him back by the phone and call him to come to us again. We devoted the next half hour to making sure he obeyed completely, not just partially…This one outlasting session had a considerable and exciting long-term impact on our child. He clearly learned he was under our authority and must always obey us…The initial two-hour ordeal never needed repeating.”

These “friends” who were “excellent parents” that she refers to are Joe LaQuiere and his wife, her mentors, and they are the people who taught her to use the methods in her book (as well as much more abusive methods which they themselves used on children, including my own siblings). This method of teaching toddlers to obey by spanking them…and then repeating…and repeating…and repeating…for 2 straight hours….or as long as it takes (which is what she means by “outlasting them” – a concept she refers to many times in her book)…is exactly the kind of child-training my family and I experienced in the cult. I’d like to share one more quote, this one from her online article that she wrote at the same time as her book. This article is from “Christian Moms of Many Blessings” (http://www.cmomb.com/child-training/). I quote a portion of what Mrs. Krueger writes:

“Don’t be afraid of a confrontation. It is helpful to set up a confrontational situation in the case of a toliler [my note: I think this is a typo for “toddler”] who is “out of control.” For example, tell him to sit on the couch next to you. When he tries to get down, give him a firm swat on the bottom and say, “No” in an `I mean business’ tone. Continue this every time he tries to get down until he stops trying. If he actually makes it off the couch, tell him to climb back up himself, if he is big enough, or replace him if needed. Don’t restrain him. Don’t give in. Ignore his crying. You are not done until he sits there quietly for as long as you want him to without resisting. Let him fall asleep if he likes. Even after he stops resisting, don’t let him down too soon. Ten or 20 minutes or even an hour is not too long. Once you have done this, continue to expect him to obey everything you tell him to do.”

Both this method and the method described earlier by her in her book were used to train young toddlers, as young as one year old, in our cult. These methods in particular were used on my little brother, Joshua, during one of the “training sessions” that Mrs. Krueger’s mentor, Joe LaQuiere, conducted in order to teach his followers how to train “obedient” children. Joshua was made to sit on my mom or dad’s lap, and spanked every time he tried to get down. He was a bright and happy baby, but very stubborn. He didn’t want to give in, but kept on trying to get down, and getting spanked for it, over, and over, and over, and over. He’d cry and cry, but he wasn’t allowed to be comforted until he “submitted” and gave in. The goal was to get him to “sit there quietly for as long as you want him to without resisting”, as Mrs. Krueger wrote. This “training” session started in the afternoon, and went on…all afternoon…and evening…late into the night. It was 2 or 3 in the morning before Joe LaQuiere okay-ed stopping for the night. At this point they had been “training” him to sit still and not cry for over 6 hours. He was not allowed to nurse during this time, or to see his mother (my mom), because that would “comfort him”, and they wanted him to be miserable until he gave in and obeyed. You may think “a small swat on the bottom” does not sound over-the-top for a small toddler as a way to get them to sit quietly (as if toddlers were created to “sit quietly” – their nature, and their developmental needs, as any child psychologist can tell you, require them to explore, not sit quietly for hours). What about spanking them over…and over…and over…for 6 hours straight? Does that sound abusive? Mrs. Krueger’s methods (really, Joe LaQuiere’s methods) say that you CANNOT GIVE UP until your child (or baby) submits to you and obeys, no matter how long that takes. If it takes all night, so be it. If it takes dozens, or a hundred spankings, so be it. This is not training, this is child abuse. My one-year-old brother Josh was subjected to this “training” day after day, until he finally, sullenly, gave in, and was now a “well-trained” baby, who would sit quietly on demand, and not try to get down and play in normal toddler fashion. In a few short months, he went from a bubbly, laughing one-year-old to a quiet, sullen, baby who rarely smiled. He was mostly silent from then on: he didn’t speak until he was nearly 4. Joe LaQuiere, (who, remember, is Mrs. Krueger’s mentor, and the one who taught her these methods) said Joshua was an exceptionally “rebellious” baby, and it was necessary to discipline the “rebelliousness” out of him until his will was broken.

See, Mrs. Krueger’s book, and her advice, is really the somewhat-milder face of Joe LaQuiere’s teaching: the public face, if you will. She watched more violent abuse occur, and was taught that it was acceptable: babies having their faces stuffed into couch cushions to teach them not to cry – children being beaten mercilessly with “The Paddle”, not once, as she writes in her book, but often 20 or 30 times. Children being dragged by their hair, thrown against walls, or dangled in the air by their throats. My own siblings endured all of these abuses, and I was made to watch.

Mrs. Krueger, whether or not she treated her own children quite this severely, watched this abuse happen to other children, and agreed with it. Her book is merely the milder, public face of private child abuse, because she knows that some of the stricter methods taught by Joe LaQuiere would be too unpalatable to put in print, as well as likely to land her (and him) in trouble with law enforcement. But make no mistake that it occurs. To be fair, Mrs. Krueger and her husband I don’t believe followed every child “training” (abuse) method that Joe LaQuiere taught: she and her family are best friends with him (one of her daughters is even married to one of Joe LaQuiere’s sons), and while their methods differ somewhat in severity, the principle is the same: OBEDIENCE is paramount, and it is of little importance HOW you get your children to obey, or how often you must beat them, as long as the end result is IMMEDIATE, UNQUESTIONING obedience, from children of any age, even through adulthood. THIS is the goal (which is in itself a very bad goal) and the methods used to achieve it, as touted by Joe LaQuiere, through the mouthpiece of Mrs. Krueger, are cruel and damaging.

To this day, I suffer panic attacks and horrible flashbacks to watching my brothers and sisters abused through this method of child-rearing. I grew up emotionally-stunted, being taught that ‘a cheerful face’ was the only acceptable expression, and that any negative emotions I felt, like anger, or sadness, or frustration, were sin, and needed to be corrected. Thus I learned to disassociate myself from my emotions, effectively divorcing them from my conscious mind, which is a process I am still trying, with the help of therapy, to undo. The children, including those in my family, who grew up under these methods, are emotionally unstable; are fearful of and often unable to make their own decisions; are unable to move into independent adulthood without the constant guidance of parents telling them what to do; and worst of all, have a false and damaging picture of who God is, and who they are meant to be.

After leaving the cult that Mrs. Krueger belongs to, I was confused, depressed, and suicidal. I believed that God was an angry God who despised me for not reaching His standards of perfection. I learned nothing about grace through this experience. Thank God, I discovered it after I left, and realized that God does not treat us like Joe LaQuiere and Mrs. Krueger do their children: punishing every crime and dealing out justice until we are perfect. Instead, He already provided the perfect righteousness that we can never achieve through Jesus, and gave us in one fell swoop, a perfect record and status with him, and complete forgiveness of all sins, past and future! He doesn’t demand perfect performance from us to gain His acceptance. We are not “spanked” until we learn to obey Him instantly, with no questions, and with a false smile. Instead, He loves on us, extravagantly, and at great personal cost to Himself, in order to draw us to Himself…by LOVE. LOVE is what calls us to CHOOSE to obey Him – not repeated punishment, or the fear that He will only “enjoy us” as long as we fulfill the letter of His law. THIS is how we need to treat our children: with the same mercy and grace that God showers on us. To follow Mrs. Krueger’s method instead will give our children an outward layer of “goodness”, on which they think their acceptance by God depends, while inwardly they remain full of sin and darkness, needing God’s redeeming love and GRACE to flood in and wash them clean! Mrs. Krueger’s book and methods create little Pharisees: looking pretty good on the outside, but with aching hearts inside, knowing the misery of never being “good enough”. Thank God we don’t HAVE to be “good enough” for Him: we already are, thanks to the sacrifice He made for us!

Please PLEASE do not buy this book, or use these methods on your children!! Try instead something like “Families where Grace is in Place”, or “Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Children with the Love of Jesus” both EXCELLENT books! Leave Mrs. Krueger’s book where it belongs…forgotten, gathering dust in her basement somewhere, while your children flourish in the LOVE and GRACE of God!

If you have any questions, or would like to ask me specifics about why Mrs. Krueger’s methods are so damaging, please feel free to email me at sarah.dutko77@gmail.com! I’d love to talk with you 🙂

Former Employee of David and Teresa Moon at Communicators for Christ Alleges Workplace Abuse, Harassment

September 2, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following story is written by Susan Young, the Communicators for Christ Executive Assistant from Summer 2005 until Spring 2007. While HA took care to verify the claims contained herein, it must be noted for potential legal reasons that the claims are the author’s and not HA’s.

*****

We’d hit the bottom.

I thought it was my fault

And in a way I guess it was.

I’m just now finding out

What it was all about.

Those words from Ben Folds have rung true in multiple relationships in my life and none of them were healthy. The situation described, though, should never develop in your place of work. I realize now that there are things like labor laws and I know phrases like “hostile work environment.” At the time, I was naïve and far too old at the age of 23 to be so unaware of my own rights.

My rights weren’t exactly a big part of what I had been taught.

I was a good homeschooled girl. I had graduated with great test scores and had decided that college was completely unnecessary for my future. My plan for my life saw me at home with my parents until I would meet and marry a good, preferably homeschooled man. While all of this could bring up many other topics, suffice it to say that in many ways, I fit the profile of the community.

My younger brother had become something of an early rising star in the home school speech and debate community – an activity I had never participated in. Being eight years older, I had long since graduated and was working as a piano teacher. My family, however, was growing personally closer and closer to the Moon family and they were meeting up outside of Communicators for Christ conferences. Eventually, I was invited to attend a get together as well. It wasn’t long afterward that I was offered a part time job updating the CFC database and I accepted.

For the next few months, I was a strange, creepy person who called up random strangers from a spreadsheet asking them to verify and update all of their information for us including all of their children’s names and birthdays. It struck me as at least as weird and frightening as it did the people I was calling, but I was sold on CFC as a whole and would have done pretty much anything Teresa Moon told me to do. My parents believed in it, and therefore so did I.

I became more and more involved in the workings of CFC. Eventually, I gave up teaching piano, devoting more and more time. It was good timing for Teresa as her current administrative assistant was leaving for a new job opportunity. The role would soon fall to me.

The earliest clue I could look back on and recognize that should have told me something was badly wrong with my job was when the former administrative assistant was leaving. She took me aside, looked me right in the eye to make sure she had my full attention and said, “Guard your time.” I promised her I would, not really taking the warning very seriously.

Teresa told me that they wanted me to be an independent contractor, not an employee. She explained to me that we would both save money this way since my taxes wouldn’t be withheld. Even though I read the requirements from the IRS that made it clear my type of position wasn’t eligible for independent contractor status I believed her and was sure she wouldn’t do anything illegal, so I went along with it.

After all, why would she lie to me?

My second clue that this was all wrong bounced off my optimistic skull almost as easily as the first one. While going through customer emails, one came in that I didn’t know how to respond to. It was a warning directed to anyone involved with Communicators for Christ to stay away. The author of the email told whoever might possibly read her note before it was deleted that anyone who gets too involved or gets too close to the Moons ends up deeply hurt. I sent it on to Teresa not knowing what else to do. She told me to delete it and treated it like it was just something to be ignored from someone who was very bitter. Even then, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to trigger such a dire warning.

Soon, my work load exploded. My days were a mushroom cloud of maintaining spreadsheets of all conference registrations for the entire tour, answering all phone calls and emails except a few directed specifically to Teresa, packing and shipping all of the orders for the online book store, running every credit card by typing the number manually into a terminal since we had no online shopping cart system, retrieving the mail from the company box, going over each bill with David Moon, taking care of payments for all bills, both business and personal, maintaining the records of all things financial in QuickBooks, and occasional random errands like picking up printing orders and dry cleaning.

At first I could manage it, but as tour season came closer and then launched, leaving me to manage alone in the office for months on end, it became more than one person could handle. After arriving at the office at 9 in the morning, I would get just barely caught up enough on my work to rush the day’s book order out of the door to the UPS store barely in time for pick up mid afternoon and grab lunch at a drive through on the way back to be consumed while sitting at the computer futilely attempting to catch up again. At 9 pm, I would trudge out of the office after the credit card terminal automatically closed the day’s batch to drive home, stopping at another drive through on the way. This would happen Monday through Saturday and I would sometimes slip in a few hours on Sunday.

David once laughingly told me it was a good thing I was on a salary because they couldn’t afford me otherwise.

Meanwhile, my mother and Teresa became closer and closer friends. They met up often and soon it became apparent that nothing was off limits in their discussions. Not my job performance, and not my personal struggles with my family. I don’t believe my mother was intentionally trying to cause problems at work, but in hindsight I’ve been given every reason to believe that Teresa stores up this type of information to use and get what she wants.

Those home issues could be a whole other series of articles, but for now, all that’s relevant is that living at home at the age of 23 was not going well. My battle with depression, which had already been off and on for nearly a decade, was a constant in my life at this point. Still, I was trying desperately hard to be the good girl and earn approval. That approval at home now seemed inseparably tied to my performance at work.

Several weeks into my 70+ hour per week work schedule is when it all spiraled into addiction. Due to a strange food allergy, I can get ridiculously high on a fairly common ingredient: artificial food coloring. Later after meeting people who were quite familiar with drugs, I described the symptoms and they told me it was exactly like crack. Obtaining it was as easy as my usual runs to the drive through on the way home. Taco Bell provided my dinner and my fix in the form of a burrito and a large pink lemonade that I would sneak up to my room frequently so I wouldn’t have to interact with anyone while under its influence.

Eventually, it became clear to Teresa that I wasn’t keeping up, so in response she turned up the pressure on me and began calling frequently from the road to check on what I was doing, obviously convinced I wasn’t doing anything. I would also receive phone calls from David who would berate me and scream at me because in my struggle to keep everything on track for the business, I would drop balls like one of their personal bills. I knew it was all going to hit the fan after tour. Before they came back, I took a vacation they approved during which I still checked in on phone messages, returned calls, answered emails, and shipped book orders. I had literally brought books with me so I could fill orders.

After they returned, it was like I had feared. I had not lived up to their expectations. I was a failure. They wanted to know what went wrong. Why had I taken that vacation when there was so much work? I hadn’t done the work they were paying me for. I wasn’t worth my $18,000 per year salary.

I couldn’t do it any more.

I got up, dressed, and got in the car as though to go to work at my usual time, pulled out of the driveway, and went in what appeared to be the right direction. At a crucial intersection, I took the opposite turn driving away from the CFC office. Without really remembering much about the trip there, I was sitting in the back of the Walmart parking lot fighting to get control of my frantic breathing. I had a plan.

It would be easy enough to walk in, buy a knife from either sporting goods or kitchen supplies, take it back to my car, and end my life at the back of the parking lot.

As a last ditch effort, I called a number my therapist had given me where they’re supposed to talk you out of killing yourself. They tried to get me to a hospital, but I couldn’t get there from their directions. I wasn’t incredibly motivated to find it considering my worst fear was and still is a hospital psychiatric ward. They talked me into calling a family member and said they were going to call back and check on me. They didn’t. I called my dad who convinced me to come home. Turns out that Teresa had already called them wondering where I was. I got home. No one said much. My parents sent me to bed.

Later that day, Teresa showed up at my house. My parents left me alone with her to talk. I remember she asked a lot of questions. She wanted to know why I had done what I did. I don’t remember what all I told her, but I do know she learned about my depression and ADHD. She acted like that explained a lot about me. What I didn’t realize was that she was collecting ammunition.

She liked to push me

And talk me back down

Until I believed I was the crazy one.

And in a way, I guess I was.

The following weeks, I was back at work, only now they knew. Under the guise of concern, Teresa monitored me, checking on what I was doing, and scrutinizing everything I ate. While she didn’t know about my allergy, I never brought colored food to work, so there was nothing to see there. She was convinced that something I ate had to be triggering my depression and my work failures. Somehow, the culprit was erroneously identified as carbohydrates and I began ordering grilled chicken salads every day to avoid her judgment on my lunch.

Eventually, I even switched to a therapist she recommended.

Teresa told me she was glad I wasn’t seeing my old therapist any more because “Every time you saw her you came back talking about your rights.”

Her opinions extended to the medications I tried and she didn’t hide her disappointment after I stopped a particular one due to its horrible side effects.

The annual Masters conference was where it all finally went to pieces. One of my jobs had been to drive some of the volunteer staff assistants from their host home to the conference and back every day. My driving style was a lot more cautious than it was aggressive, so I became the butt of their constant jokes and taunting about my driving skills every day morning and night. Eventually, it took its toll and an intern found me in a bathroom crying and asked what was wrong, so I told her. Maybe that was a mistake, but later that day I was called in front of a very angry Teresa after the story had made its way through the rumor mill up to her. All of these volunteers were hoping to become interns in the future and she had her eye on several of them for the position. If what I had said were true, it would disqualify all of them from interning, including my own brother, since people now knew about their disrespect. That is, unless I changed my story and made a point of telling anyone who asked about it that I had overreacted and they weren’t really teasing me so much.

Caving to the pressure, I made myself out to be the crazy one. I think the only people who didn’t really believe my modified story was the intern who had found me in tears and a select few of the kids I had been driving who knew what they did and realized how close they had come to losing their internships.

As if that weren’t enough, a flu epidemic swept through nearly all of the attendees and I was not spared. Despite the fact that I couldn’t stand without shaking, Teresa made no effort to hide her irritation at finding that I had involuntarily fallen asleep on a sofa in the staff room. The next day, I had to excuse myself from driving students for their own safety after collapsing on the floor.

And I twisted it wrong just to make it right.

Had to leave myself behind.

The week after the conference, Teresa sat me down across from her and grilled me about what went wrong. She said I had done a better job the year before when I hadn’t known what I was doing yet. I was also berated about the work that had fallen behind in recent months. In my effort not to miss bills and keep everything up to date for conferences, bookkeeping had suffered. There were implications that it traced back to my mental health and that I wasn’t fit for the job. I believed her. I was damaged and worthless. That’s when she told me, “You haven’t done the job we’ve been paying you to do. How are you going to make that up to me?” The same shaking, desperate girl that had sat in her car in the back of the Walmart parking lot fought for some form of redemption.

Teresa was finally satisfied when I told her that I would give back my paychecks for January, which I had not yet deposited, and I would work through February for free.

After that, I would resign. Teresa added the caveat that working through February would be enough if the work was caught up by that time. Once again, my lack of knowledge regarding labor laws and her experience with how to manipulate me allowed her to take advantage.

Over the next month and a half through the end of February, the slow season allowed me to catch up on the bookkeeping and prepare to leave the world that my family revolved around more each day. My mother came to the office frequently as she prepared to spearhead the new chapter program. My brother readied himself for his internship the following tour season.

I left the office for what I thought would be the last time at the end of February. I was called back again in March to train my replacement – for no pay of course. Tax season came around and Teresa’s deception about my “savings” as an independent contractor came to light and I was left with almost nothing not long before I would have to strike out on my own and support myself.

My home situation was crumbling as everyone but me, the now unemployed oldest child, practically orbited around the Moon family. To be clear, I don’t think that Teresa or CFC was the cause of our problems. But I don’t hesitate to say that our involvement accelerated the self destruct course we had already been travelling for years.

It wasn’t until much later that I fully “opened my eyes and walked out the door” of that world. Yes, I could have sued CFC and had I realized it before the statute of limitations was up, I probably would have. Looking back is a painful, nauseating experience.

The worst part is reading the stories of others who have been abused by Teresa and realizing that my work facilitated her behavior.

I ask myself how much longer it’s going to go on before someone still in a position to bring them to justice and hopefully put a stop to it will speak out. I’m not the only one who has been pushed to the point of harming themselves. How long do we have before someone is driven to another suicide attempt? What if it’s successful?

I’ve just passed the 7 year anniversary of when I resigned my position with CFC. Despite everything I’m sure Teresa still believes about me, I’m proven myself responsible and capable many times, which has lead to success in my career. Since then, I’ve learned some crucial things that would have drastically changed my experiences:

Employers do not have the right to force, encourage, or even allow staff to work for free.

Employers do not have the right to be privy to the details of their staff’s medical conditions. There are a few exceptions where it might affect their job or cause them to miss work, in which case they may require a doctor’s note. Situations in which an employer can require a doctor’s note vary by state.

Employers have no say over the medical care of their staff. That is entirely up to the patient.

If there is ever any question about whether an employer’s behavior is acceptable and you live in the US, each state has a department of labor that can clarify the law for the state you live in. There is also the National Labor Relations board, which covers different rights and has several offices throughout the US. There is a section on nrlb.gov that explains the particular rights they protect.

I have the right to report any illegal activity by my employer to the appropriate government office without fear of retribution.

Any therapist worth their fee will tell a patient to quit a job that is making them suicidal, even if it means living on unemployment for a while.

If I had known half of this, maybe I wouldn’t have taken the job. Perhaps I would have left sooner.

Maybe someone will learn from my mistakes and not allow their boss to take advantage of them.

Homeschoolers Anonymous

An Archived Blog

Author: HA Editorial Team