Eric Novak – Homeschoolers Anonymous

“He Couldn’t Breathe”: Old Schoolhouse Owners Accused of Waterboarding, Child Abuse

October 17, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

This story is a modified version of a previous piece written by Hännah Ettinger (Wine & Marble) and R.L. Stollar (Homeschoolers Anonymous) on October 8, 2014.

Eric Novak grew up in Christian homeschooling circles.

He was employed from 2008-2011 by Paul and Gena Suarez, founders of The Old Schoolhouse (TOS) magazine, which boasts a readership of around 200,000. Paul and Gena speak at homeschool conventions and are seen within the homeschool community as advocates for the homeschool lifestyle. The Suarezes’ main business, TOS, is endorsed by the Great Homeschool Conventions and James Dobson as well as financially sponsored by HSLDA, the Home School Legal Defense Association.

TOS has a long history of adoration for and promotion of Michael and Debi Pearl’s No Greater Joy ministry. In 2005 TOS’s devotional editor Deborah Wuehler interviewed a member of the Pearl family for TOS, in which she wrote the Pearls were “the pioneers of homeschooling in the early 1970s” who “helped countless numbers of parents with their child training questions.” A year later the Suarezes “team[ed] up” with Michael and Debi Pearl in 2006 for a Christian homeschool conference in Germany. TOS even went so far as to give away free copies of the Pearls’ book To Train Up a Child in their “welcome packages” to new homeschoolers. After the death of homeschool kid Sean Paddock, whose mother used the Pearls’ recommended plumbing supply line for corporal punishment, Gena Suarez callously defended the Pearls, saying, “The only way you can kill a child with that is by shoving it down his throat.”

This, as well as other acts of promotion of the Pearls’ “child abuse materials,” led to a boycott of TOS in 2006 by gentle parenting bloggers.

During Novak’s time as an employee of TOS (and later, as he became a close friend to the Suarezes’ oldest son), he discovered that the Suarez and Igarashi families (the mothers of both families are sisters) are embroiled in an intense feud over physical and sexual abuse that has allegedly occurred in the family.

What Eric Novak learned about the Suarez family involved alleged physical abuse of their children as well as alleged sexual abuse within the family. According to various accounts, the Suarezes 22-year-old son, Luke, sexually abused two of his younger siblings and his young cousin, the son of Jenefer Igarashi. Luke currently has continued access to his siblings, as he lives at home with his parents. He is regularly in contact with children in the homeschool community, thanks to his family’s business. According to Novak, the Suarezes often get put up in the homes of other homeschool families when they travel. Novak relates:

“They continued going to conventions and such, and I know that for a fact that at conventions, they’ll like stay with homeschool families, and he’ll like, sleep in the younger kids’ rooms. And that’s what I’m most concerned about.”

The physical abuse allegations involve the abuse of all of the Suarez children, as well Gena’s youngest sister, “Megan.”

When Gena’s mom died, Paul and Gena took in Megan, Gena’s third sister. Megan was 13 years old and Gena was around 26. Megan claims that once she joined their family, Gena turned into a fairy-tale worthy evil surrogate mother, turning Megan into a servant and depending on her for her primary childcare support. It got to the point where even the neighbors jokingly called Megan “Cinderella,” according to a written statement by Megan (given to us by Eric Novak):

Even friends and neighbors of Gena and Paul would refer to me as “Cinderella.” It was evident to all who knew us what my role in the family was: babysitter, house cleaner and servant… and physically or mentally abused (instead of properly disciplined), when I would act childish or foolish. …I was left in charge and instructed to care for and discipline the younger children in the home – even told to strike them in the face when ‘disobedient’ or ‘disrespectful’ (they’d give me ‘slapping privileges’), which still haunts me today.

Megan alleges that the Suarezes didn’t just use her for free labor. She says they physically abused her and their other children and claimed that the abuse was God’s will. It seems like they employed the Pearls’ “will-breaking” methods quite studiously. This is also from Megan’s written statement:

I witnessed and was a victim of physical and mental abuse while in the home. I watched Gena as she would strip her youngest son down (around 4 yrs old), put him in the bathtub and run cold water over his face so that he couldn’t breathe. They would have their second oldest son strip down naked and repeatedly douse him with cold water. Gena would brag that she “finally found a punishment that would get them to obey”. She would also have her children stand in the corner so long they were forced to wet their pants. I also remember seeing her boys be made to ‘make up from a fight’ by inappropriately kissing various parts of each other’s body to the point of everyone in the room feeling awkward and uncomfortable… except for Gena, who would laugh… Remembering back on these things makes me sick almost to the point of throwing up.

…Close to the time I finally fled, it had gotten to the point that I didn’t want to live anymore. I would fantasize about dying. I couldn’t please them no matter how hard I tried. I was literally a slave in the home and punished as such when I couldn’t meet their impossible standards. What hurt the most after I fled was knowing the abuse that would continue in the lives of the children.

After Megan escaped, she found support in her other older sister, Jenefer Igarashi, and has thrived. She is now married and mentors in her community and is herself a homeschool mom. She remains a devout Christian.

For his part, Novak has decided to speak up about the allegations he learned about. He created a video explaining why he decided to speak up about the allegations against the Suarezes and his former employer The Old Schoolhouse. He also wrote an open letter to Heidi St. John, a popular homeschool speaker for the Great Homeschool Conventions, who is alleged to have participated in covering up these situations of abuse.

Other parties alleged to be involved include the National Center for Life and Liberty’s David Gibbs III, HSLDA president Michael Smith, and the Great Homeschool Conventions’ Brennan Dean.

For the full story about the allegations of the Old Schoolhouse cover-up, see HA’s original news piece here.

Heidi St. John: Whistleblowers Are “Clever Wordsmiths With Evil Intentions”

October 16, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team12 Comments

Yesterday HSLDA issued a response regarding its involvement in the Old Schoolhouse abuse cover-up allegations. Today our attention was drawn to a statement allegedly written by Heidi St. John about her involvement.

The statement alleged to be St. John’s was posted on Facebook by Melissa Crabtree (image archived here). Crabtree is Heidi St. John’s virtual assistant. St. John herself has not posted this statement on any of her publicly accessible social media accounts. We have repeatedly attempted to contact St. John — both to verify this statement’s authenticity and to give her the opportunity to comment on our “When Homeschool Leaders Looked Away” piece prior to publication — but she has refused to respond. (Update, 10/18/2014: Heidi St. John has finally confirmed the statement’s authenticity and posted it on her Facebook page.) However, numerous factors indicate the statement is authentic, so we are sharing it here:

Text is:

Statement from Heidi St. John

10/15/14

For more than six months now, a variety of accusations have been swirling within a fringe segment of the homeschool community suggesting that I, along with other respected homeschool leaders, have been involved in a “scandal.”

In a series of increasingly wild allegations, I have been accused of all sorts of terrible things, including causing a homeschool vendor to be disinvited from a homeschool convention.

I did not request anyone be disinvited from a convention. I did not cover up a child abuse scandal. Both of these accusations are completely false.

While the Internet provides a wonderful platform for encouragement and information, I am now learning first-hand that it can also be used to spread false information. It is a place where people of character can have their reputation attacked with little recourse.

Even my blog post has been used against me; proof that words written from a good heart with good intentions can be twisted by a clever wordsmith with evil intentions.

God’s Word is clear:

A tree is known by its fruit.

Assuming this truly is Heidi St. John’s statement, I have two comments:

First: Honestly, I’m not sure who or what St. John is referring to when she says, “For more than six months now, a variety of accusations have been swirling within a fringe segment of the homeschool community suggesting that I, along with other respected homeschool leaders, have been involved in a ‘scandal.'” If she is referring to Eric Novak and Jenefer Igarashi, that certainly is not true. Eric Novak is an outspoken Christian homeschool graduate and former employee of The Old Schoolhouse. And Jenefer Igarashi is a frequent speaker and vendor at Christian homeschool conventions, the sister of Gena Suarez (one of the alleged abusers), and also a former employee of The Old Schoolhouse.

Both Novak and Suarez were and are at the heart of this situation; they are as far from “fringe” as possible.

If St. John is referring to Homeschoolers Anonymous, that also is not true. Our first mention of St. John being aware of the alleged cover-up is the piece we published just last week, “When Homeschool Leaders Looked Away.” We mentioned St. John in passing (to provide context about the Suarez family) in our June piece, “Paul and Gena Suarez, Old Schoolhouse Publishers, Accused of Protecting Known Child Predators,” but we never insinuated her involvement because we were not aware of it at the time.

So if St. John means either Eric Novak, Jenefer Igarashi, or Homeschoolers Anonymous, she is either speaking falsely about the “fringe” part or the “more than six months” part — or both.

Second: St. John claims that, “I did not request anyone be disinvited from a convention. I did not cover up a child abuse scandal. Both of these accusations are completely false.” We have testimony backing up the allegation that she had a hand in getting Jenefer Igarashi blocked from attending the 2014 Ohio Great Homeschool Convention. We also have an email sent to Igarashi from Heidi St. John herself wherein St. John refused to help her. St. John’s email was sent in response to a message from Igarashi, which directly mentioned abuse cover-up. In fact, the subject of the email is “Re: TOS Magazine molestation cover up… advice?”:

Text is:

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Jenefer Igarashi [redacted] wrote:Here is the letter that was sent to Mike Smith. It has also been sent to [redacted]. And as I mentioned earlier [redacted] is actually one of the first hand witnesses who gives testimony against the Suarez’s (she witnessed, first-hand, the bullying/intimidation of the Suarez’s when they demanded that Roy Ballard continue being allowed access to family gatherings AFTER a little girl told the adults she had been groped. Roy Ballard was later imprisoned for sex crimes against children) The 20 people named in the group letter are only the tip of the iceberg.

You can see from the time stamp that Igarashi’s email was sent at 9:49 am on April 10, 2014. Less than 2 hours later, on the same day, St. John replied with the following email:

Text is:

From: Heidi St. John [redacted]

Date: Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 11:15 AM

Subject: Re: letter

To: [redacted], [redacted], “Jay St. John” [redacted]

Jenefer, I asked Mike yesterday about this dispute. … HSLDA will not be getting involved in it.

… We are not central to your grievance and we do not wish to be involved in it. …

This is a huge distraction for us in the middle of the busiest season of the year. We have neither the time nor desire to be part of it. Again, I ask that you honor our request to be removed from your grievance against your sister and her husband.

St. John was clearly aware of the allegations of both the abuse and its cover-up. She also chose to do the opposite of what the blog post she mentions said.

In short, with no “wordsmithing” required: Heidi St. John turned away.

*****

Update, 10:45 am:

Both Eric Novak and Jenefer Igarashi made statements today. Links to them are posted below:

Eric Novak: “HSLDA & Heidi St. John Refuse to Support Victims of Abuse”

Jenefer Igarashi: “Too Hard To Apologize”

#HoldThemAccountable: Eric Novak’s Appeal to Christian Homeschoolers

October 9, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Eric Novak, a former employee of Paul and Gena Suarez’s company The Old Schoolhouse, recently went public with concerns over an alleged abuse cover-up within the Christian homeschooling world. He has now released a video entitled, “Why I’m Speaking Out About The Old Schoolhouse Cover-Up,” where he explains his motivations.

“A lot of people have asked why I’m doing this,” Novak says in the video. He contends that while he loves homeschooling and that Christian and homeschool communities “don’t need help looking good,” “what we do need is people who are willing to actually expose abuse and people who are willing to stand up for what’s right.”

You can watch his video below:

Novak also wrote a blog post highlighting specific action steps people can take to help bring awareness to the situation, including using the hashtag #HoldThemAccountable on social media channels.