Hana Williams – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Michael Pearl’s Advice is Child Abuse (According to His Own Definition)

February 1, 2016May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team17 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Hypocrisy occurs when someone claims to have moral standards or beliefs to which their own behavior does not conform. If I tell you that treating your child with respect is important, and then instruct you to disrespect your child, I am a hypocrite.

Michael Pearl is a hypocrite.

This matters a whole lot because ever since high-profile cases of child murder like Sean Paddock, Lydia Schatz, and Hana Williams were linked to Pearl’s teachings, he has repeatedly claimed that those children’s parents did not follow his teachings correctly — that what those children’s parents did “is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of No Greater Joy Ministries.” They misinterpreted. They took it to the extreme. They were abusive, whereas he makes clear you should not abuse.

But Michael Pearl says one thing and then instructs parents to do another. Let me give you an example. This is from Pearl’s September 2001 article “In Defense of Biblical Chastisement, Part 2,” under the section, “When is it abuse?”:

If your child is broken in spirit, cowed and subdued, you have a problem.

This seems pretty straightforward — and in line with Pearl’s claim that there is a line between legitimate child training and child abuse. The standards are simple: if your child training results in your child being cowed and subdued, you have a problem. The problem? You are abusing your child. Hence this section being titled, “When is it abuse?” No Greater Joy Ministries itself lifts up this article as proof that the Pearls condemn child abuse.

Here is the catch: Michael Pearl gives the very opposite instructions elsewhere. This is from Pearl’s July 1998 article “Angry Child,” an article that addresses how to spank a so-called “angry child”:

I could break his anger in two days. He would be too scared to get angry. On the third day he would draw into a quiet shell and obey.

This also seems pretty straightforward. Michael Pearl proclaims his own self-mastery of godly child training: in two days, he can take the angriest of children and render them (1) “scared” and (2) “drawn into a quiet shell.”

Let us go back to Pearl’s definition of child abuse:

If your child is broken in spirit, cowed and subdued, you have a problem.

What does “cowed” mean? It means “scared.”

What does “subdued” mean? It means “drawn into a quiet shell.”

The very things that Pearl says are indicators of abuse are the very things Pearl says are the signs that one has mastered his techniques.

Let me give you another example. In the aforementioned “Biblical Chastisement” article, Pearl says:

You are abusing the child when it starts doing harm to the child.

Again, this is straightforward. Child training crosses the line into child abuse when you are causing damage to your child.

Now look at Pearl’s advice in the “Angry Child” article:

A proper spanking leaves children without breath to complain. If he should tell you that the spanking makes him madder, spank him again. If he is still mad…. He desperately needs an unswayable authority, a cold rock of justice.

Yet again, this is straightforward. Godly child training, or “a proper spanking” as Pearl says, “leaves children without breath.”

I do not mean to get super scientific, but (1) there are no lungs in the human buttocks and (2) breathing comes naturally to a healthy child. Pain inflicted on the human buttocks will therefore only disrupt a child’s intake of oxygen by spiking the child’s stress hormones to a literally traumatic level. That is to say: to spank your child to the point that they cannot take in oxygen, you have to cause nervous system dysregulation. You must overwhelm the child’s brain with pain to the point that the brain’s ability to perform normal human functions — like breathing — become disintegrated. This is why trauma is accompanied by breathing difficulties.

If you are spanking a child to the point that they cannot breathe, you are literally harming their brain. Furthermore, you are potentially disrupting many other aspect of the child’s development. While humans in general have a need for oxygen, children are particularly in need of it. The World Health Organization notes this:

Children have a dynamic physiology that is not only turned up to “high” because of growth demands, but also vulnerable to damage during differentiation and maturation of organs and systems. Their needs for energy, water and oxygen are higher, because they go through an intense anabolic process… Children breathe more air per kilogram of body weight than adults at rest… An infant has three times the minute ventilation of an adult and a 6-year-old has double.

Let us assume, simply for the sake of argument, that spanking your child with a “cold rock of justice” is not child abuse in itself. Let us assume, simply for the sake of argument, that spanking your child repeatedly — never stopping until your child submits because Michael Pearl says in To Train Up a Child that “If you stop before he is voluntarily submissive, you have confirmed to him the value and effectiveness of a screaming protest” (p. 80) — does not cause rhambdolysis (Lydia Schatz’s cause of death). Even assuming those two points, we are still left with the fact that spanking your child until they cannot breathe does physical harm to your child.

When does Pearl say child training turns to child abuse? “When it starts doing harm to the child.”

What does Pearl say child training must do? “Leaves children without breath.”

The very things that Pearl says are indicators of abuse are the very things Pearl says are the signs that one has mastered his techniques.

Michael Pearl’s advice is child abuse according to his own definition.

This Present Darkness: A Review of M Dolon Hickmon’s “13:24”

April 14, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

* Read our exclusive interview with M Dolon Hickmon and enter our 13:24 Giveaway. *

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

The highest praise I can give M Dolon Hickmon’s debut novel is a trigger warning: While I believe that everyone everywhere needs to read this book, I must urge those with a history of physical or sexual abuse to approach this title with care. I personally had a nervous breakdown after I finished it; I couldn’t breathe because it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. And I could not console myself by saying, “This is fiction.” It isn’t, as anyone who has experienced child abuse will recognize.

In his prologue, the author explains his intentional use of real-life parallels, based on his childhood experiences and research into religiously-motivated child abuse. Also examined are the intersections between child trafficking rings, physical and sexual abuse, and fundamentalist cults. Woven with fictional elements, these create the book’s complex, dark, and brutal narrative.

13:24 is the story of two young men: Josh, a rising rock star, and Chris, the neglected teenaged son of a drug addict. Their stories begin distinct and distant, but as the novel develops, their pasts—and futures—are revealed to be connected in ways that both shock and disturb.

The story opens on a gruesome murder. While the body count rises, questions multiply as a small-town detective chases Chris as a murder suspect. Along the way, readers encounter events and characters with uncanny real-life parallels: Josh has flashbacks of being abused by his minister father, who resembles Michael Pearl and advocates harsh physical punishment; in another thread, a controversial parenting manual is linked to a spate of discipline-related deaths, bringing to mind real-life cases, like those of Hana Williams and Lydia Schatz. Elsewhere, an imprisoned child abuser is freed through the efforts of a “homeschool legal defense fund”, reminiscent of the Home School Legal Defense Association. At the same time, an oily “Christian psychologist” heads a James Dobson-esque media empire, with tendrils in state and national politics.

13:24 may be fiction, but it describes the lives of any number of people I have known. In its imagery, I recognize moments that friends and colleagues have breathed and suffered through. That is what made this novel so hard for me to read.

The book exposes what many religious and homeschooled children experience every day. Readers witness their pain and hear their cries. We see their misery multiplied when it is justified in the name of God; we see their tragedies covered up to save face and preserve religious “freedom”. And unlike a Frank Peretti novel, there are no angels rushing in to the save the day. We must pick up the pieces and fight this present darkness.

Despite the darkness, 13:24 has a poetic beauty. That beauty is in the narrative symmetry: a murder begins it and a murder concludes it. While death marks where the story begins and ends, there is a profound shift in what those deaths mean. This is the power of Hickmon’s prose: he delves deep into pain, into what he has described in his subtitle as “faith and obsession,” and shows us the human faces behind news headlines’ “monsters.”

13:24 is not easy reading. It is neither uplifting nor redemptive. It will crack your heart open, set your blood on fire, and turn your screams into music. Most significantly, the characters’ actions are neither justified nor condemned by the author. He simply allows them to exist. In doing so, Hickmon gives readers an uncommon gift: a brief look behind the curtain of tragedy, a fleeting chance to understand a little more than we did.

Matt Walsh: “Let’s talk about everything as hyperbolically as possible”

January 9, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team10 Comments

Matt Walsh. Source: http://www.wlap.com/pages/MattWalsh.html

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

As Matt Walsh once said, “Let’s talk about everything as hyperbolically as possible.”

Except Matt Walsh never said that.

Then again, no politician ever said, “Let’s treat all homeschool parents like felony child abusers,” which was the title of Walsh’s December 18, 2013 post on homeschooling.

I read Walsh’s homeschooling post the same way I read many of his other posts: with a mixture of bemusement, facepalms, and sadness. Sometimes he has interesting observations; but all the times, whatever potential insights he could be making are lost in his predilection for hyperbole and grandstanding.

Matt Walsh is Rush Limbaugh 2.0: Same Hyperbole, New Tattoos!

In his homescholing post, Walsh stands on a soapbox of “parental rights” and speaks dramatically about how if parents do not have “the unquestioned and absolute right to teach and raise our own children,” then — no exaggeration — “we don’t have any rights at all.” That is really the crux of his argument, which deserves analysis. But the specific context for the argument, from which he gets the title of his post, is the recent and tragic death of a 14 year old homeschooled boy, Teddy Foltz-Tedesco.

I would like to look at Teddy’s death first.

Teddy’s death, caused by horrific child abuse, should bring all conversation about homeschooling and parental rights — really, any and every political conversation — to a halt. The kid, only 14 years old, was beaten until he was unconscious by his mom’s boyfriend. He was not taken to a hospital until hours after the fact. Five days later, after suffering internal bleeding and brain contusions, he died.

But that was the end of the story, not the beginning. I will let Homeschooling’s Invisible Children explain what happened prior:

The abuse started three year prior, when Bush started dating Widdersheim. The family became increasingly isolated, and Teddy’s father did not see him after his tenth birthday. Two years before Teddy’s death a grandmother tried to intervene in the family, but Widdersheim refused to believe her children. Friends and neighbors contacted social services, but after teachers at Teddy’s school started an inquiry with the Ohio children’s services agency, Widdersheim withdrew her children from public school to homeschool them.

Too many people failed this kid. His own mother, his siblings, friends and neighbors, social services. People who could have acted, should have acted, did not. People who tried to act should have tried harder. Policies in place to protect kids like Teddy failed. Services we pay for to keep this from happening did nothing to stop it. It makes me nauseous. I’m not a libertarian and I’m not an authoritarian, but moments like these make me want to be both: I want to punch the walls of the entire child protective system in a blind rage because they had laws and money but they did not save this boy! and I want to ban everyone from ever being parents because if we can’t stop kids from dying let’s just take all the kids away from parents!

But neither the complete absence of laws nor passing every law ever will make each and every kid safe.

That’s the maddening factuality of politics’ limitations.

But that does not mean we should stop trying to make better policies. That does not mean we burn homeschooling to the ground or give parents free rein to do whatever the hell they want to their kids.

And most of all, that does not mean it is compassionate or right to encourage others to harass people trying to make the world a better place, even when those people are misguided. Yet that’s exactly what HSLDA and Matt Walsh did.

See, after Teddy’s death, his birth father and other family members began pressing for legal reform in an attempt to spare other kids from Teddy’s fate. His birth father and other family members approached Ohio state senator Capri Cafaro, the result of which was the proposed S.B. 248. The bill (which was later withdrawn) would have required all homeschooling parents to undergo an annual interview with social services before homeschooling.

This proposal was, in my opinion, doomed to fail at the start, not to mention misguided. (Ironically, it was also the first piece of legislation that the newly-launched Coalition for Responsible Home Education took a position on, and even CRHE opposed it.) But HSLDA quickly spun it as — and I quote — the “Worst-Ever Homeschool Law.”

Yes, the “Worst-Ever Homeschool Law.”

HSLDA knows their followers. They know how they respond to such rhetoric. They know their followers will flood social media and rant and rave and bully Facebook pages to no end, just like they did the German Embassy’s Facebook page for over a month, calling people Nazis and tyrants and other colorful phrases.

And then along comes Matt Walsh, saying Senator Cafaro was — and I quote — “repulsively exploiting the child abuse death of a 14 year old kid,” despite the fact that the Senator only proposed that bill because of the prompting of that kid’s father.

But, you know, facts get in the way of hyperbole, don’t they?

Walsh wouldn’t get nearly as many blog hits if he didn’t exaggerate. HSLDA wouldn’t get nearly as much dedicated fervor from their audience if they didn’t say the bill was basically the Second Coming of Hitler. (Which makes one wonder, who is really exploiting Teddy’s death here?)

So of course inspired by both HSLDA and Walsh, angry homeschool parents flooded the Facebook page dedicated to Teddy’s death and run by his father. Teddy’s remaining family were berated and harassed for days. It was, in my opinion, a real low for the homeschool movement: a mob of people verbally abusing a grieving parent who lost his son, all in the name of “parental rights.”

But it wasn’t just sad. It was aggravating. Because there are real issues here. There are issues that demand a serious, sober debate — between legislators, child protective services, and homeschool advocates. There are heartbreaking failings that demand self-reflection within homeschooling communities about how to protect the communities’ kids from parents who misuse homeschooling.

But we don’t get any of that.

We get Walsh’s hyperbole and HSLDA’s spin.

Which means we don’t get better laws. We don’t get self-reflection. And we don’t get safer kids.

But Walsh gets more blog hits and HSLDA gets more members.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Homeschooling leaders and advocates can do better than this. We can do better than this.

No kids are saved while homeschooling leaders are off tilting after windmills of persecution. No progress is made — towards either safety of kids or freedom of education — when we cast our movement in Manichaean colors.

Matt Walsh: no one wants to treat all homeschool parents like felony child abusers. No one. No one thinks all homeschool parents are “dangerous terrorists.” No one. Not even us here at Homeschoolers Anonymous, who are apparently now “whistleblowers documenting the horrific secrets of the fundamentalist homeschooling movement.” Yes, not even us whistleblowers of horrific secrets, who blog daily about homeschool abuse, think all homeschool parents are or should be treated like terrorists or child abusers. You are vainly slapping the face of straw men. You have an entire field full of straw men. You are running around with a pitchfork and screaming at figments of your imagination.

Let’s look at the facts calmly, please?

The facts are, parents do not have “the unquestioned and absolute right to teach and raise our own children.” No. Never. This is good. This is how it should be. In refutation of this sentence of Matt Walsh’s from his post’s second paragraph, I would simply present this later sentence from — you guessed it — Matt Walsh:

You should be able to lose your claim over your child if you are truly abusive, or if you commit any felony crime that would put you in prison and require your kids to be cared for by someone else.

This is pretty simple, really: if you should lose your claim over your child if you are abusive (or for any other reason), then your right to teach or raise your own children is not “unquestioned and absolute.” So Walsh really does not mean half of what he says, or he simply ignores how he contradicts himself. There should be limits on parental rights. The state should have power over your children that supersedes your own.

To some extent.

We are ultimately arguing what the extent to which we should apply the principle; we are not actually arguing about the principle. Walsh confuses these two things. You cannot say “this right should be absolute unless.” If there is even one “unless,” then the right is — by definition — questioned and conditional, not unquestioned and absolute.

Walsh might want fewer restrictions on parents than Teddy’s dad might want, or the NEA might want, or members of the responsible homeschooling movement — myself included — might want. But all of us, Walsh included, believe we need to protect kids. We need to question parents’ right to teach and raise their own children when those parents teach and raise their children to believe God wants them raped and impregnated due to an impending Armageddon. We need to make conditional parents’ right to teach and raise their own children when those parents beat their kids to death in the name of righteousness.

People who believe “parental rights” should not be an excuse to rape and murder your kids are not “lunatics,” as Walsh might have you believe. They are not people who — again, a bizarre tangent on Walsh’s part — think “a person’s only fundamental parental right is to butcher their children.” The desire to protect children from abuse is a highly ecumenical one, transcending people’s beliefs about abortion.

So how about we not talk about everything as hyperbolically as possible?

We could sit down in person over a cup of coffee, or write reasonable blog posts with intelligent rhetoric, where we sift through the issues at hand. Issues that could literally mean the life or death of other homeschooled kids — or public school kids, even. We can have big conversations: about how to improve child protective services, how to help out parents trying to educate their children in safe and nurturing environments, how to assist public school teachers raise achievement for all groups of kids, and how to counter child abuse in any and every context.

By all means, let’s indict sexually abusive teachers in public schools. Let’s indict abusive teachers in public schools, private schools, home schools — even colleges. Let’s join with people like Boz Tchividjian and fight abuse in churches; let’s call out and bring to justice the Jerry Sanduskys in secular institutions, too.

But we’re not going to do that with hyperbole. We’re going to do that with well-vetted policies, dedicated parents, outspoken child advocates, and an endless supply of compassion for survivors and support for those fighting for them.

Let me put it another way:

The time for hyperbole in the homeschooling movement is over. It is time for productive discourse and action.

About Those “Model Homeschoolers”…

November 22, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s blog Becoming Worldly. It was originally published on November 7, 2013.

Recently a piece on Hana Williams’ death and her parents’ conviction, “The Tragic Death of An Ethiopian Adoptee and How It Could Happen Again” by Quiverfull and Child Catchers author Kathryn Joyce, came out in Slate magazine. My Homeschooling’s Invisible Children teammate and co-founder, Rachel Coleman, was quoted in it and HIC was linked.

Hana Williams’ tragic story is powerful and grotesque. It shows how at-risk children, including orphans adopted from other countries, can easily be severely mistreated or even die when living in homeschooling homes where the focus is on authoritarian “sin-punishing” parenting and having many children raised as “arrows” for Christ.

What I expect many readers of the Slate piece are struck by is how extreme the circumstances were for the Williams’ children. What they may not understand is that while that sort of awful story definitely exists on the far end of a spectrum of fundamentalist homeschooling, there are more common and often milder strains of it that are pervasive in certain homeschooling subcultures. These strains have made their way into others in a way that is often invisible unless you know what to look for.

The reason most parents do the authoritarian parenting thing in the first place is because they believe it will result in model children and successful adults.

They see children from these other homeschooling families that seem “perfectly well-behaved” and who do “first time obedience” and many understandably want that sort of awesomeness for themselves. What they do not understand is that this “model homeschooler” or “model child” image often comes at a steep price.

Like the infamous (and largely discredited) Chinese “tiger mother” style of parenting, you can sometimes have outwardly successful offspring that nonetheless have increasingly serious secret or not-so-secret mental health and emotional struggles because they have been trained to view the world as exacting, punitive, and unsafe. People who feel that the world around them is constantly requiring perfection out of them often respond by engaging in something that one of my friends called “self-cannibalization” in order to succeed. While you don’t hear much about the ones who don’t succeed, others noticeably surpass their peers in educational attainment and professional achievement.

This is my story as well, really. I grew up isolated and poor and then went on to be an honors student in college, make lots of friends and throw good parties once I learned how to socialize. I was a good neighbor, presented well in public, and was not a half bad partner to love or marry.

Nobody would have guessed at what battles went on in my head or how much intense effort went into “passing for normal” until it all came crashing down.

The walls separating the different spheres of my inner world crumbled during grad school into what for me was delayed-onset PTSD and for others might more closely resemble depression, anxiety, substance abuse, compulsive behavior, self-harm, and/or social phobias.

Some people don’t seem to connect these kinds of dots. Many people trying to defend the reputation of homeschooling (which I will note is different than defending the right to homeschool) note that the writing, educational attainment, and professions of many of us former homeschoolers speaking out about negative homeschooling experiences are respectably good.

These kinds of achievements are the stuff that homeschool leaders and proud parents would love to take some credit for, attribute to homeschooling. But for those of us who have lived through the kinds of experiences we describe, when someone assumes that the reason we have the skills and careers that we do today is because of homeschooling, we get annoyed (and sometimes triggered).

We know that they do not fully understand what happened to us and that they are definitely not hearing from or seeing all of us.

For people who see ourselves as survivors of what I’m going to start calling the Authoritarian Christian Homeschooling Movement (to differentiate it from the views of both ordinary Christians and fundamentalist Christians), it is upsetting to hear the sort of homeschooling we were subjected to and our subsequent skills and accomplishments connected in a positive causal relationship without our permission. It negates some of our feelings and experiences, doesn’t paint an accurate picture, and can also be (wrongheadedly) used as an argument for the status quo not changing (and yes, it definitely needs changing).

See, we know from experience that “well, you’re obviously doing great stuff today” can be and often is used as the basis of a “no harm, no foul” argument. This argument implies that homeschooling in fact worked as intended and the problem simply was that the formula needed a bit more of an ingredient or two, perhaps one of them being love. While I am not one to ever speak against love (as it is a many splendored thing and I think I did need more), I think what we really needed most was less authoritarianism and social isolation so that we could have the choice, rather than the commandment, as to who to give our love to and how.

So while I get that expressing appreciation or admiration or an enjoyment of the things some of us have produced is likely not meant as anything but a sincere compliment (and I and others working on shedding light on this issue do hope you like reading our stories) it is not ok to then attribute our abilities, skills, or professions to quality homeschooling.

However, I realize that me simply stating that it’s not alright to call people exemplary or model homeschoolers when they don’t want the label does not convey the full message as to why. So I decided to ask some of my fellow survivors to fill out the following prompt and share their own answers with you, so you can know why:

#1 – The Prodigal Son’s Brother (pseudonym), male, age 29
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
Much of my social interaction during certain formative years was with adults, rather than peers, and my reading material was far ahead of that for my age
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I am self-loathing, codependent, sex-negative, vengeful, immature, and suicidal.

#2 – Trinity Ruth Ruhland, female, age 23
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I relate better to my supervisors and older adults. I have a kick-ass work ethic because I had no choice but to work to survive.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I still struggle to have friends my own age, and that I feel a lot of pressure to always be perfect. Also, I am in the Air Force and I’d like people (coworkers who tease me relentlessly) to know that I have an honest fear of things flying through the air and hitting me. It is not that I don’t like playing Wally ball for PT, but that I seriously can’t handle things flying at me anymore. I also wish they’d understand that I have issues with nightmares (a combo of growing up and my time in Afghanistan) and that I can’t watch certain movies because of triggers.

#3 – anonymous female, age 28
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I work hard, I’m efficient, and I do a good job.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I frequently short-change myself to deliver this level of work. I wish they knew that I struggle with panic attacks at the very thought of making a mistake and that this makes it hard to function. I wish they knew that I suffer from chronic health problems stemming from overwork and stress during my teens. I wish they knew that I have a hard time relaxing and enjoying myself.

#4 – Holly (pseudonym), female, age 34
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I work hard and push myself beyond reasonable limits.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I have daily anxiety, frequent panic attacks, depression, nightmares and night terrors, and sometimes am unable to leave my house for days, all because of my childhood experiences in a controlling religious subculture.

#5 – April Duvall, female, age 33, homeschooled 2nd – 12th grade
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I produce high-quality work. I had to get things right the first time all the time to avoid beatings and learn how to hold a job so I could escape as a teenager.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I panic when thinking I have gotten any small detail wrong. I wake up with nightmares after any small correction. I spend hours talking myself down telling myself it’s okay, I won’t be beaten or rejected, I won’t die and won’t bring harm to those under me for not achieving a nebulous perfection. I struggle to navigate group situations, and I see that my oldest child also struggles as I haven’t been able to teach her what I don’t know – how to enter a small group of children playing. My social skills are only good in professional or maybe 1:1 situations.

#5 – Deborah (pseudonym), female, age 23
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I was isolated from every single person except my family and every moment of my life was not only accounted for by watchful adults but used to teach me something – generally not actual education, but “character” or skills I needed in order to be a housewife.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I didn’t have friends or a childhood and that has left me crushed and unable to interact socially with others in an appropriate manner or date until well into my adult life.

#6 – anonymous female, age 26, law student
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I have suffered so much pain, I don’t see the point in laughing or having fun anymore. I don’t go to parties. I don’t hang out with friends. I don’t even take vacations.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I am in counseling for anxiety, I am terrified of people, I have huge trust issues that prevent me from forming close relationships, and I am triggered by anything that reminds me of family. I work hard and accomplish things because burying myself in activity is how I hide from the pain. Don’t look at me and say ‘She’s fine.’ Look at me and wonder how on earth I still manage to function.

#7 – Stacy (pseudonym), age 25, graduate student in history and English
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
Growing up, if I wasn’t capable and mature at all times, at every age, at every event and in all subjects, it meant that I was not only failing as a Christian, cultural warrior who was the only hope for America, but I was misrepresenting and disrespecting God as my creator.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I appear so together and capable today because that binary (fail-succeed) is still dominant in my mind– joy, peace and happiness (feelings that emerge from those grey areas in the process outside failing and succeeding) are fought-for blessings.

#8 – anonymous female, age 30, married, with a master’s degree and established career
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I was required to do everything perfectly every time, both in “school” and out of it, and there was no break from those expectations.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
Now I am on an SSRI just so I can sleep at night because of my anxiety problems and my doctor’s belief that I am on the OCD spectrum.

#9 – DoaHF (Daughter of a Heavenly Father, pseudonym), female, age 23
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I had a perfectionist mother who was always on my back about doing things her perfect way.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I hate the voices in my head that won’t go away. I have authority issues and I dont trust ANYONE, even if I have known them for years. My heart is locked away so it can’t get hurt… for the thousandth time.

#10 – Susannah (pseudonym), female, 38
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I have decades of practice raising children and managing a home; I am articulate, read constantly, and live in a nice neighborhood.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
What is less apparent is that I get panic attacks from grocery shopping, that I get tongue-tied conversing with confident men, and seeing my mom’s handwriting causes me psychosomatic pain.

#11 – Hadassah (pseudonym), female, age 31
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I seem to have it together, am great at organization, pretty awesome in the kitchen, and I am often praised for my kids and understanding them. I’m praised for my language skills, but I refused to learn it from my parents. I have learned everything hands on.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I have some pretty intense anxiety. I have trouble working with others, because I find them in my way or that they’re honestly not working. I end up being assigned projects on my own and do above and beyond the call of duty for fear that I will be kicked off of the program or fired, because it has happened before in a no-fault state.

The only reason my kids and I have “an understanding” is because I’ve gone out of my way for the last 6 years to read a large amount of childhood development books that I bought on my dime.

I seem like I know all the chemistry in the kitchen when I’m barely able to handle the mathematics and never once took chemistry classes. I freak out if my cooking/baking is less than perfect.

People also do not know that I am chronically ill, and often cannot function like they do; or I have panic attacks and need to stop and try again. People do not know that I was held back simply because I am female. That I was forced to be a stay at home daughter and basically was a servant to my parents until I was finally able to marry my husband and get out of my parent’s home. People have no idea that hiding behind the “cool” veneer of homeschooling, my education is so lacking that I’m still filling in the blanks as money avails itself.

#12 – Julia (pseudonym), female, age 24
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
Failure was never an option, appearances were all that mattered, and I am skilled at communicating with my elders as opposed to my peers.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I am just going through the motions. I deal with anxiety, depression, diagnosed PTSD, and feel as though I must always second-guess what others do and say. I can’t trust them, and I can’t relate to them, and I often wish Socialization 101 courses existed.

#13 – Libby Anne, mid 20′s, blogger
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I am hard working, polite, and well spoken.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
What I wish people really knew about me was that because of my perfectionism and past family trauma I get panic attacks when my boss says “I need to talk to you about something” and my heart rate goes sky high when I see a letter from my mother or my dad’s name on my voicemail.”

#14 – Kelly (pseudonym), female, age 30, law student
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
As a child I could not rely on my parents to be mature or conscientious–I had to parent myself in many ways, and was held to adult standards even as a child. They did not support my decisions or acknowledge my feelings unless they mirrored theirs (i.e., they were “correct”), so my decision making and interpersonal skills were stunted.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
This resulted in me constantly second-guessing my feelings, decisions, and interactions with others. I have been addressing these issues through reading self-help books and several years of professional therapy, but have a long way to go. My therapist was shocked that I am as functional as I am, given my past. Several of my siblings have not fared as well.

#15 – Samantha Field, female, 26, blogger
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I was forced to take over the daily running of a household when I was 10 years old, and I didn’t have any real friends– just people who watched everything I did, everything I said, like a hawk and shamed me in public, in front of my entire church, for ever doing something that wasn’t “ladylike” and “mature.”
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I desperately loved science, but because no one was capable of teaching me math I got a degree in music– a degree I don’t even use now.

#16 – anonymous female, age 24, graduate student
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I am the perfectionist daughter of perfectionist parents. I never knew that the pressure I was under to always get A’s was not something everyone experienced until I was in college. The pressure to be perfect, to never mess up, and to handle everything with poise and excellence has been one of the defining struggles in my life.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
How inadequate I feel most of the time. I wish they knew about my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the depression that made the last ten years of my life so hard. I wish they knew that I struggle with anxiety and social awkwardness, that it’s hard for me to get close to people, and that no matter how hard I try, I never feel like I measure up. I wish they knew that the hurt I’ve suffered from legalistic conservative Christians has made it hard to hold onto my faith.

#17 – Noelle, female, age 22
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I was forced to grow up at a young age and hold more responsibilities than a lot of adults do, as the oldest of 8 kids.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
I wish people knew that I have no self confidence in myself, I struggle with depression and self injury and my biggest dream right now (which seems impossible) is to radiate peace and positivity.

#18 – me, 30, blogger and homeschool reform advocate
As a former homeschooler, I am noticeably capable and mature because:
I am friendly, educated, conscientious, good at retaining and aggregating information, and I have a knack for bringing up issues, finding common ground, and mediating disputes in stressful or high-conflict situations.
What I wish people really knew about me was:
A violent authoritarian upbringing skewed my baseline settings and left me to struggle with self-care, perfectionism, avoidance of others when I’m struggling, sweaty palms if I hear church sermons, and a strong feeling that harsh or needy attention is love.

To Break Down a Child: A Call for Stories about Pearl-Style Discipline

September 10, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team18 Comments

To Break Down a Child: A Call for Stories about Pearl-Style Discipline

By Shaney Lee, HARO Board Member

*****

Hana Williams.

Sean Paddock.

Lydia Schatz.

What do these three children have in common? All of their deaths were linked to the abusive teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl in their book To Train Up A Child.

If you weren’t homeschooled growing up, it’s possible, even probable, that you’ve never heard the names Michael and Debi Pearl before. Their success with their publishing efforts are largely due to word-of-mouth through fundamentalist Christian churches and homeschooling communities.

It is estimated that over 670,000 copies of To Train Up A Child are in circulation. That’s at least 670,000 too many. Much of that word of mouth has largely been enabled through homeschooling communities. Their books have been prominently featured in the homeschool editions of Christian Book Distributor’s catalogues, been recommended on homeschooling forums, and handed from parent to parent at homeschooling conventions (not to mention sold in some of the booths).

The Pearls don’t just advocate spanking as a method of child discipline. They advocate a method of discipline that puts the child’s will in direct defiance of God’s will and of the parents’ will, that makes the breaking of a child’s will the ultimate goal of child discipline, and that puts parents in a position to believe that if they are not 100% successful in their discipline, they risk their child’s very soul.

And yet, when these teachings are linked to the death of multiple children, there are thousands who speak up in defense of the Pearls’ teachings.

Enough is enough.

It is time for those of us familiar with the teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl to speak up and speak against these abusive methods. It’s time to show that the damage of the Pearls’ method goes beyond just a few parents who got out of control. It’s time to show that it’s justifiable for the Pearls’ teachings to be linked to these horrible outcomes.

If you were raised with the Pearls’ methods, it’s your time to speak. If you’ve read the Pearls’ books and are against what they teach, it’s your time to speak. If you are a parent who previously used the Pearls’ methods, it’s your time to speak.

Even if you’re not normally a fan of what Homeschoolers Anonymous does, I ask you to join us for this series.

Because this issue is bigger than any disagreements we might have about homeschooling. It’s about preventing another Lydia, or Hana, or Sean.

This is not about whether spanking is a legitimate form of discipline (that’s a whole ‘nother discussion in and of itself!). This is about taking a public stand against a method of teaching that is extremely harmful towards children. Any system of childrearing that views children as rebellious little souls whose wills needs to be broken — rather than as small humans who are learning to live and thrive in the world — dehumanizes children and will always be harmful in the end.

Hana, Sean, and Lydia can’t speak up for themselves. It’s up to us to do it for them, to stand up for children who still have a chance. While it is the homeschooling community that has largely enabled the Pearls, I strongly believe it is the homeschooling community that is most equipped to fight against their abusive teaching.

So let’s stand up for our children. They deserve better.

*****

To contribute your story or thoughts:

As always, you can contribute anonymously or publicly.

If you interested in participating in this, please email us at homeschoolersanonymous@gmail.com.

The deadline for submission is September 15, 2013.

Hana Williams Abuse and Murder Trial Ongoing

August 21, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on August 6, 2013.

Hana Williams died two years ago, in May 2011, of hypothermia after her mother banished her from the house as punishment for being “rebellious.” Hana was already overly-thin from starvation—her parents withheld food as punishment—and she had often been forced to sleep in the barn, use an outdoor port-a-potty, and shower outside.

Hana Williams had been adopted from Ethiopia in 2008 by a conservative Christian homeschooling couple who followed the child training methods of Michael and Debi Pearl.

Her trial is currently taking place, including testimony from some of the children’s seven biological children and Hana’s adopted Ethiopian brother.

I’m going to offer some excerpts from recent articles covering the trial. If you want to see video news reports, click through, as most of these articles include news footage. For what I’ve previously had to say about Hana Williams’ death, read this post from two years ago, written right after the news of Hana’s death surfaced.

Jurors See Before and After Photos of Starved Girl, August 1, 2013

For the first time, jurors saw what Hana Williams looked like as a healthy girl–and her shocking deterioration before her death.

Video taken in 2007 before she left Ethiopia shows Hana smiling as she looks at the camera. A photo taken closer to her death in 2011 shows her thin teen and shaved head.

Hana’s adopted brother, Immanuel, who is deaf, testified she was always told to stay outside by her adoptive parents, Larry and Carri Williams.

“They didn’t let her into the house to warm up,” said 12-year-old Immanuel, through an interpreter.

Immanuel says he and Hana were treated very differently from the Williams’ own seven children.

Hana’s Adopted Brother Testifies about Abuse, August 1, 2013

During the third day of witness testimony yesterday in the trial of Larry and Carri Williams, a mental health therapist from Seattle Children’s Hospital testified that Hana’s 12-year-old brother suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of the abuse he endured under the hands of his adoptive parents.

The mental health expert, Dr. Julia Petersen, said that the boy, who was also adopted from Ethiopia, started meeting with her last winter, when he had been in foster care for more than a year, local media reported. The couple have pleaded not guilty.

Per the Skagit Valley Herald: “Petersen said the boy fit the diagnostic criteria for PTSD based in part on his nightmares about being physically harmed and the fact he was constantly afraid of making mistakes or expressing himself lest he be “punished.” Discipline the boy experienced in the Williams home, plus seeing Hana in pain and dying, is traumatic enough to lead to PTSD, she said.”

Dr Petersen pointed out that the brother’s upbringing in Ethiopia or his stay at foster care in the U.S. do not appear to be the reason for the post-traumatic stress disorder. “Losing his parents caused the boy sadness and grief, but not the same kind of anxiety brought on by what he said happened in the Williams home,” Petersen said.

Latest from the Williams Trial, August 4, 2013

An expert on torture testified Friday in the homicide-by-abuse trial of Larry and Carri Williams who are accused of abusing their two adopted children from Ethiopia, Hana and Immanuel, and causing the death of Hana.

13-year-old Hana Alemu (Hana Williams) was found dead on May 12, 2011 in the family’s backyard in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. She died of hypothermia, which doctors say was hastened by malnutrition and a stomach condition.

“In my judgment, it’s not a close case,” said John Hutson, taking the witness stand on day-six of the trial. The law school professor and dean, who had previously testified before Congress about military prisoner abuse, added: “They both were unquestionably tortured.”

Kids Testify in Abuse and Murder Trial, August 5, 2013

Cara, one of Larry and Carri’s seven children, says Immanuel, a brother, and Hana ate outside and slept in a closet when they broke the rules in the gated, conservative Christian home.

The parents claim they cared for the adopted pair—like shaving Hana’s hair when she had lice. But Cara says Hana’s braids were shaved as punishment.

“Because she was clipping grass around the house and she was clipping it down to an inch instead of leaving a couple of inches,” said Cara.

The Williams could face life in prison and are charged with assaulting Immanuel and abusing Hana to death.

A witness told investigators the couple followed a controversial book called “Train Up A Child”. The author tells parents to use a switch, cold baths, withhold food and force children outside in cold weather as punishment. Cara says her father, a Boeing worker, and her stay-at-home mother hit all of the kids.

“In your family you call the swats and spanking “training” correct?” asked Larry’s attorney, Cassie Trueblood.

“Yes,” said Cara.

But Cara says the adopted children were the only ones who had to shower outside with a garden hose.

“Did you ever take a shower out there?” asked prosecutor Rich Weyrich.

“No,” said Cara.

Prosecutors want jurors to hear from the couple’s oldest sons. But a judge ruled the pair will not testify without immunity—because they are also accused with abusing their adopted siblings. Prosecutors say they are willing to give immunity from any future charges which should clear the way for the boys to testify this week.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here.