homeschool

HSLDA and Child Abuse: HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse

HA Editorial Team6 Comments
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HA note: The following series will run each weekday this week. It is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. Part four of the series was originally published on Patheos on April 22 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Introduction | Part Two, HSLDA’s Fight Against Child Abuse Reporting | Part Three, HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations | Part Four, HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse | Part Five, HSLDA and the Deregulation of Homeschooling

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4. HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse

This post is part of a series examining the role of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in aiding and abetting child abuse. I have previously looked at HSLDA’s efforts to prevent the reporting of child abuse and their efforts to stonewall child abuse investigations. In this post I will turn to HSLDA’s defense of child abuse.

HSLDA has made a name for itself defending parents’ right to spank their children and spends a good bit of its time and energy monitoring and opposing new child abuse legislation—an odd activity for an organization nominally devoted to protecting the legality of homeschooling. While HSLDA literature continually talks about the importance of defending parents’ use of “reasonable” corporal punishment, the organization has never taken the time to define just what constitutes“reasonable” corporal punishment. Similarly, while HSLDA occasionally makes statements condemning child abuse, I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern—these statements are always followed with the word “however.”

Hiding and Ignoring Child Abuse

In its literature, HSLDA (to my knowledge) never defines “reasonable” corporal punishment, never warns its member families not to abuse their children, and never tells its member families how to handle child abuse they might see in other families in their homeschooling communities. HSLDA’s attorneys are not pioneers in stopping child abuse in homeschooling families; they are pioneers in disabling child abuse protections. Never once does HSLDA touch on how to solve the child abuse problem, perhaps because they don’t see it as a significant problem or perhaps simply because they see it as something “other” people do, not problem some of their own member families might have. While you could argue that HSLDA sees child abuse detection and prevent as important but not as a homeschooling issue, this makes no sense when you consider the amount of time HSLDA spends working to disarm protections for abused children.

Let me give an example of the sort of advice HSLDA gives regarding child abuse and child protective services—In a document titled “The Social Worker at Your Door: 10 Helpful Hints,” HSLDA attorney Christopher Klicka advised parents as follows:

a. Avoid potential situations that could lead to a child welfare investigation.

b. Do not spank children in public.

c. Do not spank someone else’s child unless they are close Christian friends.

In other words, Klicka is aware that HSLDA member families physically discipline their children in ways many people would consider abusive, and even find concerning enough to actually call Child Protective Services. But instead of addressing where the line between “reasonable” corporal punishment and child abuse is located, he merely advises HSLDA member families to avoid the use of corporal punishment in public. This displays a remarkable lack of care about the very real problem of child abuse, as well as an inability to consider that any of its member families might actually discipline their children in ways that are abusive and should be stopped.

Further, Klicka advises HSLDA member families to restrict their use of corporal punishment on children outside their families to the children of “close Christian friends.” This statement seems to imply that without this suggestion, HSLDA member parents might spank children outside of their families without their parents’ permission and be reported to Child Protective Services for doing so—and also that close Christian friends will de facto be okay with them spanking their children without asking first. After all, why not say “Do not spank someone else’s child unless you have their permission“? Or even, why not say “Do not spank someone else’s child” and leave it there?

There is also the problem of omission—for all of the advice HSLDA gives on how its member families can recognize, avoid, or stonewall child abuse investigation, the organization never takes two seconds to inform its member families how to recognize and avoid child abuse or even how to handle or deal with child abuse in their homeschooling families or communities. One wonders if there are any circumstances at all in which HSLDA would ever recommend that its member families involve CPS.

What Is Child Abuse?

HSLDA’s member manual states that “HSLDA believes that child abuse is a terrible crime and that true abusers should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Note the use of the word “true.” The more I read, the more convinced I become that HSLDA does not define child abuse in the same way as most Americans. For example, HSLDA is on record defending foster parents’ rights to use corporal punishment on their foster children, something most Americans would find disturbing. Further, it’s worth noting that the sentence above is one of the many times HSLDA briefly condemns child abuse and then starts the next sentence with the word “However” (see page 3, column 2 of the link).

The only time anyone at HSLDA comes close to discussing what actually counts as child abuse is in discussing a 2008 California law that would have added to the penal code a list of actions for jurors to consider when determining if a form of discipline is “unjustifiable.” In a Washington Times op ed, HSLDA president J. Michael Smith explained that HSLDA had no problem with most of the items on the list—stating that these things were indeed child abuse—and that the organization only opposed the law because it took exemption to the listing of hitting children with objects. Here are his words:

This bill amends Penal Code section 273(a), which makes it a crime to cause unjustifiable pain, harm or injury to any minor child. If the bill passes, spanking with an object such as a stick, rod or switch would be lumped in with throwing, kicking, burning, or cutting a child.

Striking a child with a fist. Striking a child under 3 years of age on the face or head. Vigorously shaking of a child under 3 years of age. Interfering with a child’s breathing. Brandishing a deadly weapon upon a child. These are all factors that a jury could use to conclude that a defendant in a criminal case has inflicted unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering.

What the bill would do is to equate discipline administered via an implement with the above conduct, which obviously is abusive behavior toward a child.

Now of course, this is no actual laying out of a comprehensive definition of child abuse—Smith merely goes down the items listed in the bill. Further, I’m less than willing to trust what HSLDA spokespeople say in public forums given that Farris claimed in an article for popular readership that requiring social workers to have either parental consent or a warrant to enter a home was be no biggie because the vast, vast majority of people voluntarily let social workers in, even as the organization advises its members to never never never let a social worker into their homes without a warrant, ever. Still, it does appear that HSLDA does view some actions—such as violently shaking a small child or striking a child with a fist—to be child abuse. Whether it warns its member families against these actions or ever takes the time to define “reasonable” corporal punishment, however, is another story.

For the record, I am personally against any form of physical punishment of children, and am raising my two young children without laying a hand to them. In contrast, many conservative Christians, including those who founded and run HSLDA, believe strongly that the Bible demands that parents use corporal punishment on their children (they take “spare the rod, spoil the child” stuff literally). Most Americans fall somewhere in between these two positions: they believe that some form of corporal punishment can be employed without crossing the line into child abuse, but also that spanking should consist merely of swatting a child’s buttocks with an open hand and that this form of punishment is usually unnecessary. The question I want to ask here is not whether or not corporal punishment is acceptable but rather where HSLDA draws the line between “reasonable corporal punishment” on the one hand and child abuse on the other. The reason I titled this post as I have is that HSLDA appears to define child abuse differently from the average American.

Given that HSLDA never defines “reasonable corporal punishment” or gives any sort of comprehensive definition of child abuse, I want to take a look at the organization’s positions regarding three different proposed state child abuse statute changes over the past five years. Their positions and advocacy on these bills represent a small fraction of HSLDA’s monitoring of child abuse statute changes across the nation—something the organization watches very closely and doesn’t hesitate to use its e-alert system to mobilize its members in lobbying—but should give us a sample of how HSLDA talks about and defines “reasonable” corporal punishment and what it does or does not include as child abuse.

HSLDA in California: Don’t Restrict Disciplining with Objects!

We’ll start with the HSLDA’s opposition to the proposed 2008 revision of California’s child abuse statute referenced above. At the time, the state’s statutebanned causing children “unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering.” The new bill kept this same language but added the following:

In a prosecution under this Section in determining whether or not a defendant willfully caused any child to suffer, or inflicted unjustifiable physical pain, or mental suffering, a jury may consider any of the following:

a) The use of an implement, including, but not limited to, a stick, a rod, a switch, an electrical cord, an extension cord, a belt, a broom, or a shoe.

b) Throwing, kicking, burning, or cutting a child.

c) Striking a child with a closed fist.

d) Striking a child under the age of three on the face or head.

e) Vigorous shaking of a child under the age of three.

f) Interference with a child’s breathing.

g) Brandishing a deadly weapon upon a child. However, the above conduct is not sufficient by itself to prove guilt, and its weight and significance, if any, is for the jury to decide.

HSLDA explained its opposition to this change as follows:

The instructions to a jury which are mandated by the current version of A.B. 2943 would state that a jury may consider that physical pain or mental suffering inflicted upon a child is unjustifiable if it is caused by any of the seven kinds of actions…. The first of the seven actions listed is “the use of an implement, including, but not limited to, a stick, a rod, a switch, an electrical cord, an extension cord, a belt, a broom, or a shoe.” This first action includes the act of spanking with an object other than using one’s hand.Because these items would be listed in the Penal Code, the police and district attorney would likely consider all spanking with an implement grounds for bringing charges against the parents. Then a court trial would determine if the parents are guilty of criminal child abuse. Parents would have the difficult task of proving that the spanking was justifiable to the satisfaction of the court in order to avoid being sent to jail for up to one year or receiving other penalties. The case also could be referred to Child Protective Services (CPS) and Juvenile Court, which could result in the possible temporary or permanent loss of custody of their children.

In other words, HSLDA opposed this bill because it listed beating child with a stick, rod, or electrical cord as a factor the jury should take into account when determining whether or not the actions of a parent accused of child abuse were justifiable. Indeed, HSLDA has a pattern of opposing laws that would ban hitting children with objects, even without banning spanking itself. We can safely conclude that HSLDA does not consider hitting children with objects to be child abuse.

But there’s another reason I started with this example, and that’s because of the way HSLDA uses this sort of case in an attempt to induce fear in its member families, distorting the facts and engaging in hyperbole in order to do so. I mean just look at the title of HSLDA president J. Michael Smith’s Washington Times op ed’s title: “California May Ban Spanking.” This bill absolutely would not have banned spanking, and it would not have even banned the use of a paddle—it would instead have merely stated that when determining whether the pain a parent inflicted on a child was unjustifiable, the jury should consider whether an implement should be used. But none of that mattered to HSLDA, which saw a chance to hold the specter of a complete ban on spanking over the head of its member followers.

HSLDA in Mississippi: “Reasonable Discipline” Exemption Not Enough

Next we move to the Deep South. In January of 2012 HSLDA opposed a change to Mississippi’s child abuse statute. Let’s start by looking at the original text of this section of Mississippi’s code:

(2) (a) Any person who shall intentionally (i) burn any child, (ii) torture any child or, (iii) except in self-defense or in order to prevent bodily harm to a third party, whip, strike or otherwise abuse or mutilate any child in such a manner as to cause serious bodily harm, shall be guilty of felonious abuse of a child and, upon conviction, shall be sentenced to imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for life or such lesser term of imprisonment as the court may determine, but not less than ten (10) years. For any second or subsequent conviction under this subsection, the person shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life.

In other words, if you burn or torture a child, or whip or strike a child so as to cause that child serious bodily harm, you can be prosecuted for child abuse. Brice Wiggins, a Republican state senator, became convinced that the statute did not do enough to penalize child abuse, and introduced a bill to entirely rewrite this section of the code. So let’s look at how his 2012 bill would have amended the code:

(2) (a) (i) A person shall be guilty of felonious abuse of a child if the person intentionally and in a manner causing bodily harm shall:

1. Burn any child;

2. Torture any child;

3. Strangle or choke any child;

4. Disfigure, scar or mutilate any child; or

5. Whip, strike or otherwise abuse any child except as a result of reasonable discipline, in self-defense or in order to prevent bodily harm to a third party.

(ii) A person who is convicted of felonious abuse of a child shall be sentenced to imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for life or such lesser term of imprisonment as the court may determine, but not less than ten (10) years. For any second or subsequent conviction under this subsection, the person shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life.

(iii) Reasonable discipline shall be a defense to any criminal charge brought under this subsection.

The new statute would prohibit striking or whipping a child so as to cause “bodily harm,” rather than “serious bodily harm” as in the previous statute, but would also insert an exception to this prohibition for “reasonable discipline.” Or to put it another way, while parents before could legally strike or whip their children so as to cause bodily harm whether or not it was done as part of “reasonable discipline” (just so long as they didn’t cause serious bodily harm), under the new revisions parents could only strike or whip their children so as to cause bodily harm as part of “reasonable discipline.”

HSLDA opposed this revision, explaining as follows:

Summary: This bill would make it a felony to “whip, strike or otherwise abuse any child,” thereby causing bodily harm to the child. The maximum penalty would be life in prison. “Reasonable discipline” would be an exception to this offense, but what is reasonable would be left up to judges to decide.

HSLDA’s Position: This bill has the potential to send a parent to prison for life for spanking a child. This bill should be opposed.

First note the fear mongering: “This bill has the potential to send a parent to prison for life for spanking a child.” This makes absolutely no sense—listing a “reasonable discipline” exemption to a law that banned striking a child so as to cause bodily harm clearly indicates that striking your child so as to cause harm can be reasonable discipline. Else why the exemption? In other words, contrary to what HSLDA told its member families, the bill would actually have codified spanking as “reasonable discipline.” HSLDA’s actions here were nothing short of lying and conniving fear mongering—and HSLDA did kick up a good bit of fear as conservative media outletspicked up the story, quoting HSLDA spokespeople and running alarmed headlines like “Miss. Bill Could Mean Life Imprisonment for Parents.” Given that HSLDA makes its money off of selling legal insurance, scare mongering is where it’s at its best. In fact, some have suggested that the organization may intentionally beef up the legal alerts it sends out right around the time it does its membership drive.

HSLDA claimed to oppose the bill because “reasonable discipline” was not defined and would be left up to judges to interpret. What this indicates to me is that HSLDA is aware that its member families define “reasonable discipline” appreciably differently from most Americans—or at least differently from Mississippi judges. What HSLDA wanted was for the law to allow its members to strike or whip their children so as to cause bodily harm without having to prove to judges that their actions constituted “reasonable discipline,” or at the very least an expansive and detailed definition of what constituted “reasonable discipline.” And HSLDA got its way when a new version of the bill was introduced early this year—a bill HSLDA did not oppose. Here is how this bill amended the statute to read:

(2) Any person shall be guilty of felonious child abuse in the following circumstances:

(a) Whether bodily harm results or not, if the person shall intentionally, knowingly or recklessly:

(i) Burn any child;

(ii) Physically torture any child;

(iii) Strangle, choke, smother, or in any way interfere with any child’s breathing;

(iv) Poison a child;

(v) Starve a child of nourishments needed to sustain life or growth;

(vi) Use any type of deadly weapon upon any child;

(b) If some bodily harm to any child actually occurs, and if the person shall intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly:

(i) Throw, kick, bite, or cut any child;

(ii) Strike a child under the age of fourteen (14) about the face or head with a closed fist;

(iii) Strike a child under the age of five (5) in the face or head;

(iv) Kick, bite, cut or strike a child’s genitals; circumcision of a male child is not a violation under this subpagragraph;

(c) If serious bodily harm to any child actually occurs, and if the person shall intentionally, knowingly or recklessly:

(i) Strike any child on the face or head;

(ii) Disfigure or scar any child;

(iii) Whip, strike, or otherwise abuse any child;

The new bill banned striking or whipping a child so as to cause them “serious bodily harm” but made a broad allowance for causing a child bodily harm, excepting only bodily harm caused by throwing, kicking, biting, or cutting, striking a child under 14 in the face or head with a closed fist, striking a child under 5 in the face or head, and kicking, biting, cutting, or striking a child’s genitals. Or to put it another way, under the new bill it would be legal to cause your child bodily harm without having to prove that doing so constituted “reasonable discipline,” so long as that bodily harm was not caused by things like biting, kicking, punching in the face, or trauma to the genitals. With this change, HSLDA no longer saw this law as a threat to its members’ “right” to discipline their children using “reasonable” corporal punishment.

Just how did the law define “bodily harm” and “serious bodily harm”?

(e) For the purposes of this subsection (2), “bodily harm” means any bodily injury to a child that includes, but is not limited to, bruising, bleeding, lacerations, soft tissue swelling, and external or internal swelling of any body organ.

(f) For the purposes of this subsection (2), “serious bodily harm” means any serious bodily injury to a child and includes, but is not limited to, the fracture of a bone, permanent disfigurement, permanent scarring, or any internal bleeding or internal trauma to any organ, any brain damage, any injury to the eye or ear of a child or other vital organ, and impairment of any bodily function.

With these definitions, then, the new bill left it legal for parents to beat their children so as to cause “bruising, bleeding, lacerations, soft tissue swelling, and external or internal swelling of any body organ” without even having to pass any sort of “reasonable discipline” standard. The reason HSLDA had opposed the 2012 version of the bill—but not this one—was that the former version only allowed parents to strike or whip their children so as to cause bodily harm if it was done as part of “reasonable discipline,” a standard they did not want their member families burdened to meet. HSLDA was successful in opposing the original bill and this travesty of a child abuse statute is the result.

HSLDA in Florida: Significant Bruising and Welts are A-Okay

Finally we turn to Florida. In 2010, HSLDA sent out a legislative alert about Florida’s Senate Bill 1360, urging its members to oppose the measure. Here is the text:

Summary: Includes inappropriate or excessively harsh corporal discipline in the definition of “criminal conduct” for purposes of protective investigations. Prohibits parents, legal custodians, or caregivers from inflicting such corporal discipline. Provides penalties and applicability. Includes offenses involving inappropriate or excessively harsh corporal discipline within the offense severity ranking chart of the Criminal Punishment Code, etc.

HSLDA’s Position: Oppose.

This one had me scratching my head. Why would HSLDA oppose a bill outlawing “excessively harsh corporal discipline”? Isn’t their typical line that they defend “reasonable” corporal punishment (which they never define)? Doesn’t that make them de facto against excessively harsh corporal punishment? Just what “inappropriate or excessively harsh” corporal punishment did SB 130 add to the criminal code? Let’s have a look at the text of the actual bill. The bill begins as follows:

Section 1. Paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of section 39.301, Florida Statutes, is amended to read:

(2) (b) As used in this subsection, the term “criminal conduct” means:

1. A child is known or suspected to be the victim of child abuse, as defined in s. 827.03; or of neglect of a child, as defined in s. 827.03; or of inappropriate or excessively harsh corporal discipline, as defined in s. 827.032.

In other words, the statute originally listed “child abuse” and “neglect” as “criminal conduct” and this bill would have amended it to also include “excessively harsh corporal discipline” alongside “child abuse” and “neglect.” How does the bill define “excessively harsh corporal discipline”?

Section 2. Section 827.032, Florida Statutes, is created to read:

827.032 Inappropriate or excessively harsh corporal discipline; penalties.—

(1) As used in this section, the term “inappropriate or excessively harsh corporal discipline” means an act of discipline that results or could reasonably be expected to result in any of the following or other similar injuries:

(a) Sprains, dislocations, or cartilage damage.

(b) Bone or skull fractures.

(c) Brain or spinal cord damage.

(d) Intracranial hemorrhage or injury to other internal organs.

(e) Asphyxiation, suffocation, or drowning.

(f) Injury resulting from the use of a deadly weapon.

(g) Burns or scalding.

(h) Cuts, lacerations, punctures, or bites.

(i) Disfigurement.

(j) Loss or impairment of a body part or function.

(k) Significant bruises or welts.

(l) Mental injury, as defined in s. 39.01.

The bill defines excessively harsh corporal discipline, then, as that which results in bone fractures, suffocation, burns, cuts, disfigurements significant bruises and welts, etc. HSLDA did not explain its opposition to this bill. The only thing that makes any sense to me is that HSLDA opposed it because it listed “significant bruises or welts” as “excessive corporal discipline.” HSLDA’s concern must have been that banning discipline that resulted in significant bruises and welts infringed on parents’ rights to use “reasonable corporal punishment” on their children. It seems, then, that disciplinary actions that leave “significant bruises or welts” fit within HSLDA’s definition of “reasonable corporal punishment.”

Concluding Thoughts

Given the lack of any word from HSLDA on what constitutes “reasonable” corporal punishment, we have to piece together HSLDA’s definition of that term by examining its positions on bills revising state child abuse statutes, which HSLDA monitors closely. What we find when we do this is that HSLDA opposes laws that would ban hitting children with physical objects, striking or whipping children so as to cause bodily harm in a manner that judges would not consider “reasonable discipline,” and disciplining children in a manner that leaves significant bruises or welts. It would seem that all of these things fit within HSLDA’s definition of “reasonable corporal punishment.” And, beyond that, it appears that HSLDA is aware that its members use corporal punishment that many if not most Americans would consider child abuse.

If HSLDA’s view of child abuse reporting and child abuse investigations as bad things that need to be cut down on or obstructed was disturbing, HSLDA’s actions and views regarding child abuse itself are more so.

HSLDA seems to see child abuse as something that happens “out there” and to “other people,” not something that happens within its own member families and needs to be treated seriously. Further, HSLDA appears to view child abuse as something that always exists in extremes, in children with broken bones and starved bodies—and if its member families aren’t engaging in those sorts of activities, then they can’t be abusers, right? But what the organization refuses to admit is that it is a continuum, and that much of what it considers “reasonable” corporal punishment is considered by most Americans to be child abuse. And through all of this, HSLDA makes no attempt to draw a line between reasonable corporal punishment and child abuse or advise its member families on anything other than how to hide abuse—and by not speaking, they are complicit.

Finally, HSLDA seems oblivious to the fact that its opposition to bills criminalizing child abuse might actually aid and abet abusers to continue their abuse. After all, thanks to HSLDA it is now perfectly legal in Mississippi for a parent to whip a child bloody, or beat a child with a rod until he is covered with welts, all without even having to justify this activity as “reasonable discipline.” This sort of thing affects real people, real children, real lives.

To be continued.

Burn In Case Of Evil: Cain’s Story, Part Three

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Burn In Case Of Evil: Cain’s Story, Part Three

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

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In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

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Why It’s Not Just About the Past and My Bitterness

"Their identity as conservative Republicans is almost as important as their identity as Christians."
“Their identity as conservative Republicans is almost as important as their identity as Christians.”

As I sat down to a steak dinner with my parents after my MA graduation ceremony (8-2012), the conversation drifted to my younger sister’s future plans.  She is being homeschooled much in the same way I was, except with a hefty dose of Victorian ideas on gender roles and sexuality. (She is truly brilliant and reads tremendous amounts of literature. She could likely score a 30+ on the ACT and receive a scholarship.) I asked her if she still intended to go to college — she used to talk of being a veterinarian – and she replied that my father gave her a choice. She could either have him pay for her wedding or her college. I said that giving a young girl such a choice was cruel and my father replied that he had “lost confidence in college since [my] education obviously failed me.” And I said, “Well, I guess it failed [my older sister] too.” He said, no it hadn’t, because she is now a Christian, homeschool mother who generally agrees with them religiously. So basically, he said college failed me because I don’t believe what he does. 

Throughout my years at college, in a rural town in the Bible Belt, he has used this line of thought many times. I discovered in conversation with my extended family that he led them to believe I’d been “brainwashed” at college by my professors. I’d confronted my father numerous times about how insulting this was, but he really didn’t get it. Not until I told him that my being a liberal was actually going against the grain did he begin to respect me.

They continue to expect me to be a person that I’m not. I’ve written about how there are two versions of me and I want to focus on a few occasions during and after college that illustrate how their beliefs have continued to hurt me. Nearly every time we get together, conversations devolve into arguments about politics because their identity as conservative Republicans is almost as important as their identity as Christians. They insult my beliefs by saying that they are just a phase – when I am living in the “real world,” I will surely be conservative like them.

When I tried to explain that their twisted worldview makes nearly every minute political and social issue into a religious issue, my father simply did not understand. He responded…“Yes I try to live my life in obedience to the Word of God in the Bible. That means these beliefs inform all I do in my life. If that insults you then truly Jesus was correct in stating that those that followed Him would enter into conflict, even with their own family.”

When I visited home for Christmas with my then-fiancé, my mother started a conversation on Christmas morning about how the rise of feminism ruined America. To give some background, my wife is incredibly close to her mother, who divorced when she was young. My wife’s mother worked extremely hard and worked her way up the corporate ladder. My wife draws a lot of inspiration from her mother. Now to the conversation. My mother said that women should never have been given the right to vote, that birth control broke down the American family, and women in the workforce was simply not the proper place for women. My mother subscribes completely to the submission doctrines of fundamentalist Protestantism and, suffice it to say, my wife is very empowered. Like most Christmases with my family, it devolved into a heated argument and my wife was very offended by what my mom said. My mom was literally saying women like my wife’s mother were ruining America.

Nearly six months after my graduation-fight with my parents, my mother finally decided to weigh-in. My father and I sent a barrage of emails back and forth, because I cannot control my emotions when we get into arguments.  After a lot of small talk, the conversation turned to my sinful lifestyle. My mom asked me if I was “pure” on my wedding day. I told her no I wasn’t and I didn’t want to talk about my sex life with her. She reminded me of a pledge I made to her at the age of fourteen, promising abstinence until marriage. I told her that was very unfair to bring up something like that. Then she proceeded to tell me how I would face “consequences” later in my marriage because of my sins.Then she told me the reason we fight is because I just “feel guilty” about all my sinning. She never said anything about my living with my fiancée before our marriage. Only after we were married did she choose to judge me. She didn’t even understand why her comments were judgmental – to her she was just imparting some righteousness. It’s like she forgot to judge me two years ago, so she did it then. But to my mother, it’s not “judging,” it’s just telling the truth – she likes to call herself a prophet.

So I told her some truth. That I think they raised me in a fundamentalist cult and that’s why I don’t get along with them. Especially because they believe all the same things they used to. She tried to say they believe differently now, but couldn’t name a single area where they’ve changed their minds, except they watch more TV now. So when mom is crying on the phone telling me that “we don’t get along because your conscious is guilty” or that I broke a promise to “stay pure” that I made to her at 14, I go to a very dark place.

Whenever we go back to arguing about the things we’ve literally been arguing about for a decade, I am physical affected. The sort of panic attacks I used to have come back and I have a lot of trouble controlling my emotions. They still think rock is evil, they are going to push my sister into courtship like they did me, they are going to fuck her up.  My only twisted hope is that I can reach out to her when they start to become senile.

I don’t enjoy spending any time with them because I just leave feeling shitty. I’m so sick of it. It’s emotionally and intellectually exhausting. They say things like “we’re proud of you” but they only ever talk about my accomplishments. When it comes to my intelligence, morals, or ethics, I’m just a dirty liberal sinner to them. The fact that, after seven years of this, they still refuse to see past my political beliefs and have made no real efforts to get to know me is incredibly discouraging. I have made a lot of efforts to be more reasonable, less argumentative, and I try to never bring up an issue that would spark an argument.  The reason it’s still hard for me is because they aren’t over it and they still inject it into my life. In the past, it was easier to pretend like it didn’t bother me and I figured mom and dad would grow out of it (like almost all of my friends’ parents).

It would be different if my parents made an effort to get to know me – instead of the me I used to be. They still give me Lamplighter books for Christmas, which are out-of-print works of fiction, re-printed by Christian Book Distributers because they are explicitly Christian. I have no interest in these shitty books – I will be reading Harry Potter to my children. I recently moved across the country and they have taken literally no interest in my safety or my new home. Part of why I moved was to get away from them. I don’t want to be obligated to see them – ever.  Maybe after years of space, I can start to forgive them. It feels like every time I make myself vulnerable, usually against my better judgment, it ends in pain. Every time I let things go, more gets piled onto me.  It’s unfortunate, but the less time I spend interacting with my parents, the happier I am.

To be continued.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Nine

HA Editorial Team17 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Nine

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

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In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

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Part Nine: The “Rest” of the Story

I finally graduated and got a job.

"it was like Jesus came down and was holding me, whispering to me that how my parents and our homeschool organization portrayed Him to me was very, very wrong."
“it was like Jesus came down and was holding me, whispering to me that how my parents and our homeschool organization portrayed Him to me was very, very wrong.”

I wanted to go to college but I didn’t have a transcript. Mom never made one for me and told me when I told her that I needed one that I would have to make it myself. This was after she and Dad had spent my entire senior year telling me how stupid I was, how I would fail in college, and that there was no point in me even trying to apply for scholarships because I was too lazy and stupid to qualify. This was their backhanded way of trying to enforce the thought process from our homeschool organization that women were supposed to stay home and make babies, nothing more.

After a year of working, I was old enough to enroll at Tech school without having a transcript and I loved it. I loved having real teachers and classes and I didn’t fail. Not only did I not fail, but I had a 3.6 GPA! After a year at Tech, I transferred to Pensacola Christian College and spent 3 semesters there. I dropped out after the third semester because I could not handle the legalism and lack of privacy — and because they treated their students like untrustable children, not like adults. It was way too much like the homeschool organization I had just been able to escape. I came home to try to figure out where I would transfer to when I was hit with the shocking reality that nothing I took at PCC would transfer anywhere because they were not accredited.

I was already almost 22 and the thought of having to pretty much start over to get a degree was overwhelming. At this point, God saw fit to bring an amazing young man across my path. Through 6 months of talking and interacting with this man in church and other functions with our mutual friends and Sunday school class mates, I learned how amazing, Godly, sensitive and wonderful this man really was. So, when he finally asked me out on a date 6 months after we met, I most certainly agreed.

I was still living at home during this time, but was doing my best to never actually be there. After our first date, my parents went nuclear because I had left them out of this. According to the organization that I was raised in, I was never supposed to be alone with a man until my wedding night, and I most certainly was not supposed to be the one that picked the man I was going to marry. From that first date to our wedding date 2 years later, my parents made it clear that they disapproved, didn’t like my boyfriend/fiancé/husband in that order of course. They told me again that I was setting a terrible example for my siblings and told me that I had better behave myself because the “eyes of our church were on me” to make sure I didn’t screw up.

Needless to say, I was very angry and frustrated about this. Between our first and second dates, I pretty much dumped everything into my boyfriend’s lap. I will have to say that I was pretty surprised that he didn’t run for the hills when he saw what he was getting himself into. No, he stayed, he encouraged, he prayed, he pointed to Scripture and God — and he loved. Oh how sweet that love was and is.

Nearly to the day 2 years after our first date, I walked down the isle and became Mrs. Richard Smith.

Never have I and never will I ever regret that step like my parents told me I would.

Growing up they told me all the time that I would end up with a no good husband that would beat me and that he would be in prison and do drugs, all because I was such a “rebellious” child. Oh how happy I am in proving them so very wrong! Two months after our wedding we were joyfully surprised at finding out we were expecting our first child, our sweet son Carl.

Amidst all that joy however, there was deep pain of which I was still unaware of. During the pregnancy I was constantly freaking out because I was sure I would ruin my child. I somewhat believed what my parents had told me many times that I was going to have an evil child because of the laws of reaping and sowing. The hardest time during the pregnancy was when Richard and I partook in the Lord’s supper at church one morning. That seems like a small thing from the viewpoint of a believer, but my parents had always portrayed it to us like God was sitting up there watching us — just waiting for us to partake unworthily so that He could strike us down.

Well almost as soon as the service was over I went into a panic attack and felt like for sure I had failed to confess something and God was going to punish me. Carl moved a lot during the pregnancy but this particular Sunday morning he wasn’t moving much and I freaked out. I was sobbing by the time we got in the car and just kept saying over and over to Richard that God was going to take my baby as punishment. Richard tried to reason with me, but nothing he said could convince me otherwise. For the next hour and a half Carl kept on sleeping and I kept on begging him to turn, move, kick, just do something that would prove to me that he was still alive. I pleaded with God in tears and told Him I was sorry if I had forgotten about anything that I needed to confess. Poor Richard had to just sit there and watch me and hold me through it until finally Carl woke up and started moving. The intense joy that I felt in that moment is beyond description but I will never forget it. Afterwards it was like Jesus came down and was holding me, whispering to me that how my parents and our homeschool organization portrayed Him to me was very, very wrong.

About a month before my due date, Abby, Richard and I sat down with Mom and Dad in a meeting. Abby’s pastor and 3 of her church elders were there just so that we were not facing Mom and Dad alone. The point of that meeting was because Abby and I desperately wanted to actually communicate with our parents but we didn’t feel like it was safe to do it alone. The pastor opened us up in prayer but then he and the other church elders went silent for us to try to start talking. Then, in front of everyone one there, Dad verbally attacked Abby telling her that everything was our fault again. I couldn’t handle listening to him do that so I started to defend myself and Abby. This of course caused Dad to turn and verbally attack me.

At that point, Richard intercepted, respectfully stating that Dad was not allowed to talk to me that way (shout out for my amazing husband for standing up for his wife!). Dad stood up, motioned for Mom to follow, said, “I did not come to be lectured,” and stomped out with Mom following at his heels. To this day, Dad claims that that was a tainted meeting in which everyone was lining up to accuse him and Mom. As far as I know, this was the last time I will ever sit down and talk with them about this again. The only exception will be if I see that they are truly devastated by their behavior and truly repentant before us as their children and before God. I refuse to put myself through that emotional trauma again.

After that meeting, Mom and Dad went back to pretending that nothing was wrong and that everything was fine. I let it go simply because I was afraid that they would cut off my contact with my dearly loved younger siblings of which there were 4 still at home. I didn’t know of any physical abuse still happening, so although I knew they were still being verbally, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually abusive, I knew of no way that they would actually be able to get in trouble. I knew Dad was still dealing with his addiction to pornography (he told us about it, I still have yet to figure out why). But I still let him and Mom see Carl for fear that they wouldn’t let me see my brothers and sisters.

Hope finally graduated and got a job and started at Tech and Grace was getting very close to graduating when it happened again.

Hope came home from work to find Paul and Joshua sleeping outside in the winter cold with no coats on. Through questioning them and Grace I learned that Mom was making the boys, Joshua especially, go without food for days at a time again. I started having conference calls with my grandmother and my aunt and uncle (all who support me). We had still not come to the conclusion of what to do when I had a meeting with my counselor.

After she heard the facts that I knew, she told me that it was my legal obligation to report my parents. The biggest reason that I had been hesitant to do so was because I was really afraid that I would be making that call out of revenge, not necessity. So I called, and was so upset about having to do so that I had a migraine before it was over. Right after I got off the phone with CPS, Hope called me in hysterics saying that she had just walked in on Mom and Dad beating Joshua who was half stripped and is almost 13. They were beating him with a belt and  the belt was hitting everywhere. I called CPS right back and they went out the next day.

Hope moved in with us and Grace moved to Seattle to live with John and his wife. I am thankful to be able to say that Grace is finishing her senior year at a high school there and will graduate when she was supposed to.

Paul and Joshua are still with Mom and Dad and I haven’t been aloud to see them since.

Mom and Dad are telling everyone that it is John’s fault and my fault that the boys are being rebellious and have turned their backs on God. They are telling everyone that we have encouraged their disobedience and are actually still being rebellious ourselves.

CPS told me a month after they went to my parent’s house that they had enough information to remove the boys that day. They did not, however, because they said that Mom and Dad had isolated them so well that they didn’t think it was the best idea to throw them into the public school setting in middle and high school. I disagree, but they didn’t live there. Now I am worried about my brothers, concerned for their safety and pleading for their salvation. I know how Mom and Dad are presenting God to them and, right now, they want nothing to do with Him.

From another sibling I have learned that they are angry with me for reporting our parents. I just pray that 15 years from now, they will be able to look back and realize that I did it out of my love for them and that I was trying to rescue them, not harm them. I don’t want them to have the same regret that I have — that I once convinced my grandmother that she didn’t need to call.

To be continued.

HSLDA and Child Abuse: HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations

HA Editorial Team30 Comments
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HA note: The following series will run each weekday this week. It is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. Part three of the series was originally published on Patheos on April 20 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Introduction | Part Two, HSLDA’s Fight Against Child Abuse Reporting | Part Three, HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations | Part Four, HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse | Part Five, HSLDA and the Deregulation of Homeschooling

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3. HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations

This is the third post in a series on the role the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) plays in aiding and abetting child abuse. In the last post I wrote about HSLDA’s efforts to decrease the reporting of child abuse; in this post I will write about the role HSLDA has played in encouraging the obstructing of child abuse investigations. In a nutshell, HSLDA encourages its member families to do whatever they have to to prevent social workers from talking to their children alone, has pioneered legal strategies aimed at enabling parents to stonewall child abuse investigations, encourages children and parents alike to regard social workers with fear and suspicion, and portrays child abuse investigations themselves as abusive.

Standard Bearers of the Fourth Amendment

The fourth amendment protects citizens against unreasonable search and seizure; it is because of this amendment that law enforcement must have a warrant to enter your house. HSLDA is adamant in its insistence that the fourth amendment gives parents the right to deny Child Protective Services workers access to their homes and children without a warrant. In fact, HSLDA has been so dogged in pursuing litigation to extend parents’ fourth amendment rights that a legal comment published in UMKC Law Review in 2004 was titled “Standard Bearers of the Fourth Amendment: The Curious Involvement of Home School Advocates in Constitutional Challenges to Child Abuse Investigations.”

Just what is HSLDA’s line on the fourth amendment? Well, in his 2001 testimony urging that the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) be amended, HSLDA’s Christopher Klicka made the following suggestion:

Specific Declaration of the 4th Amendment Probable Cause Standard: Social workers must be held accountable to the same 4th Amendment standards as the police and other law enforcement authorities. As a condition of receiving federal funds, states should be mandated to declare in their state code that a warrant, supported by probable cause, must be obtained before a social worker can enter the home without consent of the parents.

HSLDA was actually partially successful in its attempt to amend CAPTA: As a result of their efforts, a provision requiring that social workers be trained regarding the requirements of the fourth amendment was added to the bill. Now while HSLDA’s laser focus on the fourth amendment as a way to protect homeschooling families against child abuse investigations may seem fishy, it is true that the fourth amendment does protect families against intrusions of law enforcement without a warrant, so applying this same standard to CPS workers, who serve as government agents, is not really that out there (whether or not I agree with it, of course, is another matter). Where it gets strange is what comes next.

Don’t Let the Social Worker In!

HSLDA insists that requiring social workers to get either the parents’ consent or a warrant before entering a home and interviewing children won’t actually get in the way of child abuse investigations, explaining as follows:

Obviously, nothing in the Constitution prevents a social worker from going to a home and simply asking to come in. If the parent or guardian says “yes”, there is no constitutional violation whatsoever provided that there was no coercion.

This covers the vast majority of investigations. The overwhelming response of people being investigated is to allow the social worker to enter the home and conduct whatever investigation is reasonably necessary.

This is very odd given what HSLDA advises its members:

Never let the social worker in your house without a warrant or court order. All the cases that you have heard about where children are snatched from the home usually involve families waiving their Fourth Amendment right to be free from such searches and seizures by agreeing to allow the social worker to come inside the home. A warrant requires “probable cause” which does not include an anonymous tip or a mere suspicion

In the Stumbo case, when a social worker came to the door to investigate suspected child abuse after a tipster made a report about an unattended naked two year old in the family’s driveway, HSLDA advised the family not to let the social worker in. The Stumbos followed HSLDA’s advice, denying social workers access to their children, and as a result what might have been a simple investigation revealing no suggestions of child abuse and leading to the tip being unsubstantiated and the case dismissed instead turned into a drawn-out court battle that lasted for years.

Growing up in an HSLDA member family, I remember what I was taught was the number one most important thing to remember in case of a social worker coming to the door: Never, never, never let a social worker into the home, and never let the social worker talk to any of the children alone. The reason for this, I was told, was that social workers would fake evidence and plant false memories in children, meaning that if even the most innocent homeschooling family let a social worker into the house they would end up losing custody of their children. I never thought about the reality that, in practice, urging parents against allowing CPS workers into their homes or access to their children might both make the families appear extremely suspicious and serve to impede the investigation and discovery of real and devastating child abuse.

Just What Is Probable Cause?

If HSLDA member families follow HSLDA’s advice, social workers will always have to get warrants to investigate child abuse complaints against homeschooling families. To get a warrant the social worker will have to establish probable cause, and HSLDA is adamant in wanting the strictest standards used in determining just what constitutes probable cause—and that means anonymous tips or “mere suspicion” of child abuse, however earnest or dire, are out.

In the Stumbo case the social worker responded to the parents’ refusal to allow access to their home or children by going to a judge and getting a warrant. HSLDA responded by taking legal action to challenge this warrant—and ultimately won.

In one article, HSLDA offers an example of probable cause: A grandmother calls CPS, providing her name and personal information, and reports that her grandson has been locked in his room for days without food and that she has seen him and he looks pale and weak. HSLDA states that in this case, if the CPS worker can verify the identity and relationship of the caller, he would then have probable cause and could get a warrant. Later, the article states that “It is not enough to have information that the children are in some form of serious danger. The evidence must also pass a test of reliability that our justice system calls probable cause. … Anonymous tips are never probable cause.”

Let’s take a look at how things would work if HSLDA has its way: When a tipster calls CPS to expresses concerns about a homeschooling family, a social worker will be dispatched to the family’s home in an attempt to ascertain whether there is any justification for these concerns. On HSLDA’s advice, the family will turn the social worker away without allowing her access to their home or children in order to investigate the allegations. The social worker can then go to a judge, and must present some form of information that will pass the “test of reliability” and serve as “probable cause”—and this information must all be obtained and presented without any access to the family’s home or children. If the tip is anonymous or the repost rests on “mere suspicions” or the allegations are not deemed to pass the “test of reliability,” regardless of the severity of the accusations, the judge will deny the warrant and the case will be dismissed, all without the social worker ever having any contact with the family’s children. Seen in this way, it’s not hard to see that HSLDA is intent on throwing up any possible roadblock in the path of child abuse investigation.

Don’t Let Them Talk to the Kids!

Perhaps this is the most disturbing part: HSLDA does whatever it has to to keep CPS workers from contact with homeschooling children, rejoicing every time they successfully keep children from private interviews with the social workers sent to investigate child abuse tips a family. In one article in its Home School Court Report, an article that is extremely representative of the stories recorded there, HSLDA exults over a successful case against child abuse investigations as follows:

A Home School Legal Defense Association member family in Jackson County recently contacted us for assistance in a Department of Social Services investigation alleging physical abuse.

The investigation was prompted by a report to DSS alleging inappropriate discipline of their child approximately two years ago. Although the report just covered one child, the social worker insisted that she be allowed to interview all of the children in the home.

HSLDA contacted the social worker, explaining that our members were eager to address the allegations made against them and were prepared to meet with the social worker to respond to questions about the report. However, we clarified that the parents would not discuss any matters beyond the specific allegations, and that they would strenuously oppose subjecting their children to the trauma of any interrogation by social workers.

The family recently received a letter stating that the investigation was terminated as “unfounded.”

In case after case after case after case after case after case, HSLDA makes it clear that allowing social workers to speak with children alone is the absolute worst thing a parent can do, and is something to be avoided at all costs. This is the thing a parent must never do. HSLDA seems completely unaware that sometimes a private interview with a social worker is the only chance an abused child has to speak out about her abuse, and that having a parent or other relative present often impedes abused children’s ability to speak openly of their abuse. But then, HSLDA also seems unaware that any of its member families could possibly abuse their children.

In fact, here is a statement by HSLDA directly addressing the importance of opposing private interviews between children and social workers:

Private interviews with a social worker can be extremely traumatic for a child. Social workers sometimes ask inappropriate, personal, and offensive questions which can destroy a child’s innocence or security. HSLDA works hard to avoid such traumatic interviews wherever possible.

HSLDA isn’t shy, then, about its opposition to letting social workers speak privately with children. In case after case listed in their Court Report and on their website, they crow over how they cowed social workers out of being able to meet one-on-one with homeschooling children. HSLDA may insist that social workers plant stories of abuse and traumatize children during these private interviews, but the simple reality is that HSLDA is working its hardest to cut off any chance abused children might have of actually speaking to social workers about their abuse.

For more on how HSLDA teaches parents to deal with CPS workers—and more on the fear and suspicion with which HSLDA encourages parents to view CPS workers—take a minute to read this play in two acts involving “Mr. Innocent,” “Mr. Wise,” “Little Eager,” and “Orwell,” the social worker. This play is an excellent peek into exactly how I was taught growing up to view social workers and deal with CPS investigations. And you may have guessed it already—the goal is to avoid allowing CPS to speak privately with the children.

Child Abuse Investigations as Abusive to Children

HSLDA also has a track record of arguing that children must be protected from child abuse investigations. For example, in explaining opposition to mandatory reporting laws HSLDA has said the following:

HSLDA has seen firsthand how malicious or ignorant child abuse and neglect allegations have destroyed innocent families. A family has few protections against the power of CPS agencies. And even if a CPS investigation is closed as unfounded, the trauma to a young child, to an innocent family as a stranger (albeit maybe a well-intentioned stranger) enters the home and threatens to remove the children, is lasting and profound.

And, after winning one case, HSLDA reported as follows:

Elated by this sudden victory after months of worry, the Willittses returned to normal life. Their refusal to back down – even in the face of relentless intimidation – had protected their children from a traumatic interview and their family from any further invasion of privacy. We thank God for the positive resolution of this case.

HSLDA often describes CPS investigations as abusive toward families, thus co-opting the rhetoric of abuse. I’m unsure of whether HSLDA is aware of how insensitive this makes them look—or if they’re aware that even HSLDA member families can be abusive. Either way, the idea that child abuse investigations are this horribly abusive thing that families and children must be protected against at all costs serves in practice to aid abusive parents seeking to hide the evidence of their abuse and minimizes the abuse that many children suffer every day at the hands of their parents.

Teaching Children (and Parents) to Fear Social Workers

I would suggest that whatever “trauma” is in fact suffered by homeschooled children interviewed by CPS workers is the result of HSLDA literature urging children to be afraid of social workers. When I was a child, I was terrified of CPS workers, viewing them as an evil boogeyman out to take me away from my parents at the drop of a hat. Where did I get this fear? From HSLDA. In spades. HSLDA sows fear among homeschooling parents and children because that fear is what keeps its coffers full—after all, if homeschooling parents are not afraid, they will not buy HSLDA’s legal insurance.

In fact, HSLDA founder Michael Farris even wrote a horror novel called Anonymous Tip, which detailed the story of a woman whose daughter was removed from her custody by a conniving social worker who faked evidence after a child abuse tip called in by the woman’s deadbeat ex. I’m sure I’m not the only homeschooler who read Farris’s novel and took it very, very seriously—and the play I referenced earlier was likely taken similarly seriously.

Through its books, email alerts, and magazine, HSLDA plants a fear of social workers and CPS investigations deep in the heart of both parents and children—even leading them to believe that CPS workers commonly remove children from their parents without justification, and that this could happen to them too—and then crows to the rooftops about the trauma that results from child abuse investigations. If HSLDA wasn’t sowing this fear in the first place, parents and children wouldn’t be frightened to death when social workers show up at the door to investigate a complaint and make sure everything is alright.

But there’s more to this, too. When HSLDA teaches children to be afraid of social workers, it is teaching them to see their helpline as the enemy. CPS workers ought to be seen as friends and supporters of children, there to listen to kids and help protect them from abuse. Sure, there may be the random bad social worker, but by and large social workers are dedicated individuals who believe deeply in helping children. Social work isn’t something you go into for the money. And yet, HSLDA is busy teaching children to view social workers as objects of terror, which of course means that homeschooled children won’t see social workers as people they can trust and go to when they need help.

This Isn’t Hypothetical

I think it’s important to realize that this isn’t some abstract hypothetical we’re talking about. In early 2012 a fifteen year old homeschooled Wisconsin girl was found starving, walking alone along the side of the road, having escaped the prison cell her basement room had become.

The girl, now 15, was found by a passerby earlier this month as she walked in her pajamas and barefoot along a McFarland road. Authorities said the girl weighed 70 pounds.

The complaint states the girl’s face appeared sunken with her collarbones sticking out, and that she was”gorging” on food after authorities got her to care. The complaint states the girl gained 17 pounds in a matter of days.

According to the complaint, the girl told authorities Drabek-Chritton often denied her food, while Chritton claimed food would trigger diabetic reactions and render the girl prone to violence. Court documents state Drabek, two small children in the household, and Chritton and Drabek-Chritton would eat normally, while the girl would scavenge for food from garbage and go days at a time without eating. Her stepmother, Drabek-Chritton, was listed in court records as 370 pounds. Authorities said there was no evidence to support family claims of the girl’s alleged medical conditions, including eating disorders.

It seems there had been child abuse tips lodged against this family in the past:

“It also appears that the family in the past was not cooperative with the department of human services or the city of Madison police department,” Moeser said. Court documents state Chritton and Drabek-Chritton refused social workers access to their home during at least one investigation, and refused staff access to Drabek and the girl at times when both were minors. State and county officials were unavailable to comment on whether court actions were considered or attempted to overcome parental objections during investigations, with officials citing confidentiality rules.

I don’t know whether this homeschooling family was an HSLDA member family, but I do know that they step by step followed the course of action HSLDA recommends families follow in dealing with child abuse investigations, and that following HSLDA’s advice enabled them to hide their abuse of their daughter, abuse that only came to light when the girl physically escaped the hell her home had become. HSLDA’s policies for the handling of child abuse investigations aren’t just hypothetical—they have real world implications and affect real children’s lives in profoundly negative ways.

Conclusion

HSLDA may not see itself as doing everything in its power to obstruct child abuse investigations, but that is in practice what it is indeed doing. HSLDA urges its members against allowing social workers to investigate allegations of child abuse without a warrant and at the same time is working to increase the standards of what counts as “probable cause,” thus making it harder for social workers to get warrants to investigate abuse. At the same time, HSLDA does everything in its power to avoid letting social workers personally interview children, thus cutting off any possibility children who are being abused by their parents have of speaking out about that abuse. Meanwhile, HSLDA keeps homeschooled children so scared silly of social workers that it is more than likely that many abused homeschooled children wouldn’t report their own abuse if they had the chance. Meanwhile, HSLDA paintsthe child abuse investigations themselves as the problem, and as a dire threat to children.

Instead of doing its utmost to obstruct child abuse investigations, why doesn’t HSLDA instead urge its members to comply with investigations in order to dispel allegations of abuse? Why not focus on ensuring that CPS follows their own best practices and rules, thus minimizing false positives in child abuse investigations, rather than viewing CPS as the enemy to be opposed and obstructed? Or for that matter, why deal with child abuse allegations in the first place? Why not stick with the accusations that deal directly with homeschooling, such as ensuring that local officials know state law and that member families comply with those laws?

There are many possible responses to these questions, of course. Perhaps protecting parental rights against any limitations whatsoever is HSLDA’s primary goal, with homeschooling merely a tool to this end, and perhaps this has led to HSLDA defending parents against investigations of child abuse. Perhaps HSLDA’s definition of child abuse does not elide with the CPS’s definition of child abuse. Perhaps many HSLDA member families do have something to hide, and HSLDA knows it. Perhaps HSLDA’s focus on the primacy of parental rights means that the organization is not actually interested in doing things to protect children against abuse at the hands of their parents.

As one last example of how HSLDA views child abuse accusations and investigations, let me quote from an HSLDA article on Japanese homeschoolers:

Recent revisions to the Juvenile Law have strengthened child abuse reporting laws. There is now the possibility for neighbors of homeschool families to give notice to the Child Consultation Center (Zidoh-Sohdan-shyo in Japanese) that homeschooled children are abused by their parents. Regrettably, the Child Consultation Centers in each district are now required to investigate each and every abuse notice. Unsubstantiated abuse claims are expected to increase and to affect homeschool families adversely.

“Regrettably.”

In case it is not already clear, HSLDA considers Child Protective Services investigations simply annoyances homeschoolers should not have to deal with rather than seeing them as important means of locating and helping abused children. Once again, it’s like HSLDA is completely unaware that some homeschooling families might actually physically abuse their children, or that some homeschooled children might be in need of help. HSLDA would probably deny these allegations, of course, and would point to statements deploring child abuse, calling for “true” child abusers to be prosecuted, and arguing that the corporal punishment parents employ should be “reasonable.” In the next segment of this series we will examine HSLDA’s ideas about just what actually constitutes child abuse.

To be continued.

What I Should Have Said 13 Years Ago: Sharon Autenrieth’s Thoughts

HA Editorial Team17 Comments

HA note: The following piece was originally published by Sharon Autenrieth on her blog Strange Figures. It is reprinted with her permission. Sharon describes herself as a “wife, mom to 5, homeschooler, Christian Education Director, idealist, malcontent, [and] follower of Jesus.”

It was one of my first homeschool meetings, an evening devoted to people like myself:  the rookies. Three veteran couples were there to encourage us, answer our questions, and give us the benefit of their experience.

I don’t recall much from that evening, but I remember one of the veteran dads counseling us, raw recruits that we were, on the importance of discipline in the home. And by “discipline” he meant something very specific. He went on at great length on the virtues of “beating” (his word, not mine) children regularly, abundantly, at the first sign of rebellion. His weapon of choice was the yardstick and he told us that he’d broken many over the years in an effort to drive wickedness and rebellion from the hearts of his children. Teenagers taken in as foster children had also received frequent beatings, something I suspect their caseworkers did not know.

I listened, trying to hide my shock and disgust. I was new to homeschooling, but I’d been parenting for almost a decade and there was no way I would be taking this father’s advice. I pitied his children; wondered about his quiet wife who nodded and smiled as he shared his “wisdom”; marveled that he could seem so jolly while describing the physical abuse of children entrusted to his care.

But here’s what I didn’t do: I didn’t speak. I didn’t say, ”Excuse me, but what you are describing doesn’t sound like discipline. It sounds like abuse.” I didn’t say, “I’ve been licensed for foster care myself and what you’ve done to your foster children is illegal. I’m going to report you.” I didn’t even meekly suggest that perhaps “biblical” parenting needn’t be so violent. I was silent because he was a veteran and I was a newbie. I was silent because he was a man and I was a woman. I was silent because I didn’t want to make a scene or alienate others in the group. I was silent because I was a coward.

Now, many years later, I know that I sinned that night. I had an opportunity to speak up on behalf of mistreated children and I didn’t take it. Perhaps no one would have listened to me or taken me seriously, but I still should have spoken. I knew that what I was hearing was not just wrong but evil, and I let it go unchecked, unquestioned. I listened as evil was called good – and I did nothing.

This week I fell down the internet rabbit hole into a world of what might be called “homeschool survivor” blogs. The stories are awful, angry, painful to read. I love homeschooling and my immediate response to criticism of the homeschool movement is defensive. I want to shout, “We’re not like that! We’re not like that! We’re not like that!”

But the truth is, some of us are like that. And it’s time that we confessed it, and started holding each other accountable.

The problem is rarely motive. Homeschoolers, as a category, take parenting very seriously. We don’t set out to damage our children, but to do the very best for them that we possibly can. That very seriousness can be a trap, I think. We are prone to particular temptations, many of which are expressed in this article by a homeschool veteran, Reb Bradley. You’d think that doing something so nonconformist (homeschooling) would mean that homeschoolers would be nonconformists generally, but that hasn’t really been the case. There is tremendous pressure to get it right – to turn out ideal children, raised in ideal families – and we are easy targets for experts who promise to deliver results. So we listen to the loudest voices and quiet our consciences and treat our children like objects to be manipulated and molded into polished, shiny finished products rather than as the complicated, untidy, beautiful persons they were born to be.

The problem is not homeschooling as an educational option. And further muddying the waters, the problem is that there’s more than one problem. Here are a few of them:

We confuse external control with internal transformation.

We crave the approval of other homeschoolers so much that we ignore the warning bells going off in our own homes.

We emphasize parental rights and parental authority to such a degree that we dehumanize our children.

We swallow poison as long as it’s coated in Bible verses.

I don’t want to be party to that anymore. It’s not enough to say, “Well, I don’t do that to my children, and other people’s children aren’t my responsibility.” Homeschool friends: do we accept that argument when we’re talking about abortion, or child pornography, or child sexual abuse? Do we feel off-the-hook as long as it’s only other people’s children who suffer, and not our own? I’m as stubborn about parental rights as the next homeschooler. I do not want someone from the government telling me how to raise my children. But perhaps that means we take responsibility for speaking truth to each other, for being honest even about our failures, and for listening to the children our community has raised.

I repeat: the problem is not homeschooling. There is so much potential for good in homeschooling, and every year that potential is realized in thousands of lives. But I’m convinced we can do even better, and it begins with recognizing where we’ve gone wrong. As I read through some of the stories at Homeschoolers Anonymous my heart ached to see how many included abusive doses of “biblical chastisement” or parenting by the “rod”.

So even if I’m 13 years late, I’ll say this now:

That father was wrong. The “biblical model” he was presenting was dangerous and destructive. What he was describing was abusive parenting.  Brutalizing foster children who have already been traumatized and almost certainly have difficulty trusting adults is a special kind of heinous.

You cannot beat sin out of your child; that’s not how spiritual transformation works. What you can do, perhaps, is silence your child out of fear. They may learn to hide their anger, resentment, bitterness, rage, depression and hopelessness from you.

Or perhaps you will discipline your child to death.

“Breaking the will” of a child is a terrible goal, and does not correspond to the way that our kind and merciful Father God deals with us. “A bruised reed He will not break.” Homeschoolers have unwittingly broken many bruised reeds and it’s time to stop.

(Note:  For more stories from former homeschoolers, I suggest Recovering Grace (specifically addresses ATI/Gothardism), Becoming Worldly, Defeating the Dragons, Elizabeth Esther – and of course, Homeschoolers Anonymous. When it comes to “chastisement,” Elizabeth Esther has done a great job over the years of covering Michael and Debi Pearl, whose To Train Up a Child has been especially influential – and deadly.)

HSLDA and Child Abuse: HSLDA’s Fight against Child Abuse Reporting

HA Editorial Team6 Comments
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HA note: The following series will run each weekday this week. It is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. Part two of the series was originally published on Patheos on April 17, 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Introduction | Part Two, HSLDA’s Fight Against Child Abuse Reporting | Part Three, HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations | Part Four, HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse | Part Five, HSLDA and the Deregulation of Homeschooling

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2. HSLDA’s Fight against Child Abuse Reporting

This is the second post in a series looking at the relationship between HSLDA and both child abuse and educational neglect. In the introduction, I discussed my background with HSLDA and HSLDA’s move from focusing on the legality of homeschooling to protecting families from child abuse investigations. In this post I turn to HSLDA’s opposition to the reporting of child abuse. And I will warn you—this gets progressively worse as we go along.

Opposition to the Anonymous Tip

In testimony given in 2001, HSLDA’s Christopher Klicka argued for reform of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). He argued that CAPTA needed amending in order to protect “parents’ rights” against the “threat” of the child welfare system, and he focused especially on the way child abuse is reported:

Anonymous Tips: As a condition of receiving federal funds, CAPTA should be amended to mandate states to require all reporters of child abuse to give their names, addresses and phone numbers. This will curtail false reporting and end harassment using anonymous tips. CAPTA should be amended by adding subsection 42 U.S.C. 5106a(b)(2)(A)(xiv): provisions and procedures to assure that no reports shall be investigated unless the person making such a report provides such person’s name, address and telephone number and that the information is independently verified.

HSLDA justifies its involvement in issues like child abuse reporting by arguing that homeschoolers are frequently falsely reported to child abuse hotlines by neighbors and family, whether as a result of ignorance or malice. HSLDA sees this as a threat to its member families. On the surface level this sounds like it makes sense, but when you pause to think it sort of falls apart. If you fear false tips, the answer isn’t to make it harder for people to call in child abuse tips—which has the negative side effect of protecting abusers—it’s to make sure that CPS workers have good training and that there are sufficiently high evidentiary standards. In other words, you want the gates wide open at the beginning but narrower as the case progresses.

Police receive anonymous tips all the time, and in fact rely on them heavily, especially when there are reports of threats or danger. Child abuse is a crime, and in arguing that anonymous child abuse tips should be barred HSLDA is asking for it to be treated different from any other crime. In the traditional structure of our jurisprudence, it’s easy to get a case filed, but as you move through the process it takes more and more evidence to keep the case from being summarily thrown out. It should take very little to get into the system, and it should take something substantial to have a verdict against you at the end of the process. And this is how our current system is set up when it comes to child abuse tips. But HSLDA wants to throw this out and treat child abuse differently from any other crime, in spite of the high stakes to the children involved.

Doing away with anonymous tips to child abuse hotlines would mean more abused children going unreported, unnoticed, unseen. The entire point of the anonymous tip is so that anyone, without fear of reprisal, can report child abuse. This means that if you know that your nieces are being abused you can report them without your sister knowing that you turned her in. This means that if you suspect your crazy neighbor is abusing his children, you can report that without worrying that he might find out what you did, and seek revenge. This, quite simply, is why we let people make anonymous tips. If you take away the anonymous tip, people will be more likely to think twice before calling CPS with their suspicions of child abuse, and that means that more abused children will go unreported, unnoticed, and unaided.

Prosecuting Those who Make False Child Abuse Reports

In the same CAPTA testimony, Klicka argued that making false child abuse tips should be made a criminal offense, and that those who call child abuse hotlines to report abuse should be made aware that their tip is being recorded and that there are penalties for false reporting:

False Reporting: As a condition of receiving federal funds, CAPTA should be amended to mandate that states make it at least a class C misdemeanor to knowingly make a false report. U.S.C. 5106a(b)(2)(A)(iv) should be amended to add: . . .and penalties for any individuals who knowingly or maliciously makes a false report of any type of child abuse or neglect that includes—a provision stating that such persons shall also be liable to any injured party for compensatory and punitive damages and a provision requiring that all reporters be informed of the penalties for false reporting and that the call is being recorded. (e.g. Connecticut).

While Klicka stipulates that the class C misdemeaner is applied to those whoknowingly make a false report, the effect of such a law is nonetheless the same as what I said above: It will make people leery of reporting child abuse. I mean, how would you go about proving that you really did suspect abuse against allegations that you just made it up? In practice anyone calling in a report that ends up being unsubstantiated would be liable for criminal prosecution. HSLDA has elsewhere stated that they want families who are turned in for child abuse to have the right to know who turned them in, and to have the ability to sue that person for false reporting. Are they unaware of the results such a policy would have? How can they not know that such laws and penalties would keep people from reporting suspected cases of child abuse, thus protecting abusers and keeping children in abusive situations?

Klicka claims that his goal is to cut down on false reports—or, more specifically,malicious reports—and this is the line that HSLDA takes every time they argue against the existence of anonymous tips or for criminalizing false child abuse tips. But once again, false child abuse tips shouldn’t be seen as this huge problem. If a false tip is called in, a social worker will be dispatched to investigate the allegations and will find them unsubstantiated and close the case. If having a CPS worker at my door to check up on my kids because a neighbor was concerned—or even because a neighbor had a vendetta—is the price I have to pay for ensuring that a concerned neighbor also calls the CPS on an abusive family, then it’s a price I’m more than willing to pay.

Cutting down on false reports, whether malicious or simply mistaken, also means cutting down on the number of reports that are not false. Getting rid of the anonymous tip and imposing criminal punishments for making false reports would make people think twice before taking the risk that reporting a family to a child abuse hotline would become, and thus would in practice have the effect of cutting down on the number of cases of child abuse, real and present child abuse, being reported and investigated.

Opposition to Mandatory Reporting Laws

HSLDA also opposes extending mandatory reporting laws. People who are mandatory reporters are required by law to report suspicions of child abuse. In January of 2012 HSLDA opposed a federal law that would have made every adult a mandatory reporter. Here is the text of this bill, S. 1879.

The requirement described in this paragraph is that the State has enacted a law that creates a felony offense with a minimum penalty of 1-year imprisonment for any person who, having reasonable cause to believe that a child has been subjected to child abuse or acts of child abuse, fails to report such information immediately to the relevant State law enforcement agency and the child protection agency of the State.

HSLDA explained its opposition as follows:

S. 1879 will require every single person to be a mandatory reporter of suspected child abuse. States will lose certain federal funds if they do not create mandatory reporter laws that encompass every single person in the state. This will create a massive “police state” system that forces people to report on family members and neighbors even if they only suspect child abuse, or they will face a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail.

HSLDA’s concern is that the bill would require people to turn in families if they “only suspect” child abuse. In other words, HSLDA plays off “having reasonable cause to believe” that there is child abuse occurring as mere “suspicions,” and at the same time minimizes suspicions of child abuse as things that probably shouldn’t be reported. Lay aside for a moment whether or not you think making all adults mandatory reporters on threat of criminal sanction is a good idea and simply pay attention to the reason HSLDA is against doing so—the idea that it’s unreasonable to expect those who “only suspect child abuse” (which is how it interprets the bill’s “having reasonable cause to believe” clause) to report it.

In another case, HSLDA expounded further on its opposition to expanding mandatory reporting laws:

S. 1877 will lead to a massive increase in child abuse and neglect investigations upon families. The stated purpose of S. 1877’s mandatory reporting expansion, along with the education campaign and training program is to “improve reporting” of child abuse and neglect. The bill will give states new federal grants to set up“experimental, model, and demonstration programs for testing innovative approaches and techniques that may improve reporting of and response to suspected and known incidents of child abuse or neglect by adults to the State child protective service agencies or to law enforcement agencies.”

Not only will S. 1877 require every single adult to be a mandatory reporter, S. 1877 will incentivize states to create untested, “experimental” programs that will increase the number of child abuse and neglect reports to CPS agencies.

Once again, leave aside what you think of universal mandatory reporting laws and note that HSLDA is against the laws’ provisions aimed to “improve reporting” of child abuse and “increase the number of child abuse and neglect reports to CPS agencies.” In other words, HSLDA sees educational programs aimed at achieving more consistent, accurate, and voluminous reporting of child abuse and neglect asbad things. As someone who very much wants child abuse to be reported so that abused children can have access to the help they need, this is flabbergasting.

Also in 2012, HSLDA opposed a California law that would have merely made employees of nonprofits that work with children mandatory reporters, requiring them to report suspected or known cases of child abuse, educational neglect, or sexual abuse. HSLDA opposed the law because it “would have caused the loss of tax-exempt status for nonprofit organizations with any activities involving children in California” for organizations whose employees did not report child abuse. This is perhaps only more confusing given that California’s instructions to mandatory reporters regarding what they are expected to report are not at all vague.

HSLDA, then, is against both more consistent child abuse reporting and the reporting of child abuse suspicions when an individual has not personally witnessed the abuse taking place. HSLDA attorneys state that their concern is that programs aimed at improving child abuse reporting will make false reports skyrocket. And I’ll say it again, even if this were the case, so what? False reports will simply be found unsubstantiated upon investigation. It’s like they’re blind to the fact that child abuse is this real thing that really does happen and needs to be reported and stopped more systematically—and the fact that increased reporting of suspected child abuse is agood thing that will improve the lives of real children.

HSLDA also appears to be unaware of the fact that eighteen states already have universal mandatory reporting and disaster has not struck—in fact, those states didn’t actually see explosions in false reporting, and in fact some evidence suggests that the child abuse reports in these states are more likely to be substantiated. (For more on mandatory reporting, this article is a good introduction.) Whatever your thoughts on universal mandatory reporting—and some scholars and advocates have their reservations—you have to at the very least admit that HSLDA’s arguments against universal mandatory reporting laws read like they come from a bizarre dystopia where reporting suspected child abuse is the problem and actual child abuse is not something worth worrying about.

Opposition to Reporting Suspected Child Sexual Abuse

It seems that 2012 was a busy year, because that same year HSLDA also opposed another California law that made all adults mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse. This law was one of many proposed in response to the revelations of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, in which it came to light that several adults in the school’s football program were aware that Jerry Sandusky was sexually abusing boys in his charge, or at least suspected that such abuse was taking place, but nevertheless failed to report it. This California law, and others like it, was aimed at ensuring that individuals in similar situations would actually report such abuse. It read as follows:

A competent adult who becomes aware of information or evidence that would cause a reasonable suspicion of child sexual abuse is required to report that information to state or local law enforcement or to county child protective services within 72 hours.

HSLDA explained its opposition to the law with these words:

SB 1551 – would have inappropriately required all adults, most of whom do not understand the complex legal definitions of sexual abuse in California law, to report any “reasonably suspected” child sexual abuse, even when based only upon a rumor. Penalties for failure to report all “suspected” child sexual abuse could have included imprisonment.

We strongly agree with protecting children who are sexually abused but strongly disagreed with this bill’s proposed methods. Known child sexual abuse is a hideous and perverse crime that needs to be reported! We favor cracking down on known child sexual abusers. Current law already requires everyone who has observed child sexual abuse to report it and encourages everyone to report suspected child sexual abuse. The approach in SB 1551 is unnecessary and would have done great harm to the lives and freedoms of everyone.

In other words, while “known child abuse is a hideous and perverse crime that needs to be reported,” requiring people to call in tips regarding child sexual abuse that is “reasonably suspected” is unreasonable. Leave aside the universal mandatory reporting requirement for a moment and you will see that the key word here is “known”—”observed” child sexual abuse should be reported, but child sexual abuse that is merely suspected? Not necessarily. HSLDA’s position appears to be that people shouldn’t necessarily feel that they need to call in child sexual abuse allegations based on silly things like “reasonable suspicion.” Is HSLDA not aware that child sexual abuse is something that is rarely caught in the act?

Reading the above, I’ve realized that I’m completely flummoxed at how HSLDA has such a positive reputation among so many homeschoolers. I mean for goodness sake, the organization has concerns about people reporting the suspected sexual abuse of children!

Conclusion

From opposing the anonymous tip to prosecuting those who call in false child abuse accusations to opposing mandatory reporting laws to suggesting that “suspicion” of child abuse is inadequate grounds for calling child protective services to arguing that child sexual abuse should only be reported if caught in the act, it appears that HSLDA is working to set up barriers to the reporting of child abuse. And as HSLDA itself states, that appearance is correct. HSLDA’s concern about false child abuse reports—something it really shouldn’t even consider a “homeschooling” issue—has led it to make efforts to restrict the reporting of child abuse. And making it more challenging to report suspicions of child abuse doesn’t just cut down on false reports—it cuts down on accurate reports as well.

In HSLDA’s ideal world, only those who directly witness child abuse occurring (i.e., not just suspect that it’s occurring) and are willing to go on the record and be sued and charged with a crime if their allegations turn out to be unsubstantiated should call in child abuse tips. Think about that for a moment, and then ask yourself what that would mean, practically speaking, for the chances of children who are currently being abused, including the victims of sexual abuse. And when you’re done with that, feel free to join me in wondering, for the millionth time, how in the world HSLDA has become so prominent in Christian homeschooling circles.

In the next installment we’ll turn to HSLDA’s stonewalling of child abuse investigations. Let me put it this way: It only gets worse.

To be continued.

HSLDA and Child Abuse: A Series

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following series will run each weekday this week. It is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. Part one of the series was originally published on Patheos on April 17, 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Introduction | Part Two, HSLDA’s Fight Against Child Abuse Reporting | Part Three, HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations | Part Four, HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse | Part Five, HSLDA and the Deregulation of Homeschooling

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1. Introduction

As a homeschooled child, Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), was my hero. It was HSLDA, I believed, that had given my parents the right to homeschool, and that continued to protect our rights against government encroachment. This made what I have learned about the organization upon adulthood that much harder to absorb and fully comprehend. Put simply, HSLDA is doing everything it can to keep people from reporting child abuse and to inhibit child abuse investigations, has opposed laws against child abuse, and is working to undo compulsory education laws altogether, effectively decriminalizing educational neglect.

HSLDA was in 1983, ostensibly to protect families’ right to homeschool. In practice, however many of its cases today deal not with homeschooling but with child abuse allegations. If you read through HSLDA’s Court Report, you will find story after story of HSLDA defending homeschooling parents against child abuse allegations. Homeschooling is today legal in every U.S. state, and HSLDA has gone far, far beyond its original mandate. In fact, it appears that HSLDA is today more preoccupied with sheltering child abuse than it is with protecting the legality of homeschooling.

Let me offer the Stumbo case as an example. In September of 1999, a neighbor saw the Stumbo’s two-year-old naked and unattended in the family’s driveway and registered an anonymous tip with Child Protective Services. After receiving the tip, a CPS worker appeared on the Stumbo’s porch and asked to interview the children to ensure that there was no abuse taking place. On HSLDA’s advice, the Stumbos refused to grant the CPS worker any access whatsoever to their children. The CPS worker then went to a judge and got a court order to interview the children. In spite of the fact that the case had nothing to do with homeschooling, HSLDA appealed the order and eventually won; the court found that there was too little evidence of abuse to justify a court order. HSLDA had hoped the court would find that interviewing a family’s children would count as seizure under the fourth amendment, but was disappointed as the case was decided more narrowly.

I remember reading about the Stumbo case in Home School Court Report when I was kid. It was played up as this grand scary thing, as though the kids were about to be removed from their parents for no reason whatsoever. At the time I wasn’t aware of the legal background surrounding the case—including the reality that there was never an attempt to remove the children from their parents and that the case primarily involved not homeschooling but rather the proper procedures for child abuse investigations. Whether or not the CPS took the proper actions in the Stumbo case isn’t the issue. The issue is that HSLDA has moved beyond defending the legality of homeschooling and into the world of litigating against child abuse investigations—sometimes with rather disastrous implications for abused children.

And HSLDA isn’t shy about this shift, either. For example, this statement was included in a paper from the 2000s on how to deal with CPS investigations:

HSLDA is beginning to work with states to reform the child welfare laws to guarantee more freedom for parents and better protection for their parental rights. HSLDA will be sending out Alerts to its members in various states where such legislation is drafted and submitted as a bill.

“Child welfare laws” means laws dealing with child abuse and Child Protective Services investigations. “Better protection for … parental rights” means protection against accusations of child abuse and CPS investigations. This has nothing to do with homeschooling and everything to do with protecting parents’ absolute control over their children, and absolute freedom from state interference, no matter what that means for the well-being of the children themselves.

From what I have learned in the time since my teenage years spent pouring over each month’s Home School Court Report, it appears that there are four primary ways that HSLDA is complicit in aiding and abetting child abuse and educational neglect: (1) They work to minimize the reporting of child abuse; (2) They seek to stall the investigation of child abuse; (3) They defend the legality of excessive corporal punishment; and (4) They oppose any homeschooling regulation whatsoever, even when it is merely intended to ensure that learning is actually taking place. This post introduces a series addressing these issues and revealing HSLDA’s troubling relationship with child abuse and educational neglect.

To be continued.

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part One

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In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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I believe that the greatest source of tension between myself and my mother is that I have deep sense of compassion. I care about the suffering of others, too much in her opinion and it set me apart from her in a serious way. I loved to help people and she always believed that people need to help themselves. A very staunch conservative Republican. I was not her mini-me and she couldn’t stand it. I also didn’t fit her mold in any way. My mother always told me, “I had three kids. I wanted an older boy, then a girl, then another boy. That way you would be in the middle of two protectors, but your older brother can’t protect you and you don’t fit.”

She was right. I did not fit.

My mother did get her wish on the order of the children. I am the middle of three children. My older brother has a mild form of autism known as Aspergers Syndrome. My younger brother was the definition of the baby. My parents made the decision to homeschool after a series of bad experiences with public school. Autism, especially high functioning spectrum disorders, were not at all well understood in the late 80’s and early 90’s. So when my brother, with his severe speech delay (caused by deafness as a toddler) and a complete inability to cope with his peers came to public school, they had no idea what to do with him. The school attempted to diagnose him with a range of disorders from mental retardation (he has a genius intelligence) to epilepsy. This difficulty with public school coupled with their extreme religious right views led them to homeschooling.

It was perfect. My parents could hide away the autistic child that they did not understand and were ashamed of, they could indoctrinate us and they could discipline us without fear of anyone hearing the stories or seeing the bruises.

I believe of the most fundamental problem with religious homeschooling is that in the seclusion provided by homeschooling, abuse can hide and thrive. There does not have to be anyone else around that differ from the views of the parents. How can a child even know they’re being abused if they don’t know that other children aren’t treated that way? It took me years to identify the sources of abuse in my childhood. There are still times when a childhood memory comes to mind, I think it through and realize just exactly how fucked up the situation was.

My three earliest childhood memories go as follows:

Memory number one: I remember myself sitting in a highchair, I couldn’t have been more than two. My mother was chasing my older brother around my highchair with a rolling pin.

Memory number two: I was about four and was sitting playing with dolls in the living room. My oldest brother starts screaming from the bathroom. I walk to the bathroom to find my mother beating my 7 year old brother’s head into the shower wall and there was blood running down his naked body. Then we went to the hospital for stitches. We had to practice saying, “He tripped in the shower.” This was my first introduction to the government.  If we didn’t say what we were told, the government would take us away and put us with awful people that wouldn’t feed us.

Memory number three: I was 5. I do not remember what I was in trouble for, but I remember my mother looking at me and saying, “You give me looks like you want to stab me in my sleep. I’ll get you first.”  I’m sure at some point in time, I played with my parents. We had a swing, I had a bicycle, but I remember almost nothing before around age 10 that wasn’t traumatic.

The curriculum that we used was from Bob Jones University. The famous science textbook page that is floating around the web about the girl with the hair dryer that states we don’t know how electricity works? That was in my elementary “science” book. I will say that my mother did dedicate herself fully to our education, but we inherited her educational weaknesses. She was not at all proficient in even basic math. As her daughter, she was convinced that I shared her lack of math skills. She firmly placed in my head the idea that I was incapable of math. Instead, we focused on reading. The science was young earth creationism and the history, revisionist christian. I knew that the earth was no more than 6000 years old. God created it in six literal days and then flooded the planet.

When I shared my disdain for the idea of killing everyone on earth, I was beaten. God was not to be questioned. This was the academic aspect of my early childhood years.

The theological side was pure right wing extremism and some things that I can’t even give a label to.  I would like it to be noted before this section that I believe my mother suffers from untreated mental illness.  She is a pathological liar and possibly schizophrenic. I will lay out the basic tenants of my religious upbringing.

1) Abortion:

One of the most important lessons that my mother ever tried to teach was about evils of abortion. Alone in the car one day, she told me the story of my twin brother. I could not have been more than five. I learned that my mother had originally been pregnant with twins. After she was several months pregnant, she was in a car accident that killed my brother. At this point, she did not know that she was pregnant with twins. She was informed at the hospital that the fetus was dead and needed to be removed before it caused infection. She refused because she does not believe in abortion under any circumstances. God would deliver the baby when he was ready. A month later, the doctor did another ultrasound and found me. If she had submitted to an abortion I would not be here.  Then, in graphic detail I was told how my brother’s arm was born, then he came out, then me.

I was horrified. I had nightmares for weeks. I cried and cried. I spoke to my brother in prayer for years. Even as a teenager, I would lay in bed at night wondering how my life would have been different if my twin hadn’t died.

This might be one of the most important stories of my entire childhood.

It is completely made up.

At the age of 27, I told this story to a very close friend of mine. He looked at me like I had three heads and called bullshit. I was completely taken aback, highly offended. How could anyone hear one of my most personal, painful secrets and tell me it was crap? I had to prove him wrong. I ran upstairs to get my birth certificate, it would say twin birth and then he would apologize. I had never really read my birth certificate before and it said single birth.  I became instantly nauseous as the details of the story ran through my head. My mother never mentioned that story in front of anyone. We were always alone but we discussed it a lot. I ended up filing for copies of my birth records at the hospital I was born at.

I was a single, uncomplicated delivery. Single.

2)  Obedience to men:

To quote my mother, “You kids are the third most important things in my life:  God, my husband, then you. Remember, I will always choose your father over you.” This was ironic, very ironic. As I’m sure you, the reader, has noticed, I have thus far said very precious little about my father. There really isn’t anything to say. I saw him for roughly one hour a day in my early childhood. The only other times I saw him were on his few days off and vacations. When he was home, it was misery. He hit us; he beat my eldest brother with sticks. We also sometimes saw him at night. If we had misbehaved during the day, my mother would report to him as the head of household.  He would then come home from his second shift job and wake us up for a spanking with a heavy leather mechanic’s belt.  It was rarely more than one child a night, so if you were awakened in the night to the screams of another sibling, you were safe.

Even though my father was rarely present, I was to submit to him in all things. Then one day, he would pass me to my husband and I would submit to him.

Women were created to help men. We were not to question. Honestly, this is all I know about my father. I don’t know what his childhood was like. I don’t know his favorite food, his favorite color. I know that he’s a Republican, that he enjoys camping, and that I was to listen to him second only to god, just like my mother. This was also in my homeschooling curriculum. Most lessons for girls were somehow tied back to obedience of the father and, one day, the husband.

3)  Demons are real:

My mother was in constant fear of demonic influences and witches. Growing up, she would constantly discuss demons and witches. She was very fearful of witches casting spells on items to watch us. Things like MTV and other modern tv and radio could lead demons into us. This was so deeply ingrained from such a young age that I would lay awake at night paralyzed with fear that the scratching sound at my window was a demon. I even had to burn a present given to me by a friend once because my mother believed that my friend had cast a spell on it.  Even today, as an atheist with no supernatural beliefs, I still have to catch myself if something unexplained happens. The anxiety can be literally physically paralyzing and I have to stay constantly aware. I can’t let my self start into my cycle of fear.

At the age of ten, my mother decided that we had surpassed her ability to teach us. This and the strain of my older brothers autism led to the decision to put us in the local public school. I also believe, though I cannot verify this, that we were put in school because we did very poorly on the Iowa Test of Basics Skills that the state had forced my parents to take us to.

I was very excited about the prospect of school. I was going to be around kids of my own age for the first time. I would get to have friends.

Then the first day of school started and I was completely out of my element.

Imagine, if you will, that you are doing an experiment with monkeys. The test is to see how quickly the monkey can adapt and learn. So, you take this test monkey and you put it in the driver’s seat of a running vehicle heading straight for a wall. The purpose is to see if the monkey, having no prior experience with cars, can stop the car before it crashes into the wall and dies.

I was that monkey. I died.

To be continued.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Eight

HA Editorial Team12 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Eight

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Part Eight: Teen Years

Teen years

I cannot sleep and I am trying not to freeze.

It’s sometime in January and Abby and I have been kicked outside for two days. We were wearing just our shirts, jeans and socks when we got kicked out and it is so cold outside that we can see our breath is the air. We didn’t try to ask for our shoes and coats because they never let us have them. We are walking and walking around the house over and over trying so hard to keep warm. This might not be so hard if my stomach would stop screaming.  It’s been 4 days since we have eaten a meal. We tried sneaking out a snack earlier and got caught. That is why we are outside.

Before Mom sent us out, though, she gave us both a spoon full of ipecac to make us throw up. We threw up but nothing came up but stomach juices because we hadn’t actually gotten anything yet when she caught us.

I’m so hungry that I feel dizzy and faint. Abby can hardly walk. We finally get too tired to walk anymore and go huddle together in the corner of the porch and cover ourselves in the cushions from the porch furniture. We usually go huddle in the van to get out of the wind but Dad caught us there the last time and they made sure that it was locked tonight. We finally manage to fall asleep but I wake up so often because of my stomach and being so cold.

Sometime after devotions the next morning, Mom comes to the door to give us our chores for the day that will be outside chores since we have been sent out. We are actually glad to have something to do because it will help us stay warmer. The next night passes just like the first and finally we are allowed back in the next morning in time for devotions.

*****

Right now I am shaking with rage and my head is throbbing.

Mom got angry with me again a few minutes ago and grabbed my hair and started yanking me around. I finally got away from her and ran upstairs but my head hurts so badly. I run my fingers through my hair to try to soothe my head and when I pull my hand away I almost faint with rage.

There is a ball of hair so large in my hand that it looks like I just cleaned out my brush.

I storm downstairs and head for Dad and show him the hair. He accuses me of lying and said that I just cleaned out my brush to get attention. I don’t know if I have ever been angrier and I yell at him that I am not lying and I haven’t even touched my brush! He finally looks like he might somewhat believe me and takes the hair into their room. I follow because I want to hear what happens. Mom is putting her makeup on in the bathroom when he shows it to her and tells her what I said. Then she yells at Dad and says that she doesn’t care and that she will do it again if she wants to.

I am furious but what else should I expect?

*****

My fault

Everything is John’s and Abby’s and my fault. That’s what Mom and Dad keep saying.

All of the younger ones are following our bad examples and we are leading them astray. John moved out years ago but somehow he is still to blame as well. Abby and I are always in trouble because every time one of the younger ones disobeys we get in trouble too because it is our fault.

I don’t want to believe it, but I really don’t know what to believe anymore.

*****

At this point in my story I am going to change how this is being written. If I were to keep writing as I have been, this would probably end up being 50 pages long. I have many, many more examples of how we were abused again and again — day in and day out — but I really don’t know if they all need to be told in this one document. In this story, I focused more on my younger years but the abuse only got worse and worse as we got older so I find it very hard to try to formulate a way to put it all on paper. From here on out I will be writing in more of an overview position.

*****

The “rest” of the story

Until I was about 18 all of the above and other things were all pretty normal in our house. We never knew when our next meal would be, we never knew when we would be kicked outside and for how long. Basically, we never knew anything. Age and gender didn’t matter in public punishments. Abby and I were made to half strip for our beatings in front of all of the other siblings. We would also be made to walk around in our underwear for hours at a time and, because I developed later, Mom saw no reason that I should even be allowed a bra all the way till I was about 17. I have and always have had really bad seasonal allergies as well, to the point of asthma attacks. That didn’t matter either as far as losing house privileges when I got kicked outside. She would never allow me any allergy medicine. Being on my period didn’t matter either because I would lose access to feminine products while outside too. My driver’s license was used as a pawn for years and so, half of the time, I didn’t even have it in my possession.

Somewhere between my 17th and 18th birthdays, my Mom’s Mom found out some of the things that were going on and freaked out. Abby and I actually didn’t understand at first why she freaked out because it was all so normal for us.

I remember her telling me on one occasion that she was going to call CPS on my parents. I freaked out at that point because I knew enough to know that we would all be split up into foster homes and the thought of losing my siblings was too much to bear. In tears, I begged her not to call, assuring her that it wasn’t “that bad” and we were used to it anyway.

Nearly 15 years later, both of us have talked about it and realized that she should not have listened to me and should have called anyway. But we cannot change the past. The fact that she was willing to do so for us makes me love her even more (if that is possible). After my grandmother got involved, the physical abuse slowed to a near stop, while the emotional and mental went through the roof. Mom was furious at me and Abby for “telling on her” and was doing everything she could possibly do to make our lives more miserable and blaming us for everything going on.

To be continued.

This One’s For The Homeschool Moms: Mercy’s Story

HA Editorial Team26 Comments

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

Homeschool Moms (Present, Past, and Future), this post is for you.

"Be strong and call it like it is."
“Be strong and call it like it is.”

I’ve thought a lot about how conservative, Christian (in my case, not fundamentalist) homeschooling has shaped my life, but it wasn’t until last year that I took the time to think about how it impacted my mother. My sister had just called home to tell me that her and her husband of a short time were divorcing. I broke the news to my mom before my sister did, to soften the blow a little bit. My mom’s face went grey and she said, “How could this happen to your sister? I did everything right.” There was little consoling her, she thought that she had failed as a parent.

Why would the divorce of a child who married at a young age, in a country with a high divorce rate come as such a shock to a parent? Because the homeschool movement told my mom that they had given her the magic formula to make her children’s lives perfect. They give her a list, and promised her that if she followed the rules that her children would be perfect, Godly, and never experience life’s pain. How could that not be a tempting promise to any parent who cares about their children?

Homeschool moms, I want to tell you that promise is false, and that believing it is going to hurt you. Your child is a sovereign individual, and no matter how carefully and lovingly you arrange every part of their upbringing, education, and socialization, you cannot control their future. You can’t control it because you don’t have total control over your child or other people. If you’re stressing yourself out, afraid you’re doing it wrong, and a constant bundle of nerves, I want you to take a moment and think about whether or not you have set unrealistic expectations for yourself as a parent, and your child as a child. You probably have, and I want to tell you to give yourself a break.

Also, a lot of you have commented on these posts explaining that you’re different from the “crazy” homeschool moms, and I do believe you, but chances are if you’re Christian and homeschooling, you and your kids will be interacting with fundamentalists and you may be gradually sucked into parts or the whole of their ideology over time. These are some warning signs that could cause you to be more susceptible or signal that you’re already being sucked in:

1. You have deep regrets about your past. Perhaps you were raised non-religious like my mother, and then converted later in life, causing you to view your earlier years as sin-filled and in need of atonement. Maybe you were raised in a religious home and just think that you made some stupid, sinful decisions. Either way, if you are feeling guilt about your past, and like you need to make up for it, I want to tell you that homeschooling perfectly isn’t the solution. Don’t let people lead you into thinking that this is your path to forgiveness and the way to prove that you have become good. Additionally, many homeschool conventions, talks, gatherings will involve long lectures and speeches about the evils that your kids are supposed to avoid and that are taking over America (divorce, abortion, pre-martial sex, drinking, drugs, etc…). If these are things in your past, that you have regrets about, I want you to step out of those talks and lectures and stop punishing yourself. By sitting through those demonizing speeches you are tearing yourself down emotionally. You’re forgiven, now move on.

2. You find yourself becoming increasingly judgmental of other’s “walk with God” and parenting choices. Perhaps you were always fairly even keel, easy to get along with, not too judgmental, etc… and then lately you’ve noticed just how few people seem to truly be Christians, and how other parents are not really raising their kids to be Godly enough. Stop right there. You are treading into dangerous water. I remember there was a stage in my mother’s homeschooling where she felt that she was dressing more modestly, using more Christian curriculum, and going to a Godlier church than most other people. My dad sat her down one day and said, “Do you remember where you came from? You look at everyone and judge them, like you’ve forgotten that you’re human, too.” Was my dad harsh? Yes, but it opened up my mom’s eyes to the fact that she, a woman who had always been a fair-minded free spirit, was becoming fundamentalist. My mom dumped her jumpers and added a good dose of charity and compassion to her assessment of other’s (including her children), and her assessment of herself.

3. You find other homeschool moms criticizing you and your children, as “sisters in Christ.” It feels like they’re just being mean, but everyone says that they’re being Godly… True story, they’re probably just being mean. If you are a more relaxed, liberal homeschooler, and you are involved in homeschool activities where you are around fundamentalist homeschoolers, they will judge you and your children. Other homeschool moms were constantly telling my mother about my “slutty” dressing and “immoral” ways. They sought to demonize me, punish me, and slander me because I was not a cookie-cutter Christian homeschooler. My mother always defended me, but what makes me sad is that she never defended herself. I noticed that the longer we were involved in certain homeschool activities populated by more fundamentalist homeschoolers, the more fragile my mom was becoming. She went from outgoing and smiley, to frighteningly quiet, she stopped telling jokes, she got sick almost every time we went to a homeschool gathering, and her head started shaking. It was like all of her bottled up anxiety and hurt couldn’t be kept in, so a barely perceptible shake would start as soon as we pulled up to a homeschooling event. I found out why my mother was acting this way my senior year of high school: other home school parents were bullying her. I overheard them openly confront her about how prideful, how unloving, how assertive, how terrible, and how unchristian she was. My mom never stood up for herself. To any mom who is being treated this way, and is afraid to stand up to it because you either think that a). you deserve this, or b). what’s being done is Godly I want you to be strong and call it like it is. Some homeschool moms are bitches. If they treat you and your kid terribly, tell them that it’s not Godly. It’s rude, and get out of there.

4. You’re told that the answer to parenting/homeschooling is ________________. There is no perfect way to parent. If you’ve come across a group, speaker, pastor, or curriculum that promises that they have the one and only way to good parenting and God then you know you’ve run into a nut job. They may have great success stories, and a bevy of perfectly mannered children at their beck and call to demonstrate their effectiveness, but you shouldn’t fall for it. There is not one way.

5. You feel like other homeschool families are always so much more perfect. You see these glowing, wholesome families who encourage you to homeschool and sell you curriculum, and then when you start homeschooling your kids don’t magically change. They don’t want to do their school, they fight with each other, they back talk, they may even turn into teenagers. And, you get frustrated, mad, tired, and say mean things. You might look at these other families and ask, “What am I missing?” What you’re missing is the whole picture. No family is perfect, nor are their children. Even the most well-mannered exemplars of homeschooling virtues have kids that misbehave and days where they feel frustrated, too. As you can see from this blog, a lot of these kids that may seem so much more virtuous than yours are actually deeply hurting and will eventually turn their parent’s perfect world upside down. So, be patient with yourself and your children, and don’t let other family’s public veneer make you feel like a bad parent.

And, please, please don’t feel like if you try homeschooling, and hate it, that you’re bad and must work through it. If you really hate it, are unhappy, and struggling, then maybe homeschooling isn’t for you and that is just fine. Keep your options flexible and your mind open. You don’t have to homeschool to have happy, well-educated, respectful kids. Look out for them, and look out for yourself. Don’t let other people force you into any lifestyle or belief system that you feel uncomfortable with, and if you feel as though that might be happening, be strong and get out now.