molestation – Homeschoolers Anonymous

When Homeschoolers Turn Violent: Charles Carl Roberts

March 31, 2014May 12, 2020HA Editorial TeamLeave a comment

Series note: “When Homeschoolers Turn Violent” is a joint research project by Homeschoolers Anonymous and Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. Please see the Introduction for detailed information about the purpose and scope of the project.

Trigger warning: If you experience triggers from descriptions of physical and sexual violence, please know that the details in many of the cases are disturbing and graphic.

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Charles Carl Roberts

On October 2, 2006, 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts IV barricaded himself and ten young female hostages into an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He proceeded to shoot the girls one at a time, execution-style. By the time the police broke into the schoolhouse, he had wounded 5 girls, mortally wounded 2, and killed 3. He then shot and killed himself.

Charles was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to his father Chuck, a retired police officer who became a taxi driver for the Amish community, and his mother Terri. Charles never attended public schools, receiving his high school diploma from a homeschool association. 20 years before his rampage and suicide, when he was only 12 years old, Charles molested two of his relatives — girls between the ages of 3 and 5. This would haunt Charles for the rest of his life, and he reportedly was tormented by “dreams of molesting again” around the time of the rampage and suicide.

After graduating from high school, Charles worked a number of jobs, ranging from dishwasher at Good N’ Plenty Restaurant to a commercial milk tank driver for North West Foods. In 1996, Charles married Marie Lynn Welk at Highview Church of God. A year after their wedding, Marie gave birth to Elise Victoria, who tragically died shortly after birth. Elise’s death would also haunt Charles until the day he died. Charlie and Marie later had 3 more kids, who ranged from ages 7 to 1 1/2 on the day Charlie killed himself. Marie described her husband as “loving, supportive, thoughtful” and “an exceptional father,” and Terri similarly described her son as “an excellent family man.” After her son died, Terri mourned that, “I had no idea anything like this was going to happen.”

On the day in question, Charles drove his own children to school then returned home and left handwritten notes to his family. He then drove to and entered West Nickel Mines School, a one-room Amish school house in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He came prepared with a vast inventory of equipment and weaponry: a handgun, shotgun, and rifle; 600 rounds of ammunition; black powder, a stun gun, knives, pliers, wires, and wooden planks. He let 15 male students out of the schoolhouse as well as a pregnant woman and three parents with infants. Remaining with him were 10 young female students, ranging in age from 6 to 13. He tied up the 10 girls together. While he “appeared to have plans to molest [the] children” on account of bringing a bottle of sexual lubricant with him, the police arrived almost immediately and no signs of sexual assault were found later. Instead, as soon as the police arrived, Charles’ plans were thrown in disarray. He called his wife on his cellphone and told her for the first time about how he had molested his relatives when he was 12. He also told her he was surrounded by the police. He then proceeded to shoot his young hostages and kill himself.

In 2013, 7 years after Charles’s rampage and death, his mother Terri channeled her feelings of grief and guilt into helping others, including one of her son’s own victims. She spends time with and caring for 13-year-old Rosanna, who sits in a wheelchair and eats through a tube on account of Charles’s attack.

View the case index here.

When Homeschoolers Turn Violent: Joshua Komisarjevsky

March 10, 2014May 12, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

Trigger warning: If you experience triggers from descriptions of physical and sexual violence, please know that the details in many of the cases are disturbing and graphic.

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Joshua Komisarjevsky

According to friends and family, Joshua Komisarjevsky was “a brilliant but troubled young man” who was “very loving, very caring.”

Joshua was adopted at two-weeks-old by fundamentalist Christians. His father Benedict has been described as “critical, cold, and controlling”; the mother Jude, “quite submissive.”

Jude homeschooled Joshua using material from the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), the homeschooling curriculum developed by Inge Cannon (the former Director of HSLDA’s National Center for Home Education) for Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles. Jude said that she and her husband Benedict “had tried to instill Christian values in the boy by pulling him out of public school and educating him at home,” but he had nonetheless “wallowed in depression” due to the death of his grandfather a year earlier and had “come under ‘satanic’ influences through other youths” in his hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut. Jude said her son “was easily manipulated and controlled by others,” and she recalled going into his room at one point and “he had written over and over again on the walls: ‘death’ and ‘die’ and ‘suicide.’”

At some point during his childhood, Joshua was raped by “someone he trusted,” allegedly a teenage child that the Komisarjevsky family had fostered. Several years later, Joshua molested his younger sister Naomi. The church that the Komisarjevsky family attended “rejected psychology, psychiatry, or any kind of mental health treatment, and so did Komisarjevsky’s parents.” When Benedict and Jude discovered the sexual abuse in the family, they did not seek any mental health treatment for either Joshua or Naomi.

Right before turning 15, Joshua set fire to a gas station. Since police recognized he had serious mental health issues, he was briefly hospitalized in a mental health hospital and given medication. However, his father did not want him on any medication, and instead sent him to a “faith-based” treatment program.

On July 23, 2007, Joshua and his friend Steven Hayes broke into the home of the Petit family — William, Jennifer, and their daughters, 17-year-old Haley and 11-year-old Michaela. Joshua and Steven held the family hostage for hours. They forced Jennifer to drive to the family’s nearby bank and withdraw $15,000 — on the threat of killing the entire family otherwise. They raped and strangled Jennifer and then sexually assaulted Michaela. William was severely beaten and tied to a post in the basement. Joshua and Steven then doused the house with gasoline and set fire to the house. Haley and Michaela died from smoke inhalation. William managed to escape.

Joshua had specifically targeted the Petit family. A day prior to the killings, he noticed Jennifer and Michaela at a grocery store. He followed them from the store home and made plans to come back the next day with Hayes.

Joshua was found guilty of murder. Evidence of “his strict Christian upbringing, his disturbed behavior as a youth and his parents’ decision not to get traditional psychological treatment for him because of their Christian beliefs” was a significant matter of discussion during his trial. In January 2012, Joshua was sentenced to death. His accomplice, Steven Hayes, was also sentenced to death.

View the case index here.

Bill Gothard Resigns from IBLP

March 6, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team26 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Bill Gothard resigned today from the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and its affiliated organizations.

Last month the IBLP board placed Gothard on administrative leave. According to a report by WORLD Magazine, the administrative leave would be in place “while the board investigates claims that he years ago engaged in sexual harassment and other misconduct.” Allegations and evidence have surfaced recently about how Bill Gothard has sexually harassed and molested over 30 young woman, including children, for decades. There are rumors that David Gibbs, Jr. — the former president of ACE who was the longtime attorney for convicted child abuser Jack Schaap‘s church, First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana — was hired by the IBLP board to spearhead the investigation.

Today, however, David Waller — the Administrative Director of the Advanced Training Institute (ATI) — sent out an email to families involved with ATI and announced that Bill Gothard has resigned from the Institute in Basic Life Principles and all its affiliated organizations. Waller said that Gothard “communicated to the Board of Directors his desire to follow Matthew 5:23-24 and listen to those who have ‘ought against’ him.”

Waller did not state if Gothard planned to return to leadership at some point. He did say, however, that IBLP and ATI will continue as is. Their upcoming conferences in Big Sandy, Nashville, and Sacramento will be held as planned. The organization also “expects to appoint interim leadership for IBLP in the very near future.” Chris Hogan, ATI’s president, “will play an active role.”

You can view David Waller’s email in its entirety as a PDF here.

Grace is For Gothard Only

February 13, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Guess what? There’s a new Facebook page for defending Bill Gothard against “persecution.”

Here’s the page’s Description:

(Because complaining about cold fajitas is totally comparable to “complaining” about being molested by a religious leader?)

The page is run by people who think calling Bill Gothard out for a history of sexual harassment and molestation is pretty much the equivalent of stoning Stephen or persecuting Jesus himself. But don’t worry your pretty little head about whether or not that’s legitimate theology. Just get back under your umbrella of protection.

There’s also a public Facebook group for “friends” of Bill Gothard. It’s been around for a while, existing to “appreciate the wit and wisdom that Mr. Bill Gothard has shared over the years from his practical study of God’s Word and heartfelt desire to help young people find success in life.” But it has recently been revitalized to defend Gothard against everyone who is mad about the many disturbing allegations concerning him sexually harassing and abusing young women under his “umbrella.”

Full disclosure: I refuse to link to the Facebook page and group and thereby give them increased attention.

But I am happy to share screenshots from the public group.

*****

First of all, you should know there might be a “huge backlash” from IBLP directors and ATI parents who are “mad” and “repulsed” by Recovering Grace, the evilest of organizations dedicated to furthering the work of Satan by “helping people harmed by the teachings of Bill Gothard, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), and the Advanced Training Institute (ATI).” There might even be a “rebuttal website” soon against Recovering Grace. This is according to Robert Norvell, who was the Director of Gothard’s Eagle Mountain Training Center:

Norvell is “glad there are some standing” with Bill Gothard because, basically, for every one girl Bill Gothard allegedly molested, there’s at least a hundred girls he didn’t molest. So that’s something, right? Especially since Recovering Grace is so “liberal.”

People are pretty mad at Recovering Grace for standing up for abuse victims. Abuse survivors and allies are like “children” who “mock the prophet Elijah.” Abuse survivors and allies are also like people who stoned Stephen:

So thank God for people who stand with abusers. These brave people are voices “crying in the wilderness”:

…and it’s a wilderness for IBLP indeed. A wilderness of $84,000,000 in assets and an annual income of $12,000,000. It’s a rough life.

What’s particularly weird is that the same people who accuse Gothard of being “cultish” also accuse his defenders of being “cultish,” too. But people in cults never defend their cult leaders, right? So that makes no sense. And really, everyone who is mad that Gothard might have sexually harassed and molested kids just want “to continue on in their sinful lifestyle.” After all, “it’s why they persecuted the Messiah too.” So if you think about, Gothard is pretty much like Jesus.

So come on, everyone. Let’s not try to “destroy” people by bringing abusers to justice. And let’s not focus on “who is right or wrong.” “Right and wrong” is doublespeak from the pit of Hell. People should just “move on.”

It’s all “under the blood” anyways. We might as well ignore abuse victims at this point.

It’s a free country. So let Gothard have the freedom to keep abusing and let the victims have the freedom to shut up.

Someone also posted this photo of young women who experience “brokenness” and “full surrender.” Not that that’s at all creepy in this context.

In conclusion: This last comment was probably prophetic, in light of all the screenshots I took.

How I Lost My Faith — Reflections of God’s Love and the Power of Indoctrination: lungfish’s Story, Part One

November 11, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Part One: Childhood Indoctrination

HA note: The following story is written by lungfish, a formerly homeschooled ex-Baptist, ex-Calvinist, ex-Pentecostal, ex-Evangelical, ex-young earth creationist, current atheist, and admin of the Ask an Ex-Christian web page.

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Introduction

“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.“ Philippians 1:6

I once called myself a Christian.

I thought I was a child of God among the children of Satan. A shining light in a world of darkness. I was convinced of the absolute truth of the Bible and no amount of human reason could convince me otherwise. I believed the Holy Spirit lived within me, allowing me to be a reflection of Jesus and his love. But, when I finally looked into that reflection, I could not stand what I saw.

Everyday, for more than a year, I sat in the same corner of the cafe at my university for lunch – always facing outward so no one was behind me. Everyone there brought up such an unbearably anger within me – to the point that my muscles would tense into painful spasms and my vision would blur white around the edges. These people never did anything to me, except give the impression of having lived normal lives. My grades began to fall. All I could think about was my past. Memories I had long blacked out began to resurface. I poured over every word in the Bible and every popular Christian belief that I could not reconcile with my own sense of morality. I could not shake the feeling that my entire life had been dedicate to a lie.

I was de-converting.

Christianity sets for its followers impossible standards – so that its people are broken and desperate for the savior it provides. When a Christian truly attempts to desperately live up to those impossible standards, he finds only failure and the feeling that he can never be good enough. But, despite the mental anguish, a believer often remains in the faith because existence in the provided alternative is unimaginable. This is the doctrine of Christianity. This is the life I left behind.

My de-conversion was not voluntary.

I did not go looking to lose my faith. I fought my de-conversion as hard as I could. I had a family, a wife and child. My wife was a Christian. I had brought her to Jesus myself and I didn’t want to lose her by rejecting the very faith that she accepted from me when we were young. But a balloon expanding with air will eventually burst.

This is my story. A story of the unyielding grip that indoctrination held on me.

Childhood Indoctrination: The Baptist Church and Calvinism

“And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15

Indoctrination is defined as the act of programming a doctrine, principle, or ideology: such as religious belief. It is not presented as something you must think about; it is presented as something you must believe. In the case of religion, one’s belief is rewarded by entrance into a heavenly paradise; but failure to believe results in the eternal suffering of the soul in a lake of fire. Religious indoctrination is often forced on a child at the critical age during which the way the child will think, feel, and act for his or her entire life develops. When a child is indoctrinated into a religion, nothing else exists for that child. The mere thought that others can even hold to an alternative faith or belief is completely baffling.

This was Christianity for me.

My faith started at an age much too young to fully understand. Under the desk in the office is where my older brother told me of a place called hell. Tears ran down my face and I begged him for an alternative. Then he told me of heaven and how Jesus, because he was crucified, could save me from this place. This is the first time I accepted Jesus as my savior and my earliest memory.

“You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles.” Matthew 7:16

As a toddler, I attended a Baptist church with my mother and brothers. The church was filled mostly by the elderly and fundamental homeschooling families with older children. The culture here was one of strict rules and mistrust of modern medicine and science.

Morality was the center of our being and every move one made was judged harshly.

We believed that it would be observations of our morality, unique in the world, which would bring lost souls to salvation. We were constantly tempted by Satan to sin against God and any momentary weakness could be observed by one of these souls who might then choose to reject God because of our weakness. That person would be sent to hell and it would be our fault. Although, the eventual version of Christianity that I held to was the result of the belief systems of multiple denominations, this is the world I was originally indoctrinated into.

”I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.“ Matthew 10:35-36

My father did not attend church with us. He had de-converted over a verbal argument with a pastor long before I was born. Afraid that my father would turn her children against God, my mother always kept us at arm’s length from him – making sure we knew that he was not a Christian like we were. The tension between my parents was always high and my brothers and I could sense it. We spent most of our time hiding upstairs in in our separate bedrooms trying to distance ourselves from this tension as much as possible.

The sight of my parent’s broken marriage could be escaped, but the sound could not.

Almost nightly the screaming would echo up the stairwell as my mother tried to force her beliefs and sense of morality on my father. I would often lay awake at night crying and praying to God that they would get a divorce so that the screaming would stop; but divorce was against my mother’s religion.

When my parents weren’t fighting, my father escaped into the cyber world of strategy gaming and conspiracy theory forums. While doing so, he demanded quiet. A single noise traveling down the stairs would set him stomping up to ensure the noise did not continue. He never touched us, but, I can still remember being terrified of him to the point that I could not breathe when he came up those stair.

After years at this small Baptist church, my mother began to realize that my brothers and I were the only young people in attendance.

As homeschoolers, our only contact with other people was through church and, as a result, we had no friends. So, we began attending a small mission church in the next town that leaned towards Calvinism.

Unlike our previous church, worship held a joyful tone and the sermons were passionate. There, at the age of eight, I made my first friend. He was the pastor’s son. He was five years older than me and I saw him as a wise man that I could look up to. He was from the other end of the country and had seen parts of the world I could only dream of. We skied, we biked, and we went on camping trips, talked about life, hobbies, and girls. I also began attending a very small private Christian school in an Evangelical church during this time and came to depend on him for social advice.

After about a year, the mission began losing attendance; so the pastor and his family decided to return to their home church in Florida. A week before their move, I went on one last camping trip with my friend before he had to move thousands of miles away.

There, alone in a tent, my only friend, the pastor’s son, sexually molested me.

That was not the first time I was molested by an older Christian whom I looked up to – so, I thought it was normal. Images of the previous instance are much more vividly burned into my mind. I do not remember how the first came too happened, but I remember who the person was and what he asked of me. These two people told me to never tell anyone – so, I never did.

To be continued.

I Was A Problem To Be Ignored: Krysi Kovaka’s Story, Part Two

July 3, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

I Was A Problem To Be Ignored: Krysi Kovaka’s Story, Part Two

Krysi Kovaka is the 2008 recipient of the Institute for Cultural Communicator’s Raudy Bearden Community Speaking Award. She served as an intern for the 2008 Communicators for Christ conference tour.

< Part One

I was a problem to be ignored.

At a post conference party in Texas, I met a man who used to be part of the NCFCA/CFC scene. He was well into his twenties and I was seventeen. We talked for a bit and ended up exchanging numbers. Our relationship happened mostly via text and IM, and it was a case of trouble attracting trouble. We never dated, but our relationship was really creepy and weird. One night after I had taken loads of my Xanax and other meds, he drunk texted me and over the course of several hours, ended up talking me into sending him naked pictures of myself. Despite this creepiness, I ended up disclosing a lot of my life’s story to him and I told him about my father abusing me. He really encouraged me to tell Mrs. Moon about the abuse. A few weeks later we ended up sexting again – eventually my mom found out about him and threatened to have him put behind bars if he ever talked to me again.

Towards the end of tour, I really started to fall apart (as if I wasn’t falling apart before.) I started to stress about having to return home. Things got so bad that I did end up telling Mrs. Moon and several of the other interns about my father molesting me. I don’t know what an appropriate reaction is when a teenager tells you that her father molested her, but what happened was far from a right response. We were at a conference in TN when I told Mrs. Moon about the abuse, and she had me tell my two younger brothers about the abuse, and then she had me tell my mother. My memory of this conference is pretty fragmented, but I remember crying a lot and feeling absolute horror about what was going on around me.

At the time, I really didn’t have words to describe the abuse. People kept badgering me and asking me questions about exactly what happened, but I was in no emotional state to talk about it. I felt like I was on the verge of having a mental breakdown. My behavior got more and more erratic and shortly after I told my family about the abuse, Mrs. Moon kicked me off tour.

We were in Pigeon Forge, TN and Mrs. Moon told me that she had asked my mother to drive down to TN to pick me up. I would not be able to finish the last two weeks of tour. Apparently, she had finally realized that I was in no condition to be on tour. The Moons had a goodbye breakfast for me at a little diner in Pigeon Forge. At this breakfast, I said goodbye to all the people who had been like family to me. The Moons promised that they would stay in touch with me and help me and that if I ever needed to talk about anything that I could call.

I was completely numb at that breakfast. I cried a lot and I remember several of the other interns crying. Very few of them really understood what was happening or why I had to leave. I hardly understood why I had to leave – in a way, I felt like I was being punished for speaking up about the abuse. I was on vacation last week, and I ended up driving through Pigeon Forge – to this day I hate that place.

After being kicked off the internship, I didn’t return home. I went to live with some family friends until my mom decided to divorce my father. Life got really rough after that. I attempted suicide again just a couple months after leaving tour. I also started drinking all the time and I started using more prescription drugs. I felt like my whole world had crumbled. The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to Mrs. Moon the day I left tour:

“Saying goodbye to the team was the worst thing I think I’ve ever had to do. Arriving in North Carolina was even worse. It occurred to me that I might be stuck here for a long time. I really, really, really hate it here. I don’t know anyone. I’m lonely, depressed, teary, and scared out of my head. Life is so confusing right now. I hate this….All I want to do is go home. I have no clue what home is right now, but I know I want to be there. I just wish I could be somewhere where I knew people and where I felt safe and cared about. I’ve yet to see what that would look like in practice…”

I tried to keep in touch with the Moons and with the people I toured with, but shortly after leaving tour, one of the other interns told me that none of the people I interned with would be allowed to talk to me. As it was explained to me, Mrs. Moon felt like it was best that they not be in contact with me. I later contacted Mrs. Moon and received a similar answer from her. I can’t even begin to explain how much this devastated me. These people were my friends and support system and all of a sudden it was all yanked away from me. The Moons stopped talking to me shortly afterwards. On tour I was treated as a problem to be ignored – when that problem got too big to ignore, I was dismissed from tour. Once again, I could be ignored, as I was now someone else’s problem.

Needless to say, I was not invited to the annual Masters conference. A week before Masters I was diagnosed with meningitis and was hospitalized. I was told later that when Mrs. Moon heard I had meningitis, she was relieved because she would be able to use that as an explanation for why I wasn’t at the conference. When she heard I was in the hospital, I was told that her exact words were, “Oh thank God.”

Several months later, my mom emailed Mrs. Moon and asked if I could use her as a reference for another internship I was applying for. I should have known better. This was part of the reply she sent to my mom:

“I have not really had a chance to experience the Krysi that is dependable, trustworthy, honest, respecting of authority, a team player – many of the qualities I would expect an internship director to look for. I am optimistic that these character qualities can become a part of how Krysi is known. I currently have no real frame of reference for making that type of recommendation. I recall receiving only a few pieces of communication from Krysi shortly after she left the team complaining about her life and her options…”

The email to which the last sentence refers is the one I quoted previously. As to the rest of it… what did she expect? I was an emotionally traumatized teenager put in an impossible situation. Tour was one of the most stressful environments I’ve ever been in. Mrs. Moon knew I was unstable and she still allowed me to intern – when that didn’t work out, she took away the only support system I knew. I’m really not sure what other outcome she would have expected.

Six months after I left the internship, I sent an email to a friend and tried to explain to her how tour was for me. This was part of what I said:

“People put way too much pressure on 17 and 18 year olds. This was what damaged me the most, I think. Everyone expected all 13 of us to be absolutely perfect. On the platform and at conferences, we did a great job of meeting those expectations. After a while though, it become sort of soul killing. I’d go to a conference and feel absolutely dead – no one really knew me. They thought they did, but they had no idea about my life.”

That’s the thing, the one person who had an idea about my life (Mrs. Moon) accepted me to intern – being fully aware of my mental health problems – and then put me on a platform and expected me to act, look, and behave perfectly. When I didn’t measure up to those standards, I was rejected. I really don’t understand the reasoning behind any of it.

The last contact I had with the speech and debate world was during the spring of 2010 when I went to an NCFCA tournament to judge. I showed up with an orange juice bottle full of vodka. I was completely drunk and I gave alcohol to several of the competitors. After that I never went back.

I’m definitely not proud of all my actions over the years. I know I’ve made some mistakes, but then again, so have the responsible adults in my life. What happened on my CFC internship definitely messed with my head – I learned that nothing in life is permanent, that people will eventually abandon you, and that talking about trauma is unacceptable (and even punishable.)

Post tour, I got into a decent amount of trouble and did some crazy stuff (I was a wild one). I rejected Christian fundamentalism, in large part because of the hurt I experienced in the “Christian community.” About a year ago, I started to work on my trauma and substance abuse issues. It’s been a journey, but I’m finally in a good place. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, I have a great job, and I have people in my life who don’t abandon or reject me when I act a little crazy. It’s the first time I’ve ever known what stability looks like. I’ve re-embraced spirituality; I don’t consider myself a Christian – I’m just trying to figure out what it looks like to follow Jesus. I still screw up a lot and make mistakes, but I have people who love me through those mistakes rather than rejecting me.

I’m sure that there are people who will be angry for the things I’ve said about CFC/ICC, and I’m okay with that. I’m past the point in my life where I feel like I have to pretend everything is okay.

End of series.

I Was A Problem To Be Ignored: Krysi Kovaka’s Story, Part One

July 2, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

I Was A Problem To Be Ignored: Krysi Kovaka’s Story, Part One

I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out what I would say about my CFC tour experience if ever given the chance. It’s a lot to try and put into words. CFC was one of the first places where I felt a sense of family and acceptance. It was also one of the first places where I experienced the rejection and hypocrisy that seem to go hand in hand with conservative homeschooling groups.

Krysi Kovaka's staff picture from her 2008 conference tour with Communicators for Christ. — Krysi Kovaka’s staff picture from her 2008 conference tour with Communicators for Christ.

To give proper background to this story, I first have to explain a bit about my childhood. I grew up in a conservative Christian middleclass family. On the outside, everything about my childhood was perfect (albeit a bit unconventional.) My parents chose to homeschool me and my four siblings. I was given a great academic education, but school is really only a very small part of any discussion relating to homeschooling. My father molested me while I was growing up, and given the insular community of which I was a part, there were very few people who would have been able to spot any signs of abuse. Nobody found out about the abuse until much, much later.

When my public schooled peer group was playing sports, doing ballet, or marching band (or just being normal teenagers) I was busy doing competitive speech and debate. I started doing speech and debate when I was eleven and I went to my first CFC conference. After that, I spent the majority of my time going to NCFCA tournaments, researching debate resolutions, and attending CFC conferences.

The thing is, I never quite fit the mold of what a conservative homeschooled debater should look like. I was a bit different; I liked to dress differently, dye my hair weird colors, and do anything else I could think of to stand out from my homogenous peer group. I think part of this was personality (I’ve always been a bit quirky) and part of it was my attempt at a cry for help. I was a very troubled teenager; despite (or maybe because of) my Christian homeschooled upbringing, I had problems with cutting, eating disorders, depression, and substance abuse. Of course, when I was competing in NCFCA tournaments and attending CFC conferences, very few people had any idea about my problems.

To adequately explain what happened on my CFC internship, I have to rewind a bit and talk about the winter before I went on tour. Christmas break of 2007 I was put in a behavioral hospital for attempting to commit suicide. I was radically unhappy at home, so I tried to overdose on over the counter pain medicine. I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks before I was discharged, just a few days before Christmas.

Several weeks later (January 2008) my mom was hosting a CFC Masters conference in my hometown of Louisville, KY. Prior to my suicide attempt, I had been accepted to be an RSA (staff assistant/all-purpose slave) at this conference. For reasons that still baffle me, the adults in my life decided that I needed to attend the conference and pretend that everything was okay. While I should have been in therapy, I was busy cleaning bathrooms, setting up for banquets, and doing any other menial task that came my way. Child labor laws where never even talked about.

During this conference I spent a lot of time holed up in bathrooms either cutting myself or making myself throw up. It’s interesting now for me to look back at pictures of myself at that Masters conference – it was evident from looking at me that there was something deeply wrong. Still, no one talked about it or asked about it. Depression, suicide, and mental illness are not socially acceptable topics among conservative homeschoolers.

To illustrate the polarity that was my life, I was awarded the Raudy Bearden scholarship at this Masters; in one minute I would be in a bathroom trying to hold myself together and in the next, I would be up on a stage accepting an award or giving a speech. Prior to the awards ceremony where I was awarded the scholarship, I was in the bathroom making myself throw up.

It was also during this conference that I decided I wanted to apply for a CFC internship. It wasn’t so much that I loved CFC or that I loved public speaking – I just wanted to leave home and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. The week after Masters I filled out an application to intern – I was pretty sure that getting accepted would be easy since my sister had interned twice. Turns out that I was right. I had a phone interview with Mrs. Moon, and despite the fact that she knew all about my mental health background (including my recent suicide attempt) she accepted me to intern just a few weeks after the phone interview. I told her that I was on psych medication but that I would be fully competent to tour the country in a motorhome with a dozen other people. To this day, I’m not sure why she took my word for it.

That spring and summer was a blur – I remember a lot of emails and writing a lot of classes. I remember having to go shopping for tour clothes (all of us interns had to wear color coordinated outfits.) I remember feeling a lot of pressure to perform well at that year’s NCFCA national tournament.

August rolled around and it was time to go to prep week and start tour. Over that summer I had spent a lot of time at counseling and therapy, but I was still in no mental or emotional condition to be in such a stressful environment. On tour you are expected to look perfect at all times, teach multiple classes in a day, give speeches, and function on very little sleep. At this time I was still dealing with an eating disorder (which I tried to hide by saying I was a vegetarian), I cut myself regularly, I was very depressed, and I was starting to abuse alcohol. I tried to hide all of these problems and put on a brave face as I got up on countless stages and spoke about the benefits of communication training and homeschooling. I felt like a performing monkey.

My internship wasn’t all bad – I made some great friends and I felt a real sense of community with a few of my fellow interns. I got to see the country and I got to get away from home. I loved not being at home.

Tour was a very stressful environment though, and I started to crumple under the constant pressure to be perfect. I would get up on a stage to speak and the second I got off stage I would run to a bathroom (bathrooms were the only place I found privacy) and hurt myself. I started having really bad anxiety attacks during this time, so a doctor (who was a friend of the Moons) prescribed me Xanax over the phone. I promptly started abusing this medication and nobody attempted to monitor my use of the pills.

What really amazes me about all of this is how few people took notice of my troubling behavior. Of course, there were a couple of my fellow interns who knew that something was wrong, but they were only teenagers themselves. None of the adults in my life took any notice. I can only attribute this to the fact that I was in a homeschooled bubble – I assume that the people I was around were sheltered to the point where they didn’t know what to look for. The other explanation is that the people I was around purposefully didn’t take notice of my behavior.

During the second half of my internship I began self-medicating with alcohol more frequently. One night, me and one of the other interns separated from our group. We were in Boston and we decided to strike out on our own to explore the city. We found a couple of homeless men and we had a fascinating conversation with them about life and God. During this conversation, I shared their vodka. Yes, I did that. I really didn’t see a problem with sharing vodka with homeless people. When we got back to the group no one noticed that I was slightly inebriated (or they pretended not to notice.)

On another occasion, I and two other interns raided the liquor cabinet at our host family’s house. We got black out drunk that night and ended up playing a risqué game of truth or dare. That night was the first (but not the last) time that I got sloppy drunk with a boy and made decisions I regretted later. The next morning we three were nursing hangovers, but we drug ourselves to the motorhome and tried to pretend that we were fine. I’m sure that one or two of our fellow interns noticed, but no one said anything. That was the culture we lived in – pretend that everything is fine, don’t make waves, and ignore problems.

I was a problem to be ignored.

Part Two >

From Hell to Heroin to Here: Jezebel’s Story

June 17, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

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

Trigger warnings: child sexual abuse, self-injury.

I’m not really sure how to describe my childhood. Blacks and whites don’t really exist in my world, so it’s difficult to say that it was ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ I feel like we put labels like that on things to simplify them.

Unfortunately, nothing is simple.

My earliest memories are very fragmented – my memory isn’t that great to begin with, and PTSD combined with years of drug abuse have further eroded the recesses of my mind. I remember starting first grade. My parents decided to send me to a ‘cottage school’ where I would go to school two days a week and be homeschooled the other three. I knew my friends from the neighborhood went to something called ‘public school,’ but from what I overheard my parents talking about, I was pretty sure that public school was bad. That didn’t make sense to me, because my friends were really nice and their parents seemed nice too. I was curious about public school, but at such a young age, I didn’t pay too much attention to the differences between myself and the other kids.

Around this same time (when I was seven) my father started to molest me. To this day, I don’t talk about it too much.

At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening to me. No one ever taught me about sexual abuse or inappropriate touching, so I thought that what was happening to me was normal. I hated what was going on, but I understood that it was very important for me to pretend that everything was okay. From a very young age, I understood the importance of not making waves and protecting my family’s reputation.

As I was growing up, the only sex education I received was from my time with my father. My mom never talked about sex with me, and since I was homeschooled, I was never given formal sex-ed. In one sense, I was insanely naïve about sex, but at the same time, I was receiving a sex-education from my father that would prove to be incredibly damaging to my psyche. The messages he gave me were that I was powerless, worthless, and valuable only as a pleasure receptacle. It was all very confusing for me.

As young girls, my friends and I used to talk about how we wanted our weddings to be. We would all daydream about what type of guy we wanted to marry and what type of dress we wanted to wear. Me, my sister, and our two best friends were planning a quadruple wedding.

When I found out that a father/daughter dance was a part of a traditional wedding, I remember deciding that I didn’t want to get married anymore. I was willing to do anything to avoid spending time around my father. The idea of having to dance with him made me sick to my stomach.

My parents continued to homeschool me and my three siblings. We stopped going to the cottage school and started going to a homeschool co-op (it was pretty much the same thing, just less organized.) I don’t remember too much from this time period. I know that I wasn’t particularly happy and that I found solace in drawing. I was off in my own little world much of the time, and I had quite a few pets that were my best friends. I didn’t have a lot of friends, and the few I had I didn’t really like; most of the time I preferred to be alone and draw with my dog.

The abuse from my father continued until I was eleven. I can’t tell you how many people have asked me why he stopped. Don’t fucking ask me – go ask that pervert. Maybe he’ll tell you. I can only assume that I was getting too old for him or that he found someone else he liked better. I didn’t ask questions about why he stopped, I was just thankful that he did.

I remember the time period after the abuse stopped a lot better than I remember my childhood. My parents were still together. I can’t begin to convey how terrible this was for me. On Sunday’s my family would attend church together (by this time we had started to attend a home church because traditional church was too secular) and my dad would get up and lead worship. I hated him so much and I didn’t understand why nobody else saw him the way I did. Everybody I knew acted like he was such a great person – after all, he had a great job, he let my mom be a stay-at-home homeschool mom, and to all appearances he was a loving father. My mom never noticed him abusing me, but I don’t blame her for this. I can only attribute it to her own dysfunctional upbringing and the years of emotional abuse she endured with my father.

Even then, as a young teenager, I didn’t have the words to describe what had happened to me. At thirteen I knew very little about sex, and I knew even less about how to express myself. I was full of inner turmoil and hurt, and I had no outlet for it. This is when I found out about cutting. I was reading a magazine article about Angelina Jolie and the article said that she used to cut herself. This was the first exposure I had to the concept of cutting and I decided to try it right away. I got a safety pin and started to scratch my skin. I couldn’t draw blood with my safety pin, but I liked the pain it caused me. For the first time in a long time, I felt some release.

Around this same time, I realized that I could achieve a similar level of catharsis through not eating. I wasn’t entirely aware that what I was doing was considered to be an eating disorder – I just knew that I really enjoyed how it felt when I would starve myself. I came up with crazy diet plans and arbitrary numbers of how many calories I was allowed to eat in a day. Occasionally, I would screw up and binge. I felt horrible about my binges, so I would cut myself to try and feel better. Somewhere along the lines I figured out that I could make myself vomit. From that point on, I would starve myself for days, binge, and then make myself throw up.

This sort of behavior went on for quite a few years. Of course, during this time I did my best to hide my eating disorder and cutting. To outward appearances, I tried my best to look happy, well adjusted, intelligent, and well educated. I simply wanted to be perfect. I was part of a very insular community, so it was fairly easy to hide the symptoms of my problems – after all, everyone was sheltered to the point that they couldn’t recognize the symptoms of emotional disturbances.

In my early teen years, I started participating in competitive speech and debate. My mom signed me up for NCFCA tournaments, and public speaking and debate took over my life. I still kept up with my other school work, but the vast majority of my time was spent designing visual aids for expository speeches, researching debate resolutions, and practicing speeches. I had very little life outside of NCFCA – as has been said by others, the closest thing I had to a graduating class were the people I competed at tournaments with.

During my teen years, I wasn’t allowed to date. Despite the parental prohibition on relationships, I started talking to a boy I met through NCFCA. He became my first boyfriend, and he was the first person I felt I could really confide in. At fifteen, I was looking to him to save me. I told him things I had never told anyone – I told him about my self-harm problems and my eating disorder. We commiserated over our teenage angst and unhappy upbringings. I was never able to trust him enough to talk to him about the abuse I suffered as a child, but this relationship helped me to begin to open up to people.

Of course, the relationship ended badly and dramatically (as most teenaged relationships do.) Still, the simple experience of being able to confide in someone was profound. Shortly after this breakup, I was researching something online, and I stumbled across an article on child abuse. The article talked about sexual abuse and molestation. For the first time in my life I had words to describe what had happened to me. Prior to this time, I had heard people talk about molestation, but I always thought that if what happened wasn’t actual rape, that it didn’t constitute abuse. No one had ever taught me otherwise.

I came unhinged when I read about what molestation actually was. All the evil I had experienced as a child finally had a name. Not only that, I felt justified in feeling that the abuse I suffered was wrong. I spent that whole night crying, cutting, and throwing up.

The next day, I called my best friend. I told her that when I was little my father had sexually abused me. It was the first time in my life I had told someone the truth about my childhood. I was sixteen years old. My friend told me that she already knew – she could tell by the way I acted and talked about my family. She knew I was miserable at home, but she didn’t know how to help me. She was only a teenager herself.

Having the words to describe my experiences made me feel better about myself, but it didn’t help my immediate situation. I still lived at home with my parents and my siblings and I didn’t feel safe enough to tell anyone about the abuse. To make myself feel better, I started self-medicating with prescription pain pills and alcohol. I started to get drunk off alcohol I stole from my parent’s liquor cabinet and I would get high off of Lortab’s and Percocet’s I found in our medicine cabinet. My weight continued to fluctuate and my arms were still crisscrossed with cuts. Because I was fairly isolated, few people took notice of my behavior.

My mom and I started to drift further and further apart – we would fight over the silliest things. I wanted to listen to secular music, and she preferred that I listen to opera and classical. I was a political libertarian and she was a staunch republican. I thought that morality had little place in art, and she believed that the books I read needed to have strict moral messages. We fought a lot.

On one particular day, mom and I had argued over the Harry Potter books (what homeschool child hasn’t been through a conflict involving these books?) I ran upstairs to my room in tears. I wasn’t really depressed about having differing opinions with my mom about Harry Potter – it was simply the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back. The weight of all the secrets I was keeping came crashing down on me and I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I felt like I had no way out, that my adolescence would never end. So I did the only thing I could think of – I swallowed a bottle of pills and prayed that it would kill me.

My sister called an ambulance when she came upstairs and found me – I was inconsolable as I told her that I had just swallowed a bottle of pills and I wanted to die. The ambulance came and carted me off to a mental hospital where I stayed for two weeks.

Ironically, the mental hospital was the only place where I came close to being in a public school. Because I was in the adolescent ward, we had to attend school while at the hospital. When I went to science class, I raised my hand and challenged the teacher on her teachings about evolution (that was what I had been taught to do in all my worldview and debate classes.) I’m pretty sure that the staff took this as further evidence of my mental problems.

After I was released from the hospital, I went through a very rough period. I finally told my mom about what my father had done to me. It was an experience that I can only describe as horrific. My mother believed me, and she had me write a letter to our church elders asking them for help. I wrote a detailed letter and told these men what my father had done to me. The church elders responded to my mother and said that both she and I were lying and that we weren’t welcome at that church anymore. To this day, my father still attends that church and is a very active member.

Amidst all this madness, I attempted to finish my senior year of high school. It was chaos. My mom and I cobbled together a transcript that was substantiated by my debate experience, my love of classic British literature, and little else. I was very intelligent, but no one ever really made me complete my math or science homework. I would tell my mom that I did my math or science homework, and for the most part, my word was enough assurance that I was getting a well-rounded education.

When I went to take the SAT I hadn’t studied (literally, I think I cracked the study book one time) and I was hungover. I did very well on the English and reading portion, and I bombed on the math portion. At this point, I didn’t particularly care about school though, and my home life was so hectic that my mom didn’t have time to care either – she was in the process of dealing with a hellish divorce.

During my senior year I was so busy going to therapy and psych appointments that I never got around to applying to colleges. Growing up, I had always wanted to go to college, but in the midst of the wreckage of my parent’s divorce, nobody really had time to help me figure out what I wanted to do with my life or where to apply for school. I got more and more depressed and I started drinking and abusing pain pills even more heavily.

After high school graduation, I was simply drifting through life. I worked a dead-end restaurant job and spent all my spare time at bars (I had a fake ID that I had stolen from someone.) The only friends I had were people I knew from work – very few of my NCFCA friends kept in contact with me and I felt a bit ostracized. Alcohol and pills fixed these feelings though, so I continued to self-medicate.

Eventually I applied to the local community college. I went there for a semester, and I enjoyed it. At the time though I was working fulltime at the restaurant, working weekends at a haunted house, and trying to keep up with a fulltime school schedule. I ran myself ragged – my health started to deteriorate and I ended up in the hospital with meningitis. I would also periodically have to go to the doctor because I got severe kidney infections. One day as I was leaving to go to work, I simply collapsed in the garage – my body was wearing out.

While I was going to community college I couldn’t stop drinking. I would routinely show up to class drunk or high out of my mind. Alcohol was the only thing that helped me feel less stressed. After one semester of college, I dropped out.

After dropping out of school my life became a bit of a blur. I continued to drink myself into a stupor every night because I was severely depressed. After a while, I got fired from my restaurant job because I routinely came to work drunk. Within a few weeks of getting fired, I tried coke for the first time and I loved it. I started routinely doing hard drugs. My drug use culminated in an addiction to heroin.

To support my drug habit, I started working at a strip club. I worked as a stripper and a prostitute for several years before I got arrested for trafficking heroin. My life was a wreck and I had nowhere to go, so I went to rehab. I had tried going to rehab several times before, so I wasn’t sure that it would work for me, but I was out of options. I ended up in a year-long program, and it saved my life.

When I was shooting up heroin and stripping, I didn’t care about my life. I would overdose or get beat up and it didn’t matter to me. I felt like I was a fuckup and that my life wasn’t worth living. In rehab I did the hard work of processing everything that had happened with my family, and as awful as it was, I’m a more whole person for all that.

It’s ironic – while I was in rehab, I was processing with a counselor and I told her about how I was brought up – conservative Christian homeschooler. She was shocked. She said that my story completely reframed how she thought about homeschooling. She had always assumed that homeschooling was a good way to safeguard against having your kids become radically screwed up. I guess I disproved that idea.

Since graduating rehab (most of the kids I competed in NCFCA with graduated college this year – I graduated rehab – ironic, right?) I’ve done my best to live life sober. I attend 12 step meetings and a big part of my recovery is letting go of my resentments. I’m still working on letting go of some resentment I have about my upbringing, but I’m slowly coming to terms with it. In no way do I blame my choices on the way I was raised; I accept complete responsibility for my actions over the last few years. Still, as people we are the sum of our experiences, and homeschooling was a huge part of my experience. My upbringing shaped me into who I am today.

I can’t say that I liked the process of getting here, but today my life is good; I have a good job, I’m clean and sober, I’m not incarcerated, and I have people that love me when I don’t love myself.

It’s been hell to get here, but it is what it is and I’m okay with that today.

The Queer Elder’s Son: George

May 22, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team3 Comments

The Queer Elder’s Son: George

Trigger warnings: this story contains brief references to molestation.

Hi, I’m George, and I’m a queer man who was homeschooled. And guess what? For me, it wasn’t all that bad. Yes, within the conservative Christian community I was raised in, complete with the requisite Bill Gothard character studies and HSLDA membership, I actually turned out okay. How is this possible? Let’s take a look.

I’ve never attended a public school. I stayed at home and was taught by my mother from a self-created curriculum from kindergarten through senior year of high school. During this period, my family attended a series of churches, trying to find the correct mix of the fundamentalism my mother sought and deism my father was attracted to. Surprisingly, this meant a lot of different churches including one ill-fated and ill-advised attempt at creating our own.

We’ll start with some of the ugly stuff. Like most in my situation, sexuality was always correlated directly with shame. We never, ever spoke of sex. I found out about it when I was ten years old and reading the encyclopedia article on vaginas. The line “insertion of the penis into the vagina” was the most detail I got, later telling my parents who laughed, asked if I had questions, and never spoke of it again. The secrecy and taboo nature of sex led to me being more than slightly obsessed with it. However, the idea of purity had been ground into my mind, and I remember flagellating myself after masturbating for the first time, thinking I had left my purity behind. No God could love someone like me. But the confusion of sex as being ugly — after all, God struck down that man who ejaculated on the ground — and somehow ‘good’ was something my mind was unable to rectify.

I still hesitate when trying to find words for what happened next. The simplest explanation is often the best. While at a Christian summer camp, I was molested by a male counsellor over the course of a three-week session. He was in his late teens and while what occurred between us wasn’t rape, it obviously wasn’t consensual sex either. I came away from the experience with two major problems.

First, my purity was definitely gone now. What I had done with that man meant I was officially damned to hell. It was over. Could I even go to heaven now that I’d lost that part of myself? I figured the answer was no.

Second, I enjoyed it physically. I found myself attracted to him. Him, a man. I was a homeschooled preteen, and thus the idea of homosexuality didn’t even make sense to me. But it was obviously not normal and not something men were meant to feel for men.

For mostly the second reason, I kept it a secret. And the next year? I went back to the same camp, he was still there, and we picked back up where we had been. This move I did regret afterwards, serving myself up to him so obviously.

So that year I decided to tell.

This is probably the lowest point of this tale, the part where things suddenly screech to a halt. My mother told me she did not believe me, it was too ridiculous to think the person I was specifically singling out had done what I was saying. So I slammed it back inside and did not speak of it again for years (this post is around the fourth time I’ve ‘said’ it in the last fifteen years).

Unfortunately this didn’t mean the attraction to boys went away. Which was a problem, especially once I found the terms to label it.

Sitting through long discussions of purity? Of how to remain like Timothy or Titus or some other short book of the Bible? I had already committed the sin of Onan, with another man. How on earth was I supposed to return to a time before that all happened? So I settled for keeping it quiet.

Fast forward a few years, to my first same-age homosexual encounter. In an extremely conservative Christian organization, I attended an annual ‘summit’ of sorts. Boys and girls were kept very separate for propriety’s sake. I am unsure how the organizers didn’t see how this would backfire, as it led to me and several others initiating activity which was just a ‘joke’ and ‘so gay lol’. I do wonder about those men, some of them now married with children being raised in the heart of southern baptist ministries.

This was when I decided to embrace my sexuality. I had only one life. The shame I felt about it? Still present. Always present. Knowing God hated me. But he had hated me since the first moment I had had hands lain on me back at summer camp, so what did it matter any more?

I manifested this choice in several overt ways. I began to dress much more flamboyantly, with bright colors, patterns, and the occasional piece of non-gender-appropriate clothing worn in public, even to church. I started to spend time grooming myself, discussing personal hygiene with ‘the girls’ and loving the camaraderie we shared. My male friends dropped away one by one, until none were left, which was picked up on by the homeschooling community we were a part of. My mother was a leader in it, my father an elder in a church with a few thousand congregants who all paid close attention to his kids.

The son showing up in makeup, flares, and paisley? With a sash?! Yes, it was noticed. The boy who was quickly becoming ‘one of the girls’? Oh, very much noticed.

People whispered. People talked. I wasn’t invited to so many messianic seder celebrations any more, but I could handle it. Because I was already damned to Hell!

But soon the girls weren’t allowed to be my friend either. The more conservative families pulled away entirely, leaving my own siblings without close friends.

Finally my parents had two very different conversations with me.

My father sat me down and requested very plainly that I not come out of the closet. He said if I did, he would cut off ties with me. But otherwise, I was free to live my life. There was no preface at all, it was said during a car ride to get groceries, and I guess my desire to self-destruct had reached a point where he felt it necessary to say something. I told him I was still into girls, and his smirk made me want to prove him wrong.

Within the same week, my mother and I were baking together (yes, a homeschooled son allowed to help prepare family dinner!) when she asked me if I was gay. She quickly followed with “because it seems like you really want people to think you are.” I told her I sort of was and sort of wasn’t. I just liked expressing myself.

My mother, a friend of Michael Farris, worshipper of Francis Schaeffer, former pal of Doug Phillips, said she just wanted me to be happy.

We had Bible studies every morning still. I read about how much Jesus loved those who were as fucked up as me, obviously lacking the belief that this was true. My parents loved me, and still love me.

Shortly, my father was removed from the board of elders of our church. We were still welcome to attend, but not to hold leadership or serve in any particular area of ministry. The hunt for a new church began quickly, settling on a liberal Presbyterian congregation that left me with less of a desire to rub my sexuality in everyone’s face.

Prior to enrolling in college, I dated a Good Christian Girl for a year to make my family happy. We did it all the right way, asking about courtship, allowing her father to have some level of control (my own father terrified of messing up what seemed like the perfect ‘out’ for him with regards to his gay son), and keeping things very chaste. After our breakup, my mother asked if we had ever kissed, and seemed disappointed when I said no. Seemed like that wasn’t the cure, but she had hopes still.

I dated another girl in college, one I got much more physical with, though not to the point of full-on sex, as we were at a conservative Christian school and she wanted to preserve her ‘purity’ for marriage. I was aware mine was gone and didn’t believe in the magic ability to restore virginity, so I broke up with her rather than break her heart with the truth of me.

I remained celibate for the next two years, toning down my flamboyancy and joining a church’s youth ministry where I quickly became a favorite of the kids and a hot item for the single ladies seeking a man to produce a quiver full with. I think perhaps browsing my old Facebook photos was enough for them to know it probably wasn’t going to happen.

The period of celibacy brought great joy to my parents. Perhaps I wouldn’t turn out gay, just maybe. I had dated two girls after all. I was just a bit more…out there than most men.

When I started dating my most recent partner, a black male poet from Brooklyn, I kind of figured it was time to admit something to myself. But my Dad’s words about coming out still rung in my head, and I kept it quiet.

That relationship ended without anyone ever hearing about it.

Shortly thereafter I moved far from my family’s location. Dated a couple other men, a couple other women. Kept it quiet and out of their earshot (except for my mother, who once asked specifically about my ‘special friend’, who she found endearing).

The shame is still there. The desire to hide it is still there. Most of my siblings don’t even know I’ve dated men, much less several men.

I wonder where I’d be had it not been for that summer camp. I wonder if my belief in purity would have resulted in many more years of repression or would have resulted in me being able to maintain a heterosexual relationship?

But those value judgements are for people who desire to make value judgements. I’m past that.

My parents still love me. They are from a different time, a different age, and aren’t quite able to cope with the entire truth. But they know who their son is, and they love him anyway. They love him enough to lose friends, to be removed from a church, to question their own deep biases. Sure, things could be better. But they could also be a lot worse.

Mostly, I worry about those who are less happy than me.

Is my story the picture of perfection? No, not at all.

But I’m finding ways to like myself. Finding ways to believe in something that brings me joy rather than pain.

I’m here, I’m queer, I was homeschooled and I’m not ashamed.

I Can’t Tell My Story Without A Trigger Warning: Elizabeth’s Story

May 15, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team30 Comments

I Can’t Tell My Story Without A Trigger Warning: Elizabeth’s Story

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

*****

Trigger warnings: this story contains graphic and detailed descriptions of rape, physical abuse, the physical results of abuse, and religious apologisms for both physical and sexual abuse of children.

*****

I can’t tell my story without a trigger warning. I try writing it without describing physical and sexual abuse and it just doesn’t work. It could get graphic.

I just spent the last half an hour sitting in the corner, hugging my knees, and bashing my head into my wall because I dared to post a link to the HSLDA petition. I’m nearly 40, but I’m terrified of getting into trouble.

I can’t use my name–call me Elizabeth. This name I write with isn’t mine. I picked a name that I think is the sort of name that a typical white, protestant American would have. I hope that some homeschooled kid with that name and a similar story won’t be tortured or shunned on account of my speaking out. I just hope that anyone who reads this and sees someone they know knows that it wasn’t really them. It’s just an eerie similarity. Please don’t punish them for speaking out, because I’m someone else.

I can’t tell my story exactly. I’m afraid my family will recognize that it’s me writing. I only feel safe writing anything at all, even vagueing up the details, after reading the lawsuit filed by survivors of abuse covered up by sovereign grace ministries. It’s sad when the text of a lawsuit reads like your biography, but there you have it. It made me realize that this culture of abuse is sufficiently widespread that my parents could just read my personal story of our nightmare family and assume it comes from any anyone anywhere.

It at least gives me some plausible deniability. Not that I need plausible deniability–I have no contact with my family or anyone from my childhood. I won’t even be setting foot in a church again. But I’m so terrified of repercussions that I need a crutch. The brainwashing runs deep. I know I’m safe intellectually, but the rest of me doesn’t believe that safety is possible.

What lets me comment on the differences between homeschooling and other kinds of schooling? I’ve done it all. We started in a religious homeschooling coop–we did PACES first, later A Beka. Then my parents homeschooled us by themselves in a Northern European country–the rest of my education was in the United States. When we homeschooled in Europe there was no curriculum: it was closer to unschooling. Then they sent us to a private fundamentalist Christian school. Then they sent us to public school.

My parents’ reason for homeschooling us was ostensibly religious. We never heard that we’d get a better education than in public school. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that public school would corrupt us. There’d be peer pressure. We’d risk getting caught up in a bad crowd and imperiling our immortal souls.

This seemed plausible at the time. After all, our church was very isolationist. You know that Emo Philips joke about the Baptists on a bridge? That was us. Everyone else was wrong. We spent hours learning about other denominations and how they got it wrong. Maybe some other Christians would still get into heaven, if God was extra merciful, but we were the only ones who actually had it right!

Did I mention that I basically had zero friends?

We were taught that children had to obey all adults unconditionally and instantly. We were taught that good Christian children who don’t want to burn in hell submit to their parents. They submit to discipline from their parents, other adults, or older children. They submit to spankings. They do not talk back. And so on. If you are wrongly accused you should still accept your punishment because you are a worthless sinful being and the punishment is probably good for you anyway. If you don’t accept punishment when you’re wrongly accused, that’s a sin, so you need to be punished for that now. Catch 22.

And we were taught that good, Christian children do not ever let anyone find out that they aren’t completely thrilled with their lives. We should never complain to secular authorities (or anyone, for that matter, but especially secular authorities) about anything. It makes us bad witnesses. It makes us bad Christians. And we might also be selfishly risking the destruction of our families because CPS will come and take us away. And there isn’t anything better, so after CPS destroys our families, we’ll still be disciplined so destroying our families and our parents’ good names will have been for nothing. If your bottom is sore from a spanking, you’d better not wince as you sit down. If you’re in pain down there, you’d better not let it keep you from walking normally. Don’t talk about your punishment. Don’t let anyone see you cry.

And we weren’t taught about sex, or wrong touching, or children’s rights. Most kids would get this in public school. At a young age, they’d learn that there are things adults aren’t allowed to do to them. They’d learn that they have the right to say ‘no.’ They’d learn that if something is wrong they can tell their teacher or call the police or something. Later, they’d have sex education and learn what sex is.

Here’s what I thought the word “spanking” meant when I was a kid: if your dad is home, usually it happens right away in your bedroom or his. If your dad isn’t home, you get sent to the guest room, where there’s nothing to do in the meantime, to wait for him to get home. Then the spanking commences. Maybe he’ll go for the big wooden paddle. Maybe he’ll pull off his belt. Sometimes he gets them both out and makes you chose. If he makes you choose, he’s feeling particularly sadistic.

Just the paddle is better. Then he sticks to your unclothed bottom and thighs. The pain is excruciating, but it’s a good sign if he doesn’t take his belt off at all. He’ll probably just finger you a bit when he’s done. Ditto if he bends you over his lap instead of over the edge of the bed. If he just breaks out the belt, he’s lost his temper. You’ll get hit everywhere that can be covered by clothes. The individual strikes aren’t as hard as with a stick, but the beating goes on forever. Sometimes your body just shuts down. Maybe that’s better; if you wet yourself the spanking might stop there because you’re now too gross and dirty to rape. But usually he’s going to finish the “spanking.” The whacks stop coming and then he’s inside you, crushing you with all his weight and ramming into you over and over until he’s done with his business.

I was told that all kids got spanked. I didn’t understand that ‘spank’ meant a bit of a beating for most people and not an extreme beating followed by rape. I didn’t even know what rape was, as I knew nothing about sex. I had no idea what was going on.

Spanking was how my dad got access during the day. If he wanted it and I hadn’t done anything wrong, he would make up something wrong. Notably, he’d wait for me to look at the telephone. Mind you, I was too short to actually reach the telephone up on the wall, but he needed to make sure the message was ingrained. He’d wait for me to look at the phone then punish me for thinking about making a phone call. For thinking about lying to people that I was being abused. It was part of his way to drill into my mind that there was no way out. That this way of life was all there was or ever could be.

I only remember a few instances of explicit training. I remember a gruesome rape when I was too young. I can see my baby fat hands in my memory. I can taste blood. I wonder if that was the first time. I think the ripping might have caused some nerve damage. I can’t actually feel much on the surface, which might have made me the perfect victim in the future. He could do whatever they wanted and I wouldn’t react much. I remember one day when I was older–maybe 3ish–getting taught to relax properly, to stretch out, to be able to take in something larger. Being told that this is what big girls are supposed to do. This is what good girls are supposed to do.

Compared to a spanking, simple molestation didn’t mean much. There was a ‘monster’ that came at night and did his thing. I was told that I had nightmares. And I had to comply instantly with any demand made by an adult. I had to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. So if I was running around at church and an adult said I had to come give him a hug, I had to. And if his hand slipped up under my skirt, I was supposed to relax like a good girl and ignore the uncomfortable pressure filling me up. I guess it got out to anyone who was interested that I was groomed for complete submission and wouldn’t make a scene. I don’t know if he shared me on purpose or if all the perverts attracted to the good cover of a patriarchal church found me independently.

The violence was most extreme when we were at the cooperative homeschool. The school and the church reinforced the message. We only came into contact with other kids in the same situation. The probably weren’t all being seriously abused, but some of them sported regular bruises–new dark blues and purples in a new pattern over the fading browns and yellows from last week. Even the ones who weren’t abused weren’t told that they had rights. None of us was going to compare notes and discover that rapes weren’t a standard part of spanking. It was Orwellian. We didn’t have the words or concepts to address any of it.

No one at church would question my dad’s authority. He was a well respected member of the community. He was all godly and stuff. The benefit of the doubt extended to someone in his position was endless. By homeschooling us through this crucial period, my dad normalized abuse and kept me from finding out that I had rights. I literally had no idea until I was an adult that there was anything else out there, that this was not the natural order of things, that everyone wasn’t raised with this sort of abuse. Insofar as I ever heard about child abuse, I was taught that abuse was something that happened to other people.

When we homeschooled in another country, the abuse stopped almost completely. My dad was away from the comfort and safety of being an established pillar of the community. The monster still came at night, but the daytime abuse was drastically curtailed. I spent huge amounts of time being free and happy. The only punishment I recall was being yelled at.

I was only punished for one thing: speaking the other language. Somehow I’d picked it up, although my parents and other siblings hadn’t. My dad could use English at work and didn’t need to know it. Everyone spoke English in the shops anyway. My mom didn’t have a problem with it, but my use of the other language outraged my dad. If I uttered a word in front of him, his face would turn red and he would explode with anger.

How dare I speak another language. I couldn’t know what I was saying if it wasn’t English. I could be insulting someone and not know it! Because I couldn’t possibly know what I was saying if he didn’t know what I was saying. I couldn’t guarantee to him that I wasn’t saying something inappropriate because he couldn’t speak the language. So the act of speaking the other language was deceptive: I was hiding things from my parents by not speaking English. I never knew that I wouldn’t be spanked after these outbursts; I only connect the dots with the illegality of spanking in the other country now, as an adult. Looking back, I realize that he was afraid of getting caught in a country that cared about its children. He needed to make sure that I didn’t trigger any alarm bells there and get rescued by their child protection agencies.

When we returned to the US, we went to a fundamentalist Christian school. The ‘spanking’ resumed but it was much less frequent. Partly the training had kicked in and I was a good little robot. It was very difficult to find a reason to spank me. Partly we now lived in a bigger house. I had my own room and was far enough away from my parents room that it was unlikely for it to wake anyone up when he came in at night. Partly he couldn’t assume that he’d get a free pass at the new school. Teachers were from other denominations who might be just as distrustful of us as we were of them. Some students were just there because their parents thought they’d get a better education at a private school. Some students were even there because they’d been expelled from every other school and their parents couldn’t find anywhere else to take them. While I was guaranteed to not get any sex education or get told I had rights by the school, it was less clear that I wouldn’t exchange information with peers who knew stuff.

The fundamentalist Christian school went bust over doctrinal differences (surprise, surprise) and I was allowed to finish out high school at the local public school. It was the most supportive and loving environment I’d experienced in my life. No one made fun of me, as they had at the Christian school, for having zero social skills. People, not just teachers but students as well, put up with horrific ideas from my upbringing and gently taught me tolerance. Even people who didn’t like me were still patient and cordial with me. And my dad had to stop the ‘spankings’ altogether.

He still came in at night. He suffocated me so I wouldn’t wake up. I only woke up to absolute terror a few times. Rape is a thousand times more terrified when you fade in and out of consciousness from lack of oxygen. When I asked the youth pastor at church he said it was a demonic attack. I tend to trust my gut; I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. I think he was just gullible and never got any sex education himself either. He was a relatively young adult who had never dated. I don’t think he had any idea that he was passing on a lie used to conceal abuse.

Unfortunately, I got to public school too late to get sex education. It would have been covered in junior high. I’d learned about periods the day my first one started (I was at the Christian school at the time). A neighborhood girl who went to public school found out how little I knew about it and tried explaining the facts of life to me, but she was several years younger than me and hadn’t learned all the details herself yet. I am grateful that she noticed something was wrong with my complete lack of education and did her best to step in and fill in my educational gaps. But there was so much she couldn’t tell me.

So I didn’t know that periods were supposed to happen regularly, about once a month. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t normal to go months between periods. I didn’t understand that that much pain and that much blood was abnormal. I didn’t understand that something was very wrong if you had to spend several hours bleeding into the toilet and passing chunks. I didn’t put two and two together until I had my first miscarriage as an adult. Then it hit me that my period got regular after I got married. I wasn’t in so much pain. The flow was lighter – a pad was enough instead of having to spend time on the toilet because it was too much. And it hit me that while I’d had a few odd periods in high school, I’d mostly just had a succession of miscarriages. I still can’t have kids. I wonder if it’s from too much violence to my reproductive organs at such a young age. It’s not something I can face having a conversation with my doctor about.

I didn’t understand that I was experiencing rape until we had to read a short story in 12th grade advanced English about a girl being raped. That’s when I learned that that’s what rape was and, by extension, that’s what sex was. But I was too afraid to tell anyone. The programming to pretend everything was fine persisted. Teachers and counselors noticed and asked if something was wrong and I instinctually lied every time. I didn’t know how to do anything else. I didn’t believe anyone could help me, just that it would get back to my parents that I’d told someone. And then I’d be in for another spanking; I’d rather have died than risk another spanking.

I tried reporting my abuse to the authorities once as an adult but the law wasn’t on my side. If I’d been a minor, they could have gotten CPS involved. But as an adult, the law is written for specific instances. You can’t charge someone with years of violence and rape where there are so many memories jumbled together. You need a report of a specific instance. And remembering a specific instance with all its details when it happened all the time is like remembering what you had for dinner on March 12, 1986. What time was dinner? What did you eat? Did you have company? How was the food arranged on your plate? Who sat where at the table? Good luck with that.

Having been rebuffed, I tried getting out but it didn’t take. The economy was in shambles and I couldn’t find steady employment. The U.S. has a patchy safety net. One of the things that we as a society assume is that people’s parents don’t suck. If you’ve very lucky and your abuse is caught and you end up in the system, there are programs for young adults who have aged out of foster care. These programs aren’t perfect, but it beats the hell out of choosing between starvation and going back to an abusive family. After you’re an old enough adult (I think it varies by state), you are eligible for things on your own. But there’s an awkward gap between 18 and 20 something where your eligibility is determined by your parents income. Long story short, I ended up homeless. I had to go crawling back to my parents, tail between my legs, and enduring several more years of abuse before I married my husband and escaped.

I firmly believe that if public school teachers had gotten to me before the brainwashing set in that I might have told them the truth. I think the brainwashing would have been harder if I’d been getting a counterbalancing affirmation from public school that I was a human being with rights of my own. And you know what? Maybe my dad still would have found a way to abuse me, but he either would’ve had to pull me out of public school to keep the abuse hidden or he would’ve had to abuse me a heck of a lot less.

That’s what bugs me the most when homeschool parents bring up the fact that kids in public school get abused too. They act like that’s evidence that regulating homeschool is pointless. From where I’m sitting, that’s hogwash. I’d take rare beatings over frequent beatings. I’d take beatings severe enough to leave obvious marks during just summer vacation over getting those beatings several times a week around the year. I’d take just being raped over having the crap beaten out of me then being raped. I’d take being brutalized for the first 7 years of my life over being brutalized for the first 20 years of my life. I could go on down the line.

It’s clear to me how the abuse I received changed with the amount of control my parents had over the other adults in my life. When it was just them and church, the abuse was horrific. When it was public school teachers who weren’t going to give them a pass just for being Good Christians, the abuse was relatively minimal. I guess it reads as pretty extreme still, but that level of abuse required that they already have the prior controlled environment in which to make sure I never found out about my rights. And it’s way less than the baseline level of abuse they established when they had complete control of my environment.

But the more I think about my upbringing, the more I think the church and homeschooling were just convenient. In the wake of the ohio kidnap victims’ escape, an article in the guardian addressed the issue of girls and women being trapped in long-term situations where they were kept as prisoners and raped repeatedly. It quotes Prof. Sherry Hamby of Sewanee and journal editor of Psychology of Violence as saying “I don’t think there is any question there are other victims in similar situations. We are only catching the dumb ones.” It’s the first time in, well, ever, that I’ve felt like I wasn’t invisible. Usually situations like mine are invisible to mainstream media that is usually so desperate to maintain our societal illusion that abuse is a rare thing that is done to and by people we don’t know.

There are victims in similar situations. And we do only catch the dumb ones. My dad is extremely intelligent. It doesn’t matter what his personal beliefs might be: the perfect place to isolate his prey was in a patriarchal religious sect. The perfect way to avoid letting his kids encounter mandated reporters is through homeschooling. The perfect way to keep me from going to authorities was to lie to me about my rights and to surround me by other kids who didn’t know their rights. I don’t think I’m special. I don’t think I’m unique. I think odds are high that there are plenty of other people who grew up just like me.