Another Hephzibah House Abuse Story

On January 8, 2012, I wrote a blog post titled, Tim Dunkin's Hephzibah House Faux Pas, in response to a terrible article by Dunkin himself.  It was, and still is, one of the most read post on Incongruous Circumspection. 

In that post, you'll find links to other first-person survivors of the extreme HH abuse stories, as well as a robust conversation in the comments when one Lucinda, a staunch defender of HH, begins to attack those who are telling their stories.  

Today, one of the commenters posted the following anecdote, in response to Lucinda's claims that abuse simply did not happen at HH.  I have edited out some personal religious opinions for the purpose of this post, but feel free to read the comment in it's entirety.

Are you serious? Ok, so let me get this straight Lucinda. When I was there, I followed their rules to the letter. Always had my [Bible] verses memorized, always completed chores quickly and thoroughly, never mouthed off or argued. 

My one "crime' was that one night I wet the bed because they would not allow me to go to the bathroom. The incident was extremely embarrassing for me, and having to tell them in front of all the other girls, even more so. So they put me in diapers and made it a point to tell all the other girls how nasty I was. Of course this further humiliation and stress added to the fact that they would refuse to let me go to bathroom when I clearly needed to only made things worse. 

There was also the isolation.....speaking partners? Yeah....mine left the week after I got there and for the next 8 months I was not allowed to speak to a single other person there other than staff. I got one phone call with my family the entire time I was there. Once I accidentally made eye contact with another girl. Since that was considered "communication" I was punished by not getting dinner. On top of that I was stood up in front of the entire school and raked over the coals by Naomi, who told me how worthless I was, and that I was possessed by demons and the my parents would never love me because I was so rebellious. 

Yeah, rebellious.....because they forced me to drink more liquid then (sic) I could hold and then refused to let me go to the bathroom. Once when [we] were standing in line waiting for bathroom break, Naomi spotted a drop of water on the floor. It was immediately blamed on me......the fact that I hadn't had an accident was irrelevant, they were convinced I had somehow peed one drop on the floor and so as a punishment I had to scrub the brick floor of the entire building. Alone. and of course on hands and knees. My knees were bruised and blistered for days, but of course they didn't care. 

And all the while, while they were telling my family I was rebellious and disrespectful and refused to follow the rules....outright lies. 

Once while getting ready for church, I didn't move away from the mirror in the dorm fast enough to please Naomi so she grabbed me by the back of my dress and literally threw me down on the floor, But that was also my fault because that extra .5 seconds I was standing there was rebellion. So eventually, they told my parents that I was demon possessed and a hopeless case, that I would never change and they kicked me out. 

The day I left I got called to William's office. I was lectured sternly on what a horrible, wicked person I was and that he prayed that God would save my soul from the fires of hell, but he feared it was too late for me. I was then laid down on the floor and spanked. And by spanked I mean beat so hard and so many strikes that my buttocks were bleeding. Literally bleeding. 

So now how about you go and argue that was NOT abuse. If you truly believe that then I feel for you because you are more brainwashed and ignorant then I ever imagined. 

Furthermore, not only did they blatantly lie to my parents about how I was behaving and that they had NOT spanked me, but my parents took out a load to pay for the full 15 months I was supposed to be there in advance. They never got a dime back. 

As for Patty William's, she was a bitter, angry, hateful woman who specialized in degrading others ( believe[d] calling us whore's (sic) and slut[s] and telling us how lazy we were while all 300 lbs of her perched on her balcony above us was her specialty) ... 

Oh did I mention that when I arrived home I was down to 101 lbs, from the 143 I was when I arrived there. I'm 5'9", so that is dangerously skinny. I also had a massive UTI from being forced to hold my urine for hours. 15 years later I still have nightmares about that place. So go ahead and keep deluding yourself. I feel for you, and pray that you will see the truth.

And that is why I write about this.  Hephzibah House is evil, is still in business, and the state of Indiana refuses to do anything about the alleged abuse.  Religious boarding schools flock to that state because of its complete lack of regulation over them.

Also, read about Ken Copley, the pastor that sexually abused his adopted daughter, and is now happily pastoring a church in Fort Wayne, IN. 

The Hammer Drops: Dr. Kenneth Copley Exposed - Severe Homeschooling

Begin reading the series here.  Or, go back to Severe Physical Abuse.

*****

During this time my parents were also homeschoolers which meant I was taught at home by my mom.  I was absolutely terrified.   I wanted to vomit the day she announced I was to start my homeschooling with her the next day.  By this time, I was so terrified of her that whenever she would ask me any sort of question, I would completely freeze up.  Concepts I understood just moments before would escape my mind as she would relentlessly hammer problem after problem into my head.  And yes, I got spanked my first day of school for not being able to find and circle every “A” on the page. 

By this age, the spanking implements my parents used had advanced.  At first, it was just the wooden spoon.  We had a running joke in the home that my mom couldn’t keep wooden spoons around because my dad would often break the wooden spoon across any child’s bare butt in two swats.  Then, my mom broke a wooden pant hanger on me.  They used metal kitchen spoons, belts of various sizes and thicknesses, and eventually, my dad settled on 1x2, about three feet long.  This became the spanking implement of choice.  It’s also interesting to note my siblings were never struck with anything more than a hand or a wooden spoon.  Not to belittle their experiences, but I’m simply stating the fact my parents utilized measures with me far beyond anything they tried with their biological children.

School became a nightmare.  Flashcards scared me the absolute worst.  It became the norm on a daily basis that for each missed wrong answer, I would be spanked.  If I got the answer wrong, I was to immediately stand up, pull down my pants and underwear, and bend over the arm of the living room chair.  Each subsequent wrong answer was met with another spanking.  And another.  And another.  Eventually, I became so terrified I couldn’t retain anything taught from the day before and everything felt out of control.

One afternoon, my mom asked me to read an analog clock.  I looked up and answered “1:00.”  “No.  It’s one minute before 1:00.  What’s one minute before 1:00?”  Because I had gotten the answer wrong, I went into instant freeze mode and couldn’t come up with the correct answer.  And thus began my afternoon from hell.

From 1:00 until nearly 4:30, my mom beat me with the 1x2 until I finally came up with the right answer.  For those skeptics who say it couldn’t have gone on that long, just know this:  my mom developed such deep splinters from the wood that she had to wrap her end of the stick in a towel because she couldn’t grip the wood anymore.  Eventually, I was forbidden to even pull up my pants after each spanking and thus stood, pants and underwear around my ankles as I shook and gave random, wrong answers.  At one point, I must have guessed the right answer because suddenly she grabbed me and pulled me out to the living room.  She called an older sibling into the room and asked me, “What is one minute before 1:00?”  I couldn’t remember.  Back to the bedroom until I finally guessed the right answer, and this time, I made SURE I ALWAYS knew what one minute before 1:00 was.   I remember her having me show my butt to Ken Copley the next day and having her proudly comment on all the coloring and deep bruising going on.  My dad praised her for “hanging in there” with me and my mom noted she “should’ve called [my dad] home so he could’ve taken over the spankings for her.”  She was exhausted, but pleased she had driven “rebellion” from my heart. 

After this incident, this treatment translated into nearly every single aspect of my life.  Failure to be able to make a complete round on the monkey bars resulted in me going outside every night and getting a spanking each time I fell off until I finally learned how to be able to go BOTH ways on the monkey bars. It became part of my daily routine to go outside after supper and spend the entire evening getting spanked until bedtime. I learned how to ride my bike in this exact same manner.  At each meal, I had twenty minutes to clean my plate.  If my plate wasn’t empty after twenty minutes, the clock was set to five minute increments and I was spanked every five minutes till the plate was empty.  I learned how to clip my fingernails using the beat-until-learned method.  My parents made it very clear they both supported each other with these methods because the Bible told them I was rebellious and God promised spanking would fix me.

Read Part Four - A Curious Child.

The Hammer Drops: Dr. Kenneth Copley Exposed - Severe Physical Abuse

Begin reading the series here.

*****

Not surprisingly, my behavioral problems did NOT stop with my second adoption, but rather increased ten-fold.  Both of my parents were extremely demanding and expected instantaneous, unquestioning, complete, obedience.  For me, in particular, this type of exactness was a far cry from what I experienced in the Bible’s home.  My parents believed the “rod” was the ONLY form of correction and they used it often throughout the day.

My first spanking I can remember was for dancing at age four.  I wasn’t even dancing, per se, I was sitting on my knees and wiggling in time to music on the radio.  My mom grabbed me and beat me for disobedience.  I supposedly understood CLEARLY at age four that dancing was a forbidden, evil activity spawned from the depths of hell itself.  I never danced again.

My parents decided I needed even MORE discipline in my life, so they gave my two older siblings age 9 and 7 full parental rights over me.  This meant if they saw me doing anything or “disobeying” rules, they had the right – no, the obligation - to beat me, as well.  And if THEY decided to beat me, they had to report to my parents so I could undergo a second parental beating as well.  If my parents went out for the evening together, my sisters would conjure any reason to spank me and then my parents would return home late, yank me out of bed and sleep, to reinforce a nine-year-old’s call to spank.  I do not blame my siblings for their behaviors as they too were simply following the rules and they would have faced the same discipline if they HADN’T followed through on my parent’s guidance.  They are not responsible and once they reached an age where they realized they were wrong, they stopped their behavior and later apologized voluntarily to me. 

My parent’s fully believed that spanking would fix any and all problems with me.  As I grew older, the spankings became longer and more brutal.  While they spanked each of my siblings, (eventually they had seven biological children) I underwent the worst and cruelest of them all.  It was my father who decided bare-butt spankings was the most effective way to spank.  He also began to pray before each spanking asking God to “give him strength.”  My parents also believed spanking should continue INDEFINITELY until the child “cried softly” and the cry itself had “changed” to prove “brokenness of spirit and a genuine desire to repent.”  This meant I was routinely given 30-50 swats.  Sometimes, I was given two spankings back-to-back.  The first spanking was for the infraction, the second spanking was to reiterate the fact I was NOT TO CRY LOUDLY and they would continue to the second spanking to make their point.  On two separate occasions, my mom bloodied my mouth by striking me across the face mid-spanking to make me stop crying.

Read Part Three - Severe Homeschooling.

Answer to My Critics: My Childhood Opened My Eyes

UPDATE: 7/27/2015:9:01:34

The last few paragraphs end as a sort of sermon. I was a devout Christian when I wrote this piece. I am no longer religious and have no interest in ever being so, again, yet still have a deep appreciation for religious discussion. Bear in mind that this does not take away from the importance of the message of this post.

Recently, I was accused of only speaking out against Billy Boy G. and his patriarchal ilk because I have a vendetta against my life as a child.  While I do not disagree that half of my childhood was pure torture, I vehemently disagree with that accusation.

Here's a summing up of my childhood:

When I was seven years old, my parents divorced.  At the time, my mother convinced me, through the most holy word of the god man Billy Boy G., that divorce was pure evil - the cardinal sin of mankind.  The only sin (other than being a woman, women wearing pants, men having long hair, women cropping their hair, women working outside of the home, children being curious, not hitting your child whenever you pleased, not obeying all authorities without question the very first time, not taking the word of your pastor as if it were the word of God, even though the only word of God was supposed to be found in the Bible, questioning the inerrant nature of the Bible, questioning the holiness of the "inspired" canon, being suspicious of the counsel at Trent and other men gatherings, being a feminist, women speaking out in church, farting out loud, listening to rock music, using more than three sheets of toilet paper per bowel movement, answering a phone call without permission, not sharing the gospel to at least five people a day at school, playing sports in school, going to college, women not being homemakers, believing that a doctor was a good thing, immunizing, treating chiropractors with disdain, not accepting all weird eastern alternative "medicinal" therapies without question, while ignoring the obvious contradictions in religious philosophies, reading the words of Ghandi, studying evolution, saying anything bad about Ken Ham, not having a verifiable "biblical" world view, not swearing on a stack of Bibles that you would carry out your given "role" in life, drinking city water that had evil teeth rotting and population controlling fluoride in it, sex outside of government sanctioned marriage, sex for pleasure, masturbation, any sex that deviates from the missionary position, using birth control, desiring money, etc., etc.....sheesh!....seems to me patriarchy has some notion of paranoia) that disqualifies you from serving in a position of authority in the church - provided you're a man.  A woman is always S.O.L.


The divorce didn't affect me then.  I hardly knew my dad, something I blame my mother for completely.  She made a point to keep him away from my siblings and I at all times.  Even before she fell in love with Big G. (she told us many times that she wanted to marry the guy, Bill Gothard, once my father died and she was free to marry again) she had a notion that her way was the only righteous way and my father was always wrong.


She disciplined him on a regular basis.  The details, for privacy sake, I will not go into.  She also beat us from the age of...well...we actually had no age when she started,  She started in on my oldest sibling when she was just a small baby.


When the divorce happened, my father tirelessly went to court to gain custody of us.  My mother and our church pastor fought tooth and nail against him.  The state sided with her and my father had to go away empty handed.


She discovered Big G. very soon afterward and soon had us all converted to the "us vs. them" philosophy that kills all freedom and love in a life.


She had always beaten us.  One day, she found a pink pamphlet that taught her how to hit us the "proper" way.  Yes, there must be a proper way to hit a child.  Hitting, alone, isn't okay at all.  You have to hit, then pray a lot, then hug a bunch, then...well...I can't think of any more extra-biblical ideas, but these morons and the Swine Beads and Ezz-skimos that came after have built an empire out of beating children by dreaming up this bald faced lie.


She sat us all down that day and read us the entire skinny, four-page piece of trash and then told us all that she had to practice to get it just right.  So, she lined us all up on some soft black couch cushions that were lying on the dining room floor in front of the full-wall bookshelf and lit in to each of us.


Spank!  Hug, hug.  Spank!  Hug, hug.  Span....


Once all seven of us had been fully practiced on, that was the last time she ever hugged us after a beating.  After that, everything was fair game.  With a hardwood, boar-bristle brush, beating us on the head, back, shoulders, legs, bare bottom, six times, then eighteen, then thirty six, then it doesn't matter anymore because you lost count and it just hurt like hell.  She made my sister eat dish soap and toilet paper on a regular basis because she was a poor eater.  She kicked, slapped, bit, made us lay on our face on the floor for hours, forced us to stand in a corner for hours, even days.  Sleep deprivation was the norm.  Forced Bible readings for hours, sometimes days. Rubbing and massaging her legs and feet was my own personal punishment.


All of this in the name of love and obedience to god-given authority.  Yes, small 'g'.


Now, you know why I speak out? 


Don't even try and come at me and tell me that my mother was the exception to the rule.  I won't even give you the time of day.  That doesn't even matter.  Her way of doing things was simply her way of exemplifying the doctrines that propped up her way of doing things.  The exact doctrines that prop up everything in the false lifestyle of patriarchy. 


I learned from my childhood.  It was harsh and I ignored it for years.  Tried to push it away with humor.  But I can't do it anymore.  Not because I care about me, as a victim.  I don't give a rat's rear end about myself.  I care about my wife and kids, the kids and young adults (even old ones) that are forcefully involved in this controlled and evil lifestyle, and those who are in it and yet have questions of what the hell they are supposed to believe in.


And now the kicker.  I don't care at all for those that are inflicting the pain, the spiritual, physical, and emotional abuse on the least of these.  Sure, I want them to change, but I've met them.  I've hung with them.   Patriarchy breeds the most prideful, arrogant, pompous, self-righteous, pharisaical, holes of arses I have ever met.  God can deal with them.  Others who care more can deal with them.  But I will not.


I will follow Christ's words to do what is right to the least of these.   I am at peace and yet yearn for the freedom of controlled souls who have not tasted true freedom in Christ.  Or even, freedom at all.  Freedom without Christ is better than the prison these hurting souls find themselves in.


Maybe not sufficient, but I don't care.  Don't cheapen my message, if that is what this is.