The Hammer Drops: Dr. Kenneth Copley No Longer Employed

A friend of Incongruous Circumspection sent an email to Brownburg Baptist Church in Brownburg, Indiana, requesting that the church look into the allegations against Dr. Kenneth Copley by his adopted daughter, Ruth Esther (Copley) Burger.  This friend of the blog received the following communication from the pastor's wife, Diana Abbott.

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Thank you for your concern. Dr. Copley is no longer on staff or our church membership as of May 20, and our web site is being updated. We were not aware of these accusations, but do take such things very seriously. We share your desire for the truth to be brought to light for the sake of all involved.

Respectfully,
Diana Abbott

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Ruth's story was posted on this blog on June 3, 2012, which means that Dr. Kenneth Copley had already left Brownburg Baptist Church prior to its release. 


Take away what you will from this correspondence.  At this point, Incongruous Circumpection is not aware of Dr. Kenneth Copley being employed where there are minors under his care or in any position of authority over another person.  If it is discovered that he is, I will keep you posted.


Thank you,


I. C.

The Hammer Drops: Dr. Kenneth Copley Exposed - Exposing the Hypocrite

Begin reading the series here.  Or, go back to Pushed to Suicide.

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Of course my parents found the note and woke me instantly.  Instead of taking me to the hospital and admitting I had a serious problem, they decided to handle it themselves.  That night they poured an entire bottle of Ipecac syrup down my throat and sent me off to work with my dad the next day.  Even his coworkers were concerned as they could hear me continuously vomiting all day long and my dad refused to send me home because I was sick.  I called my Youth Pastor’s wife from work and told her the story.   She told her husband and he called my dad that evening with the request to bring me in for counseling.  My dad refused and forced me to admit to my Youth Pastor that I “hadn’t tried to commit suicide.  I was only trying to get attention. Nothing is wrong with me.”  Afterwards, my dad informed me I was being sent away to Northland Baptist Bible College (NBBC) in two weeks.  I was 16.

I enrolled at NBBC one month shy of my 17th birthday.  Once my roommate walked in and found me counting pills and laying them out so I could swallow them.  I eventually told a couple of students in whispers that I believe I had been molested and told them about my dad.  This was the first time I found the courage to say, “Something bad happened to me.” 

By this age, I knew something of sexual sins.  I was aware of the term rape, but I was bit uncertain about molestation and abuse.  To me, abuse was when you had black eyes and your parents weren’t Christians.  I thought beating meant you had marks everywhere on your body when of course, under Biblical spanking, you should only mark the butt.  I believed molestation to be an act of violence ending in rape.  It took me several years to accept the fact I was molested and not every child molester leaves marks or rapes their victims.  I didn’t understand that pedophiles and their victims can actually have a “good” relationship.  It took me several more years to recognize the fact my parents didn’t “spank”, they beat me brutally and just because you strike a child on the butt instead of the face or arms doesn’t mean there isn’t abuse taking place.

College money ran out and I returned home to live as an adult in my parent’s home.  My mom and I had an unspoken agreement to simply stay out of each others’ way and it worked.  We became…very civil and polite, like strangers.  My dad and I were still close.  However, hearing his porn through my door each night (I lived in the basement now) and seeing his girlfriend (whom I knew as one of his counselee’s from ICBCI days) riding in the car each night my dad came and picked me up from work was too stressful.  So after a year at age 19, I moved out.  The affair was discovered several months later and Ken Copley resigned from ICBCI.

Read the Final Part, Part Nine - Unfinished Justice.

The Hammer Drops: Dr. Kenneth Copley Exposed - Pushed to Suicide

Begin reading the series here.  Or, go back to Everything but Rape.

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Naturally, my day-to-day behavior was getting worse.  I was stealing from gas stations, libraries, parents, siblings, etc. etc.  I was lying a lot too and home-life was splintering quickly.  For whatever reason known only to him, my dad abruptly stopped coming into my room and molesting me once I began working for him at age 15 as a secretary at ICBCI.

Even with my dad’s lessons of orgasm and masturbation and R-rated sex-filled movies, I still had questions.  I knew I couldn’t ask anyone so I decided one afternoon to Google “sex” on the computer at work.  I learned a lot that day.  I had heard the terminology “oral sex” and “homosexuality”, so it was mainly these terms I searched for.

In January 2000, my dad found out because a coworker had checked the internet history and discovered my searches.  I denied this vehemently and that night he declared there would never be any hope for me or my future.  My mom had been telling me this for years, but my dad and I were strangely close and I trusted him, even with the molestation.  I mainly trusted him because he always made himself available to me and paid me positive attention. He had never fully verbally belittled me, or at least it was very mild compared to my mom’s verbal abuse.   He was the only adult in my home-life that was nice to me and listened when I needed someone to listen to me.  He was like two different people.  “Night time dad” was bad but “daytime dad” was a safe rock and refuge.  But knowing that BOTH my parents were in agreement and believed there was no hope for me, I swallowed a whole bottle of Tylenol and left a suicide note.

Read Part Eight - Exposing the Hypocrite.

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

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

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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.

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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.

The Hammer Drops: Dr. Kenneth Copley Exposed - Adoption into a Family

This is the long-promised, nine-part series that will expose the evils perpetrated by Dr. Kenneth Copley.  While you read, keep in mind that this man is still serving as a staff member of Brownburg Baptist Church in Brownburg, Indiana as a Pastor of Discipleship.

This series is written by the victim in the first person.  Many of the details are very graphic.  You have been warned.

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Sometimes, good people do bad things.  Sometimes, evil people pretend they are good while fooling everyone around them.  Some have experience with the former; I have personal experience with the latter.

On the surface level, most believed my family epitomized the ideal Christian family.  Over the years, we never missed a service.  My dad was a pastor and later became a well-known name in Biblical Counseling.  He specialized in family and marital counseling.  He led the largest Sunday school class in our church.  He became a published author  and was invited to Kenya, Africa to teach pastors.  My mom was an Awana leader and a church choir member.  Nearly all of us kids took yearly awards in Awana and other activities.  I personally joined the Awana Bible quiz team as a child and took multiple awards for Christian Service and Bible Memory as a teen.  I became one of the church pianists. I also sang in the church choir and was the youth group pianist.  We had family Bible reading every day followed with prayer.  Bible memory was a daily activity.  We stayed away from movie theaters, refused to listen to rock music, and watched ourselves carefully for modesty.  Anywhere we went, people knew our name.  So surely, my parents desired to follow the Lord in all areas and desired the same for the children, right?

I was born in Seoul, Korea as Su-Yong Park.  My family lived in extreme poverty and at one month of age, my father placed me into Korea’s adoption system.  Five months later my overseas adoption was approved and I was placed with a family who last name was Bible, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  They decided to re-christian me as Julie Anna Marie Bible and I became part of their family.  While I could spend hours dissecting what went wrong within their home, it’s easiest to simply state I had behavioral problems and they decided they couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with them.  From what I’ve been able to piece together of my earliest years, eventually the Bible’s contacted the State and asked to have me temporarily placed with another family when I was around three years of age.

Kenneth Copley, an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) Pastor at Normandale Baptist Church, in Bloomington, Minnesota, and his wife Elizabeth, a stay-at-home mother to their three biological children, were part of a new religious movement called The Advanced Training Institute of America. Incongruous Circumspection has written copious articles about this program so I will not go into great detail about ATI and Bill Gothard.  For reasons beyond my understanding and knowledge, they were also approved as foster parents by Minnesota and it was to their home I was redirected.

For some reason, everyone involved decided I was better off staying with the Copley’s than the Bible’s, so after months of being moved back and forth between their homes, the Copley’s were awarded full guardianship and my second adoption was finalized when I was five.  Once Ken Copley told me I had run to the Bible’s and told them, “They pull off my pants and underwear and spank me on my bare butt,” which was true.  How I wish someone had listened instead of blowing it off as a “good thing” to happen to me.  I was terribly confused and frightened during those days.  I remember each night asking myself, “Who is my mom?  Do I even HAVE a mom?  Who’s gonna be my mom tomorrow?  I thought mom was “forever” but now they’re telling me that my old mom is NOT my mom and this new woman is my mom.”  I was a very scared and uncertain little girl.

Once my adoption was final, my name was changed a third time to Ruth Esther Copley.  And thus began a nightmare from hell over the next twelve years. 

Read Part Two - Severe Physical Abuse