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 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.

John Piper Wants to Go to Prison: An Argument for Hitting a Child

John Piper is a very odd man.  He is old and has many a follower that will stick up for him when there is even a tiny whisper of dissent.  He tends to say some incendiary things, and then grandstands when the ridicule comes shooting in, waving it off as being persecuted for the truth.  But in many cases, the truth for John

Piper is a relativistic sort of thing.  He sees many things in life as being very dichotomous - black vs. white, having no color.

One of those areas is spanking.  And the way he gets around to telling us why he believes in spanking is very odd indeed. He titles his chat, "Would Jesus Spank a Child?" 

Watching Johnny talk in his multitudinous video collection online, this title does not surprise me in the least.  He did it for the express reason of causing areaction.  It worked.  He got one out of me.

Let's explore what drivel he has to say.  You will notice that I have nothing but disdain for this man.  He is a cancer on society in my opinion.  A threat to freedom in Christ.  Any good that he does in preaching what he deems as "the truth" is negated by his worldview as pertaining to simple things like "roles" for women (and men, of course...you have to be politically correct when you're trying to put a woman in her place by pretending to care what role a man has, rather than just glorying in the fact that you were created to be superior to the "weaker sex") and of course, spanking.

Piper Boy starts out with this:

"If Jesus were married and had children, I think he would have spanked the children."

The fact is, Jesus wasn't married and never had any children,. unless you believe in The Davinci Code, so we don't really have to go there.  But Johnny forced our hand, so we must.

Rather than, "If Jesus were married and had children, he would have loved his wife and children, gave the kids hugs and smoochies every night before bed, fed them three squares a day and lots and lots of sugar and Twinkies, taught them about God until he was blue in the face, and then left them all to fend for themselves when he died," Johnny decided to go the route of the most important aspect of married life with kids - hitting your children.

In all fairness, this is Piper Boy, chatting about spanking so it kind of fits, but, we are working on conjecture here and it begs the question: "Why did Johnny have to go here?"  Seriously.  Why?

Let's move on.  Hopefully he'll tell us.

"The place that I would go to help a person see that he would, when they can't imagine that he would, is Matthew 5 where he said, "Not a jot nor a tittle will pass away from the Law until all is accomplished." In other words, all the Law and the Prophets stand until they're done. And the Law says, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." That's a paraphrase. The book of Proverbs says, "If you withhold the rod, you hate your son." Jesus believed the Bible, and he would have done it."

Did he just say that?  I can't believe he just did.  This paragraph is not fickle, by any means.  It completely and utterly describes the underlying theology, whether he likes it or not, of how Johnny views Christianity.  He is saying that Jesus told us that the law still applies to us today. 

Jesus goes on for the rest of Chapter 5 and a few more chapters saying, "the law says this, but I say that you need to do this".  And the "this" that Jesus referred to was always much more difficult than the law contained.  Don't just not murder your brother, don't hate him either.  Don't feel good about the fact that you haven't

committed adultery, you better not even look at a woman to lust after her.

This was a message to people that were pretty high on themselves and their perfection.  In contrast, which it really isn't a contrast, but rather a good segue, Paul writes in Galatians 3 (reading the whole chapter gives excellent context) that the law, which was our guardian before Christ, who came to justify us by faith in Him, no longer applies.  We don't need a guardian anymore.  We're all sons of God.

Now, I don't always agree with Paul, but I can say I am convinced he's dead on with this point.  Jesus wasn't talking about all that schtuff we had to do in order to be perfect.  He stated that perfection was needed to be accepted into the kingdom of heaven.  Then he stated the perfection that was needed and notes that even one little piece being broken causes us to have broken the whole law, which he made harder than the law actually was written as.  Thus, if we can't do it anyway, what the heck is the law for?

A guardian prior to Christ.  A schoolmaster to point us to Christ.  A picture of our own sinfulness that points to the fact that we cannot DO anything close to following the law without Christ.

But, why argue that point.  Piper Boy makes a very strange segue here.  He says that Proverbs was the law.  This is a consistent mistake that people like Piper make.  I can assume that it may be inadvertent on Johnny's part, but I don't think so.  I think he purposefully ignores the meaning of "the law" because it fits his own little

definition of what it means to be a "true Christian."

The law was the law.  The law of Moses.  The one that was written down.  You know.  The Ten Commandments and bunches of other Levitical laws in between.  Yes, laws. Proverbs is not part of the law.  Psalms is not part of the law.  Huge parts of every book of the Old Testmant was not part of the law.  That means that "spare the rod, spoil the child" (which isn't in the Bible) was not part of the law.  Nor was it part of the Prophets.

Then, after ignoring the true definition of "law" Piper makes a smooth transition to calling it the "Bible".  But there is a problem here.  Jesus didn't believe in the Bible.  Jesus couldn't care less about the Bible.  Jesus was God.  He had God's true word in his back pocket.  The Bible didn't even exist.  It had yet to be formulated

and gathered together and canonized by counsels of men.  Yes, men.  Jesus knew the LAW, John Piper.  Not the Bible.  He knew what the law was and what it was meant for.

Finally, if we take John Piper at his word, why would Jesus change the law?  Why would he say the creed of divorce handed down by Moses was because of the hardness of the hearts of the Jewish people.  Could it be possible that the rod is one of those "rules" that fit into the category of "not applicable"?  We don't need to conjecture there anyway because there is a very simple point to be made here.  The Old Testament tells us to stone rebellious children, accusing him to the elders, not only as a rebel, but also a drunkard and a glutton - Deut. 21: 18 - 21.  It tells us to kill a child if he hits his mommy or daddy - Exodus 21:15, 17.  Even the most holy of holy books, Proverbs, states that even if a child so much as looks at his father in mockery and disobeys his mother, must be held down and have his eye plucked out by wild birds - Proverbs 30:17.  That Proverbs one leads us to possibly see, just maybe, that many parts of the Bible could potentially, likelyishly be allegorical.  You think?  Or take Psalm 137:9 where the writer is speaking of revenge against the enemy and glories in the possibility of children be dashed against rocks, most likely killing them.

Would Piper say Jesus condones that because, after all, he believes in the Bible!?

Let's move on.  Hopefully Piper says some good stuff so we don't have to hit these super softballs out of the park.

I won't quote him directly but Piper goes on to say that there is a problem in our culture.  The "heart of the issue" is simply that the person accepts the sign, that isn't there anymore, along I-35W in Minneapolis, Minnesota, imploring people to not hurt children.  To that, Johnny says, "That's all it said! And spanking is equated with hurting children." So, I assume he doesn't believe that hitting children actually hurts.

It gets better:

"Well, I will go to jail over that issue!"

Really, John Piper?  You would actually go to jail over hitting your children?  Seriously?  So, you would risk leaving your wife without a husband for a time while you sat in prison for your righteous endeavors?  You would leave your children with the only option of seeing your face through a window and hearing your voice over a phone just because spanking was right?  You would rather spank and go to jail than compromise by doing other forms of discipline, just to prove a point?  You would rather go to jail than make sure your kids had three squares a day?  You would rather withhold sex from your wife except for state-approved conjugal visits beacuse you felt spanking was right?  Maybe you missed Roman 13:1-7.  If you do read that John, skip Verse 8.  Its innaplicable to our life today because of what Jesus says in Matthew 5.

Then Piper goes on to make a weird attempt at connecting how we parent our children to how the author of Hebrews referenced how God treats His sons.  He calls Hebrews 12:6, the "direct connection".  All that verse says is that God disciplines us and chastises us because he loves us.  I'm not sure why Johnny didn't go further because Verses 9 - 11 actually would serve to prove his point a tad better.  But, the fact is, discipline may not be the same as hitting.  Unfortunately, when Piper sees "discipline" he sees "beating a child".  I don't see that.  I learn discipline by motivation, hard work, staying at it, verbal and emotional chastisement, people coming

alongside me and walking me through the process, mentors, and even through my own mistakes.  Nobody whoops my behind and yet I learn just fine.

Piper then makes a funny statement.  He excitedly declares (he's always excited when he's making a great point - I know - I'm the same way) that saying don't hurt a child is a wrong view of God and that, since God uses suffering to discipline his children, so should we.  This is very dangerous.  John Piper is not talking to students in a classroom where they can follow-up with questions on actual application of his teachings so as to do it right and not hurt someone.  He is talking to everyone who will listen.  And for everyone who would only rub their children's behinds or even tap them to stay on the good graces of the law, there are ten more that will beat the living hell out of their children because Piper Boy told them it was our job as parents to make the kids suffer.

In Piper's defense, he does follow that one up with his extra-biblical application of not breaking an arm or giving them a black eye.  Then he floats a whopper:

"Children have little fat bottoms so that they can be whopped."

Really?!!!   So, let's explore that a weeny bit.  Has Piper Boy ever met my kids?  Their butt cheeks couldn't hold up a pair of underwear if the cloth was glued to it.  They eat like horses and can't gain an ounce.  But, they have a little fat on their heels so maybe that's the place to spank.  Or, they're pretty large around the mid section when they're younger, so, maybe a good kick in the belly would work.  Also, with that philosophy, adults have fat bottoms too.  Maybe they need a good whoop arseing every so often to keep them in line.  Piper is too skinny, so he gets a pass, but I think his wife might have a few extra pounds.  She may be a great candidate for his lil' bop theory. 

What a stupid line.  A real good whopper to base your theology on.

Then Pipes tells us a sweet story about a kid, during the discovery period of a child's life, colors some orange crayon on the wall.  Now, in the Piper household, coloring on the wall is akin to stealing maney from a  bank.  It's evil.  Pure evil.  Doing that little act of curiosity deserves a whoopin'.  So Piper takes the guy in a room, gives him a good thwacking and then makes it ok by hugging him and saying he loves him.  Don't be shocked.  Piper says it was just fine.  The kid was bouncing off the walls "happy, happy, happy"!  Glad he didn't put a hole in the wall because Johnny Boy might have thrown him through a second story window and then went and hugged him on the concrete below.  Of course, Piper would have no consequences for breaking the window.

Hey John.  Who whoops your arse when you fart in an elevator?  You should know better!  What a completely asinine idea.  Here, a kid is learning to explore and discover new things in life and the parent comes over and hits him, putting an end to his creativity. 

Why couldn't John Piper just go and take his hand, walk him over to a coloring book, and have him color on the proper places?  Maybe because he might have to do that stunt many many times.  Maybe because spanking is much more efficient because the child equates fear of dad when he wants to write on the wall.  Maybe because John Piper doesn't gives a rat's rear end whether or not his child maintains a penchant for discovering knew things.  Did John Piper, in that one orgasmic moment of his brilliant parenting career, singlehandedly change the direction of his son's life from a nuclear physicist who would discover cold fusion?

But, no.  John makes the only alternate conclusion available to all mankind in the area of child discipline by saying:

"Now if I had said to him, "You go into your room and you sit there and you stay there until you feel appropriately guilty, and then we'll see if you come out and do the right thing," what a wicked way to punish a child!"

Very typical of those who want to prove an unproveable point.  they make the alternate seem, not only evil beyond measure, but also, the ONLY way.  He never goes on to explain why that form of discipline is evil.  It has worked very very well for us in many cases, including staying on the good side of the law when we were not allowed to do anything else while running a daycare. 

And he finishes with:

"Spanking is so clean! It's so quick! It's so relieving! A kid feels like he has done atonement and he is out of there and happy.

To these modern ideas of timeout, or sitting in the corner, I say, "Bologna! Give me a spanking! I want to go play!"

I just think spanking is really healthy for children. It is a measured deliverance of a non-damaging act of mild pain that makes the child feel the seriousness of what he's done. It is not beating. It is not abuse. There is a clear difference. The very word "spank" exists because there is such a thing as a loving way to whop a child on his behind or his chunky thigh."

John Piper would never be trusted with my children - EVER!  Hitting them on a chunky thigh?  Are you kidding me?  I've been slapped on my thigh and it's not cake walk.  Also, he acts like hitting a child has some magical pixie dust qualities that, when administered on the fly, gives a child the necessary training they need to be a perfect human being.  "...give me a spanking!  I want to go out to play!!!!!!!!"

But then again, I don't take my children to prison for daycare.  Being in a cell with Big John would be a scary thing indeed.

Sickening.