My father turned his back on them and marched to the car. He slammed the door and said, “Children, that’s how you act when you do not have the Lord in your life. Those people are lost and in sin. They are going to Hell when they die. We are never coming back here. You will never see them again. I don’t want an ounce of their negative, godless influence on you.” Although my mother did not directly participate in his sadistic behavior, she remained silent then and throughout all the years of his abuse.
An immediate sense of loneliness overwhelmed me. When we got home I pulled out a porcelain elf that my grandmother had made. She had her own kiln in the basement of their house and she made a lot of beautiful things over the years, from flowerpots to figurines. But this elf was special because my grandfather had given him to me. He became my new Emily, my favorite doll. For the longest time afterward, I slept with him by my side. I talked to him and played with him and pretended he was my baby, just as I had done with her.
Dedication to All Things IFB
Though no dramatic incidents drove us away from my father’s side of the family, we seldom saw them and they played no significant role in my childhood. My clearest childhood memory of my father’s mother is of her being so distressed over the news that we had joined some “cuckoo cult” that she baptized me with tap water in her kitchen sink when I was a toddler, to wash away my sins, according to Catholic doctrine.
With our extended family shut out of our lives, the drama in our home intensified. Perhaps the worst consequence of this was that, because men hold the reins of power in the IFB and their authority is absolute, my father’s temper went unchecked.
Our family sank deeper into the IFB subculture with every passing year. Our home life and the Christian school we attended, in the basement of our church, were steeped in IFB philosophy and rhetoric. The cult breeds paranoia in its members, about society, law enforcement, and the government so we became more and more isolated.
The more immersed my parents became in IFB ideology, the more abnormal and confusing things got in our home. The combination of dire financial struggles with the IFB’s draconian rules and isolationist culture sometimes made me feel as if I was losing my mind. My parents fought constantly about money, and the strain of poverty stoked their belief that the U.S. government was the enemy. Most of the other IFB families we knew were as dirt poor as we were, and the church leaders exploited the emotional instability engendered by poverty. Police officers too were bad guys, according my parents—the only “good guys” were members of our own church.
It was a frightening way to grow up. Instead of reassuring us that the monsters from our nightmares were figments of our imagination, our pastors seemed to assure us that the monsters were real and that they were everywhere, waiting to pounce. Our parents and our fellow IFB members were the only ones who could protect us, they preached. Yet this was hard to reconcile with my father’s cruelty, which kept escalating. Essentially, the IFB ideology inculcated children in sadomasochistic thinking. It taught that love and pain were interconnected and that by hurting you, your father—or your teacher or your pastor—was expressing his love for you. A shrink could have a field day with this.
So, steeped in IFB thinking as I was and removed from objective, caring adults like my grandfather, who might have given me some real perspective, I developed a sort of blind allegiance to my father, despite his faults and his uncontrolled rages. I looked up to him. He called me his “special little girl.” He gave all three of his daughters nicknames. I was his Little Ladybug. Meagan was Mag-pie. And Melissa was Muff or Muffy. The term of endearment softened her enough toward him that at least she stopped running to hide behind the living room chair whenever he came home from work. It wasn’t until we were adults and she had left the IFB and started working as a nurse that she learned the term “muff” was slang for a woman’s pubic hair. She was humiliated, but perhaps not surprised that what seemed like affection from our father was a demeaning sexual double entendre.
My Father’s Escalating Violence
My father’s murderous tendency toward animals pervades my childhood memories. One day I was putting my shoes on in the bedroom that I shared with my sisters, when what looked like a long rat ran across my leg and scratched me. I hurried out to the living room and told my father about it.
“Mike!” he shouted to his work buddy. “That weasel is back again. We need to catch that sucker and do away with him.”
My mother ushered us all into the kitchen while he and Mike started banging the walls in our room and scooting beds around. “There he is! Get him!” I heard my father cry, then came more banging and shuffling. Finally, both men emerged from the bedroom grinning victoriously and announced proudly that they had beaten the weasel to death. In a sick attempt at humor, my father propped its bloody, mangled body up on the front lawn against some large stones and placed an open copy of the New Testament under its paws. “Look, the weasel’s preaching,” he said and bent over laughing. I was happy the rodent could no longer run up my leg to scare me, but I was still disturbed by what my father had done.
Not only did my father consider animals disposable, he seemed to relish killing them and he taught my brothers to do the same. He even put a picture of my brother Jason strangling a pigeon in our living room and tried to convince us it was funny. He loved to boast about his ghoulish boyhood hijinks, like the time he tied up a bunch of his family’s chickens in nooses and suspended them over a bar in the barn. He would let out a hearty guffaw when he described how they flapped helplessly as they strangled to death. His father, he said, had gone ballistic when he found the birds and rammed his head through a plaster wall to punish him. I’m not sure whether my grandfather was mad about the senseless savagery of the act or its damage to the family’s livelihood, but his son certainly didn’t get the message that killing birds was wrong.
Studies show that sociopaths, rapists, and serial killers often start out abusing animals and graduate to harming humans. That’s what Ted Bundy did. So did Jeffrey Dahmer. You can imagine how fearful I became in later years for my own children’s safety and how much danger I now believe we were all in as children in my father’s house. But at the time we had no idea how bizarre his behavior was. Animals had no immortal soul, he said, so what did it matter? Not only did he encourage cruelty toward them, he forbade sympathy for their suffering.
The only time I remember crying over what happened to four-legged creatures at my father’s hands was when he beat Exes, our Lhasa apso puppy, with the same wooden dowel he used on us. Exes had been scratching the back patio door when he wanted to go in and out, and my father caught him in the act. He grabbed Exes by the scruff of his neck, hoisted him into the air, thrust his face into the puppy’s and roared “BAD DOG!” then slammed him back to the floor. Next, he started bashing his front paws with the dowel, stopping between blows to rub the puppy’s nose hard against the glass while Exes yelped and whimpered piteously. He beat the dog so severely that he broke both of his front legs. Exes had to scoot around the yard on his hind legs and use his head to propel himself to his food and water dishes. Naturally, no one took him to see a veterinarian, and even after his legs eventually healed, he walked with a limp.
I loved Exes dearly and I can remember standing nearby, quivering and crying silently as I watched him cower under my father’s blows. My father caught sight of me and shouted, “Get in your room! No one in this house is going to cry over a stupid dog!” Then he beat me bloody with the wooden dowel too.
Breaking the Will of the Child
The IFB teaches that a child’s will must be broken, just like a horse’s before it can be ridden. It is one of the most dangerous tenets of the cult. How do you break a child’s will? You spank her until she is docile, broken emotionally, and wholeheartedly repentant for whatever transgression you think she committed. The key to spiritual maturity, the IFB claims, is reaching the place where one has no internal will. IFB parents are fond of advising each other to “break
the will of the child, but not the spirit.” But in my experience, no one knew how to distinguish between the two. It was ambiguous messaging, to say the least. And it dovetailed beautifully with my father’s penchant for brutality. It gave him carte blanche to beat us whenever the mood struck him. He could vent his frustration, disappointment, and rage on us and then blame us because we “asked for” a beating by displeasing him. Better yet, he got to feel righteous about it; he was being a “good father” by bloodying his own children.
Convinced as my parents were that the five of us had strong wills, they decided we needed severe correction even by IFB standards. My father was always the disciplinarian. We could be beaten for anything: Sloppy handwriting, a misplaced backpack, crying too hard during a spanking session, or a simple sigh on our way to do a chore was enough to incite rage in my father. I can still hear the familiar words, “If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you! Do you understand me, girl? You better!”
Though many IFB mothers I knew beat their children as mercilessly as their husbands did, my mother left it to him. I can only recall one time when I was thirteen that he insisted she spank me, but she barely touched me with the dowel. Knowing her personality, I think her actions stemmed less from compassion than from a desire to keep a physical distance from me. It seems ironic now that I spent my childhood dreaming about having a baby to cuddle when my own mother was so relentlessly disapproving and cold with us. She seemed to have a specific disdain for me and would often exaggerate claims of my “disobedience” to my father, which would result in one more horrific beating. At times, it appeared as if she were even smirking at me when my father flew into another rage—outlining all my wrongdoings. I can remember trying desperately to coax a smile out of her and getting only a raised eyebrow. Our preachers told parents to be stern and my mother was exemplary in that regard.
When it comes to spanking, IFB parents use all kinds of instruments. The most popular is a rod of some sort. My father favored one-inch-in-diameter dowels of a heavy wood, usually oak, from Menards home improvement stores. They typically came in eight-foot lengths, so he would buy one and cut it in half. He was so proud of his “spanking instrument” that he engraved Bible verses in the wood. One read, “The blueness [bruising] of the wound drives away evil.” He stained and lacquered the dowel and drilled a hole in the top through which he looped a leather strap. Throughout my childhood, it hung on the kitchen wall, prominently displayed as a constant reminder of the harsh consequences my siblings and I would face if we ever disobeyed. He was exceedingly proud of his spanking instruments and he made use of them on us almost daily.
Even if they genuinely believed they were saving our souls by beating us, my parents must have been aware that most of society would beg to differ. At least they took great pains to ensure that no one found out what my father was doing to us. They went so far as to stage Child Protective Services training sessions with us. I’ll never forget them. My father would call us all into the living room and tell us that we needed to have a family meeting. He would line us all up on the sofa, then my mother would come in wearing a gray wig and horn-rimmed glasses, clutching a clipboard.
“Children, my name is Myrtle and I’m from Child Protective Services,” she would say in a high-pitched, whiny voice. “I’m here today to talk to you about what goes on in your home.” The two of them would instruct us on what to say or not say if we were ever questioned about their method of discipline. They made us rehearse over and over. “Where did you get that bruise?” “I fell.” “What about that one?” “I bumped into something.” They even recorded the sessions on audiotape and replayed them as we were playing with our dolls and toys in our basement. I still have vivid memories of looking down at my doll and hearing my father’s recorded voice in the background saying, “Does your dad spank you?” and all five of us children responding in unison, “No. We’ve never been spanked.” Looking back now, it sends chills down my spine.
As the spanking sessions in our home became more aggressive, my father created what he called the “spanking position.” When he decided we were in need of a beating, we were to lie facedown on our beds and put our hands under our stomachs and our faces in our pillow. This ensured that he wouldn’t break any of our fingers or hands. Plus, if we ever cried out, our pillows would muffle our screams so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.
It’s difficult to convey the deep-seated confusion and insecurity you feel as a child growing up in an environment like ours. Irrational and sadistic behavior was often considered normal, even admirable, in our culture, so discerning between right and wrong in my father’s actions got muddled in my mind. Nothing speaks to this more than the morning of my tenth birthday.
I woke up early, excited about being in the double digits, even though we had all been up late the night before, ringing in the New Year. My birthday celebration was planned for the afternoon of New Year’s Day. My parents didn’t make a big deal out of birthdays since money was so tight, and celebrations usually consisted of a cake, a song, and a gift or two. Still, it was a big deal for a child. That day, my father came down the stairs waving the spanking rod over his head.
“It’s Jocelyn’s tenth birthday today and I want you all to know that she’s had a bad attitude lately,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “This year for her birthday, I’m taking her upstairs and she is getting ten swats. Let’s go, young lady. To your room!”
My heart started thumping wildly. Was he kidding? My father was a prankster and sometimes played tricks like this, so I sat for a moment, waiting for him to burst into laughter. Instead, he shouted, “MOVE!”
I leapt up and took the steps two at a time. Though I assumed my father’s wrath was justified, I had no idea what I had done wrong and no time to think it through. I felt no sense of anger, resentment, or injustice. My only emotion was terror. And it was well founded. He gave me a birthday spanking I’ll never forget. Welts, blood, and bruises were my only gifts that year. He never elaborated on what I had done to constitute a “bad attitude” and I never asked. I wouldn’t have dared.
3
INSIDE THE WORLD OF THE IFB
Any believer who wants to be God’s mouthpiece in the world must be a separatist.
—Bob Jones III, 1985
“Thank you, Meredith. This is WGRE on location tonight in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where five young children were removed from the home of a Baptist children’s pastor after nursery workers at the church they attended discovered bruises, welts, and other signs of physical abuse on the youngsters and called local authorities. When police arrived at the pastor’s home, they found a number of wooden rods he had evidently been using to beat his children with on a regular basis. A police spokesperson stated that there was evidence the pastor had also tortured and killed several kittens the family had been keeping as pets. The children were placed in protective custody and are undergoing counseling. Extended family members are working with the state and hope to assume responsibility for all five siblings shortly.”
Had that imaginary scenario unfolded, it would have changed the course of my life. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen for me. Or for seven-year-old Lydia Schatz, beaten to death in 2010 by her adoptive parents, who claimed they were following the advice of Michael Pearl in his book To Train Up a Child, a favorite IFB homeschooling discipline manual, when they held her down and hit her with a plumbing supply line for seven hours, pausing only for short “prayer breaks.”
No one stepped in to rescue Esther Combs, the homeschooled daughter of an IFB pastor in Tennessee, during the decade she spent being beaten with whips, chains, bats, ropes, and umbrellas by her adoptive mother, who also pinched the skin off her arms with pliers, and her adoptive father, who sexually abused her, assuring her that King David had concubines too, so the Bible condoned it. When she finally turned up in an emergency room in 1997 after a nearly successful suicide attempt, hospital staff found scars covering nearly every inch of her body. They counted more than four hundred of th
em. Esther had to swallow almost enough antifreeze to kill herself to kick-start the process that would eventually lead to prison terms for the people who tortured her.
Nor did anyone protect thirteen-year-old Hana Grace-Rose Williams, a Washington girl who was adopted from Ethiopia in 2008. She was beaten, locked in a closet, deprived of food, and forced to sleep naked outside by her new parents, which led to her death from hypothermia in 2011.
The sad truth is, thousands of children just like Lydia, Esther, and Hana are victimized at the hands of Independent Fundamental Baptist churches members every year. And no one comes to their aid.
Like me, they have nowhere to run. Raised in a clandestine subculture that breeds fear and suspicion, they’ve been taught from birth to distrust outsiders. Most have no idea that charitable organizations and government authorities exist that could offer them counseling and protection. Even if they did know, the majority wouldn’t dream of seeking their help.
They are trapped—and invisible to the people outside the IFB who might be able to rescue them. After all, when your teachers, preachers, neighbors, and doctors all embrace the same sadistic childrearing mentality as your parents, who is going to report your injuries? The cashier at the grocery store? The attendant at the gas station? Even if they did, your parents would hide behind the First Amendment, and odds are good nobody from the outside would meddle. It’s tragic, but abusers in the IFB know they can use the “religious freedom” argument to do the same kinds of things that would bring Child Protective Services banging down the door in other circumstances.
How the IFB Started
The Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church movement grew out of a concept called the Doctrine of Separation. This teaching was touted by “Dr.” Bob Jones Sr. in the 1950s and then “Dr.” Bob Jones Jr. in the 1970s, and it held that all churches and Christians not associated with their ideology were “compromising” and “liberal” and needed to be completely shunned by the Joneses’ followers. (I use quotes here and elsewhere to indicate that many leaders of the IFB who refer to themselves as “Dr.” only have honorary doctorates.)
I Fired God Page 3