Boys in Gilded Cages

by Jarod Powell

  The tiny town of Hawthorn, Missouri, population 575 as of 2010, has never been so embattled as it is now. Father Redmond is the mayor of Hawthorn, taking Bobby’s father Jerry’s seat. This is the first time in over 100 years that the mayor’s seat was not run unopposed. As Bobby saw it, the rural Missouri church’s increasing public spectacle, coupled with what Faust saw as a betrayal of his father—a family friend, became grounds for resignation of membership. He said, “I never considered myself a particularly religious person. In fact, these days, I’m closer to an atheist. But in Hawthorn, church is family, and family is church. You don’t hurt family.”

  Faust is surprisingly cavalier about defecting from the church that so many have labeled a cult. He claims to not know much about the accusations of fraud and drug operations, and suggests that his decision to leave was more personal than moral. Although he is decidedly aloof regarding the alleged corruption of Hawthorn Baptist church, he was a lifetime member, getting Baptized there in 1987, at the age of two.

  In spite of his casual cynicism, he has not been silent. He recently blogged for ManChild New York—a sort of op-ed for a liberal site, known for skepticism of media conglomerates, politicians, and the establishment in general. It tends to treat all public figures with the same fascination and repulsion many people have for Hollywood actors. No one is spared from gossip, and ManChild New York became interested in Hawthorn Baptist Church shortly after its most famous member—troubled actor Brandon Bennett-- disappeared briefly in 2009.

  Bobby has since spoken with every media outlet, from Fox News to the Huffington Post, who are mostly interested not in Bobby’s story, but Hawthorn’s connection to another controversial Midwestern church, the Westboro Baptist Church. He seems to understand what they want, which is soundbytes that are remarkably similar, and reflects on them with media savvy that belies his objective stance on the church’s operations. “They didn’t want to know about drug trafficking, they didn’t want to know about the Church’s income last year, which was ridiculous when you think about how small it is,” he said. “They hinted at it, leading questions off with ‘with their alleged IRS-dodging tactics,’ but mostly they focused on the gay-bashing and their connection to Westboro. There’s a much bigger issue here, with Hawthorn. But it’s like they’re building up to it. It’s like, ‘First America’s gotta know that Hawthorn exists, then we can break the biggie stories.’ It’s kinda gross. It’s almost like they’re working publicity for Hawthorn. The weird thing is, Father Redmond always seemed to hate attention. But knowing him, there’s a plan in place. He’s creeping up on you guys.”

  Father Redmond is no slice of bologna. Hailing from Nashville, Tennessee, his ex-wife is the head of Eye of the Needle Music Group, a Christian Rock record label bought by Capital Records in 2005. Before entering the ministry, he was CEO of the company, and upon his divorce and resignation, was promptly awarded an undisclosed settlement, which is rumored to be in the low millions. He had a son, Eric, during his second marriage, but many in Hawthorn quietly doubt that he is a product of either marriage. “People talk, you know. Even in such a controlled atmosphere. They talk,” Bobby Faust says. “And Father Redmond is a known adulterer. That kid’s got problems.”

  In his op-ed for ManChild New York, Faust wrote, “Eric Redmond’s real mother was rumored to be a Nashville prostitute ordered off of an internet dating site, and Eric has definitely inherited his mother’s probable drug problem and mental illness. Or maybe Father Redmond molded them himself.” Rambling strangely, “I don’t want to get too specific, and in fact I’m talking too much now, but I wish a real journalist would investigate what Father Redmond has single-handedly done to the once not-unpleasant town of Hawthorn, Missouri. It’s a town of ghouls and zombies.” Father Redmond has only formally responded to anything said about him in the media once—to this op-ed. “I don’t know where to begin with Mr. Faust’s so-called article. If he wrote it, you can bet it’s not true. This is a badly-executed retaliation from a known liar, drug addict and reported homosexual.”

  “At first, I was surprised he even read it,” Faust said. “He preached about the evils of the internet many times. Hawthorn Baptist doesn’t have a website. But now that I think about it, it doesn’t surprise me that he did.” As for Redmond’s allegations, Faust simply replied, “Used to be true, true, definitely false.”

  The recent boom in Methamphetamine use in the Midwest is no secret, particularly in Southern Missouri. A nickname for Meth in Hawthorn’s area is “417”, the area code for much of Southwest Missouri. A little more than 10 years ago, Glamour Magazine featured the Southeast Missouri town of Sikeston, and named it, somewhat sensationally, the “Meth Capital of the World”. Strangely, Hawthorn had remained unscathed by the Meth epidemic, until about four years ago. Conspiracy theorists and message board users on topix—an anonymous board for small-town citizens to gossip about their neighbors, have connected the arrival of Father Redmond with the boom in Meth use. Bobby Faust seems uncomfortable with this line of thought. “Redmond’s not innocent, let’s put it that way,” he offered, declining to discuss it further. He did imply that Redmond’s son, Eric, was a notorious drug addict and that for some strange reason, Father Redmond ignored the problem, and was hostile to anyone who brought it to his attention. “Every Sunday service, prayer requests are called for,” Faust said. “One morning, Eric’s aunt Tina said something like, ‘Please pray for Eric, that he is cured of his illness.’ Eric was never at church, as long as I could remember. Redmond got real red-faced, and one of the Ushers whispered into her ear. She wasn’t escorted out or anything, but she never came back after that.’” Tina, seemingly ostracized from the church, became mostly isolated. “We weren’t told to stay away from her or anything, but she was gossiped about something fierce,” Faust remembered. “Horrible things that probably weren’t true; a game of telephone, really. Eventually we never saw her at the post office or anything. Then about a month later she got a job offer in Springfield, and blew out of Hawthorn.” That was the first time, Faust said, he became acutely aware of the quiet control Father Redmond had over the town. “It was a weird feeling. It was the first time the word ‘cult’ entered my mind. I couldn’t think of it any other way after that.”

  After Tina’s departure from Hawthorn, virtually everyone in Hawthorn was put on the church’s mailing list for a monthly newsletter, Hawthorn Times. Tabloid esque headlines splashed across the front page, most often with a celebrity or politician that Redmond deemed a target, usually on account of so-called perversion or liberal politics. ‘Lesbian Lohan Makes no Apologies for Demonic Behavior!!!’ one headline read, with a tweet-length blurb. Even Brandon Bennett, Hawthorn’s other claim to fame, was not spared. ‘Possessed Bennett: Rehab Can’t Save Me Now!’ It read.

  “I had a serious problem with that,” Faust said. “I went to middle school with Brandon, shortly before his family moved him to L.A. We were all so proud of him when he got famous, and a lot of people didn’t like Redmond tearing him down. He was one of ours. Redmond didn’t even know him.” On topix, and eventually talk in the town, suggested that Redmond actually did know Brandon and his mother, and was instrumental in getting him an agent in Nashville. “I don’t know anything about that,” Faust said.

  Brandon Bennett, in an interview with Howard Stern, laughed off the church when he was asked about Father Redmond. “So who’s this kooky pastor from your town? You know anything about him? People are saying he knew your mom, in Nashville,” Stern asked him. Bennett said simply, “My mom knew a lot of people. She would have set herself on fire to get me an audition with Nickelodeon.” Stern pressed, “So you never went to this church…what is it, this Baptist Church?” Brandon flatly replied, “I was born in that town. You don’t exist in Hawthorn unless your family is in church. But this asshole was not there when I was,” Bennett said. “To answer your question, it’s possible my mom knew him, but as far as I know, I’ve never met him.”

  In his Op-Ed for
ManChild New York, Bobby Faust said he considered himself an agnostic since age 18. It started with a simple google search.

  He had broken the ‘no internet’ rule by going to the library in the nearby town of Oak Tree Bluff, and started reading topix, which he had heard about from one of his friends. “Some of these posts were alarming to me, because they were obviously written by people I knew, and they were saying some pretty horrible things.” One topix user, whom Faust says he’s friends with, claimed that an unnamed teenage boy, we’ll call him Darrin, sold drugs for Father Redmond. “It didn’t say ‘to’, it said ‘for’,” Faust said. “Selling ‘to’ Redmond would make sense to me, because the man is off his nut. But ‘for’? That one word made me physically ill.” Another replied to this post: “Redmond’s his pimp! If you’ve ever seen the T.V. show Cops, you know that pimps get their hookers on drugs. Control. Duh!”

  Faust said he was most disturbed by the fact that these people seemed to keep attending church every Sunday, despite knowing these things about the pastor. “I had never known anyone to gossip, or back-bite. That was the thing that killed me at first: The gossip. I didn’t even entertain the thought that the things being said could be true. It was kind of funny, though, because they thought they were anonymous,” Bobby said. “In fact, I figured out who most of the five-or-so posters are just by the way they wrote, so I know they show up every Sunday and Wednesday. I have to wonder why,” he said. “Of course, they’re all tweakers—every single one of them. So I guess there’s my answer.” Most of the posts were gleefully catty, and nothing more. “Did you see Father Redmond’s brow today? Sweaty pig,” one user posted, in a typically-gossipy thread. “His face looked like a glazed ham.”

  His online investigating prompted him to tell his parents what he had found. Unsurprisingly, his father, who had, for all purposes, been betrayed by Redmond, wasn’t interested in what Bobby had found, but that he had gone against orders and surfed the web. “That was the last ass-whooping I ever took from my father. I was 16 years old, getting beaten by a belt for what I saw as looking out for my family and my town,” Faust said. “I figured that he wouldn’t necessarily believe what I found—I didn’t. But he had an axe to grind. Not only that, but wouldn’t you at least want to look into something this serious? This was serious.

  “I was thinking, what are you, brainwashed? Does he have something on you? I saw my dad as a little bitch. I couldn’t even look at him after that.” Bobby Faust ran away from home two days later.

  The Hawthorn Sherriff, Clay Hamm, found Bobby sitting under an overpass on Highway 60, smoking weed with Darrin--the unnamed teenage boy said to be a drug dealer and prostitute on the topix board--while coming home from a dinner date with his wife. Bobby was picked up, and brought back to his parents’ house. “I was kind of relieved,” he said. “I was hungry, and I’m not really built for survival without a roof.” But what really struck him about this encounter was that Sherriff Hamm wasn’t interested in picking up Darrin. In fact, when asked why he didn’t give Darrin a ride, Sherriff Hamm snapped, “He does this shit all the time. He’ll be fine. Your parents asked me to find you. Darrin’s none of your business, and you shouldn’t be hanging out with him.”

  “Darrin wasn’t pissed,” Bobby said. “He seemed to just have an understanding that he was not to be picked up. He waved goodbye as we drove off. He was smiling. It was kind of weird.”

  “So after that,” Faust continued, “I doubted my own mind about the whole thing. It was just too weird…it was surreal, the way people were acting. But that Darrin was some sort of drug mule for Father Redmond was just too weird to be believed.” Faust can’t bring himself to go there, even now. “I still just don’t believe it,” he said. “I mean, [do I think they] sat by and watched this boy go downhill, maybe turned a blind eye? I absolutely can buy that. But to think this dumbass [Redmond] can pull off a big drug operation, and the whole town goes along with it, or doesn’t know? Nah, no way. Not to mention child prostitution? It’s a neat story, but there’s no way.”

  Once Bobby Faust was back in his parents’ house, he wasn’t disciplined. For about three days, it wasn’t mentioned. Neither was anything else. “I got the silent treatment. Or what I thought was the silent treatment. The whooping I got from my dad was the last time he has spoken to me,” Faust says. “It’s been about two years—the last words my father said to me were ‘bend over.’” Faust hesitated, seemingly to hold back tears. “Talk about fucked up.”

  On the third day of eerie silence, his mother coldly told Bobby to get in the van. “I thought about telling her no, but I had a bad feeling about what would happen if I did,” he said. “These were the first words she had said to me since I came back. I thought it best to just do as I was told.

  “I got the feeling something fucked up was about to happen, but I had no control over it. I thought ‘Okay, I’ll just take my punishment, whatever it is’. I thought the worst case scenario was a lecture from Father Redmond. This whole thing was because of him. My intuition was right, in a way.”

  Bobby was carted to Father Redmond’s office. They weren’t alone. There were two men there he didn’t recognize. One of them was an older man dressed in a suit, who didn’t look up from his computer once, and who was typing every time Bobby said anything. The other man was tall—over six feet, standing at the back of the room with his arms crossed, staring hard in Bobby’s eyes, rarely blinking. “I thought, ‘Okay, this is that bouncer from the [local bar]. And he’s gonna fuck me up if I don’t do whatever it is I’m here to do,’” Bobby said. “All that crap I had heard and read online was in the back of my mind, I’m not gonna lie.”

  “He looked me in the eye, and said, in a real sad voice, ‘I’m really disappointed in you, Bobby,’” Bobby recalls. “And I said, ‘for what?’ He sighed, and I thought he was being kinda phony, like this was scripted.”

  “He said he wanted to send me to this place in Springfield, this sort of Job Corp place, but religious. I told him he was full of shit. That’s when he told me I couldn’t go home, that my parents gave him control of this decision.”

  “I started to ask if they made it official, on paper, through the courts or whatever. Then I realized it didn’t matter that much. So I just said, fine, I’m not going home, but I’m sure as shit not going to some group boys’ home or whatever. Not one he was involved with.”

  Harold Redmond, unlike the spokespeople of the Westboro Baptist Church, did not court media attention. On the contrary, Redmond is known as a bit of a recluse, shunning even local media. He has, so far, refused all requests for interviews, and when the local paper wanted to profile Hawthorn Baptist Church for a series of features on local churches and non-profits, he agreed—with a truckload of conditions. The editor of the Springfield Sentinel, Jane Marley, says that what was to be a fluff piece meant to bring exposure to Hawthorn, became a nightmare. “I don’t usually get involved with reporters’ pieces until difficulties arise. So mostly I don’t even see them until there’s a draft on my desk, especially ones such as this,” Marley said. “But after he had turned in the necessary paperwork to get this story started, it became a daily barrage of voice mails that were increasingly bizarre.”

  Marley recalls her phone going off in the middle of the night on several occasions. “I’d wake up and look at my phone and realize it had been Redmond calling me. Sometimes three or four times. Sometimes at two o’clock in the morning.” As for what he could possibly want at such an hour, Marley seemed exasperated while talking about it. “The thing is, at first it was the most inane things; the photograph we’d use, for example, or certain church-related events we could promote.” When she didn’t return his calls within 24 hours, he got irate. “I have messages from Mr. Redmond that are just vile. Vile. Name-calling. Profanity. Accusing the paper of a conspiracy against Hawthorn Baptist. Extremely paranoid ramblings, at times,” Marley said. “I just told the reporter, who was a sophomore in college, to forget it, I wasn’t going to pu
t her through that.” Marley chuckled a bit. “Unless she wanted to do a completely different story. In the end, I thought it better to just leave Redmond alone.” Marley paused for a second. “I did think about calling a hospital, though. Maybe I should have.”

  “I don’t know if Father Redmond is on drugs,” Bobby Faust says. “I do know he is batshit insane, for one reason or another.”

  Ironically, what Bobby Faust is most known for condemning, he wasn’t around to see. “The Westboro comparisons started after I was kicked out. I know from other people that Father Redmond started corresponding with Shirley Phelps around 2006 or 2007,” Faust says. “I think what Redmond saw in Westboro Baptist Church was a good business model. People think the two churches actually believe the shit they say on those signs. To me, as far as I can see, it’s a racket.”

  It has long been suggested that the protests that have made Westboro Baptist Church infamous are nothing more than a scam to the system. Bobby seems to think that’s what attracted Redmond to WBC, not the ideology. “Think about it. No one ever talks about the gazillion law suits both churches have been involved with,” he says, becoming more animated as he tries to collect his thoughts. “They are their own lawyers. Every time someone tries to stop them from protesting, or assaults them in some way—it happens,” he calms himself mid-sentence. “It’s a payday.” He shakes his head. “The best thing you can do with Westboro is ignore them. But the best thing you could do with Hawthorn is to start paying attention. Knowing Redmond, this is just a phase in a crazy, fucked up plan.”