I wish to address how people who
survive aggressive thought reform and physical abuse can have
different perceptions of past events, applying it to survivors of
Hephzibah House.
When one individual claims something glowing and wonderful and
nearly 100 others describe specific and corroborating conditions of
abject abuse spanning nearly four decades, perhaps that one dissident
has some issues with false
memory as a coping mechanism which allows them to transcend the
abuse they suffered themselves. (These are issues will be explored
in upcoming posts after a review of Doctrine Over Person. The reader
may also find a recent series posted on Overcoming
Botkin Syndrome concerning gaslighting to be helpful, as
gaslighting is also a means by which a manipulator can pressure a
person to relinquish their personal history and perspective.)
The Saga of the Ingram Family
(summarized from Dominic
Streatfield's book)
In the summer of 1988, a young woman
named Erika Ingram ventured off to Black
Lake Bible Camp, returning there as a counselor to the Heart to
Heart camp held by the International
Church of the Foursquare Gospel, though she'd previously attended
previous events as a camper. (Jack
Hayford is a commonly known pastor with the Foursquare Church, a
Pentecostal denomination founded by Aimee
Semple McPherson.) The evangelist who addressed the crowd
allegedly received a specific and personal, prophetic word
of knowledge of a terrified little girl (attending the gathering)
who was hiding from her father, giving specific information about the
environment she envisioned. Immediately, several girls jumped up and
came forward, stating that they had been abused, and one burst into
tears and ran from the room. Many campers admitted to being abused
by their fathers before the end of the service.
Erika Ingram wept and sat on the floor
in the meeting room after the service concluded and the group
dispersed. The evangelist, Karla Franko, states specifically that
other concerned camp counselors called her back to the meeting room
where she delivered a message specifically to the emotional Erika
which echoed the general message she gave in during the service. In
what Pentecostals and Charismatics understand as divine knowledge
imparted by the Holy Spirit to someone who operates in prophetic
gifts or the “charismata,” Franko tells Erika that the Holy
Spirit has revealed to her that God acknowledged that she was abused
as a child by her father, and that the abuse took place for years.
(This technique, when used to manipulate, demonstrates another of
Lifton's criteria called mystical
manipulation. Read even more about the phenomenon and watch a
short video clip HERE.)
Shortly thereafter, Erika's younger 18
year old sister named Julie exhibited odd and emotional behavior at
school in the Fall. A teacher encouraged Julie to write about
whatever it was that was troubling her because she could not get her
to talk. By October, Julie began to produce notes for this concerned
teacher that started out benign but eventually claimed that her
father would molest her during the night, describing the same type of
scenario presented by the evangelist, Karla Franko, at the Black
Lake/Heart to Heart camp. These descriptions progressed, and Julie
eventually claimed that her father's poker buddies would also molest
her. She claimed that her sister, Erika, slept on the top bunk in
their shared room and was not subjected to the abuse because the men
were obviously afraid of breaking and collapsing the bunk, or so she
reasoned. Julie was referred by the teacher to abuse counselors who
were appalled to learn that the girl claimed to have also been burned
and cut.
Soon Erika would meet with her mother
to tell her mother about being abused by not only her father and the
poker buddies, but also by her brothers. Erika's sister, Julie,
confirmed the story with her mother, as did the pastor who heard
about Erika's admission at the camp that summer. They claimed that
the abuse started when Julie was in the fifth grade and stopped about
five years ago. The abuse counselors reported the claims to the
Thurston County Sherriff, and Julie was questioned. Julie reported
to the sex crimes investigator that her father would threaten to kill
her. Eventually, this story changed, and she claimed that the last
rape took place in 1987 because at that time, her father gave her an
STI and then took her to San Jose for anonymous treatment. Then,
after the questioning, Julie delivered a note to the police claiming
that she became pregnant and that her father forced her to have an
abortion.
On November 28th, Paul
Ingram, the father of Julie and Erika, awakens and vomits due to
anxiety. He's taken in for questioning and read his rights. Then
Paul Ingram makes an odd and nebulous admission that he “has
a dark side.” Twenty years later, the officers who
arrested him recall the strange nature of the comment because no one
accused of such a crime ever makes such an admission. Ingram can't
recall ever raping his children, and repeats that “I
can't see myself doing this,” while in the next
utterance would repeat that “I taught the
kids not to lie.” Then he tells the sheriffs that
though he's never contemplated such a thing, but in the event that he
was guilty, he asked them to make sure all the firearms were removed
from the home. What do you think that the police are thinking? This
man sounds bizarre, probably seriously deranged, and guilty.
Eventually, he confesses that if
he did molest the girls, he would have done such and
such. Eventually during the intensity of the interrogation, Paul
Ingram changes those “would have's” to confessions of “I
did.” He would then go
back into the mantra of “My kids don't
lie.” He also made statements that these things “must
have happened” as the girls recalled, though he couldn't
think of any specifics. Then he started agreeing with the specifics
that his daughters shared with the police. In custody, Ingram would
pray to Jesus to “give him a picture”
of the events because he couldn't remember the details but just
“knew” that they had to be true if his daughters claimed that
they were.
A minister came to the prison for a
“deliverance” session with Ingram to cast the devil out of him.
Ingram then confesses that he recalled events that were similar to a
chain of murders in the Seattle area, and for a time, the police
evaluated him for long periods of time concerning a string of serial
killings, wondering if Ingram had participated. Ingram focuses on
the idea that if he is in jail, there must be very good reasons for
it and he must be a guilty man. After intense sessions of prayer to
remember events and after long sessions of interrogation, Ingram
claims to have been involved with witchcraft and ritual killing. He
begs God to release his memories so he can fully repent of the
terrible evil he must have committed. He then claims that he
sacrificed his daughter's babies, his own children, in satanic
rituals. When the family members are questioned, and though such
details were never included or recalled in their initial accounts,
they magically begin to think that they remember details that
corroborate elements of their father's many new ritual abuse stories.
Eventually, Ingram would go on to claim that one of the chief
investigators in his case had been one of the poker buddies and was
guilty of violating these young girls. . .
The long and detailed account continues
in Streatfield's book, Brainwash,
which makes for very interesting reading on this subject of
manipulation in Evangelical settings and how people who are
conditioned to respond to shame and guilt react to this type of
pressure. I've glossed over a much detail in this short summary.
It turns out later that the girls were
given cause to be angry with their father, immediately before
attending the camp in 1988. As the book notes, the sex crimes chief
notes,“That camp was noted with Thurston
County officials as having an extreme number of unsubstantiated or
unprovable accusations” (pg 313). The Ingram Family
were not the only people to come forward over the years, repenting
and accusing others of abuse. When the authorities searched for
medical records of the abortions and other medical treatment for the
specific abuse that the girls claimed, they could find none. When
both girls underwent GYN exams, both girls were virgins and had also
had none of the clinical signs of prior pregnancy. (In addition to
the external factors, the presentation of the cervix changes after
pregnancy, and the manifestations of pregnancy versus delivery of a
term infant are also different from one another which permitted
physicians to make such a determination.) There were no scars from
the burns and the cuts they supposedly suffered during their
molestations and satanic ritual abuse.
Paul Ingram spent almost 15 years in
prison for a crime that he NEVER committed. He was told that it
would all make sense after his confession, but not in the way that he
expected. He is not permitted contact with his family.
He states that when the interrogators
finally left him alone, he felt impressed with a specific message
from God – that he knew the truth in his “heart of hearts.” He
had committed no crime. He tells Streatfield, “And
at that point, I knew that none of it was true. I had suspected it
all along, and I couldn't figure out how it had all happened, but now
I knew.” He knew that it didn't happen and trusted his
own perceptions, though he believed that his confession would bring
him release and comfort. All it did was buy him 15 years in prison.
Streatefield states that Julie admits privately to friends that she
now doubts the accuracy of her own memories.
For Consideration
I often end up repeating like a broken
record that the brain is not as adept and talented at realizing
things. The brain's great ability really shows through in its
ability to ignore that which we find unpleasant. We tend toward
confirmation
bias, the ability of the mind to keep us optimistic and
functioning when we are overwhelmed by the pain of reality, and a
gift that can protect us when that pain is too great for us to bear.
It can also be a curse, for if we get stuck emotionally or mentally,
we can use this ability to ignore the truth, choosing to believe
fantasy over the truth.
In this example of how powerful the
manipulation of emotions and ideas can be when under social pressure
or when experiencing the dissociative effect of derealization
and depersonalization in response to a terrifying situation, how
much easier would it be for a person to choose to believe a more
positive message? The Ingram Family was conditioned to be dutiful
and to respond to authority with compliance and agreement (a
common trait in people anyway), something that may have been a
pressure in their church. It definitely manifested through the
emotional stimulation created when interrogated by the police.
Imagine that a more impressionable,
traumatized person who has been grossly mistreated for as long as
they can remember might experience this same kind of effect, but
rather than filling in the gaps with negative ideas, they keep up
their sense of optimism by imagining an unrealistic history that is
glowingly positive. This also draws on an element of denial which
also helps the person cope with their tremendous emotional stress.
This kind of thinking is called a primitive ego
defense mechanism. People tend to employ this type of mental
strategy and outlook in order to survive horrible experiences, retain
the will to persevere and go on to have a meaningful life.
How could one woman remember one thing,
and another 100 girls remember something entirely different? Please
think about it for awhile. This question will be explored in
an upcoming post after more discussion of Doctrine Over Person and
confabulated memory.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES and INFORMATION
Please listen to all of the Jocelyn Andersen's Blog Talk Radio episodes about Hephzibah House
- Hidden Abuses in the Baptist Church Part I: The 20/20 Episode (introduction to Hephzibah House)
- Hidden Abuses in the Baptist Church Part II: An interview with Susan Grotte (a 29 month resident in the early 1980s)
To learn more about Hephzibah House, please link to these additional resources:
- Jeri Massi's Lambs of Hephzibah House podcasts
- Hephzibah Girls Blog (Susan Grotte's blogspot; This site includes copies of documents distributed to families by Ron Williams.)
- Former Hephzibah Girls (Visit their links page for more links on activism.)
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- FACEBOOK
