Demanding Duggar Cradle, Teen Homes and the Baptist Myth of Family

Welcome to the resource page that accompanies the discussion:

From Demanding Duggar Cradle to Troubled Teen Home:  

Overcoming the Baptist Myth of Family

ICSA Annual Meeting 2016

Friday, July 1st, Dallas, TX

View the slides here, and visit Slideshare's website for download.

Demanding Duggar Cradle to Troubled Teen Home: Overcoming the Baptist Myth of Family from Cynthia Kunsman

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CNN AC360's Investigation into Pinehaven Part I of III: Yet Another Child Abuse and Trafficking Ring

AC360 again focuses on one of the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) affiliated homes for troubled teens as part of its ongoing series concerning child abuse by Evangelical Christians called Ungodly Discipline.  (See addendum note.)  Like Hephzibah House, Pinehaven in Montana is just one of many of these types of residential facilities where drastic discipline techniques, beating, shaming, and heavy labor are used to allegedly help purify the souls of these throw-away children. As Kathryn Joyce points out in her 2011 article, it seems that the laws in Montana where many homes facilitate their ability to operate, despite many reports of injustice and abuse. In many cases, these children who are seen as hopelessly tainted by sin or are rendered worthless because they've been sexually violated are told that they can only live a marginally meaningful life. The harsh conditions and complete isolation from family that they're forced to endure at the IFB homes supposedly will purify them so that this marginal life will be possible for them.

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CNN AC360's Investigation into Pinehaven Part II of III: The IFB Ignores More Sexual Abuse while “Pinehaven Oversees Pinehaven”

Continuing with Part II of the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 investigation into Pinehaven of St. Ignatius, Montana, one of the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) affiliated homes for troubled children that employ extreme abuse and forced heavy labor to purify their souls. Note that Kathryn Joyce titled her article about these IFB homes as “Escape from Montana” when it first appeared in Mother Jones in August, 2011 because the Montana state laws apparently facilitate the free operation of the abuse that takes place within them.

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CNN AC360's Investigation into Pinehaven Part III of III: Escape from the Illinois Child Trafficking Pipeline of Children to Montana

HT to Chuckles Travels:  "Your Kids" or your prey, Mr. Duke?

Continuing with Part III of the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 investigation into Pinehaven of St. Ignatius, Montana, one of the Independent Fundamental Baptist affiliated homes for troubled children that employ extreme abuse and forced heavy labor to purify their souls. Note that Kathryn Joyce titled her article about these IFB homes as “Escape from Montana” when it first appeared in Mother Jones in August, 2011 because the Montana state laws apparently facilitate the free operation of the abuse that takes place within them.

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The Compulsion to Reenact Trauma as a Component of PTSD for the Christian as well as the Hephzibah House Survivor

Fairly early in the book, Love is a Choice, it talks about how when there are two people with significant shame and pain left over from their childhood which affect their behavior as adults, if you put those two people in a crowded room full of people, they will find one another. They are most likely the worst people in the room for one another to get to know, but they respond to the familiarity of the dysfunction that they recognize in themselves and from their families of origin. Likewise, abused people tend to be attracted to abusers, and predatory abusers know well how to target a new mark. Even if the relationship is undesirable, the draw of the familiar overrides one's sensibilities. The dysfunctional person's instinct and radar will always draw them to the most unhealthy people, as they too will tend to play out aspects of their childhood in their adult relationships because it was a type of trauma.

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Understanding the Freezing Response in PTSD in order to Better Understand the Behaviors of the Survivors of Hephzibah House

This post seeks to explore the freezing response in trauma in order better understand why a survivor of trauma at Hephzibah House (HH) would have experienced confusing and constricted responses to threat. Survivors of HH specifically report that their responses to threats become flattened or frozen after leaving HH, specifically reporting a freezing response to threatened sexual assault.

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Understanding Learned Helplessness and Bounded Choice and Their Role in Self-Protection and Self-Care

In the late '60s, Seigelman at University of Pennsylvania developed the concept of learned helplessness as part of his study of the nature of depression. The researchers apparently discovered by accident that if dogs were subjected to punishment with electric shocks and their ability to protect themselves was thwarted would eventually become pessimistic. In the second phase of the testing, believing that there was no hope in avoiding the shocks the dogs would not avoid the punishment – even when the conditions of the study enabled them to avoid punishment by jumping over a small barrier to find relief. They would just passively lay down on the floor through which the shocks were delivered and would whimper instead of protecting themselves. The first part of the study successfully trained the dogs into a state of accepting punishment, even though they could avoid it. The conditioning also produced depression and anxiety in the dogs.

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Shattered Optimism Grows into Failure to Self-Protect in PTSD

In an ongoing discussion of trauma, our original objective involved an attempt to understand why the survivors of Hephzibah House (HH) experience a failure to protect themselves, especially after immediately leaving the home.  Some survivors also experience long-term problems with self-care and self-protection problems, even into adulthood. Though this information pertains directly to them, it also pertains to anyone who has experienced significant trauma.

We've examined the childhood roots of victimization that certainly contribute to lack of this particular lack of self-care, but we've yet to consider this feature directly related to PTSD. When people develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition that quite often results when the affected person has been unable to avoid painful circumstances, it creates a pervasive sense of pessimism which arises from the physical response of survival which fails to shut down after the trauma threat has resolved. One of the ways a person lives out that pessimism comes through the idea that self-protection will be futile. Just as developmental factors contribute to a person's failure to self-protect, so does their sense of pessimism.

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The Three EASY Things You Can Do to Stop Abuse at Hephzibah House

For those of who have become with Hephzibah House and other teen homes run by Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB), you will understand the significance of the need for legislation to stop the abuse that takes place in these "private boarding homes."  Because of the denial about the true conditions in these homes and because of the belief that this extreme abuse is required by God to save souls, the IFB will do nothing to address the abject abuse of children within their ranks and sphere of influence.

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Shame Based and Immature Parenting Creates Victims of Circumstance and Dependency on Self (External Locus of Control)

We've now considered the two primary ways that a damaged or immature parent takes from their child (unloading shame and by siphoning back nurture) which we understand results from a parent's disrespect for the child's characteristics (and needs). With that background, we can now better understand how adults, both parents and grown children, cope with the sense of emptiness that they face. As we've noted in the most recent posts, the parent has two drives and needs of their own. They need to both purge shame and gain their own worth, and they pass this “multigenerational faithfulness” down to their children because the have nothing else to give to them. The immature adult must then look to other sources to find worth, peace, safety and soothing elements so that they can cope with the pressures and problems of life.

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Information About Hephzibah House and Resources for Survivors

-->INFORMATION ABOUT HEPHZIBAH HOUSE

Overview

• Susan Grotte's Account
• CNN Report, September 2, 2011
• Kathryn Joyce's July/August 2011 article on IFB Teen Home Abuse (Offsite link)
• Blog Talk Radio Episodes
  • Intro to abuse in the IFB
    • Listen to internet radio with jocelyn andersen on Blog Talk Radio
      
      
  • Learned Helplessness in the former Hephzibah Girls
    • Listen to internet radio with jocelyn andersen on Blog Talk Radio
      
      
  • Interview with Susan Grotte (a 29 month resident of HH in the '80s)
    • Listen to internet radio with jocelyn andersen on Blog Talk Radio
      
      

Physical Abuse

• Williams' sermon on the Correction and Salvation of Children
• Personal Accounts
  • Patti Williams beating an infant at HH
  • Denial and degredation concerning use of the restroom at HH
  • Physical beating at HH
  • “The Blue Room” for beatings at HH
• Jeri Massi addresses the correct interpretation of “chastisement” in Hebrews 12 (offsite at HephzibahGirls.com
  • Similar onsite post featuring Jeri's translation of paideia (chastisement understood as nurture) concerning hermeneutics and Michael Pearl

Misogyny and “Strange Women” (young children who are said to have the soul of a prostitute)

• Williams sermon concerning his Strange Woman Doctrine
• A Christian response to the Strange Woman Doctrine: Redeeming Dinah
• Jon Zens' book mentions patriarchal domination of women at HH
• Problems within the IFB (HH as a dumping ground for tramatized girls)

ABUSE AND MIND CONTROL

AT HEPHZIBAH HOUSE

(Lucinda Pennington often featured as an exemplar)

Understanding Altered Memory in Mind Control (a focus on HH)

• How Doctrine Over Person has Affected Lucinda Pennington
  • Sycophant for a Sociopath does Damage Control
• Final Review and Summary of Doctrine Over Person (summary of posts about created history under the pressure of thought reform with a focus on HH)
  • Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast and the Ingram Family (Family who creates, accepts and believes an alternate version of reality under the pressure of thought reform and interrogation)
  • Transformed Memory in a POW Camp (a way of coping with mind control)
  • Reaffirming the Myth (how and why victims change their memories and believe falsehood as a coping response to mind control)
  • Changing Memory to Gain an Abuser's Approval (Martin on mind control)
  • Using Denial Results in Altered Memory (more Martin on surviving mind control)
  • Altered States of Consciousness Contribute to Altered Memory (how mind control adversely affects a person's ability to think and their mental development)
  • The Role of Trauma/PTSD in Altered Memory (trauma as a physical process; nouthetic counseling can inhibit healing from PTSD)

Trauma within Families Before Hephzibah House: Children Primed for Victimization

• Punishing a Child for Behaving Like a Child
• Five Characteristics of Children (Priming them for Continued Victimization (how children can be misunderstood and abused)
  • Faulty Ideas about Self-Love and Self Esteeem
  • Training Children to Have No Personal Boundaries (and how this creates abusers)
  • Perfection Primes Children for Victimization
  • Degrees of Neglect and Abuse (lack of care for children's needs)
  • Intolerance of a Child's Age Appropriate Immaturity
• Healing through the Twelve Steps
• How to Find a Counselor
• Journey Out of Shame: A List of Resources

How Abuse of Children Makes Adults Become “Victims of Circumstance”

• Responding to Those Who Challenge the Former Hephzibah Girls
• Victims of Circumstance through External Worth and Peace
• Shame-Based Parenting
• Enmeshed Parenting

Post Traumatic Stress and the Affects of Abuse

• Note previous posts on this subject
  • Altered States of Consciousness in Mind Control
  • Trauma and PTSD
  • Bounded Choice
• Upcoming posts in January/February 2012
• Shattered Optimism in PTSD (and its role in self-protection
• Learned Helplessness and Bounded Choice at Hephzibah House
• The Freezing Response (Immobility) in Response to Threat

STOP THE ABUSE

• Three Easy Ways You Can Help Stop Abuse At Hephzibah House

OFFSITE RESOURCES

Podcasts

• Jeri Massi's Lambs of Hephzibah House podcasts

Survivor Blogs

• 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.)
• HephzibahHouse.com
• Voices of the Past

Social Media

• Facebook
  • Hephzibah House
  • Hephzibah Girls
  • Forsaken the Girls of Hephzibah House 

• MySpace

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How Dysfunctional Parents Siphon Resources Back from a Child, Depriving them of Healthy Self-Development

In the previous post, we discussed how children lack internal resources which the parent provides to them so that they can develop their own sense of self, internal peace and what many authors describe as a sense of abundance.

Healthy parents understand that their children cannot tolerate or process many aspects of living because of the natural characteristics of children. They understand that they are immature and dependent. When the child reaches maturity, ideally, they've developed a sense and personal worth as well as a sense of peace about being alive and okay in the world.

In the diagram, an empty beaker represents the child's lack of resources, and a heart represents the healthy adult sense of self. Parents that tend to be full of shame unload their shame onto their children, but this is not the only way that a parent uses a child when they fail to respect their developmental needs. 

 The enmeshed parent uses their child in a slightly different way. As we will see in the next post to come, both of these patterns set up the child to become an adult who does not look to who they are in Christ to find worth but obtains all of their sense of worth and peace from performance, circumstances, and the esteem of others.

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Shame-based Parenting Fills a Child's Heart with Shame Instead of Love: Disrespect for Children that Tilled the Soil for Abuse at Hephzibah House

If you recall, this latest discussion here concerning developmental problems and deficits in children came about after a supporter of Ron Williams, the proprietor of Hephzibah House (HH), published a blog post that challenges those HH Survivors who have come forward to tell of the abject abuse and terrible conditions they suffered while incarcerated there. There are many other Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) homes of this type where children suffer these same conditions right now, every day. Kathryn Joyce wrote an excellent, must-read article describing several of these homes where young men and women live in and under unthinkable conditions as punishment under the guise of rehabilitation through religion.

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Parents Prime Children For Spiritual Abuse? More Posts to Come on Developmental Needs and PTSD

The purpose for this review of the developmental needs of childhood and how parents can show dishonor to those needs came about to help the reader understand why a young woman exiting Hephzibah House (HH) would fail to protect herself once she left. If a person had developmental deficits going into the home, she would certainly have them upon leaving. Those identified characteristics (and resulting needs) are value, vulnerability, imperfection, dependency, and immaturity.  (Explore these topics HERE in a developing index of posts on this topic.)

Why protect yourself if you have no worth, if you have no right to have personal boundaries, if it is required of you to be perfect though it is impossible, if you're taught that you must have no needs (and guilt over having them), and if you're required to be the epitome of self-control when you're life is completely out of your own control??? A person can respond to trauma through a “freezing response” which we will explore further in future posts, but post traumatic stress after leaving HH may only capitalize upon the deep felt helplessness in the heart because of emotional issues from early childhood. For many who endured at Hephzibah House, it was actually a revictimization experience re-traumatizing a previous and older emotional wound.

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How Parents' Intolerance of a Child's Immaturity Creates Both Victims and Abusers

As noted earlier concerning the natural characteristics of children, the parent's proper respect for and care of a child's immaturity builds the basis for self control in their adulthood and helps them learn how to effectively manage and govern their lives as adults. This mastery, a characteristic of maturity, also provides for a healthy sense of spontaneity. Healthy maturity involves relaxation and time for restoration, an early lesson that the parent can build into a child through celebration of that spontaneous wonder and joy of life that children possess.

Parental Intolerance of Immaturity

As discussed in an earlier post, sometimes parents can become weary of the boundless energy and the self centeredness of their children, failing to see these qualities as the gifts they are given to accomplish the hard task of growing up. When a parent fails to accept these traits which they view as an inconvenience, or they punish these qualities in the child, the child learns to feel shame when “being authentic” and honest. 

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How Parents Prime Children for Victimization through Ignorance, Neglect and Abuse of Dependency Needs

 

One of the primary roles of a parent should be preparing their children to be safe, protected, and secure in adulthood, preparation that begins in childhood, encouraging the child's growth into maturity. When successful, parents prepare children who become adults who are able to care adequately for their own basic needs and are also responsive to the needs of others without compromising their own self-care in the process. In dysfunctional homes, children derive too much of their identity and sense of self from within the family or specifically from another family member. When they enter the world of adults without having adequately shaped their identity, they have much difficulty in relationships when they move on from the family of origin.

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How Piety and Perfectionism Prime a Child for Exploitation and Victimization

Human beings make mistakes, and it is unreasonable and unhealthy for people to believe that they are perfect. By embracing and anticipating the needs of children related to their characteristic of imperfection, parents can raise children who become adults who not only feel comfortable with themselves, but they learn to become accountable for the impact that their actions have on other people.

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Priming a Child for Victimization or Predatory Behavior Through Poor Regard for Developing Personal Boundaries and Vulnerability

Human beings are not omnipotent creatures, and children are definitely not invulnerable. When properly honored and taught to the child, appropriate vulnerability teaches and prepares the child to be appropriately intimate in relationships in their adult life. To achieve emotional intimacy in a healthy way, a person must be emotionally honest with their close friends and in love relationships through limited vulnerability which allows them to connect to others.

An excellent resource concerning Boundaries is the Christian book of that title by Townsend and Cloud whose topical video clips are featured HERE online.

 

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The Extremes Created by a Poor Sense of Vulnerability

As we will note in all of the characteristics of children that parents must honor, in dysfunctional homes, children tend to develop the same kinds of boundaries both modeled and taught directly to children by parents. Problems tend to develop when children fall to one extreme reaction or the other, or an ineffective mix between the two, wherein the child learns only partially effective boundaries. As one only protects what is worthwhile protecting, boundaries can be closely tied to self-worth.

The child who learns ineffective boundaries becomes too vulnerable because the parent fails to teach the child self protection. The parent may overprotect this child, objectifying them by viewing them as incapable of any discernment of their own, or they just fail to protect them altogether. The child never learns where they begin and end, and they walk into dangerous situations with no awareness of the threat of harm. Some children are taught to place implicit trust in any adult and authority figures, and in religious groups that follow patriarchy, girls are taught to obey all men without qualification. Likewise, some Christian groups teach that adults and children alike have no personal rights, viewing any suffering that comes because of lack of boundaries to be an opportunity to develop character through disappointment. These children learn passivity, or they follow passivity to avoid punishment by the parent who will tolerate no assertiveness.

The exaggerated alternative results in a child who does not set boundaries but establishes walls and thus avoids vulnerability by feigning invulnerability. They're too fearful to be vulnerable, and the cost of their safety comes at the forfeiting of emotional intimacy. They may start to develop friendships but will retreat in withdrawal. 

Internal Versus External Boundaries

• An internal boundary involves behavior and thought originating with the self, that which refers to what that person does.  Of people who have poor internal boundaries and set no limits on their own behavior, it may be said of them that such a person "knows no bounds." The primary problem originates with them as a lack of their own internal boundaries.  

A child with a collapsed sense of self may have been conditioned to set very narrow limits on their own behavior in a way that is inappropriate, allowing others too far in to their inner world, if they have any internal boundaries at all.  When any child has not been trained to respect others or basic rules of appropriate social behavior, they may violate the boundaries of others without realizing it, merely out of ignorance.   Their self-centered perspective may be the only indicator of appropriate behavior because they have not been taught to anticipate or be sensitive to the needs of others.

In the child who demonstrates too much invulnerability, they will either withdrawal from interaction all together (their created internal boundary) through antisocial personality traits, or they may exaggerate their behavior, willfully ignoring the boundaries of others by in order to feel powerful.  They claim everything (including other people) as within their own boundaries by setting no boundaries on their own behavior.

• An external boundary is a barrier that a person creates around themselves to limit outside forces.  An external boundary involves what the a allows into their world and involves saying “No.”  (LINK HERE to another Boundaries video about what the Bible says about saying "No.")

In the collapsed response, the child lets anyone and everyone take advantage of them. In the invulnerable, the child does not allow anyone to get close enough to take advantage of them, and they may be well-known for always saying “No.” Another way an external boundary can be violated presents when adults do not permit the child to own their own perceptions and experiences. If a parent does not like a particular emotion, they may punish a child for it, teaching the child that they cannot know themselves or their experience. The child is required to allow that parent in through their external boundary, exchanging their reality for that of the parent.

Vunerability Issues in Adults

In a healthy adult relationships, boundaries establish what we will and will not tolerate. For adults who grew up in very dysfunctional homes and didn't learn appropriate boundaries, this dynamic element of hard work within a relationship fails.

Those who are too vulnerable fail to establish any kind of boundary, and they let anyone have access to any area of their lives. Or they may have a difficult time establishing boundaries through assertive expression of their wants and needs, the type of person who struggles with saying “No.” Sometimes, these individuals can declare boundaries to others, but cannot motivate themselves to defend their established new boundaries. These are not boundaries at all but are merely “nice ideas” when they are not defended.

The person with very weak or non-existent boundaries may also seek to have levels of intimacy that are too close for the nature of the relationship, and this may create behavioral problems and may violate appropriate social rules. It also sets the adult up for disappointment through unmet expectations and confusion.

Some individuals may also have only partially ineffective boundaries, and in one area of life, they may be able to clearly establish what they will and will not tolerate in a relationship. But when dealing with a certain situation or a particular type of person (such as a woman raised in an extremely patriarchal system of gender hierarchy, she may find herself completely unable to establish a boundary or may have been taught that a woman must submit to the demands of men. Authority figures also pose great difficulty for the person who tends toward collapsed responses because it is human nature to tend to comply with authority.

As noted earlier, the invulnerable type of person tends to withdrawal from social interaction and may cope through an anti-social personalty. They may have erratic relationships, vacillating between the development of friendship, only to abruptly retreat in response to perceived threat. They have the opposite type of presentation concerning their problems with intimacy, but both types of manifestations prevent healthy intimacy. 

The invulnerable person can also develop ineffective coping mechanisms leading to the abuse and exploitation of others by violating their boundaries through an exaggerated response, motivated by manipulative behaviors and poorly controlled negative emotion, the extroverted expression of lack of respect. These are the classic abused people who go on to repeat the same type of abuse as their abuser modeled for them.

One might think that the person with excessively collapsed boundaries is more vulnerable to manipulation, but because the invulnerable type of person who hides behind walls craves intimacy and attachment, this basic human need can also be exploited, making this person just as vulnerable to the right influences.

Self Awareness and Self Regulation

Many adults who grew up in dysfunctional families of origin struggle with knowing themselves because they were never permitted to own their own experiences and feelings, constrained to feel only that which was set for them by someone else.

Because their boundaries were never respected or because the parent fails to realize that the child is not an adult with the capability of setting limits, the adult who uses their child as a companion or requires the child to be someone that they're not overrides that child's sense of self. The interaction is too intimate and interferes with the child's development of a sense of self.

The child has no choice and does not even realize that the relationship is emotionally inappropriate or damaging to them.  (An adult can set limits and protect their sense of self when overwhelmed by another, but the child is obligated to absorb the parent's reality because of their dependence on the adult to protect and provide for them.)

Instead of awareness of self, the child's inner world must be negated (their heart denied) in favor of the adult's experience, wants, and needs. 

These adults struggle with finding satisfying vocations, pastimes and relationships because they are unaware of their feelings and emotions and do not have much awareness of their true strengths and weaknesses. They were not encouraged to make their own decisions regarding their life choices and were required to sign the right to direct their lives over to someone else or some religious system. When they work on recovery, learning self awareness and experiencing  the liberty of choice can be a very difficult, anxiety-producing challenge.

Erratic patterns in relationships are common in people who suffer from complex PTSD, both craving attachment and fearing it and feeling unable to modulate their own behavior. So in the person with patterns built around long-standing trauma, they may have a very complex mix of incomplete boundaries, varying from the extremes of walls to the enmeshed type of unhealthy attachment found in the person with little to no boundaries at all.

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How Parents Prime Children for Victimization Through Faulty Ideas About Self Love/Esteem

 

Failing to Teach A Child Appropriate Self Love and Value

As noted in the previous post, children the characteristics of children, when respected and anticipated by the parent help to form the basis of appropriate core behaviors in adulthood. What is perhaps the most primary of these is the development of appropriate self-love, addressed briefly in an earlier post. 

When a child learns that they have precious value and the trait is honored by the parent, the child matures into an adult who can find stability and worth in themselves instead of either earning worth through outward performance (What happens when you can't perform?) or only when circumstances in life are very good.

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Understanding How Dysfunctional Families Prime Children for the Experience of Shame (Leading to Victimization)

There are many excellent Christian books concerning dysfunctional family dynamics -- that is besides the Book of Genesis which contains the best archetypal examples of how you should NOT relate to other family members! One of the most interesting families to draw out on a relationship diagram is that of Jacob, Esau and their parents, and some of the Christian self-help books in this genre look at many of the Old Testament patriarchs to explain how triangulation in relationships works. 

My favorites include titles on the topic of family relationships include Love is a Choice (by Hemfelt, Minerth, and Meier) and Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves (Stoop and Masteller) and many others which are discussed at some length on the OvercomingBotkin Syndrome blog (posts which you can find by looking for the author near the top of the tag list). I also like Sandra Wilson's Hurt People Hurt People, too. And specifically related to boundaries, the Christian books by Townsend and Cloud shouldn't go without mention, either.

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