* Trigger
Alert for those who were previously abused. *
My thoughts keep drifting off to
the late Hana Alemu “Williams” who died from neglect and abuse at
age thirteen under the care of her evangelical Christian parents who
homeschooled her. I'm also deeply concerned about her surviving
adopted brother, a fellow Ethiopian named Immanuel who is now twelve
years old. I was surprised to learn yesterday that the Williams' defense team rested their case on this past Friday.
Late Edit 2025: Both parents were convicted for her death and are currently serving long prison sentences.
Following the death of two other
adopted children as a consequence of a system of allegedly Biblical
corporal punishment, it was Hana's death that finally compelled me to
attend a meeting of the
International
Cultic Studies Association after more than a decade of
procrastinating. I was deeply honored that Janet Heimlich (author of
Breaking
Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment)
was able to attend
my
presentation there concerning how some sectors of evangelical
patriarchy use ideology to vilify both women and children, as well as
how this vilification can result in physical abuse, morbidity, and
mortality.
For those of you who are unfamiliar
with Michael Pearl or these deaths, I will again revisit this
subject, hopefully offering you a helpful synopsis. I elect not to
address the Pearl-related death of four year old
Sean
Paddock who died of asphyxia in 2006 because his case is rather
different than these other two more recent ones. I will also refer
you to this post about the death of
Lydia
Schatz for more details. (Her parents, who believed that they were providing their daughter with better opportunities, were alive in Liberia at the time of her death, as Kathryn Joyce reports in her book,
The Child Catchers.) I've also written a
long
series of posts about the ideological pressures used against
these homeschooling parents and the moral disengagement that results
from the thought reform promoted through the writings and among the
followers of Michael Pearl. Also note
this
list of all posts discussing harm to children as a consequence of
religiously motivated discipline programs for children with a focus
on Pearl, including off-site links to additional history,
information, and resources.
Comparing and Contrasting the
Williams and Schatz Families
Hana died in her Washington State home
as a consequence of profound neglect and physical abuse at the age of
thirteen, though the defendants are attempting to dispute her age.
(If it can be demonstrated that Hana was sixteen at the time of her
death due to poor documentation or deception on the part of the
adoption agency and the orphanage in Ethiopia, her parents face
lesser criminal charges concerning their role in her death.) I'm
also struggling with my mix of thoughts and emotions concerning their
adoptive parents. I find that I had far more compassion for the
contrite parents of the Liberian adoptees,
Lydia
and Zariah Schatz. These Evangelical Christian homeschooling
parents faced a similar situation, and were very guilty of horrible
abuse, but I also understand the tremendous power of the thought
reform used by Pearl and the tremendous pressures within the culture
of homeschooling to follow Pearl's methods.
In the Schatz Family, while using the
Michael Pearl recommended implement to hit seven year old Lydia after
several hours for mispronouncing a spelling word, the child collapsed
from the consequences of renal failure. She was found dead in the
Chico, California home of Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz when emergency
services arrived, the home where these evangelical Christians
homeschooled their children. Lydia's surviving thirteen year old
sister Zariah was also found to be in renal failure as well and was
hospitalized. The parents plead guilty to the charges against them
in 2011 and were incarcerated, but they also demonstrated great
remorse. Testimonies from the people who knew them well found them
to be kind people but were following the instructions of Michael
Pearl to obtain the results that he promised them – if they
followed his instructions implicitly. The children's bodies broke
before their spirits and behavior did.
I Find the Williams Family Much More
Disturbing
Though I am not discounting the
influence of Pearl on Carri Williams in particular, I am more deeply
troubled by what seems to me to be a lack of integrity, familial
love, and parental concern in the behavior and example of the
Williams parents. I see little to no contrition in them, and I am
also very disturbed by the lack of loving sacrifice on the part of
Larry and Carri Williams for one other in this legal battle. Each
Williams parent has plead “not guilty” to the charges against
them, and the individual testimonies of the parents label the other
for the responsibility for choosing the specific methods allegedly
meant to discipline their adopted children. Each parent claims to
have only been complying with the poor decisions the other in the
hope of reducing their own culpability and sentence. We shall see
how these arguments impressed the jury later this week.
I find their individual self-interest
at the expense of their respective spouse deeply troubling,
particularly because Carri claimed under oath this week that they
followed a complementarian gender hierarchy in their marriage. If
that were truly the case in principle, each partner would be “falling
on the sword” to spare the other party a more stringent sentence,
just out of principle if not also just out of mutual love. We've
witnessed just the opposite this week. They attempted to blame and
smear one another to spare themselves a greater punishment. In
coming days, we will learn whether or not this was an effective
strategy, though I believe that it speaks poorly of their character.
Emmanuel suffered from urinary
incontinence,
not
an uncommon problem for boys that age who have been adopted from
foreign orphanages. The Williams parents both testified that they
felt that the child did so willfully, so he was not only forced to
sleep on the floor, was locked in from the outside of the family's
“shower room” and nursery closet for as long as twelve to fifteen
hours (with linens and blankets for comfort), was “hosed down” in
the yard outside, and siblings would also do so in the house with
Emmanuel as a punishment. (I've read nothing about Hana suffering
from bedwetting, but I have read references to testimony that she was
also being hosed down like an animal in the yard outside of the
home.) Both children spent time sleeping on the floor in these
aforementioned rooms rooms that were locked from the outside, one
that kept the children in complete darkness, though Hana also would
be required to sleep in the barn in a sleeping bag. For Hana, to
correct her thinking, the family would play audio recordings of the
Bible from outside of the nursery closet while she was locked there
in the dark for extended hours.
The Williams' natural children were
told to stop using sign language with Emmanuel at some point, and
they would only communicate with him by stomping on the floor. Both
Hana and Emmanuel were eventually served frozen food or sandwiches
made with bread that was soaked in liquid to make it unpleasant, and
they were often forced to take meals together alone outside, away
from the family. (Some of this was explained as punishment for
stealing food.) Hana was found to have an H. pylori infection which
contributes to some gastric ulcers, so this was certainly no help to
her condition of malnourishment. These adopted children were
eventually excluded from the celebration of holidays with the rest of
the family. Hana's head was shaved more than once, and because of
concern about a Hepatitis B infection, she was eventually restricted
to use of an outdoor chemical toilet and was denied use of the
facilities inside the home. And, of course, there were the beatings
with switches, plumbing line, and
glue
sticks. The children were beaten on the bottoms of their feet
per Emmanuel's testimony, a time honored practice of child abusers
because resulting injuries are harder to notice. It is legal in the
State of Washington to spank a child, so long as the action leaves no
signs of a mark on the skin or tissue.
The Williams' natural children were
spared the extensive abuse that was inflicted upon adopted, foreign
born Hana and Immanuel. This was also true of the Schatz family, but
to my knowledge, their siblings were not also instructed to
participate in the Pearl-recommended abuse practices. The Williams
parents not only enlisted their other natural children to punish
their adopted siblings, they also instructed their children to
conceal information and lie to authorities about the measures used
against Hana and Emmanuel. Though
Bill
Gothard and
Jonathan
Lindvall have also either recommended or practiced restriction of
food and confinement in locked closets and rooms, and though Pearl
has recommended the hosing of incontinent children out of doors to
shame them into compliance, the Williams Family seem to me to have
grossly extended these already abusive methods. Experts witnesses
defined these practices and treatment as torture. The food issues
also seem more significant when considering Hana's substantial weight
loss and the fact that both adopted children had no access to medical
care since 2009. (Recall that Hana died in May of 2011).
I understand well that defense
attorneys are hired to defend their clients, and part of their job
involves exhausting every loophole available to either vindicate
their clients or at least mitigate charges so that their clients face
the least imposing sentence as is possible. In addition to all of
the deeply disturbing aspects of this process, I've found the
grilling of Emmanuel, Hana's brother, to be especially difficult.
This young, deaf boy spent several days on the stand, for two and a
half hours each day only, using deaf interpreters. This boy was
questioned and negated, and it was even suggested that he'd altered
his testimony because he received lunches and was allowed to play
video games while waiting to give testimony because of this special
treatment. (Though many therapists testified that the boy suffered
from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, this was also aggressively
challenged, but these witnesses adamantly maintained that the trauma
occurred in the Williams' home after the adoption.) The child was
miserably treated while in the Williams' home, but he was questioned
in an adversarial way before the court as though he was the source of
this own problems, soliciting his own abuse due to poor behavior. He
witnessed the starving of his sister and shared in a good deal of the
treatment that Hana received, but he was treated as the culprit by
those advocating for his parents.
I am also disgusted by Carri Williams
similar testimony about Hana. Carri stated in court that she
believes that Hana had, in fact, “killed herself,” consistent
with what she reported to the 911 Emergency Operator. She also
claimed under oath that Hana did not look emaciated (my wording)
until she saw the child dead on the floor of her home. My
interpretation of her statements suggest that she believed that if
Hana was found to be under weight upon autopsy, then she (Carrie, the
mother) felt that it was a condition that had something to do with
the dying process and was not due to starvation prior to death.
On social media and in comments in some
media reports of the trial, people who knew Carri claim that she was
not only a long-time and zealous evangelist for Pearl's methods, she
also allegedly made statements to people that she could not wait for
Hana to come of age so that she no longer had to be responsible for
her. This was likely another motivation to make the claim that Hana
was actually older than the stated age noted on her adoption and
homeschooling enrollment documentation. If Hana were just a year or
two older than they were lead to believe, the Williams Family could
disown her sooner rather than later. Some have also stated that
Carri had a fantasy about adopting a younger, doll-like girl that she
could mold and model, but instead, found a budding teen in her care,
complete with what Carri called “oppositional” behavior. This
brings to mind other things I have written about
parental
convenience as opposed to a duty to care appropriately for a
child.
For the past few weeks, we have not
only read reports of testimony wherein the parents of these children
have blamed one another for the conditions that Hana lived under,
we've heard Carrie claim that she was not ignorant of both Hana's
declining health and of other approaches or resources that could have
helped them overcome the challenges they faced with both of these
adopted children. They've sought to have Hana's documented age
changed, allegedly, to reduce their own culpability and the magnitude
of their sentencing. And, most notably, Carri Williams claims in
many ways that the children were responsible for their own suffering
and demise. As she states on the call to 911, Hana killed herself.
When the emergency operator asked her to explain why Carri thought
Hana had “killed herself” (wondering what symptoms made her
believe that the girl was indeed dead), Carri's immediate response
was,
“Um,
she's really rebellious.”
To find summaries of each day of court
testimony and news reports, please visit the website,
Why
Not Train A Child? You will find daily summaries there, links to
media reports, in addition to a catalogue of information about all of
these deaths. I am also beyond impressed with writer Maureen
McCauley Evans' reporting on the events and testimony in the
courtroom, so much as she's been able. She's chronicled events on
her blog,
Light
of Day Stories. Both of these sources will direct you to media
reports from which my here summary was drawn.
The Pearl Method
For those of you who are unfamiliar
with Pearl, though you may
read
more HERE, let me offer this summary. Michael Pearl is an
evangelical minister with a Baptist flavor who follows a system of
strict, adversarial hierarchy in the home. As you will have noted in
the embedded videos, he devised an authoritarian system of corporal
punishment for children. In terms of gender, his wife lays out her
family's beliefs in the very shame-based book called
Created
to be His Helpmeet which became staggeringly popular among
Evangelical Christian homeschoolers. He calls his system of
punishment “Child Training” which quotes the language of the King
James Translation of the Bible directly. He propagates his methods
through his parachurch organization and magazine, both named
No
Greater Joy (coining another phrase written by the Apostle
Paul), and through his book called
To
Train Up A Child. Considering that most of the people who
subscribe to his teachings ascribe to a special creation theory of
the origins of life and a special status for mankind as created in
God's image, Pearl ironically leans towards what I would define as an
evolutionary or Darwinian model of how to approach behavioral
training and management in children. He derives his behavior
modification system for children from the same approach used by the
Amish to train horses.
I will state that the book does a very
good job of stressing the consistency that a young child needs, I
find little else about the book that is positive. It shames parents
into accepting a system that requires parents to hit their children
with a whip-like piece of pluming supply line because it does not
leave lasting marks on the skin. (This technique has resulted in
rhabdomyolosis,
a potentially lethal condition that causes kidney failure resulting
from substantial muscle damage, fragments from which lodge within and
block the filtering structures within the kidney.) According to
Pearl, punishment must continue until a child's behavior (or
comfortable breathing) has been completely “broken,” as
demonstrated by the child's passive posture and behavior. Failure to
follow through into this broken state is tantamount to sending the
child to hell, as resisting the parent is directly analogous to
rebellion against God Himself that will surely persist into that
child's adulthood.
The media continues to report that the
book advocates the striking of children with an implement as early as
six months of age, but the book and isolated quotes on the website
also state that if a two month old can “fuss,” they can be
punished.
(Read pertinent quotes from the book HERE,
and do not buy the book but read the text HERE.)
Pearl also teaches the binding and squeezing of infants to cease
their crying (the cause of Sean Paddock's death), not as a method of
making that child feel secure but as a form of punishment to arrest
behavior. As wives are thought of to be the natural enemy of the
husband due to an inherent gender-based adversarial relationship,
infants are also defined as diabolical tyrants who willfully seek to
dominate their parents. This type of attitude towards other human
beings for a greater cause has been demonstrated in Albert Bandura's
research to cause
moral
disengagement.
For more comprehensive information
documenting and critiquing Michael Pearl's approach, please visit the
website,
Why Not Train a
Child? The host there, Hermana Linda, has tirelessly catalogued
and noted all of the documentation related to these cases, criticisms
of Pearl, commentaries about him, and some of Pearl's own responses
to criticism against him. She also tracks good information about
other practices of abuse within the Fundamentalist Evangelical
Christian community.
Tulip Girl
also hosts a blog with moving perspectives, documentation and
histories concerning Pearl, the fallen victims and the survivors,
other “Christian” restrictive/abusive child-raising systems, as
well as inspiring posts about moving on from such systems to embrace
far better alternatives.
Sigh....
In summary, it is quite obvious that I
am grieved for the children who suffer (and have died) under this
kind of abuse, and I grieve for the parents who were emotionally and
spiritually blackmailed into employing such aggressive and harmful
practices of abuse because they believed these techniques would be
the best thing for their children. Many did so because they believed
that it was possible to remove the motivation for bad behavior if not
sin itself from the hearts of their children. Many did so, believing
that they were actually saving their children's souls from eternal
hell and torture. And then, there are other parents who I believe
follow these practices because they promise them that they will
achieve their implausible fantasies. I think that some also wish for
their lives to be easier, so they follow these practices for their
own convenience.
As a Christian, I am grieved that such
extreme cases have come to represent what Christianity produces, and
they use it as a straw man to discount Christians, God, if not all
religious pursuits. I find that Pearl's book weaves some Christian
ideas into his traditions, but they are not Christian traditions that
are found clearly and plainly in the Bible. Some people look at the
extreme example of Pearl and believe that he represents all of us.
Those who have issues with faith and with Christianity, or even those
who have had bad experiences with or in homeschooling where these
techniques gained great popularity can use them as a straw man to
discount all Christians. In private, I often say that the cruelty of
the fringe give the good and earnest Christians and homeschoolers a
terrible name, when we do not even follow or believe these types of
principles and do not live these lifestyles. Christianity purposes
to show forth God's love and boasts that it is the source of health,
life, and eternal life. These examples resulted in sad abuse and
death. All of this leaves me broken in so many ways, I cannot count
them.
Hopefully,
there will be more to come
(I
am planning two additional posts)
concerning
nouthetic and Biblical counseling
after
the Williams Trial has concluded.
