The Truth About Ruth - Part 2 - Merge

[LucySnowe]

I went off on down a bit of a rabbit hole with the Tracey Seth. Apparently (I'm not sure whether or not to put that in inverted commas) she had a baby with died soon after birth from Hyperplastic Left Heart Syndrome, then 18 months later had a baby with sacrococcygeal teratoma. I was pretty sure it was 'RR' laying the groundwork for another con job but then I did a bit more googling and found her photobucket. Her photos seem to support her story-the same people appear in them consistently over a fairly long period of time, the pic of both babies seem to be legit. I'm not exactly going to be sending her any tip money anytime soon, but I don't think it's a scam. Anything is possible but if it is a scam, it's a whole lot more sophisticated the last one(s). It would have been years in the making.

Ah, cheers for the info.

At this point I'm so dubious of anything online, I'm not sure I'd believe Mr. Snowe's claims on the internet were it not for the fact I'm married to him!

And even then.... :shifty-kitty:

[Carla Bruni]

Yes, absolutely, be on the lookout for more scams. Her financial situation has deteriorated and she will certainly be looking for more money. The period between PM & RR - about 6 months - coincided with her getting money from other sources. When that was cut, RR appeared.

Ruth, if you're reading - you're a grown-ass adult, get a job.

[kaetrin]

Thanks for remembering my question, Kaetrin. I was mostly curious to find out if there were particular turns of phrase that really stood out, or stuff that nobody had put out there (as far as anyone knew) until RR did.

And I'd like to say the same thing to you that people are saying to contributors and sympathizers -- you have nothing to apologize for. You are not the liar and the scammer.

Thanks. I'm curious now, too, how good/specific her ATI research really was and how much I just assumed from a casual reading. I don't remember anything specific right now. All I can say based on memory is that she never used the jargon in a way that made me say, "A real ATI person would never say it that way" -- the way, for instance, I often see it used here when people are being silly and pretending to use fundie-speak. But that's pretty basic-level competence and I don't want to go down the rabbit hole right now.

[Curious]

This probably isn't the place to ask this question, please forgive me, I'm new! What exactly is Chatter? :shifty:

Quiverfull of Chatter is the "off topic" forum, though we don't really do "off topic" here in the traditional sense of the term. It's for things that are not related to snarking on fundies, essentially. It's not open to the public (when FJ is open to guests) and you have to have 75 posts to read/post there. It's also not viewable if you are in the Journey to the Heart group (which is used as a step rather than banning people).

[Curious]

I went off on down a bit of a rabbit hole with the Tracey Seth. Apparently (I'm not sure whether or not to put that in inverted commas) she had a baby with died soon after birth from Hyperplastic Left Heart Syndrome, then 18 months later had a baby with sacrococcygeal teratoma. I was pretty sure it was 'RR' laying the groundwork for another con job but then I did a bit more googling and found her photobucket. Her photos seem to support her story-the same people appear in them consistently over a fairly long period of time, the pic of both babies seem to be legit. I'm not exactly going to be sending her any tip money anytime soon, but I don't think it's a scam. Anything is possible but if it is a scam, it's a whole lot more sophisticated the last one(s). It would have been years in the making.

I think it may be safe to say that there will likely not be photos involved in any RR-like schemes unless they started pre-2008 and by some miracle are still going on. From my research, one of the issues in a previous scheme had to do with photos. I'm just guessing that is probably a mistake that won't be made again. If you notice, we never saw any photos from RR.

[uber frau]

Unless she has access to a whole family who don't mind her taking a whole lot of snaps at some fairly private moments, I doubt it's a scam. (Although I suppose it's possible to steal someone's whole album and the story to go with it).

Incidentally, are you the same Curious that posted on Calladus's blog when the PM/PM and friends thing blew?

[RealityTVRN]

So, some poor woman just picked "possummomma" as her Pinterest ID? That's the sort of bad luck that would usually happen to me!

[Curious]

Unless she has access to a whole family who don't mind her taking a whole lot of snaps at some fairly private moments, I doubt it's a scam. (Although I suppose it's possible to steal someone's whole album and the story to go with it).

Incidentally, are you the same Curious that posted on Calladus's blog when the PM/PM and friends thing blew?

No, I'm not. I posted a note about that in the Chatter thread, but didn't post one in the admin notice here because we don't have as much info in this thread and I thought it would be confusing.

[FundiPastafari]

While people are comparing writing styles, has anyone compared RR to writing in the multi-part story about a girl who was raised fundy and supposedly got out? I don't remember the link but I think it was a 10 part story. It seems that every cliche' bad thing a fundy parent could do to a kid was done to this girl and her siblings. Now I am NOT saying this person is RR, or even a fake at all, but it was a story that sort of pinged my fake-dar at the time I read it (as did RR) because of the extreme amount of bad things happening.

brokendaughters.wordpress.com/ Are you refering to this girl? I dont think shes a fake. She says that she lives in Germany right now and as far as I can tell, her story isnt fake. I also exchanged emails with her, her German was very good and she was very nice.

[ILoveJellybeans]

brokendaughters.wordpress.com/ Are you refering to this girl? I dont think shes a fake. She says that she lives in Germany right now and as far as I can tell, her story isnt fake. I also exchanged emails with her, her German was very good and she was very nice.

Mary on Homeschoolers Anonymous I think? Her story was in 10 parts and was full of things like being beaten, forced to do chores for hours on end without sleep, locked outdoors overnight for days even in the winter, being starved...

[Queen Of Hearts]

Mary on Homeschoolers Anonymous I think? Her story was in 10 parts and was full of things like being beaten, forced to do chores for hours on end without sleep, locked outdoors overnight for days even in the winter, being starved...

Yes, ILoveJellybeans, I do believe that is the one. I am not saying that her story isn't true, just that it seemed so incredibly over the top, even by fundy abuse standards, that I found myself questioning it. I always had the same reaction to RR.

FundiPastaFari, I am not familiar with the blog you mentioned but now I am going to go check it out!

[Dysfundamental]

Oddeverything, thanks for your research. Your summary post in the previous thread is outstanding.

This is the very first time I've fallen for an Internet scam! I don't know whether it was the fundie world being so alien to me personally, or my feeling that if Vyckie vouched for her, she must be legit, or just me being a dumb.

Kudos to everyone who figured it out.

[mausi]

brokendaughters.wordpress.com/ Are you refering to this girl? I dont think shes a fake. She says that she lives in Germany right now and as far as I can tell, her story isnt fake. I also exchanged emails with her, her German was very good and she was very nice.

Thanks for posting the link to this blog, I have never seen it. I had to laugh at her 'Things I Miss About the US' post from 10. June; some of it seemed a bit over the top, but Nr. 5, Opening Hours... LOL So true. I am currently in the States and went to the stores last Sunday just because I could. :cracking-up:

[salsa]

Mary on Homeschoolers Anonymous I think? Her story was in 10 parts and was full of things like being beaten, forced to do chores for hours on end without sleep, locked outdoors overnight for days even in the winter, being starved...[/quote]

That is what makes it hard to call people on what seems like shite but may not be. I had doubts about Mary's story and stopped reading, but even so I remember thinking or maybe even posting here something to the effect of, "while I'm suspicious just because the story seems over the top, in the event that it is at least partially a real story, I also don't want to cause further hurt to someone who may be trying to recover from abuse."

Folks felt this way about Ruth, too. It wasn't until just today that I learned that Ruth supposedly left 10 years ago. I thought her leaving was within the last few years and that was why she wasn't quite stable. 10 years seems a long time to be on the lam even from ATI.

Some stories are true-ish but much embellished "A Million Little Pieces" and I always suspected some of Dave Pelzer's story.

Others are pure bs - "Go Ask Alice" (wasn't that the diary of a drug addict was called)

and the thread about the 80's satanic cult scare illustrates how groupthink works.

No one is immune to it. People are human beings and, for the most part, we naturally seek ways to connect with others. That's how confidence people work - they know that human nature is basically good.

Oh, by the way. I locked my keys in the car down the road about 3/4ths of a mile and I called a locksmith but he charges $20 and all I have is $17.50. Could you spare a few dollars so I can get him to come out and let me in?

on edit: .... I NEED $17.50, cash only. I'll pay you right back once I get into my car and get my wallet out.

[Curious]

Others are pure bs - "Go Ask Alice" (wasn't that the diary of a drug addict was called)

Wait. What? Go Ask Alice wasn't real? I read that years ago when I was a teenager or maybe a preteen (clearly my parents didn't monitor my reading too much as a youngster).

[rward]

Go Ask Alice was pure fiction. Good fiction, but fiction.

[salsa]

Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist, wrote it. It's very handy, if sad, that the supposed author is found dead a few weeks after her last entry.

I think her intentions were good - people were pretty scared about drugs back then (with good reason, IMO, but it was more of a panic) and it was meant to create awareness of how your life really could go when you get mixed up in it.

[Curious]

Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist, wrote it. It's very handy, if sad, that the supposed author is found dead a few weeks after her last entry.

I think her intentions were good - people were pretty scared about drugs back then (with good reason, IMO, but it was more of a panic) and it was meant to create awareness of how your life really could go when you get mixed up in it.

Not that I was ever a wild and crazy person that probably would have gotten mixed up in drugs even if I hadn't read it, but reading it did impact me. I had no idea it was not true all these years.

[BravaAmica]

Go Ask Alice was pure fiction. Good fiction, but fiction.

So was A Million Little Pieces. He lied about the whole thing- Oprah devoted an entire episode to calling him out.

[GenerationCedarchip]

Mary on Homeschoolers Anonymous I think? Her story was in 10 parts and was full of things like being beaten, forced to do chores for hours on end without sleep, locked outdoors overnight for days even in the winter, being starved...

Yes - I have to admit that she and RR have both pinged my "fake" radar at times. I've known folks who escaped fundie. We've got a lot of inner drama and some childhood stories that are pretty weird and most of us know of some households that were pretty twisted. Even so, the constant, over-the-top abuse of Mary's story just started to seem off to me.

I'm only just now catching up on the Ruth threads (holy cow!) but I have to say she was good at first. Over at No Longer Quvering, she did sound believable. It was an extreme story, but I could buy it. It was after this forum pointed me to her blog that I started wondering because things just seemed to conveniently happen to her in ways I'd never seen in real life. I think it was around the time of the breakup with the fiance that I started to wonder because the tone of her writing in those entries was just so strange and her portrayal of events seemed a little skewed. Her cross country moving saga on here clinched it for me, though. I couldn't prove anything, so I never spoke up but things just seemed not to add up.

Am totally itching to know what public docs people found that keep being referenced, btw.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Yes, absolutely, be on the lookout for more scams. Her financial situation has deteriorated and she will certainly be looking for more money. The period between PM & RR - about 6 months - coincided with her getting money from other sources. When that was cut, RR appeared.

Ruth, if you're reading - you're a grown-ass adult, get a job.

So - just for confirmation of my curiosity - the moderators and others actually do know who this is now, in RL, enough to find her actual financial situation?

(I have no desire to know who it is, just am curious to know how solidly the hammer has come down, is all!)

I didn't follow the Ruth posts ever, but with some interest in scamming I have now read the threads about putting it all together from the past few days, and yeah, wow.

These stories and scams seem to always be going on somewhere. Even when there's no money involved or probably any serious "scam" happening, there are always posters on forums who seem to have an insatiable need to be the object of sympathy, to always have the "worst" or "most extreme" story, or to belong to the most "oppressed" category. Someone posts that X happens to them and these posters will come up with their tales of how "that's terrible, I know because I had a three times worse XXX story!" infinitely. "You think it's bad being a Y? I'm a YYY and let me tell you..."

With these people, any offers of advice are ignored, or there's a reason why it won't work in their case or they can't take you up on it. Every. Single. Time. Probably I'd say that's the #1 red flag. Even suggestions about how they fix things on their own, or "hey I did this for free and it helped me" will be turned down, because the bottom line is they don't want to solve their problems.

...and their real problems aren't the ones they're posting about.

[salsa]

So was A Million Little Pieces. He lied about the whole thing- Oprah devoted an entire episode to calling him out.

I remember that, but I thought it was an embellished story of his recovery and not a total fabrication.

See how tough it is? Unless you want to go around being a sourpuss cynic all the time, it's can be disconcertingly tough to tell truth from fiction.

Hell, there are websites like snopes and truthorfiction that are devoted to just that

[Knight of Ni]

Nurse Nell, thanks for clarifying. I must have been confusing adenoids with the tonsils as being non functional. Take it from someone whose tonsils and adenoids were surgically made non functional at the age of 7. All went out.

Back to RR.

I only began to experience major problems with my tonsils when I was an adult. I had problems with strep, constant sore throats, and something called tonsil stones. (If you're squeamish don't look those up on Google.) So while rare, adults can experience tonsil problems.

[nerdymama1]

Princessjo is still an active member here. I believe she is going through some real life stuff right now, but she does actively read. I always felt sorry for how much crap she took over this, so I hope she and also Red Headed Skeptic (who I believe left during the Yuku days) are feeling vindicated now. I wonder if jo is still in contact with RHS and cant let her know.

I already know, and have been rather riveted to this discussion. (Housework and parenting be damned!) I have debated and debated jumping in with more than a vague comment because I really did not want to be involved in more FJ drama and I thought it would look tacky to stop posting after RR drama and come back during RR drama, but I can fill in some holes (maybe) and add some new info. I haven't before because I am rather nervous about doing so, plus I didn’t want to drag PrincessJo into drama she maybe didn’t want to get into. So my apologies if I do that in any way. Here is the story from my perspective:

Jo and I had some contact off board. We were fb friends with each other and with Vyckie. I had some doubts about RR, mainly that I didn’t see how her father had found her anonymous blog within a month of posting it. (I brought up my concerns on FJ and RR ignored them. I brought them up again in the deleted thread and her explanation of it did not ring true.) I also knew she was exaggerating when she talked about how angry ATI was about it or how threatening her blog was to them. Why would an organization be so threatened by an anonymous blog most people had never heard of?! She also said some things that made me wonder, but I chalked it up to RR’s family being into Gothard much more than mine. We weren’t ATI, but we made it through the advanced seminar and anger seminar. Because of that, when RR would talk about Gothard things, I thought there were some obvious things she DIDN’T talk about, and I found that odd, but since I don’t give out every detail about me, I figured I was overanalyzing. I also found it odd that she was still so helpless when she’d been out, at the time, about 7 or 8 years, when I’d been out for only 2, though again, chalked that up to her being much deeper into it than my family was.

When Jo posted the thread instigated by Vyckie, I first posted something like, well, I had doubts, but I overall believe her because she knows so much about what life is like as a fundie. Then Jo messaged me on fb and told me Vyckie had asked her to post about it. (She did NOT ask me to help her. I want to make that very clear.) We had a conversation about our doubts, and when I found out Vyckie was behind it, I thought, ohhhh, well, if someone like Vyckie is having doubts, then I can feel more free to express mine. So I did. It did not go over well! :lol:

From what I remember in that thread, I was very confused about the way Vyckie came in like she had NO IDEA what was going on and I didn’t understand RR’s martyrdom about the whole thing. But I felt extremely pressured, so I apologized to RR both on and off board. (That bitch now owes ME an apology, haha!) I also gave her a rundown of libel laws because I was a former fundie-light blogger and my husband was then a law student, and at that point, she said she didn’t want to out herself because she was worried about the legal repercussions. But she ignored it and continued saying she was worried about being sued before changing her story awhile later. Or maybe it was one reason she used for awhile. I don't remember exactly. Either way, both left a very bad taste in my mouth and I stopped reading Vyckie and removed the RR link from my blog. Because she claims to be from NW Arkansas where I lived at the time and claims to have a similar background, I did read RR occasionally to see which way it would go. I felt both like she was still exaggerating (I thought at the time that she was both a former fundie AND some kind of compulsive liar) and like a horrible person for maligning a poor abused fundie.

Anyways, right after the major drama thread, I asked Jo if Vyckie was ever able to confirm anything about RR since the thread resolved with RR supposedly going to tell Vyckie her identity. I think there was a phone call where RR didn’t actually tell Vyckie anything, and that Vyckie never was able confirm RR’s identity, but after the major flare up of drama, she certainly wasn’t going to say so! I do not know for a fact what actually happened, though, since Vyckie wasn’t very trustworthy either.

I met Jo in person and she stayed at my house for about a week. (She is absolutely amazing, btw! My daughter still talks about her and begs me to go visit her!) We had a huge discussion about the RR drama and added a few more major holes in RR’s story that had developed since. During that time, RR claimed that Rachel had received help from legal aid. Well my husband had since graduated from law school and was a lawyer at that organization. He couldn’t break confidentiality with names or details we knew, but we asked if he would check to see if anyone matching Rachel’s situation came through at all. No one had. I also read him RR’s description of her encounter with legal aid and he was able to confirm it did not work like that. I showed him her description of her encounter with the legal system in Arkansas after she ran away and he said without a doubt that her blog was full of bullshit because even a small municipality doesn’t work like that. That was the moment I stopped waffling and feeling like a bad person for doubting RR. I did think at the time that she probably had a friend who was ATI, but I don’t think that anymore. I think her “friend†was blogs and message boards. (Remember when RR was suddenly living in a camper right around the time the Shraders were being discussed living in their pop up?)

But I’ve always been curious about when/if she’ll get caught. I thought she had gotten away with it when she first closed her blog down. And even though I thought I had satisfied the sock puppet question on the first drama-filled thread, I did notice that people who were upset about people questioning RR were considerably less vicious about it once the board migrated.

Like I said upthread somewhere, I think RR succeeded because she was so vague on the details. Former Gothard people DID doubt RR, but were immediately shut down. RR also says on her profile that her family may not be like every other family so that disclaimer would make people question their doubts.

So anyways, that’s all I know, or at least all I remember at the moment. I am back to mostly lurking now and really hope this post didn’t come across as me having any kind of vendetta against RR or thriving on drama in any way. I’ve been curious, but that’s about it. I just wanted to help fill in some details, particularly about whether or not Vyckie had confirmed RR’s identity.

Wow, this is a massively long post. Kudos to anyone who read it.

[Curious]

So - just for confirmation of my curiosity - the moderators and others actually do know who this is now, in RL, enough to find her actual financial situation?

Circumstantially, most likely yes.

Edited to make my answer a little less final. I don't think we are likely ever going to have 100% concrete proof, but we are comfortable saying that RR is a fictional persona.