Home is Where the Hurt is: a haunting blog

[AuntCloud]

Between watching the Boston images and reading this blog, I didn't get much sleep last night.

It's a 10-part story of growing up in a family who started out normal and loving but turned out Pearl-level abusive in the name of fundiedom. If it's a true account, and I would somehow like to believe it's not, there are "training" methods there that have been taken directly from torture how-to manuals, except that the people being tortured are young kids who are supposed to love and depend on their parents.

The blog is part of a larger site that has been mentioned here before, so I won't take it personally if it is merged.

http://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress ... -part-one/

[MamaJunebug]

Thanks for posting, and good on you for not taking it personally if it's merged. Merging has no intrinsic value judgment as to whose topic is better or better-titled, it's just a prudent way of keeping all the information and comments on a topic in one place.

Or trying to, anyway! ;)

[belly_button]

This is horrible. I got to part three and had to stop. I agree, AuntCloud, I would like to believe this is not a true account. Why would people ever have kids if they hate them so much. I look at my girls and wonder how could anyone ever want to cause their child pain. Sure I get angry or frustrated as a parent but I cannot fathom hitting or treating them like that.

I drive by the local police station on my way home from work every day. This month they have pinwheels up in the grass and a sign that says each pinwheel is for a verified case of child abuse in our county since April is child abuse awareness month (or something like that). It makes me want to throw up.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Ive been reading this, and it is completely and utterly terrible :( How could someone do such a thing to their kids??? Why would anyone think that beating and depriving their kids of food and sleep is a legitimate discipline strategy. There is nothing in the Bible that says it is okay to torture your children.

These people must really hate their kids.

I cant wait for the next bit, I want to find out how Mary got out of this abusive situation

[browngrl]

I just finished reading. The author is up to part six so far and things are just getting worse and worse. Now, I am just hoping that (1) this is a fictional account (2) if real - then somehow the children manage to get help.

For anyone who is triggered by abuse DO NOT READ. Some terrible things happen.

[Rosa]

Aunt Cloud, I keep starting to read and having to stop.

The thing that always haunts me in these cases is, there's always one parent who is NOT home all day. What do they THINK is going on? What are the chances of two human beings who happen to be married to each other being into this kind of torture?

Sadly, I expect it's true - like Jesusland, like the various parents who starve or expose their kids to death, whether they're religious or not. It's just horrible.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Both of the parents are aware of what is going on. Its mostly the mom doing the beatings, but the dad is also involved. I get the feeling that the mom is the worst though, and she also yells at the dad a lot.

[GenerationCedarchip]

This is horrible. I got to part three and had to stop. I agree, AuntCloud, I would like to believe this is not a true account. Why would people ever have kids if they hate them so much. I look at my girls and wonder how could anyone ever want to cause their child pain. Sure I get angry or frustrated as a parent but I cannot fathom hitting or treating them like that.

I drive by the local police station on my way home from work every day. This month they have pinwheels up in the grass and a sign that says each pinwheel is for a verified case of child abuse in our county since April is child abuse awareness month (or something like that). It makes me want to throw up.

Social Services does that in my county, too. The part that upsets me the most is that I know for a fact that they have to work all year long to be able to make enough pinwheels for the display. :cry:

[rward]

This is horrible. I got to part three and had to stop. I agree, AuntCloud, I would like to believe this is not a true account. Why would people ever have kids if they hate them so much. I look at my girls and wonder how could anyone ever want to cause their child pain. Sure I get angry or frustrated as a parent but I cannot fathom hitting or treating them like that.

I drive by the local police station on my way home from work every day. This month they have pinwheels up in the grass and a sign that says each pinwheel is for a verified case of child abuse in our county since April is child abuse awareness month (or something like that). It makes me want to throw up.

For the same reason people go out of their way to get dogs, and then beat and starve them to death.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

I only read the first two parts and then I got too stressed out. The mom is angry and depressed and this story is unfortunately all too common.

[GodsKnickers]

Oh hello, my life. Sooooo many similarities. There were some things that were different - never wet the bed, wasn't raped (unless I've suppressed that) but was molested, parents were equally insane like this, and so on.

My dad really liked to do that belt snapping thing, at home. When we traveled, dad kept a piece of fan belt in the glovebox and that's what we'd get smacked with - let me tell you, when that thing connected? Yeeeowch, big time. We used to hide it in the Gideon bible in the hotel rooms, when we got a chance, if we could do so unnoticed. My parents already brought their bibles everywhere, so we knew they'd never crack open the Gideon bible in the room, so in our minds, that made it a perfect spot to hide it.

If you want to see a mild version of the beatings we used to get, you remember that video (below, behind spoiler tags) that came out a couple of years ago, about that Judge (William Adams) that beat his daughter with a belt? Yeah, that was our life too.

Trigger warning, before you view, if you haven't seen it before.

Wl9y3SIPt7o

[AnywhereButHere]

I need to go hug my kid now... I'd love to believe it was all made up, but whether or not this story is, for so many kids it isn't, and that is truly sickening.

I'm wondering about the mom in this account. With the unexplained headaches and health problems, is it possible she had either an undiagnosed mental illness or maybe a tumor affecting her behavior? Not saying she would have been parent of the year in any case, but it does seem like things escalated after the mention of mom's hospital stay. I do want to know how things end, but I don't know if I can read any more of this story without throwing up. I hope to god all of the siblings made it out of that house.

[Ex 2x2]

I am so sorry to any of you who experienced this kind of thing. I am horrified. The only good ending to this is both of those monsters in prison.

I do have one question though...do we know if they are Pearl followers or ATI or what? They don't seem fundie...there's the mention of homeschooling, devotions, and church but that's it. Far be it from me to defend the Pearls, but even they, I don't think, would advocate this level of abuse.

I'm confused on the rape part. Was she imagining it? If not, who was raping her? (If any of this needs to be put under spoilers b/c of being triggering, can the mods please do so? I don't know how that works.)

[gulag]

I need to go hug my kid now... I'd love to believe it was all made up, but whether or not this story is, for so many kids it isn't, and that is truly sickening.

I'm wondering about the mom in this account. With the unexplained headaches and health problems, is it possible she had either an undiagnosed mental illness or maybe a tumor affecting her behavior? Not saying she would have been parent of the year in any case, but it does seem like things escalated after the mention of mom's hospital stay. I do want to know how things end, but I don't know if I can read any more of this story without throwing up. I hope to god all of the siblings made it out of that house.

That's what I'm thinking.

Very interesting. Not just FJ, but other blogs as well - half the people say, oh yeah, pretty common abuse story. The other half are horrified and sickened, can't conceive of it.

I read all six parts and went looking for the next installments. Which I couldn't find, by the way. My thought was relief. Just relief. Apparently it wasn't just us at our house. See, some of us carry our little dirty secrets like this, even as well-educated adults, thinking we really are the only ones who had something like that happen, even though we intellectually know better.

I always feel funny because our stuff was like this. Weird and traumatic and being yanked out of bed, clipboards, assignments and being thrown outside, sometimes in underwear. Concentration camp stuff. Not a discipline style. Weirdness. I discovered that a wet bathing suit under your clothes worked to make it not hurt so much, so I started wearing a bathing suit all the time.

And lots of minimizing - it wasn't really that bad. Real child abuse is being chained up in the back yard or really really crazy stuff. And that didn't happen to us. This is just having a stressed-out mother. Lots of people do. Lots of people get spankings and have to do chores. Not quite the same, but still. They just have nicer parents, that's all.

Was I abused as a child? Oh, god no. My parents are wonderful kind people that do a lot for others. Other people really like them. Very well respected in the community. This kind of stuff only happens in alcoholic families. Dysfunctional families and lower-end intellectual capacity. Not us.

This wasn't about extreme religious practice or doctrine (we weren't churchy), drunken raging, incapacitated adults, or not knowing better. I don't know what this was about. No idea why this happened.

I don't talk about it because the few times I did, I was embarrassed and ashamed at my listener's horror. Yes, someone else's horror and sympathy makes me feel ashamed. When I disclosed to a counselor, getting a pat on the head, being urged to cry, compassionate comforting, all make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Not comforted. I don't have the desire to cry, but they think I should. Am I supposed to?

Why would I cry? I celebrate every day that I'm all grown up and not little anymore. My brother and I used to laugh about it. Uproariously. Laugh until tears came down our cheeks. Mimic my mother and her screaming and crying. I didn't know until recently that that's a coping mechanism. Comic relief. But I wish I hadn't been informed of that, because now it's not so funny.

[GodsKnickers]

Gulag, do you find that you and your brother remember things that the other has forgotten? While my sibs and I have many of the same stories, there are things that they've blocked out that I remember clear as day and vice versa. Generally, one or two of us will remember the same things that the other two don't, so it lends credence to the memory for us.

[gulag]

No. We don't discuss it seriously. Evah. And we don't mock anymore, since now we know that's bad. :?

We have the same memories of the same things. Nothing repressed, that we consciously know of. We experienced the same thing at the same times. It was formulaic - same behaviors, every day, every month, year after year. We had a secret language, a code, so we could warn each other as we walked past, or when the other guy came in the door, assessing the hazard level before entering the room.

There was no single belt. Everything was a weapon. Whatever was in reach. We'd clear rooms of everything portable. It was an ordinary routine that we just did on auto-pilot, without thinking. If we saw something lying there, like a stick one of the kids brought in from outside or whatever, we'd quickly stash it behind something, out of sight and out of reach.

That was one of the topics we laughed about - reminiscing about the parents searching for some object that nobody could find, when it had been _right_there_. We knew where it was. We'd calculate the value of keeping the object out of sight, against escalating frustration about the missing thing, while we ran around frantically "looking" for it. If the scales tipped and violent melt-down was imminent, we'd produce it as if we had just found it. Boy, I tell ya, it's hard to hide a toaster.

Long after we had all moved out and our old house had been empty and vacant for years, we were moving an old huge chest freezer for my dad. Pulling the freezer away from the wall, 50 or 60 orange Hot Wheels tracks tumbled out from behind it. We all kind of froze, like we had been discovered. We had stopped playing with the Hot Wheels and had secreted the 2-foot-long lengths of track behind the freezer, one at a time. Until they all disappeared. We were in trouble at some point for not taking care of gifts and losing things. The Hot Wheels set.

We stood there in silence. Not knowing what to do with them. Until one of us said: "Well, do we still have the cars...?" We burst out laughing.

[GodsKnickers]

There's a pretty good age difference between my siblings and I, so I wonder if that's why some of us remember things the others don't. Also, I think it also was dependant on our personalities as well. My one sibling wasn't confrontational, and he'd go along to get along, kwim? So if they said jump, he'd ask how high, what time of the day best worked for them, was there a particular day they preferred over any other, and what was the approximate height they'd like him to achieve.

I always questioned. We weren't supposed to do that. We were supposed to do more like the sibling I mentioned above. But I've always questioned - if I'm told to do something, I like to know the reasoning behind it. Tended to get me into a lot of trouble. That and having a deep seated 'you will not beat the life out of me, you will not beat the mind out of me, you will not win on that front, no way no how' sort of will.

My parents worked us pretty hard against each other. I think it worked because of the vast age difference. They were too little at first, to be catching any of the crap I got. And my parents had them so worked up about going to hell and such, and they convinced them that I was demon possessed and I lied about everything. So we didn't compare notes much. It was always pretty much every man for himself. We were just trying to survive. And then, I left home and they got the full brunt of it. They were catching their own rations of abuse by then, but it escalated even further after that.

Out of 4 of us, 3 of us have been molested/abused in some way, though I guess if we're going to give our parents credit for anything, it was that that was the one avenue of abuse they never went down with any of us.

As we got bigger, the use of belts and spoons and cords and things they could grab to hand (like your situation) lessened to a degree, but that only escalated the back stomping and the arm twisting to the point of breaking, or the smashes to the face/head and so forth.

[gulag]

We didn't have any God stuff. No religious crazy shit to confuse us and scramble our brains. It wasn't about pleasing God; it was about pleasing her.

None of us were openly defiant. It amounted to not only rolling the other guy under the bus, but prolonging agony for everyone. If he got a bad grade, I got punished. If I did the dishes wrong, he got punished.

[Syd+Marky]

O my...I should not have read that.Why do I never abide the trigger warning?I think I will from now on.

[Ex 2x2]

O my...I should not have read that.Why do I never abide the trigger warning?I think I will from now on.

It's pretty rough. It's been on my mind all day. No child should ever have to go through that. I hope she finishes the story, only b/c I need to know that the monsters are in prison.

[Bethella]

Part 7 is up now, for those of you who can stand reading it.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

This mother must be mentally ill. I can't accept anyone could do this and not have severe mental problems. I keep reading because I want to know what happens to her.

[Jana814]

This mother must be mentally ill. I can't accept anyone could do this and not have severe mental problems. I keep reading because I want to know what happens to her.

I have to agree w/ the mother having mental problems! I also want know more!

[Lady]

I want one of the kids to beat on the mother and see how she likes it.

[Grace Elizabeth]

The video of the judge . . . that man is still a public servant? The DA said it was too late to prosecute? That sounds like utter bull to me. I get the impression there's some cultural stuff there, like that a man should be in complete control of everyone in his home. I don't mean to make assumptions, but the Texas accent made me think that. Where I live, in a small liberal northern state, that man would be hauled into court the day after that video came out. It would be all over the papers and if he were allowed to return to the bench there would be an enormous outcry. He would probably step down voluntarily even if there was no mechanism to remove him. Just the way he spoke to that child . . . you do not swear at your children. You don't tell them they don't deserve to be in your home, short of their committing violent crimes against others in the home. The emotional abuse I endured is hugs and sunshine compared to what that child lived with. May he rot.