All things Razing Ruth

[Lainey]

A couple of former posters I know thought she was jhawksgirl/PennMommy/Possummomma.

[mrs]

A couple of former posters I know thought she was jhawksgirl/PennMommy/Possummomma.

Here or a different board?

[Shirley MacLaine]

A couple of former posters I know thought she was jhawksgirl/PennMommy/Possummomma.

Grounds?

I'm Team Scam but I love this shit anyway

[Lainey]

Here or a different board?

The former posters were from here. The possible Ruth aliases, I think, were all over the place. I think jhawksgirl was on TWOP. Not sure about the other two names.

I am not sure of the grounds. They told me this during Alectogate, so I was distracted.

[CoffeeBean]

Reports from the Penn Mommy scam ( http://gosselinsdonotneedourpity.blogsp ... h.html?m=1) indicate that the scammer's IP was from Bakersfield, CA. That would be consistent with Ruth's supposed central CA college town locale.

[Oddeverything]

I just know that this will get people worked up. Personally I think the skepticism is fair and also, completely out of line to visit a workplace even if Ruth has lied about everything.

Treemom, I am trying so hard to keep my skepticism based on things that others can see that aren't open to interpretation, like the TWoP baby comment. But your comment is one of the reasons why I decided to speak up and I am going to deviate from my intent to address it. What I am about to say is based purely on my own interpretation, but I no more believe that anyone went to Ruth's place of work than I believe that a woman with a Bachelor's degree was offered a job across the country in a field so crowded that people with MLIS degrees are being turned away without even so much as a face-to-face interview. I believe that she made that claim because it helped deflect attention away from those questioning her hospital stay. Make the skeptics seem like prying, inhuman lunatics and it stops the questioning for a while.

Of course it is completely out of line to visit Ruth's workplace or harass her in any way even if her entire story is a lie. But I don't think she has experienced any such harassment. Not a single detail in that entry had a ring of truth to it, least of all a woman who guards her secrets so closely she will not reveal basic details about her life turning over her drivers license to a person who wandered in off the street and demanded to see it. The "tells" that this was a lie is that the woman left no clue as to her identity - just another anonymous person harassing Ruth and she willingly did what this anonymous woman demanded in direct defiance of the way she has guarded her identity for years.

There is a sizable number of people who are skeptical about Ruth. Are we to believe a skeptic went into her place of work and got the information that would clear all of this up - Mary/Ruth's full name - and then just kept it to herself? She didn't share the name so other sleuths could look into it? That's unbelievable.

I bring this up only because you mentioned one of Ruth's deflections - the crying victim pose. I fear that with any new, earnest discussion of the inconsistencies in her stories, Ruth will come back with another tale of stalking woe that sounds horrible and cruel but cannot be proven. No one wants to be the source of misery for a woman who suffered in life but Ruth has squandered her trust capital and I would hate a legitimate look into a major fact that can go a long way to proving deep problems with Ruth's story to be derailed because kind people think Ruth is being harmed because of our discussions.

(edited because I suck at coherence)

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

All I know is that I feel increasingly dumb for having put money in her tip jar a year ago. Never gave to an individual online before, and never will again.

[OkToBeTakei]

My only addition is that Peas and Carrots myself and one other were supposed to meet in February. Due to kiddie illness and so forth it did not happen. My personal view is just that P&C is just a deadly friendly person who welcomes life. I am not like that. But I was sad it did not happen. Her offers to meet Ruth/Mary/Doodad in that light seem totally lovely to me. As were P&C's e-mails. Still sad it did not happen. Any girl who can navigate Glasgow and tell me where is good to eat is just fine.

So whilst I may differ in my opinion regarding this issue, please do not cast aspersions on a person who I truly believe had good and friendly intentions. If Ruth/Mary/Doodad had the friendly e-mails I did then she is a lucky girl.

Next time hopefully.

I just got a bit annoyed that everybody who was being friendly were being cast as STALKER!

ETA

Somebody fix my shit grammar.

[Oddeverything]

My only addition is that Peas and Carrots myself and one other were supposed to meet in February. Due to kiddie illness and so forth it did not happen. My personal view is just that P&C is just a deadly friendly person who welcomes life. I am not like that. But I was sad it did not happen. Her offers to meet Ruth/Mary/Doodad in that light seem totally lovely to me. As were P&C's e-mails. Still sad it did not happen. Any girl who can navigate Glasgow and tell me where is good to eat is just fine.

So whilst I may differ in my opinion regarding this issue, please do not cast aspersions on a person who I truly believe had good and friendly intentions. If Ruth/Mary/Doodad had the friendly e-mails I did then she is a lucky girl.

Next time hopefully.

I just got a bit annoyed that everybody who was being friendly were being cast as STALKER!

I'm unclear about the situation you are referring to, but I promise I for one will not say anything unkind about anyone who treated Ruth or anyone else on this site well.

And I also hope that if the worst some of us think is proven true that none of us who gave love and help to Ruth regrets it. While I think being informed about the person to whom you give help is a good thing, ultimately our desires to help those whom we feel need it ennobles us. No one should ever regret treating anyone well, even if we later discover that person was not who we thought they were. Our good intentions matter and are not made irrelevant by the bad acts of others.

[Lainey]

All I know is that I feel increasingly dumb for having put money in her tip jar a year ago. Never gave to an individual online before, and never will again.

Me too, a little bit. But it was only $10 or $20, at least. I'm sure I've wasted more on worse things.

I know I've been increasingly suspicious recently. Things weren't adding up, and then there was a point where she seemed to come right out and ask for money...I dunno, just didn't feel right.

I agree that Peas and Carrots sounds like a lovely, friendly person, and not stalker-ish at all.

Anyone wanna 'fess up to tracking Ruth down at the campground?

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

I apologize if this has been brought up before, but didn't Ruth/Mary supposedly confirm her identity with Vickie on NLQ?

[Closed Womb]

"Obsession" dialed up! :popcorn2:

[Oddeverything]

I apologize if this has been brought up before, but didn't Ruth/Mary supposedly confirm her identity with Vickie on NLQ?

I have never been able to pin down what Vyckie did to confirm Ruth's identity. Vyckie's.... well, she's an odd duck in her own right and carries a fair amount of drama baggage herself, but if anyone can recall or knows what she did to verify Ruth's identity it couldn't hurt to know the facts behind how she gathered information.

I do know that there was a ton of drama around Vyckie supposedly outing Ruth's identity in some sort of situation wherein Ruth was supposed to get some sort of charity award. Ruth speculated in the entry that the whole thing may have been an attempt to stalk her. Rereading that entry it reeks more of the victimization that has been a part of Ruth's experiences that cause others to feel sorry for her yet doesn't make any sense when you stop and think about all the details. razingruth.blogspot.com/2011/01/again-with-drama.html

[mrs]

I have found this old post that may give some insight about the 'drama' at NLQ.

I am not sure how much I should say on this, because I got too involved the first time, and got really hurt. I am in a really good place right now, and I am not sure of how much I can get re-involved without getting hurt again. So...

I will say that I did start the thread questioning Razing Ruth's identity mostly because Vyckie asked me to. But, I won't deny that I did have doubts of my own about Ruth's identity prior to that, and had shared them with Vyckie, and other NLQ/FJian members.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see how my own deep seeded need for praise/attention etc allowed me to go along with it, without really considering my actions and the results it ended up having. For me, when the dust finally settled, it was like beginning again, from scratch. I had nasty emails/blog comments, and I was banned from NLQ - a forum that I had felt very passionately about, and had held a lot of hope for. I still do - the escaping fundamentalist women and children do need all the support they can get.

At the time, I was also having private conversations with a few NLQ members in the chat room (in the private messaging section, so not the public chat room), about information that Angel had shared with me, that I was concerned about. Vyckie ended up confronting me one day - I hadn't realised the so-called private chat, was so tightly overseen, to say nothing of the fact that I could not discuss, even privately, information that to me, directly impacted her reliability and whether the role she was creating for herself, was one that she wasn't ready for (aka, hadn't finished healing, getting her family back on track etc). As I have explained before many times, I really firmly believe there is a big gap between the Adult/child generations of fundamentalism. And I admit, I chose Angel's side and did defend her, mostly because our stories were so similar, and I understood the turmoil Angel was going through at the time. I was one of the child generations, not the adult. The resulting implications of the 'incidents' only made that divide all the more obvious.

My own personal thoughts are that Vyckie took too much on too quickly in the community - and didn't really give herself the time to let herself and her family heal, without the stresses that the publicity etc that the blog inspired.

Perhaps, this story is the biggest example of how damaging fundamentalism is, even after leaving. The wounds go deep, and take a long, long time to heal, and sometimes, if at all. And even if they do heal, they leave long time weaknesses and faults - and this is true, even in my own family and self.

But again, this is just my perception of events. Others might see my actions differently, and that is fine.

_____________8

Lawfulevil, I am coming over to the US next year. If that is where you are, I would love to catch up for a quick coffee or something - I have started a thread in Chatter detailing our plans - The Great US Roadtrip!

[Lillybee]

That link didn't work, I think that thread was posted on the yuku board.

[Oddeverything]

I have found this old post that may give some insight about the 'drama' at NLQ.

http://www.freejinger.org/forums/viewto ... f9a2fb9be3

Bolded for emphasis. Like I said earlier, Vyckie rides, waters and feeds her own Drama Llama. But this does make one wonder why on earth Vyckie would encourage someone to start a thread to question another user on her site if she had done proper due diligence in checking Ruth's bona fides. Well, it makes you wonder if you leave out all the dramarific implications of such an act. And this is why I don't know how much use Vyckie would be to anyone when it comes to getting information about whether or not Ruth is who she says she is.

Also, bleah.

[mrs]

freejinger.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4807&start=20

I apologize, I am posting from a tablet. If you search "NLQ Razing Ruth'' it is one of the first threads.

[Oddeverything]

Having spent the better part of an evening rereading Ruth's blog and skimming her entries on NLQ, I simply cannot find a reference to her having had a baby as a young woman. At this point, there is no way around this and it is unlikely Ruth can explain this away with her usual excuses of privacy.

She felt safe enough to reveal in an open community like TWoP that she had given birth to a child when young. She had no problem telling us details about her sister's pregnancy, birth and subsequent adoption of her child to a lesbian couple. Her personal safety cannot be the reason for failing to include such a significant detail in her various stories and in her blog if she felt safe enough to share it on TWoP, of all places.

There is no gray in this one. Ruth either had a baby and excised it from her life story in some manner, or she lied about it. Either way, she lied. I tend to believe the latter option - that she just made something up in a community that was so trivial to her that she forgot to go back and delete it as she formulated her official story and she never had a baby. That is the least horrible option, frankly, but it still raises all kinds of questions of what it is we can believe about Ruth now that she's been caught in a lie she cannot explain away.

If anyone else can find any explanation as to why Ruth would have lied about having a baby, or that she had a baby and there is a compelling reason she would never mention it even as she told the story on an open forum and shared her sister's story, I would love to read about it. But until then, I think for me the case has been made that Ruth is not made of truth and that one strange lie opens the door to all kinds of questions about the rest of her story. So I am leaving it alone until someone can offer another perspective on the very real problem that Ruth openly stated she had a baby and then never mentioned it again.

And in the event that any of the ofduggar remarks on TWoP get deleted, I have screen shots of all the relevant comments, like the one about the baby and the one wherein it is clear ofduggar is Razing Ruth.

[Lillybee]

My question is why were RazingRuth posts and poster name completely removed from TWOP. I thought that doing things like that were impossible.

[Coconut Flan]

It's developing the earmarks of when possum mama et al began overplaying her hand and got caught.

:popcorn2: :penguin-no: :popcorn2:

[Daisy]

My question is why were RazingRuth posts and poster name completely removed from TWOP. I thought that doing things like that were impossible.

She didnt post on twop as razing Ruth, her user name there was ofduggar. As of now all of the ofduggar posts still seem to be up

[wtylcf]

http://freejinger.yuku.com/topic/1453/k ... eal?page=1

FJ has questioned the veracity of Ruth's blog before, in 2010. The thread is above, in case you'd like to brush up on the (possible) anachronisms in her story present in 2010.

GOMI has a thread discussing Ruth as well, with the responses running the gamut from, "she's obviously a professional panhandler," to, "I can explain away all the inconsistencies and I believe her."

getoffmyinternets.net/forums/lifestyle-bloggers/razing-ruth

The TWOP thread where Ruth discusses her own pregnancy, and then links to the razingruth blog, where she tells a quite different story, is pretty damning, in my opinion. Unfortunately, I feel like this may be one of those cases where amateur sleuthing can not be conclusive, but only compile potential anachronisms, which leaves it to the reader to decide whether it all adds up to truth or lies. Obviously at least one version of Ruth's story is a lie - as has already been pointed out, either Ruth was a young mother, or she wasn't. But who knows what else may be a fabrication - potentially the entire story, I suppose.

[ShesCrafty]

This is interesting reading. Razing ruth is actually how I found freejinger. I've never known quite what to make of her story, I've just assumed that its somewhat truth/somewhat fabrication. Never heard the possible baby story. Thanks for posting, Odd.

[Rachel333]

This is interesting reading. Razing ruth is actually how I found freejinger. I've never known quite what to make of her story, I've just assumed that its somewhat truth/somewhat fabrication. Never heard the possible baby story. Thanks for posting, Odd.

Come to think of it, I think that's how I got to freejinger as well. I doubted her story from the start and in googling to see if anyone else did as well I found FJ. I'd forgotten that.

This is interesting.

[darkplumaged]

It's too late for this to be meaningful, but I've never been convinced her story is true. I guess I'd assumed the whole thing was the work of a scammy fiction writer, but I suppose parts of it could be true.