The Truth About Ruth - Part 2 - Merge

[Daisy4]

Somebody asked about the Vyckie connection, here is what I remember of that:

Vyckie of NLQ featured Ruth's story and blog

Vyckie vouched for Ruth. She said that Ruth had revealed her real identity to her.

Sometime later Vyckie privately encouraged PrincessJo to question Ruth's story here on FJ

PrincessJo started a thread questioning Ruth's identity and was slammed for it pretty hard.

My guess is that Ruth told Vyckie that she was from a certain family (maybe this C family) and revealed a few bits of info to make it seem legit. Vyckie featured Ruth on NLQ and got lots of hits. I always thought Ruth's NLQ story was one of the most interesting and well written. Maybe Vyckie started to realize that Ruth was faking but couldn't admit it because of the damage it would do to NLQ and so she encouraged PrincessJo to do the dirty work for her.

[RealityTVRN]

I wonder if the Possum ID had something big going on in Sept 2012? Would anyone know? It seems that "Ruth" sort of wrote a farewell message on 9/24/12.

[Lainey]

I'm, sadly, most familiar with Atheist in a Minivan/Possummomma. IMO she/he/it concocted multiple personalities to support her/his/its various scams. Friends, children, acquaintances had identities who posted to support the tales . . . I opted out early.

I was a late-comer to the Atheist in a Minivan/PossumMomma/Pennmommy connection. That concerned the Gosselin fiasco.

I'm still not convinced that RR = PossumMomma. The writing styles are not similar enough. But I could be wrong.

I'm not convinced, either, but I think it's worth looking into.

[Lainey]

I wonder if the Possum ID had something big going on in Sept 2012? Would anyone know? It seems that "Ruth" sort of wrote a farewell message on 9/24/12.

There's a gap in her posts on her blog between August 25, 2012 and March 7, 2013 (which is when she asks about Chicago).

[Queen Of Hearts]

While I can understand not wanting people to jump to conclusions, contact innocent people, etc., it sort of makes me laugh how so many are feeling bad about us all looking into the [redacted] family in more detail, reading their sites and blogs, and the like. Folks, this is what we do. We research and snark.

There are enough similarities that it is not unreasonable of us to suspect some kind of involvement with this family, albeit likely just as inspiration for RR's made up family. I don't think anyone here has hinted that they will be contacting this family and any theories regarding their involvement at any level have been just that - theories. This family fits the RR profile in so many ways (locations, family size, names, Gothard connections, and the list goes on) that I don't think anyone here should feel bad for wanting to investigate this in more detail, if for no other reason than to rule them out as suspects or as inspiration for the RR story. No one has point blank said that RR is any of them, but I would not be surprised if RR knows this family somehow... or at least has done the same internet research we have.

And besides, they are fundies with public blogs and FB pages. And if anyone read the Dad's comments regarding his view of Gothard "grooming" young girls I think you would see that this family is just as cray-cray as the rest of the fundies in their crazy beliefs. So should anyone here harass them? Absolutely not... but I don't feel the least bit guilty about looking into their public presence on the internet.

[nelliebelle1197]

This is from the old yuku board:

NeonJungle writes:

I believe she is real. She has written that she doesn't want to post identifying information on her blog in an effort to protect her younger siblings, because her father is somehow involved in ATI. Another ex-pilot ATI woman who uses her real name posts comments on Ruth's blog confirming some of the things Ruth has posted.

Would that be Vyckie or someone else? Anyone have any idea about a verified ex-ATI besides Vyckie on the blog?

[nelliebelle1197]

And the link

http://freejinger.yuku.com/topic/1453/k ... d4m6Kx1C81

[Coconut Flan]

I find parallels with the Possum and she's had as much interest in the Duggars as she did the Gosselins. I think the style is somewhat different - more grammatical errors in the Razing Ruth posts, but those could be intentional. The Possum can write in different styles. I can't say for sure it's her. Also I'm sure she learned lessons from the debacle a few years ago as the techniques for tracking her were all discussed quite publicly. It gives me "echoes" if you will. In fact the research was all done so publicly that it was easy to find the Possum's real identity and some not so nice things happened after that. The Possum enjoyed joining boards and groups to both gauge the interest of the groups she targeted and to get information to further her ruse as well as keep up with the state of tracking her.

Whether it's the Possum returned, as I'm sure she's done somewhere, or a similar internet persona I think they're following a lot of the same techniques and storylines.

Edited for extraneous words.

[Lainey]

I find parallels with the Possum and she's had as much interest in the Duggars as she did the Gosselins. I think the style is somewhat different - more grammatical errors in the Razing Ruth posts, but those could be intentional. The Possum can write in different styles. I can't say for sure it's her. Also I'm sure she learned lessons from the debacle a few years ago as the techniques for tracking her were all discussed quite publicly. It gives me "echoes" if you will. In fact the research was all done so publicly that it was easy to find the Possum's real identity and some not so nice things happened after that. The Possum enjoyed joining boards and groups to both gauge the interest of the groups she targeted and to get information to further her ruse as well as keep up with the state of tracking her.

Whether it's the Possum returned, as I'm sure she's done somewhere, or a similar internet persona I think they're following a lot of the same techniques and storylines.

What happened?

In other news, I was looking again at the post Ruth made during Alectogate, about the email she had received. Here is the link: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14807

I don't know a whole lot about the Possummomma/PennMommy/etc. debacle, because I've just been looking at it recently in connection to this, but I remember reading somewhere that one of these PM people turned up somewhere all bewildered and wondering what was going on, how did she get dragged into the fray, blahblahblah-wide-eyed innocence-blahblahblah? Ruth's post sounds like that to me.

Also, you can see an example of what Samantha was talking about in the first post--hyphenating "well-and-truly" when most people wouldn't do that.

[Oddeverything]

This will hopefully serve as a master list of inconsistencies and problems that many of us have encountered with Razing Ruth's narrative. I am largely uninterested in finding out who Ruth may be in real life because, as I will explain in a moment, knowing such information and outing it will not prevent the scammer from creating a new identity and because it violates the TOS on this site.

I initially approached this from the position that perhaps Ruth could explain the inconsistencies, but as I read and researched, I no longer believe that Ruth is a real person. I think Ruth is a persona adopted for the purposes of malingering and for the emotional benefits of Munchausen by Internet.

Malingering is assuming some role as a sick or injured person for gain. It can be as simple as calling in sick to work when you want to go shopping or as complex as faking a prolonged injury to get insurance payments or on disability. People who have created cancer or illness scams online in order to get money are engaging in malingering. In this regard, the person behind Razing Ruth has engaged in malingering. Ruth had so many accidents, so many illnesses and so many incidents wherein she needed money. Even if the ruse she used to get money did not involve sickness or injury, she assumed situations that were not true to get money and we can consider her a malinger.

But the blog also is an example of factitious disorder/Munchausen by Internet. While both factitious disorders and Munchausen by Internet generally are used to describe blogs by those who fake illness to get attention and positive support and feedback, the definition has expanded to include those who fake any sort of sad situation. Ruth certainly fit these categories in terms of the injuries she claimed, but she also claimed to have experienced an almost unending onslaught of abuse, poverty, false allegations, cruelty and more at the hands of her family, her fiance and his mother, customers at her job, meanies on the Internet and on and on. These claims were used to create the same sort of sympathy one who claimed to have cancer would receive and therefore that is why I lump her in the factitious/Munchausen by Internet category. The blog also shows signs of pseudologia fantastica, a condition wherein people lie so often and with such casualness that there seems to be no purpose behind the lies. Thsre are the sorts of people we have encountered wherein it seems like they believe their own nonsense and lie about any detail, no matter how small.

Since Ruth's blog contains elements of both malingering and factitious disorder, I genuinely do not think exposing her will make her stop. Financial scammers have a good reason to move on and create a new identity - money. People who suffer from factitious disorders have deep psychological problems that make it impossible for them to stop unless they get lots of intensive therapy. Nothing we say here will make her stop but hopefully it will make her drop the Ruth ruse that has been used to prey on sympathetic members of this community.

I come by this information via years of reading on the topics. Please do not substitute my opinions for your own research because being well-read in the subject does not make me any sort of an expert. Reading information on the following is very helpful:

-pseudologia fantastica

-Factitious disorder

-Munchausen by Internet

-Malingering (psychological accounts)

-Dr. Marc Feldman

-Examples of some long-lived cases that crossed the malingering/Munchausen by Internet/pseudologia fantastica boundaries into large, hellish psychological messes: Victoria Bitters/Andrew Black/Amy Player/thanfiction and "Janna St. James" have been engaging in these sorts of scams for decades. One of their scams has even caused the death of an innocent person and yet the scammer is still scamming.

Once one has seen enough of these, one begins to pick up on some commonalities. While we all know someone who has had a very bad life, no one's life is a continual onslaught of misery and abuse, especially once they have left the main source of misery and abuse. Those who abuse them seldom have coherent motives because to have coherent motives can lead one to believe that perhaps some of the bad experiences were earned (for example, a bad employee who steals could reasonably have a boss who says bad things). Ruth's strange experiences with the man who let her use her trailer on his land and later threw her off for stealing/failing to prevent people from stealing was bizarre and almost beyond reason. Another "tell" with these sorts of blogs is that when something good happens, it is frequently followed by something horrible. Ruth gets a fiance, yay! Then his mother is nuts and he's a weak man, boo! Poor Ruth, will she ever win? Interestingly, some of the elements she used to explain her misery come up and never get mentioned again, despite their severity.

Another hallmark of these blogs are sock puppets. It is impossible for us to determine if people posting on Ruth's blog were puppets, but her father's comments were a near perfect example of sock puppetry. He would show up, hurl abuse at Ruth, create a stir in her comments section and the end result was that her followers were appalled at how she was treated and would rally around her. We all have our psychological burdens that have scarred us, but very few of us would permit someone who had done us grave harm to continue to do so in the comments section on our blogs. I don't even allow strangers to act poorly in the comments on my blogs - I certainly would not let a person who had kept my mother, siblings and me in a sort of Christian bondage humiliate me once I was free from him.

One of the best elements of Ruth's blog is that her persona chosen can explain why she does so many things that make zero sense. Once you have been inculcated in the patriarchy, it can take years to get over the abuse and stand up for yourself. Her status as a former Gothard daughter gave her plausible deniability in every bad decision she made that caused people to pity her or send her money and shut down those who wondered how someone who had been shed of her family for a decade still could not even find it in herself to moderate the comments on her own blog.

And every time people questioned Ruth, she posted one of her "I don't blame people for doubting me!" entries followed by sad pleas or examples of how people's interest in her harmed her. This also effectively shuts down questioning because who wants to be the horrible person who asks questions of the brave survivor of the patriarchy?

In many ways, Ruth's blog was brilliant in its execution. I would be surprised if this was the first time she has done something like this, though I have not had time to investigate the possum mama claims.

Additionally, if anyone wants to add their research to this master list, let me know and I will add it.

With all of that out of the way, here are the many problems people have found with Ruth's accounts.

1) The job in Chicago. I am friends with people who have MLIS degrees, meaning they have a Master's Degree in Library and Information Sciences, and they cannot find work. My own husband quit this program at UT because the job market, back in 1998, was cut throat and it has not gotten any better. I find it very hard to believe anyone can be offered a job today in any professional field without a face to face interview, or at the very least a Skype interview. By way of example, my husband was a library intern at a microchip research consortium. People were flown in from all over the country for interviews for jobs. And no one with a Bachelor's degree is getting that job, no matter how junior the position. Ruth has a Bachelor's degree, little experience, no connections and she was offered a job across the country, sight unseen, over the dozens of MLIS candidates with experience and references that such a job would attract? That makes zero sense and reads like a lie.

2) The baby. Ruth posted on TWoP using the moniker ofduggar. Here is a screenshot that shows ofduggar linking to Razing Ruth, claiming it is her blog and encouraging people to come over and discuss issues there (last comment): http://www.flickr.com/photos/deadandali ... 7/sizes/l/. Under ofduggar, Ruth says in unambiguous verbiage that she was pregnant with a baby that she gave birth to. Here is a screenshot of that comment: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deadandalive/9236689744/

This is information she felt okay enough about sharing in a community wherein she had directed people to her blog. It's not like it was information she felt she needed to hide for her personal safety as Razing Ruth. Yet no where in any of her discussions as Razing Ruth in her blog or on NLQ does she ever mention having a baby, losing a baby, adopting out her baby, etc. Some may think that discussing a baby could have revealed her identity, but she openly discussed her sister who got pregnant, adopted the baby to a family of lesbians, went back home to and married a widower. That is a lot of detail and fear of too much detail cannot be a reason why Ruth would hide having her own child. I do not think that if Ruth exists in any real form wherein she has a child. I think that comment was part of a person trying on an identity and seeing how it floated to others and then forgetting about it when the persona was later refined.

3) Her identity. I can understand that she wants privacy. But at this point, her family is aware of the blog. She is not hiding from them. She is hiding from us. Which is her right. And if anyone knows her identity, I do hope it is not revealed here. That is not what this is about. But this is problematic. The ATI/Gothardite community is not so large that no one would know who this family is. Despite all the voluminous detail out there about her family - college educated mother, sister left pregnant and disgraced and returned and married a widower, connections to the Duggars, one daughter fled and never came back, patriarch recently died - and no one knows who her family is? And they had no obituary because of Ruth's blog? The blog where she has never mentioned any of them by real name and protects their identity? None of this makes sense and I posit that is because the family does not exist, or at least it does not exist in the form Ruth has presented. We know too many people who are refugees from that community and none of them have any idea who Ruth is? That seems odd.

3a) Ruth using vagueness to "prove" her family connection. On Ruth's blog (razingruth.blogspot.com/2012/03/email-comment-is-gothard-greedy.html), "Gretchen" links to a slide show and says she saw Ruth's family's picture on the 22nd slide (tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/duggar-home-pictures.htm). No way to prove Gretchen is a sock puppet but Gretchen's comment has no information linked to it and the comment does two things: First, it makes it seem as if there is someone out there who knows Ruth's family and therefore gives credence to Ruth's claims of both belonging to an ATI family and that the family was close to the Duggars; and second, it brought people rallying to poor Ruth's defense as it appeared someone was trying to out her. But the end result of such a comment was to bolster Ruth's stories and I would not be surprised if it was a sock puppet account.

4) The pregnant sister. It was about here that I began to doubt Ruth, having defended her myself in the past. Ruth's sister gets pregnant and leaves and places the baby in a lesbian family. Okay. That could happen, however unlikely it sounds. But let's think about the details. Her sister got pregnant at an ATI conference? Does this have the ring of truth to anyone that a patriarch so involved in his daughters' sexual natures that he charted periods and lost his mind when Ruth started menstruating because he was sure the blood on her bed meant she had been fornicating, would really permit his daughter that much freedom away from him at a conference? Especially since one daughter had already left? Wouldn't everyone else there at the ATI conference have noticed that a betrothed couple had stolen away for time together? The entire story of how her sister got pregnant has nary a single ring of truth to it. AND if Ruth indeed had a baby of her own, then that means her father, the intrusive lunatic she described in such depth, let two daughters get pregnant on his patriarchical watch. Unless Ruth got pregnant after she ran away, which of course is a whole other set of questions.

5) The trials of Job. I know people have hard lives and at times have very dramatic lives. I myself have gone through such a time. But I have never met someone who has had as many problems as Ruth. She never stumbles but breaks a leg. She gets a job as a caretaker on some land so she can live there free in her trailer but gets called a thief, is run off the property and forced to sell the trailer for pennies on the dollar. Her fiance is a sad little mama's boy. She gets stiffed all the time at her restaurant job. She can't get to her new job. She has no clothes for her new job. She needs help and can't ever get it. People stalk her in real life. She's been in the hospital more than my terminally ill mother. That's just off the top of my head.

5a) The number of problems she has allows Ruth to collect a lot of money via tip jars or actual fundraising. Because Ruth is so beloved to so many people, when she falls on hard times, often people suggest she put up a PayPal link, and that gives Ruth plausible deniability because she can say that she didn't suggest it - others did and she just listened to them. But there have been plenty of times Ruth has actively solicited money. I counted five specific times when I stopped counting but it would be interesting to see the number of times Ruth has sought money in total. It is definitely an error to think Ruth never outright asked for help herself and in at least once case, she ignored a person who offered help that did not come in the form of cash. I will come back to this and provide links at a later time.

6) Every instance wherein Ruth is confronted is self-serving and bizarre and used to cause people to stop questioning her. The most recent one wherein she was confronted at work is the best example. We all had questions about Ruth's most recent hospitalization followed by her strange job offer and then she is confronted at work in a manner so terrible it makes her cry and her fans come to her defense. It was thrown out there to shut down questions but this time it backfired because she overplayed her hand.

Here's a breakdown of the problems in that story.

-Ruth's library has a sign-in system but the woman who came in to confront her was permitted to act like a lunatic AND not sign in, meaning there is no way to determine who she is.

-Ruth, who was at work and was called to the front desk to deal with this lunatic, had her drivers license on her. I generally don't carry my purse around with me when I am at work and I almost never just happen to have my id in my pocket in casual situations.

-Ruth, who has guarded her name closely, so closely no one really knows who she is, willingly let an aggressive stranger see her drivers license. She just willingly gave over her information to this person despite years spent hiding who she is? Just because the woman wandered off the street and demanded it? If that's the case, can we get her to scan it and e-mail it to us? Yeah...

7) Her facts are odd. Between all of the places she has posted online, she has made claims variously that she lived in Arkansas in Duggar country in the 70s and 80s, but then later claimed she was born in 1984.

She claimed she attended CSU on her now deleted Facebook page but that college offers no LIS degree. She herself says she has no LIS degree but that makes her getting a job offer as a librarian, a job so vital she begged for money online to get there because it was a jump start in her career, all the stranger.

She claimed she needed a psych evaluation before changing her name. You can see the comment here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13842&hilit#p420855 I checked with the state of California's site and no one needs a psych evaluation before changing one's name. Have a look for yourself: http://www.courts.ca.gov/22488.htm

8) Horribly important facts are brought up when convenient and never mentioned again. TWoP baby is the best example of this. Another excellent example was when Ruth claimed her brother had been diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma (in an entry when she was also upset about losing her scholarship and needing to quit school - more trials of Job for our Ruth, it seems). I have a screen shot in the event it gets deleted, but as of now it is still up on her Facebook, on November 10, 2010 (http://www.facebook.com/ruth.razing). She says:

"Brother has stage 4 melanoma. Got word that one of the my scholarships is bankrupt and wont be availale next quarter. Im proably going to have to leave school"

And it is never mentioned again despite the fact that stage 4 melanoma is very serious and very deadly.

9) The book. Ruth mentioned, in her wall of text posted in her blog on June 30, that she'd had a book deal fall apart because the publishers wanted her to out her brothers and write an expose on Gothard, which she refused to do because too many people relied on ATI for their living. Okay, bizarre enough, but that was the first I had heard of a book. I traced back all references to a book in her blog and on her Facebook.

One June 10, 2012, she says:

I've noticed that some people are wondering how I'm doing. Some say that I only post when I have drama in my life and I suppose that they're at least partially correct when it comes to recent posting activity. The good. I graduated. I've been looking for a job and have few prospects that are looking promising. In the meantime, I'm still working full time to bring in enough to feed my sister and I. We're living in a camper van that someone loaned us. It's not as bad as it sounds. It suits or needs perfectly. The only real issue is that it's getting hot here! The camper van has to be running gas to run the AC and gas is expensive. The bad. We're living in a camper van. The ugly. This life. However, all is not lost yet. There's always the possibility that I'll get a better paying job. Maybe someone will want to publish my blog as a book? I know I'm helping other QF/ATI girls see a light at the end of a tunnel.

In June of last year it was a musing, nothing more. Just the end thought at the end of all the ways her life might, in some way, get better financially. (And note all the bad things that happened. Just another example of how the horror never ended.)

She mentions nothing about writing a book again for months. On December 23, 2012, she mentions this, in a long list of things she wants to have happen in her life, all of which are "Chris Angle" type things, meaning she needs magic for them to happen:

Santa, I want my fathr to snap out of the hallucination he's been in for many moons. I'm talking Chris Angle stuff, Santa. I need him to see and accept the world as what it is. I need my mother out of poverty. I realize that these are usually requests for God- but I'm covering my bases. I selfishly want ease and freedom. I want to be able to take Ellie to a store and buy something off the wrack. I want to give her a present. I want to quit one of my jobs and write my book. I want to get out there and meet new people. Basically, I want to live life. I'm doing my part to work and earn enough to live that life...but, it's hard. I need a mystery, piano coaching laundry woman to pop into my house. Do what you can do, Santa. Love, Mary

Nothing there about a book contract, just a desire for enough to time to write one.

But wait! Back on November 13, 2012 she left this comment here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13842&hilit#p420855

She says:

You're right, anniec. This is the beginning of my "coming out" party. I have working with a publishing company on writing a series of articles to be published in a magazine. If those go well, then we may try to put together a book with others who have left to create a marketable product.

In November she has been working with a publisher on writing magazine articles. Okay, that is a strange way to put it, that a publishing company wants her to write articles that could become a book. A book publisher generally comes to you after you've received accolades for good magazine articles, but generally you have to make a pitch and without the articles there is nothing to pitch, but never mind. The real issue here is that she mentions writing a book later, when a month earlier she was working on magazine articles that might become a book if people are interested.

And then we hear nothing about the book again for seven months until Ruth writes a list of all the ills in her life, from being stalked by the woman who came to her workplace, to all us meanies asking her questions, to the dissolution of her book deal. From her article on June 30, she says:

In actuallity, being completely transparent about my family name might have garnered me a CNN interview and they were willing to help me pay for certain things. The book fell apart because the publisher wanted me to make it more about Gothard and out my brothers for their participation in the organization- rather than being my story, they wanted it to be a tell all, "inside look" at ATI. I couldn't do it. As much as I dislike the organization and the ideas that QF and ATI hold up, I also know that there are very large families that are dependent on the money that their association with the organization has and while I want to hold certain people responsible and prevent them from hurting other girls- I can't have my nieces and nephews go hungry so that I can get royalties from a book. I can't destroy my mother like that. I can't destroy my brothers and sisters like that- and I WON'T put young children in poverty or the stress that would come from outing my family.

So, we went from musing about a book a year ago, to working with a publisher to write magazine articles that might become a book, to needing time to write a book, to having the entire book deal blown due to her innate integrity in a year. This is utter nonsense and even if one does not know all the details of how the publishing industry works, her inability to keep her details straight is a giveaway this is a lie. And it's another example of how it is she can never, ever, never reveal her name!

There is so much more. Please let me know if you have information to add to this. It would be nice if we could make a large list like this and keep adding to it as we go along and get more details. That way we will have all the information on one link. It may seem like overkill to some, but I take Free Jinger very seriously. I am focused on a handful of fundies and generally only speak up when I find something about those specific people to discuss, but this site showed me troubles in this world I didn't know about. I had thought being a Southern Baptist refugee was hard and then I found this site and found out the real truth behind the Christian patriarchy. Someone has used the identity of the abused women we long to help to fleece good and honest and kind people. And her perfidy, if unaddressed, can taint the entire mission of FJ. That is unacceptable and to me there is no such thing as too much discussion as long as we are polite and as long as none of us harass the Ruth spots on the Internet.

Edited because I borked my quotes six ways to Sunday.

[Coconut Flan]

What happened with the Possum?

Her address and name were published on at least two websites and were up for a few days. I saw a post with a picture of her house. There was talk of a plan to take a field trip to her house. I don't know if they actually went or how many, but the picture of her house lead me to believe that people at least did go there to look. Lastly, although it was scrubbed fairly quickly, someone admitted to printing out all the research and all the internet postings and blog posts that they could find and mailed it to the Possum's husband. He filed for divorce within weeks. Whether he was already planning to divorce her, we don't know but I'm sure that didn't help matters any. I was kind of fascinated by the whole drama at the time. There were quite a few people who were rather rabid in their intent to track her down and bring her to "justice."

Some people would say she got what she had coming and others would think it was stalking and vengeful. It was all over the top for me. Perhaps it's a cautionary tale.

[Palimpsest]

Oddeverything

Everything you have said in your post reflects my thinking. I've posted a lot of it scattershot and left much out -- or lacked the words and confidence to express my feelings.

Thank you so much for that brilliant synopsis.

I don't have anything to add except :worship: :worship: :worship: .

[kal]

Delurking because I haven't seen this inconsistency mentioned yet: in the "Razing Ruth posted again" thread (7th post down), she says that her "REAL first name" is Mary. On the Razing Ruth blog, she writes, "Mary is my middle name" (Feb. 21, 2010 post). Either her parents named her "Mary Mary" or she is a liar who lies.

[thoughtful]

Delurking because I haven't seen this inconsistency mentioned yet: in the "Razing Ruth posted again" thread (7th post down), she says that her "REAL first name" is Mary. On the Razing Ruth blog, she writes, "Mary is my middle name" (Feb. 21, 2010 post). Either her parents named her "Mary Mary" or she is a liar who lies.

p6jVxks8M4A

What, you didn't want an earworm?

:D

[Lainey]

Another possible link to PennMommy/Possummomma: Somewhere, and unfortunately I've looked at so many links recently I've forgotten where I read this, someone mentions that the PMs use apostrophes as accents. I couldn't help but notice that in one of the links OddEverything posted, ofDuggar refers to when she was "prego'. "

[Stickers]

Oddeverything - you're awesome! I have never followed "Ruth" closely and your post was a crash course.

[uber frau]

Can this be published offsite or in a publicly accessible section of FJ?

I just think, given the impact RR had on the greater exFundie online community, this shouldn't be allowed to be swept under the carpet.

[OkToBeTakei]

Somebody asked about the Vyckie connection, here is what I remember of that:

Vyckie of NLQ featured Ruth's story and blog

Vyckie vouched for Ruth. She said that Ruth had revealed her real identity to her.

Sometime later Vyckie privately encouraged PrincessJo to question Ruth's story here on FJ

PrincessJo started a thread questioning Ruth's identity and was slammed for it pretty hard.

My guess is that Ruth told Vyckie that she was from a certain family (maybe this [redacted] family) and revealed a few bits of info to make it seem legit. Vyckie featured Ruth on NLQ and got lots of hits. I always thought Ruth's NLQ story was one of the most interesting and well written. Maybe Vyckie started to realize that Ruth was faking but couldn't admit it because of the damage it would do to NLQ and so she encouraged PrincessJo to do the dirty work for her.

Found this by princessjo.

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.

So basically despite RR allegedly being verified by Vyckie. Vyckie suspected she was a fraud and used Jo to perpetuate it. How lovely.

[Closed Womb]

Oddeverything:

A few things you may want to add to your list.

On 1/8/12 Razing Ruth indicated that her username for MakazVille is OfDuggar. Although a different site, the unique name convinces me that she is the OfDuggar poster on TWOP. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6573&p=167512&hilit=ofduggar#p167512

On November 5, 2010, Razing Ruth explicitly states that she does not have children. razingruth.blogspot.com/2010/11/long-e-mail-list-of-questions.html Her TWOP post indicates that she is a "mom", which would indicate (to me) that she is raising a child. I think it's unusual, if not unheard of, that a woman who had an abortion, miscarriage, or otherwise lost a child OR a birth mother who opted for adoption would refer to herself as a "mom".

[keeks21]

Great wrap up Oddeverything.

I don't think we'll ever find out who RazingRuth is because they have been to good about hiding their identity and using specific razingruth email addresses. I doubt they'll even come back to explain themselves and for all we know they've gone on to another character.

I am concerned that the Donate button is still up on the RR blog?

[NDC22]

I'm calling Ruth a fake and a liar. I just PM'ed Odds to give her my brief online experience with Ruth, but I'm going to post it here. When Ruth posted she was moving to Chicago I PM'ed her and told her I lived in downtown Chicago and I told her a bit about me and offered to meet her and take her out to lunch. I also offered the household contents and business clothing (ranging in size from 8 to 16....don't judge, I happen to like chocolate) since I moved in with my SO (and no longer work) and no longer needed an entire house of furnishings or business clothes in my three storage lockers. I gave her my real name to google and my SO's name to google because he is a prominent trial lawyer and there is enough media coverage about him. I further offered him up (along with his children and daughter-in-law who are all lawyers and one is an Assistant DA) should she need any legal help here. I basically was being kind in my email offering her help. Days went by and she responded with the following PM.

Re: Hi-From a Chicago Girl

Sent: Sun Jun 09, 2013 6:40 pm

From: razingruth

To: NDC22

Thank you for your email. As soon as I get to an actual keyboard I will reply appropriately.

razingruth

Frumper Lover

Posts: 144

Joined: Sun Dec 25, 2011 11:22 am

So, she doesn't have a keyboard to write anything more, yet she was able to blog two long posts after she responded to me? I would think someone moving to Chicago, without any household furnishings, would jump all over that, she didn't even need to meet up with me either. Another FJ poster, the crockpot offerer, has had more emails from Ruth during the period Ruth couldn't correspond with me due to not having a keyboard. Hmmmmm, is it because she googled the name of my SO and found out about his background or the fact his DiL is an Assistant DA?

Sorry I didn't spell check this or grammar check it. It is 2 in the morning, I've spent the last hour getting schooled about the fraud that is Ruth and I'm pissed off for offering support and help to a whack job.

[keeks21]

Sorry, but not sorry I sent an email to Paypal with my concerns about the validity of this blog and donation cause.

[JesusFightClub]

I was very interested to read this:

getoffmyinternets.net/forums/fundie-blogging/razing-ruth

FJ getting discussed in the comments too there :whistle:

I liked the Msscribe reference, because I remember this and it is a great comparison. I was thinking Lauren Stratford, as well.

[Curious]

Can this be published offsite or in a publicly accessible section of FJ?

I just think, given the impact RR had on the greater exFundie online community, this shouldn't be allowed to be swept under the carpet.

I agree about public viewability. The transition team will be conferring about this when everyone is awake and figure out the best method to make the information available.

[Milly-Molly-Mandy]

Years ago, while I was watching the news, a story came on about a family eerily similar to my own. Parents with the same names as my parents, their daughter same name as me, living and working in similar are and jobs my parents did when I was born. It was creepy seeing another family out there that was almost exactly like mine, just with subtle differences.

I realize it's possible RR based her account on all these people mentioned here, but it's also possible she made it up off the top of her head or it's based on people without an internet presence. Similarity just isn't enough evidence.

I don't think we'll ever know anything conclusive about RR.

There are triplets with the same names as my brother, sister and I :)

Yeah, like so many others on FJ, the adoption story was what made me decide she was lying.

Just seemed very sus. No idea what she made up-all or just some.

Pretty pathetic really.