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Erika Shupe *grim rictus* Large Families on Purpose Part 3


happy atheist

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I just read the Hana story. No words. 

I repost these links fairly frequently because they are really important.  VERY hard on the heart, but also entirely true and worth our time and attention: 

the 5-part Reuters investigation on rehoming: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1

Evangelicals, baby obsession, and the trauma of real, actual children: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/christian-evangelical-adoption-liberia

More should have been done for Hana.  Beyond tragic.  There are no words.  I hope she knows peace now.  

 

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I calculated it in part one to be 54 cals per 8 oz, using the higher amounts she listed & the kale at 4 oz.

She has two recipes--one spinach based and one kale based. The first one I saw was spinach based, so that's what the screenshot is of.

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Hana's obit says her funeral service was by Pastor Howard Cooper of Good Shepherd Baptist church in Burlington. Another article, http://www.komonews.com/news/local/130871178.html?mobile=y, says the williamses sometimes attended his church.

You're right. The church was in Burlington, not Sedro Woolley. The towns are next to each other and I didn't bother to look it up before I posted.

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I repost these links fairly frequently because they are really important.  VERY hard on the heart, but also entirely true and worth our time and attention: 

the 5-part Reuters investigation on rehoming: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1

Evangelicals, baby obsession, and the trauma of real, actual children: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/christian-evangelical-adoption-liberia

More should have been done for Hana.  Beyond tragic.  There are no words.  I hope she knows peace now.  

 

Those Reuters articles are heartbreaking, and terrifying. I really had no idea how little oversight there is in the US of adopted children, and that they can quite literally disappear when 'rehomed'. The whole homeschooling ethos also means that in those cases there is no mandated reporter to notice the abrupt appearance/disappearance of these children.

That as detailed in these articles, known abusers were able to obtain custody is beyond belief. The parents in the 'disrupted' adoptions seem to have made no attempt to check the bona fides of those to whom they handed over their children. To my mind, they themselves were not fit to adopt in the first place, and I am surprised that they passed their original home studies. But unfortunately, well staffed and well trained childrens' services departments are not a priority in the present political climate, in either the US or the UK.

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Earlier in the discussion some people were wondering if Erika's kids ever saw a (real) doctor. When I read back on her personal facebook page I saw a post about riley gouging his soft pallet while running with something in his mouth & bleeding a lot. She talks about taking him to the doctor, but after more looking around, it was the chiropractor. Your kid is bleeding from the mouth & you take him to the chiropractor?!?!?!?

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Earlier in the discussion some people were wondering if Erika's kids ever saw a (real) doctor. When I read back on her personal facebook page I saw a post about riley gouging his soft pallet while running with something in his mouth & bleeding a lot. She talks about taking him to the doctor, but after more looking around, it was the chiropractor. Your kid is bleeding from the mouth & you take him to the chiropractor?!?!?!?

 

This is Erika all over. She visits a chiropractor and a naturopath. They fit in with her general life philosophy of using natural remedies etc. She doesn't believe in vaccination, nor do they.

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I was just thinking (not all that familiar with Erika & family) ...  do the Shupes do Thanksgiving?  Maybe it gives the poor kids a chance to eat a little bit more than just smoothies.  

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I was just thinking (not all that familiar with Erika & family) ...  do the Shupes do Thanksgiving?  Maybe it gives the poor kids a chance to eat a little bit more than just smoothies.  

I'm pretty sure she does, though I don't think she discusses what they do on Thanksgiving (one of us should totally ask her to write a blog post about having a Biblical Thanksgiving celebration!). 

And on the salads- she says that all of them are the same veggie wise, but that they get to choose other toppings to go on them like nuts, seeds, bacon, cheese, dressing, etc. The salads aren't exactly the same for everyone everyday. So, while I'm not an Erika acolyte by any means, I think she's ever-so-slightly less draconian on this particular subject than some of you are making her out to be. It's possible she's changed her salad routine since this post, but I kind of doubt it. Erika is all about the routines.

http://www.largefamiliesonpurpose.com/2011/09/favorite-recipes-karens-cobb-salad.html

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This is Erika all over. She visits a chiropractor and a naturopath. They fit in with her general life philosophy of using natural remedies etc. She doesn't believe in vaccination, nor do they.

This is exactly Erika.  She visits a chiropractor and naturopath, but refers to him/them as "doctor."  She also doesn't allow snacks, or gives them one or two per day.  They cut off all contact with Bob's family, but he was still talking to his dad.  She's a bit slippery.

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I repost these links fairly frequently because they are really important.  VERY hard on the heart, but also entirely true and worth our time and attention: 

the 5-part Reuters investigation on rehoming: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1

Evangelicals, baby obsession, and the trauma of real, actual children: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/christian-evangelical-adoption-liberia

More should have been done for Hana.  Beyond tragic.  There are no words.  I hope she knows peace now.  

 

Wow. I've only read the first article so far. I bookmarked the other one. This is so awful and sad! I sent it to my best friend, who is a CPS social worker. She wasn't even surprised! She said it happens all the time! I'm so disgusted. 

I'm considering sharing a family I follow with all of you. They live near me, and have a blog and Instagram. They have 3 young boys, and the middle one is biological. The oldest is adopted from Uganda and the youngest, from Florida (I think). They are amazing parents! They picked up and moved to a predominantly Black city in the area, so their two Black sons would have more diversity and access to more specific to their needs, such as Black barber shops (might sound trivial, but hair care is very important for African Americans). The mom posts a lot of thought provoking entries about this and about holding on to their different cultures and heritages. I nearly cry sometimes as I read her writing. I have mutual friends with them, and I think they're Christians, but if they are, they're quite liberal and certainly not fundie. 

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This is Erika all over. She visits a chiropractor and a naturopath. They fit in with her general life philosophy of using natural remedies etc. She doesn't believe in vaccination, nor do they.

Has Erika spoken about vaccinations on her facebook or the Large Families on Purpose fb page? I did a cursory blog search for vaccines but nothing came up. I only ask because I'm interested in reading Erika's rock-solid logic and rationale for not vaccinating her children. :my_cry:

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Has Erika spoken about vaccinations on her facebook or the Large Families on Purpose fb page? I did a cursory blog search for vaccines but nothing came up. I only ask because I'm interested in reading Erika's rock-solid logic and rationale for not vaccinating her children. :my_cry:

It will be some Bible verses taken completely out of context so she can tell everyone that, "it's God's words," not her opinion. :pb_lol:

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Has Erika spoken about vaccinations on her facebook or the Large Families on Purpose fb page? I did a cursory blog search for vaccines but nothing came up. I only ask because I'm interested in reading Erika's rock-solid logic and rationale for not vaccinating her children. :my_cry:

Just as we trust Jesus to determine how many children we have, we also trust Jesus to ensure our children are healthy. *love* Our pastor said that the smallpox inoculation originated in either China, India, or the Ottoman Empire....three evil non-Christian empires.  Thus, all vaccines are the work of Satan. *devil horns*  My chiropractor ensured us that if we continue to drink our green drinks every day, there is no way any evil non-Christian viruses can harm us. *smile*  *burp*

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I plugged her green smoothie recipe into Chron-o-meter. I guessed on the amount of spinich, but it's not exactly calorific so it doesn't make much of a difference. 565 calories for a full recipe. Bob and Erica each get half one one recipe, and then they make another for the kids--split among 7! That's about 80 calories per kid. No wonder they look so thin!

Wow, thank you for the link! I read a little further down the page...this lady does not even make basic sense.

In her diagram on personalizing smoothie ingredients she divides it into three columns : Fact, Ideas to Try, and Common Misconceptions.  "Is this like a liquid salad?" is NOT A FACT, lady. 

And apparently they got the smoothie recipes from their chiropractors? At first I assumed it was kind of like getting a recipe rec from a friend, but upon hearing how they consult chiropractors for first aid it seems totally normal that they would also go to them for nutritional advice.

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I was checking out the latest recycled entry on Erika's blog about Christmas/winter birthday shopping, but I was mostly struck by the first picture. There's really nothing wrong with it; there seem to be quite a few gifts there, plenty even for the number of kids they have. It's just so...monochrome. So classic Erika. Their Christmas tree is a small tabletop tree, entirely decorated with like 3 different things. All the gifts are wrapped in identical silver paper with identical silver bows. Except for the sheer volume of gifts, you would never imagine that a child lives there, much less 9 of them *laugh and cry and sigh at the same time*

http://www.largefamiliesonpurpose.com/2011/11/large-family-christmas-birthday.html#more

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I think she posted about vaccines on her facebook page. She got a lot of pushback on it, and I think ultimately deleted it.

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I'm pretty sure she does, though I don't think she discusses what they do on Thanksgiving (one of us should totally ask her to write a blog post about having a Biblical Thanksgiving celebration!). 

And on the salads- she says that all of them are the same veggie wise, but that they get to choose other toppings to go on them like nuts, seeds, bacon, cheese, dressing, etc. The salads aren't exactly the same for everyone everyday. So, while I'm not an Erika acolyte by any means, I think she's ever-so-slightly less draconian on this particular subject than some of you are making her out to be. It's possible she's changed her salad routine since this post, but I kind of doubt it. Erika is all about the routines.

http://www.largefamiliesonpurpose.com/2011/09/favorite-recipes-karens-cobb-salad.html

Yeah they definitely do Thanksgiving. There are albums on the FB page. I think they also use it as an opportunity to celebrate the November birthdays- they hold a big party every month for all the people in the family born that month. The November birthdays include the twins. 

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Has Erika spoken about vaccinations on her facebook or the Large Families on Purpose fb page? I did a cursory blog search for vaccines but nothing came up. I only ask because I'm interested in reading Erika's rock-solid logic and rationale for not vaccinating her children. :my_cry:

She has written about it on the blog, but only a little (it might have been a response to a comment). The oldest two or three are vaccinated, but on the advice of her naturopath, no subsequent children were.

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Even though I love salad, I cannot imagine eating it every single day. I would hate seeing it on my plate after only a few weeks. How can she eat the same stuff every day? Aren´t they bored?

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Has Erika spoken about vaccinations on her facebook or the Large Families on Purpose fb page? I did a cursory blog search for vaccines but nothing came up. I only ask because I'm interested in reading Erika's rock-solid logic and rationale for not vaccinating her children. :my_cry:

I think I saw somewhere that she used to get the kids vaccinated (so the oldest) but then got involved in the whole anti-vax thing and decided not to get the others done. No idea where this was, I just remember seeing it.

She also posted some anti-vax thing on FB a while ago. Not sure when or what it was. People were criticising her saying that her page was just turning into an anti-vax conspiracy page.

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Even though I love salad, I cannot imagine eating it every single day. I would hate seeing it on my plate after only a few weeks. How can she eat the same stuff every day? Aren´t they bored?

Given Erika's love of Costco, I'm sure she picks up her favorite fixings in quantity & then its use it til its gone. So there may be some variety but not much.

On the topic of mandatory reporters, do NDs and chiros escape that responsibility somehow? They're licensed medical professions in WA. I work in an office in higher ed & following the Penn State incident, all WA higher ed employees became mandated reporters.

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Given Erika's love of Costco, I'm sure she picks up her favorite fixings in quantity & then its use it til its gone. So there may be some variety but not much.

 

On the topic of mandatory reporters, do NDs and chiros escape that responsibility somehow? They're licensed medical professions in WA. I work in an office in higher ed & following the Penn State incident, all WA higher ed employees became mandated reporters.

According to Washington state law, NDs and chiros are indeed mandatory reporters. Here is the list of mandatory reporters, and the list of those who qualify as healthcare professionals

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On the topic of mandatory reporters, do NDs and chiros escape that responsibility somehow? They're licensed medical professions in WA. I work in an office in higher ed & following the Penn State incident, all WA higher ed employees became mandated reporters.

According to RAINN, chiropractors in WA are mandated reporters: https://rainn.org/pdf-files-and-other-documents/Public-Policy/Legal-resources/2009-Mandatory-Report/Washington09C.pdf

ETA: @defraudingjezebel got there first whilst I was typing my wall o' text!

But if she's getting that kind of nutritional advice from the chiropractor, I'm assuming that person thinks all is well in the Shupe household.  I'm not sure about WA, but in CA, no chiropractor I've ever been to has checked my height or weight or kept those kinds of records at all.  I'm not sure if her chiropractor would even have charts for the kids' height and weight ranges.  I would assume a naturopath would have more records, but I've never been to one, so I have no basis of comparison.

Wow. I've only read the first article so far. I bookmarked the other one. This is so awful and sad! I sent it to my best friend, who is a CPS social worker. She wasn't even surprised! She said it happens all the time! I'm so disgusted. 

I'm considering sharing a family I follow with all of you. They live near me, and have a blog and Instagram. They have 3 young boys, and the middle one is biological. The oldest is adopted from Uganda and the youngest, from Florida (I think). They are amazing parents! They picked up and moved to a predominantly Black city in the area, so their two Black sons would have more diversity and access to more specific to their needs, such as Black barber shops (might sound trivial, but hair care is very important for African Americans). The mom posts a lot of thought provoking entries about this and about holding on to their different cultures and heritages. I nearly cry sometimes as I read her writing. I have mutual friends with them, and I think they're Christians, but if they are, they're quite liberal and certainly not fundie. 

I always feel a little horrible sharing those articles because the information is so painful.  Ultimately, though, I don't think our discomfort with the truth is the most important part of the story -- those kids deserve so much more protection and oversight than they get.  Before reading that, I had had no idea that once an adoption is complete, oversight basically disappears.  I didn't know that kids could be "rehomed" like pets and that people could say the adoption was "disrupted." I've even seen "rehoming" forums on Facebook (I've also reported them and then not found them again -- but I'm sure they pop up elsewhere).  I had assumed that crazy lady who sent her adopted son back to Russia was an anomaly, but have since learned otherwise, to my dismay and horror.  

The  family you follow sounds lovely and not at all snarkable.  In fact, they sound rather admirable, ensuring that their sons are able to connect with those from their heritages and cultures.  That's fantastic.  I'm still pissed about the lesbian couple who sued over their biracial child because they were pushed out of their comfort zone, had to go get her hair done in Black neighborhoods, and were planning on moving because their part of Ohio was too racist for their daughter (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/black-sperm-lawsuit_n_5922180.html).  I can understand needing an adjustment period for the surprise, and I can understand being shocked at the racism they suddenly discovered with a biracial child...but I can't understand suing when the Internet is forever and their daughter will one day see all the articles written about that fiasco.  

That family sounds about a billion times better. 

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