Vyckie Garrison - GoFundMe

[princessjo1988]

The saga continues. Apparently, Vyckie has found herself in another abusive relationship and there is a fundraiser for her to leave.

https://www.gofundme.com/vyckie-garrison-urgent-divorce-fund

I'm not surprised, to be honest. The woman seems to draw drama, generally. 

My only wish is that she finds a nice quiet spot in her life to live quietly without the drama. 

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

This isn’t terribly uncommon. Going from one abusive relationship to another. Especially if abuse is all you know. Your “normal meter” is off from the start. I agree that it’s likely best for her to be in no romantic relationships for a long while. 

[louisa05]

45 minutes ago, princessjo1988 said:

The saga continues. Apparently, Vyckie has found herself in another abusive relationship and there is a fundraiser for her to leave.

https://www.gofundme.com/vyckie-garrison-urgent-divorce-fund

I'm not surprised, to be honest. The woman seems to draw drama, generally. 

My only wish is that she finds a nice quiet spot in her life to live quietly without the drama. 

 

She likes the drama and the attention that goes with it. So if she gets out of this, she will move on to a new chapter of drama. And probably more grifting. My opinion for several years now has been that Vyckie needs to shut the hell up and get a damn job. 

This guy was the second coming for a long while and she lived pretty well traveling on his dime and setting herself up as a spokeswoman of some sort for atheism (--like she once was for QF and fundamentalism: same schtick, different view as far as I can tell). Makes me wonder when it went awry or if it was from the beginning and the rest was too appealing. 

[Alcyone]

Does anyone know what happened to her kids? I hope they all were able to leave fundy-dom and go on to live normal lives.

[Jezzable]

Quote

She is not used to being in need of financial support,

Um - - yes she is. She's had a GoFundMe before. 

[louisa05]

7 minutes ago, Jezzable said:

Um - - yes she is. She's had a GoFundMe before. 

Yep. And early in the NLQ years, she asked for money or wrote about financial woes constantly. When she left husband #1, she moved to the nearest town and would not work--tried to live on child support (that he had no real means to pay) and assistance and taking money from her mother. The notion that she could get any kind of job never seemed to occur to her. 

[acheronbeach]

$9000 bucks?  For what?  An uncontested divorce starts around 700 to 1000 bucks Canadian round here.  Where's she living now?  And I imagine her "job" is still posting shit on the internet and occasionally doing talks with her brood of children as props.  

I really liked Vyckie when she started out.  She used to be a massive topic of discussion on FJ.  But she's demonstrated that she's willing to lie and mistreat others to keep the clicks - and thus dollars - rolling in.  After the Razing Ruth fiasco and her awful behaviour toward Angel, I have no time for her.  She is shady as fuck.  

[smittykins]

Get a job, Vyckie.

[ViolaSebastian]

I feel like $9,000 is a lot. Surely she'd qualify for legal aid?

Does anyone know how many minor children she has living with her at this point?

Edited December 15, 2018 by ViolaSebastian

[feministxtian]

A DIY uncontested divorce is about 300 bucks here in the land of sin. My last divorce was pricey but that was because my X was/is an ass. It's ok though, I didn't have to pay a dime and the lawyer refunded me the retainer. 

I can't see her needing 9 grand for a divorce. Hell, if you hire a lawyer, they want maybe a grand as a retainer and will ask for legal fees in the divorce. Dumb bitch. 

[louisa05]

12 hours ago, feministxtian said:

A DIY uncontested divorce is about 300 bucks here in the land of sin. My last divorce was pricey but that was because my X was/is an ass. It's ok though, I didn't have to pay a dime and the lawyer refunded me the retainer. 

I can't see her needing 9 grand for a divorce. Hell, if you hire a lawyer, they want maybe a grand as a retainer and will ask for legal fees in the divorce. Dumb bitch. 

Well, she wouldn't want to pay her own rent, now would she? She's the whatever year "Atheist of the Year" and we should treat her accordingly! Just like when she was the matriarch of the "Family of the Year". She is special. And you all want her to pay her own rent? 

Get a damn job, Vyckie. There are a lot of no skill or low skill jobs out there. You aren't too good for that. Bring your ass back to Nebraska. The unemployment rate is under 3% here and you can rent a two bedroom in Norfolk for $500 a month or less. 

[fundiefan]

18 hours ago, ViolaSebastian said:

I feel like $9,000 is a lot. Surely she'd qualify for legal aid?

Does anyone know how many minor children she has living with her at this point?

Only one of her kids is currently a minor. I don't know how many are living with her, but just her youngest son is under 18. 

I never liked her but  I hope she gets out and gets her life together. I do not, however have much sympathy. 

I suspect the one child under 18 plays a part in her financial woes - child support for one is not the same as it was when she had several. If she weren't too good to go and get a job, I may have some sympathy. Instead, I just wish her no harm. 

[treemom]

10 hours ago, louisa05 said:

Well, she wouldn't want to pay her own rent, now would she? She's the whatever year "Atheist of the Year" and we should treat her accordingly! Just like when she was the matriarch of the "Family of the Year". She is special. And you all want her to pay her own rent? 

This.  So much this.  I feel like this encapsulates Vyckie’s issues right here.

 

obvs. I want no one to stay in an abusive situation.  But Vyckie is often both the abused and abuser.  

[hoipolloi]

2 hours ago, treemom said:

obvs. I want no one to stay in an abusive situation.  But Vyckie is often both the abused and abuser.  

ITA. She's an awful person who's had bad things done to her.

I could accept that much but she never fails to extract the last ounce of drama from these situations, and it's always all about her.

[NakedKnees]

23 hours ago, louisa05 said:

The unemployment rate is under 3% here and you can rent a two bedroom in Norfolk for $500 a month or less. 

I can't believe how much this sentence excites me. I pay a good deal more than that for a two bedroom in Chile.

Oh Vyckie. She was one of my gateways to FJ. I always hated the "No longer Qivering" stylization but thought this place was too hard on her for a long time. I was wrong... Her platform is certainly interesting, but she is not a person deserving of funding from me at this time. I always hope she turns around and starts working hard to make the most of her experience, but I'll believe it when I see it.

If anyone can approximate about how old her kids are now, I'd be curious about that. I think most would be adults or at least teens at this point? But I may be way off.

[ViolaSebastian]

20 hours ago, fundiefan said:

Only one of her kids is currently a minor. I don't know how many are living with her, but just her youngest son is under 18. 

I never liked her but  I hope she gets out and gets her life together. I do not, however have much sympathy. 

I suspect the one child under 18 plays a part in her financial woes - child support for one is not the same as it was when she had several. If she weren't too good to go and get a job, I may have some sympathy. Instead, I just wish her no harm. 

I asked because if she still had a whole herd of little ones, the number would make more sense. Daycare would have to be arranged and paid for before she started working. She’d have to get a bigger place, more dependents, a higher power lawyer needed for a custody dispute, etc.  But one?

 

 

[Palimpsest]

Oh, please.  This request for $9,000 from Vyckie for another divorce is chump change.  She was shilling for a cool $23,000 back in 2014 because she was about to lose her home.  But it was all her ex-husband's fault that there was a lien on the house due to unpaid bills.  Of course she was a victim then too, but this was a long time after she divorced Bennett.

Vyckie is to trouble like a moth to the flame.  If she is now in an abusive relationship (again) then I feel sorry for her. 

However, she has cried wolf and shown her extremely unpleasant side too often to garner much sympathy from me these days.  I don't think that is being too hard on her.  It reflects my opinion of her disgraceful behavior towards Homeschoolers Anonymous and her incessant grandstanding and bullying, as well my distaste for the way she behaved towards Free Jinger over the RR debacle.

Vyckie should be capable of finding and holding down a job.  She claimed to be the bread winner in her first marriage.  But since then she has preferred to live on child support and donations, reliving her glory days when she was the big anti-QF voice.  And I think she is abusive person herself - although I don't doubt she was abused by the QF lifestyle.

On 12/14/2018 at 4:48 PM, Alcyone said:

Does anyone know what happened to her kids? I hope they all were able to leave fundy-dom and go on to live normal lives.

The only minor is the youngest, Wesley.  I don't know what happened to all the others, except for Angel.  I prefer to leave Angel her privacy because she has been put through a meat grinder by Vyckie and never sought publicity herself.

We have had a couple of visits here from Angel.  She originally posted here as AngelRenee, but the last time she visited (within the last 12-14 months) she used another name that I forget.  I only remember the incident because it was clearly Angel, and I alerted the admins to the posts so that she wasn't banned for accidentally socking herself.  I can't find the posts, they were at the end of a non-Vyckie thread, so this is from memory.

Angel previously went back and forth over Vyckie and was clearly manipulated and guilt-tripped by her many times.  Unfortunately being estranged from Vyckie means being estranged from her siblings, in a very Jeub-like fashion. 

However, the last time she was here Angel said that she had distanced herself from Vyckie's toxicity for once and for all.  She also seemed in a much better place herself.   I wish her well.

[Beermeet]

The nerve of some people to publicly ask for money over the same shit astounds me.  Like, we all have our own issues.  You need help once to get out, I get it and may help.  Then, because new husband doesn't pay bills and now to divorce again.  Um, nope. It's greedy and entitled.  People have GoToMe funds because their loved ones need emergency medical help or a house fire and very serious situations like that.  To use it over and over for your pretty normal life ups and downs is gross.  

Edited December 16, 2018 by Beermeet
Changed than to then, I couldn't let it go.

[lilwriter85]

I'm a former Vyckie fan. I found NLQ around 2010 when I was reading more about the Duggars and QL lifestyles. I liked some of her takedowns of the Duggars. But, over the years I've liked her less and less. 

[feministxtian]

So what's keeping her from finding a job? I mean, admittedly she may not have many job skills but, there's jobs that don't take much skill from fast food to call centers. Is she "too good" to do like the rest of us? She has one kid under 18 left, there's no reason to get up off her dead ass and on to her dying feet and WORK. 

I did the whole get a job thing after being a SAHM. Started as crew in a fast food place and worked my way up to ass't manager. Traded that job for a manager job at a pizza joint. Got my shit together and finished college and jumped into the big time. It wasn't easy, it was exhausting while trying to work and go to school, but I did it. Took me about 5 years total to get to where I was making decent money but now...I have a marketable skill that's in demand (I get calls/emails from recruiters almost every day now). 

She's not a "speshul snowflake"...she can act like the rest of us. She's not special b/c she's a DV survivor, there are millions of other DV survivors that have succeeded...she needs to realize that she's capable of doing it too. 

[apple1]

She's a narcissistic user, and she always has been. She was when she was "THE" voice of quiverfull (one of two writers/publishers of the primary newsletter for that lifestyle). She has continued to be so in every iteration she has had since then. The story is all the same; only certain details change.

I could also almost guarantee that she is reading all of this; she used to have alerts set for the unusual spelling of her name -- that is why I have refused to type her name as it is in posts.

Gah.

[Koala]

I can't remember the details, but I remember being absolutely appalled by the way she treated Angel.  

The GFM says her kids "need to get to safety", and you know, all I can think is- how DARE she put her kids in yet another abusive situation?  At some point she has to grow up and put the children she's brought into this world, ahead of herself.

If those kids are in danger, she needs to get to a shelter for domestic abuse victims, not wait for someone to giver her 9 grand.

[Aine]

Also, if she's in serious danger in the home she is in right now- surely a public Go Fund Me isn't the safest way to get out, at least right now. Leaving is the most dangerous time for a woman and any kids (whether they be step kids to the abuser or bio kids) as they are losing their control and even a 'separation' is seen as a public humiliation of sorts to them and their power is being challenged by the partner they have been abusing. 

I've purposely never spent much time looking into Vyckie. I know her story in general. I read some stuff of her's ages ago when I was first interested in quiverful and Christian fundies but the way she wrote was intolerable to me and screamed narcissist. Then I found FJ and lurked for years here under a couple of user names before I ever posted and never felt any desire to ever look into Vyckie again, even when I've read discussions on here about her.

Anyway....while I don't know much about her, and someone can correct me if I'm incorrect, she's been out of the lifestyle a fairly long time. She does speaking engagements around the country, her kids went to public school after she left, she hasn't been a hermit- presumably she has friends, right? Someone else started that GFM, probably someone she knows over the internet that she has cried poor to and manipulated, but still...a friend. She writes about domestic violence and speaks about it and all that, and yet she is doing a public money grab before leaving and that flies in the face of all research on DV. You get out first. You stay with a friend or a family member, especially when you only have one minor child. Have your child that is under-18 stay with a friend from school if that is what will keep them safe and if you don't know anyone close by that can take you and a kid that needs to be in school on their couch for a a couple of weeks until you're situated. This abuse came out of nowhere all of a sudden? You've done this before, when the warning signs started, even if you weren't ready to leave him just yet, you couldn't have put aside just a little money? Neither of you had any income that you had access to? With as much of a narcissist as Vyckie appears to be, I can't imagine she married a man that didn't provide any financial support for her. When they first got married, I'm sure I saw some posts on here somewhere that her FB showed her vacationing with him and things- and I've seen photos of Vyckie...she doesn't look like she buys her clothes or anything else at Goodwill or that she scrapes pennies on her appearance and lifestyle.

Some women do have relationship after relationship with abusive men. Most of those women are repeating patterns that they themselves grow up with and they don't generally have insight into how abnormal those relationship dynamics are or even if they do, they are usually so beaten down psychologically that they do not think they deserve anything else and/or are filled with (misplaced but very real) shame because they think it's their fault or there is something wrong with them and/or it's better than being alone and/or raising kids without a father and/or they are so isolated that they really have no one they can turn to (or a million other reasons). But those women aren't Vyckie, who has made a name for herself being so 'enlightened' about the dangers of not just religion but patriarchy and domestic violence and power dynamics in relationships. You can even convince me that this abuse did "sneak up on her" but no one can convince me that she is dumb enough to not realize the huge amount of danger she has put her and her child in by publicly raising this money without having already left him and being safe somewhere IF (and that's a big IF to me still) he is that abusive and that unsafe. And if she is somewhere already safe away from this scary abusive partner...then $9,000 is not urgent. Get a job, get back on your feet, you have no children together to need an attorney immediately because there is no custody to work out, save some money for an attorney, talk to a DV NGO and they may be able to help you out with a bond for an apartment as a loan or as a donation and stop manipulating people.

 

[Jezzable]

On 12/14/2018 at 7:48 PM, feministxtian said:

A DIY uncontested divorce is about 300 bucks here in the land of sin. My last divorce was pricey but that was because my X was/is an ass. It's ok though, I didn't have to pay a dime and the lawyer refunded me the retainer. 

I can't see her needing 9 grand for a divorce. Hell, if you hire a lawyer, they want maybe a grand as a retainer and will ask for legal fees in the divorce. Dumb bitch. 

I've seen retainer fees from $5-10K around my neck of the woods. 

[Aine]

10 hours ago, Jezzable said:

I've seen retainer fees from $5-10K around my neck of the woods. 

For an uncontested divorce?

Divorces can cost a tonne, don't get me wrong- but those are usually long term marriages with shared children and an accumulation of wealth and assets when married. She hasn't been married to this dude that long so she is likely not entitled to too much of what he had coming into the marriage, nor should she be. There are no children as the product of the marriage. It should never even have to go to court (presumably)- just file and be out of there after the minimum separation period in your state.

If she has a stake in a good deal of money requiring an attorney and that attorney can see she has a good claim, she'll likely be able to find someone to take it on contingency for a cut of what she gets. That what I need to decide soon regarding a civil suit over my sexual assault against an institution (that I really don't want to do but apparently it's one of the only ways to maybe make institutional change in this country, and I've tried all the others). It takes work though the call around and meet with attorneys over and over even if you have a case. It's not fair and it sucks so bad that getting any semblance of justice becomes a full-time job, but guess what? Other people at least try their asses off to make it happen and to find that person or persons to help. We don't go running to a GFM again and again to raise money. And most people make at least some attempt to work to at least contribute.