Where in the World is Doug Phillips? Part 13

[neuroticcat]

Vision Forum gets called out in this report on sentencing of these abusers who beat their children. Good. I hope it helps everyone remember how horrible they are.

The two eldest daughters caught some of their father's beating their brother on video and sent it to CPS. 

Thankfully the father got 11.5 years though he issued a statement about how humiliating this has been for him and how they were justified by God.

All kinds of TW for the article, but here's the story on the daughters: https://www.wbiw.com/2023/05/20/daughter-testifies-about-her-beating-by-her-father-scott-blattert/

And his sentencing: https://www.wbiw.com/2023/06/16/scott-blattert-will-serve-11-1-2-years-in-prison-for-beating-his-children-with-glue-sticks-and-a-belt/

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, neuroticcat said:

Thankfully the father got 11.5 years though he issued a statement about how humiliating this has been for him and how they were justified by God.

I hope that the wife is also convicted & sentenced to serve time. These two are a pair of monsters and should never again be allowed near their minor children without supervision.

[Katzchen24]

7 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

Vision Forum gets called out in this report on sentencing of these abusers who beat their children. Good. I hope it helps everyone remember how horrible they are.

The two eldest daughters caught some of their father's beating their brother on video and sent it to CPS. 

Thankfully the father got 11.5 years though he issued a statement about how humiliating this has been for him and how they were justified by God.

All kinds of TW for the article, but here's the story on the daughters: https://www.wbiw.com/2023/05/20/daughter-testifies-about-her-beating-by-her-father-scott-blattert/

And his sentencing: https://www.wbiw.com/2023/06/16/scott-blattert-will-serve-11-1-2-years-in-prison-for-beating-his-children-with-glue-sticks-and-a-belt/

What a pair of monsters. I bet they're not the only ones using biblical justification to terrorise their children though. Thank goodness the eldest two had enough courage to record and report them. I see by the article that they tried suing the local county for infringing their freedom of religion when they interfered with them beating their kids.

[hoipolloi]

Some excellent comments in this Twitter thread  and absolutely righteous smackdowns of Doug Phillips, VF, Voddie Baucham, and their fellow travelers:

Glad we arenʻt the only ones who have noticed how these assholes slithered away from VF and DPIAT without a word.

Some bonus content which made me smile:

Oh honey, if you want to know the whole story, come check us out at FJ!

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by hoipolloi

[Columbia]

15 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

Thankfully the father got 11.5 years though he issued a statement about how humiliating this has been for him and how they were justified by God.

Huh. According to the Pearls, and Voddie, and Dougie, and Don Hart, and Geoff, when it comes to hitting your kids "everyone knows what abuse looks like."

Except for this guy, apparently. It's too bad no one thought to tell him.

[ptm6114]

Again I am new to all of the Vision Forum shenanigans. But this is just awful! Awful!!! How the Phillips family can just carry on as if they have done no wrong. Of course the children are not responsible for Doug and Beall’s wrongdoings, however they have made no effort to distance themselves from their father. Liberty actually quoted her father in one of her cheatball instagram posts last December! The Phillips daughters selling sand from Iwo Jima, exploiting veterans to finance their travels, taking pictures of themselves at veteran graves and posting them on social media (that would be YOU Liberty! 🤢), having no real grasp of the damage they inflict. Because the little bubble they’ve encapsulated themselves in rants and raves of their self promoting “heroic deeds”. Just like Doug. This family is rotten. No apologies at all for how their bull shit negatively impacts others. Pretending to be patriots. Wear all the red lipstick and cosplay your heart out, you’re still slime underneath all of it. Children are beaten under the leadership of VF, a child goes without his father so Jeff and Liberty can go skydiving and cosplay and make instagram reels in France, innocent people/abuse victims are lied about and villainized to protect the facade of the Phillips family. While the real abusers turn themselves into victims. 

[Columbia]

3 hours ago, ptm6114 said:

Again I am new to all of the Vision Forum shenanigans. But this is just awful! Awful!!! How the Phillips family can just carry on as if they have done no wrong. Of course the children are not responsible for Doug and Beall’s wrongdoings, however they have made no effort to distance themselves from their father. Liberty actually quoted her father in one of her cheatball instagram posts last December! The Phillips daughters selling sand from Iwo Jima, exploiting veterans to finance their travels, taking pictures of themselves at veteran graves and posting them on social media (that would be YOU Liberty! 🤢), having no real grasp of the damage they inflict. Because the little bubble they’ve encapsulated themselves in rants and raves of their self promoting “heroic deeds”. Just like Doug. This family is rotten. No apologies at all for how their bull shit negatively impacts others. Pretending to be patriots. Wear all the red lipstick and cosplay your heart out, you’re still slime underneath all of it. Children are beaten under the leadership of VF, a child goes without his father so Jeff and Liberty can go skydiving and cosplay and make instagram reels in France, innocent people/abuse victims are lied about and villainized to protect the facade of the Phillips family. While the real abusers turn themselves into victims. 

The Vision Forum crowd has always been very good at
1: Inventing a new problem and ignoring the ones that are actually there (e.g. CPS is going to come take your kids away in the night, but we're never actually going to talk about what child abuse looks like, or give the kids steps to protect themselves)
2: Talking a lot about why something is important, and not having any practical steps or alternatives (the CD I linked to earlier is an hour-long rant about the evils of CPS, and no patriarchal Christian dominionist solution to how to prevent and address child abuse)

It also doesn't help that so many of the "child training" tools provided are themselves child abuse manuals. When you're surrounded with the Pearls' materials, when you're listening to Voddie Baucham laude a pastor for beating his daughter 13 times for being shy why would you ever wonder if your own "training" is too harsh?

I also think that the VF hotshots (Voddie, Doug, Geoff, Scott Brown, etc) would probably have a difficult time explaining why child abuse is bad, and centering it on the child rather than the parent. They'd likely start with something like "Child abuse is bad because it's the father overstepping his authority" as opposed to "child abuse is bad because it hurts a child made in the image of God." And ultimately I think that's why they never discussed child abuse (or spousal abuse, for that matter,) because I think they have a hard time seeing it as a bad thing or a sin, rather it's too much of a good thing. It's good for the father to be in charge, it's good for the father to discipline his children, it's good for children to submit to their parents, and this guy who's beating his kids just took it a step too far and needs better guidance. He certainly doesn't need to have his kids put in a safe place away from him. That way no one ever runs the risk of overthrowing the father's authority, which, according to Mr. Don Hart, Esq., founder of Heritage Defense, is the bigger tragedy.

[neuroticcat]

13 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Some excellent comments in this Twitter thread  and absolutely righteous smackdowns of Doug Phillips, VF, Voddie Baucham, and their fellow travelers:

Glad we arenʻt the only ones who have noticed how these assholes slithered away from VF and DPIAT without a word.

Some bonus content which made me smile:

Oh honey, if you want to know the whole story, come check us out at FJ!

 

Oh man re-reading that Voddie quote is just horrible. I hadn't forgotten about it, but seeing it again was just so gross. Ew. Those poor girls. 

This link was interesting. I don't think I knew all the manliest of men literally met at IBLP headquarters. I knew people who followed these guys all were in the same circles, but Gothard always felt like he kind of officially kept set apart (or maybe people tried to stay clear of association). I'm not sure I've seen an official tie like this before. 

Do you all know Cait West? She writes about being a SAHD in Vision Forum and has a memoir coming out soon. I hope it gets a huge boost from Shiny Happy People interest and tons of people read it and see what these guys are really like. 
 

[ptm6114]

9 hours ago, neuroticcat said:

Oh man re-reading that Voddie quote is just horrible. I hadn't forgotten about it, but seeing it again was just so gross. Ew. Those poor girls. 

This link was interesting. I don't think I knew all the manliest of men literally met at IBLP headquarters. I knew people who followed these guys all were in the same circles, but Gothard always felt like he kind of officially kept set apart (or maybe people tried to stay clear of association). I'm not sure I've seen an official tie like this before. 

Do you all know Cait West? She writes about being a SAHD in Vision Forum and has a memoir coming out soon. I hope it gets a huge boost from Shiny Happy People interest and tons of people read it and see what these guys are really like. 
 

Is this on twitter? 

[noseybutt]

46 minutes ago, ptm6114 said:

Is this on twitter? 

It’s a screenshot from a an article on Homeschoolers Anonymous that was posted on the above Twitter thread.

Article is here: https://homeschoolersanonymous.net/2013/05/14/end-child-protection-doug-phillips-hslda-and-the-2009-mens-leadership-summit/

[noseybutt]

I have chills reading that HA article. It’s meticulously researched and sourced. 

And it explains so much about what was happening in homeschooling communities around that time.

Many support groups that were considered both Christian and “inclusive” (welcoming to non Evangelicals) began insisting on statements of faith. If you couldn’t sign because you were secular, Catholic, Lutheran, Mormon, Jewish…..you were out. (In some cases you were out of leadership but could still attend activities, in other instances you were out out.)

In states that allowed state funding for homeschooling (eg Colorado, California), that too became a point of exclusion. If you accepted state funding, then no participation in activities.

 I believe this was also the start—or maybe the pinnacle—of the curriculum wars. Where there was increased policing of books and curriculum teaching other than young earth creationism, dominionism, etc at the curriculum fairs. Even the re-sale events, where families would gather to resale curriculum and purchase second hand, began to be policed.

In my corner of the world it was a sudden and bizarre shift. I don’t know how much of the shift pre-dates these type of leadership conferences and these men were simply riding a wave, or if they were creating the agenda that others followed.

 

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, noseybutt said:

In my corner of the world it was a sudden and bizarre shift.

That seemed to be the impression of Karen Campbell who used to blog at That Mom. She was a veteran homeschooler in 2009, having done started with her kids since the 1970s. Her post & the commenters on it did NOT recognize these asshats as leaders of any kind:

Quote

I found the time line they are using to be quite interesting. In fact, I found it interesting a few years ago when Doug Phillips stated that “home education began to emerge as a national movement” in 1983, remarkably the year Bill Gothard launched his Advanced Training Institute. Why did he choose that time in history as a starting point? Could it be that he equates the advancement of home education with the theonomic, patriocentric agenda that saw home schooling as an essential vehicle for promoting those goals for a Christian society?

 

[Hane]

@noseybutt, thank you. I’m stunned by the hypocritical, self-serving, toxic rhetoric these guys spew.

I cannot help being tickled by DPIARBT’s assertion that women working outside the home is “unbiblical.” Dougie, remind us again—how does that square with Beall’s current job in home health care?

[ptm6114]

58 minutes ago, Hane said:

@noseybutt, thank you. I’m stunned by the hypocritical, self-serving, toxic rhetoric these guys spew.

I cannot help being tickled by DPIARBT’s assertion that women working outside the home is “unbiblical.” Dougie, remind us again—how does that square with Beall’s current job in home health care?

Lolllllllll I wonder if he’s spoken to his daughters about being “biblical” 🤣🤣🤣

I don’t think his daughters are doing anything wrong as far as how they dress and *spending the night unsupervised* with their boyfriend(s). I am not of the faith. However I don’t think Liberty or Faith’s behavior would fall under the biblical teachings of Doug Phillips. Hypocrites!

Edited June 20, 2023 by ptm6114

[noseybutt]

1 hour ago, Hane said:

@noseybutt, thank you. I’m stunned by the hypocritical, self-serving, toxic rhetoric these guys spew.

I cannot help being tickled by DPIARBT’s assertion that women working outside the home is “unbiblical.” Dougie, remind us again—how does that square with Beall’s current job in home health care?

Yes, and it’s deeper than that. Make no mistake, in most families 90+% of labor for homeschooling pre-pandemic was on the moms. (I think there has been a shift post pandemic even in conservative circles with more fathers assuming direct roles.) What he is doing is minimizing and downright ignoring the labor of women, including his own wife. It’s jaw dropping. 

I consider homeschooling to be a viable and unique educational offering, but to do it well requires energy, planning, and on-going education of the teacher. It’s a career.

The way this was framed in religious circles is horrific. No wonder the outcomes were/are so terrible.

The men were wanting the professional part (eg picking the curriculum) while the women were expecting to implement as unskilled labor. 

[noseybutt]

2 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

That seemed to be the impression of Karen Campbell who used to blog at That Mom. She was a veteran homeschooler in 2009, having done started with her kids since the 1970s. Her post & the commenters on it did NOT recognize these asshats as leaders of any kind:

 

YES! Thank you for sharing. That is a rabbit hole I definitely need to go down.

In the 1980s, even 1990s, the American evangelical and fundamentalist missionaries were still encouraged/expected to send their children off to boarding schools (eg Dalat in SE Asia, Rift Valley Academy in Africa). HOMESCHOOLING WAS NOT A SIGNIFICANT MOVEMENT AT THAT TIME. In fact, it was considered an act of faith to send your kid off at age 5 or so, and if you were not willing to make that sacrifice, then maybe the mission field was not for you.

This was further normalized by the tradition of British missionaries who were comfortable with the boarding school model because it was culturally familiar.

Going back in US history, homeschooling was something of a stop gap measure on the frontier until enough families were in an area to support a teacher. It was not a goal, more of a necessity.

On the west coast, homeschooling in a more modern format began popping up in the 1960s as part of the youth movement. The flower children who “dropped out” didn’t suddenly opt back in when the children came along.

This was especially true with the 1960s Jesus movement. There are still pockets of “Christian hippie” homeschoolers up and down the west coast who mostly have quietly gone about their business, often raising their children in off grid or partially off grid environments, as likely to home birth as they are to keep marijuana plants on their property. 

It’s not the Gothard school of the dining room table, that’s for sure.

The revisionism of the history is not surprising, but certainly curious and enraging.

Edited June 20, 2023 by noseybutt

[Columbia]

19 minutes ago, noseybutt said:

Yes, and it’s deeper than that. Make no mistake, in most families 90+% of labor for homeschooling pre-pandemic was on the moms. (I think there has been a shift post pandemic even in conservative circles with more fathers assuming direct roles.) What he is doing is minimizing and downright ignoring the labor of women, including his own wife. It’s jaw dropping. 

The deep disdain for homeschooling mothers runs just below the surface in those groups. Doug spoke often about how historically homeschooling conferences were 90% women, and how many more men were starting to come to homeschooling seminars. Victoria Botkin in her webinar talked about how she loved snuggling up with her young children on the couch and drinking cocoa and reading books, and contrasted that with the real exposure homeschooled boys need to get from men, and talked about how poorly homeschooled teenage boys did because they were around women all day. She said it was so great when Geoff started working from home, but it would also throw off the whole schedule because then he would need the kids to work on a project of his, instead of doing the schooling she had planned. It's another great example of the VF "only problems, no solutions" approach, because there's no way for Dad to homeschool all his very young sons if he's working from home all day, but somehow families are still ideally supposed to pull off both of those at the same time. In some of the more extreme patriarchal circles (Doug Wilson, et al.) there's debate about how old sons should be before their mothers shouldn't teach them anymore, lest they get overly corrupted by female influence; 13 seems to be the popular age. 

[Columbia]

1 hour ago, ptm6114 said:

Lolllllllll I wonder if he’s spoken to his daughters about being “biblical” 🤣🤣🤣

I don’t think his daughters are doing anything wrong as far as how they dress and *spending the night unsupervised* with their boyfriend(s). I am not of the faith. However I don’t think Liberty or Faith’s behavior would fall under the biblical teachings of Doug Phillips. Hypocrites!

If you're not yet familiar with it, Return of the Daughters gives a pretty good overview of what the Phillips' girls lives should have been like (with exceptions, of course; the rules never completely apply to the people in charge.) It was produced by a family that was close friends with the Phillips and other VF leadership, and wildly popular with Vision Forum in general, and Doug in particular. They showed it often at the father-daughter retreats. For whatever reason the Mormons stuck it on YouTube. It doesn't include Lourdes' interview, not for her sake, I assume, but more to hide the natural consequences of the stay-at-home-daughter movement.

[Hane]

@Columbia, I distinctly remember seeing several minutes of Lourdes proudly saying she’s “counter-cultural.” Could her footage have been edited out for legal reasons?

[Howl]

On 6/18/2023 at 9:09 PM, neuroticcat said:

All kinds of TW for the article, but here's the story on the daughters: https://www.wbiw.com/2023/05/20/daughter-testifies-about-her-beating-by-her-father-scott-blattert/

Let's be clear.  This was not corporal punishment; it was out-of-control violence, enough to land the father in prison for 11 years.  Quite a few of the kids will be legal adults when he's released. I desperately hope an element of his parole is not having access to his younger children.

It's a good thing the daughter was able to get this on her cell phone.  The father was becoming increasingly violent and that included strangulation -- a huge red flag/predictor for subsequent homicide in domestic violence.

I do think that if the father hadn't been stopped, he would have murdered at least one of his children, maybe more. 

The mother is equally culpable here;  she incited the father to violently punish the children.  She was not their advocate.  Two utterly f**ked people who should never be allowed access to children again.  

Sadly, according to the article linked by @neuroticcat, these two scumbags managed to crank out two more infants between the time of the video and the father's incarceration. 

I wonder if both parents were themselves products of a regimen of extreme punishments as children. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Howl

[Columbia]

On 6/21/2023 at 10:29 AM, Hane said:

@Columbia, I distinctly remember seeing several minutes of Lourdes proudly saying she’s “counter-cultural.” Could her footage have been edited out for legal reasons?

I remember that line, and that she was shooting a pistol in the beginning of her interview. I always thought hers was the coolest interview.

I don't think they pulled her section out for legal reasons. I think they put the video on YouTube as some sort of pro-patriarchy propaganda, but it's hard to sell patriarchy when everyone can see how it played out in real time. I think her interview's not in there because they don't like people asking questions or drawing natural conclusions. This is the website from which it originally came; they have Peter and Kelly's courtship section posted on there as well.

https://josephsmithfoundation.org/ziontube/biblical-young-women/

[hoipolloi]

There is a clip of Lourdes saying she's counter-cultural in this trailer for ROTD.

I got the actual DVD some years ago and need to rewatch it. IIRC, her segment include longer statements of course as well as scenes of her interacting with her family.

And who could forget the "directorsʻ cut" segment featuring an interview with Kelly and Bradrick! I donʻt think that is anywhere on the web.

[Columbia]

2 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

And who could forget the "directorsʻ cut" segment featuring an interview with Kelly and Bradrick! I donʻt think that is anywhere on the web.

Ah yes, the "my father fell in love with Peter before I fell in love with Peter" line. 

[ptm6114]

Have you all seen the shit posting going on over at the WARTOG page on Biberty’s photo? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

simp city 

https://www.facebook.com/MyPhotosFromHistory/posts/pfbid0tGRFdPbW6enRmWHNPAjfHJpiPhku3T1qx2hGj4PJV8LUzomvXaUox9VMviz9UuNHl

[ptm6114]

My apologies everyone, WARTOG has blocked anything contradictory to Liberty’s “service.” Even if it was written respectfully. They must uphold the illusion and cannot debate! Anyways. I thought y’all would appreciate this before it gets deleted. Many many Marines are not happy with the Phillips family 

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by ptm6114
Privvvacy