ATI adoption & physical/sexual abuse story

[mirele]

This is a link to the first of nine blog posts by a woman named Ruth Burger, detailing physical and abuse at the hands of her father, "Dr." Kenneth Copley. Warning: This is very triggering.

 

http://incongruouscircumspection.blogsp ... posed.html

 

For a long time, Copley worked at ATI...which I find interesting, given how Gothard feels about adoption. (However, Burger ended up in the Copley family as the result of an "interrupted" fundie adoption.)

 

Kenneth Copley is currently a pastor of discipleship at Brownburg Baptist Church, Brownburg, Indiana.

 

And no, the state has not prosecuted this $#!+!!!

[Didi]

I am gonna reply as I read each part.

Part 1 thoughts -

A: How on earth does a child from 6 months to 3 years have such intense "behavioral problems" as to require "replacement"??

B: It isn't legal ANYWHERE in the US to spank foster children, soooo.... why didn't anyone listen to a 3 -5 year old who said "they spank me on my bare butt"...???

C: I get the initial parents giving her a new name - I would not have chosen that one, but a 6 month old I get changing her Korean name to something in English at 6 months of age... but why in the world did the Copley's change her American name?? It's even Biblical... I personally feel weird about changing a 5 year old's name even in an international adoption, but I understand why some people do... but I do NOT understand changing a 5 year old's name who has a name, not only in the language you speak, but is a perfectly "normal" name... (It's not like it's "Sunrise Cupcakes", but even then I'd leave the kid with their own name :))

on to part 2...

Part 2 - I don't even feel I need to comment as EVERYTHING is wrong with that entry...

on to part 3...

Part 3-

I am not sure I am going to continue commenting... it makes me so sick and sad and teary eyed. Who would treat another human being this way, let alone a child???? I am surprised she didn't turn out mute and incapable of learning. These people should be flogged and then shot.

Part 4 -

If they were that "worried" about their other children and hated her that much then maybe they should have sent her away - at least she would have been out of their grasp. :( :( :( I am so scared to see where this is headed, but I have a bad feeling...

Part 5

Vomit... just....vomit

Part 6 -

I literally gagged. :(

Part 7 -

I don't blame her. I am surprised it took her that long.

Part 8 -

At least it sounds like she got some slight relief starting around 16 :-/

Part 9-

I am so proud of her for doing everything she can to tell the truth and nail this bastard. Wow. :(

[IceQueen]

I just read the first part, but someone dropped the ball with the spanking thing. Kids don't lie about stuff like that and it's abuse plain and simple. About the name change, my sister was adopted from foster care. She was in our home for a few years before she was officially adopted. She had visits with her mom and she knew us and we knew her. She had anger problems and my mom was terrified she would find us since we lived in the same city. She was afraid she would somehow recognize my sister with her new last name like see her in the paper or something . I did run into her after the adoption was finalized. Also my bio sister and I have names that start with the same letter, so my parents didn't want it to seem weird they didn't follow the theme with the little one. So I give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to adoption name changes. Also little sister's middle name was her first name and she goes by both names.

[emmyfair]

.... sickening ....

[Miss M]

I am just shaking with anger over this.

[emmyfair]

I am just shaking with anger over this.

I know,eh? It's been an hour since I read it and I can still taste the bile in the back of my throat and I have this lurching feeling in my stomach. I wish with all my heart I could have taken that girl out of that hell. We would have loved her.

[Miss M]

I know,eh? It's been an hour since I read it and I can still taste the bile in the back of my throat and I have this lurching feeling in my stomach. I wish with all my heart I could have taken that girl out of that hell. We would have loved her.

Adopted parents failed and abused her, the State of Indiana has failed and also abused her. I have two adopted brothers, and I know my Mother would have taken this girl and raised her to know she was love and cherished. Who can help at this point, I thought about emailing her story to Anderson Cooper but I read in one of the comments he is kind of off the ATI thing now. Emmy, did you read the comments from two other girls that were there at the same time, during the time she was locked in the room at ATI for a year, that is when I started crying.

[Bellatrix]

The increasingly painful spanking, the extreme power and "will" to go through (or quantity of spanking) and the nudity associated with it (not even able to pull her panties up during the 1-minute-before-1-o'clock spanking session) just screams perversion.

And it simply reinforces the fact that making sexuality synonymous with sin just suppresses it, makes it boil over and come out in the most inappropriate ways. Seeing cleavage or doggy style isn't inappropriate, what is inappropriate is making a child grow up in semi-nudity, grooming it and then molesting it. This is, when you look at it with some analytical distance, a perverted sexual fantasy that brew between both parents and of which the adopted daughter became the terrible collateral damage. I couldn't read this story, even before reaching the grooming & molesting chapters, and think to myself that the mother's will to continue "spanking" her daughter on her naked butt, not even allowing her to pull up her panties, for hours was not associated with the error of the girl but with her own terribly messed up feelings that link up nudity, pain and the concept of sin. Except the nudity and pain were inflicted on the non-biological female child and the biblical sin became any random fact.

Repressing sexuality and making women the recipients of the males' "spoon" instead of considering that all people should be free and sexually liberated beings is having major impacts not only on the father (or other close male) who can abuse his pater familias position of all powerful, but also making the elder females despise the younger ones and turn their anger and frustration on them, making them their victim of abuse. The nude spanking, because of its impressive volume, and then the seperation from the family home when reaching puberty, pushes me to think the perverted sexual mind was in many ways shared by both parents (although not planned out together or even discussed between the parents). The biblical ATI/Gothard doctrine both led to this situation of abnormal sexuality amongst the parents, and fed the troubled relationship with their adopted daughter as it validated the punishment.

I said in a different thread that this type of fundies would have driven Freud mad with their overflowing sexual thoughts (everything is sex!!! NIKE!). This just proves how complex it makes relationships between men and women unbalanced and unhealthy, within the same generation, and beyond the generational ties.

[BravaAmica]

So only she was abused and molested? Her parents' birth siblings weren't abused as much as she was nor molested??

[justlurking]

So only she was abused and molested? Her parents' birth siblings weren't abused as much as she was nor molested??

That appears to be the case, but let's face it--even in families where all the children are bio-siblings there may be situations were one is the scapegoat and the only one who is abused by the parents. Remember the book "Child Called It"?

[gardenvarietycitizen]

So only she was abused and molested? Her parents' birth siblings weren't abused as much as she was nor molested??

It does make me wonder how the ATI views on adoption and kids maybe born with their ancestors' sins plays into it, if it does (I've only read about that).

Horrible story. I have to admit when she got to the part where her own behavior got bad and she was shoplifting and the like, I was hoping she'd get arrested - and it takes a quite shitty homelife needing escaping before I'd hope for THAT for anyone. Just thinking things maybe would have come to light earlier...

[SpeakNow]

Because I know people on the 19KaC page lurk here and still don't believe us.

http://peace-love-swift.tumblr.com/post/25695249265/the-duggars-involvement-with-bill-gothard