A Review of Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult, by Jeff C. Stevenson<\/i><\/span> Lately, the Internet has been flooded with revelations of a particular Christian child abuse scandal, perpetrated by an ethically-challenged gang of TV celebrities, who banked a small fortune as de facto spokespersons for a patriarchal and isolationist Christian cult<\/span><\/a>. As shocking as the initial accusations are, responses from the victims\u2019 devout parents, members of their local church, and representatives of the wider religious community have, to some observers, been even more disturbing. Yet, in a recently released book-length report titled Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult<\/span><\/a><\/em> (Freethought House, 2015), journalist Jeff C. Stevenson proves that far from setting a new low in the faithful\u2019s handling of child abuse, this most recent dust-up is sadly typical.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur group was no more a cult than the Baptist church is\u201d \u2014 Reverend Larry Hill, Prophet of the Church of the Risen Christ.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n The above quote appears near the beginning of Stevenson\u2019s painstakingly researched examination. Intended as a defense of the fundamentalist group that he founded, Hill\u2019s statement instead takes on a broader and more sinister meaning as readers unravel the details of two intertwined real-life tales. The first concerns the bud, blossom, and eventual decay of Larry Hill\u2019s Ohio-based Church of the Risen Christ, a fundamentalist group as fiendish in its subjugation of women and abuse of children as any I\u2019ve ever read about. The second details the genesis, rise to fame, and ultimate disintegration of Reverend Hill\u2019s ambitious and surprisingly effective public outreach, the All Saved Freak Band (ASFB)\u2014a cult-founded, cult-funded, and cult-distributed Christian blues-rock, folk and classical hybrid, which managed to attract radio airplay and a national audience in spite of spooky religious overtones. As in the case of the expanding television family mentioned above, fans, law enforcement, and even mainstream religious leaders bought into the ASFB\u2019s wholesome Christian image, never guessing at the catalog of horrors bandmates were experiencing on their prophet\u2019s rural farm.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNo one ever pulled me aside and told me the truth. If they had, I would have called the police immediately, I would have confronted Larry; I would have done anything necessary to help them.\u201d \u2014 Statement by the All Saved Freak Band album producer.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Before being recruited into the Church of the Risen Christ, soft-spoken and likable guitar soloist Glenn Schwartz achieved national fame, first as a member of The James Gang<\/span><\/a>\u2014where the absence left by his voluntary departure was filled by guitar legend and future Eagles bandmate Joe Walsh\u2014and later with Pacific Gas and Electric<\/span><\/a>, a Los Angeles based funk and blues band best known for \u201cAre You Ready?\u201d, which peaked at #14 on the Hot 100 chart. By the age of 30, Schwartz was rubbing shoulders with Steppenwolf, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, along with other superstars of the day. Then, \u201cas if a powerful switch had been flicked on and all at once, Glenn Schwartz became an unstoppable zealot for Jesus Christ.\u201d Personally courted by Reverend Larry Hill, Schwartz soon relocated to the Fortney Road farm, where his recognizable name and renowned guitar chops helped propel ASFB to national prominence.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLarry Hill has one simple rule about disciplining children of all ages\u2014beat them until they stop crying.\u201d \u2014 John Griffin, writing in the News-Herald of Willoughby<\/i>.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Some were beaten with a solid wooden board, an inch-and-a-half thick and three feet long; others with \u201cThe White Judge\u201d, a six foot buggy whip \u201cfashioned from strips of pure white leather bound onto a flexible plastic rod.\u201d Victims describe being lashed so hard that the blows tore their clothes and \u201ccompletely\u201d ripped the skin from their bodies. Rather than concealing such acts, Larry Hill preached them publicly: \u201cWe\u2019re so squeamish about bruises on our children\u2019s legs,\u201d Hill wrote in a rag called The Freedom Bell<\/i>, \u201cbut we can stand and watch their souls and emotions be mutilated.\u201d Hill\u2019s followers lived to regret the physical abuse they meted out on their pastor\u2019s advice\u2014\u201cit\u2019s an unending source of sadness\u201d one father told Jeff C. Stevenson\u2014but according to statements in a recently released police report, at the Arkansas home of the newly disgraced reality TV family, Biblically-justified child whippings remain the norm<\/span><\/a>: \u201c[redacted] said that when [redacted] is bad that [redacted] mother and dad spank [redacted]. Inv. Taylor asked what they use to spank. [redacted] said they have a rod.\u201d The embroiled television matriarch is also reported to have employed a baby-training method that she calls \u201cquiet and still\u201d<\/span><\/a>; based on the \u201cblanket training\u201d system of fundamentalist preacher Michael Pearl<\/span><\/a>\u2014whose book, To Train up a Child<\/span><\/a><\/em> has been linked with at least three child deaths\u2014the method is frighteningly similar to advice that former cult-members credit to \u201cprophet\u201d Larry Hill: \u201cyou take the child at a very early age\u2014before they are a year old\u2014and if they have an occasion where they disobey or don\u2019t do what you want them to do, you spank them.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat one legged preacher . . . he put a terrific burden on the women and the men\u201d \u2014 former member, Church of the Risen Christ.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Like TV\u2019s most famous homeschooling family, the believers living on Fortney Road faced daily work requirements: \u201cThat house was immaculate,\u201d one member of Hill\u2019s cult said. \u201cWe cleaned cracks on the floor with toothbrushes. We really cleaned. We did everything in the house every day\u2014all the woodwork. We shampooed the rugs once a week. We\u2019d wash the curtains once a week.\u201d In addition to housework, there were farm chores, daily devotions and mandatory prayers. At night, the men dug tunnels and walked patrols, in preparation for the apocalyptic war Reverend Hill predicted. In the dark hours of morning, members awoke to calisthenics and rifle practice.<\/span><\/p>\n One ex-member described a few of the punishments that members faced for failing to meet Hill\u2019s standards: \u201cI was going twenty days without food because I couldn\u2019t please God. I had too much ego! The one-legged preacher would always warn us that we were going to lose out if we didn\u2019t obey. So I\u2019d fast Monday but it wasn\u2019t enough so I\u2019d fast another day . . . Some people would eat only dog food to humble themselves, to keep themselves low. I would slap and punch myself in the face to punish myself so I wouldn\u2019t lose out in the end . . . I was always under fear. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I walked in, Larry was under the covers. Diane closed and locked the door behind us and started taking her clothes off. I was so scared. I didn\u2019t know what they were doing.\u201d \u2014 Bethy Goodenough, child of former Church of the Risen Christ members.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Some of Larry Hill\u2019s strictest requirements involved enforcing a hierarchal division between women and men. A former-member\u2019s brother observed that the women from the farm \u201cwere not permitted to look at any of us, and they were only permitted to speak in very soft voices. They shielded their eyes and continually looked down at the floor.\u201d\u00a0 In addition, Hill enacted a regime of total sexual repression. \u201c\u2018The game is to convince people their natural impulses are sinful and then set them at war against their own personality and nature.\u2019 The victim then continually works at suppressing his or her own \u2018unholy\u2019 personality, and then self-doubt drives the person to further surrender his or her will and judgement to the leader.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But despite modest clothes, gendered sleeping quarters, and Larry Hill\u2019s frequent sermonizing against sexual immorality, there ran an undercurrent of prolific depravity.\u00a0 \u201cI do think Larry had sex, of some sort, with everyone he could,\u201d one former cult-member opined. And Hill\u2019s predations were not limited to adult women. \u201cLarry\u2019s son Mark confided in Leon about some of the sexual acts he witnessed. He said that Diane would often perform fellatio on Larry while Mark was in the room.\u201d Eventually, Larry went beyond exhibitionism: \u201cThey had sex while Larry made me touch him,\u201d Bethy Goodenough alleged; \u201cHe would bring me into the study or his room and make me perform oral sex on him while he fondled me. And he showed me how to French kiss\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt the trial, every one of us involved perjured themselves in an effort to save Larry. On the stand I was asked if I had ever seen anyone whipped. With my own lashes always fresh in my mind . . . I lied and said \u2018no\u2019. No one asked me to lie under oath but I did.\u201d \u2014 former Church of the Risen Christ member.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, all of the abuse meted out at the farm ended in a single trial. Unable to prosecute the grotesqueries that adult members willingly endured, investigators instead focused on a single act of physical abuse directed at a child: the brutal horsewhipping of eleven year old Bethy Goodenough by Diane Sullivan, Larry Hill\u2019s \u201cprophetess\u201d and second-in-command. The case was heard by Judge Avellone, who agreed to be interviewed by Jeff Stevenson decades after the fact. \u201cThe defense agreed generally that certain events happened but denied any serious injury occurred,\u201d the judge recalled. \u201cDiane never intended to seriously harm the child . . . and she had no previous record\u201d. In accordance with what they\u2019d been taught on the farm, Bethy Goodenough and others corroborated Diane\u2019s defense. \u201cThe girl said [being beaten with a horsewhip] wasn\u2019t painful,\u201d Judge Avellone remembered. Diane was sentenced to nine days in jail and a $500 fine\u2014a sentence decried as too severe by mainstream religious leaders who\u2019d been following the case: \u201cSeveral clergy that were there were surprised she got any sentence at all,\u201d the judge recollected; \u201cThey believed she and the church were exercising their religious freedoms and since she did not intend to inflict child abuse, she did not commit a crime.\u201d Meanwhile, Larry Hill crept off to another state, where he remained until the statute of limitations ran out on his crimes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c[R]anked as number 228 in \u2018Contemporary Christian Music\u2019s 500 Best Albums of All Time\u2019\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n The All Saved Freak Band lives on. Between spells of reading Fortney Road, I listened to their tracks via unofficial YouTube videos, filtering the lyrics through what I\u2019d learned of the ugliness that lay behind. The music isn\u2019t awful. In fact, it continues to garner positive attention\u2014most recently from Slate<\/span><\/a><\/em>. But for me their songs stand as a solemn testament to the unmerited respect that law enforcement still pays to those who dress their crimes in religious mumbo-jumbo. It would be comforting to think that public officials\u2019 religious favoritism has been relegated to the distant past, but events involving the Christian darlings of reality of TV have proven that in thirty years, nothing much has changed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult<\/a><\/span><\/em> <\/i>is an unexpectedly entertaining, phenomenally well-researched and thoughtfully organized account of religion gone horribly awry. In it, journalist Jeff C. Stevenson exposes much more than the odd happenings that took place on a fringe religious group\u2019s isolated farm. By lifting the veil on tactics and techniques that even mainstream religions use to unduly influence their followers, Stevenson exposes the essential truth that underlies cult-leader Larry Hill\u2019s chilling statement: \u201cOur group was no more a cult than the Baptist church is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult<\/a><\/span> M. Dolon Hickmon<\/i><\/a><\/span> explores the intersections of religion and child abuse in essays published around the web, as well as in the pages of his critically acclaimed Amazon child abuse bestseller, <\/i>13:24 \u2013 A Story of Faith and Obsession<\/i><\/span><\/a>. You can follow his writing on Twitter <\/i>@TVOS1324<\/i><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Review of Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult, by Jeff C. Stevenson Review written by M. Dolon Hickmon\u00a0 Lately, the Internet has been flooded with revelations of a particular Christian child abuse scandal, perpetrated by an ethically-challenged gang of TV celebrities, who banked a small fortune as de facto spokespersons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[211],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nReview written by M. Dolon Hickmon\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/i>Published by Freethought House
\nRelease Date: June 2, 2015
\nISBN: 978-0-9884938-2-7<\/span><\/p>\n