Proof Positive That Fundamentalist Home School Families Create A Private HELL And Must Be Regulated

Ever wonder what can go on inside the private totalitarian hell of unregulated fundamentalist home school families? Watch this YouTube video! How about wiping the very legal existence of a child off the map? Meet Alecia. She escaped her homeschool home at 18. Her parents allegedly never got her a birth certificate so Alecia has no ID and no way to prove her citizenship. Her parents, who allegedly never got her a birth certificate, SSN, refuse to help Alecia unless she agrees to come home on their terms and repent.

Think about parents so far into fundamentalist la,la land they are opting out of even vaccinating their children. Think that’s extreme? How about refusing to even get your kid a birth certificate? Should that be legal? Should “freedom of religion” protect home school families when they blight the future of their kids?

This story was first reported by in Patheos on the great site Unfundamentalist Christians. Here’s how they put it:

Alecia’s mother, Lisa, writes a blog she calls The Pennington Point, featuring “lots of tips on Parenthood, Mothering, Home and Faith.” She titled the post she wrote about Alecia running away from home The Hardest Post I Ever Wrote.* In it she (of course) cast herself as the victim:

On Wednesday, September 24th my life was changed forever. My 18 year old daughter left home. She gave us no warning, no signs that it was coming. She didn’t try to talk to us about it or work with us. She, with the help of my parents, just left. And with her she took pieces of my heart that had been torn to shreds. I cried harder that day than I ever knew was possible. So hard that it scared my little boys and I had to go in my closet and put a pillow over my face to muffle the sobs. … Yesterday she came and got all of her things. That tore out more of my heart and if I am being completely honest, threw me into a tailspin that it feels like I will never recover from. I can’t stop crying and I can’t turn off the thoughts of pain and desperation.

If you’re unfamiliar with the terrain, welcome to the toxically insane world of Christian fundamentalism. It’s the gift that just keeps on ruining lives.

* About an hour after I published this, Alecia’s mother deleted this post from her blog. UPDATE: Reader/commenter Emily Barney points us to the still-viewable archived post.