worst<\/em> part of what she suffered at Gothard\u2019s hands. Those who still defend Gothard\u2019s teachings need to read how\u00a0Gothard destroyed Heather with\u00a0those very teachings\u2014and that this is about much more than sexual abuse.<\/p>\nHeather met Gothard when she was 11, and her family soon became constantly involved in his ministry. As a young teen, she spent time alone with him in his office. There was footsie, and petting, and hand holding. Heather was not aware enough to recognize that these were warning signs, and she tolerated it because Gothard made her feel special<\/em>. But things were about to get much worse.<\/p>\nWhen Heather was 17 or so, her mother left her abusive father, with Gothard\u2019s support. But it appears that Gothard had ulterior motives for supporting this move. He soon\u00a0made it clear to Heather that he would provide housing and financial support for her family, but only if she would become what amounted to his constant servant. And so, with no education to speak of and no skills, Heather took the deal, and became her family\u2019s sole support\u2014at the cost of being Gothard\u2019s slave.<\/p>\n
Heather eventually\u00a0complained about\u00a0the 12 hour days Gothard was requiring her to put in caring for his mother at his home, including additional personal time with her at the end of each day.\u00a0As punishment, Gothard sent her to Northwoods Conference Center<\/del> Prison Camp to do janitorial work for a month.<\/p>\nI lived with hundreds of boys that I was not allowed to speak to or look at and a small clique of girls who never showed any warmth to me.\u00a0 I had no phone access to call home.\u00a0 My hours were long and tiring.\u00a0 There was nothing to look forward to.\u00a0 I felt like I was in prison.\u00a0 Before that month at the Northwoods, I\u2019d always felt like a little bird; able to fly around from here to there talking with people and smiling and laughing and feeling someone \u201cnormal\u201d because of interacting with others who lived the same insane existence that I did.\u00a0 But when you locked me up at the Northwoods, it felt like torture.\u00a0 The depression was intense and relentless, but not a single person took notice of it or sought to give me aid.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nGothard finally allowed Heather to come home, but not for long.<\/p>\n
\nYou gave me two options: go to live with my father \u2013\u00a0the one you supported my mother to leave based on his years of abuse toward us \u00a0\u2013\u00a0or to go Indianapolis and join the EQUIP program.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
At this time Heather was no longer a minor. No, she was 19 years old.<\/p>\n
\nI went to Indianapolis kicking and screaming inwardly but without any outward show of pain whatsoever.\u00a0 I arrived to have my things dug through as though I were a common criminal.\u00a0 My clothing selections were deemed inappropriate and taken from me even though they were long skirts and modest blouses. \u00a0 I was made to wear things chosen from the donations boxes that were ill-fitting and terribly outdated.<\/p>\n
I was near a literal nervous breakdown but was not allowed even a moment alone during the day.\u00a0 Even trips to use the restroom required accompaniment.\u00a0 The only times I was allowed to be alone was in the shower.\u00a0 And even though my showers were timed and kept to a limit so that I was not alone a moment longer than was necessary for personal hygiene, oh how I wept during those precious minutes alone.<\/p>\n
You told me that these situations were intentionally designed to break me.\u00a0 And break me they did.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even know to cry out to God to rescue me from that awful place because I was utterly confused about who God really was and what His true heart was toward me.\u00a0 Thanks to your teachings, grace was a distorted concept in my mind about something I initiated and responded to that lead me to righteousness, not something that was entirely God-initiated and had nothing at all to do with whether or not I was righteous in any way.<\/p>\n
My time in Indianapolis lasted for nine months.\u00a0 I was forced many times to miss meals, sometimes for days at a time, when my heart was \u201cnot right before God\u201d.\u00a0 I was locked into my room on more than one occasion and had all outside contact and food withheld from me until the leadership decided it was enough.\u00a0 I was interrogated by leadership on a regular basis, often taken into back rooms with only one member of leadership\u00a0 \u2013 usually of the opposite sex \u2013 and berated for hours.\u00a0 I was not allowed to cry or disagree.\u00a0 I was called a \u201cwhore\u201d.\u00a0 I was treated with utter cruelty.\u00a0 I was isolated from the few friends I was able to gain.\u00a0 I worked 10-12 hour days of hard manual labor with no pay on a renovating crew where I hung drywall or molding or helped lay carpet or paint and hang wallpaper.\u00a0 I missed many meals because of my long work hours and was not allowed to find food when I was done working.\u00a0 I lost several dress sizes within just a few months of arriving and no one noticed that or called my treatment into account for my obvious physical distress.<\/p>\n
I was subjected to room searches on a regular basis where my drawers and mattresses and closets were rifled through and things taken if they were not deemed \u201capproved\u201d.\u00a0 Everything of value had been confiscated from me.\u00a0 Letters from friends, pictures from home, even toiletries that I had purchased.\u00a0 My mail was routinely opened and read before being given to me \u2013 a federal offense.\u00a0 My friends were often interrogated about me.\u00a0 Some remained loyal to me while others gave in to the tremendous pressure from the leadership and gave false stories about me to gain their approval or to simply be removed from their interrogations.\u00a0 The results of those betrayals often cost me our weekly outing to the store or being allowed to go to church \u2013 the only two times in a week that we left the compound.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I know someone who spent three months at the Indianapolis Training Center, as a young adult. She left the compound exactly once in that entire time.<\/p>\n
\nWhat happened to Heather? Well, it came out that she had begun to fancy a young man also in the program, and that he fancied her back. Gothard was not pleased with this when he found out.<\/p>\n
When October came around, you were in town when my final week with your cult was upon me.\u00a0 Depression was apparent in my face and mannerisms.\u00a0 You saw me singing in choir and summoned me to your office.\u00a0 You said that you could tell from my downcast countenance that I had given ground over to Satan. The light in my eyes was gone.\u00a0 You blamed me and some supposed, hidden sin in my life rather than the blatant woeful treatment I\u2019d been receiving.\u00a0 Once again, you held me responsible for the abuses of others.<\/p>\n
The next day, you called me to your table after lunch for another meeting.\u00a0 You told me that the leadership had shed light on the situation.\u00a0 They\u2019d told you that I was attracted to a boy, but they could not figure out who it was.\u00a0 You asked if that was true.\u00a0 I did not attempt to withhold the truth from you.\u00a0 I told you immediately that it was true and who it was.\u00a0 I told you that we were obeying your rules of conduct and that our relationship had not gone past mere attraction and that it would not until we were older, had our parent\u2019s blessing( as was standard IBLP law), and were no longer working at your facility.<\/p>\n
We were both locked up immediately and left with no food or outside contact for days as you decided what to do with us.<\/p>\n
I assume that you have never been held against your will in a locked room.\u00a0 It is a form of torture, you know.\u00a0 As is the withholding of food.\u00a0 These games of mental cruelty wreaked far greater damage in me than a hungry belly and a night of dark tears.\u00a0 They broke me.\u00a0 They ruined me.\u00a0 Nearly twenty years have come and gone since these days, but the bones you crushed, the heart you flogged, and the mind you broke back then still refuse to function correctly today.\u00a0 No amount of intervention, therapy, and medication in the world seem enough to turn back the clock and reverse the damage.\u00a0 I live with constant impairment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And then what?<\/p>\n
\nI don\u2019t need to tell you the end of the story because you already know it.\u00a0 You kicked me out.\u00a0 You gave me three hours.\u00a0 Three hours.\u00a0 Three hours to leave the only world I\u2019d ever known.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Three hours. Three hours<\/em>.<\/p>\nSeriously, go read Heather\u2019s story in its entirety<\/a>. There is so much there worth reading. She talks about Gothard \u201ccounseling\u201d regarding the sexual abuse she had previously suffered at the hands of some boys her own age, and about the mind games and how Gothard managed to control her for so long.<\/p>\nWhat I want to drive home, though,\u00a0is that Bill Gothard\u2019s sexual abuse of Heather and other vulnerable young women is only a part of his larger abuses. Heather\u2019s story makes it clear that Gothard was a cult leader in the classic way we think about cults\u2014wielding absolute power over members\u2019 lives, punishing or banishing offenders, using control tactics to ensure that members don\u2019t consider leaving an option,\u00a0and so forth. The sexual abuse is only the icing on the cake.<\/p>\n
Heather\u2019s story also makes it painfully\u00a0obvious\u00a0that IBLP can\u2019t just ditch Gothard and keep right on running as before. Gothard was not physically present at Northwoods, or at Indianapolis, where Heather was held prisoner, and yet his underlings upheld his system of control, spiritual abuse, and punishment. The problem at IBLP was not simply Gothard. It was\u2014and is\u2014a systemic problem. It should not have taken sexual abuse to bring Gothard down. Gothard should have been pulled down long, long ago.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m especially struck by Heather\u2019s literal imprisonment. By the end, she was 20. She was not a minor in the custody of a guardian, as bad as that would still be. No, she was an adult, literally held against her will at Gothard\u2019s orders. This is not legal. Gothard\u2014and IBLP\u2014are in serious need of some actual legal investigating\u2014and none of this in-house stuff.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently read what is I think the most horrifying story I have read yet in the Bill Gothard scandal. In it a young woman, who goes by Heather, tells her story. Gothard began an inappropriate physical relationship with her when she was eleven—eleven—but that was really only the beginning. Honestly, from reading Heather’s story, I get the feeling that she doesn’t feel that the footsie at age 11 or the caressing and feeling-up at age 15 was the worst part of what she suffered at Gothard’s hands. Those who still defend Gothard’s teachings need to read how Gothard destroyed Heather with those very teachings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n