The Vision, pp. 145-148<\/strong><\/p>\n So. What\u2019s the rest of Magdalene\u2019s story? We now know how she found her way to the roadside where Omar picked her up. But how did she end up on the streets in the first place? The answer may surprise you.<\/p>\n Side note: what narrative purpose does Magdalene\u2019s time stranded in the forest serve? Sure, Omar had to be able to pick her up on the side of the road, without being in the red light district at night. She had to want a ride in someone\u2019s car for reasons other than sex work, so it did serve\u00a0some\u00a0<\/em>purpose. Here\u2019s the missed opportunity, though: we\u2019re never told how her time stranded in a cabin in the woods changed\u00a0her.\u00a0<\/em>Did it make her decide to give up sex work? Did it make her reconsider decisions she\u2019d made? Did it make her resolve to turn over a new leaf and start over again when she finally got back to civilization?<\/p>\n This strikes me as a\u00a0big\u00a0<\/em>missed opportunity. Magdalene\u2019s time in the woods could help explain her decision to stay with The Last Publishers group, for instance. Maybe she decided to get a regular job once she got out of the woods, and maybe Cheyenne\u2019s parents offered her a paying job at the Herb Den, and she decided to take it. But \u2026 we\u2019re not told any of this. We\u2019re not told she\u2019s paid for her labor, or that there was any discussion involving Magdalene about her future. We\u2019re not even told what\u00a0she\u00a0<\/em>wants.<\/p>\n All of this is really bad writing.<\/p>\n That said, Magdalene\u2019s explanation of her life before she ended up on the streets is really, really elucidating of Debi\u2019s view of the world. Magdalene wasn\u2019t some godless public school kid. She grew up in a large church-going homeschooling family. Debi seems very aware that things can turn out very badly for children who grow up in large church-going homeschooling families. She most have personal experience seeing this. Of course, Debi can\u2019t acknowledge that this could be a product of things like educational neglect, or authoritarian parenting, because those are both things\u00a0she\u00a0<\/em>promotes. So instead, she finds other<\/em> things to blame.<\/p>\n Better Do What We Say<\/strong><\/p>\n But first \u2026 first, Magdalene faces more abuse. \u201cSo how did you end up in the streets in the first place?\u201d Cheyenne asks.<\/p>\n Magdalene paused. Hadn\u2019t she risked enough today already? Cheyenne was asking her to peel back some ugly layers. There were some things best left untold. The girl drew back and continued in a whiny, childish voice, \u201cWell, my daddy beat me all my life and my mama ran off and left me when I was just a kid. I had nowhere to go and nothing to eat, so I \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, cut the crap! Tell the truth or I\u2019m outta here.\u201d Bobbie Jo had a keen sense for deception and an equally low tolerance for it.<\/p>\n Snapping back, Magdalene stormed, \u201cIf you are going to call me a liar, then I\u2019m not telling you anything.\u201d The small teen pulled her feet up onto the couch, sitting on them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Magdalene\u2019s desire not to share this part of her story is understandable, and should be respected. She\u2019s only lying because she doesn\u2019t feel safe sharing her story, and they\u2019re not respecting that boundary.<\/p>\n Also, I feel like I need to add that\u00a0this is\u00a0Magdalene\u2019s\u00a0place of work,\u00a0<\/i>and these are her coworkers. They\u2019re\u00a0on\u00a0the clock.\u00a0<\/i>This is completely inappropriate, and is making me wonder about Debi\u2019s own employment practices and workplace culture.<\/p>\n \u201cFine, Liar, get your stuff together,\u201d Bobbie Jo retorted. \u201cI have spent several weeks trying to hide my purse from your thieving fingers. I\u2019m tired of your drama. It\u2019s time for someone else\u2019s turn to put up with your duplicity. Get up. I\u2019m taking you to the cops.\u201d<\/p>\n Bobbie Jo was ten inches taller and at least fifty pounds heavier than Magdalene and just as tough. She could be as mean as she needed to be, and everyone knew it. Magdalene peevishly relented. \u201cOkay, okay, You are going to be sorry, because it is one lousy story.\u201d<\/p>\n Julie and Cheyenne breasted a sigh of relief.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Note that Julie and Cheyenne just sat by while Bobbie Jo threatened to take Magdalene to the cops. Cheyenne is a\u00a0terrible\u00a0<\/em>employer. Absolutely\u00a0terrible.\u00a0<\/em>She\u2019s the boss here, and she just let\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>happen, just like she let Yancey come in and bother her employees without ever even asking him what his business was.<\/p>\n But also\u2014why do they keep threatening to take Magdalene to the cops? This isn\u2019t the first time. What are they threatening to turn her in for? Sex work? In that case, they don\u2019t have proof\u2014Magdalene wasn\u2019t doing sex work when she came to them. What then? If they are threatening to turn her in as a runaway, that means they know they\u2019re\u00a0harboring a runaway.\u00a0<\/em>Is the idea to turn her in to get her sent back to her parents? Regardless, the fact that they\u00a0can\u00a0<\/em>threaten this makes clear the power they have over this girl\u2014and underscores the fact that, as I\u2019ve noted,\u00a0they\u2019re engaging in human trafficking.\u00a0<\/i>They\u2019ve taken in a vulnerable girl and are using threats and coercion to make her do what they want (including working for their home business, likely without pay).<\/p>\n And Debi makes it clear that Magdalene also (rightly) perceived Bobbie Jo\u2019s physical size and strength as a threat.\u00a0It should go without saying that this is a bad thing.\u00a0<\/em>I mean gracious, Debi even writes that Bobbie Jo \u201ccould be as mean as she needed to be\u201d and that \u201ceveryone knew it.\u201d And Cheyenne just sits by and lets Bobbie Jo intimidate and threaten her coworker.\u00a0Lovely.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Magdalene Tells All<\/strong><\/p>\n Proper scared, Magdalene finally tells all. I kind of feel bad reading this section at all, frankly; it feels like an intrusion on Magdalene\u2019s private,\u00a0because it is.\u00a0<\/em>But, here we go:<\/p>\n \u201cMy family homeschooled\u2014really goody-goody two-shoes. We girls wore head coverings. The boys were not allowed to play Cowboys and Indians because it was violent.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is jumping so fast\u00a0<\/em>into Debi\u2019s narratives. Too fast.\u00a0Debi doesn\u2019t like families she thinks are goody two-shoes. Debi\u00a0doesn\u2019t think head coverings are required<\/a>, and perceives of families that wear head coverings as \u201clegalistic.\u201d Magdalene\u2019s story is simply Debi\u2019s compilations of all of the ways large church-going homeschooling families can\u00a0do things wrong,\u00a0<\/em>according to Debi.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were drilled on behavior and manners. Mama made sure we followed all sorts of religious requirements.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What \u2026 sorts \u2026 exactly?<\/p>\n \u201cAppearances were very important to Mama. I think she thought if people thought we were wonderful then so must God. She really thought she was saving her children, but our family was always bitter.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh,\u00a0bull.\u00a0<\/em>Magdalene wouldn\u2019t use a word like \u201cbitter\u201d unless she heard it used, and she wouldn\u2019t have heard it used\u00a0for her family\u00a0<\/em>unless she had access to people outside of her family who were saying that, which she didn\u2019t.\u00a0I buy that Magdalene heard that word (i.e., in church), but I am not as certain that she would have applied it to her family.<\/p>\n Actually, you know what does occur to me? It\u2019s possible that that\u2019s the only term she knows that means dysfunctional.\u00a0<\/em>In that sense, it\u00a0might\u00a0<\/em>make sense for her to use that term for her family. Girl needs a better vocabulary for things like this, but, well \u2026 she was homeschooled. The only things she knows about abuse or proper family relations are what her parents teach her.<\/p>\n Next, we move into another of Debi\u2019s no-nos:<\/p>\n \u201cThere was some church trouble. I\u2019ll spare you the details. Mom rehashed the problems every waking minute. Dad dropped out of church and got more bitter with each telling.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Michael and Debi Pearl are pretty firm in preferring that families attend church, rather than doing home church on their own, or even with a few families. (They way they write about this issue suggests that they\u2019ve known many<\/em> families who stopped attending church, and whose kids turned out badly.) Their justification is that families\u2014and children\u2014need community. This is true! They also argue that children need access to other good Christian children to consider as possible marriage prospects. It\u2019s not that this is\u00a0wrong\u00a0<\/em>necessarily \u2026 but note that it\u2019s all about introducing children to a limited selection of Godly Marriage Prospects.<\/p>\n I\u2019m completely unsurprised that Debi has Magdalene\u2019s family leave their church over an argument\u2014an argument her mother made worse by rehashing repeatedly and venting about it to her husband ad nasueum (as Debi would say women do\u2014in fact I think she addresses this directly in her good wife manual).<\/p>\n The White Supremacist Father<\/strong><\/p>\n So. What happens next?<\/p>\n \u201c[Dad] began spending a lot of time on the internet. Then he started going to what he called Bible meetings, but he didn\u2019t invite us. \u2026 We wanted to know what was really going on, so Ike\u2014that\u2019s my favorite brother\u2014got a key to the locked room and got on my dad\u2019s computer \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Ya\u2019ll I definitely thought it was going to be porn. It\u2019s not.)<\/p>\n \u2026 and found out it was White Supremicist meetings he was attending. Soon after that, Dad shaved his head and started slipping off to meetings all dressed up crisp and clean like a soldier getting ready for inspection.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yikes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s funny, growing up in the Midwest, I never would have considered this as an option, but Debi writes about it like it\u2019s a common problem she\u2019s seen a lot of. Yes, we had our right-wing \u201cmilitia\u201d groups, but I don\u2019t remember straight-up\u00a0White Supremacist\u00a0<\/em>groups being common enough for notice. Either that had changed by 2009 when Debi wrote this book, or\u2014and this is completely possible\u2014Debi may have more experience with straight-up White Supremacist groups because she lives in Tennessee.<\/p>\n I\u2019m also not surprised that Debi would see white supremacists as a separate social movement from godly Christians. There is definitely overlap: both groups are conservative, and plenty of white supremacists also identify as Christian. Some groups, like the League of the South, combine both religion and white supremacy. This makes the League of the South an interesting one, though: in 2018, the group\u2019s president, Michael Hill, felt the need to respond to southern Christians concerned by the group\u2019s presence at the Charlottesville rally. The group still stood for traditional Christianity, Hill wrote, but had radicalized on the \u201cNegro Question\u201d and the \u201cJew Question.\u201d Hill wrote that: \u201cbecause most Southerners (particularly evangelical Christians) are still reluctant to take to the streets to defend their civilization, we have made alliances with other radicals who are willing to stand with us in public.\u201d<\/p>\n A full discussion of the relationship between Christianity and white supremacism would require a far longer discussion, however. Suffice it to say that there\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>white supremacists who make race purity more important than anything remotely Christian, and even white supremacists who worship the old Norse gods. Racial purity and race pride can become a person or group\u2019s central ideology and focus to the extent that it edges out time and energy spent on Jesus or on Bible reading. (But again \u2026 there are also white supremacists who claim their ideology is rooted in the Bible, as we saw earlier in this book, so \u2026 it\u2019s complicated.)<\/p>\n Most white evangelicals believe in white supremacy even if they don\u2019t realize it. White evangelicalism is rooted<\/em> in white supremacy; see centuries of white evangelical missionary activity, for instance. Most white evangelicals, though, would deny being white supremacists\u2014they may not realize they hold white supremacist ideas\u2014whereas the sort of white supremacist groups we\u2019re touching on here are open about their belief that the white race is superior. For people like Magdalene\u2019s father, belief in racial purity and race pride can edge out their focus on Christianity, Bible study, and so on.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m just going to leave that there. Magdalene\u2019s father\u2019s new hobby is white supremacy, and he\u2019s taken up with skinhead groups to the point of changing his appearance. He has also retreated somewhat from involvement in family life.<\/p>\n The Spiritual Lesbian Mother<\/strong><\/p>\n Magdalene goes on:<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s when mom really flipped. She became the victim.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh lort.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I have time to get into this idea of \u201cbecoming the victim.\u201d It\u2019s\u00a0gross.\u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s this idea that people participate, in some sense, in their own victimization. In fact, it can even suggest that they\u00a0victimize themselves\u00a0<\/em>by\u00a0deciding\u00a0<\/em>to be a victim.<\/p>\n \u201cMom started getting regular counsel from a lady named Alice who told her to ignore any unreasonable demands my dad made, and that would humble him.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Uh \u2026 what.<\/p>\n Note that Alice only told Magdalene\u2019s mom to ignore\u00a0unreasonable\u00a0<\/em>demands her husband made. Neither party in any<\/em> marriage should be expected to meet\u00a0unreasonable\u00a0<\/em>demands by their spouse. (What sort of demands are these, exactly?!) And what\u2019s this bit about this humbling him? Conservatives\u2019 approach to marriage and relationships is just\u00a0so\u00a0<\/em>broken.<\/p>\n \u201cSo mom just stopped doing home school with us and told us kids to stay outside all day while she talked on the phone with Alice.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is why we need better homeschool laws: because parents can do this. Since Magdalene was in North Carolina when Derek kidnapped her, that\u2019s probably where she grew up. Homeschooling parents in North Carolina never have to submit any evidence that they are educating their children. Hence Magdalene\u2019s mother\u2019s ability to simply\u00a0stop educating her.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDad said mom and Alice were spiritual lesbians.\u00a0At first it seemed like a nasty thing to say, but after a while I saw his point.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ughhhh, again<\/em> a Debi talking point. A woman has a female mentor! Egads! It\u2019s not like everyone<\/em> needs some mentorship in their lives, or anything. Not only should spouses\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>try to fill their spouse\u2019s every need\u2014bad idea!\u2014but also, Magdalene\u2019s father has already become remote and distant at this point, so it\u2019s not like he\u2019s even trying<\/em>. But no! According to Debi, Magdalene\u2019s mother should carefully keep herself alone and friendless.<\/p>\n And then we get to\u00a0another\u00a0<\/em>thing Debi dislikes:<\/p>\n \u201cAnyway, Alice got mom into keeping Jewish feasts and fasts, lightening candles on the Sabbath, and a bunch of other ridiculous religious junk. They even started calling each other \u2018prophetess\u2019. When she wasn\u2019t on the phone, Mom was reading the Bible or down on her knees praying with this big black scarf on her head. It was really weird.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is actually common enough that I saw it while I was growing up. Some homeschool families started calling themselves \u201cMessianic Jews\u201d even though they had no Jewish ancestry, and had never joined that faith. They\u00a0did,\u00a0<\/em>however, change their names, start recognizing the Sabbath, and start celebrating Jewish feasts. It was a sort of cosplay.<\/p>\n Debi does not like it. She does not like it one bit<\/em>. So, since Magdalene\u2019s backstory is an amalgam of everything large Christian homeschooling families can do wrong,\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>is thrown in too.<\/p>\n The Drug-Addicted Brother<\/strong><\/p>\n And things are about to get\u00a0worse\u00a0<\/em>for Magdalene.<\/p>\n \u201cWe barely saw Dad for the next year. When he wasn\u2019t at work, he was with his White Power buddies. Mom was sure that when things didn\u2019t go her way it was a direct attack on her happiness.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like I said: Magdalene\u2019s family was dysfunctional.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyway, the night of my sixteenth birthday, my oldest brother, Dave, came home for the party. Dave was hooked on drugs and I hadn\u2019t seen him for a while. I was thrilled and flattered that he came home just for me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wait, wait, I want to hear\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>story. What happened with Dave?<\/p>\n In families like Magdalene\u2019s, kids\u2019 reach adulthood with two primary problems.\u00a0First, they often don\u2019t have a high school level education or, in many cases, a high school diploma. Homeschool graduates\u2019 high school diplomas are accepted by most employers and colleges. However, the parents are usually the one who issues the diploma, and when a family is dysfunctional, this does not happen. Or if it does, the document is slapdash and doesn\u2019t look terribly official. So it\u2019s likely that Magdalene\u2019s brother, Dave, did not receive an adequate education\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>does not have a high school diploma. He\u2019s effectively a dropout.<\/p>\n The second problem kids like Dave face is a lack of connections. Kids who attend school have contact with different families and people, from teachers to fellow students and their parents. Kids in families like Magdalene\u2019s aren\u2019t just homeschooled; they\u2019re also often isolated from relatives and others. Connections are often important to getting your first job. You may have a friend who works at that plastics factory; or, maybe your uncle knows of an opening at an auto body shop a friend of his runs. If you don\u2019t have those connections, getting your first job becomes a\u00a0lot\u00a0<\/em>harder.<\/p>\n