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Sadistic Foster Mom a Devout Jehovah’s Witness

Sadistic Foster Mom a Devout Jehovah’s Witness

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I had intended to do a summary of recent stories on Jehovah’s Witnesses in the news, but I can’t put this in as a story among others. It illustrates the extreme of a general tendency fostered by Jehovah’s Witnesses, however they may try to deny it.

Twice-divorced foster mom Eunice Spry, of Tewkesbury, Glos, has been found guilty at Bristol crown court of 26 charges of cruelty and assault. This Jehovah’s Witness has shown no sympathy for her victims, nor accepted any blame for torturing three children over a period of almost 20 years.

Spry, 62, routinely beat, abused and starved the two girls and a boy as punishments. The victims, now in their late teens and early 20s, said the devout Jehovah’s Witness forced sticks down their throats, made them eat their own vomit and rat excrement, drink washing-up liquid and bleach and locked them naked in a room without food for a month.

Spry claims that the children were possessed by the devil. Sandpapering their skin seemed like a good solution.

Child A, now 21, came into Spry’s care when she was five. She said: “We were regularly beaten. We were starved or made to eat blocks of lard, drowned in the bath and kicked down the stairs.

“Mum had an array of sticks and would beat us with them and kick us until we were bruised and collapsing with pain. If we screamed, she would push the sticks down our throats. The pain was unbearable. These things happened all through my childhood.”

Child B, a girl also now aged 21, said: “We had no friends. We were told not to speak to anyone.” Child C, a boy of 23, told Bristol crown court: “One summer, when I was seven or eight, we were starved for a month.

“We were kept locked in a room with no clothes on and had very little to eat.

“If we wanted to go to the toilet we had to do it in the corner. I remember being made to eat my own excrement off the floor.”

Spry, 62, who faces jail after she was yesterday convicted of child cruelty, wounding, assault and perverting justice, kept her savage regime secret by refusing to send the children to school. She taught them at home and rarely let them to leave the house.

The children were routinely punished for supposedly misbehaving by being made to swallow rat droppings, dog food, bleach, washing-up liquid and the antiseptic TCP.

Prosecutor Kerry Barker said that interviews with the victims resulted in a “horrifying catalogue of cruel and sadistic treatment,” but the case relied heavily on evidence from forensic scientists.

Police described Spry as intelligent and clever who had showed no emotion when she was questioned. Det Con Victoria Martell said: “Most mothers who’d been accused of such things would have shown something. She didn’t and it was quite chilling.”

Although a spokeman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed that the faith does not tolerate physical abuse, her behavior was clearly fueled by JW beliefs. Fanatical Jehovah’s Witness Eunice believed the two girls and a boy were possessed by the Devil – she wanted to “purify” them. At a local Kingdom Hall, Spry made one of the children wear a sign on back which said: “This child is evil. Do not look at her or talk to her.” Did anyone intervene? Nah. This nasty woman was considered a pillar of her local community.

Yes, clearly this story is beyond the pale of any kind of acceptable behavior. Why does it matter that she was a “devout Jehovah’s Witness”? It matters because the authoritarian/perfectionist mindset of JWs contributes to the pathology of individuals like this. In such simplistically totalitarian groups (and JWs are not alone), there is simply more child abuse, more domestic abuse, more sexual abuse, and more violence.

Despite their “pacifist” beliefs about not fighting in wars (which really have to do more with their separation from the world and this “system of things” – like their refusal to vote), the internal dynamic of the followers of the Watchtower Bible and Tract corporations encourages behaviors of domination and control. In a very real psychological sense, they are controlled and thus abused, and often become abusers themselves. As any non-JW family member can tell you, kindness is not at the top of their list of priorities. This is especially so for men, although this case involves instead a woman. I hope to hear more about the background – I think the history here must be very convoluted.

I never saw an elder chastised for cruelty. I never saw a single JW interfere with physical, abusive “correction” of children (or women). The man is head of the household. This book excerpt describes a common situation that I observed in my own youth.

When I was twelve years old, my nineteen-year-old sister married a Jehovah’s Witness, and one year later she delivered a beautiful baby boy. Sadly, Jon would come to know at a tender age of one the frustration I experienced sitting on that anthill during those long sermons in the Kingdom Hall. When Jon started fidgeting, his father grabbed him by the arm and literally dragged him to the restroom to beat him. Jon’s beating became such a ritual that when his daddy reached for him during a meeting, he knew it meant a beating. He cried and pleaded “No, Daddy” as he buckled his legs, refusing to walk willingly to meet his fate. Everyone in the Kingdom Hall could hear his screams. The sound that echoed from the blow varied; sometimes Jon’s father used his hand, sometimes a belt. After ten or fifteen minutes, they would return with Jon hyperventilating, desperately trying to catch his breath. Beaten into composure, he would sit still for a while longer. Usually he stared motionless into space, his eyes bloodshot from crying. If fate smiled on him, Jon fell asleep in my arms for the duration of the meeting. If not, then back again to the restroom he would go for another beating and the cycle continued, until the closing prayer. One heart-wrenching day in particular is forever seared into my memory. My sister confided in my mother, father, and me that Jon, then two years old, had asked his father to hit him on his hands with the belt instead of his buttocks. When asked why he wanted to be punished that way, he replied, “Because my butt is too sore.” Within a year, my sister had another child and his fate, sadly, was no different than Jon’s. Meanwhile, my sister’s husband was rewarded for his devotion to the faith. He was made an Elder.’ – from Out of the Cocoon: A Young Woman’s Courageous Flight from the Grip of a Religious Cult by Brenda Lee.

Punishments are inflicted – even at the Kingdom Hall itself – to try to create the perfect submissive JW child who will never make a mistake of any kind. That kind of situation was the subtext of a poem I wrote about how I learned to re-imagine my role in order to navigate through difficult situations. My mind was always my realm of freedom. As a child, there are some things you can’t escape. I was hit with a belt, but not nearly as much as some others. Sticks are also common, since they seem to remind people of the “rod.”

While the actions of this horrible woman are not typical, they are on the same continuum. The protective paranoia of the group, which considers all “worldly” authorities to be ruled by Satan, discourages reporting to outsiders. They don’t trust psychologists, psychiatrists, or child development specialists. They don’t trust the police or the legal system or any part of government. They discourage reading outside their publications, and think that education is a waste of time and energy. People who are so controlled sometimes do odd and destructive things, like this. She would have been horrible without the JWs, but this gave her the ideology and rationalization, and the cover, to do it. She was also able to pull the kids out of school (for “home-schooling”) when concerns arose about their neglect, possible starvation, and the environment of “austere” parenting. Children, who may grow up thinking that abuse is “normal,” should be better protected.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C.S. Lewis

Jehovah’s Witnesses Child Custody Help

Jehovah’s Witnesses Child Custody Help

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The founder of SilentLambs.org has started up JWChildCustody.com to highlight the issues connected with JW divorces, and to help to protect the children of divorcing parents when only one of the parents is a Jehovah’s Witness.

If you are a parent who is going through a divorce from someone who is a Jehovah’s Witness, this site is a valuable resource for you. There is a toll free number to set up a free consultation as well as email correspondence for specific legal issues. Know that it is always in the interest of the organization for the children to stay with the JW parent. The Watchtower Bible and Tract corporations provide legal help to help ensure that this happens. Parents who may have left the organization are frequently “demonized” to their own children! There have been few resources as yet for parents who are targeted for this treatment, and little recourse in a legal system that remains largely unaware of the psychological issues involved.

If you are a former JW, please take action! Individuals are needed who can write legal affidavits (a personal, written, and notarized statement) regarding their personal knowledge or experience of the following:

  1. Medical Issues – Blood and how you were affected: why you believed in not taking blood transfusions or other blood products of any kind. Did you or any member of your family suffer any kind of loss as a result of the blood doctrine?
  2. Alienation from Non-JW Family Members, including parents and siblings – how (and why) you or family members made a choice not to have normal relations with non-JWs. How did you view non-JW members of your family if you grew up as a JW? How did others in your family view them? How were non-JW members of your family treated by JW adults and children?
  3. Isolation from Society – How (and why) you personally were affected as a child by beliefs about worldly associations, school activities, higher education, careers, patriotism, and interaction with people outside the organization as a whole.
  4. Theocratic Warfare – Your personal belief as a Jehovah’s Witness about being truthful (and whether you were ever encouraged to lie) to worldly authorities. What was acceptable behavior if you felt your beliefs or religion were being threatened in any way? In what ways or circumstances was there a different standard for within the organization, and outside it?

I am pleased to see some action on this area. The most heartbreaking letters I receive have to do with destructive family dynamics. Shunning and alienation from non-JW family members can be very extreme.

All by itself, divorce is a hard enough thing for children to navigate.

Silent Lambs has been speaking up for the powerless for some time. Thanks for caring about the children. I am very proud of Bill and Janet Bowen, and of all the people who have contributed – in all their different ways – to getting the message out there. Public awareness has grown, and there are now documented resources for anyone who cares to look.

Kudos to Silent Lambs – silent no more, victims no more.

Since the inception of silentlambs the purpose of the website was to give victims a voice, protect children and educate about child abuse issues. After hearing over 6,000 abuse stories in the last seven years everything that was stated in the beginning has proven itself to be the truth about the cover up of abuse in the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

We have simply asked for specific actions to protect children.

Report all allegations of abuse to police

Never reappoint pedophiles to positions of authority.

Never allow pedophiles to call on the homes of the public.

To this day not one of these simple requests has been enacted as policy of the organization.

I continue to hope that even within the JW congregations, there will be recognition that major reforms are long overdue, that policies of cruelty and fear and domination and exploitation show no signs of the spirit of love. I hope this for the wider community too…

Beautiful Day

Beautiful Day

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Yes, there is plenty to blog on today. Politics, catching up with some Jehovah’s Witnesses in the news, activist links… I spent much of yesterday proofreading my son’s elementary school yearbook.

Today, it was just too gorgeous not to play and be happy. Since I didn’t have to go to work (at my part-time job), I’ve been playing hooky.

I planted caladium and candytuft and dianthus and hostas and impatiens and a big patch of ever-bearing strawberries. I’ve now got baskets of geraniums hanging by the back door. I didn’t get to the dahlias, though.

After my bookworm winter, some good exercise was appreciated by my aging body (even if I did probably go at it a little too much in one day).

Enjoying the warmth of the sun, smelling the reviving lavender, seeing the various perennials starting to sprout. Ahhh… bliss.

That hot tub sure is going to feel good tonight.

The Need to Speak, and Nothing to Say

The Need to Speak, and Nothing to Say

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“The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.” – Jean Baudrillard

I remember a lecture given by Baudrillard at Emory. The crowd had transcripts of Baudrillard’s lecture, in case his accent was too overwhelming for them. People flipped pages like it was the Bible.

I just looked and listened. I had no trouble whatsoever – and after all, he gave the lecture in English, not French.

At one point, he quoted “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” while making slight gestures from side to side. Because they were focused on the paper before them, not many people saw his slight gestures (nor, I suspect, recognized the lyric). Performative irony.

I laughed out loud, earning disapproving looks from those around me. It reminded me of the old days at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But Jean Baudrillard looked straight at me, and grinned.

If you are a literalist, don’t even bother trying to read anything by Baudrillard. It will never make sense to you. The question and answer period after that lecture was a parody of the intellectual life toward which I had always worked.

To his critics: Yes, Baudrillard could have been more clear, less aphoristic. Yes, he got both the left and the right to froth – that’s one of the things that made him interesting. But let’s start with a hermeneutics of paying attention, eh? Sigh… I often feel that his detractors haven’t even read the work.

Baudrillard is partially responsible for my marriage. He has already apologized (grin). John has been friends with Baudrillard for years. He had translated some of Baudrillard’s work, and they had been planning a project together… he is even more upset than I am.

Anyway, the early encounters between John and myself were all about arguing about Baudrillard. We had differing interpretations on his views of the viral and evil and reversibility. We began to meet in order to argue about Baudrillard. We met a lot. It took a song by Leonard Cohen to tip the balance, but without Baudrillard we would never have gotten together.

Eventually, we visited Baudrillard in Paris, and posed our questions. That conversation was one of the highlights of my life, and that session did more to solidify the eventual argument of my dissertation than almost anything else. My dissertation, by the way, leaves a lot unsaid.

What isn’t mentioned very much in discussions of Jean is the kind of energy he gives off as a person. When I’ve seen him, he’s been a bit rumpled, often needing a shave and a haircut. He had the most wonderful mischievous grin, and he was hospitable and clearly delighted to see us. What struck me most was his “there”-ness. He was there in a way that is very rare. He made me feel confident, engaged, worthy of being an interlocutor – and a friend. Beyond the incredibly stimulating intellectual/pataphysical discussion, I remember being surprised by Jean’s kindness and charm. I had read his books so feverishly, but I had not understood the tone of voice. The books read differently, later – much more comprehensible, with different rhythms.

His works in progress looked something like the Burroughs “cut-up“, which explains a lot.

I admired his crystal bowl full of lemons, a point of beautiful innocent clarity among all the piles of books and papers. I’ll be buying a bag of lemons later today. We’ve got a beautiful big crystal bowl, and we’ll honor and remember him that way.

When John and I married, Jean gave us a large print of one of his famous photographs as a wedding present.

John has been able to spend more time with him than I have – and of course they have known each other much more closely and for a longer time. I don’t get to Paris very often, and Baudrillard only came to Emory a couple of times.

Jean Baudrillard was, nonetheless, one of those rare people who change something within you – something subtle perhaps – but something real and permanent. I have my disagreements with some of his ideas, but my engagement with them changed me. It was a kind of alchemical synergy.

My dissertation owes a debt to Baudrillard (among others, of course). Of course, that may be why it took so long to write… What I ended up with was a cyborg creature. Perhaps Baudrillard was its eyes.

There was one very unfortunate side-effect of reading his work, and taking it seriously (and playfully and provocatively and ironically). A series of synchronicities occurred which, together with reading a lot of Baudrillard, made me very nervous about the potential “revenge” of the viral. It was a bit like Nietzsche’s abyss gazing back at you.

I can never decide whether Baudrillard is more of a Gnostic or a magician.

I am not sure how Baudrillard’s work will resonate in future. Others may attempt to paint the bigger pictures, to create the spectacle, the more-Baudrillard-than-Baudrillard. Or perhaps he will just disappear.

Still, this death – this “disappearance” of a “simulacrum” – affects me deeply, personally.

There is so much to say, and nothing to say. He’s gone.

Baudrillard on Tour, Nov. 28 2005, From The New Yorker, Talk of the Town

“I don’t know how to ask this question, because it’s so multifaceted,” he said. “You’re Baudrillard, and you were able to fill a room. And what I want to know is: when someone dies, we read an obituary—like Derrida died last year, and is a great loss for all of us. What would you like to be said about you? In other words, who are you? I would like to know how old you are, if you’re married and if you have kids, and since you’ve spent a great deal of time writing a great many books, some of which I could not get through, is there something you want to say that can be summed up?”

“What I am, I don’t know,” Baudrillard said, with a Gallic twinkle in his eye. “I am the simulacrum of myself.”

The audience giggled.

“And how old are you?” the questioner persisted.

“Very young.”

“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”

“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The “marketing” immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.”

“What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world.”

A little background:

More Obit thoughts:

Of course, that’s just a start. I’ve got a shelf of Baudrillard books here. When I can stand it, I’m going to read them all again.

Cooking as Stress Management

Cooking as Stress Management

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I’m not a wonderful cook. Because the rituals of cooking don’t interest me very much, I haven’t learned how to make the things that I love to eat. I may have to reconsider. I’ve been making a monster lasagna today, and I discovered something. Cooking, all of a sudden, seems to relax me.

I’ve had a strange couple of weeks, involving much more emotional turmoil than I can easily handle. I’ve been feeling fragile, tired, angry, sad. I’m not yet back to myself. The one good thing about it all is that I seem to have gotten some excellent crying done. I’m such a stoic that it tends to build up. I’m good to go for at least another year.

It was a manifold crisis – a miscommunication in my family (well, it was more than that) was the breaking point. But it had been building.

I’ve gotten a bit disheartened about the difficulty of securing a professional position. There aren’t any university jobs. I’m now refocusing on finding a job as a discourse analyst or rhetorical strategist – maybe at a PR firm or something like that. That may be better than pursuing some sort of IT or Project Management position. It would be more targeted to my talents. I don’t have the certifications that would make me an attractive candidate in some of these other fields anyway. And, as a former Jehovah’s Witness, I’m not comfortable with sales (grin). I’m good at it, just not comfortable with it.

Anxiety about my future is compounded by student loan debt and the feeling that I might have wasted my time and money getting the Ph.D. It seems bizarre, but the degree seems to work against me more often than for me.

All of this hit me at once, or perhaps it was a relay, a cascade, a feedback loop. I had the it’s-not-fairs. I was swamped, smashed, splintered into bits.

I can’t, and don’t, stay in that horrible psychological space for long. Life keeps moving on, after all. Fortunately, I also appreciate small comforts and pleasures, and there are all sorts of ways to lick your wounds (so to speak).

Today I discovered that as I was chopping, and mixing, and layering the lasagna, I went into a state of serenity. It was almost hypnotic. Very relaxing. I started to breathe more easily again, like I do when I meditate. I took the pace way down (I tend to move quickly).

The lasagna smells great. I’ll have to remember the cooking method of stress management. I shouldn’t resist it simply because of the “traditional gender role” aspect of the thing.

Today is the five-year anniversary of the day I very nearly died. I can’t help thinking that the pregnancy I lost that day (a ruptured ectopic) might have been a little girl or little boy now. I can’t help mourning the fact that I will never have another baby. Knowing this day was approaching made the family problems worse, as related things tend to do.

Any little comfort helps. And I can’t complain, really. I’ve been surrounded by love and caring as I struggled through this difficult terrain.

Snowbird Guardian Totem Feb 3 2002

And now my little boy comes in to this tiny office of mine and gives me a hug. It’s not such a bad day after all. He’s such a gift of the cosmos, and I am grateful.