Monday, September 12, 2011

Cult Got Your Tongue?

As I watch this video about the abuses of Hephzibah House (or, as I call it, Hezbollah House)...







...my first thought, every time the CNN reporter approaches Don Williams, is - "What's the matter? Cult got your tongue?"



Note Williams' body language as he's asked the initial question about the allegations of abuse. I don't mean his overall weaseliness, but the nuances. His body, specifically his right arm (which is even more significant if he's right handed - which he probably is), looks for support. This could mean a few things - none of them reflecting well on Williams. Whatever words he might have to offer, he, internally, had no confidence in their ability to "support" him, so his mind/body responded. Later, he speaks in blatant contradiction relational to the situation he was in (which is also indicative of defensive deception)...


"I'd prefer not to decline, sir."


Mmm hmm. Nope. Nothing being hidden there. No defensiveness there. Nothing at all like a cult. [SA]


Also, note the physical location of the house. Considerably back off the road, encased by trees and brush, "No Entry - Private Drive" signs on the gate. Nope. Nothing being hidden there. Nothing at all like a cult.


The bottom-line, whatever's going on in Hezbollah House isn't something Williams, and his operators, want you knowing about or interfering in, because, frankly, what Susan Grotte and Me'Chelle Dowling are telling you goes on in Hezbollah House is probably the rule rather than the exception. These two women, and all others who've come forward about HH, the Rebekah Home, New Bethany, and the rest, are genuine heroes in my book.  ALL of the women these homes have abused are special, priceless, invaluable people. I wish ALL possible grace, Heavenly and human, for them. And, BTW, kudos to Anderson Cooper and CNN for having the gravitas to investigate this, and here's to hoping they become a permanent hemorrhoid on the caboose of these cult behavioral modification centers and concentration camps for girls/women (masquerading as Christ-based "rescue" homes) until the homes are no more and their operators are behind bars where they belong.


Many of you who read here are either acquainted with the Williams in some small capacity or actually know them well. Either way, don't bother to defend them to me. These people aren't of the same faith I am. They simply aren't good people at all (look at what they do to defenseless young girls!), and I can make NO connection between them and ANY kind of faith in Christ. As people, they suck. As "Christians", they suck even worse.


If that video wasn't enough to get your blood boiling, this article by Kathryn Joyce about the abuses in various spin-offs of Lester Roloff's Rebekah Home behavioral modification cults positively will. It made me so angry that I shook as I read it. Roloff may be long dead, but I'd like to dig up his ignorant old bones and kick the hell out of them. The one bit of solace I've found in researching all of this - believing in God as I do, believing in a reckoning, in some form or another, in eternity as I do - I'm confident that Roloff has been made to look long and hard at all the human debris in the wake of his violent religious addiction.


It angered me even more to see how politicians, particularly from the GOP (gotta love that brain-dead Religious Right), have fought tooth and nail against legislation which would bring these homes under government regulation and oversight, in the process giving these fundamentalist religious idiots carte blanche to abuse away to their religiously addicted, sociopathic hearts' content. How sad that, in the past, I actually voted for NC Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. She represents my district (Lucky me!). Legislation has been presented in the Congress which would be ever so small steps toward improving the conditions in these cultic concentration camps, particularly after a government study into faith-based children's homes/residential treatment programs a few years back. Among that legislation was the "Keeping All Students Safe Act" in March of last year, which would ban seclusion and restraint, whether physical or chemical, in homes which received any kind of federal funding (a small, small step). Congresswomen Foxx is quoted in the linked article, in reference to this legislation, "This bill is not needed...The states and the localities can handle these situations. They will look after the children." Right. Just like the fine job they're doing now. Ugggh. What an idiot. What a PAIR of idiots - me and her. Her because she's a political weasel of an idiot, and me because I voted for her. The states and localities can handle these situations? Like in Indiana?...where no jurisdiction actually wants to claim jurisdiction over the Hezbollah House situation?


Let's hope the lives being damaged or ruined at King Family Ministries/Second Chance Ranch by fundamentalist religious huckster Olin King don't in any way interfere in Mrs. Foxx's Congressional career and ambitions. [SA]


In the next few days, I hope to write a bit about Lester Roloff, and look at just how cultic and sickening these homes (and the fundamentalist fervor behind them) are.

14 comments:

  1. What shocks me most is that these people have no accountability by the state or government! That's insane!

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  2. "Cult got your tongue?" Genius.

    And I am with you on the voter's remorse.

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  3. What leaves me speechless is Child protection saying they could react to a current complaint - but several young women who used to be there say they cannot make a phone call from there.

    All in all, stories like this makes me cry - and say that this is NOT anything like Christianity.

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  4. If you liked that, checkout other stuff Anderson Cooper has done. Amazing man, I have a crazy amount of respect for what he's done. Most men don't have the you know what to do what he does.

    It would be nice if something like the IJM would step up to the problems in its own backyard.

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  5. Are you sure this isn't Ron Williams? Don Williams is a singer.

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  6. Excellent post. Yeah, Don Williams was totally 100% suspicious in that interview. If he has nothing to hide, he should have been perfectly okay talking about it.
    OH! And how he wouldn't come out and say that those people speaking bad about HH aren't liars, obviously implying that they're telling the truth... :-P

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  7. Lewis hi
    yaa this story makes me sad i agree with you 100% o by the way this is why i dont vote im saving my vote for a poltician that deserves my vote. As of right now not seeing anybody that actually does so no voting for me.

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  8. Now if the media would find the you-know-whats to investigate the Duggars sweet little "homeschooling group" down there in Big Sandy, Texas or up in Sin-City Chicago (ok, suburban Oak Brook). Mr Bill's "character" can't stand too much scrutiny.

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  9. haven't politicians got the balls to rewrite and pass a law to bring these places under their jurisdiction so they can be regulated.

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  10. More on Lester Roloff:

    (comments by former "residents" of his child lock-up facilites)

    http://baptisttaliban.blogspot.com/2011/09/lester-roloff-roloff-starts-his-radio.html#comment-form

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  11. Anonymous: it isn't about balls. Go find out the difficulties in doing that and then go make a difference yourself. It's easy to take potshots from behind a computer screen.

    If we don't do something ourselves, we're worse than the people we complain about.

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  12. Every. single. day. when I take my dog outside for a walk, in my pajamas or sweatpants, hair still greasy from not yet showering or whatever the case may be... I get honked at. The fact that this could in any way be my fault is a freaking joke! I don't walk or dress provocatively, and I certainly couldn't have done anything else to warrant this unwanted attention.

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  13. Thank you for your outrage.

    I was in Rebekah 1979-1980. It was fucking brutal. The funny thing is that I was court ordered to spend a year there at the same time the state was trying to close it down.

    I'm not sure what Christianity is, Rebekah kind of ruined any idea of that for me.

    Again, thank you for your outrage. It helps.

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