Leaderboard

I, too am new to this particular thread. I spent several hours this morning looking through it. While I was never a part of any "initiation" ceremony (tongue in cheek or otherwise) that Evan described, had I personally known what was going on, I would have never put up with it. And I know several men who if they had known of a father sexually abusing his child, would personally have escorted him out behind the barn and beaten him within an inch of his life before handing him over to the authorities. TWI was an interesting mix. Depending on where your assignment was and who your leadership was, there are a variety of contradictory experiences, all of them VALID. There is a lot of mention of leadership physically and/or sexually abusing children in their fellowship. I am here to tell you that it also happened the other way around. When I first moved to NW Indiana, and I did not know anyone there, I had to leave my daughter (age 3 at the time) with a believer I had never met. The next time I needed a babysitter and I was going to leave her at this woman's house, my daughter was reluctant for me to leave. She had never behaved that way before, and I was concerned. But I "trusted" the believer. How wrong I was. When my husband brought my daughter home from the babysitter, and I questioned my little girl about how the evening went, she began crying and told me about how the woman sat and watched while her 5 year old son pushed her around all night and eventually knocked her into a table and hurt her head. When I brushed back her hair and looked, her ear was caked, CAKED with BLOOD which had also run down her neck. I called the woman and let her know what I found, and she offered no explanation for why she allowed this to happen. She "had no idea" my daughter was hurt. She admitted she watched her son push her around, and offered no explanation for why she did not intervene. She did not even bother to check my daughter's head for injuries, or to even tell my husband that an incident had occurred when he picked her up. I let the woman have it. I never took my daughter over there again, and she never came to my fellowship, either! She would NOT HAVE BEEN WELCOME. My daughter was also sexually abused by the child of someone in our fellowship. Unlike the previous incident, I left my daughter with a non-Corps woman who I trusted more than anyone else in my branch. I had known her for at least two or more years, and allowed her to babysit my daughter overnight, only because I considered her a trusted friend. This woman had two children, a boy and a girl, several years older than my 6 year old. The next morning after my daughter came home, she had a hickey on her neck! When I asked her how she got it, she was upset and embarassed, and told me that this woman's daughter had done it playing "vampire." I also learned that in that household this woman allowed her children to watch R rated movies that were inappropriate for her own age children, let alone my child. I had considered this woman a trusted friend of mine, but I found out that even after knowing her for several years, there were still things I didn't know about how she ran her household and oversaw her children. And as a good question-asking intrusive Way Corps overseer, I thought I knew. So then this woman learned from me a few things she didn't know about her own kids. I got in her face and I kicked her @$$. Hard. And she learned a few things. She was humiliated, sorry, and honestly made some changes in her life, and tried to make some changes with her kids. I talked with her kids about it, too. They apologized, and everything seemd to be ok after that, but later on, her boy got in trouble several times. The Mom truly made valiant efforts at correcting behaviors, but I think the horse was out of the barn for her kids. We continued our friendship, but I never trusted her with my daughter again. Now more than a decade down the line, recently I ran across a photo of this woman's daughter, and I mentioned how I missed her mom. Then my daughter stood up and told me how she hated that girl. She was finally old enough to tell me that this girl had actually sexually abused her that night. I had actually forgotten the incident till she brought it up when we were looking at the picture. And I learned far more than I knew even then about what actually occurred that night. And I want to kick the woman's @$$ all over again, But she IS STILL IN TWI AND SO ARE HER CHILDREN. So, it isn't just "leadership" doing the abusing. This is a two way street and they also learn it other places than from "leadership" who did it to them. As for TWI "condoning" beating your child senseless, of course they did not "condone" it. They condemned it loudly from the podium. However, it doesn't take a genius to note that many many times, what TWI condemned outwardly on one hand was actually practiced privately with impunity by the other. And yes, I remember a Rock of Ages in the 90's where Donna Dearest came before the entire ministry to "set the record straight" about how to "properly" use the "rod of correction." But there is a strange disconnect regarding the time frame. With reports and examples common among the ministry as early as the 70's that the rod was chronically being misused, why the twenty-year wait? In 1976 or 1977 in Altamonte Springs, FL, I witnessed Bob Moynihan smack a three year old girl on the legs for a good 45 minutes, simply because she had not said hello to me when I said hello to her. I told Moynihan it didn't bother me-- she is just a kid-- I'm not upset she didn't speak to me. Apparently she had an "attitude" problem according to Bob, and he made me stand there while he smacked her little legs for I know at least 45 minutes until she broke down in tears and said hello to me. THIS is the EXAMPLE that the STILL oh-so-revered REVEREND MOYNIHAN set for me as an interim Corps person as to how you handle SOMEONE ELSE'S obstinate child. You make the entire world stand still for an hour while you smack the little legs of a child and bully them into obedience for your own ego. THIS is the man they eventually put in charge of Rome City for years. And yes, when visiting Rome City, I remember being told proudly by the in-residence Indiana Corps (my in-laws in fact) that they were actually told to correct one another's kids even in the presence of their own parents if the parents did not do it first. That was circa late 80's I believe. Even then I thought that was weird and excessive. The straw that broke the camel's back for my participation in TWI was when Josephine Wallace countermanded my instructions to my daughter right in front of me. Who the hell, and I don't care WHAT "program" you are in, has the right to usurp my own authority over my child? It is for that reason I finally left this wretched cult. And, yes, BELIEVE THE CHILDREN!