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Bethany Brittain grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home and is a survivor of religious child maltreatment. As prescribed by church leaders, her parents used corporal punishment on Bethany and her three siblings starting in infancy, and frequent and severe beatings continued into their teen years. After having been home schooled in isolation and groomed to be a submissive wife, she left home in her late teens, obtained a college degree in instructional design, and transcended her abusive childhood. Today, Bethany creates training programs for corporations and specializes in adult learning. She is on the Board of Directors for the Child-Friendly Faith Project.Ann M. Haralambie, JD, CWLS, is a certified family law attorney and certified child welfare law specialist in private practice in Tucson, Arizona, where she specializes in custody and child abuse cases. She is the former president of the National Association of Counsel for Children and a charter life member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. Ann is the principle author and co-editor of Child Welfare Law and Practice, the author of Child Sexual Abuse in Civil Cases, The Child’s Attorney, and the three-volume, annually supplemented treatise, Handling Child Custody, Abuse, and Adoption Cases. She is on the Board of Directors for the Child-Friendly Faith Project.
Transcript
IntroductionToday’s episode of the Social Work Podcast is on Religious Child Maltreatment. Longtime listeners of the podcast will remember that I first addressed this topic in 2012 when I interviewed Janet Heimlich about her book “Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment.” In episode 72, Janet explained that religious child maltreatment is any abuse or neglect that was done in the name of religion, or that was encouraged, condoned, or assumed as a necessary practice by a religious community. Parents are more likely to engage in religious child maltreatment when they are members of authoritarian religious communities. Janet’s book is a wonderful primer on the topic, and her interview was a treasure trove of information for social workers.
So, why am I revisiting the topic? It is pretty simple. Even though social workers are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect, social workers are not trained to consider the role of religion in child maltreatment. As you’ll in today’s episode, even if a social worker suspected and reported religiously motivated child maltreatment, any investigation would run into a number of road blocks, starting with one of our foundational principles – separation of church and state, and the freedom of religion. Quick legal history: A series of laws were passed in the 1960s and 1970s that gave child protection services the authority to intervene when a child was being abused or neglected. In 1993, the federal government passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which said that laws could not substantially burden a person's free exercise of religion. You’re spanking your child because it is a documented part of your religious beliefs? Telling you not to would be an unreasonable burden on your free exercise of religion. Although the federal law was struck down, 19 states have passed versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. These laws challenged CPS systems when it seems like they are interfering with people’s first amendment right to freedom of religion. Even if there was no constitutional issue, the investigation would still have to some proof that abuse or neglect was occurring. What do you do if the alleged victims deny, and the alleged perpetrators are held up as pillars in the community? Finally, if none of those are barriers, right, there is no legal barrier and there are victims willing to talk, you still have to have investigators who are trained in identifying and documenting religious child maltreatment. In most states, CPS systems are overburdended by limited resources, and high turnover. This perfect storm of issues is one of the reasons why I wanted to revisit this issue.
In today’s episode I spoke with two people who bring very different perspectives to this issue. Bethany Brittan is on the board of the Child Friendly Faith project and is a survivor of RCM. Ann Haralambie is a certified family law specialist and a certified child welfare law specialist practicing in Tucson Arizona. I had two goals for our interview. The first was to give voice to the experience of people who have survived RCM. To that end, I present Bethany’s story as un-interrupted tape. The second was to unpack some of the differences between the personal experience of RCM and the professional challenges associated with protecting children from religious maltreatment. You’ll hear Ann and me talk about legal, educational, and bureaucratic issues associated with child maltreatment. Today’s episode covers four broad themes. The first is called “cuddling in the name of the lord.” The second is, “who defines the line?” The third is called “random acts of kindness.” The last theme is called “Heal thyself.” At the end of the episode I’ll tell you about the Child Friendly Faith Project 2014 conference.
And now, without further ado, on to episode 93 of the Social Work Podcast: Personal and Professional Perspectives on Religious Child Maltreatment: Interview with Bethany Brittain and Ann Haralambie, JD.
Interviews (forthcoming)
[06:16]
This section starts out with a brief summary of some of the tensions between church and state, and then we hear Bethany tell her story of growing up in a Christian home that followed specific teachings around corporal punishment. Trigger warning for folks who have experienced abuse: Bethany talks about being beaten.
[06:40]
“Cuddling in the Name of the Lord”
Ann: Most of the 20th century and certainly all of the 21st century so far has very much seen child rearing as something within the family’s exclusive province, and so you have to go pretty far to get the government to say, “OK, this is child abuse and we can come in and take, you know, a child out of your home”. When you combine the fundamental rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit with the First Amendment right of the free exercise of religion, when the maltreatment involved has to do specifically with religiously based beliefs, it's sort of a double whammy in favor of the parents having autonomy. By the same token the United States Supreme Court has made it very clear that parents are free to make martyrs of themselves based on their religious beliefs, but they are not free to make martyrs of their children.
[07:52]
Bethany: My parents became Christian a couple years before I was born. They were kind of in that Jesus movement where it was, you know, this freedom that people were finding and kind of a respite from the rest of the world. They saw themselves as going back to the basic, going back to what really the Bible was about and they were involved in a church called Outreach Publication. One of the founders was Roy Lessin who wrote the book on spanking. My parents wanted to be the best Christians they could be, and they wanted to raise their children according to biblical principles.
[08:34]
I’m the oldest of four children. There are two brothers and then my little sister. I have wonderful siblings. I have a brother that I'm particularly close to, and I think that he's such a gift to have in my life. Oftentimes, church services were people barefoot, long hair sitting in a makeshift church kind of like a home church and talking through and reading scriptures and seeking out God. The church services would get really intense and someone would, you know, the group would cast a demon out or the women would be praying with her head covered or, you know, it could get really intense. But a lot of times, it was very intellectual and a lot of discussion. We were expected to participate with adults. We didn't go to Sunday services for children. And I found the music and the singing wonderful, but I found the speaking in tongues and the demon part was very frightening to me. I didn't understand it, and I was taught that there were demons and there was a real Satan. So, it made for a lot of nightmares, and I definitely was guarded. I remember even being very little and being very guarded in those services.
[9:53]
But I found the sitting through the sermon horrible because I knew that if I didn't sit according to the way my parents wanted me to, I could be punished when I got home. When we would leave church service, I wouldn't know and I'd always be looking at my mother's face or my father's face to determine whether or not I was in trouble. It was often hard to tell because they would be socializing, so it would be the car ride home where my mother would turn and say, you know, “you children disappointed me” or “I expected you to sit still”. And it was at that point I knew that what they called a spanking was eminent. So, then we would get lined up and then they would take us through a Roy Lessin spanking. According to Roy Lessin, you know, you clearly state what the child did wrong. So, they would set us down and say, “Do you understand?” and then there'd be kind of a lecture that seemed to go on for a really long time. And then, once we said we understood, then we would disrobe and be completely bare naked and be asked to take a submissive position. So, it could be holding our ankles, holding the dresser, laying over the bed…and then my parents would have a spanking implement which could be a bamboo stick, it could be a paddle, it could be a belt. They didn't use their hands very often because they were fearful that we would be fearful of their hands, so they always used an implement. And then they would hit us until they heard a broken cry. And that was, you know, not an angry cry, we wouldn't be fighting back. It was completely submitting to the pain that they were inflicting and being very willing to accept it. And then they would consider us, you know, that our will would have been broken.
[11:37]
At that point we would be instructed to get dressed again, and then there was cuddling where we were to, you know, cuddle with my father and my mother, and then they would say, “it's time to pray and ask God to forgive you”. And then it was all done, and what “all done” meant was there was to be no bad attitudes, there could be no sniffling afterwards, or looking depressed. We had to look cheerful, because if we were seeing as having the wrong attitude, it was determined that our will wasn't broken and we were in need of another spanking.
My mother tells the first time that she spanked me when I was six months old. I honestly don't remember it. I don't think it's possible for me to remember, you know, it as an actual story, but I do think it had an effect. My siblings were beaten when they were infants. When we were toddlers up until, well for me, up until the age of 11, one could receive a spanking multiple times per day. So, there are times when, you know, I ended up getting spanked two and three times a day, and then there are days where I would be really good and nothing would have happened. And then by the time I was 11, it was very infrequent and then the last spanking I received was when I was 13. But my brothers were spanked more often, and they had, you know, they got in trouble more frequently. And my little brother was what my parents, you know, that he was kind of the chainsaw kid where he just got everything wrong. And so, they spanked him multiple times per day until his last spanking he received when he was 18 years old. And then my father couldn't legally hit him anymore.
[13:26]
Jonathan: So, how common is this approach to corporal punishment?
Ann: What I hear from a lot of those people who consider themselves to be fundamentalists, you don’t ever use the hand to inflict punishment because a hand is part of your body and that should be a loving thing. For them, the loving way to discipline a child would be to use an implement- a switch or a stick or a paddle or something like that. For other people who were not raised with that set of beliefs, if you're going to spank your child, you need to spank your child with your hand so you can feel how hard you're hitting the child and whether you're crossing whatever line you personally have on what's too hard to hit and that it is per say abusive to use any kind of an implement. So, parents coming from different belief systems- secular or religious- maybe trying to do something that is not motivated by sadism or things like that.
[14:36]
“Who Defines the Line?”
Jonathan: In the section we hear Ann talk about the moving target that is religious child treatment. Where is the line between strict religious teachings and abuse or neglect? Who defines that line? Is it the government? Is it parents? Is it CPS?
[14:56]
Ann: So where is that line that a parent crosses? As with most child protective cases, it’s initially in the eye of the CPS worker who goes out and investigates. And there are certainly situations, even outside of the religious context, where one social worker would remove a child and another social worker would not. And then you go to court and one juvenile judge would say, “This is a dependent child. Put the child in the foster care system” or “This is a good parent. We’re not going to interfere”. But we don’t have, in the United States, a lot of uniformity in terms of what is appropriate discipline…what are appropriate practices.
[15:46]
Jonathan: It seems like we don't have much uniformity in the standards and training that CPS workers get.
Ann: When I started doing this work, we had mostly MSWs as the social workers in CPS. Most of them had children. Most of them had common sense and life experience. Now, we don’t have that. We have a lot of people who are not educated to be social workers, very young, have no children, have no experience, and they see somebody who looks and sounds very good. And when they talk about disciplining their children, they’re not describing it as abusive. I've been in many child abuse cases in juvenile court where the parents will come in and they'll bring in the elder board, and the mothers from the Sunday school, and everybody who talks about how wonderful these people are and how well they treat their children, and how polite and well-behaved their children are, and that these are not abusive people. And if people aren't even thinking about religious maltreatment as a possibility…as a hypothesis to be explored in the case, they're very likely to miss it because many of these people, you know, seem like salt of the earth, caring, wonderful people who are in many cases very well motivated…and yet they’re abusing their children. When I hear my pastors talk, they are all the children of pastors. They’re preachers’ kids, and they talk about going to these very long services and falling asleep under the pew. They would go to revival services for two weeks straight every night, and they saw that as a good thing. So, is that abuse of those children?
[17:53]
Jonathan: Yeah, and that fits perfectly with what Bethany was saying about being terrified of beaten for fidgeting in these long, and what sound like really disturbing for her, church services. And yet the parents, you know, were doing it, even from Bethany’s account, they were doing it because this is what they thought was raising children from biblical principles.
[18:21]
Ann: If you break your child’s bones, if you chain them up in a doghouse, and you leave them there to drink their own urine, whether you’re doing it in the name of God or not, we pretty much have a societal consensus that that’s abuse. What I tell people is if you're leaving marks, pretty much the law in most places says you can intervene there. You cannot have sex with your children. You cannot expose your children to a church service where venomous snakes are three inches from your child. This is an unreasonable risk. You may think these things are alright, but in our society, under our laws, they are illegal. We say that this is the compelling governmental interest.
[19:19]
Jonathan: By compelling governmental interest, you’re talking about the about the criteria that need to be met in order for the government to intervene in a situation like this which seems to be religiously motivated discipline or abuse. So, why is this the case with CPS that there seems to be this difficulty pursuing investigations?
[19:48]
Ann: I live in a state that sort of worships at the altar of cutting taxes and cutting resources. And while we say children are our greatest resource, we don't fund our systems sufficiently to attract people. When the economy went into The Great Recession and the social services budgets across the country were being cut, so were the social supports for these parents. And we saw, you know, the numbers of people coming into the CPS system really increase. You’re cutting things when you need more, and we just need to make decisions that budgets our moral documents. And if we really care about protecting our children, if we really care about providing resources, to even let faith communities become aware that abuse can be going on in the name of the religion, even for the groups not like Bethany’s where it was not a part of the teaching of the church but where it was misunderstanding and misapplication. You know, if we’re not going to take the time and spend the money to do it, I think we’re better off without the illusion of saying we have a child protective services system. Let it stay in the law enforcement system. A radical idea, I know.
[21:18]
Jonathan: (laughing) Yeah, that's definitely a radical idea and probably would be enough material for an entire podcast episode on its own.
[21:31]
Ann: Many of these insular communities will homeschool their children. So, the children not only don't, you know, have contact with the secular society that might corrupt them, but there's also no school nurse, no teacher, no coach, no other children's parents who are not part of the same group who can notice something in that child.
[21:57]
Jonathan: The third section is called “Random Acts of Kindness”.
For professionals, the problem with socially isolated families is that it makes it hard to find children who are being abused. But for the children like Bethany, the consequences of being isolated are significant and can have profound effects on the sense of identity and development. So, Bethany tells this beautiful story about how a random act of kindness provided her with perhaps her first sense of feeling human.
[22:36]
Bethany: My parents moved to the mountains when I was 12. And so, we all of a sudden were in the middle of nowhere, and we were homeschooled. And we didn't see people very often. We had friends that came over occasionally, but they were usually people who thought my family was amazing. And they were interested in our pioneer existence. They were interested in her homeschooling and asked a lot of questions. And so, I felt more like an object than a person. Like, I was an object of interest…not really a person. And, we were taught the end of the world was imminent so that everyone on the outside was controlled by humanists, so there was this fear of the outside and really not knowing. And being homeschooled, I got a sixth grade education, so I didn’t really have…I mean, I had books and the classics and things, and I wrote stories and had my imagination, but I didn’t really understand how the outside world worked. I understood it through thought leaders, like Bob Mumford. You know, we used to get tapes. Or other religious leaders…Dobson. Just people like that. So, they kind of painted the outside picture for me, and it didn’t look a lot safer out there than where I was at. And when I talked, I had a very distinct way of relating that was based on my experiences and it was confusing to outside people. They didn't really understand me. I didn't have a friend until…I didn't make…I didn’t really make a friend who wasn't attached to my parents. Like, I had a girlfriend who was way older than me. She’s my mother’s friend and she took a liking to me. And I think she might have suspected what was going on, but it never dawned on me to tell her because she would have told my mom. So, I didn't really make friends until I was in my late or mid 20s was when I started actually making friends where I went out and did stuff and had talks. Most of my relationships were or, you know, associated with the church for my extended family. And, again, they didn't understand. They just thought I was weird. I was just different.
I’ve done a couple of speaking events where people have asked, you know, “What could we have done?”. You know, I spoke to a church group. “What could we have done?” And I think back to a situation where there was a woman who lived on the side of town, and she was vaguely familiar with my family. And at some point, I was riding by her house and her dog spooked me and then she got the dog under control and asked me to come in. And I did. I went inside. I was a little nervous and she asked me if I wanted hot cocoa, and I said that I wasn't allowed to have hot cocoa. And she said, “Well, I don't think that a half a cup of cocoa will matter. It's just between us”. And she befriended me and she talked to me. And the entire time, I was in her house, which couldn't have been more than 30 or 45 minutes. You know, she had other kids and they just went around and she's talking to me and I felt really special. And we just talked about normal stuff, like she seemed to know…seemed to be able to talk to me to my age and she didn't ask me questions and that was really refreshing. Like, she didn't ask what it was like. She didn't ask, you know, kind of those voyeuristic questions that I'd gotten from other people. And for the 30 or 45 minutes I was in her home, I felt completely and utterly human and that was such a wonderful experience. And then I went back. If there's any way I could ever thank her for that, that was that was an amazing gift that she gave to me that day.
[26:13]
Ann: The big problem that I’ve seen, particularly if you have parents who are involved in insular communities or authoritarian communities, is they are getting no backup from their community that anything they’re doing is wrong. And I know I represent a number of churches, and I advise all of those pastors, you know, when you're talking about “children, obey your parents”, also talk about “fathers, provoke not your children unto wrath”. When you talk about your parents know what’s best for you or doing what’s best for you, also talk about there are occasions where there is abuse. And in those occasions, you don’t obey. In those occasions, you tell somebody. There may be people out in the congregation that take their words and twist them in ways that those pastors never intended. So, you need to explicitly talk about non-abusive ways of disciplining your children. But it's hard for people who think they're doing what God wants them to do to change because some secular authority tells them not to do it. They'll say, “I'm going to obey God rather than you”. And if their society, if their faith community is authoritarian and approving of those kinds of harsh methods, you know, in many of those cases removal of the children is the only thing that's going to protect those kids because the parents are not going to be willing to change what they're doing.
[27:59]
Bethany: I don’t think anybody could have come in and called Child Protective Services. I don't think that would have made a difference. For those of us who are isolated, you can't…I don't think anybody could have really come in and rescued me. So, talking to me and befriending me was probably the best thing anybody could do. Like giving me a normal place, you know, inviting me to come in…not asking so many questions, ‘cause all the answers I gave were all based on what I was supposed to give. So, you know, I felt like a robot. And I think asking those questions aren't necessarily helpful but standing alongside someone and allowing them to have a space to kind of decompress, you know, is about the best.
The longest and most painful part of that treatment is ongoing anxiety that I experience today. I manage it, but a sense of hypervigilance- always being on guard, never wanting to make a mistake. I've had to work very hard on relaxing, and I know that I probably will never be without it. It will probably always be there. I've been through quite a bit of therapy in terms of learning to relax, and it's caused me to distance myself from people. So, it's taken a lot for me to build a community of people. And trust is very delicate for me. It's really hard to be in a relationship where people can assert themselves in an authoritative way. And then I'm not real sure always how to push them back.
When I was young, I believed that I heard a small, still voice in my head that was very comforting, and it wasn't the same voice that I thought was God, but it wasn't the same voice that the type of God that I heard in church, so it was very separate. And I believe that that voice was comforting me all through my childhood. It would come and go and then at some point the evidence that was there for God was no longer evidence… like it wasn't, I couldn't. When I was in my 20s…when I was like 25, I had already gone through several churches looking for help. And the problem was is that the churches that I went to, and I would describe my upbringing, I was using words that biblical. And so, everybody just thought that I was rebellious…that I just needed to heal my relationship. They didn't realize where I'd come from and how extreme it had been and I couldn't find the words to tell them. It just I didn't even dawn on me. I thought everybody got spanked like I did. And so, at some point when I was 25, I just became agnostic and then after a while I just became atheist.
[30:50]
Jonathan: This last section is called Heal Thyself”.
Both the victim of religious child maltreatment and the professional who’s supposed to be in charge of preventing this type of child maltreatment are really having to do this on their own these days.
[31:09]
Bethany: For those who have had experiences like mine, it's not easy, but there's help. And it's been very, very great to see that come about in the last couple of years. Janet's book was really helpful. That was great to connect with other stories that were like mine. Our organization has a Facebook group called Child Friendly Faith, and it's a closed Facebook group. We have over 400 members and that's been excellent for getting information. You know, I've posted and asked for help in understanding something or wanting to talk. You know, I'm feeling distressed, or I'm feeling hopeless, and I just need to connect and those are good places to connect. Homeschoolers Anonymous is another group. They're 500, and that's been excellent for posting experiences or just trying to get input or help. I think at one point I posted that, you know, the Master Lock was something I just had a really tough time with. And, you know, when you go to high school you get a lock to put on your locker. And so, learning how to use that’s been challenging. You know, it was really cool to post that in Homeschoolers Anonymous and get huge ongoing responses back saying, “Yeah, me too”. So, those are some examples.
[32:35]
Ann: There are not necessarily a huge number of places where you can get it. There are groups such as the National Child Protection Training Center which is in Minnesota and is very, very involved in training people, both prosecutors on the criminal side and also Child Protective Services people. But there also, I know the executive director of that organization Victor Vieth has particular expertise in religious child maltreatment, and I know they have speakers that will go out and do training. So, if there is, for example, a social services agency that wants to bring somebody in to do a training, they're available to do that. There's also a group called Grace, which I believe this is what it stands for- Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment- that is specifically addressing Christian religious organizations and they also can go in and do some training. Jan Heimlich's book on religious child maltreatment has a lot of very helpful information but what we need to have is we need to get our state or county child welfare agencies wherever they have their homes within a state, you know, to bring in people as part of their training and look at the religious child maltreatment possibilities, so that people one- are aware that it happens, and two- we're now talking about partnering with faith communities. And there are a number of faith communities that want to be child friendly, that are willing to help families. And I know in my own private practice, if I'm involved with a family that is abusing their child, I usually will ask them directly if they have any kind of church involvement. And with their permission, because obviously there's attorney-client confidentiality, but with their permission, I'll talk to their pastor. I'll talk to other people in their faith community who can maybe mentor them in more effective ways of disciplining their children. Pastors who have been very good in pointing out these scriptural errors and the way these parents are thinking God wants them to raise their children and talking to them about other scriptures, I'm being kind to children and pointing out things like, you know, they talk about “sparing the rod”. The rod was something a shepherd used to beat the wolf away from the sheep and the crook on the end of the of the shepherd's rod was something to pull the lambs out of danger. The rod was not something to beat the lamb. The quote Proverbs, “spare the rod and spoil the child” is not a biblical verse. And so when they hear that from a pastor, they receive it a little differently than if they hear that from a judge.
[36:20]
Jonathan: Bethany, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.
[36:26]
Bethany: Thank you, Jonathan, for asking me this is very heartening to hear this discussion and to meet you and, you know, and to be a part of what you're doing. I really appreciate it.
[36:36]
Jonathan: Ann, thank you so much for your insights into the laws and how social services work and all of your experiences as a professional in this field.
Ann: Thank you.
[36:51]
Jonathan: You've been listening to Bethany Brittian and Ann Haralambie talk about the personal and professional experience of religious child maltreatment. If you're thinking to yourself, “I really wanna learn more about this topic and I wouldn't mind spending a couple days in Austin, Texas, the live music capital of the world,” then you're in luck. The Child Friendly Faith Project is holding their second annual conference at the Wyndham Garden Hotel on December 4th and 5th, 2014. Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will and president of the Child Friendly Faith Project created a special discount code so that listeners of The Social Work Podcast could register for $155, which is $40 off the regular rate of $195. So, to get the discounted rate enter the code “SWPodcast”. If you can't make it to Austin, Texas on December 4th and 5th, join me and hundreds of other people who have registered to attend the conference online. Registration information for in-person and online can be found at childfriendlyfaith.org.
[37:58] END INTERVIEW
Podcast transcript generously donated by Shelli Rodrigues, a Licensed Certified Social Worker in South Dakota.
References and Resources
Member requests are vetted. Group is closed so that members can post openly. Many group members are therapist who are well-versed in religiously motivated child maltreatment issues.
(Secret) Homeschoolers Anonymous
This is a wonderful resource for those of us who were home schooled and isolated. Conversations range from issues like how to date after being raised with the purity doctrine, how to do every day things like get a social security card, to read about news that touches issues that really matter. Younger members are often looking for support as they leave their families knowing that they're leaving younger siblings behind.
Quiverfull Sorority of Survivors (QFSOS)
This group is for women. [from Bethany: "I wasn't raised in the Quiverful movement but a movement that was an offshoot. The Jesus Movement of the 70s lead to the Shepherding Movement that turned out to be a disaster. It was discarded by Bob Mumford and four other men who had promoted the doctrine. There was a substantial amount of groups who kept the principles and went into isolation. My family was one such group. I love this group because I can post anything! These women understand the nuances of religious abuse and are very supportive."]
APA (6th ed) citation for this podcast:
Singer, J. B. (Producer). (2014, November 25). #93 - Personal and professional perspectives on religious child maltreatment: Interview with Bethany Brittain and Ann Haralambie, JD, CWLS [Audio Podcast]. Social Work Podcast. Retrieved from http://www.socialworkpodcast.com/2014/11/RCM.html
I am a current MSW student and am researching this topic. I wonder if there is a full transcript of this episode? Thank you.
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