Tim,
I've thought for a long time on how to address you. I asked you a question on the yahoo group, but by then you were angry at all those in the group and you refused to reply. I won't ask the question again, I'll just leave you with my perspective. My perspective on you, Tim, not the homes.
Why you decided it was your job to step up and defend the program is unclear to me. Yet, you felt the urge to do so. Your method was to find posts made here and call the authors of the posts liars. You offered semantic evidence of why the posts could not be true, not stopping to consider that things may be different now than when the author of the post was there. You speak to us as if you are the know-all and see-all of the Roloff homes. In doing so, you became that which we have been conditioned to abhor.
It's like this, Tim: We gain NOTHING in telling our stories here. We hope some parent may see it and maybe change their minds about sending someone, but seriously...when does someone really come in here for that? We tell our stories because something motivated us to run a search about the homes, and we stumbled here. We read the stories and we felt some sort of validation. So we shared our experience too. Yes, we all define abuse differently, I will give you that much. I am one of the first to admit my stay there was not as bad as others. Still, I can recount three episodes that I would (and a court would probably agree) define as abuse to me. However, I'm not a scarred person because of those instances. There are people here, though, that went through so much worse than what I went. I know it happened. I saw it. I heard the accounts. These people were called "rebellious" and chastised because they wouldn't conform to the program, so they were abused. Not spanked, as I don't consider that abuse. Spanking, or "licks", as we called them, was a common occurrence. So common that it wouldn't phase us anymore. So abusive methods of punishment were developed. Then there are other horrors: teenage mothers told that the only hope for their babies was to give them up. What you can't understand, Tim, was that we didn't know other options. In our young minds, we were being told by our mentors the "right" thing to do. Even if everything in our hearts was telling us that it wasn't the right thing, we followed. We followed because to not do so brought on unpleasant consequences. Our actions were motivated by fear. It was to the points that our own thoughts would frighten us sometimes. Like if we thought of a rock song, because someone said something that reminded us of it, we felt we were doing something wrong.
Then, upon leaving the homes, we were allowed no more contact with each other. Addresses and phone numbers were taken away from us. I remember finding some letters in the trash while taking the trash out one Saturday. They had been sent to some girls in there by a former student. We weren't allowed to write to anyone besides our pastor and parents, but we were allowed to receive mail, if it met censorship guidelines. (Yes, all our mail was read before coming in or going out.) But a former student couldn't write a student still in the program. I read the letters, with the intention of telling the intended recipients what was said. There was nothing wrong with what she was saying, so I still don't understand why they didn't allow the recipient to get it. I was caught reading one and quickly reprimanded. Why the fear of us talking to each other after the program? My theory is because once out, we could objectively review our experiences and that was a threat to the "ministry". So when we found these boards, you can't imagine the relief we felt to see that our reinsertion into society (which was very difficult) was a similar experience to others. The knowledge that I wasn't alone in my confusion and anger over the homes. If you go back, you may find my posts...angry, accusing. Then you can see the fights that inevitably break out in these boards, and I eventually left for a long time because of those. Then I healed. I healed through these boards, through the groups. It became such a small part of my life, but I had to HEAL. Because of it, I can't get as angry as others that are still going through the healing process. Yet I understand their reaction to you. You undermined their experience. You called them liars. You had no agenda, other than to bring them down again. In the name of what, Tim? Of God? Of Roloff Enterprises? They don't need you to be their lawyer. If the program helps people, and I am not going to say no one has been helped, then the results speak for themselves. You don't have to feel the need to defend them. Start your own site promoting the good and allow former students to do the same. But let those who feel differently express themselves as well. It's their story, and you are not the one who should tell it.
