I consider myself a survivor of the homes also. I too kneeled for over two hours in the middle of the night, endured lock-up, solitary confinement and the many bruises that came with licks. Mrs. Barrett was the cleaning inspection lady at my time and was very cruel - I can't imagine her actually running the home. Mrs. Cameron ran the home with the staff of Miss. Vicki (Kermit), Miss. Sue, Mrs. Yoder, and Miss. Jane that I can remember.
The unfortunate thing is that we were all broken but never built back up. Mrs. Cameron made it clear to me shortly after I arroved that my mother did not love me (my father had died months prior) and that she was now going to be my mother. Her presence was always chilling.
I thank God every day that I was saved before I came to that place in Hell called the Rebekah Home. If I had not been I can't imagine that I ever would have been there.
My God is loving and kind. What they did and continue to do to children is horrible. They took our childhoods and we will never get those back. They left us in a place where no one, not even loved ones can possibly understand the pain that we endured - physical and mental. Only others who have been there. I compare it to a Concentration Camp in a so called "free" country.
They preach that everything in the Bible is how we should live yet they themselves have created their own Bible about raising children. The Bible does not teach to lock your children away because you do not want to deal with the problem.
With homes like this thriving it just shows that we as parents have given up on our kids and want to pass our problems on to somone else so that we don't have to deal with it.
The Bible says to raise your child in the way that he should go and when he is older he will not depart from it - what about the in-between. That is called a teenager!
Teenagers just need to be loved, not beaten down physically and mentally! If we would just stick with our kids - I know because I went through 3 rough teenage years with my son and now that he is 19 I am finally starting to see him come back again.
I did not abandon him or throw him away. I am widowed, I work and it was tough. I loved him but I did not like him very much at that time. I won't go into all of the problems but because of my Rebekah home experience I refused to send him away. I knew that if I could help him not self destruct, then the choices that he made whether bad or good were going to be his choices that he would have to live with.
Not choices that were forced upon him. He made good and bad ones but after trying everything I finally got couseling for him which was probably one of the best choices I made. He came through it.
Periods were missed, food was horrible, yes we all gained weight in our bellys. We have to be able to move on with our lives otherwise we will be bitter individuals but moving on does not mean forgetting.
I sometimes wonder how many children are out there that I may have been personnaly responsible for in coming to the home?
I toured with the Ensemble, I gave the testimony in the churches about how the Rebekah home had "saved me". I said that I was a drug addict and a rebellious teen. I was none of the above but that is what they wanted to hear. The better your testimony the more that they will believe that they "saved" you and start promoting you to room captain then helper then Ensemble.
Yes I did what I had to in order to survive. I remember sitting in the closet with my dearest friend Helen singing Journey songs very quietly hoping that nobobdy could hear us through the intercom. Why risk something like that? To keep my sanity, to make sure I had not been broken into nothing, to keep fighting and I was a helper!
I remember Mrs. Cameron killing Miss. Sue's pet gerbel. I never spoke of it to anyone out of fear. Paula (another helper) was standing with me holding open the back door to the dorm after lunch for Mrs. Cameron and Miss. Sue. Everybody was inside and we were waiting for them. They got with 10 feet of the breezway and all of a sudden Mrs. Cameron held the gerbil up and threw it as hard as she could towards the brick breezway. Miss Sue screamed. The gerbil just layed on the ground not moving. Paula grabbed me
and we closed the door. She looked at me and I at her and she made it clear that no matter what we did not see anything. We never spoke of it again.
Mrs. Cameron is an evil woman. There is a dark side that many have seen. The enjoyement she would have when she gave us licks and the constant intimidation. Does anyone remember the death prayers that she would threaten us with if we ever tried to run?
The girl that dug her way out of lock up on the second floor and set the alarms off in the middle of the night, jumping out during a storm I beleive her name was Betsy? or Becky?
Does anyone remember Emily? We called her "piglet." She got out before me and a few months later her parents decided to bring her back. She got control of the vehicle and it slammed head on into a semi killing all of them. Before she left she told me they would have to kill her to bring her back.
So many tragedies - we have to stop these homes.
Tamra@bigplanet.comknown as Tami Wolff
