Magnolia Christian Center... OWNED..

[Guest]

Its not everyday when a program staff member shows up and admits to paddling the kids.

http://cafety.org/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&Itemid=&func=view&id=1596&catid=2[/quote]

[Guest]

Since you asked, I'll reply...truthfully.

Each packet sent out contains a form which is notarized authorizing us to use corporal correction on their son. This is very very rarely used; and only as a last ditch effort. In the soon to be two years we've been open, I can count on one hand the times we've used it.

On the rare occasions it's used,I am the one who does it. I am not a strong person, and would not ever harm a child even if I was. The correction given is no where near as strong as what I received as a child....and my parents were loving, caring people. It truly hurt them more to have to spank me than it did for me to receive it.

I might add that the few times it's been used, it's been rare that it had to be used more than once on anyone.

After being in places that used and more so abused the policy, I can see where you're coming from and your need to be cautious. Had I gone through what you've been through, I would be equally if not more so cautious.

As I've mentioned before, we use privileges and loss of as our main way to discipline.

HOLY shit.. this is the place Kevin and Bill are supporting?

I sure as hell hope Bill wakes the fuck up after this. What a shithole!

Sounds like WWASP lite.

[Guest]

Yes, that sounds like Christianity to me alright!!

[Guest]

On the rare occasions it's used,I am the one who does it. I am not a strong person, and would not ever harm a child even if I was. The correction given is no where near as strong as what I received as a child....and my parents were loving, caring people. It truly hurt them more to have to spank me than it did for me to receive it.

That is what many abuse victims say! What crazy parents would send their kid off to someone who willingly admits to abusing kids, and being abused themselves in childhood??

Come on Kev, it's time to dump this guy, he's admitting to hitting kids right here.

:-?

[Guest]

Each packet sent out contains a form which is notarized authorizing us to use corporal correction on their son. This is very very rarely used; and only as a last ditch effort. In the soon to be two years we've been open, I can count on one hand the times we've used it.

I wonder why it is allowed to sign contracts paying other people to hit and spank and put your kid in isolation when you cannot do it at home yourself to your kids. The self righteousness of this Judge Roy is sky high, he doesn't even see what he is actually admitting to!!

If this is what they admit to publicly, I'd hate to see what is going on behind closed doors.

[Antigen]

I can actually answer that. These people actually equate what they do w/ advanced medical procedures like surgery or chemo therapy. They honestly believe that they are endowed with a sacred science that justifies all sorts of sadistic, perverted bullshit in the course of their higher calling to save the very lives and souls of errant kids.

And, of course, the primary market for places like Magnolia are probably people who think it was a big mistake to outlaw parents beating their children.

[Guest]

Who instigated this confession?

[Guest]

Looks like Waypoopie did it.

[nimdA]

I can't and won't take responsibility for Mr. Pearce's arrogance and stupidity. Me managed that little slip of his tongue all on his own.

[Deborah]

"corporal CORRECTION"

That's a new spin on the term. Correction sounds 'softer' than punishment.
Reminds me of another christian program that was beating kids with tree limbs, with their parents blessings.
What's their favorite dogma... Spare the rod....Gotta beat the devil out of them.
The really scarey thing is that religious programs are exempt from licensure and state oversight. Who decided that they could be trusted to treat kids humanely and ethically?

[Oz girl]

You know this is slightly off topic but i find it hilariously ironic when Christian schools parents etc quote that verse.
One of the few things i remember from the very tedious divinity classes i was forced to sit through at catholic school was that this verse was king soloman. Among other things that guy had about 10 wives! i wonder why they dont advocate poligamy? :rofl:

[Truth Searcher]

And King Solomons adult son Rehoboam later became Israels king. He was very hated, was a terrible leader and had to flee for fear of being lynched. Apparently, Solomons parenting approach did not produce a well adjusted man.

This is one of the most misinterpreted verses in all of scripture. The "rod" was not an implement used to beat the sheep. It was used to guide the sheep away from danger.

The statement, "Spare the rod -- Spoil the child" is one that most people assume deals with corporal punishment. It is not about beating!

This saying comes from a Proverb which reads, "Those who spare the rod {shebet} hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them." (Proverbs 13:24, NRSV1). The Hebrew word here is "shebet" that can be translated scepter or staff. If a rod for beating was meant here, the more direct term of "muwcar" would have made the meaning clearer.

So, what is this "shebet"? As noted above it can mean a scepter or a staff as in a shepherd?s staff. It is a sign of authority and a tool to shepherd the sheep. According to Easton?s Bible Dictionary, "the scepter originated in the idea that the ruler was a shepherd of his people.

What does being a shepherd entail? The earliest meaning in the Bible is that a shepherd is one who cares for his/her sheep: "But made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. And he led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies." (Psalm 78:52-53) As parents we are to guide our children in the wilderness of the modern world. We need to provide them with a set of values and with ways of approaching life that has integrity and respect for others as a cornerstone. We certainly don?t do that by beating them. A shepherd who beats his/her sheep, will have no flock. The sheep will run from his/her voice and flee from his/her calling.

But what about the second part of the Proverb? That phrase about "discipline" can be also misunderstood. For some people, the only concept of discipline which comes to mind is vengeful and punishing. Its sole purpose is to break a child?s spirit. This kind of parent confuses the fear that their children have of them with respect which they think they deserve. What they do not understand is that fear drives out respect. Respect is earned through loving interaction, not with beatings.

So what does "discipline" mean? One only needs to look at the beginning of the Book of Proverbs to find the definition: "For learning about wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity..." (Proverbs 1:2-3). The Hebrew word used for discipline in the proverb is used here for instruction. Discipline has to do with teaching, not beating.

We parents are the shepherds for our children. By applying the rod of protection, guidance, care, and nurturance, we can guide them into adulthood. But if we spare the rod, children are abandoned to their own devices and limited experiences for guidance.

Discipline is about instruction, not beatings. A child cannot listen to someone he/she is afraid of. Lessons cannot be integrated by one who is in shock from having been struck. What they learn is distrust, fear, and violence.

Michael Jost, M.Div., LMSW

[nimdA]

Lols.. Thanks for the bible lesson. I'll post it over on CAFETY for that Judge Roy to share with the rest of his freaky fundie friends.

Or not..

I'm thinking my posting on Cafety is going to come to an end here by my own choice. To many little niggling things that bother me way to much.

It really does have a political atmosphere that fornits thankfully is free of. Here the politics are crudely delightful. Someone calls me a republican I call them a cocksucker in return, and everyone calls The Who a spastic tool.

I was walking home tonight thinking how long all of this came about, but before I elaborate on my thoughts I have to make the following acknowledgements.

There is a certain someone here that wishes their name not to be mentioned. YOU drive me nuts sometimes, but without your persistance this never would have happened.
-This person called Magnolia twice and found out oddles of information. The paddling part is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm going to let the others develop the information further and hopefully it will all go up on ISAC and HEAL.
-This person kept me motivated to persue this when it seemed like so many others had forgotten.
-This same person also pointedly reminded me again and again not to let my temper get the better of me when dealing with Bill Boyles. I have to admit my handling of Bill Boyles could have been better, but then given my tendency to completely unload on others when they are defending programs I'm surprised I didn't flame Bill right into oblivion. Bill nearly had a lemon party waiting for him more than once in his pm box.
-I want to thank Oz Girl who was all roaring to go about being my back up when Judge Roy showed up on Cafety. She actually made an international call to the place and confirmed for a 3rd time that they indeed use corporal punishment.


I was chatting with a friend of mine just a few minutes ago about the whole thing on cafety and she asked me why I wasn't going to persue it any further. My response was simple, "I did my part and now its time for others to take up the charge."

Yes my good friends the rest is up to you. Blow the doors off that place and set the children free. My part in this is finished.

When I was teaching my last class I was reminded of Magnolia their buttwhomping ways. I only have 3 students for this class so its pretty informal and we spend most of the time talking. The owner of the school walked through the door just before class and had ordered me to hit the students if they didn't talk more English. After nodding and dismissing him we went ahead with the lesson. When the lesson was finished I told the students, "Do you think I would actually hit you?"

The only girl of the trio said, "No, because you told us the first day of class that hitting people is wrong."

I replied, "But the school owner said I must hit you if you don't speak English."

The girl said, "You still won't hit us."

Well she was and is right. Something in each and everyone of us must give at some point in our lives. In my own life I came up in a violently abusive household. My perception of a normal childhood was so skewed in favor of routine beatings delivered by both of my parents that it still affects me to this day. Though certainly nothing like it used to bother me. Just recently I walked passed the school next to mine that is a Math Academy and saw a student getting beat with a meter stick. I turned to push open the front door of the school to say something(Big plate glass doors) when the teacher stopped and looked at me. Apparently the look on my face was enough to convince her that I wasn't stopping by for a cup of tea. Needless to say the beating stopped and the young man was allowed to hobble off on his way(Corporal Punishment is very legal and very over used in Korea). Looking back at my employment with Three Springs I'm not at all surprised that I ended up using brute force tactics to control my group.

We are the product of our environments. At Eckerd's such brute force wasn't used. On very rare occasions I saw restraints happen when they shouldn't have and those ended up being addressed by the program directors. In two years of dealing with juvenile delinquints I ended up performing 4 restraints. The rest of the time I managed to avoid those situations by using common sense and building good relationships with the young men in my groups. My last group was filled with the lowest functioning members of all the other groups. It was decided to keep all the really low functioning kids in one group for whatever reason.

Despite this my group never had much in the way of fights, restraints, or anything else. The worst those Juveniles managed to do was run each other's underwear up the flag pole in the middle of their campsite. I found out all about the incident the next day when I returned to work and promptly gave them a verbal reminder to take pictures for me the next time. The program directors wanted a stronger reaction from me regarding the incident, but my point was very simple in the fact that they were boys. Sometimes teenage boys are known to do goofy things like run each others underwear up the flag pole. While Eckerd's was a decently controlled environment there are still problems with the program that like all programs need to be address.

Please don't think I'm endorsing the Eckerd's program, because I'm not. I will elaborate on what I believe is the underlying problems with the Eckerd model of wilderness therapy at a later time.

Back on topic here..

At Three Springs I was thrust right back into the midst of a very violent situation. The old saying, "You can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy," can be changed to, "You can take the abuse away from the boy, but you can't take it out of him." That was me in 2002 in the middle of Alabama with a group of 10 to 12 year old children. The violence I resorted to to control my group seemed completely normal to me. It wasn't violence like I was exposed to when I was a kid. No punching, no kicking, no choking, no slapping, no whippings, no paddlings, no kids was nearly thrown out of a moving vehicle, no sexual abuse, and definitely no firearms were ever pointed at any of the kids in any of my groups. My actions towards my groups are the palest palest weakest form of what I experienced. It was still wrong no matter how pale the form. However, never once did I actually question it. The outrageous number of restraints, the unreasonable consquences, the humiliation, the verbal abuse, and the mind games all seemed perfectly normal to me. My justification was it wasn't anything like what I experienced, so what the hell where the kids complaining about?

It is funny, in a very sad way, now that I look back on it. Here I was dealing with troubled kids when I was more troubled than almost all of them put together. Yet from that situation I can say I took away a great number of things. First and foremost I now believe more than anything that abuse never goes away. I also endorse the idea that children who are abused have a higher chance of being abusive adults. I used to think it was more a choice, but now I fully believe in the environment a child is raised in having a huge factor in that process. Now that I've had a two year period to reflect on Three Springs I've come to terms with my own role in the program:

Programs aren't divided by staff and residents. Staff is another stage of the program.

Programs don't just seek to warp the minds of kids they go for their employee's minds also.


I've also come to understand the WWASP middle ground movement a great deal more from dealing with Bill Boyles and Kevin August. I really do believe that Bill isn't a sell out. Let me repeat that: I really do believe that Bill Boyles isn't a sell out. He may have shown poor judgement in associating with Kevin August, but then again name the decade that you've managed to with no lapses in judgement. Bill Boyles may have decided to contest my claims on CAFETY out of misquided loyalty to a fellow survivor in the form of Kevin August.

I believe the sense of loyalty Bill feels to Kevin is to be applauded. Not the misguided part of the loyalty, but certain it never hurts to acknowledge a person who didn't run from defending a fellow survivor and from all appearances a friend of his. I could say a great deal more about Bill, but I think my above comments sum up what I feel at heart. Hopefully Bill will learn a thing or two from the events that have transpired. One can only hope he does anyway.

WWASP survivors aren't unique, but they are numerous. They have been abused in such large numbers and in recent years by WWASP that their stories can't help but pop up all over the internet. These stories are so appalling that is it any surprise that a facility that isn't any where near as hard as their own would seem attractive?

Not at all if you take the time to think about it. I'm waiting to see what Bill says now that the corporal punishment part of Magnolia has been confirmed before I put him in the WWASP middle Ground tendency catergory.

Kevin is another paradigm all together. I really do think he knew about the paddling at Magnolia all along. What this says about him is up to your own interpretation.

Either way thus endeth the rant. Needed to get a few things off my chest and hopefully for the poor buggers who read this gibberish it makes some sense.

[BuzzKill]

You know this is slightly off topic but i find it hilariously ironic when Christian schools parents etc quote that verse.
One of the few things i remember from the very tedious divinity classes i was forced to sit through at catholic school was that this verse was king soloman. Among other things that guy had about 10 wives! i wonder why they dont advocate poligamy? :rofl:

Actually - Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. First Kings, chapter 11.

Truth Searcher - thanks for the post - I was glad to read it.

[nimdA]

King Solomon is a mac daddy. How did the man ever find the time? Or did most of his kids look alot like his body guards?