This is the story of Lydia Schatz, a 7 year old girl in a good Christian home, tortured and beaten to death in the name of God.
Her parents were stupid people, following the parenting advice of a pair of demented fuckwits, Mike and Debi Pearl. The Pearls are popular and prospering because they have a ministry and a collection of books that appeal to a popular strain of fundamentalist Christian thought: the need to control. They see the family as a reflection of their imaginary god, patriarchal, ruled, dominated, and advocate a policy of discipline that echoes what they think their god desires.
If you are just beginning to attempt to control an already rebellious child who runs from discipline and is too incoherent to listen, then use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay. If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring, and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender. No compromise. You are to rule over him as a benevolent sovereign. Your word is final.
Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz had nine children, at least some of them adopted. I notice that in none of the coverage does anyone question their right to overdo and underprovide for their blessed swarm — apparently, the child service agencies saw nothing wrong with tossing yet another baby into the litter, again and again — no doubt they were won over by the Schatz’s sanctimony and overt Christianism, which, unfortunately, our society tends to see as a good portent rather than the threatening omen that it actually is.
So the Schatz’s stuffed their home with innocent minds, no doubt proud of themselves for doing the Lord’s work and accepting the responsibility of shaping those minds into the narrow, intolerant, closed vessels of their faith. And I suspect they were overwhelmed with work (nine kids; I had three, and it was exhausting), and saw the Pearl’s advice as a blessing: all they had to do to achieve their desired ends was to whip the children into submission! Daddy gets to be the home tyrant, beating the children into total defeat! That, after all, is what Jesus wants: crushed children willing to serve without question.
The Schatz’s are going to prison for murder for a good long time. Their ‘family’ has been broken up and sent off to foster homes…which is usually a tragic result, but in this case is definitely an improvement over constant physical and emotional abuse.
But still, the Pearls persevere. No one questions the faith of the Schatz parents or Mike and Debi Pearl — no one in authority is stopping to wonder if maybe there isn’t something sick, warped, and twisted at the heart of the major religions in our country, something that scrambles brains and allows ordinary people to thrash a child for seven hours…with occasional breaks for fucking prayer. Prolonged torture interspersed with conversations with an invisible man — this was unrelenting derangement.
And now you can find plenty of Christian sites deploring the excesses of the Pearls. That’s nice; I know that most Christians would rightly consider murdering a child to be an evil act. But they don’t go far enough. They see it as a superficial bit of rot on the surface of the body of their religion, something that can be pared away and discarded. They’re wrong. This is simply an eruption of the corruption that lies at the wretched heart of the Abrahamic religions. It has emerged over and over again in history, in violence, in warped cults, in the oppression of the mind.
Christianity says obey. Christianity says submit. Christianity worships authority. Women and children are to submit to the will of the father of the family, just as he is to submit to the grand phantasmal patriarch. Christianity is about never questioning; about not thinking critically; about worshipping; about accepting holy writ. It is about knitting elaborate straitjackets for the mind, cheerfully putting them on yourself, and then making sure your children are burdened with the same restraints, all in the name of perpetuating a hateful and limited ideology.
Yes, the Pearls are extremists who cinch the straitjacket more tightly and more brutally than most, and I do not regard most Christians as even endorsing the evil they promote (although, with over 650,000 copies of their book sold, the Pearls’ ideas are apparently a rather popular subset of Christianity) — but still, this isn’t an aberration, a wild notion grafted onto a benevolent faith. It’s part of faith itself, that people are raised to value belief in and obedience to the holy strong man.
Your children are not your followers or your servants or slavish little echoes of yourself. They are your responsibility, and your job is to raise them to be free and independent and, most of all, to be themselves. We are not sinners in the hands of a <insert random adjective here> god, and this whole idea that there is a hierarchical chain of authority is demeaning and destructive. We are fractious and creative and unique and wild and interesting, and when you force children into this restrictive mold of subservience, you diminish their humanity.
And sometimes you snuff it right out.
“You don’t use your hand – that’s a karate chop!”
Wait, a hand is worse than a belt?!
650,000 copies sold? Even if 1% takes it seriously that’s 6,500 people who think abusing a “willful” child is acceptable.
Justifiable homicide? On the Perls and the parents, I mean. Please?
I’m imagining RA Heinlein’s “Bulahland” society, where there are no lawyers and justice is meted out exactly–“an eye for an eye.” In which case, the parents would be beaten to death in as close to the same way as those administering the justice could get to how the child’s death happened.
Michael Pearl calmly explaining how he would explain to a child that violence is wrong before beating him to teach him a lesson? Beating a child with a hose because a hand is like a karate chop? The instruments of pain left no physical marks?
!…
This type of torture and humiliation would not be tolerated when inflicted upon adults. If Michael Pearl beat a grown man with a belt, he would be arrested immediately. Yet he describes beating a seven year old boy with a belt, and it is merely seen as authoritarian parenting.
That such violence can be inflicted by people who are apparently more misguided than malicious is another good example of the way that literalist interpretation of religious doctrine can have very real and tragic consequences.
As the father of a seven year old girl myself, my instant reaction is a desire for a few hours alone with those scumbags. I know it’s immature, but, I would really like to see them suffer. That being said, prison isn’t generally very accepting of child murderers.
The problem is twofold, (1) that the Bible says what it says:
And (2) that people take its inhumane commandments very, very seriously.
I wonder how Christians will rationalize this tragedy and the direct role their religion played in it. I suspect the more fundagelical flavors will blame Satan, while the more milquetoast strains will employ some version of the No True Scotsman fallacy. The majority of them will never tear up their vile book, because they personally get something out of it. Like a license to beat and torture kids, or just confirmation that they’re Jesus’s Special Snowflake.
This is…beyond. I had a sister who adopted 9 kids and believed essentially the same things about discipline (and was an over-the-top Christian, to boot). She tied mentally handicapped children in their beds at night, and when one of them died by choking on his own vomit because she didn’t even check on him until 2:00 in the afternoon, she momentarily lost her children, but they were soon restored to her, because obviously it was simply the flu, and tying children in their bed (of course, she somehow managed to keep that info from the judge – probably by not calling her sisters to the stand). 5 of the 9 kids she adopted are dead.
Perhaps my parents could someday make the argument that the beatings I received as a child (yes, I was sat on, and my mother used electrical cords) warped my mind so much that is why I became an atheist. No, I guess they can’t argue that, can they? Because they believe in the beatings.
Tragic. We use to take the example about stoning your kids if they disobey as how akward and cruel the bibel is, and that noone will do that for real. It turns out that even that part could be taken literally.
In Sweden all spanking of children ar prohibited. Probably also encurage others to to it.
I know someone who should be stoned…
won over by Schatz’s sanctimony and overt Christianism,
Not me. Not a lot of people. And more and more each day.
US xianity is redefining itself as a social problem. Beating children to death, sacrificing children to their imaginary god, trying to sneak their cuckoo mythology into our kid’s science classes, attacking public education, birth control, science, and the US government.
It goes on and on and never ends.
Thanks to the fundies, I’ve gone from being a xian to being very wary of them and opposing most of their mentally defective ideas about how I’m supposed to run my life and we are supposed to run our society.
I wish these socially incompetent creeps would find a theocracy somewhere and join it rather than try to destroy our country. I’d donate Texas and Louisiana to them. They are already National Sacrifice Areas anyway.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-6009742-504083.html
Because they believe in the beatings.
Because I am not a good person, all I can say to this, besides the obvious “I’m sorry you went through this!”, is “When you pick your parents’ nursing home, consider all they’ve done for you and choose well.” Or just let your sister take care of them. That should handle the problem in no time. How is she not in prison for life? Five of the nine children she adopted died?
I can’t even watch the video without pausing. The Pearls and listening what the Schatz couple did to their children is making me physically ill.
I’m reminded of this quote from Steven Weinberg, a Nobel-prize-winning physicist, which is not to imply that the Schatzs are actually good:
I’ve actually read that book, back when I was working a second shift lab tech job by my lonesome and had nothing better to do while waiting for samples to cook. One of my co-workers left it there, and he got fired because he was reading about beating his kids instead of working. I don’t remember the details, beyond the claim that children should be beaten for EVERYTHING, and an obsession with The Rod, always capitalized. I do remember thinking that someone should maybe check on that guy’s 5-6 kids.
Here’s where this inherently leads to abuse and murder. If you’re a normal parent, you might or might not spank your child, but you most likely have various levels of punishment from scolding to time-outs, and maybe even up to spanking. If you start with spanking for even the most minor offense, the only thing you can do for more serious problems is more serious beatings. And if you’ve psychologically damaged your kid with all the beatings, they are probably going to “act out” and eventually beat them until you put them in the hospital or kill them.
iknklast:
What you and your sister’s brood went through is beyond reprehensible. I have no words. I guess I am not a good person either, because I wholeheartedly concur with Dianne.
A morbid whisper in my mind wonders if some people listen to the tripe sold by the Pearls because it is simply easier to beat the kids than to actually have to teach them. My oldest (older teenager) gets rebellious every now and then. I’m stunned at his thought process (or lack thereof) at those times, but I see it as my duty not just to correct his behavior, but to get him to better think thru the consequences of his actions.
Of course, it would be easier just to beat him and lock him in his room; but at that point I’m no longer a parent…I’m a warden of a makeshift prison. It would be good if the people that bought the Pearl book were educated that this type of “parenting” is simply laziness.
Iknklast, I am very sorry about what happened to you. I also was brought up with spankings, and once in a while a broken yardstick was used, and once in a great while, if the transgression was very bad (I can’t even recall what it would have been), a belt, doubled in two.
My parents were not hardcore christians, just old-fashioned traditionalists, so it’s not always overt religious beliefs that impels people to beat children; however, I recognize that my parents’ actions were based on the old Puritanical ethics and mores. (We are an old New England family – not blue-bloods, blue collars — but with a strong Puritan heritage.)
As a result of those childhood humilitations, I resolved that if I had children (I have one), I would never use physical punishment. And I have not. It is degrading to everyone involved. It solves nothing. It creates new agonies and lasting harm. It teaches violence, it teaches despair and hopelessness.
Seems like an endless stream of these stories over the past few days … and we know that there are hundreds or thousands more.
How very sad.
Louis CK has a great routine about the absurdity of hitting your kids. I tried to find a clip, but no luck. I believe it is part of his “Hilarious” special. Definitely worth checking out.
I kind of wish that “jerry” guy from a few days ago were here to read this thread. It’s shocking how delusional people can be. No doubt people will say “but we’re not like them we wouldn’t do that”, or “they’re one of a select few” etc… Isn’t it obvious, I mean how many christian people have been arrested of late for murder, rape, abuse, etc and still people are blind to the most common denominator… RELIGION, and not just that, but the fact that it happens in almost EVERY religion (except pastafarianism lol). I mean come on, even the buddhists are pedofiles!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/us/21beliefs.html
Ugh, I hate stupid people, someone needs to say enough is enough and get these people to wake the fuck up.
Seems the Bible is filled with the murder of children….
Kill Brats
From there Elisha went up to Bethel. While he was on his way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him. “Go up baldhead,” they shouted, “go up baldhead!” The prophet turned and saw them, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two shebears came out of the woods and tore forty two of the children to pieces. (2 Kings 2:23-24 NAB)
Kill Sons of Sinners
Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants. (Isaiah 14:21 NAB)
Kill Men, Women, and Children
“Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.” (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)
God Will Kill the Children of Sinners
If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey, I will inflict you with seven more disasters for your sins. I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted. (Leviticus 26:21-22 NLT)
More Rape and Baby Killing
Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children. (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT)
And those kids had better not lift a finger in their own defense…
Death for Hitting Dad
Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death. (Exodus 21:15 NAB)
Kids don’t stand a chance with god and his parental minions.
What a world these assholes inhabit. One where someone, whom they don’t know, aborts a fetus is a murderer and beating your own child to death is simply good, xtian parenting.
Death cult, indeed.
I have a currently 8 year old kid. One of my worst nightmares is that something will happen to everyone in the family but her and she’ll be adopted by one of these fuckwits. Why are these people even allowed to adopt children? Ok, maybe the first time the adoption agency might fall for the “good Christian” thing, but didn’t they notice the abuse of the other 8 on the home visit before they tossed the 9th in? This is clearly a failure of society to protect kids, not just an example of an evil couple. (Though it’s that too, of course.)
The anti-abortion people are always going on about how any pregnant woman who doesn’t want a baby should give it up for adoption and bring joy to a couple without kids. Instead, it seems, adopted children are likely to be thrown into a situation where they’ll be beaten to death or tied to a bed and allowed to drown in their own vomit. Which is, of course, so much better than being aborted before they have the capability to feel pain, distress, and fear (/snark.)
Also, I think there ought to be a maximum number of children that can be adopted by a single couple. Actually, a maximum number of children, after which you simply can’t throw more in. We can’t stop people from having more kids-at least, not without making an even more horrific situation socially-but why not make a rule that a family with more than 4 children under 18 simply isn’t allowed to adopt any more? It’d at least limit the damage-no more than 4 kids would be exposed to any one religious abuser.
I was brought up being spanked, and while I don’t plan to ever spank my children (don’t have any yet, but it’s not for lack of trying) I don’t think a mild switching is all that horrible.
Now, I haven’t read the book, but the kind of mild spanking shown in that video isn’t something that disgusts me. It’s not ideal parenting, but really, a parent that gives his or her kids everything they want or overloads them with fatty foods is doing more harm to their child than the mild spanker, at least in my opinion.
The idea of evolution is so horrible to the religious because they feel it reflects poorly on themselves and their children.
Not sure if the CNN piece covered this or not, but the most insidious part of the Pearl Treatment is that in most cases it doesn’t leave marks. The “hoses” used are often plumbing line that leaves little visible marking. If you look up early news treatment on the Schatz death, the girl died of long term tissue damage ultimately resulting in renal failure: http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-do-we-track-kidney-failure-in.html
It’s part of why so many fundie parents get away with using his techniques- it’s hard to prove.
This is very much the atmosphere I grew up in. My father used to beat us with his belt until he was exhausted. He would hold us down with a hand on the neck and wail away until he was sweating and out of breath. Everybody in the neighborhood knew when one of us was getting a spanking because we couldn’t hold in the screams for very long.
He used to lecture us about how it “hurt him as much as it hurt us” but his first duty was to God. One lecture that sticks in my mind was about an occasion when his father was giving him a similar belting and his mother tried to intervene. Grandpa turned around and lashed the belt across Grandma’s face, then returned to whipping my dad. This was supposed to illustrate how seriously a father was supposed to take his responsibility. It was my first indication that people who believe absurdities can commit atrocities.
My 3 kids are all grown up now. I never took a belt or a stick or any kind of “weapon” to any of them. They’re all good kids and we are good friends with each other. For a number of reasons I consider myself to be much luckier than my father. I now understand the kind of relationship that he missed out on with his kids (we couldn’t wait to get away from him) and I pity him. I have to say, from what I can tell, he was not a lot different from many other fathers of his era.
Evil. I wish the Pearls had been convicted as accessories to murder. Poor little girl. Poor kids who have been subjected to that terrible treatment. With sales of the Pearls’ book so high, there must be thousands of them.
Together with the heartbreaking post about the abuse of children at Christian camps today I have been shocked at how widespread this abuse is, and how it seems prevention is out of the reach of the authorities until it is too late.
How are they getting away with it?
I am worried about one thing, though. Not everyone with large families necessarily mistreats them. Anecdotes, I realise, are not data. Even though I have known large families where the children were very happy indeed and no physical punishment was ever used and, conversely, I have known single-child families where the child was ill-treated, is family size, at least in the USA, really a predictor of abuse? Do abusers, perhaps in certain states, tend to have larger families? Or are certain religious sects more likely to both have larger families and believe in corporal punishment?
Still fuming. Let me share another element.
Liberia, where the girl was from, was created as an African republic for repatriated slaves from the US-people escaping human trafficking, rape, torture and murder at the hands of good Christians who believed the Bible gave them the right to own and mistreat Black men, women and children.
Makes my noggin ache.
Wow, that’s horrific. And the Pearls should be held responsible for those actions, at least in part. I would hope someone would file a civil suit over that… but I just don’t know who.
I have a daughter. She’s not even 2 yet. And she’s starting to be willful and independent. She wants to do things herself. If she sees mommy or daddy doing something, she wants to try. She’s curious. And I think that’s great. I love it. I want her to be willful and independent. I do not want her to be thoughtless submissive.
Yes, there’s time for discipline. Right now, having a conversation with her isn’t helpful. But it isn’t about bending her to our will. It is about teaching her that she needs to listen to mommy and daddy at times. It is hard to explain to a 19 month old that jumping in a chair is bad because you might fall. It is hard to explain why holding and pen while running when you fall every 4 steps is a bad idea to my little girl. So right now, we are not always explaining ourselves.
Obedience for obedience sake is horrible. I can only imagine the horrible trauma those two nuts inflicted on their own children, let alone all the damage done to families who bought into that crap.
I left this on Cuttlefish’s blog, just have to repeat it here:
I have two sisters. One is a fundie, one was on that route, but changed midstream. The second was once about to hit her child with a “rod” (which he had to fetch himself). I stopped her saying that this was abusive, inhumane and demeaning to a child. She tried telling me that the bible said to do this–using a rod was appropriate because the hands should be used for love. I told her she was crazy.
During this entire encounter, I was shaking and quite upset. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
As far as I know she never did it again. By the way, I’m the oldest of us three and didn’t have my child until after my sisters had theirs (this incident occured long before mine was born). I learned a lot of what not do from them.
There’s a hell of a lot of territory between “switching” your children and overindulgence or spoiling. Why does discipline have to involve striking at all? On the few occasions that I remember ever giving my kids a smack on the hand or on the behind I have to admit that it was out of frustration and/or anger and all it demonstrated was that I was mightier than them and I regretted it immediately. Only bullies or dimwits resort to violence to get their way.
When I get mad at kids, I plan a gigantic flood that will wipe out all of humanity. That’s how I roll.
Things I’ll never understand:
People who get off to child abuse and write books about it
People who buy, consume, and live by such books
People who place foster children in the homes of above groups
People who see stories like this and don’t immediately see the correlation between religion, authoritarianism, and violence, and then reject them all.
She tried telling me that the bible said to do this–using a rod was appropriate because the hands should be used for love. I told her she was crazy.
That’s pretty crazy. There’s an argument out there that under a certain age, children don’t understand reason, you can’t explain to them why they shouldn’t run with scissors, you just have to make them understand you don’t allow it. They do understand pain, though, and a spanking for a serious offense is warranted as a way to make them stop dangerous behavior.
I don’t really agree with that line of reasoning, and I don’t plan to spank my children when I have any. But I understand the thought process.
The idea, though, that your children make some kind of hand/rod distinction at a young age is insane, though. In the same way they won’t listen to reason, they won’t make some kind of distinction with using a “rod” instead of a hand. The pain is still coming from the same person.
My father spanked me a lot, always with his belt. I dreaded those incidents, and I think it was part of the reason I was never close to him. He was a giant threatening figure in my childhood, not a friend or confidant.
Glodson: “So right now, we are not always explaining ourselves.”
True! You can’t really reason with a 19-mo old! As she gets older, you will be able to talk with her about behavior and self-control. This will come bit by bit, as her language skills develop and as she becomes able to converse. And that skill comes sooner than many parents are aware – even more quickly if you talk with her often, and, more importantly, give her plenty of time to form her thoughts and find words to express them.
“Let’s talk about that.”
“Why do you think might happen if you do that? Why? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?”
“What would you do if you were the daddy [or mommy]?”
etc.
Enjoy her, love her, let her grow into her own person. :-)
–
By the time my daughter was 3-ish we could have pretty good conversations about her behavior. Often kids just want to be HEARD, and too many parents/grownups just ignore them or silence them – they don’t think that kids have ideas and feelings and sense. Well, they do. Look at any infant or toddler – there are THOUGHTS in there. Given encouragement and plenty of conversation practice, a young person can really be an amazing conversationalist.
/tangent
Repeated for Truth:
Thanks, Raven. Well said.
How does our American society not see the parallel between christian zealotry and islamic fundamentalism? We downplay the prevalence of one and exaggerate the dominance of the other, when both are equally flagrant violations against humanity.
I agree that spanking, apart from being wrong and abusive, is also just lazy. I remember my mother telling a story about this: She was pregnant and was visiting a friend of hers who had a toddler. The friend saw the toddler reaching for an ashtray (yes, she smoked: it was a different time) and slapped the toddler’s hand “to teach her a lesson”. My mother thought, “That’s dumb. Why not just put the ashtray somewhere the kid can’t get at it?” Engineering solutions are very useful when you have a child too small to reason with.
Then, too, I’m not sure that even toddlers can’t be reasoned with on some level. When my kiddo was about 18 months, she wanted desperately to pick some flowers that were intentionally planted in the park. She was very angry when we stopped her but seemed to calm down after a long discussion about how these were “looking at” flowers not “picking” flowers. Well, that and coming to a field full of dandelions which she could pick to her heart’s content with everyone’s blessing. Distraction, reason, making the environment safer…they’re all harder in the short run than just whacking on the kid until it stops doing whatever, but more likely to be effective in the long run.
Of course, it’s easier to do this if you have one to 3 kids than if you have 9. Which is an argument for having 3 kids, not 9, not an argument for having 9 and abusing them.
@18 Deepsix
I found a clip of him on Youtube from a radio show.
I’m not arguing that. I don’t think spanking is a good solution, really. The only figure that spanked me regularly in my life was my father, and as I stated in an earlier comment, it didn’t do anything good for our relationship.
My maternal grandmother was the only other caregiver I had that ever spanked me, but it was only once in a blue moon that she did, and the feeling that I’d screwed up so bad to earn The Ultimate Punishment from her was far worse than the mild pain I felt when she did it (I don’t even remember it hurting, in fact, but the feeling of regret knowing how much I’d let her down that she would spank me stays with me to this day).
And I’m not even defending the practice by recounting that story. I think any sort of Ultimate Punishment that I knew was reserved for my ultimate screw-ups would have brought on the same level of regret.
So, I don’t think spanking is good. I’m not defending it. Not at all. But I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever, and I’m more speaking out of the hyperbole here than anything else. Like, for instance, that they should go to jail for advocating spanking because someone who bought their book killed their child. That’s crazy, unless maybe the book advocated tying children to the bed and beating them for hours. But I doubt it, or the linked segment would have probably brought it up.
So, spankings: I’m against them. I just don’t think they’re always equivalent to child abuse or that those who espouse it are guilty of murder-by-proxy, especially the very mild form shown in that video.
*cough*James Dobson*cough*
I find it interesting that the “preacher” said he would use violence against a little boy while he say -immediately afterwords mind you- that violence in unacceptable in society. Does his head not hurt from the dissonance?
I find there is something terribly wrong and disturbing about people who will use violence against children. There is a great need for them to receive psychological assessment to see if they are sane and fit to live amongst the general population (even after 22-25 years). We do assessments when we see people torturing animals and we should do it when it is done to human beings.
Thinking that sparing the rod is spoiling the child may have been seen as a good solution in the Bronze Age, but now???
I have lost faith in humanity’s ability to save itself.
pharylon:
Excerpts from Pearls’ book, “To train up a child”, found here:
There is more on that site and I’m sure more could be googled. That was just the first result for pearl to train up a child excerpts.
Pearls are advocating child abuse. They should be prosecuted for that.
We do. I looked hard for years for a difference between fundie xians and fundie Moslems.
There isn’t any.
We just don’t let ours run around loose any more since the Enlightenment. It’s a sign of a civilized society to keep your religious kooks in a box.
It is not acceptable to strike an adult. But a child who cannot fight back?
OPEN SEASON!
How else can one get through to a strong willed child, they are mindless beasts.
Read this article by Michael Pearl and get back to us.
For those of you who don’t want to give him any traffic, it’s an article about how he dealt with a two-year-old visitor who wanted to go outside against his will. He hit her three times across the calfs with his belt, the second and third time because she was screaming and crying.
The money quote:
Child abuse or no?
How does this not set off warning bells? I mean, I understand being introverted and not overly sociable, but good grief.
So, if I were to start using a switch on all of my nieces and nephews, they will start giving me loving embraces every time they saw me? Sounds like fear. They are doing what they can to keep from getting hit again.
True love.
Do the Pearls also advocate for the discipline of wives?
Raven @9
Well said, as usual. Can we keep Austin, though?
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2011/08/16/sparetherod/
(my reaction from 2 days ago)
If memory serves, our former Governor argued in court, in a child abuse case, that it was the first amendment right for parents to hit their children with rods. Their religious beliefs were that the children should associate the pain with the rod, and not with the hand of the parent.
Another case where clear empirical evidence is dismissed in favor of an interpretation of an ancient book.
Can we keep Austin, though?
I used to think that too. Then I heard a story from a colleague of my partner’s. This colleague, who is ethnically Jewish, worked at UT Austin and took a sabbatical for a year at Johns Hopkins. When it was time to go back, his daughter said, “Dad, do we have to go back to Austin?” “Why?” he asked. “I like it here. It’s nice not to be called a Christ killer all the time.” They stayed.
My conclusion is screw Austin. They deserve the rest of Texas.
I see what you’re saying and I partially agree. From a legal standpoint everybody is responsible for their own actions – bad advice from book authors does not diminish responsibility for the actions of the parents who beat their daughter to death.
Well, they come pretty close to that:
There’s something reminiscent of a confrontation between Winston Smith and O’Brien in that excerpt.
Incidentally, why is it that the “spare the rod/spoil the child” verse is always cited, and NOT the “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” verse?
Isn’t what Jesus said supposed to be more applicable than old testament?
Blondin, the end result was good. Winston Smith loved Big Brother.
A mormon mother from Anchorage, Alaska was finally put on trial for disciplining her adopted son by forcing him to hold hot sauce in his mouth. After the hot sauce treatment, she would subject him to an icy cold shower.
She was proud enough of her discipline regime to send a video tape to Dr. Phil.
After the story first surfaced, a lot of ex-mormons posted that their parents had also used the hot sauce treatment as punishment, but I don’t think it’s limited to mormon culture. Mormons are really big on obedience, but so are a lot of other religious sects.
The abusive mother admitted that her tactics had failed to improve the boy’s behavior. So, she was looking for help.
Most of the news coverage doesn’t identify the woman as a member of the LDS Church. Jessica Beagley served as the Stake-level Primary President (woman in charge of seeing that church for kiddies follows mormon rules, and is well-staffed with volunteers).
Here’s a photo of the Beagley family in their temple clothes, posing outside of a temple in Bountiful, Utah.
Here’s a discussion of the hot-sauce punishment episode, with links to related videos, on the ex-mormon forum.
The link to Beagley’s blogspot page now requires a password. She must have gotten fed up with all the negative reaction. When her blog was still accessible, she posted a caption for the temple photo: “We were sealed in the Bountiful, Utah Temple on June 6, 2009. Our forever family was established 14 years ago. We have SIX very active children. I know we have been blessed to have these sweet spirits in our home.”
What do you want to bet that Pearl’s daughter(s) are in abusive relationships with their husbands/boyfriends? After all, they’ve been trained to believe that getting beaten is a sign of love.
OK, yeah, after seeing some of those quoted passages, I do think the Perles are bad people, and what they advocate goes beyond the mild spanking in the video.
I mean, I still don’t think they should be tried or anything, but I definitely denounce what they advocate.
So much for benevolent.
“I know how to get those kids to do what we want! Kill them, string ’em up like puppets, and puppeteer them to do what we want! No, it’s not crazy, it’s what Glob-fearing goodpeoples do for the times!”
Kill them, kill their free will, same thing.
Just in passing: the ‘rod, not hand’ argument is borrowed from old-fashioned animal husbandry. If you always beat a horse or a dog with the same stick, it will learn to fear the stick, not you. Or so the theory goes. For obvious reasons, I haven’t tested this, and don’t know if it works on dogs, but human children are somewhat more intelligent.
The real reason, of course, is that hitting a child with your hand as hard and often as these people recommend will injure your hand. For sane people, this would suggest that you need to stop before you permanently injure your child. For Christians, it just means you need to hit them with something else. A crippled, obedient child is better than a healthy, rebellious one.
If not for advocating child abuse, the Pearls should definitely be prosecuted for the child abuse they did themselves. The book is practically a confession.
At least, Amazon shouldn’t be selling their book. Respectable book stores should refuse to stock them.
President Obama says it is to be tolerated, at least when carried out by American agents working overseas.
I’m pretty confident that your morbid whisper is right on the money.
NancyNew @3: Unfortunately, in Beulah-land the Schatzes and the Pearls would be seen as Just and righteous followers of the Son of God.
A Just god (ha! as if) would see to it that those two couples I mention above would suffer for all eternity. Stories like this give me violent impulses. But then, I’m actually civilized and reject violence except as a last, self-defense resort.
This child abuse manual would almost certainly be illegal over here.
Corporal punishment of children was an offence on Mainland Europe for some years before it became one in the UK. Funnily enough, Continental kids tend to be better behaved than British ones.
Delightful. I wonder if that continues to hold when the children get into their teens and the parents get old. Because “might makes right” is totally the Christian way.
Except the book does far more than advocate spanking, which you would have known if you had bothered to read PZ’s post. It advocates beating children with rubber hoses for any and all infractions.
So before you address our “hyperbole”, maybe you should make sure it really is hyperbole. Or at least RTFA.
Actually no they wouldn’t.
Janine 48:
Of course not. Unless the wives are disobedient. Duh. In which case I think we can all agree that they need and deserve it. [/evil]
NancyNew:
Jesus was only talking about “little ones which believe in me,” and by definition those little ones obey their parents. It’s in the Ten Commandments, after all.
No. See Matthew 5:18.
Well, who wants their children to have HUMANITY? I mean, really…
The Pearls are big in the homeschool world and I totally loathe them. If it were up to me, anyone who adopted their parenting practices, even in part, would be in danger of losing custody.
I would, however, like to separate the first part of that Proverbs verse from the second. When it was written, physical punishment was thought to be effective. Now we know that it’s not, and in the reality based universe, we stop doing stuff that’s not effective. “He who loves [his son] is diligent to discipline him” is not actually bad advice – effective discipline takes attention, consistency, willingness to learn from the child’s behavior, and (overlooked by the Pearls and their ilk) an understanding of what constitutes effective discipline and interest in learning more from research into human behavior and child development.
At least, Amazon shouldn’t be selling their book.
Hmm…would this be a place to attack? If enough people flag the book as offensive, for example, would Amazon take note? Or is the technique too sleazy to even contemplate?
pharylon,
I am sorry to tell you that I strongly disagree. Intentionally striking a child is a form of child abuse.
I feel ill after watching the video. I couldn’t get through it in one sitting, had to get up and walk around. Unfortunately evil disguised is difficult to discover in time to stop it from spreading.
Quodlibet, I agree with you that talking to children at a young age is a good thing and I believe promotes language skills, reason and independent thought. My son could read a bit (more accurately word recognition) at 2 and was very loquacious. The down side is that he’s 24 and I don’t think he’s stopped talking long enough to take a breath.
Mad The Swine, I do not believe in beating people or animals, but after spraying my cat with water a few times when she jumped on the counter I only have to reach for the spray bottle and she gets down.
A Just god (ha! as if) would see to it that those two couples I mention above would suffer for all eternity.
If I could summon a supernatural being to deal with these sorts of people, it wouldn’t be a god seeking eternal revenge. No, I’d like to see Neil Gaimen’s Dream take them on. A few years of nightmares in which they come to understand their victims’ suffering. That’s what I’d like to do to them. Not just experiencing what they did to their victims, but also understanding the betrayal that it is to a small child to have the people who are most supposed to protect you and teach you beat and humiliate you instead. Of having no recourse, no way of ever getting your needs met, of not being allowed to even express emotion. As far as the Pearls, maybe they could also come to understand what they’re doing to well meaning, if extremely naive and ignorant, parents who follow their advice and find that their children justifiably hate them a dozen years later.
Alternately, if we’re playing in the Christian mythos, god looking them in the eye and saying, “It was the devil’s work you did” might be a substitute.
Basically, my evil revenge fantasy comes down to wanting them to know the evil they’ve done.
QFT.
Children NEED structure and stability–reasonable limits that age appropriate, with reasonable consequences that are age appropriate. There are a multitude of different ways to determine and enforce those limits–and thus far I haven’t seen any ‘one-true-ways’–but the key lies in clearly stated boundaries and rules that are consistently applied.
This utterly repulsive TRASH is abuse. Period.
When asked by clients, my professional opinion is that corporal punishment is ineffective, but legal with certain limits, and some applications of corporal punishment are unlikely to scar a child for a life.
Also, I had this up on my cubicle when I worked foster care–I just consider the spiritual bits poetic license. :) The point of it is good though, and I tried to convey it to parents.
Dianne, As offensive as the book is, I’d hate to see it or any book removed from bookshelves. Banning or burning books is never a good thing. You cannot change a thing unless you bring it out into the open.
Dianne – I agree 100%. That’s a much better version of hell than any theists have come up with.
@Dianne
If I recall Dream did do that to a group of serial killers. They annoyed him so he removed his domain from them…so they would have to see themselves as they really are without any comforting delusions.
@Dianne #70
Instead of banning a book off amazon, it needs to be linked to other items. O’Donnell’s book was linked to vibrators and other sex devices. But it would be fitting to link this book with others documenting the history of child abuse and “God is not Great” (only because of the title). Humiliation can be used for good occasionally.
Dianne,
I don’t think it’s too sleazy. It wouldn’t be a lie, the book really is offensive. Offensive is the least I would call it.
oldguy-1,
I’m not advocating burning the book, only that respectable book sellers should refuse to sell a book that openly promotes child abuse.
I would love to change things by making a huge stink around this book, so that shitheads that promote child abuse think twice about it.
Oldguy: Normally I’d defend the idea of getting the Pearls’ book marked offensive by pointing out that I’m only asking a bookstore not to carry it, not the government to ban it or it to otherwise be removed from public life. However, given that I avoid amazon because I think it’s a bit too much of a monopoly, yeah, it does get a bit close to censorship. And not only is that game immoral, conservatives are so much better at it the chances of winning are pretty low. How about alverant’s idea of getting it linked to Dawkins’ book or maybe something saner in the child rearing department. Not that any childrearing book is perfect, but getting parents who might be swayed by whatever they find exposed to Spock or Karp or even Sears might have some utility.
Never? Really? So how about books which give instructions on making bombs from readily available materials, and advice on how to smuggle them onto planes? Books which list the names and addresses of people the author hates for ideological reasons, along with exhortations to kill them? Books which contain libels on innocent people?
A just god wouldn’t allow people like this to exist in the first place. Or at least wouldn’t allow them to be anywhere near kids.
Beatrice,
I see your point about not selling the book openly and my apologies to Dianne for my rash remark. I run straight to the slippery slope as soon as I sense censorship.
Also, if the relationship of this book to the acceptance of child abuse gets past this forum, I’ll throw in my support. I’ve seen it, I’m disgusted by it and it cannot be tolerated.
Oh, it’s effective alright. It effectively teaches that the strong have the right to use violence against the weak.
You’re wrong. “Spanking” is violence. What is it about this is so fucking hard to understand? If I hit you, that would be violence. Why is it different when an adult hits a child too small to fight back? Violence against children is always child abuse.
KG, yes, never. As bad as all those things are, I feel censorship is worse. It is far too easy to go from banning a book that is blatantly horrific to one that some people find offensive to one that promotes an unpopular idea.
Banning the book would make us no better than the Pearls.
It isn’t the book that mad the Schatzs evil. It just allowed them to reinforce their insane beliefs. Had it not been for the book, they would have found another way to rationalize their behavior.
Not here here in Britain so much. We have rather a lot of Christians moaning that the services wouldn’t let self-identified Christian homophobes foster or adopt children of an age where that could be harmful. Our adoption services are certainly more wary of highly religious households than over in America. However, there is still a problem with abusive parents, religious or not, being insufficiently monitored by child protection agencies which has to be – and is being, I might be wrong as I haven’t kept up on the story – looked at.
PZ, I just wanted to say, there were a few paragraphs (particularly the last one) that were just completely spot on and beautifully put. Definitely one of the best responses to this horrific story I’ve seen.
oldguy-1,
I understand your reservations when censorship is concerned. I just think that something needs to be done about a book, or rather people who openly advocate child abuse… who people are listening to. There is the case that prompted PZ to make this post. I’ve also searched for quotes from the book and the first result took me to a blog about homeschooling(religious- didn’t check denomination, but Bible was mentioned as authority). I got curious and started reading comments on the post (that was decidedly against the book) and a lot of people were defending it. They described how that book helped them raise their children, how good and wonderful it is, how those quotes are taken out of context, how the author of the post doesn’t understand the Bible or what God instructs people to do with their children… and so on. It was horrible to see how many people advocated it as useful and defended the Pearls. And if all those people really followed the book and considered it benign – they were all abusing their children. I’m a bit horrified now, so that might be influencing my posts.
Oldguy: FWIW, I didn’t find your response to me rude, inappropriate, or even wrong.
In the tradition of answering the bad consequences of free speech with more free speech, how about writing reviews of the book pointing out that it’s dangerous nonsense and that kids have died because of parents taking the book’s advice? That might at least give the well meaning, naive 18 year old new parents who were themselves home schooled a moment’s pause.
The Pearls’ book is advocating and instructing people how to commit violent crimes against children. The authors should be charged and the book banned (just as would a book instructing people how to build bombs and get past airport security). I don’t know about the law in the US, but I imagine that there would be a suitable statute this would fall under here.
Oh, these Schatzes are just real honeys!
Time index 3:25: “…you explain to [your 7-year old son] that what he has done is violent and that’s not acceptable in society and that’s not acceptable at home… […] … and I would tell him I am gonna give him 15 licks…”
Don’t they see the blatant hypocrisy of using violence while at the same time telling that violence is wrong? What is a kid gonna make of that!? No wonder so many of these people are growing up being fucked up!
I know censorship is a difficult issue, but on the other hand…
Seriously, if a book is an instruction manual for criminal behavior, doesn’t that leave the area of “free speech” and enter the area of “conspiracy” to commit a crime? If person A and person B are sitting at a table, and person A suggests a crime and person B talks them through how to commit the crime in exchange for money, aren’t both people co-conspirators in the crime? Is it different in a meaningful way when the instructions are written down for money, instead of expressed in person?
It teaches them to follow the plan. We have set places and targets for violence and those are ok…outside of it is wrong.
I am no fan of censorship, but HELL NO, don’t even go there.
Banning the book would make us censors.
Banning the book would not make us just like MURDERERS.
I am just going to admit I have nothing but contempt for adults who use physical violence against children. I don’t care if it’s for discipline – you don’t hit people, espcially those who are largely defenseless.
Frankly, if I were in charge, Mike and Debi Pearl would be in jail for assault.
We (generally) do not tolerate it when an adult uses physical force against another adult. We should not tolerate it when adults assault their children, especially since children are usually weaker than adults.
These assholes also seem to think you can and should train animals with force and pain. Wrong. You don’t need to cause physical pain to a horse to train it. I ride horses all the time without hurting them. Actually, animals actually learn better and faster with positive reinforcement. I train dogs and parrots all the time to do all sorts of things without using physical force.
We looked into the case to see . . .
To see if we were wrong? To see if there’s anything we could do to help these kids? To see if there’s something we could have done to prevent it?
. . . . if there was going to be any blame pointed at us.
Right. “A little girl was beaten to death but the important thing is that we don’t get blamed.”
The Pearls claim “it worked for their children”, and the reporter leaves it at that. It would be interesting to talk to their kids and hear what they have to say about it.
Midnight Rambler,
I found a letter from their eldest daughter, Rebekah Anat. (linky)
Brainwashed, I’d say. An interesting definition :
Oh yes, she certainly is well trained.
Ignore the half-aborted sentence “An interesting definition… ”
I lost my train of thought and forgot to edit that out.
Again, I rushed to the slippery slope of censorship. I in no way meant to equate censorship with murder. I do not condone the Pearls or anyone who follows them. However, I cannot see censorship as a solution. Personally I believe that would drive people like them underground and I’d rather have them out in the open where I can see them.
As Dianne suggested (paraphrased), reviews pointing out how dangerous this book is and how it has directly contributed to the torture and death of children might be a idea.
Improbable Joe, I don’t think freedom of speech is the most important of our freedoms. It’s too easy to have that freedom taken away no matter what your advocating. It is not the idea that should be punished, but the actions of people.
Just because I know how to commit a crime doesn’t mean I will.
PZ, I seem to have turned this into a discussion on censorship instead of keeping the focus on the horrific nature of the Schatzs and Pearls. That was not my intention.
Improbable Joe, Sorry, bad editing…
I think freedom of speech is the most important of our freedoms. It’s too easy to have that freedom taken away. No matter what your advocating, it is not the idea that should be punished, but the actions of people.
Advocating, in this case child abuse, by giving parents detailed descriptions how to do it and a load of excuses for doing it is an action. They don’t simply have an idea. They acted on it with their own children. Now they are encouraging other people to act on it. Those who listen to them should of course bear responsibility for their own actions, but people like the Pearls should hold some responsibility as well.
@ 85
“It isn’t the book that mad the Schatzs evil. It just allowed them to reinforce their insane beliefs. Had it not been for the book, they would have found another way to rationalize their behavior.”
That is the same argument used about guns in American society…
‘Well if they can’t use a gun they would use a knife!’
Total bollox of course…not saying that knife crime does not exist…just that Columbine & Virginia Tech would have had different statistics and so would a dozen other little abominations of the Second amendment for the obvious practical reasons.
Just disappointed that not one Sheriff, deputy, DA,local administrator, government administrator, up to and including the House of rep even the, Senate have neither the wit, the will, the gumption, the integrity or the intelligence to put a stop to this bullshite, at least enough to throw all the dingbat asses that practice this dysfunctional nonsense into a mental institution at the very least.
This is fucking insanity and an abhorrence to a so-called modern society.
I also note that few, if any, church leadership or xian cult has ever condemned outright the sadistic and brutal bronze age ‘morality’ these sicko’s love to practice on their own offspring, or indeed any child within their toxic influence.
That brain dead retards are incapable of sense proportion and balance is one thing …but that they are encouraged by openly and proudly published claptrap with such vile and sick instructions is paramount to the most defiled and mentally ill pornography possible.
And that gets banned and burned as a matter of public will and approval.
Religion has responsibility…this is the result of removing such strictures.
It is not expected of the religious to exercise sense…by their delusion tis plainly obvious they have none.
But that same charge cannot be leveled against the secular authority…if it can be then America are in a fucking tarpit of inevitable doom.
I hope all xians, fundies et al, are proud of themselves, they are indeed the scum of the earth, every single mewling one of them!
After all it is their religion, no matter how they try and dodge the charge it is home grown insanity and they ARE to blame.
Promoting that people harm or do illegal actions to a minority might fall under incitement and not be protected.
Does under 18 count as a demographic for this purposes? (as black, gay, etc would?)
What a Maroon @ 46:
We have to remember that this is Michael Pearl’s account of the spanking. The child, if questioned, might have a different version.
These…people are quoted at FSTDT all the time. Now I’m reminded of Barb in the Glenn Beck thread. She posted the crap about “a little child shall lead them” and I responded with a list of bible verses on how to handle your child. Lots of beating and death sentences.
These people are following the bible. Literally. Which shows what a sadistic and sociopathic mash of horror it is when you actually do what it says.
So you prefer the freedom to publish instructions for and incitement to murder, to the freedom to stay alive; I can only conclude that you are insane.
Pearl’s account is horrific enough. Hitting a child with a belt is child abuse.
As for the child, given that she was 2 at the time, she probably doesn’t remember.
What a Maroon:
I wouldn’t count on that if I were you. Trauma can and does embed itself in the memory that young. Whether or not one blocks it, if you survive, it affects how you behave for a good portion of your life.
I was abused from the time I was an infant, and the rape started when I was three years old. I remember.
Just to be clear, I was basing my assertion on the fact that most of us remember almost nothing from when we were two. So I doubt she’d remember that particular incident.
But I don’t doubt it affected her behavior. And I don’t doubt that it was abuse.
THIS!! A million times, this!! This story is beyond horrifying.
Escaping slavery was once a crime. Still is in some places.
In certain parts of the world, renouncing the dominant religion is a crime.
This isn’t a book about how to beat your children, it’s a book about why to beat your children. The how is only incedental.
People who don’t have a visceral disgust at the thought of their children being beaten are broken people. A book didn’t break them. It might, at most, give them an excuse.
@Lalita #20: Yep, lots of killing in the Bible and lots of admonitions to kill, especially from the big guy in the sky. All this despite that 6th commandment.
In his book, The Secret Origins of the Bible, Tim Callahan claims that if you disentangle the intertwined story threads of Genesis, then Abraham came down from the mountain without Isaac, there was no lamb in the bushes (later addition), and the child was actually sacrificed to the voice in Abraham’s head.
The only saving grace for all this, as it were, is that such brutality was common fare throughout the ancient “civilized” world. But that just adds weight to the point that we shouldn’t be kowtowing to these ancient beliefs and cultural practices. Time to chuck the whole mess, and all the idiots who follow it regardless of the particular sect they profess or their level of success in life (such as governor of Texas, congresswoman for Wisconsin, etc).
Pfff, it doesn’t even exist in the way it is defined in the USA over here and most people in the western world don’t feel actually opressed or deprived of said right.
I think the right to life weighs a lot more, especially that of a child who was placed into a home where she should have found love and care and protection.
A manual on child abuse comes under incitement in my book, not under free speech.
This is sick.
When I was a kid, spanking was considered part of the childhood. So was getting the measles and ridng a car without an appropriate seat or even a seatbelt.
I came to be who I am in spite of those things. And most importantly, I would probably receive a final spaking by my parents if I ever did any of those things to my children.
The most important rules around here are:
-No hurting each other
-No shouting at each other
-No name-calling
And the best way to teach them is to set a good example. The kids didn’t learn “please” adn “thank you” because we trained them, but because we used those terms ourselves.
With regard to the censorship issue, one has to realize that there is a difference between a person’s right to free speech and a person’s right to an AUDIENCE.
One is free to advocate any stupid, anti-human thing they want. One is not entitled to be given an outlet to an audience.
Different things. Let’s not confuse the two. If one flags the book as objectionable to Amazon, that’s only representing one’s own opinion — exercising one’s own free speech rights. It denies the Perls nothing except more victims.
KG, All I can say is Wow. I do not recall saying that I prefer the freedom to publish instructions for and incitement to murder, to the freedom to stay alive. What I said was that freedom of speech is our most important freedom. Once you lose the freedom of speech, the very next this you lose will be your freedom to think, and that smacks of religious fervor. Bring back the Inquisition! Incitement as you know, like screaming fire in a theater, is not freedom of speech. I also did not say that all ideas are good ideas. You seem to be stuck on the bomb thing.
Anubis, I will not get into the pro/anti gun debate but I will say that it seems ridiculous to claim to need an Uzi. Also, I’m not sure why you brought up Columbine and Virginia Tech. Although those we horrible acts committed by dangerous people and yes, had they not had access to the weapons they had the statistics would have been different, however it would not have changed the basic personality of those responsible.
So my statement still stands. With or without the Pearls book, the Schatzs were never going to be good parents.
Beatrice, Personally i think everyone involved from the Pearls to the publisher, distributor and the Schatzs are all responsible for this outcome. If there was a way to mete out responsibility without infringing on the rights of the rest of society, I would be appreciatively receptive.
oldguy-1,
But that is the thing, you don’t have to infringe on the rights of the rest. You just have to determine which things simply can’t be protected by right to free speech , like incitement to violence. Why is yelling Fire in a crowded theater not covered by the right for free speech, but encouraging people to beat their children is? That just isn’t right.
My parents weren’t crazy with the religious stuff; they settled on an Episcopal church.
But my stepfather was very authoritarian (probably because his devoutly-Baptist fundie father was that way)–and I didn’t get “spanked.” I was whipped with a doubled-over belt. It was never a measured experience, either–it was more of a thrashing ’till his arm was tired.
I don’t remember what I did for most of them; I do remember getting a beating because my stepbrother was picking on me. I was supposedly “egging him on.” I got a lot of my contempt for authority in those days. I hated and feared him.
I didn’t know until after he died last year that he was afraid of me, once he couldn’t whip me anymore.
No kid should ever go through that–but I can’t say I’d step in to keep a child abuser from getting his due.
So you are saying that it is more important than the freedom to stay alive. One of my examples was, specifically, of incitement to murder:
You responded:
Gah! Sorry, blockquote fail, but I think my intent is clear.
One last thing on the freedom of speech…. maybe.
I was in Chicago when the Nazis marched in Marquette Park (nicely depicted in The Blues Brothers) and they do nothing but spout hate speech and incite riots. They however, had the right to gather in the park and let whatever lunatic who wanted listen to them soak it all up. Sure there were a lot of protesters, but as scary as it is, there were some people there who supported them.
Beatrice, Apparently I was responding before I saw your post with the reference to yelling fire in a crowded theater. Again, I am in no way condoning violence or child abuse. Is what the Pearls wrote an incitement to commit violence and instructions on how to accomplish that goal? It appears that it is by the posts here, but I have not read the book and I don’t think I will. The video made me sick so I doubt that I could make it through the book.
KG, I don’t have a world view of restrictions on free speech, but my slippery slope claims are only ludicrous drivel when dealing with rational people. And not to put a fine point on it, not all people are rational, especially those that make the rules. Even things that may seem innocuous can get out of hand.
For instance, for many years on Network TV, you could show a baby’s butt, but not a doll’s butt. You could say damn, but not god damn. Who made those rules, and why? Ostensibly they were made for reasons of morality.
I’d rather make moral judgments on my own and I’d not have a politician make them for me.
oldguy-1,
I have looked up some quotes from the book, they are in post #43.
I simply cannot accept that what Pearls are doing is wrong and harmful, but we have to shrug our shoulders and let it be because there is nothing to do about it. Not to mention that they are quite guilty of abusing their own children, proofs for which they have helpfully provided in their book.
oldguy-1, #115
Bullshit. What makes you think that? Are you a time traveler or something? If they hadn’t been influenced by the book, perhaps it would’ve been another book which described good parenting behavior. Perhaps they would’ve rented Star Wars and ditched their religion to become Jedi. These are just evil caricatures to you, not people. People change. So your statement doesn’t stand.
you don’t. nobody does. your moral judgements are the effects of a complicated interplay of environment (social, natural, etc) and inborn traits. It stands to reason that shifting the environment to be such that more people make non-harmful decisions is good, as long as it doesn’t result in further concentration of power in a single area.
In that sense, government censorship of the book would be negative (and this extends then to libraries, since they’re part of this), as that gives an already powerful institution even more power. It can even be argued that having amazon not sell it is wrong, because they’re becoming a monopoly (but then, the problem is with amazon being a monopoly, not with them not carrying a book; they don’t carry a lot of the books I’ve read, after all), but to argue that it’s in principle wrong to try to get a bookstore to not carry a book? that’s deontological bullshit and a limitation on the free speech rights of the critics of a book.
Gasp!
I was spanked as a kid, sort of. My folks told me years later that I never threw a tantrum until the time they tried to spank me. All I remember is having a spank suggested a couple times if I did X.
So when I had kids, I thought it might be okay if I really needed to spank a kid, but to avoid it.
And then as I learned more about domestic violence I realized how wrong that really is.
Why, oh why, would we ever think to teach a child that sometimes someone who loves you will hit you.
I immediately realized I did not want my daughters learning that vile lesson. And I didn’t want my son to learn it either.
I have 3 kids. They have never, ever been hit by anyone who loves them. Not once. Instead, we teach them what expected behavior is and consequences.
At the earliest ages, when they headed toward something dangerous, I slightly overacted my own fear. They got the message as soon as they could crawl. Watch them walk toward the street and scream in faux fear and scoop them up, then calm them as you carry them back to safety. You can bet they didn’t get near that street again until they understood it better.
There was never a day when I questioned my resolve to never spank my kids.
I just took the eldest to college for the first time, and I have to say all 3 of them are fabulous, moral, smart kids. They were never in trouble with schools or police. Instead they are often picked by teachers and coaches to be leaders of their fellow students. And they are well liked by their peers.
There is never, ever, a need to beat your kids.
What these fundy idiots teach is vile and disgusting. I don’t believe there is a word in the English language that properly reflects the complete evil of what they teach.
Hitting is wrong, and the broad acceptance of hitting the smallest, most fragile humans in our care is a huge factor in the deaths connected to the Pearls. Lydia is not the first and will probably not be the last. Sean Paddock’s adopted parent hit him all day and strapped him to a bed at night.
When we live in a world where it’s ok to mildly physically assault a tiny person, we will have lots of incidents where those in power are unable or unwilling to stop before severe damage or death occurs. It happens all the time.
How do we fix it? The only thing I can do is not hit my kid and speak up. When someone else champions hitting small people as a method of discipline (which means to teach, not hurt, humiliate, demean, punish, damage, hit, etc etc etc), stop worrying about hurting someone’s feelings and speak up.
Looks to me that we need a book published, “To Train Up a Fundy Adult”.
Oops, I forgot that the CIA and NSA already have their versions.
Personally, I would like to have a private conversation with that lune of an author, old “man” to old man.
Jadehawk, I retract my statement. You are correct, as much as I would like to think that my sense of morality is my own but is not.
I will agree to your assessment – “your moral judgements are the effects of a complicated interplay of environment (social, natural, etc) and inborn traits. It stands to reason that shifting the environment to be such that more people make non-harmful decisions is good, as long as it doesn’t result in further concentration of power in a single area.”
Beatrice, I did not read that post prior to my statement and I have to say I feel dirty after reading it and I will amend my earlier statement, I will definitely not read their book. Still I have to say that I find the Pearls offensive and reprehensible, but the ultimate blame must be on the Schatzes who take this insanity as actual advice. Again, if there is a way to mete responsibility to the rest of those involved I’m all for it.
consciousness razor, what makes me say that the Schatzes would be bad parents? The fact that they took this book as good parenting advice. Anyone who can read that and take it as acceptable behavior is simply not right. Either they had a predisposition to what they read, they were looking for an endorsement of their behavior or they are gullible beyond imagination. If you’ve never met anyone who’s a religious zealot or just plain nuts looking for an excuse for his/her behavior I’m jealous and you have my deepest admiration. I’ve encountered far too many. Am I a time traveler, no, but I’ve been around a while.
This horror story reminds me about the girls who had their “will broken” at Christian boarding school: http://www.jeriwho.net/tlohh.html
oldguy, I know people who have used these methods, believing the authority in their lives wouldn’t direct them wrongly, who were able to move away from hitting altogether when encouraged and informed by others in their community. People who are taken in by these things are often nice, normal, good parents in all other respects. By acting as if they are so awful that there is no way they could have been anything but awful you are demonizing them. You are making the situation seem to be one that is simply unavoidable for those OTHER, inherently FLAWED people UNLIKE you. That perspective is not only completely incorrect, it damages any efforts to make change in conservative parenting circles towards non-violent discipline and parenting.
Fucking wankers.
I think old Mr. and Mrs. Pearle need a dose of their own medicine…you know, kind of remind them what torture and pain is like. Clearly reason and humanity doesn’t get through to their vanishingly small brain cells, if they think it is ok to beat children with objects! These people should be charged with inciting violence against children. If they are not charged, then the state is actively allowing violence against children.
As for the parents who beat the child to death. How do you live with yourselves? I’m speechless and in shock.
I used to believe spanking was ‘sometimes necessary’, but I long ago decided otherwise.
The ex has sworn that the baby will never be spanked, and I agree. She doesn’t need it. She WANTS to please us. She WANTS to make us smile and do things that meet our approval. She WANTS to be good, even if she doesn’t fully understand what ‘good’ is yet. She wants to ‘help’ when she sees us cleaning up her toys or doing dishes.
Argh, posted too soon.
What I mean is…. she naturally wants to be good. I think it’s a basic human instinct, or even a basic primate instinct. There is no need for hitting.
We all have to remember that this about training a child just like you would an animal.Interestingly the top trainers for almost every kind of animal almost never rely on violence. Agility dogs and Key West cats don’t do it to escape punishment.
These folks followed the punishment methods recommended until it led to death. But that’s all Biblical; Can’t you have the sassy child stoned by the elders of you’ve had enough?
They’re also into infantile dick cutting. They are total pervs.
I unfortunately know a little about the Pearl’s “ministry”, and I don’t know how much good getting rid of the book would do. I haven’t seen mentioned here anywhere the monthly (perhaps quarterly?) magazine they send out to purple who sign up for their mailing list. I have thumbed through some copies and it’s pretty terrible.
My mother broke a hairbrush over my head when I was about 8, because she was annoyed that I was complaining about her brushing hurting me. I’ve brushed this hair for a lot of years since, and I know now it was never necessary to try to take the brush straight through the tangles by sheer force, which is what I was complaining about. But rather than trying to avoid hurting me, she hit the top of my head so hard a half inch thick plastic hairbrush broke in two.
My sister still complains about our parents sitting on her to hold her down for spankings, and their response is to tell her that they had to because she fought tooth and nail, as if that made it make sense.
@ 115
“I’m not sure why you brought up Columbine and Virginia Tech.”
Because those death statistics were excessive and perpetrated solely because guns were available to mentally unbalanced individuals that could not have wreaked the same over the top havoc and devastation they did if only using knives instead of the armory of a fucking platoon of Marine grunts.
“Although those we horrible acts committed by dangerous people and yes, had they not had access to the weapons they had the statistics would have been different”
Agreed and was the point I was making, I am not saying they would not have killed…but the toll would not be as it was…their arms would have dropped off long before they reached the numbers that actually fell to the bullets.
You seemed to conflate the fact that these religio bozos would have used another excuse to get their sick jollies…maybe so.
But on the other hand maybe they just might have found a genuine book of balanced and non-violent advice in ways to administer their kids.
” however it would not have changed the basic personality of those responsible.”
Those fuckers are so batshit insane that the sheep in them would follow any thing presented to them.
Especially so if the church they attended got off their fat ecclesiastical arses and started doing their job instead of getting all breathless and sweaty during group masturbation to jeebus every Sunday!
And before anyone chips in with the point that that is their job…well yeah…but only a facet of it the majority is supposed to be *a social guidance and offering aid comfort and advice to their parishioners.
Otherwise they would preaching everyday 8 hours a day 8 days a week and it seems they are not!
*Their boast not mine!
If they were aware that these pillocks of society needed guidance in upbringing they could have recommended a decent and wholesome advice package.
I would be interested to know where they got this piece of crap from anyway?…if from a church then that church needs tearing down and ministers jailed for incitement to abuse children.
The fact that this vile tacky example of a violent pornographic vicious literature fell onto their hands and was their blue print does not mean they would definitely go for similar vein crap if it was not available.
If it can be proved that they wanted the xian violence, they all so revere in xian circles, then that is a court case for conspiracy to inflict abuse on children, and if not it fucking well should be!
“So my statement still stands. With or without the Pearls book, the Schatzs were never going to be good parents.”
Very possible…but giving them this cult literature legally certainly did not contribute to their children’s welfare in any way shape or form.
I have to presume that this tacky sexually dysfunctional pamphlet, and not much doubt that the attitude in it is a derivative of a sick sexual dominance and power over partner and the weaker members of a family unit, was printed up by an xian ministry, or at least at their behest.
I cannot imagine a publisher of any integrity would allow this vileness to foul their presses.
But if that is the case then greed stupidity and cynical business ‘morality’ trumps all else.
If an unaligned publisher did it, the share holders should be made aware.
If a self gratification publishing..i.e they paid for it themselves…then you still require press and print machines, in volume that means a company, the same goes!
Involvement at any level in the production and distribution of this shabby putrescent script should be highlighted.
Wringing hands and wallowing in freedom of speech mantra’s on this particular issue of a vile little bit of xian wanking should also be aware that responsibility is a pre-requisite in exercising that oft vaunted trait.
That Xians do not have a clue what responsibility actually means is not an excuse to abuse the principle…neither is it an excuse to allow them to get away with this sadistic bollox…it is anti-social.
When I read this yesterday, I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t find the words to express my horror. It has taken my tears of rage almost a day to come under control.
Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz are undoubtedly insane. No mentally competent person could beat a small child to death and believe they were doing the moral thing. But their insanity is of a sort that could not be recognized and treated in any medical or psychiatric way. Their insanity is of an incurable, but godly sort, and it’s very good thing that they have been incarcerated. May they never even see another child in their lifetimes.
Their children probably have a very long way to go, and might never be completely free of the legacy of horror to which they were exposed. Their new foster parents have taken on a difficult task; I hope they are up to it.
@Lone Coyote
I remember when my daughter was that biddable. Yeah, fun times.
The problem with raising a young person as a human being with human rights and entitlements is that she wants those rights and entitlements whether or not it’s convenient for her parents to give them to her. Which is the point, of course.
LC, check out Honey, I Wrecked the Kids. Democratic parenting is the way to go.
What? Of course they’re not insane? Seriously how manly times does this have to be demonstrated in a lab. NORMAL PEOPLE CAN DO HORRIBLE THINGS WHEN THEY THINK AN AUTHORITY TELLS THEM ITS OK!
FFS think back 200 years…perfectly normal people probably beat small children daily to train them to be proper slaves
Yeah not sure why this is so hard to grasp.
Are all Priests who rape kids insane?
Ing and Rev.: In case you missed it, I was not using the term “insanity” in its legal sense, but rather in a more general sense. Perhaps I strayed further from the English definition than you might have, but I have a mental image of sane parenting that doesn’t include the infliction of extreme pain on helpless children.
Ing, I’m familiar with the experiment you refer to, and in some sense I agree with you. But beating a child to death is so far removed from pushing a button that it transcends the definition–legal or otherwise–of sanity. I cannot bring myself to regard the Schatz’s as normal human beings that just happened to do a bad thing.
They were, to be sure, rational. Their actions were well thought out to accomplish the desired end. Their incarceration is completely appropriate, as their brand of insanity cannot be treated effectively. And I agree that they were not insane in the same sense as Markuze. (I have some sympathy for Markuze, but none for the Schatz’s.)
Tim do you realize you contradict yourself?
UGH!
Again and again! Ok, address the other example I gave. There was a time in our nations history where a man could beat and cripple a child and it was seen as 100% legal and acceptable because that child was property.
This is one of my pet peeve issues
There is not anything “WRONG” with people who do horrible things. Everyone is capable of doing horrible things. Saying that these people are ‘wrong’ is an effort to distance yourself from them and frankly is dangerous because it convinces people THEY could never do something like that. It’s the exact mentality that probably enabled Schatz’s crime.
FFS, the “push the button” was an experiment meant to recreate the conditions of Nazi Germany…where they didn’t push buttons. Hitler and his gov convinced thousands of people that it was ok to brutalize men, women, and children up close and personal.
Ing:
We are using the term “insane” in quite different ways. Perhaps it would be more acceptable to you if I said “unsane” in the Korzybski sense.
What I meant is that torturing children is not normal sane behavior for our species. Such behavior, were it “normal”, would lead to our quick extinction.
This behavior differs from the norm in significant ways. I did not mean to condone or excuse or otherwise justify or explain the torturing of children. You have willfully chosen to interpret my post in a manner that it was obviously not intended.
Please step back a bit and try to understand what I meant. You are being obstinate in reading what I said in the light of your own biases.
No I understood what you said and disagreed. Normal people do DO horrible things when they believe it’s normal.
Were say, Chinese parents who wanted a male child and who abandoned their female infant normal or not? for example.
Ludicrous claim, considering they’re living by the rules of a society from the Bronze Age…who survived.
The argument that you should use an instrument to hit your child instead of your hands always reminds me of the wire hanger scene in Mommy Dearest.
Ing:
My contention is that normal people do not torture children to death. Apparently, you disagree. So, let’s agree to disagree.
Affecting your behavior for the rest of your life is not the same as remembering.
What a Maroon wasn’t saying the abuse was harmless because the child won’t remember it, he’s saying the child won’t be able to give her version of the abuse because she probably won’t remember it.
Noooooooooooo! She’s supposed to stay cute and small and lovely and affectionate and biddable FOREVER!
But seriously, I’ll read your link.
I should also point out, since I talk about the baby so much, that she’s not my genetic spawn. My ex and I had been off and on for years, and she got pregnant by someone else during a ‘break’. I stepped into the kids life at about 10 months of age, and she almost instantly ‘adopted’ me. She played right to my most basic primate instincts. She started copying my facial expressions and mannerisms, as if to say “Look! I’m just like you! Take care of me!”. It was really quite a neat little trick. I would basically have had to be monstrously evil and selfish to resist it.
I’m OK with this. Really.
Ah the verbal white flag of surrender of an indefensible position.
Hitler and his gov convinced thousands of people that it was ok to brutalize men, women, and children up close and personal.
Actually, they didn’t really. Part of the reason for the gas chambers was that men who were assigned to machine gun down large numbers of helpless civilians quickly developed PTSD and they needed a more “hands off” method of killing. It’s fairly hard to completely eliminate the urge to not harm people who are helpless.
One way to do it is to convince the perpetrator that they’re actually doing it for the victim’s “own good”. Only a particularly nasty sadist would beat a kid for fun. But a parent convinced by propaganda that their kid will become a drug addicted slut who never holds a job (or will go to hell) if they don’t beat the kid is likely to believe that they have to do it. The most implacable torturer is the one who believes they are torturing in the victim’s own best interest. They will never have mercy or get bored and do something else.
Thank you! That was a useful critique.
So it took the murders of TWO children for blind religious zealots to start questioning what was child abuse in the first place? And that book sold all those thousands of copies. Un-efffing-believable. Or maybe not so much- this is religious people we are talking about- who lack a frontal cortex usually.
Here’s the real story behind “the Pearls” and their love of “the Rod”, or “birching”:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Pearl/Volume_1#Miss_Coote.27s_Confession.2C_or_the_Voluptuous_Experiences_of_an_Old_Maid
(I’m surprised I didn’t see this reference earlier.)
They have to be getting off on this. It is too brutal, too enthusiastic. I’d have been depressed and mortified if I had ever done that to my daughter. I did cry when she got her baby shots, and I knew it was for her best, and felt terrible for hours after….They beat their children, humiliate them, try to destroy their self-image. What they do to their children’s psyche is a type of rape.
Hitting this little girl with plumber’s line?!? For seven hours–with prayer breaks? That is not tough-love that is psychotic savagery and sadism. That is glorying in authority and power. That is them getting off on power and then, hallelujah, congratulating themselves on their own godliness. This is a flagellator’s ecstatic delectations masking as righteousness.
shudders
I don’t often read posts that really disturb me, but this was one. I really don’t care whether the perpetrators are “insane” or what they did is “wrong”, or by whose definition. It still shouldn’t have happened.
But what about those who incited and encouraged their behaviour? is the Pearls’ book available in Europe? because if it is, it must surely be in breach of all kinds of child-protection legislation. –
(Yes, apparently – amazon.co.uk lists it: “Tags customers associate with this product” include “child abuse(11), torture(10), immoral(9), sickening(9), wrong(9), how to abuse a baby(8), morally repugnant(8), illegal(3)”) Any EU lawyers reading this?
Get your kicks torturing children? Here’s a source that explains how to choose instruments so you can do it without leaving marks!
PS
True love means hitting someone til he does what you want. That’s what Focus on the Family says.
Also, if the best kind of pain is the kind that leaves no marks, then obviously the best method of punishment is a tube up the rectum, followed by a red hot poker.