This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Episode 010 – Abigail’s Story Part 1 – Childhood in Bill Gothard’s IBLP (Shiny Happy People)

June 14, 2023

T: Hi, I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon.

T: And we are Feet of Clay.

S: Confessions of the Cult Sisters. So Tracey, this last week we’ve been watching a really intense 4 part documentary about another cult. I’m sure our listeners will have seen Shiny Happy People, which goes into the behind the scenes story of the Duggar family. Even more importantly it focuses on the teachings of Bill Gothard and the Institute of Basic Life Principles, otherwise known as IBLP.

T: We wanted to give listeners a heads up and a warning that we will be discussing triggering and disturbing topics such as severe spanking rituals and severe child abuse, mental health struggles, fear of the Satanic and curses, arranged marriages, physical and sexual assault and abuse, and we advise that listener discretion be used. Please take care of yourself.

T: IBLP – yes. This has been a very hard documentary for me to watch. I think I was talking to somebody recently – it is really hard to be in the home schooling movement and not be reached by the tentacles of Bill Gothard, either through families that you’re doing home school co-ops together, and for me when I was in my youth group back in El Paso – this would have been in 1979 – I was chosen as one of the on-fire youth to go to the Bill Gothard week long seminar, which is the Basic Youth Conflicts, where you become a lifelong member. I would get the yearly, annual update from Bill Gothard every year. At 15 years old that was my introduction to Bill Gothard’s principles.

S: And did you totally buy into it?

T: I bought into most everything because I didn’t come from a churched background, so I was eager to take these notes and I think as we’ll hear more in the story, and as the documentary points out so well, it’s giving you the manual for life. For those who aren’t super familiar with my story, I did come from an alcoholic home. My sister had gone the way of drugs, sex and rock and roll. She had ended up getting kicked out of the house, so I was very eager to learn these principles that would keep me from that pathway.

S: Right. Basic Life Principles, right?

T: Basic Life Principles. He did have some stance on rock and roll music which I absolutely bought into.

S: So did you stop listening to rock?

T: Absolutely. I was 15 as I was coming into…

S: Okay yep wait, I just gotta say when you’re keeping count on who is more spiritual, you can give yourself a point sister, because I didn’t stop.

T: We’ll get into more of our stories in other episodes, and I want to get into Abigail’s story but I just wanted to preface it by saying it’s infiltrated into so many aspects of Christianity, and my church was a charismatic, non-denominational church that sent us, so I know it has lots of ties with the Southern Baptist and those deeply fundamental churches, but I was coming from a non-denominational, charismatic renewal, and was sent by my church to adopt these principles back and again, the authority of the parents was something very much taught. I’m a new Christian to an unsaved father, but absolutely still needing to come under his authority. Fast-forward, I home schooled my kids and you can’t get away from the Bill Gothard theologies and principles. I watched this documentary with everything that people are saying – I cried, I had to walk away at different points, I had to take moments of pause. It ran the gamut and then most of all (because as we’ve talked about, we’re older now), this younger generation, my children’s generation grew up in this. It’s all they’ve known. I just wanted to hug all of these brave adults that have come on and told their story. Definitely I’m excited today to give voice to somebody who has a story to tell.

S: Absolutely. Well you know, I did not get into the Bill Gothard thing, I remember hearing bits and pieces of it and thinking yeah, this sounds good, because it’s based on the bible, right? And the bible is the shit, it’s the thing. I didn’t call it the shit then. I call it the shit now in a different context. Oh my gosh. But, yeah, I am really happy and privileged, Tracey. It’s so funny how the universe works, call it serendipity, or whatever – this wonderful woman that we’re going to talk to today; I first met her several years ago. Our lives intersected because we are both animal behavioral science geeks. She’s had a professional career with dogs, and also is into horses. I have my certification in equine behavior and I do educational workshops. She is friends with another friend of mine who is a veterinarian specializing in animal behavior and so they came to an educational workshops, hands on horse training workshop that I did at my farm in Florida. That is the first time I met Abigail. So Abigail, welcome to Feet of Clay – Confessions of the Cult Sisters and we are so excited to have you here with us.

A: I am so excited to be here, thank you so much for having me. This is just like – I’m giddy. I’m a huge fan of the podcast.

S: Well, thank you. Something that’s funny is I do recall having heard little bits and pieces when you and Jenny were together. There were little clues from time to time that you had been in a cult, or had undergone some sort of trauma in your life. I had no idea, no idea of the depth and extent of what you experienced and suffered, and I had no idea it was related to this IBLP thing. I remember seeing you post a couple of times recently hey, there’s a documentary coming out about this cult I was involved in. that just got my antenna up – wait, what? So Abigail, why don’t you give us a little bit of background on yourself and then we’ll launch into you telling us your story.

A: Yeah, so my name is Abigail, I live in Alabama on a little ten acre hobby farm, and have some goats and a horse and several dogs. Professionally I work in animal behavior, mostly with dogs, and here the last number of years I’ve been running a pretty large service dog non-profit, so that’s what I do for my day job.

S: Very cool.

A: It’s super fun. It’s my favorite. So I am married to a man named Brian. We live in a kid free household just doing our thing here. I’m 38, almost 39 and I think the cult thing has been something that is really helpful to trot out at dinner parties.

(laughter)

A: Probably ten years I’ve been talking much more openly about it and discussing evangelicalism as a whole, more publicly on social media and things like that. And that kind of brings us to today.

T: So one of the things that I was interested in – because Sharon you have your Facebook account that is pretty equine focused. I think you do some personal stuff, but I was surprized that you were willing to put our cult podcast posts up on your Facebook page. My one thing was like oh my god, how is her horse community going to respond to this? Then to hear these connections coming through that you also had these experiences has been another case of serendipity for me – like, wow I didn’t expect that. Since you knew Sharon a couple of times I’m surprized that you both didn’t pull out the cult party trick at the same time.

(laughter)

A: That surprized me too, when our lives intersected and we kind of both had that moment of oh my gosh, you were in a cult, too. It was a little bit surprizing that that hadn’t come out before.

S: Right. Well, they say timing is everything, huh? So here we are. So your parents – were they already very steeped and into this whole belief system before you were born?

A: They weren’t. My parents were Anglican and Lutheran respectively and kind of socially religious. My mother’s brother served in Vietnam, came back and was part of that group of Vietnam veterans who kind of became radically saved. That group of people and he is who brought my mother into the more conservative faith and became saved, and then my father about two years after that, from my understanding. That would have been maybe ‘78, and my brother was born in ‘82 and I was born in ‘84. They really became radlicalized when my brother was – kind of gradually from the time he was about school age, about seven. My brother is an amazing person. He’s a genius, that’s just the easiest way to say it. His Vanderbilt score was off the charts at a very, very young age. He was reading chapter books at two years old.

S: Wow.

A: When my mother had him tested at that time with what they knew about education and mental health and things like that, they told her he could never be in traditional school. She tried to put him into kindergarten and he just did not do well. In hindsight there were certainly diagnoses would be very clear today that were just simply not clear in the mid 80s. She became home schooling him, mostly out of necessity. At that time the only support in home school was pretty fundamental Christian support. That was about all that was available.

S: Right. So that was in the mid-80s?

A: It would have been the mid to late 80s, and by the time I was nine years old which would have been 92-93, they joined a 100% IBLP church and were totally bought in. I think my mother, from the conversations we’ve had, it was a little bit like a frog in a pot of boiling water, it just gradually became more and more radicalized. I think for many men – and I don’t think my dad is the exception – it was kind of a dream come true. Total control and authoritarianism, and that felt super good to him.

S: Right. I think you bring up a really good point, the frog in the boiling water thing. You get to a point where you wake up and you look at what you bought into, what you believed, what you allowed to be done to you, and what you yourself have done to others, and you think holy shit, how did that even happen?

A: Yeah.

S:  It is this gradual thing. It’s lovely that masquerades under these great names. If anybody’s watched the documentary already, when you want to call spanking and beating your child, we’re going to call it “encouragement”. Yeah. Let’s mislabel and use euphemisms, and we’ve kind of got this Orwellian animal farm dystopia of terminology that has nothing to do with the reality of what’s happening. But by using this innocuous, or even virtuous sounding language, we can be gradually duped into accepting greater and greater atrocities that we never otherwise would have.

A: Especially if you’re cherry-picking scripture to back up those pieces, whether that’s actually what the scripture says in context or not. It even further bolsters the rightness of that belief system.

S: Yes.

T: Those are such good points. That’s been something I’ve been thinking about through the movie Jesus Revolution that just came out, depicting this time of the turmoil of the 60s and 70s with the Vietnam war, which impacted me because my father also went off to Vietnam. Then you have this wave of Christianity coming that’s love and joy and peace which drew me, so I’ve had to take a step back a lot recently, and I look from the beginning of that, of my Jesus freak days where I can much more genuinely say I loved everybody and just wanted to share this joy and peace that was reaching into my life, to then being able to look from the beginning to where I know I ended up with the big glasses and the curly hair and the no birth control, and most egregiously the discipline we brought into our household. How do you get from point A of the Jesus love joy and peace to this? So I think Abigail you make a great point – it is that slow, gradual boiling.

S: The slippery slope.

A: Yeah, and I think in the conversations I’ve had with my friends that grew up in the same way, comparing notes on what our parents said both in that time period and afterwards when we would talk to them about it as much as it was available to us, I think we realized that for the majority of us – at least one of our parents was coming from trauma themselves and really searching for anything that would give a guarantee or an answer to not traumatize their own children. To come to terms with that as an adult; that that is true, but also not permissive has been a huge piece of this journey for me that is still very much ongoing. There is responsibility for what my parents and other parents did, but I also have a lot of empathy for the trauma that they were escaping and trying to benefit us in just a really broken and wrong way.

S: Yeah. Fucked up. Really, really fucked up.

A: Super fucked up.

T: That speaks so much to your character and your beauty that you can step back from some of the stuff that’s been done to you and kind of see how that beginning is.

A: I think that brings back the animal behavior nerd piece. I have been really eager to dissect it and understand it from pretty early on. That was super important to me, to behaviorally at least understand what happened.

T: Yeah, that’s good.

S: Right. Our behavior nerds will understand this, but there’s so much of this classical conditioning and emotional association that really fucks up these brain connections and decision making. For me having gone through a whole variety of childhood trauma, and knowing that my wholehearted diving in headfirst to the Jesus thing was about trying to make sense of my world, trying to find some emotional comfort, some ability to cope – it comes from that, and those underlying emotional traumatic experiences; they really do shape how we view the world around us and the conscious decisions that we make thereafter.

A:  Mmhmm. Absolutely.

S: Abigail, so how old were you – were you home schooled from the very beginning?

A: I was, I was home schooled K through 12. Mostly because my mom was afraid I would feel less than or other, since my brother by necessity was home schooled, so she really kept me home – especially in the early first two years – she kept me home less out of fundamental belief systems, and more because she didn’t want me to think that she didn’t want to be with me, and she did want to be with my brother. That was a big fear of hers. So in the first couple of years I was home just because he was home. I think they went pretty well, and she was like oh, I actually can teach a child how to read and it was fine, so by the time I was nine we were pretty deeply in, so at that point being home schooled was more of a world view than a necessity.

S: So tell us about that. Tell us about what the family dynamics looked like, what the obedience requirements, the discipline – what did all of that look like in the day to day, week to week, for you?

A: So we had a little bit of a unique family structure within the IBLP since my parents had already had their children before they joined. My father had gotten a vasectomy so there was only two of us, which of course was very uncommon in the IBLP. My parents weren’t Quiverfull because that decision was considered a grave sin, that they had committed prior to joining. In fact my father did have a vasectomy reversal, and it was unsuccessful, but that was a big thing. Vasectomy reversal babies in the IBLP are a big thing; if God blesses you after a vasectomy reversal, that’s a huge deal.

S: Like, if you have more kids he forgives you, and if you don’t, he hasn’t?

A: Right, so a big teaching in the IBLP that the documentary didn’t talk about too much was this whole concept of sins of the father. You have your own sins, then your parents have their sins, your granparents have their sins, and God can judge you on sins that are not even your own.

T: Yes. He does bring that out in the Basic Youth Principles and that did strike me very much, because of course my father is an alcoholic, and that’s terrifying. I was actually convinced for years that I would probably marry an alcoholic coming from those teachings, because I think he actually lays out examples of how this happens and this happens, and that happens.

A: Yes, he does.

T: And then Youth With A Mission also picks up on that teaching, so again that teaching isn’t just isolated to them. You hear it in other different disciplines, and oh, I’m really glad you pointed that out, because it is a really big one. So continue. That must have been intense for you all.

A: This idea that my parents had each had a very brief first marriage before meeting each other, and then of course, not “trusting God” with their family was always present in my worldview. I don’t ever remember not knowing that and having that be a huge burden on the family. Then of course we went to an IBLP exclusive church, which meant that every family in the church was IBLP and I think something like 98% of the church body was home schooling, maybe more than that. I don’t specifically recall a family that wasn’t home schooling.

S: I want to go back for just one second, Abigail, to this thing of your parents and these sins of the father scripture. Your parents had previous marriages, so they’re married, divorced, re-married – huge big black sin. Your father’s had a vasectomy, another huge black sin. So I would imagine you lived under a sense of overall shame. Just this sense of shame and our family is less-than and we don’t measure up, so within this very intense structure and these virtues that are being extolled, and held up as this is the ultimate, you guys could never, ever measure up as a family.

A: Right, because there were only two of us, so my father’s quiver could never be full because there were just the two. That was always present and it was always instantly identifiable to anyone within the IBLP from the outside, that there were just the two of us. So that was always present – of course, I was nine years old when we joined the church, and then things started changing very quickly. I had a short, nine year old girl pixie haircut – you know the kind that moms do when they don’t want to brush their kids’ hair. So I had one of those, and I wore pants and those things. I have a very vivid memory of very shortly after beginning to attend Calvary, the cult church, of being in the girls bathroom. I had on one of those bubble onsies, you know, the thing that kids in the 80s wore, with the long pants but they were bubbly. I remember a girl walking in and saying you look like a boy, and you should wear a dress, and your hair is too short. And she was my age. I remember going home in the car and crying. That was so early – it had to be within the first couple of weeks of attending the church. I was always allowed to wear pants at home, which is another strange thing about my particular upbringing in the IBLP, is that there were differences in my family. I was allowed to wear pants at home; I rode horses; my mother played tennis in tennis skirts. There were things that happened in my home that didn’t happen in the average family’s home in the IBLP, but then when you went to church – which of course was three times a week, Wednesdays, and Sundays twice, you completely changed the rules to attend the servicers. We were taught we did that out of respect and not causing your brother to stumble, and purity culture and all of those things kind of layered in. Then my father worked out of the country, so while most families in the IBLP are incredibly father-centric, my father was out of the country at least four weeks, two weeks in the country, at minimum, my whole childhood. It was a very interesting difference in my family that was very othering from the very beginning; and also since my father had had a previous marriage, he could not be in leadership at the church. He could not be an elder. I always say there’s cult wealthy, and then there’s real world wealthy, because Quiverfull movement creates poverty, and they create really intense poverty. My family just had two children, my father also graduated with an MBA from Vanderbilt, he was very successful in his career for a period of time – not for our whole life, but for a long period of time, he was quite successful. So we were kind of this weird, in-between of a very prestigious family in the church because we had money and we were quite devout, but also very well-known that my father’s quiver wasn’t full and that he couldn’t be an elder.

T: Wow.

A: That was a very strange kind of one foot in, one foot out way of growing up.

S: Yeah.

A: And really never feeling like you were enough, no matter what happened.

S: Not quite the right fit.

A: Yeah. Always a little square peg in a round hole feeling, no matter how devout we were within the tenets.

S: And were both your parents as totally all in on these teachings of IBLP?

A: Yah, for sure, and I definitely am still working through where they fit in that and how that really happened because my mother is a very beautiful woman. When we started going to the church she had a very short, very stylish haircut and she is very stylish in general. It was so odd, I remember being young, watching her grow her hair out and begin to look frumpy. It was so bizarre, because really her whole life she’s been a fashion icon, except for that 10 or 15 year period of being in this cult. To look at pictures now, it’s just so strange. It just isn’t her. I do have lots of questions about how that happened, and how it happened so fully, and how she taught things I know she didn’t believe herself, but she taught us those things. I think a lot of it had to do with fear of making a mistake. I think she was terrified that she was going to make a mistake, and I think a lot of that came from her own childhood trauma. For my father – I mean, I just think the idea of being in control was just enormously seductive.

S: Yeah. It’s a high. It’s a high for a lot of men.

T: Yeah, I was just saying to Sharon yesterday – we were driving, and I’m like, whose idea is this to give young male egos total power and control and say you get to make the decisions, you’re the one that hears from God. This is such a bad idea, and has borne such bad, bad fruit.

A: It was so strange in my own family, because my dad was not a good decision maker. It was a terrible idea to let him make decisions, because he was not a good decision maker.

S: With him travelling so much though, so if he’s gone four weeks out, two weeks home, how much of the discipline or other things fell to your mom? I think this is long before there was easy internet, WhatsApp – quick easy calls.

A: We were the first family I knew that got the internet, and I was in high school. Long distance calls from Europe happened rarely. Some of those calls were disciplinary, but a huge amount of that burden fell on my mother. While I do think that was somewhat unique to my family, I think it is far less unique than what the IBLP would like for people to believe. I think that you had fathers that were trying to support a dozen children on a relatively low education salary, so they were working two or three jobs, and it did fall on the mother to somehow be totally submissive but also completely burdened with all of the execution of the family. I think that was enormously common.

T: I think you’re exactly right. For the listeners who don’t know because I don’t think we’ve had a whole episode on this yet, but I have five kids, she has five kids. They came one right after the other because we were not using birth control and trusting God…

S: Until we couldn’t take it anymore!

T: So we joke we hit five and we’re like, we’re out, but most of or many of our friends circles have nine and ten and eleven. The amount of financial strain is its own story and what I’ve heard from a lot of survivors is a lot of the abuse did come from the mothers, and I think now we know a lot more about mental health; they’re nursing and having babies, and nursing and having babies and not getting sleep, and they have to home school all these kids and the sheer stress and anxiety of all of that, just the short tempers and short fuses – absolutely I can look back at moments of my past where I was at my end and the child did something they weren’t supposed to do, and you snap. I always felt guilty because I knew that wasn’t the preferred method, but you put this mix of a stew of all of this exhaustion and being worn out, and I think it did happen a lot more than the documentary brought out.

A: Yeah. I think that discussion about mental stability and exhaustion and parents within this cult – there’s something about this that is attracting a certain type of person. I think it was very attractive to people like my mother who struggled with depression, who struggled with trauma prior to joining. You add this enormous amount of pressure to be perfect and to execute perfectly, and in my mother’s case you add in a child that is not a typical child, that requires a challenging parenthood regardless of situation. My brother was a difficult child to parent; he will tell you that, it is not a secret – without resources, and you’re trying to fit this incredibly non-neurotypical, gifted child into this hugely controlling group – it was horrible. Then I as the child that figured out the game very, very quickly, that if you just say yes ma’am and do it, you in fact never get spanked. It was such a survival instinct that still affects me to this day; this ability to survive and not rock the boat, and go under the radar, and do what you need to do. To one, not be a burden to your parent because you are keenly aware that she is exhausted, and also to simply avoid any attention so that you don’t get into trouble.

S: So Abigail, with that, was your instinct to fly under the radar, comply immediately, instant obedience – as we saw this little kid saying in the documentary; instant obedience – was that out of having watch severe discipline of your brother? Was that having experienced it yourself? What happened with that?

A: Some of both. My brother certainly got the brunt of corporal punishment, just because he (to his credit) was never willing to accept instant obedience without explanation. Which is fair, and good. And he just never could quiet that little voice inside you that say’s that’s wrong – he never could be quiet about that voice. I was much more adaptive to abuse, to be very quiet and instantly obedient, and at least outwardly shelve that and just take on a lot of inner anxiety. But I certainly was spanked – that spanking video in the documentary, of the Pearls spanking with the rod and the puppet was disturbing, but the spanking video with the little boy on stage was the most disturbing, because I don’t think any of us had ever seen that video before, and it was so step by step, exactly what spanking looked like for me – and I spent the majority of my 20s saying that I did not have harmful spanking because I was never spanked in anger. And I wasn’t. That is 100% true – I was never spanked in anger.

S: That is what is so much more fucking fucked up and screws with your head.

A: I was in my early 20s before I realized how primed I had been for trauma bonding. And then I really did not know how to bond with somebody outside of trauma. I couldn’t do that. I think it was directly because of that very structured spanking that the IBLP taught.

S: I want to comment on this for listeners who may not be familiar. It’s this idea that we’re not going to discipline our child in anger, but we’re going to discipline our child out of love. We’re going to be very intentional, and we’re going to be very calm. And we’re going to say Johnny, what you did is wrong. It’s a sin, and it makes God sad, and that’s why I have to spank you. Do you agree that this is God’s law and this is right, and God commands that you be disciplined this way? And Johnny has to say, yes mommy, or yes daddy. Okay, come here, lean over, pull down pants, however you’re going to do it, take the rod, smack, smack, smack. If the child does not cry enough or in the right way, the beating will continue until we see that there is a breaking of some sort. And then, once that’s all done – and who’s to say how much they have to cry, how loud it has to be, how long it has to happen – but if they’re also fighting it well, we’ve got to keep smacking them until they stop fighting it. Whenever this horrific ritual is over, it’s okay, let’s pray. I forgive you, hug me, I love you, tell me you love me. It is so sick. That is so sick. To people in this culture that think that spanking is okay and maybe that’s better because it’s not out of anger; what I just want you to imagine – and I’m going to say trigger warning here. Trigger Warning: Imagine if you will, a man who thinks he has authority over a woman, who decides he’s going to violate her sexually. And when it’s done, she needs to tell him thank you.

A: Mmhmm. Absolutely.

S: We can see how messed up and abusive and just headfuckery that is, and it is not different with what these children are inflicted with.

A: And you cannot have normal emotions as an adult, as a who was taught submission that way. I want to be clear about this. Ginny, who Sharon mentioned at the beginning of the podcast is my best friend;, she’s a veterinarian specializing in behavior, and we are very, very close friends. Kind of an inside joke between the two of us is Ginny calls me her favorite little sociopath. I think that that is so important, because you don’t emote normally. It’s not that you don’t have emotions, because you do – I do, I certainly have normal emotions but they never come out of my face.

S: So let’s be clear Abigail, for listeners who may not be into the behavior geek speak and the clinical definitions that you and I know. Sociopath – people hear that and immediately think oh that’s the type of person that inflicts pain and gets joy out of seeing others suffer, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about abnormal, maladaptive, out of touch with emotions, not able to connect and relate in what is a species-specific, normal social interaction. That’s what we’re talking about.

A: Right. It’s guardedness, is really what it is. Your emotions are always private only for you, never to be seen by others – particularly negative emotions. When I do have a big emotional response, it is a cracking that is done privately until exhaustion. That is still true, and I think that’s really important, that 20 years of therapy, working, working, working; a crack in emotions where I genuinely cry is still done privately and to exhaustion. That is a reality that likely will never be typical for me, and that is a direct result of this kind of spanking of children in peace and harmony and that whole trauma bonding thing.

S: Do you hear a similar experience with others that you know that have come out of this or similar type cults and family dynamics?

A: Yes, very, very similar. I think there are two presentations that are most common; the presentation that I have where I’m generally quite in control of myself all the time – to my detriment, so I’m overly in control. And then you see things like my brother who spent a number of years in his 20s quite violent, and quite explosive. Because the emotional dysregulation is the same, regardless of whether it presents as overly violent or underly violent – it is still the same emotional learned dysregulation.

S: Right. It’s kind of an emotional learned helplessness in some ways, for you.

A: Absolutely. And always kind of saying well, if I can just get through this then I’ll feel better. It’s taught in that spanking ritual that you describe that it’s like – well now we’re going to pray and cuddle after you were broken.

S: What the fuck!

A: I think everybody I’ve talked to that watched the documentary and saw that video was appalled. That was the point where they either had to pause and walk away, or it was certainly the point in the documentary where I cried for the first time, and I was like, oh my goodness. It was so orderly and so learned, and our parents were taught this, then implemented it and executed it perfectly. At least, my parents did, and to realize that it presents in a lot of weird ways as an adult – there was a big discussion on a back channel of survivors that sexual kink is a real thing that happens coming out of this cult, and it’s directly tied to that, and I think that’s an important discussion. I think the idea that you are so groomed for abuse that you don’t even know that you’re being abused. As an adult that is so vital, and so common. And then this inability to – it makes me a little bit physically ill to say I love you to somebody that I am not deeply emotional intimate with. It makes me a little bit nauseous, to this day.

S: It’s this very weird robotic, totally disconnected, totally dissociated – there is no real emotion and connection. Going through the motions and then putting those words on top of it of mommy loves you, daddy loves you – it is just so, so – I’m just going to call it wicked. I’m just going to call it wicked.

A: It is.

T: It is evil. That was so well-stated Abigail. I can’t do enough in my life to give voice to you being able to break this down – and survivors like you – in making sure you all have a platform to really communicate the depths of the impact, because of course I’m a perpetrator in this story. I did walk away and I did apologise, but because I did faithfully carry out these rituals, there will be things in my kids through years of therapy, that like you stated, they will never be able to be what they should have been in a normal environment. That methodical conditioning and short circuiting of the emotional range, and dictating how they’re supposed to feel in this situation, and the trauma that that records in their physical and emotional being for all their further relationships is so real. For me, I have to walk carefully because this is my children’s story – it’s their story to tell. But you, people like you, the survivors you are friends with, have been an enormous voice of teaching so that I can hear what you are struggling with and I want so much to amplify your voice in that, and all of the things you guys have learned and especially in your support groups talking to each other. I think most people watch that documentary and they’re like, okay, this is uncomfortable, this is horrifying, they’re spanking. And then people are spanked in lots of different kinds of settings, but this ritual has deep psychological underpinnings that anything more you want to say about that, I really want to hear it. Plus, you have this background in behavior learning that you’ve been learning with the animals, and I think your insight on this is just so valuable.

A: I appreciate that, and it means a lot to me as an individual – and I know this has come up when I’ve discussed it with my friends that grew up this way – when we hear an adult who did this with children be so transparent about coming out of it and how that happened, it is really helpful to us. It is helpful to hear how you got there and why it happened, and how you got out of it. those are things that are helpful to me as an individual. I want to understand – parents are just people; I think we all get to a stage in life when we figure that out and go oh, my parents are just like, people that have trauma and problems and their own things. But it is helpful to hear responsibility taken and those things are valuable. I am very in awe of my friends who have chosen to raise children after this, because I could not. I didn’t have any confidence in myself to know how to not have feral children, because I was really worried that I would just not do anything because I was afraid to be controlling, and our examples were so distorted on what it should look like. That was very terrifying for both me and my brother. We have other decisions that factored into that; I have genetic health conditions that factored in; my brother has quite a lot of mental illness and it runs in our family. There were other decisions. There are a large percentage of us that came out in my age group who didn’t have children. I think a lot of that is the same fear that motivated our parents to join is the same fear that has motivated us to not do it. I think that is really important; there is a connection between generations, that fear is still hugely driving in this world, even out of it.

S: Yes, you know, circling back to that scripture, that the sins of the father are visited upon the children to the next generation – I can’t quote it exactly anymore. It’s funny, I look at the bible now and certain verses – and I think you know, there are some truths in that. I don’t read it anymore the way I used to, of okay this is the infallible word of God telling us how to live every aspect of our life. No. There’s some cool stuff in there, there’s some stuff you could look at as being – well, kind of shitty Shakespeare, if you will. But this particular verse, now I look at it and I think this isn’t about God saying he’s going to punish some innocent child for the horrible shit the parents did. No, what this is saying is that the wounds of the fathers – so many of the bad things that we do that we inflict upon ourselves or other people are the result of unresolved traumas and unresolved issues that we might not even know how to deal with.

A: Sure.

S: But because of that we have a brokenness in us, and because we don’t get it healed or resolved – whether intentionally (which sometimes it is) or unintentionally (which I think is more often the case), our pain is impacting our children. And as they are impacted and have their pain and grow up, it impacts the next generation. I think that’s what this is talking about, and that’s why talking amongst generations and being able to say hey, we fucked up, big time, and we hurt you and we damaged you, and we want to do all we can to be part of the healing and maybe we can break this “generational curse” so that others in the future are not wounded in these same ways.

A: Absolutely. I think that’s so valuable. The truth has to lie somewhere in the in between. This extremist view that was taking in my raising and in the early rearing of your children is extreme, but there is another extreme, and I think the truth can only be found in talking amongst generations about how we got there, and certainly even if it would be possible to include y’all’s parents – I think those are where the meaty discussions really happen. How did we get here, where is a more educated and more empathetic response to these big questions. Rearing children is hard and terrifying.

T: That’s so well said. I keep trying to post as much as possible – it’s on Instagram, Feet of Clay.cult sisters, and I genuinely from the heart of my heart, I’m so proud of your generation, and the ones coming up behind you. You guys have been so thoughtful in this, you’re being educated and you’re looking for those answers and starting those conversations, and I’m just so proud of your generation. Especially the ones who came out and started talking about their abuse stories. You’re right, even in the documentary I think it just kind of glosses over the 60s kind of – we’ve heard it a lot in our generation, the sex drugs and rock and roll. That was impactful; Vietnam impacted my growing up years. It did impact how I wanted to parent and do it differently. That trauma I did bring in, and of course when you say Jesus heals everything – obviously he didn’t heal everything. And then you watch Bill Gothard up there – we took notes yesterday when we were watching it. I think he uses the word guarantee a couple of places.

A: He does. He loves that word.

T: This is – you’re confused, you don’t know how to do it, THIS IS the guarantee to have the answers. And how we were such suckers for that.

S: We were.

A: How wild is that. Just as an animal behavioralist, I would never, NEVER guarantee the behavior of an animal I’m working with. That’s insane. That is career suicide, to guarantee the behavior of an animal I’m working with. When I watched that documentary that stood out to me so much too; how many times he said guarantee and promise.

S: Oh my god.

A: Oh my god.

S: And also, who was the old looking dude, the creepy guy with the long hair and beard?

A: That’s Mr Pearl, who’s like, a straight up child abuser.

S: Oh my god.

A: Literally writing a book on how to not get arrested.

S: It’s just like training an animal. And I’m like, you know what? Any animal you train, you asshole, will try to run away as far as possible from you.

A: Ohh. It was so weird to hear him say that. I was like oh, I bet your animals are just miserable and also very dangerous.

S: Oh my goodness. On that whole thing of the brokenness of the previous generation – I grew up in a home where we were financially well off, my dad was a surgeon but my mom was a pretty intense alcoholic, and it was a very abusive, horrible childhood. I remember thinking after I was married and the idea of having children – when we were first married we used birth control because it was more about working for the kingdom – I didn’t get that revelation and truth about no birth control for a few years after. That blessed, blessed revelation! I remember thinking about having children, and I imagined this number line with a zero in the center, and it goes off to a 100 in the positive side and 100 negative, and I thought of my childhood as being pretty damn close down to 50 or more negative. And I thought, if I can just give my children that is neutral, just zero – I had no hope that I would be a positive parent. I had no idea how to do that. I was scared. I didn’t know. No good role models, so it was just like, my greatest hope was I wouldn’t do too much damage. And that’s really said.

A: Yeah, that is sad but I also think it’s really honest. I think that that’s a pretty honest viewpoint of my friends that didn’t grow up this way that had children; if I can just get them neutral.

S: Right.

A: That would be better than what I had. I think that is maybe more human condition than even evangelicalism.

S: Very good point.

T: I think to the point of the sins of the fathers, which was such a principle, I know what I’m seeing a lot on the TIktok videos and the posts from the survivors of this form of abuse is being cycle breakers. I’ve thought that’s really interesting; I entered into the depths of the belief system that I did to do just that. To break the generational curses – and then created a whole shitload of new ones. So now that whole concept of cycle breakers. That’s what I loved when you said it’s really the other generation – my parents, my parenting and now my kids. How can we get to the table and say let’s truly be cycle breakers and let’s see where this came from. Can we achieve more than being net neutral. Can we actually start to teach principals and health and life to equip even the next generation.

S: Yeah. Emotional connection. Emotional awareness of yourself; the ability to identify your feelings and express them and know it’s normal and okay. I see videos – there’s one of this little Asian boy (we’ll have to find it Tracey, and put a link in). It’s a little toddler talking to his mom saying I was angry, and I was having a hard time making good choices because I was angry. And I’m like oh my god, that is so beautiful and amazing. That is how we should be raising our children.

A: I saw that video too, Sharon. I watched it over and over and over again because I was so interested to see if it looked rehearsed and coerced. It really didn’t; it looked so lovely and about how he feels and how his feelings affects his behavior and his actions, and giving him a fullness of language to express minute differences in feelings. I really did like that video. I watched it a whole bunch of times.

S: And I saw another one, a young woman with her maybe 4-year-old or so, and she was talking about how her child had slapped, or done something to another child over a toy. The woman was talking about how – she goes, I’m not putting my child in a time out. Why would I do this? She’s having trouble with her emotions; she’s having trouble regulating this conflict of how she feels, so no, I’m going to gather her up in my arms and say honey, we don’t hit and hurt other people. No one will hurt and hit you and it be okay. We can’t do this to other people. What you’re feeling is frustration, right? You feel confused, you feel sad, you feel angry, you feel frustrated. I’m here with you. And holding her daughter in her arms and saying breathe with me, let me help you through this emotion. That blew my mind. I’m like, oh my god I want that. I want somebody to put their arms around me and say honey it’s okay, you’re struggling with this, I’m here with you, let’s do it together; so it’s not a time out, it’s a time in. it just makes me want to cry right now thinking of it; this is the message we need to bring to every parent. Yeah.

A: It’s meeting that emotional need and teaching the language for what they’re feeling and what’s happening. I’ve been in therapy for 20 years; the first ten was religious therapy which was a whole different thing, but at this point I see my therapist every week, and that’s pretty much my therapy appointment. It’s just help us feel our emotions today; labelling things and still learning those appropriate behaviors and labels, and what needs to be acted on and what doesn’t need to be acted on; what needs to be resolved and what doesn’t need to be resolved. That is still such a huge part of my daily life of still learning those things.

T: And we all are. That’s what I love so much about what you said. I adopted a practice because I was trying to react against a bad one, then we enacted a bad one. Your generation is coming out reacting against that bad one and it’s like, let’s come together. We’ve come further on understanding mental health; we understand more about the emotional complexities. What everyone is having to get in therapy – how do we equip us all to collectively, even as a culture, bring this so that we’re going to raise a healthy generation in the future. I love it. I love the work you’re doing; I love that you met Sharon, I love that you guys are working with animals. I love that you’ve learned all these principles and are bringing it – I think it’s beautiful. I love to hear you talk. I think it’s such an important message.

S: So Abigail, you’re in this family, you’re nine years old, your parents are going deep into the IBLP rabbit hole. What was your belief? What did you accept, what did you adopt – what did you think about all this God stuff, as a child and then in your teen years?

A: So I think as a child it never really occurred to me to have my own thought about it. I don’t particularly remember not swallowing it hook line and sinker at any point. I was frustrated that I couldn’t wear pants to church – that was frustrating. I felt like it was wildly unfair that the boys could play kick ball in the church parking lot and I couldn’t. That seemed hugely unfair. I also thought it was wildly unfair – so at the ATI home school curriculum at IBLP they had the conference every year, and the boys got to do this thing called ALERT cadets, which was just the coolest thing ever. It was a whole week of boy scout camp; they would go rappelling, they would shoot bow and arrows, they would wood carve and it was so much fun. The girls had to go to this stupid thing called pre-EXCEL where you learned how to set a table and have a tea party and it was dumb.

(laughter)

A: And we had to wear dresses and the boys got to wear khakis and polo shirts, and it was just stupid. I remember being really angry that I couldn’t rappel at the annual conference and that that was really dumb, and also I was a very athletic child and my brother was not, and that seemed wildly unfair that he didn’t even like rappelling and was forced to rappel, and was therefore not man enough (and that’s a whole other thing about what this did to the boys), but I just remember knowing how unjust and unfair it was that I would be such a good rappeler and then stupid Jeffery would be forced to rappel, and he didn’t even want to. I do remember being mad about that.

S: When you think of it as unfair, did you think of this as being imposed on you by adults? Did you see this as God’s rule? How did you interpret that?

A: I think probably a little bit of both. This is again where my own household was complex. I read this article years ago and I’m so upset I didn’t save it, but it was talking about how fathers in power have rules for women that are not their daughters and that was very much true in my home. My father had these strong beliefs about women and the place of women, and what women should do, but not for his precious baby girl. I was to be a leader and make money, and be successful at what I was doing in a way that was a little bit at odds with the theology of what he was also teaching me. That was always a little bit frustrating. My dad loved the fact that I was an elite equestrian. He loved the fact I was incredibly strong and incredibly fit in those things, so the idea from my father at least, of being able to rappel off of a wall would have been greatly valued – but not in the context of mixed company, meaning boys and girls together.

S: So a little bit of a double standard or a double life?

A: For sure. There was very much a double life element. I don’t know how unique that is to my family; I think not super unique but somewhat unique. I was raised in a much more progressive way about being my own person in some ways, and then in other ways taught this complete submission, only pleasing to men. There was kind of a double-mouthed snake about that, that was really consistent in my whole upbringing. It was very frustrating and very confusing. I definitely was very frustrated by modesty culture – not necessarily purity culture. I believed that very early on, pretty hook line and sinker, but modesty culture was frustrating to me because the rules seemed ambiguous and ever changing.

T: Yeah.

A: That was very frustrating.

S: Abigail, I do know a little bit more about how things progressed for you in the following years. I want to do a deep dive into that, but I want to come back to the question of your faith. Did you have a belief in a God? Did you have a belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection? Did you pray and feel you had this personal relationship with Jesus?

A: Yes, very much so. I professed Christ as my savior at seven, I was baptized at seven. I don’t have any memory of not deeply believing in a personal relationship with the Trinity and deeply believing the tenets of the faith. I did not question those things. My brother had much, much harder questions and did spend a lot of time questioning very young. He also really struggled with his belief system around the more demonic forces of Christianity – demons and Satan and being plagued or possessed by demons. Those are things that from a very young age he was talking about and struggling with and wrestling. Of course, in the IBLP active and living Satan is a huge tenet of the faith.

S: Yes.

A: That Satan is actively pursuing your heart, almost more so than God is in some very weird ways.

T: Oh my god. That’s so well said.

S: That is so right! It’s like, the devil is after you every single day to try to intervene and he’s taking more of an interest in your day to day than God is, right?

A: It was much more. I think it’s a CS Lewis quote, and I may be misquoting it, where he talks about the hounds of heaven, where the hounds of heaven are chasing you and that God is covetous of your heart and that he will keep your heart. That was not taught to us at all. It was that you had to seek God, but that Satan was wily and actively trying to trick you into possession. God was not after your heart in that same pursuit.

S: It’s like you as this little sheep; it’s up to you to make sure you stay close enough to the shepherd; it’s not up to the shepherd to keep you close and safe. Yeah. I see that.

T: I haven’t heard that brought out in a lot of stuff I’ve been listening to. I think that’s another really poignant point, when you look at the whole umbrella diagram, and how much emphasis is put on when you’re going to get out from under that umbrella where the devil’s going to be able to get you. We had definitely that aspect – as you’re talking about that double-mouthed kind of lifestyle, I would say that was prevalent in Last Days Ministries too. We did have so many women in leadership positions, and we would preach this one thing so it definitely was confusing.

A: And think about the umbrella diagram – it’s not like the blessings of God are raining on you under the umbrella. Only the fiery darts are raining on you if you’re out from under the umbrella. There is no existence blessing of God.

T: That’s so good.

S: Yeah.

A: It’s really fucked up. And you think about that you’re teaching this to tiny children, right? Itty bitty kids. Not allowed to watch Freddy Kruger because we’d have nightmares for months, right? And yet you’re teaching these tiny children that Satan is actively pursuing you and your heart. My brother had night terrors that were truly indescribable. To my knowledge I’m not sure he sleeps with the lights out to this day; I don’t know. He did not sleep with the lights out in the entire time we cohabited a house together. Not one time.

S: Because it’s not just the devil after you, but there’s a burning lake of fire waiting and if you trip up, your loving, heavenly Father is going to send you there.

A: Yep, and not a drop of water for you.

S: Nope. Man.

T: Wow.

A: There was an underpinning of terror and fear that was so normal that it’s really hard to even ferret it out and describe it, because it just existed. Any wrong move and Satan was going to get – they used to call it a stronghold – in your heart. It was this diagram like a grid; the grid was your heart, and Satan could build strongholds almost like a chess game. Then when all the grid was full, you were hopeless and there was no salvation. There was all this teaching how to break strongholds in your heart, so it was assumed that you had them, and then the rituals of breaking strongholds was so entrenched in everything we were taught. I as an individual believed that 100%. I have journals from when I was little (9-12 years old), just entries on entries of strongholds and prayer, and breaking strongholds and re-giving your heart to God. It’s so sad to read now, because you’re just little.

T: You’re just little.

S: Just a kid. Abigail, this has been painful and wonderful both, and there’s so much more of your story and your journey for us to share. I think what we will do here though – I think we’re going to put a pause in it and carry on and pick up in your mid-teens. I know there’s some pretty fucked up shit there to talk about.

A: The most fucked up shit happened then.

S: Well, I think we can say the idea of arranged betrothals and shit like that is a big part of the story.

T: Yes. Which dovetails into – if listeners have already heard some of Sharon’s interview and stories about how she also had an arranged marriage. That’s been one of my ah-ha’s as I’ve been diving into all of this is wow, I think some people who have them in modern US culture; you think you’re an outlier but wow there’s a lot more arranged marriages going on out there than even I realized.

S: Right. We’re gonna pause. We’re gonna keep talking with you but hey listeners, a little bit of a tease. You’re gonna have to wait until next week to hear some pretty juicy shit. I can say that.

(laughter)

S: Abigail, in the meantime would you just take a moment and tell people about where they can find out a little bit more from you on your Tiktok, and also what you do in your non-profit work with therapy dogs.

A: Sure, so they can find me on Tiktok at unicorn habitat. That Tiktok is mostly about my cult journey and leaving, and irreverent bible stories – it’s a quality Tiktok. Then if they want to know more about my non-profit and what I do in my post-cult regular life, they can find that at theroverchasefoundation.org and we’re on all the social medias too.

T: Great, and we will be sure to put all those links in our show notes to make it easy to find.

S: Alright everybody out there, thank you so much for listening and we’re going to continue chatting to Abigail, you’ll hear more of that next week. In the meantime please rate us, give us a review if you like. Find us on Instagram Feet of Clay.cult sisters and we’ll see you next time. Tracey, want to say goodbye?

T: Goodbye! See you next time.