This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Episode 011 – Abigail’s Story Part 2 – Arranged Betrothal & Teen Trauma in Bill Gothard’s IBLP (Shiny Happy People)

June 21, 2023

T: Hi, I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon, and we are Feet of Clay…

T: Confessions of the Cult Sisters. And do we have some confessions of some cult sisters today!

S: Yes we do! A different sister, and a different cult, but oh my god it’s kind of like same song, different verse, huh Tracey.

T: Very much so.

….

T: Hey listeners, we wanted to give you a heads up that in this episode we will be discussing very disturbing topics such as arranged child marriages, domestic abuse, as well as physical and sexual assault. Please use discretion when listening and take care of yourself.

…

T: Very much so, and we like our sisters, so welcome Abigail to The Confessions of the Cult Sisters. I already feel bonded to you.

A: It’s great to be here. I’m super excited to be back again with you guys.

S: Alright well folks, if you missed it, you should go back and listen to the last episode where Abigail told us about her childhood and growing up. Now we’re going to pick things up in the teen years and that’s where things get a little hot and steamy and more fraught with … aargh … all this shit that got heaped on all of us.

T: Yes. If we were Troy and Brian, at this point we would say Abigail, were you a teenage fundamentalist?

A: Absolutely yes! It doesn’t get a lot more fundy than me.

S: That’s true, I think you did out-fundy us, for sure.

(laughter)

S: Alright Abigail, bring us back to your teen years and how that all played out.

A: Yeah so I think the crazy thing about being in the IBLP is that all the rules suddenly change right when you’re about 13 years old, as a girl.

S: How do you mean? What changes?

A: IBLP kind of follows the Old Testament belief system that children are adults at 12 or 13 years old, depending on gender, so for girls 13…

S: Wow.

A: And all your rules change. You are suddenly now a sexual object. Suddenly now your purity culture and modesty requirements change even to more extreme than they were as a child. Your conduct needs to change – you are not allowed to have unchaperoned interactions with boys at all, in any scenario. Everything changes.

S: Is there like, a ritual or a talking about it, or a hey sit down, or is it an expected gradual shift? How does that take place?

A: I think we’re pretty taught to that rhythm from the time we’re little so we know it’s coming. I think it’s something that is usually met with some form of excitement and anticipation. There are things you weren’t allowed to participate in as a child that you’re now allowed to participate in as an “adult” (which is still a child).

S: Wait, wait – at 12 an 13 they’re calling you an adult?

A: Yes.

S: Oh my god.

A: IBLP doesn’t believe in teenagers. Teenagers are a thing that Satan created. So you’re a child, or you’re an adult.

T: It’s kind of like the entry fee to amusement parks. You’re either a child or you’re an adult, and it really is at that cut off.

A: Right. You either get chicken fingers, or you don’t.

(laughter)

S: The happy meal.

A: Yeah.

S: Happy meal or a big mac – okay then.

T: You know Sharon, in Judaism they have the Bat Mitzvah or the Bar Mitzvah of this coming into – I think what we would have called it is the age of accountability?

A: Yeah.

S: Yeaahh, but that’s just – I’m surprized. I’m kind of a little bit shocked.

A: I mean, it’s gross. It’s super, super gross.

S: Yeah.

A: So you can join the bell choir, and you can join the adult orchestra, and then you’re segregated even more by gender at this point, so our kind of answer to youth group was this thing called Impact. And that’s not all IBLP, that’s just our particular church.

S: What was the name of your church?

A: Calvary Baptist in Smyrna, Georgia, and it still exists in much the same form it did when I was there.

S: So it’s still IBLP?

A: Yes, and the same pastor as when I was growing up.

S: Okay.

A: We would go to Impact – sometimes the Impact group would meet together, meaning boys and girls, but there was an aisleway and the boys sat on one side and the girls sat on the other side, always. Often we were separated, and when we were separated – from what I’ve been able to piece together by talking to my brother and other boys who were there, is that the boys pretty much began their grooming for being finite, godly leaders. As my brother puts it, groomed to be abusers, and girls were (of course) almost 100% of our curriculum was purity culture and modesty, and not causing our brother to stumble, and how if we wore something or said something or did something and it caused the boys to think about us in a sexualized way, that was 100% our responsibility. It really can’t be overstated how much that was taught. It was almost exclusively what was being taught. I was a late blooming child, so at 13 I still looked very much like a child, and I really looked very much like a child until I was 16 coming 17, and then all of a sudden in like, a six month period of time, I grew six inches and I was a very curvy girl. I actually happen to know my measurements at that time, which was 36 18 30. So I just looked like Marilyn Monroe all the time.

T: Yeah.

A: And it was hor-rible. I cannot describe to you the body dysmorphia, the hatred of my body. It is so hard to describe it, because it was so not in keeping with the purity culture that we were being taught within the IBLP. There was almost nothing I could do to not look sexy by their standards.

S: You know what Abigail, I’m sitting here and I just realized my mouth is kind of dropped open, because I am like – I’ve got this weird tingling in my body trying to imagine this. It is a different experience than Tracey and I had. We didn’t feel shamed about our bodies transforming into women, and I’m putting myself into your position where you’ve been taught and conditioned that anything in any way sexual about you is a temptation; that you’re going to be a stumbling block to your brothers; therefore you are the source of sin, you are the one responsible, and you’re blossoming, you’re growing breasts, and you’re at this phase in life where you should be rejoicing and happy about what’s happening in your body, and instead it’s got to become a self-loathing and a shame and wanting to hide it?

A: Yes, it was truly a horrible experience. Also compounded by the fact that we’re now talking about the late 90s early 2000s, which was Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and so even in pop culture, what was being shown of women what was still a very athletic, slight build, so the body type that I had was not popular in any arena that was visible to me. I did not know another person that had a body like mine. I don’t have a body like my mother’s; I have a body like my paternal grandmother. She died when I was four, so no one that I knew had a body like mine, which I think would have been difficult in any upbringing, but you add in that sinfulness of the female form and it was devastating. Just devastating. In addition to that – it’s so hard to describe. So you want to not look sexy, but at the same time the IBLP is all about this courtship/betrothal idea, which is just a fancy way of saying arranged marriage. It was a meat market. It was so competitive.

S: How do you mean? How so? Describe that.

A: So the way that courtship works in the IBLP and the way it was practised – and there was some diversity in courtship, but the general tenet is that a boy gets vision from God or a word from God that you’re supposed to be his wife, and then he goes to talk to his dad about it. His dad then talks to your dad about it, and the agreement is made.

S: Wait. Before talking to you?

A: Correct. So the boy is the instigator, but you don’t know about it as the girl. He talks to his father, who then talks to your father; the fathers make the agreement that the intention of courtship is present, and then depending on the particular accent or flavor of that courtship, the girl is then courted or wooed to see if she is in fact interested in the match – and this is where things get really very complex.

T: Okay, I’m going to stop you there and say Sharon, we had this at Last Days Ministries but take the parents out and put in the group leader.

S: Yes.

T: Sharon was already married for a lot of the time before I came, but it was almost textbook the same – equally, I as a female could go to my group leader and say I was interested and I was still to be praying, but it was driven by whether the man felt he had heard from God and that the leaders would bless that. Then our group leaders would talk first and they would come to us and basically say this is approved. Then the male could start to walk with you and spend time with you, so I absolutely understand that. I think in our four part series on purity culture I so relate to the confusion, because in one aspect I’m being told that my body is sinful and I can’t be a stumbling block, and that’s when I went to the opposite extreme. I stopped taking showers, I was trying to be frumpy, and then I watched all the ones that were getting in relationships were the prettier girls, and so I was very confused. So I relate to that, a lot.

S: There was also another level at Last Days Ministries and that was it wasn’t just the group leaders, but it was the leadership – some or maybe a lot of it happened after Keith was killed in the plane crash, and then you still had this kind of trinity of Wayne and Martin and Melody and I believe that the group leaders had to submit the whole idea of each couple to them and they’d have to pray about it and feel that it was of God, and get that sanctioned. So I’m not sure, maybe in some of the IBLP churches it wasn’t just the fathers, the head pastor had to be okay with it too? Or did it not go that far?

A: It was less about the head pastor in at least the experiences I’m aware of. My understanding is that there were some arrangements that Gothard himself had quite a lot to do with…

S: Can I just say something real quick, I want to say it right now. I had a lot of fun when I was making notes. I decided I’m not going to call him Bill Gothard, I’m going to call him Bill Got Hard.

A: Ahahaha I love it. I fully support that.

S: I could just picture it – man, he got hard looking at all these young virgins, didn’t he!

A: I’m sure he did, there was no doubt about that.

S: Okay sorry, I digress.

A: So, for my experience the senior pastor kind of, I think passively, had to not have a check in his spirit about it.

T: Oooh yeah.

S: That all knowing check in my spirit.

A: Yeah, the magical check in the spirit. Where it got so messed up is that in theory, a girl could veto any offer, but in reality that’s not really true. We had been groomed from infancy that our purpose in life was to be a wife and a mother, and there was a really meaningful terror of no one asking.

S: Really.

T: Ohh yeah.

A: Like, a really meaningful terror.

S: I hadn’t even thought about that.

A: And if no one asks, then who are you? What is your value to the kingdom?

S: So basically you’ve got to just take the first offer, because you may not get another?

A: That was kind of the unspoken truth of it all. Unless you were confident you would get multiple offers, which some of us had that privilege and some of us didn’t. I was in a position of privilege at least in that way, that I was confident I would get the offers I wanted.

T: Wow.

S: When did you get your first offer, and how did that happen?

A: That’s where this all gets so – just gross and pedo. So I read through my journals recently, and at 12 years old is the first time people started to talk to me directly about Jonathan.

S: People. Which people?

A: His mother, my mother, random people in the church, just about that existence and about that match. It was done in such a kind of subtle way that…

S: Sneaky.

A: I don’t know how else to describe it other than grooming. I really don’t. it was grooming; it was subtle things like his mom started to spend a lot of time with me. Our families started to spend time together.

S: Oh my god I’m just starting to get so creeped out right now.

A: It’s so gross.

T: So he was in your church?

A: Yes. It was a church courtship, meaning we were in the same body of Christ.

T: Okay, had you been in any home school groups with him or in your childhood years had any kind of childhood interactions?

A: We were both active members of the church, which was large by IBLP standards, but not large by any other standards – about 300 families.

T: Ooh, that is kind of large.

A: We certainly knew each other and knew of each other. I will tell you this, having re-read all of that – I have absolutely no idea whether I had a crush on Jonathan or not. I have no idea. I could not tell you. It was abundantly clear from my journal entries that I was thinking about him as a potential God’s plan partner for me at 12 and 13 years old.

S: At 12?? At fucking 12 years old?

A: Yes. And don’t forget that me at 12 years old looked like a super child. Very, very prepubescent.

S: I’ve got my hands on my head and I’m just wanting to go holy shit, what the fuck.

A: Nothing about the story that I’m about to tell you guys is unique to me. Nothing about this is my individual experience in courtship in the IBLP. This is how it was done.

S: Oh my god.

T: And Sharon and I are going to try really hard not to interrupt you so you can tell your story, but we’re so sad and horrified. We so want to wrap our arms around you and say this shouldn’t have happened.

S: I’m just stunned. I am literally sitting here feeling this in my body right now. I’m remember the terror I felt when I was 17 and it’s like – okay, what do you think of this guy. I remember being terrified of that. I’m putting myself back as a 12-year-old – and to our listeners, every one of you, please think back when you were 12 years old. 12 years old!

A: So, it was just always in my mind. I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t present in my mind that was perhaps God’s plan for me. There was an enormous amount of grooming, both individually for Jonathan, but also daily grooming for being the perfect submissive wife, being the perfect helpmeet, being all of these things – that was daily grooming. A constant daily grooming. And then of course, you’re a teenager, so you’re a little boy crazy, right? Those things are still happening, you still have hormones. It was really interesting to hear my brother’s perspective recently, when we talked after the documentary. My brother was gone by the time it got serious with Jonathan, which is when I was about 15 because he had been kicked out of the house for rebelling. So he was not present, and it’s been really interesting to visit with him about this story now. I will use his words because it just feels weird for me to say it, but he said yeah, you were like the Ken and Barbie of Calvary. There was a pressure, as much as I hated my body and I hated my sexuality, I was a very beautiful child and Jonathan was a very beautiful child. We came from very respected families, and there was a pressure there that is pretty indescribable to not mess it up.

T: Oh yeah.

S: Like you’re going to be the poster child couple.

A: Absolutely.

S: And you’re going to be this show piece that the church can point to as isn’t this beautiful and wonderful what God has done.

A: Yeah. Absolutely. We always say that we were the guinea pig generation of this whole idea, so there had been two courtships prior to mine that we were positioned to view as wildly successful.

S: You mean in that church before you.

A: Correct. In that church, just two. I will say their stories are their own stories and I do not want to presume to tell them. I have since learned as an adult that there were certainly full of hardship and trauma and abuse, but we had no idea. It was THE thing – you wanted it so badly because who were you if you didn’t have that.

S: And they looked like shiny happy people, right?

A: Exactly, and it was so romanticized, this idea of God’s perfect person and he would fill every crevice and every absence of your heart, and every longing would be completely and totally filled by this person. It was a guarantee.

T: A guarantee!

A: And it was a promise that if you did this, God would fully bless you.

T: Wow.

A: And as often happened in courtship, as it turned out much later, by the time we were 15…

T: 15??

A: Yeah – hormones were raging, we were obsessed with each other, because we had been groomed to be.

S: Right.

A: Then, the parents were like well you guys can’t talk to each other or see each other at all. Because it was too soon, and it wasn’t the fulfilment of God’s timing.

S: Okay.

T: Did they give you any teaching as far as what God’s timing would look like? Were they saying get through high school, were they giving you any markers?

A: So my parents really wanted us to get through high school which meant that we could begin a serious courtship at the end of high school. I think my parents really wanted 19 or 20.

S: Can I just back up a second? When did it become official that you were like, betrothed or matched. Was there a specific conversation?

A: That didn’t happen till I was 17. We had this two years of separation, which was brutal. Think back on when you were 15 and the person you were puppy loved with. To not be able to speak with him or converse with him in any way – we would just be in our little pods of friends looking longingly at each other. It was horrible.

T: Oh yeah, it is. So 12 and 13 they’re grooming you for this and you’re noticing each other, and then they put brakes on. Did they ever think maybe we shouldn’t start this as young as 12 and 13 and maybe let them get older? I’m a little confused on why the start then the brakes.

A: We were all very confused. That is a fair confusing moment. I’m not sure – I don’t know if it got away from them, I don’t actually know how that happened. I don’t know. It’s still a mystery to me.

T: Okay. It’s part of their messed up plan then, which is something that’s come out in other parts of – no one really thought this through. Yeah. Okay.

A: Yeah it was like, what a great idea, and then there wasn’t actually plans for what a great idea it was. So in that two year kind of separation from 15 to 17, it’s very normal in the IBLP and I think in home school in general, to graduate early and I certainly did. He certainly did. He graduated and went to a fundamental Christian college for a year, and I worked. I was working fulltime in animal behavior and as a vet tech, still very much in the faith, and then according to my journals – which is all a little hazy, so journals are super helpful. So according to my journals it comes out that he is interested in a girl at his fundamental Christian college, which of course is devastating.

T: Mmmm. Devastating.

A: Devastating. Then at some point…

S: Were you 16 then? 17?

A: 17. I had just turned 17. Then at Christmas, so first semester break that’s kind of when it all came together. He apparently had seen me at Christmas and rekindled whatever and I was oblivious to this because I was heartbroken, shattered, and I had had a birthday party – my 17^th birthday party, and he came. Apparently that was the day he went home and talked to his dad.

T: He heard from God.

A: Right.

T: He heard from God on your beautiful birthday.

A: It was certainly nothing about the fact that…

T: No.

S: I think his cock and balls heard from her beautiful breasts.

A: I think that is 100% fact. Just an aching sense of God’s presence, if you will.

(laughter)

A: So his dad communicated with my dad and then as I understand it, because I was not involved, there was kind of like an interview process that occurred for several months, where my father would send enquiries. What is typical in a courtship and you will hear this some in the documentary, and certainly some if you watch the actual Duggars 19 Kids and Counting, the application and a common thing would be for the father of the girl to email him and want full a full thesis on belief systems and are in you in the word and how much are you in the word, and what has God shown you. You’re supposed to have this remnant verse about why it’s that girl, that God’s supposed to give you this remnant verse.

T: Oh my god.

A: Just a cherry picking expedition. But not from the Song of Solomon, because let’s not get too crazy.

(laughter)

S: Okay, I’m thinking of this application. Abigail, I know you’re in the dog world and I’m in the horse world, and I breed and you breed and I’m like, you know, I have a buyer’s application.

A: Oh me too, it’s crazy.

S: Yeah. So if somebody wants to buy one of my colts, one of my horses, yeah, I got a whole lot of information I want to have from you, because I do care that my horse gets a good home but in the end it’s like yeah, I’ve got a product to sell so are you the right match. That’s what I’m thinking about this application.

A: That is 100% it. I am a product to sell. You are really doing a disservice to not think of it that way. I am a perfect virgin and therefore a hugely valuable commodity, both for the kingdom, for my father’s status, for the status of the church I am an enormously valuable commodity.

S: Holy shit.

A: So, some courtships are much more extreme than others. Mine was kind of middle of the road. Certainly some courtships require a bride price; some courtships require all kinds of crazy things.

S: Wait, wait – a bride price.

A: Yeeah.

S: Like you hear about in India and…?

A: Yeah, it’s a real thing.

T: Like the dowry. It transcends cultures and time. Mainly time.

S: Wait, wait.

T: Time.

S: Wait. This is … you’re kidding. What kind of bride price??

A: We’re going to break Sharon.

(laughter)

T: And to listeners – everyone, I want listeners to just take a step back; Sharon is freaked out, who was in an arranged marriage herself.

S: I was.  My marriage was arranged, but it was for the glory of Jesus, it wasn’t …

(laughter)

T: So yes, hearkening back to what I would say the women before me, a little bit older than me, women’s rights they were fighting in DC for, to bring us out of these kinds of dark ages, and then we as religious people stepped us right back into it. Moreso that now we’re bringing back bride prices, so continue.

A: Absolutely. In my particular situation that wasn’t a factor, but I certainly know of many situations where there was that the boy had to go and work for the daughter’s father for a period of time to work off her bride price. Those are things that actually happened.

S: Wow.

A: And not uncommonly. That was not part of my particular story.

S: Here you are blowing my mind. You are blowing my mind.

A: It was wild. So once the daughter’s father is satisfied that this is a godly enough man or has a remnant from Christ or whatever, then the typical progression (which was the case in my situation) is that you’re allowed to write letters back a and forth for a period of time, which is usually rather lengthy. Like, at least six months, pretty typical.

S: Can I just say, rather lengthy, six months? When you’re thinking about dating or going to get married, six months is nothing.

A: Right, yeah.

S: But you’re just writing.

A: Yeah, and you’re just writing, and there’s usually a stipulation on how much you can write. We were allowed to send letters once a week.

T: So controlled.

A: And I still have them, which is just mind blowing. They are some of the most disturbing content I have ever read. I’m going to describe some of the content. Now I want to be very clear about how these letters passed through cos this is so important. This was at the beginning of emails so we were allowed to email. I believe, if I remember the rules correctly, we were allowed to email once a week, and we were allowed to write a handwritten letter once a week, but the process was the same. I would write the letter and it would go to my father who would read it, and then mail it to Jonathan, or email it to Jonathan. Then Jonathan would write a letter or email to my father, who would then read it and then send it to me.

S: So your dad was the gatekeeper both ways.

A: Yes. That is so vitally important, that this was fully sanctioned in every sense of the word by your umbrella of authority. And fully controlled by your umbrella of authority and the content of those letters is so disturbing to me, even now 20 years later, because the content was so groomy and gross. There’s whole letters talking about everything he thought was wrong with me. Entire letters about everything he wanted me to change for the glory of God. You are prideful. You are immodest.

S: Ohhh. First I’m in a stunned silence, and now I just want to scream.

A: You’re going to get really angry in this story. You’re going to get very angry.

S: Okay.

A: And there are dozens of them. This is not like a one and done thing, there’s a four page email. So like, Times New Roman 10 point, four pages single spaced email all about modesty and how I am not modest enough, and how I am causing both him and others to lust and stumble, and how that is completely my responsibility.

T: Oh my god.

S: And your dad sees all this and gives it to you.

A: Correct. And just the detail on those discussions, and how sexualized they were in such a broken, disgusting way. At this time in the emails it references that he and his best friend took me to the mall to literally look at girls in advertizements to show me how their clothing forced them to connect the dots of nakedness.

T: Okay, can you explain that?

A: It’s wild. It seems like a whole other person. So, in this time period of the letter writing we were allowed to see each other occasionally, with chaperones. His best friend of course, wasn’t a qualified chaperone, because boys. But his siblings were, which was a huge mistake which we’ll get to later. So we were chaperoned at the mall and I don’t remember who the chaperones were, but they kind of fall into the background. Who I was at the mall with was Jonathan and his best friend, and me. The entire purpose of the mall trip was to walk me through the mall and point out living human being females who were dressed immodestly. For instance, this is the early 2000s, Britney Spears, Christine Aguilera. They would show me a girl that was in a baby doll t-shirt right, a V-neck with an inch of midriff showing, and they would say do you see how we can see the cleft of her breast and then her stomach, and then she has on super tight hip hugger jeans, and we are then forced as boys to imagine her naked, because all we have to do is fill in the blanks that her clothing is covering.

S: I think he was getting off on that.

A: Oh for sure. For sure.

T: For absolute sure, but is his purpose with you in this to say why it’s so important for you to be modest?

A: Correct.

T: Ohhh.

A: Because I needed to be perfect and pure and virginal for him.

T: I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.

A: And also, if he looked at pornography or he thought of me in a sexual way, that was my fault because I was not protecting my brother by dressing modestly.

S: Yes it was, yes it was your fault because you should have been wearing a burka.

A: Which I practically did!

T: I was going to say, what would he have been able to point out in your dress, because I’m sure – you talked about your mother being stylish in the other episode and that changing. I’ve thought about putting Sharon’s and my pictures in a montage to show the change, to show the teenage change. So I know when you’re in this mindset I can imagine you would be by all standards, very modest at this point.

A: Yes. And it was exhausting for me as an individual, because of my body type, nothing was modest enough. I was wearing the holy trinity of clothing, which was…

(laughter)

A: Remember, I was little bitty. I was a size 4, I had double E cup breasts and size 4, and I was wearing triple X button down shirts from Old Navy over to-the-ground denim skirts.

S: You know, that was just an exercise in subjugation and shaming.

A: Correct.

S: All that was, was an exercise in making you feel sinful and unworthy, and to blame so that you would internalize how bad you are so he could get away with whatever the fuck he wanted to do.

A: Yes. It was grooming. That’s all it was. There’s no nice way to put it. It was grooming, and it was grooming from the second it started. That’s so important to remember about these courtships; they are designed to groom submissive wives, and that you are of Eve and therefore full of sin and shame. 

T: Oh Yes. You’re putting this so well, and I just feel like – we all have to do what we can to turn the tides of acceptance in the halls of evangelicalism. We cannot accept this, and people who know this, we have to speak out. We can’t accept this. So, thank you.

A: It’s so common. Yes my rules of modesty were extreme but the message is identical to what is being preached to youth groups in almost every evangelical church in this country.

S: Yes, it is. There is a fantastic little satirical video, Christian rap song done by MEGA the podcast – Ooh, you made me feel like that.

A: Yes!

S: We’ll put that in the show notes as well. It’s all blame the woman. It is blame the woman. I want to say something else here – I will get into it a little bit more, but this system that hyper-sexualizes women by inflating the value of virginity and purity; it also creates in the boys – it can’t do anything but create in them their own hyper-sexuality. Everything is so taboo, it’s so taboo, it’s so taboo – all that does is it’s the scarcity principle; it just makes you want it more.

A: And there is a commonality – not everyone, but a commonality of creating some perversion in the boys that I don’t feel expert enough to speak on because I was not a boy in this movement, but there are people who speak about it openly within the IBLP context, of not just a hyper-sexualization of everything, but also a little bit of a sexual perversion tendency in many, many of these boys.

S: Mmhmm. Maybe that can be another topic we explore down the road, Abigail.

A: Yeah.

S: But continue on with this heartbreaking, angering, frustrating…

A: We’re going to skip ahead for a little bit, so this goes on, this kind of hyper-controlled, mostly focused on purity and modesty with occasional time together with chaperones – this goes on for a period of time, eight months maybe. I do want to give a trigger warning here for sexual content and sexual assault. At this point now, things are progressing right along; we’re discussing in-game tactics of when is an engagement going to happen, when is a marriage going to happen, and you’re putting the cart before the horse constantly. Constantly in these courtship relationships. They say it’s about getting to know one another with the intention of marriage, but what is actually happening is you’re obsessing over getting married, and not actually getting to know each other. And you’re never alone, so there’s no freedom to be yourself in its most raw format.

S: That makes so much sense.

T: We experienced that – listeners can go back to our four part purity culture series, but that was the short courtships. Mine was six months, and we were so obsessing about staying pure that you absolutely can’t build anything else, but always fighting that potential to sin. So I can fully relate to that.

A: Mmhmm. And you’re constantly sinning and confessing and sinning and confessing.

T: Ohh. It’s exhausting. So would you say during this time – I know that was the overriding thing – did you ever discover oh we like to do this fun thing together, was there any time that pressure was off when you could have a chance to know if you even liked him?

A: So not really, no, because you’re dating the family. I very much loved his family, his mother and his brothers in particular. I very much loved them, and that is God’s way – if you love his family then obviously you love him. But I had so much more freedom with his brothers to know them and to play with them – and you’re a still a child. I wanted to play. So the original sin was made of his siblings being allowed to chaperone us, which was just a terrible decision in any high control group, because there is a back scratching understanding that they are younger than us…

S: Yeah, I was going to ask are they older or younger.

A: Younger. So if they’re good to us, we’ll be good to them when it’s their turn. So that’s when Jonathan began asking for sexual acts that I did not know the words for. I was a perfect virgin daughter; I had done everything the way I was supposed to do it. Everything. When he began asking for sexual content using normal terms like blow job, I didn’t know what that was. So I was working full time and I went to a friend of mine at work who was a stripper when she wasn’t a vet tech. True story – I was like, who would know the answer to this question? And in my very sheltered mind, obviously she was the right choice. So I went to her and I said you know, Jonathan is asking for this, I don’t know what it is. She was also very young and told me what it was and how to do it. So I did, because I want to be very…

S: Wait, wait. What did you think when she was describing that to you?

A: Super, super terrified.

T: Oh yeah.

A: And like terrified-terrified. Made my stomach hurt.

T: I have to ask on here too, which you may get into, but in your head when you heard this – as long as the penis didn’t go in the vagina was it a grey area then?

A: No, there was no grey.

T: Okay, so you knew this would be wrong.

A: Yes. And I want to be clear on how this was presented, and why the grooming in purity culture is so key. This is exactly how it was present. This is Jonathan speaking: I am struggling with staying sexually pure, and if you don’t do this I will sin and it will be your fault.

S: Wait, wasn’t getting a blow job sin?

A: It certainly was, but you are so groomed at that point. I’m already going to marry him, right? It’s already done.

S: Right.

A: And if he’s going to sin…

S: Sin as in rape you? I mean, what other sin would he commit?

T: Sleep with another person.

A: Sleep with another person or look at pornography which of course was like the ultimate sin.

S: Okay.

A: So if I didn’t fulfil this sexual need of his then he was going to look at pornography, or get it from an unchristian girl or whatever. It was presented so clearly that way. When I tell you it was not presented like one day he asked for a blow job, that’s not how that happened. It was tiny, tiny pieces of grooming over months.

S: Yeah.

A: Then when it was presented that way, I did not want to and did not consent, but I was in my mid-20s before I realized that. I was in therapy and saying why am I behaving like a sexual abuse survivor when I have never had sexual abuse, and my therapist was like um, excuse me ma’am. In fact, that’s not your story and we need to have a discussion about consent and having enough education to consent, and having the ability to say no. Because the other half of that if you don’t do this I will sin, is if you tell anyone I asked for this, they won’t let you marry me.

T: Oh my god.

A: They are two sides of the same coin, and it is how these girls in purity culture are groomed to be victims.

T: Yes.

A: They are created to have all of that 100% their responsibility, and if a courtship breaks up towards the end of a courtship, it might as well be a divorce. You’ve given your heart away, and your heart is dirty and ruined.

S: So you’re being both preyed upon, and imprisoned.

A: Yes.  And that went on for several months.

S: So this wasn’t just a one time, this was multiple?

A: Dozens.

T: And the sibling chaperones are leaving you alone in a private place for this to happen?

A: In a car. Always in a car. They would be in the McDonalds, eating.

T: Okay. Wow.

A: Always in a car, and it was so not consensual, which is so difficult to describe because the context is so complex.

T: Mmhmm. You’re doing a great job.

S: Yeah, you are Abigail.

T: I love and appreciate the detail you’re giving, because of course there’s certain elements that Sharon and I can identify with because we came from situations that had some of these tentacles, but coupled with the docu-series you could see it as people were trying to express you’re being groomed to be a victim. I think you’re definitely adding a lot more color and flavor to this for us to understand how this is happening over a methodical conditioning.

S: Let me just say also, Abigail – thank you. Oh my god. Thank you for your bravery, your courage to be this transparent and vulnerable. Yeah.

A: I think it’s such an important thing to talk about and I think just again, to say this is not the IBLP, this is not courtship. I cannot begin to tell you how many girls I know that I grew up with in both IBLP but also evangelicalism as a whole, that were assaulted this way. Exactly this way, with this playbook.

S: So when you just said this is not IBLP, what do you mean by that?

A: This is purity culture, and purity culture and evangelicalism are one and the same.

T: Yes.

S: Yeah.

T: Thank you for saying that, because I think we’ve already heard it from some of the streams of people in our history, that this is a perversion of people going to the extreme; this is sensationalized, this is not happening, and I am very happy to hear you say that. Also, we have friends as well who are like this has happened, this is happening, this is not some sensational perversion of the teaching; this, like you said, is the playbook.

A: Yeh, it is.

S: Let me also just state – how old were you at this point?

A: 17.

S: So technically – depending on your state’s laws, in many states you are a minor.

A: Yes.

S: And this is actually child sexual assault.

A: Yes. So the way the courtship ended – this is in the very early days of text messages, where you still had to pay per message – his father who was a dangerous man in himself, which is probably a whole other section of the story; he was a scary person – found his cell phone where he had sent an explicit description of what we had done, and found it and they came to my father’s home and I got called at work and said they are here, you need to be here in five minutes. I was five minutes from home, so I left work in the middle of the day, came home, and his father broke up with my father in my father’s office, and I never spoke to him again.

T: Ohh. And of course, you were blamed.

A: 100%. It was 100% my fault. I was the Jezebel; I was the problem. Oddly, we had made a contingency plan, as many in courtships do when they’re not going well. There was an escape plan that was made – I’m not talking like a hey if this happens we’ll figure it out; I’m talking like if our parents find out and they break us up, at 12:30 in the middle of the night, you will climb out of this window, my truck will be here, you will get in it, we will drive to Mississippi, we will get married. That kind of contingency plan. He didn’t show up. So I was there, waiting for the truck to drive to Mississippi to get married, and he didn’t show up. What came out in the weeks and months after that through mutual friends is that he had been seeing many, many girls throughout this entire time. I had to figure out how to get tested for STIs. Fortunately everything was negative, but I had to figure all of that out having never had a consensual sexual experience. I do want to be clear that we never had intercourse, because that would have been absolutely an unforgiveable sin. I would also like to be very clear that every sexual act was me performing on him. There were no reciprocal sexual acts.

S: Oh Abigail.

T: Can I ask if when his dad came to break up with your dad, did any of your dad’s natural instincts kick in to try to protect you or say hey this is a two-way street here?

A: Not in my recollection; I in fact don’t remember my father saying anything. My mother had a pretty significant emotional breakdown and I didn’t speak to her for many weeks, because she was not in a position to leave her bedroom.

T: You felt the weight of her depression for this.

A: Yes, for sure. Definitely felt completely responsible.

S: What happened within the church?

A: Yeah, it was not good. I mean, it spread like wildfire as most things do in churches.

S: Yeah.

A: It was everywhere, and it was everywhere and none of it was true. It’s not like they even told the bad part of the truth; it’s that it wasn’t true at all. And then his cheating or whatever you want to call it, was never discussed. The church turned on me in a heartbeat. I mean, a heartbeat. I think I went back the very worship day which I don’t remember if it was a Sunday or a Wednesday, and I did not make it through the whole day. I left. No one would speak to me, all of my friends’ parents had told them they weren’t allowed to speak to me. I was completely shunned. It was enormously public – enormously public.

T: And your father is not having any conversations, he just walled off?

A: Yeah, my strong suspicion is my father was then out of the country immediately after. That’s my guess, but I don’t know that for sure. I don’t remember him being there, and my mother was ill, so I drove myself.

T: Oh man.

S: And how long did you continue to stay with that church?

A: Just that one day. I left, and I didn’t go back. I went back at Christmas for the Christmas cantata. My dad did ask me to go back for the Christmas cantata, he was performing and asked me. I did go back and it was horrible. Then I went back one other time several years later when I was engaged to the man that would become my first husband.

T: Wow. When you father asked you to come, was that a hopeful sign that he was wanting you in the midst, or do you think it was a ploy to get you to come back? Did you carry the stain of being fallen away?

A: Yes. It was the latter. It was the stain of being a rebellious child. From their perspective in the cult, I had completely left the faith and was in rebellion – whereas from the viewpoint of literally anyone else on the planet I was still enormously fundamental and deeply, deeply religious. I was attending another church.

T: And broken-hearted right? You’re broken hearted.

A: Crushed.  That’s another thing that’s heart to explain – I wrote him letters, every day for a year after this happened. That’s how groomed you are. You are THAT groomed.

S: Were you apologizing to him and taking responsibility or what?

A: Yeah, it’s really interesting to read that journal now. Certainly for the first six months I was apologizing, grovelling – I never sent them, but I wrote them every day, just what can we do, how can we make this right? I know you’re God’s plan for me – just utterly incapable of thinking of how to do that without him.

T: Wow.

A: Then in the last six months the letters got progressively more angry and the last letter is enormously angry. Very, very angry. In that last letter I wrote – he was dating somebody else who would later become his wife – and I wrote in that letter I hope that one day when you have a child and you’re rocking it, you can only think of me. Which I think is possibly true.

T: Yeah, it might be.

S: Oh my gosh Abigail, well again I just want to say thank you for your bravery, your courage, your vulnerability. This is the stuff people need to hear.

A: It is.

S: This is the reality of what seems like this – oh isn’t that so nice purity and this virgin idea – it’s like holy shit guys, this is so, so awful.

A: It is.

T: We have this theme, we’ve just finished the four series on purity culture Virgins and Volcanos, and I think at times when Sharon and I were talking we were like,  this is such a sad story. There’s so much intensity to this that I think when you hear it from start to finish, and then coming into your story which is keeping us speechless – which rarely happens! It rarely happens.

S: It’s true!

T: And the point of this is just that. It’s so important to pull the curtain all the way back; it’s so important to say this is what’s going on in the hearts and the minds of these young girls and these young men, and we who have lived parts of this, and Abigail who’s lived a horrific part of this, it’s being shared so we can collectively take a stance that this is not healthy or good, and just thank you, thank you, thank you – and bravo to you for your healing, because you can hear it in your story, which allows us to get on and tell these stories.

A: Yeah, I think these are such important stories, and for people to realize they may have happened in cults, but they happen a lot of places under the guise of biblical teaching, not just in cults.

S: That is so true. So true.

T: Alright, well there’s more that Abigail is going to share with us. We’re going to – I think Sharon, put a pin in it. That’s what Troy and Brian say so we’ll borrow from the Aussies, put a pin on it for this one and pick back up next week with another part.

S: Sounds great. You good to keep going with this, Abigail?

A: Yes, I am ready to do it.

S: Alright, we will.  Abigail, before we sign off can you tell folks again where they can learn a little bit more about you and what you’re doing?

A: Yes, they can find me on Tiktok at unicorn habitat. That’s where I talk a lot about my experiences in the cult and evangelicalism – there’s some quality cult pictures in there.  Then they can find my non-profit at theroverchasefoundation.org which is providing service dogs to individuals with disabilities.

S: Excellent. Alright, in the meantime folks, rate us, write a review, tell your friends…

T: Yes, and check us out on Instagram, Feet of Clay.cult sisters. We keep everybody updated on the latest episodes and where to find them – along with some cool pictures and photos.

S: And stay tuned for more from Abigail.