Baptist Teen Home Recovery Event, Texas June 2016

Our Story

As Kathryn Joyce reported in Horror Stories from Tough Love Teen Homes, thousands of children in the US suffer torture under the guise of Christian ministry at the hands of affiliates of the Independent Fundamental Baptist church network (IFB). Aimed at both spiritual development and rehabilitation, thousands of parents have relinquished parental rights to their “troubled teens” to these unregulated private religious homes, subjecting their children to abject physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse as well as educational neglect. Media attention and public pressure now forces these systems to operate in even greater privacy, and several homes have moved to locations outside of the US to continue without public, media, or governmental intrusion. (The Kidnapped for Christ film also documents these abuses.)

A panel of survivors of the IFB as well as the Hephzibah House and New Bethany homes will meet in for a few days in June and July of 2016 in Dallas, TX to discuss these struggles and what may be done to reach more former inmates with the message of the hope of lifelong recovery. Sessions will be recorded to reach the many who continue to endure in silence, isolated from healing resources. Aspiring to overcome the indoctrination of prejudice against peer support and expert care, the materials produced will do much to stem the tide of harm that continues, both through the current operation of these homes as well as the burden carried by those who strive to overcome their past experiences within them.

Financial help is needed, however, to cover the expenses incurred by the speakers who are traveling from across the US to assist in this unique, chance-of-a-lifetime event. We will be doubling up on affordable accommodations near a gathering of expert therapists, sociologists, ministers, and activists to accomplish this task, but partial financial assistance is needed for the eight lay persons who are banding together for this effort. The deficit needed for local transportation for the physically challenged, hotel, and meals for the seven individuals who committed to participate has not yet been met. Please consider contributing to the cause in order to provide a new lifeline of help and hope to them and to all those women who were told that God had discarded them.

https://www.generosity.com/education-fundraising/baptist-teen-home-recovery-event-texas-june-2016