'Shiny Happy People,' Fundamentalism and the Toxic Quest for Certainty

David French
Opinion Columnist
New York Times
June 13, 2023

In the summer of 1993, I almost joined a cult. For love.

It was the same cult featured in the current most-watched show on Amazon Prime, a documentary series called “Shiny Happy People.” It’s centered on the Duggar family and the teachings of a man named Bill Gothard. The Duggars, as many readers know, were the focus of a popular 2008 reality television show called “19 Kids and Counting” and its 2015 spinoff, “Counting On.” Gothard — the Duggars’ spiritual mentor — is less famous in secular America but far more consequential across evangelical America, where the influence of his movement continues today.

Most of the attention paid to “Shiny Happy People” will focus on the accusations of sexual abuse — some of them proven in court — surrounding the Duggars and Gothard. (The Institute in Basic Life Principles, which Gothard founded, has issued a statement in response to the documentary, calling it “misleading and untruthful” and claiming that it “mocks that which is good and moral in the most sensationalized way possible.”)

I’m going to address the issue of abuse below, but I also want to focus on a different question: Why are otherwise good, solid people attracted to movements like Gothard’s? How can they not see its controlling darkness?

My own story isn’t uncommon. If you lived in evangelical America in the 1980s and 1990s, you’d often encounter men and women who were deeply influenced by Gothard. When I was 24 years old, I was engaged to a woman I’d been dating for two years. She and her family followed Gothard’s teachings and attended events sponsored by the Institute in Basic Life Principles. She told me that she couldn’t marry a man who hadn’t attended its introductory course, the Basic Seminar. Just as important, as it happened, her father said he would not allow his daughter to marry anyone who refused to attend the seminar.

So I said yes. I’d give the seminar a try. For a week, I got up early and drove an hour from my small hometown to a packed megachurch in Louisville, Ky. It turned into one of the most important weeks of my life.

I grew up in a quite conservative church (as one friend joked, we definitely did not put the “fun” in “fundamentalist”), and I was accustomed to encountering strict families and strict teachings. But the teachings at the seminar were unlike anything I’d ever heard. In my church, we had learned to value modesty in attire. My Christian college, for example, regulated the length of skirts and didn’t permit any shorts on campus until my senior year.

The Gothard movement, by contrast, went so far as to teach that even otherwise modest outfits could contain “eye traps” for men that rendered the clothing morally insidious. This teaching placed an enormous burden on women to maintain the purity of men and created an environment where women would often blame themselves in the face of male predation. The actual material has to be seen to be believed.

My church taught that men and women should not have sex before marriage. The Gothard movement placed such a premium on virginity that his followers viewed any sexual activity before marriage — sometimes including even kissing — as a form of defilement, a permanent stain on your life.

Life was strictly regulated. All music with a rock beat, including Christian rock, was deemed spiritually dangerous. Men and women should not date, or at least not in the way most Americans do. Instead, young people could only “court,” which was a father-directed, father-supervised process that could be strikingly similar to arranged marriage, especially if both families followed Gothard’s teachings.

The beating heart of Gothardism was a combination of authority and superstition. One of Gothard’s keys to Christian life was something called the “umbrella of protection.” So long as the wife placed herself under the husband’s authority and the husband placed himself under Christ’s authority, then the family would flourish. Defying Gothard’s teachings, by contrast, placed you outside of this zone of God’s protection and rendered you (and your family) vulnerable to disaster, destruction and even death.

I sat through each session. I tried to be open, but I just couldn’t agree. The ideas in the books didn’t match what I read in Scripture. My parents taught me to value mercy and grace, and I couldn’t see mercy here, just power and control. I couldn’t join Gothard, and that ultimately meant I couldn’t continue my engagement. The entire trajectory of my life changed.

Even as I share this story, however, I’m uncomfortable. The details of Gothard’s teachings are so strange to so many people — especially to those who grew up outside of the evangelical church — that it’s easy to distance oneself, to watch with a sense of morbid curiosity about “those people,” those crazy folks who live lives we can’t understand.

When I went to the Gothard seminar, I didn’t see strange people. I saw people seeking community and certainty in the most important relationships of their lives. In fact, the families at the seminar were so mainstream and so numerous that I worry that the word “cult” communicates something more fringe than it truly was.

They loved God, and they wanted to learn how to serve him better. They loved their spouses and children and wanted to make sure that their marriages were healthy and their children thrived. Many of them came to the seminar facing serious challenges. Their marriages were in trouble, or there was conflict with their kids.

They found community in the people who flocked to the churches like the one I visited in Louisville. Certainty, however, was elusive. The formulas they received from Gothard seemed to work for some, didn’t work for others, and deeply damaged many, many people — especially women and children. The Duggars are a prime example. As the Amazon series recounts, even as the Duggar parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, were enormous celebrities in Gothard-world, extolling the virtues of his vision, they were concealing terrible secrets about their family.

Their oldest son, Josh, had molested four of his sisters. Later, he admitted to cheating on his wife. And now he’s in prison for possessing child pornography. The Duggars weren’t the model family they were presented as. They were in crisis. The Duggars’ guru, Gothard, was also disgraced. He has faced dozens of accusations of sexual misconduct — he denies them — and in 2014 he resigned from the presidency of his ministry.

But that’s not the extent of the darkness. Gothard’s teaching didn’t reach just the millions of Christians he claims have attended his seminars. Because he spoke to the most motivated and dedicated cohort of evangelicals in America, his teachings spread deep into American churches. Gothard’s concepts became part of the fabric of evangelical life even for people who’d never heard of the Basic Seminar.

In 2021, my wife, Nancy, and I published a report detailing years of horrific sexual abuse at one of the largest Christian camps in America, Kanakuk Kamps. The camp’s chief executive, Joe White, wrote that the “greatest journey of my life” began at a Bill Gothard conference in 1974, and many of the teachings at the camp mirrored the marriage and purity teachings in the Gothard seminars. A predator named Pete Newman exploited such teachings to gain access to countless young boys. White supported and promoted him even after receiving repeated reports of Newman playing games in the nude with kids.

With authority so central to Gothardism (and so many other fundamentalist movements), the quest for certainty turned into a quest for control. The explicitly patriarchal structure fed the will to power in troubled men. Failures in the family would lead to tighter controls, more rules, and an enormous amount of guilt and shame. After all, the principles Gothard taught were supposed to work. At the seminar I attended Gothard even taught that following his principles would make a young woman more beautiful. Obedience would improve her “countenance.” If a family struggled, the principles weren’t wrong — they were.

A healthy church can provide community. But it must also teach its members that certainty is elusive, humility is essential to the Christian faith and the will to power is antithetical to the example of Jesus. Otherwise, America’s conservative Christian communities will continue to face different versions of the same rigid fundamentalism. They’ll be tempted to follow more gurus like Bill Gothard.

The quest for certainty and control can tempt people of every faith and no faith. In religious circles it can manifest itself in ways that look strange to secular eyes, but I’ve seen people from all walks of American life and all ideological perspectives fall for gurus and fads. Life is hard, and we want answers — even, perhaps especially, where answers are impossible to find. We crave control, even when attempts to establish control sow destruction in our loved ones’ lives.

The Apostle Paul stated a universal human truth when he declared that “we see through a glass, darkly.” We can know things only “in part.” The Gothard movement and movements like it reject that sense of doubt. They purport to reveal all the deepest truths and answer all our most difficult questions. Yet no person possesses such wisdom. And if there is one lesson we should take from “Shiny Happy People,” it’s this: When people claim to personally light the path and clear away the darkness, you know they are leading you astray.

David French is a New York Times Opinion columnist. He is a lawyer, writer and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is a former constitutional litigator, and his most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” @DavidAFrench



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/opinion/shiny-happy-people.html

Amazon’s ‘Shiny Happy People’ Has Lessons to Teach, If We’re Willing to Listen

ALEX HARRIS
TGC (The Gospel Coalition)
June 2, 2023

It can be messy and confusing when outsiders poke around and try to tell a story about the church.

This is especially true when the focus is on some group or "scandal" most of us are already embarrassed about but don't think fairly represents us or our faith. We can speculate about the agenda of those who seek out these stories, and see all too clearly what they missed, glossed over, or got wrong. There will inevitably be examples of where these storytellers paint with too broad a brush or give a free platform to people eager to throw stones at a faith they've left behind.

This would be an understandable reaction to Amazon's four-part docuseries Shiny Happy People, now streaming on Prime Video.

The series focuses on the Duggars—the ultraconservative homeschool family made famous by TLC's hit reality show 19 Kids and Counting then rocked by sexual abuse, infidelity, and child pornography scandals perpetrated by their oldest son. It also explores the influence of disgraced Christian teacher Bill Gothard, one of the most powerful leaders of the Christian homeschooling movement and a key proponent of "Quiverfull" theology (i.e., that parents should, in obedience to Psalm 127, have as many children as God will give them). In 2014, Gothard resigned from his sprawling parachurch organization, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), after dozens of women accused him of sexual abuse and harassment going back decades.

Coming on the heels of The Secrets of Hillsong (FX/Hulu) and last year's God Forbid (Hulu) on Liberty University's Jerry Falwell Jr., it may be hard for some in the church to stomach yet another exposé of abuse, hypocrisy, and downright weirdness by those who claim the name of Christ.

The temptation is to tune out. But should we?

Full Disclosure

Before going further, I should confess I'm not an impartial reviewer.

I grew up at the forefront of the Christian homeschooling movement. My parents, Gregg and Sono Harris, were prominent homeschool leaders in the 1980s and '90s and educated me and my six siblings at home. While we weren't involved in IBLP, I had many close friends who were. And my family and I helped popularize to a more mainstream evangelical audience some of the same ideas Gothard promoted: from homeschooling and "courtship" to strict rules for female modesty and obedience to authority.

I had a wonderful homeschool experience, for which I'll always be grateful. At its best, I see in the Christian homeschooling movement a work of genuine educational reform and spiritual renewal for countless families.

But while I remain firmly in the fold, I have peers—including members of my own family—who have left the church, rejecting not just their upbringing but faith itself in response to evils they experienced and false gospels they were taught.

Perhaps more unusual for a reviewer, I also appear in several episodes of Shiny Happy People. A year ago, the filmmakers invited me to sit down for an interview, not to talk about the Duggars or Gothard but to discuss the bigger story of the Christian homeschooling movement and the "Joshua Generation."

The Joshua Generation is an influential concept—one I embraced most of my life—that my generation would rise up and attain positions of power and influence in government, law, and beyond, and in so doing help restore the United States as a Christian nation.

There are many problems with that vision of political engagement, and this isn't the place to get into them fully. Suffice it to say that as believers our hope isn't in princes or earthly power, and the United States isn't a new Israel.

But the Joshua Generation story is one worth telling. It's an ambitious plot that has been far more successful than most people realize, and it helps explain much of our current political, cultural, and spiritual moment. To the extent someone was trying to tell even part of that story, I wanted to help them do it accurately—ideally paired with a more biblical vision for Christian engagement with politics and culture.

I also chose to participate to make clear that even those of us with good homeschool experiences have real concerns about aspects of the movement, to buttress the voices of those understandably hurt and even angry.

It can be far too easy for those of us in the church to dismiss the stories of those who've "deconstructed"; to take issue with their choices, tone, and new beliefs (or lack thereof); and to move much too quickly past the sins, abuses, and hypocrisies that caused so much pain.

I spent a full day with the filmmakers last July, knowing I'd ultimately have no control over which of my words would be used or how they'd be used. I've spent the past 11 months wondering how it would all turn out.

Searing, Imperfect Series

The wait is finally over and, while far from perfect, Shiny Happy Peopleaccomplishes its primary goal: it's a searing indictment of Gothard's teachings and, for those previously unfamiliar with it, a thorough introduction to the rotten fruit of the IBLP empire.

The narrative is engrossing and deeply troubling, weaving together archival footage and IBLP materials with compelling interviews with individuals who grew up in IBLP—most notably Jill Duggar Dillard, one of the oldest Duggar daughters, whose words and revelations anchor much of the series.

I know people who had positive experiences with IBLP. These were homeschool families with parents who genuinely sought to honor God and do what was best for their children. I also know people who experienced every bit of the trauma the series exposes.

Shiny Happy People is in many ways an ideal supplement to a book by another of the Duggar daughters, Jinger Duggar Vuolo. In Becoming Free Indeed, Vuolo engages in a systematic theological takedown of Gothard's controlling, fear-based, and gospel-distorting teachings, sharing her own journey of disentangling her faith and holding on to Christ. Shiny Happy People brings Gothard's false teachings to life. Vuolo's book provides hope that true gospel faith can rise from the ashes.

The series's strength might also be its biggest weakness, especially for an evangelical audience. With its focus on the Duggars, Gothard, and IBLP, the episodes can feel narrow—a sordid story about "other people." On the few occasions the filmmakers try to connect Gothard's teachings to broader themes in Christianity, the attempts are invariably heavy handed, often equating Gothard's genuine extremism with beliefs held by the vast majority of evangelicals. That may have been a considered choice on the filmmakers' part, but it preaches to the choir of evangelicalism's detractors rather than engaging in the more difficult task of persuasion.

The series does include a segment on the Joshua Generation, but the discussion is ultimately superficial, with little to no exploration of the context, ideas, or individuals behind the movement or attempt to accurately situate it within the larger "Christian Right" and our current political moment. Perhaps most disappointing to me, there's no discussion of what a more faithful approach to Christian political engagement might look like.

Why We Shouldn't Look the Other Way

Despite Shiny Happy People's shortcomings, it'd be a great loss to the church if thoughtful Christians, pastors, and other ministry leaders choose to look the other way.

Looking the other way is how this happened in the first place.

While he has few defenders in high places these days, and while some now attempt to dismiss his influence, Gothard is no fringe figure. His father served for a time as the executive director of The Gideons International, and Gothard received two degrees from Wheaton College. Long before turning his attention to a burgeoning Christian homeschool community in the 1980s, Gothard was presenting his "Basic Seminar" to packed coliseums around the country and winning the support and patronage of prominent Christian politicians, businessmen, and ministry leaders.

And yet even a cursory examination of Gothard's core teachings reveals his distortion of the gospel. Strict obedience to Gothard's "principles" guarantees spiritual and material success, like a fundamentalist version of the "prosperity" or "health and wealth" gospel. Disobedience opens you to Satan's attacks and sudden disaster.

Whatever wisdom or biblical insight was otherwise included in IBLP materials, the end result was a controlling, fear-based religion, where women and children were especially vulnerable to abuse of all kinds.

To be sure, there were some early criticisms of Gothard's principles, but those were few and far between. Tragically, it turned out that many who were quick to spot "liberal drift" and denounce the prosperity preachers on TV had little to say about an ultraconservative Bible teacher shaping the daily lives of millions.

An article in a 1984 issue of The Journal of Pastoral Practice suggests part of the reason was pastors "not wanting to run the risk of offending their congregation or constituency," among whom Gothard likely had some "avid followers." That article was published only a few years after the first major sex abuse scandal in Gothard's organization, including public accusations of impropriety and "moral failures" involving Gothard and a secretary.

How many evils could have been prevented if faithful Christians hadn't looked away?

As Christians, we should be willing to listen to and humbly learn from criticism, even when imperfectly delivered.

For those willing to answer that call, Shiny Happy People is a good place to start.

 

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/shiny-happy-people/

 

'I broke away from a strict homeschooling community cult'

BBC News

February 2, 2018

When you're very young, your parents or guardians are responsible for nurturing and teaching you as you grow up, but how do you know if you are getting a good upbringing?

The news that a teenager escaped from her home in California, where she and her 12 siblings were held in shackles by their parents, sent shockwaves across the world.

But what happens to children who are brought up under such restricted conditions?

Judy (not her real name) told the BBC about what life was like for her living in a "homeschool community" in Oregon, USA.

'His word was law'

"I was raised in a homeschool religious cult which encouraged parents to set up their own little schools and renew their marriage vows, just like the Turpin family. I recognise some of their behaviours.

"When my parents got together they were disenchanted by the overly free and 'hippy' style of living that was sweeping across the country. They wanted children to live a different life instead of one with no morals or rules.

"They had heard about Bill Gothard, founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), who was a really big deal in Oregon. They attended his seminars and embraced the IBLP homeschooling curriculum wholeheartedly.

"He was an icon, kind of like a prophet. The seminars involved a week of intensive brainwashing. He was the authority. His word was the law.

"My parents started homeschooling in the late 1980s and for over 30 years our family became part of this closed community with similar values."

'Strict and abusive'

"There was a lot of heavy-handed smacking from our parents. To disobey them, was to disobey God. The system was especially awful for the little ones. At Bill Gothard's seminars he used to talk about 'breaking their will'.

"They were quite abusive, but we knew other families who had it worse than us. When I was little, we lived in a mobile home. It was really inadequate - there were four or five of us in a room.

"Under the IBLP system, adults were not allowed to get into debt or have a mortgage, so my parents built a house. While it was being constructed we lived in a garage. I lived in a proper house at 15 and shared a bedroom with one or two sisters. It seemed fine at the time but as I grew up, it was more and more difficult having no space to myself."

Judy believes there is a connection between the Turpin family and Bill Gothard and the IBLP:

"He's very big in Texas. I met the Duggar family (who have 19 children) at one of the seminars. The real emphasis is on families, big ones."

'You don't know what's normal'

"The world outside our community was presented to us as an evil, bad place that we were protected from.

"We were required to memorise a lot of scriptures - chapters and chapters of the bible, to the point at which we could quote them off by heart.

"I got on with my siblings. You had to - that's one of the commands. I might not have in normal circumstances. There was definitely a pecking order and a lot of bullying in the family.

"Abuse in homeschool communities is often normalised or well-hidden and all too common.

"You don't know what's normal. There was no TV and no communication with anyone outside our circle. We watched movies once a week at our grandparents' house.

"We would have been seen and heard as there was a park and playgrounds near our house where we could play. But we didn't integrate outside the family."

'I was a second mum'

"We were fed well. All of us had braces on our teeth and we were healthy.

"I am the second eldest of nine siblings and when my mother gave birth I had childcare responsibilities.

"Girls weren't encouraged to pursue careers. They were expected to stay at home and help out with the family, and I was kept busy with lots of domestic work.

"I did pretty much everything. I was like a second mum, especially while my mum suffered from depression after she miscarried child number 10.

"My dad was away a lot on business during the spring and summer. But when he was around, he was most definitely in charge."
The outside world

"Under Bill Gothard's teachings, I was sent to Taiwan aged 21 to teach English for six months.

"After a year back in Oregon, I went to mainland China. In a sense, I didn't really leave my family. I was still very much connected by phone calls and emails.

"Living in China, I got to know 'normal' Americans who hadn't been homeschooled. That was a bit of a culture shock.

"I met a British man there and soon realised how different my life was back in Oregon. We decided to get married in the US."
Cutting ties

"I didn't realise how much of a hold the cult had on me. My husband and I stayed in the US for a while, but soon realised it was better for us to remove ourselves from the community completely. My family didn't really like my husband although he was really good with them.

"My husband encouraged me to stay in touch with my family. It took a lot for him to see that they were never going to change. But I have not seen my family since I left. I'm now in my 30s.

"A lot of people ask if it's hard to cut yourself off from your family. It was an upheaval but I was lucky to have the support of my husband who helped me to find the strength to leave my community and country. I couldn't have done it alone.

"It's taken me a long time to realise the extent of the abuse I encountered. Now that I have three lovely children of my own and am part of a real community and church, I realise my upbringing was not normal."

The Washington Post reported that Bill Gothard resigned from the IBLP ministry in 2014 amid allegations of sexual abuse, which he denied, and in 2016 there were further details of a lawsuit filed by 10 women.


Interview by Sherie Ryder, UGC and Social News team

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42701297

New charges allege religious leader, who has ties to the Duggars, sexually abused women

Sarah Pulliam Bailey
The Washington Post
January 6, 2016

Ten women on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Gothard, who for decades was a major force in the conservative Christian homeschooling movement, charging him and leaders in his ministry with sexual abuse, harassment and cover-up.

Gothard, who urged Christians to shun things like short skirts and rock music, is accused of raping a woman. The same woman says she was raped by one of the ministry’s “biblical counselors.”

The lawsuit is part of a battle between dozens of women and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which was until recently an influential homeschooling ministry, and its charismatic leader Gothard, who urged Christians to focus on their “biblical character” and have large families. Gothard has never been married.

Gothard, 81, resigned from the ministry in 2014 after more than 30 women had alleged that he had molested and sexually harassed women he worked with, including some who were minors.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Gothard said he has not seen the lawsuit and denied allegations that he had raped one woman. “Oh no. Never never. Oh! That’s horrible,” he said. “Never in my life have I touched a girl sexually. I’m shocked to even hear that.”

Gothard denied sexually harassing women. “That really is not true,” he said. “I’d rather hold off to comment until I see what’s in the lawsuit.”

A smaller group of the same women filed a lawsuit in October against IBLP. In Wednesday’s amended lawsuit, more women have joined the lawsuit, and the lawyers added Gothard to the complaint as a named defendant. The ministry, which has training center across the country and about a dozen across the world, asked the court to dismiss the complaint, and the judge gave the plaintiffs’ lawyers permission to file a new complaint.

Gothard’s ministry was once a popular gathering spot for thousands of conservative Christian families, including the Duggar family from TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting.” Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute conferences, where families would learn from Gothard’s teaching, were popular among homeschooling families. He has also rubbed shoulders with Republican luminaries like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

Wednesday’s lawsuit includes an undated letter in which Gothard allegedly wrote to the women who were accusing him. “I was very wrong in holding hands, giving hugs, and touching their hair and feet. I was also wrong in making statements that caused emotional turmoil and confusion,” the letter reads, describing what he did as “sin.”

In Wednesday’s interview, Gothard declined to confirm or deny whether he had written the letter. “I need to get more facts here, okay?”

The lawsuit filed Wednesday, a copy of which lawyers provided to The Washington Post, includes an affidavit signed by Gothard saying IBLP’s board has not contacted him for information or for assistance and has not met with the women or their attorneys. Gothard said in the affidavit that the board is “handling the case unwisely as I have the information they need. This is a shameful waste of donors money.”

“I assume that the IBLP Board thought that the plaintiffs and their counsel were bluffing and that they would not sue,” Gothard wrote. “Obviously that is not the case.”

Although Gothard resigned, his affidavit makes clear he intends to return to the ministry he started in 1961.

“During the past seven months, God has allowed me to publish six new books that contain a powerful new message that I want to get out to all of the alumni,” Gothard wrote, adding that over 2.5 million alumni have attended his seminars.

Gothard confirmed that he worked with the plaintiffs’ lawyer on the statement, but denies giving the lawyer permission to use it in the lawsuit. He declined to comment further.

IBLP was in the headlines last year after In Touch magazine reported that Josh Duggar, the eldest son of reality TV stars, had been sent to an IBLP training center as a teenager after he admitted he had sexually abused four of his younger sisters and a family friend. IBLP did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.

The ministry posted a statement on Wednesday saying it welcomes “the structure and integrity of the court process as a means for determining the truth with respect to these allegations.”

“Many of these allegations concern conduct that allegedly occurred as early as the 1990s, and, as claimed, primarily involved Mr. Gothard,” the statement says. “Since March 2014, Mr. Gothard is no longer associated with the Institute.”

The lawsuit alleges that IBLP is liquidating its assets of over $100 million and plans to sell off its holdings in Illinois, where most of the allegations took place, and move to Texas, which Gothard confirms in his affidavit.

Each of the 10 plaintiffs — Gretchen Wilkinson, Charis Barker, Rachel Frost, Rachel Lees, Melody Fedoriw, Jamie Deering, Ruth Copley Burger and three Jane Does — are seeking at least $50,000 in damages, alleging that Gothard and the organization, claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, willful and wanton and civil conspiracy.

The lawsuit in DuPage County Circuit Court in Illinois, where IBLP’s headquarters is located, charges that IBLP, its employees and board members received reports of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and “inappropriate/unauthorized touching” from women and girls. But, the women allege, the defendants never reported the “potentially criminal allegations” to law enforcement authorities or the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services as required by state law.

One of the Jane Doe plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleges that she was raped by her father and other relatives and says she was sold by her father through human trafficking when she was a minor. She said she reported the abuse and trafficking to IBLP staff, which failed to report to authorities.

Families in the ministry would sometimes send their children to institutes across the country, including its headquarters in Illinois. When the Jane Doe plaintiff was at a ministry’s training center, she and Gothard both called her father and Gothard asked him if abuse allegations were true, the lawsuit states. After her father denied the allegations, she said Gothard threatened her. Gothard taught that children were to obey their parents even if they were being sexually abused, the lawsuit states.

The Jane Doe then alleges that Gothard had sexual intercourse with her without her consent, saying she notified IBLP of the rape through an email in 2013. She alleges that an IBLP-employed counselor also raped her in his office at an IBLP training center in Indianapolis. David Gibbs III, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said she is not sure how old she was at the time of the alleged rapes, but was likely around 17 or 18 years old. Another woman in the lawsuit, Ruth Copley Burger, who was the adopted daughter of the counselor in question, alleges that her father sexually molested her.

Gibbs said that he believes both women went to the police with the allegations but he is not sure why law enforcement didn’t prosecute the cases. Allegations of sexual abuse that happened years ago are often difficult to pursue due to the possibility that the statute of limitations — the time period during which prosecutors are able to pursue a crime — has expired.

“It would not surprise me if law enforcement got involved in this case [now], but we’re not anticipating it at this time,” he said.

For the past few decades hundreds of young people from around the country would come to the ministry’s training centers, some sent by their parents, others by juvenile court, for counseling.

“This wasn’t just a church youth group,” Gibbs said. “This was holding itself up as an expert in counseling and care for children.” Gibbs said he has been contacted by more women and men who are alleging abuse within the ministry and expects more plaintiffs to be added to the case.

Since 2012, the website Recovering Grace, run by former IBLP-affiliated women, began posting stories from more than 30 women alleging they experienced sexual harassment and abuse.

Gretchen Wilkinson, a plaintiff who is now based in Winchester, Va., says that she went to work for Gothard in 1992 at IBLP’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., when she was 16. During her time there, she said Gothard would play footsie with her and hold her hand. At one point, she said, he had coordinated a ride from the airport for them to be together and molested her.

“He was built up to a god-like state in our eyes because he was a man who could do no wrong. I looked up to him as a father figure, almost like how Catholics look up to priests, bishops or their pope,” said Wilkinson, who is now 40. “Now I can see a photo of him and say, ‘You can’t touch me.’ That’s incredibly freeing to me.”

A different Jane Doe plaintiff alleges in the lawsuit that after she wrote about sexual harassment on the Recovering Grace website, Gothard called her and verbally assaulted her for three weeks until she had the stories taken down.

In the lawsuit, a woman named Jamie Deering alleges that Gothard sexually abused her multiple times. She said he would play footsie with her and he would sit across from her with an erection and with his legs spread wide apart.

After he resigned in 2014, Gothard denied the sexual harassment charges, saying “God is my witness that I have never kissed a girl, nor touched any young lady in a sensual way.”

In 2014, IBLP conducted an internal investigation, writing in June 2014 that “no criminal activity has been discovered,” saying that what Gothard did was “inappropriate behavior” and “sin.” The investigation was conducted by the Christian Legal Association, and the lawsuit says none of the women were contacted during the investigation.

Rachel Frost, who alleges in the lawsuit she was sexually harassed from 1992 to 1994 when she was a minor, and then again when she was an adult, said she was initially afraid to share her story. She said Gothard was able to control and micromanage any allegations until women began sharing their stories online.

“I feared the backlash of people who would question my motives, asking why I would come out against such a famous and charismatic leader,” Frost said. “He could not control social media and victims coming together and validating each other and realizing they were not alone.”

The court’s first hearing on the amended lawsuit will be Jan. 13.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/01/06/new-charges-allege-religious-leader-who-has-ties-to-the-duggars-sexually-abused-women/

Five women sue Bill Gothard’s ministry that has ties to the Duggars

Sarah Posner
Washington Post
October 22, 2015

 

Jim Bob Duggar and his wife Michelle
with 12 of their 13 children, May 21, 2002.

Five women have sued the Institute in Basic Life Principles, once a leader in the Christian homeschooling movement, charging that the organization and its board of directors enabled and covered up sexual abuse and harassment of interns, employees, and other participants in its programs.

Each of the plaintiffs — Gretchen Wilkinson, Charis Barker, Rachel Frost, Rachel Lees and a Jane Doe — seeks $50,000 in damages, alleging that the organization and its board acted negligently, with willful and wanton disregard for them, and engaged in a civil conspiracy to conceal the wrongdoing.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a long-simmering scandal that has engulfed the ministry once admired by conservative Christian parents for teaching them how to raise obedient, devout and chaste children since the 1960s. The ministry has found dedicated followers in politics, including Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), who sought to replace Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) as House Speaker, and in entertainment.

Last year, IBLP’s founder and longtime president, Bill Gothard, resigned amid allegations by more than 30 women that he had sexually harassed them. Former followers have said that Gothard was revered as an almost saint-like figure, and that members of IBLP’s homeschooling arm, the Advanced Training Institute, feared questioning him.

Earlier this year, IBLP was once again in the headlines after the gossip magazine In Touch reported that Josh Duggar, the eldest son of reality television stars and longtime Advanced Training Institute members Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, had been sent to an IBLP training center as a teenager after he admitted he had sexually abused four of his younger sisters and a family friend.

[Duggar sisters Jessa Seewald and Jill Dillard to star in TLC specials]

The new lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in DuPage County Circuit Court in Illinois, where IBLP’s headquarters is located, charges that IBLP, its employees and directors “frequently received reports” of “sexual abuse, sexual harassment and inappropriate/unauthorized touching.” But, the lawsuit said, they never reported “these serious, potentially criminal allegations to law enforcement authorities or the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services” as required by state law.

David Gibbs III, the attorney representing the women, said in an interview the women decided to litigate only after unsuccessful efforts to address the issues with the IBLP board of directors, who are also named in the lawsuit. Gibbs added that his clients did not want to sue, but that the board “rather stubbornly and in my opinion rather arrogantly basically challenged the girls to bring the case.”

The board, he said, “is not operating in a spirit of transparency or openness,” and has not discussed the allegations with the victims.

IBLP did not respond to a request for comment.

Founded in 1961, and led by Gothard until his resignation last year, IBLP was once highly regarded among conservative Christians for its conferences and teaching materials that focused on “biblical character” development.

The organization’s culture and teachings were depicted in the Duggars’ reality show, “19 Kids and Counting,” until TLC canceled it in the wake of the revelations about Josh Duggar. But IBLP’s philosophy continues to be shown on “Bringing Up Bates,” a reality show on the Up television network, about another family with 19 children, whose patriarch, Gil Bates, serves on the IBLP board and is named in the lawsuit.

Despite the positive depictions on reality television, IBLP recently has seen a decline in support, particularly since the Web site Recovering Grace, created by disaffected former followers, began drawing attention to the sexual harassment charges in 2012. Recovering Grace compiled the stories of more than 30 women who said they had been sexually “groomed” and inappropriately touched by Gothard over a three-decade period, and sought to address the charges internally at IBLP.

About the lawsuit, John Cornish, a spokesman for Recovering Grace, said, “Our goal and our hope is the same as it’s been all along — that they will be accountable for what’s taken place, that Bill [Gothard] and the board would repent, and that the victims will finally be acknowledged and taken care of in the right manner.”

The longtime founder and head of the ministry, Gothard, who is now 80, has long denied the sexual harassment charges, even as he resigned as president of the organization in March 2014. (Gothard is not named in the lawsuit because, Gibbs said, he is no longer affiliated with the organization.) That year, IBLP conducted an internal investigation (with which David Gibbs, Jr., Gibbs’s father, was involved), after which it concluded “no criminal activity has been discovered,” but that “Mr. Gothard has acted in an inappropriate manner.”

But the plaintiffs say the internal investigation amounted to sweeping a pattern of abuse and possible criminal activity under the rug. The victims, said the younger Gibbs, were as young as 13 or 14 years old, and often had been subjected at home to physical, sexual and other abuse or neglect. The “pattern” common among the plaintiffs, he said, was that the girl would “act out” as a result of the abuse at home; her parents would then send her to IBLP for counseling.

Other women who have been counseled by Gothard have said he questioned sexual assault victims about whether they were dressed immodestly or had “lustful” thoughts. He also taught that sexual assault victims must “cry out to God” to stop the assault; if she does not, Gothard has taught, she is equally guilty with her assailant.

Gothard, said Gibbs, was aware of the abuse the girls had suffered at home, and would offer to counsel them at IBLP headquarters. When they were alone with him, they say he inappropriately touched them. Sometimes, he added in an interview, a driver would take the pair out for ice cream, for example, and “inappropriate touching” would take place in the back seat of the car.

If they pulled away or rejected the advances, Gibbs charged, Gothard or another IBLP leader would “call the parents and share with them all the allegations of abuse that were shared in counseling, and then send the children back into those environments.”

No one answered the phone at Gothard’s home on Thursday, nor was there a voicemail system or answering machine.

Although they were reluctant to sue, Gibbs said, his clients want to hold the organization accountable for “perpetuating this philosophy and culture of abuse.” He said since filing the lawsuits, other women with similar experiences have contacted him.

The lawsuit further charges that IBLP is seeking to liquidate its sizeable real estate assets, now located in seven states (the organization’s most recent tax return values these holdings at nearly $80 million). Gibbs also said the organization is seeking to relocate its headquarters to Texas, where, he said, the courts are less aggressive than those in Illinois in handling sexual abuse cases.

Cornish, the Recovering Grace spokesman, emphasized IBLP’s own claims to act biblically and morally. “For an organization that has always prided itself on doing the right thing, it’s a bit of a shame that it’s taken legal action for them to even have a discussion with the victims about this,” he said.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/10/22/five-women-sue-bill-gothards-ministry-that-has-ties-to-the-duggars/