Janet Heimlich - Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment

Bringing this book to fruition required the help of many extraordinary people. I first want to express my thanks to experts in various fields, all of whom have made a significant impact in helping to improve the lives of children. These individuals were kind enough to speak with me about the child maltreatment problems that exist in America's faith communities, and some shared with me their own painful childhood experiences. They include Salma Abugideiri, Wisconsin State Rep. Terese Berceau, William H. Bowen, Barbara Dorris, Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune, Philip Greven, Marci A. Hamilton, David Jensen, Flora Jessop, Tim Kosnoff, Dr. Asher Lipner, Patricia Merkley, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Dr. Anne Owens, Phil E. Quinn, Kathryn Goering Reid, Rev. Dr. Sarah M. Rieth, Daniel Shea, Rabbi Zeev Smason, Rita Swan, Keith Wright, and David Yoder.

My deeply heartfelt appreciation goes out to the dozens of individuals who agreed to be interviewed for the purpose of talking about their own histories of abuse and neglect. While I will not list their names here to protect their identities, I cannot express how grateful I am for their honesty and trust. I also admire these individuals for finding the strength to face their hurtful pasts and build successful lives as strong and compassionate adults.

I thank Prometheus Books for publishing this work, a testament to the company's continued efforts to educate the public about problems that exist in religious settings. Everyone there has been courteous, supportive, and professional. I especially appreciate the work of copyeditor Jacqueline May Parkison, who gave my manuscript the polishing it so needed.

This was a research-heavy project, and it could not have been turned around in a timely way without the help of research assistants Heather Young, Meghan Hall, Gordon Wilkins, Allyson Whipple, and, above all, Chris Bennett, who stuck with the project until the end. I also extend a warm note of thanks to my local editor, Kathleen Magor.

Along the way, several close friends gave me unflagging moral support; some even took time to read parts of the book and provide helpful feedback. I also thank my parents, who never tired of encouraging me, listening to my complaints, and believing in the project. Finally, a special note of appreciation goes to my young daughter, who put up with me spending many hours on my laptop instead of doing fun activities with her such as playing chase, making lanyards, and going to Chuck E. Cheese's.

To all who have helped toward the completion of this text, I will always be grateful.

When it comes to discussions about religion, people have all kinds of ways of defining the same terms and viewing the same concepts. Therefore, I feel it's important to explain my particular literary choices.

For starters, this book looks solely at what I call religious child maltreatment in the United States. (For the purposes of this book, a child is anyone under the age of eighteen.) The book addresses all three Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. That said, readers will likely notice that there are many more pages devoted to Christian-based problems than Jewish or Muslim. This is not to assert that Christianity is a more worrisome faith (all faiths have doctrines that can be used to hurt children) but is simply because most of this country's worshippers are Christian. I should also add that problems can occur in any belief system, including Eastern and New Age religions.

Why the United States? Certainly, serious problems are occurring all over the globe. However, I felt it best to limit the focus to this country for a number of reasons. In part, I simply had to keep content to a manageable size, but, more important, I feel more attention needs to be paid to religious child maltreatment in America. While Americans seem able to recognize problems when they happen in other countriesespecially those involving religions with which they are not very familiarmany in this country seem blinded to what goes on here.

Many biblical passages appear throughout this book, and almost all come from the New King James Version. I realize that many see newer translations as more authentic; however, my purpose is not to reveal religious truths but to explain how and why certain believers religiously justify abuse and neglect, and these perpetrators often adhere to the King James text. (I chose the newer version to save readers the headache of plowing through archaic language.)

I use the terms religion, faith, and spirituality interchangeably, although I usually avoid the use of the word cult. It has such negative connotations that I fear readers will discount information presented about these small, newly formed (and often unconventional) religious groups. In fact, I believe many Americanseven mainstream believerscan learn a great deal from problems that arise in cults. After all, the harmful aspects of some cults can manifest themselves in any faith, small or large. University of Illinois at Chicago psychology professor Bette L. Bottomsone of only a few researchers to empirically examine the issue of religious child maltreatmentraises this point in one study. She notes that the public is quick to condemn cults that, for example, use excessive Godly discipline on children. Bottoms writes that these cases are immediately highlighted in the news media, and criticized and rejected by society with much self-righteousness. Yet cult beliefs and practices may differ only in degree from those of mainstream religious groups such as Methodists, Baptists, and Catholics.

I interviewed many people for this book who shared with me their personal histories. Some subjects are identified by first name only or by a fictitious first name. While I encouraged everyone to be identified with both first and last names, I ultimately allowed interviewees to decide how they would be identified. Many who wanted anonymity explained that, while they had left their childhood faiths, they continued to have relationships with people still in those faiths. These individuals felt revealing their identities would jeopardize those relationships.

Many people have asked about my upbringing, often assuming I had a terrible religious experience as a child. As I describe in the first chapter, I was raised with next to no religion. Both my parents are Jewish; however, religion was almost entirely absent from the household in which I grew up. As I describe in more detail later, I became interested in the subject of religious child maltreatment much the same way I have become interested in other subjects I have covered as a journalist. I learned that child abuse and neglect motivated by religious belief is a serious problem and one that needed more in-depth scrutiny.

Another disclosure: My book discusses problems of medical neglect in the Christian Science Church. Without fully realizing it, I used to indirectly work for the church. In the late 1990s, I was hired as a freelance reporter by Monitor Radio, a radio network that was owned by the church before being closed down in 1997. At the time, I knew next to nothing about the religion and generally enjoyed working on the handful of stories I reported for the network.

Finally, I want to include a few notes about the many tragic stories that are discussed in Breaking Their Will. First, I realize that a person's accusation against another does not in and of itself constitute guilt. However, I only included cases in which I wholeheartedly believed the allegations rang true. For example, in criminal cases, just about all the perpetrators I discuss were convicted by a judge or jury at trial, and many received long sentences. Also, I scrutinized interviewees who alleged that someone had harmed them.