Well, I think that the thing with ATI is that it is so far out in crazy land that it is very, very obvious where the problems are. When Gothard says things in his health newsletters like, "Cabbage Patch dolls and Troll Dolls bring demons into the house so a woman can't birth naturally, but getting rid of them allows a woman to birth easily and without complications", and that this is special revelation from god just to him, the target is clear. That's the thing about ATI/Stay at Home Daughters, IFB, and the crossovers between them, the problems are not subtle, and not particularly nuanced. But take for instance the sex abuse scandals of say the SBC, things can be much more multi-faceted, and the discussions have to be more nuanced. And I don't think most folks on this board are up for a hard, hard look at how a variety of religious faiths as well as nonreligious belief has shaped and informed what has been bred into the fabric of our society and culture, even at the legal level. It is difficult to hold these discussions in an online forum like this where tone can't be read. Usually it ends with people feeling attacked. And as someone who was once very much a devout Christian but who is no longer, I know exactly how attacked I would be. So I stick to the likes of the easy targets. Gothard and his followers, Doug Phillips, Doug Wilson, Jeffrey Botkin, RC Sprout Jr., etc.

Yes, there were a lot of similar groups, and they were all dangerous. I think after the Phyllis Scraply/Falwell mind losing over the equal rights amendment, there was a big move among these misogynist pricks to offer "the perfect life" to christians. I know all about IFB, because fundie Gothard school didn't think it was enough for us to have Bill Gothard to worship, and also took us to Hyles church in Hammond, the prick that had his own version of this and meanwhile was using church money to hide out his mistress in a nice condo across town, and covering up for his deacon raping a disabled girl in Sunday School class. It was a bad, bad time. I mean, I went to one homeschool convention in 2007, just the one GHC thing in Cinncinnati. The highlight was meeting SWB and having my book autographed. But all the rest of it still felt like crazy, right wing, fundie, misogynistic garbage looking around the exhibit it it's hall. Vision Forum, The Botkin crap, Essential Oils and Bee pollen cures everything, etc. SWB, Miller Pad and Paper, and Rainbow Resource were the only stop worth makinfg, and I wasn't even deconverted at that point and still a conservative to moderately conservative Christian. I saw a LOT of stuff that just made me feel like I needed to be bleached because it reminded me so much for ATI/IBLP. So much crossover.

I don't have a puke emoji on my kindle. So I will have to go with this one 😱😠👿

Danish Smorrebrod, and this year adding several new recipes including Aebleskiver, as well as singing/dancing around the Christmas tree with each member having an LED candle to clip on the tree because DH refuses to let me do the truly traditional of putting real, lit candles on it! 😂.This is all for Christmas Eve. Oh, and we have new Icelandic Elf houses and the grandsons will be leaving gifts for the elves in the hopes that they will be good and not bring mischief to the house. I am sure my husband and son in law will enjoy scarfing down the cookies, candy, fruit, etc. that is put out. For trinkets, dd and I are having them put out a couple of LED flashlights that we both wanted anyway. 😁

Quinoa, spring greens, green olives, topped with hummus, tahini, and Greek yogurt.

I love it!!

My sister and daughter did it when they were coming home from Arizona on Amtrak. A freight train derailed on the tracks, so instead of starting out on the train, Amtrak brought in a big bus, and drove them some ridiculous distance out of the way, to pick up the train in Texas on a different set of tracks. It was not particularly pleasant.

Right, I didn't mean that they would automatically be taken away or anything like that. Just that if JB fought for them, and should have said if the court forces a CPS report (which has been done for federal cases because judges can demand that in order to decide things like where the inmate can live when paroled), she would probably need to show she is willing to do the hard, single parent thing independent of JB. Otherwise, it is very conceivable that JB would fight for custody of those kids claiming she can't do it, isn't capable, isn't educated, isn't...whatever lie he makes up. So I think it is more of an uphill battle for her if JB wants to keep the M's in the cult, than it would be for other moms. But, I wasn't clear on what I meant. Sorry about that!

As to ATI, yes, math and science is limited. A.C.E. is sometimes used as a supplement. But we are.talking about, at a high school level, 12 consumable workbooks that cover roughly 1-2 chapters that a textbook would cover except not because content had to be limited in order to make room for writing all the answers in the book, a portion of every other page devoted to Bible memory, and quizzes, self-test in the book that must also have room for writing in so it limits what is gone over. Plus there is a lot of time spent on dubious topics like "the Lochness monster proves dinosaurs are still alive and walked with man". I did a review of the stuff.back in 2009, and at that time, the biology paces were missing 22 topics from a standard, non-advanced, non AP biology text, and when it came to comparison to an honors course, 40. 40 missing topics. There was a tremendous emphasis on taxonomy which is normally these days taught in 7th grade life science. If you have any familiarity with Jay Wife's high school.science texts, his biology (again non honors, just basic) is heads and shoulders above A.C.E. Algebra 1 had so many mistakes it was nerve wrecking. In comparison to Christian Light Algebra 1, it just didn't hold a candle. Additionally, as a general rule, the strict IBLP families end all math and science for girls at the end of 10th grade figuring she has enough to get a GED. Obviously not all. This is what is recommended by Gothard. Some families may be a bit more pros education than that. Some will follow it to the letter, and some will be worse. Locally, the two IBLP families at my mom's church openly flaunt that they stop education for their daughters at the end of 8th grade in total violation of Michigan law. However since Michigan homeschool law is NOT enforced, they get away with it. Therefore, these girls have about no chance of passing the GED since it had been updated to include some algebra 1 and geometry, some biology and physical science. The Wisdom Booklets/Gothard and friends are scared to death of literature so apart from reading Pilgrim's Progress, do not cover much. The reading level is low. So the bottom line is if these kids make it, either their parents supplemented with other, decent curriculum and in several subjects, or they didn't fully swallow the kool aid when it comes to educating girls.

I believe you are correct. For one thing her parents are rather poor. Her dad has a prison ministry and they live on donations. It isn't great. They would not be able to help her fight for her kids. JB, prior to potentially paying upwards of a half million (the defense's "expert" witness billed out at roughly $70,000 for just her testimony and the claimed 200 hours she put into her independent investigation), would have had a lot of money for a cut throat, s.o.b. of a divorce lawyer, and he and Josh are sociopaths or something. They would not have let those kids go. And also prior to the CSAM allegations, Mike Huckabee was still a big fan so they would have a powerful friend to bring pressure on the system to favor Josh. Her only chance was at the Ashley Maddison scandal. Her brother is married to someone with a fair amount of assets and cash flow. Josh went to Jesus camp for several months and wasn't working, which is a situation that could have been spun by a good lawyer as abandonment. Her brother and sister in law offered to help her, and she declined. That was her chance. Her brother publicly offered, and she didn't take her up on it. Now there are 7 kids. That is a lot more to handle for any family member to intervene. The only thing I can think of, if she were inclined to try, is if her brother offered again, she cooperated with CPS for an investigation, got a job - any job - right away and put the older ones in school, and the baby maybe being cared for by Jill if Jill agreed. She would look responsible, and could maybe make a case that because she had Covenant Eyes on his machine and is not tech savvy, she was sure he was innocent until the court testimony and conviction. JB may be running low on cash, possibly not able to pay for a top shelf attorney since he has already allegedly paid out retainers for an appeal which is NOT going to be cheap. But, she is going to have to cooperate with CPS, and do things that will make them feel she is going to get away from Josh and keep them safe, and that means becoming a viable single parent supporting herself with the help of public assistance and family. I don't know that she thinks she can do this.

I am so sorry Laura! Hugs

It is a 24 hour bus ride to go 7 hours from there to here and that is if they don't cancel due to a blizzard and leave the students stranded in some hamlet along the way. That has most definitely happened. I made it home and roads were decent today, just a few squirrelly patches getting to 75, and then totally fine from there. I am very happy I made the run. Some students from the school tried to make it out Friday night after dark, and that didn't end well though no one was hurt. Phew! But ya, no thanks. The down state young drivers from south of US 10 don't have enough experience that I am comfortable with my son riding with them. We were safe, comfy, cozy in our hotel. Yes, it was expensive. But I will take that expense over the risk of something terrible happening to him. And our insurance company charges an unholy amount of money to insure someone under 25 to keep a car up there. It is crazy! $200 a month. Over four years, me driving when the weather is not good so he isn't tempted to "catch a ride" is way way cheaper. I did check into a plane ticket from the "International" airport up there. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. $1054.00 yes, you read that number correctly. To go 7 hours, 450 miles. And it would have been canceled anyway! LOL

Finally, home. I am so very glad that I laid over one more day. MSP at 1:00 on Saturday begged people to stay of the roads because they were still responding to so many ditch accidents. We left about 10 am today and there were 3 patches of M28 that were NOT great, but they also weren't treacherous. It was just a matter of going slow, not braking, not getting close to anyone else. I 75 had been cleared down to dry pavement. I did buck a head wind. And it was bad. My car normally gets 30-33 mph on the highway. I got 26.5. When we got to the bridge, there were white caps 4-5 tall on the open water of the Straits. I can only imagine how high those.waves were breaking at the beach along US 2. US 2, when weather is good, is my favorite route because the scenery is lovely, and then in the middle, I head up to Munising and go along Lake Superior. Really, the U.P. is paradise for beauty! It is exquisite, but when Old Man Weather hits, it is a frightful grizzly bear. I am so glad I did not let him come home with other students from campus. I know how that goes. They are all poor, may not even be 21 and can't check into a hotel room, and inclined to be adventurous and think they can make it when they can't. Several of those cars on 28 that were in the ditch were reported to be college students. Someone on the other thread - I will also respond there - asked about buses. Buses are not kuch of a thing in Michigan, and mostly limited to the I-94 corridor with city buses in the urban areas. City buses in Flint and Saginaw but not outside of town, and a couple of buses run south to Saginaw, and those are.the only ones that are reliable. There is one bus that runs from the U.P. Houghton/Marquette to the lower peninsula. It routinely cancels or delays in weather like this, and makes so many stops that it can take up to 24 hours to get from those two universities to Flint, Michigan. It is not something students can rely on. I don't like all the money spent on hotels laying over, but I am not unhappy. I will take that any day over my kid being wrecked riding with inexperienced drivers, or left sleeping in a not necessarily heated by station/bus stop in some hamlet along a remote road where the only motels are seasonal and shut down for the winter, and the only food IF lucky, is the gas station. There are whole little towns up there that do not have gas stations as well. Now I need to think.about the trip to Alabama with a departure time of 6 am the 18th, and I just lost my weekend of prep time! 😜

Okay, if anyone wants to know more, I will be back in 7-10 hours depending on how long it takes me to make my way out of the U.P. I just can't lay over another night because I have a doctor appointment tomorrow. Hopefully the roads are cleared by now. Yesterday there were a lot of stranded motorists/ditch accidents on M28 and MSP was asking people to stay home. But that was 19 hours ago so here is hoping the plows have been able to get it safe to drive.

Yes, it is sad but Gothard teaches that woman outside of her father's or husband's headship will often be raped, sink into prostitution, be infertile. The slime bag takes some of the worst fears that women will have about sexual abuse or fertility and then tells them that it will happen to them if they don't bow the knee to abuse and neglect by their fathers and husbands. He is one sick bastard! And of course this teaching attracts sick bastards who want to control the women in their lives, even hurt them. So it naturally attracts to its midst, narcissists and sociopaths.

Well, I don't want to have a long debate, but just want to say that if it is all god's choice than people are obviously created, if one buys into the theology, for hell. There is no alternative because they can't choose otherwise. I am not sure what the allure is to a religion in which you could spend your whole life, I once did, serving and loving god with your whole heart only to be rolling the dice on NOT ending up in hell. So there is that. However, since IBLP is outside the scope of even Calvinism or Welseyanism/Arminianism or any other mainstream, it isn't worth discussing here. They are just a whole level of crazy theology!

Yes, there are more than hundreds. Gothard did not amass a fortune just shy of a 100,000,000 on so few families. Now that said, certainly some of them paid the Money for the conventions, and then decided against it. The cost is $60 for the first person, and $35 per additional family member with encouragement for the whole family to attend and then a lot of add on costs not listed on the website. This is way less then in the mid-80's when it was about $750 for the basic for just two or three people, and $1500 for the advanced. And what I quote is for the basic. It is close to double for advanced. Wisdom Booklets are $85 per student (down a long way from the 80's and 90's eras but printing is actually cheaper, and I think they lowered the price to keep big families involved). Family enrollment annually in order to get the newsletters is $150, and that also represents a price drop. But also, these are 2011 prices. I don't have anything more recent than that. They do top Wisdom Booklets out at $630 per annum for families over a certain size. I guess they figured out that huge, single income families might not be able to afford it. Last I knew, Journey of the Heart was $500 per ATI student, and $800 for non-ATI, and that was for a week at a time. ALERT, if memory serves, was a little more expensive because the boys got to do first responder type stuff so they had licensed CPR instructors and what not brought in, and of course, they get paid their EMS organizations going rate. But even at the higher prices three and four decades ago, it was more than a few hundred families paying dues, buying wisdom.booklets, going to conventions, and constant buying up his books, tapes/cd's, and crap, paying for youth camps, in order for him to get that rich.

Yes, it varies the degree to which people swallow the kool aid. For a lot of families, it all sounds wonderful when the kidlets are little and easier to mold. Hit the teen and young adult years, and it gets mighty tough. A lot of people who fall for it in the beginning lose their taste when it gets rough sledding, or they have teens who won't comply and are more than willing to speak up to people in the community, the doctor, a teacher, the neighbors, etc. So when it gets hard, they easy way up, and then over time, fall away. The IFB church about 20 minutes from my house had a big rude awakening just a few years back when the pastor's oldest child ran away from home. Fled in the middle of the night, and managed to hitch a ride to the ER where she showed the staff her back, where her father had beaten her with a belt for speaking to an unapproved boy. He went to jail, her mom had to go to parenting classes and promise to never lay a hand on any of the other kids, three years of supervision while he was in jail, and then they remained under scrutiny because she refused to divorce him. The daughter was 16 and a nice family in the area took her in and helped her get caught up on school work, then enrolled her in dual enrollment to finish high school. But that church, fundie as it was, was floored that their pastor was that abusive. I mean they all had swallowed the kool aid to some degree or they wouldn't have been attending his church, however not to that extreme that they would do something like that to their own kids. What was scary was how many pastors from the non-denominational churches in the area supported him!!!! No joke. Their big thing was, "well, he shouldn't have hit her so hard, but we don't want the government up in our religious business so we need to protest his arrest". 😯 Very frightening. IFB churches, in particular, have been a bit more prone to following Gothardism. Or Jack Hylesism or.....it is a lot of the same thing just packaged a little differently.

It is not hundreds of thousands by any stretch. It is in the high single digit thousands to low tens of thousands. Gothard is worth a about 94 million personally, at least back in the 2005 or so. That might have dropped off since then due to "retiring" over his own sex scandal. But, he was international not just national. He has a youth retraining center in Moscow, Russia. His bedroom is in the girl's dorm! When I was a teen and he was the main speaker for the conventions, he would pack out places like Joe Lewis Arena, and you could watch the families, women walking behind their husbands or beside but staring at their feet the teenage girls not making eye contact, extreme conservative clothing and a lot of it looking pretty ratty for the women, men and teen boys in expensive suits, men just FAWNING over Gothard as he trumpeted abusing their wives and daughters because "god wanted it that way", it was frightening. It was not quite that bad at the Basic convention where he tried to woo knew converts so he didn't bring out the craziest of his stuff. Yowza those Advanced ones were just 😥. I was forced to go to both. My dad went to the basic. Then that abusive school he had me in made the entire body of teens attend the advanced one. My dad didn't go so naturally he had no idea just how off the freaking rails it was. I never went to Journey of the Heart. During dad's year of flirting with IBLP, he was still very into promoting my musical abilities. So he for in big trouble with the Gothardite pastor of the school when I went to Interlochen (so scandalous to them). Two girls I went to school with got sent to Journey. Both were groped by Gothard while there, and one got caught with red nail polish and sentenced to stand on a chair for hours with a tomato under her heels. People got to smack her as they walked by, and she wasn't supposed to let that tomato smash her feet. Sick bastards. Also, the Indianapolis Star - if memory serves - was the investigative news org that blew the whistle off his youth re-training center in Indianapolis. It was horribly abusive, just awful. Local judges used to send youth in trouble with juvy court there for Gothard and company to straighten out. I don't know if the videos are still available anywhere, but if you google, you might find the written reports. It ended them getting state money for housing and "training" kids in the system. The two Botkin sisters are in their thirties now, unmarried and probably still washing Jeff's feet for him. One of the Botkin sons left the cult, married a gal with an engineering degree! It has been a bit of a scandal over there. They have never announced a courtship for either sister, and my guess is that it was planned that way though in his early days of spreading vile family ideas to the homeschooling community, Jeff Botkin talked about holding his baby girls for the very first time and praying for their ovaries because he wanted them to have lots of babies! That guy is gross! That I know of personally, those who follow this idea - even if they don't attribute it to Gothard and have put their own spin on it - Boerne Christian Assembly, San Antonio and two off shoot Texas churches, Christchurch of Moscow, Idaho - and Doug Wilson is someone a lot of people in Moscow are trying to bring down - two non-denominational churches near me, and several non-denoms in my uncle's area of Kentucky are involved with IBLP. There are plenty of others, but they are spread out and do not function like a denomination per se. Also, Kentucky Mountain Bible College, while not proclaiming any allegiance to Gothard, teaches a ton of the same ideas. Also, often IBLP families are spread out and don't have enough other like minded families to form a church so they attend very, very conservative Holiness Association churches instead of home-churching. And of course those churches do not necessarily believe all of the rhetoric though they do tend to be pretty anti-female rights for sure. This makes it hard to get a true picture of how many of them there are. The conventions are very expensive to attend, and the materials are crazy expensive to buy. That one way the organization rakes in the big bucks. Gullible people were willing to buy it because of the allure of having a perfect, godly family, and of course a certain level of prosperity gospel - god will shine on your business, your income, etc. if you follow the plan.

Actually, I know of two quiverful/IBLP families who have groomed their eldest daughters to never marry because then they remain under their father's headship, and must be sistermommies and nurse caregivers for elderly parents. That is another thing Bill Gothard thought was wonderful.

Eye roll! Because yes....so persecuted! It couldn't possibly be because of his choices Josh's choices! Nope. Narcissism at its finest.🙄😠

Actually quite a few. It has been noted on other sites that the Kendra and Jessas kids are there a lot along with John David's daughter. That is eight, and the town is tiny, super duper tiny. People refer to her as the Duggar free daycare provider.

But we don't know that this was the M's. Duggar have 22 grandkids 12 and under, and only four - Jill and Jinger - are not around. It could be one of the other sets of nieces and nephews. And since the child/children in question are minors so their identities will be protected, we may never know which family's kids were involved in the incident. I have also seen judges say someone cannot provide childcare, and in some cases, for years not just months. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

We are taking vitamin d. Trying to do Better with getting a lot of fresh air which isn't easy now that Michigan has gotten so cold. Our big focus is more on mental health ad we come up on two years of this mess. We are having a lot of movie and game nights whenever we have one or more of our adult sons in the house, taking walks, trying new recipes, I am doing a lot of research on the Danish concept of "Hygge", and we have been slowly purging the house. Dh is doing a lot with his new hobby of bread making and says he finds it very relaxing. I have been making some floral arrangements for the new house. We decided that we needed more balance, not just worrying about physical safety. We are taking our two sons who are winter sports buffs, skiing the last weekend of February. I am hoping that cases are low enough that with a good mask I will feel okay taking a good book and curling up in front of the lodge fireplace since my permanently injured ankle does not withstand skiing or snowshoeing.

Picking up on Pam's thoughts. When these kinds of charges happen for things like car seat/seat belt issues, it is just big fines unless the family is poor or homeless in a car, and then there are a lot of avenues for assistance. Police and fire departments have fee, brand new car seats in their boxes and will install them. Often judges will waive the fines once the family produces proof of car seats properly installed, and promises to use them. We have two new shelters for homeless folks, one is for families. Numerous nonprofits help. So unless.something egregious is going on in terms of neglect, assistance will be given and they will try not to punish unless they have to. In the case of other types of child endangerment, it runs the gamut. Sometimes intervention such as parenting classes can be ordered, sometimes day care can be paid for if the parent is working nights and needs to sleep but has no one to take baby, etc. In the case of a non parent endangering a child, that can be less about intervention and more geared to punishment. I have to wonder about that for Jana. None of these kids are hers. The state has no vested interest in her becoming a better "parent" so it might be harsher for her.