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Question:
Can
you elaborate on the experiences you've heard from survivors of the
QF cult? The lack of healthcare, emotional and physical abuse, risks
of so many pregnancies and births, girls being robbed of their own
childhoods, shame surrounding bodies and sex et cetera. It would be
great to flesh those as a little so the readers can really understand
the terrible impact of these on the women that you've helped.
The
Inestimable Damage Suffered by Sons and Daughters
Survivors
of the QF/P began to surface in the ‘90s in the early days of the
internet. The Gothard Discussion Yahoo Group served as one of the
first, early forums, though it addressed the needs of parents. Those
who were raised using Bill Gothard’s Advanced
Training Institute (ATI) curriculum organized their own private
online forums, many of which fractured and splintered. Threads of
them remained, however, and many who sought a healing community in
the original groups now participate with the forums and website,
RecoveringGrace.org.
Since
the 2010 publication of Quivering
Daughters, another new group of well organized SGAs have
established Homeschoolers
Anonymous, Homeschool
Alumni Reaching Out, and the Coalition
for Responsible Home Education which hosts Homeschooling’s
Invisible Children. They offer a new forum for survivors of the
movement to tell about their experiences, good and bad, towards the
end of changing homeschooling for those who follow behind them.
They have conducted research projects and advocate for more oversight
in individual states that have little (as each state in the US has
established their own rules governing the practice of homeschooling,
some of which require nothing of parents). They also track the
incidence of injury, neglect, and morbidity that has gone unnoticed
or has been ignored by the formal leaders who control and guide the
homeschooling movement who seem more interested in preserving their
own freedoms than they do in the best interests of the children in
their homeschooling communities.
~
Cynthia Kunsman
The
view of Quiverfull from my vantage
August
2015
