A stay at the Hephzibah House (from:Youthrights.org)

This story was originally written on a webpage created to provide statements for a GAO hearing in 2007. The address is cafety.youthrights.org and it waits for your statement if you believe that your stay at a boarding school included unfair treatment or even abuse. All rights and credits goes to the annonymous contributor, who posted the original story on cafety.youthrights.org

When I was 14 years old my parents decided to take me to “Hephzibah House” in Winona Lake, Indiana, where I would stay for 15 months. N

ow, twelve years later, the nightmare and memories that were “Hephzibah House” only bring me pain and hurt as I remember my stay there.

When I was just a little girl of eight years, my brother began sexually abusing me. This abuse continued for about a year, despite my pleas to my parents that this was happening, and me begging my parents to believe me and to help me. I was so sad that my parents never believed me, that even after the abuse stopped, I never felt safe again in my own house.

I grew bitter and angry and hurt as the months and years followed that my own mother and father never even once believed me. This bitterness resulted in constant fights between my family and me and ultimately led to my decision to run away. I only wanted to find peace and safety somewhere.

I was not sexually active, I had not tried drugs or alcohol and was actually very active in the Mormon LDS church at the time – this being my only salvation and my only safe place I knew. My parents decided the LDS church was a cult and didn’t want me to attend it. In the end, the constant tension and my parents’ twisted views led them to the conclusion that “something needed to be done” to “fix me”.

Remember, from the very onset of my victimization of sexual abuse at age eight, they never believed me and only sought to berate me and exile me emotionally from the family. One day, my father and grandfather told me we would be taking a nice little trip just for me, together - to get away. I had no idea that this “trip” would be to Indiana and that I was going to be left at a boarding school for fifteen months. Had I known what I was about to experience, I would have run away to save my own life.

Upon my arrival, the realization that I was going not be going back home with my family left me feeling absolute shock, betrayal, fear of the unknown, and a desperate terror of what was to lay ahead. I was taken to an office in the front of the house with my father, grandfather, and “Pastor Williams”. Pastor Williams started explaining the rules of “Hephzibah House” and he and my father were reviewing some sort of documents that apparently my father had already signed - giving them full custody of me for fifteen months! I was cold. Time stood still and I felt as though I was watching myself from outside my own body, that this was truly unreal in some way, and that it would magically stop. I felt tingling in my hands and feet, and this tingling started to creep further and further up my arms and legs. I thought I was going to literally faint.

When Pastor Williams started talking about corporal punishment, I had had enough. Pastor Williams went on to say that corporal punishment was legal in the state of Indiana. I bolted upright and started running for the door saying under my breath that I was not going to stay at this nut house! When I reached the door I realized it was bolted - all the way up the door - and that I was locked in! I desperately looked around for my Grandfather, I trusted him and I knew he would save me, but he was gone! Only twelve years later did I learn that my trust was well placed that day – my mother recently told me that as I was screaming to be saved, my Grandfather had been forced to the outside of the building that was “Hephzibah House” and was locked out!

Pastor Williams then called all his six sons in the room who circled around me and held me down as Mrs .Williams began beating me with a huge stick they called the “rod of god”. I started screaming – I thought this was the end, that I was going to be beaten to death, and prayed for the end to come quickly. I was then handed over to Pastor Williams himself who also began beating me with this long rod from the top of my body to my knees. The pain was unbearable! Oh God – the pain – and my heart was exploding in a desperate sadness as I watched my own father being ordered by Pastor Williams to take the rod and help beat me with it. My father seemed to almost be afraid of Pastor Williams, and he seemed disoriented, so with tears streaming down his face, he raised the rod in the air and meekly spanked me on my behind 5 or 10 times. Pastor Williams shouted over my desperate screams that my father “had raised a selfish spoiled daughter and that he would go to hell if he did not use the rod of god” - then my father dropped the rod and left the room, sobbing. At this point, numbness set in. I didn’t feel the pain any longer…I couldn’t even scream, my voice was hoarse and my throat in pain…I just waited to die.

The next thing I remembered was that my father was gone and I was taken to a shower where I was stripped of all my personal clothes and given a Hephzibah house uniform. While I was in the shower I realized that my entire body was covered in bruises and I was locked up with no way out. The next few weeks were agony for me as it hurt to sleep or sit. I was filled with hate and anger. For the next fifteen months I refused to yield to Pastor Williams’ fanatical “Baptist” teachings, teachings that in my opinion stripped the spirit of God and Christ himself from the very Bible that the “Pastor” read from.

The next fifteen months would bring a string of abuses to us in ways I could never have imagined, before or since. “Talking lists” - where the communication was to exclude anything from my past life and past friends. These “lists” at the school would have 1-2 girls on them that I would be allowed to talk too as long it was in the presence of a staff member. Nothing was EVER private. Any form of communication to other girls such as eye contact, using hand motions, anything - would result in “demerits”. Too many demerits would lead to a loss of privileges: no food, three minute showers, having to wear your uniform to church which would show the public that you were a “bad girl”, being shadowed by another girl 24/7, to being beaten by the “rod of God”.

Each day we would have to write on a “BM” board if we had “pooped” or not in the toilet, and then were forced to write down on the board what our “poop” was like – was it large, small or medium? Was it diarrhea? Did we only pee? Not only was this a public shame, but our most intimate bodily functions were displayed for all the girls too see. I never did understand the reasoning for this.

Every week we were allowed to write one letter to our parents and our home Pastor on Sunday. These letters were censored and if we did not write what we were told, the letter would be trashed. My parents and pastor were allowed to write to me, but many of mothers letters were “blacked out”. Every three months my parents were allowed to come visit. These visits would be inside of the building and we would have a staff member present to watch what we would say to each other. If anything was said out of context of their “approved” communications, the visits would be cut short and I wouldn’t see my parents for another three months.

The depression from Hephzibah House was overwhelming. Many girls remember a bucket where you would put your dirty period pads, although I do not remember this bucket. This leads me to believe that I may have stopped my period during my time there, which was very common among the girls. Monday through Friday we would attend school which was taught by the PACE curriculum which I really didn’t know anything about. I know it’s a Christian series of books that you have to complete in a sequence to get to the “next level”. Because I love learning and reading I threw myself in these books hoping to make myself forget for just a few minutes how much I hated Hephzibah House and my life.

Wednesday nights, Sunday morning and Sunday nights consisted of church. The church sermons were filled with the terror of hell and burning forever if we did not convert and give our lives over to God. Pastor Williams brought a sense of fear and dread for death. The sermons left you feeling scared of the world and the ways of the world. I remember a church sermon where Pastor Williams spoke of the Rod of God and how important it was that the mothers and fathers need to hide these rods from social services and the police because they didn’t understand the ways of biblical teaching and those of God. Another sermon was given shortly after I got there about Mormonism and how Mormons were going to burn in Hell. Pastor Williams told me they had burned my Book of Mormon. Another day I remember it was “free time”, a time we could sew or do projects or write home, and a new girl had arrived. I heard her screams of terror and of pain and I knew she was being beaten. Tears fell down my face silently as I prayed earnestly for God to be with her. How I hated Pastor Williams!

The remaining months began to go by quickly as I learned how to become a survivor and how to deal with Hephzibah House without receiving demerits and/or having any attention paid to me. I told Pastor Williams I wanted to be baptized in hopes that this could get me home and out of his private hell.

On my 15th month, to the day, I was called upstairs where my parents were there to pick me up. I wasn’t allowed to say good bye to anyone or anything. My things had already been packed and were waiting for me. I don’t remember the drive home all the way back to Virginia. So many things I think I blacked out in my mind. After a few weeks at home, I realized how bad Hephzibah House really was. I recently had a conversation with my mother for the first time in twelve years about Hephzibah House. She broke out crying saying she tried to have them let me go home but because they had signed me over to them that there was nothing they could do. My mother said she tried to contact the Winona Lake Police but that they said Hephzibah House was a good school!

Now, twelve years later the pain and hurt that comes with the memories of Hephzibah House will not go away. I am now a mother, college graduate, a successful realtor and soon a real estate broker! Yet with all my accomplishments and success in life I can not seem to forget Hephzibah House. The nightmares still come…and as I lay alone at night in my bedroom, I still hear the screaming of myself and the other girls in my mind…I still see my father sobbing…I still see Pastor Williams and I am afraid…and I wonder…how can this kind of pure evil exist in our world, and in our own country? I hope this testimony will help another mother not send her daughter to this school or other schools like this. I hope that if there is another girl that went to this school and has these memories that she realizes she is not alone. We are SURVIVORS and I hope that we can band together to help our country see what is going on here and to shut them down once and for all!

References:
Datasheet about the boarding school at Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
The original statement on cafety.youthrights.com