In case I was ever tempted to return to my Fundy roots...

I’ve been reading up lately on the Chuck Phelps situation, since he just resigned from his position as board member of Bob Jones University. Phelps, in case my audience doesn’t have as much free time as I have at the moment to follow the situation, is the guy who was the pastor of the church where one of his congregation members, Ernie Willis, raped and impregnated a 15-year-old girl and knew about it and did nothing!

Sorry, “nothing” is the wrong word - after the girl, Tina Anderson, and her mother informed Phelps of the situation, he had Tina stand in front of the congregation and apologize for being a stumbling block and he refused to believe she was raped - it was an “adulterous affair.” He arranged for Tina to spend her days of pregnancy in Colorado with a preacher friend of his and the baby was given up for adoption. Then she was sent back home and continued to attend church with the perpetrator, her rapist.

Yeah, because he was still permitted to come to church! Phelps said that the church is to encourage struggling Christians, but Willis was beyond struggling - he was a criminal and a pervert, only most of his fellow church members didn’t know this.

The case was reopened recently - this happened in 1997 - and Phelps was subpoenaed to testify and was caught lying under oath. He said up a website defending his honor and insisting that Tina was the one being dishonest. Willis was convicted of forceful rape.

Sometime during the trial, Bob Jones University invited him back to the board, since he had been given the boot by Maranatha Baptist, where he had been president. Of course, there has been quite a bit of pressure to BJU to give rid of Phelps, but Bob Jones III officially backed up Phelps in a recent chapel, proclaiming that Bob Jones University would never endorse a man who swept sexual abuse under a rug, - "we're not Penn State, folks."

Phelps actually just handed in his resignation, but he never apologized or indicated that he was wrong in any way. He just didn't want to interfere with the "university's mission."

On one of the websites I was reading, I came across a link to the transcript of Bob Jones III's interview with Larry King in 2000, when the university was getting all that bad press on account of its interracial dating ban. I was disgusted, although not surprised, at Jones's words:

“ I've learned that religious freedom, and particularly Bible-believing Christians, that maybe we're the most unprotected and misunderstood and maybe despised minority in America. I think some of this is frightening. I think the hostility toward Christianity that has been exhibited in all this should frighten all freedom-loving people and certainly should frighten Christians. And I believe it has. I believe that somehow the university's been allowed of God to be brought into this thing through no fault of our own, and I think as a result a lot of people have had a wake-up call that maybe we're about to lose tolerance toward religious freedom in this country. And I am really, really concerned about that.”

What?! Delusional much? No, because I know ,poor little Bob Jones III, how you have been agonized by the many trials, tribulations, and persecution you've been through. You and your fellow Christians, all 80-something percent of Americans, have suffered indeed! How arrogant, to wine about his non-existent problems and imply that the horrors other minorities in American are trivial! No wonder he didn’t want blacks marrying his Caucasian students - he must have a low opinion on all they’ve been through and are even still experiencing. Dude, the gay community is getting much more crap than Christians - but then he thinks homosexuals are perverts and sinners and so need not be mentioned.

But they are people, too. And maybe he’d better get rid of that beam in his own eye, his own pervert-concealer in residence, Chuck Phelps.

Rant, Part II

Here's my before-mentioned Facebook message to Jewell:


Hi, there, Jewell! I heard that you are now employed at Ruby Tuesday as an hostess - I'm so relieved for you! I know that feeling well - I hope you work with great people. Melody and I both agreed the people we restaraunted with were the bottom of the barrel, the most depraved we'd ever met - so that should be fun!

Mama gave me strict orders before you came that I was not to speak to you about Big Jim, and I promised her I wouldn't. She is extremely concerned - a little too much, if you ask me - about not slandering Big Jim and making sure you guys have a good relationship with your father and all that jazz. However, I could never forgive myself for not being honest with you, and I think it's disrespecting you treating you on the same level as the boys and George - you're 18 and out of the house.

I know you think that basically Big Jim is a decently good guy with a rocky period in his past for which he is sincerely sorry. I know as well as anyone how charming and fun he can be. But another strong trait of his is arrogance and manipulation. He is a star at the whole manipulation thing! Dude, he had Melody convinced for YEARS after what happened between them that somehow he was the victim! I was 21 when I left for college, and for most of that time I was convinced that Big Jim was such good Christian and that any struggles I had were my failing, not his.

Jewell, what can I say to make you see how he is not genuinely sorry in the least and in fact thinks what he did not a big deal and that it was actually not even his fault, that it was Melody and Mama's? Because I know how you pride yourself on having your own opinions and don't like accepting others' for yourself, and yet this should not be a situation between you and me, about you and Mama. This is so much bigger than that, so much graver. I swear I'm not writing to impose my opinion on you. I love you so much.

Here's the thing: EVERYBODY who knows about Big Jim and Melody thinks what he did sick and that he should never be given custody of ANY child, including professional counselors. Even Aunt Kathleen wrote Mama and told her this. The only people who do not feel this way are Big Jim's impressionable and slightly biased children and his mother, who I find it ironic that Big Jim is such great allies with because he has called her crazy on more occasions than I can remember. Melody's counselor said that Big Jim is a perfect example of a sexual predator, since he has been behaving inappropriately to her since she was 12 and yet didn't actually perform sex with her until the week after her 18th birthday. How can this be cooincidence? And up until I was in my late teens it was the same way with me. Those massages where he would go up under our nightgowns right near our privates and also right by our breasts when he was doing our backs - that's not the way a healthy father treats his teenage daughters. If I hadn't been uncomfortable and made up excuses for him to massage me, who knows what might have happened.

After the trial, I am more sure than ever that Big Jim is not sorry in the least. His attorney's open argument sounded like it could have come from Big Jim's own lips - because I have heard him say it - saying that Big Jim was drivin into his actions by his wife, that Mama wouldn't have sex with him and so naturally he turned to the slender arms of his beautiful stepdaughter. What he didn't say was that the reason Big Jim and Mama so rarely had sex then was because, per his choice, they were sharing a room with the boys and Georgia.

And then when I was on the stand - Mama's attorney had me tell about what inappropriate things Big Jim had done when I was living at home, I looked over at Big Jim as I was talking and he was glaring at me with pure contempt. I wasn't expecting to him to look sorrowfully at me - what he had done to me was nothing compared to how he messed with Mama and Melody - but it struck me how what he did was so oviously wrong and here I was describing it in graphic detail for the judge, and Big Jim wasn't sorry for what he did to me even though I was looking him in the eye.

But do you know what really gets on my nerves? When Big Jim first started talking about getting custody, he told you guys that no way in the world would he separate the kids. But when it turned out that he couldn't get Georgia, too, he decided he would just get as many kids as he could, the three boys, even though he knows more than anyone how cruel it would be to separate her from her brothers. Splitting them up is clearly not the best thing for them, but because Big Jim is much more concerned about what he wants than the welfare of anyone else, including his kids, he does what he wants.

So a couple of weeks ago, Abigail told me that they were discussing sociopaths in her med school class and told me she was sure Big Jim was one. I typed in "sociopath" into Google and read the first list of traits, and it was uncanny how well it described Big Jim - only one or two points didn't match. I showed Mama, and we were amazed. It explains him, down to the sexual abuse and authoritarianism and the parasitic lifestyle, meaning he spends a lot of others' resources (Mama Jean bought his house and is paying for his attorney). Jewell, I know you don't want to read such things in relation to Big Jim, but please, please, read this article that I attached. It's not long. Please, if you love me at all, try to see this from both sides.

I hope you have a good weekend. I really wish I could see you again and spend more time together - Mama and I are going up to Macon tomorrow to go shopping since I am going to Homecoming at Covenant in October, and it would be fun if you were with us. Have fun with your training!

Love, Rebecca



There it is - everything laid out, and Princess Jewell has vetoed it. Not only that, but she offers to testify FOR Big Jim. I want nothing to do with her.

Oh, my goodness, I feel another stepfather-bashing welling up within me. Who is this guy? How can he get away with so damn much?

So, ever since Mama filed for divorce, she has been spending a decent amount of time conversing with the IRS. A little background is needed here: my amazing stepfather is an extremely paranoid guy, full to bursting with conspiracy theories. When I was living at home, it was The System this and The System that. Medical System corrupt, Education System corrupt - we never so much as went to the doctor, because of course any doctor would just want to take advantage of us. I think one of the boys might have had to get stiches from the ER once when Big Jim's crafty butterflies weren't sufficient.

And all the boys and Jewell were born at home. At first it wasn't just for religious reasons - Mama had always wanted to give it a try, but Daddy wasn't buying it. Of course, Big Jim was all about doing things the natural way - Mama had a great midwife in Atlanta and great experiences with Jewell and Clay and Josiah being born in the splitlevel in the suburbs while we older kids stayed with Grandpa and Grandma.

By the time Sam was born in the wilds of Kentucky with the help of  a stern Mennonite midwife that had never so much as given Mama a prenatal exam, Big Jim had begun his decline. He had already insisted that Josiah not be given a Social Security number - didn't want his son to be registered with The System, wasn't going to sell his son for tax returns, and now he went one further with Samuel - he didn't want Sam to have a birth certificate. He said he and God knew when Sammy was born and that was all that was needed. Mama wasn't too thrilled, but she was just the woman and, like Eve and her forbidden fruit, was deceived. So Sammy went certificate-less.

Until now. The first thing Mama did when she filed for divorce was start the process to get the boys SS numbers and Sam a birth certificate. Georgia May lucked out when she was born five weeks early in the hospital and provided with both.

Of course, it has taken a while, but Mama found out that from the IRS that she would get a nice check for the boys, so that made it even more worthwhile - she can really use the money. She's already using my American Funds money I got from Grandmommy when I was 21 for her current attorney, who's great but twice as expensive as her last attorney, and I know it killed her to ask me that.

Mama has spent so much time on the phone, sending things back and forth to Kentucky for Sam's certificate, going to Macon an our away to the IRS office, but at last she got the numbers and certificate AND a check was sent - to Big Jim.

I KNOW. Both Mama and Big Jim's names were on the check, of course, but Big Jim informed Mama that there was no way he'd signed his signature unless the check were mailed directly to him. He never got her signature, but he gave her about a quarter of the amount, telling her this was what she deserved from what he'd figured out. He'd have to have forged her name in order to deposit the check, or else some stupid teller let him do it with just one signature. Mama is having the IRS send a copy of the deposited check to see if he forged her name.

That sonofabitch. How can I NOT hate the guy?

AND Mama is so low on funds this month since the child support situation hasn't been figured out by the lawyers, and it's Christmas this month! And she's only getting the money for the house from Big Jim this month; he payed her pittance for child support for all five of the kids this past year, but at least it's better than what she's getting this month - nothing.

Of course, if the Stepfather had had his way, he would not have even paid for the house, let alone for Georgia. He makes so much money and he doesn't even have to pay for his stupid lawyer or for the house he's living in since his mother is providing him with both.

He's so evil, so very evil. He's trying not to give her any of his money and is trying to give her practically nothing of that IRS money that I think is rightfully all hers but is at least half hers.

Written early on a rainy Wednesday morning ... on the front porch, of course, wrapped in my bathrobe...

It's strange how deathly quiet it is here without the three boys. When Big Jim picked them up after work on Monday and just Georgia and Mama and I were eating supper, I couldn't get over the conspicuous silence. I hadn't thought I would feel the their absense so soon ... they're gone two nights a week at swim practice, but Georgia usually goes for swimming lessons, too, so it's just Mama and me and we don't fix supper for just ourselves.

I'm glad to say I've resigned myself to the boys ultimately not being here anymore, though. Clay is 16, Josiah 14, and Sam 11, so even though they don't know the details of their father's involvement with their sister and are probably too immature to actually grasp the situation, still the fact remains that he had an incestual relationship with Melody - they know this and yet they are stupid enough to want to live their father because it's "fun" - impeccable reasoning, no? Fine...they have chosen.

I think I would feel worse about it if they weren't such a trio of bratty boys. They've gotten zero direction or discipline from either their father or their mother for quite some time. If Sam was still his sweet self and Clay the sensitive responsible guy he once was only a year or two ago, I would be afraid what would happen to them. But all three of them are so self-absorbed now!

I feel a naughty sense of glee thinking about them being condemned to a whole semester at least of school with Mama Jean - AND they have to live with her. I could let it rest with just that statement, as I lived with her, if you remember correctly, for six awful years. She's CRAZY. Like her son. Like Jewell. They might not have Huntington's on that side of the family but something is definately loose in the Copland brain. I don't think there's one of Mama Jean's siblings who isn't a bit odd. Lots of crazy. And then one of Aunt Betty's granddaughters left her husband and two sons to shack up with her first cousin ... yeah, talk about cliches. But Big Jim, of course, has left them all behind in the dust.

I also wonder who on earth cleans that house in which they live. What are the state of their bathrooms? Mama Jean is messy, so she won't be any help. The boys are so lazy that someone's going to have to lay down the law ... at least as far as school goes. They take long breaks whenever they feel like it, and Mama didn't do anything about it. Josiah and Sam would have the freakin' radio on back in their room - "it helps us concentrate!" but then they go tell Mama that my music on my computer in the living room is bothering them. The few times Mama Jean has substituted teaching for us when we lived with her, she got really stressed out. Hey, if the boys want her as their teacher, they're welcome to her!

I think I've already started the detachment process with those boys, the way I have with Melody and Jewell. It's really easier not to care too much and to keep myself at an emotional distance - they are all old enough to be accountable for the decisions they've made. I can't imagine respecting Melody again or wanting to be close to her after the way she took her crucial testimony from the trial; it's not even that I'm angry, in Melody's case, I'm just neatral. She has a boyfriend of her own now who's very serious about her and going to see her counselor with her, and I'm glad for her - I want her to be happy. I just have the lost the desire I've had all the years to get back to being besties with her.

As for Jewell, yeah, I have plenty of anger there. How can I not? How can she think it's okay for her to support someone she knows is so perverted? Where is the reasoning behind it?

Oh, Jewell is supposed to come over this morning for a visit. Yay. I haven't seen her since the trial and would be perfectly fine with not seeing her now.

And Melody just wrote on my Facebook wall that she wanted to call me - yay. I don't even remember when the last time is we talked on the phone - Memphis, probably. I know she's going to ask, well, how am I doing, and expect me to share all my problems and struggles with her so she can sympathize. That is the last thing I want to do. I've done it countless times over the past few years, but I am so over it. I usually end up regretting it.

No Rest for the Wicked

Well, well - Big Jim has had yet another victory. He has temporary custody of the three boys which means of course that he will most likely get permanent custody. I'm pretty sure Mama's not going to want to try and get them back for fear of them coming after Georgia.

When we got to the court house, Mama disappeared into a room with her lawyer and his assistant, leaving the boys and me divided among the benches in the hallway - Georgia was spending the day with a little friend from the homeschool group. I took out a biography on Franklin Pierce and tried to read, but then a door to another room opened and I heard Big Jim say, "Well, hey, boys!" and they went in there with his insane mother and insane lawyer and brainless sister and shut the door, leaving me in abrubt silence.

I never saw the boys without their dad from then on. They were so excited about the outcome and didn't bother to hide it. They and Jewell were goofing off together, and half the time I was there I was on the verge of tears. Even Mama was brisk and professional. I don't know why I took it so hard - we knew this was an excellent possibility. I just felt so bad and angry that Big Jim was the criminal here and yet all the kids were sitting on his side of the courtroom and he was acting like he deserved them. I felt awful for Mama, who was the victim and yet they chose him. I knew she was not looking forward to telling Georgia.

I was also fearful for my fledgling faith. There was so obviously a right and wrong here. Of course Big Jim should not be given any more children! Of course they needed to be with their mother! How dangerous would it be to these kids for the court to say that, yeah, incest was really not a big deal, their dad would make a decent parent. This, I told God even as I knew the judge was back in chambers approving the deal, was an easy one to decide. For Big Jim to get this was downright wrong - he's an evil man! Mama might could say she was okay because she knew that this was what God wanted, but how could God want something so wrong? How could he let the wicked prosper? At that moment I really didn't give a fuck about what would happen to Big Jim on Judgment Day - I needed to see this son of a bitch suffer NOW!

Not happening.

He wanted the boys to move out that very day, but Mama said since this was her weekend to wait until the end. I can't believe he conceded that to her. The kids still have two weeks of the semester of school so Big Jim is supposed to drop them off each week day at nine and retrieve them after work. After the two weeks is up they'll be over here every other weekend, as will Georgia over there, and it's arranged so that they'll be at the same house each weekend.

Oh, my god, I got so upset when I was sitting around the table with Mama and Tommy the lawyer and assistant - whose name I don't remember but whom I liked a lot - and Tommy, who'd just been conferring in the hallway with Big Jim's evil attorney, Van-something. Tommy said that Big Jim said he would come pick up the kids at our house at 2 in the afternoon on Christmas! Now Mama and I had just spent a Thanksgiving by ourselves so that we could spend Christmas with everyone, including Melody, who was going down to Alabama with Mike to his parents' place. The kids had practically spent a week with Big Jim and last year he had them for Christmas AND New Year's because they spent Thanksgiving with us. The plan had been that this year the kids spend Thanksgiving  with their dad and Christmas here and New Year's at Tybee Island with Big Jim and Mama Jean.

And here he was trying to insist that he got them for half of Christmas! Who did he think he was? He apparently thinks he has more of his DNA in those kids than Mama does.

I was about to spit bullets, but Mama said, "Rebecca, we can just have our Christmas on Christmas Eve." I guess she wanted to choose her battles.

Like the one in which Big Jim didn't want to pay the house payments or child support for Georgia. Get this, he told his attorney that Mama had access to bountiful sums of money through OUR trust funds - that's right, Grandmommy's money, which belongs to Melody and Jim and me. Grandmommy and Big Jim didn't even LIKE each other! Turns our Grandmommy was right for once...

Dude, Mama doesn't have anything to do with my money or Melody's. I send the amount I need each month to cover long-term care insurance and medical insurance and my meds and Uncle Doug sends a check. Mama has nothing to do with it! And she gets a check for Jim, but it's made our to him, and she has to send a list of expenses every month, which is aways a huge hassle. But the money's not for her!

Mama could be living on the street and Big Jim wouldn't care. Maybe he's trying to force her out so that he can take Georgia from her.

Now you can see why I was so angry and felt so horrible about this guy being handed more children to raise!

Fortunately, Big Jim agreed to pay for the house. Mama told him that he knew before they signed the loan that Melody was going to tell Mama everything and still didn't tell her - she sure as hell woulnd't have done so had she known! And also, Big Jim isn't paying anything on the house he's living in, and he gets 66 grand a year. As for child support, the lawyers should be filling our a worksheet to figure it out. Dude, he should be paying alimony as far as I'm concerned.
 
The three boys and Jewell, rot her, were sitting on the front row on the other side of the room with Mama Jean, and I was sitting by myself on the other front row, since Mama was up in the front of the courtroom with her attorney Tommy and his assistant (which, incidently, is the very place I sat with Lisa in this very courtroom in front of this very judge back in the days of my legal internship).

The judge, who should also rot because of his immoral behavior and had even gotten a DUI last spring and yet was still sitting on the bench, motioned at the kids to leave, but when Mama Jean got up, he said she could stay (it was supposed to be just the clients and the attorneys and the judge since it was a settlement). But he told me to go.

“I’m NOT his daughter,” I said, glaring at Big Jim’s florid puffy face, just as Mama said, “She’s an adult.”

“Come back to chambers,” snapped the righteous judge to Mama and Big Jim and the lawyers, and so they did.

Mama Jean laughed and looked at me and started to say something - who did she think she was? We wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for her oh-so-generous funding of her son, who should be in prison, buying the house he lived in, paying for his lawyer, offering her services as a live-in teacher should he get the kids. I very deliberately looked away, examining the portraits of previous judges at the front of the room. I couldn’t believe how good I had become at blowing people off! I remember how when all of this happened five years ago and I was angry at Big Jim, I wanted to bite his head off. My journal entries were filled with hate and rage - YOU know. I HATED him with all of my heart.

And yet, whenever we had a family discussion (actually, not the family since the kids from Jewell down had no idea what had happened) and we girls were asked if we had any questions, what I would have like to yell at Big Jim came out in a little squeak. It was so against our training and brainwashing to raise our voices at either of our parents that even now, even when I had the most legitimate reason in the world to be angry at Big Jim, I couldn’t even legitimately demonstrate what I was feeling.

I glanced over at Mama Jean again and saw that she was scribbling away in a little notebook in her terrible cursive. I felt like laughing when I found myself wondering incredulously if she was writing poetry. That’s the only time she ever writes anything. In spite of her Ph. D. in English, I literally have never seen her write anything but her trashy poetry. Mama Jean is actually quite proud of her poetry and has various poems framed around her house, and she has even published a book or two of her stuff - self-published, of course. Now you know as well as anyone, Journal, that I am no poet, but I appreciate and enjoy reading good poetry. I have always thought her poems were terrible, although of course I never told her that.

I wondered what she was writing about. I smiled as I wondered if she were writing haiku about my behavior, the fact that we used to be friends, that now I was being the smaller person who did not care what her younger brothers and sisters wanted, the oldest sister who once bathed them and taught them and cooked for them and read to them at night when they were smaller and now forgot that to side with her mother. Maybe she’ll publish it in her next book and have “for Rebecca” written above it like she had done for some people in her previous books. She had written a haiku for each of her sons in her first book, and Big Jim, when he read his, said, “What is the heck does that mean, Mom?” to which she sniffed in injured annoyance.

A Rant

Oh, my word, I am furious. Not unusual, you may say, and that’s true enough - my horrible stepfather just gets under my skin!

So tomorrow is the big day - finally, the day court will be in session again, the day temporary custody is supposed to be decided for the three boys. Mama’s attorney is suggesting a settlement between her and Big Jim with her having temporary custody of Georgia and him taking the boys. If she gives up temporary custody of the boys, she probably won’t be able to obtain permanent custody.
But Mama doesn’t know if Big Jim would go for that, because the boys all stand behind their affidavits saying they want to live with their sociopath father, and Jewell is supposed to testify tomorrow for Big Jim, probably to give witness to her father being a great dad to Georgia. And Big Jim will say he doesn’t want the kids to be separated since Georgia is basically one of the boys. So not only does he have a pretty good chance of getting the boys, he could even get George in the deal.

I hate him. Oh, how I hate him. I want to throttle his neck and wipe his smug grin from his red face. Stupid Jewell. I sent her an honest, loving Facebook message including the link about characteristics of sociopaths and asked her to read it. Her next Facebook status was about how she was eating Smoky Pig sandwiches on the Riverwalk with her amazing father. Stupid Clay, Josiah, Sam. How can they be so damn dense, even if they are still young? Clay’s 16, Josiah’s 14, Sam’s 11. They are old enough to realize a bad guy when they see one, and they know their dad had sex with their sister, and that doesn’t bother them - !

Selfish Melody. I can never respect her again after she refused to testify last summer because she didn’t think SHE could handle. I would have done whatever it takes to help out my familiy, to make sure Big Jim didn’t get custody on those kids, but whatever... you know I would have testified if it had been me, Journal.

November 29, 2011 (again)

This is me working through things.

What I'm thinking about right now is Wicked Stepfather. It's strange to me how uncompromising he was when I was at home about some of his beliefs and rules and yet how flaky he was about other matters. To us girls he preached unendingly about the freedom we had in Christ and that he didn't condone legalism. (Hmm -if only he lived like that!)

Like he would say that he didn't really see the big deal about females garbed in pants to we three girls, and then when we mentioned it to Mama in his presence, hoping to start a conversation about it, Big Jim would splutter indignantly and say he hadn't said any such thing, and Melody and I would exchange looks of disbelief - we had both been there, after all!

And what was far worse to me than him playing with my mind about our clothes was when he did it about college. See, Mama never faltered from her opinions: she had certain rules she wanted to see followed in our wardrobe, and there was virtually never any hope for me