A new twist in the Linda Stoltzfoos Kidnapping/Murder Saga

I wrote earlier about Linda Stotzfoos, who was kidnapped and murdered by a fellow member of the Mennonite community where she lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There's a new chapter to the story: her murderer, Justo Smoker (a Costa Rican who had been adopted by a family in the Mennonite community), confessed to the murder, and as a condition of his plea arrangement he promised to show the authorities where he buried her body. This link probably won't be valid forever, but for now you can watch the authors of a new book on the story--Justo's relatives by adoption and marriage--tell how the event impacted them, and how it ties into the Nickel Mines hostage-murder.

The sad tale of a potential paeodophile child psychologist who practiced at Wheaton College

In this modern world's news cycle, we are continually deluged with stories about people who got caught doing something bad. We don't always take the time to think of what this may be telling us.

Today I found a website dedicated to reporting on some of the hundreds of teachers who have been arrested for sex crimes: specifically, college professors who used their computers to download and/or sell child pornography. It's quite an extensive list, with lots of pediatricians, child psychologists,  and early childhood educators, but of the dozens of names the one the jumped out to me was Donald Ratcliffe, child psychology professor at Wheaton College. Run a search on his name and college, and you will find this video, on "children are important."

He actually thought that viewing hard-core child pornography--vicariously enjoying the pleasure of torturing children--would keep him from becoming a full-blown paedophile. Meanwhile, he was teaching the importance of meeting the spiritual needs of children through his books and lectures.

What are the signs of a mind so twisted? Very few of these professors were found out because they were actually caught molesting a child, but many of them had been doing so for years--one man even adopted a baby specifically for the purpose of being able to molest him with regularity. What they all had in common was that they started out by watching porn--due to the capabilities of today's internet technicians, that's as far as some of them got before getting caught. Others were actually in the business of producing hardcore child porn before it finally found them out.

The government officials who investigate these crimes face two major threats: one, that they may end up losing their jobs when they catch someone so high up the chain of command that no one will dare to prosecute him.  We're talking someone above the level of a college president, because there's one of them on the list. Someone so highly placed that anyone who tries to bring him down will at the very least lose his job; more likely his life.

Secondly, they face the risk of becoming drawn into the very pit from which they are endeavoring to pull others. No doubt several of these professors were first exposed to abusive pornography through their studies--Alfred Kenzie certainly felt the need to dabble in it to develop his celebrated human sexuality curriculum at Indiana University. He was under investigation for trafficking in paedophilia at the time of his death in 1956.

Well, child pornography, at least as practiced by those lower on the ladder, enjoys no legal protection in Donald E. Ratcliff's county, state, and country. Wheaton College summarily dismissed him; Brenda, his wife and co-author of his final book on the spirituality of children, divorced him and married a Californian; their three children, whom the book's introduction credits with "overlook[ing] our failures" in parenting, disowned him; and even though he escaped having to go to prison, he will be haunted for the rest of his life by the label of sexual predator, with its onerous attendant restrictions. What he claimed at the time to be harmless-even therapeutic--has ruined his life. But how many more like him are still out there, waiting for an investigator to take the time to find them out?

Faith

I have a couple of stories to tell this morning—one from the world of the Bible, which you already know well, so I won’t spend much time on it—and one from our own world, which you’ve probably never heard. Then I’ll tie them together with the song we just sang, and leave you with something you can take home with you.

In 1981 a baby girl was born to the Moceanu family. This couple had been gymnasts in Romania, a country famous in the 1970’s for its world-class female gymnasts. But the oppressive Communist government in Romania made the whole country like one big prison, and they wanted to make a life for themselves elsewhere. So they had left Romania and moved to America. Life was looking good for them when their first child turned out to be a daughter. They named her Dominique, and decided to give her every opportunity to excel as a gymnast.

As soon as Dominique was able to stand up, they started her training, putting her little hands around a clothesline to see how long she could hang from it. By the time she was four years old, she was already competing, and by the time she was six, she was winning gymnastic contests around the country. They knew she was great.

Then something terrible happened—at least they thought it was terrible. Mrs. Moceanu gave birth to a second child—another daughter—but something had gone wrong, and she was born with no legs. This child, surely, had no hope of following in her parents’ footsteps. This child had no place in a family of world-class gymnasts. Mr. Moceanu’s decision was firm, and it was irrevocable: without ever giving his wife a chance to hold her baby in her arms, he insisted on putting her up for adoption. They would try again, and sure enough, two years later they had another daughter. Little Dominique never realized that she had two sisters—the little cripple was never spoken of again.

Without the distraction of a disabled daughter, the Moceanus poured themselves into Dominique. She got the best gymnastic schools, the best coaches. They even moved to a different state to put her under the tutelage of a pair of Romanian coaches who took only the best as their pupils. Dominique won again and again, until at the age of 14 she reached the pinnacle of success as a gymnast—an Olympic medal. She was still young enough, there was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to continue completing all the way to the next Olympics, four years later, and maybe beyond, if her body held out that long.

But what about her disabled sister—the one she didn’t even know she had? Well, in fact, she didn’t have a disabled sister. The little girl with no legs had been adopted by the Brickers, a couple who already had three sons, and decided to give her a chance to be part of a normal family. They named her Jennifer, and determined to never tell her that she was disabled. They never allowed her to say “I can’t.” She learned to crawl at the normal age, and by the time others were toddling around on their legs, she was crawling circles around them using just her arms and hands. The Brickers got her a bicycle that she could pedal with her hands, and taught her that anything others did with their feet, she would just do with her hands. But what did she want to do, more than anything else? She wanted to be a gymnast, just like her hero, the famous medal-winning Dominque Moceanu.

Dominique, meanwhile, ran into some trouble. The intense schedule of training and competing had stressed her young body to the point of almost crippling her. Again and again she fell down during her performances, and the chance of winning another Olympic medal seemed more and more elusive. Still, she kept on, refusing to give up. But one thing she could not endure was the pressure from her father, who constantly demanded that she be perfect. Her best was never good enough for him, and finally, at the age of seventeen, she gave up trying. She sued for emancipation, testifying in court what a horrible man her father was. The court granted her independence, and Mr. Moceanu, the man who rejected a disabled daughter in secret, found himself publicly rejected by a daughter he had driven to the point of disability.

But his other daughter wasn’t crippled. Her loving parents never let her think of herself as disabled. Once she made the decision to become a gymnast, they supported her all the way. And, incredibly, she started to succeed—winning contests against other gymnasts who did have legs. She specialized in tumbling, and without any legs to get in her way, she was able to leap somersaults around the other gymnasts. One day, when she was the age at which her sister Dominique had rejected their parents, she decided she wanted to find out more about them. What sort of family had she come from, she wondered. So she decided to ask her mother.

I can tell you, Mrs. Bricker responded, but you’d better sit down first. “Mom, I’m always sitting down. You sit down.” So she sat down and gently told her adopted daughter, Your parents were the Moceanus. Dominique is your biological sister.” As the truth began to sink in that Dominique, her hero, was her sister, she realized that her parents must have rejected her because they thought she would never be able to be a gymnast like her sister. Then the irony hit her—Dominique, at the tender age of twenty-three, was already in decline as a professional gymnast. Repeated injuries to her legs had caused her to miss the previous Olympics—in fact, because of her the Olympic committee had decided not to allow any more gymnasts to compete at such a young age. The Moceanus had rejected the daughter who didn’t have any legs to get injured—didn’t have any legs to get in her way to success as a professional gymnast—and along the way had lost their golden girl, the one who showed so much promise—but rejected them. The daughter they didn’t want was happy, confident, and successful—while the daughter they wanted now didn’t want them.

Now, this is all about faith. The Book of Hebrews says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We just sang about faith being there in the place of the evidence—it’s even better than that. Faith IS the evidence. When little Jennifer was born, there was no evidence that she would become a professional gymnast. But faith could have seen that it didn’t matter. Faith could have seen that Jennifer could do anything she set her heart on—even if that was becoming the only professional gymnast in the world with no legs. The Moceanus didn’t have that faith—but the Brickers did.

Now, I’m ready to tie this in with a story we’re all familiar with: Joseph. Joseph had dreams that his brothers would all bow down to him, and when he told his brothers about it, they didn’t like it. Now, faith would have seen this as a sign from God—a sign that Joseph had been chosen for something very special. But his brothers didn’t have that faith. His father didn’t even have that faith. The Mideanites, who purchased him for a paltry twenty pieces of silver, didn’t have that faith. Potifar, who threw him in prison on false charges, didn’t have that faith. But Joseph did. All through those years of struggle and setback, he never gave up his faith. If God had said he was going to be raised to such prominence that even his older brothers would bow down before him, then it was going to happen. He didn’t see any evidence that it was going to happen, but he didn’t need evidence. Faith was there in the place of evidence. His faith was his evidence.

Who else had faith in Joseph? Well, Pharaoh did. With Joseph just one good shower and a haircut away from a filthy prison cell, Pharaoh looked at him with eyes of faith and said, Here, Joseph, take my ring. Go to my closet and pick out the best clothes. Take my extra chariot and go do the job that only you can do—don’t let anyone in the kingdom stop you. When Joseph’s own father didn’t think he was fit to rule a country, Pharaoh, who had just met him ten minutes earlier, did. Joseph’s brothers, who scoffed at his dreams, fell down at his feet and gave him the honor God had told him, all those years earlier, that he would receive from them. And God did use him to do great things, just as He had promised when no one else but Joseph had the faith to believe it.

I think we all need to be reminded from time to time how important faith is. I know I need to—this sermon was for me. And the writer of Hebrews must have thought so to--he devoted an entire chapter to the subject. You see, we live in a sight-centered world- a world based on evidence. A world that looks at a baby girl with no legs and comes to the logical conclusion that there’s no future for her as a gymnast. A world that can’t see the promises of God, and in its blindness, not only doesn’t gain the blessings that await them through faith, but loses out on what God has already given it. Joseph lived in such a world, but he didn’t have his eyes on what was around him—his focus was on what awaited him.

Now, none of us know what is ahead of us in this life. We may experience success, we may have failure—there will be some of both in everything we do. But our number one goal is find out what God’s promise is for us, and to achieve it—never saying ‘I can’t.’ The whole eleventh chapter of Hebrews is devoted to one example after another of people who didn’t have evidence of God’s promise, but did have faith. And yet listen to this: These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

These all DIED IN FAITH! The ultimate promise of God for each one of them was eternal life, and even with all the setbacks they faced in life, they never lost hope of that promise. They knew that even if they lost their homes, their liberties, even their lives—they would never lose God’s promise of eternal life. Their faith WAS the evidence of what was to come.

Many people in this world won’t believe in what they can’t see—and scoff at those who do. They don’t have faith in the promises of God—or in the judgments of God. And there’s a perfect example in the Bible of what happens to someone who doesn’t believe in the judgments of God’

1Ki 2:36-46 And the king sent and called for Shimei, and said unto him, Build thee an house in Jerusalem, and dwell there, and go not forth thence any whither. For it shall be, that on the day thou goest out, and passest over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die: thy blood shall be upon thine own head. And Shimei said unto the king, The saying is good: as my lord the king hath said, so will thy servant do. And Shimei dwelt in Jerusalem many days. And it came to pass at the end of three years, that two of the servants of Shimei ran away unto Achish son of Maachah king of Gath. And they told Shimei, saying, Behold, thy servants be in Gath. And Shimei arose, and saddled his ass, and went to Gath to Achish to seek his servants: and Shimei went, and brought his servants from Gath. And it was told Solomon that Shimei had gone from Jerusalem to Gath, and was come again. And the king sent and called for Shimei, and said unto him, Did I not make thee to swear by the LORD, and protested unto thee, saying, Know for a certain, on the day thou goest out, and walkest abroad any whither, that thou shalt surely die? and thou saidst unto me, The word that I have heard is good. Why then hast thou not kept the oath of the LORD, and the commandment that I have charged thee with? The king said moreover to Shimei, Thou knowest all the wickedness which thine heart is privy to, that thou didst to David my father: therefore the LORD shall return thy wickedness upon thine own head; And king Solomon shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be established before the LORD for ever. So the king commanded Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; which went out, and fell upon him, that he died. And the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon.

Turning to the New Testament, we see another case of a man unwilling to really believe the truth about the certainty of punishment. It's in the parable of the talents:

Mat 25:24 And the one who received the one talent also coming up, he said, Lord, I knew you, that you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter;

Mat 25:25 and being afraid, going away, I hid your talent in the earth. Behold, you have yours.

Mat 25:26 And answering, his lord said to him, Evil and slothful slave! You knew that I reap where I did not sow, and I gather where I did not scatter.

Mat 25:27 Then you ought to have put my silver to the bankers, and coming I would have received my own with interest.

Mat 25:28 Therefore, take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents.

You see my friends, it's vitally important that we have faith in God's promises, whether they be for good, or for evil. And God has promised judgment to those who follow a false prophet—or a false prophetess. So be on the alert for such, and steel yourself against falling for their wiles. Don't stick around to argue with them—flee for your lives! John the Apostle is said to have fled naked from a public bath when he saw there one whom he regarded as an enemy of God—lest he be so near as to fall under the punishment which as sure to fall.

The Missing Link in Child Abuse Cases

I've added another blog to my list, TulipGirl. She commented on my latest post, which led me indirectly back to her blog. I see she has written on a wide variety of parenting subjects.

As a veteran parent myself, I thought her blog would well complement mine, since I seldom write on such topics myself (it probably has a lot to do with the fact that she's a mom and I'm not--sorry, egalitarians, but that's just the way it is).

Anyway, in tracking back TulipGirl's comment, I realized that the reason why I'm getting so many hits lately from Michael Pearl searches is that yet another child's death has been blamed indirectly on Micheal Pearl. The link in these three deaths is that in each case, the father and/or mother read the Pearls' book before punishing their adopted child to death.

Ah, yes. Adoption--it's the other link that seems to be missing in most discussions of this case. Michael doesn't talk much about it--perhaps he should--but when he's responsible for raising children that aren't his own he NEVER spanks them--especially not the ones he gets from overseas. Yet he's done very well in instilling both love and discipline into quite a few orphans and otherwise untrained children over the years.

Michael Pearl should probably put a warning on his TTUAC book that it is most effective for married couples training their own children. All others should consult his other book (yet to be written), To Train Up Another Parent's Child (TTUAPC).

I may come back and add a few UPDATES to this post, but I've probably said enough already that I should stop for now and let it sink in.

UPDATE: Well, here we are already. Thanks to TulipGirl, another story of a woman spanking her adopted son to death: but this was in 1996, a bit before the Pearls' TTUAC book had taken the nation by storm. Moral of the story: Parents determined to conquer the will of an adopted child are perfectly capable of killing him in the process, with or without any help from the Pearls. And the Pearls aren't offering any.

What to do it CPS/DHS/DCS takes away your children (except by then it's probably too late)

As a result of this post, I'm getting a lot of hits from people wondering what happens when Big Brother makes good on his claim to their children.

I haven't had it happen to myself--not the whole process anyway--but I've seen it happen enough times to give you a pretty good idea. Let's go through the flow chart:

1. Are the children yours? If not, kiss them goodbye; you'll probably never see them again. They will join the long line of "lonely children waiting to be adopted." Two biological parents, married to each other, probably will get their own children back, if anything short of rape or attempted murder is alleged.

2. Is it Friday afternoon? Then this is probably a politically motivated stunt meant to scare you into submission. You can work on getting them back starting first thing Monday (or Tuesday) morning.

3. Have any criminal charges been filed? If not, then Big Brother will try to get you to sign something "for the good of the children." You do not have to sign anything, you do not have to let them in your house, you do not have to let them take your children. Short of a criminal investigation, they have no grounds to touch your kids.

If you already let them take your kids away before you read this, so sorry. Tell everyone you know not to let it happen to them.

The wolf-child phenomenon: a modern view

Anyone familiar with Mowgli of Kipling's Jungle Book has heard of such a thing as a wolf-child. The idea of a child being raised by wolves runs deep in human experience, dating back to the founding of Rome. But on more of an historical note, I recently came across this tidbit in a 1930 book by E. Stanley Jones, an incarnational missionary to British India:

A wolf-child, captured near where I live in India, had lived with wolves from the age of two to the age of eleven. It ran on all fours. Its knee joints were stiff and enlarged from running in this fashion. It would eat only raw meat, and when it was put on a more civilized diet, it took dysentery and died.

Now, Jones never said that he himself witnessed any of this, so we are forced to first examine this story for apparent veracity. Let's begin by listing the alleged facts:

1) Nine years previous to a given date, a two-year-old child had disappeared from society.
2) Shortly before the given date, a being was captured in the wild who met the description of a wolf-child.
3) This creature was identified as being the lost child, now age eleven.
4) The child was then brought back into society, whereupon it died of dysentery.

Now, notice the inferences made from these facts:
1) The child had lived among wolves for nine years.
2) The child had eaten nothing but raw meat for nine years.
3) The child could only walk on all fours, due to its being raised by wolves.
4) The child could only tolerate a diet of raw meat, due to being raised by wolves.

Well, these may or may not be true. All humans start out without the ability to walk upright, and some never attain it; others lose it quite early. Without studying a wolf-child in its natural habitat--something that has never been done by a scientist--it's impossible to say for sure which of these were true. In researching the subject of wolf-children, I found that one universal characteristic is that they lack human language--so Mowgli heads back to the fairy tales where he belongs. It's also rather common in a wolf-child narrative that the child spends somewhere between eight and fifteen years in the wild before making contact with society.

One glaring problem with the veracity of the wolf-child phenomenon is that it has never been studied scientifically. The closest anyone has come is in the case of a Los Angeles girl known as "Genie," who was kept locked in a bedroom by her father until she was 13 years of age. Although she learned some speech after being brought out into society, she has never progressed beyond a most rudimentary level of communication. And she was so traumatized by scientists squabbling over the exclusive rights to study her that she regressed as an adult to the autistic state in which they had found her.

Many 'wolf child' stories can be attributed to an autistic child who is abandoned in the wild but manages to survive until later discovery. His autism makes any transition back to civilised life all but impossible, and he often dies from the sudden change in diet. One should therefore not approach a 'wolf-child' account as showing what happens to someone who is raised in the wild; rather, it shows how animalistic autistic children are by nature, making it all the easier for them to live among animals than among humans.

The idea of a child being raised by wolves runs deep in the human psyche. But when examined in the light of science, it turns out to mostly just be a good story.

Deportation on the rise

Did you know that thousands of Americans are being deported to other countries--countries in which they are foreigners? Well, it's happening, and it's going to get worse--a lot worse.

Imagine this. An Afro-American veteran, the son of Afro-American veterans--once by birth, once by adoption--is deported after living for 40 years as an American to a country where he doesn't know the language, isn't connected to the culture, and has no known relatives--all because his mother, whom he never knew, was a German citizen. This is the case of Rudi Robinson, who has been banned from the US since 2003. By being adopted out of one American family into another, he lost out on being able to inherit either his natural or his adopted father's American citizenship, and reverted to the citizenship of his mother, a prostitute born in Nazi Germany.

The US Government is not at present deporting, either externally or internally, any holders of American passports. But I do know of a couple of cases in which it revoked the passports of Americans who had been born overseas, forcing them to go through naturalization before they could get new ones.

American citizenship, which our own African-American president was ineligible to inherit from his teen-aged mother who was fornicating with a married alien, is turning out to be not such an easy thing to hang on to for those who weren't born in the U.S.A. It's no wonder he doesn't want anyone to see his birth certificate; imagine him being deported to Kenya once he and his party fall from power!

At least he'd be able to live high on the hog there, with his numerous US Government pensions, aside from the forfeited presidential one. But he'd probably really miss the Secret Service protection.