Sniffing After Whores - Party of Four - Part Four

Many of you who have stayed with this last 4 part blog are probably hanging on to hear the end of the story of my relationship with my girlfriend. And you are wondering, and rightly so, how our two worlds and our two backgrounds could ever meld together.

As I mentioned at the end of last week’s blog, my father made me quit the job I had taken to earn extra money. He had no idea I had taken the job so I could pay for dates with my girlfriend. And it wasn't my study hours my father was concerned about. My father was completely against any time we spent working elsewhere since it took time away from work we could be doing for 'The Place'. He simply did not want me focusing on ANYTHING other than what HE wanted me to do! He wanted control. It was not about my earning money; it was that he did not want ANYONE working ANYWHERE or doing ANYTHING that was not at ‘The Place’ under his immediate and direct control.

So, I had to shave a dollar here and there off my candy sales and summer yard work to court my girlfriend. I would sneak the car for a few hours and take her to a movie or dinner at a fast food restaurant.

Once, we were in the Taco Tico, a fast-food restaurant at 15th and Lane, around 9 p.m. when the place was robbed. Two men in ski masks came in, and my girlfriend and I took off out of the place. We didn't want our names involved as witnesses because my father would have heard about it on the evening news and the jig would have been up - my secret life of dating.

My now wife adds, laughing "Trouble was, after we hit the sidewalk running, only then did it occur to us everyone would think we were the ones who'd just robbed Taco Tico."

Despite my girlfriend’s quiet demeanor and biblical mane, I soon realized she was not plugged in to the world according to Pastor Phelps. For example, one day after Debbie had died, Nate, Jonathan and I were out in the car selling candy. Following Fred Jr.’s habit, I had brought my girlfriend along with us, and we sat and smooched while the two younger boys worked in the neighborhood. (I learn quickly!) When Nate came back to report scant sales for that day, I gave the command by reflex: "Chin chin!" And Nate put his chin on the back of the front seat.

With my girlfriend sitting beside me, I punched Nate painfully in the face for his sales shortfall, as usual. In equal reflex, one from another moral world, my mild-mannered girlfriend immediately slapped me hard enough to bring stars. "Why did you..." I asked in stunned bewilderment. "Why did you do that?" she demanded. Soon the esteem I had for this petite firecracker-five-feet-two, eyes of blue, and with a fist like my father - caused me to begin opening my heart to her radically different view of human relationships.

For several years before I met my girlfriend, I had been my father’s assistant master-at-arms: when there was a beating due one of my siblings, sometimes my kind father would order me to do it. "At first I thought it was a great idea," says Nate, who received most of his elder brother's ministrations, "because he didn't have my father's violent spirit when he swung the oak mattock handle. However, that was short-lived. After a few less than satisfactory beatings-from the old man’s viewpoint-he threatened to beat Mark instead. Suffice it to say that afterwards I couldn't tell the difference between one of my father's and one of my brother's beatings - except maybe in their angle of attack."

I agree with Nate. My father would tell me to do it and then he'd go upstairs and yell down to us in the church: 'If I don't hear it up here, it's you who'll get the beating!' Now, however, confused by my new feelings for this remarkable girl I was getting to know, I began to slam the oak mattock handle onto the pew cushions instead. It sounded sufficiently similar to the sound when I did hit Nate and Nate would just howl in pain every time I hit the pew. It worked perfectly. But it wasn't until my new girlfriend and her influence that it would have ever occurred to me to do that.

In a matter of months this teenager with her radically different world view was making a major crack in the crumbling façade of my father’s hatred. Love and its power to conquer hatred were being shown to me by a young teenage girl. And once my father’s wall of hatred and control started to fall my life would change. Forever!

I've been told children from abusive homes are unable to develop empathy. Boy that was us. It was survival . . . period. Save yourself. Remember how I said I felt when Mom used to drive off with everyone in the car, and Nate would get left behind, running alongside my window, begging not to be left alone with my father? I literally could not feel for Nate at that moment in my young life. I had only enough energy and stability to put one foot after the other and do what was required to stay alive and not be beaten myself.

God puts in us strong instincts of self- preservation. What it takes to care for others and do selfless and courageous acts must be taught by strong committed adults. In our abusive world nothing was being taught that would build our character, or our love for others, or our compassion. I didn't even know how to consider what Nate might be going through. I was just glad I was getting out of the house for a little while, and that was all that mattered.

But, after I'd been around my girlfriend, what was going on inside other people suddenly started to matter to me. I guess you could say she kissed me and changed me from the frightened little frog my father had made me. After I fell in love with my girlfriend, it made me begin to want to care about others. She gave me the courage to become much more of a person as she modeled a good life. Even at her young age. I have come to see how the Savior of the world, Jesus, would use a principled and loving young lady to be my savior to pull me out of the cult. To say I am eternally grateful to both of them is truly not thanks enough.

Little wonder my girlfriend is Nate's favorite sister-in-law still today. Though my girlfriend refused to join my father’s church, she continued to attend Sunday services there for nearly two years. "I knew if I didn't, Mark's father would make it even harder, if not impossible for me to see him" she says.

"During that time, I learned things about Fred Sr. I didn't like." Such as? "That God hates. It seemed to me he was putting his own words in God's mouth. I mean, Mark's father was a pretty disturbed guy. I could see that and I was only 15. It's just sad he didn't have the self-knowledge to leave religion out of it and get some help. Also I didn't like his attitude toward family. His belief in beating children, and that women were servants to men. As a future wife and mother, that left me little motivation to join his claustrophobic community."

Toward the end of my girlfriend's two-year ceasefire with the pale-hearted Pastor, she arrived for services early one Sunday--too early. My sister Katherine was getting beaten with the oak mattock handle upstairs. In shock, my girlfriend listened to my sister's screams of pain and sobbing pleas for the good Pastor to stop. He didn't.

My girlfriend turned on her heel and walked out. Shirley Phelps, who always wept hysterically whenever her father went into his beating mode, ran after my girlfriend. At the door she grabbed her arm.

"Please . . . please...," she sobbed. "He doesn't mean it . . . he doesn't know what he's doing..." I remember my girlfriend stopped, whirled around, and looked Shirl dead in the eye. 'No, Shirl,' she said, 'you're wrong. He does mean it.' And she left.

Shortly after, my father decided to dish my girlfriend some of the abuse he'd used on Debbie Valgos. Following Sunday services, while my girlfriend waited within earshot in the church, my father collared me for a 'talk' in the law offices adjoining. He was punching and kicking me, and yelling in crude, filthy anatomical detail everything he said he bet I was doing to my girlfriend when we were alone. He knew she would hear, and that's why he did it. The level of my father’s crudeness and callousness toward the people of his church was astounding.

And that was my girlfriend's last Sunday at the Westboro Baptist Church. She walked out and down to the shopping center on Gage Boulevard where she called her father to come pick her up. The girl with the knowledge of right and wrong had had enough. My father had stepped over a line.

My girlfriend knew that day that she needed to leave the church and in doing so had to leave me. When she told me it was over she never asked me to leave the church. She didn't believe I could. She knew I had been taught that, if I left, I would be taken by God during the first night while I slept and that I would wake up in hell. My girlfriend didn’t want me to have to face that terror. She was looking out for my good then and she has never stopped.

For my part, I was in despair. At age 19 I flung myself face down in my girlfriend's front yard and cried. I cried because I was losing the person I believed was the best person ever to have come into my life. And there I remained for two hours, embarrassing her parents in front of the neighbors. My girlfriend's dad even came to her and told her, "I didn't realize you were so hard-hearted." My beached whale impersonation did not sway my girlfriend. Have I told you how strong my wife is?

Such emotional firmness in a 16 year-old was remarkable. But my girlfriend didn't know what else to do. She had no intention of joining the Westboro family cult and raising children in that kind of environment. And she knew I wouldn't leave. Meanwhile, one can only imagine the kind of talk this generated among the deeper keels in my girlfriend's cheerleading set. She was certainly a girl with a foot in both worlds. And a firm, mature head to know how to navigate each!

After the break-up, neither my girlfriend nor I slept or ate for days. I walked around in a fog. Then I found out I was going to get a 'B' instead of an 'A' in one of my college courses at Washburn University. That meant I was in for more trouble with my father. Somehow the idea that my father might now hurt my body after making my heart so miserable . . . it just seemed insane and ridiculous . . . and if all this misery was to please God, I was beginning to think it was awfully mean and petty for a Being that had created such a majestic universe... and that's when I began to hope my girlfriend might be right. That God might really be a loving God, and not full of hate like my father. . .and that if He was made of love . . . then he wouldn't send me to hell for loving her so much, would He? Oh the power of the truth coming from my girlfriend’s knowledge of her God was beginning to set me on a path that would one day set me totally free!

So I did it. I just grabbed some clothes and left. An acquaintance had told me if I ever wanted to leave, I'd be welcome to stay with his family the first few days. Little did he know how much that simple offer was to challenge and encourage me that one day, maybe, I would do it! I just showed up on their doorstep and they took me in for one night.

It might seem funny now to some who did not grow up in the brainwashing our family was exposed to, but those were some of the most terrifying hours of my life. I lay awake most of the night in their guest room, in cold, absolute cold terror; waiting for God to kill me. Afraid if I fell asleep, I'd wake up in hell. Literally! The ultimate nightmare! But I didn't. I woke up in the same bed the next morning. It was then I realized God might be nicer and the world bigger than my father had taught. Oh, what a glorious morning of beginning that was! And I thank my God for that day!

I landed on my feet, renting a room from a retired couple and worked; first as a busboy, then as a salesman in a downtown shoe store. My girlfriend and I were reunited, dating on weekends and talking every night on the phone.

However, I was in a serious car accident six weeks later and miraculously escaped injury. That shook me up. I thought God was giving me one last chance before He did what my father said He'd do. So I high-tailed it back home. And my girlfriend broke it off again. “This time I wasn't so strong," she recalls. "I was totally miserable. I almost went over there many times." I really cannot communicate to you the depth of my gratefulness to my wife for remaining strong during that time. And it must have been so difficult for her!

By this time my father had taken to calling my girlfriend 'the Philistine Whore.' So now life with my father and a broken heart soon had me willing to play tennis with death once more. After two weeks, I returned to my new life, only to have my father swoop in to snatch me back, as he had with my sister Katherine and my brother Fred Jr.

That time, however, a miracle happened. Just as we pulled up to the church on W. 12th Street, some of my father’s law clients pulled up too. It was like a Hitchcock film: My father couldn't do anything in front of them, so I just got out of the car, walked through the front door of the law office (housed within the church building along with our family residence), and out the back door. Nobody stopped me. Freedom!

After that, I held on to my independence and my dreams tenaciously.

I knew I made enough money for only two of the following: an apartment; a car; and college tuition. I needed the car; and - now that it was for me and not my father - I really wanted to finish college.

For a year, I slept in my car or in the backroom of the print shop where I worked all day. In the evenings I took classes, and on weekends I worked as a waiter at Flaming Steer steak house just south of 37th Street on Topeka Boulevard. I took my showers at the YMCA downtown and did most of my studying while running the offset presses on the job. My girlfriend completed her junior year and senior years at Topeka High, and we dated on weekends. Despite my father’s curiously vivid and explicit imagination, our relationship remained chaste and unconsummated.

When my brother Fred Jr. asked me to be his best man at his wedding, I was thrilled and agreed. But when I showed up at the Westboro church for the ceremony, my father demanded I recant and return to ‘The Place’ or depart before the wedding went forward.

It was a trap! If my father ever missed a beat at being a jerk he did it before I was born.

I departed.

I have never been back. Well not until just a few weeks ago. That story will be in a later blog.

Nor did my father miss a beat damning me to the fires of hell. When I refused to die in my sleep, my father sent me my notice of eviction from the assembled elect of ‘The Place.’ I was cast out and banished forever from ‘The Place.’ My father then tore up both my picture and Katherine's picture in front of the rest of the family. (Katherine was also gone by then; she was working as a waitress and living with a soldier near 12th and Topeka Avenue. Apparently the GI took a dim view of anyone kidnapping his girlfriend, and the Phelps quick-reaction team left her unmolested.)

I did see my father again however. Once! At the YMCA gym one day, my father took the time to stalk up to me, close so no one else could hear, and whisper, glistening with hatred: "I hope God kills you."

God didn't.

In May, 1976, I graduated from Washburn University with a business degree. In August of that year, I married my childhood sweetheart after a courtship that had lasted since 1971. I was 22. She was 19. Though the family Phelps was all invited, none of them came. Many of them might have wanted to be there, but they had been forbidden to attend. My father, the good Pastor, had threatened anyone who did attend my wedding with being banished from ‘The Place’ and from the family.

My father’s methods involved erasing people from his life who did not live up to his code and then he moved on to demolishing them verbally for years. Does that sound like a man with the courage of his convictions or someone who is convincing himself?

The cramped apartment at 15th and Lane quickly became the headquarters for Phelps exiles. At one point, both my brother Nate and my sister Margie were living within its tiny confines alongside my wife and me. We didn't have much time to ourselves. I brought half my family out with me! Fortunately, Nate and I have always been friends. And, back then at least, Margie and I were too.

Later my wife and I would be the consolation and support for Paulette, Jonathan's girlfriend, who was driven from Westboro Baptist Church when she became pregnant by my brother Jonathan. Abandoned by Jonathan and rejected by his family, Paulette went through some pretty tough times.

Certainly today, if any of my family; if any of my nephews or nieces or brothers or sisters truly needed help, for refuge, for unconditional love, my wife and I, and Nate, would make ourselves available. Sadly the poison runs mighty deep in the hearts of those who have been abused and been blinded by hate. I doubt they would feel comfortable getting solace and comfort from us. But if they wanted it, it would most definitely be theirs.

So far, we haven’t had any takers on our offers. It’s understandable, certainly, that none in our family would want to associate with the one who chose a life with a woman who my father did not have on his “approved list.” I mean, who would want to associate with a ‘Philistine Whore!’ But from where I sit after 38 years of marriage with the one who was responsible for delivering me from a destructive cult and abuse, she has the highest approval rating I think a husband could ever give one woman. She has my undying admiration, love, respect and esteem. She is the heroine of my story. Our story.

Some of you reading this blog are longing to change your own stories. Many of you have poison in your souls just like I did and you want to begin to heal. And to bring to the surface the pain and agony of that poison and be set free. If I can be of any help to you as you take steps along that journey please let me know. A soul that is set free is an amazing thing of beauty! It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!

Mark Phelps

Sniffing After Whores - Party of Four - Part 3

In my last blog we ended with the untimely death of my brother’s beautiful girlfriend. This was a tragic death that would shake my brother at his core. But you remember the problem for Phelps children. We were not allowed to express normal feelings, true of many children of abuse. My father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr., simply had no place in his world for others feelings, either good or bad. He allowed only expressions of soldier-like support or the animated retelling of stories where we were the victors in fighting my father’s ideological battles for him. So when Fred Jr. needed to find comfort and solace to mourn for Debbie he would have to seek out someone other than my father, once again a perpetrator of wrong in my brother’s life.

Fred Jr. came to visit Mom, secretly. No one knew Fred Jr. was in the house. My brother Nate came into a room inadvertently and saw Fred Jr. and Mother sitting in chairs, facing each other. The eldest son had his head in her lap and she was stroking his hair. I have never talked to Nate about what that meant to him, but it must have been an unusual moment for him to see the great needs of a child being met by a parent.

Fred Jr. was crying for Debbie.

There's no question that my brother wanted to spend his life with Debbie. She was who he loved. And I knew her well enough to say my brother was the first light of hope she'd had in her life. When he left her, that light went out.

I think of Debbie sometimes. Debbie had a hard life before she met our family, and all she really needed was someone who would value her. If my father had allowed that, Debbie might have really found some hope and blossomed in her life.

In Matthew 12:20 Jesus says, 'the bruised reed I will not break; the flickering candle I won't snuff out; instead I will be your hope'. These verses are talking about people who are at a very low place in their lives and need extra special care. It was Jesus' desire to make it very clear He wanted to reach out to people whose lives felt close to being “snuffed out.” He wanted to bring them hope they might never have received before.

Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd. He was modeling very clearly what he expected leaders to do. When you read about Jesus’ life you sense his tremendous compassion for the downtrodden and the weak but he had very strong words of warning to religious leaders. When you look at the evil and the hurt my father caused during his lifetime, my father had no right to the title of 'pastor'- never mind 'guardian of ‘The Place’.’

Two years later, Fred Jr. married Betty, the woman he'd brought home that Valentine's Day. Betty was finally approved by his father.

Betty was music major at K-State when she met Fred Jr. She had perfect pitch and played many instruments. However, she transferred to Washburn for her last two years of college, and went to law school on command. What dreams did she give up in that decision? Or perhaps Betty made the choice to go to law school. I know Fred Jr. did not. Not really! He had a passion for history and wanted to teach history.

I remember a time in 1973, when Betty was visiting Fred Jr. in the kitchen and the pastor started beating our brother, Nate, savagely with the oak mattock handle in the adjoining church auditorium. Betty had been eating a cantaloupe and she jabbed her spoon all the way through it and screamed: “Stop it!" It was loud enough for my father to hear out in the church auditorium. The good pastor came in from the church auditorium where he'd been beating Nate, and he said to Betty: 'You got a problem with this?' Then he turned to Fred Jr.: "If that girl has a problem with this, then I'm not going to put up with it! You better get her under subjection, or you're not gonna be marryin' her!"

In one of his FAX campaigns to the local Topeka community a few years later, the pastor, my father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr., stated: "Wives who have strayed too far from traditional family values of home and children need to be whipped into godly obedience. Sparing the rod and sparing either the children or the women is a strategy that fundamentalist Christians reject.”

I do not know of anyone who calls himself a true follower of Christ who would condone whipping anybody for any reason! My father was preaching something that is simply not found in the Bible. There was never to be a time where a husband would lay violent hands on a wife. For any reason!!

Betty was put in her place by my father and she was the butt of numerous negative comments from the pulpit over the following months until she finally displayed the 'proper spirit of subjection and obedience'. Betty sat under my father’s preaching for months having to endure the humiliation he was heaping on her. Finally, Betty chose to willingly cease to be the person she was to meet my father’s desires.

When I think back on the brief life of Debbie Valgos, this amazing 17 year old, I realize my father was frightened of Debbie! He was actually frightened by the power of a life that still had joy and passion in it! It was something my father could never compete with. He knew she'd take Fred Jr. from him. Yes, she might give Fred Jr. the chance of having a truly joy-filled life, but if my father let that happen he would truly lose his son Fred. And my father would lose a soldier in his army. His first born son!

Seeing Debbie's weak spot- her self-esteem - my father did everything in his power to drive a sword through it... right into her heart. Debbie didn't hate life like my father did. She loved life despite all her reasons to despair. She had an indomitable spirit. My father knew she'd never fit in at his stoic doom and gloom ‘church’. Eventually she'd want to leave to go somewhere where life could be lived to the fullest and pull Fred Jr. along with her.

My father could not brook any insubordination in his “church.” It seems that Debbie was a person so full of life, and zest that her very presence seemed insubordinate! My father simply could not stand someone who was happy, or self-possessed, or had a dream or believed in herself or even believed in tomorrow and what it might bring. My father seemed bent on forcing all people into his mold. After he crushed the life out of someone, they were actually worth so much more to him. Because without a will to be one’s own man or woman, and without the ability to at least try to use the beautiful gifts God put in us, we tend to shrivel up into shells of whom we were meant to be. And shells are a whole lot easier to command.

Sitting in her mother's house, the sinking afternoon sun pours through the screen door, casting its soft gold across the widow's tattered carpet. Debbie’s mother offers, a little reluctantly and her eyes bright with guilt, the last moments of her daughter’s life: a First Communion veil; a dried corsage from an Easter Sunday get-to-together, and the photo album Debbie kept at the orphanage. On its cover, printed in the awkward, block letters of a bruised but hopeful new reed, a flickering candle not yet quenched, are the words:

I LOVE FRED PHELPS

"Debbie Valgos was a whore extraordinaire," snaps Fred Jr’s sister, Margie. But the good pastor’s words sound empty and formulaic on the daughter's tongue. What a pathetic justification for the loss of this beautiful, spirited young woman. Bankrupt words from a bankrupt system! And any who knew Debbie simply do not believe those words.

There is a verse in Philippians where Paul exhorts all followers of Christ to grow in love. To really grow in it! He says “This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ Jesus.”

My family did not exhibit love first of all, but they certainly weren’t choosing to let their love grow in knowledge! Or depth of insight! My sister’s comment about Debbie showed a complete lack of insight! And this verse makes it clear that a love that is not growing in knowledge will not be able to discern what is best. My family did not love, so they were never, ever going to be able to discern what is best . . . about Debbie Valgos or anybody else.

And the end of this verse mentions the real consequences if our love isn’t discerning. We will NOT know what is best. We will simply not walk in a pure way or a blameless way. My family sadly has walked in a way FILLED with blame. All because they did not understand that a faith that isn’t filled with love simply can’t “get it right.” Not ever. Said another way, a life that lacks love will be a life filled with blame. That would describe my father’s church and what came from his hatred. And the blame for Debbie’s death is partly on them.

Research indicates that three out of four children in criminally abusive families will be unable to surmount their experience. As adults, they will rationalize their past and will accept abusive behavior as the norm in both the outside world and their personal lives.

It is instructive that nine of the 13 Phelps children, almost exactly the predicted ratio, continue to embrace the pastor's abusive world and ways. I am one of the few who made it over the wall at Westboro. I made it over the many barriers and managed to escape. And I hope my story can be a small beacon of hope to others who have survived abusive families. And who are ready to go on to lead different lives. Lives filled with hope and purpose they have never lived before. That is my strong desire as I write this blog. If I was able to be set free from the poison and pain of my past I know that others can.

I might still be my father’s point man today if it hadn’t been for a pretty 13 year old I met that evening at the skating rink. In May of 1971, a few months after Fred and Debbie had been dragged back from their aborted elopement, Fred Jr. and I met Debbie at the skating rink. Fred Jr. and Debbie paired off, and I remember I was rolling along alone on my rented skates, wishing for my hundred dollar pros Fred Jr. had sold, when suddenly a petite girl, slim and shapely, with long dark hair hanging halfway down her back sailed by. She fixed her beautiful blue eyes on me, smiled and said "You're a good skater!" And she pulled my heart right off my sleeve. I was only 16, and she, 13, but for me the search for my life's mate was over.

Only two months after rescuing his eldest from the charms of the 'whore-extraordinaire', my father found another wily ally of the serpent threatening his second son; my new girlfriend. My father actually perceived all future spouses of his children as allies of the devil. I think this was partly because he knew these spouses would naturally pull us away from him. But also I think my father had such distrust of the human race that he never was able to see any potential for good in our future spouses. In any of them! Even the hand-picked ones! He just had such a profound need to control us and use us as his pawns that all our marriages seemed a waste of time to him. But somehow he couldn’t think of any legitimate way to stop us from getting married. So, he would do his best to try to poison and control our choices in whatever ways he could. So my father saw my new girlfriend as a threat to be sure. And little did he know what a threat she would end up being. And what an incredible force for good she has been for those who have left the fold.

This girl was no fragile psyche, vulnerable and clueless when it came to dealing with abusive authority figures, as Debbie Valgos would be. Raised Catholic, Debbie may have had no criteria by which to identify Protestant heresies, and, coming from a broken home, she might have had no expectations of being esteemed by others or treated with kindness by the outside world.

My girlfriend and future wife to be came from a conservative Lutheran family firmly grounded in the unconditional love of God the Bible speaks about. Even as a young teenager my wife had high self-esteem and a very clear idea of right from wrong. Her parents were as firm about their God of love and their love for her as my father was about his hateful god and his hate for all. Little did my father know that he had just met his match! This girl, though slight and shy, was not going to accept my father’s interpretation of the Bible, his personal myth; nor would she take to being called a 'whore.' But, at first, things went well between the two.

A few weeks after my girlfriend and I had met to skate again and I had been calling her secretly by phone, she came to church. It was on that Sunday in early June that Debbie first came as well. Things went better for my girlfriend because the pastor believed her long hair showed her subjection to God and man. And her naturally shy and quiet way belied the stout heart within her.

If his boys had to have mates, here was a good example of the kind of girl my father wanted to see joining his church. Not the sassy, rebellious, Catholic, blonde-with-the-page-boy-cut Fred Jr. had brought home.

In high school, the disfavor of our family name, combined with the pastor's refusal to allow his children any participation in extracurricular activities, assured the Phelps kids were the pariahs of Topeka West High School. So Fred Jr. and I were both pleased with ourselves that we had the great fortune of meeting such wonderful girls!

Across town under the gothic vaults of Topeka High School, my girlfriend was quite the opposite of a pariah. She had many friends and became one of the school's cheerleaders. It was a mystery to everyone why she insisted on dating a member of the Addams family over on 12th Street. My girlfriend remembers the curious questions and the biting comments she got.

So why did she? She laughs "At first? Because he was a good skater, and he was cute – but remember, I was only 13. That's what 13 year olds notice. Later, it's not so important if they skate or not" she laughs again. "Seriously though, he had so much energy and he was very smart and he was really sweet to me. What chance did I have? Even my dad told me I wouldn't find a better one!"

Because she was just 13, her parents at first would only allow me to visit her at their home. I would sneak out whenever I could, or drop by while on candy sales. After a year and a half, her father agreed to let us date. He even offered to give me enough for dinner and a movie out. (My girlfriend had been attending services every Sunday at my father’s lonely keep, and she had invited her parents several times – and they saw enough for her dad to feel sorry for me.) My father knew nothing about my home courting advantage, or our plans to date.

I refused my future father-in-law’s offer to pay for our date and instead found a weekend job as a busboy in the restaurant at the Ramada Inn on Fairlawn Road in Topeka. That lasted one shift. My father found out about my endeavor to expand my independence and promptly beat me. In fact he punched me in the eye Sunday night immediately before church service. I promptly assumed my position at the church organ that night. I was so angry. My tears of anger made it hard to read the notes. But I did not let anyone see me crying. After the beating, he forced me to quit the job and forbade me to take another.

Perhaps this blog, even though it ends before we go on to its conclusion in #4 next week will help you see what difficulty it would be for Phelps children to follow the dictates of their own conscience and their own spirits. Especially when it came to the spouses we would choose. For those of you who have suffered abuse from a parent especially you may see parallels in your own life.

The abusing parent finds it especially difficult for their children to appropriately grow up and exercise adult decision making because it can signal the end of their reign of terror over that particular child. Often you will see the parent stepping up their fear tactics and making it clear that there is no purpose in telling anyone about the abuse. And to keep the child or fledgling adult tied to them in fear. Keeping secrets is a top priority in maintaining abusive control!

Perhaps some of you find yourselves in fear as you ponder seeking help. Perhaps as you imagine beginning to tell your story that there is just too much pain and that if you ever take the lid off of your rage and anger for the way you were abused you might not be able to contain it. I would love for you to write to me if you want to process this idea. Of beginning to allow light to shine into the dark places of your heart. Where the pain has been closed off, and held at bay, for maybe decades. Oh, friend, I would love to help you begin to consider the process of working toward healing. Or perhaps listen to a part of your story no one has ever heard.

Mark Phelps

Sniffing After Whores - Party of Four - Part 2

If you have been reading my blogs for long you know a key aspect of my father’s life was his need to control anyone within his sphere of influence. I believe my father exhibited an extreme case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. People with this disorder “often believe they are of primary importance in everybody’s life or to anyone they meet.” My father had a profound need to control our behavior and any independent thinking he ever saw us exhibiting!

One day my father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr., announced that the entire family was going roller skating; even Mom. He said we'd have some 'fun' together. It was a very surreal experience. You have to realize, in all the time we were growing up, our family never did that. We never, not once, went on an outing together. We'd go sell candy, or to run, but never to have fun. My father never took us to the zoo, the movies, out to eat, to the park, on a picnic, vacation, Thanksgiving at the relatives, to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July, driving around looking at Christmas lights-none of these things.

We spent our entire childhood and adolescent years waiting on our father and working for him and getting beaten up by him. The idea of parenthood or fatherhood as an obligation or duty he owed to his children was an alien concept to this man. My father never really wanted to be a father and he really didn’t want to be bothered with children! He wanted children so he could control and use them, but he had no desire to be a father. He wanted subjects! So we were very suspicious when he announced he was taking us all skating.

Sure enough, it turned out he'd caught wind of what was going on down at the rink. My father had found out that Fred Jr. and I had made plans to meet Debbie and my girlfriend there that day, and now he was ready to swoop in and destroy whatever small efforts we had made in having a life of our own.

Though my girlfriend had already been to services at the church, I only nodded to her as if she were a passing acquaintance at the rink so as to not arouse my father’s suspicions. When my father made fun of my girlfriend’s parents within earshot of my girlfriend, while at the rink, I was under duress to laugh at his cruel comments.

Fred Jr. and Debbie skated together briefly, but they didn't hold hands.

Everyone was watching the good Pastor. He strapped on a pair of skates and storked out onto the floor looking like a new-born calf on ice. I wanted to show off for my father so I started skating backwards and doing jumps and spins when I knew he was watching. Talk about redefining stupid!! Do you think my father liked my skating? No way! He went into a seething rage. He said he could “see I'd been spending all my goddam time down there, trying to get my dick wet.” What a guy!

Oh, by the way, both my girlfriend and I were virgins when we were married . . . five years after we met. Not that my father would ever know or even care about our own standards of purity for our marriages. If my father wasn’t able to personally plan, dictate, and implement the details of our lives and have full control over them he would eventually reach a crisis point. This crisis point meant we either had to fully capitulate to him and his wishes or be kicked out of the home and the church. A simple decision from my father’s perspective. Give up control of our own destinies or be thrown out and banished forever. And banished to a destiny he had painted for us our whole lives meant to torture us. Tyrants simply have no room for the autonomy of their subjects . . . and especially not their first born son.

Possibly due to the stress of the unexpected confrontation with my terrifying father, Debbie had another seizure right there on the skating rink floor. In a gloomy portent of what was to come, none of the Phelps boys dared go to her aid. My father was raising sons who had to fight against every manly, protective instinct they had to reach out to a helpless young girl who was in real need. She lay unconscious and abandoned by the good “Christians” of Westboro Baptist Church before my 13 year-old girlfriend noticed and rushed to her side. At that, my father glared at me. “Someone should tell that girl (my girlfriend) we don't associate with whores, (Debbie)". My father might have been hoping to control her behavior as well as ours. But instead the steadfast young teenager (my girlfriend) revived her new friend, while Good Samaritan Pastor/Father – Fred W. Phelps, Sr. – wobbled past on his skates and muttered, "Whore" at Debbie while she was recovering her feet.

The charitable timing of my father’s comment caused Fred Jr.'s girl to burst into tears. My girlfriend helped her off the floor and into the ladies' room. "I don't know why Fred's old man hates me so much," Debbie sobbed. "You're lucky that he likes you." My girlfriend never forgot the bitterness of those sobs: an SOS from the threshold of a soul's despair.

Debbie went to services at the Westboro Baptist Church several times after that, and, each time, she was called a whore from the pulpit. Truly unbelievable, right? Then why did she go? Why go to a church where you will be publicly humiliated and shamed by the leader of the church?! The hope of having Fred Jr. was clearly greater than the pain of my father’s words.

Debbie even came over once and asked my father what it was he wanted her to be. I was sitting in the room during their conversation. My father’s attitude and tone was condescending, arrogant and harsh. He was cruel to Debbie that day as always!

My father told her she'd have to get an education and amount to something if she wanted his son. That she'd have to go to college and law school first, and, while she was doing it, she'd have to stay away from Fred Jr. “But right now,” he told her, “You’re just a whore.”

Debbie said she could do it-she just needed a chance to prove it. I remember my father laughed in her face and told her she'd always be a whore. My father was compelled to trounce on the hearts of the vulnerable, like a roaring lion going for the kill on one of his prey! Hmmm . . . reminds me of Satan.

Another time, Debbie had been riding along with us on the candy sales, and afterward she and Fred Jr. intended to sneak out to a movie. Fred Jr. asked her to wait in the candy room at the church / house while he changed clothes. You see, my father almost never went in the candy room.

Well, my father chose that time to fly into one of his rages at Fred Jr.

Of course, whenever my father started beating someone, all the kids not in the line of fire would run into the candy room at the back of the house for safety. And we would always send a scout to assess the lay of the abusive landscape – the scout would listen in on my father’s raging to see how bad it was – and report back details every so often until the rage subsided. Certainly when he got really loud, all of us could easily hear him. This particular rage was one of the loud rages.

The candy room, and the back area of the house, was sort of our bomb shelter. We'd be pacing nervously, waiting for the violence to end, like a herd of cows from the candy boxes to the laundry dryers and back. Some of us would sit and quietly shake, with our faces white with fear. Debbie just sort of sat in shock watching all of us, as she listened to my father rage at Fred Jr., and as she listened to my father beat him.

My father was beating on Fred Jr. and screaming things like, 'You son-of-a-bitch! You got your dick wet! And now you're sniffin' after that whore!' It made Fred Jr. and Debbie both feel dirty and ashamed for what was really the best thing that had happened to them so far in their lives-their first love. And of course they were both very frightened!

Debbie got hysterical when she heard the things my father was saying. She ran outside crying. We were very nervous because she wasn't supposed to be in there. I remember several of us followed her out to ensure she didn't make a scene. That's where we were back then; we were all heart! Nothing mattered except keeping our father cooled off and staying out of his line of fire.

Outside in the street, Debbie was crying her heart out. She kept asking, 'Why does he say those things about me?' We had no answer for this anguished girl because at the time we had not yet articulated, even to ourselves, that he was simply a hateful human being who was absolutely filled with hate. (Well, the truth is, most of my siblings still have not figured out what a hateful, cruel person our father was, nor do they see how they have taken over where their father left off.) And that the character of the person on the receiving end of his hate attacks was in no way related to his hatefulness. His rage and hatred could be triggered by anything and everything.

Shortly after this event is when Fred Jr., now 18, decided to move out. My father vehemently opposed it, but Fred Jr. stood up for himself. Though Fred Jr. received multiple beatings with the oak mattock handle he was still unwilling to give up in this fight for his life!

Finally the two compromised: the son would go and live with one of his father's business associates. Bob Martin was a retired army officer who ran Bo-Mar Investigations, a private detective agency. After Fred, Jr. had been staying with Martin for a week in his house, I remember my father got a phone call. It was Martin.

"Let's go!" said my father, to me! I had become the squad leader in my father’s schemes. While we drove to the detective's place, my father explained the plan he and Martin had for Fred Jr.: wait till he was in the shower and then confront him; a naked man feels vulnerable and powerless. Fred Jr. had just come in from work and gone into the bathroom. "When he comes out, we'll be waiting," chuckled my father, in obvious glee at being able to, once again, thwart any plans my brother had to live out his own life and his own future. And so we waited. We waited with our secret plan to attempt to destroy a young man’s dreams. As Fred Jr. came out, towel around his waist, he was confronted by our father, by me, and by a suddenly hostile Bob Martin.

"Get your clothes! You're going home!" snapped my father. The eldest son complied without argument. The next part I'll never forget. When we got out to the car, I was in the back on the right, my father was behind the wheel, and Fred Jr. was in the front passenger seat. Bob had followed us and he opened the car door on my brother's side. Through the space between the front seat and the door, I could see him place a revolver against my brother's knee. And he said: "If you run away again, I have orders to come after you. And when I catch you, I'm going to shoot you right here." Yes, my father asked one of his few good friends to threaten serious physical harm against his own son!

At the time, 'knee-capping' had spread to the United States from Italy and France as the preferred punishment in underworld circles. It left its victim crippled for life. My intent is not to imply my father had underworld ties. I’m just saying that anyone who lives handsomely off the work of urchins hustling in the streets, who disciplines subordinates by beating them senseless, who fosters filial piety by threats of knee-capping, who knocks his wife around regularly, who surrounds himself with lawyers, and who is apparently beyond the long arm of the law could have made a very respectable gangster. Not a pastor; and certainly not a father!

Fred Jr. enrolled at Washburn University that fall and Debbie returned to Topeka West High School. Though the pastor had forbidden them to see each other outside church, they continued to do so.

My brother was struggling with his love for Debbie and his very real fear of hell. Remember my father taught that just leaving our family church meant you were consigned to hell. Some might find it hard to believe this kind of teaching could even be credible or that it would instill such real fear. But if you grew up from birth with your imagination open to my father, and heard his harsh words hammered into your heart and mind day after day, believe me when I tell you, hell as the consequence of leaving my father’s church was a concrete reality. For all of us! The battle inside Fred Jr. would last until the following spring, but the war had been lost when he turned back from Indiana.

In late September, Debbie dropped out of high school and moved in with girlfriends at a house on Central Park Avenue. It was just a few blocks from the Washburn campus. We went there a lot when we were out selling candy. That lasted into December, probably, because I remember being there when it was very cold and we were wearing winter coats.

But father was relentless, and not only with the oak mattock handle. He assumed Fred Jr. was still seeing Debbie, and he hit heavy, heavy on Fred Jr.’s heart and mind with his chosen weapon the Bible. My father had spent decades cherry picking verses from the Bible designed to terrorize his children. Fred Jr. was especially vulnerable to my father’s framing of the situation as 'Debbie the Whore... the Agent of Satan sent to lure him into temptation and directly down into the gaping jaws of hell.’ Our father had scripted this scenario for us from the time we were young boys, and repeatedly warned us about what would happen were we to date the “wrong” girl or not do as we were strictly told. Fred Jr. would spend time with her then try to avoid her to escape the pain of what he understood my father’s words truly meant for him.

In addition to the guilt being heaped on him Fred, Jr. was getting some pretty severe beatings. While Fred Jr. drifted from his girlfriend out of fear, Debbie fought to hang on to the man she cherished and who cherished her. Debbie would wait for Fred Jr. outside his classes on the Washburn campus. She would beg him to come back to her. It always worked. He always went back to her, at least while he was at Washburn. Fred Jr. never stopped loving Debbie; he was just more scared of my father and hell than he was of losing her.

Sometime in December, 1971, events turned murky, fast, and fatal. Even though Fred Jr. was furious at my father for forcing him to leave her apparently he was willing now to give Debbie up. But Fred Jr. was also afraid he wouldn't be able to do it while they lived in the same town, so he ran away again, despite Bob Martin's threat to find him and kneecap him if he did so. From late December till mid-February, the following events are known:

Fred Jr. disappeared and no one in the family knew his whereabouts. One night in January, shortly after Nate and Jonathan had been beaten and shaved and the school had notified the police, Fred Jr. stopped by the house without his father knowing. Nate remembers he asked to see their heads and then commiserated with them about the embarrassment they had felt at the police station. My brother Fred Jr. often showed real compassion towards his younger siblings. And it was something we were all hungry for.

About the same time, my girlfriend’s father saw Fred Jr. at a Washburn University basketball game. Fred Jr. had a K-State jacket on and a rash on both arms. My girlfriend’s father became concerned about Fred's welfare and, with nothing to go on but the jacket and the rash, he was able to track the troubled youth down working at a produce business in Manhattan, where the state college was situated.

My brother, Fred Jr., had a look of terror on his face when he looked up and saw my girlfriend’s father. He was certain his father had sent him. My girlfriend’s father assured him he had found him on his own and that Fred Jr. could trust him; that Fred Jr. was safe with him. But Fred Jr. turned down all offers of money or help. At the time, he was living in the basement of a young married couple’s home. Whether Debbie visited him or even joined him up there is unknown. What is known is that, on Valentine's Day, Fred Jr. showed up in Topeka with a new girl for his father to meet. The need to meet our father’s approval, no matter how cruel he was to us, was still very much a reality for us all.

Betty was a lot closer to what my father demanded in a young woman. She was another like my girlfriend - or at least who my father originally thought my girlfriend was - she had long hair, and she was very quiet and submissive.

A few weeks after Valentine's Day, Debbie came to see her mom. Debbie’s mom remembers they went for a walk in the small park near where Debbie had lived with her friends. Her daughter's spirits were very low, she recalls. Debbie confessed Fred Jr. had given her an engagement ring and they had eloped, but that Fred Jr's dad had made them come back. She admitted bitterly that his father had told her she wasn't good enough for his son, and the younger Phelps had been forced to obey him. “Now Fred Jr. has found another girl," she told her mother. As they walked, Debbie’s mother remembers her daughter took off the ring and threw it in the bushes. “He's never going to marry me, Mama," she said, "but I know I'll never love anyone else."

Debbie’s mother says she tried to cheer her up, and later, thinking Debbie might regret it, she returned to search for the ring in the grass. She never found it, and even if she had, Debbie never would have accepted it. The mother and daughter's walk in the park that afternoon would be their last time together.

The remainder of Debbie's hopeful life can be found, not in the memories of those who knew her, but in the dusty, impersonal files of the U.S. Army Intelligence Criminal Investigations Division.

After seeing her mother that day, Debbie went up to Junction City, an army town that served nearby Ft. Riley. It was also only a 20 minute drive from Manhattan, where Fred Jr. was living. Whether they saw each other during that time is not known. From the part of her life that has been documented in the Army's investigation of her death, it seems unlikely.

During her final days Debbie Valgos touched a match to her longing soul. She flamed up in a white-hot blaze of self-directed violence, anonymous sex, amphetamines, heroin, and rock and roll. All the things my father said she was, she'd end up being. I wonder how Debbie’s life might have turned out differently if the good pastor had told her she was precious in the sight of God and how much she was loved by Him.

She moved in with a soldier. She shot smack. She partied for days without sleep. The speed she was constantly on burned through her body till she'd gone from 130 to 87 pounds. In less than a month the 5'7" girl had become a walking corpse with the wide, burning eyes of the starved. Perhaps that is when her face could at last reflect her heart: faltering into despair after a lifetime without sustenance.

Because the effect was so striking, Debbie's new acquaintance nicknamed here 'Eyes'. But 'Eyes' had stared into her abyss, and she knew. At the end of all worlds...was a single lost soul. The last days of Debbie Valgos' life, those few weeks in Junction City, were one long suicide...a death dance through the Army bars...a soul signing off. When she lost Fred Phelps Jr., Debbie must have felt she had forever lost her way...that she was never coming back...and so she touched a match to her despair.

Her new friends told CID agents she had tried to commit suicide four times in the weeks prior to her death: by jumping out a window, rolling off a roof; and twice by drug overdose. Each time they had stopped her or brought her through it; then came the night of April 17, 1972. Debbie was in the Blue Light, a soldier's bar. Though she had a soldier waiting at home, that hardly mattered. She let two more pick her up. When they invited her back to their barracks to 'party', she said 'yes'.

As they left, a girl who lived in Debbie's house insisted that she come along. She'd been there during Debbie's earlier attempted suicides, and she worried that the frail runaway might try it again. They were spirited past the gates of the fort, hiding on the floor of the car. The soldiers parked in an alley and had the girls crawl through a window into their barracks room.

Once inside, one of them offered Debbie some speed. It was a bottle of crushed mini-bennies, according to CID reports. Debbie took it, and the soldier turned to put on a record. When she gave it back, the boy was amazed. "You took way too much!" he said. "You'll be up three or four days!"

Debbie only smiled at him. What might have been a four-day problem for a 180 pound man, Debbie undoubtedly hoped would solve all her problems at 87 pounds, less than half the other's body weight. Shortly after, "Eyes started to have a 'body trip'," states the girl who had accompanied her. "She shut her eyes and just started moving with the music. She did that for a while and then she started to act dingy. She called me over and said she felt like little needles were poking her all over her whole body and she was tingling. I told her I would stay with her and not to make any noise in the barracks." When Debbie started rolling around on the floor and mumbling, her friend worried she might hurt herself, and so she sat on her.

The other girl, who apparently was quite large, continued drinking and talking while she kept Debbie pinned beneath her. The party went on. Debbie was babbling incoherently. After almost another hour, everyone became alarmed at Eye's grotesque physical contortions. They pulled her back through the window, loaded her in the car, and smuggled her off base. Returning to her new boyfriend's house, they woke him and ran the tub full of cold water. By then, Debbie had passed into a coma. She would not be taken to Irwin Army Hospital at Ft. Riley until 5 a.m., nearly five hours after she'd ingested almost half a bottle of crushed Benzedrine.

Debbie lasted 20 hours unconscious in ICU, just long enough for her sister to find her. At 1 a.m., her heart stopped. Her spirit had flamed up and was gone. She was 17. She was sunny and loving and only wanted to be loved. After all she'd been through, Debbie Valgos thought she'd found safe haven with the family Phelps.

She died for her mistake. Debbie Valgos died because she found hate in the heart of my father, the pastor; where she should have found love . . . and the truth about how to have life forevermore!

In that spring of 1972, one of the Top 40 songs playing on the rock and roll radios Debbie no doubt listened to while riding her dark current of heroin, amphetamines, and despair was a tribute to Janis Joplin, sung by Joan Baez: "She once walked right by my side I know she walked by yours. Her striding steps could not deny Torment from a child who knew. That in the quiet morning there would be despair. And in the hours that followed No one could repair... that poor girl… barely here to tell her tale. Rode in on a tide of misfortune rode out on a mainline rail...”

But the Pastor, Fred W. Phelps, Sr., my father, devotee of a hateful god, had made up a song of his own: I remember getting home from school the day Debbie’s death notice appeared in the papers, and my father came dancing down the stairs, swaying from the knees and clapping his hands, singing: 'The whore is dead! The whore is dead! The wicked whore is dead!' He paraded around the house, singing and laughing with that maniacal giggle he had, 'the whore is dead! Thank God, Thank God, the whore is dead!' My father was singing his words to the tune of the song from the Wizard of Oz, ‘The Wicked Witch Is Dead’. The cruelty of this man still sometimes takes my breath away.

One is reminded of the warning from the first epistle of John: "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

Let that soak into your mind, dear one. If we claim to love God and hate anybody we are liars. And if we do not love others we simply cannot love God. These are simple words. But the truth behind them is powerful. My father did not love people, and based on that we know he also did not love God.

God told us if we say we love God we must love others. It was a command, not a suggestion. My father never chose to follow that clear command. Sadly I have to conclude my father didn’t love God.

My father’s hatred of a precious 17 year old girl was clear evidence he didn’t have the kind of love God expects of His followers. And my father’s very grave misunderstanding of who God was set him up to live a life in complete opposition to this God of love. My father opposed the God of the universe in pride and arrogance and because of it he brought people down . . . and some of them down into their graves.

I hope you are like me. Encouraged that God gives us a very clear way to show love to him simply by loving the people he made. Jesus said this so clearly. “My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you.” And the best part about it is when we love people we get blessed. More than anyone! Loving people, really loving them is the greatest adventure and the greatest privilege we have. Go have some adventure! Love people!

Mark Phelps

Sniffing After Whores - Party of Four - Part 1 of 4

My personal introduction to sex and sex education, from my father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr., came in the form of a sermon preached one Sunday morning. The content of this sermon, thundered from the pulpit was: ‘Don’t let me catch any of you hot blooded young bucks sniffing after any whores!’ So, parents, how would you feel about your children getting that as their first introduction to sex education?

I don’t think it ever occurred to my father to have a one-on-one conversation with me, regarding sex, sex education or expected behavior related to sexuality. I just showed up to the church service one Sunday and ‘wham!’ I heard the above statement. I overheard him say one time: “What’s to learn, you do what comes natural.” When I think of the importance of the marriage relationship and what a gift it might have been to me to have a caring father giving me wisdom about how to be a man of integrity in marriage or in relating to women this all seems even sadder to me.

This theme of my father’s ‘No Sniffing After Whores’ was hammered over and over again as my older brother, me and a couple of other young men in ‘The Place’ began to come of age. Lessons were drawn from the Old Testament as well as the consequences that could come from ‘going a ‘whoring’’. It is probably safe to say that every verse on the subject of the evils of sex, adultery, fornication and every form of sexual sin were included in my father’s effort to control the anticipated behavior of the few young men in ‘The Place’, during my adolescent years. Sadly what was never mentioned by my father was the profound importance of treating any women of our acquaintance with the utmost respect, honor and kindness. That sort of advice would have helped us all be much better future husbands and better people!

I am sorry to even write what I am about to write because I wish it were not true; I wish it had never happened. This part I am attempting to describe now is one of the most heartbreaking times of our growing up years with our father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr. It is a profound and tragic example of the fruits of hatred when it is directed by a hateful tyrant against the innocent and defenseless.

My older brother Fred Jr. was deeply in love with Debbie Valgos, a girl from St. Vincent's Orphanage in Topeka, Kansas located several blocks from our house. The two of them were just crazy in love... Debbie was a free spirit; and a great looker. Noisy, loud, hearty laugh! She was very warm, and friendly, and loving. She was cute, thin, and blonde.

"That name...," sighs one of the nuns from the orphanage, "is like a punch in the stomach..." Debbie was not an orphan. She lived with her mother and step father on Lincoln Street in Topeka. When she was 11 years old, for reasons undisclosed, Debbie was placed in St. Vincent's Orphanage.

She went to Capper Junior High and later attended Topeka West High School. When she was 14, Debbie sent this poem to her mom: “I settled down west from town, though no one knew I was a clown. My face was clean, and all around were children, though I heard no sound.” She signed it, 'Mom, I love you very much!' with seven asterisks for emphasis.

Debbie’s older sister recalls: "She sang. She had a beautiful voice. And she played the guitar. She was a pretty little thing." Debbie's mom had an album of photos taken by the nuns of her daughter while she lived at the orphanage. Pictures of her as a cheerleader at Capper; smiling on a dock at the Lake of the Ozarks with some other girls from St. Vincent's; clutching her pom-poms, watching the players; pictures of her 15th birthday party at the orphanage.

Fred Jr. and Debbie met at the skating rink. Sometimes my older brother Fred Jr. and I would trick my father. When he thought we'd gone out on our obligatory 10 mile run, instead we'd go skating. Or if we'd had a good night on candy sales, my brothers Jonathan, Nathan, Fred Jr. and I would knock off early and hit the rink before going home.

Debbie was a good skater. She came to the rink with other kids from the orphanage. She skated fast and reckless. At first my brother Fred Jr. saw her secretly, during stolen moments. Then he'd go by the orphanage when the four of us boys were out selling candy.

You should know when I was 9 and Fred Jr. 10, we began to hear degrading, insulting sermons from my father about how no good it is for boys to have girlfriends. My father would say: "You'll meet a girl someday and she'll start saying things like, ‘aren't you cute; aren't you handsome; ooooooh, you're really something’, and like some kind of ignorant, stupid lamb being led to slaughter, you'll fall for it, and the next thing you know, she'll want to kiss you or some bullshit like that. I'm telling you now; I'm not going to put up with it. If you think you're going to have some whore coming around sniffing after you, you better know right now that I'm not going to put up with it. You better start gettin' it through your thick head right now. You just have to trust the Lord to provide you a good woman who will subject herself to the authority of the church...”

They met, I think, in the fall of 1970. On the candy sales, Fred Jr. would drive and I'd ride shotgun, with brothers Jon and Nate in back. We'd pick Debbie up on the way out and she'd sit between us. When we got to our selling destination, the rest of us would sell candy, and Fred and Debbie would stay behind in the car. Boy, did they kiss. Every time was for the last time. Like Bogart and Bergman at the Paris train station.

She was cute, but it wasn't only a physical attraction. Those two were very, very much in love. I was there. I saw it. I watched them together - kissing, walking, and being together. Fred and I shared the same bedroom and I knew my brother. It was obvious they were meant for each other. That romance had so much voltage it could have lit the city.

Fred and Debbie's special song was "Close to You", by the Carpenters, but that didn't keep them from fighting. Debbie had a hot temper. She was very intense and dramatic. So they kissed and fought, kissed and fought. But they loved each other terribly hard--none of us doubted that. Debbie also got a kick out of hanging around with all of Fred Jr's brothers. She used to say it was her instant family. And that made us all feel good. Lord knows we had very little family closeness so the fact she saw us that way was pretty amazing.

Many of Debbie's teachers remembered her vividly. And they remembered her long-lasting romance with Fred Phelps Jr. “She was craving a family environment, with all the emotional outlet and loving she imagined went with it," recalls one. "When she was dating Fred Jr., she thought she'd become an adjunct member of his family and she wanted to be a part. When she thought she was, she was very happy." "She was such a warm, sweet girl," remembers another, "it's just a shame what happened to her."

In the car on candy sales and at the skating rink was the only time they could see each other.

Apparently Debbie suffered from epilepsy. Periodically she'd pass out. I saw it happen 10 to 12 times. Suddenly she'd stop talking and when you looked, she'd be limp, her head back and eyes closed, though still breathing. Debbie told Fred Jr. what it was, but he never revealed it to anyone.

After they'd been stealing time together for several months, Fred Jr. somehow found the resources to buy Debbie a gold band with a tiny diamond. I remember her showing it off proudly in the car that day. Fred was 17, she was still 16. They began to talk of getting married. Before you jump to conclusions about another teenage marriage remember my family didn't believe in dating around. We believed God would send us our mates. That it would just happen one day, and we would know it in our hearts. When it happened, that was it--whether you were 16 or 56.

Of course, my father thought he was the god in charge of that. But I wouldn't assume Fred Jr. and Debbie's union would have been another miscast teenage marriage-and therefore my father was right to do what he did. Such an assumption would be a mistake! Why?

Because my wife of 38 years, and my best friend for 43, is the same young girl I met at the rink that May of '71. We've been together since I was 16 and she, 13, and we're still totally nuts about each other. You see, I think God has a hand in these things. And maybe it's naive of me, but I think all that we Phelps children went through as kids made us wiser and more street savvy about people than a lot of grownups. We had spent time on the streets from the time we were very young, selling the candy for our father’s church in a variety of places, and we had to learn to be good judges of character to try to stay safe.

I estimate the passionate romance between Fred Jr. and Debbie was kept from my father through the New Year of 1971. Sometime shortly after, however, my father caught wind of his son's happiness. After that, my father, of course, forbade Fred Jr. to see Debbie. He tried everything to get Fred Jr. to stop.

Though Fred Jr. was only a few months shy of 18, my father regularly took the oak mattock handle to him to stop his 'slinkin' with that whore'. In February of that year, Debbie left the orphanage and moved back in with her mother and stepfather in the house on Lincoln Street.

Fred Jr., Nate, Jon and I would swing by and pick her up there. Shortly after she moved, Fred Jr. and Debbie moved again: they made their bid for a life together free of their burdened pasts. They eloped.

They took one of the family cars, a '66 Impala wagon. And I had a pair of top-notch skates hidden in the back of the car. They cost me a hundred bucks. I was a serious skater back then, and I carried them around in a slick black case and felt very professional. But my brother Fred Jr. took them along for gas money. He sold them at a rink in Kansas City for ten bucks. I missed my skates, but I wasn't mad at him. Back then, we had no sense of personal belongings or boundaries. And we did not have parents who had the time or inclination to help us learn how to navigate anything like living in a family and respecting each others things. If you needed something, you just took it. Besides, I wanted those two to get away. I just wish he'd gotten more for those skates! Ten bucks was insulting!

With a borrowed car and a tank full of gas, the intrepid couple hit the great American highways-though not with that era's open agenda of 'wherever you go-there you are!' To Fred Jr., the available universe consisted of two addresses and the highway that connected them. One was on 12th Street in Topeka; the other was the home and church of Forrest Judd in Indianapolis.

My father and Judd met at a Bible conference in Ashland, Kentucky. Forrest was a Baptist preacher and he and my father hit it off. They used to come to Topeka and visit a lot. He and my father were doctrinally alike, but Forrest was a very different personality. He was a jolly fat Santa type of guy-a factory worker and a really neat fella. He had three sons of his own, but he'd become sort of a 'good' father figure to a lot of us kids.

His church was the only one my father approved of. You see, no matter what differences we had with my father as the head of our house, none of us questioned his authority as head of our church. It was a certified gathering of those who had been chosen, remember. And the only way to get to heaven was to do that, to assemble with the chosen. My father interpreted that, and we accepted it, as membership in a physical congregation certified by him as part of the chosen... ‘The Place’... And there was only one Place besides his-Forrest Judd's. So my brother had nowhere to run, you see. Not if he wanted to get to heaven. To a believer, even the most wonderful love in this world isn't worth an eternity in the fires of hell. As long as we accepted that my father had the power to send us all to hell. He had the trump card in any showdown over our choices.

After Judd and my father conferred by phone, the father figure, Judd, convinced Fred Jr. there would be no room on the Indy bus to heaven. If he wanted to get there, he'd have to go back to Kansas. A member of the staff at Topeka West High School remembers my father called the school to rage at them, holding them responsible and threatening to sue. As I recall, my father stopped the marriage; and he was demanding the school go and get them. He wanted each returned separately so they wouldn't 'fornicate' on the way home. School officials tried to point out to my father that Fred Jr. and Debbie were teenagers, and they'd been alone together for over a week-the damage was done. Not that my father ever wanted to hear the truth about his children or the people they were becoming!

From the moment the disappointed lovers started down the road from whence they had come, the clock began to tick toward tragedy.

Back in Topeka, Debbie moved in with her mom again, and Fred Jr. counted the weeks till his 18th birthday. Though my father did everything in his power to separate them, those afternoon candy sessions went on just as they had before. In early May of 1971 my brother, Fred Jr. turned 18, and my father changed his strategy. It would be OK for Fred Jr. to see Debbie, but only when she came to church services on Sunday.

By this time, I had met my future wife, also at the skating rink. She was convinced to come to church as well. The only way my girlfriend and I could see each other, officially, was if she came to ‘The Place’ for Sunday service. None of the children of ‘The Place’ had a social life; we simply weren't allowed to date. So my girlfriend’s willingness to come to church service in order to have a friendship with me was a real blessing in my life, as you will soon see.

My girlfriend remembers that first Sunday: "When I arrived, Debbie was already there, sitting in one of the pews, waiting for it to begin. She looked back at me and smiled. I was nervous and her warmth touched me. She was quite radiant and seemed very happy that day."

My girlfriend fared better than Debbie under the pale-hearted Pastor’s basilisk eye. She had long hair and was shy - a quality my father mistook for subjection to her man.

My father took an instant dislike to Debbie. She had all her signals wrong: she had short hair; she was vivacious, passionate, and fiery; she was direct; and she had an open, honest laugh. Openness?! Honesty?! Hardly traits the head of a cult would be welcoming! Starting that Sunday, and forever after, my father called Debbie ‘the whore' from the pulpit, in person, to Fred Jr., and to the family.

Let me make this clear. My father would say things from the pulpit like “'I see the whore is here today' then start in on Fred about running after whorish women.” In the middle of the church service! She didn't argue! She just looked shell-shocked. I am sure it never even occurred to her that a pastor would say such horrible things to someone in public, much less from the pulpit! She started to cry, but did it quietly. After the service, she disappeared. After that, my father preached to Fred Jr. that this beautiful woman who he loved dearly and wanted to marry was a whore; from the pulpit every Sunday.

My father had so little understanding of human nature I honestly wonder if he even understood what incredible harm he was doing to my brother Fred. I have no idea all that went on in my brother’s young heart and mind as he was subjected to public denigration and shaming week after week from this supposed man of God. But I can tell you it took a desperate toll on him as a person.

Mark Phelps

Part 2 of four parts will be published next Thursday, October 30, 2014.