My Brother Nate

If you grew up in a large family you know sometimes the children will gravitate to different roles within the family structure. In some families you might find one kid being the smart one, or the athlete, the clown, the artistic one, the trouble maker, or the quiet one. If you are from a big family you can probably add to this list.

In my family I was appointed the saint in my father’s family cult, while my brother Nate was assigned the role of sinner. For me, Nate was the needed scapegoat . . . because in a very real sense Nate kept me safer. When my father had Nate on his radar I was not! For that moment anyway! For the rest of the family, Nate was a problem child, the delinquent of the brood. Brilliant like his dad (Nate's IQ has been measured at 150), the middle son heard a different drummer from the time he was a toddler.

When he was five, Nate remembers my father telling him, “I'm going to keep a special eye on you. Nate immediately knew that special eye was not going to be a kind one. The regular beatings of Nate started shortly thereafter. But this was not a role Nate gravitated to or wanted or used to distinguish himself as someone important or special in a large family of 13 kids. No, Nate had this role assigned to him by his father. “Hello, my name is Nate Phelps, and I was chosen to be the child who got the worst beatings and the most beatings, by a father who beat us all.”

For a brief period our father’s beatings were administered with a leather strap about 3 ½ feet in length, a leather strap he had made especially for administering ‘discipline’ to his children by the local barber shop. He wore out one strap and had another made, then another. However, by the time Nate was about five years old, around the time my father told him “I’m going to keep a special eye on you”, my father had the appalling idea of using an oak mattock handle for administering ‘discipline’ to his children. Disciplining with an oak mattock handle is like disciplining a child with a heavy baseball bat. And from that day on, all discipline was administered via the use of his oak mattock handle, for all the children, but especially for Nate!

If you want to think through the level of pain this would have produced in Nate’s little body imagine asking a friend to hit you hard with a baseball bat. Have your friend hit plenty hard enough on your backside but not too hard . . . hard enough to really hurt, but not hard enough to break any bones. And get a full swing in. Then imagine that you had the guts to ask your friend to hit you on your backside and upper legs and lower back with a strong firm hit like the first hit, a couple of more times. Just hard enough but remember, no broken bones.

Now, how about 40 times in a row? Or as in the case of my brother Nate, 40 times two or 40 times three. And to really simulate it you’d have to have your friend miss the intended target of back side and upper legs several times and beat on your lower back and your legs just behind the knees . . . with the intent that you not walk for four or five days. Got any friends (or enemies?!) you could even get to hit you that hard . . . Once!? (And in this hypothetical we have an adult hitting an adult with the same relative body size.) But then imagine, just imagine that you are a scared little boy, and that the one beating you with the bat is your six foot four inch daddy. Are you able to imagine, for just a second if you can stand it, the damage this would do to your body? And the damage it would do to your soul?

My brother Nate endured hundreds of brutal beatings in his young life before walking out at one minute after midnight on his eighteenth birthday. Nate got the lion's share of the 'discipline' among the kids in our family. I honestly don't know how he endured it, but he did; at least he lived through it. He'd get 40 blows at a time from the oak mattock handle, and at times, 40 times two or 40 times 3.

I used to think my father thought Nate was just tougher than the rest of us so my father somehow “adjusted” for that in his beatings. I don’t believe that any more. What I believe is that Nate was the child who consistently had the courage to stand up to my father and call what my father was doing wrong. Nate’s very presence in my father’s life was a daily reminder that my father’s message was not being believed by everyone. Nate stood as a kind of fortress that my father could not scale with his tactics and therefore could not conquer. Nate stood as the lone dissident of my father’s children. Who simply could not be broken, no matter how cruel, no matter how unjust my father was.

I believe Nate was born with a wonderfully strong sense of justice, and a natural sense of right and wrong. Nate knew early on that our father had no love for us and was simply using us; using us for his personal soapbox, his own agenda and his hate. Nate knew it and he always made sure our father knew he knew it. Nate realized our father was using us for his own monetary gain and to have some notoriety as the man whose only church members were his wife and children.

That’s why Nate would not cower before my father, and that’s why my father assumed, foolishly, ignorantly, that Nate was tougher than the rest of his children. Nate defied his father because he hated my father’s injustice! But, oh, did my brother Nate pay for his desire to always stand on principle. Nate was brutalized at the hand of his father . . . for years; for most of his growing up years!

In fact, Nate's tenacious resistance so angered his father that, by age nine, when regular candy-selling family outings were planned, frequently Nate missed them. Nate would be required to stay behind with father at the house/church building. And during the course of the day, Father would beat Nate whenever he had a whim to do so.

I recall the family coming back once to find our father jogging around the dining room table, beating the sobbing boy with a broom handle on the arms, shoulders, head, hands, back, rear end and legs. While doing so, father was alternately spitting on the frightened child and chuckling an evil laugh. I can hardly fathom that little boy’s terror and despair at being left alone with this tyrant! Who should have been his greatest champion and greatest advocate!

When Nate wasn't allowed to go along he would literally scream and chase Mom as she drove off with us kids in the car. He knew what was coming after we left. I remember little Nate racing alongside the car windows, begging us not to leave him until, like a dog, he could no longer keep up. I am sorry to admit it, but I did not allow myself to feel any empathy for him, only relief it wasn't happening to me. I just stared straight ahead. I didn't allow myself to think about what Nate was yelling about. I was just glad to get the heck out of there. Later I would wonder how my mom could tolerate leaving him behind to suffer at my father’s hand. You would think the maternal instinct would cut in at some point! Wouldn't the lioness turn in fury to protect her cub?

But I guess I do still feel that very deeply . . . that Mom betrayed a gut, primitive bond when she drove off and left Nate. I do love my mom. But I wish with all my heart she'd have put a stop to the abuse. As difficult as it would have been, she might have stopped my father, and she didn't. Please don’t misunderstand. I have great empathy for my mother. I realize she believed she was in an impossible situation. But these were her children. And they were, after all, only children. What were her children going to be able to do to stop their father!? Obviously, if our mother couldn’t stop our father, nobody could. Nobody did! So my father’s vicious, savage abuse of his family continued unchecked for many years.

One night just before Christmas, my brother Nate and I were out selling candy together, as was our custom. We were in a residential area, and while we were selling, we'd unscrew a tiny Christmas light from the evergreens outside people's houses, one of those small bulbs on a string of lights. We were only doing it occasionally for kicks. We'd 'launch' them over the street and listen to them pop on the pavement. We didn't think anything about it. Nate was 9 and I was 13.

Well, I remember very clearly what happened that night when we got home. I walked into the dining room where the bottom of the stairs was going up to our father’s bedroom. He was coming down those stairs just as I came in. Mainly I remember the look on his face. He said, 'Who was selling on Prairie Road tonight?' It took me only a few seconds to register that, first of all, he was really angry, and second, it was Nate and me who had been selling on Prairie Road that night. I got sick to my stomach immediately. I remember the intense fear that came over me. I didn't know much yet, but between the look on his face and the questions he was asking, I knew something was really wrong. Nobody answered my father’s question that was hanging in the air.

My father asked again. By that time Mom had come in. Her face was white. She said, 'Why?' Father said, 'I got a call from some guy who told me that there were two boys that had come by his house tonight, and that he was a retired police detective. Was this the church that the boys were selling candy for? I told them it was, and asked why. He told me he was sorry to have to report it, but that I should know the boys were stealing light bulbs from Christmas trees and then trying to sell them door-to-door. Who was it?'

Before I could say a word, someone told father it was Nate and me. My father said, 'Let's go.' Those were the words my father always used when he was about to begin a beating. We dutifully went upstairs. Our father never asked me or Nate one word about whether it was true. He never asked us for our side of the story. All he said, after we got upstairs was, 'How could you endanger the church like that, after all the problems we have? How could you do it, bring reproach on the church of the Lord Jesus Christ like that?' By that time, I was so scared, all I can remember saying was, 'I'm sorry Daddy. We didn't mean it. We're so sorry.'

I feel nauseated whenever I remember that night. I was hit 60 times and my brother, Nate, 120, with an oak mattock handle. Nate went into shock. I didn’t. The compassion toward my precious little brother and the terrible anger I felt that night over what Nate had to go through are still with me to this day. I will never, ever forget the injustice and cruelty that were done to Nate by my father that night. My father was the person on this planet given the greatest responsibility by God to protect and defend and nurture his young son. And he did the exact opposite. He acted like a treacherous villain instead of a dad. What happened in the mind and heart and spirit of that precious young man, my brother Nate, the night his protector and defender beat him till he went into shock? That night was a turning point for me in my relationship with my father and what would become my future. I wonder if that particularly deadly beating was a turning point for Nate as well.

I became a compulsive counter to handle the stress of our father’s beatings. I counted the square tiles on the floor as I paced in fear throughout the house. I counted the stairs up to my father’s bedroom. I counted every stroke, mine and Nate’s, while my father screamed obscenities and Nate screamed in pain. Every 20 strokes, my mother wiped my face off with a wet wash cloth while my father beat my brother Nate.

That was Christmas Eve. We didn’t celebrate Christmas in our family. Christmas was considered evil by my father! And for children who were in forced isolation of the type seen in cults, the holidays seemed fraught with danger to us because we were further hidden from the view of the world for those days when we weren’t in school. And there was simply more opportunities for us to be beaten.

A mattock is a pick-hoe using an oak handle heavier than a bat. The ax head is easily removed leaving only the handle. My father swung it with both hands like a ballplayer, with a full swing. The first blow stunned your whole body. By the third blow, your backside was so tender, even the lightest strike was agonizing, but he would still hit us with a full swing. By 20 hits, though, we’d have grown numb with pain and the pain had become bone deep. That was when my father would quit and start on my brother.

After the second 20 strokes, I was weak and nauseated and very pale. My body hurt terribly. Then it was Nate’s turn, again. He got 40 strokes each time. I walked slowly over to the bathtub where my mom was wetting a wash cloth, again, to bathe my face. Behind me, I could hear the mattock strikes and my brother was choking and moaning. He was crying and father wouldn't stop. Then I heard my father shouting my name.

My mom was right there. But she wouldn't help me. What agony we endured knowing there was no help in sight. Not from my mother. Not from anyone. It hurt so bad during the third beating that I wanted to drop so my father would hit me in the head with the oak mattock handle. I was hoping I'd be knocked out, or killed... anything to end the pain. After that... it was the waiting that was so terrible. I didn't know if, when he was done with Nate, it would be my turn again. I was shaking in a frantic panic. Forty-five years since it happened, and the same sick feeling in my stomach comes back now.

Did he? Did my father come back to me for another round of beating?

No. He just kept hitting my little nine year old brother, Nate with the oak mattock handle. A little nine year old child would take the brunt of my father’s rage for a childish prank. And my mother must have suffered greatly as she stood by watching this cruelty being perpetrated on a son who was still a little boy. I wonder how many times in my mother’s life with my father that she considered picking up the phone and calling the police. She had to wonder at some point that night if Nate was going to die from the blows that rained down on him. The beating seemed to go on and on and on. As if it would never, ever end.

I remember the blunt thud sound of each blow and how finally my brother stopped screaming. Now Nate could only emit groans with each blow; a sort of desperate, sickening, groaning sound came out of Nate with each blow. It was a horrible sound being released involuntarily by a young boy in terrible agony whose father continued to beat him beyond all reason or mercy; a young boy who at that moment most likely despaired of his very life. I looked at my brother once the beating stopped. He was in terrible, grievous, torturous pain, barely able to stand! He was desperately weak and in the throes of sheer agony.

I can't describe the basic animal fear that races through your body at a time like that, where someone that evil has complete power over you. And they're wracking you with unendurable pain. And there is no rescue, no deliverance, no escape. No way out… if your mom couldn't help you. I can't explain it to anyone except perhaps a survivor from a POW camp or a woman being held captive and repeatedly raped and brutalized. In a situation that had daily violence with no hope of escape.

I can barely imagine how it felt to Nate because he got twice as many hits as I got. He was in bed lying on his side for four or five days after the beating. Totally alone! Nate was a nine-year old boy being left alone with no medical attention, no basic treatment for his wounds. Left alone to make sense of the cruelty he suffered for a little boy’s prank played out in the streets of his city. My father did not so much as look at him as he lay there, or even pass by his bed. Nate did receive a scant bit of obligatory care and food from his sisters, and maybe a little check in, once or twice, from his mother. Otherwise, he lay there as the scapegoat and family outcast he had become; an embarrassment and a shame to his family. Well you know what? . . . I say shame on his family for allowing him to be criminally beaten by his father, and particular shame on his father!

This action by my father was an unconscionable act of a physical and emotional abuser. It makes me wonder what it must be like for prisoners in a prison camp. Prisoners of war are held at the mercy of the enemy and subject to horrible treatment of all kinds. What goes on in a prison camp is often not known by anyone except the soldier being tortured. The tortured prisoner can tell his fellow prisoners how he is being tortured, but it brings no relief because all the prisoners are captive and hidden away from view and shut off from contact with the outside world. There is no one to stop the outrage and no hope for intervention. Sure there were rules for treatment of prisoners, such as the rules of the Geneva Convention, but rules are very difficult to enforce when there is no immediate accountability. Yet my father had no outside rules superimposed upon him and not an ounce of outside accountability. And he obviously had no internal mechanism to govern his treatment of his own children. He was free to brutalize his son, Nate, with no apparent personal consequences to himself. Apparently he felt no shame, no remorse and no agony for what he had meted out on this young boy.

I remember a day when the boys in our family had gathered in one room to do their homework. They'd been working quietly for some time when my father walked in. After staring in simmering malevolence at each of them, he intoned: "You guys think you may be foolin' me. But on a cold snowy day, the snow will be crunchin' under the mailman's tires, and under his boots, when he puts that letter in our box. Your grades! And that's when the meat's gonna get separated from the coconut.” My father had the opportunity to praise the children in his household for showing initiative in doing homework, or for perseverance or stick-to-it-iveness. But did he? No, he stared at us with anger and hatred in advance of what he perceived as something that could make him look bad. Our grades!

When the report cards arrived from Landon Middle School one day in January, 1972, it was snowing. And Jonathan and Nate's grades were poor. And the meat got separated from the coconut.

The beatings were so severe the boys were covered with massive red, green, black and purple bruising extending from their lower back to below their knees. Some of their bruises were bleeding through to the surface. Their skin would swell, and then due to repeated blows with the oak mattock handle, it would crack and bleed. Neither Jonathan nor Nate was able to sit down, and the blows to the backs of their knees had caused so much swelling they were unable to bend them. My father was a sly man who knew very well how to keep all contusions, bruises and injuries on his children’s bodies in places no one else could see.

And after the beatings came the shaming. It was 1972-the age of shoulder-length locks. Both boys had begged their father not to give them crew cuts. They already felt exposed to enough ridicule as the odd ducks whose father didn't believe in Christmas, whose home no one was allowed to visit, and who were forbidden to visit others' homes (the isolation thing, remember?). Jonathan and Nate had a teenage dread of braving the corridors with flesh heads in an era of long manes, and their father had relented for a time. Their hair had been allowed to touch their collars. But when the grades turned out to be poor, out came the clippers. No attachments. Brutally short; shaved bald! It was not a haircut. It was a penalty, and a further way of cutting my brothers off from the outside world . . . and for my father to show his complete dominance over his captives.

On the following day-a Thursday-the boys came to school wearing red stocking caps. When asked to remove them in class, they declined. This upset their teachers almost as much as their refusal to take their seats. One instructor demanded Nate remove his headgear. Finally, Nate did. The teacher stared at his bald head. So did his classmates. "On second thought," said the charitable man, "put it back on."

For gym class that Friday, the boys had a very necessary note from my mom excusing them all week. My father could hardly let the evidence of his beatings be seen by the school authorities. By now, the faculty had a pretty good idea what the clothes, notes, and funny hats were covering, and Principal Dittemore asked Jonathan to come into his office. Waiting for him were the school nurse and a doctor from the community.

They asked the 13 year old to show them his bruises. He refused. Feeling their hands were tied, the staff released Jonathan, only to have the pastor himself show up a few hours later. During a stormy second meeting, Phelps accused the school, first of slackness and poor discipline, then, paradoxically, of beating his sons and causing the bruising themselves. My father, the deceiving bully, threatened to slap a lawsuit on anyone who pursued the matter.

Not a man to be intimidated, Dittemore reported the suspected child abuse to an officer of the Juvenile Court. On Monday the same routine occurred-with my brothers unable to sit down and insisting on wearing their stocking caps-until it came time for gym once more. The note had excused them for a week, but now the coach demanded they show it again, saying he'd thought it was only for a day. The boys had left their note at home.

The coach took Nate into the locker room and stood there, waiting for him to get undressed. Nate refused. At that point, the faculty relented, and Jonathan and Nate thought they were off the hook. But, as they walked out of Landon to their mom's station wagon after school, (to start their 5 hours of candy selling) they saw two police cars waiting. One of the teachers pointed the boys out to the officers. Before he knew it, Nate was in a squad car on his way downtown. Nate was terrified. Not because he was afraid of the police. No, he was afraid of his father! He kept thinking it was all over but the funeral. He was terrified of what my father would do to him, even though it was in no way his fault! Nate was sure this would be perceived as his fault and was certain his father was going to beat the daylights out of him. Nate was like a lot of abused children who believe even the legitimate consequences their abuser has to face for his criminal behaviors are things they, the victim, should have foreseen and figured out how to deal with. And poor Nate could barely walk from the last beating.

At the station everyone was very kind to Nate. They spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to allay his fears and coax him to allow them to photograph his naked backside. Finally he did. When the police allowed Mom to take her boys home, Nate's worst nightmare did come true. After my father nearly got arrested for delivering a tirade of obscenities and threats to the juvenile detectives, my father rushed back to the house and delivered a fresh beating to his exhausted sons.

How can I describe the physical pain my two brothers endured that evening when my father ruthlessly beat their raw backsides, again, with the oak mattock handle. What cruel and inhumane injustice! And remember this was on top of my brothers having spent time at a police station getting the best my culture had to offer at the time for children of child abuse . . . which was, sadly, to send them straight home to an angry abuser bent on avenging himself of his humiliation at having been caught. My father’s behavior that night was atrocious, outrageous and evil! My father blamed his sons for the consequences of his own personal behavior, and his anger was vented, brutally, in a raging fit, onto the backsides of two of his sons, with an oak mattock handle. It felt like there was no hope and no justice in the world. Certainly there was not for us as Phelps children!

For the moment, however, the circumstances of the investigation had gone beyond the pastor's control. Police detectives investigated the matter, and it was filed as juvenile abuse cases #13119 and #13120. Jonathan and Nate were assigned a court- appointed lawyer, a guardian ad litem, to protect their interests. The assistant county attorney took charge of the cases, and juvenile officers were assigned to the boys.

In his motion to dismiss, the ever-resourceful pastor/lawyer; my father; filed a pontifically sobering sermon on the value of strict discipline and corporal punishment in a good Christian upbringing. When he beat my two brothers, Jonathan and Nate, he told them if this situation became a legal case, they would pay hell. And the boys believed him. At that time, believe me, there was nothing those two boys wanted to see more than those charges dropped.

When the guardian ad litem came to interview these two boys, they lied through their teeth. Can you imagine? These two boys lied to save themselves from what they knew would be far worse punishment! Surely the child abuse system has learned from those early years, but in our case the system actually caused my brothers more abuse and more pain. And further isolation knowing that their father could do an end run around all of the authorities. Legally and personally! And my father, tragically, was emboldened to abuse again.

Principals involved in the case speculate the boys' statements, along with legal superiors' reluctance to tangle with the litigious pastor, caused the charges to be dropped. The last reason is not academic speculation. The Capital-Journal newspaper in Topeka, Kansas learned through several sources that the Topeka Police Department's attitude toward the Phelps' family in the '70s and '80s was ‘hands off-this guy's more trouble than he's worth'.

As I mentioned earlier, there was no escape from my father as far as we children were concerned. And the decisions of the Topeka police department, and the other civil and criminal authorities, put an end to any flickering hope for the Phelps offspring. The legal system, with very clear evidence of abuse, was unable to come up with a way to prosecute my father for abuse and thereby protect his children from him. The system that exists today to protect children has a much more sophisticated system in place to help children. But in the late 1960s the city of Topeka, Kansas was just not there yet.

Three months later, the case was dismissed upon the motion of the state. The reason given by the prosecutor was "no case sufficient to go to trial in opinion of state." The two boys were selling candy in the Highland Park area of Topeka when they learned from their mom their father would not go on trial for beating his children. They were elated! It meant at least they wouldn't get beaten for this. To say that the Phelps children’s lives were the time they lived “between beatings” is really an apt understanding of what we went through.

But if Nate's life was so full of pain and fear, why didn't he speak up when he was at the police station and everyone was being so nice to him? I remember Nate’s response to this question. He laughed. It's the veteran's tolerant amusement at the novice's question. Nate explained: "We'll do anything not to have to give up our parents. That's just the way kids are.” And of course there was the desire to avoid even more horrendous beatings had the case continued.

That's the way we were. Besides, when crippling abuse occurs from birth, and fear dominates your daily existence, it never even crosses your mind to fight back! You know how they train elephants? They raise them tied to a chain anchored deep in the ground. Later, it's replaced by a rope and a stick. But the elephant never stops thinking it's an impossible-to-break chain. He is forever in bondage to his understanding that he cannot escape.

Since my brothers’ juvenile files were destroyed when the boys reached eighteen, had it not been for my father’s vindictiveness, there might have been no record of this case. As it was, my father sued the school. This caused the school's insurance company to request a statement from Principal Dittemore, who complied; describing the events which led to the faculty's concern the boys were being abused. The suit was dropped. When contacted in retirement, Dittemore confirmed he'd written the letter to the insurance company and he acknowledged its contents.

Nate finally left the house, his family, and his father’s church at the stroke of midnight, November 22, the day he turned 18. Nate's departure from home was dramatic. Inclined towards being a freethinker and sceptic, and long the family's designated scapegoat, Nate was initially not so torn about leaving the assembly of the elect. "He constantly told me I was worthless," says Nate about his father. "That I was a son of Belial (Satan); I was going to end up in prison; I was evil. That message came through loud and clear. For years since, I have had to struggle to achieve any sense of worthiness in the eyes of God or man.”

“My father often opined I was such a loser; I'd never even make it through high school. Two weeks before the end of my senior year, when it was apparent I would, he decided my weight needed constant watching again. Instead of being allowed to take my final exams. I was pulled out of school and made to ride a stationary bicycle six hours a day. Now . . . there's a rational act . . . a real daddy-non-compos-mentis. So I didn't graduate. I had to take the GED later for my high school diploma.” For those of us who knew my father’s fear of having his flock leave him this looked like just one more act of desperation.

“A few weeks before my 18th birthday, I bought an old Rambler for $350. I parked it down the street and I didn't tell anyone I had it. I took my things out to the garage a little at a time, and I hid them amid the mess out there. On the night before my birthday, around 15 minutes to midnight on November 21, 1976, I pulled my car into the drive, opened the garage, and loaded my few personal belongings in the back. Leaving my keys in the ignition, I walked into my childhood house of fear and pain.”

“I walked to the bottom of the stairs to the room where my father slept and I...screamed; at the top of my lungs; and left. That night, I slept in the men's room of an APCO gas station on Fairlawn across from my high school because it was heated. I found work and eventually ended up living with my brother Mark, his wife, and my sister Margie, who were also experimenting with adult independence.”

Thus, Nate made his initial escape. When my wife and I moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1977, my sister Margie and Nate took an apartment and jobs in Kansas City. A little later, Nate went to work for me at a print shop in St. Louis, and Margie returned to the Westboro community. She would become one of my father’s staunchest defenders even to the point of arguing the Snyder v. Phelps case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011. I’ve said it before. It is really hard to leave that level of mind control.

In the summer of 1978, my wife, my brother Nate and I returned and opened our first copy shop in Prairie Village, a suburb of Kansas City. It was a success. In January 1979, my wife and I opened another copy shop in Topeka, and Nate stayed in Kansas City to manage the first. At that point, says Nate, "It hit me. It was the first time I'd ever been totally separated from all of my family.” Though Nate held no illusions about building some kind of new relationship with my father, deep down Nate had always wanted to be a part of the rest of his family--his mother and brothers and sisters--in some other capacity than as the bad seed. Now, he felt cut off and alone.

It was precisely then that my sisters began calling him, pressing him to return, saying they could all be one family again, and that my father had stopped beating his children. Interesting, don’t you think, that they knew with Nate they would have to lead with whether his father was still physically abusing his children. “Hey, Nate, the physical abuse isn’t happening anymore. Want to come home?”

So, three years after his Jim-Morrison-exit, the prodigal returned. However, my father’s idea of a welcome was to draw up not a feast, but a document. Nate remembers they had him sit down and pen a letter to me - Mark, his brother and his boss at the time - which they dictated. It was left on Nate's desk at the shop in Kansas City, and it informed me I had lost my manager without notice due to my serving as ballast for that manager's slide into hell.

For Nate, rebirth into his family came with my father’s umbilical cord drawn tightly around his neck. Though he got his meals now, Nate was expected to work in the law office full-time for his meals and a room. He was also expected to complete college and attend law school. "And, in return for my work, my father would pay my tuition," says Nate. "But I had no desire for law school, and I had debts to pay. I needed a cash income - not just room and board." Nate declined the work in the law offices and found employment outside the compound.

In the meantime, my father refused to talk to him, handling any business through intermediaries. Seriously? Come back and be part of the family but we won’t talk to you! Nate attended church services, but was excluded from the adult male congregation. Instead, he worshipped with the women and children.

You see, every Sunday, just prior to services, all the men in the church would congregate in my father’s office to sit and chat. When they filed out and took their seats in the auditorium, it signaled services were beginning. It was a rite of passage for the older boys when they were allowed to join. To his credit, Nate was never included nor wanted to be part of this ritual, either when he was younger or when he came back to the church. Nate knew at his core that what got decided by the men of this church was simply a perpetuation of my father’s hate. And he wanted no part of it.

During the ensuing months, my father still refused to speak to Nate. Instead, envoys were sent to inform Nate that the pastor was displeased he was working 'outside'. Again and again, it was suggested to Nate he ought to give up the 'outside' job and work in the law office; that his benevolent father would pay him for this by sending him to law school. Nate was true to himself and always refused. He didn't want to go to law school. And he needed cash to pay his debts. He was 21 at the time. If my father had paid a wage, even a small one, it might have been OK with Nate. But money in your pocket, to my father, meant he had less control over you. It allowed mobility and independence; something he was not going to tolerate.

All of the loyal Phelps children and their approved spouses followed the pastor's formula: they worked as law clerks, legal secretaries, and go-fers for my father as he churned out lawsuits. In return, my father took care of whatever he had decided were their needs.

Finally, one Sunday my father devoted his entire sermon to denouncing the reprobate in our midst. He preached that Nate was not of ‘The Place’, not one of the chosen, or he would be happy to join in the toils of the family enterprise. My father announced there would be a meeting after the service where the family would 'decide' whether Nate should stay or go. "I started packing my bag," says Nate. "Family councils never contradicted my dad. He just called them when he wanted everyone else to feel responsible for something he had every intention of doing, regardless."

After he'd thrown his few belongings together, Nate remembers he dozed off on his bed, waiting for the verdict. He was awakened by a fist pounding on his door. It was Jonathan. The two brothers were less than a year apart. "You have to go,” Jonathan told his older brother. "You have to go tonight."

The Phelps family scapegoat nodded stoically. He hoisted his bag and stepped through the door. His younger brother gave him no hand to shake, no pat on the back, no words of farewell - only silence. None of the normal, bittersweet responses you would have expected from a sibling who was being forced to say goodbye to another sibling, perhaps forever. Nate has not seen his father since. Once, he went back to visit his mom: "It had been years since I'd talked to her," he relates bitterly. "She'd only see me for two minutes at the back door. And she kept looking over her shoulder the entire time. I felt like a hobo asking for a meal." It was as it had always been for my mom. Her fear of my father would trump all else.

But Nate, who, like Katherine, had taken the brunt of my father’s cruelty and abuse, would find he could not leave his past behind so easily. When he drove away that night after his family council, rejected, wounded, he would be in a very vulnerable state. And that vulnerability would set the stage for Nate to move into self-destructive behaviors that anybody who had read a high school Psychology textbook could have predicted. Gratis the pastor and the horrible, denigrating things he had said about his son Nate for all those years. Nate would now experiment with all the bad things his father had said he would do.

The image we have of ourselves has a profound influence on our actions. The brilliant, creative, intense, passionate, justice-seeking, kind, compassionate, gentle Nate Phelps had never known what a gift he was; to God, to many of us in the family, and to random strangers who would immediately see his amazing joie de vivre. He would simply begin acting in accordance with the self-image my father had shaped in him, through terror and abuse.

Nate was 6'4" and 280 pounds. He plunged himself into a world of drugs, drink, violence, and hooligan friends, and very nearly accomplished his parents' self-fulfilling prophecy that he would be the convict of the family. "When I first left," says Nate, "right away I moved in with some wild boys living above the VW shop on W. 6th Street in Topeka. They had a perpetual party going there for almost four months. A keg was permanently on tap. When I hit that, boy, did I have an attitude! I remember I was real belligerent and anti-authority." Raise your hands all you reading this blog if you are surprised Nate Phelps would be a little anti-authority after his horrendous upbringing!

Ten months later, addicted to speed and crystal meth, without shoes, penniless, and desperate, the prodigal giant appeared on my wife’s and my doorstep only a few days before we were to move to California. Haunted by ghosts of his father’s hatred, enraged by the memories of his physical abuse, and emotionally disemboweled by the knowledge that his mother and his siblings had offered him up, had sacrificed his entire childhood, to save themselves, Nate Phelps had become a rider on the storm.

Soon the pastor (my father) might have had reason for dancing and clapping his hands again in delight. But my father’s appointed angel (me - Mark) and his projected devil (Nate) knew instantly we were veterans from the same war. We needed each other. We each sensed we might be able to redeem the other brother: the one of his guilt; the other from a coffin void of love or self-esteem. Thus, the former favorite of our father; and back-up oak mattock handle-beater; was the only Phelps who could understand and forgive the rage of the family's designated criminal and black sheep. The 'good' Phelps boy forged a bond with the 'evil' one, and he invited his little brother to come to California with them.

It’s been a rough ride for my brother Nate who has striven with all his might to reconcile the insanity of his youth with the growth of his journey toward wholeness. In his present life, my brother Nate is reaching out to those who have been abused by our society, by religion, and by my father’s church. He is standing in the gap for those who are mistreated and scapegoated by a society that still struggles with prejudice and bigotry.

I am so very proud of the man my brother Nate has become and proud of how he is living his life today. I have intensely deep respect for him. You can easily learn of Nate’s present endeavors by a quick search of Google under the name ‘Nate Phelps’ or find him on social media. This brother of mine who has so many gifts is using many of them right now in his life. So I hope you gain hope knowing that about him. He has a heart full of love and compassion to help others. You’re the best, Nate!

If this blog has brought up issues for you related to your own abuse or if you have questions about anything you’ve read, please contact me. It is my desire, always, to reach out to my blog readers as they read and process abuse. I am a former victim, now survivor and I know there can be intense pain even when you read of someone else’s abuse . . . because it reminds you so much of your own. So please know it would be my privilege to walk with you on any part of your journey.

Mark Phelps

Assailed To The Breaking Point - Part 2

All of us have rules we live by. Some of us are aware of our rules and some of us aren’t. My father’s rules for how to interact with people were forged throughout his lifetime. My father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr., set the stage for family relationships in our growing family by looking to the way he handled his family of origin. My father’s stance was to reject everyone in his life who did not agree with him and support him in whatever he was doing. And this stance would eventually include all the friends he ever had. His rule was simply to reject them and slander them as soon as they “crossed” him in any way.

My father even made it clear to all of his children that it was right and proper to reject; banish and never speak with again; any of his own children (our own brothers and sisters) who chose to exercise the freedom to live their lives as they chose. And he taught that there would be public humiliation from the pulpit for any who left ‘The Place’, his church. This was a threat my father made good on within the full view of all of his children who stayed with him.

I do not think you will be surprised to learn that there are now Phelps grandchildren who have left my father’s church, and so by necessity have been banished from their own families. I am sure the choices to leave were for a variety of reasons, but at the very least those reasons reflected the unique, made-in-the-image-of God precious people they are. Individual decisions made by individual people simply wanting to live their lives.

But the serious, life-changing consequence of those decisions was that these individuals were required to be shunned. My father taught us that to leave him meant the person who left must be shunned. By the entire church! And that the shunning had to include their own parents and siblings. For the remainder of their lives! Simply because they want to live out their lives by their own conscience and their own dictates. So because of this teaching each of my siblings, who have had a child leave, must now shun his or her own children. Forever! This is what my father required.

And because the brainwashing of my father is so profound and so effective it is almost certain my siblings truly believe they must follow this command . . . that they must show no love and no respect for their children who have left, and have no contact with them whatsoever! And who are committing the “crime” of wanting to follow their own dreams. Is it possible there is some faint impulse in these parents of being just a little proud of their children for having had the guts to do something they never could? I wonder. Late at night or in a moment of reflection, do they find some small satisfaction that their children are living their lives in the way each child believes is best? To follow their own hearts and their own best idea of how to live a life of love, and integrity and following the gifts that are in them . . . gifts that are different from those of anyone else they know?

I weep for my siblings who have had to shun their children. And who believe there is no other response to their young adult children’s desire to have their own lives but to shun them. This is what my father required of those who stayed in his church and who had to watch others leave and be given the opportunity to live out their dreams. Shunning and shaming were required for the audacious behavior of wanting to be an adult in a free society. And my siblings seem to be following that family code set down by my father. It hardly matters that our father has passed from this earth because his teaching on this was woven so deeply into the fabric of their souls . . . this code that says they are to do exactly as their father tells them to do in every particular, forever, if they want to remain safe from hell fire!

God does not want any of us to experience hell. The truth is He wants everyone to spend eternity with Him in complete freedom and joy. But God created us with a free will, like his own. And He wants more than anything for us to come to Him with a willing heart; to come to Him out of true desire and freedom; and to be able to respond to Him as the most loving being in the universe. God has never wanted people to come to Him out of fear. Or as puppets and pawns who are not able to use their brains and their gifts and their talents.

My father, on the other hand, was happy with puppet behavior from his followers. He wanted no honest questions or discussion. Ever! He wanted complete obedience and submission to any and all of his commands. My father preached about hell constantly. But he never, ever preached about a God who wanted to rescue all his children from this hell and give them amazing lives connected with Him. My father never preached about the real, loving God of the universe. He just tortured us with a terribly twisted view of God that to this day makes it very, very hard for my siblings to come to the real God.

As for my father’s teaching on shunning children . . . I still hope in my heart, that somewhere deep down is a spark or an impulse in these precious parents that allows them to see how this is still my father’s hand of hate directing their steps. Even after his death. And that they are free to do otherwise. Free to love their children, even if their children disagree with them. Free to love their children and stay in contact with them as these young people search out their own faith . . . and truly make it their own! This is a concept that was completely foreign to my father.

My father’s fear of anything less than immediate mechanical compliance to his rules made him seek to dominate even his adult children’s lives. He warned us that we didn’t even have the right to live our adult lives as we chose. My father did not seem to want children who freely chose the life he was offering, so that he would know they willingly joined his efforts. My father seemed perfectly happy to create puppets that did his bidding even if out of fear and bondage to him as a kind of slave master. Slaves never admire nor do they love their slave masters. I believe my father knew in his heart we could not love him because he beat us so cruelly and that he would have to have a slave-like compliance to have any followers.

But, I believe there is a spark or an ember that may still be alive in the hearts of my siblings who have had children leave their families, and their grandfather’s church. And I hope that ember gets slowly fanned into flame and that they reach out to their children . . . in love and in kindness. Knowing that with all of their hearts that is the treatment they longed for from their own father when they were young people.

I pray that my brother Fred Jr. will pursue these precious daughters he has lost, if necessary to the ends of the earth, and seek to build a bridge with them. I know this brother of mine. He has a heart of compassion. He showed that heart toward me many times . . . and to his daughters, I am sure. I only wish I still had a connection with that heart! Hearts are amazing things. I pray for the rejuvenation and healing of each of my siblings hearts as they try to stay connected to the amazing children they have. Even ones who disagree with them! It has always taken bravery to let our offspring be who they are, but there is so much blessing in it!

Sometimes I wonder. What might have happened if my brother Fred Jr. had been allowed to follow his dream and be a history teacher? And bring a love of learning and wisdom for life in the way history teachers can do so well? What might have happened in the lives of students Fred Jr. would have poured into? But the world got one more lawyer. And one unhappy one I am sure.

And that was the method my father used always; to squeeze the life out of young people. Clearly he had no zest for life, no love for life or people and it must have been too hard for him to bear to see a young one with a different bent; young ones with liveliness in their step and a twinkle in their eye. Once again my father did not push past his own negative emotions to allow others to live. And his cult leader status for years gave him a sense of the right he had to crush others.

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'. Jesus was very clear here that He would be especially kind and gentle to people who had suffered greatly and were barely hanging on.

My father, on the other hand, bruised his children . . . then he broke them! He did both of these things to his children! My father did everything he could think to do to cause the candle of his children’s hearts to flicker and then flicker weaker. And then he snuffed them out. It was as if he was raising an army; all privates in Fred’s army. The fact that they were unique, valuable human beings in their own right just never crossed his mind. His children were fodder to sacrifice in his hate battles, his pawns for playing, but never, ever people who had a right to themselves, their thoughts, and their dreams. Never!

These facts provide a clear insight into the horror coming of age held in the house of the preacher, my father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr. These words I have written are an expose of a man who gained a following from his own offspring and then saw those precious souls writhe in agony from the evil he would do to them. It is a look behind the veil of a false prophet who, with investigation, appeared more and more as a new type of serial killer. My father was too clever, too cowardly, and too lawyerly to kill the bodies. His life was a trail of murdered souls. And his worst victims were his own family. These words may sound strong to you, but I can tell you as one who lived it that this is exactly what it felt like to grow up in my family. We felt like we were being systematically exterminated as thinking, feeling people, exploited by my father strictly for his desires.

No man or woman living in the Phelps compound has been allowed to become the person they longed to be. We were never allowed to figure out our own gifts, talents, desires and longings. Any hint my father saw of one of us not being completely prepared to give up his or her dreams; and their very soul was summarily squashed. This short writing is meant to reveal the betrayal and murder of the spirits of his children by my father.

Katherine’s brother, Nathan, has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is quite likely that Katherine suffers from it also. Today, but for the statute of limitations, the brutal beatings and torture this pretty teenager experienced would bring a long jail sentence to her perpetrator.

But nothing was ever done. And as far as I know, nothing has ever been resolved for Katherine. I have not had contact with my sister Katherine for 40 years. I could be mistaken, but as far as I know, she has never received the kind of help that reaches deep into the spirit that is needed for the level of abuse she endured. Perhaps no one has ever come alongside her to process the depth of the abuse and the lies she was told. And the toll this all took on her beautiful spirit. And to weep with her over it! As far as I know, my sister Katherine remains in her brokenness and, despair to this day, still believing that God hates her and her father despises her.

I was certainly in a similar state for years myself and know the horrendous agony of your soul being filled up with poison that you have believed about yourself and your life. And for which you believe there is no escape. That is the sense of despair I lived with for years before I got help and I believe Katherine probably suffers far more than I did with what she has been through. I heard she had tried to return to my father’s ‘church’ from time to time and been treated with disdain. So as far as I know, she has found no consolation, no resolution . . . and no truth, except for her father’s ‘truth’! The damage is the same today, I fear, as the day it was perpetrated.

If Katherine is where I was before I got help in healing she is still terribly broken, as are any of us who grew up under my father’s abuse. Because the betrayal and broken trust in her case are so complete. She was assailed continually, over and over, and then assailed again . . . by my father and by his religion, and by his church; and by her family, until she no longer has life in her. Victims of lengthy abuse often say they feel invisible. As if they are just going through the motions. Oh, as far as I know Katherine is still breathing. But she doesn’t really live. She is terrified of hell and she is terrified of this present evil world. It’s as if she has been suspended in a permanent state of anguish and despair that has locked her into a private hell.

I don’t know if Katherine has ever been able to comprehend how much her God loves her. She has not been taught the truth of that by anyone. Certainly not by my father! She has been so mangled in her soul, and been so abused by the deceitful use of the Word of God, that she is unable to sort out the truth. And there is no one to console or even reach out to her. That’s what her life feels like to me. I hope I’m wrong. But I am probably not wrong.

Katherine, wherever you are, I hope you call me or email me. I would love to begin a dialogue with you. With the beautiful sister I never got to know. And I would love to start right now getting to know you. The real you . . . in all your brokenness Katherine! Maybe we can compare our brokenness and do some healing together. I would love that. We have stories to tell and stories to hear, and much healing to do.

Here is the reality: The victim of abuse takes the guilt and shame of the abuser deep into his or her own heart. It all gets buried deep down in the heart of the child. And often the adult survivor of abuse can’t analyze it or get down to it to fight back. To challenge the lies and the damage the lies have done. It's a feeling of filth and worthlessness and horrible dirtiness and ugliness and shame that goes deep into the heart of the child, and remains and putrefies deep down inside there, way down deep in their heart. And the child has no way to filter all that out because it came from the people whose job it was to help her and define her not as one who is worthless but one who has amazing worth. And what a child hears from a parent as a very young child she believes in a way different from all other teachers and voices in her life.

My father left no room for his children to make mistakes, no room for grace, no room for humility, no room for learning and failing and trying again, no tolerance for humanness; and no need for faith in the one true God. All the while we all fell further and further into grave theological error because my father had no accountability outside himself, anywhere in his life. We learned nothing of humility, godliness or truth. Instead, we learned cruel, crushing dogma; that everything he said was right and was not to be questioned. Learning was punished and mocked, if it deviated from what he taught. Attempts at understanding or developing relationships outside father’s control were annihilated.

The truth is, my father is not like the Lord. My father is nothing at all like the Lord!

There is a place in the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament where God is telling the prophet Ezekiel what to say to the leaders of the day. And the words God has for bad leaders are worth hearing.

“. . . But I (God) want you to condemn these leaders and tell them:

I, the LORD God, say you shepherds of Israel are doomed! You take care of yourselves while ignoring my sheep. 3 You drink their milk and use their wool to make your clothes. Then you butcher the best ones for food. But you don’t take care of the flock! 4 You have never protected the weak ones or healed the sick ones or bandaged those that get hurt. You let them wander off and never look for those that get lost. You are cruel and mean to my sheep. 5 They strayed in every direction, and because there was no shepherd to watch them, they were attacked and eaten by wild animals. Ezekiel 34:2-5

God is making an analogy about sheepherders doing a poor job of taking care of sheep. But he is very serious about the leaders of Ezekiel’s time understanding that a leader’s foremost job was protection and taking care of any of his people who needed things; things that would be for their well being.

The Lord of the universe feeds and strengthens and heals and binds up and seeks the lost and does not break a bruised reed and does not extinguish a flickering candle. He does not weaken anyone, or make anyone heart sick, or drive anyone away, and ignore anyone when they are lost or crush anyone or put out the light in anyone’s heart. That’s Satan’s job. It’s not who God is. It’s who Satan is. My father spent years telling us qualities of Satan and attributing them to God. And my father made it extremely difficult for us to ever hear the truth about the real and loving God.

He will not crush the weakest reed, or put out a flickering candle, finally He will cause justice to be victorious. Isaiah 42:3, Matthew 12: 20

There it is again! Here again is a statement about God’s character where He acts in kindness and gentleness towards the weakest in society. We in the Phelps family never learned of this kind of God. And never knew how much he loved us and wanted to care for us.

Fred Jr. never became a history teacher. He left the law profession to work for the Kansas Department of Corrections. A quick survey of the curricula vitae of the Phelps children shows my father’s astonishing success in getting his children to conform to his wishes. In fact, the Fred W. Phelps, Sr. Plan became a factory for loyal and legal support of one man's ambitions – his own: Of the 13 children, 11 got law degrees-nine of those from Washburn University; of the nine loyal offspring and four approved spouses, all but one received law degrees; eight have undergraduate degrees in Corrections or Criminal Justice. One can only wonder why the pandemic fascination exists about prison among the Phelps loyalists.

For the nine kids who stayed with my father, God provided only three spouses from within his church. Fred Jr. and my brother Jonathan had to provide for themselves. They became Westboro outlaws to find mates among the damned. When they eventually returned to the fold, these 'tainted women' were only accepted after a long probation and apprenticeship at being a wife-in-subjection. Six of the Phelps daughters remain at the compound. Two of them were betrothed to Chosen already residing in The Place. I have no idea if any of these marriages are happy and lively. Or if they are filled with honor, respect, love, openness and maybe even a little fun. But if I know my father that was something he did not care about in the least. He wanted soldiers. Who wants a soldier with a personality or one who is enjoying his life, I ask you!

Research indicates that three out of four children in criminally abusive families will be unable to fully overcome their experiences. As adults, they will rationalize their past and will accept abusive behavior and its fruits as the norm in both the outside world and their personal lives. With all the detriment to themselves and anyone they come in contact with if they are unable to get healing help.

It is instructive that 9 of the 13 Phelps children, almost exactly the predicted ratio, continue to embrace my father’s abusive world and ways.

We were the only members of my father’s church; and we had no choice. When we got old enough to make our own decisions, choose our life's work, and our life's mates, did you think my father would permit that?

My father’s bizarre behavior toward his children as they struggled to become adults is as disturbing as it is revealing. To my father, adulthood for his children meant soldiers for his wars. To accomplish this, he attempted to arrest and redirect each child's path to fulfillment. We were not to leave his nest, nor learn to fly: "The Bible may say you're gonna be the head of your house. But I'm tellin' you right now, goddammit, that ain't gonna happen! I'm gonna be the head of your house! And you better start gettin' that through your thick head right now!”

It was emotionally degrading. And it was the misuse of religion. And it was most decidedly abuse! It was spiritual abuse!

But how was my father able to maintain control of the lives and dreams of his children? There were some formidable forces working against my father’s desire for a family who would willingly be an extension of himself. One was the adolescent's yearning for independence; the pull of hormones and the heart of another to love and care for was another. In addition, the harshness of our upbringing left us with little genuine respect or love for our father.

Then what produced such amazing levels of conformity with people who feared and even hated my father? There were two major obstacles for Phelps children being able to exercise the freedom to live their own lives and dreams, both too high for 9 of the 13 to surmount. These are the twin secrets of my father’s sway over his troubled flock.

First, in our firmly brainwashed belief system, the ones my father said were “chosen” were the only ones who could reach heaven. And he taught that one could only reach heaven through the portal of ‘The Place’. What arrogance my father had in believing he was the only one who held the entrance into heaven. But that’s what he taught. That he who runs ‘The Place’ holds the keys to the gates of Paradise. My father said it, and we believed it. But our belief came from years of repetition that started when we were too young to even understand. And the teaching was always followed by brutal beatings. This type of violence is what many cult leaders find is the only technique that can keep thinking people in a cult. We were terrified to oppose the will of heaven's gatekeeper and imperil our souls. It was the fires of hell we felt in all our choices. So my father didn’t talk softly but he carried a very big stick! And that stick was hell.

So once my father had been able to get us in complete fear of hell, he could almost stop with the brainwashing. The deed was done. The fear he instilled was destined to keep most of us from ever leaving him to be sure. It also sadly kept us from ever having the son/daughter relationships with God that the real God wanted us to have! My father truly set us up to not be able to receive love from God and understand that God wanted us to be His beloved sons and daughters. In my father’s desire for a kingdom of his own in Topeka, Kansas he was attempting to keep us away from the only Father worth trusting for Phelps kids, a heavenly one. This is the thing that nearly crushes me when I think of the real damage of religious abuse.

My father established early on the expectations of each child in the family. My father didn’t say what many fathers do and set expectations till a child was 18 or graduated from college or could go out on their own. No. My father set up his expectations for each child’s entire life, and the consequences to each of us if his expectations weren't met. According to my father, each of us would finish college, get our law degree, work for him, and marry whomever he chose, when he chose. By no means were we allowed to leave ‘The Place’, or it would be seen as 'abandoning the church'. (Or if he were honest, abandoning him and his dream of fiefdom?) If we did that, we'd be excommunicated. Cut off! And we would go to hell! Can you imagine the power over a child who was brainwashed with this thinking year after year, from birth? Little children do not have the capability to fight off that kind of relentless conditioning.

Besides being groomed as lawyers, we were constantly told we were “different”. We were taught we were “special” from the time we were able to learn. And we were taught that the rest of the world out there was evil. And inside ‘The Place’, people were good and going to heaven. Outside ‘The Place’ they were all damned and going to hell. And, if that other world ever got us down, or argued back, or poked holes in our rigidly constructed façade, we were taught to find strength by imagining the terrible horrors that would happen soon to everyone outside ‘The Place’.

‘The Place' was how my father referred to his church. If you left, you were ‘forsaking the church’ (his, of course!) My father spent an enormous amount of time trying to frighten us and threaten us into doing what he wanted us to do. He had two separate preaching time slots a week to harass us and intimidate us but it didn’t stop there. He even had letters delivered to those of us who left with legal stationery with a list of our grievances to try to get us to come back to him. And always, my father manipulated various passages in the Bible to get us, and try to keep us under his thumb.

One passage my father chose to manipulate refers to a child 'leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife'. My father interpreted this to mean a child was not to leave his parents until he was married. But, since he decided who and when we were to marry, he controlled this, too. If my father had truly understood the word “cleaving” he would have known his days were numbered with all of his children. He either didn’t understand or chose to ignore the meaning of the word cleave. Cleaving to one’s new spouse was to be something like the most powerful glue in the world; stuck to them by choice and by vows to stick with THEM and no longer with parents. My father completely misunderstood how much the next generation’s marriage trumped anything that came from their family of origin, no matter how much you loved and honored that family. And that misinterpretation was to profoundly hurt and injure 13 children and their future spouses. The happiness, autonomy and blessings of 13 homes my father could never and would never support.

Another passage mentions 'not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together'. Since my father had long ago established in our minds that his church was where the Chosen ones came to assemble, that it was 'The Place', he could lead us easily to the belief that to leave home was to 'leave' the company of the Chosen, to join the innumerable multitude of the damned! My father did not understand that passage meant that people who loved God should spend time together, nurturing, supporting, and helping each other through life’s difficulties. The Bible is filled with people who belonged to God and were able to pick up and travel to the far flung corners of the world, with the full knowledge that God would be with them wherever they went.

My father had no trouble “whiting out” large chunks of the Bible that did not suit him. And because he himself “forsook assembling with others” – others who might have challenged him in his conceit and arrogance and very strange interpretations of the Bible - he might have been slowed down in the implementation of some of his terribly wrong views. Or turned in another direction! Had Fred W. Phelps, Sr. followed the meaning of that verse and “assembled” with people beyond his own family some of the protections of that verse might have been there. For him and for us!

The second of the twin secrets used to keep us all in line was to cast the world beyond The Place as evil and fatal to the soul. My father spent a lot of time telling us how wicked people on the outside were. Never mind we had a father who was a vicious abuser, and wicked beyond most of what we would ever encounter on the outside. But somehow we believed what he said.

Then my father would follow up with his claims by manipulating the local community so they would react with hostility and aggression whenever a kid would venture out. It's why my father insisted we go to public school. Thanks to him, we were hated before we even got there on Day One. And people were so mean to us, that, when we came home, my father could say, 'See, I told you so. They're evil and reprobate. They're not like us.' It is hard for me to say this, but my father was both evil and brilliant. And I doubt he could have pulled off the level of his evil intent upon his family and his culture had it not been for his brilliance. And of course his willingness to use violence to maintain compliance in his chosen group.

Growing up in our family we were told we did not believe in Christmas because there is no mention of it in the Bible; nowhere does it say Jesus Christ was born on December 25. Seriously? The birth of Christ could not be more central to the truth of who God is. And my father chose to leave that truth out of our upbringing! That truth was not preached at his church!

Jesus shared deity with the Father. But somehow, out of the great love they had for the human race, it was decided that Jesus would set aside the privilege he had in heaven and come to earth to be born as a baby. What a humbling thing for Jesus to do! Leave all His glory and majesty in heaven and come hang out with the human race and be a baby and then be a little kid and grow up and be a laborer and finally be given the task of paying the price for the moral wrongs the human race would commit. All of them! God the Father sent his son to rescue the world from the moral wrongs we had committed that would separate us from the Father. If you think about the picture that the Bible shows us about God’s love it’s a Father knowing his kids are going to sin and make morally wrong choices and sending someone else to actually pay for the consequences of that sin and wrong instead of the children. Sound like a pretty typical loving father?

So a question comes to mind for those of us who knew my father and the lengths he went to in recreating God in his own image. Is it possible my own father simply could not stomach the amount of love that was shown by the Father in sending His son so he chose not to tell us?!? His actions now strike me like someone finding buried treasure but being so selfish as to not want to share it with others. Why on earth would my father not want to share that Jesus Christ came to earth as a baby to one day pay the price, on a Roman version of Death Row, for all of our sins and moral wrongs? Was it too loving for my father’s comfort? Too extravagant? Too outrageous a love?

When I think about how often my father tried to downplay or white-out of the Bible any loving acts by God, it occurs to me that what my father could not stand was God’s love. Did God’s love infuriate my father? My father seemed to have such an adverse reaction to God’s love that it compelled him to eliminate the truth of God’s love at every turn. But deep down do some of the rest of us feel a little uncomfortable with unconditional love? We hear that God’s love is free and for all and we think “now wait a minute God, I think I can help you here. Your love is just a little free and a little too lavish! So, how about I add a bunch of conditions to your love? So I can feel more comfortable with it.” And what my father did was add the final trump card of all conditions that if you weren’t in his church you simply couldn’t receive God’s love.

My father knew, somehow, that there was a gift of eternal life available from God but he kept telling the world they couldn’t have it! How does telling the world over and over again that God’s love is unavailable make any sense? There is a verse in Revelation that shows the complete availability of God’s gift of eternal life. It says “Whoever is thirsty, let him come and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” Really it’s an unbelievable truth.

It’s saying to receive this gift you just have to be thirsty. And then it says “whoever wishes.” Whoever wishes? Well, that could be anybody, right? Yes! It could! I think Jesus gift of eternal life just blew my father’s mind. It was too good and too big and too free. And that was just too irritating to my father! How could all these reprobates out there who were sinners deserve God’s kindness? So my father began to do damage control on God . . . the Old Testament God my father somehow found ways to twist to use for his purposes of hate mongering. But, Jesus? He was far too dangerous. And He was always offering the gift of eternal life to anyone! Prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners! So, what I think my father did very early on was essentially write Jesus right out of the Bible. This dangerous and crazily loving God had to be put back in his box. And the best way he knew to do it was to wrap the box in hate.

So when my father did war on Christmas in our household none of us really understood it was war on Jesus Christ and His love. All-out war! So besides being reprehensible to not present the basic tenet of God’s love toward mankind to his own children, my father’s 'bah-humbug' to the season of comfort and joy significantly added to the burden of 'otherness' we shared that caused the world outside to repel us all back to ‘The Place’. My father knew what he was doing and how it would impact the young minds of his children.

And our father poisoned our souls toward beautiful precious parts of the Bible so we literally avoided them as pure evil – and specifically he did this toward all the parts of the Bible that speak of the miraculous birth of our Lord; the angels’ joy and declaration of ‘peace on earth, good will toward men’; and the unspeakable joy of Simeon, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds in the field, the three wise men and others getting to witness and be a part of God’s miraculous plan to bring salvation to the entire earth! This included all the beautiful Christmas songs of faith which declare with great joy and victory this miraculous work of our God! Not once were we given permission to join in with the angels to sing of this miraculous virgin birth of a King who came to earth to bring great salvation to the whole world!!

From kindergarten on we were not allowed to stay in the classroom if there were Christmas activities going on. We always had to go to another room, usually the library. My father threatened to sue the schools if they did not remove us during those times. Our humiliation was constant. And effective! Once when a teacher found out I was a piano player she asked me to play some Christmas carols for a sing-along time in class. I obediently did what she asked but felt like I was doing something horribly wrong the entire time I was playing. Imagine this with me. I am the pastor’s son and I am asked to play songs honoring the beautiful story of Christ and feeling bad about it. What is wrong with this picture?!

From suing the schools to shooting our neighbor's dog, my father’s personal and litigious behavior would ensure his children a cool reception in their community-without an encore as the pastor who stole Christmas. We weren't allowed to participate in any activities at school. Not through most of our childhoods. No choir or musical performances. No sports, not even track; until my senior year. And I have to wonder if that was allowed because since I had become a good runner, I was able to be one of my father’s “trophies” for him to trot out for the sake of his own self esteem. And never, ever about what might be an enjoyable activity for his son.

And there were to be no outside friends. No one was allowed to visit, and we weren't allowed to go anywhere; to birthday parties or anything else. Then, he decided to shave the boys’ heads. My father wanted the world to reject us. It would drive us right back to him; to ‘The Place’; the world-within-a-world; the world that was father-centric. And it worked.

Spouses were not welcome in such a world. There were to be no girls for the boys and no boys for the girls. If my father had his way none of us would have gotten married. He'd just as soon keep everyone away, thanks.

With his private genetic following, my father had found a world perhaps he'd always sought; one where they would care for him and do his bidding and never leave him. To make that happen required the promise that their youth be devoted to settling the scores of my father’s past; sacrificed at the altar of my father’s monumental, albeit terribly fragile, ego. My father crushed the innocence, the joy, and the dreams of his children.

His reputation as a civil rights advocate is at least ironic. My father preached racism that he thought he could justify from the Bible so imagine the surprise of people who saw Fred W. Phelps, Sr. now championing causes in the civil rights movement. Perhaps he saw this as a way to make a name for himself and bring home some bacon. Our pastor/father's chains of bondage over our souls may have been invisible to our community, but were actually far stronger than the iron ones worn by the ancestors of those he often brags he's helped free. The children who were raised in the nightmare on 12th Street carry their shackles in their hearts.

It is their fear of my father’s keys to hell, and their view that the world is hateful and hates them, that made us Phelps kids like the elephants in India. Elephants in India are initially kept shackled by iron until their wills are subdued. Then the flimsiest stake will keep the elephant tethered. And that describes most of us. We kept serving the will of a man who, by now they must realize, is much smaller than themselves and honestly unable to do anything to them. Well, except there were his powerful words of doom. Those hung around…

My father for years hoarded his hell-stunned flock close around his own flickering candle. He pulled them like a threadbare cloak about his old wounds, huddled against the cutting hawk of a cold soul wind blowing from somewhere out of his past. His woundedness was the source of all that would run our lives. And ruin our lives as well.

With the evil he perpetrated and the hurt he caused during his life, my father had no right to the name of 'pastor'- never mind 'guardian of The Place.’ Since the word pastor is called Shepherd in the Bible it is a particularly egregious misnomer to call my father ‘pastor’. A shepherd will do anything to protect his sheep and if necessary risks his own life to do so. My father risked anybody and anything to serve his weaknesses and his wounds.

One of the greatest consequences of my decision to follow very closely in my father’s footsteps was that it sort of made me invisible to his view. When you are right behind the point man he is not looking at you! This was a strategy I think I instinctively used to remain safe as a Phelps son. But it perhaps allowed my father’s actions to go unchallenged and possibly emboldened him further. By pretending to be a staunch supporter; by being the only son who did not fight or resist openly; perhaps my father took even greater license to abuse than he would have. I have spent much of my life wondering about those decisions I made. And I have wept buckets of tears. I have wished I had stood up for my siblings, at least once in a while; that I had been able to communicate my horror at what they had to go through and my sadness too. I wish I could have been a good big brother, looking out for ones under me. Like a big brother should!

My father never taught me that. He never showed me that to be a true man meant to protect the weak and innocent. Nor that it meant I was to lay my life down for others. True manhood is something I have had to learn as I healed from the poison my father used on my soul. Some of you will try to excuse my behavior and say I was caught in a Stockholm syndrome, or fighting back would have gotten me the same internal injuries Nathan and Katherine got; that I was simply a kid protecting myself. But, I have profound grief over those decisions nonetheless. If I get the chance I would like to look each of my siblings in the eye and tell them I am sorry; for what I didn’t do to protect them. And to show them how valuable they are to me.

My father did not allow sibling relationships to develop into much of anything because it would have diminished his power base. It is so much more effective to keep the underlings afraid of everybody including each other. But I would like to try now. To develop what I can with any of my siblings who would like to. I would like to talk. And take a walk around the block and learn of their lives, what they have been through, how their journey of healing has gone, if it has, and encourage them on that path. I would love more than anything to hug some of my siblings and tell them I value them. And have missed them terribly. Whether or not I could have had any influence on my father’s behavior, I can’t say for certain . . . but probably not. I am not aware of any person on the earth that ever had the ability to bring about positive change in my father’s behavior!

I do know my father’s extreme acts of aggression and violence toward his children increased more and more as each of us sought to find our own direction in life. Nothing we did was acceptable to him. And what “might have been” for his children’s lives will forever remain unknown. His destructive impact in our lives changed every one of our lives forever. Some of us have chosen to seek hope and healing. And we have seen amazing changes. But our father’s destructive impact is still something we must fight. Daily!

I mentioned to you that I started this blog with the word assailed to represent my father’s actions. And the word assailant is the noun form of the verb to assail. And from our perspective as growing children we had a deadly assailant in our house.

My father did not understand true loving relationships and did not understand the true, loving God he preached about. God longs to have a relationship with all of us and He showed His love in a way that is incomprehensible to any human being. None of us would give our only beloved child for our enemies! God gave us free will and He stays with us to the very end of our lives in the hope we will give our hearts and lives to Him in relationship . . . willingly with a full heart of love and gratitude! And He makes all kinds of ways for us to be able to do this. To respond as the loved children we are.

The true God would NEVER enslave the hearts of those He loves as a means to gain their love. We do not comprehend the massiveness of the gift of eternal life God has provided. But I know my God desires for me to love Him from my heart, not love Him because He forces me to love Him. He does not shackle my body or my mind or my soul. He sets me free to live and love. This is something my father never understood. My father, who thought he spoke for God, never understood the most basic fact of God and His amazing love for people.

My father had his children physically close to him but was unable, ever, to love them. I am reminded of the warning from the first epistle of John: "He who has no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen..." By the strong truth of that verse my father does not appear to have ever loved God. The person he claimed he lived his life for; he did not love at all.

In sharp contrast to my father, Christ will heal the brokenhearted. And in whatever state your broken heart finds itself. The Bible speaks of Him granting freedom to captives and new sight to the blind. Among His titles are the King of kings and the Creator of the ends of the earth but it is his strong desire every day to give liberty to any bruised captives, and to heal the broken hearted! And He does it in a way that totally respects the individuality of that precious person. You!

If you are struggling with this concept, that God could truly love you and want to set you free from the pain of abuse and lies, please get in touch with me. I would love to step into this with you. And hear your story. And weep with you and mourn with you. But also look forward to a new day . . . a day when you may be set free from this. And become the person you were meant to be….

Mark Phelps

Assailed To The Breaking Point - Part 1

You may be wondering why I started this blog with a word whose origin is from the 1200s, Assailed. It’s not exactly a word we use much in modern speech. One night I was actually woken up in the middle of the night by this word and this title. And I knew it was something I needed to explore. I discovered these definitions of assail on dictionary.com and they seem to capture very well who my father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr. was and what he wanted to do to his children to “break” them.

Assail

verb (used with object) 1. to attack vigorously or violently; assault.

2. to attack with arguments, criticism, ridicule, abuse, etc.: to assail one's opponent with slander.

3. to undertake with the purpose of mastering: He assailed his studies with new determination.

4. to impinge upon; make an impact on; beset: His mind was assailed by conflicting arguments. The light assailed their eyes.

As you read this blog that features my precious sister Katherine, and my wonderful older brother, Fred Jr., perhaps you will understand my word choice. And why this title expresses well what my father accomplished in their innocent young lives.

My sister Katherine Rose was my father’s favorite when she was a baby. She had beautiful blue eyes and dark hair. She was very pretty and he would spoil her. He used to bounce her on his knee and sing 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' to her. Katherine was born 340 days after I was born. Knowing the stress pregnancy puts on women’s’ bodies I marvel at what my mom went through having 15 pregnancies in 15 years and suffering two miscarriages.

Somehow Katherine managed to get quite a ways into her life without having much negative experience with my father, directly, though she endured his standard violence and fit throwing like we all did. Then came a time when suddenly Katherine, at about age 16, got in my father’s doghouse. A boy had called on the phone one time, for Katherine. From that time on, my father commenced beating her, and he stayed on her and stayed on her and stayed on her relentlessly.

He'd beat her routinely in the auditorium area of the church building/house where we lived, requiring her to lean forward with her hands against one of the foundation poles that ran down the middle of the church auditorium to allow him best swinging room and clear access to her backside with the oak mattock handle.

He'd beat her with the oak mattock handle and then twist her arm behind her back and bend her backwards over the back side of the bench seats in the church auditorium. While holding her arm painfully behind her back, he would hit her in her face with his fists. Then he would spit in her face. He would curse her with filthy, garbage, derogatory, demeaning language as he beat her. She'd be screaming-bloodcurdling screams-desperate screams of pain and fear, with no one to help her or stop her father’s assailing assaults. Often my father would sustain the beating of Katherine for an hour at a time, and I lost track of how many times she suffered such beatings. And all of this devastating brutality was started because a boy had called her on the telephone. Once! You have to understand, my father wanted her to have zero contact; absolutely no contact with any boy; none . . . Ever!

My father justified punching his daughter in the face with his bare fists, because a phone rang in our house one day that might be a boy interested in her. Simply unbelievable, right?! But true. My father acting in deadly rage and anger toward a young girl who had the horrible misfortune of growing up with Fred Phelps, Sr. as her father!

And time and time and time again I would stand by and watch and not say a word, not move a muscle. I stood by in quiet anguish, despair and fear, watching the brutal, savage beating my sister Katherine was suffering at the hand of her father. Had my father been teaching me how to be a godly, mature young man, he would have taught me to rescue any young woman, anywhere, any time who was being savagely beaten by a male perpetrator twice her age!

But, not in our house. No, in our house, the young men had to hold back and stuff down every natural instinct we had to protect our sisters and each other, knowing that the savage beatings of our father could instantly be turned on us and ultimately make Katherine’s life even harder. As I think about the horrible existence Katherine had I truly have no idea how she lived under this kind of brutality and what it did to her young mind and heart. I think of her often and hope with all my heart she has found healing and hope for her life.

As I think about how much society has changed in the last 40 years in its attitude towards physical abuse I wonder how Katherine’s story might have turned out if she’d been born even 10 or 15 years later. Today if there were a father committing the kinds of criminal abuse my father was inflicting on his children there would be district attorneys lining up to file multiple charges against him. And gratified to know their actions would be protecting vulnerable children from abuse.

Today we have the NFL taking steps to deal with domestic abuse in its players and there are cries for judges to step down from the bench who beat their wives. Society has reached a place where it is raising a collective outcry against abuse. Just this last week in Topeka my family put up on the Westboro Baptist Church marquee that “God h8s domestic violence” Indeed he does! But apparently the head of Westboro Baptist, my father, did not hate it at all. In fact he was a violent perpetrator of it on his family over many, many years.

But the political and social climate of Topeka Kansas in the 1960s and 1970s was just not where it needed to be to protect children from violence perpetrated within families. So the cries of the Phelps children were left unheeded by any who heard them. And the few interactions our family had with the police showed us that for many children of abuse; and most certainly for us; a one-time interaction with law enforcement often gets children even worse beatings. And those interactions would leave the children in greater despair. If Katherine were a child today I believe Topeka, Kansas and our society in general would have found ways to stand up to this abuser and give her the protection she so desperately needed. But, in our family, that blessing of legal rescue never came.

It got so if the phone rang and the caller hung up the phone when he would answer, my father would assume it was a boy trying to reach Katherine, that she was 'doing' him, and then she'd get beaten again. Yes, you heard me right. Katherine was being beaten by my father because of something he just assumed was happening . . . with absolutely no knowledge that any of it was happening. He beat her mercilessly because something MIGHT have been happening. The injustice of this is more than I can even think about now as an adult and as a father. But it was Katherine, our amazing, beautiful, sweet sister who had this injustice perpetrated on her by the man in her life who should have protected her from evil and harm. Her father!

And, on top of that, Katherine and my brother, Nathan, were getting beaten several times a week simply because they weighed more than my father thought they should weigh. My siblings were being beaten for a body weight that bothered my father. They risked internal injuries from the beatings, malnutrition and a host of other problems because of my father’s desire to control and to inflict pain and misery on them. I marvel at the indomitability of the human spirit that existed in Katherine and Nathan and their ability to handle such incredible injustice and violence, and still find a way to go on.

When I was in college Mom would take all the children to sell candy, but she'd leave Katherine home alone with my father. Katherine would get beaten during those times, just like Nathan had been beaten when he had been left home alone with my father.

Oh the profound despair Katherine and Nathan must have felt to be left totally alone with their abuser; and with no one even able to hear their cries of anguish. My family was made up of children who were never heard appropriately by adults for the meeting of their most basic needs as children. Along with my mother, Nathan, Katherine, and my brother, Fred Jr., took the brunt of my father’s violent rage. Fred, Jr. was the first boy, Katherine, was the first girl, and Nathan was the child who consistently tried to challenge my father on the wrongness of the injustice he was perpetrating on his family. And for being “firsts” in the family they truly took the brunt of my father’s rage.

But what impact did this kind of brutality leave on the rest of the family? How must it have felt to my mother to leave a defenseless child at home, alone with a man who was going to beat that child? What kind of damage did that do to her soul to knowingly leave a child in harm’s way? And what damage did it do to a carload of children going to sell candy to know that adults simply were unable to protect children from evil? Well I can tell you for some of us it produced real despair.

For a period of about six years, the sweets we sold were often a principal element in our diet. So principal, that some of the children began to gain weight. This visible development, particularly in my brother, Nathan, and my sister, Katherine, caused my father great upset. For one thing, after my father’s own successful battle against obesity, he had little patience for anyone else in the family who he thought had a little extra weight. For another thing, my father suspected some of the sales crew might be eating the profits.

My father used rigorous diet controls according to his own arbitrary, vicious will.

My father employed daily weighing for my brother Nathan and my sister Katherine. When this did not work, and their weight increased, he apparently deemed it time to use the oak mattock handle to beat them into svelte bodies that lived up to his standards of “bodily correctness.”

Fear would permeate the faces, hearts and bodies of Nathan and Katherine, routinely.

It is difficult to imagine anyone who runs 10 miles a day becoming obese. In fact, at the time my father imposed his Nazi-like Weight Loss Program, my brother, Nathan, was 5' 10" and weighed 185 pounds. Not leathery and lean, but not worthy of comment on a large-boned male. But to my father, that extra thickness on his son meant thinner profits from the children's candy selling crusade. So my father took steps. He designed a weight-loss regimen for Nathan and Katherine.

Can any of us who are loving fathers even fathom this barbaric behavior? I believe my father chose to beat growing, developing children because of his own shame in not providing adequately for his family. My father well knew that his children were eating the candy because he often couldn’t or wouldn’t provide us with good nutrition. What we learned in my father’s response to the natural weight gain that would occur from eating too much candy, and not enough other wholesome food is that it was “all about our father”. The sad thing is every behavior we ever witnessed in our growing up years was “all about my father.” He truly was the evil center around which we all orbited. As children we had no way of knowing how to understand that his own self-loathing as a man unable to provide our basic needs was being heaped instead upon his children. And not that it would have mattered at the end of the day. Because when you are recovering for four or five days after a terrible beating you don’t really want understanding. You just want it to stop.

Katherine and Nathan were required to go through the shame, humiliation and terror of having to weigh themselves in front of my father each night, on the doctor's scales sitting outside his bedroom. Mind you, this was what they had to look forward to at the end of a long day; sometime after 9:30 at night; that included a normal length school day, 5 hours of candy sales for their father’s ‘church’, and an hour and a half of running around the local high school track. If they didn't weigh less than they had the day before, they got a beating with the oak mattock handle. Sometimes the two were beaten every night of the week with the oak mattock handle. They must have experienced such intense rage and despair and who knows what else, but frantic terror filled their faces and most assuredly devastated their souls.

There is a phrase that has been coined by young women in this culture called “fat shaming” which describes the American fixation with top model thinness as a cultural value. I think the women of today would be horrified at the level my father went to in his fat shaming of my brother and sister.

Nathan would eat lunch but he would make sure he would throw up before going home. Or take Ex-Lax. So would Katherine. My father was essentially setting up my siblings to be bulimics with all the serious physical risks that condition entails! Think of this. When my brother and sister had growing adolescent bodies in need of wholesome food my father set up a dastardly scheme to deprive them of it. All because of his “need” to have his children look good to the culture, because his children were his work and his life. And if they failed to make him look good, he truthfully had nothing else. My father who disdained culture was caught in a vise grip of need to live up to it nonetheless.

My father’s expectations were impossible, so the two teenagers had to learn to manipulate the scales.

By manipulating the scales they hoped to avoid the brutality at least some of the time. Their strategy was to place a small piece of tape with several metal nuts attached in the palm of their hand. As they stepped onto the scales, they would rapidly, with slight-of-hand, stick the tape with the metal nuts to the backside of the balance beam on the scales. This would show their weight to be lower than it actually was because of where they learned to place the metal nuts. I have creative and smart siblings!

Unfortunately, one day the tape wouldn't stick properly and fell to the ground along with the metal nuts. My dear father didn't see it fall, but he did see that their weight was eight pounds higher than expected. ‘You've been eatin' my goddamed candy again!' yelled my father.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the supposed man of God.

This event led to a 10 hour ordeal of beatings for the two of them, followed by marathon running sessions, followed by more beatings, followed by running. The net result was that, at the end of the day, Nathan had lost 14 pounds and seriously injured his hip. The irony is that, since that weight loss was all fluid dehydration, when he replaced the fluids, he regained the weight. But Nathan didn't realize this, and my father didn’t care WHY he had regained the weight.

The next day, when Nathan had mysteriously shot up 14 pounds, the vexed father fell into a frustrated fury and son Nathan got beaten once more. The incident manifests my father’s trademark career combination of ignorance and violence.

Afterwards, the teenager was literally forbidden to eat until he lost those extra pounds. My father was running the equivalent of a concentration camp in his brutality and starvation techniques! All to protect his precious public image! Remember the Narcissistic Personality Disordered person has an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. My father would never get that admiration from his children because he beat us and abused us. So while he would never get it from us, he continued to seek it from the public. My father was a man of paradoxes, to be sure, because this was the same public who he actually had zero respect for.

Breakfast!? Nathan was never to get it after that. And when the family lined up for the food cooked in the great pots, Nathan wasn't allowed to eat with them. If the menu called for cabbage, curds, liver pills, brewers yeast or raw eggs, his siblings would envy him. But if father relented and something tasty awaited the hungry children-chicken, spaghetti, Spanish rice, refried beans or stew- Nathan was never given any.

My brother Nathan was neglected, starved and abused. And my culture simply was not prepared to rescue this child from that abuse. I know the child abuse laws and their implementation in this country are not perfect. But their need was evident in the lives of 13 children in Topeka Kansas in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, the man, Nate, is philosophical about the trials of the boy. "I'd just sneak food from the fridge later, or eat candy from the boxes," he observes. Incredibly, this father-enforced fast went on for five years. All the while, Nate's weight continued the same, and the pastor continued to accuse him of eating candy.

"Well...duh!" laughs Nate today. "If, after five years, I was still alive, I must have been eating something, right?"

Even our mother was not immune to the weight-watcher from hell.

My father got mad at Mom once; said she was getting too fat. Did my father understand anything at all about the toll it would take on a woman’s body to be pregnant 15 times in 15 years? Right in front of me, he beat her with the oak mattock handle. I mean . . . it was a really . . . really degrading, humiliating kind of experience to watch my mother being treated like that . . . by my father . . . by her own husband. This from a man who allowed his own weight to balloon to 270 pounds before self-imposing a fast of 47 days to reduce his weight to 135 pounds.

But as researchers about Narcissistic Personality Disorder would say my father “lacked insight” about his own life and behavior and had the characteristic lack of empathy seen in this disorder! It would never occur to him to have compassion for people who struggled with something he himself had struggled with.

There is a concept among people of faith that you can “sear” your own conscience by repeatedly ignoring its impulses to avoid wrongdoing. That over time you can ignore your conscience till it no longer has impact on your decision making. I believe that is part of what happened to my father. His increasing raging and violence at some point were no longer checked by a working conscience. He was out of the reach of any of the normal methods people have for pointing their compass toward good instead of evil. And of course, he no longer saw his own behavior as evil.

When my father was not successful getting Katherine’s weight under control with daily weighing, diet control and oak mattock handle beatings, he had another strategy up his sleeve.

It was time to confine his daughter, Katherine, in a nook outside his bedroom, upstairs. For 40 plus days Katherine was confined, without food, only water, and allowed exit only to use the bathroom, until her weight was acceptable to my dear father. This is the stuff of torture and concentration camps. I can hardly bear to think of it. I cannot imagine how this may be affecting some of you readers. My heart goes out to you right now in your pain as some of you think of your own perpetrators’ violence toward you.

I remember that either her sister Margie or her sister Shirley once smuggled Katherine a glass of tomato juice. Well, my father caught his eldest daughter with it. When Katherine refused to tell who'd given her the tomato juice, my father yelled and cursed and beat her for nearly two hours. It was one of the worst beatings she ever received. It was delivered by fist and oak mattock handle to a starving teenage girl. Katherine had an open sore on her backside for over a year because it could not heal due to such frequent beatings. I can still see my sister Katherine’s face in my mind’s eye; the terror, despair and frantic look in her eyes; and her quivering hands as she approached her mother to request help in tending to her sore.

Katherine tried to escape the nightmare called 'home' at the Westboro Baptist Church at least three times between the ages of 17 and 18. Each time, my father found out where she was living and led a Phelps' quick-reaction team to literally snatch her away from her life and bring her back. The dealer of abuse was bent on dealing his abuse against Katherine again and again! There was no escape from the torture!

In one incident, Katherine was living in a quiet Topeka neighborhood and dating a boy from our high school. It was the summertime, about 6:30 in the evening. Katherine’s boyfriend pulled in to pick her up on a date. We'd been waiting for her to come out of the house, and when she did, we just swooped in. We had two cars. I was driving one and my father the other.

It was a real 'Starsky and Hutch' covert operation. We blocked off the departing vehicle, and pulled Katherine out of the car while her date just sat there stunned. Back at home my father beat her terribly. It was then she was confined in the nook for 40 days on nothing but water. This 'parental intercession' was actually a kidnapping: Katherine was 18 when it occurred. She easily had a cause of action against my father if she had wanted to pursue it.

Katherine, if you are reading these words today, I ask your forgiveness for my part in bringing you back that day. Oh how I wish I had had the strength to stand up to our father in those moments. I have never stopped praying for you, sister, and hoping your life has turned out well when you were able to finally leave and begin again.

Though she eventually finished college and graduated from law school, I am concerned that Katherine has not yet been able to find resolution to her anger and the self-destruction that often accompanies this level of abuse. (And some might even argue that acts of “self-destruction” are beautiful signs of life as the abused person begins to make new and very different decisions than the ones prescribed by the controlling abuser.) She allowed her active status as an attorney to lapse, waitressed at Topeka's Ramada Inn, got laid off, and went on public assistance. Are you surprised? What might you have done living with the level of abuse and torture my sister suffered? What might any of us have done with the psychological and physical scars she has from the horrendous abuse she suffered? From the person who should have loved her, defended her, championed her, admired her, and sought to bring all good things into her life - - her father.

My precious sister, Katherine......oh, everything my father did to her...she's just been so deeply hurt as a human being. How my heart breaks for her. It is so difficult to accept that her life was so destroyed by my father. She had hardly begun her life and it was permanently crippled by her own father. I have a lot of righteous anger against my father’s actions towards Katherine as I am sure many of you who are reading this do! It was terribly wrong and should never have been allowed!

Once, while she was going to college and living in the family compound, Katherine went jogging late one night, as was her habit. But, this time, the sight of a woman running through a darkened residential neighborhood after 1 a.m. caught the attention of a patrol car. When the officer tried to question her from the rolling vehicle, Katherine turned and ran the other way. When he overtook her on foot, jumped ahead of her and tried to block her passage, she jumped on him like a wild animal. Other officers were called and Katherine fought them with the same intense ferocity. She was finally subdued and arrested. When the case went to court, my brother Nate was there: "The judge asked why she fought when the officer tried to stop her. She turned to him-and I was shocked by the hate in her face-and she almost spit out the words: 'I can't stand for a man to touch me!'" Continues Nate: "That face full of hate I'll never forget. My sister was very, very angry about something."

Hmmm, I wonder where all that anger originated!? Can you imagine the irony of this? My father, who had such an aberrant view of a boy even calling my sister on the phone, who could not stand the thought of my sister being in a normal relationship with a man, would create from his savage beatings my sister learning to hate the touch of any man. My father who was so twisted and tortured in his own soul managed to foist his own pain on those closest to him.

Katherine was willing to fight back with several police officers because she felt safer and more able to fight back with them than she did trying to fight back against her own father. She had observed her father’s rage and brutality toward her brothers and her mother and knew, deep in her soul, that any resistance or attempt to protect or stand up for herself against her father would only result in greater abuse and greater pain. We all knew this about our father because we were trained so skillfully and thoroughly from the earliest days of our lives. All of us knew his hair-trigger temper and the instant, vicious escalation of his rage at the least sign of resistance on our part! We all knew . . . there was no stopping my father!!

My father once had a sweet relationship with Katherine. She was truly the apple of his eye. And then she did what all children do. She grew up. And by growing up my father knew that she was stepping into adulthood and would one day not be under his control any more. Watching children grow up is not easy for parents. Even normal parents struggle with the end of the sweet relationships they once had with their small children. But, normal, loving parents push through to allow their kids to become all they can be. And appropriately push aside their personal needs and emotions to provide that freedom.

My father, however, was running a cult. And he followed the first rule of cults which is that mind control is the order of the day and no one is allowed to leave. I think my father’s heart broke as a father the day Katherine appeared to him to be a young woman. And he must have realized she would truly leave him. For her own life, and for a loving, caring man who might be her husband. And that my father would not tolerate. And as one who ran a cult he had powers beyond that of a normal parent. And he exercised them! My father even warned others of his children that the cult phenomenon would continue into their marriages. And that he would maintain control of them INTO their marriages. And make decisions for them. And that they would never, ever be treated as autonomous adults. Are you amazed that anyone EVER married into our family? I am!

My older brother, Fred Jr., wanted to be a history teacher. Ever since he'd been a kid, he wanted to be a history teacher. At Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas Fred Jr. was a masterful history student. He got A’s in history, even Chinese history. High A’s!! He wanted to teach history, and he held on to that. He'd say: 'I have that right!” and my father would try to beat it out of him, literally, with the oak mattock handle.

I can remember my father beating Fred Jr. when he was 17, 18 and 19 because of his desire to be a history professor and his efforts to accomplish this goal. I couldn't believe my brother, Fred Jr., would even try to argue with my father! I think I did not understand the depth of Fred’s desire to use the talents and gifts God had given him. And that he knew would express who he truly was. That desire must have been incredibly powerful, but I couldn’t believe my brother, Fred Jr., kept pushing and pushing; and getting beat over and over and over!

My brother, Fred Jr., was an amazing, strong, talented and gifted young man who simply wanted a chance to be! And he tried so hard to gain the right to be his own person. And my father took that simple, beautiful, honest desire to be a person and hoped to beat that desire out of him. He knew his first born was an example that would be set for other siblings and he simply had to break Fred Jr. Do you remember definition #3 of assailed was “to undertake with the purpose of mastering?” Well, my father planned to “master” young Fred and not allow him to be his own man. And master he did . . . eventually! But for those of us who saw the beautiful young man Fred, Jr. was becoming it was horrible to watch that process.

Personally, I had learned better! My father knew nothing of my heart, nothing of my interests, nothing of my desires and nothing of my needs! I was not about to reveal anything, only to be ridiculed and maligned . . . and beaten! I was a master at hiding who I was! My father thought I accepted every aspect of his filthy language, despicable lies and felonious destruction of his family. He continued to believe this until the night I left ‘The Place’ . . . permanently! And it is because of this meticulous hiding of my own heart that I survived and was ultimately able to leave.

Normal children in safe environments love to “try out” their dreams and desires by talking about them to parents, siblings, coaches, teachers and friends. To get advice, counsel, help and encouragement from people in that relatively safe world. But there was nothing normal about being a Phelps kid. So my stance of protecting myself and my dreams from all view and all critique ended up being a way to protect them also from destruction.

But when I think of Fred Jr. and his valiant efforts to be a person while under his father’s care, I admire him. I took a different path, of protecting myself at all costs, but I admire my brother Fred Jr’s tenacity in the face of such blatant, vicious, brutal abuse and lack of respect shown by my father for who Fred Jr. was as a person.

I remember when my brother, Fred Jr., was 18, and in his struggle to find his way, he had decided to move out of his father’s house to live on his own. My father vehemently opposed it, but Fred Jr. stood up for himself. After several beatings from my father with the oak mattock handle and Fred Jr. even still refusing and refusing and refusing to relent, the two finally 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 received 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. And so we were. As Fred Jr. came out, towel around his waist, he was confronted by my father, by me, and 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 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." Of course . . . my father issued these orders to Bob Martin regarding his own son!

My father was not ABOUT to let Fred Jr. be who he was created by God to be, even if it meant violating the criminal laws of society. Fred Jr. was going to be a lawyer because that’s what my father said he was going to be. My father viewed his children as an extension of his empire, and in no way as precious, vibrant individuals who deserved to be able to have their own dreams. My father would have their dreams for them.

Eventually, I think, my brother's spirit was simply broken. And he capitulated to my father’s will and became a lawyer. After that, he submitted totally to my father. He'd lost his thrill for life. He went to law school, like father wanted; he married a girl father approved of; and he shouldered a role in ‘The Place’. And that's where he is today. He recently turned 61. But I doubt his heart has ever been in the things my father “programmed” into his life whether he wanted it that way or not! Fred was a dutiful soldier in a battleground he never wanted to be part of. The history teacher was finally beaten into total submission. And the world missed out on a magnificent teacher who could have opened up young minds and hearts through an honest look at history. This was our society’s loss for sure.

Let’s talk about what happened to the hearts of Phelps children. If you are a student of the human heart you know of its amazing resilience but you also know it can be pushed to a point of breaking. As little children our father took our hearts and pretty much stomped all over them. He was incapable of showing kindness or gentleness or any type of compassion to us and instead terrorized and physically abused us all. To the point where all we could think about was our own safety. I honestly still marvel at the courage my brother Nathan was able to show as he stood up to our father repeatedly. And I have never forgotten the initial courage of my brother Fred Jr.! And I never will.

But most of us first cowered and wept and then finally we became little automatons who tried to shut out all feelings. So we could survive. I had the immense blessing of being able to leave the fold and over several decades, was able to seek healing that was necessary to undo the work in my heart that my father had done there. But for those who stayed under my father’s domination the damage to their hearts continued. They were not just told what to do as young children, every waking moment of every day, in kind of a federal prison, every-decision-being-made-for-you way. These precious siblings of mine had to endure the shame of being considered non-entities who had no right to be young adults. No right to think for themselves. No right to pick a major or a career, a spouse or a way of raising their own children. Their lives continued to be scripted by their father, in details that did not reflect the respect owed an adult son or daughter by their own father.

Remember me telling you I was awakened one night by the phrase “assailed to the breaking point”? Well, I think that was exactly what my father was able to do with most of us in our family. He was able to “to attack vigorously or violently; assault.” He was able to “attack with arguments, criticism, ridicule, abuse, etc.: to assail one's opponent with slander.” And he was able to “undertake with the purpose of mastering.”

My strong desire, for my siblings and for all of you in my blog audience, is to give you the hope that the human spirit and psyche and soul is able to come back from that breaking point. That while it is true that enormous damage has been done, with enormous consequence, there is still tremendous hope for each of you.

What you will be reading about in the days and months to come in this blog is my return from the near breaking point of my own life. And that with hard work, helpful, kind souls and truly the help of God himself, I have come back. Or perhaps, I have actually gone forward. To new things I would never have dreamed possible back on 12th St. in Topeka, Kansas. And I hope and pray for those new things for each of you. If you need to write to me about the journey you are on or wanting to start, I would love to encourage you in that process. There is much cause for hope in this, friends!

Mark Phelps