The Hammer Drops: Dr. Kenneth Copley Exposed – Severe Homeschooling

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Kirill Ignatyev.

HA Note: This is the third in a nine part series telling Ruth Burger’s, a plaintiff in the IBLP/Gothard lawsuit, story of abuse while in ATI. It is cross-posted from Joe Sands’ blog Incongruous Circumspection and was originally posted on June 3, 2012.

Edited by Wende Benner, HA Editorial Staff

 CW: Descriptions of physical abuse

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In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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During this time my parents were also homeschoolers which meant I was taught at home by my mom. I was absolutely terrified. I wanted to vomit the day she announced I was to start my homeschooling with her the next day. By this time, I was so terrified of her that whenever she would ask me any sort of question, I would completely freeze up. Concepts I understood just moments before would escape my mind as she would relentlessly hammer problem after problem into my head. And yes, I got spanked my first day of school for not being able to find and circle every “A” on the page.

By this age, the spanking implements my parents used had advanced. At first, it was just the wooden spoon. We had a running joke in the home that my mom couldn’t keep wooden spoons around because my dad would often break the wooden spoon across any child’s bare butt in two swats. Then, my mom broke a wooden pant hanger on me. They used metal kitchen spoons, belts of various sizes and thicknesses, and eventually, my dad settled on 1×2, about three feet long. This became the spanking implement of choice. It’s also interesting to note my siblings were never struck with anything more than a hand or a wooden spoon. Not to belittle their experiences, but I’m simply stating the fact my parents utilized measures with me far beyond anything they tried with their biological children.

School became a nightmare. Flashcards scared me the absolute worst. It became the norm on a daily basis that for each missed wrong answer, I would be spanked. If I got the answer wrong, I was to immediately stand up, pull down my pants and underwear, and bend over the arm of the living room chair. Each subsequent wrong answer was met with another spanking. And another. And another. Eventually, I became so terrified I couldn’t retain anything taught from the day before and everything felt out of control.

One afternoon, my mom asked me to read an analog clock. I looked up and answered “1:00.” “No. It’s one minute before 1:00. What’s one minute before 1:00?” Because I had gotten the answer wrong, I went into instant freeze mode and couldn’t come up with the correct answer. And thus began my afternoon from hell.

From 1:00 until nearly 4:30, my mom beat me with the 1×2 until I finally came up with the right answer. For those skeptics who say it couldn’t have gone on that long, just know this: my mom developed such deep splinters from the wood that she had to wrap her end of the stick in a towel because she couldn’t grip the wood anymore. Eventually, I was forbidden to even pull up my pants after each spanking and thus stood, pants and underwear around my ankles as I shook and gave random, wrong answers. At one point, I must have guessed the right answer because suddenly she grabbed me and pulled me out to the living room. She called an older sibling into the room and asked me, “What is one minute before 1:00?” I couldn’t remember. Back to the bedroom until I finally guessed the right answer, and this time, I made SURE I ALWAYS knew what one minute before 1:00 was. I remember her having me show my butt to Ken Copley the next day and having her proudly comment on all the coloring and deep bruising going on. My dad praised her for “hanging in there” with me and my mom noted she “should’ve called [my dad] home so he could’ve taken over the spankings for her.” She was exhausted, but pleased she had driven “rebellion” from my heart.

After this incident, this treatment translated into nearly every single aspect of my life. Failure to be able to make a complete round on the monkey bars resulted in me going outside every night and getting a spanking each time I fell off until I finally learned how to be able to go BOTH ways on the monkey bars. It became part of my daily routine to go outside after supper and spend the entire evening getting spanked until bedtime. I learned how to ride my bike in this exact same manner. At each meal, I had twenty minutes to clean my plate. If my plate wasn’t empty after twenty minutes, the clock was set to five minute increments and I was spanked every five minutes till the plate was empty. I learned how to clip my fingernails using the beat-until-learned method. My parents made it very clear they both supported each other with these methods because the Bible told them I was rebellious and God promised spanking would fix me.