Gothard, again

You blamed me and some supposed, hidden sin in my life rather than the blatant woeful treatment I’d been receiving.
 Once again, you held me responsible for the abuses of others.
~Heather

I wrote a long letter to most of the members of my family about two weeks ago because I know that they are still keeping Gothard materials in their homes and even using them for their own "enrichment" or for teaching my siblings.

  I told them about how I got the famed "personal interview" with Got-hard and how he immediately closed down the conversation and the time when I said that our missionary family had not been able to afford to purchase and ship his homeschooling and other materials overseas.
  I told them about the second time we talked when I came to him with a special request from my mother.  Desperate for "godly" solutions to our increasing home trauma, she asked me to ask G to call and counsel my father.  As she put it, G was one of the last teachers on earth who my father respected and would listen to.

Instead of listening to me he attached the blame to me.  He said I must be bitter and had me do a writing assignment.  Then he left for a long period of time ostensibly to talk to some delegate in mexico on a "gospel-spreading mission."  When he finally deigned to come back and speak with me, he looked quickly over my pages of writing and again ordered me to asses myself on my own time, and write further because obviously the first draft was half-heartedly done and did not really reach the depths of my bitter, hardened heart.  Why else would I dare question the behavior of my father, no matter how many times I attempted to reiterate that it was my mother's request with which she entrusted me.
After both times I left his office sobbing deeply and felt not only valueless, but dirty and shamed.  How could this great "seer" (as my Journey Leader Libby called him) have possibly gotten my situation wrong?  He was the one who was the leader and I was one of the inductees.

I told them in the email about how one girl who was largely deaf, but with golden hair and big blue eyes was asked to stay.  Another girl, one of a twin, was asked to stay the last day.  Her other twin was more loud, "tomboyish" (in the most feminine sense of the word), and had darker hair and more makeup was left protesting.  She was told that she had to go home and finish school, while her mostly identical twin got showered with the honor of being asked to stay at HQ. (Her school was somehow able to be completed via distance at OakBrook)


When I contacted my mother by phone (a twice-a-year-if-that-occurrence) a week or so after, I mentioned the email to her and she voiced extreme reticence to not only believe the accusations, but to see G's horrendous teachings for what they were.  She felt that the testimonies were hearsay and few and far between and did not compromise his lectures and seminars.
  She did not discount my story, but she apologized for putting such an expectation on a 19-year old.  I told her that I felt proud to be her emissary and was deeply disappointed that I was not able to help my family.  And then I told her something that nagged at me then like a mosquito bite and was obvious to me now: I KNEW that I WAS NOT THE REASON that there were problems in our family.  Yet I was made to feel responsible because of how G acted and the very pointed things he said, almost in those exact words, that I was.

Making children responsible for the sins of their families is heresy.  In fact, it is also abusive, cruel, and harmful to the children/adults themselves.
I think this is something that has yet to be fully addressed by places that focus more on g's theology.  But I know that it has been a constant thread for those of us with family.