Introducing the Episode and Panelists

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am John Dehlin, one of your hosts for today. It's June 16, 2023 and we are super excited today to be covering a new documentary, a four part documentary that was recently released on Amazon Prime. It's called Shiny Happy Duggar Family Secrets. It's a limited docu series exposing the truth about beneath the wholesome Americana surface of reality TV's favorite mega family, the Duggars, and the radical organization behind them, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, or the iblp. As details of the family and their scandals unfold, we realize they're part of an insidious, much larger threat already in motion, with democracy itself in peril. Sounds a little bit scary, but I'm just going to say right off of the start, I kind of follow high demand religions and or cults. It's kind of my thing.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] I've been doing this for at least

John Dehlin [00:01:03] 20 years and I am embarrassed to say, number one, I never watched the Duggars, so this was like binge watching all new material for me. But secondly, I'd freaking never heard of Bill Gothard or IBLP or ATI, which we'll be discussing. I had of course heard about homeschoolers because there are plenty of homeschoolers within Mormon culture and in Utah culture. But, but this was a fascinating series for me. I probably had 20 or 30 of my followers or listeners immediately reach out to me and say, john, you gotta cover shiny happy people. And so, as any smart Mormon podcaster would do, they reach out to Rebecca Biblioteca and they say, rebecca, we need to do a series on shiny happy people. Help me, Rebecca Biblioteca. And so Rebecca comes through. Hey Rebecca.

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:01:53] Oh, hey John. How are you?

John Dehlin [00:01:54] Thank you so much for helping us put this together. How are you doing today?

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:01:58] I am great. And I have to say I also was overwhelmed as I watched this documentary and thought the same thing. I didn't contact you, but I thought somebody needs to do a treatment of this. This is incredible. So when you ask me if I would try to reach out to some of the people that we saw in the documentary, I was more than happy and so thrilled to meet these wonderful people. I cannot wait to dive in today.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] It's going to be great. Really quickly, Rebecca, plug, plug what you do just so people kind of know a little bit about your background for those who don't know you.

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:02:26] Yeah, I actually kind of started in the post Mormon arena by starting the Good Book Club, which is a virtual national Book club for post and nuanced Mormons. And you can find us on Facebook or Instagram. And we read and we deconstruct and create new spiritualities and new ideologies. Really fun. Lots of people, lots of friends. And then I also have a podcast with my co host, Landon Brophy called Mormon Ish, where we just delve into the Mormon landscape and the post Mormon landscape. Our tagline is fun finding a living a joyful life on the other side of Mormonism. So we're trying to talk about that.

John Dehlin [00:02:55] I love it.

John Dehlin [00:02:56] Well, Rebecca, you are absolutely one of

John Dehlin [00:02:58] my favorite creators in all of progressive and post Mormonism. So I'm honored to have you on the show. Thanks again.

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:03:04] Oh, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] And to bring back another familiar face is one of, if not the most popular interviewee in the history of Mormon Stories, YouTube. We're bringing back today, Chandler Roberson. Chandler, how are you?

Chandler Roberson [00:03:18] Oh, I'm great.

Chandler Roberson [00:03:19] How are you?

John Dehlin [00:03:20] Good, good. So for those of you who don't know who've been living under a Mormon Stories rock, Chandler appeared on Mormon Stories episodes 1522 and 1523 entitled Surviving Purity Culture at BYU Idaho. It was a phenomenally successful series. Chandler, remind me if you've been on other episodes.

John Dehlin [00:03:39] I can't keep track of all 1800 episodes.

Chandler Roberson [00:03:41] No, that was. That was the first time. So this is. This is my second time.

John Dehlin [00:03:45] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:03:45] And Chandler, I saw you post, I think it was either on Instagram or TikTok where you this and you thought it was amazing.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] And so I thought of you to come on.

John Dehlin [00:03:54] Would you mind just telling people quickly you sort of were a blogger, influencer, faithful back in the day, and then you've kind of changed over. Do you mind giving people a quick introduction about you?

Chandler Roberson [00:04:05] Yeah. So I went to school, college at BYU Idaho, grew up LDS and kind of did a Mormon LDS fashion blog. So I was doing like, how to wear garments and make it cute. Um, and then I came over to Utah and kind of continued that until I had my faith crisis and kind of left Mormonism and left blogging and all that. So now I'm in the TikTok space and Instagram and all that. But I don't do the Mormon modesty thing as more as much.

John Dehlin [00:04:30] And tell us your handles on TikTok and Instagram.

Chandler Roberson [00:04:33] Yeah, so it's both the same. It's just Chan Roberson. So my first and last name, basically.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] All right, well, and. And congratulations on the pink hair.

John Dehlin [00:04:41] That's a new addition to Mormon Stories.

Chandler Roberson [00:04:43] Thank you. Yeah, I'm Very excited. My niece wanted to do pink hair for her birthday, so we did it together.

John Dehlin [00:04:49] I love it. Yeah, thanks.

John Dehlin [00:04:51] So we've got a little bit of Brady Bunch vibes going on and you have to be 50 or more to know what I'm talking about. We've got the Mormons above and we've got the IBL peers below, and I have to be careful how I'm going to be talking about this. But we are so excited today to have three people who appeared to, who actually appeared on Shiny Happy People as interviewees. We have Brooke Arnold, Lindsey Williams, and Tia Levings. And I'm gonna have each of you, if it's okay, just briefly introduce yourselves and kind of what area maybe you'll

John Dehlin [00:05:27] be focusing on today a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] And let's go ahead and start with Brooke Arnold. Hey, Brooke. Welcome to Mormon Stories.

Brooke Arnold [00:05:34] Hi. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:38] Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about, you know, just give us an introduction about who you are and what you do now and then we'll, we'll get

John Dehlin [00:05:45] into, you know, your history with, with Bill Duggars and iblp.

Brooke Arnold [00:05:49] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:05:50] Bill Gothard.

John Dehlin [00:05:50] Sorry? Bill Gothard. Bill Gothard.

Brooke Arnold [00:05:52] Bill Gothard. Yeah. Mr. Gothard. Anyway, my name is Brooke Arnold. I grew up in IBLP ATI and I left when I was 17 to avoid going into my courtship. I eventually became an English profess in New York City. And I've also been talking about my experience of. I think at first I called it Growing Up Fundy. Now it's a little bit more Growing Up Gothard. But I wrote an award winning play about it that I put on in New York. And I wrote a salon piece back in 2015 talking about how connecting the abuse in the Duggar family to Bill Gothard's teachings. A lot of the media surrounding that was focused on this idea that he was a hypocrite. And I was making the art that abuse, and especially sexual abuse is inevitable when you're really adhering to Gothard's teachings. And that kind of put me in this position of being in touch with tons of people who grew up in IBLP for the first time in over a decade. And I started doing research and talking to people with the idea of doing my own project, which kind of got pulled into Shiny Happy People. So that was really cool.

John Dehlin [00:07:14] Yeah, well, I'm just, I can't tell you how thankful I am for all that you've done, but specifically for helping

John Dehlin [00:07:21] with this documentary because I think it is.

John Dehlin [00:07:24] You know, again, I follow cult stuff

John Dehlin [00:07:26] pretty closely, and this is a very

John Dehlin [00:07:28] important contribution to what is becoming almost

John Dehlin [00:07:31] a cottage industry of ex high demand religion slash cult documentaries on streaming services. But thank you so much, Brooke, for your part in this. It's really important work.

Brooke Arnold [00:07:41] Thank you for having me. It's been, you know, it's difficult work, but it's so rewarding when, you know, you get to a moment like this and you kind of see this huge wave of recognition, awakening, healing, purging. It's. It's a really beautiful moment and I'm really excited to be a part of it. I feel very blessed to be a part of it.

Lindsey Williams [00:08:03] Very grateful.

John Dehlin [00:08:04] And I'll just say really quickly that, you know, part of what we try

John Dehlin [00:08:08] and do, I think Rebecca and Chandler would agree that one of the things

John Dehlin [00:08:11] we try and do is not necessarily get people out of Mormonism per se, but just like help them wake up to what they're a part of so that they can have informed consent and make informed decisions about their lives. And when anybody, you know, no one's in a cult, right? Everybody's in the true thing. And sometimes the only way that people can get perspective on, on what they're a part of is to see it through the lens of other traditions. And that's one of the main reasons

John Dehlin [00:08:39] why Brooke and Tia and Lindsay, your

John Dehlin [00:08:43] contributions are really important to our people and that means so much to us.

John Dehlin [00:08:48] So I'm being effusive, but it's. Cause it's really important stuff. So again, thank you, Brooke.

Brooke Arnold [00:08:55] Thank you for having us.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Okay, the next guest we have is Tia Levings. Tia, would you mind introducing your. Oh, no, no, no. We're gonna do Lindsay next. Lindsey Williams. Lindsey, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Chandler Roberson [00:09:09] Hi, my name is Lindsay Williams. I actually am a makeup artist and hairstylist in the professional industry of print work, advertising, commercial, fashion, beauty, and sometimes I play in film and tv. So very opposite of how I was raised, where your appearance mattered, but you couldn't dress it up at all. So the only thing you could do is like curl your hair. But that's what I do in my real life. And I love it so much because it is so opposite of how I was raised. And it gives me such a beautiful opportunity to. To just create and not worry about confines. And yet it's a very high stress situation. A lot of the times, Fashion Week, backstage, it. I mean, sometimes I step back and wonder, how in the world am I functioning in all of this chaos right now? And yet I realize that I actually am pulling from my past to be able to deal with high stress situations. So it's a little weird, but that's what I do.

John Dehlin [00:10:03] So your profession is this long play

John Dehlin [00:10:05] and rebellion basically against your background, is that what you're saying?

Chandler Roberson [00:10:09] Yes, exactly. Just full on rebellion.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:12] And when you say you used to

John Dehlin [00:10:13] curl your hair, you used to curl your hair a lot, I'm guessing.

Chandler Roberson [00:10:16] Oh, yes. I was with the godly Oomph where Bill Gothard just wanted the hair to be as curly as possible. And my hair is naturally bored straight. So I would take two hours a day to curl my hair to please him.

John Dehlin [00:10:28] And really quickly for those, just as

John Dehlin [00:10:30] a preview, you're going to be focusing today on which, which part of the

Chandler Roberson [00:10:35] story, more my time with him, how he met me and how he groomed me at headquarters and took advantage of his authoritarian, like, his authority over me. Yeah, it really eked into a lot of places that it never should have.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much for joining us, Lindsay.

John Dehlin [00:10:53] All right. And the last amazing panelist we have to for today is Tia Livings. Hey, Tia, tell us a bit about yourself.

Brooke Arnold [00:11:00] Hello.

Lindsey Williams [00:11:01] I am an author. I have a book coming out in 2024 called a well Trained Wife. It's my escape from Christian patriarchy. So it dovetails very well with what I shared in Shining Happy People. I came into IBOP a little differently than anyone else, so I'm like, in our cast. So I'll be sharing a lot about the family context and what it's like to be mentored in as well as the influence on the wider culture. Spending most of my days breaking down the similarities that we have across different cultures and, like, denominations and all of the overlap between the cult documentaries that are out now. So it's a big wild, wild world that we'll be diving into.

John Dehlin [00:11:43] It is.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] Well, Tia, you know, some of your

John Dehlin [00:11:46] stories on the documentary are some of the most harrowing, especially about your escape. So we're so glad again you're here to join us.

Comparing IBLP and Mormon Structures

John Dehlin [00:11:54] All right, so. Oh, go ahead. Oh, good, good, good, good. Okay. So I think what makes sense, if it's okay, what I want to do is try and navigate a balance between making this program valuable for those who have never seen Shiny Happy People. Of course, we want everyone to go right now and watch Shiny Happy People, but we also want to make the program valuable. If you have just have no idea what, well, you know, what IBLP or ATR or who Bill Gothard were, we're gonna kind of navigate, making this, these two hours, valuable to those who haven't watched the documentary yet, but also making it interesting to those who have seen the documentary. And what we're gonna try and do is kind of maybe compare and contrast a little bit about the IBLP and the Mormon experiences to see how much the Venn diagrams overl. You know, spoiler alert. I think there's a lot of overlap, but that's just my opinion. Rebecca and Chandler may disagree, but I think the first thing we ought to do maybe is give a little bit of history for those. You know, I've heard of, like, you know, lots of evangelical preachers. I had never heard of Bill Gothard, and I'd never heard of iblp. So is it you, Brooke, that maybe is a good place to start to kind of just give us a little bit of a history in the overview. And, of course, we'll ask Tia and Lindsay to jump in as much as they want. Does that make sense, Brooke?

Brooke Arnold [00:13:31] That's great with me.

Bill Gothard and the Christian Homeschooling Movement

John Dehlin [00:13:32] Okay, so who is this Bill Gothard guy? And tell us about IBLP in the Christian homeschooling movement.

Brooke Arnold [00:13:41] All right, so Bill Gothard comes from the Chicago area, which could be considered the hotbed of evangelicalism. His father, as I mentioned in the movie, Bill Gothard Sr. Was the president of the Gideons organization, is actually the person responsible for the Gideons Bibles being in every hotel room. So he came from this evangelical dynasty. And when we think about the history of the institute, it was really started not just by Bill Gothard, but by the Gothard family. And what Bill Gothard kind of did was he plugged into this zeitgeist of fear amongst people in the 1960s, fear about all of these kind of new cultural changes. The advent of rock and roll, the advent of genes, the idea of the teenager and teenage rebellion, which was really created by media in the 1950s. And so he kind of tapped into all of these present. These. These. These present fears to kind of scare families into following his teachings. And so you have this moment of extreme cultural and social upheav. Gothard kind of comes along like a Pied Piper and says, look, I've got the answers. I know what the right thing to do in every situation is. And what it ended up being was this kind of very totalizing psychological structure of oppression and disavowment and abuse.

John Dehlin [00:15:22] Beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] Lindsay and T, anything you want to add to this character sketch?

Chandler Roberson [00:15:29] I love that you're saying character sketch, because that's one of the materials in iblp.

John Dehlin [00:15:35] Oh, really?

Chandler Roberson [00:15:36] Yes.

Chandler Roberson [00:15:36] There's like three books and there's, there's actually a new edition that's coming out, I've heard. So that's pretty funny. I think for me, I, I was raised in this. My parents got in, they were influenced by bill in the 1980s, very early 1980s, and then we got into his homeschooling program in 1986. I was 8 years old, so I've pretty grown up in this. I was heavily influenced and controlled by all of his teachings. And he was like a God. He was a, he was a very high up prophet that we all trusted. And it didn't matter what came out of his mouth. We trusted it implicitly, especially as kids. We were, we were trained to believe everything that Bill said. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] Like I, you know, whether it's Elron Hubbard or Keith Ranieri or Joseph Smith,

John Dehlin [00:16:27] if people aren't offended that I put him up there, that there's just, you

John Dehlin [00:16:31] know, these, these charismatic white male, you know, religious founders that, that aren't satisfied

John Dehlin [00:16:38] just leading a congregation, but they need

John Dehlin [00:16:41] to build an empire.

Brooke Arnold [00:16:43] Right.

John Dehlin [00:16:44] They're empire builders. It just seems like he just really fits that mold.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] So, so succinctly.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] T. Anything you want to add before

John Dehlin [00:16:53] I have Rebecca and Chandler jump in about whether there's any Joseph Smith vibes in Bill Gothard?

Lindsey Williams [00:17:01] Yeah, I think what attracted me the most to Bill Goddard's teaching is how con. How he contrasted with the Southern Baptist screamer. Bill leads with a very quiet, humble, unassuming method and it draws you in. He's very magnetic and yeah, that's him. Greasy car salesman is how I, is how I think of him now. He always looks like no matter where he is. And I used to think he went swimming like that, if he ever went swimming. And it's just he's very good at seeming like the humble servant leader that you. That's not threatening and that you can trust everything that he has to say. So I don't know how that aligns with Joseph Smith, but it definitely draws in a lot of well meaning Baptists.

John Dehlin [00:17:43] Well, I don't want to steal Rebecca or Chandler's thunder, but Mormons are known to be nice people. Like, if you talk to anyone, anyone who's kind of known Mormons, it's like, oh, they're the nicest people, you know, and there, but there is something that can be toxic and insidious about niceness. And so I'm just going to tell you that was one of my immediate connections with this culture was just this toxic niceness. But let me jump to Rebecca and just say, Rebecca, did you. Did for you. Did.

John Dehlin [00:18:16] Did Bill Gothard have any Joseph Smith vibes or not?

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:18:19] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Just. Just the control and just how he was able to manipulate people around him. And. And I actually, I kind of curate media that has to do with, you know, high demand, high control. I have a Facebook page called the Good Media Club, and I ask some of our members if they had any questions. And one question that they had that I thought was really good. Does Bill claim to be speaking for God? Is there that kind of element? Is that why people follow him? Is he saying I'm literally a mouthpiece? And the other question that kind of goes along with that is that he doesn't actually have a church or a congregation. It's basically his principles that then are disseminated out into. You take it back to your home church, basically. I don't know if any of you want to kind of tackle that sort of hierarchy or how that works. Those two questions came up.

Lindsey Williams [00:19:10] That sounds like an umbrella question, doesn't it, girls?

Brooke Arnold [00:19:13] A little.

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:19:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:14] Oh, the umbrella.

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:19:17] Explain the umbrella. Somebody explain the U Umbrella principle in Mormonism too. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Yeah. Who wants to.

John Dehlin [00:19:23] Who wants to tackle the umbrella while I pull up a photo of it?

Brooke Arnold [00:19:27] I could do the umbrella.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] Okay.

Hierarchy, Control, and Patriarchal Authority

Brooke Arnold [00:19:29] All right. So kind of, you know, piggybacking on what I was saying while ago. And like Gothardism being this response to kind of 1960s counterculture, the idea that you should question authority was a horrible idea to Bill Gothard. And so he. Authority was his most important teaching. You know, we were kind of America was straying from its path because we were rebelling from authority. And he created this chain of command in which God is at the top. Then there's Bill Gothard, then there's the pastor, then there's the dad, then the mom, then the kid, then the dog. You know, you have this very strict chain of command which also kind of, you know, morphed into this trickle down abuse system. It's like Bill Gothard abuses dad, dad abuses mom, mom abuses kids, kids abuse the dog. You know, and there's this idea that Satan has control over this world and is always constantly trying to harm you. And the only way that God can protect you from Satan in this fallen world is through your chain of command. So if you're obedient to those within your chain of command above you, within Umbrella, then God can protect you and will protect you from any harm. But if you disobey, even just internally, you've removed Yourself from God's umbrella of protection. And Satan can attack you at any moment.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:00] And I'm just sharing. Oh, please, please.

Lindsey Williams [00:21:03] Yeah. I kind of want to add that, like, so you won't see Bill's name on the graphic. He's kind of in the atmosphere. And I. As I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, I cannot remember a time when I heard Bill say he was God's mouthpiece. Again, his style is defer. So it's institute of basic life principles. And these are from the Bible, they're not from Bill. So we didn't feel like we were following a man. We felt like this. It's just permeated this. Permeated. He's this voice box, this humble servant who can hear God. And if we stay in our channels, like in the picture, we could almost think of Bill as the rain, because obviously it rains underneath each umbrella. They're not very effective. They're touching all of us all the time. That also applies.

John Dehlin [00:21:47] That's beautiful. He's the rain.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] For those who are listening and aren't viewing what we're viewing here. And this may be a derivative of. This is a slightly different version of the umbrellas that I've seen. But it basically has got a big umbrella, which is Christ, and then a smaller umbrella under it, which is the husband, and then under that. And the husband's job is to protect the family and provide for the family. And then the umbrella under that is the wife. And then under the wife is, you know, her responsibilities are children, managers of home. And, you know, the immediate question that I had is, where's the church? Because what I expected was to see some sort of umbrella between Christ and the husband, which would be the organization. But I mean, in some ways that's even more insidious because basically, Bill Gothard of the church becomes Christ. Because how do you know what Christ wants you to do? He wasn't super specific. Oh, well, Bill Gothard is gonna tell you how to interpret the Bible. Now, Chandler, really quick. If you don't talk about the proclamation on the family in this slide, I'm going to. So, Chandler. But, Chandler, whatever you wanted to say about Bill Gothard and Joseph Smith, I

John Dehlin [00:23:01] wanna give you a chance.

Brooke Arnold [00:23:02] Yeah.

Chandler Roberson [00:23:02] I mean, first of all, I think overconfident white men will be the death of us all. And I think it's always been that way. So it seems like the parallels between Joseph Smith and Bill fall into that category. But kind of with what Tia was just saying, it seems like. And this seems like A Joseph Smith thing, it seems like a high demand religion leader thing is that they do tend to keep things a little bit vague so that it can be interpreted by the followers, I think. And so they can't quite deny something, but they can also take credit and lead that way. So kind of with that same thing, I don't think Bill Gothard probably ever said like, I'm talking to God, but it could be inferred by people, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Yeah, that's brilliant. Thank you, Chandler.

John Dehlin [00:23:46] I love this idea that he's the reign because one of the things that

John Dehlin [00:23:49] I often say on Mormon stories is

John Dehlin [00:23:51] religions needs you to feel like you need them. Christ, but really the church or why, you know, how they get. How do they get your money, how do they get your reputation, your time, your power? It's only if you feel like you need them. And so guilt and shame are kind of the secret ingredients to your loyalty and obedience. And in that sense, I really, really resonate and love this idea of Bill Gothard being the rain. I think in some ways the Mormon teachings of the atonement or sexual guilt and shame often are the rain as well. Really quick, Rebecca, does this graphic give

John Dehlin [00:24:36] you any proclamation on the family vibes?

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:24:39] Oh, absolutely. In fact, I feel like perhaps the LDS church would have wished they would have come up with an umbrella like this. It's very clear and much easier to read. We have, if you guys are not familiar, we have something called the proclamation of the family, which started out as a legal brief to, you know, get involved in politics against same sex unions. And it's really now permeated everything. It basically. Well, here's a term that I really liked that that was mentioned on the documentary performing your gen. To have you guys talk about that. Because that's what the proclamation is all about. That's what this umbrella is all about too. You stay in your lane, you stay in your role. And that's what Bill Gothard. That's what the LDS Church, that's what the IBLP expect. That's what Christ expects. So I'd love to hear more about that. Performing your gender. I think that permeates both of our high demand, high control religions.

John Dehlin [00:25:33] Who wants to start on that one?

Chandler Roberson [00:25:35] I mean.

John Dehlin [00:25:36] Oh, Tia. Yeah, Tia.

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:25:39] This is a TIA question.

Brooke Arnold [00:25:41] I was like, oh, my God.

Lindsey Williams [00:25:42] Okay, so, yeah, so like the whole thing breaks down if we don't stay in our lanes. You cannot have women behaving like men. And you certainly can't have. We used to call them girly men. You can't have or milk toast. You can't have effeminate men. You have to have very, very strict lines. And it is masking and it is performative. And it's very. So complementarianism, this idea that men and women are each different, but you bring together their strengths sounds so beautiful on the surface, but it doesn't take individuals into consideration. And so what you have is men learning only one way to be a man and women learn only one way to be a woman and all individuality is lost. So it really feeds into the uniformity that we started to adopt where we all dress alike, look alike, talk alike, because we are given this formula that we're supposed to fit in. And our days are full of performance, performance. And there's no, there's never a letdown from that performance. You go to bed with it, you wake up with it, you sleep with it. You're constantly performing. In fact, as I say that, I think that was a big part of my burnout at the end of my story where I was just couldn't do it anymore. And also I was interchangeable. Anybody can do my job because there's nothing that's uniquely me that's brought to the table. It's just my gender that they need.

John Dehlin [00:26:58] And I was so shocked by the Christian influencers section of Part four, where these young couple, Paul and Morgan, are just talking about how, yeah, the woman submits to the wife, and I mean, the woman submits to the husband. Up until like five, ten years ago,

John Dehlin [00:27:15] the Mormon church literally in its temple

John Dehlin [00:27:17] ceremony, had women covenanting with their husbands while in the temple, the husband covenanted with God. So we had an identical structure within Mormonism. And I was just shocked to see younger generations, you know, Gen Xers or millennials, willingly and overtly adopting that patriarchal structure. But really quickly, Tia, would you mind just giving us a few minute summary of how you literally, consciously, as an adult chose to enter in to this sort of patriarchal arrangement and then how that worked out for you.

Chandler Roberson [00:27:52] I will.

Lindsey Williams [00:27:53] I'm also going to tie it together with what you just said about Paul and Morgan, because Morgan reminds me so much of why this happened to me in the first place. Bless her heart. She's young and she hasn't yet suffered for her views. And if the day ever comes that she does, she will be older and wiser and she know exactly what she was complicit in. That's my story exactly. I was a young mom. I was quickly married to somebody who showed up and said he wanted me that he was God's best, which was a reflection of the grooming that I had been in evangelicism in my megachurch. And what I didn't know until it was too late to know was that I had married an abuser in a culture where divorce was not allowed. So I didn't know what to do. We had domestic violence immediately. I didn't know to call it that. All I knew was that my hopes and dreams were shattered. I was miserable, and I had nowhere to turn. So we had IBL peers in our church that had. They were enacting that strategy of going into their church and proselytizing. That's the whole market for the IBLP is people who are already Christians, who want to be more holy, more successful in their families. So that's what they were there for. And they were modeling this quiverful, shiny example of life. And we have all the little problems solved and we're also in service. So we're the deacons and the teachers and the mentors. And I actually went to them and asked for help. I was a new mom and I needed to get my baby to sleep through the night. And so I asked for advice from older and wiser women, which is what Scripture told me to do in Titus 2. And it changed my life in dramatic ways. The mentors schooled me, probably in a crash course. What it takes years and lots of seminars and time together in your marriage to learn through the regular IDLP structure. I got in a matter of a year with my red textbook and all the character wisdom booklets and all the things that come with it. I'm not sure where to pick it up, because the Shiny Happy People story shares what happened to me during the IBLP years. But I actually left that in 1999, mentally, didn't leave it physically. And I had seven more years where I actually get darker because I go into Reformed theology and into. If anyone is familiar with Ginger Volo's book Becoming Free, indeed that's my path in MacArthur, John Piper. These areas where Reformed theology was really picking up trend and steam in the early 2000s, and I end up in a domestic discipline wife spanking cult that looked like Doug Wilson's Federalist Marriage. If anyone's familiar with Doug Wilson, he's based in Moscow, Idaho. And all, everything, everything, everyone around me had been iblp. Everyone had IBOP roots and affiliations. All of this was very confirming. One author leads to another author leads to another system. And so it was a very organic descent into hell, coupled with an abusive Husband who was mentally ill and not treated because we weren't allowed to go to doctors, we weren't allowed to call mental illness what it was. We had to consider it spiritual warfare. And so by then I had a little quiver full of children and was isolated in the mountains and I made a harrowing escape. It's touched on in the documentary one night after a long session of domestic abuse. And I'm lucky that I got out with my life and with my children's lives. And that's where the documentary ends. There's a lot more that came after it that'll be in the book.

John Dehlin [00:31:30] Yeah, and we're, we're super excited for your book.

John Dehlin [00:31:33] Lindsay, was there anything you, Lindsay or

John Dehlin [00:31:35] Brooke, is there anything you guys wanted to say in, in follow up to tia?

John Dehlin [00:31:39] Okay, Brooke, let's, let's have you go.

John Dehlin [00:31:40] And then Lindsay, let us know if you want to follow.

Brooke Arnold [00:31:43] Not really in Follow up to Tia, but circling back to the point about the Christian influencers and episode four, I just wanted to say that I personally believe, you know, within the Abrahamic religions in which God is male authority outside the self that sets up an ontological and psycholog structure that always tacitly legitimizes and promotes male authority. So I don't feel surprised that they believe that because it's embedded in the deepest part of their theology.

John Dehlin [00:32:14] Yeah, this all does kind of just root get rooted in the Bible and interpretations of the Bible, doesn't it?

John Dehlin [00:32:21] Lindsay? Any, any quick response?

John Dehlin [00:32:23] And then I have a follow up really quick.

Chandler Roberson [00:32:25] Yeah. I would also say that for those who were children like myself, I started at 8 with these beliefs and really my parents were going IBLP, basic and advanced seminars, you know, when I was 6. So they would come home from every seminar and start pulling stuff away from me, like, you can't watch TV anymore, you can't wear pants, you can't do this, you can't do that. And so it very quickly it becomes a restrictive life and then you are gender specific. Like as a girl, I could only learn certain things. I only needed to know certain things. And as boys, they could seem to be able to do whatever they wanted, you know, could wear whatever they wanted. There was, there weren't as many boundaries around them. But as a girl, I had to be as pure as possible. I had to be so aware of not letting you know, causing anyone else around me to stumble or lust after me, even as I'm like a young, young, undeveloped teenager, preteen, you know, so you become very hyper vigilant. And aware. And it creates so many problems, especially for females, not excluding the males. They definitely have, you know, they're getting this idea that they need to be these strong, authoritarian men. And that's not really necessary either to live a fulfilled life with great relationships. So it gets very early entrenched in you as a child that this is the role you are meant to play.

John Dehlin [00:33:39] Yeah. Well, let me, let me just step back and let Chandler and Rebecca respond. And then I do have a question. But I, when we're on the topic of how women are treated, I want to step back. So Rebecca, any, any quick responses?

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:33:53] You know, I actually, I pulled out some quotes from our guest. Sorry, my cat is on my desk here. I pulled out some quotes from our guests. And I love this from Lindsay kind of speaking to what she said. She said through ati, all my freedoms or rights were slowly being taken away from me. It became a world of all the things I couldn't do. And that absolutely resonated with me because when I look back at my childhood, especially teenage years, there was certainly a long list of the things I couldn't be doing. So I appreciated you saying that, Lindsay. I think it really capsulized how a lot of us felt growing up in that high demand, high control situation.

John Dehlin [00:34:26] Thank you, Rebecca and Chandler, when I

John Dehlin [00:34:28] think about your story, I'm trying to remember you were married twice.

John Dehlin [00:34:32] Is that right, Chan?

Chandler Roberson [00:34:33] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:34:34] Tell me if you relate to any

John Dehlin [00:34:35] of the kind of themes that we're touching on right now.

Chandler Roberson [00:34:39] I mean, yeah, all of it. I think this was of the whole documentary, the thing that I related to the most. I mean, same thing as growing up a Mormon girl. I mean, you are kept in a box and you get to watch the Mormon men continue on and do all these awesome things. And there was a part in the documentary where somebody said something about how these high demand religions, they kind of cannibalize your self esteem. And I think that is super true for women because you are kind of fetishizing yourself from such a young age. I mean, I know a lot of people that wouldn't put their babies in like a two piece swimsuit, for example. We're so hyper aware of everything that women are doing, but you're becoming so self aware. It is not healthy to become that self awareness. And so I really do relate. And then same thing goes with marriage. I thought that all my self worth came from what a man gave me and the validation that a man gave me. So I found myself in two marriages, one of them being very unhealthy because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. And it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I kind of started asking myself some of those questions about my self worth and began to develop some more self confidence. But it takes a lot. I mean, I mean these high demand religions really do beat that out of you. So I relate to a very sad level to this.

John Dehlin [00:35:57] Yeah. Thank you, Chandler.

Purity Culture, Modesty, and Women's Roles

John Dehlin [00:35:59] I want to talk about modesty because that was a huge parallel that I found and kind of purity culture. But before we do, for me, clearly

John Dehlin [00:36:09] one of the darkest scenes in the entire documentary was this scene where the

John Dehlin [00:36:15] preacher gets up and invites the boy

John Dehlin [00:36:17] up on stage and puts the boy

John Dehlin [00:36:20] over his knees and starts modeling how to spank your child.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] But to do it in this sort of perverse, you're.

John Dehlin [00:36:28] I love you. Let me spank you while I love you. Oh, get up. Oh, hug me. Oh, you didn't hug me hard enough. Let me spank you again. But to say perverse loving things as I'm spanking you.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] Okay, now you hugged me hard enough.

John Dehlin [00:36:42] Like clearly that was just so deeply disturbing. But then to, you know, and I'm

John Dehlin [00:36:48] just going to admit ignorance here to,

John Dehlin [00:36:50] to hear that there is a culture in the United states in the 21st century where adult wives are spanked. I don't mean to like glorify that or to like act too, I don't know, scandalous about it or tabloidy, but can anybody talk about that actually being a reality in the world? And I don't. Again, I don't mean to be insulting, but can we talk about wife spanking if it's okay? Because I'm shocked by that. Tia, please.

Lindsey Williams [00:37:20] Let me tell you, okay, John, I did not bring this up or write it in my book or share it in a documentary without being able to talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:37:27] Yeah.

Lindsey Williams [00:37:27] So it is okay to talk about. And I just felt shame around it. I do not speak shame into that space. And it is okay to ask questions. And it is okay to talk about is an extreme end of a spectrum. And it's a spectrum that I think. John Josh Peace, who said that this system turns every family into its own cult. You're given all of these vague materials and then built around these principles and you're supposed to interpret them the way that you can. And so in the complementary and authoritative structure that we've already talked about, a tremendous amount of responsibility is put on men. Tremendous. And when you get further, like into my story, which is again the opposite, the far end of the spectrum that is still flooded. Inbox, flooded messages.

John Dehlin [00:38:22] Hey, Tia, you broke up for just a second. Repeat. Tia, repeat what you just said about your inbox being flooded. Tia, Sorry, Yes. You cut out for a second and I think it was really important. Can you repeat what you said about

John Dehlin [00:38:35] your inbox being flooded?

Lindsey Williams [00:38:36] Right.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] So sorry, go ahead.

Lindsey Williams [00:38:39] My inbox is flooded with me toos. It's flooded with me toos. And it is not a rare thing that this happens. It is only silent that it happens because everyone's ashamed to talk about it. They don't know how to talk about it. They can't believe it. They don't believe that they'll be believed. So I don't know if I are about responsibility. Men are. Men are given way too much responsibility and they can't handle it. And federalist marriage, which is Doug Wilson's thing after the iblp, Although a lot of IBLP members adhere to his teachings, the husband is responsible before God for everything that happens in his household. This is also true with the umbrella. So if husband's up here in the umbrella, he's responsible for everything that happens below. A weird thing happens around responsibility in this group. And I would think and all in fundamentalism, there's. The pressure is high to perform and to make sure that you look right, you sound right, you talk right, you act right, you know that you're pleasing to God. So when you have that kind of pressure and to the.

Tia Levings [00:39:41] To the highest stakes, that you're going

Lindsey Williams [00:39:43] to stand before God and account for what happened in your household, you're willing to do whatever it takes to make sure everybody complies and conforms. So the men. What happened is the men got together in these private forums and these back channels behind the paywalls, and they exchanged. This was in the early 2000s. So we still had cassette tapes that were being milled to people and, you know, little crude books that people make in their basements. And they're sharing ideas on how to do this. How do I live this way? I know what the principle is, but how do I live this way? And that's how it came into my home. And I knew wives at the time at homeschool conferences that I had known from my mentorship that this was practiced in their home. And it really compounded the inability to say no. There's already no consent, but I really felt like I couldn't say no. I went to a pastor and I told him of everything and begged for his help. And his answer was, this is God's design for marriage, and you need to honor your husband more. So I call it church sanctioned domestic violence because that's what it was to me. That's what I have discovered in healing is the way to frame it. It's. It's abusive and it's condoned by church leadership.

John Dehlin [00:40:51] I'm so sorry that happened to you and to so many others. I mean, we joked about this trauma Olympics where cults compare the respective traumas that they experience.

John Dehlin [00:41:01] And you know, just like Scientology, oftentimes

John Dehlin [00:41:04] I think of Scientology and Job's witnesses as worse than Mormonism in terms of, like, severity of.

John Dehlin [00:41:10] Of awfulness.

John Dehlin [00:41:12] This was a part of the documentary

John Dehlin [00:41:14] where I'm like, yep, IBL peers have

John Dehlin [00:41:16] it worse than Mormons.

Lindsey Williams [00:41:18] I want to say about that. Can I just. Comparisons are not helpful. Yeah, everyone, trauma has not happened to you. Trauma is how it's stored in your body. So someone who doesn't have it as bad may still feel as traumatized by what happened. It's not, It's. It's the way it is to you as an individual. And that it's not helpful for us to compare to has it worse.

John Dehlin [00:41:42] Totally, totally. I hope it didn't come across like I was condoning that comparison, but I do it anyway. I do it anyway.

Chandler Roberson [00:41:48] And I also, like, make it.

John Dehlin [00:41:50] I.

Chandler Roberson [00:41:51] When I was growing up again, I'm like the kid that grows. I mean, I know Brooke too. Like, we grew up in this from a young age and I was very heavily spanked as a child and it went on into my mid teen years. And it was, it was not. It was not good. It wasn't what I felt would be like a holy way of disciplining. But you're so conditioned that like, well, this is what happens. And it was like a constant thing. There was just even the littlest infractions of not saying yes or no, sir, or, you know, having an attitude or not getting to the car fast enough when I was told to. So it really starts to condition you that this is just the way that it is. And when I was actually going through my therapy over the past couple of years, I was trying to understand what the. Because I have a lot of physical anxiety trauma from all of this. And so for me, even when I saw the little boy getting disciplined on stage, I had a panic attack. Like, I had to stop the show for 15 minutes. And just like, literally I lost my mind as I was like screaming and yelling around my house, house. And I was just like, what in the. What is going on with me? And I knew that it was a trauma response to what had happened, you know, for almost 10 years of my life. But I remember going through therapy where I was trying to figure out how does this make an impact on somebody that is constantly hit in this way and it's to condition them for their spirituality. But my body is harnessing all of this anxiety and I ran, I started running across tons of blogs of fundamentalists and evangelical Christians that had blogs about how to do this to their spouses and then spouses writing, oh, you know, he finally broke my spirit and he finally broke my will and now I see the way of God and I, I was so freaked out. I still like even to talking about this gives me goosebumps everywhere that, that especially if someone is brought into this as a child, they're probably not even going to question it when it starts happening in a marriage. And it's so, it's so gross and heartbreaking. And then if you're like Tia was saying, when you're in a church where a church is going to condone it too and just say well go, go back. You're not submitting. It's similar to what Bill Gothard would do to, to young ladies like my dad is harming me. Well, you need to submit to his authority because his authority is over you. So it doesn't matter his actions. What matters is your submission.

John Dehlin [00:44:15] Beautiful. Brooke, do you anything you want to add really quick? And then I want to throw it to Rebecca and, and Chandler really quick.

Brooke Arnold [00:44:25] Just that I feel like too when you know, to kind of piggyback off what Lindsay's saying. In addition to like the physical terror that's instilled in you, there's also this psychological terror because you're living in this incredibly fear based world where it's only your absolute perfection that can and obedience that can prevent bad from happening to you. And I know like for me as a, as a young imaginative child at the age of seven, you know, kind of being told that the world is infested with demons and that the world is bad and that you know, any kind, any kind of individual thought or behavior or action or expression is disobedience and can kind of rain punishment down on you. You know, it's also extreme psychological abuse and psychological. And I think that fear is the primary tactic that they use.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] Yeah, powerful. Thank you for sharing Rebecca and Chandler. Anything y' all want to add to this specific thread and then we're going to get to modesty.

Corporal Punishment and Childhood Discipline

Chandler Roberson [00:45:29] Yeah, definitely. I, this, this part was hard for me to Watch too, the spanking scene. And you know, I don't think in Mormonism it was, you know, abuse, like spanking. I don't think it was necessarily as big of a role for sure, but I think it just. And relating to marriage and all these relationships as well, I think this is an issue you see in high demand religion or religion in general, is that abuse is confused and taught as love. And it becomes very confusing. So I've always thought about, you've got God in Christ and you have him having his son go to Earth and go through all these horrible things, and that's his dad, and that teaches you that. That love is pain and suffering, and that's okay. And I think that speaking as a woman, I found myself in so many unhealthy relationships, mistaking abuse and things that are unhealthy as love. And I just see this as a really horrible parallel. And then also going through therapy myself, there was a term that I learned called maladaptive homeostasis. And I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, but it's kind of when chaos is, you know, all the time, it becomes your baseline. So when things are not chaotic, you tend to feel like something is going to go wrong or anyway. So I was just curious if any of you have struggled with these feelings since leaving or after leaving with. I guess when things were okay, did you feel like something bad was going to happen or just, I don't know, like, how did you deal with that, moving forward after breaking free from the chaos?

Lindsey Williams [00:47:06] Yeah, it's called making peace with the peace. And it's a whole step, major step of recovery because you're afraid to trust it. You're afraid to trust love because you're used to love that hurts. And I had years of my life where once the pressure was taken off of me, that's actually when my health suffered. And actually when I struggled, like really started having all these panic symptoms and anxieties come out and. And it was ugly. I wasn't safe to do it when I was in. So I would have these beautiful happy moments and then they would just be. I didn't know what to do with them and I didn't know how to be in them at all.

Chandler Roberson [00:47:50] Yeah, I think for. For myself, I definitely was. Again, I still battle with anxiety. I've learned through therapy that my anxiety I may actually carry with me for the rest of my life.

Chandler Roberson [00:48:01] Life.

Chandler Roberson [00:48:02] I also have a lot of inflammatory dis. Issues with just different things that I have that my body had to hold on to and bear the brunt of all of this in silence. And so I just basically became my own toxic personal shell where my body basically just started to turn on itself because it could not. It had no outlet of dealing with the trauma. I'm definitely a catastrophizer. I think that there's always going to be something down the road that is going to happen. I can't really still have a hard time with quiet. If I'm sitting in a quiet space, there's too much nervousness that starts to really show up. So I'm still trying to find that peace for myself because I'm always anticipating that something may happen. I don't want it to yuck my yum. I don't want it to destroy what I love and what I've built for myself. But it's a body response. I'm not consciously trying to make my head do this. It is a survival response of I just need to make sure that I'm going to be okay at all times.

Lindsey Williams [00:49:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] I'm so sorry. That's trauma response, right? That's autoimmune stuff developing from.

Chandler Roberson [00:49:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] Unhealthy.

Chandler Roberson [00:49:12] It's awful. It, I, I won't lie. It makes me really angry, you know, because it's something that the people above us have never really understood, and they don't care to understand what that impact has made. I always say the ax forgets, the tree remembers. They have the, the, the blunt force of their actions, but they don't have consequences of them. We are now suffering for them. And so, I mean, thank goodness for my amazing therapy and EMDR has really helped. And I'm on medication now, and it has quieted down my body so that I can get on with my life, you know, essentially.

John Dehlin [00:49:54] Brooke. Brooke, I see you nodding. Is there something you were wanting to add? No, go ahead.

Brooke Arnold [00:50:00] Not necessarily add, just. I just really feel you, Lindsay. I deal with the exact same thing. Catastrophic thinking anxiety, constantly worrying that I'm in trouble, that I'm messing things up. You know, I, I just was like, oh, I, I, I really do think that's a absolutely a result of these teachings.

John Dehlin [00:50:21] Yeah. Rebecca, did you have a quick response from your experience?

John Dehlin [00:50:25] Yeah.

Rebecca Biblioteca [00:50:26] I think that I also found that this whole segment very disturbing. It's called encouragement. I guess in the IBLP and discipline of very, very young, there's something called blanket training, which I had not where a baby's put on a blanket, the mother holds out a toy, the baby reaches, and then you discipline the baby. It's a way to completely control from birth and make them completely submissive. And I thought about my own upbringing in a more fundamental way. My family was definitely, you know, no, no television the world maybe more than other Mormon families. But, you know, submission like that was really just very ingrained. I have some relatives that said to me later in life, in your entire childhood, you always had your arms folded wherever you went? I don't remember that, but apparent. I walked around with folded arms constantly. And when I think back to my time spent in primary, that's an organization for those of you that don't know, for the younger children in the Mormon church that you go to on Sunday and have activities, the first thing the primary president usually says in that very sweet voice is, I'm not going to begin until your arms are folded, your head is bowed, you're sitting still. The submission is there. Learning to submit, and it continues through your entire life.

John Dehlin [00:51:39] Yeah. Thank you, Rebecca.

Grooming Dynamics Across High-Control Groups

John Dehlin [00:51:42] All right, well. Well, really quickly, the next thing I

John Dehlin [00:51:45] kind of wanted to try and cover

John Dehlin [00:51:46] are the parallels in terms of grooming, appearance, modesty, culture. And I've got a few.

John Dehlin [00:51:53] A few photos that. That I've.

John Dehlin [00:51:55] That I've pulled together here that I

John Dehlin [00:51:57] just want to show.

John Dehlin [00:51:58] So we've got like some. Some hairstyles where kind of like the, you know, for women, for those who can't see, where basically the shorts shorter and what some would say the more modern or masculine hairstyles are kind of discouraged. And then they're showing more sort of longer hair, more. More what maybe some would call traditionally feminine hairstyles are. Are more appropriate. And of course, the more curls, the better. So. So these. And I just have to say, when my wife Margi saw this, she gasped because she remembered seeing these types of

John Dehlin [00:52:36] images growing up as a Mormon young woman.

John Dehlin [00:52:39] So I know that that reservoir.

John Dehlin [00:52:41] I never saw these as a Mormon man.

John Dehlin [00:52:43] Of course, I just saw them on the heads of all the women that

John Dehlin [00:52:46] I were and young women that I were interacting with.

John Dehlin [00:52:48] But at least from my wife Margi's

John Dehlin [00:52:50] perspective, this was an image that was very familiar to her.

John Dehlin [00:52:54] And then, of course, you've got the Duggars, you know, wearing what we would almost call pioneer dresses or clothing, where shoulders are, of course, covered and the dresses are long, long, and the hair is really poofy with the. With the ultra bangs and the. The hair sprayed bangs like that, or with the little girls, like the braids. For me, that gives almost strong FLDS fundamentalist vibes.

John Dehlin [00:53:19] This could.

John Dehlin [00:53:20] This could very easily, almost be a Photo of people down in southern Utah or, like, you know, Colorado City, etc. And then, of course, there. There's this sort of modesty, the. This kind of modesty policing or purity culture. There's this photo of, like, different photos of adults where they're. They've got different gazes and. And the. Basically the question asked above, like, different women looking in different eye gazes or men with different eye gazes. There's a caption that says. Says what are these eyes saying? As if it's kind of your job to manage a facial expression such that you would never, ever encourage any sort of sexual thought or impure thought, but instead, you're wanting to sort of construct a gaze that would redirect people to a positive, Christian edifying countenance. And that takes us to this final image of, like, you know, learn 10 ways to direct the eyes of others to your countenance. And it's got this idea of, you know, what women might do to affect the gaze of men. And this goes back to some of the points that you were talking about,

John Dehlin [00:54:45] Rebecca, early in the show.

John Dehlin [00:54:46] So let me just. If it's okay, let's just spend a little bit of a segment talking about. About purity culture and modesty standards and the sexualization of. Of not just women and young women, but even girls within the IBLP world.

John Dehlin [00:55:05] Who wants to take this one first?

John Dehlin [00:55:08] Brooke.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] Okay, let's do Brooke first.

Brooke Arnold [00:55:11] Yeah. So I want to point out that the images that are being shown are from the homeschool curriculum. Curriculum? Yeah, wisdom booklets. So this isn't just like, something that you're learning in church or something that you're learning in Sunday school. This is actually, you know, what substituting academic study. Like, you're not learning history. You're not learning English. You're not learning math. You're learning slut shaming. As I say in the movie, you're learning modesty standards. You're learning how to dress. You're learning to reject your body, to be ashamed of your body. I think this is one of the things, at least for me, that has had the longest and deepest impact. You know, I still feel uncomfortable showing my shoulders. I still feel uncomfortable when men flirt with me. It's kind of. It becomes so deeply ingrained, I think, especially because, you know, you're learning it at such a young age, and there is this hypersexualization of. Of women's bodies, no matter what age they are. You know, in ibl ATI families, you know, you're learning at the kitchen table. Everyone's studying the same material at. At once. So you're going through this material with your siblings, and everyone's kind of being simultaneously sexualized and groomed in this family setting. And I think for me, that's one of the creepiest, most insidious things about the Gothardism is it's not just this extreme patriarchal Christianity. You also have this kind of subtext of perversion going throughout the deep teachings.

John Dehlin [00:56:49] Well, thank you, Brooke. Lindsay, let's have you go next.

Chandler Roberson [00:56:52] I. I get so triggered looking at those illustrations because they were so entrenched in my upbringing. And I think it's really interesting, that second collage that you showed of the different eyes, like what eyes are good eyes versus bad eyes? And yeah, the woman in the top middle, she's a shiny, happy person. Person. Everybody else has issues. And I. You learn in this cult to judge a book by its cover. Even though Bill Gothard wants everybody to have self acceptance and the way that they're made and the way that their hair is and the way that their body is, this is how God made you. But maybe you should be that. It's. It's so hypocritical. But again, for a young woman, a child, a little girl growing up in this. I was a tomboy. I have two younger brothers. I was very active. They loved sports. I would play with them. And then one day, like, sorry, you can't wear pants anymore. Sorry you can't wear super short sleeves or cap sleeves or cutoff sleeves anymore. All of a sudden, I wasn't even developed yet, and I had to start, you know, wearing everything above my collarbones and my collarbone bones kind of protrude. And so they were a problem. And then it was my ankles that were a problem. And, you know, I think I'm 14 at this point, and everything about me is a problem. My existence. Distance is a problem for men. And so then you start to trust no men because you're just like, well, they're all out to get me. And if I look at them wrong or if I'm interested in what they're having to say, because I was always interested. I was a curious person as well. I'm like, oh, they're talking about something I've never heard about before. Oh, your eyes are too wide when you're listening to them now. And that shows that you're overly eager. So you just start to become this shell of yourself as you continue to put on all the garb in order to look like you're one of these people. And this, for me into imposter syndrome because I didn't believe all that I was being told to do. I didn't want to subscribe to it. I didn't want to believe it, and I didn't want to be this person, but I had no choice because if I didn't, I would get spanked. So the conditioning is so heavily there as well, and it doesn't get better the older you get and your body develops and you're. You're so. It's this, don't touch men. You're everything a man wants. So you have to run from that and guard everything about yourself to, oh, look, you're married now, completely have. Have an intimate relationship with someone, get it on like rabbits, and then go and have 20 children. How in the world do people expect you to flip that switch and all of a sudden become asexual person? It's just. It's so awful. I just get so angry about it.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] Super powerful.

John Dehlin [00:59:35] T, I want to get you in,

John Dehlin [00:59:36] but I'm seeing mega nodding from Chandler.

John Dehlin [00:59:38] So, Chandler, I want to give you

John Dehlin [00:59:40] and then Rebecca a chance to respond. And then T, I'm going to come right to you and go ahead, unmute yourself. Chandler.

Chandler Roberson [00:59:47] Sorry about that. Yeah, no, everything you just said, I almost feel like I could have said myself. Although the only difference was my parents did not make me start dressing more feminine. It was just this thing, this feeling that I had based on pressure at church to become more feminine.

Brooke Arnold [01:00:02] And it.

Chandler Roberson [01:00:02] Just because I grew up a tomboy, too. And then I was like, oh, but it's just this weird thing where you. You, like, want to be feminine, which is, like, attractive to men, but you also are supposed to not be too attractive attractive and too interesting to men. And it's just this weird, like, liminal space to just exist in. And it's. It really is. Use the word. You feel like imposter syndrome. I think that is the biggest thing that I struggle with to this day, too. It's always feeling like a huge imposter because, like, it's so hard to relearn those things. And then again, the same thing. You're. You're taught your entire life to resist and not. Not give men these feelings and not involve yourself with men. And then as soon as you get married, that switch. And I think I've used that exact term so many times, and it is. It's pretty devastating, and it's hard to unlearn that stuff. So I, unfortunately relate a lot.

John Dehlin [01:00:53] Thank you, Chandler. Rebecca.

Rebecca Biblioteca [01:00:55] Yes, I absolutely relate to this in the documentary, this was called being an eye trap, which I thought was absolutely perfect. It means, you know, you're going to suck somebody in and you're going to make them do something wrong. This concept of your body doesn't really belong to you and there are no boundaries on what, what anybody can tell you or teach you to do with your body. I was grew up in an era. I also recognized that picture like Margi did, where we would have lessons at church for young women about what kind of hairstyle would be more attractive and flattering. Also what kind of collar would make you look more modest. I was told that a pilgrim collar, I should only wear a pilgrim collar and that would help me, you know, with maybe a more curvy figure. I had male church leaders that actually spoke to me about, you've got to do something as you're developing because people are noticing and you're causing problems. Problems. Well, what am I supposed to do? I mean, this is nature. This is how I'm going to look. So absolutely this exists in our culture and it does give you that sense of your body is not your own and anybody can weigh in and tell you what you can do. It's very harmful. And again, the parallels, I mean, I just, my mouth was open as I watched this entire documentary. People everywhere are being raised with this shame.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:10] This is one of the areas in

John Dehlin [01:02:11] the documentary where I'm like, I don't think they have anything on us.

John Dehlin [01:02:14] I think, I think there's a very strong parallels here. And I almost wondered how much IBLP has influenced Mormonism or if this is just common to a lot of high demand Christian religions. And of course Islam and Judaism have their own versions. So I think maybe this is just high, high demand patriarchal religions, you know,

John Dehlin [01:02:35] have modesty, slut, shaming kind of sort of rhetoric.

John Dehlin [01:02:39] But let me, let me. I promised I would add you in. And Tia, please jump in here.

Chandler Roberson [01:02:45] Yeah.

Tia Levings [01:02:45] I want to say that what hangs out in the negative space, modesty conversations about women, is what happens with the men. They too are over sexualized. They're taught they don't have any self control and breeds rape culture. I think it's a talking point that gets lost in the.

John Dehlin [01:03:11] T. I'm, I'm, I'm losing Tia's audio. Are the others losing it too?

John Dehlin [01:03:16] Okay, we may have lost Tia. Does somebody want to pick up on,

John Dehlin [01:03:20] on what they are anticipating? Tia was saying, and then maybe we'll get her back.

Chandler Roberson [01:03:24] She was definitely, you know, talking about the rape culture that starts to also be perpetuated within this system. Because men are also. They are kind of told like, hey, you're uncontrollable. And they're given the power, they're given the authority to be able to do whatever they want in their home unquestioned. They are the ultimate authority. Plus, again, we've been taught to be compliant, so we are there at their. At their pleasure. There's also a. A chart that Bill has that talks about the spirit, the soul, and the body. The body is the. The most reduced space. And so I think it's so interesting how much time he talks about purity, culture and your mind and everything else about your body and like, your image. Image. But then it's still. It's the smallest part on his scale that matters. So he's already putting the fact that the priority of your body is low. So whatever happens to it is, you know, that's okay. Because as long as your spirit and your soul are intact, then your body doesn't matter as much. He hasn't. He has. I know. It's definitely one of the worst things I feel like he's ever said. He has information where, like, a little boy is abused by an older teenage boy. And because that boy did not cry out to God, he. He was complicit in the actions that happened against him. This is what Bill has said with many different types of abuses, if you don't cry out, especially with sexual abuse, if you do not cry out, then you are complicit. And also one of his teachings is that if you are in situations of egregious abuse, that that is a way for God to give you bigger and better blessings. So if you're in a sexual abuse or a domestic violence abuse situation, if you've been really indoctrinated with this mater, you more than likely will believe that even though you are being harmed, God is meaning it for a much higher purpose for you. So you may endure it believing that God is blessing you. Heather Heath, who is also on our documentary and has a book called Lovingly Abused, she used to pray that God would allow her to endure such sexual abuses so that she could have the greater blessings from God. How horrible is that? That that is what you're being led to believe by this man who is telling you that you will get greater blessings.

John Dehlin [01:05:47] Powerful.

John Dehlin [01:05:48] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:05:49] Thank you, Lindsay.

John Dehlin [01:05:50] Tia, we want to bring you back on.

John Dehlin [01:05:52] We're having slight Internet connectivity problems with you. I'm not sure if you change your location, but do you want to. Do you want to Pick up where you left off.

Tia Levings [01:06:00] I think I was talking about how men are also sexualized, hypersexualized culture.

Brooke Arnold [01:06:05] And.

Tia Levings [01:06:07] And I'll just repeat it because I don't know where it cut off. But what I was saying is that when you have little boys that are taught from, you know, earliest ages that they can't control themselves and that they will be looking at little girls wrongly and they will be looking at women wrong, and that it's on the girl

Lindsey Williams [01:06:22] always to be the more responsible one and the more preventative one, that it

Tia Levings [01:06:25] feeds into the rape culture that many of us have experienced because the whole paradigm is set up that way. It's the natural consequence of that kind of conflict conversation.

Lindsey Williams [01:06:35] That's what I was saying.

John Dehlin [01:06:37] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:39] A couple really striking points for me were.

John Dehlin [01:06:42] Were when. And Tia may have been you where. Where one of the interviewees talked about being raped twice on their wedding night. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, T. I don't mean to be telling your story. Do you wanna.

Tia Levings [01:06:57] That's fine. So I just. The crux of that story is that I did. I followed it with every rule. I was the good girl. I did everything successfully to make my wildest, happiest dreams. You know, my prince came and I'm going to be a princess bride and I'm going to have this happy, godly marriage and do everything right. That took years of dedication, you know, through high school and all of the above. And what actually happened is not rare as well. I was expected to flip a switch on overnight. Suddenly I'm a sexualized creature. But my husband did not have any language either for acclimation, nervous system acclimation, or foreplay or healthy sexuality. And so he just forced himself on me three times. That was my wedding night. And I ended up traumatized and sick and everything that you are after a sexual assault, but without any language to explain that or to reach out for help.

Lindsey Williams [01:07:56] Help.

Tia Levings [01:07:56] I had to internalize it and kind of figure things out for myself. And the resources that I had available to me actually encouraged that kind of mindset where you're supposed to be available at all times.

Lindsey Williams [01:08:05] You're not supposed to question.

Tia Levings [01:08:06] You don't have any consent over your body. It's all man focused. You know, my entire existence was for his pleasure. Not, not, you know, I didn't have any rights or autonomy or saying that. So I don't exactly know where we are in the conversation. But that, that is. That was the end of my modesty, you know, years when I became mentored in the iblp, they quickly taught me that if I wore jeans in front of my toddler, he was going to get turned on. You know, I need to wear dresses at all times and, and that even my little babies would be sexualized by my disobedience.

John Dehlin [01:08:43] Yeah, and there's just so much here we can go off in so many branches. But there is this ra. Obviously, this rape culture element was so striking to me. Also the part in the documentary where it talked about the punishment of wives

John Dehlin [01:08:58] and how sometimes a wife needs to

John Dehlin [01:09:02] submit to having sex with her husband

John Dehlin [01:09:04] as almost a consequence for conflict with her husband or for being disobedient. Brooke, if it's all right, let me get you in here.

John Dehlin [01:09:12] If, if you want to kind of share some of your perspectives on, on this series of threads that we're discussing.

Brooke Arnold [01:09:21] I think for me, you know, having had a, a slightly different, you know, personal experience, I, I grew up in iblp, you know, immersed in these teachings. I remember, you know, going to Sunday school and getting the modesty teachings, you know, about defrauding and then going downstairs to the church service and noticing the men looking at my body and starting to internalize this hatred of myself and this hatred of my body and the shame and this guilt. And when I event. I eventually left. You know, they kind of talk in the film about how courtships are set up through the father. And so growing up in this large IBLP community, I was very aware of who was going to come and ask me and the fact that I wouldn't be able to say no. And I didn't want to go into that courtship. I wanted more for my life. And so I ended up leaving. But what ended up happening to me is kind of this getting out from under your umbrella of protection became a self fulfilling prophecy because I wasn't really prepared at all to be in the world. I had a second grade education. I didn't know what sex was. I'd never been alone in a room with a man who wasn't a relative. And so for me, suddenly being thrust, not thrust into, or leaving that, leaving the IBLP world and going into the quote, you know, real world, I experienced, you know, sexual assault and sexual abuse because I hadn't really been prepared to say no. I hadn't really been prepared to have a healthy relationship with my sexuality or my body. I didn't even know what masturbation was. So I was just completely unprepared, prepared for the world that I found myself in. And I also felt that the psychological training and the Brainwashing that happened to me within the IBLP kind of set me up to be this, I don't know, all you can abuse buffet for, for, for many, many years.

John Dehlin [01:11:27] I'm so sorry, Brooke.

John Dehlin [01:11:30] Just if it's okay, let me give

John Dehlin [01:11:32] Rebecca and then Chandler a chance to discuss discuss both anything they may or may not want to say about rape and abuse culture within Mormonism and any other, any other commentary they want to make about parallels in their experiences to those that have been shared. Rebecca?

Rebecca Biblioteca [01:11:48] Yeah, one of the phrases that they used in the documentary was a prepubescent sexual subtext, basically sexualizing children in such a weird way. And that modesty culture for sure does that. I have all boys and I remember moving into a very LDS neighborhood and I, we all went out swimming one afternoon and my boys were wearing little swim trunks and a mom took me aside and said we don't show the boys belly buttons here. I mean this is a little three year old in a swim trunk. And how sexualizing this little guy in a swim trunk, it's just pervasive and, and the very dark and ugly side where it arrives as you shared, it's just unconscionable. But it starts there at that sexual subtext that's always there. It's very perfect. Pervasive.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] Yeah. And it's not good for men and it's not good for the male's treatment of women. Chandler, anything you want to add about this? Chandler?

Chandler Roberson [01:12:40] Yeah, no. It seems like in high demand religion, obviously they're not going to teach members about consent because that would just disassemble their whole thing. Right. If you understand consent, you probably understand what religions or high demand religions are doing to you is not consensual. And collateral damage to that is usually abuse, I would say and I think think that it's really similar. I would say in Mormonism there was that, is that the crying out that was in the documentary. It reminded me there's a quote from a general authority in Mormonism talking about abuse as well, saying if you're abused, you have to accept some level of responsibility. You need to assess if you fought as hard as you could and all of that. And as someone who's been abused as well and in a similar circumstance, that was really crushing to realize that not only did it happen, but maybe I was responsible. And like, like you were saying, it really does set you up for continual abuse because you have no boundaries. You've never been taught to say no. But yeah, I think, I think it's really prevalent In Mormonism as well. And unfortunately in a lot of marriages. It seems

John Dehlin [01:13:54] so, so heavy. This. I, I have to admit, I. And I'm. I'm a guy.

John Dehlin [01:13:59] I' white male, middle aged.

John Dehlin [01:14:01] Like, I started watching this documentary the first time and after 10 minutes I had to turn it off because, because I was flooded.

John Dehlin [01:14:08] And if I'm flooded, I just can't

John Dehlin [01:14:09] imagine how flooding it is for, for women because obviously women are, are the, the biggest victims, I think, in, in these sorts of patriarchal societies. So I just want to apologize on behalf of dumb men to, to all of women for how men continue to treat women. It's awful. And I'm flooded, so you must be flooded, maybe even more so.

Bill Gothard's Pattern of Sexual Predation

John Dehlin [01:14:31] If it's okay, I'd like to switch

John Dehlin [01:14:33] to talking about, talking about Bill Gothard a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:14:39] And what I wanted to start with was I can't help but have spent

John Dehlin [01:14:45] a lot of time comparing and in

John Dehlin [01:14:47] some sense this whole episode is structured

John Dehlin [01:14:50] as a way to kind of compare and contrast the Mormon experience experience with, with the IBLP experience.

John Dehlin [01:14:58] But you know, in, in this area of like sexual predation by the leader, you know, of course it's hard to be Joseph Smith. I guess Warren Jeffs, the FLES leader, beats Joseph Smith. But in Joseph Smith's case, you know,

John Dehlin [01:15:12] he had over 30 wives. You know, many as young as 14.

John Dehlin [01:15:17] Mother, daughter pairs, sister pairs.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] He's lying to his wife about it. He's lying to the membership about it.

John Dehlin [01:15:24] Like, it's hard to be Smith in terms of sexual predation, especially when you adjust for time period.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] He's in the early 19th century.

John Dehlin [01:15:31] And so as I'm watching and learning about Bill Gothard, there's, you know, the, the documentary not in, not meaning to give spoilers, but like the documentary, it never really gives. It never really gave me a clear sense of, of whether Bill Gothard was having sex with anyone. Like, like I, I was just so dumbfounded, flabbergasted to see that this guy never was married, apparently never had children. And then even, even the discussions of abuse, it left me unclear. And maybe I didn't watch it as carefully. You know, it talks about the one woman that he takes to the office late at night, but then when he goes in, there's someone in the office. And so you don't have a clear sense if anything ever really happened happened there. It talks about him praying with these women and he's touching their hands weird during the prayer. But, but, but then it ends with this, you know, lawsuit that involved sexual harassment and abuse. And I. So I don't mean to speak in an uninformed way, but I do want to touch about, you know, Bill Gothard's sexual predation. Not that the discussion ends with his

John Dehlin [01:16:44] behavior, because, of course, there's the.

John Dehlin [01:16:46] The Josh Duggar abuse that we need

John Dehlin [01:16:49] to talk about elsewise.

John Dehlin [01:16:50] But, Lindsey, maybe this is a part for you to discuss, because you actually worked with Bill at headquarters. So back up and give us as much as you want to discuss, if you're comfortable, just about. About this.

John Dehlin [01:17:04] This topic, and then we'll go to the others who. Who want to share as well.

Chandler Roberson [01:17:09] Sure, yeah. I mean, I think that everything that we've talked about already is a great lead up to this, because now you have a foundation of what I knew and what conditioned to be. When I met Bill, he was our leader, like the supreme leader. And I was at a seminar. I was teaching with the Children's Institute, which is basically like a Sunday school breakout session for the kids while the parents are taking the basic and advanced seminars. So I'm there with my brother. We're at a hotel. There were a bunch of other students. We're in the breakfast room, and Bill Gothard walks in, and we were. The whole room just kind of got a fluttery, but also a hush, like, you know, it's him. And then we're like, why is he here at the Double Tree? But he is sitting across the breakfast table or breakfast room from me. He was many tables away, and at first he was kind of looking around at other people, and then he locked eyes on me and he stopped looking around the room. And at this point, I think I was 17, 18 years. I think it was 18 years old at the time. But I felt like my maturity and my understanding of the whole wide world was probably 12, maybe 14 at best. And so I had an innocence and a naivety to me, but I thought that he kept looking at me because maybe he just saw the bright shining countenance. Maybe he saw that I was just so entranced with the Lord and I'm just, you know, vibrating religious beliefs off of me, and I finally have, like, one in my Christianity. And he sees that spark in me. Of course, now I know that it was something very different. But he gets up and he comes over to me and he says that he would like to meet me after the seminar. And I'll just come up to the big stage off to the right and. And let's meet. And you don't say no, but you have no idea what this is. About my brother was ecstatic for me. I'm ecstatic but nervous. What does this mean? After the seminar, I go over and I meet his assistant. He takes me out to what I became very familiar with. With his van. It's his traveling van. And he's so excited to see me. I mean, he was just, like, percolating with joy. And he was like, yeah, come on in, and let's get over there. I go over to this little satellite office that. And through a course of events, I'm now sitting with him. You know, he made me go work with the ladies and make dinner. And then we all ate dinner. And then he called me into his office. His male assistant was with him in the office. And I just remember the office being very dark and, you know, a few spotlights here and there, but not much. And he sits back and he's like, well, Lindsay, tell me about yourself. And so I start sharing with him just the things that you do, like how old I was, my spiritual gift, how many kids are in my family, how long we've been in ati, Just all the things you do. And then his first question out of his mouth was, well, Lindsay, are you a virgin? And I was like. I remember looking over at the assistant first, like, oh, those are. That's just not. That's not a modest word to use. And also, why is he asking, just, do I seem like someone who would not be. Or impure? Because, oh, that would be horrible. And I said very meekly, I was like, yes. And he's like, well, good. Okay. Do you have any. Any suitors or anything going on in that area? Because we adhere to courtship. And I was like, well, I have one guy who's interested in courting me. And he's like, well, how old is he? And I was like, he's 35. And he was like, well, we need to release him from that promise. And I was like, I haven't promised him anything. I'm not even courting him yet. He's just interested. And he's like, you need to release him emotionally, so you should call him. So through the course of the week, I do. I call him up and I release him. But every night, I would do the same thing. I would meet him at the stage, go back to his office, and for the rest of the week, we would talk about some things. And then sometimes I would just sit there in silence while he did work with his assistant. But by the end of it, he was like, well, why don't you come to headquarters? I think you have a life purpose of being at headquarters. And of course, who wouldn't want to go? Headquarters, Hello. It's like, you know, it's the ultimate, as they say in the documentary. So my. He calls my parents, they bring me there. They basically say, whatever. Bill Gothard, no questions asked. And he makes me go to Indianapolis for two weeks on my way up to Chicago to take the counseling seminar, because it was a box that needed to be ticked in order to be able to come to headquarters, apparently. Or maybe that was his way of saying, hey, look, she's got enough skill sets. Let's bring her up for the board of directors and whatnot. But I get my way up to headquarters, and I'm immediately thrown into. Within the first week, he starts calling me, and he's like, come up to my office this evening. So I go up to his office, and within the first two or three meetings at his office, we are now praying over at his prayer couch. And he would allow. He would have the assistant leave, and we would be alone. And he would have me come over to his little red velvet couch and sit there and, like, kneel beside the couch with him beside me. And it would start with him holding. Holding my hand, you know, like, I. I went like this, like, put my hands together to. To pray. And then he. All this, like, I have my eyes closed, and he wiggles his hand into my hand and he pulls it towards him. And now our hands are interlocked. I'm a purity culture girl. What in the world is Bill Gothard doing holding my hand in the first place? And this is very intimate feeling. This is where you supplicate with the Lord. Like, this is supposed to be with just you. I don't generally kneel and hold hands with people. So what is this? I was in total freeze. And he's just continuing to pray like nothing's happening. And he's rubbing his thumb against my. He's just caressing my hand. And then his whole profile starts to press up against mine. His shoulder, his elbow, his hip, his thigh, his leg. And I'm like, what is going on? And then his foot starts to caress my foot, just like his thumb was. I'm in full. Just overload. I don't understand what's going on. And then he. He nudges into me. He just, like, nuzzles into my head. And I'm like, I don't know if I could get any further away from this right now, but I don't know how to do that. And all of a sudden, I realize oh, he's nudging me because it's my turn to pray. And so then I try to get out of prayer. I don't even know anything I'm saying. And as soon as we say amen, I, like, I pull out of that. I get up, I get my bag, and I'm like, all right, well, have a wonderful evening, Mr. Gothard. I gotta go now. And I was out. This course of action happened for the first six months, probably every three. Like, for three to week. It happened to me for four to six months in my first time or my. My first introduction to headquarters. And then it tapered off in the. The next year and a half or so that I was there, because he would have other people that would be there, other girls he would bring back from other seminars. And honestly, I was just relieved that it wasn't me. And I. My fight or flight, my resistance to this was internal, but I wasn't doing it externally. And I've been asked before, why did I stay with that? Because the abuse at home was worse, and I had to choose between these, like, two evils. And very quickly, I was dubbed Gothard's pet. Oh, you're one of the Gothard girls. And it was just like a scarlet letter that had been ascribed to me that I didn't ask for. And not once did anybody ever stop to think or say, well, maybe they thought, but they never stopped to say, this is wrong, Lindsay. You need to get out of here. My boss at one point did say, we need to find a way for you to not be spending so much time me with. With Bill. And I'm like, well, how is that supposed to happen? I'm obedient. If I'm willful and I stand up against him or I refuse him, I'm going back to a different abuse system. And I would prefer to just. I mean, all he's doing is, you know, pressing his body against mine. But he loved to play footsie in public, too. He would pull me up into the front table for delegations, and I would try not to sit across from him. If. If I could. I would try to sit, like, one chair down or two chairs without being too obvious that I was trying to avoid. Avoid him. His foot would always find me, like, to this day, like, I will. I curl. Even right now as I'm sitting, I curl my feet around the legs of chairs just out of habit. I have to force myself to cross my leg or sit more normal because I just have this behavior of wanting to tuck my feet in. He did it when I was in Romania with him. Like, it just unbelievable, the amount of touchy, touchy with him and super control over me in kind of like a physical way.

John Dehlin [01:25:48] Oh, Lindsay, I'm so, so sorry. Everyone's shaking their heads. Like, the idea of a prayer couch is so disgusting. The idea of grooming young girls to come to headquarters with your power is so gross. And then all this gross, touchy feely molestation stuff is disgusting. And I'm. I'm horrified and so sorry and so grateful that you'd be willing to, to share that.

Chandler Roberson [01:26:13] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:26:15] And as I think about Keith Ranieri or Warren Jeffs or Joseph Smith or David Koresh, so many of these cult leaders end up. Or even the Elijah Muhammad of Nation of Islam, so many of these cult leader stories end up with pregnant women or rape or assault. And I just, I can't imagine this unmarried, weird, sleep celibate, like, childless guy who's got all this money and power, who isn't also, in addition to this horrible stuff he's doing with people like you, Lindsey, also raping and having sex and molesting women in all the ways. Brooke, let me bring you in here. Do we know if he was just some had some weird boundary that he was able to hold for himself that was still completely illegal? Assault, inappropriate, disgusting, gross, vile, you know, rapey. Do we know if there's also victims in even more extreme cases? Do we even know?

Brooke Arnold [01:27:17] Well, I don't want to violate anyone's privacy, but I do know that Bill got. I have spoken to people firsthand who have been sexually assaulted by Bill Gothard. I know that he has a decades long history of picking out cars. So to join the homeschool program, one of the requirements was that each family submit a individual photo of each of their children over the age of 11. And if we look at the age range of Gothard's predation, we can see that it goes from 11 to 19. So he was using the homeschool program as a means to gain access to young, vulnerable. I think I could say brainwashed because I could include myself in that category. To young brainwashed girls who had been trained to be obedient and amenable to him and for whom he had kind of set himself up in their family chain of command as this almost God level figure. And I think that with the release of this film, you're gonna have a lot more. The courage of people like Lindsay and the courage of the plaintiffs, I think you're gonna have a lot more people coming forward. And I Think we're gonna hear even more extreme stories about Bill Gothard, because I think we've only really scratched the surface and knowledge of what he was up to.

John Dehlin [01:28:48] Thank you, Brooke and Lindsay.

John Dehlin [01:28:50] I hope you.

John Dehlin [01:28:50] It's clear to you I'm not in any way trying to minimize the abuse that you experienced in others like you.

Chandler Roberson [01:28:56] No, I really don't. I think that it's important. Like t was saying earlier, I've had to make peace with some of this to say, like, it is important to speak out, because that's one of the things that is really awful to. About this. This whole system that Bill created is always give a good report. And again, he knows how conditioned we are. He knows the material that we were brought up with. He knows how far he can try to push us. And I really think I've talked to several other friends now because the documentary that have reached back out to me and said, hey, I remember when he did this to you. I remember when he did this. And I'm just like, I know my truth, but when someone else validates that they saw it happening as well, it just helps to lock it in further. And I think that the fear, especially for the. Like, I know that all of our traumas are valid, but those. Those more egregious lines that he probably attempted to cross, I don't doubt that they were attempted. You know, I. Not for one second. And anyone that. That would try to even speak out for the more insidious things that he attempted or did. I think that that fear. I can't even imagine the overwhelm of just physical fear just being believed. Because I think he set up a system where no one would believe someone like that that would come out in a victim. They're not going to believe it. I have relatives that do not believe what I have said and that I am making it up.

John Dehlin [01:30:23] Yeah.

Chandler Roberson [01:30:24] So I can't imagine it being worse. You know, I can imagine it being worse for. For others and so terrifying to speak up.

John Dehlin [01:30:30] Yeah.

Chandler Roberson [01:30:32] Did I say something?

John Dehlin [01:30:33] Yes, yes. Chandler.

John Dehlin [01:30:34] Oh, go ahead. Yeah, please.

Brooke Arnold [01:30:36] Oh. I just wanted to add. I just wanted to add to this real quick that, you know, Bill Gothard, too, you know, this. This was all very intentional. It was his intention to find girls, and he collected information through family consultants in the homeschool program on the different families. And so he also kind of selectively chose people who were being abused, people he was already aware were being abused in their own home, so that he could prey on the very vulnerable and make it the least likely that they would be the ones who would ultimately speak out.

John Dehlin [01:31:12] Yeah. Thank you. So, Rebecca and Chandler, I'm going to

John Dehlin [01:31:17] throw it to you both just to

John Dehlin [01:31:19] hear your reactions to Both Joseph Smith

John Dehlin [01:31:22] vs. Bill Gothard, but also, you know,

John Dehlin [01:31:25] Mormon practices of things like one on one interviews and rape and assault and cover ups.

John Dehlin [01:31:30] But before I do, really quickly, Tia, is there anything you want to add

John Dehlin [01:31:34] to this discussion of Bill Gothard's sexual predation?

Lindsey Williams [01:31:40] No, I think the stage has been set really well. I think more revealed and I think it's just important to really look at the grooming behavior that is very long and extensive. It'll help later when more comes out.

John Dehlin [01:31:54] Okay, thank you.

John Dehlin [01:31:55] Okay. Well, Chandler, I'm curious if Bill Gothard's sexual predation gave you any Joseph Smith vibes or even modern Mormon prophet vibes. And then any reactions you have about like grooming or one on one behaviors or cover ups of sexual abuse.

John Dehlin [01:32:11] And then, Rebecca, I'm gonna ask you the same question.

Chandler Roberson [01:32:14] Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the parallels between Joseph Smith and Bill are pretty obvious, but I think that a huge issue is that they put so much on people's countenance and appearances so that when somebody does abuse somebody, it's easy for them to say, oh, they could never. They're such a, like you're saying, a shiny, house happy person. There's such a spirit about them, whatever it may be, so that it's impossible to hold people accountable. And I can relate because in college I was abused by somebody who fit the Mormon mold in a way that I never wanted to go to leadership because I knew that I wouldn't be believed either. So it really is a similarity that's being bred between the two. But I am curious really quick too with what Lindsay said when all this was happening. Was this kind of your first, first big, like, I want to say way out, but was this like a big what am I doing Moment when Bill was coming on to you and doing

Chandler Roberson [01:33:11] this, One would think that it would be, but it wasn't. I was so deeply brainwashed. I don't even, you know what, I don't even want to say brainwashed or indoctrinated. I was conditioned. I was so conditioned. And I also believed I had no value, I had no worth. So I didn't even know that. Like my, one of my friends, one of my dearest friends, he was like, did it never occur to you that the door was open for you to walk out? Like to just one? Because at headquarters there's a little more freedom versus the training centers where they're a hotel, there's one way in, one way out. I lived in a house. I was a house mother. I had, I had a lot more freedom than the average person within these systems. But it literally never occurred to me at any point that I could just leave and go get a job and maybe just, you know, pretend, you know, moonlight at one job and come back to this one. I just, I was so afraid too because the one thing I've always been aware of is how much I didn't know. I knew I didn't know enough to be able to survive the outside world. So somehow I had to just endure and hope that even if like my way to freedom was getting married, there was no other option for me to get out of any of this.

Chandler Roberson [01:34:35] Yeah, And I, I 100% believe you because I think in a lot of abuse situations, in high demand religions, you know, obviously you have this highest up person abusing you. And I think because you are not taught any of those skills and then you have such a low self worth, it's easy to turn it back on yourself and say it must be something I'm doing or I could be doing something better. And it really does not occur to you in any step along the way that this is not okay. And looking back, you can see it, but it can be really murky. So I'm just happy that you got out.

Chandler Roberson [01:35:07] Thank you. And I do want to also say that when you do get free of these systems or when you endure these systems, it also just continues to exacerbate the anxiety. I knew it inside from a very young age that I didn't subscribe to any of this. You know, I question even if I really became a Christian or if I was impostering because I just wanted to survive my life. So even getting into Bill Gothard and dealing with him, I was just like, this just seems to be how it rolls, right? Because you can't control men, but you can control yourself. So I just became a very hyper controlled, non trusting, but all internal. So all of this I knew, I knew fundamentally where I stood with things. I just felt like I had to

John Dehlin [01:35:52] keep enduring beautiful, great questions, Chandler. And thank you so much Lindsay for sharing such difficult stuff. And Rebecca, you and I have been talking a little bit about Elizabeth Smart lately. And hearing Lindsay's comments about the door being unlocked but not feeling, feeling like

John Dehlin [01:36:12] she could leave definitely gives me Elizabeth

John Dehlin [01:36:15] Smart, you know, Brian David Mitchell vibes.

John Dehlin [01:36:17] But I just want to throw it

John Dehlin [01:36:18] to you to answer the same question.

John Dehlin [01:36:19] About either Joseph Smith and or modern

John Dehlin [01:36:23] Mormon patriarchal structures that just are breeding grounds for both the patriarchal abuse and cover ups.

Rebecca Biblioteca [01:36:32] Yeah. Something that Lindsay said really struck me when she said that other people reached out after the fact and said, I knew this was happening, happening to you. And that is very much the culture. I'm not sure if you are aware, but in the Mormon religion we have interviews one on one, starting at a very young age. Like I think it's eight now or even. Yeah, around eight. One on one alone with a male authority figure, a bishop or a counselor. And you go in and as you said, you're extremely conditioned. You just answer everything and there's no inappropriate question that you are not expected to answer. So I, growing up in the era of the 70s and 80s, went through many situations I related to. I can't remember who it was on the, on the documentary who talked about tampons. I was also asked about tampons and why am I using them and how evil of me. Things that are so inappropriate you can't even believe it. I was had masturbation explained to me by a bishop because I didn't know what it meant. And he said, I can see by the look on your face you don't know what it means. I'm going to tell you so you can answer the question whether you're doing this. This is 12 or 13, so these kinds of things happen.

John Dehlin [01:37:37] Lindsay, we've got some serious, serious nodding.

Rebecca Biblioteca [01:37:39] Yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, but, but the issue what Lindsay said is my friends, we all knew this was happening. We would sort of console each other. Oh, did he ask you? Yeah, we never thought as a group to go in and say, look, this is happening to us. It was just what happened. And we sort of supported each other by making fun of it. We were never, we never said, you know, oh my gosh, we need to tell someone. It was like always just shrug. And that was sort of the era. It was also the environment. So I'm wondering from any of you, did you talk amongst yourselves at all or was it just so locked down that you couldn't. You suffered alone yet everyone knew it was probably happening. I'm just curious about that.

Chandler Roberson [01:38:24] For me it was definitely a suffer alone even. Even though we were all like, I have had really good friends there, but I didn't trust them. And I remember telling someone once about what Bill was doing, like, oh yeah, he prayed with me and this is what happened. But even they were like, oh really? Well that's weird. But I was, I instantly was like, I can't trust this person to tell him. It's been systemically happening for the last two years. You're not safe. No one was safe. Because you also were. If you knew about something that was going on that was egregious, you needed to give that report, you needed to tattle. And what you guys were saying about you had these meetings that you would have to do with a male that to me was our father structure, our home structure. If you had lustful thoughts or impure thoughts about something, or you lust. You desired a toy or you did something inappropriate, you were to self report. So a lot of the times that guilt, you would just have it already conditioned inside of you to say, oh, you know what? I just did this. I stumbled by doing this. And you would just self report and then you self police too. So you're not going to tell other people what's going on? For me, it was a fear of they're not going to believe me.

John Dehlin [01:39:42] Yeah, well, I'll just say, you know, Chandler, you. You did say that.

John Dehlin [01:39:48] The, the parallels between Bill Gothard and Joseph Smith are obvious. Just for those who don't know about Mormonism or for many orthodox Mormons that don't know about the real history of Joseph Smith, I do think it's worth

John Dehlin [01:40:01] stating, and we've covered this on Mormon

John Dehlin [01:40:03] Stories in our LDS discussion series, Joseph

John Dehlin [01:40:06] Smith absolutely had a pattern of identifying vulnerable young teenage girls, whether they were domestic workers in his own home, whether it's phenylgia or others, whether it was foster children, sister pairs that were entrusted to live with him. He would isolate them. He would meet with them one on one. He would pressure with them. He would use his spiritual influence to pressure them. And then he would basically give them ultimatum, saying, marry me as my. As my 20th or 25th wife. If you do so, your entire family will be saved in heaven as God's. And if you don't, you and your

John Dehlin [01:40:43] whole family will be damned. And of course, once they submitted, the

John Dehlin [01:40:47] sex followed, as we all presume, because

John Dehlin [01:40:50] polygamy was always about sex within Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:40:52] But then also, if any woman dared speak out and say, Joseph approached me and I declined his advances, he would

John Dehlin [01:41:00] destroy them in the press and smear them mercilessly.

John Dehlin [01:41:04] And so this idea of both predation, isolation and then fear of speaking the truth and being terrorized, that's absolutely foundational to the Mormon story and the Mormon experience. And in the modern era, in 2023, a month literally doesn't go by where

John Dehlin [01:41:23] there's not another news story of a Mormon bishop or a Mormon male or,

John Dehlin [01:41:27] you know, youth leader whose, who's now, you know, being charged with sexual abuse of a young woman or a young man or, you know, a child within Mormonism. Not, not even mentioning, you know, paternal sexual abuse that's going on or sibling

John Dehlin [01:41:47] sexual abuse that's going on and being covered up.

John Dehlin [01:41:49] And then of course, we've got the Boy Scouts of America that's almost been destroyed in part by the Mormon Church participation in the program where up to, up until recently, the Mormon Church was willing to settle up to $750 million in the boy Scouts of America suit because we know that at least 80,000 victims, you know, Mormon boys have been victims of sexual abuse within the Boy

John Dehlin [01:42:13] Scouts of America context.

John Dehlin [01:42:15] And so I just, I feel the need to draw these parallels because I

John Dehlin [01:42:19] don't think I'm forcing the parallels. You know, I think they're real.

Chandler Roberson [01:42:25] Yeah. And I think, you know, one thing too as well, on top of that is that I do feel like Joseph Smith did a similar thing where he wasn't totally living the religion that he was introducing and requiring other people to live. I think there's so many steps, I mean, if with like word of wisdom, with not drinking alcohol or with even with like the sealing process, because he wasn't, I think it was, he wasn't even sealed to Emma is that right before he was married to Joseph was

John Dehlin [01:42:52] sealed himself secretly to like 22 women before he ever got his first wife on board with polygamy. And then he was sealed to her as like the 22nd spouse.

Chandler Roberson [01:43:03] Exactly. So, yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't living the same religion that he was expecting everyone else to live. And it was all just kind of this self serving thing. And I thought it was interesting too, just the way that I think in Mormonism we talk about how, you know, there's this culture and a lot of members will say the culture is different and the church is different, they're two separate things. But we understand, we know that culture is not produced in a vacuum. It comes from somewhere. And I think the abuse is the same thing. When you have leaders like Joseph Smith or Bill Gothard, they come from somewhere because along the line you have people that are willing to keep buying into that power structure and abuse. So, yeah, I definitely see a painful amount of parallels.

John Dehlin [01:43:46] Yeah.

Institutional Protection of Abusers

John Dehlin [01:43:47] All right, well, part, part, you know, the one aspect of the Duggar family that I was actually familiar with was

John Dehlin [01:43:56] that at some point the oldest son,

John Dehlin [01:43:59] Josh, you know, Gets busted for, you know, assault or rape or you know, eventually child pornography.

John Dehlin [01:44:07] And I think he ends up in prison.

John Dehlin [01:44:09] What we absolutely. But what was shocking to learn from the documentary again, spoiler alert, was that the Douglas family knew about Josh's molestation of his own siblings and possibly other women before they ever signed the contract to do the, the program with, with tlc. And so just this brazen knowledge of abuse. But then the COVID ups of abuse, you know, the abuse is bad enough, but the coverups, you know, whether it's the spotlight scandal with the Catholic Church

John Dehlin [01:44:46] or the Mormon church and the Boy

John Dehlin [01:44:48] Scouts or the Duggar family covering up Josh's, their knowledge of Joss's, Josh's early abuse is just repulsive. And so let me just throw it to our panelists to just speak about whether it's the Duggars or Josh or just the culture of knowing cover ups

John Dehlin [01:45:07] with within, you know, within the IBLP culture. Who wants to, who wants to take that first?

Lindsey Williams [01:45:14] Yeah, I want to say that. Yeah, sorry. I want to say that I think one of the reasons why Jim Bob dismissed it is because it's not uncommon. Josh Duggar is certainly the most well known fundamentalist son who molested his sisters and went down a really dark road after that. But we all know people like that. We all know families that weren't on TV that did that. I don't think he, you can even see in the responses since they documentary. His, his M.O. is to protect boys, not even his daughters, who were the victims themselves. So I think, I think it is a reflection of the culture and I think it is a consequence of so much of the behavior lifestyle that comes along with the ride with, with Quiverful and glorified poverty, small houses, hypersexualization, like all of these things create a formula that results in this. Josh Duggar, once upon a time was a baby and he was blanket trained and he was abused and he was suppressed and he was not offered tools. And when that happened, when he did that to his sisters as a young boy before their first TV special, he was sent to a behavior camp to build houses instead of talk about what was going on. So the line of travesties is his lifetime. It's not as easy as saying this one thing happened and it happened in isolation. It absolutely did not happen in isolation anymore. More than any of these situations do. And the commonalities between the Catholics and the Mormons and the Fundamental Baptists, Fundamentalists there, it's all the same. When you listen to survivors. There's no distinction. We might have some doctrinal differences here and there, but the traumas and the abuses are identical case after case after case after case.

John Dehlin [01:46:58] Powerful. Brooke, Brooke, I want to come to

John Dehlin [01:47:01] you next, but I'll just say like the end where,

John Dehlin [01:47:06] sorry, the Duggar dad. Tell me his initials again.

Brooke Arnold [01:47:10] Jim Bob.

John Dehlin [01:47:11] Jim Bob Where? Jim Bob, in response to the shame of losing his TV show and his son being put in prison. What's his response to that? It's to run for Senate. Just this doubling down. I've heard so many instances in Mormonism when a high level leader is guilty of abuse. He gets, gets promoted to a higher status within the organization. As if the Mormon Church has this history. Abuse is so systemic that that the church leaders double down by promoting the abuser. It's just, it's so crazy to see that in other cultures and it's almost in a sad way reassuring to see that other cultures double down in such a disgusting way because at least it's not just us.

John Dehlin [01:47:58] Brooke, let's give you a chance.

Brooke Arnold [01:48:00] Well, I think that institutions seek to maximize control and there certainly seems to be a certain segment of the population that has, that is predatory and that also seeks to maximize control. What the origin of that is, you know, we can only speculate. But I think that, you see, I think what we're learning from these cross church, cross religious, cross institutional abuse scandals is that these institutions are being used to abuse and control people that can easily, easily be hijacked for that. Speaking of the Josh Duggar sex scandal, in 2015, I published an article that said I grew up in an IBLP church and this scandal doesn't surprise me because sexual abuse and domestic violence were endemic within my church. That's something I witnessed. There are, you know, three boys that I grew up with in ATI from my IBLP church who are now registered sex offenders. And more. There would be more, even, even more than that that I'm aware of, but that just never got prosecuted. And so thinking about how, looking at, looking at kind of the inherent danger that we see institutions create towards control and abuse, thinking about how the, how those are structured and how that, what their teach, I think kind of just leads to this inevitability.

John Dehlin [01:49:34] Yeah, it's a dark inevitability for sure.

John Dehlin [01:49:37] Lindsay, let's give you a chance to

John Dehlin [01:49:38] weigh in and then Chandler and Rebecca will give you final words on this topic.

Chandler Roberson [01:49:43] Yeah, I don't, I don't know that I have too much more to add, honestly, because I feel like there's so much about it that it's just insidious in the way that it works, and it's effective, and for those who are brought up in it, they don't know any better but to follow. And then those that have the. The. The power are the ones that kind of turn the blind eye. You know, there have been so many times where people have even told Bill about what was going on in. In IBLP or in their families, and he would send them right back to it. And so the complicity of this and also just knowing that we're controllable, it. I don't know, it breaks my heart, and it makes me so enraged, because these systems will always put pressure on the victims and gaslight the victims and then continue to give all of the power to the abusers, and they're none the wiser. I, you know, or no one is the wiser for it. Like, nobody would have looked at all these shiny, happy people and thought, oh, wow, there's something really wrong here. And again, that was designed. It was designed that way. I've had relatives reach out and say, we didn't know that these types of things were going on in your home. And I'm like, you weren't supposed to it. We were to keep silent and not give bad reports.

John Dehlin [01:51:02] Yeah. This idea, this culture of protecting the abusers and. And punishing the victims is just outrageous. Chandler and Rebecca, anything y'.

John Dehlin [01:51:10] All.

John Dehlin [01:51:11] Y' all want to add before we kind of start wrapping up?

Rebecca Biblioteca [01:51:14] I was going to say that it's. It's tragic on so many different levels. I remember one part of the documentary I think it was. It was a reporter asked Josh's mom, Michelle, so, you know, you sent your son away. He got help. Did you talk to him? She said, oh, no, I don't need to talk to him. I just talked to our heavenly Father. I talked to God. So it's just a blip on the radar to them. And. And to your question of why would you then run for political office, I feel it may have to do with. We're doing God's work. Right. It's Christianity with activism, I think is the phrase they used. These other things that are happening, forget about those. We're moving forward on our mission. I just wonder if it's not given the attention that it needs because there's a bigger picture. It's God's work. It's rolling forward. That's kind of the sense I got. Nothing else matters. Very tragic.

John Dehlin [01:52:00] Yeah. For a culture wrapped around shame, these

John Dehlin [01:52:04] people are kind of shameless.

John Dehlin [01:52:05] You know, in the way they run their culture. Chandler, any final comments on this topic?

Chandler Roberson [01:52:12] I mean, also, I think what's been said I agree with. It's just. It's just kind of amazing. What a performance. I mean, obviously we talked about gender, but just being part of high demand religions is because, like you were saying, Lindsay, you just wouldn't know from the outside, from so many of these fundamentalist groups that there was anything awful going on inside. Like, even for me, you know, I was familiar with the Duggars, and then watching this, I was shocked. And that's coming from someone that, you know, grew up in the Mormon religion. So it's just, it's. It's exhausting and, and super sad. I don't know. It just blows my mind.

John Dehlin [01:52:49] Yeah. Well, this is an amazing panel, and I am just so grateful that all

Closing Reflections and Words for Survivors

John Dehlin [01:52:57] of you are here caring enough about

John Dehlin [01:53:00] humanity to want to weigh in on topics like this and wanting to.

John Dehlin [01:53:05] I know that all of your hearts

John Dehlin [01:53:07] are to try and just help us do better as humanity. Right. As people.

John Dehlin [01:53:12] So what I'd like to do is

John Dehlin [01:53:13] end just by kind of going around the horn and giving everyone a chance

John Dehlin [01:53:17] to, number one, just kind of make any final point that they want to make or summary or plea or recommendation. And of course, please feel free to plug any book or show or blog

John Dehlin [01:53:31] or whatever it is, you know, social media account that you want to because. Because you're all doing really important work.

John Dehlin [01:53:39] Let's start with Tia. We'll do Tia, Lindsey, Brooke, Chandler, Rebecca.

John Dehlin [01:53:45] That's going to be the roll call.

John Dehlin [01:53:46] So, Tia, final thoughts?

Chandler Roberson [01:53:50] Yeah.

Lindsey Williams [01:53:50] Earlier you were talking about Bill Gothard and you mentioned that you had an instinct that there had to be more. And I would just love to affirm that. We need to listen to our instincts, our body. Bodies know what our mind can't always articulate. And to clock that and to honor it can sometimes be like armor against further trauma. I think that if we had all been, you know, raised from early childhood to pay attention to our instincts and have our autonomy honored, none of us would be having these conversations today.

Tia Levings [01:54:25] So that's.

Lindsey Williams [01:54:26] That's really the focus of my work. I believe that trauma victims have a healing, that they are. They are worth it and that they deserve it. And that is the focus. The focus is the light and reclaiming what was taken from us. I say a lot, if trauma took your past, it does not have to have your present and your future, too. And so that's where your control is and it's in how you handle it from here. My book comes out in August of 2024, so there's still a long wait for that. I'm very active on Instagram. Tia Lovings Writer and I'm always happy to hear from you. So if this resonated with you, feel free to DM me or reach out, you know, in any way. I put up a new substack today on complicity and. And criticism, the evangelical response to all of this and targeting. So there's lots. There's lots of content in my realm to. To interact with until the book comes out.

John Dehlin [01:55:17] Beautiful. Bless you, T. It's been so great to have you and your. Your part unshiny happy people was just amazing. Amazing and so important. Thank you, Lindsay. Let's have you go next.

Chandler Roberson [01:55:29] So I. I think for me, what I would. What I've always wanted to impart to people is they're not alone and that they will be believed. They need to find, unfortunately, the right people to believe them. And that really sucks because you would hope that the adults in the room would know how to protect you and how to listen to you and how to believe you. So I started telling my story out on TikTok TikTok under the occult chronicles three years ago. And I've found so, so many survivors have found me. And that's been a really healing way even for me to see that my voice is getting out and where people are finding me, they're not alone. We're able to talk about some of this trauma that we've all been through. But then I always resource them to go and get a complex trauma therapist, not just a family therapist or, you know, talk therapy, a complex trauma therapist. Because this type of damage so deeply, it's reprogrammed the way that our mind and the way that our body actually function. I've. I've done the practice of EMDR therapy, which has truly changed my life and changed the way that my body behaves. I've allowed my body and my mind to become a little bit more together instead of living so separately in their understandings of each other and then just continue to be brave. It's really hard to be brave. But bravery doesn't happen unless. Unless there's fear. You have to have that fear and that worry and fight through that to be brave enough. And someday that bravery will switch into courage and you will want to speak even more because you'll realize that the fear is only there because that was the confine and the conditioning that was placed upon you that isn't your True North.

John Dehlin [01:57:17] Beautiful and powerful. And I'll just say I'm adding. I just added Lindsay and tia to my TikTok accounts. I'm excited to follow you both there, Brooke.

John Dehlin [01:57:28] Oh, any other thing you want to plug Lindsay before we go to Brooke?

Chandler Roberson [01:57:31] Not yet. I mean, I am in. In the throes of trying to write my story, but I keep joking that their people's grandchildren will probably read it. It's a long process, and I've never done it before, but for me, it's just Cult Chronicles. That's where I'm using my voice and other podcasts and stuff. But I do have links in my bio for just more information resources if you need different resources for help and a escaping situations that are difficult or homeschooling support. That's healthy. Homeschooling support. I have a lot of different foundations and organizations listed out there in the link in my bios.

John Dehlin [01:58:08] Beautiful. All right, thanks, Lindsay.

John Dehlin [01:58:10] Okay, Brooke, you're next.

Brooke Arnold [01:58:14] I want to just take a second and thank you for having all of us on the show. And I want to thank Tia and Lindsay for being here. I have so much respect and love for them. It's an honor to be a part of Shiny Happy People with them and. And the panel with them today. I also want to say just real quick, thank you to Corey Shepherd Stern, Olivia Christ, and Alicia Russo, who were the executive producers, directors, and studio execs that made Shiny Happy People possible. This is a really difficult story for people to deal with. I think that there's a lot of recognition here, which is why I think it's an important story, and I'm grateful that we're having this chance to tell it. It's really exciting to see so many people from so many different backgrounds come forward and say, I recognize something of myself in this because I think that the more that we understand how these systems of oppression and abuse work, the more we can combat them. If you want to find me online, I am Trippin with brooke Arnold on TikTok and Instagram, and my website is www.trippinwithbrooke.

Chandler Roberson [01:59:31] ar.

Brooke Arnold [01:59:32] I am currently on an unlimited road trip traveling to all 49 states, so you can follow my travels there.

John Dehlin [01:59:43] That's awesome. Yeah. And I just added you to TikTok as well.

John Dehlin [01:59:46] Well, thank you.

John Dehlin [01:59:47] Of course. Thank you, Brooke. It's so great to have you.

John Dehlin [01:59:50] What a great panel. Right, Chandler, Rebecca.

John Dehlin [01:59:54] And this has just been so great.

John Dehlin [01:59:56] Chandler, let's give you a final word,

John Dehlin [01:59:58] and then we'll end with Rebecca Chandler. Oh, go ahead and unmute yourself, Chandler. Sorry.

Chandler Roberson [02:00:04] Sorry again.

John Dehlin [02:00:05] No worries.

Chandler Roberson [02:00:06] I just want to say, first of all, like, thank you to all three of you for coming here and for being on the documentary. I know that is not easy and I know there's so much loss of friends and family along the way. So thank you for doing that. I seriously connect with all three of you on so many different levels. And then I want to say I appreciate you sharing the struggles that you face too. I think a lot of the time post religious people feel this pressure to continue to be shiny, happy people and to make it seem like that process is also effortless. So I really appreciate you sharing the things that you struggle with as well, because I think that a lot of people will connect with those things as well, myself included. I also want to second the complex trauma therapy. I think that is very good advice. And again, thanks for letting us share kind of the parallels between Mormonism and some of of the parallels that you guys experienced as well. I think there are a lot of times people might see other religions and then it helps them unlock things within their own and make them think more critically. So doing that is just really helpful. I know I had a lot of people messaging me on Instagram when I posted about this documentary that are practicing LDS and were. I couldn't believe this. I couldn't believe this. But they were direct parallels. So I hope with continuing this that other people will continue to see. See those things. But yeah, that's all I have.

John Dehlin [02:01:24] And people can find you where.

Chandler Roberson [02:01:25] Chandler, Tick tock, Instagram. My handles just Chan Roberson.

John Dehlin [02:01:31] All right, so great to have you, Chan. Please come back.

John Dehlin [02:01:33] Okay, thanks.

Chandler Roberson [02:01:35] Anytime.

John Dehlin [02:01:36] All right, and let's end last but absolutely not least, my dear friend Rebecca.

Rebecca Biblioteca [02:01:44] Thank you so much. Yeah. I just have to say that when I sat down with my bowl of popcorn flipped on Amazon prime because that's where you can find this documentary, I just, I had no idea what impact the documentary would have on me personally and the parallels I would see. And then I had no idea that within a few days I would be in contact with these incredible survivors. Just amazing and wonderful people who are so open in sharing what they've gone through. And with so many resources, I feel that anyone in a high demand, high control religion can. Can use. And I just feel really honored to be able to have been a part in introducing these incredible survivors, survivors to the post Mormon community. There was one thing that I just wanted to read at the end. This is a quote toward the very end of the documentary by Chad Harris. He's another wonderful survivor that that is prominent in the documentary. And I think this just sums it up. It says we had this power the entire time over the people who were hurting us. It turns out as much as they try to control us, we were ultimately what they feared most. And all we had to do was talk. That just gives me goosebumps because that's all we have to do is talk. That's what you do. That's what Mormon stories does. That's what all of the platforms do. We just talk and we heal and we connect and we empower through that. So I just thank you guys. You're just absolutely wonderful. So thrilled to have met all of you.

John Dehlin [02:03:12] Amen. I see a lot of heads nodding. Yeah. Thank you so much to all of you.

John Dehlin [02:03:17] Really quick, Rebecca, before we go, plug plug your stuff.

Rebecca Biblioteca [02:03:21] Oh, let's see. Mormonish podcast. We drop episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays. And then if you want to read to reconstruct and heal the good book club for post and nuanced Mormons.

John Dehlin [02:03:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:31] That's so beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:03:32] All right, well, what an amazing panel. Again, the documentary that every Mormon and

John Dehlin [02:03:39] ex Mormon and human should check out is she Shiny Happy People, four parts, the Duggar family secrets.

John Dehlin [02:03:48] It's really only a fraction about the Duggars.

John Dehlin [02:03:52] Honestly.

John Dehlin [02:03:53] It's much more about IBLP and ATI

John Dehlin [02:03:58] and Bill Gothard, which for me was delightful because it's really the engine behind the Duggars and this homeschool curriculum movement. We didn't even touch on the kind of Christian national, the sociopolitical ramifications, the militarization. And just in this world of topsy turvy conspiracy theory world going on, this

John Dehlin [02:04:21] is the engine for so much that's wrong with America today. And so it's for all those reasons

John Dehlin [02:04:27] it's such an important documentary.

John Dehlin [02:04:30] Everybody, check it out. Support these documentaries because we need viewers

John Dehlin [02:04:35] and forwards and shares to make these streaming services want to invest in more programs like it.

John Dehlin [02:04:42] So thanks again. Check out Shiny Happy people. Thanks to our amazing panelists, y' all. Keep up the great, great work.

John Dehlin [02:04:50] And thanks to everyone who supports Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. We couldn't do it without you. Go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor, and then of course, subscribe to our YouTube channel, subscribe to Facebook and TikTok and Instagram,

John Dehlin [02:05:05] and then share with everybody in addition

John Dehlin [02:05:07] to all the amazing accounts that we've shared today.

John Dehlin [02:05:11] Please, everybody, let's get rid of patriarchy. Let's get rid of high demand religions. Let's get rid of dogma. Let's get rid of abuse. Let's get rid of anti science, anti skepticism, anti rational mentalities and let's, let's move to a world of ego egalitarianism, of social justice, of, of, you know, of just kindness and, and love and connection and healthy communities.

John Dehlin [02:05:42] I think that's what we all want in the end.

John Dehlin [02:05:44] Be good to each other.

John Dehlin [02:05:45] Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.