Table of Content
- New Bethany founder Mack W. Ford died of a heart attack, coroner says
- Seven former residents of New Bethany Home for Girls make emotional return to Arcadia to file charges of sexual assault
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- About Gunzenhausen Beach Home Rentals on Rent By Owner
- Looking for news you can trust?
- Grand jury declines to indict Mack W. Ford, founder of New Bethany Home for Girls, following allegations of sexual abuse
- Pretty Girls from Gunzenhausen
The only way to eradicate these kind of homes and the influence men like Lester Roloff, Jack Hyles, and Mack Ford have over IFB churches is to shine the light on their vile, dark secrets. An earlier statement of one of the alleged victims was turned over to state police in Bossier City in October, Ballance said. "We'll visit you," Elizabeth Jordan said before watching the girl disappear into a circle of people at the home. Another pulled open the passenger side door before Elizabeth jerked it back shut. Ralph slowed his green van along Highway 9 in Arcadia, La. The couple's two young daughters were in the back seat.
It survived years of residents' complaints, outlasted social workers' documented abuse findings and largely fended off state and local authorities' efforts to intervene. And while the home was shuttered from time to time, it always reopened. No one at the girls' home was ever prosecuted over claims of abuse. Stories of physical and mental abuse plagued New Bethany for almost as long as it was open, documents and news stories show.
New Bethany founder Mack W. Ford died of a heart attack, coroner says
The site had served as a penal farm and later a nursing home before he turned it into a home for what he called “wayward” girls. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a lower court's decision, determining that Ford has shown no evidence that fire inspectors and state social workers are plotting to shut down New Bethany Home for Girls. Ford files a federal lawsuit against the State of Louisiana, requesting a permanent order to keep government officials from interfering in New Bethany operations.
He would arrive with a school bus full of teenagers from his girls’ home in Arcadia, a Louisiana town of 2,700. They made a striking presentation—young women in white blouses or dresses, with lovely voices, singing and offering dramatic testimonies. They spoke of living as prostitutes and drug addicts before finding salvation at New Bethany, where they now rode horses and studied the Bible. Churchgoers emptied their wallets, pouring out “love offerings” to sustain Ford’s mission. For 25 years, Jennifer Halter, 39, had been living with memories of what happened to her at a religious girls' home in Arcadia, La.
Seven former residents of New Bethany Home for Girls make emotional return to Arcadia to file charges of sexual assault
Over the years, Elizabeth and Ralph Jordan have wondered about the girl and whether she was OK. Until that August night in 1982, they had always heard good things about New Bethany. Elizabeth's older brother had grown up with Ford.
“We have to respect the court’s decision,” Cain said. One such home was the New Bethany Home for Girls, owned and operated by IFB preacher Mack Ford. Ford, who died February 11, 2015, was a protégé of famed abuserLester Roloff. The New Orleans Times-Picayune published numerous articles about New Bethany. Unfortunately, many of these stories are no longer available. In late December of 1991, a 20-year-old woman sat down in a room with a cassette recorder and two other women more than twice her age.
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Then there was the “big sister treatment”—established students, directed by staff, inflicting punishments on the newbies. The “bowel and bladder torture” consisted of girls being given bran, made to drink lots of water at breakfast, and then denied bathroom access until lunch. Back in Maryland, Jeannie Marie was unaware of her daughter’s plight. Her letters went unanswered—only one of Roxy’s replies got past the academy’s censors. Getting through by phone also proved challenging, and calls were monitored. A billing dispute with New Beginnings’ staff didn’t make things any easier.
Labeling, even if it is just repeating society’s view, can invite predators because in the predator’s mind he or she thinks the organization has the same mentality as the predator does. "That's why false allegations of old abuse are really quite rare," Dion said. "Because it's not a pleasant thing to deal with. Oftentimes, survivors will do everything they can to get on with their lives and avoid making their report." "I had never talked to the first one who told me that they had been sexually abused," he said.
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A staff member grabbed her by the hair, she says, dragged her from her bed and hit her in the head with a Bible until she fell to her knees. The fenced-in 18-year-old school was the ministry of Mack W. Ford, a tire-repairman-turned-preacher who marketed the school as a Christian-based residential facility for wayward youth. Halter, a mother of five, was dying of a rare cancer-like condition called histiocytosis x. If her doctor's prediction held, she would have four more years to live. "I started finding out that there were places opening up all over the United States that had the same theological teachings," Frye says.
In a 1979 standoff that would become the stuff of fundamentalist folklore, Roloff declared his cause “the Christian Alamo,” organizing hundreds of supporters into barricades to keep state officials off his compound. The ensuing church-state battle outlived Roloff, who died in a plane crash in 1982. The home relocated to Missouri three years later, returning to Texas in 1998 after then-Gov. George W. Bush deregulated the activities of faith-based groups there. The First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, received a great deal of notoriety over the sexual trysts two of its ministers had with female church members over a period of several years.
The next day, he told Frye, Guy disappeared from the home. To summarize–and this description comes with a massive trigger warning for abuse and torture–trauma survivor James Swift tells his story of what it was like growing up in a Christianity-based doomsday cult in Louisiana. His mother joined the church, then known as the Worldwide Church of God, when he was very young. The Worldwide Church of God was founded by Herbert W. Armstrong, a televangelist and the host of a program called The World Tomorrow. No amount of reparations could ever atone for the hell That we suffered, this man abused us & paid for that place with our tears & pain.
Louisiana Department of Health and Human Resources tries to close the school for refusing to allow state inspection and licensing. A district judge rules the state lacks the authority to do so. I got plenty of likes and women interested in me in less then like 30 minutes. That has happened hardly never on other dating web sights for me.
The couple supported their own church's efforts to raise food and money to support the home. But this strange scene left them ambivalent and worried. They went on and reported to deputies what had happened near the rural compound.
The plane would fulfill her fear of flying and fall from the sky. Police in Louisiana would ridicule her, tell her she was lying and remind her of all the ways she had messed up her life. Her children would never understand that her brokenness had roots, that she was not crazy, that she had loved them as best she could.
Several of the former residents who talked to NOLA.com
To top it off, the place even looks creepy with the barbed-wire fence surrounding it. I don’t have kids, but if I did, I wouldn’t send them to a boarding school/home that looked like a penitentiary. "That night, after the girl's complaint, I gathered girls together and asked if there were any girls abused by Mack Ford," Johnson wrote. "If so, please speak up. NONE expressed anything and they had a great opportunity to do so without him present." Shannon Scott says the other person who was in the room at the time she gave her report was Nora Carter.
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