Table of Content
- Girls locked up inside fundamentalist religious compounds. Kandahar? No, Missouri.
- Grand jury declines to indict Mack W. Ford, founder of New Bethany Home for Girls, following allegations of sexual abuse
- Independent. In print. In your mailbox.
- New Bethany Home for Girls: Timeline
- Premium Service Designed For Single Women in Gunzenhausen, Bavaria, Germany And Their Admirers
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When she arrived at New Bethany, she believed in God and heaven and hell. Nighttime was for recurring nightmares -- like the one with the faceless man who stands over her bed breathing. The hallways to the restroom felt never-ending -- a maze of walls and turns. When they reached a single-stall bathroom, she says, Ford went in with her. He unbuttoned his pants, she says, told her to get on her hands and knees and demanded oral sex. When the service ended, Halter urgently needed to go to the restroom.
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.
Girls locked up inside fundamentalist religious compounds. Kandahar? No, Missouri.
Its board of directors reportedly voted for closure in 2001, but rumors abound that New Bethany boarded girls as late as 2004. That the home’s own former staffers aren’t sure of the year speaks volumes about an industry so poorly regulated that state officials can’t verify whether certain homes even exist. But for residents like Frye, the boarding school became a memory they tried to forget. She says that while she was there, she witnessed abuse and degradation, but was not herself the victim of sexual abuse. In 2007, when Frye stumbled across an online message board containing hundreds of conversations between former residents, she felt her life pivot. That was not the first time I had been sexually abused and I told my secrets to Mack Ford when I was 13, in 1973, visiting a church in MO.
If not HH, does anyone know the name of that ministry? Heard some disturbing stories about that one from co-workers of mine back in 1980s who belonged to a church where the choir visited. I don’t know the people involved in New Bethany or the other “homes.” But I’m sure they do not know the Bible, and I’m sure they were not representing Jesus. There are people who have made a living selling Jesus since the beginning of the church, and there have always been people who are willing to give them money. Other people with good intentions to help young people gave money to them in good faith, believing that the young people were being cared for. We need to keep being Jesus’ living priests and identify the moneychangers in his living temple and throw them out.
Grand jury declines to indict Mack W. Ford, founder of New Bethany Home for Girls, following allegations of sexual abuse
Within the IFB, it’s rebellion as the sin of witchcraft & must be beaten out of them. Not long ago several of the alleged victims returned to Arcadia, Louisiana to see the place that has haunted them – New Bethany Home for Girls. Even though the facility closed in 2001, it appears that Mack Ford has continued to live on the property. "As far as I'm concerned, you can walk out of here." He left her sitting in the courthouse and, he said, never saw her again.
I later learned this and much more, the sexual abuse…she was essentially a “bad girl” so was passed around quite a bit. I was physically abused there, so was my brother and sister. There was no end to the depravity or horrifying situations you could find yourself in. Former residents who were aware of the latest police investigation, recalled decades of abuse allegations recorded by state social workers and local police that never materialized in criminal charges. State fire marshal and child welfare investigators arrive at New Bethany Home for Girls.
Independent. In print. In your mailbox.
After leaving Hephzibah House, Karen Glover ended up becoming both an addict and a sex worker for a time. Teresa Frye “did my body weight in drugs” after her stint at New Bethany. Lenee Rider “stayed drunk for a year.” Angela, her old watch, died of complications from cirrhosis in 2008. “I felt they stole whatever was inside me that allowed me to trust,” Rider says. The raid grabbed headlines, but the school reopened again, this time merging with Ford’s New Bethany girls’ school in Arcadia. Over the next two decades, both the girls’ and boys’ branches would close and reopen several times more—swelling at times to hundreds of students.
"I didn't want my boys turning into one of those monsters and to have to still say he's my son and forgive him," she said. When she became a mother at 20, she couldn't bring herself to breastfeed her baby girl because it felt awkward after years of being fondled and shamed for her large bosom. Instead, she let her mother bind her milk-swollen breasts flat. She struggled to stop the thoughts and memories from racing.
New Bethany Home for Girls: Timeline
"If we strike someone and you call it a beating, that's offensive. ... If we call it a spanking, that's not so offensive." "We are reaching out as a mission project to the incorrigible, unwanted rejects," Ford told attorneys in a 1997 court deposition. "Destitute, lonely, prostitutes, drug addicts ... These kids haven't been loved and haven't had a chance in life." The Christian life is “difficult “ to live, thus it’s understandable if pastors sexually molest and rape children or take sexual advantage of vulnerable church members?
When he was done, she says, he touched her privates, then threw folded tissues at her. Halter thought her mom was driving her to a Catholic boarding school. Her mom and grandmother had both attended Catholic schools and Halter had been begging her mother to let her do the same.
And if the authorities have no problem with this, it is usually because of political ties. People who can be plausibly discredited and who reside in a closed institution are very vulnerable to abuse. When residents of psychiatric hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, and facilities for troubled juveniles complain of abuse in an abusive facility they are called liars or delusional.
He then referred reporters to attorney John Hodge of Shreveport. When contacted, Hodge said he had not represented New Bethany in years and was no longer qualified to talk about it. Ford did not respond to additional attempts to reach him by phone and letter.
Land is power, and being that his wife &” children KNEW what was going on- they SHOULD NOT be allowed to retain possession of one speck of dirt that comprises the New Bethany Holdings. He purchased his first airplane in 1954 and used it to travel between his various speaking engagements throughout the country. On November 2, 1982, the same day that the Democrat Mark Wells White, the outgoing attorney general, unseated Republican Governor Bill Clements, Roloff’s plane crashed during a storm outside Normangee, Texas.
New Bethany Home for Boys in Waltersboro, S.C., closes and 37 students are taken into protective custody after authorities find a 14-year-old boy sleeping in a windowless padlocked cell, where he had been for several days. Two employees are charged with unlawful neglect of a child and conspiracy to commit unlawful neglect as well as kidnapping. Looking for a beach rental rent near Gunzenhausen? Rent By Owner features more than 67 beach rentals that are perfect for your next beach holiday.
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The Shreveport couple own a cabin in that area that they travel to on weekends. Over the years as they have passed this same stretch of highway near New Bethany, they've remembered the girl and the night. They have watched the girls' home deteriorate, with vines growing over buildings, grass creeping, unmanicured.
From what I can see in the accounts of Jesus’s life was that he elevated the people he came to serve, he didn’t approach them as a problem that needed to be fixed. I may not be communicating this well, but to me, entitlement and the objectification of other human beings are root causes of abuse. The mentality needs to be addressed and changed before real help can occur.
