by Jameson Parker
Recently, America’s secretive “Christian
homeschooling” movement found itself at the center of attention when a
19-year-old girl created a viral plea for help
proving she really existed.
Her parents had withdrawn so far from the rest of society that they had
refused to get her a social security number, a birth certificate, or
any form of medical history – in essence, the girl, now a young adult,
was an undocumented illegal alien, despite having been born in Texas.
The neglect has prevented her from entering into society on almost every
level: She can’t get a job, she can’t attend college, she can’t rent or
buy a home or car.
But if people assumed that the parental malfeasance displayed by her parents was the worst the movement had to offer, a
new whistleblower has shown that these fundamentalist Christian communities can be infinitely more damaging than that.
Jennyfer Austin was adopted as a child into just such a home
and was from then on blocked off from the outside world. During her
formative years, Austin grew up under strict, oftentimes severe,
religious parenting that she says only got worse as her mother was
“egged on” by homeschooling friends and church leaders.
Christian fundamentalists often opt for homeschooling over public or
private schools because it allows them to control every aspect of their
children’s lives. A
study
released in 2013 found that homeschooling has been growing steadily in
recent years. 77 percent of parents asked why they chose to homeschool
their children said that it was a desire to provide moral instruction
that they believe “secular” schools lack.
For Austin, being shut away from the watchful eye of the public
school system allowed her parents to keep her near. Even when she
reached adulthood, Austin was prevented from going out into the world.
Unlike many Christian homeschooling children, Austin knew that she had a
birth certificate and social security number (because of her adoption),
but her adoptive mother hid the documents as a way of keeping Austin
close.
Austin’s
description of life in her home sounds like something out of Saudi Arabia, not California:
‘Dating was a
complete no-no. I might be able to have a parent-approved courtship and
go places in public, but I couldn’t possibly do something like hold
hands with a boy.’
She was forced to wear long skirts and
blouses with high necklines and long sleeves. If she chose a skirt which
went to mid-calf, she would have to put on knee-length boots so no leg
was shown.
‘Even my swimsuit went down to my knees
and had sleeves,’ she recalled. ‘I wasn’t allowed to shave. My
grandfather felt that any part such as my legs that needed to be shaved
should not be shown off in public.’
Most appallingly, at the age of 20, Austin was told by her parents
that she had been “sold” to a man twice her age, a situation that Austin
and others like her say is disturbingly commonplace. She says her
parents’ asking price for her was $25,000, a fee that was much smaller
than the average (around $50,000), because due to her being molested as a
child she was considered within her Christian community to be “damaged
goods.”
Thankfully, Austin managed to escape from her appalling life, which
was, to be frank, little more than an imprisonment. Escaping was
nonetheless difficult. After refusing to marry the man her parents were
paid to deliver her to, her mother said Austin owed the would-be husband
a refund of his $25,000 down payment. Instead, she fled.
Austin is now married, albeit to a man that she actually
chose
to be with. She now says that she is focusing on rebuilding her life in
a society that her parents had tried for her entire childhood to keep
her from.
She says that because of her experience that she no longer identifies
as a Christian. Her adoptive parents may not have been representative
of all of Christianity, but Austin can certainly be forgiven for not
wanting any part of it.
According to a report by the AHA Foundation, a group which focuses on
protecting the rights of women, America is home to a large number of
forced marriages. Concrete numbers are hard to come by given the
secretive nature in which they take place, but the group identified as
many as 3,000 cases
in just the last two years. Many of the cases involve immigrants who
maintain the customs from their home country, however there is anecdotal
evidence to suggest the fundamentalist Christian movement is also
implicated.
