Sometimes I come across stuff that makes me soooo mad, I just have to....blog about it!
This time, it's a fundamentalist family called the Diehls: Michael and Karen (now in their 60s and late 50s, respectively) and their 17 children. 13 of those kids were disabled/emotionally disturbed/deformed kids adopted between 1981 and 1984. The family started out OK, but in time Karen Diehl made Andrea Yates look like June Cleaver.
Michael and Karen Diehl knew they wanted to adopt lots of unwanted kids even before they married in 1971, and they purchased a nice 5-bedroom home in Idaho for that very purpose. Both were college-educated, and Michael made a decent living as a carpenter and forestry consultant. For a decade they tried to adopt special-needs kids without success, so they had 4 boys of their own. They were both born again in 1976.
After 1981, adoption referrals came thick and fast until 17 kids - some profoundly disabled, others just mildly disturbed - lived in the house in Idaho. The Diehls received so much government money that Michael was able to quit his jobs and help his wife homeschool full-time.
Problems began around 1984, when the family started to withdraw from society. The KKK had its state headquarters not far from their home, so they were afraid to let their black and mixed-race children stray outside the yard. The Diehls stopped attending church altogether, and Karen dropped out of a parenting support group. Then they had the bright idea to buy a 1950s bus and convert it into an RV so they could travel to Michigan and visit their families. This road trip, which was supposed to last around 3 months, evolved into a traveling ministry that took them all over the country.
By spring of 1986, the Diehls were living in a campground near Virginia Beach, Virginia. They had found a lovely hunting lodge in the area that they were convinced God would somehow provide to them, even though they couldn't afford to buy it by a long shot. Their ministry had attracted a lot of attention; they appeared in folksy newspaper stories and on The 700 Club, praised lavishly for their self-sacrificing lifestyle.
The truth was a little darker. Without social support and confined to a small bus, the Diehls were having a rough time controlling their troubled kids - especially a boy they called Andrew. He was clearly not happy about having to share a space with 18 people who were just as disturbed as he in their own special ways, so he took to peeing and defecating in his bed and on the other kids' clothes in the middle of the night just to get everybody's attention. Karen and Michael tried an array of punishments - smacking with a wooden paddle, limiting liquids, supervising him closely, forcing the boy to eat his feces - then resorted to handcuffing Andrew to a rubber mat on the floor of the bus, 24/7. That took care of their problem. Note that they never tried things like counseling or, say, not trying to be the effing Partridge family. Later they would say they didn't seek outside help for Andrew because that would make him feel they were "giving up on him." Apparently strapping him to the floor of a filthy bus in some godforsaken campground wasn't "giving up on him".
So, surprise surprise, Andrew lapsed into a coma and died in May 1986. The coroner discovered scratches, cuts, bruises, and a massive head wound on his body. Karen said he tripped and fell atop a pencil box. A search of the van turned up restraints, the paddle, a whip, and other instruments used to keep the kids in line. Friends leapt to their defense, saying the Diehls were the most loving and capable parents they'd ever met, but Michael and Karen were both charged with a laundry list of crimes and given stiff jail sentences.
I'm not going to say the Diehls are in any way typical of fundie families. Thankfully, they're not. But there is a creepy trend here that began with Karen Diehl and moved on to Andrea Yates, Deanna Laney, and Dena Schlosser. All were fundamentalist women, stay-at-home moms who abandoned organized religion in favor of their own home-brewed faiths. All rejected social support, probably because God would magically erase their troubles if they waited around long enough. Both Yates and Diehl had lived in vehicles for vague religious reasons (frankly, I think their husbands were just cheap). And all killed one or more of their kids because "God", in one or another, told them to do it. This pattern should serve as a lesson not just to reclusive fundie parents, but to anyone who might know someone like this. If you know a holy roller mama who never leaves her house because God told her not to (or, more likely, because God told her husband she shouldn't), please go and have a cup of coffee with her! And don't tell her she's selfless and saintly, like Pat Robertson would! In fact, there's a rule of thumb for all of life's awkward situations: Do the opposite of what Pat Robertson would do. Get yourself a WWPRD?-NDTO! ("What Would Pat Robertson Do? - Now Do the Opposite!") bracelet!
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5 comments:
Actually, my button says WWID (What Would I Do?) and I usually do the opposite.
I love your bracelet idea! I'd love to wear one to work and have all the fundies ask me what it means. ;)
I don't think it would do QUITE as well as the Lance Armstrong bracelet, but it would be a lot more fun. ;D
I hesitate to give you more detail because a) this blog entry is pretty old and b) it might send you into the stratosphere. I found you by running a search to determine some dates regarding the Diehl's cases for a reason.
As a very young law clerk, I worked on Karen's defense case, for the firm of Clark & Stant. Specifically, Thomas Shuttleworth, who was her criminal defense attorney. Here are some extra pieces to the puzzle:
1. Mr. Shuttleworth's $40,000 retainer was put up by a local church.
2. Karen beat Dominick (his real name) to death with a lead pipe then left him to die. When she finally admitted it, she said God told her to beat him like that because he had the devil in him.
3. The boy's injuries were so severe that he literally could've been hit by a speeding dump truck. I know. I copied, labeled, disseminated and filed the reports from the emergency room and coroner.
4. Michael was present and did NOTHING to stop this. Nothing. Thus, 15 years for accessory which was affirmed on appeal.
Until working on this case, I had spent my entire life wanting to be an attorney. I was hired to work on a corporate case for Borden but then farmed out when they took this high-profile defense case. When it was over and we lost, I did two things: Celebrated with the paralegals, secretaries and assistants and swore off law as a career.
Any person of faith who truly believes that beating children is the proper way to shape them (might makes right) is delusional. I would no sooner do that to my children than sell them into slavery.
My Mother is Mike's cousin...she asked Karen & Mike to take my brother just before this travisty, they declined saying they had their hands full with Anthony. But the Diels told my mother of another family, the Trittos who moved to Post Falls, (where the Diels were from) who had adopted 13 grossly disabled children, were Christian fundamentalist, who could possibly help my brother....and so, looking at it all now, perhaps my brothers life was spared by not living with family, (the Deils) however, my brother was given to the Trittos with the understanding that a stable two parent home, devoute faith in God, and firm discipline would lead this child in the way that he should go....But, less than 5 years later....my brother and was removed from that home by CPS for brutally similar conditions. Beaten, starved, abused & neglected....they were never criminally charged. As a matter of fact, the sun rises & sets on this family who dedicated their life to all these severally disabled children. Of course, the fact that the Trittos collect social security disability on each child sure helps....enough to drive luxury cars, pay for Jana Tritto's education (she is now a physician assistant),purchase prime realestate, the list goes on....I know, the social security she collected on me was placed in a trust account when we were taken by CPS& placed in "permanent foster care" until 18. I continued to receive the social security payments she applied for on my behalf until I was 21 at which point social security advised my brother & I that we didn't qualify for benefits and needed to repay them.....long story....and I've digressed, sorry. Mike Diehl is my biological family....he is my Mothers cousin. My Mother is mentally I'll & incapable of caring for us children following her seperation of my father and she asked the Diehls to take us. They gave my Mom the Trittos contact information....and then, 1984 Mike and Jana Tritto adopted my brother, later took myself and my other sibling, and with the exception of murder, followed in the footsteps of Mike & Karen Diehl. Our society needs to do a better job of protecting our children. A home of 13 severely disabled children that quality for social security disability payments should receive second looks from the state when they live in busses/motorhomes for a year & homeschool children.
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