New Bethany Home for Girls endured 30 years of controversy, leaving former residents wondering why Crime Police
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- 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
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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.
Bethany home houses boys in a cottage on the site of the present st. Two employees are charged with unlawful neglect of a child and conspiracy to commit unlawful neglect as well as. On his second day, he recalls, he watched administrator larry. Dion is deputy executive director of the National Centers for Victims of Crime and a child sex abuse survivor himself. He said that often children either block out the experience or else don't realize until later that they were harmed by what happened to them. Now, more than a decade after New Bethany's board voted to close the facility for good, women are coming forward with not only tales of continued harsh physical and emotional treatment, but reports of sexual abuse.
Girls locked up inside fundamentalist religious compounds. Kandahar? No, Missouri.
Details about what Halter says was the first time Mack Ford sexually abused her are based solely on interviews with Halter. She says she gave the same account to Bienville Parish Sheriff's Office investigators. While the agency and Louisiana State Police confirm they are investigating the claims, neither agency will release details of the report in an ongoing investigation.
It was two months before she and her husband could arrange a conference call with Roxy and the staff. Surrounded by her disciplinarians, the girl replied that she had to stay—that New Beginnings was good for her. The call dissolved into a shouting match between Jeannie Marie and McNamara—who finally declared that he would only discuss the matter with her husband. An archive photo of Mack Ford, center, the founder and pastor at the New Bethany Home for Girls in Arcadia, Louisiana. I appreciate Tom Aswell bringing the heinous past of Mack Ford and New Bethany back into the public spotlight.
Grand jury declines to indict Mack W. Ford, founder of New Bethany Home for Girls, following allegations of sexual abuse
When reporters from NOLA.com
Up to 18 boys, mostly wards of state aged between 2 and 18, lived there. Other documents from survivors of new bethany home for girls. Ford operated a separate new bethany home for boys in longstreet, louisiana. As you can probably imagine, a district judge ruled that the state had no authority to do so.
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.
“We have our critics, but also people who think very well of us,” he said. When I phoned New Beginnings to ask about the family’s allegations, a staffer referred all questions to Wesley Barnum, the academy’s attorney, who did not return my repeated calls. Likewise, group homes where abuse has been documented tend to receive devout support from area churches. Instead of asking those who run the homes to explain their behavior, their accusers are routinely treated as pariahs while the accused are welcomed as heroes at church rallies on their behalf.
New Bethany Home for Girls: Timeline
Ford also opened a boys' home in nearby Longstreet, La., soon after creating New Bethany. That compound was shuttered in 1981 amid charges of child abuse, and its manager, L.D. Rapier, was arrested and charged with cruelty to children. A year later, Ford moved the boys' home to Walterboro, S.C. In 1984, two administrators for that school were arrested on abuse and neglect charges and the facility was closed.
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.
A group of teenage girls dressed in long khaki skirts and modest blouses stepped onto the stage at an Independent Fundamental Baptist church in Maryland where Jeannie Marie attended services with her family. The young women, visitors from a Missouri girls’ home called New Beginnings Ministries, sang old-time hymns, recited Scripture, and gave tearful testimonies about their journeys out of lives of sin. Headmaster Bill McNamara spoke, too, depicting the home as a place where girls could get on track academically, restore broken relationships, and learn to walk with God. The traveling singing group was one of the mechanisms by which Ford promoted and raised money to fund his boarding school.
All four have spoken with NOLA.com
Members of the Worldwide Church of God were not allowed to celebrate any holidays or birthdays, as they were all part of a pagan tradition. They weren’t allowed to see doctors for anything other than broken bones. Armstrong demanded that all men have no piercings and short hair, and that all women have long hair and be free of makeup.
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.
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.
There was no apparent reason for this treatment, Glover says, save reminding the girls who was in charge. Dave Halyaman, assistant director of Hephzibah House, would not respond directly to Glover’s claims. Instead, he offered to put me in touch with two pastors who had daughters there.
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