Children
Need ... THIS ?
THE FATHER'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT:
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
This is the story of the "Westboro Baptist Church," a lesson about how religion informs zealotry and hate. It doesn't just happen in places like Afghanistan. Religion is the anomaly through which otherwise learning and advancing societies inculcate and embrace a measure of cognitive thought (even in our most brilliant thinkers), that is based upon arbitrary premises and the uncritical acceptance of them. And in this way and for this reason, it is history's proved vehicle for facilitating the creation and rise to power of monsters, from isolated hallucinating murderers to the vilest dictatorial political regimes. The normalization of dogma itself permits them to spawn and grow undetected, in the nature of bacteria, mutating and reproducing until reaching the critical mass that poisons and kills. By that time, it's too late. Witness: the dementia that does and can be expected to move beyond blind faith in pretty and compassionate ideas, to blind faith in what is ugly and sick. Yes, it can happen here.
What follows is a copy of the original court file of a case known as Jon Bell v. Stauffer Communications, which file originally was disseminated by a group known as the "Anti-Phelps Underground," along with some notations by that organization. Exhibit A to that court file is the draft of the nonfiction book written by Jon Bell, Addicted to Hate. The lawsuit centered on the publication of the book and the information contained therein. -- liz
On June 29, 1994 Jon Michael
Bell, a former reporter hired to investigate Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist
Church by Stauffer Communications, Inc., filed a lawsuit in Shawnee County
District Court in Topeka, Kansas against Stauffer Communications alleging
the Topeka Capital-Journal owed him compensation for overtime and to clarify
ownership of his notes and work product. The work product in question,
"Addicted to Hate" chronicling the life and times of Fred Phelps,
was attached to the lawsuit as Exhibit A making it, therefore, a public
document. Learning of the suit, members of Topeka's anti-Phelps underground
delivered a certified copy of the lawsuit to a copy shop near the courthouse.
Within 48 hours, Stauffer Communications had written all area media outlets
and issued veiled warnings about using the information contained in "Addicted
to Hate". A rival Topeka newspaper, the Metro News, announced it was
considering publishing the lawsuit in it entirety. The Kansas City Star
abided by Stauffer Communication's wishes, but several other media outlets
aired or printed portions of the manuscript. Within 48 hours of the filing,
Stauffer Communications persuaded a judge to seal the suit so the Clerk
of the District Court could no longer make copies for the public. No matter
-- no such order was issued to the copy shop or to the hundreds of citizens
that already had copies.
On July 8 the Capital-Journal,
which had deep-sixed the Phelps project and fired the publisher who authorized
it when it was completed last fall, suddenly began its watered-down, copyrighted
series on Phelps that they had earlier claimed they wouldn't print. Bell
also withdrew his suit the same day. By this time, however, TV networks,
wire services, and eastern newspapers had obtained copies of the manuscript,
and Stauffer's unprecedented attempt to suppress media discussion of the
document attracted the interest of several major East Coast newspapers
on First Amendment grounds.
Phelps, a self-proclaimed advocate of the First Amendment, whose free speech
activities include libel, slander defamation of character, intimidation,
obscene language, battery, promptly denounced Stauffer Communications and
denied the allegations of child abuse, spouse abuse, and other illegal
activities. Anyone familiar with Phelps and his children who remain loyal
to him, however, can clearly see these adult children and his wife suffer
from the grotesque and obvious behaviors symptomatic of severe, long-term
abuse. Where and how the twisted saga of Fred Phelps will end is anyone's
guess.
The volunteer distributors
of this file wish to emphatically state that Jon Michael Bell did not suggest,
encourage, or take part in the transfer or distribution of his typewritten
manuscript (Exhibit A) to ASCII format. Volunteer distributors make no
guarantees either expressed or implied and cannot be responsible in the
use of this file.
Jon Michael Bell, one of the authors of "Addicted to Hate", seeks
no compensation for his work. If, however, after reading "Addicted
to Hate", you would like to make a contribution in his name to organizations
in Topeka assisting AIDS victims, abused children and battered women, please
send your donations to [listed below]:
IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF SHAWNEE COUNTY,
KANSAS DIVISION 7
Case No. 94CV766
JON BELL, Plaintiff,
vs.
STAUFFER COMMUNICATIONS, INC., Defendant.
PETITION FOR DECLARATORY RELIEF (Pursuant
to K.S.A. Chapter 60-1701 et. seq.)
COMES NOW the Plaintiff Jon Bell and states:
1. Plaintiff is a resident of Kansas.
2. Defendant Stauffer Communications, Inc. is a corporation organized under the laws of Kansas and may be served by serving its resident agent The Corporation Company, Inc., 515 S. Kansas Ave., Topeka, Kansas 66603.
3. Plaintiff was an intern and employed by Defendant to work for its newspaper Topeka Capital Journal, in Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas.
4. As part of his work he was assigned by the managing editor to prepare stories and/or manuscripts concerning one Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church, Inc.
5. That Plaintiff's employment was originally
undertaken for compensation of $1300 per month (37 hours per week at $8.00/hour).
As the scope of the Phelps project expanded to book length, Plaintiff indicated
his willingness to do a book for the compensation he was being paid. It
was represented to him by the managing editor, Mr. Sullivan, that the publication
of the book would have such value to Plaintiff's reputation as an author
that the publication plus the salary was just compensation. In reliance
upon the representation that the book would be published by Defendant,
he continued with the project to the point of final manuscript and dedicated
overtime hours (for which he was not separately compensated) having a reasonable
value in excess of $10,000.
6. Plaintiff has been advised by Mr. Hively, the publisher of the Topeka
Capital Journal that Defendant does not intend to publish the book or any
portion of it.
7. Plaintiff has been separately advised by the defendant's attorney that Defendant does not grant Plaintiff permission to publish the book (Ex. B attached).
8. Plaintiff claims that he has intellectual property rights in the manuscript and desires to publish it and that in the absence of compensation for his overtime or because of his reliance on Mr. Sullivan's representation if Defendant chooses to waste the work that he has the right to publish the book.
9. In that Defendant has asserted superior rights to the manuscript, but, has likewise has declared an intent not to publish and the fact that the material may become dated, or alternatively, lose its timelessness (the subject of the manuscript is currently running for the Democratic nomination for Governor of the State of Kansas), it is important to resolve the rights of the parties in and to the manuscript as it relates to the contract of employment which previously existed between Plaintiff and Defendant, and terminate the controversy over rights to the manuscript which gives rise to these proceedings.
10. Plaintiff feels uncertain and insecure of his legal position in the absence of a judicial declaration of his rights, and for that reason, brings this action.
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays that the Court
construe the terms of his employment and his rights to publish the manuscript
marked as Ex. A and attached hereto, and permit the Plaintiff the right
without restriction, and subject to any fair accounting to Defendant, to
publish the manuscript.
(Signature of Jon Bell) Jon Bell, pro s 82
(Home address intentionally omitted)
Lawrence, KS 66044
[Document contains the seal of the District Court of Shawnee
County, Kansas and the
signature of Leslie Miller, Deputy Clerk of the District Court of Shawnee
County, Kansas and dated 6-29-94.]
(Letterhead of the
law firm of Goodell, Stratton, Edmonds & Palmer)
515 South Kansas Avenue
Topeka, Kansas 66603-3999
913-233-0593
Telecopier: 913-233-8870)
June 2, 1994
Mr. Jon Bell
(Home Address Intentionally Omitted)
Shawnee, Kansas 66216
In re: Topeka Capital-Journal Our file: 31143
Dear Jon:
I understand that you are
in some way marketing or trying to develop an interest in the Capital-Journal's
investigatory work on Fred Phelps.
Be advised that you are not authorized to engage in this activity. This
work is the property of The Topeka Capital-Journal, and does not belong
to you. My client will make all decisions regarding the piece. You are
not authorized to speak on behalf of The Capital-Journal regarding this
work, or even to reveal its existence for that matter. If you are taking
any steps to develop a market or other interest in this work, you are required
to cease immediately.
Meanwhile, please advise Pete Goering at The Capital-Journal of any steps
you have taken in this regard.
Very truly yours,
(Signature of Michael W. Merriam)
Michael W. Merriam
MWM:ah cc: Mr. Pete Goering
[Note: This document contains the time stamp of the
Clerk of the District Court,
Shawnee County, Kansas showing the document was filed with the Clerk at
1:05 p.m. of June 29, 1994.]
"And be sure your sin
will find you out." (Num. 32:23)
A frequent quote of Pastor Fred Phelps
Reverend Fred Phelps:
lawyer and Baptist minister; head of the Westboro Baptist Church; 64 years
old. Disbarred.
Marge Phelps: wife of Fred; mother of his 13 children; 68 years
old. WBC member.
1. Fred Phelps, Jr.: lawyer and employee at the Kansas Department of Corrections; 40 years old. Oldest son. WBC member.
Betty Phelps (Schurle):
wife of Fred, Jr.; lawyer and owner-operator of a day-care home; 41 years
old. WBC member.
2. ***Mark Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged
from the family cult; 39 years old. 2nd son.
Luava Phelps (Sundgren): wife of Mark; childhood sweetheart; 36
years old.
3. ***Katherine Phelps: lawyer; suspended from the bar; living on
welfare; 38 years-old; oldest daughter. Not in WBC.
4. Margie Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Kansas Department of
Corrections; 37 years old; 2nd daughter. WBC member.
5. Shirley Phelps-Roper: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 36 years old; 3rd daughter. WBC member.
Brent Roper: husband of Shirley; lawyer and businessman in Topeka; 30 years old; WBC member.
6. ***Nate Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged from family cult; 35 years old. 3rd son.
7. Jonathon Phelps: lawyer; 4th son; 34 years old; WBC member. Paulette Phelps (Ossiander): wife of Jonathon; 33 years old; high school graduate; WBC member.
8. Rebekah Phelps-Davis: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 32 years old; 4th daughter; WBC member.
Chris Davis: husband
to Rebekah; 38 years old; raised from childhood in the WBC.
9. Elizabeth Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; night house manager
staff at Sheltered Living, Inc. Topeka; 31 years old; 5th daughter; WBC
member. Former counsel for the Shawnee County Sheriff's Department.
10. Timothy Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections; 30 years old; 5th son; WBC member.
Lee Ann Phelps (Brown): wife of Timothy; lawyer and employee of Shawnee County Sheriff's Department; 27 years old; WBC member.
11.***Dorotha Bird (Phelps): lawyer practicing independently in Topeka; 6th daughter; not a WBC member; changed her last name to avoid family's notoriety. 29 years old.
12. Rachel Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; YMCA fitness instructor; 28 years old; 7th daughter; WBC member.
13. Abigail Phelps: lawyer and employee at SRS-Youth and Adult Services, Juvenile Offender Program; 25 years old; 8th daughter; WBC member.
Fred Wade Phelps:
the Rev. Phelps' father; he lived in Meridian, Mississippi. He was a railroad
bull.
Catherine Idalette Phelps (Johnson): the Rev. Phelps' mother; she
died when he was a small child.
Martha Jean Capron (Phelps):
the Rev. Phelps' only sibling; a former missionary to Indonesia, she now
lives in Pennsylvania; the brother and sister have not spoken for years.
***Denotes a Phelps child who has left the family cult.
[Note: The next portion of Exhibit A contains some handwritten notes denoting
ages of the Phelps' children, some names of some of the non-Phelps WBC
members (George Stutzman, Charles Hockenbarger, Jennifer Hockenbarger,
and Charles Hockenbarger), names of some of the Phelps' grandchildren (Benjamin,
Sharon, Sara, Libby, Jacob, Sam, and Josh), and 2 items pasted onto the
document which are published documents showing the Phelps family tree and
a map of the area surrounding Meridian, Mississippi.]
He rang the doorbell. It was winter, and with his thick gloves he could barely feel the button.
No answer.
He waited. A cat, caught like him on this cold night outside, walked along the porch rail. Toward him.
He watched it.
In the street behind them a solitary car passed. Like urban sleigh bells, the chains on its tires chimed rhythmic into the pounded street snow.
No one was home. The cat. Was rubbing against his leg.
He set the candy down and picked it up. It purred. And purred more when he tucked it under his warm arm. Like a football. Against his thick coat.
He could see into its eyes. Up close. He liked it that way.
When he wrapped his thick fingers round its tiny neck...
Pinning its legs against his side, he slowly squeezed, watching the eyes widen in alarm. Feeling it push against him. Desperately struggle. For a long time struggle.
Watching.
The lids droop slowly down. The light pass from the eyes.
He let go. Another car rattled metal links by in the snow.
Watching the light return. The animal terror that followed. Flooding the look in those helpless eyes. It pierced his soul.
A shock wave of remorse flamed hot. In all his cells he could feel it.
Guilt.
Or was it love. Yes, warm love for this tiny being.
But...
I want to do it. Again. Now.
Yes, I want to know what it's like once more.
He squeezed the cat's thin neck. And when it has succumbed, he felt the same pity again warm flooding him.
And only horror at himself. As he did it once more.
And when it was over he...
But this time the cat mustered the last of its tiny animal ferocity and writhed free.
He felt...watching it streak away...he felt jarred awake somehow...as it ran from him...yes, he was awake now...
And terrified
Had anyone seen him? Would they know?
In a panic he ran
Home to his father's house...
"Introductions All Around"
A TIME magazine article from 1950 hangs framed on the wall. It's about
a college student's crusade against necking on a campus in Southern California.
That student's office in Kansas today is aclack with fax machines and ringing
phones, but the chair behind the great mahogany desk is empty.
When the former campus evangelist finally bursts in, he is trailed by grandchildren-so
many sixth-grade secretaries-gophering, sending faxes, fetching papers-and
a glass of water for the reporter.
Thoughtful. It's 93 outside.
"Sit down," says Fred Phelps, rumored ogre, with an effusive
Southern graciousness. "But I got to tell you, you know we're going
to preach the word, the same thing I've been preaching for 46 years, and
it's supremely, supremely irrelevant to us what anybody thinks or says.
"You get a little bit of this message I'm preaching, you can't ask
for anything more. God hates fags-that's a synopsis."
Phelps, 63, a disbarred lawyer and Baptist preacher from Mississippi, is
on a mission from God. His face lights up like a kid's on Christmas morning
when he talks about how the nation is reacting to his anti- homosexual
campaign. He contends the Bible supports the death penalty for sodomy:
"I'm not urging anybody to kill anybody," he adds, then matter-of-factly
explains how his interpretation of the Bible calls for precisely that:
"The death penalty was violently carried out by God on a massive scale
when the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and
brimstone," says Phelps. "I am inclined to the view that the
closer man's laws come to God's laws, the better off our race will be."
Phelps has found the national spotlight by disrupting the mourners' grieving
at the funerals of AIDS victims. His followers carry picket signs outside
the services with such stone-hearted messages as GOD HATES FAGS and FAGS
3DDEATH.
Last spring, he and his tiny band traveled to Washington, D.C., to taunt
the gay parade, creating a near-riot. Since then, Phelps has been the subject
of a 20-20 segment, appeared on the Jane Whitney Show twice to mock homosexuals,
and is now regularly interviewed on both Christian and secular radio across
America.
Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist
Church in the Kansas capital of Topeka, since 1990 has also been an unsuccessful
candidate for mayor, governor, and United States Senator. Currently he
is negotiating his own radio show-one that will be heard throughout the
Midwest.
His message is simple: God hates most everybody and He's sending them all
to hell. Makes no difference how they lived their life.
For the Pastor Phelps, except for a handful of 'elect', the human race
is composed of depraved beasts. God hates these creatures and so do His
favored few. The world is divided sharply and irreversibly between the
multitude of the already-damned (called the reprobate or the Adamic Race)
and those chosen by God to attend Him in heaven. Those selected to be elect
were tapped, not for the rectitude of their lives, but by what could best
be described as the Supreme Whim of the Deity.
While this is the theology of predestination, one that in less vengeful
minds is a mainstay of many Protestant sects, in Fred Phelps' mind it has
become a green light to hatred and cruelty.
Recently, Pastor Phelps has added a corollary to this thesis that God hates
the human race: God reserves His most pure and profound hatred for the
homosexuals among the Adamic race.
At 63, Phelps is a triathlon competitor who bikes or runs every day. The
strongest thing he drinks is what he calls his 'vitamin C cocktail', consisting
of Vitamin C, Diet Pepsi, and water.
The pastor basks in the heat of the outrage triggered by his campaign against
homosexuals.
"If you're preaching the truth of God, people are going to hate you," he grins. "Nobody has the right to think he's preaching the truth of God unless people hate him for it. All the prophets were treated that way."
Phelps delivers this with all the drama, fire, and brimstone of a man who used to be a trial lawyer and is still a preacher. His voice and tone are spellbinding and chilling. He doesn't stumble over his words. Clearly, he believes he is a modern day prophet.
Phelps says he and his family have been
hated and persecuted almost from the time they arrived in Topeka in 1954.
"The more opposition we get, the more committed we get," says
Liz Phelps, one of the pastor's daughters. "Nothing, short of the
elimination of homosexuality in the world, will make us stop," announces
the pastor. In an unexpected reprieve from the anticipated 'sodomite' label
pasted on all who disagree-especially the press-the former vacuum cleaner
salesman gives his visitor a warm smile and immediately takes to calling
him warmly by his first name. He leads a brief tour through his church.
It adjoins his office: a long room, with a low ceiling and a rusty red
carpet and dark, oaken pews. It has enough seating for twice the current
congregation of 51.
The reporter asks to go to the bathroom. A stocky teenage grandson with
training in judo is sent along. He waits outside, no dummy, for the reporter
to finish. Then it's upstairs to the study, a high, spacious room filled
with books of biblical exegesis dating back to the Reformation. Fred is
eager to prove his Bible scholarship, and perhaps frustrated, even contemptuous,
when he realizes he is talking to a Bible-ho-hum humanist. Downstairs,
the pastor leads to the garage where their wardrobe of picket signs is
kept. Stacked high against the walls are messages for every occasion-all
of them gloomy. No good news here.
Outside, one would never guess they were at a church. Westboro Baptist
is actually a large home in a comfortable Topeka neighborhood. In fact,
Phelps and his wife have lived in the house for almost 40 years, and raised
their 13 children within its walls. For many years, his law office was
also located in the residence Fred Phelps insists is still his 'church'.
The pastor's large family has always composed nearly all of his congregation
and loyal following. As his children grew up, they bought the adjoining
houses on the block, creating a tight compound around the church. Today,
one finds a citadel of modest homes joined by fences, sharing a common
backyard.
In a small revolution in urban design, the space behind their houses has
not been sub-divided, but made into a wide grass park, complete with swimming
pool, ball court, and trampoline. The grandchildren wander from their separate
houses to play together. The effect on the nervous reprobates outside the
walls is a sense of Waco in the air.
From his compound, like a knight sallying forth from the Crusaders' citadel
of Krak, Pastor Phelps and his child band make war on the Adamic race.
When not doing TV talk shows, radio interviews, or appearing on the cover
of the national gay magazine, The Advocate, Phelps lays siege to his hometown,
nearby Kansas City, and local universities.
The Westboro congregation pickets public officials, private businesses,
and other churches, many of whom have had only tenuous connection to some
form of anti-Phelps criticism. Until a city ordinance was passed against
it, the Westboro warriors even picketed their opponents' homes. For the
last two years, this tiny group, by virtue of their tactics, dedication,
and discipline, have held the Kansas capital hostage. Fred Phelps has been
able to intimidate most of the residents of Topeka into a fearful silence,
though he himself is a shrill and vigorous defender of his own First Amendment
rights. Those who would disagree with his brutal remedies to his perception
of social ills face a three-fold attack: Lawsuits: If the rest of America
has justly come to fear the anonymous lone nut with a gun, it has yet to
experience a community of eccentrics stockpiling law degrees. Picketing:
One prominent restaurant in Topeka is now failing after being picketed
daily for almost a year. "Patrons just got tired of the harassment,"
sighs the owner. The cause of the pickets? One of the restaurant's employees
is a lesbian.
Faxes: Phelps has gone to court and won on his right to fax daily almost
300 public officials, private offices, and the media with damaging and
embarrassing information from the private lives of his opponents-most of
it false, wild, and unsubstantiated. One city councilwoman was called a
"Jezebelian, switch-hitting whore" who had sex with several men
at once. A police officer saw his name faxed all over town as a child molester,
one who had lured young boys to a park outside the city and had sex with
them in his patrol car. Despite his daughter Margie's assertions that Phelps
has the evidence to prove such accusations 'big time', no such proof has
ever emerged. Over the weeks, one learns about the family. Of Fred's 13
children, nine remain in the community. Five of them are married and raising
24 grandchildren. All of the members of Westboro Baptist-children, in-laws,
and grandchildren- participate in the pastor's anti-gay campaign. Despite
their image from the pickets, most of the adults are friendly and socially
accomplished. Each of them has a law degree, and some have additional postgraduate
degrees in business or public administration. The adults pay taxes, meet
bills, and obey the laws. The grandchildren are perhaps less demonstrative
than most children, but in an earlier day that was called well-behaved.
Many of their parents hold or have held important jobs in local and state
agencies. The pastor's first-born, Fred, Jr., and his wife, Betty, were
guests at the Clinton inauguration. The former northeast Kansas campaign
manager for Al Gore in 1988 has a stack of VIP photos, such as the one
of him, Betty, Al and Tipper, and even soon-to- be Kansas governor Joan
Finney smiling and yucking it up at the Phelps' place just a few years
ago. Clearly these are not street corner flakes taken to carrying signs.
The only discordant note here is the Pastor Phelps, pacing about in his
lycra shorts and windbreaker, looking like a triathlon competitor who made
a wrong turn, ended in a bad neighborhood, and had his bike stolen. But
he can easily be discounted while listening to his wife reveal just exactly
how she managed to raise those thirteen kids. How? Well, for starters,
the woman born Margie Simms of Carrollton, Missouri, had nine brothers
and sisters herself. Her own tribe she raised by the same five rules she
grew up under: keep their faces clean, their hands clean, and their clothes
clean; keep the house clean and keep 'em fed. No Game Boys, college funds,
and cars on sixteenth birthdays. She did most of the cooking at first,
and her grocery bill, she estimates, would be over two thousand a month
today. Many of the 24 grandchildren still spend time at Gramp's house,
she said, and their food costs are over a thousand a month, even now.
Mrs. Phelps smiles. Before the kids got
old enough to be finicky, she could fill one tub and bathe them all, then
line them up to brush their teeth and clean their fingernails. They had
six bedrooms furnished with bunkbeds, and everyone wore hand-me-downs.
Her laundry pile was so huge, she needed two washers and two dryers: "I'm
afraid that Maytag repairman wasn't lonely with us. He was always out at
our house. We went through washers and dryers every three years. They worked
all day long. "The part I dreaded most about raising so many children?
When they were sick. Then you had to pay all your attention to that one-and
hope the others would make out all right." Later, she adds, the older
kids took over most of the chores and her job became considerably easier.
The children used to listen to their father
preach twice on Sunday, says daughter Margie. Once at eleven and again
at seven that evening. "But there's too many conflicting schedules
now. So we only have the one sermon at eleven-thirty," Margie tells
how their household was abuzz with political bull sessions. All the candidates
and wannabes came through there: "My dad was complete activity and
whirlwind. My mom was the calm at the center of the storm. She's the one
who inspired our closeness. Getting us to look out for our brothers and
sisters; bond with each other." Mrs. Phelps describes how everyone
had to take piano lessons. They had two pianos in the garage and three
in the house. (Chopsticks in fugue-five as a backdrop to any childhood
might explain why the adults seem so tense today.) Margie tells of their
family choir. How they practiced a cappella and harmony. Even today, their
counter-protestors grudgingly admit the Phelps sound good when they raise
their collective voice in hymn from across the street. Once for their father's
birthday, says Margie, the children learned to harmonize "One Tin
Soldier", the theme song from the film, "Billy Jack". She
laughs at the memory. "He was of two minds about that: flattered that
we'd done it. And not too pleased by the lyrics. ("...go ahead and
hate your neighbor...go ahead and cheat a friend...do it in the name of
heaven...you'll be justified in the end... ") "We had good times...lots
of good times," says Mrs. Phelps. "I would not have had any other
childhood but that one," adds her daughter. If they're not holding
harassing signs saying, 'God Hates Fags', calling deaf old dowagers 'sodomite
whores', or bristling at startled churchgoers, Fred's kids are back at
home being model parents and neighbors, attending PTOs and Clinton coronations.
The stark contrast of the two masks-decent and repulsive, hateful and considerate,
forthright and devious, stupid and clever-creates a polarity that begins
to weigh on the observer. Contrasts frequently are the visible edge of
contradiction. And contradictions sometimes arise from very deep and secret
undercurrents. Currents of pain. One day in the pickup with the pastor
and his wife, driving the signs to the picket line, Fred suddenly jams
on the brakes and pulls over.
"Why'd you do that?" asks the
mother of 13. "We're gonna make sure those kids are safe," the
pastor replies. The objects of his concern are in the yard across the street.
There is absolutely no chance he could have hit them. It's odd and unnecessary
and exaggerated behavior.
His wife knows it; even the children know
it-they've pulled back and are watching the truck suspiciously. Mrs. Phelps
gives her husband a strange look. As if she had some secret knowledge.
It's obvious Fred intended this as an awkward display of altruism for the
press. The message is: "The pastor loves kids". But the message
one gets is a warning from Hamlet: "The play's the thing wherein we'll
catch the conscience of the king." Because that boy, now a man, ran
home to his father's house. The house of Fred Phelps. Where all good things
end.
Where any family counselor will assert
that a child who strangles pets has almost certainly been brutalized as
well.
"Daddy's Hands"
Mark Phelps feels nauseated whenever he
remembers that night. He was hit over 60 times and his brother, Nate, over
200 with a mattock handle. Nate went into shock. Mark didn't. A boy who
became a compulsive counter to handle the stress, Mark counted every stroke.
His and Nate's. While their father screamed obscenities and his brother
screamed in pain. Every 20 strokes, their mother wiped their faces off
in the tub. Nate passed out anyway. That was Christmas Day.
Though he believes he should be the next
governor of Kansas, Pastor Phelps has never believed in Christmas. A mattock
is a pick-hoe using a wooden handle heavier than a bat. Fred swung it with
both hands like a ballplayer and with all his might. "The first blow
stunned your whole body," says Mark. "By the third blow, your
backside was so tender, even the lightest strike was agonizing, but he'd
still hit you like he wanted to put it over the fence. By 20, though, you'd
have grown numb with pain. That was when my father would quit and start
on my brother. Later, when the feeling had returned and it hurt worse than
before, he'd do it again. "After 40 strokes, I was weak and nauseous
and very pale. My body hurt terribly. Then it was Nate's turn. He got 40
each time. "I staggered to the bathtub where my mom was wetting a
towel to swab my face. Behind me, I could hear the mattock and my brother
was choking and moaning. He was crying and he wouldn't stop." The
voice in the phone halts. After an awkward moment, clearing of throats,
it continues: "Then I heard my father shouting my name. My mom was
right there, but she wouldn't help me. It hurt so badly during the third
beating that I kept wanting to drop so he would hit me in the head. I was
hoping I'd be knocked out, or killed...anything to end the pain. "After
that...it was waiting that was terrible. You didn't know if, when he was
done with Nate, he'd hurt you again. I was shaking in a cold panic. Twenty-five
years since it happened, and the same sick feeling in my stomach comes
back now..." Did he? Come back to you?
"No. He just kept beating Nate. It
went on and on and on. I remember the sharp sound of the blows and how
finally my brother stopped screaming... "It was very quiet. All I
could think of was would he do that to me now. I could see my brother lying
there in shock, and I knew in a moment it would be my turn. "I can't
describe the basic animal fear you have in your gut at a time like that.
Where someone has complete power over you. And they're hurting you. And
there is no escape. No way out. If your mom couldn't help you...I can't
explain it to anyone except perhaps a survivor from a POW camp." Last
year, Nate Phelps, sixth of Pastor Phelps' 13 children, accused his father
of child abuse in the national media. The information was presented as
a footnote to the larger story of Fred Phelps' anti-gay campaign. But the
deep currents that lie beneath the apparent apple-cheeks of the Phelps'
clan were stirring. A series of interviews with Nate resulted in an eyewitness
account of life growing up in the Phelps camp. These reports contained
allegations of persistent and poisonous child abuse, wife-beating, drug
addiction, kidnapping, terrorism, wholesale tax fraud, and business fraud.
In addition, Nate described the cult-like disassembly of young adult identities
into shadow-souls, using physical and emotional coercion- coercion which
may have been a leading factor in the suicide of an emotionally troubled
teenage girl.
The second son, Mark Phelps, who according
to his sisters was at one time heir to the throne of Fred, had refused
comment during the earlier spate of news coverage. He and Nate have both
left the Westboro congregation and now live within four blocks of each
other on the West Coast. But, like the icy water that waits off sunny California
beaches, the deepest currents sometimes rise and now Mark has surfaced
with a decision.
"My father," says the 39 year-old,
now a parent himself, "is addicted to hate. Why? I can't say. But
I know he has to let it out. As rage. In doing so, he has violated the
sacred trust of a parent and a pastor. "I'm not trying to hurt my
father. And I'm not trying to save him. I'm going to tell what happened
because I've decided it's the only way I can overcome my past: to drag
it into the light and break its chains."
Mark believes that Fred Phelps, no longer
able to hate and abuse his adult children if he hopes to keep them near,
by necessity now must turn all his protean anger outward against his community.
Mark has decided to tell the truth about his father so that others will
be warned. He and his brother have now come forward with specific and detailed
stories, alarming tales, ones that could be checked and have been verified.
Mark's testimony supports Nate's previously, and both men's statements
have been confirmed by a third Phelps' child. In addition, the Capital-
Journal has uncovered documents which substantiate this testimony, and
interviewed dozens of relevant witnesses who have confirmed much of this
information. "One of my earliest memories...," the voice in the
phone pauses, painful to remember: "was the big ol' German shepherd
that belonged to our neighbors. One day it was in our yard and my father
went out and blew it apart with his shotgun."
Mark says he has no memories prior to
age five. "Living in that house was like being in a war zone, where
things were unpredictable and things were very violent. And there was a
person who was violent who did what he wanted to do. And that was to hurt
people, or break things, or throw a fit, or whatever he wanted to do, that's
what he did. And there was nobody there to say different."
One day when Mark was a teenager, he came
home to find his mom sitting on the lip of the tub, blue towel on her head,
her lips pursed with anger and hurt. "Do you know what your father
did today?" she asked. To Mark, it felt surreal. His mother never
spoke out nor vented her emotions. She seemed quite different just then.
He looked at his father. Pastor Phelps
was standing across the room with his arms folded, smiling (the bathtub
was in the parents' bedroom). "No," said Mark. "I don't
know." His mother stood up and whipped the towel down her side. "He
chopped my hair off," she announced, tears coming to her eyes. The
son stood aghast at the grotesque head before him. His mother's former
waist-length hair had been shorn to two inches- and even that showed ragged
gouges down to the white of the scalp. "Why?" he asked. "Your
father says I wasn't in subjection today," she replied. According
to Mark and Nate, all of the Phelps children were terrified of their father:
"Usually we had to worry what mood we'd find him in after school.
You didn't make any noise or racket, or cut- up; you had to walk on eggshells,
tiptoe around him; you didn't fight with your siblings; you did your jobs,
performed your assigned tasks, and hoped not to draw his attention."
If you did draw it and he was in a foul mood, say the boys, summary punishment
at the hands of the dour pastor involved being beaten with fists, kicked
in the stomach, or having one's arm twisted up and behind one's back till
it nearly dislocated.
Sometimes Pastor Phelps preferred to grab
one child by their little hands and haul them into the air. Then he would
repeatedly smash his knee into their groin and stomach while walking across
the room and laughing. The boys remember this happening to Nate when he
was only seven, and to Margie and Kathy even after they were sexually developed
teenagers. Nate recalls being taken into the church once where his father,
a former golden gloves boxer, bent him backwards over a pew, body-punched
him, spit in his face, and told him he hated him. Mark's very first memory
in this life is an emotional scar: their mom had gone to the hospital to
give birth to Jonathon. Mark remembers being very upset, since now they
would be alone in the house with their father, his threatening presence
left unmitigated by her maternal concern. Though only five, already Mark
could use the phone and, one day while his father was out he dialed the
number she'd left.
When he heard her voice, he told her,
"Mom, I'm scared. I need you." But before she could respond,
the Pastor Phelps came on. He had gone to visit the new mother. "What
the hell are you doing calling here?" the father shouted into the
phone. "Don't you ever call here and bother her again!" That
is Mark Phelps' earliest memory. That, and the feeling, when his father
hung up, that there would be no rescue and no escape from the fear and
pain contained in the word, 'daddy'. When Fred Phelps came home, he beat
the little boy's first memory of the world in to stay. From that moment,
Mark whispers softly in the phone, "I resolved to be a total yes-man
to my father. If I couldn't escape his violence, then I'd get so close
to him he wouldn't see me. I'd survive that way."
"We had clothes and food," adds
Nate. "What we didn't have was safety. He could throw fits and rages
at any moment. When he did, the kids would respond by turning pale and
shaking, standing there shivering and listening-Mark would pace and count
the squares in the floor." "But I learned exactly what I had
to do...to stay safe around him," continues Mark. I did a good job
of it." He admits he used to beat his brothers and sisters if his
father ordered
him: "If you fell asleep in church,
you got hit in the face. Once I hit Nate so hard, it knocked over the pew
and blood splurt across the floor." After a moment, he tells us quietly:
"My brothers and sisters are entitled to hate me." Physical abuse?
Nonsense, say sisters Margie and Shirley. They laugh.
Well, maybe during their father's period
of preoccupation with health food. Every morning they were required to
eat nuts and vitamins, curds and whey. "I hate nuts," says Margie
"We'd take the vitamins and drop them in our pockets. Throw them out
later." She adds: "Little Abby was the only one who liked curds
and whey. Poor kid. She'd have to eat every bowl on the table when my dad
wasn't looking."
Against this charming story is set another.
For all her reputation as a minotaur of the Kansas courtrooms, Margie Phelps
was like a second mom to the younger children. Today, she remains well-liked
by her siblings, including Mark and Nate. When her father was beating someone
and screaming at the top of his lungs, frequently Margie would take her
terrified younger brothers and sisters away for several hours. When they
thought it was over, they'd come back like cautious house cats, sneaking
in softly, Margie on point, to see if the coast was clear. The boys tell
how one day their father was in a barbershop and noticed the leather strap
used to sharpen razors. It struck his fancy as a backup to the mattock
handle, so he had one custom-made at a leatherworker's shop near Lane and
Huntoon.
"It was about two feet long and four
inches wide. It left oval circles- red, yellow, and blue," says Mark.
"Usually the circles would be where it would snap the tip-on the outside
of your right leg and hip...because he was righthanded." According
to Mark and Nate, their father wore out several of the leathermaker's straps
while they were growing up. As Mark Phelps became the angel-appointed in
Fred's family cult, Nate was assigned the role of sinner. For Mark, his
brother was the needed scapegoat. For the rest of the family, Nate was
a problem child, the delinquent of the brood. Brilliant like his dad (Nate's
IQ has been measured at 150), the middle son followed another drummer from
the time he was a toddler. When he was five, he remembers his father telling
him, 'I'm going to keep a special eye on you'. The regular beatings started
shortly thereafter.
Nate endured literally hundreds of such
brutalities before walking out at one minute after midnight on his eighteenth
birthday. His siblings both inside and outside the church agree that Nate
got the lion's share of the 'discipline'. "Nate was a very tough kid,"
says Mark. "I don't know how he endured it, but he did. He'd get 40
blows at a time from the mattock handle. He was just tougher than the rest
of us and my father adjusted for that."
Today, raising his family in California,
Nate is a devout Christian and a warm, friendly, considerate, mountain
of a man. But at 6'4" and 280 pounds, it would be...instructive...to
see father and son in the same room today with one mattock stick between
them. "I sensed early on this man had no love for us," says Nate.
"He was using us. I knew it. And I always made sure he knew I did."
in fact, Mark adds, Nate's obstinate resistance
so angered his father that, by age nine, when a family outing had been
planned, frequently Nate not only missed it, but Fred would remain behind
with him. "And during the course of the day, my father would beat
Nate whenever the spirit moved him. " Mark remembers the family coming
back once to find Pastor Phelps jogging around the dining room table, beating
the sobbing boy with a broom handle; while doing so, he was alternately
spitting on the frightened child and chuckling the same sinecure laugh
so disturbing to those who've seen him on television. When he wasn't allowed
to go along, says Mark, "Nate would literally scream and chase mom
as she drove off with us kids in the car. He knew what was coming after
we left." The older brother remembers the little one racing alongside
the windows, begging for them not to leave him until, like a dog, he could
no longer keep up. Mark sorrowfully admits he felt no empathy for him,
only relief it wasn't happening to himself. "I just stared straight
ahead. I didn't know what he was yelling about. I was just glad to get
the hell out of there." But how could their mom tolerate that? Wouldn't
the maternal instinct cut in at some point? Wouldn't the lioness turn in
fury to protect her cub?
It turns out Mrs. Phelps was herself an
abused child, according to her sons. "The only thing she ever told
us about her dad was that he was a drunkard who beat them. She said she'd
always run and hide in the watermelon patch when he was raging." Though
most of her nine brothers and sisters either settled in Kansas City or
remained in rural Missouri, Mrs. Phelps has had virtually no contact with
them during the last 40 years. Not since she married Fred. "My father
was very effective at jamming Bible verses down her throat about wives
being in subjection to their husbands," Nate says. "She was a
small woman and very gentle. She felt God had put her with Fred and she
had to endure." "Oh, mom would try to interfere," adds Mark.
"She'd come running out, finally, into the church auditorium as the
beating would escalate, and yell wildly, 'Fred, stop it!" You're going
to kill him!' "And then my father would turn on her. I remember him
screaming, 'Oh, so you want me to just let them go, huh? You don't believe
in discipline, huh? Why don't you just shut your goddam mouth before I
slap you? Get your fat hussy ass out of here! I'm warning you, goddamit,
you either shut up or I'm going to beat you!' "And then," Mark
continues, "she'd shut up till she couldn't take it anymore, then
she'd start again. When she did, he'd start beating her and hitting her
with his fist, and sometimes she'd just come up and grab him. Sometimes
she'd run out the front door, and sometimes he'd just slap her and beat
her until she'd shut up. "I can remember times when she'd get hit
so hard, it looked like she'd be knocked out, and she'd stagger and almost
fall. She would give out this desperate scream right at the moment when
he would hit her.
"Sometimes, after he'd get done beating
her, he'd have forgotten about the kid. Sometimes he'd go back to the kids
and beat even harder. Then he'd blame the kid for what had happened."
The phone line falls silent. "Out in public," recalls Nate, "she
wore sunglasses a lot." Mrs. Phelps was beaten even when she wasn't
interfering. After Nate and Kathy, the boys figure their mom was victimized
the most. They remember their father finishing one session by throwing
her down the stairs from the second floor. "It had 16 steps,"
says Mark. "And no rail," continues Nate. "Mom grabbed at
the stairs going over and tore the ligaments and cartilage in her right
shoulder. The doctor said she needed surgery, but my father refused. We
had no medical insurance back then. She's had a bad shoulder ever since.
My father often chose that same shoulder to re-injure when he was beating
mom. He'd grab her right arm and jerk it. She'd yelp." The voice in
the phone sighs: "But...I guess I do still feel that very deeply...that
she betrayed a gut, primitive bond when she drove off and left me. I do
love my mom. But I wish she'd put a stop to it. She could have and she
didn't." Pastor Phelps denies beating his children or his wife. "Hardly
a word of truth to that stuff. You know, it's amazing to me that even one
of them stayed." He grins, referring to the nine daughters and sons
who remain loyal to him. Why?
"Because teachers have the kids from
age five. And children are besieged by their own lusts and foreign ideas.
"Those boys (Mark and Nate) didn't want to stay in this church. It
was too hard. They took up with girls they liked, and the last thing them
girls was gonna do was come into this church. "Those boys wanted to
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. I can't blame them. I just feel
sorry for them that they're not bound for the promised land." Margie
is the second-oldest daughter and the fourth Phelps child. Her mom goes
by 'Marge", so she is 'Margie'. Some say Margie is the de facto head
of operations for her father's war on the community. Anticipating bad reviews
from Nate, at least, she explained: "My brother is furious with his
father because he (Nate) is married to another man's wife. My dad and our
whole family do not accept that." On the abuse issue, her denials
take a softer tone: "There were times in our childhood when each of
us had bruises on our behinds. My dad had a capacity to go too far. In
what he said even more than what he did...yet, as obnoxious as he can be
one minute, he's the most kind, caring person another minute. "I have
a marvellous relationship with my father as an adult. He respects me. He
listens to me. And he helps me. Most people, when they get older, they
don't have that kind of relationship with their parents." Margie,
as a single woman, adopted a new-born infant boy nine years ago. "Jacob
doesn't have a father," she says, "and my dad fills in there.
He's one of Jacob's best friends. He's just a wonderful grandfather to
him." For his part, Nate remembers Marge bringing home bad grades
one day and going running to avoid a beating. When she got back, she was
in an exhausted state. Fred beat her anyway. So badly, she lost consciousness
and lay in a heap on the floor. The Pastor Phelps kicked his daughter repeatedly
in the head and stomach while she out. "I saw her interviewed on television,"
adds Nate. "And she said we weren't abused, just strictly brought
up." He was concerned when he heard her say that: "If she remembers
that as a 'strict upbringing', then there's no moral suasion there for
her not to 'strictly bring up' her own child, the adopted Jacob. "Nate
would have ended in the penitentiary without his father's discipline,"
says his mother. "I believe it's him who's the bitter one. He needed
a lot of discipline." That's fair. All large families have a black
sheep. But this one has four: Nate and Mark rebelled, accepting they'd
be turned back from the gates of heaven by their father who was acting
as St. Peter's proxy. They later received an official letter from the Westboro
Baptist Church, informing them they had been 'voted out of the church and
delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh'. Katherine and Dottie
suffered the same fate but continue to reside in Topeka. "Dottie only
cares about her career," says her mom. "Family is an embarrassment."
And Kathy? "She's been a bitch since high school," says Margie.
"Mark," reflects Mrs. Phelps,
"was always well-behaved. Of the ones who left, he was a surprise."
According to Mark and Nate, fathering to Pastor Phelps meant the rod and
the pulpit. "My dad never once stood with me, or sat with me, or worked
with me to teach me anything about the practical life of a Christian,"
says Mark. "It was just preach on Sunday. There was no focus on the
human heart or being a human-you know, how we were supposed to do that."
When it came to their formal education
as well, Fred's input to the curriculum was limited to the rod and the
wrath of God. "Our dad had no use for education. He wanted us all
to be lawyers, and for that we needed good grades. But he would sneer at
our subjects, never helped us with our homework, never went to any school
meetings and skipped our graduations. All he cared about were the grades.
On the day they arrived, that was the one day he got involved in our education-usually
with the mattock." "The only time he met our teachers,"
adds Nate, "was when he was suing them ." Mark remembers a day
when the boys had gathered in one room to do their homework. They'd been
working quietly for some time when the dour pastor walked in.
After staring in simmering malevolence
at each of them, he intoned: "You guys think you may be foolin' me.
But on a cold snowy day, the snow will be crunchin' under the mailman's
tires, and under his boots, when he puts that letter in our box. Your grades.
And that's when the meat's gonna get separated from the coconut..."
When the report cards arrived from Landon Middle School one day in January,
1972, it wasn't snowing. But Jonathon and Nate's grades were poor and the
meat got separated from the coconut. The beatings were so severe, the boys
were covered with massive, broken, purple bruising extending from their
buttocks to below their knees. Neither Jonathon or Nate were able to sit
down, and the blows to the backs of their legs had caused so much swelling
they were unable to bend them. Today, Nate has chronic knee complaints
whose origin may lie in early trauma to the cartilage. And after the beatings
came the shaming. It was 1972-the age of shoulder locks. Both boys had
begged their father not to have crewcuts. They already felt exposed to
enough ridicule as the odd ducks whose father didn't believe in Christmas,
whose home no one was allowed to visit, and who were forbidden to visit
others' homes. Jonathon and Nate had a teenage dread of braving the corridors
with flesh-heads in an era of long manes, and their father had relented.
Their hair had been allowed to touch their collars. But when the grades
turned bad, out came the clippers. No attachments. Brutally short. Shaved
bald. "It was not a haircut," says Nate. "It was a penalty.
And a further way of cutting us off from the outside world."
On the following day-a Thursday-the boys
came to school wearing red stocking caps. When asked to remove them in
class, they declined. This upset their teachers almost as much as their
refusal to take their seats. One instructor demanded Nate remove his headgear.
Finally, Nate did. The teacher stared at his bald head. So did his classmates.
"On second thought," said the charitable man, "put it back
on."
For gym class that Friday, the boys had
a note from their mom excusing them all week. By now, the faculty had a
pretty good idea what the clothes, notes, and funny hats were covering,
and Principal Dittemore asked Jonathon to come into his office. Waiting
for him were the school nurse and a doctor from the community.
They asked the 13 year-old to show them
his bruises. He refused. Feeling their hands were tied, the staff released
Jonathon, only to have the pastor himself show up a few hours later. During
a stormy second meeting, Phelps accused the school, first of slackness
and poor discipline, then, paradoxically, of beating his sons and causing
the bruising themselves. He threatened to slap a lawsuit on anyone who
pursued the matter.
Not a man to be intimidated, Dittemore
reported the suspected child abuse to an officer of the Juvenile Court.
On Monday, the same routine occurred-unable to sit down and insisting on
the stocking caps. Until it came time for gym once more. The note had excused
them for a week, but now the coach demanded they show it again, saying
he'd thought it was only for a day. The boys had left their note at home.
The coach took Nate into the locker room
and stood there, waiting for him to get undressed. Nate refused. At that
point, the faculty relented, and Jonathon and Nate thought they were off
the hook. But, as they walked out of Landon to their mom's station wagon
after school, they saw two police cars waiting. One of the teachers pointed
the boys out to the officers. Before he knew it, Nate was in a squad car
on his way downtown. "I was terrified. Not because I was afraid of
the police. I was afraid of my dad. I kept thinking it was all over but
the funeral. What would my old man do? This was my fault and he was going
to beat the daylight out of me and I could still barely walk from the last
one." At the station, Nate remembers everyone was very kind to him.
They spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to allay his fears
and coax him to allow them to photograph his naked backside. Finally he
did. When the police allowed Mrs. Phelps to take her boys home, Nate's
worst nightmare came true. After nearly getting arrested for delivering
a tirade of obscenities and threats to the juvenile detectives, the dour
pastor rushed back to the house and delivered a fresh beating to his exhausted
sons.
For the moment, however, it had gone beyond
the pastor's control. Police detectives investigated the matter, and it
was filed as juvenile abuse cases #13119 and #13120. Jonathon and Nate
were assigned a court- appointed lawyer, as a guardian-ad-litem, to protect
their interests. The assistant county attorney took charge of the cases,
and juvenile officers were assigned to the boys.
In his motion to dismiss, the ever-resourceful
Phelps filed a pontifically sobering sermon on the value of strict discipline
and corporal punishment in a good Christian upbringing. "When he beat
us, he told us if it became a legal case, we'd pay hell," says Nate.
"And we believed him. At that time, there was nothing we wanted to
see more than those charges dropped. When the guardian ad litem came to
interview us, we lied through our teeth."
Principals involved in the case speculate
the boys' statements, along with superiors' reluctance to tangle with the
litigious pastor, caused the charges to be dropped. The last reason is
not academic speculation. The Capital-Journal has learned through several
sources that the Topeka Police Department's attitude toward the Phelps'
family in the '70s and '80s was hands off-this guy's more trouble than
it's worth'.
Three months later, the case was dismissed
upon the motion of the state. The reason given by the prosecutor was "no
case sufficient to go to trial in opinion of state". The boys were
selling candy in Highland Park when they learned from their mom during
a rest break the Pastor Phelps would not go on trial for beating his children.
"I felt elated," remembers Nate. "It meant at least I wouldn't
get beaten for that."
But if Nate's life was so full of pain
and fear, why didn't he speak up when he was at the police station and
everyone was being so nice to him? Nate laughs. It's the veteran's tolerant
amusement at the novice's question. "We'll do anything not to have
to give up our parents," he answers. "That's just the way kids
are. That's the way we were." "Besides, when it (abuse) occurs
since birth, it never even crosses your mind to fight back," interrupts
Mark. "You know how they train elephants?
They raise them tied to a chain in the
ground. Later, it's replaced by a rope and a stick. But the elephant never
stops thinking it's a chain." The loyal Phelps family are of two minds
on the case. Margie admitted it had occurred. Jonathon denied it. The pastor
never decided. Instead, he launched into a lecture on the value of tough
love in raising good Christians.
Since their juvenile files were destroyed
when the boys reached eighteen, but for their father's vindictiveness,
there might have been no record of this case. As it was, he sued the school.
This caused the school's insurance company to request a statement from
Principal Dittemore, who complied, describing the events which led to the
faculty's concern the boys were being abused. The suit was dropped.
When contacted in retirement, Dittemore
confirmed he'd written the letter and acknowledged its contents. The family
now accuses Nate of fabricating his stories of child abuse. They claim
he is spinning these lies out of the malice he has over their opposition
to his marriage (Nate's wife is divorced). But Nate was married in 1986.
The described case of abuse was a matter of record 14 years earlier-and
21 years prior to Pastor Phelps' controversial debut on national television.
The Phelps family has since maintained that, while the case did exist,
the charges were invented by the school to harass their family. They say
they were raised under loving but strict discipline, and that is how they're
raising their children. Jonathon Phelps, who admits he beats his wife and
four children, for emphasis reads from Proverbs, 13:24: "He that spareth
his rod, hateth his son. But he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes."
Yes...but...where does it say the purple child is a child much-loved? Betty
Phelps, wife of Fred, Jr., glowers at the questions. Anytime you spank
a child, you're going to cause bruising, she explains. And sneers: "I'll
bet your parents put a pillow in your pants." Jonathon, staring straight
ahead and not looking at the reporter, states in a barely controlled voice
of malevolent threat that, should the reporter tell it differently than
just heard, said scribbler is evil and going to hell. Assuming there'll
be space, the doomed dromedary of capital muckraking must tell it differently.
To begin with, the reporters on this story
were raised in the same era and locale as the Phelps boys. They also grew
up under strict discipline, and one of their fathers was, at one time,
a professional boxer. Daddy's hands sometimes swung a mean leather belt,
but only a few strokes, and it left no bruises. After a few minutes, one
could sit down again. The moving force behind the pastor's hands was not
'tough love', as he so often claims, but malice aforethought. The Capital-
Journal has established from numerous sources conversant with the case
that the injuries to Nate and Jonathon Phelps in January of 1972 went far
beyond the bounds of a 'strict upbringing'-even by the standards of the
strictest disciplinarian. Those injuries would have been seen as torture
and abuse in any era, at any age, in any culture.
Mark's front porch tale is instructive.
Any psychologist hearing the story about choking that cat today would know
immediately to investigate the child's home life for abuse. Back then it
was not the case. That child would have been left to find his own way out
of the terrible subterranean world another had made for him. Most don't.
Research shows nine out of twelve die down there.
In their heart. When the light in their
soul goes out. If their bodies live on, they grow up mangled and mangle
those closest to them. And it all takes shape down there. In the dark new
universe of a young child's mind. Mark Phelps escaped.
His father did not. That man came to the
Kansas capital instead. And, after 40 years, he still haunts its porches,
tormenting its innocents. The Capital-Journal went south...Mississippi...to
see if it could learn where and when...perhaps how...the light went out
for Fred Phelps.
It followed him to Colorado and California,
Canada and New Mexico. For three months, it turned every stone in Topeka,
seeking the truth about this man. What follows is the monster behind the
clown, the street corner malevolence mocking the cameras.
"God's Left Hook"
The air hangs heavy, torpid, and hot.
Pulling the warm steam into one's lungs leaves only a disturbing sense
of slow suffocation. Under the harsh subtropic sun, the magnolia blossoms
slip from the black-green leaves, falling like wet snow-petals to perfume
the red-clay earth. In the heat, it leaves a heavy, hanging smell...the
wealth of Dixie. Fred Phelps spent his first years here.
Outside the courthouse, flags sag limp
and breezeless. Above the doors are cut the words: Thou Shalt Not Bear
False Witness Against Thy Neighbor It's Meridian, Mississippi, town of
old store fronts, mouthwatering cornbread, and 40,000 people. Surrounded
by 100-foot pine forests, its business is lumber. Trucks and flatbed railcars
loaded with freshly cut logs rolls slowly by. To the sensual fragrance
of the magnolias is added the sweet aroma of pine. While great pyramids
of logs await processing into lumber at the plant on the west side, Navy
jets roar overhead...the other source of revenue. The federal government
threatens to close the base down; the locals fight to keep it. Meridian
was sacked by General Sheridan during the Civil War. The implacable bluecoat
burned the town and tore up what, till then, had been a rail hub of the
South. The town has since recovered. The railroad did not. In the cemeteries
can be found gravestones of the Confederate dead. Among them, a more recent
marker reads: Catherine Idalette Phelps, Age 28 Fred's mother used to open
all the windows in the house and play the piano, according to Thetis Grace
Hudson, former librarian in Meridian and a neighbor of the Phelps family
during the Depression. The other households on her street were too poor
to afford any entertainment, she says, so everyone remembered Catherine
Phelps for her kindness.
Apparently she played well. Whenever she
was at their house, Hudson remembers she used to ask Mrs. Phelps to play
the hymn "Love Lifted Me" on the piano. Fred's mother always
obliged, even if she was busy. But, after an illness of several months-those
who still remember the family say it was throat cancer-Catherine Phelps
died on September 3, 1935. Fred was only five years old. Since the little
boy's uncle was the mayor of nearby Pascagoula, and his father was prominent
in Meridian, the honorary pallbearers at her funeral included the local
mayor, a city councilman, two judges, and every member of the police department.
Ms. Hudson says young Fred was bewildered at the loss. After his mother's
death, a maternal great aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for Fred and his
younger sister, Martha Jean. "She kept house for the daddy,"
adds a distant relative who declined to be identified. At times, work caused
the boy's father to be away from home and Jordan raised the children. The
woman Fred Phelps has referred to as 'his dear old aunt' died in a head-on
collision in 1951 as she was driving back to Meridian from a nearby town.
The boy had lost two mothers before he'd turned 21.
Family friends remember Fred's father
was a tall, stately man. A true Southern gentlemen, they say. And a fine
Christian. But the elder Phelps also had a hot temper, according to Jack
Webb, 81, of Porterville, Miss. Webb owns a general store, the only business
in Porterville, a town of about 45 elderly people. "If he got mad,
he was mad all over," said Webb. He was ready to fight right quick.
He was mad, mad, mad." Webb is a frail man, slightly hard of hearing.
Walking into his general store is like stepping back into the 19th century.
The shelves, all located behind a 100-foot wooden counter, are stocked
with weary tins of Vienna sausage and dusty bottles of aspirin. Coke goes
for 30 cents. Glass. No twist-off.
Despite the temper, Webb adds, the elder
Phelps was an honorable man. In Meridian, he had been an object of great
respect. Fred's father was a veteran of World War One, and throughout his
life suffered from the effects of a mustard gassing he'd taken in France.
He found work as a detective for the Southern Railroad to support his family.
The railroad security force or "bulls", as they were called,
had a reputation for brutality when they patrolled the yards to prevent
the itinerant laborers, washed out of their hometowns by the Depression,
from riding the freights. "My father," says Pastor Phelps, "oft-times
came home with blood all over him." Suddenly he stands up, turning
his face away, and exits. Several minutes later he returns, smiling, apologizing:
"You got me thinking about those days," he offers, then bravely
charges into a round of the town's official song: "Meridian, Meridian...
a city set upon a hill; Meridian, Meridian... that radiates the South's
good will."
The elder Phelps was a "bull"
throughout the Depression, says Thetis Hudson, and the pay was good. The
family lived comfortably at a time when the other families in town were
being ravaged by hardship. What was the son like? "Fred Phelps had
as normal and beautiful a home life as anyone ever wanted," commented
a relative who didn't want their name used. "His childhood was very
good," says Hudson. "There was nothing in his family out of the
ordinary." "All I know is it's a tragedy, and it stems from within
Fred Phelps," adds the anonymous relative, referring to the homosexual
picketing. "It has nothing to do with his upbringing."
As a teenager. Fred was tall and thin
and sported a crewcut. He was extraordinarily smart, but thought to be
a bit overbearing about it at times. A reserved and serious high school
student, he never dated anyone while there. "He was not a real socializer,
but he knew a lot of people. Everyone had the greatest respect for him,"
says Joe Clay Hamilton, former high-school classmate, now a Meridian lawyer.
The future Pastor Phelps earned the rank of Eagle Scout with Palms, played
coronet and base horn in the high school band, was a high hurdler on the
track team, and worked as a reporter on the school's newspaper. In a class
of 213 graduates, he ranked sixth. When he was voted class orator for commencement
of May, 1946, received the American Legion Award for courage, leadership,
scholarship, and service, then honored as his congressman's choice for
West Point, Fred Phelps was only 16 years old. A year later this young
man, touted as the quiet achiever, had turned his back on West Point, his
former life, and his future promise. The summer of '47 would find him a
belligerent and eccentric zealot, antagonizing the Mormons in the mountains
of Utah. Because of his age, Phelps had to wait one fateful year before
entering the military academy. During that time he attended the local junior
college. While waiting for his life to start, Fred, along with his best
friend, John Capron, went to a revival meeting at the local Methodist church.
It was there the budding pastor felt the 'call', and the dreams of going
north to West Point melted like the river ice washed down and marooned
on the hot mud of the Mississippi banks.
Fred Phelps, by his own description, "went
to a little Methodist revival meeting and had what I think was an experience
of grace, they call it down there. I felt the call, as they say, and it
was powerful. The God of glory appeared. It doesn't mean a vision or anything,
but it means an impulse on the heart, as the old preachers say." The
revival had a profound effect on both Phelps and Capron. "The two
of them 'got religion'," said Joe Hamilton. Friends and relatives
claim the two boys became so excited, they were unable to distinguish reality
from idealism-they were going off to conquer the world. One relative still
in Meridian described it this way: "Fred, bless his heart, just went
overboard. If you didn't accept it, he was going to cram it down your throat."
Was this radical change in behavior a
characteristic of the conversion experience? Or was there something hidden
in the young man's character that drew him to the experience and its consequent
license for loud and abusive behavior? If the latter, then some heart should
be heard pounding beneath the floorboards in the old Phelps' house. Yet,
there is little to be heard.
Fletcher Rosenbaum, a retired lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Air Force who lives in Meridian, went to high school
with Phelps. "He was good at whatever he tried," Rosenbaum says.
"He was a first-class individual. I would be surprised if he wasn't
a top-notch citizen in Topeka." Picketing AIDS funerals and the fax
attacks on members of his community by Phelps surprised Rosenbaum: "He
was very reserved in high school. Very quiet. I'm surprised he would be
involved in aggressive activities. To me, it would be out of character
for him." This observation may not be entirely accurate. One woman,
a librarian at the Meridian Public Library, said she remembers Phelps and
went to school and church with him. "He doesn't bend," she observed.
"He never did." She also described him as "spooky",
"different", and "a preacher prodigy." "You tell
him not to do it, and he'll do it," said another Meridian woman. "He
was a very determined person. That's to be admired, but it can be taken
too far." Even Fred himself remembers differently. He was a boxer
throughout high school and, reminiscing briefly about his days in Meridian,
he chuckles to himself. If any of the other boys came to class with a puffy
face or shiner, their friends would ask if they'd been sparring with Phelps.
He always left his mark on them, he tells me proudly.
Sid Curtis, a grade-school classmate of
Fred's, remembers the future pastor drew well, even then. What did he draw?
Boxers.
A golden glove contender in high school,
Fred fought twice in state meets, winning matches which, according to him,
were head-on slugfests. Not aggressive? Not the Bull of Topeka yet, but
clearly it was in his character. A story in the high-school paper, predicting
the futures of Phelps and his classmates, reads: "Fred Phelps will
box in Madison Square Garden next June, 1954. Young Phelps will fight for
the world championship." One can only wonder what deep currents rose
in the teenager whenever he climbed into the ring. Recalling the earlier
testimony of his sons, Nate and Mark, and remembering that research has
proven abusive behavior is passed with high probability from one generation
to the next, the question must be raised: Was the Pastor Phelps equally
abused as a child? In the South, there is an unwritten code you don't bad-mouth
one of your own. Strangers are welcome unless they ask too many questions,
or speak ill of Southern folks and ways. In fact, if ET had come down in
Meridian instead of Southern California, and a yankee inquired about that
today, folks would probably scratch their chins, figure the carpet-baggers
with a knowing eye, and say he was a quiet boy, little short for his age...but
had good hands for the piano... If the stories his sons have told are true,
the outside observer has two choices in understanding Fred Phelps: either
there's a pounding heart under the floor in that old house or the teenager's
Saul- into-Paul experience produced the character change. However, many
Christians might find it difficult to believe that discovering Jesus would
render a good-natured, quiet lad into the bullying hostile whose trail
we will shortly follow from Vernal, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. If something
did happen to throw Fred Waldron Phelps off track, something that mangled
him for life, no one in Meridian wanted to say. Doing that no doubt would
be to speak ill of the dead-something Pastor Phelps also was taught to
avoid.
Yet, suddenly at 16, the child has become
the man: fanatic, unempathic, combative, and vindictive. If there is an
answer to the question, 'why does Fred hate us all so much?', perhaps it
lies in those years, age five to 15, when his father was largely absent
and Fred and his sister were cared for by Irene Jordan.
"If he were dead, I'd talk,"
says Fred's sister, Martha Jean Capron, now residing in Pennsylvania. "But
as long as he's alive...that's up to him..." Following the revival
experience, Phelps abandoned plans for West Point. He moved to Cleveland,
Tennessee, where he attended Bob Jones College, a non-denominational Christian
academy.
John Capron went with him. While Fred
and his boyhood chum would eventually separate over religion, Martha Jean
and Capron never would: they were married and moved to Indonesia as missionaries.
John was a minister there for ten years. Later he would smuggle Bibles
into Communist China. Pastor Phelps' brother-in-law died of a heart attack
in 1982.
Perhaps it's a shame Phelps didn't go
to West Point. An army career could have provided a healthy outlet for
his aggression, been more compatible with his demanding and commanding
nature, while his strong body, mind, and will would have been an asset
to the service and his country. If he'd survived Korea as a 2nd lieutenant,
probably he'd have been a lieutenant colonel by Vietnam. There he'd almost
certainly have chipped his Manichaean mandibles of dualism on that war's
hard bone of moral ambiguity. Either he'd have ended on a river somewhere,
whispering "the horror...the horror..." to bewildered junior
officers, or gained a wider horizon and returned home to retire an urbane
cynic and Southern gentleman. But in 1946, Fred Phelps had a year to kill
instead of Nazis or North Koreans. The revival took him from Meridian to
Bob Jones; from there the future pastor found another outlet for his anger.
This one gave instant gratification and conferred adult license to abuse
almost overnight: lip-shooting preacher; revivalist minister. And, unlike
Vietnam, here God was unequivocally on his side...
As part of a Rocky Mountain mission assignment
in summer, 1947, Phelps and two other students from Bob Jones were to seek
out a fundamentalist church, convert non-believers to Christianity and
steer the converts to that church. The three men chose Vernal, a town in
northeast Utah. They would be working to convert, not secular hedonists,
but a population that was predominantly and staunchly Mormon. When Fred
and his friends got there, they set up a meeting tent brought from Bob
Jones in the city park. A local Baptist minister provided them food and
lodging (B.H. McAlister, who would later ordain Phelps). During the day
the do-it- yourself apostles went door-to-door, seeking converts to the
good news. At night, they conducted revival meetings in the tent. Only
no one came.
So Ed Nelson, one of the trio, had an
idea. He went to a local radio station and asked if he might buy a block
of time. Nope, was the reply. Not if you're going to attack the Mormon
church. Ok, said Ed, can I announce I'll be giving an address tonight at
the tent?
Sure. So Ed Nelson announced on the radio
he'd be doing just that. And the title of the speech? 'What's Wrong with
the Mormon Church?' says Ed, over the air. That night, continues Nelson,
now 69 and a traveling Baptist evangelist based in Denver, a huge crowd
arrived. It was so large, the trip had to roll up the sides of the tent.
Ed was nervous, but he gave his speech. The crowd listened politely. When
the young evangelist was finished, a man in the crowd asked would there
be questions. Sure, said Ed.
But the very first one stumped him, Nelson
confesses disarmingly, and he panicked. Flustered, he announced there would
be no more questions. Several in the throng protested, saying that, after
sitting in courtesy, listening to their religion attacked, they weren't
going to let the young men off so easily-that they should be willing to
answer the crowd's questions.
At that, Fred rushed one of the men speaking
and started to throw a punch, but Ed grabbed his arm and shouted: "Fred!
Fred! No! Don't you do it!" "And," Nelson recounts, "Fred
looked at that guy and he said, 'you shut your mouth, you dirty...' something
or other."
Which, to Ed, only compounded their troubles.
Fred's companion then raised his arms and shouted, "Folks, the meeting's
over! It's over!" And he rushed out and killed the lights inside the
tent. This discouraged any further theological discussion.
It would seem this format-speak one's
mind, then take violent offense at anything less than complete agreement,
and suppress all opposing views by any means handy-was the major life lesson
learned by Fred Phelps during his sojourn among the Vernal heathen. "He
was hot-headed and peculiar," remembers Nelson about Fred then. Eventually
the minister decided to cease his association with Phelps because of his
hostility and aggressiveness. "The last time I saw him, he was traveling
through (on the road preaching). My wife and I gave them a hundred dollars
and a bunch of handkerchiefs." When told of what Phelps was doing
today, Ed said: "I'm not surprised. He was heading that way. He was
so brilliant, he was dangerous. He was getting involved in the idea that
only he was saved...going into heresy..." Though vandals damaged the
tent, the boys from Bob Jones continued to hold nightly meetings there
during the rest of their vacation. No one came, but Nelson reports they
did manage to convert two teenage girls-at least for the summer.
At the end of their stay, Fred got ordained.
Ordained? At 17? Isn't that too young? "No, it isn't," replies
B.H. McAlister, who did the ordaining. "If he can pass the test, he
is eligible. I don't think the word of God is bound by age."
Phelps was at least three years younger
than most when they become ministers. Southern Baptists do not require
a candidate for the ministry be a graduate of seminary. McAlister, who
has helped ordain hundreds of ministers, said an examination board of 10
to 20 ministers would ask a candidate questions about doctrines and scriptures.
Not everyone passed. Fred Phelps did-but only after McAlister and a missionary
convinced the teenager he was wrong on a scriptural fine point. Which point
was that? According to McAlister, Phelps considered the local church to
be more than a place of fellowship-for him, membership in the local congregation
directly corresponded to membership in the Body of Christ. Phelps may have
conceded the point to be ordained, but, for 40 years, his family and church
members in Topeka have been controlled by his threat that, if they depart
his congregation, they must carry a letter of permission from him. In addition,
they must join a congregation that he approves. Otherwise, as with Mark
and Nate, the pastor Phelps draws up the dreaded missive ordering the straying
sheep to be 'delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.' "We
barely knew him," admits McAlister, who settled upon Fred the distinction
of having been both baptized and ordained in a single eventful summer.
Phelps returned that autumn to Bob Jones,
but left after a year without graduating. Later he would say he did so
because the school was racist. In 1983, the IRS revoked the tax exemption
of Bob Jones, accusing it of practicing racial discrimination. From there,
Fred went north to the Prairie Bible Institute near Calgary, Alberta. But
after two semesters he moved on.
Sources have disclosed the head of the
college felt pastor Phelps might be clinically disturbed. Compatible with
that diagnosis, Fred's next stop was Southern California. There he enrolled
at John Muir College in Pasadena.
Campaigning to change community sexual
mores with a sign and a sidewalk harangue has been a four-decade effort
for Fred. His implacable efforts at John Muir to root out necking and petting
on campus and dirty jokes in the classroom reached the pages of TIME magazine
(11 June 1951). After being forbidden to preach on campus and getting removed
at least once by police from college property, Fred finally found a following
that cheered his defiance of authority when he returned to harangue from
a sympathizer's lawn across the street. TIME speculated it might presage
a movement back to more solid values by the younger generation. Phelps
cashed in on the notoriety of the TIME article to become a traveling evangelist
again-this time with more success than in Vernal.
In return for spending a week or two preaching
at an established church or giving a revival, he would receive a bed, his
meals, and a small stipend for gas to the next assignment. It was during
one such ministry in Phoenix that he met his wife, Marge. She was a student
at Arizona Bible School and an au-pair with the family that took in the
itinerant evangelist. Today's Mrs. Phelps remembers being curious about
the minister who'd been in TIME magazine. Laura Woods, the mistress of
the house who gave voice lessons during the day, remembers Fred was the
perfect guest. He helped build a room, mowed the lawn, made the beds, and
washed the dishes, she said. When the couple decided to get married, Mrs.
Woods made Marge Simms two dresses-a wedding gown and an outfit to travel
in. They were married May 15, 1952. Laura and her husband, Arthur, remain
friends today with Fred and Marge Phelps. The couple moved to Albuquerque
for a year, where Marge kept house while Fred traveled a circuit around
the Southwest-one that took him from Durango, Colorado to Tucson, Arizona.
Fred Jr., the first of their thirteen children, was born May 4, 1953.
The family then lived in Sunnyslope, Arizona
for a year while pastor Phelps continued his itinerant ministry. Mrs. Phelps
was eight months pregnant with Mark when Pastor Leaford Cavin at the Eastside
Baptist Church in Topeka invited Fred to come and preach.
On Fred Jr.'s first birthday, the family
arrived in the Kansas capital to find it an auspicious day indeed: May
4, 1954 was the day the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic decision,
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, the landfall desegregation case
which ruled separate but equal schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional.
The Pastor Phelps saw the coincidence of the Brown decision -just as he
was deciding where to settle-as a sign telling him that Topeka was The
Place. On that watershed day for America, if the new arrivals visited the
state capitol building, perhaps Phelps was struck by the dramatic mural
of the raging giant on the burning prairie, rifle in one hand, Bible (law
book) in the other. Perhaps, as he has hinted, Pastor Phelps came to Topeka,
saw it had become a national forum on black civil rights, saw the power
of the legal profession, and decided it had fallen to him: Kansas would
have a new John Brown.
"Dog Days for the Pastor"
Before greatness could be thrust upon
him, however, this new John Brown would suffer his dog days. At first,
the new arrivals sailed smoothly into the Eastside Baptist community. Fred
was roundly admired for his thunderous preaching, and was quickly hired
an associate pastor. The ladies at Eastside all liked Marge and made the
young mother welcome in their circles.
Things went swimmingly. The Eastside congregation
was planning to open a new church across town, and it seemed natural when
their pastor, Leaford Cavin, asked Fred to fill the job. The Eastside church
issued bonds to purchase the property at 3701 12th Street. To help Brother
Phelps get underway, the congregation re-roofed the building, painted it,
and bought the songbooks necessary. A start-up group of about 50 former
members of Eastside volunteered to attend services at Westboro. The church
formally opened on May 20, 1956. Fred had it all. A fine church and a congregation
of his own. What went wrong?
What did provides an insight into the
man who craves a greater and greater role as a moral arbiter of our times.
"We gave him his church; painted; roofed it; even bought his songbooks;
and after only a few weeks, he turned on us," says a long-time member
of Eastside. Apparently not everyone in Leaford Cavin's church was enthusiastic
about Phelps. One from that time recalls Fred, Marge, 2 year-old Fred,
Jr., and 10 month-old Mark were in the pews one Sunday with the rest of
the congregation, listening to Cavin preach. Mark began squirming suddenly.
To the appalled amazement of his fellow worshipers nearby, the junior pastor
repeatedly slapped the infant across the face with an open palm and backhand,
snapping Mark's tiny head to and fro. Afterwards, several of the men in
the congregation confronted Fred and told him never to do that again. Mark
Phelps laughs to hear that story relayed: "My mom once told me-proudly,
as if she'd effected a big change in his behavior-that my father had beaten
my older brother when he was only five months old. She said she'd argued
with him about it and he'd agreed to hold off beating the kids till they
were a year old." "Phelps was wrapped pretty tight, even back
then," recalls an old member of Eastside. "He was very severe
with his children and a lot of people didn't care for him. But we all thought
he was a man of God."
Within weeks after receiving his new status,
building, and congregation, Fred Phelps warmed on the hearth of Eastside's
hospitality and but the hands that had helped him. He and Leaford Cavin
had an almost immediate falling-out over whether God hated the sinner as
well as the sin. "Today, Fred will tell you it was theological differences,"
says an acquaintance of Cavin, "but those differences didn't seem
to bother him when he needed out help." Adds another: "Theological
differences? Brother Cavin was a very staunch Baptist." But not staunch
enough for Fred?
"I don't know if there ever was a
man more strict than Leaford Cavin. Really, it was the anger in Fred, not
doctrine, that caused him to act the way he did." When a man in Fred's
new congregation came to him for marital counseling, the pastor recommended
a good beating for the wife. The man followed his spiritual guide's advice.
Later, he called the pastor to ask for
bail: apparently separation of church and state didn't apply to assault
and battery. Phelps paid the confused Christian's bail, but stuck to his
guns: a former members of the early Westboro community remembers the following
Sunday Pastor Fred was fiery in his message that a good left hook makes
for a right fine wife: "Brethren," preached Phelps, "they
can lock us up, but we'll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either
our wives are going to obey, or we're going to beat them!" "Leaders,"
observes B.H. McAlister, the minister who ordained Fred, "break down
into shepherd and sheep-herders. The first lead, the second drive the sheep.
If love is absent, the pastor is one who drives the flock; with love, he
leads it."
Mark remembers his father used to frequently
tell of the time he purified the flock and paid the price for his courage.
Apparently a female member of that early Westboro congregation was discovered
having an affair with a soldier from Ft. Riley. Only the males in the congregation
were allowed to vote, and the pastor prevailed upon them to cast the Madeleine
from the midst. Away from the effects of his heated rhetoric, however,
many of those swayed felt first remorse, then disgust at their part in
the moral lynching. Mark remembers his father always referred to this incident
to explain why his congregation had deserted him.
In later years, Phelps was convinced he
was alone in his church with only his children to listen because those
who'd opened Westboro were too weak for the harsh truth of God: that He
hated sinners as well as the sin; and therefore His elect must also hate
the sinners-even those who might be assembled with them. If the local Baptist
churches were still unsure about the new fire and brimstone brother from
Arizona, shooting his neighbor's dog didn't help. Aside from etching one
of his children's earliest memories, shotgun-blasting the large German
shepherd that had wandered into his unfenced yard quickly got the novice
pastor notice in his community. The incident was discussed in the papers,
and the dog's owner sued the arrogant minister. Fred defended himself and
won, an action his son Mark believes may have encouraged his father's turn
to the law.
But the irrationality and violence of
the act sent the last of his congregation scurrying back to Eastside. For
weeks after the shooting, one church member recalls, someone placed signs
on the lawn in front of Westboro at night that declared prophetically:
"Anyone who'd stoop to killing a dog someday will mistake a child
for a dog." Soon it was clear no one wanted any part of Fred's god
not if he hated like Fred. And that posed a problem for the Pastor Phelps:
he still owed 32 dollars a week on the bonds for the church, and no one
was paying for his hate show on Sundays.
To cover his mortgage and support his
family, the failed pastor turned his pitch from God to vacuum cleaners.
During the following five years, he went door-to-door in Topeka, selling
those and baby carriages and, finally, insurance. In a pattern that held
ominous overtones for the future, Phelps at some point sued almost everyone
who employed him during that period.
He also carried on a running feud with
Leaford Cavin at Eastside Baptist. Cavin spent several years trying to
discover how to repair his mistake and stop the nightmare unfolding at
the Westboro church. "Eastside held the mortgage on Westboro,"
remembers one churchgoer who was involved in the finances there, "and
we always hoped Fred would miss a payment so we could foreclose. But he
never did."
To save money, the pastor moved his wife
and children into the church. Since the congregation at Westboro was essentially
the Phelps family, Cavin convinced John Towle, county assessor, that Westboro
should be taxed as private residence. The controversy was covered in the
media, and the exemption for 3701 West 12th was lifted. But again the fighting
Pastor Phelps taught himself enough about the law to successfully contest
the decision before the Board of Tax Appeals. For good measure, he sued
Cavin and Stauffer Communications for libel. He lost the suit, but the
lines of his future had now been drawn: Fred Phelps had his castle and
his church and he'd learned how to defend them.
His chosen community detested him, but
that was to be expected when one was elect and immersed in a world of damned
souls. Fred was content that his god hated those who questioned him. And
he was content to remain in his private La Rochelle and sally forth occasionally
to smite the reprobate. One old member of Eastside is philosophical about
the feud with Pastor
Fred: "I'll tell you one thing, we
can feel awfully lucky he turned down that slot at West Point. Right now,
he'd probably be a general-with his finger on the button." It was
during this period that the Pastor Phelps cut the final ties with his original
family.
When talking with friends, Fred's father
never discussed the son he had in Topeka, says Fred Stokes, a retired army
officer who lives outside Meridian. Stokes was a close friend of the elder
Phelps and a pallbearer at his funeral in 1977: "He had some fundamental
beliefs that were unshakeable, but he didn't force them on anyone."
In his later years, Stokes says, Fred's father was active in the Methodist
Church. "He was a very kind, grand fatherly person. He was at peace
with himself and didn't have any rancor toward anybody at the time of his
death." Marks tells how his grandfather, Fred, (whose name he learned
only recently from Capital-Journal reporters) once came to visit them in
Topeka when Mark was a child. What he recalls most vividly is standing
on the platform at the railroad station with his father and grandfather.
As they waited to put him on the train back to Meridian, the preacher told
the weeping old man never to come back, not to call, nor to write. "I
remember my grandfather was crying. He told my father to get back in the
Methodist Church and stop all this nonsense."
Pastor Phelps admits there was a rift
between him and his father. "He was disappointed when I didn't go
to West Point, which is understandable. He worked hard to get that appointment
for me, and he was a very active Methodist, so he was disappointed in that.
But my dad was a super guy that I loved deeply and I miss him." Relatives
in Mississippi said the elder Phelps never really got over his abandonment
by his son. "It grieved him a lot," remembers one.
When Pastor Phelps was 15 and in his last
year of high school his father, 51, married a 39 year-old divorcee named
Olive Briggs. The son would leave home soon after and grow up to be a fierce
critic of divorce. Olive's sister, who didn't want her name used, said
Olive was a kind Southern lady who never had children and treated Fred
and his sister, Martha Jean, as if they were her own. The new Mrs. Phelps
often talked to her sister about the trouble between the former railroad
detective and his son, the Baptist preacher. "Olive would say he grieved
over that every day of his life. That he never would have parted ways.
It was his son who parted ways."
Other relatives recalled that, each year,
the grandparents sent birthday and Christmas presents to their grandchildren
in Topeka. Each year they were returned unopened. Photos of grandpa and
grandma the pastor gave his extra touch: "When they once sent him
pictures of themselves for us kids to have, I remember watching my dad
cutting them meticulously into little pieces with a pair of scissors. Then
he placed them in an envelope and mailed them back."
When the elder Phelps died in 1977, and
Olive Briggs in 1985, of the two not inconsiderable wills, Fred's father
left him one-eighth and his sister, seven-eighths. Fred's stepmother left
her entire estate to Martha Jean. There would be no relatives dropping
by from mother's side either. Though Marge Phelps had nine brothers and
sisters still living in rural Missouri or nearby Kansas City, with one
notable exception, her own children never met them or so much as knew their
names. And the firm pastor forbade his children to play or talk with the
rest of the youngsters in the neighborhood. Says Mark: "I wanted friends
to share with and talk to, but felt it was the wrong thing and felt guilty.
They would initiate conversation or want to play, and I would feel real
scared and not know what to do or say. Sometimes I couldn't avoid talking,
and it made me feel real uneasy and scared that I would get caught. "My
dad used to make me go and tell the neighbor kids they couldn't play by
the fence, or talk to us, or come in the yard. He'd say, "I'm tellin'
you, if those fucking kids are in this yard again and I catch them, it's
you I'm going to beat!"
"I used to have to fight the kids
sometimes, or yell at them, or push them out of the yard; or I'd turn my
back and ignore them so they wouldn't want to talk or be friendly and get
me in trouble." While this is in keeping with the 'fortress Phelps'
mentality the pastor embarked on shortly after opening Westboro, it is
interesting to speculate how much of the strange goings-on within the fortress
the pastor feared his children might reveal had they been allowed outside
confidants. When Fred's sister, Martha Jean, and her husband, Fred's teenage
best-buddy, John Capron, returned to the U.S. on a year sabbatical from
their Indonesian mission, they came to see Fred. In part, they'd come to
arrange a reconciliation between the brittle pastor and his devastated
father.
They never got started. "He wouldn't
even talk to me," Fred's sister told her nephew, Mark. The good pastor
bid her also leave and never return. Mark remembers riding his bike along
in the street, both curious and embarrassed, watching his aunt go weeping
down the sidewalk for three blocks from their house.
With that, the vengeful minister had succeeded
in cutting all lines leading to his captive congregation. Anyone in the
outside world who might know of their existence or be concerned for their
welfare had been driven off. After he had sold insurance for several years,
Phelps had amassed enough commissions off the yearly premiums to allow
him to stop working and go to law school. He had already transferred credits
from Bob Jones and John Muir to Washburn, then taken course work there
to receive his degree. Fred Phelps had guts. When he entered Washburn Law
School, he had a wife and seven children. When he graduated, his family
had grown by three.
Phelps was editor of the Law Review and
star of the school's moot court. He is remembered by some of the faculty
as perhaps the most brilliant student ever to pass through Washburn Law.
If the public performance was impressive, however, the private life grew
even more dark.
"It was a very rare occasion,"
says Mark, "when he would come anywhere in the house that the kids
were. While he was studying the law, he'd fly into rages because we were
making noise. Mom would hide us-for the good of all." In fact, Phelps
began to spend more and more time in his bedroom, cut off from his family
except when they were needed to run errands for him; cut off except for
his wife, whom he forced to remain with him in his bedroom for days at
a time. Apparently the pastor's sexual appetites were voracious, and his
emotional dependency even greater: Says Mark, "Mom had to spend the
major portion of her day sitting next to him in bed, trying to say the
right things to keep him calm, while he bitched and moaned and complained
and railed and carried on. "He left the older children to take care
of the younger ones while he monopolized our mother's time and attention.
We were literally left on our own for the major portion of our childhoods."
While the pastor lolled now grossly overweight in his bed like some Ottoman
pasha, rolling in his law books and 100 pounds of excess blubber, lecturing
the wife and walls on the evils of the reprobate, wallowing in gluttony
and goat-like sexual appetites, he resembled, not so much the John Brown
of his earlier ambitions, as he did an esquired Jabba the Hut.
"The kids would sit in grime and
scum and filth for hours at a time," says Mark, "tied into their
high chairs or strollers by mom, for their safety, until she could sneak
away from him to give them a diaper change, redo their ties, and set it
up for the older kids to feed them, so she could get back to him.
"I remember when she'd come downstairs,
all the kids would cluster around her like a swarm of bees, just to touch
her and talk to her." Mark goes on: "I started doing most of
the grocery shopping, by bike, with my brother Fred when I was only seven
or eight, because our mom had such a hard time getting away. We had baskets
on our bikes. We were given money but it was never enough. It was humiliating
because we would hold up the line at the checkout while the cashiers would
ask us what we wanted to keep or take back, and then they'd do the figuring
for us," Mark sighs in the phone: "When he wanted a chicken dinner,
he'd stay in bed and have me ride my bike two miles each way to get him
one. He never thanked me. "We'd run errands for that, or he'd send
us out for a piece of apple pie with cheese on it. And we had to get back
fast. Damn fast, or he'd complain his apple pie wasn't hot enough. "It
was a mile or two back, the pie riding in a mesh basket, and we had to
get it to him hot." Mark pauses. "It's pretty unbelievable when
I think about it. At breakfast, my father got bacon and eggs; the kids
got oatmeal and grits. At dinner we'd have beans and rice while he ate
chicken or hamburger. Now that I'm a father myself, that just seems incomprehensible
to me. "My father had to take care of us each year when my mom went
into the hospital to give birth. Whatever he had to do, he'd always lose
his temper and start screaming.
"We'd be too scared of him to eat-and
then he'd beat us for not eating. My saliva would not work when he was
in the room and mom was gone, so, to clean our plates, we'd throw our food
under the table or into our laps and flush it down the toilet later. "When
he took care of us, I tried to stay out of the same room with him at all
times. He would be real hard on the little ones when he dressed them. He'd
push and jerk and tug real hard. My father was so impatient and unpredictable.
You never knew what to expect or how to act." When the children did
run into Jabba-the-Dad out of his bed, it was usually unpleasant. Mark
tells of one such time: "The day my brother, Tim, was born, Fred,
Jr., and I were in the dining room fooling around and Fred started to chase
me out the back door. I ran right into my dad."
According to Mark, the pastor started
screaming at them not to horse around. He punched both boys several times
and ordered them outside to work in the yard. On his way out, Mark rounded
a corner and inadvertently stumbled into his father a second time. Enraged,
the pastor connected with a hook to the side of his son's head. Mark fell
down dazed and stunned. The pastor began to kick him, and kept kicking
him, but Mark couldn't get up. His father screamed at him to go out in
the yard, but the boy's legs felt like jello and "the room was rolling
in vertigo". Finally, his father left him there, sprawled and dazed
like a defeated boxer. When Mark could stand up, he joined his older brother
already at work.
Three hours later, their dad called them
in. "He told us to get into bed and not to move. He told me to turn
my face to the wall. For hours I lay like that, too scared to roll over
because I thought he might still be standing there, watching me. Finally,
I fell asleep.
"When we woke up the next day, we
found he'd been at the hospital with mom the night before. And we had a
new baby brother." Their father often slept all day and got up in
the afternoon, remembers another Phelps child. "And then everyone
would hide because 'daddy was up'. "He habitually had violent rages
that included profane cursing, beyond any sailor's ability to curse, where
he threw and broke anything he could get his hands on," states Mark.
"My father routinely demolished the kitchen and dining room areas,
as well as his bedroom. He would not only beat mom and the kids, he would
smash dishes, glasses, anything breakable in sight; he'd even throw everything
out of the refrigerator.
"He'd literally cover the floor with
debris. I remember seeing so much broken crockery once it looked like an
archeologists's dig. There was ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise splashed
across the walls, cupboards, and floor like a paint bomb had gone off in
there. "Afterwards he'd go upstairs to the bedroom-and force mom to
go with him. It would take hours for us kids to clean up after his rages.
He never helped-he'd just dump on us and leave.
"But he wouldn't stop raging. While
we were cleaning the mess downstairs, he'd force mom to sit at his bedside
upstairs while he continued to curse and complain to her about whatever
had gotten his goat." Nate and Mark confirm the pastor's dish tantrums
occurred regularly, usually once or twice a month. Sometimes there'd be
several in one week.
"It established a life habit for
me," says Mark. "Even today, the moment I get home, I'm thinking
'Is Daddy mad?' "Our walls were stained with food," he continues.
"And my mom used to cry because she couldn't keep good dishes. My
father would also bust holes in the walls and doors. If they were on the
outside, he'd fix them quickly. On the inside, he'd leave them unrepaired
for months.
"And, remember, whenever my father was beating us, or if he was tearing up a room, the violence might only last a few minutes, but he would keep up his tirade for hours on end. "I'm not exaggerating. My father would literally scream-not talk-scream-of-consciousness non-stop insults at us for hours. "His mouth was, for all the years I knew him, the most foul, vulgar, cursing mouth you've ever heard. There's nothing he wouldn't say, including cursing God openly. I watched him, one day, stand at the back of the church auditorium just outside the kitchen door, and literally jump up and down and scream curses at the top of his lungs, like a grown-up two year-old man." The content or nature of those tirades is instructive. If, in fact, Phelps did maintain this kind of vitriol for hours one end, it indicates an individual who is seriously clinically disturbed. Since one man's scandal might be another's vernacular, the Capital-Journal asked Mark and Nate for a sample of one of their father's marathon four-hour tirades. The following, if read in a loud and angry voice (not everyone can scream), will have a very different effect on one than if it is only scanned. It offers a sudden and shocking subjective experience of what it must be like inside the pastor's head-of the twisted rage and volcanic hate that must seethe in there-assuming the sample is accurate. Most functioning individuals are able to carry on the following Fauve impressionist vitriol for only a minute or so...Phelps reportedly maintained it for hours: Shitass, Goddam, tit-ass, piss-ass Goddam, ass-hole bastard, piece of shit, dick, son-of-a-bitch God forsaken filthy measly-assed piece of fucking shit Goddam horses ass. You're not worth shit. You're a no good, no account, God forsaken piss-assed little bastard. Get your ass in there and lean over that Goddam bed, you're going to get a licken. Bitch. Fucker. Prick, Fucker, Prick, Goddam fucker, Goddam prick, asshole, prick, prick, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fuck you, you Goddam fucking piece of garbage. Go to hell. Fuck you. Go to hell. Prick. Fucker. GODDAMN YOU, you fucker. You worthless piece of shit. Goddam you, you worthless piece of shit of Goddam fucking shit. Fuck you. Go straight fucking to hell you Goddam fucking son-of-a-bitch. God Damn You! God Damn You!!! God Damn You!!! You Goddam asshole son-of-a- bitch. God Damn You! How dare you, you asshole bastard prick turd. You turd. You lying, mother fucking stinking piece of fucking shit. Fuck you, you lying sack of shit, you. Get the fuck out of my face. Go to hell. I hate you, you bastard. I hate you, y