Thread by @MattDrapps

TW. Abuse, child abuse, not being believed

Mute thread if that will be helpful to you. I will be talking a little about Mary Pride's utterly messed up book The Child Abuse Industry

#ExposeChristianAbuse

What
And I do mean what.
The fuck.
Is this book.

I have physically crossed it out in red pen so that no one who happens across my copy, or sees me reading it, or notes it on the table when I'm writing in a coffee shop could ever think it is a book I subscribe to.

In this book, systematically, piece by piece, Mary Pride undermines all of the safe guards that should be in place to prevent children from being abused in their own homes because she thinks
That
Society
Is trying
To steal
Christian
Children
From their homes
For.....profit?

"Trading on public goodwill and the halo that floats over those who dedicate their lives to 'helping children', the child abuse industry has enjoyed years of exponential growth virtually untroubled by any need to justify its actions." - Mary Pride, 1986

"We child abuse industry roared into action with dazzling ad campaigns and universal acclaim." - - Mary Pride, 1989

I'm not going to go page by page, but suffice to say, she LEAPS into action with all VIGOUR and VALOUR proclaiming that families are under attack by beurocrats who she thinks have made up the vague term of 'child abuse' so they can storm any house they choose and take kids

Oh, statistics, she has statistics coming out of her ears, but I'm not sure that she has a CLUE how to apply them, she exclaims: if you include "bad behaviour of teenage girls dates in the sexual abuse category, wow, One Out of Every Four Women was Sexually Abused as a Child"

Guess what, Mary, teenage girls SHOULDN'T experience abuse on dates! That's not normal!

She says, "Ignore the fact that abuse means 'anything I don't like done to me'"

Yes, Mary, that IS what abuse means!!!

She thinks that statistics of reported abuse that don't make it to court, means that the abuse reports were fake.

No, Mary, a lot of abuse cases don't make it to court because people like you call them, 'a bad experience on a date'.

She's taken different seemingly random statistics and comments from different organisations and assumed they cancel each other out. She says, headlines say 'Incest is the most common for of childhood sexual abuse' and then pulls a ten% of sexual abuse is incest out of her arse.

Mary Pride says, "Can it really be true that every child with abusive parents griws up to abuse his or her own kids? Statistically the idea is nonsence."

Thanks for the math lesson, Mary.

She says, 'I heard from a man at the FBI, the parents of children taken by divorced spouses got together and deliberately exploited the concern of stranger kidnappings to get their own kids pictures plstered all over America."

Oh, did you hear that from an FBI agent, Mary.

"Authors in their study of family violence...deliberately redefined Violence in such a way as to include physical punishment"

BECAUSE IT IS VIOLENCE, MARY.

She admits, 'An average of 1,000 children die each year at the hands of their parents or guardians,' and goes on to say, that's not a lot compared to car accidents, hospital caught diseases or murder by nonparents.

Mary, the number we are aiming for is '0' in all those areas.

Oh by the way, so far at ZERO point has she said, "Sometimes the abuse is real and if you are a survivor this is what you should do to protect yourself." So far, it has all been manic style writing and painting a picture of a power hungry system.

Mary, the SYSTEMS are never perfect, and we must do what we can to establish the safest systems and models for dealing with abuse and ensure in every area that Power Hungry users are not mamipulating the systems. We get that. That's important, but

She says, "Mashmallow statistics serve a purpose: Money 'if people knew how few cases of genuine abuse there are, it would be hard to keep money rolling in' and Power 'that the family doesn't need work and needs to be replaced by state-run institutions'

#marypride

Now, I'm not an professional who works with children or works for a government agency that is involved with children, but hands up if you are in that job and have 'money rolling in'.

I didn't think so.

TW. Sexual abuse

Mary Pride actively tries to reduce statistics about abuse by family members this way, 'Abuse figures include anything from fondling to actual sexual intercourse'.

Yes. Mary. That. Is. What. Abuse. Is.

"In New Jersey, for example, almost half of sexual abuse reports involve mild fondling."

Mary.... Mary Pride.... Mary...

Why don't you sit yourself down so I can tell you about a little thing called 📢📢📢 ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT.

Mary Pride, that jewel of the home schooling movement, goes on to say, "My husband has been told by a daycare chain operator that her workers are fearful of touching children when changing their diapers because they might be accused of sexual abuse."

📢 NO. SIT DOWN MARY.

If child care providers don't know the difference between changing a babies nappy and sexual abuse then THEY HAVE NO PLACE PROVIDING CHILDCARE.

Okay, so, it was early days in the open everyday discussion of abuse, so maybe people WERE briefly fearful and went too far out of their way to ensure they - - -

📢📢📢 NO.

And if everyone HAD been more careful in the 80s then maybe survivors wouldn't have gone through it!!!

TW. Blame of survivors

Mary Pride then makes the case that, fair enough, sexual abuse does happen but it doesn't happen in the home it happens in, capital letters, 'Fornication.'

"Public school courses indoctrinate children in the rightness of nommarital sex, tell them how to do it, and practically order them to go out and practice sex as homework."

I...

...no, no, I don't think...

She's grotesque in her wording, too, as she suggests that teens dating will only ever end in sex. She writes the male teen as believing he's entitled to sex, and the female teen as passive.

Maybe, instead of crowing about it, Mary, teach boys about 📢📢📢 ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT.

She says that making children AWARE that sexual abuse can exist in the home will make girls suspicious of their parents and boys attracted to their sisters.

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️ I CAN'T EVEN DEAL RIGHT NOW, MARY

She indicates that those who oppose the traditional family and traditional religion are those causing an increase in sexual abuse.

I wonder if she would think the same if she took a look now at the traditional Christian organisations that spent decades hiding abuse.

While many women have led the way consistently in exposing and uncovering abuse in the workplace, schools, in dating, in all areas of life, Mary Pride would have us believe that talking about it was causing an increase. 🤨😐😑

She then compares child advocasy to a holy war against the family 'the new jihad'. She compares child advocates following their beliefs to Nazis following the Fuhrer.

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️

She indicates that when people say that many abuses go unreported, this is said just to increase suspicion and to increase statistics.

Excuse me, Mary, but a lot of abuse DOES go unreported and I know that because I know survivors, and they are each incredible, brave and true.

TW. Not believing survivors

Mary Pride uses, as proof that child abuse is made up by social workers, an example of a child who in a court hearing discloses that they have been touched, but then changed their story when cross examined.

She uses an example in which a cross-examiner asks the child if their social worker had asked them to make it up, and the child says, 'Yes'.

She uses this one example to try and discredit child witnesses.

TW. Not believing survivors

Children may contradict themselves, may show no emotion, may try to cover up the incident, may wait a long time to disclose.

That's true.

MARY TWISTS IT

She implies that those things are used to cover up holes in made up stories.

She infers that showing no emotion fit example USED to be proof the child was making it up, but now is used as proof the child is telling the truth.

📢📢📢 SIT DOWN, MARY

In the next chapter her exaggerations continue, "A grandfather of two no longer smiles at toddlers" for fear that he'll be accused of abuse.

📢📢📢 KNOW THE FUCKING DIFFERENCE THEN

"Parents who are used to administrating heavy spanking or if love, are becoming afraid to discipline their children at all."

Good 🤷‍♂️

#ExposeChristianDiscipline #totrainupachild #ExposeChristianAbuse #MaryPride

On and on she goes. Everything is a conspiracy to take children away from their 'Godly' parents.

Childlines, she sees as encouraging children to make up stories about parents out of spite of rebellion (remember, in this Christian Extremist world children are super evil brats)

She implies over and over again that in foster care and state care the children are in danger of physical and sexual abuse (but, didn't she just spend a whole chapter saying that wasn't a thing?)

She says in another chapter, "The child abuse industry is a recent invention."

Yes, Mary, because before now children were used for labour, sold into marriages and often died at a young age. Was that some sort of golden age?

Ahhh. She goes on to say that in the past, in the poor, every family member 'worked for his keep' and didn't become dependents. I forgot that, to Christian Extremists, social care is worse than work houses. *

*some exaggeration perhaps, but only a little

I guess I come at this from the future, where we know that abuse is real, that it happened to us and those we know, but how did we get here? Not by ignoring it, hiding it, or pretending it wasn't real. By opening it up, examining it, learning.

Now though that really at NO POINT so far in this book have I found that she's stopped long enough from her shout tone to calmly say, "Some cases of abuse are real, and if you are a survivor, here are ways to heal".

Not at all.

Mary P does be a solution of her own, if the abuse leads to a child dying then death penalty for the parent.

She says, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But this doesn't count in physical discipline, as she says parents are given authority to hit their children with the 'rod'.

TW. Sexual abuse, not believing survivors

She also says, simple as, death penalty for rape.

Um...Mary, while I appreciate the sentiment, its difficult enough to get abusers convicted to serve community service for sexual abuse, I'm not sure your method is the way

I am also against the death penalty in every instance. I'm sorry. That's just me.

She says prison would be punishing the tax-payer. Ahh those canny Christian Extremists, they sure don't like paying those taxes.

She seems to now be implying there should be harsher punishments, but also that there needs to be solid evidence including Multiple Witnesses.

Excuse me, hands up if there were multiple witnesses to the abuse you suffered who are likely to come forward. No hands? None? Not one?

"Parents should not be made afraid to hug their children."

📢📢📢📢 MARY THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HUG AND SEXUAL ABUSE AND IF THERE ISN'T A DIFFERENCE THEN STOP HUGGING THAT PERSON THEY DON'T WANT IT

Ooooh, she literally does want physical punishments for adults. Makes sense. *cough* theocracy *cough*

Blah blah blah. Etc.

She wants to abolish child abuse hotlines. 'America does not need a KGB.' In other places she said that neighbours should mind their own business.

She says, 'If a child is ever removed they should be placed with relatives.'

Because in Mary's mind, abuse doesn't exist in family homes but does in foster homes.

'Remarriages are a fruitful source of sexual abuse," Mary Pride says, clearly not understanding that often women flea abusive husbands in the first place and that's why they have remarried. Uuugchhhh.....

At the same time, "Abolish no-fault divorce". Its like Mary simply has NO experience understanding abuse in adult relationships, let alone in children's.

She says there should be social sanctions against people who get a divorce. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

📢📢 MARY NO.

Mary Pride talks about porn and she reiterates the myth which I don't buy into that men start on simple porn and go on to worse and more and more abusive stuff.

The way I see it is, if your porn involves a character or actor who is not giving Enthusiastic Consent then Stop.

There are places to get help.

Wouldn't recommend bogus Evangelical teaching on the subject, but there is help for anyone who needs it, if you find yourself drawn to nonconsenting porn, look for help please thank you.

Despite earlier suggesting that foster parents are dangerous for children, she encourages Christians NOT to foster themselves. You'd have thought that - - okay never mind, I forgot that she only cares about Biological Children of Christian Nuclear Families 👪

A few other suggestions, some that are are wild, since that are good on their own, some that are healthy taken alone and some that aren't.

But ultimately the book overall creates a Very Unsafe Environment in which parents cannot be challenged, children not believed.

She finishes with, "Picture a future where each generation respects the other, where families are no longer isolated in the *cough* suburban ghetto or inner city *cough* *cough*

Where parents enjoy their children, and children their parents, where child abuse is a thing of the past. It can happen.

Please help it happen."

Indeed, Mary, we ARE working for a child abuse IS a thing of the past, but the way to that is not by hiding it, ignoring it or

worse still, creating an unsafe environment where children and survivors are not believed.

📢📢📢 GET IT TOGETHER, MARY

#marypride #ExposeChristianAbuse

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