MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Girls living at a home for unwed mothers and the wayward appeared to suffer emotional and physical abuse administered under the guise of religious beliefs, a social psychologist testified.
Jean Merritt of Washington, D.C., was called by the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center as an expert witness Friday in its federal court suit seeking to close down the Bethesda Home, run by fundamental Baptists near Hattiesburg, Miss.
Ms. Merritt testified the girls who left the rural south Mississippi homemight appear to adjust to their family environments, but she said she told their parents 'they have to view their daughters as time bombs.'
The SPLC lodged complaints of abuse, including beatings, denial of medical treatment and inadequate food, against the home as it secured the court-ordered release of a pregnant girl who claimed she was held against her will.
The Rev. Bob Wills, Bethesda's director, has denied the allegations and will have an opportunity next week to defend the home's operation in the suit heard by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson.
Ms. Merritt compared Bethesda's strict adherence to fundamentalist religious doctrines to a cult situation that she said left the girls frightened and confused.
'The Bethesda Home was a brainwashing environment,' she said, 'by the isolation, by the fear, by the physical and emotional abuse, the close-off of communication (from family and friends) ...'
Some 80 girls apparently were at Bethesda before the SPLC filed its lawsuit. The home gave girls an option to leave after it was attacked in court, and only about 20 reportedly remained at the home.
When an SPLC attorney asked Ms. Merritt if the girls left at the home were in a harmful environment, she said, 'Definitely, absolutely.'
The girls who remain at Bethesda, she said, were so fully indoctrinated to the strict religious beliefs espoused by Wills and the Rev. Lester Roloff that they could not make a decision for themselves and elected to remain.
Bethesda is operated by Redemption Ranch Inc. and was purchased from Roloff's multi-million dollar evangelical empire last year. Roloff has been investigated for the operation of a children's home in Texas.
Ms. Merritt said the girls who left Bethesda still have nightmares that Wills, his wife or his staff will grab them, beat them and return them to the home. She said the home's denial of communication with their families caused the girls to doubt their relatives want them.
She said the girls who appear to have adjusted since leaving Bethesda are in the 'honeymoon stage' and are subject to flashbacks that revive 'guilt and fear' hammered in their heads at the home.
'Occasionally the girls will stare off in space with a smile fixed on their faces,' she said.
