Nate Phelps, Son of Westboro Baptist Church's Fred Phelps Writes of Violent Child Abuse

[Kurovski]

I don't think I can ever again write or say another nasty, snarky thing about Shirley Phelps or any other of the Phelps clan save for Fred himself. Those children must already live in hell.

This is from Nate Phelps' blog. He even has a piece on the recent Supreme Court ruling, which I have not read yet, but might make a good separate thread.



"...In light of your efforts to soft peddle it, I’m obliged now to counter your characterization. What our father did was violent child abuse. His actions were criminal. His actions today are a reflection of the same insensitive violence that he visited on his wife and children. You can shroud his deeds in robes of righteousness, with “over the top fluffy words”, and the plain stench of it is still there. He repeatedly, viciously beat us with that mattock handle, his fists, his knees, and his feet. That’s plain English and that’s my indictment! Bring your bible and your formidable legal army. It changes nothing"

"...You’re big on the whole “connect the dots” rhetoric Shirley so let me speak in your own language for a moment. Please connect the dots between our father violating our mother by chopping her hair off and my mischief. Connect the dots between my misdeeds and the image of our sister Margie lying semi-conscious at the back of the church while our father repeatedly kicked her and brandished a frying pan over her head. Connect the dots between my misconduct and the distended lump at the top of your leg caused by the “spankings” you received from our father. Please Shirley, set your bible aside for a moment and lets play a little game of connect the dots."

http://n8rphelps.blogspot.com/2009/05/over-top-fluffy-words.html


"...I looked to my mother for protection from my father. When I was around the age of 6, my mother packed the kids into the car and ran away to her sister Dorthy in Kansas City. Her sister lived in a small walk up apartment in a poor area of town. Her home was filled to overflowing with all the children. I remember being sat down in her living room with the TV while my mother and aunt sat, shoulders slumped, drinking coffee in the kitchen. Even at that age, the sense of joy was strong in me that we weren't going to have to deal with that man again. In the end she went back. I can only imagine the impossible hurdle she faced being alone and unemployed with 10 or 11 kids at that point. I learned very quickly that she was just as defeated by his violence as any of the children. The very real threat of violence and even death was more then enough to keep his wife and children from seeking help from the outside. Any intervention would have to be instigated from without."

http://n8rphelps.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-isnt-that-man-in-jail.html

[Drale]

1. Are all the Westbro church members gonna be found dead one day?

Because they really have the smell of cult around them.

[Kurovski]

3. I don't think so.

I feel so differently about this. I'm near tears for those people, who deny this, who suffered so wretchedly as children.

I'm such a fuckin' sucker. They are damaged. I wish i could have fun trashing their nasty-asses, but I can't. Sucker.

Oh but Fred? He's big game.

[Kurovski]

5. Another thing is: they are almost all family. I've read that there are maybe

4-6 non family members in the church.

[beac]

2. Wow. I would never have guessed i could think less of Fred Phelps than I did before reading this

but now I do.

[Kurovski]

4. No kidding.

A criminal piece of it to be sure.

[HughBeaumont]

8. Fred Phelps is a superfucker that deserves to be thrown in a hole.

Read the detailed account of the abuse sometimes. He'd rattle off 300 curse words while beating them with an ax handle. I think if the public knew more about this abuse, he'd be in danger for his life.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. There was a great documentary made for British TV on the Phelps

I have friends in Topeka who remember being in school with the Phelps kids. They say it was common knowledge back then (in the 60s and 70s) that their dad was violent and crazy.

Fred sent them out to sell candy door to door and beat them when they got home if they didn't sell enough candy. Many people in Topeka can remember the Phelps kids selling candy all over town.

This family has been a trainwreck for decades.

[deerheadgal]

10. Absolutely true

I worked in Topeka in a state agency in the 1970's, and those kids were all over the place selling stuff. People would buy from them out of pity. It would have been nice if someone had stepped in then and stopped the abuse, but he was a slippery, oily and dangerous foe and nobody would take him on. The generation you see now is the product of years of his unrelenting "parenting."

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. I've heard they tried to hotline him for child abuse.

But for whatever reason, that didn't work.

[Ken Burch]

7. We ALL need to send messages of support to Nate Phelps

He is showing incredible bravery in going public about this nightmare and in challenging a situation that is somewhere between a cult and fascism-in-one-family.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Blue-Jay]

12. Fred's an abusive dick. Color me surprised.

[LiberalLoner]

13. Child abuse like this is pure evil. I honestly think that if there is good and evil in the world,

pure good or pure evil, this is surely the best example of pure evil.

I want to find a place some day where this doesn't exist. I guess I want to be in heaven already.

I hate this stuff so bad. I hate the people who abuse children. I hate the people who think it's okay that this stuff goes on. I hate a society that pretends to care about children but looks the other way when crap like this goes on.

We should be rescuing the children who live lives like this...we should not care about laws, we should go and take the children away from people who are abusive.

I am burning with hate and rage right now.

[LiberalLoner]

14. The only thing that gives me any comfort at all is knowing that that man will

face God one day. And every single thing he ever inflicted on others, will be inflicted on him and he will FEEL it. For millions of lifetimes he will FEEL it.

[Kurovski]

15. There is a comment box at the bottom of the page, if you think

it might help to send Nate a message it might release some of those feelings?

Abuse of those who are least able to defend themselves, and are in fact just wanting to be loved is the moat hideous thing a person can do. The powerful over the powerless, taking advantage of it.

I hope you feel better soon, LL.

[Politicalboi]

16. My take on Fred is

That he is an angry gay man who tried to deny it by having children, but was miserable his whole life, and made everyone around him suffer.

[Kurovski]

18. It's very difficult to repress sexuality. Basically impossible

But he may have just chose gays because pretty much the whole world has/had a big problem with it. You were in fact supposed to be disgusted by it.

a soft target.

[Politicalboi]

21. When you repress you become angry

I think he is angry because he couldn't live the life he wanted. He tried to prove to himself he wasn't gay by having children and a wife (beard). We see this all the time on the Repuke side. This would explain his abuse of his family.

[Ghost in the Machine]

17. Another Phelps son, Mark, wrote about some of this, too

"PSYCHOTIC FRED PHELPS FAMILY EXPOSED"



Snippets:

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."

http://www.congressunderfire.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=109&topic_id=54&mesg_id=54&page=2

[Kurovski]

19. Thank you. (nt)

[Ghost in the Machine]

25. No problem

I'm glad I saved the snippets that I did, as the link to the whole story is no longer available. It seems compu serve is no longer in business..

:hi:

[Tsiyu]

20. He referenced his PastaFazoliness The FSM

Ha.

And the Flying Biscuit, a fine little breakfast place...

I'm glad he is telling the world and yet getting on with his life working hard.

A very brave, insightful man.

[Ilsa]

22. What a shame that his own family didn't kill him in his sleep. nt

[Tsiyu]

23. kick for the afternoon crowd

:kick:

Read this guy's blog....it's really goood.

[Kurovski]

24. It sounds like Margie was a big protector of the kids wherever possible.

I hope something happens and she snaps out of it. She's currently psychologically abusing many people now.

I wonder what it's like for the younger kids? In what little video i've seen, they're fairly messed up. They do look like brainwashed cult members. Always smiling. And very aggressive and shut down.

Or maybe they're just taking the pot? Don't let crazy grampa know, izall I can say.

[demmiblue]

26. Here is another source of info:

http://www.robertslevinson.com/gaylesissues/features/collect/phelps/bl_phelpsmain.htm

Once upon a time some very nice people, Jon Michael Bell along with Joe Taschler and Steve Fry, decided to write a story about Fred Phelps.

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.

Addicted to Hate, as reproduced here, is the full contents from Addicted to Hate of Exhibit A of the lawsuit filed in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka, Kansas by Jon Michael Bell against Stauffer Communications in June of 1994, Case number 94CV766. It was transcribed into digital form during the course of the lawsuit by persons unknown, and distributed first as pamphlets and then over the internet.

Feel free to copy and distribute this important material. The authors claim no copyright. For additional background and details start with Cover and work your way forward.

[Ghost in the Machine]

27. Wow, thanks for that link, I've been reading for a while now

I've got it bookmarked in my favorites and plan on distributing it where I can..

Peace,

Ghost

[Kurovski]

28. Geez. More info. ;) thanks!

Did you see the BBC documentary? it is on Nate's blog, embedded. It's one hour, nearly

I actually like Shirley. And one of her daughters, 21, was quite taken with the interviewer. It was...I can't believe i'm saying this...charming the way the daughter soaked up the positive male attention. (maybe it's just positive attention from outside the family, period. The older girls do a lot of smiling. Which, yes, you see in cultmembers. No young men (offspring) were interviewed. Which I have a theory about that is completely uninformed. I'll just say it's suspicious.

The kids are cute, like just about every average booger-picking kid you'll meet. I don't see that anyone is abusing the grandkids physically, that's not to say that there is not abuse. The children do not even know why they are out on the protest line.

Shirley is a powerhouse. But she is also damaged and delusional. She has love in her folks. That's a fact. She's not a demon.

But her father is probably psychotic, and he is violent. He can't even be on screen for five minutes without risk of a meltdown. He is exactly what human evil is partly about. In one scene a daughter hovers nervously in the background while Fred Phelps is being interviewed. He answers nothing but all our notions of what he is about.

There is an awful scene where one of the 7 year old is on the protest corner, and a car races by and someone throws a full soda cup out that hits the kid in the head. The asshole who did it covered their license plate. Shirley said that's a common occurrence.

So Shirley, if it happens alot, do not bring the little ones. That is endangering your children to do so.

Anyway, knock me down with a feather, and I'm still happy to go to hell if Phelps' are all and only who will be in heaven.

[Kurovski]

29. Kick

:kick:

[Matariki]

30. Why does this not surprise me.

Just as sexual abuse in that family wouldn't surprise me either.

[Matariki]

31. Interesting read. His sister Shirley has a creepily perverted love of the word "disobedience".

He obviously has a lot of unresolved issues surrounding his family, which is normal. He seems like a reasonable guy, I hope he can find some peace and get on with an independent life.