The Rebekah Home was bent on driving sin from even the wickedest of girls and making them see the light of God. Jo Ann Edwards was brought to the Rebekah Home in 1982, after running away from home at the age of thirteen. "I was an acolyte at my church before I went there, and God was very close to me in my heart," she said in a phone interview from her home in Victoria, where she is the mother of five children. "But that place turned me against Him for a while and made me very hard. I thought that even He had left me." As a new girl, she was scrutinized by "helpers," the saved girls who handed out demerits for misbehavior. Demerits were given for an endless host of wrongdoings: talking about "worldly" things, singing songs other than gospel songs, speaking too loudly, doodling, nail biting, looking at boys in church, failing to snitch on other sinners. Each demerit earned her a lick, which the Rebekah Home's housemother administered with a wood paddle. The beatings left her black and blue. "I got twenty licks my first time, and I was hit hard-so hard that I couldn't sit for days," Jo Ann said. "I begged [the housemother] to stop. When she was done, she hugged me and said, 'God loves you.' She told me to go back to the living room and read Scripture and sing 'Amazing Grace' with the other girls."
Only Rebekah girls who had proven their devotion by repeatedly testifying to God's grace could avoid Bible discipline. Some girls were genuinely troubled teenagers who had gotten mixed up with drugs or prostitution; others had been caught having sex; many were guilty of nothing more than growing up in abusive homes. Tara Cummings, now 31 and a mortgage consultant in Chicago, was sent there by her father, a preacher, whose beatings had left her badly bruised. Even she was not immune to judgment. "I was told that I was a reprobate, that I was beyond help and was going to hell," she said. She was treated to the full range of the Rebekah Home's punishments, which were not limited to lickings. "Confinement" meant spending weeks hanging her head without speaking. "Sitting on the wall" required sitting with her back against a wall and without the support of a chair, even as her legs buckled beneath her. But kneeling was what she most dreaded. Kneeling could last for as long as five hours at a time; she might have to kneel while holding a Bible on each outstretched palm or with pencils wedged beneath her knees. Only girls seen as inveterate sinners received the full brunt of the home's crueler punishments. "You had to be saved," Tara said. "It didn't matter if you didn't feel moved to do that-you did it to survive." The worst form of punishment, the lockup, was reserved for girls who had not yet been saved-who had talked of running away or who had proven to be particularly intractable. The lockup was a dorm room devoid of furniture or natural light where girls spent days, or weeks, alone. Taped Roloff sermons were piped into the room, and the near-constant sound of his voice was the girls' only companionship. Former Rebekah resident Tamra Sipes, now 34 and working in advertising for a newspaper in Oak Harbor, Washington, remembers one girl who was relegated to the lockup for an entire month. "The smell had become so bad from her not being able to shower or bathe that it reeked in the hallway," she said. "We could do nothing to help her. I remember standing in roll call one day waiting for my name to be called off, and I was directly across from the door. She was singing 'Happy Birthday' to herself in such a pitiful voice that I couldn't help but cry for her."
DeAnne had been caught talking in class, and when she was told to write "I will not talk in class" one hundred times, she refused. ("I was tired of playing by their rules," she said.) Mrs. Cameron grabbed her by the arm and marched her to the lockup. "You'll stay here until you write your sentences," she said, bolting the door behind her.
Inside the lockup, Lester Roloff's voice began to play over the intercom, his rich baritone echoing off the walls-sermonizing, singing gospel songs, and exhorting all who listened to come to Jesus. His voice droned on as morning turned into afternoon and afternoon into evening. DeAnne stuck her fingers in her ears, but his voice seemed to have lodged in her brain. She began yelling rap songs at the top of her lungs-anything to drown out the sound-but Roloff's voice was only turned up louder. "You people are crazy!" she screamed at one point, beating her fists against the wall. "Get me the hell out of here!" She began kicking the wall that night, and by morning a hole had formed in the Sheetrock. ("I felt like I was losing my mind," she said.) Mrs. Cameron warned her that if she did not stop, she would be restrained. When DeAnne persisted, she was wrestled to the ground by three male guards, who pinned her arms behind her back while Mrs. Cameron bound her wrists with duct tape. Her ankles were then bound as well, and once she was immobilized, someone-DeAnne is unsure who-gave her a hard kick to the ribs. She was left alone to writhe on the floor, gasping for air. Having worked herself into a sweat trying to fight off the guards, she was able to squirm out of the tape within a few minutes. She has no idea how long she would have been left restrained.
