“When I was in regular school, I had several adults telling me that I was smart, that I was kind, that I was capable of producing good things and of being a good person. When I was homeschooled, the main voice I had in my life was telling me that I was nothing, that I was ‘too stupid to do anything right,’ and that I was bad just because I happened to be alive.”
My parents have always been prone to rage and impulses. My family has had large and violent arguments that began because “someone” (me or my brother) failed to replace the roll of paper towels in the kitchen before one of the almighty parents found that they had need of one. We consistently had different utilities disconnected for lack of payment. We had a truck and trailer repossessed, and my mom picked my brother and me up early from elementary school on days when she was tired or the weather was bad because she “didn’t want to have to go out again.” There was dysfunction.
Education was never important to my parents. In fact, they bad-mouthed and openly mocked teachers, school, and people who pursued higher education non-stop when I was growing up. They both had high school diplomas and believed that pursuing anything more than that was ridiculous and a waste of time.
Then they discovered homeschooling.
I was in fourth grade, and my best friend Alice invited me over to her house all the time. We spent a huge amount of time together, and my parents and her parents became friendly. Alice had been homeschooled previously, and was still required by her parents to do math out of a homeschool math book in addition to the math we were taught in our public school class. Alice and I were both GATE (gifted and talented education) students, and we completely enjoyed each other’s company.
Slowly, my parents came to be enamored of the idea of homeschooling through their relationship with Alice’s parents. During this period, they were becoming more and more fundamentalist Christian in their thoughts and actions, and more and more legalistic in their ideas about what was acceptable behavior for our family. Due to their own experiences of abuse as children, I think the idea of being disliked, ignored, passed over, and maltreated because they were Christians gave them something to cling to; their abuse wasn’t because of who they were, but who they worshipped.
Things slowly got even crazier in our house. It seemed like we watched a new Christian documentary about how the Occult was trying to steal and sacrifice Christian children every weekend. My parents became obsessed with the end times, and we watched all the Thief in the Night videos multiple times. In an effort to protect us from all of this evil descending upon us and to keep us close as the end times were near, they started homeschooling us when I started sixth grade.
*****
This period wasn’t so bad, although I suffered my first major depressive episode from the isolation. We homeschooled under an umbrella school and my mom, my brother, and I attended monthly meetings that taught the adults how to do the school’s paperwork and the kids how to deal with social workers who wanted to take you away from your family and never let you see them again.
I learned during this period, but the books I learned from were suspect. I specifically remember the only mention of Joan of Arc in my eighth grade world history book said that she was simply a crazy person who wanted to be famous. No mention of her importance in French history, her military significance, or that the fact that a young woman even achieved fame during this time in history was amazing. She was just a crazy person who shouldn’t be remembered.
This really bothered me and I brought it to my mother’s attention. Joan of Arc was one of my favorite historical people at this time, and I was very angry that she’d been treated this way. My mother laughed it off and told me it didn’t matter.
During our time under the umbrella school, my mother wrote LIFE SKILLS in block letters across every Friday in her lesson plans. The “skills” we were learning were how to clean the house top to bottom for no apparent reason. Not only was this accepted by the school, they actually suggested that she do this. Unfortunately, it was a portent of things to come.
My mother had gotten into a car accident when I was 9 years old. As a result of the accident, she was becoming more and more physically disabled. She would eventually be unable to walk more than a few steps at a time and became wheelchair bound.
What I believe happened to her during this time, at least from my perspective looking back as an adult, is depression due to her medical condition and anxiety about loss of control. She was already unstable, abusive, and prone to rages before this happened. Now things were starting to get really dark and scary.
*****
Ninth grade happened. Ninth grade remains one of my favorite and most wonderful experiences of my life. I went to a charter school that had independent study for some classes, so it was still homeschool, but I had friends and teachers and a fantastic opportunity for learning. It was amazing, and part of why I am not anti-homeschooling as an adult. This was a good school: they checked up on kids who hadn’t been seen in awhile, required weekly meetings with parents, and made sure we were learning. I would send my own kids there.
Then we got kicked out. Not because of me or my brother, who were doing extremely well, but because my mother refused to do the lesson plans or attend the meetings required of her. We weren’t “technically” kicked out, but the school sent her a letter “suggesting” that she put us in a more “traditional” school environment, as she was unwilling to comply with the mandatory parent participation rules.
That’s when my life took a drastic turn for the worse. I almost didn’t survive this period, and it still affects me in ways I don’t always realize. Thankfully, I had made some friends during my one year of good schooling that stuck with me through this time. Without them and their understanding, I know I wouldn’t have made it, despite how little I saw and communicated with them.
My mother’s medical condition had worsened when I was in 9th grade, to the point that she needed nursing care. My parents, rather than looking into what their excellent insurance would cover or reaching out to the community for help, figured that they already had a solution sitting right there in the house—someone who they wouldn’t have to pay, who could be on call 24/7 with no time off and be not only a nurse, but a maid, a cook, and someone for mom to scream at because she felt like it. Me.
I fell into one of the darkest pits of my life. I spent my days answering my mother’s beck and call, being screamed at and called names continuously, scrubbing floors with toothbrushes, washing underwear by hand, and making gourmet dinners far beyond my skill level. There was no gratefulness. There was no escape. It just went on and on.
*****
A typical day during this time looked something like this:
5:00 A.M. Be awakened by mom and dad flipping the overhead light on in my room and screaming at me to go in the kitchen and wash the dishes I left in the sink after my dad ate his dinner last night. Be screamed at continuously and told how lazy I am over and over. Since I’m up, I can make Dad’s oatmeal for breakfast. I had better not burn it, or World War III will commence.
5:30A.M. Dad leaves for work, Mom goes back to bed. I retreat to my room and try to sleep. If I’m not successful at sleeping, I’ll read some Wuthering Heights again, for the 18th time.
8:00 A.M. Mom wakes up. If I’m not awake, she runs her electric wheelchair into the door of my room, popping it open. She may then proceed to scream at me for being lazy and not being up yet, or may simply yell at me to make her bed and get her breakfast.
8:30 A.M. Breakfast gotten, her bed is made. She tells me I can do school now. I lay across my bed, a school book next to me. I am so tired, I can barely keep my eyes open. I try to focus, try to understand what I am reading. Then I hear, “Rai!” shouted down the hallway. I pull myself off the bed, exhausted and a little dizzy. My heart is pounding, but it does that a lot. I ignore it and hurry down the hall to my mom’s room. She says, “Hand me the remote control.” I fume inside as I look down and see that the remote is 3 inches from her hand. I hand it to her and go back to my room, filled with anger. I try again to concentrate on my book, but end up falling asleep.
10:00 A.M. I wake up, spluttering. My mother has told my brother to pour water on me because I fell asleep. She then tells me if I’m not going to do my schoolwork, I need to start cleaning instead. Today’s chore will be dusting her bedroom. Every item in her bedroom must be thoroughly dusted, which will involve removing every stupid tchotchke from every single surface and running a dust rag over the items and the surfaces, and then replacing every single item in its original place. This would be horrible enough, but she is going to sit on her bed and criticize me constantly for the entire time I am working on this project that I do every single week.
11:30 A.M. It’s time to make Mom’s lunch, so I will have to go back to the dusting later. She has decided she wants a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. I make them and bring them to her. She yells at me because there are a few blackened spots on the sandwich. She makes me make it again. I have to make the tea again too because I put in too much soy milk the first time. I make it again.
12:30 P.M. Mom has laid down for a nap. I will finish dusting after she wakes up, but for now I have to do laundry. I have already washed the laundry, but I have to hang it out to dry on the clothesline. It’s towels, and it is going to take forever to hang them up. It’s so cold outside, I can see my breath. I’m not wearing shoes because I’m not allowed to wear them “just” to hang up clothes. I am freezing, my hands hurt. I’m trying to hurry as fast as I can to get back to the warm house. My hands are so cold, I struggle to pry open the clothespins. I have to open them up so they can fit over the thick towels, otherwise they’ll fall off and I’ll get screamed at. Dad refuses to buy a new dryer because, “Why do we need a new dryer when we have you?”
1:00 P.M. I lay on the couch in the living room, enjoying the quiet as I start to warm up, my hands and feet burning as they get warm again. As the burning fades, I drift off to sleep.
2:00 P.M. I wake to Mom yelling at me to get up, why am I sleeping in the middle of the day? “Get in the kitchen and start dinner! I want to eat at 4:00!”
I trudge into the kitchen. Terrified, I realize I forgot to take meat for dinner out of the freezer this morning. Mom didn’t tell me to, so I didn’t do it. I don’t know how to decide to do things myself because I am never allowed to do that. I have to do what I am told, always, no matter what.
Scared, I sheepishly creep into my mother’s bedroom. “Mom, I didn’t take anything out for dinner.”
“How can you be that stupid? You knew you were going to have to make dinner, why didn’t you take anything out?”
“You didn’t tell me to.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you, you should know that you have to take meat out for dinner. For a smart person, you are so incompetent sometimes!”
I ask what she wants me to do. She tells me to just finish the dusting and then make spaghetti. I go to get a new dustrag, and try to take as much time as I can because I am trying with all my might not to cry. She is really mad, and I have to now spend another hour right under her nose, getting constantly criticized. I come back in the room, and I’m tearing up despite my best efforts not to. The worst possible outcome happens: she notices.
“You are such a drama queen. It’s your fault the dusting isn’t done yet, you’re taking all day on it because you’re too incompetent to even pull out meat for dinner. You see this?” she holds up her right hand, face full of contempt. She rubs her forefinger against her thumb and says, “This is the world’s smallest violin, playing for you. Stop crying and do what you’re told!”
I get angry. I tell her that I dust this room every week, and it’s so stupid to take every knickknack down every single week. I tell her that she never told me to take meat out, that it’s not my fault. We argue for a while, maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Finally, she says, “Get out of my sight, I don’t want to deal with your attitude anymore. Go get the towels off the line and fold them and then make dinner. Do what you’re told and don’t give me any stupid excuses.”
I go and check the towels. I decide that she can yell at me for not folding them later, because they’re still wet. Something like that is inconceivable to her. After checking the wet towels, I go into the kitchen to start dinnertime. I hate dinnertime. It’s the beginning of this agonizingly long process that can sometimes last until 2 AM. I have to wash the lunch dishes and clean the kitchen first. Then I make the dinner. Then I serve the dinner. Then I wash up from dinner all alone.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it was a normal way of doing these things. After dinner, I have to not only do the dishes and clean the surfaces, which is normal, I also have to take all the burner covers off the stove and clean them. I have to scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush tonight because I talked back to my mom. Then I have to make my dad’s lunch for tomorrow, which means I will be here for awhile because my dad is having a chopped salad. I am 15 years old. I don’t have very good knife skills in the kitchen yet, and a chopped salad takes forever. I also have to heat up my dad’s dinner and serve him when he gets home, and then do the dishes after. If I am very lucky, I will still have some energy left to read a little bit before I go to sleep. I ache for the moors of England, so far from this hell I am living in.
11:00 P.M. Finally everything is done, and everyone’s in bed. I read for a little while, and then fall asleep, exhausted.
3:30 A.M. I wake with a start. I heard banging on the wall. It’s my mom’s cane that she sometimes uses in the middle of the night when she’s trying to be quiet and not wake up my dad. “Rai, get up.” she whispers, “Make me some cinnamon toast and tea. I’m nauseous.”
I drag myself out of bed and do as I’m told. I’m so tired, I can’t bear to be yelled at again today. Sleep isn’t that important anyway, right?
*****
I lived like this for 3 years. I learned absolutely nothing. My mother had found a crappy charter school willing to take us that had no parent requirements. They sent a teacher once a month to our house to collect my work. The night before each of these visits, I stayed up all night long copying out of the teacher’s answer keys to produce about 5 pages of work per subject. I fell asleep and fell out of my chair on three separate teacher’s visits during these three years. I graduated from the “school” in 2003 with honors.
There is much more I could say about how long it has taken me to recover to the point that I am not completely debilitated not only by my lack of common book and logistical knowledge, but also PTSD and severe social and generalized anxiety. I am finally in college and pursuing the education that will lead to me living up to my potential, but I am 33 years old. That is 15 years I could have been already pursuing my education and career that have been stolen from me, not to mention the 3 years of schooling that were lost to my parents’ abuse and educational neglect. I think that homeschooling can be wonderful, but my experience proves that it can be absolute hell when unstable, irresponsible people aren’t held accountable for the work they say they are doing for their child’s education.
Having experienced three different types of homeschooling as well as having attended public school for the first six years of my education, I find that I am in the unique position of knowing what it’s like to be abused by one’s parents regardless of where you’re being schooled. I was bullied terribly in third grade through the entire year, and that was a nightmare in and of itself. I have no intention of downplaying bullying when I say this, as it’s a terrible, terrible thing for anyone, especially a child, to endure, but I ask you this: what if your bully was always at your elbow? What if they sat across from you at the dinner table? What if they were in complete and total control of your entire life? What if you had no one to protect you from their rages? Not just that no one will stand against them, but that there is literally no one to stand up for you in the first place? What if that bully intended you to be their slave for life and had everything at arm’s length that they needed to try and make that a reality with very little possibility that anyone would notice or help? That’s what it’s like when you’re homeschooled by one of them.
They bully, of course, when you’re in regular school too. But there are limits to what they can do without it being noticed. Also, when I was in regular school, there were 6 hours of my life 5 days a week when I could be a child. When I could laugh without fear of punishment. When I could ask questions and read without being put down for trying to be “smarter” than my mother. I was allowed and encouraged to learn by my teachers when I was in regular school. When I was homeschooled, my mother was there every moment of every day criticizing everything about me and telling me how stupid it was that I wanted to learn anything because it was all just “worthless.”
When I was in regular school, I had several adults telling me that I was smart, that I was kind, that I was capable of producing good things and of being a good person. When I was homeschooled, the main voice I had in my life was telling me that I was nothing, that I was “too stupid to do anything right,” and that I was bad just because I happened to be alive.
I don’t know that I’d take my bullying experience of third grade instead of what happened to me through homeschooling, but I will say that neither is what should be happening to any child, ever. It is my opinion that a child should be schooled in the way that’s best for their education and emotional well-being. If a kid is being tortured in school, their parents can choose to homeschool them, and I think that is wonderful. But here is the thought I leave you with: what about the kids being tortured at home? What are their options?
Rai Storm was homeschooled in California from 1996 to 2003. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 12 September, 2018 by Kate Corbett Pollack
Victimization of Autistic Children: The Savannah Leckie Case
Autistic people are more likely to be victims of violent crime. The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) states in its online literature that “…the safety of autistic people is a critical concern for autistic self-advocates, federal and state government agencies, parents, and other stakeholders.” When researching autism and crime, often what comes up in a search for information are articles, much of them biased, on whether autistic people are “more violent” than the general population. The reality is, autistic people are more likely to be victims of hate crimes and other crimes than the able-bodied population. Stereotypes about disability and crime have persisted for centuries, and the topic was a favored one in the eugenics era, when disabled people were said to be morally depraved and genetically defective. Disability and criminal, violent, and otherwise degenerate behavior were said to be comorbid during the eugenics era, and these biased notions about disability are still extremely pervasive today, even though eugenics was discredited as a junk science which fueled the Holocaust. It is important when thinking about disability to remember that all disabled people are victimized at higher rates than able-bodied people, regardless of what their specific disability is. The question should not be: are disabled people or autistic people violent, the question should be why are these groups victimized at such extremely high rates, and what can we do about it?
Disabled people are also more likely to be victimized by a family member, and teenagers age 12-15 are most likely to be victimized. Disabled homeschool victims Hana Alemu and Erica Parsons were both around 13 when they were murdered. From ASAN:
‘People with disabilities were more than three times as likely to be victims of a serious crime (such as rape, robbery, aggravated assault) than people without disabilities. Among people with disabilities, people with cognitive disabilities had the highest rates of serious crime victimization. Because the BJS [Bureau of Justice Statistics] defines “cognitive disability” as “serious difficulty in concentrating, remembering, or making decisions because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition,” this category includes many autistic people. Autistic people may also be represented in the categories of people with a “self-care limitation” or “independent living limitation,” as defined by the BJS. Because BJS disaggregated its data in ways that may have put autistic people in multiple categories, it is difficult to determine the rate of victimization of autistic people as a whole.’
Savannah Leckie
In August 2016, when Savannah Leckie was 15, she moved from Minnesota to Missouri to live with her biological mother. Some reports indicate that when Savannah’s adoptive mother, Tamile Leckie-Montague, got a new boyfriend, that caused her to send Savannah away. However, Leckie-Montague disputes this, and says that the family was having so much trouble caring for Savannah that they needed help. Savannah was autistic and had depression and ADHD. It is not uncommon in cases like this that a disabled child is passed from one relative to another. Savannah was sent to live with her biological mother, Rebecca Ruud, who had a farm in rural Missouri, and lived there with her boyfriend, Robert Eugene Peat, Jr., a firefighter.
Rebecca attempted to put Savannah to work on her farm, but became frustrated when she felt that Savannah had difficulties acclimating and carrying out tasks. Rebecca also homeschooled Savannah. There are no reports that Rebecca was working to accommodate Savannah’s disabilities or provide disability focused education and supports.
The rural farm in Missouri. [image of dirt road, gate and fields with trees.]
Rebecca was severally abusive to Savannah. From the Daily Mail:
‘In the lead up to Savannah’s death, authorities say Ruud had allegedly taken to extreme forms of punishment to discipline her daughter. The criminal complaint reveals Ruud forced the teen to roll around in a hog pen on at least one occasion and wade into a muddy pond and dunk under. She also allegedly used a water hose on her daughter. Ruud also told police that Savannah had once deliberately cut her own arm ‘in a suicidal gesture’, according to the complaint. To punish her, Ruud poured alcohol and salt on the wound twice a day and rubbed it in until the scabs came off. She had also smashed Savannah’s cell phone and banned her from using Facebook as a form of punishment, according to the complaint. Ruud also admitted to making her teen daughter remove her pants so she could spank her bare bottom.’
Rebecca also made Savannah live in a 30-foot cramped trailer on the property that was run down and had no electricity or air-conditioning. She repeatedly contacted Tamile Leckie-Montague to tell her that Savannah was a “drain” and costing her too much money.
At some point, the abuse accelerated to homicide, although authorities are unsure of what exactly happened, but it appears that the child died on or around July 18th, 2017. On July 20th, 2017, Rebecca Ruud called police to notify them that Savannah was missing, stating that she thought the girl might have run away. Police were suspicious that Savannah had not run away due to all of her belongings, including her toothbrush, piggy bank and messenger bag, still being at the Ruud farm. Rebecca Ruud started a campaign to “help find Savannah”, both online and in her community.
[Image of “Missing” poster with photos of Savannah and identifying details.]
Two days prior to reporting Savannah missing, Ruud had called local firefighters to help her extinguish what she said was a large brush fire on the farm. When firefighters asked about Savannah, whom Ruud said had been injured in the fire, Ruud was evasive, and said the teen was “taking a shower” and did not want to be disturbed. Firefighters observed that Ruud was also injured with a burn mark and treated her for it. Rebecca said it was a result of battling the brush fire, but would tell people different versions of how she got the injury.
Shortly after the report that Savannah was missing, a large search of the 80-acre farm commenced. Authorities noticed that Rebecca was acting strangely the entire time, which heightened their suspicion that Savannah had not run away.
The search revealed the charred remains of a body in a burn pit, a fire which was deliberately set and fueled with an accelerant. The canine unit discovered the pit, which was concealed by brush. Forensics revealed that the body was Savannah Leckie.
[image of Rebecca Ruud mugshot, close-up of Savannah Leckie’s face, Savannah and Rebecca posing together.]
Forensics also revealed that large quantities of lye, likely from Ruud’s home-made soap business, had been poured on the body, and that the body had been burned several times. Rebecca responded to the situation by hurriedly marrying her live-in boyfriend, Robert Eugene Peat, since they believed a married couple could not testify against each other. Rebecca was later arrested, attempting to flee the area on a Greyhound bus, carrying large luggage bags.
An informant, according to court documents, told authorities that Rebecca had admitted to her how Savannah died. She drugged the girl and put her body in a fire. When Savannah started to wake up, Ruud hit her with a rake. However, it is unconfirmed whether this story is true. A search warrant revealed several long-handed garden tools on the property, including rakes. Reports also indicate that Rebecca Ruud had prescription hydrocodone on the property.
Rebecca was charged with first degree murder, second degree murder, abuse or neglect of a child resulting in death, tampering with physical evidence in a case, and abandoning a corpse without notifying authorities. She awaits sentencing. Robert Peat was also arrested, but later released.
Patterns
Rebecca Ruud tried to force Savannah into a particular way of behaving, and did not accommodate or respect her neurodiversity. When Savannah did not act the way Rebecca wanted or expected, Rebecca became violent. Savannah responded to being effectively abandoned by her adopted family and abused by her mother by attempting suicide. Instead of being caring and understanding towards this understandable response to her circumstances, Rebecca added to and exacerbated Savannah’s emotional and physical wounds.
Able-bodied people far too often erroneously view non-neurotypical people as being defective, burdensome and irritating. They try to force them to be “normal” or to behave in specific ways. Instead of forcing a disabled person into an environment and set of expectations, one should instead work with them to celebrate who they are and accommodate their disabilities. The answer to having a disabled child is not to send them off by themselves to be homeschooled on a farm in the middle of nowhere with someone they do not know very well. As we frequently see in child torture, abuse, and homicide cases, the child victim was placed in an “informal family arrangement” (Knox, 2014). This is often because the disability is too overwhelming.
Autistic children are murdered by their parents and caretakers at astonishingly high rates. The disability community remembers these victims every year with Disability Day of Mourning, which specifically focuses on disabled people who were murdered by a parent or caretaker. I attend a vigil for Disability Day of Mourning every year, and the list of names of victims that we are given is very, very long. Many of these victims were autistic.
Another aspect of this case is the fact that anyone thought it was a good idea for a child who evidently needed support doing daily tasks, as Savannah needed, to be homeschooled by someone like Rebecca, who has no qualifications in the field of special education, disability studies, or anything else. Autistic children can thrive and excel if they are in situations where their abilities are supported, and they are not pigeon-holed into behaving the way an adult would like or prefer. The issue is that it can be difficult to find these kinds of supports, and public schools frequently pass the buck when it comes to disability. However this does not excuse how Savannah was treated by any of the adults in her life. Far too often parents who murder disabled children are sympathized with and looked at forgivingly by the public since the child was such a “burden”. Many times, these murderers are given light sentences. I have a feeling that this will not be the case in the Leckie situation and hope that justice is appropriately served.
The Leckie case has the hallmarks of many homeschool homicide cases: isolation, deprivation, adoption, informal family arrangements, disability, and abuse by the mother. This is a tragic and extreme case, but there are patterns and recognizable, recurring issues when looking at it through the lens of disability studies. It is by using this lens that we can better understand the high rates of murder and abuse suffered by autistic and otherwise disabled people.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Rai Storm: “There was no gratefulness. There was no escape. It just went on and on.”
“When I was in regular school, I had several adults telling me that I was smart, that I was kind, that I was capable of producing good things and of being a good person. When I was homeschooled, the main voice I had in my life was telling me that I was nothing, that I was ‘too stupid to do anything right,’ and that I was bad just because I happened to be alive.”
My parents have always been prone to rage and impulses. My family has had large and violent arguments that began because “someone” (me or my brother) failed to replace the roll of paper towels in the kitchen before one of the almighty parents found that they had need of one. We consistently had different utilities disconnected for lack of payment. We had a truck and trailer repossessed, and my mom picked my brother and me up early from elementary school on days when she was tired or the weather was bad because she “didn’t want to have to go out again.” There was dysfunction.
Education was never important to my parents. In fact, they bad-mouthed and openly mocked teachers, school, and people who pursued higher education non-stop when I was growing up. They both had high school diplomas and believed that pursuing anything more than that was ridiculous and a waste of time.
Then they discovered homeschooling.
I was in fourth grade, and my best friend Alice invited me over to her house all the time. We spent a huge amount of time together, and my parents and her parents became friendly. Alice had been homeschooled previously, and was still required by her parents to do math out of a homeschool math book in addition to the math we were taught in our public school class. Alice and I were both GATE (gifted and talented education) students, and we completely enjoyed each other’s company.
Slowly, my parents came to be enamored of the idea of homeschooling through their relationship with Alice’s parents. During this period, they were becoming more and more fundamentalist Christian in their thoughts and actions, and more and more legalistic in their ideas about what was acceptable behavior for our family. Due to their own experiences of abuse as children, I think the idea of being disliked, ignored, passed over, and maltreated because they were Christians gave them something to cling to; their abuse wasn’t because of who they were, but who they worshipped.
Things slowly got even crazier in our house. It seemed like we watched a new Christian documentary about how the Occult was trying to steal and sacrifice Christian children every weekend. My parents became obsessed with the end times, and we watched all the Thief in the Night videos multiple times. In an effort to protect us from all of this evil descending upon us and to keep us close as the end times were near, they started homeschooling us when I started sixth grade.
*****
This period wasn’t so bad, although I suffered my first major depressive episode from the isolation. We homeschooled under an umbrella school and my mom, my brother, and I attended monthly meetings that taught the adults how to do the school’s paperwork and the kids how to deal with social workers who wanted to take you away from your family and never let you see them again.
I learned during this period, but the books I learned from were suspect. I specifically remember the only mention of Joan of Arc in my eighth grade world history book said that she was simply a crazy person who wanted to be famous. No mention of her importance in French history, her military significance, or that the fact that a young woman even achieved fame during this time in history was amazing. She was just a crazy person who shouldn’t be remembered.
This really bothered me and I brought it to my mother’s attention. Joan of Arc was one of my favorite historical people at this time, and I was very angry that she’d been treated this way. My mother laughed it off and told me it didn’t matter.
During our time under the umbrella school, my mother wrote LIFE SKILLS in block letters across every Friday in her lesson plans. The “skills” we were learning were how to clean the house top to bottom for no apparent reason. Not only was this accepted by the school, they actually suggested that she do this. Unfortunately, it was a portent of things to come.
My mother had gotten into a car accident when I was 9 years old. As a result of the accident, she was becoming more and more physically disabled. She would eventually be unable to walk more than a few steps at a time and became wheelchair bound.
What I believe happened to her during this time, at least from my perspective looking back as an adult, is depression due to her medical condition and anxiety about loss of control. She was already unstable, abusive, and prone to rages before this happened. Now things were starting to get really dark and scary.
*****
Ninth grade happened. Ninth grade remains one of my favorite and most wonderful experiences of my life. I went to a charter school that had independent study for some classes, so it was still homeschool, but I had friends and teachers and a fantastic opportunity for learning. It was amazing, and part of why I am not anti-homeschooling as an adult. This was a good school: they checked up on kids who hadn’t been seen in awhile, required weekly meetings with parents, and made sure we were learning. I would send my own kids there.
Then we got kicked out. Not because of me or my brother, who were doing extremely well, but because my mother refused to do the lesson plans or attend the meetings required of her. We weren’t “technically” kicked out, but the school sent her a letter “suggesting” that she put us in a more “traditional” school environment, as she was unwilling to comply with the mandatory parent participation rules.
That’s when my life took a drastic turn for the worse. I almost didn’t survive this period, and it still affects me in ways I don’t always realize. Thankfully, I had made some friends during my one year of good schooling that stuck with me through this time. Without them and their understanding, I know I wouldn’t have made it, despite how little I saw and communicated with them.
My mother’s medical condition had worsened when I was in 9th grade, to the point that she needed nursing care. My parents, rather than looking into what their excellent insurance would cover or reaching out to the community for help, figured that they already had a solution sitting right there in the house—someone who they wouldn’t have to pay, who could be on call 24/7 with no time off and be not only a nurse, but a maid, a cook, and someone for mom to scream at because she felt like it. Me.
I fell into one of the darkest pits of my life. I spent my days answering my mother’s beck and call, being screamed at and called names continuously, scrubbing floors with toothbrushes, washing underwear by hand, and making gourmet dinners far beyond my skill level. There was no gratefulness. There was no escape. It just went on and on.
*****
A typical day during this time looked something like this:
5:00 A.M. Be awakened by mom and dad flipping the overhead light on in my room and screaming at me to go in the kitchen and wash the dishes I left in the sink after my dad ate his dinner last night. Be screamed at continuously and told how lazy I am over and over. Since I’m up, I can make Dad’s oatmeal for breakfast. I had better not burn it, or World War III will commence.
5:30A.M. Dad leaves for work, Mom goes back to bed. I retreat to my room and try to sleep. If I’m not successful at sleeping, I’ll read some Wuthering Heights again, for the 18th time.
8:00 A.M. Mom wakes up. If I’m not awake, she runs her electric wheelchair into the door of my room, popping it open. She may then proceed to scream at me for being lazy and not being up yet, or may simply yell at me to make her bed and get her breakfast.
8:30 A.M. Breakfast gotten, her bed is made. She tells me I can do school now. I lay across my bed, a school book next to me. I am so tired, I can barely keep my eyes open. I try to focus, try to understand what I am reading. Then I hear, “Rai!” shouted down the hallway. I pull myself off the bed, exhausted and a little dizzy. My heart is pounding, but it does that a lot. I ignore it and hurry down the hall to my mom’s room. She says, “Hand me the remote control.” I fume inside as I look down and see that the remote is 3 inches from her hand. I hand it to her and go back to my room, filled with anger. I try again to concentrate on my book, but end up falling asleep.
10:00 A.M. I wake up, spluttering. My mother has told my brother to pour water on me because I fell asleep. She then tells me if I’m not going to do my schoolwork, I need to start cleaning instead. Today’s chore will be dusting her bedroom. Every item in her bedroom must be thoroughly dusted, which will involve removing every stupid tchotchke from every single surface and running a dust rag over the items and the surfaces, and then replacing every single item in its original place. This would be horrible enough, but she is going to sit on her bed and criticize me constantly for the entire time I am working on this project that I do every single week.
11:30 A.M. It’s time to make Mom’s lunch, so I will have to go back to the dusting later. She has decided she wants a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. I make them and bring them to her. She yells at me because there are a few blackened spots on the sandwich. She makes me make it again. I have to make the tea again too because I put in too much soy milk the first time. I make it again.
12:30 P.M. Mom has laid down for a nap. I will finish dusting after she wakes up, but for now I have to do laundry. I have already washed the laundry, but I have to hang it out to dry on the clothesline. It’s towels, and it is going to take forever to hang them up. It’s so cold outside, I can see my breath. I’m not wearing shoes because I’m not allowed to wear them “just” to hang up clothes. I am freezing, my hands hurt. I’m trying to hurry as fast as I can to get back to the warm house. My hands are so cold, I struggle to pry open the clothespins. I have to open them up so they can fit over the thick towels, otherwise they’ll fall off and I’ll get screamed at. Dad refuses to buy a new dryer because, “Why do we need a new dryer when we have you?”
1:00 P.M. I lay on the couch in the living room, enjoying the quiet as I start to warm up, my hands and feet burning as they get warm again. As the burning fades, I drift off to sleep.
2:00 P.M. I wake to Mom yelling at me to get up, why am I sleeping in the middle of the day? “Get in the kitchen and start dinner! I want to eat at 4:00!”
I trudge into the kitchen. Terrified, I realize I forgot to take meat for dinner out of the freezer this morning. Mom didn’t tell me to, so I didn’t do it. I don’t know how to decide to do things myself because I am never allowed to do that. I have to do what I am told, always, no matter what.
Scared, I sheepishly creep into my mother’s bedroom. “Mom, I didn’t take anything out for dinner.”
“How can you be that stupid? You knew you were going to have to make dinner, why didn’t you take anything out?”
“You didn’t tell me to.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you, you should know that you have to take meat out for dinner. For a smart person, you are so incompetent sometimes!”
I ask what she wants me to do. She tells me to just finish the dusting and then make spaghetti. I go to get a new dustrag, and try to take as much time as I can because I am trying with all my might not to cry. She is really mad, and I have to now spend another hour right under her nose, getting constantly criticized. I come back in the room, and I’m tearing up despite my best efforts not to. The worst possible outcome happens: she notices.
“You are such a drama queen. It’s your fault the dusting isn’t done yet, you’re taking all day on it because you’re too incompetent to even pull out meat for dinner. You see this?” she holds up her right hand, face full of contempt. She rubs her forefinger against her thumb and says, “This is the world’s smallest violin, playing for you. Stop crying and do what you’re told!”
I get angry. I tell her that I dust this room every week, and it’s so stupid to take every knickknack down every single week. I tell her that she never told me to take meat out, that it’s not my fault. We argue for a while, maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Finally, she says, “Get out of my sight, I don’t want to deal with your attitude anymore. Go get the towels off the line and fold them and then make dinner. Do what you’re told and don’t give me any stupid excuses.”
I go and check the towels. I decide that she can yell at me for not folding them later, because they’re still wet. Something like that is inconceivable to her. After checking the wet towels, I go into the kitchen to start dinnertime. I hate dinnertime. It’s the beginning of this agonizingly long process that can sometimes last until 2 AM. I have to wash the lunch dishes and clean the kitchen first. Then I make the dinner. Then I serve the dinner. Then I wash up from dinner all alone.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it was a normal way of doing these things. After dinner, I have to not only do the dishes and clean the surfaces, which is normal, I also have to take all the burner covers off the stove and clean them. I have to scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush tonight because I talked back to my mom. Then I have to make my dad’s lunch for tomorrow, which means I will be here for awhile because my dad is having a chopped salad. I am 15 years old. I don’t have very good knife skills in the kitchen yet, and a chopped salad takes forever. I also have to heat up my dad’s dinner and serve him when he gets home, and then do the dishes after. If I am very lucky, I will still have some energy left to read a little bit before I go to sleep. I ache for the moors of England, so far from this hell I am living in.
11:00 P.M. Finally everything is done, and everyone’s in bed. I read for a little while, and then fall asleep, exhausted.
3:30 A.M. I wake with a start. I heard banging on the wall. It’s my mom’s cane that she sometimes uses in the middle of the night when she’s trying to be quiet and not wake up my dad. “Rai, get up.” she whispers, “Make me some cinnamon toast and tea. I’m nauseous.”
I drag myself out of bed and do as I’m told. I’m so tired, I can’t bear to be yelled at again today. Sleep isn’t that important anyway, right?
*****
I lived like this for 3 years. I learned absolutely nothing. My mother had found a crappy charter school willing to take us that had no parent requirements. They sent a teacher once a month to our house to collect my work. The night before each of these visits, I stayed up all night long copying out of the teacher’s answer keys to produce about 5 pages of work per subject. I fell asleep and fell out of my chair on three separate teacher’s visits during these three years. I graduated from the “school” in 2003 with honors.
There is much more I could say about how long it has taken me to recover to the point that I am not completely debilitated not only by my lack of common book and logistical knowledge, but also PTSD and severe social and generalized anxiety. I am finally in college and pursuing the education that will lead to me living up to my potential, but I am 33 years old. That is 15 years I could have been already pursuing my education and career that have been stolen from me, not to mention the 3 years of schooling that were lost to my parents’ abuse and educational neglect. I think that homeschooling can be wonderful, but my experience proves that it can be absolute hell when unstable, irresponsible people aren’t held accountable for the work they say they are doing for their child’s education.
Having experienced three different types of homeschooling as well as having attended public school for the first six years of my education, I find that I am in the unique position of knowing what it’s like to be abused by one’s parents regardless of where you’re being schooled. I was bullied terribly in third grade through the entire year, and that was a nightmare in and of itself. I have no intention of downplaying bullying when I say this, as it’s a terrible, terrible thing for anyone, especially a child, to endure, but I ask you this: what if your bully was always at your elbow? What if they sat across from you at the dinner table? What if they were in complete and total control of your entire life? What if you had no one to protect you from their rages? Not just that no one will stand against them, but that there is literally no one to stand up for you in the first place? What if that bully intended you to be their slave for life and had everything at arm’s length that they needed to try and make that a reality with very little possibility that anyone would notice or help? That’s what it’s like when you’re homeschooled by one of them.
They bully, of course, when you’re in regular school too. But there are limits to what they can do without it being noticed. Also, when I was in regular school, there were 6 hours of my life 5 days a week when I could be a child. When I could laugh without fear of punishment. When I could ask questions and read without being put down for trying to be “smarter” than my mother. I was allowed and encouraged to learn by my teachers when I was in regular school. When I was homeschooled, my mother was there every moment of every day criticizing everything about me and telling me how stupid it was that I wanted to learn anything because it was all just “worthless.”
When I was in regular school, I had several adults telling me that I was smart, that I was kind, that I was capable of producing good things and of being a good person. When I was homeschooled, the main voice I had in my life was telling me that I was nothing, that I was “too stupid to do anything right,” and that I was bad just because I happened to be alive.
I don’t know that I’d take my bullying experience of third grade instead of what happened to me through homeschooling, but I will say that neither is what should be happening to any child, ever. It is my opinion that a child should be schooled in the way that’s best for their education and emotional well-being. If a kid is being tortured in school, their parents can choose to homeschool them, and I think that is wonderful. But here is the thought I leave you with: what about the kids being tortured at home? What are their options?
Rai Storm was homeschooled in California from 1996 to 2003. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Brittany Randolph: “As time went on, our schedule became looser and looser”
“My sister and I were fine with this at first. No school! We could spend time on the things we actually wanted to do. One thing, though, is that none of these things involved friends, at least not ones we had ever met in person.”
I was in public school up until the early 8th grade, when my dad demanded my mother take my sister and me out. It was over something I won’t go into complete detail over, but to simplify I’ll call it spiritual beliefs. I was initially very excited. When you’re that age, who wants to go to school? It is a toxic environment, with teachers that don’t respect you, an overwhelming workload, and your peers finding any little thing to make fun of you for. And at that age, I had an image of homeschooling that was pretty much all play and no work. I knew that was too good to be true, but it was fun to imagine.
Turns out, that wasn’t so far from the truth. And it wasn’t good, either.
When my mother first started homeschooling us, it wasn’t so bad. We would start at 9:00 and sit at the dining room table, and we would refer to the schedule she had written out on a whiteboard. She’d give us little lessons, then she would have us do lessons online. Some of them were below our grade level, especially for me, the older of the two. It was understandable, as she was suddenly thrown into this; you couldn’t expect it to be perfect right off the bat. But I was under the impression that this was just temporary, just something to use until she could find something for my grade level. Also, it was free, and she seemed to have no intention of spending more than the bare minimum on our education.
She didn’t seem to be in any rush to find something better suited to me, though, and she would get defensive if I mentioned it. I ended up using it for the rest of the year, and if I remember correctly, most or all of the next year, too. It should be mentioned that I was considered “gifted” in school, and was part of a special education class to keep those students stimulated and working at their level. My sister was pretty smart, too, and generally got good grades, but had areas that she did struggle in and needed special focus on.
As time went on, our schedule became looser and looser. My sister and I would ask to not do school. You can hardly blame us, we were kids who wanted to have fun. Some days our mother would still make us, but some days she would give in. As you would expect from a couple of middle school girls, we were not enthusiastic or excited about school. This made my mother lose motivation, and we started stopping school early, then going weekdays without doing school altogether. Eventually, we got to the point where we could go for two weeks with just one or two small lessons she would sit us down for.
My sister and I were fine with this at first. No school! We could spend time on the things we actually wanted to do. One thing, though, is that none of these things involved friends, at least not ones we had ever met in person.
As I moved through middle school, I started to become bitter and antisocial. All of my friends had some glaring flaw that I just could not stand. So when I was taken out of school, I made no effort to talk to any of them. To be fair, most of them made no effort to talk to me either, but the few that did didn’t get much back. I just didn’t care to talk to them; they were too annoying, or too boy-crazy, or too bitter. They were just too flawed for me. I was above them.
My sister, on the other hand, was shy, but very social. She tried to keep in touch with her friends, but her friends had just entered middle school and were trying to paint new images for themselves. They were putting a lot of effort into being cool, and were changing in ways that may not have been great, but would probably only be temporary. My mother was very unhappy with these changes, however, and would confront her friends about the new negative changes they had taken on, whether or not my sister asked her to. She eventually scared off a good deal of my sister’s closest friends, and my sister became certain that about everyone from her grade hated her. She became bitter; she did believe these kids were in the wrong, that they just cared about pointless things and that she was better than them. There were a few kids who still wanted to hang out with her, but eventually, she stopped putting in the effort. She was better than the rest of the kids her age.
I remember being pretty clearly discouraged from having friends by my mother, and when the concept of finding a homeschool co-op was brought up, she would acknowledge the thought but made little to no effort to find one. My sister did find friends online, but besides that, we were both pretty alone and cut off from the world. I had one friend who called once in a while, but that was it for a while. She did eventually start to call more often, but couldn’t have friends over, so my sister and I just sat in the house, wallowing in bitterness, hardly having anything to stimulate us.
Now, I will only make a brief mention of this, and won’t go into a lot of detail, as it is very hard for me to think about, but I went through about a year of intense mental illness, which I believe probably could have been avoided if I had something stimulating my mind. What I went through caused a lot of stress for my family, and I was not treated well. My dad was usually patient with me, but my mom guilted and screamed at me. If I remember correctly, my dad did have his moments as well, at least when it started a second time about two years later.
Because we had hardly any connections, especially with adults, abuse could go unnoticed by anyone who might have been able to stop it. I received abuse from both of my parents throughout my life, but it was most frequently from my mother. It was almost entirely emotional, so I’m not sure much would have done about it anyway. But it would have been nice to at least have people to talk to, to see if this is normal or right. My parents themselves are shy/ antisocial, so they don’t really keep any friends, meaning there wasn’t really anyone to catch or criticize their choices and behavior.
I eventually started to figure out how wrong their treatment of us was, and I started to speak up. It was not accepted well, but I knew I had to at least try to make a change. I hope to gain back the bravery I had during those days. I was treated poorly, and a lot of the time met with defensiveness. It took some time, but I was eventually able to at least get my sister to listen to me, and she started to realize how wrong so much of our childhood was. At first, she just stayed quiet and took their blows, but slowly started speaking up. These days she’s much bolder than I am.
Things did start to get a little bit better after about a year of nearly nothing education-wise. My sister and I eventually met a family who attended a local homeschool co-op and invited us to join, and our parents let us attend. Though I had a very hard time interacting with the others, it was still beneficial to have some kind of socialization. School became slightly more organized by the time I graduated but was still extremely lackluster. As of right now, my sister insists on directing her own education, where she can escape my mother’s blaming and mocking for the things she struggles with. She has more resources than we ever had in previous years, and she’s using things closer to her grade level, desperately hoping to catch up.
As for me, I started working my first and current job a few months after graduating, and have been putting off starting college, as my parents talked frequently how they believed college was usually a waste of time and money. I believed this for most of my life and didn’t think I’d go, and by the time I decided I needed to go in order to pursue the things I wanted to do, I was almost graduated and was clueless about how to prep for it, with no one I felt comfortable having an open conversation about it. I am also trying to work on finding myself after being made to repress my personality and interests for so long. I’m trying to figure out how life and society functions, and I’m trying to build connections and make friends. I have a very difficult time opening up and making close friendships, but I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve also moved out of my parents’ house which has been very healing.
I was homeschooled in West Virginia, which definitely has better oversight than some other states, but I still believe it needs to be improved. My mother submitted portfolios with our elementary/ middle school-level work, and we always passed just fine. There needs to be a way to verify that the child is working at their ability level, and it must be seen that there is progress being made. There also needs to be a way to check on students to make sure that they are not being abused and have everything they need, physically, mentally, emotionally, educationally, and spiritually.
Brittany Randolph was homeschooled in West Virginia from 2012 to 2017. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Jones Case Highlights Lack of Homeschool Oversight in Oklahoma
For Immediate Release: Oklahoma parents who nearly starved their 15-year-old son to death used lax homeschooling laws to hide their abuse
Canton, Ma., 07/20/2018—This week, the 15-year-old son of Jimmy and Amy Jones was rescued from starvation and imprisonment in his parents’ barn. The boy weighed only 80 lbs. and investigators believe that if a passerby hadn’t noticed and reported the boy’s condition, he would have been dead within a week. “This boy is far from the first homeschooled child to be starved and abused by their parents,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization founded by homeschool alumni that advocates for homeschooled children. “Oklahoma should enact basic legislation to protect children like this boy from horrific abuse.”
CRHE runs a database that tracks cases of abuse and neglect of homeschooled children across the country. That database, which is not comprehensive, contains 13 other cases of severe or fatal abuse of homeschooled children in Oklahoma alone, including the case of Marcus Holloway, a homeschooled 10-year-old who was imprisoned in a “dungeon” in Fort Sill and starved to death in 2011. “Our goal is to identify themes that will help us prevent these tragedies before they happen,” said Coleman. “The Jones case has many characteristics in common with the cases we have observed, such as prior social services involvement, starvation, torture, and scapegoating.” While many parents use homeschooling to provide children with an individualized education in a nurturing home environment, Oklahoma’s lax homeschooling laws allow abusive parents to effectively hide their abuse without the intention to provide an education.
In the Jones case, the boy was removed from a prior home by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services; children who have had prior involvement with child services are at greater risk of abuse and neglect and are in need of closer monitoring. It appears that the boy was scapegoated by the Joneses, whose other children were well-fed and lived in the house with them. The Joneses tortured the boy, deprived him of medical care, and starved him, all forms of abuse that would have been much more difficult to hide if he attended school. “When children are enrolled in school, they have access to school meals, a school nurse, and trusted adults they can tell if something is wrong at home,” Coleman said. “But children homeschooled in Oklahoma are not required to be seen by anyone outside the home, allowing abusive parents to isolate their children from anyone who could help them.”
Oklahoma’s homeschooling law exempts students for whom “other means of education are provided” from compulsory school attendance, requiring only that homeschooling parents provide 180 days of instruction. Parents are not required to register their homeschooled children with the district, so school officials have no way of checking up on them to ensure they are receiving instruction, and there is no requirement that students ever be assessed academically. What’s more, there is no requirement that homeschooled children receive medical care or interact with mandatory reporters. There is no law barring Oklahoma parents who have been convicted of child abuse from homeschooling. CRHE maintains a list of policy recommendations that would close these loopholes and prevent homeschooled children from slipping through the cracks.
“Oklahoma’s laws are among the worst in the country for providing protections for homeschooled children,” said Coleman. “It’s not surprising that cases like this keep occurring. Oklahoma’s lawmakers should include homeschool alumni in the conversation about how to best prevent things like this from happening.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Rebecca F.: “The physical abuse and neglect was obvious to me from a very early age”
“Although parents had to submit lists of textbooks that they were using for each grade as part of their report to the local school district, it became apparent that the school district didn’t know what to do with this, and didn’t read the reports at all.”
I was homeschooled from first grade through most of high school, and then went to public school very briefly after moving. Although homeschooling was effective in helping me get a very strong math and science education, and we were in New York—a state that, according to my parents’ homeschool group and organizations like HSLDA, had very “restrictive” homeschooling laws—there were many major gaps in my education that still affect me today.
As I grew up, I saw that these “restrictive” laws still translated into practically no oversight as to either the quality of the education or of the well-being of children who were homeschooled.
The physical abuse and neglect was obvious to me from a very early age: One little girl in our homeschool group nearly died of pneumonia at age four, due to her mother’s refusal to seek medical attention, even when she had difficulty breathing. She wasn’t taken to the dentist until age six, at which point it was discovered that her teeth were so decayed, she needed multiple root canals. Parents “spanked” their children all the time, which in reality often meant outright beating them with tree branches or plastic pipes. I clearly remember overhearing adults having conversations about how they hid these items, and what excuses they used to keep their children out of swim lessons or in long pants or sleeves on occasions that suspicious bruises would be visible. I remember children who were deprived of food for days, with their parents telling them that they had to eat a specific food item or part of their meal before getting any further food, even when the food they were being coerced into eating made them ill.
The next thing I noticed was the educational neglect. One family “unschooled” their children, which to them meant they counted allowing their children to play with American Girl dolls as “history” and handling cash while they purchased items at the grocery store as “math.” Although these children could pay for a purchase, by middle school they were lagging far behind their peers. I personally experienced this somewhat later: My parents had no idea how to write, and taught me English using a curriculum that only went to 8th grade, and past that, allowed me to read books and do nothing more for “English Literature.” I had no idea how to structure a paper or even what a “thesis sentence” was until a college professor actually sat me down and asked me what I knew about writing.
The lack of oversight was also quite obvious: Although parents had to submit lists of textbooks that they were using for each grade as part of their report to the local school district, it became apparent that the school district didn’t know what to do with this, and didn’t read the reports at all. Standardized testing was required, but parents were allowed to administer it themselves, in their homes, and there was no safeguard to ensure that the parents themselves adhered to time rules and didn’t assist their children. The quarterly progress reports we had to make were similar, and parents who didn’t feel like properly grading their children’s work would simply estimate grades or use a pass/fail system, making accurate estimates of the students’ progress nearly impossible.
As an adult, I also saw that there had been a near complete failure for children to be tested for learning disabilities or other developmental delays. I showed clear signs of autism from an early age, yet my parents were angered at a suggestion that I get assessed, and looking back I can remember many other children who showed clear signs of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more who were neither assessed or treated, whose parents were at best blissfully unaware, and at worst bragged about how homeschooling meant their children would have been “labelled” if they had been in a public or even private school, unaware of the resources that their children so desperately needed in order to succeed.
The last issue that I experienced was transitioning from homeschooling to the professional workforce. Due to a disconnect between the homeschooling graduation requirements and public school graduation requirements in my state, although I completed every class necessary to “graduate” as a homeschooler, I didn’t complete them all while homeschooled, and didn’t complete enough to graduate from a public school. As a result, I don’t have a high school diploma. I was discouraged from taking the GED, which has left me with no proof of having graduated high school. This has occasionally presented a difficulty when applying for jobs that want proof of high school completion regardless of college degrees. (I was able to attend college as a legacy admission.)
I strongly support better oversight of homeschooling—regular contact with mandated reporters, academic assessments that aren’t administered by parents—because for many years now I have seen that it would have helped uncover or prevent many of the dozens of cases of child abuse and neglect that I saw around me growing up, and would have left many of us homeschooled students better prepared for our own independent adult lives.
Rebecca F. was homeschooled in New York State from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
Fairfield Abuse Case Highlights Lack of Oversight for Homeschooling
For Immediate Release: The rescue of ten homeschooled children from a life of torture comes following other concerning cases and a new provoking study
Canton, Ma., 05/21/2018—Officials are accusing Ina Rogers and Jonathan Allen, of Fairfield, California, of torturing their ten children, ages 4 months to 12 years, for “a sadistic purpose.” The children did not attend school; Rogers reports that she was homeschooling them. The couple stands accused of shooting the children with pellet guns and crossbows; strangling and scalding them; and waterboarding them. “This case in Fairfield fits many of the themes we have seen in child abuse cases that occur in homeschool settings nationwide,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children.
“Cases like the one in Fairfield, California, need to be understood within a wider context in which abusive families routinely use homeschooling to hide abuse,” said Coleman. “Many individuals have rightly noticed similarities between this case and the Turpin case and expressed concern,” said Coleman. “But the use of homeschooling to conceal child abuse and neglect is neither new nor isolated or rare.” CRHE has been cataloging similar cases in the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database since its founding in 2013; the earliest case in the database is from 1986. “Inadequate homeschool laws that offer no safeguards are easily manipulated by parents who want to escape the legal consequences of child abuse,” Coleman explained.
In April, the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) released a report finding that 36% of children withdrawn from school to be homeschooled in six school districts between 2013 and 2016 lived in families subject to prior accepted child abuse and neglect reports. The majority of these children (88%) lived in families that were subject to multiple prior accepted reports or had been the subject of at least one substantiated report.
“The OCA report is not the first study to raise concerns about homeschooling being used to conceal child abuse,” noted Coleman, referencing a 2014 study of child torture in which 47% of school-age victims examined had been withdrawn from school to be homeschooled and another 29%, like the Fairfield children, had never been enrolled in school.
According to the California Department of Education, Rogers and Allen did not register their homeschool with the state. However, this does not necessarily mean their homeschool was not operating legally. Many homeschooling parents in California enroll their children in private “umbrella schools” which allow them to avoid providing their information to the California Department of Education. These umbrella schools often offer little to no oversight of their students. It is also possible that Rogers and Allen were operating their homeschool in violation of the education statues — homeschoolers often refer to such truancy as “homeschooling under the radar.”
“If state laws were not being followed, that ought to have surfaced when the family was investigated by social services three years ago,” said Coleman. “Unfortunately, we have found that social services does not always verify whether a family that claims to be homeschooling is doing so in accordance with the law. We need both good laws and effective enforcement.”
Following the Turpin case, in which 13 homeschooled children were rescued from decades of imprisonment and starvation in a Perris, California home, two bills designed to improve the state’s oversight of homeschooling were introduced in the California Assembly. Both bills were opposed by organizations representing homeschooling parents and neither made it out of committee. “It is our hope that the Fairfield case and the growing attention being paid to this issue nationwide will bring the California Assembly back to this subject in the next legislative session,” said Coleman. “There are homeschooled children out there today who need help.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Many Homeschool Families Have Past Child Welfare Reports, CT Study Finds
For Immediate Release: New data suggests cases where homeschooling is used to hide child abuse or neglect are disturbingly common
Canton, Ma., 05/18/2018—Last month, the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) released a report finding that 36% of children withdrawn from school to be homeschooled between 2013 and 2016 lived in families with at least one prior accepted report of child abuse or neglect. “This finding backs up concerns we have voiced about lax homeschool laws for years now,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children. “While opponents of oversight claim that homeschool abuse cases are isolated or rare, the OCA report suggests they are much more common than anyone realized.”
In Connecticut, reports to Department of Children and Families (DCF) are either accepted or “non-accepted” based on whether an allegation meets the state’s definition of abuse and neglect.) Since 2012, accepted reports have entered a two-tier system: lower-risk reports are assigned to a Family Assessment Response (FAR) track that connects families with services while higher risk concerns are investigated and given a finding of substantiated (when investigators find evidence to support the allegations) or unsubstantiated (when they do not).
In order to conduct their study, the OCA obtained lists of all students withdrawn to be homeschooled between 2013 and 2016 from six school districts and cross-referenced these names with records from DCF. The OCA found that 36% of these children lived in families with at least one prior accepted report of abuse or neglect, and that the vast majority of these children (88%) had families with multiple reports or a single report that was substantiated. Of the 380 students withdrawn to be homeschooled in these school districts, the OCA found that:
“It is well known that abusive parents can and sometimes do use homeschooling to isolate children and conceal child abuse,” said Coleman, pointing to a 2014 study of child torture in which 47% of the school-age victims examined had been withdrawn from school to be homeschooled. In that study, researchers found that this homeschooling was “designed to further isolate the child”; that it “typically occurred after the closure of a previously opened CPS case”; and that it “was accompanied by an escalation of physically abusive events.”
CRHE’s policy recommendations, which are based on patterns observed in the cases of severe and fatal abuse and neglect catalogued in the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database, include creating a screening system to catch cases where a child has been withdrawn from school to be homeschooled following a concerning history of child welfare reports. No state currently has such a screening system.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 18 May, 2018 by Rachel Coleman
Connecticut Study Finds High Rates of Past Child Welfare Reports Among Homeschooling Families
In late April, the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate released a report based on data from six school districts, finding that 36% of students removed from school to be homeschooled from 2013 to 2016 lived in families subject to past accepted reports of child abuse or neglect. This report followed a case where a child was removed from school to be homeschooled despite past abuse allegations, with tragic results. The study was conducted as part of the Office of the Child Advocate’s investigation of the case.
We have been asked whether we found these findings surprising. We did not. This is not the first time we have seen numbers like these. A similar study conducted in another school district in another state — but not publicly released — had comparable results.
One of first themes we noticed when we began logging cases in our HIC database involved families who pulled their children to homeschool after the closure of a child protective services investigation, to avoid further scrutiny. This research does not reflect concern about parents who remove their children from school to provide them with an innovative, child-centered, educational environment in the home. Instead, it points to inadequate laws that offer no safeguards and are easily manipulated by parents with abusive motivations.
Child protective services cannot conduct an investigation if there are no allegations, and no allegations can be made if a child is isolated from contact with adults outside of the family, as often happens in cases where parents remove their children from school after the closure of a child protective services case. We need a screening system to catch these cases.
How many reports were substantiated?
One question that has followed the report released by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) is this: How many of these children lived in families subject to allegations that were substantiated? We wondered this too! When a report of child abuse or neglect is screened in, it is typically investigated and found either “substantiated” or “unsubstantiated.” When we started asking questions, however, we learned that the system works slightly differently in Connecticut.
As in other states, allegations of child abuse are either accepted or screened out. However, in Connecticut, unlike in many other states, accepted reports then enter a two-tier system: lower-risk families are assigned to a Family Assessment Response (FAR) track and connected to services while higher risk concerns (such as allegations of physical or sexual abuse) are investigated and the allegations are either substantiated or unsubstantiated.
The FAR system was created in 2012. While accepted reports made before 2012 received a substantiated or unsubstantiated designation, after that year roughly 40% of accepted reports have been tracked into the FAR system and thus have not received either a substantiated or unsubstantiated designation. To avoid confusion over this change, the OCA report focused on children in families subject to multiple reports rather than on whether the reports were substantiated.
How do the numbers break down?
The OCA obtained lists of all students withdrawn to be homeschooled between 2013 and 2016 from six school districts and compared the names with records from the Department of Children and Families. They found that 36% of the 380 students removed from school to be homeschooled lived in families subject to at least one prior accepted report of abuse or neglect. The vast majority of these children (88%) lived in families subject to multiple reports or a single report that was substantiated. Furthermore, the majority of these families (75%) were subject to an accepted report dated 2013 to the present.
The OAC released the following breakdown of all students removed from school to be homeschooled in these six school districts during this period (chart created by CRHE):
Here is the same data in bullet points:
There is currently no screening system to catch cases like these or to otherwise prevent fraudulent homeschooling. Removing a child from school to homeschool them after a concerning history of child abuse and neglect allegations, cases, and even convictions is not prohibited by law, and families that do so do not receive additional monitoring.
Do we have other data?
To our knowledge, there have been only two studies of the rate of past child abuse allegations among homeschooled children, each conducted locally — the OCA’s study, and a second that we are aware of in another state, but whose findings have not been released publicly. However, there are a few other data points that can be useful in considering this issue.
In 2014, Barbara Knox and a group of researchers published a study of child abuse so severe it could be rightly termed child torture. Of the school-age cases Knox examined, 47% of victims were removed from school to be homeschooled. Knox writes that this homeschooling “appears to have been designed to further isolate the child” and that it “typically occurred after the closure of a previously opened CPS case.” Knox also found that these students’ removal from school “was accompanied by an escalation of physically abusive events.” Knox’s finding that the children in her study were generally removed from school “after the closure of a previously opened CPS case” should raise concern.
In April, six children of Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart died when their family’s van plummeted from a cliff in an apparent murder-suicide following years of abuse. The children had been removed from school years before, days after the conclusion Sarah Hart’s prosecution for physical abuse. By isolating their children, Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart were able to carry out years of physical and emotional abuse undetected. Removing children from school after the conclusion of child protective services scrutiny can offer parents a way to avoid being subject to future reports.
Children who have been the subject of previous abuse or neglect reports are at elevated risk of future abuse. The Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities (CECANF), which was commissioned by Congress in 2012 to make recommendations for decreasing child maltreatment fatalities, found that “a call to a child protection hotline, regardless of the disposition, is the best predictor of a later child abuse or neglect fatality.”
Concluding Thoughts
Parents with a concerning history of child protective services reports should not be permitted to use homeschooling to remove themselves and their children from the radar of child protective services. And yet, this is what we currently see on a regular basis. These cases are not hypotheticals or rare instances. The OCA’s report suggests that homeschooling is used to conceal child abuse far more frequently than has been commonly thought.
An estimated 1.7 million children are being homeschooled today. If the OCA’s findings hold true across the country, the implications are massive: We are looking at hundreds of thousands of children who are very likely in abusive situations. Creating a screening system that flags cases where children are pulled from school after a history of child protective services involvement is crucial.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
California Assembly Bills 2756 and 2926 will improve protections for homeschooled children in CA
For Immediate Release: CRHE and homeschool alumni support CA AB-2756 and AB-2926, which would improve protections for homeschooled children in California.
Canton, Ma., 04/16/2018—Two bills proposing homeschool regulatory reform were introduced to the California state legislature on February 16, 2018. AB-2765 was brought by Assembly Members Medina, Eggman, and Gonzalez Fletcher, and co-authored by Assembly Member Rodriguez. A second proposal, AB-2926, was introduced by Assembly Member Eggman.
CRHE members and homeschool alumni support both these proposed California homeschool legislative reform bills.
AB-2756 would allow the California Department of Education to more effectively gather information on the state’s homeschools by creating different categories for different types of private schools. It would also ensure that local school districts receive full contact information for students being homeschooled locally. We support these proposals without reservation.
We also applaud AB-2926, which would create an advisory committee to assess the state’s oversight of homeschooling and make recommendations. We commend the intent of this bill and would urge an advisory committee to consider (1) requiring homeschooled students to receive an annual physical by a practicing physician and (2) requiring these students to take an annual standardized test or have an academic portfolio reviewed by a certified teacher unrelated to the family.
While we recommend that certain academic standards be met by homeschooling parents, such as having a high school diploma or GED, we do not find that requiring homeschooling parents to have a teaching certificate is an effective way to ensure that homeschooled children are educated. We strongly suggest that lawmakers amend the current text of AB 2926 to remove its mention of a possible teacher certification requirement, instead considering other alternatives to ensure that academic standards are met in homeschooling families, such as annual academic assessments.
AB-2926 would open a much-needed larger conversation on homeschooling oversight in the state of California.
We at CRHE support and applaud the legislative efforts to evaluate and improve homeschool oversight in California currently under consideration. We are passionate about preventing children from falling through the cracks and ensuring that homeschooled children receive an adequate education. These proposals uphold the spirit of our work to make homeschooling safe.
Background
California has no specific codified legal process for homeschooling. Instead, homeschooling parents register themselves as private schools and are obligated to do little more than record how many days they participated in “schooling” (what “schooling” looks like is determined by the parents). This system fails to provide homeschooled children with effective protections or oversight to prevent abuse or ensure they receive a basic education.
These bills were introduced in response to revelations that David and Louise Turpin isolated, starved, and imprisoned thirteen homeschooled children in their Perris, California, home. The Turpins took advantage of the laxity of current law, but they were far from the first California parents to use homeschooling to hide abuse. Indeed, the story did not come as a surprise to us. Our database of homeschool abuse cases contains dozens of other cases of severe and fatal abuse in homeschool settings in California alone.
In a 2014 study of child torture, Barbara Knox, a pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin, found that 47% of the school-aged victims she examined were withdrawn from school to be homeschooled. As Knox explained: “This ‘homeschooling’ appears to have been designed to further isolate the child and typically occurred after closure of a previously opened CPS case.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by CRHE
Hart Children’s Deaths Raise Questions about Homeschool Law
For Immediate Release: The Hart case fits a pattern of abusive homeschooling following child abuse convictions, cases, and reports
Canton, Ma., 04/04/2018—On March 26, a van sped off a cliff and into the Pacific Ocean. California Highway Patrol reports that the speedometer was stopped at 90 mph, suggesting that the crash was intentional. Inside the van were the bodies of parents Sarah and Jennifer Hart, and three of their six adopted children. Their other three children are missing but presumed dead. Investigation revealed that the children were homeschooled after Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to assaulting 6-year-old Abigail in 2011. The abuse had been reported by school officials after Abigail showed them her bruises.
The Hart children’s deaths occurred two days after a child protective services official visited their home following a report made by a neighbor that one of the children had come by her home a dozen times asking for food, stating that he was being starved as punishment.
Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit that advocates for homeschooled children, did not find the details of the case surprising. “The Hart children’s abuse and tragic death fit many of the themes we have identified since we began maintaining our Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database in 2013,” said Coleman. “A disproportionate number of severe and fatal child abuse cases in homeschool settings involve adoption.” Many of the cases in CRHE’s database, such as the high-profile deaths of Lydia Schatz in 2009 and Hana Williams in 2011, also involve interracial adoption, as in the Harts’ case.
This is not the only theme Coleman noted. The food deprivation suffered by the Hart children fits into a common pattern in CRHE’s database. “Children who are homeschooled do not have access to food at school like other children,” Coleman noted. “Abusive parents wield food as a weapon; homeschooling allows them to do so with sometimes deadly efficiency.”
Sarah Hart’s 2011 domestic assault conviction for abusing her daughter also does not come as a surprise to Coleman. “We have seen other cases where individuals who pleaded guilty to child cruelty, often after a report made by school employees, subsequently homeschooled and abused their kids,” said Coleman. “In these cases, homeschooling is frequently used to deliberately hide abuse.”
In a 2014 study of child abuse so severe that it could be termed torture, researcher Barbara Knox of the University of Wisconsin found that 47% of the school-aged victims she studied had been removed from school to be homeschooled. “This ‘homeschooling’ appears to have been designed to further isolate the child and typically occurred after closure of a previously opened CPS case,” Knox wrote. The abuse typically intensified after homeschooling began.
Only one state — Pennsylvania — currently bars convicted child abusers from homeschooling, and then only if the conviction is in the past five years. No state has any system to flag cases where parents pull a child to homeschool after a child protective services case is closed, or after a series of concerning child abuse reports. Coleman, however, is hopeful. “We are seeing more legislation designed to protect at-risk homeschooled children introduced this year than we have any year since our founding in 2013,” she notes.
“Public education is not perfect, but attending school does offer children access to a support system outside of the home,” Coleman stated. “Prior involvement with child protective services is one of the strongest predictors of future abuse. We as a society need to protect children who are especially vulnerable, not abandon them.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.