Mary Kumar

My name is Mary Kumar.  I arrived at Hephzibah House in August of 2007 and left 4 months after my 18th birthday in August 2009.  I apologize for how fractured this story might seem.  I’ve been trying to put it onto paper for about 10 years now, and it never seems to go well.  I cannot possibly be concise in telling you all of the horrors I endured and witnessed at Hephzibah House, so I will go ahead and give you just a few memories that I have not shared previously to the public.  To get this out of the way, Hephzibah House has been operating without a license for 47 years.  No one who is employed at Hephzibah House has any sort of formal training in how to counsel, feed, educate, or raise ‘troubled’ youth.  The ‘education’ that the girls receive is not accredited and is self-study learn-at-your-own-pace material, which is not overseen by any sort of licensed educator and is not accepted by legitimate schools, colleges, or even entry-level employers(please see my video here: 
https://youtu.be/L03j7NufKtA).  Since there is no working definition for ‘troubled’, Ron Williams is free to accept any girl, no matter her ‘offense’, at any point in time.  Some women have come forward testifying that they were sent there because they had fallen in love with a boy, were not getting along with new step-parents, or were shipped off in response to speaking up about sexual abuse happening within the household.  

   The ‘counseling’ I received was quite minimal and did not revolve around learning healthy coping skills, how to ready myself for a future as a productive citizen, or about dealing with general growing pains, but rather focused on my place as a woman under the authority of my father and then husband(if God did not deem me too worthless and cheap to marry), my part in the abuse that had taken place up until my stay at Hephzibah House, and my ‘need’ to steer clear of secular(and Bible) colleges, since it was not God’s will for me.  I was not given any, I repeat, ANY practical knowledge that I could utilize in getting a job, going to school, or becoming independent, but was rather actively taught to keep my mouth shut, my head down, to pray for a god-fearing man to marry me, and to depend on others to provide me with a means to survive and through that support, bear children for the kingdom and glory of God.  The weak barriers that I had built for myself to try and keep myself safe from predators pre-HH were actively broken down with the ideology that I was NOTHING without the say-so and approval of the men within our little culture.  It was taught that ALL authority was sent from God, and was a voice for God, so when that authority turned out to be abusive and predatory, I simply learned to embrace that authority as if they were God Himself.  This is how girls can come out of HH having gone through the same things as all the rest of us, and still turn to them with a smile and a trusting hug...they haven’t gotten their barriers put back up yet, and they still see the predators as parts of a confusing God-Head. 

   There were times of extreme physical pain, sickness and infection at Hephzibah House.  We were not allowed to use q-tips to clean our ears, but when I asked what I could do to help resolve the pressure that was building in my ears, I was told to use a pen, or even a bobby pin.  Since I was too afraid to use any of those things(having accidentally hurt myself at home going to far with a q-tip), the pressure grew.  My head felt foggy, and my hearing became impaired, and my ears would shoot pain, and turn red, and I would have a fever.  Since we were only allowed a couple of Advil a month, I was not able to stop the pain all the time.  Finally, one day in school, I was sitting with my ear pressed against the palm of my hand, and when I moved my  hand away from my ear, it created a tiny vacuum, and I heard a loud ‘pop’, and pus and water exploded out of my ear and down my neck.  I just sat there for a second, with my wet hand, and my ear pouring stinky pus all over me and instead of worrying about my ear, I felt SCARED because I didn’t know if I would get demerits for asking to go to the bathroom to wash it off of myself and my clothes(changing clothes was not an option-too much of a hassle on the staff ladies to take that much time out of their day for that nonsense).  I didn’t worry about my ear, I didn’t bother to ask for medicine(since I had already used the couple Advil that I was allowed for the month), I just sat there, startled, with no idea how to help myself.  I did end up raising my hand.  I had pus in my hair, and down my shirt; it was still dripping out of my ear and with no tissue, I had no other choice.  I was escorted to the bathroom, and allowed to used some tissue to wipe off.  I told the staff lady what had happened, and she thought it was really weird, and that was that.  We weren’t supposed to make a fus about health issues while we were there.  Sometimes it would get us made fun of in front of everyone, and sometimes it would just get us demerits.  Health was NOT to be brought up openly.  After that day, I was given ear oil to put in my ears at night, but still no q-tips, so I still suffered blockage, but none as bad as that first ‘explosion’.  

   Before HH, I had minor tenseness in my neck(it seems to be where I hold all of my stress).  I was young, so it never really held me back that much. At Hephzibah House though, with all of the hard labor with no sort of warm-up or wind-down, and all the jerking of heavy-weighted objects(to try and make sure that we got things done on time), my neck got measurably worse.  Before lights-on one morning, I rolled over to grab the last minutes I could before we had to hit the ground running, and as I rolled over, I heard what sounded like a gun-shot in my head, and a huge pain in the side of my neck.  I didn’t mean to, but I screamed.  Not everyone woke up, and Ms. Theresa, who slept next to me, glared at me.  I was crying.  My neck was swollen on one side, and the pain was terrible, and I thought I had broken my neck because I couldn't move it.  I tried to tell her, through my sobs, what had happened.  She told me to go back to sleep and I told her that I couldn’t and that I needed to go to the hospital, but she told me that if I didn’t be quiet, I would get demerits.  So I just laid there, crying.  I thought I was dying.  Throughout the day, I had to go slower than everyone else.  I got in trouble for that.  I took too much time to get out of the shower stall since I couldn’t get my clothes on fast enough and got demerits for that. Every time I tried to move my neck, a hot-white pain blinded me, and I would yelp.  I couldn't help myself.  I am not weak.  I have been in pain.  But I had never been trapped in a pain that would not ease and would not allow me to move.  As the day went on, and I continued yelping, some of the staff and girls started making fun of my noises, and of how I looked with my neck stuck to the side.  I was so embarrassed.  I am just now thinking about this after all of these years, and I am still so embarrassed.  I was a child, with no ability to help myself or figure out what to do, and I was mocked for being injured by adults who should have helped me.  This happened two times at Hephzibah House.  Both times it took me about 4 days of massaging it on my own and trying to move it without making noise to get it almost all the way better.  The second time I knew how to take care of it myself. 

   A while in to my stay at HH, I started having problems going to the bathroom.  The bathroom breaks were high stress situations, were either I almost messed myself getting to the toilet on time(struggling to hold it until the allotted bathroom breaks was difficult most of the time, especially with how much water we were required to drink), or I was not able to go at all.  Girls who were on their periods and had to ask staff for a sanitary napkins in front of us were mocked, and reminded that they were probably just having an emotional week because they were letting their hormones drag them around.  Girls who took more than a couple seconds in their stalls were singled out, with staff laughing at how long their ‘bowel movement’ was taking, waving a can of air freshener around, and making a scene.  I stopped having regular movements, and started getting constipated.  Many of the other girls were on Metamucil, and I figured that if I wrote a note upstairs, that I might be prescribed a scoop of this orange-flavored goodness as well.  No one responded to my note(I had to send a note to Mrs. Williams, and then one to Drazich, two identical notes), so a week later, when my situation started worsening, I wrote another note.  This time, days later, I was whisked silently out of school to put on my Sunday clothes and accompany Ms. Drazich out to a waiting van.  I did not ask questions, I did not know what I was being taken away for.  Was I meeting my parents? Was I going to go get food?  Why the Sunday dress?  I was told not to look around, so I did not.  When we arrived at our destination, I kept my eyes down until we got inside.  I was in a Doctor’s office.  While we sat and waited, I stared at my lap, since the magazines were full of all sorts of worldly trash that I was not supposed to see. When I was called into the office, Drazich came with me, as well as the attending nurse.  Then a man came in.  I was told that I was going to be given an exam with this HUGE anal speculum to see if I had hemorrhoids, which the doctor said was a very real threat.  I don’t want to talk about this. But they did the exam.  The nurse stood in the room.  The doctor did what he did.  Drazich laid across me with her heavy body holding me down.  I told her she didn’t have to, but she did it anyways.  I was a child.  Of course I did not have hemorrhoids, and I didn’t get metamucil.  I was just told to go home and stop pushing so hard when I went to the bathroom. 

   Is it a little weird that my neck problems were of no concern, and my ear oozing pus was not a problem, but when I pushed too hard when I used the bathroom….I needed a super-invasive anal exam?  We see this a lot with survivor stories.  Some girls wet themselves(signs of real health issues) because the forced hydration has damaged their anatomy enough that they are not able to control their bladders and they are shamed without end and thrown into depends; at the same time, some of these girls had problems going to the bathroom like I did, and had forced enemas in the basement, performed by staff.  Some of these girls would lose dangerous amounts of weight over very little time(hard labor/low nutrition), and no one took any notice, but when these same girls had their underwear inspected for discharge(a common practice until the early 2000’s I believe), and been found ‘guilty’of whatever staff wanted them to be guilty of, some of them would have a forced pelvic exam performed on them in the basement. I am not a doctor, but I don’t see anyone on the outside acting like this.  

   The day I arrived at Hephzibah House I brought a shank with me to kill myself if I got raped.  Since my brother had been sent to one of these places, I was familiar with other houses like Hephzibah House that starved, raped, and/or beat their children. I found myself in the hell that I had tried so hard to avoid.  

   The things that happened to my mind at Hephzibah House were absolutely horrific.  At home, I wrote almost every day in my diaries, but at Hephzibah House I was not allowed to have paper, pencils, crayons, paints...anything that could get what was in my head out of me.  Those were things that other children could have, but since I had ended up at HH, I could not be spoiled with things that good children should have.  I was not to utter a sound, think a thought, move my pupils too many inches in a certain direction.  At home, I was always trying to dance, or shout, or read, or study.  At Hephzibah House, the human in me was pulled out into the open, and weighed, and every last bit of it was judged to be disgusting and it was burned up.  I like to think that they didn’t break me at all, but there are cracks in me, all the way to my foundation.  The mind that I had before Hephzibah House has not been renewed.  I cannot pick up a pen and write like I used to.  I can’t think.  The defense mechanisms that I had when I was younger are dull and were broken with purpose deliberation. 

   The schoolroom was large and sharp and bright and smelled like bottles upon bottles of bleach, and that is where pieces of me were whittled and worn away.  I had words that would bunch up inside of me, that I had to write, but I would get in trouble if I wrote them out.  I would use my fingers to write them on my desk.  The paper was counted, so I was not able to let one sentence out of me.  My mind saved, and documented, and kept track of everything I saw, every day, for the first couple months of my stay.  I tried to narrate the arrival of new girls, and figure out why other girls had just disappeared in the night.  Had they been murdered? Had they been given to a man?  I tried to put words to how hard it was to swallow my heaves as I watched bugs with missing legs crawl out of the food that I had to eat.  I would stay awake most of the nights, just trying to hold on to memories, and drown out what they were force-feeding my mind.  What was my day like?  What had they done to so-and-so? Why was so-and-so crying when she limped back into school after she had been called away?  How many months has it been since a person touched me?  Will I ever be ready to like this ‘God’ that keeps on being shoved onto me?

   All day every day was a day of constant praise to this God.  Prayers morning, noon and night.  Scripture verses quoted out loud.  Hymns played while we studied.  Verses during duties and work-outs.  Singing or scripture or silence during heavy labor.  Bible stories while we worked for hours collating tracts to bring ‘heathens’ from all over the world to the knowledge of this everlasting God.  We were berated for being slovenly, and loud, and whorish, all day.  Stories of torture and abuse in concentration camps were read to us throughout the week and before bed, and it was reiterated to us that we were lucky to have what we had and that we should go to sleep grateful every night for the little that we were given.  During counseling sessions, we were reminded that sexual abuse that may have happened at home was mostly our responsibility to bear and that we had better mend our ways before we leave - or continue to woo men to us with our shamelessness and sexuality.  We were admonished during church services and Bible studies that our place was at home, under the authority of our husband, and that it was his right and duty to discipline and dominate us.  Some of us were singled out and humiliated separately.  The suffering of Jesus on the cross was pulled apart and studied in gruesome detail, and the gnostic value of his pain and suffering was transferred to the care that they gave to us....the more they could make us suffer translated into a more thorough salvation for ourselves.

   Soon I started losing the stories that I had memorized.  I couldn’t remember the name of that girl that disappeared in the middle of the night.  I stayed up late just to try and remember anything besides the words that I had heard through the day.  A snippet of a song...there was a world out there, right?  I would sleep with my head pressed against the wall next to my bunk, trying to feel a heartbeat out there somewhere.  Within the first year and a half, every word I wrote, everything that came from my mouth, and every thought that was crammed into my mind was in praise to this God that I did not want.

       I was not told on my 18th birthday that I could go home.  I was still locked in the basement, the day after my 18th birthday, much to my deep deep horror. I sent notes upstairs to Ron and Pattie Williams to let them know that I thought it was ‘God’s Will’ that I go home.  They declined and sent Pastor Halyaman downstairs to speak with me and to try to sway me otherwise.  The next time I asked to go home, Ron Williams came down and spoke with me, and I told him that I most assuredly was not supposed to stay there any longer(I was SO shaky!!).  I wasn’t punished, and no one said anything about it for a while, I was just left to wonder what was going on, but then I was tapped on the shoulder during school one day, and Mrs. Halyaman said that it had come time for me to go home.  I didn’t get to hug anyone, or say goodbye, or tell any of the girls that I loved them(I want to scream every time I think about how that day felt), I just got to wave at them and walk out of the room.  My things were already packed for me.  I was like a child...no one thought I needed to know any of this plan that involved me.  I had no say in when I got to leave; I was completely at the grace of the ‘adults’ around me.