Our Stories - Escape From The Park: - Leaving the Sexual, Physical and Emotional Abuse of Leo Mercier

Deborah Thibodeau is a former member of William Branham's "Message" cult commune known as "The Park", which made national news after the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of the children by Leo Mercier and other cult members resulted in a criminal suit in the California Supreme Court.  (For more information see Keith Loker).  Deborah has written a book detailing her traumatic experiences entitled The Serpent's Tail, which will be released January 16, 2022, by Adelaide Books.

I was born into The Message.

My large family lived in Somerset, Kentucky. My father, Ed Daulton, a WWII Veteran, and nominal Southern Baptist, met William Branham during the wave of Pentecostal revivals sweeping the country. It was in the course of attending these meetings he received, "The Promise." I was five days old.

Ed Daulton, Baptist sitting here, from down in Kentucky, sitting right here. How many children you got, Ed? Twelve children. Standing right here, he asked for his children. I walked out of the building. Ed come to me again; I said, "Ed.” The Holy Spirit was on me, said, "Give it to him. Give him.” I said, "I give you your children.” Every one of them, saved and baptized.
Branham, William. 1961, August 27. The Message Of Grace (61-0827). 

My father became a devoted follower of William Branham's Ministry and ultimately joined Leo Mercier and Gene Goad to move west and create a righteous stronghold, a place to live apart from the world and await the second coming of Christ. My twin sister and I were one year old when we moved to Prescott, Arizona with our family. We developed a trailer sanctuary on the west side of Pine Lawn Trailer Ranch and became known as "The Jesus Freaks in The Park".

The first few years in The Park were happy and many people joined our group to live a blessed, righteous life. We bought old and burned-out trailers and remodeled them. There was no point in buying homes or living a fixed life. The coming of the Lord was at hand. Brother Branham visited The Park and preached there two times, the first time, in May of 1964.

I thought, "Well, I’ll run up and visit Brother Leo and the church up there and the portion of the Body of Christ that’s waiting for—for His Coming, and a part of the Bride that’s sojourning here.” And how you’ve separated yourself from the rest the world, and—and come over here to live this way. I was thinking, even the little creek, you’re on this side of Jordan now, you’re—you’re in the—the land here. You’ve—you’ve come over an exodus, a coming-out of the world, into a place to where you can congregate yourself together and—and worship God, really according to the dictates of your conscience.
Branham, William. 1964, May 31. The Oddball (64-0531). 

He came again in October of 1965 just before his death. He praised the people of The Park for separating themselves from the world, endorsed Leo Mercier as the shepherd we needed to keep us on the path.

Brother Leo here, your brother, see, now he had a talent, to come and lead people ... We have to be led. You know, God likened us unto sheep. And did you know a sheep can’t lead itself? He’ll wander away and stray away, and he—he just can’t lead himself. And he has to have somebody to lead him.
Branham, William. 1965, October 31. Leadership (65-1031A)

Given this high praise from The Prophet, in two of his last sermons before his death, folks were doubly sure they made the right decision to move to Prescott and live in our secluded group but things began to shift. Brother Leo Mercier became "The Servant of The Lord." Little things, done in our early lives there, became the insidious way that we built a communal cult, created a monster, and became subject to his evil whims for the remainder of our time there. He was shown deference, he was served the choicest food first, his trailer remodeled first with the finest appliances and fittings, everyone tithed to him, his word was law. Eventually, he wrested control of the teaching and the discipline of the children. Using the Abraham message and "Phileo Love" like a hammer, he shamed parents into giving up their children to be taught the way of righteousness with "Agape Love" and firmly placed on the path to a heavenly home.

Leo Mercier's homosexual proclivities were even rumored when he and Gene Goad worked as "Tape Boys" within William Branham's ministry. It is said that they were advised by The Prophet to repent and marry good women. What people couldn't see was the sadistic pedophilic creature, Leo Mercier hid beneath his righteous exterior. It started with "Godly correction", whipping the kids, but he liked to strip them naked for their whippings and then make them run home. That is one of the milder descriptions of his deviance. He soon had enforcers, righteous men who would carry out his commands. Much of his Godly correction carried some kind of sexual overtone. As punishment he stripped the boys, shaved their heads, and then dressed them up like painted women, wearing makeup, earrings, frilly skirts, and lacy panties. They were ridiculed and laughed at; polaroid pictures were taken. He cut my hair off twice as a child, labeled me an abomination before God and my family, "not worth the good clean bullet," it would take to kill me. These were sins we'd heard about since we could comprehend words.

He received visions from God, usually while sitting in his bathroom. As a child, I was called into his bathroom many times to hear what God spoke to him or showed him in a vision, as well as what my punishment would be. He would send men, our neighbors, fathers of other kids, to kill our puppies and pets for perceived sins and infractions. As he became more self-indulgent and bizarre, punishment increased and became overtly brutal as the years passed. We were not protected by our families. They lived with the fear of eternal damnation, and apparently, they believed this kind of torture made us ready for the Kingdom of Heaven. They were caught in the penultimate, "Lucifer Effect, good people can be induced, seduced, and initiated into behaving in evil ways."

My own story of life in The Park, I have shared in my book, The Serpent's Tail. I took the name of my book from an old Southwestern Myth, that of the Alicante serpent, who steals milk at the breast of the mother, while he pacifies the malnourished infant with his tail. This may seem shocking but it is in fact, what happened to the children of The Park. Parental nourishment which should have been ours went instead to the titular serpent in my book, Brother Leo Mercier. The Serpent's Tail will be released on January 16, 2022, by Adelaide Books.

I have detailed Leo Mercier's crazy fixation with twins. He believed there is always a good twin and a bad twin. Early in my life, I became the subject of this cruel speculation. According to him, it is the second twin who receives the birthright. He named me "Serpent's Seed" and made my life a living hell. Based on a vision shown to him by God, I was revealed and punished as a sexual predator, disfellowshipped from the other kids at the innocent age of nine. Interestingly enough this began when I was just six years old after I refused to follow the scripted line for a prayer meeting, invited to sit in his lap to reveal to him sexual acts I needed to be forgiven for. During the years, as he focused his deviance on me when I was horribly abused spiritually, mentally, and physically, I begged God to spare my mind, for even as a child I recognized looming insanity and possible dissociative disorder.

Books became my solace, and research became my strength. The Park split in mid-1975. Leo Mercier was addicted to narcotic drugs and alcohol. He had become ever more bizarre and when his sexual deviance carried over to the adults, they revolted. The families of The Park left and went their own way. My father moved us to Flagstaff where we began to attend the Flagstaff Tabernacle. I soon realized we were no longer in The Park, but we were bound by the same religious wrath and fear. I heard thunderous sermons about sins I was not committing. Women were frequently reminded of the sin of inappropriate dress and action, something I never saw. We heard daily that the Lord was coming in 1977 and we'd better be ready. I felt confused by what I heard as dichotomous sermons. If you take communion and you have hidden sin, you invite damnation, if you don't take communion, you are not worthy to enter the kingdom. 2 of the teenagers in the Tabernacle were, "turned over to the destruction of the flesh and a reprobate mind." I could not encompass this. How could a kid, who has fewer sins than any adult, by virtue of the fact they are years younger, be wicked enough to put this kind of curse on them. I'd heard witches and mediums denounced my entire life, but this curse was equal to any evil spell a witch could throw. The lives of those two teenagers following that curse evidenced their belief that they were doomed and beyond redemption.

One of the things we did which we had never been allowed to do before: we visited other churches around the country. More of the same, hellfire and damnation for women and kids not worthy or ready to enter the kingdom. One summer we were allowed to stay in Idaho for a few weeks with a family that belonged to a local Tabernacle. I heard the Pastor of that church chide the mother of the family for allowing her daughter to stuff her bra. Her mother, stupidly enamored with the pastor, let him know it was natural. He had a large bed in his church office, he slept with his underage ward and other young girls in his congregation. Ultimately, he left his wife and six children to take that woman's 14-year-old daughter into his bed. Another well-known Pastor from Washington was sleeping with the women in his church during counseling sessions. One of the revered, hellfire and brimstone preachers from Arkansas, left his wife and nine children to take up with a young woman from Delaware. Eventually, the pastor of our own church left his wife and married a younger woman, the wife of one of the young preachers he ordained, several years before. Why did they feel exempt from the teachings of the Prophet? The same teaching, they enforce from the pulpit.

I was really only free of Leo Mercier, my thoughts and actions, my desires for the future were still subverted by The Message, and the sermons of William Branham. Depending on which church you attended, sins were the things the pastor of that church decided they were. Kids were screamed at from the pulpit, better get right or face the fire. I was on a bus trip with a bunch of kids and a preacher wanted to talk to me about the sin of bikini panties, my neckline, and the split in the back of my skirt. Unbelievable that anyone would call this, a conversation about panties with an underage girl, a righteous endeavor. In December of 1977, we went to special meetings at the Tucson Tabernacle. Such fear was generated in those meetings. The Lord was coming before the first day of 1978. On New Year's Eve, we sat in the last meeting. The message of fear, tribulation, horror, death, and damnation, the Mark of the Beast, was unflinchingly hammered into the youth. Ironically, they baptized hundreds of frightened kids and teenagers well into the first day of 1978.

My father was frustrated with me because I did not get baptized but I checked a box inside. I would never get baptized because I was too afraid to do anything else. I began like a pervasive tidal bore, to exercise my own will, quietly inexorably moving in my own direction. I pushed against the boundaries put in place for women. Eventually, I made it to college and got my nursing degree. I dated and married a man outside the church. This caused a storm in my family. They and the Pastor, had me on my knees more than once to pray away this unrighteous choice. I went to work in Emergency and Trauma Nursing. I was a very efficient ER Nurse, the decreased empathy I developed as self-preservation, a singular, warped gift from my childhood. I had 2 children between 1984 and 1987. I decided very young if I ever had children, I would not let anyone hurt them but I was completely unprepared for how overwhelming and all-consuming that love would be. I would go to hell with them before I would allow anyone to abuse them the way I had been abused, in the name of God.

My mother died in 2001. On her deathbed, she gave her children a beautiful gift. She was surrounded by what had become hundreds of family members. her children held her hands as she talked about a beautiful place full of color and light where there was room for all of us. She earned that transition, an unworthy woman, wiser than most men. My father died in 2004, his last days a mighty struggle against death. He was afraid to go by way of the grave. Some of the last words he said, "Brother Branham lied to me, I have been betrayed."

I made my own way in life but for the most part, I was still bound by fear to The Message. I did not walk away from it completely. I rode the fence for many years, partly because I love my family and did not want to disappoint my parents but that changed when my twin sister died. The last years of her life were fraught with conflict, fear, alcoholism, and ultimately cancer. She was afraid to die, consumed with fear that she had not lived a righteous life. The babies in a family should not die first. I have watched many of the kids in my family, and kids from The Park struggle with impulsive life choices, addictions, traumas, trying to overcome the brokenness they didn't even understand they have. I was no exception. I struggled for years with sweaty nightmares, waking cold and wet, clutching my head to make sure I still had my hair. PTSD was not really talked about until the late '80s. I chose to speak my truth, something I have a right to do before God. I wanted to give the children of "The Park" a voice. The result of that effort, "The Serpent's Tail." I have decided there is nothing I can say that will be as bad as some of the words that came from the mouth of William Branham, preached from the pulpit as the Voice of God, living on in uncensored books and tapes that are still sent around the world for people to read.

There is nothing designed to stoop so low, or be filthy, but a woman ...  a human sexual garbage can, a pollution, where filthy, dirty, ornery, low-down filth is disposed by her. What is she made this way for? For deception. Every sin that ever was on the earth was caused by a woman ...  lower, in the sight of God, ten million times, than an old slut dog or a sow ... They’re not worth a good clean bullet to kill them with it."
Branham, William. 1965, February 21. Marriage And Divorce (65-0221M),
Branham, William. 1960, June 26. The Unfailing Realities Of The Living God (60-0626),
Branham, William. 1959, April 19. My Life Story (59-0419A). 

I was assured, this does not mean good women, willing to be obedient and serve their husbands and the Lord. He was talking about wicked, sinful women, so as girls growing up in The Message, we were constantly trying to overcome our predicament of birth as automatic filth. Brother Leo exploited those words and used them on me as a child. He hated women, preferred the company of men and boys. I wonder why William Branham preached them?

My disappointment in my family and other Message believers is their weakness for men, their willingness to follow the words of a dead man right to the end of their lives, when they may or may not, realize that his words were just words, many of his vast revelations, plagiarized from other preachers. These good people, who elevate a man, blood and bone to "The Voice of God," find him incapable of vanity, false pride, and the ability to perpetuate a lie, have fallen for the oldest human scam. They have abandoned their divine right to touch the heart of God without a skin-wrapped intermediary, mortal and fallible as they are.

William Branham was not the Voice of God. He was a man, like any other, with a pronounced foible, inbred misogyny, and white supremacy, but he had the ability to captivate, use his charisma to lure people, and in so doing he created a religion numbered among thousands of other religions, which thousands of people follow. His religion is a house of cards, built on a foundation of ignorance. In 2021, information is readily available and a little research will bring great enlightenment, and as we all know just one lie leads to more lies.

If these things didn’t happen the way that I said the first night, call me a false prophet. 
Branham, William. 1950, August 24. To Whom Is The Arm Of The Lord Revealed? (50-0824).

Good folks, including women, don't need anything more than the gift of their birth as a human, to be worthy of a place in God's rest. Abandon fear! Speak your truth!

Signed,
Deborah Daulton Thibodeau, Author, The Serpent's Tail