The Park: An Interview With Deborah Thibodeau Part 2

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-Brannem.org. And with me, I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org.

And today, we again have our very special guest, Deborah Tibado, the author of The Serpent's Tale. And together, we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannem and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals.

Charles Debra, it's so good to be back, and I know our listeners are going to be excited to hear the rest of the story. Last episode was just mind-boggling whenever you think about the depth of what went on at the park.

And I know that we have not even yet begun to get into the good stuff yet. So we're excited about today's episode, and I'm so excited to have you back on the show. Thank you for doing this with us.

Thank you. Have it to be here. Charles and I have been talking about this during the week and some of the things that went on the park. And as they relate to what we had in the previous episode, it's telling a much, much bigger story than I think many people are aware happened in the park.

Your book is absolutely fascinating, and I'm sure that all of our listeners who have either read your book and own a copy or who are aware that the book exists are curious to know why you chose the name, the Serpent's Tale.

So my book is called The Serpent's Tale. And I thought of so many things to call it. I wanted to call it, suffer the children. There were several titles. But I read about a southwestern myth of an alicante serpent who is thought to seek out women who are breastfeeding their children.

And that serpent sneaks to the mother and steals the milk while he pacifies the infant with his tale. And that's disgusting, but you know what? That's exactly what happened to us. All of the nurture that should have been going to the children was going to the serpent instead.

And... So I struggled with the name because believe me, I know how my family feels about anything that has to do with a serpent. So I, but it fit to me, everything about it was appropriate because we were definitely pacified with the serpent's tail.

Interesting. So you've given me yet another history that I've got to go back and dig into and a better understand. So as I said, I'm so excited to get back into this Deborah and if you're a listener and you're just now tuning into this episode and you missed last episode, I strongly recommend that you go back and listen to part one of this because it will help you to better understand what was going on in the message cult commune that was established by Jean, God and Leo Mercer, the two men William Brandham called as his tape boys and all of the tragic events

that happened there from torture and rape to just, you know, cult indoctrination and putting a man up onto a pedestal that definitely did not deserve to be there. So I'm very excited to get back into this and I'm a little bit scared to know what's going to happen next, but I've already read the spoilers in the book.

So, you know, let's let's get back into it. Right. In the last week's episode and here's a picture, here's Deborah's book again, everyone, please buy a copy of Deborah's book, The Serpent's Tale, It's on Amazon.

Last week we got right up to the spot where Deborah, you had got trouble at school and your mother basically turned you over to Leo to deal with you. Maybe you want to pick up the story from there and let us share what comes next for our audience.

He was just this fearful monster in my life and I just will never forget him putting his hand on dad's face and just pushing his face away from me. And so, and he told him, I'm taking you're out of your home, I'm taking your other children out of your home, your old parents, your wife has too much filial love.

And so now, I was completely abandoned by daddy too and it just, I didn't think you would ever do that. I didn't think you would ever just absolutely turn from me, but he did and he left and I was just there at his mercy.

So they walked me up to the barbershop, which was behind Meredith Loker, not Meredith Loker's house, Ron Loker. Ron Loker had a little trailer there, his, him and his wife Margie, Loker lived there Carl Earley was the barber in the park. He cut everybody's hair and so and I wrote that in my book the second time in spite of everything he knows and everything he believes he cut my hair off and this time they gave me a marine cut you know shaved shaved back in my head and up over my ears and and for our listeners who have never been involved in this type of religion this is the

most single devastating thing that can happen to a female in the group. The women are taught that if they cut their hairs they're going straight to hell and the rays like this from birth so the daughters they live in this mortal fear that their hair might even get broken or accidentally cut and so this this would have been devastating absolutely devastating for anybody who was in this religion. Those people that I loved you know my my brother and his wife and people that I loved they spun me around in that chair and they they just

poked fun at me you know I had already been humiliated to the point of not being able to tolerate it and then they just added more fuel and they kept trying to figure out which boy I looked the most like you know they kept saying well she doesn't really look like John and she doesn't really look like Tony you know and eventually they decided I looked the most like James who was another kid in the park another boy in the park and another another piece that happened to me after that that I felt like okay maybe Jesus is looking out for me is when

they gave me to her in grace a lot so I they took me from dad and mom and her in grace were these very cultured he was very educated there's part of me that wonders how the message became such an absolute to them because he was he was interested in other cultures and other people he loved Russian and Chinese culture he was he was just an incredibly well-read knowledgeable man and I think that at least in my opinion he was going to take them down an oughter to by saddling them with his hillbilly kid an evil kid and ultimately

that's not how it turned out those people were they were wonderful to me and I absolutely came to love them and they were staunch devout message believers right until the day they died it's amazing that it happened to this degree in the park and we know that this has also happened in substantial number of lateral range sex where the preachers become so powerful that they actually break apart and rebuild family units.

This kind of thing even happened in some degrees where I come from, John, where homes would be broken up by the preachers based on what people believed. People would lose their parents. Usually it was more divorce and then a lot of times they could even arrange remarriages.

Of course, people never looked at it that way, but that really was what was happening. And it's just something else that Leo had finally risen to this degree of power that he could at will take people's children and reassign them just incredible.

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, to be quite honest, it almost sounds as though it was a miracle from God that you got reassigned. They're the kind of people that sounds like, just like you said, I mean, if they have the resources that were available today, they're the kind of people I think that could have woke up and escaped this cult.

And you know, today we're in a place where we have this podcast like me and you've been doing John, there's your website, there's believed the sign, there's proved the claims, there's searching for vindication, there's lots of resources online about this cult and the things that have went on like you're describing, Deborah.

So people today have access to this knowledge and have an opportunity to wake up that really wasn't available when you were growing up, Deborah, or to the family you got reassigned to. So I think it's just amazing that people are having the ability to wake up today that in a way that they didn't in the past.

There's a part of me that always wonders when you can find research evidence, when you can go and see that something that he said is not true. And when you preach just one lie, just one lie out of his own mouth, he said, you catch me in one lie, you call me a false prophet.

So that by God is what I'm doing, caught you in a lie, your a false prophet. And I'm sorry that it has taken so many years of my life to get there. And that's because of the fear that we develop within our families of being an outcast, of being the one who isn't doing what they're supposed to do.

So what I see in the message now is that they believe every word that came from William Branham's mouth was anointed by God. So if they believe that, why can't they live it? You know, this is directly tied to people that I know are still alive.

So I'm curious what type of reaction have you received from these people? You've published your book. Some of the flack that I took from family members for writing this book was so beyond the pale.

I was called names that, I mean, I didn't think that anyone would call me those kind of names now. You know, I heard a lot of that when I was a kid, but just being absolutely denounced and called demented, deranged, insolent, bob-haired, backslid, horror, from family, family.

And some of them were kids who were raised in the park and know what happened. A couple of them were kids who were dressed up in girls panties and had their head shaved. And this whole idea that the adults had of this mockery that would happen.

So the kids would be shamed. The adults would laugh and ridicule. And take pictures. There were photos taken of all the boys. And the boys were told when they got their underpants, which girl, which girl those underpants belonged to.

They were dressed up in skirts. And then that would have been bad enough. But then they made them up like drag queens. They had black mascara on and eye makeup. And the poor kids had been beaten.

And they were crying. And their mascara was streaking down their face. And the adults took pictures of that. And I believe they still exist. I saw them several years after we left the park and thought, how could anyone keep these?

So for children who experienced that kind of degradation, to then keep that kind of just horrible denunciation on my head now, that's hard for me. And I don't know if it's because they feel shamed that it happened to them.

Or if they feel like, well, it was just life. So some of this was unexpected. My older siblings, very quiet. Very quiet, had nothing to say. But the three members of my family, who were the most abusive, were kids in the park.

So how does that happen? I will never know. And they're all about message believers. But they're only. message believers if they happen to be in church. They're not message believers any other time. In fact, one of them enjoys a very hedonistic lifestyle. You know, there's nothing that they won't do. But Brother Random said it. I believe it. That settles it. And so I'm saved. I'm going to heaven. Everything with May is going to be fine because Brother Random said it. I believe it. That settles it. No, no, it doesn't. And there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be really shocked someday when they're, how do

they think they can hide? How do you think you can hide an absolutely hedonistic lifestyle just because you happen to pop into church occasionally? No, it just, if you want to be a hedonist, be a hedonist, you know, go live the way you're going to live. But don't fake it all up with church and don't fake it all up with some religion that has been borrowed from, from several other people. There's nothing original about any of it. And when that evidence is researchable, research it. But they, they can't keep their illusion if they do. They can't keep their fakery if they do. But, but I feel like they've, they've settled

on that as long as I keep saying Brother Random said it. I believe it. That settles it. Everything's fine. Yeah, it's almost like a mind over matter type religion instead of Christianity because normal Christians look to Jesus Christ for these things and you're trained in the message to just kind of use your willpower, your own strength and put it on your own shoulders. And I just, it's sad to say that there's a lot of people that believe that way. I don't believe that.

I don't believe that for a minute. I think they're going to have some answering to do. So my, my life at this point in time is to stop being afraid. Yeah, for somebody speaking out against it, I think that's the most important part because they try very hard to scare you to being quiet, especially if you have information that's very critical to the cold. What can they do to me?

Are they going to come and kill me? Well, and I asked one of my family members that are, do I need to worry about you? Is God telling you that you need to remove me from the earth? Because if I see you coming, you're going down first. So other than that, what else can they do?

Yeah, I mean, what, what can they do? And in the grand scheme of things, it's in the end, it's not what you say that really matters. It's the information that you hold and whether that information comes out from you or somebody else who is at the park or somebody who's been researching the park.

The information is the information. It is the facts that we have that literally happened at the park. You know what I'm saying? And I'll be honest, some of the things that Charles and I have brought to the surface.

We're taking a lot of heat too, but what can they do? Because if they silence us, this is information that will eventually make its way to the surface. One question I have is concerning how did Leo present himself to the people in terms of leadership.

Was he claiming to be a prophet? Was he claiming to be William Brannum's successor? Was he doing the whole fifeful ministry bit? Could you kind of explain how he presented himself in terms of where his authority derived from?

He set himself up as the servant of the Lord. That was his alias, so to speak. He was brother Leo or he was the servant of the Lord. And very frequently when adults came to us with the summons, it was from the servant of the Lord.

And he, you know, one of the first things they did in the park was build a tape room and everybody there donated their tapes to that tape room until they had pretty much every message there.

And so, but he began to stray from that. And I remember kind of the feeling in the park when brother Brannum, when his motor vehicle accident happened. And that was the 18th of December, I think 1965.

And everybody in the park awake and everybody just weeping and screaming and wailing that, you know, but then firmly believing that the Lord wouldn't take him away from us. And so, that was the first impression I had that we couldn't function without this prophet.

Now, Leo never called himself a prophet, but he inferred that he had received that blessing from William Brannum, double, like Elijah and Elisha, that he, you know, and I kind of put my own words on that that he claimed the Urmine mantle and became the, he no longer had William Brannum to sort of keep us corral under that influence of William Brannum.

So he went about keeping everybody under the umbrella in a different way. So he, he very frequently reminded that brother Brannum had said he was the shepherd and that we were, we needed shepherds.

He became the servant of the Lord. That's how he dictated most of his... Directives and then but then he began to preach and as a child, I wasn't aware really of what his

Like his how do I say this? I wasn't aware completely of what his specific Notion was from a doctrinal perspective In my mind everything I understood him to be was just being obeyed being obeyed the only sermons I heard from him He started recording his own and then as the park was coming to an end the tapes were less in evidence and his tapes were being listened to

and I can't remember ever hearing anything that made sense to me. I just thought that he was garbled and unclear and so I can't really speak to I do know that his mother came to the park and she was a heavy-duty Pentecostal She was a preacher herself, I think, at some point. So that I remember that being very Strange to me because she had very short hair and a lot of makeup and ear bobs on and And there again as a kid when you see someone like this and you've been taught something so different You're you're you're thinking wow this is strange

But from a doctor of perspective I don't think he taught a doctrinal perspective that I could Envelop as a child So was he wasn't really good just like the tape church then where you're playing tapes on on a regular basis the brand of tapes No, well, so when the parks started the tapes were in They were pretty predominant in what people were doing. They were listening to Brother Brown's tapes As the park culminated they were gathering in the dining hall to either listen to Brother Leo preach Or they were listening to Leo's recorded tapes and I cannot say what happened to those

But I knew there were several so he sort of took William Brown's tapes stopped using them and started preaching his own sermons but From my perspective as a child I can't I can't say honestly that I had any concept of what he was preaching so much as obedience and the lake of fire you know So one of the questions that Charles and I have been trying to answer and quite unsuccessfully Is the origins of Leo Mercer During the revivals William Brannum had you know various men that he used during his um Different versions of the message as his stage personas progressed and

Each one of them had some sort of a religious background and there's some kind of established histories that William Brannum basically built his own ministry on top of. And then suddenly, there's the quote unquote oddball, Leo Mercer, who just suddenly appears out of nowhere and William Brannum hands over full control of his entire tape ministry, the publications.

Leo Mercer is advertised in the voice of healing articles. He's, you know, suddenly this man comes out of nowhere and William Brannum just gives him full keys to the kingdom. And we've been trying to piece together his past and his Pentecostal influence, you know, what made this man suddenly emerge into the revival circuits with William Brannum and what would have made William Brannum suddenly like this man and, you know, use this man.

I don't fully understand that. So I'm wondering if you know anything about Leo Mercer's background, maybe his parents, were there any connections that you're aware of to Pentecostalism that could have put Leo Mercer into a position where he would have been, you know, connected to William Brannum?

What type of histories are you aware of for Leo Mercer? He was involved in Pentecostal situation. And again, I can't speak to how all of that went, but my understanding as a child was that his mother was a Pentecostal who spoke in tongues.

And she was revered kind of by him in a way that I didn't expect because she was a woman. She had short hair, she was wearing makeup. So I expected her to be treated like a dog, you know?

But she wasn't, she was, and she was only there once that I remember that she visited. But I don't know a lot about his origins. I knew that they were French-Canadian and they were down into the Michigan states in that area,

but that at some point his family and his mother had a very large Pentecostal influence on him. And I heard, again, don't know if it's true, but I heard that she dressed him up like a girl when he was a kid.

And I can't, I cannot put any definite on that. It's just things I heard. Okay, so it was his mother then that was involved with Pentecostalism. William Brannum says that Jean Goed and Leo Mercher, they formed their little quote unquote FBI unit.

And suddenly they investigated William Brannum and magically they become his quote unquote tape boys. But so that makes sense if his mother was involved and maybe his mother is the way in which he became connected to this Pentecostal pseudo Christian movement.

I just know that when I met her, I heard that she was a Pentecostal preacher. A preacher. So many women involved with this, and yet the women were so oppressed, and if you're a female and you have any spiritual inclination, they try to put you into a corner.

So that makes sense. His mother was probably the one who connected him. Another question that's just been, we'll never have an answer to, I know that we won't. But another question that's really been asked by many people who've contacted me, who are aware of all of this, and we've been trying to find some way to answer, but the really may never be an answer.

Are the recordings themselves? Because Leo Mercer held the keys to Brannum's kingdom, he was, William Brannum scribes, so to speak. And as you know, the very first sentence of the very first recording of William Brannum says, we're getting some new gadgets for recording, which implies and suggests that there were old gadgets and old recordings, which as Charles and I have discovered by combining our research, William Brannum's ministry, even though we're told, started in early 1947, we can place him in revival with Roy E. Davis, the second and command of the clan, and Caleb Ridley, the supreme religious chaplain of the clan, in the late 1920s and Brannum's touring

is early, I think, 1934 or 1936, we have William Brannum touring as a healing revivalist. So Leo Mercer and Gene Goat, they manage the tapes, they sold them, they're advertising them in different magazines, Harold the Faith, et cetera.

We're told and strong evidence suggests that voice of God recordings, the current publicists of the, you know, the recordings and the transcripts, they don't have the original copies of the recordings, and that's why they struggle with some of these translations, et cetera.

And that's why there's so many quote unquote blank spots on tape. I've been told by multiple people that Leo Mercer had the original copies and that they are lost in the desert somewhere, and I'm wondering if you've heard the same thing, or if you are aware of any of that history.

I have not heard about him hiding tapes, but I believe that maybe a lot of those originals were in that tape room, because it was four walls, wall to wall, and these were in tape boxes, you know, little, you know, real, real tape boxes, and it was full, absolutely full.

Yeah, so it's very possible that some of the originals were there. I just know that, that whatever they, didn't have if someone in the park had it, they gave it to him and he put it in that tape room. So I totally believe that he would have had a lock on originals somewhere and they may have been in that tape room. And I don't know what happened to all the tapes when the park split. I'm not sure. And I actually went looking. Last November, I went back to the park and I could not find any of the remains of the tape room. So that was disassembled

at some point. But I did find the remains of the root cellar. So it's interesting to me because that was one of the few buildings in there that was actually built. Everything else was a trailer. So it was interesting to me that the building is gone. It's not there at all. So I don't, I can't say what happened to them. I've been curious about that and what happened to all those tapes in there. And he might have taken them out because he lived a very bizarre lifestyle after the park split. He may have put him somewhere

in the desert. And you know, Gene Goad liked to go and kind of hermit out in caves and the wilderness. So who knows? Could you talk a little bit about what caused the park to actually break up? Was there a event where Leo went too far or did the people just gradually wake up? What made everybody decide, hey, we're in a bad situation and head for the hills? I think that, you know, and this is one of the things that frustrates me today is that it wasn't the abuse of the children that broke it up. It was when it spilled

over onto the adults that it broke it up. And Leo, the early years in the park, Leo probably had good intentions too. Unfortunately, because of my childhood, I can't assign anything to him but evil. And that may not actually be the case. You know, I kind of feel like he was born evil. And you know, he tried to make me someone who was born evil. But his, a lot of weirdness happened toward the end where he was creating covenants with the men.

And again, I didn't see these. I didn't experience of it. Any of it. This is third party. It's things I heard. I do know that craziness happened and I saw some of that craziness. He began, he started using drugs. We had, we had a very interesting situation in the park and probably highly illegal, made okay with money, I'm guessing, because Prescott Drivewall pulled in a lot of money at some point. But we had an LPN, some arrangement with a local doctor was like a pharmacy. It's another one of those stellar pictures in my head where I could see the

bottles of pills lined up in her cupboards. If you needed immunizations for school, she had them. If you needed MDK for a sore throat, she had that. She had morphine. She had demoral. She had valium. Leo became addicted to narcotics and he was getting, and I don't know what for.

I think Leo was, you know, he was kind of a hedonist himself. He pretended to be a religious man, but he liked to be intoxicated. He was drinking a lot. He was drinking expensive whiskey.

He was getting injections of demoral and morphine. He usually got them from this lady in the park who was a nurse. Some of the younger women were instructed in giving those injections, and one of them, you know, that story has been told by her that she gave them an injection and the needle broke because the spots on his hips were so hard from giving them these shots.

And then he started to become more erratic. When he was preaching,

his voice got thick and kind of slurred. I'm not even sure he knew what he was preaching at that point. So there was no doctrinal statistic that stuck out, you know what I mean?

Then he started drinking in establishments around town. Prescott was a small town, so

and the men would take him there and he would drink. And so again, confusion. What? And I remember hearing a conversation about that. How he asked one of them to get him another whiskey sour in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I had no reference for what a whiskey sour was, but you know, and can you imagine hearing this? I was a teen by then. I was probably 13 when I heard that. And you know, it's just, at some point you just have to just file it away because it's like, I can't even believe I'm hearing this. And then he had, you know, young couples

were getting married. We had had, you know, one of the things I witnessed, so I'll speak to it without mentioning names, is a forced marriage. And this is also a child who ran away from the park over and over and over again. And on one occasion, when the men from the park found her, they told her, you will get in the car and come with us or you will come with us in a coffin.

Hmm. So she was, she was tiny, tiny little- girl, and we were all there, and the wedding was a double wedding because there was another couple getting married, another young couple, and they were in love, they wanted to be together.

And unfortunately in the mess of the other marriage, theirs kind of got lost, but, you know, she looked like, she looked like a little 12-year-old doll, so, and she had experienced a rape when she was young, when she was six. By her, by an older boy, teen boy, who was babysitting.

And that was blamed on her for being a temp-trist, you know, because that's what women are. And then, when she was forced into this marriage, there was instructions on how to rape her once again.

And I witnessed that with my own, oh, and you didn't witness the rape, but I witnessed that marriage, that forced marriage with my own eyes, and I witnessed the times that she ran from the park, and got brought back. So they didn't have any difficulties bringing a young man into his, maybe it was his bathroom, I don't know, that's the only experience I had to instruct him, and how to rape an unwilling girl. And, you know, and the poor kid, you know, the boy, he suffered just as much. He was in the same mess he had been instructed, and he was told what to do,

and that's what he did. And the trouble that the generational issues that have developed just from that forced marriage are insane. So it's very possible that he arrested some of his homosexual activity when he was feeling more religious or when he was younger and yet he didn't have any problem perpetrating some very homosexual acts on my brothers. So he developed these covenants, and here again, these are things I saw the Bibles, I saw the ribbons, I knew they were there, I knew the men had entered into some kind of a covenant, and it was to abstain from your wife for three or

four months. And then, and here again, this is all something that's kind of been filled in later. So, you know, if you have a covenant, you put the ribbon in your Bible and you swear to this covenant, you abstain from your wife, and then you have a prayer meeting, you bring these men to the prayer meeting, and you invoke the LEA's or covenant. You have heard about that. If you could for the listeners who weren't in the park, if you could just take a moment and explain the LEA's or covenant. So the ribbon covenant happened for the abstinence, and then the abstinence covenant

was followed by the LEA's or covenant, and this is when Abraham called LEA's or and said, put your hand under the thigh of your master, and swear allegiance pretty much and actually the term to testify came from that swearing on the testicles of the forward or lead person or the the master of your home Leo interpreted that as the organ of circumcision so and you know he had a biblical way to twist everything and I can't say exactly what happened but I do believe that there was a lot of shame involved later I wasn't there it was

a privating among the men I do know that one of the young men was so flipped out that he put his head through a medicine cabinet because he had just been married he had been forced to be absent from his wife and some of these things I think created the shame that that caused them to ask themselves what are we doing because a man who is a homosexual by nature would not consider this to be something deviant but a man who is not and a man who has been raised to believe that this is a deviant behavior even if they enacted it even if they

were caught up in it and some of them were they then had to ask themselves what are we doing and that I feel like when that deviant spilled over onto the adults that's when the light happened that's when people started saying what are we doing so there's a there's a kernel of bitterness in me just because of that that they could watch their most precious beings their children they could give them over to be abused by this person and yet when it spilled out onto them they couldn't tolerate it and things started to get uncomfortable in the

park the kids could feel it the adults could feel it he was getting very much more indulgent and at some point the adults started to talk they started to talk about the alcohol the drugs these deviant behaviors what they were seeing and what was ultimately perpetrated upon them and I know my family went looking for an answer in the message again in the message and they found their answer in the church ages book where William Brannum of course they used a quote by William Brannum to make their break and he said if you are bound by

fear I don't I don't remember the exact quote I think I put it in my book though but if you who are bound in fear by that man, and he's leading you with fear, then you leave that man.

And so that seemed to be the catalyst. And when the adults got together and they made this decision and they started talking, it wasn't a complete break, it was a split right down the middle.

And there were a group of people who were against him and a group of people who were sticking with him. And it became very interesting. And the kids were now part of something that we never expected to be part of.

We were watching these people gather in homes and talk about the servant of the Lord. Somebody called him a dirty rotten drink and drug and bastard in front of the kids. And we had only ever heard him referred to as the servant of the Lord.

And I think it was probably over a period of about six to eight weeks after that split happened and that eventually other people who were in his camp kind of started edging their way out.

And eventually he was just abandoned by everybody. I think his wife even left him too. She divorced him a year or two later, I believe, but it happened so fast and for me and I don't know what the perspective is of other kids in the park.

And when I've had a chance to talk to him, I've asked him about that. Did you ever think that it was because the adults were now in the position we had been in for 13 years that now it suddenly was gonna break?

Because that's how I felt. I felt like, okay, now the adults are experiencing some of the things the children have experienced. And now it's gonna split. But I, for the life of me, could not understand how any parent in the world could stay in a place where somebody took creaksand out of the creek and shoved it up their child's rear end.

Yeah. Why would they stay? Why wouldn't they see evil then? Why wouldn't they see evil when they're putting their black and blue children in a bathtub and weeping over them? How does that happen?

So in my mind, this is a cautionary tale. All men are corruptible. All men are corruptible, no matter who you are. And if you're corrupted to start with, no matter what you're able to moonshine over on people, they've gotta be aware.

And you can't just bless it all away. People have to live through what you do to them. And when that split happened, it happened, I believe, and I feel like several people believe that when those deviate behaviors began to affect everyone, then it was time to say, okay, this isn't going to happen. I have wondered why why no one ever turned Leo in Ian, you know, like why was the police never, you know, even after he left and everyone got out, like nobody turned Leo in, is incredible.

But one sister had a baker. Sister had a baker was the one person who tried. She walked her granddaughter down to the police station to make a report. And of course they were intercepted before that could happen. And sister had a baker is the old lady who threw her Bible on the floor in front of him and said, if you're coming in my house, she stepped over the word of God. And you know, she was abandoned as well. She left there on a bus, and she was family. She left there on a bus. She never came back. She lived in an old travel trailer

in somebody's backyard until she died. And so she stood for what was right, she did what was right, and she was abandoned for it. It's not terrible. One thing that I really, one thing that just really got me about your book, and I got your book right after it first come out. I've got your second edition. It's a great book. I encourage all of our listeners, you know, get Debra's book. You know, I know we have thousands of people watch this video.

Everybody can buy Debra's book. This is the ending of this book is it's like the biggest twist ending that you could ever imagine. So you after you escaped, you became a nurse working in a hospital. And as Leo goes into his last days, it seems like you ended up being in some role of a caretaker or a nurse towards him in those last days of his life. You can't make that stuff up, man.

It is an incredible twist. And I won't ask you to explain it here, but if you guys want to know what happens, you got to buy a book. It is incredible. It was, it was incredible, but it released me to some degree. So and the fact what I have learned in my life and what I would like people to understand is that no matter what you employ to get through life, I think of what I employed as radical forgiveness. I forgave, I forgave Leo Mercer. I forgave the adults of the park. I forgave them for what they did to me because I was alive and standing. What I was not prepared for

were the sleepless nights, the waking terrified. Because I didn't want to be bothered by these things. I had overcome them. I had gone on to create a life of my own. I married outside the message because I couldn't for the life of me.

that are marrying one of the kids I grew up with, or the boys in the message who were advantageously allowed to do whatever they wanted, while the girls were pretty much ostracized if they stepped out of line.

So that piece to me is I did forgive, but my recovery happened with blood and sweat and tears, and ultimately the catharsis of this story, and doing something for my sister, for the people who stood at her grave site, and said, well, she's an alcoholic, you know, she's just a waste of space.

You know, no, she wasn't. She wasn't a waste of space. She was a good person who got misdirected when she was very, very young. So this is my message. Never forget that your children work out in tears and agony what they have experienced as children, and you as their parents are the only people who can make sure they don't experience it.

So don't fall in with men who are going to control them and take them from you. And I still hold to the fact that I will suffer any consequence to keep my children from people like that, and my grandchildren and anyone else.

And William Brannum is the first person that threw this cloud on us. Another thing I've been curious about, the closet homosexual relationship, as you're probably already aware, that were many, many people in William Brannum's inner circle who were homosexual, and William Brannum himself even mentioned on tape that he was accused of being homosexual, William Brannum.

And I'm curious after William Brannum died, what happened? Did Jean and Leo remain in their closet homosexuality?

You know, obviously in the park, there was a lot of activity going on that was homosexual. So I'm curious what happened after he died. Did they stay in the closet, or did they come out into the open?

What happened? Leo Mercier went on to live an openly homosexual lifestyle in Prescott after the park split up. Wow, I had not even heard that. So whenever I was a kid, this was going on, that would have been, what year did he die?

Was it 1984? 84, he was getting very sick. 87 is when he actually died. He was quite ill right up until then, for the 84, 85, 86, and he died in 87. Well, I'm very glad that you wrote your book, and I'm glad that you captured the story of what happened.

There's been so many different explanations as to why men in William Brannam's inner circle winnestray and how they winnestray, but this one in particular has been just simply, covered up and it's it's very good that you were able to capture that and get it into book form, get it into the hands of people like me who is researching this information and can now put this into our collection of puzzle pieces of the history of William Branham. So I'm just really, really glad that you got a chance to write this book and to get it out there to the public.

Everyone else had a doctor and everyone else that had something they wanted to spew or teach people or force them to believe so this is my turn. Well Deborah Charles this has been incredibly fun and enlightening and troubling all at the same time. There's so much history here that has been covered up and again Deborah thank you so much for joining us thank you for the book thanks for everything that you've done and it's a history that needs to be known it really needs to get out there so that people can see that there are some secrets that the cult leaders have

been covering up and this thing was purely evil it was not a movement by God. So I'm very excited to have you on the show very glad that we went through that history and if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at William dashbranum.org and christiangospelchurch.org for an overview of the historical research of William Brannum in the healing revivals read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William Brannum in his message available on amazon, kindal and audible. Join us again next week we've

got a great episode coming.