When False Religion Fails: A Mother's Fight for Justice - With Missy Plicque

Hello, welcome to another episode of The Wolf's William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-Branem.org and with me I have my very special guest, Melissa Plick, former member of the message. Melissa it's good to have you and to talk all things Brannemism and the message called and all things survivor because what we wanted to talk about today is a little bit different than some of the other podcasts that we have and I'm very excited to talk to you about it so thank

you for coming on. Well thank you for having me, John. I want to thank you also for having this podcast. I think I've listened to all of them and it has filled in a lot of blanks in my life and been a great part of my healing so I really feel like you're doing a service and I appreciate it and I'm honored to be on. Well I hope you've enjoyed them there. If you've listened to me for a long period of time I can't imagine what what must be going through your head. There's so much information and whenever I've started on this journey I had no idea the

things that I would find. I knew that you know some of the prophecies had problems but had no idea the depth of the mess and hypocr- hypocrisy the you know all of the many things that we found. I had no idea I'd find it so I can't imagine what it would be like for somebody who stumbles on to this and finds the podcast. What was it like going through those? When I first discovered it I what I thought was wow I'm glad somebody's coming out and saying these things because so many people have just been really afraid. I see it in their face that

they they want to turn away from some of that stuff they have turned away but they're still haunted. I've had people tell me that they can't get over the fear and I think I got over the fear some time ago but I it was really nice and it has triggered a lot of memories to me because it's been a while since I left listening to the podcasts and listening to names and little clips and messages reminds me of where some of my ideas came from and helps me deconstruct them.

or detangle them and throw out the part that doesn't make sense. So that's what I mean when I say it's been a great part of my healing. Awesome, I'm glad it has helped. And the subject that we're talking about today, it's a little bit heavier than some of the other podcasts that we do, we're delving into the abuse and specifically what it was like for the mothers, which is an aspect that not many people have really talked about.

So I'm very glad that you're bringing this topic up. As a parent, I am horrified to think that this kind of thing happened with other parents and their children. And like I just had two conversations, two podcasts, almost back to back, where the ladies talked about their abuse and their parents was aware that the abuse was happening.

And as a parent for myself, I can't believe that this happened. I can't believe that it was like this. I would be immediately going to the police, but in hindsight, after having heard the conversation and thinking through that as I'm editing it, I realized that with the level of manipulation and these cults and the level of indoctrination and mind control, there are people who just literally can't help it.

And so on one hand, for the victim, I'm really sad, but also for the people who knew, some of them could help it, some of them couldn't, but it is a huge problem. So it's a big can of worms to open up for this podcast, but I wanted to talk through it with you.

It was your idea and I wanted to go a little bit deeper with that because the parents really need some consideration as well. Yes. So I reached out to you specifically because I've done a lot of work over the last few years, finally trying to shed the sense of failure and guilt that I had that my daughter was abused.

And she, the abuse started while we were in the message and continued for several years after. And I was pretty open about it when I found out and there's a lot of shame associated with it and a lot of people that act like it's the mother's fault and you shouldn't talk about it.

So I reached out because I thought for all, the more I hear about, there's a higher incidence of child abuse and child sexual trauma in these high demand religions. The more I thought for every one of those children, there's a mother, you know?

And there's a father and there's family members and there's a lot of people who knew and didn't say anything and nobody, very few people are... willing to come forth and talk about it. So I thought I would come forth and talk about what my experience was like. And maybe I could say something that would help others understand. And maybe you have compassion and forgive. And possibly in some instances, you might see something and know what you could do in the moment to help the children. Yeah, I think that's a good thing that would help a lot of people, especially so the people who have contacted me, their parents,

for example, when you're in these types of authoritarian control and you're being manipulated and you're being taught that every single thing that the pastor says is to be not questioned because he is your spiritual conduit to God. That's basically how these five-fold ministry groups work. Well, if you can't question and then something really, really bad happens, what do you do?

You suppress the questions and some people struggle with this. There are people who do report, but I'm finding that there's a large number of people who don't because they have been coerced and conditioned not to report. And like you said, some of these people need to have forgiveness and have to understand what was happening to them. So let's talk a bit about the mind control aspect of this. Was the church that you attended? Was it in the same type of framework that I'm describing where the minister was in such a level of spiritual authority that the people in the

congregation were coerced not to question? Yes. I would say the minister was to not be questioned. And in our case, so just to be clear, in our case, the one who did the abusing was my husband, the father. And I'll get into a little bit of detail about it, but he had a spiritual problem.

He was aware of. This is what I think is part of the tragedy of it. There was a point in time when he was really begging God to release him from these obsessions. And not only was the minister without question, there were certain that like the deacons and all the elders were also to help to this holy standard. And they were not the kind of people that you could really bring your problems to, especially anything that was considered not edifying. So if you had a problem in your marital relations or some urges or desires that you thought were wrong, you were always told

to pray. And there was nowhere to go. And so that hierarchy... of ministry combined with this, you're not going to talk to us about anything that's difficult, it became a real block for us.

You know, that's something that I have thought through and I don't think anybody has yet mentioned it. The phrase you cannot bring your problems to. This is something that many, many people struggle with because, so I went to churches from Arizona to South Carolina everywhere in between.

There's a wide variety of churches, so I can't say that it's every church, but I can say that there were a number of churches that we attended where if you did go to the elders of the church or even the pastor, what would usually happen is whatever problem that you had that you went to them with, that was what was going to be in the sermon on Sunday and they were just going to blast the person who had the problem.

So if you went, you were sure to be rebuked, but not only that, because some of the natures of the problems, people knew people, I mean, everybody's in this close group. You knew exactly who the guy was preaching at, so you did not want to be the one that got ridiculed during a church service, so many people held it in and if you are, if you were never in this kind of religion and you're just curious and watching this podcast and listening, it's so foreign because now that we have visited other churches and we see true spiritual counseling that is in the churches, you can go to the pastor, you can

go to the elders, many of them have these little small groups where you can go and just talk about your problems with people and the people help one another. Now granted, some problems which we'll probably get into in this podcast are so serious that it's kind of outside of the boundaries of this, but what I'm saying is we in the message had such a culture of containing everything because of the way that it was structured and because you just literally did not want to share your burdens with somebody who's going to ridicule you on the next Sunday service.

Yes, and one little story that I thought was really a tragedy, my, I should, I want to go back a little bit and talk about the time, how we got in the message and why he was attracted to it, but first a little story, there was a time when he had kind of come forth to me and he said, I can't control these obsessive thoughts and he wouldn't really tell me what the obsessive thoughts were, but I kind of had an idea that it involved things he shouldn't do with children and, but he was like praying, like begging me and

as a wife and you hold your husband. than in this esteem, and you're there as this helpmate, and you're trying to get to heaven and you're trying to work through whatever life's problems. My thought was, wow, God, this is the one you gave me, especially with my family background.

This is the one I got, but I'm OK. So we're going to get through that. So we prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed together, and we listened to a tape, and listened to tapes all the time.

That's all we did. And one of the, you know, and there was this thing where you were supposed to stay all night on your knees. Just stay until you deliver, deliver, wrestle with your angel.

You're going to get your truth. So this, you know, this one Sunday we get up, and we're like, we're going to go down to the altar, and we're going to stay, and people are going to pray with us until we are delivered.

And this is going to be taken care of. This is done. And we are like, in faith, we are going to stay on our knees. So we, you know, service comes, and we're like, in anticipation, God's going to answer our prayers today, we are staying on our knees.

So have the, this was communion Sunday, so it's all day of church, you know. And so we, altar call comes up, we go down, we both pray, he's praying, he's got his face flat on the ground, just crying, you know.

And all these brethren came around, put their arms on him, and everybody's praying really loud. And one by one, everybody kind of gets up and goes out. But we're thinking, you know, you know, what to feel like to know you've been relieved, you know.

It feels the same. We're still here, so we're going to stay right here. And we kept praying, and we're just staying there. And I thought maybe God was getting tired of here and me just say, please, you know, so I'm just sitting there waiting for God to come down with some miracle.

And so he's praying, and he's crying, he's laid out on the altar. And I start hearing some people up at the front door. And the minister came down and put his hand on my husband's back.

And I looked up and I realized that there were some people who wanted to practice some songs at the piano. And we were interrupting their scheduled rehearsal time. So the minister looked kind of uncomfortable.

And he picked my husband up and he said, brother, you're delivered. You're just delivered. You need to go and have faith. Get out of here. You're done. And I remember this feeling of absolutely despair because we didn't know what being delivered was supposed to feel like, but we were pretty sure it hadn't happened.

And it hadn't. And you know, and like, what do you do? It's like, I don't have faith. I'm going to pray for faith. You must have sin in your life. That's why I'm here.

Here, you know, yeah. So there was that, that was our version of a healing ministry experience. Healing and deliverance. Yeah, what you're describing is, again, I won't say that it's all of the churches, but it was common.

There wasn't a lot of spiritual help or counseling. And I knew people, I had friends who were at the altar every Sunday, and they were, you know, pouring their hearts out for something. You know, some of them would confide in me what, what was their issue, but others did not.

And I just knew that whatever it was, they were there every Sunday, and it very clearly never came. And in hindsight, I think back to those times, and I wonder if they had been in a normal church and had some issue that really needed counseling.

If they were in a normal church, and a normal minister had heard the issues, he might have recommended that they go, you know, see a therapist or see a Christian counselor. Some of the problems I think could have been, you know, completely, maybe not eradicated, but at least helped to a point where people could function.

But, well, I saw instead where people who struggled even more because they're pouring their heart out, thinking that some miracle is going to happen, and it never comes. Yeah. I want to step back a little bit and just tell a little bit about how we came to be in the message, because we weren't in there that long.

I was only in the message for four years at that time, but it continued to be part of our life for a long time after, really, until I divorced that husband. But my back story is that my family was migrant construction workers, and so we were always moving, which meant we fell through the cracks of a lot of things.

And my sisters and I were all, like, everybody I knew, really, and my family were the victims of abuse. And I just, this is one of the things I want people to have sympathy for mothers in particular, is that we went to the police.

It was not illegal when I was a child. There was very specific things that really had to be a man would do for it to be illegal until 1973, because in 1973, a law officer told me it wasn't illegal.

And they just didn't want to know, and they blamed my mother. The police would be called to her home, and they just wanted to get out of there. And my mother, she worked always, but she was very subservient.

to my father and then later my stepfather. And there was physical violence as well. And then there weren't laws against violence, that type of violence against women until mid-1990s. So a mother, there was nothing for her to do.

There was no help. And there was no one to report it to that would really do anything that came much later. And everybody in my family knew what was going on with the children.

There was, as an adult, years later, I would talk to them and they would know. So I was very interested in the life of being married and being protected by a husband. And I was raised to be, I wasn't raised in the message, but I was raised with that subservient mindset and feeling like there was no protection in the world.

There was just my home was going to be my safe spot, especially from growing up, moving all the time and not having anybody. And in a minute, I also want to, so that's why I was attracted.

But there's also reasons that he was attracted to the message. Do you find that people, there is a pattern in why people are attracted to the message if they come into it as adults?

Usually, whenever I have seen people who come to the message as an adult, it's because they're searching for something and they're having trouble finding it. You might find somebody who's, especially this type of divine healing cult, you find a lot of people who are sick with either physical or mental issues.

I have seen people who really struggled come in, thinking they're going to get the answer. But in fact, whenever they come into the message, they usually don't find it because if they're unhappy or they're struggling wherever they came from, the same problems are going to exist when they come in the message.

However, whenever they're being recruited into it, you find all of these people saying, if you come and join us, we can give you a greater access to a miracle. It isn't a nutshell what they're saying.

And usually it's through the quote unquote profit, William Brannum. But I've seen people attracted like this. Now, on the other side of the fence, I have seen people who came into the message through marriage.

Yeah, I think what I didn't know is that, I had this background of abuse and trying to, one of the things I cared the most about was making sure that it didn't happen in my family growing up in the family that I would create, that I would create a safe environment for my children.

And I thought that's what I was creating. But I wasn't married that long. And my husband came forth and basically demanded that we join the message. Over time, I came to understand the kinds of things that really attracted him.

And I'm not going to say, and I just want to be real clear, I don't believe that there was anything in the message that specifically told him to go and abuse his daughter, you know, or abuse other children, which he did, that's not it.

But there were some things that triggered his particular brand of mental illness. So for one thing, he had some things in his past that I did not know about at the time that he was deeply ashamed of and was still sort of obsessed about.

And the message, and this is true of like these really dramatic salvation stories that some people give you, is like, you can wipe it all the way. And you're going to be this new person.

And it's erased, it's like it never happened. And any evil thoughts you had, they're gone. And it's like the, I call it the ultimate get out of jail free card, you know, and he had this perception that he didn't have to do any of the hard work, you know, and to me, salvation and being a Christian meant a lot of hard work.

But to him, it was like, get down on your knees and pray real loud and cry and tell God you're sorry. And everything that happened yesterday that you did bad, didn't happen and nobody can mention it because if they mention it, they're pulling something out from under the blood.

And that's a disgrace to Christ. So he was very attracted to that. Another thing that he was attracted to that, that I didn't know is, I didn't know until later that he had for some reason this real hatred of women, he really hated women.

And I'm going to use that strong word hatred and it got worse. And so I believe either the first or the second tape I heard was Marriage and Divorce. The two tapes that I heard first was Serpent Seed and Marriage and Divorce.

And that was like, this is what you're getting into. And if not, you're going to have to like pack up your bags and get out of here. And he was gleeful at the idea that one, it was all about sex and two, it was all the women's fault.

And three, he got to be in charge. Right. And four, everything he did in the past didn't happen. So for a lot of people, a lot of other people would take those things in a different way.

But it just triggered in his mental illness, just the wrong combination. You know, it's kind of funny because as you're explaining the... issue with the miraculous cure. That's what this was being presented as.

This message, it's a miraculous cure. There are a lot of people who hear that, hear exactly what you've said. And they say, well, that's Christianity and Christianity in general. You come, you lay your burdens on Christ and Christ forgives you and heals you and you move on.

But like you said, there's some work that goes with that. And if you're in, if you're not in one of these cult churches, if you're in a normal church, when you're working with people who understand the types of issues that you're dealing with, they direct you to find help for that.

Not in the message, it is presented as though it's a divine cure. In the same way that the faith healing was directed towards if you have cancer come, be prayed for, the cancer miraculously goes.

Well, they do the same thing in these types of issues. So I have seen it as well. There were men who had problems. Usually the ones that I saw, it was more of the physical abuse side.

They were struggling with that. And the sad part about it is, whenever at least two of the cases that I know, whenever they approach the minister and the minister's giving them this miraculous cure, God's forgiven you, go, don't do this again.

Because of that miracle, whenever it did happen again, the minister sided with the predator, not with the people who are being victimized. And so I've seen the aftermath of this. I've seen the children who struggle because of it.

And the whole framework is completely upside down. Like you said, it is some work. And I think it's difficult for people in this mindset to understand that. Yeah, definitely. It is he felt like his faith wasn't good enough.

And if he just got stricter to me, then he was going to be okay.

And one of the tragedies, and I ultimately went through great lengths over a number of years to get this man put in prison.

But I want to be very clear that I considered a horrible tragedy. Because when I was married to him, I loved him very much. And he got abusive and he went down this spiral.

But I see it as a, I don't know how do you,

I don't know how you're supposed to put in context that someone is a child predator. I don't know how you put that in context. What do you do with that? And to realize that you're married to one, when that's...

That's the one thing of anything in your life, you know, from my, from my childhood that I would not have wanted. And then there, there was. And so that was really a struggle. So I want to fast forward a little bit.

We ended up, we went to church and our church split. There was, it was getting kind of cold and weird in the church and these people that had been very open and loving to us.

Just we felt kind of shunned and we weren't sure why. And then the church split over the seven thunders teaching. I think that's what it was. They didn't talk to me because I was a woman.

And the minister came over and somehow found this way to blame me as if I had any influence and ever would have dared to mention something like that. It was just a way to get my husband back on board.

So we laughed, but because we didn't have, we didn't have a framework of Christianity, we didn't know, you know. But now in his mind, you know, all of the rules were off, you know, no reason to do anything.

So everything just ramped up, you know, and got much worse. But I was still in a lot of the mindset that came from being a message wife, you know, I still was subservient, I still took care of the kid, I still took care of the house, I still held him up on this pedestal and tried to always support him and say enriching and edifying things.

Only I had a full-time job and I got to where pants and make stuff. So that was the, that's how that worked, but I still was a lot the same. Yeah, I can't even imagine what that must have been like and you mentioned the sermon marriage and divorce.

My grandfather, I can remember it very clearly every year. I think it was around Valentine's Day if I remember correctly, but anyway, he would play this sermon every single year and specifically address all of the girls and the audience and say, now we need you to hear this because this is about getting marriage, this is marriage and divorce and this is how the women should be.

And then he plays the sermon where it's describing the women as lower than a hog or a dog and designed as, I think the word was sex, expose all sex, something that is a fact, right?

Yeah. I can't imagine being a female and listening to this, but at the same time, I was a male, I was indoctrinated to believe that those were the words of God and somehow I tuned out most of the bad stuff because I was a little shocked at what was in that sermon after I left and I actually read it for what it said.

This man, this was not a good man who was saying this, but to the ministers who were presenting as God's truth, these guys had like one job, right, to study the message and play it.

So these guys knew what's in there and they're literally banding together and saying this about the women. Now in hindsight, I'm just a little bit angry that this was allowed to continue. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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I'm pretty sure that I saw other girls, at least one other girl in another church, another message church that was to me clearly being abused by her father. By that time, I knew what to look for.

And the amount of shame I saw in her face made me basically, you know, tuck my tail and run out of that place and never came back. But I wanted to just to get back into what people face, if they, you know, the question comes to me as a mother of a victim of sexual abuse, you know, question is, why didn't you see it?

And what did you see and what did you know? And that was a real burden for me to work through. So I took several years, I actually wrote a book about what I saw and what I knew.

And just working through that, you know, to really just, I'm going to put it out there, what I saw. And what I realized in writing the book was that there really were, I didn't know.

I'm just going to be, I didn't know. But I, because somehow I believed that my husband had these desires, but that he had not acted on them. And I don't know how those mental contortions you go through to believe that, but I did.

And then there were times when my daughter said things that were like a clue. And I just want to come out and say this and it's very difficult to say, you know, what I know it's going to be public.

But I think this is true for, you know, the mothers of these victims, they had a clue in most cases or should have had a clue, but it didn't click. And my daughter always said nothing happened.

And I, you know, the meat that exists today would have asked my daughter more questions. You know, I thought I was asking all the questions. I really did. Right. I thought I was doing everything I could to create an environment where my daughter would trust me and tell me, I thought I was teaching her all this stuff they say about bad touch.

I thought I was teaching her that she could tell me anything and that she might encounter these looks or touches or somebody doing something, I thought she would tell me. But what, anything I said as a mother did not counteract something else I had said to her as a mother, which was you obey your father.

You know, one of the things that you said was very important and I want to emphasize it. Because I don't believe that anybody who's given their testimony has really talked about this very much.

So you mentioned the sermon marriage and divorce in this sermon, William Brannum is teaching all of the people and the pastors like to emphasize this as well that within the household, the woman is the lowest because she's lower than a dog or a hog.

And so the same level of authoritarian control that you see in a church or in the organization will now take that to a miniature scale in the household. So where in the fivefold ministry, the prophets at the top and the pastors and then all of the people are at levels below this will carry that down into the household.

The women often are coerced to believe that it's wrong for them to question the authority of their husbands because of this. And growing up, I watched this in some of the households that I grew up in.

I watched the women being treated very poorly. I read my Bible continuously, especially. I knew that the women and the men were meant to be equals in a household. Galatian says there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.

You're all one. It's describing equality. And even after leaving the message and continuing to study, there's multiple places where it talks about the equality that should exist in a household. There are passages that are overused and taken away out of context to say that the man is the superior, but in the way that this is taught, it's incorrect.

The women are not supposed to be treated like a subordinate. However, one of the points that you mentioned is very common among people who are in this cult. The women are somewhat scared to question the authority.

So when something like this happens, not only do they have the difficulty in reporting it to the elders, as we mentioned before, to the pastors we mentioned before, well now it's right in the household.

Who do they talk to? Who do they go to? And so widespread in the message, you find women that they just, they can't really compute in their minds what's going on. And so they struggle to do anything.

They just, sometimes it's just oblivious to them. They don't really recognize what's happening as it's happening because mentally they have shut down. There's, who do I go to? That's absolutely right. And I want to take it a step further.

Even when in some cases, by that time, I really did question his authority. What I was still had it in my mind, and I also got this from my mother before we got in the message that a woman shouldn't think ill for her husband.

You just always hold them up in this golden light, and you think the best of them, and you certainly aren't going to think he's going to do something that's really despicable. You just can't, can't imagine that would happen.

And it would take a big mind shift, even to suspect, and you would feel very disloyal, like you might as well already be divorced, if you could suspect the man of that. And so the burden that mothers put on their children, and that adults put on children, and that I put on my daughter, was I expected her to be so explicit to me.

Like, to be honest, that was the same situation I had with my own mother, my mother knew lots of stuff, but as a child, I couldn't be really explicit, and I wanted my daughter to be very explicit, so that I could have, otherwise I always had plausible deniability.

I could always imagine that it wasn't what I thought, and it's a burden to put on children, and I think a lot of children just don't have the language to come out and be that explicit.

She did not come forth. I didn't really find out what happened until I got a divorce, and that's what I thought. And even then, she wouldn't tell me until I married another man, and he adopted her.

And like three days after he adopted her, she came forth and told us what happened. Wow. The other thing that kind of goes with that is if the mother is powerless in the family, then the kids are not going to go to the mom because they don't think the mom can help them.

Another part of that, and I'm just trying to say things as they come to my mind of things that I think people can kind of watch for. I tried to teach my daughter all this stuff, and at one point I thought, oh, she's getting to be about nine, eight or nine.

I should start teaching her a little bit about sex. And I wasn't thinking about my husband. I was thinking about other things she might encounter. And I didn't really have the words to know how to talk to her about it.

And so I went to the library and I got what I thought was the most innocuous little Christian tape, you know, a little video tape with little shapeless bodies and heart bubbles. And you know, I teach her about something in a safe way, because we were back in the church by then.

And for some reason, something, some part of my subconscious said, let's get this little tape. And I showed her this tape. And my husband came home and I said, look, I showed my daughter of this tape.

I showed her daughter of this tape. Furious, absolutely furious. He wanted her to be innocent. He didn't want any kind of sex ed for his daughter. And it was furious that I showed her this tape and didn't consult him.

And he didn't get to pick it out. Insisted that I put it in and that he watched it. And as I watched it, I realized it was so vague. It wasn't useful at all.

It wasn't going to help her at all. It probably made her uncomfortable because she probably knew what I was getting at. And he watched it and he said, don't ever show her anything like that again.

But it made me just think, you know, this adamant don't teach her any of these things, keep her innocent. I was like, well, he didn't want her to have the words to describe what he'd been doing to her.

And so I'm very leery about that and really want girls to have some protection to understand what's happening to them. So let's take a moment and let's think on the other side of the coin.

So we're what we've been talking about. so far has been mostly addressing the female side of the equation. For the mothers who may find themselves in this issue, I don't know if there's anybody listening who does, may find yourself in this issue, you can get some encouragement that there are other people who have gone through it and they've come out like you quite successful.

To the daughters, you know, you can go get help. We've described the female side of the equation pretty well. Just think a bit for a moment about the male side of the equation in this type of example.

And it goes both ways too, right? You could have a woman who has the same issue. What we're talking about essentially is a mental health issue. So we have a marriage and one of the partners, whether the male or the female, has a mental health issue that is causing this type of thing and say that before there is any victims, like early in your marriage, whenever this came up that there was some, he was struggling with the thoughts, you know, in this type of authoritarian controlled environment where you have a pyramid of authority from the pastor all the way down to the people in the

pews, then in the household, you can't really question. You can't really open up that type of very difficult dialogue. If instead this were a healthy church with a healthy type of marriage where people were allowed to have difficult conversations and there was no question of who has the authority and who is the superior in the marriage.

If the questions were engaged before there was a victim and the person was convinced to go get help to go to a psychotherapist or a counselor or Christian counselor, any of the above, there is a chance that number one, the victim could be prevented, number two, the marriage could be saved.

The person who's struggling with the issue, maybe some of the issues are difficult to correct, maybe it doesn't get corrected, but maybe they get the help that they need to have a fully successful life and not create victims.

In essence, what I'm trying to say is the church maybe didn't cause this issue, but the structure prevented the person from getting the help that they needed. Yes. The church not only prevented him from getting the help he needed, the doctrine, specific points of the doctrine, made the problem worse because everything was about sex, everything was the woman's fault.

You could, he was supposed to exert dominance, he could be abusive and there was no questions asked, he could not be challenging. And if he stepped way out of line and got scared about what he had done, all he had to do was cry real hard until God he was sorry.

Which I hate to say it that way because it sounds really crass, but I think that was sort of the attitude. Yeah. You know, just tell, tell, I remember with a friend one time I said repentance is more than just tell God you're sorry and she said, well then what is it?

But I didn't have the words to know what to say. Yeah. You know, the cult basically creates the adult equivalent of the devil made me do it for a child, right? Yeah. It was really, it was, and it was always my fault.

And I just want to go a little bit further because the worst of the abuse happened in the years after we left the message, but the message was always sort of hanging over us.

And then there was this point in time when I didn't know until years, you know, a couple of years later that my daughter had had some friends over and there was at least one of the child involved, possibly more, and he got scared that he was going to get arrested and he was in the military at the time that would have been bad.

And so that's when he decided that we would, we need to go back in the message. And I, I didn't even dare understand what his problem, you know, what was going on. I didn't, I mean, I'm just telling you, I was like a deer on the headlights.

It's like, I don't know what's going on with you, but if you say that the message is going to fix it, we will go back and I will give up everything. And I was in college, I was like two months from getting my degree, we will go back.

And that didn't fix the problem by that time. Lots of bad stuff happened after that. But there's this attitude, people think that if you report it to the authorities, that this problem solved, it doesn't really work that way.

It took eight years for me to get him in prison. And he was all over, like, he came back into, he was caught in another country. He came, he was busted and then they'd let him go and he'd be arrested and they'd, oh, well, you know, this is really minimized, you know, and they'd let him go.

And every time I would like be upset about it, I was always pretty open to talk about it. For some reason, people would say, you know, aren't you, don't you think this is private and you should not talk about it?

And I remember thinking, I wouldn't be ashamed if somebody broke into my car. I didn't do it, you know, this is not my shameful thing. Somebody else did this. But I just, for all the times you see it, you know, you think of this family, the mother didn't do enough, and this is the great piece of piece I have about my own mother.

A lot of times the mothers do a lot more than you think, or that you can see. In the family, trying to manage their husband, trying to protect their children, trying to find circumstances to keep the children in the man apart, or it's usually a man, but that's not always a man, you know, whoever it is.

You know, there's a lot of things mothers do that you don't see, even my own mother. And a lot of things people do say, but it just doesn't work. And you go to the police, and that's the beginning of a trial, you know.

We had multiple interviews with the police, multiple police, and multiple states involved. And he kept getting away, you know, I finally, the reason he was finally arrested, and I really, when I get down to you think miracles and miraculous intervention, we finally, we went on America's most wanted, my daughter and I, and described what happened.

And we knew when we did this, that it's just, you know, they're just filler. They're just recording some other stuff in case, you know, the multi-billion dollar bank robber, you know, if that guy, you know, if something doesn't happen with him, and they have no interest in cases, they're going to show this, you know, abuse case.

But they recorded, and then they didn't even tell us, you know, we don't know when we'll air it, we'll let you know. And then we get this call, we had actually moved to another state, we get this call.

The police say, the America's most wanted people say, I've got something for you. I want you to be on film while we are telling this. And it turned out that that episode had aired, and it had been preempted almost everywhere in the world, except a little jurisdiction near Calgary, and he was arrested in Edmonton the next morning.

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, and he had to spend some time, do time up there for some other victims up there. And then he came here, and, you know, so all that, and the, you know, all that message teaching also played into him, because he was in the message during that time.

And he wouldn't go to sex offender treatment because he said it's all under the blood. It would be a disgrace. for me to go, you know, it would be,

how could I talk about these urges and these crimes when they've been washed away? And finally, he did go to treatment and, and I just want to tell that it's easy to think that people didn't do anything, but maybe they did.

It just didn't work. And what you're describing for him is basically the mental health equivalence of the name it inclaim at healing gospel. He's trying to say, it's under the blood, it's past, it's behind my condition and my brain has been healed.

It's, it's terrible and horrific that you had to go through that. Yeah. So I was trying to think of what are the, you know, the takeaways I would say in supporting women. I think, you know, really not jumping to conclusions that the woman knew and didn't do anything, you know, be compassionate, be supportive.

Well, also, she is responsible. You know, that was the hard part for me. I was responsible and I failed in my responsibilities and I will live with that. I don't use my background or the message as an excuse.

I failed to do something I should have done. So there's this weird balance of holding women accountable, but also having compassion for why they failed.

And, you know, watching the clues yourself and speaking up yourself and don't be victim of that same mentality where you think it has to be so obvious that it's undeniable before I'll do anything.

Yeah, I can't even imagine having to go through that. I'm thankful that you were able to get through it and find ways to encourage yourself and help encourage others who might be going through the same thing.

If you could go back and talk to your former self back whenever that first hint that there was an issue came up and tell yourself, give yourself some encouragement from back then. What would you, what encouragement, what advice would you give yourself?

I would encourage myself to ask the hard questions. The other thing that I would ask myself to do is not to be distracted because one thing in retrospect,

whenever I got close to knowing what my husband would do was get very aggressive and mean. And that would trigger my, oh, no, I didn't mean that. No, you know, because I grew up in violence and so I would respond to that violence, you know.

So, you know, if I could whisper in my ear, it would be, why is he distracting you right now? Why right now? Ask questions. That's what I wish I'd ask questions. Well, thank you so much for doing this.

Like I said, we've not had any of the mothers come forward who have been in a similar situation. And I think it is good because I know that you're not the only one. I know that, you know, from the people that I've spoken with, there have to be several.

It's a very difficult conversation to have. I'm not going to lie. This is one of the harder podcasts that I've had to do. And to the audience who can't see it, I've had to stop a few times and go back and rethink how I said what I said.

Because this is a difficult podcast. It's a very hard subject. And I think it's one that needs to be said. You mentioned that you had a book. Can you tell people what the title is and where to get it?

My book is The Message Wife Elegy. The Message Wife Elegy. And I wrote it because an elegy is like a thoughtful, often poetic look back at something usually attribute, usually when somebody dies. And you know, because of this experience, I had the message wife part of me died.

And I believe I'm a better wife and a better person as a result. So it is available now in ebook. It's by my pen name is Missy Plick. And the paperback will be coming out, I think on the 21st of this month.

Excellent. Well, I will put the link to it in the description of the video. So if somebody listening or watching can, once the book, they can find the link in the description. So thank you so much for doing this.

Thanks for having me, John. So 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-Branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.