anonymousfornow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi all - Some of these comments and conversations
> are becoming slightly problematic and worrying,
> and I think we would do well to refocus. SMC
> controls people's lives, has a dodgy belief
> system, and has systemically harmed and continues
> to harm families and communities. They are bullies
> - so let's not stoop to their level by commenting
> on people's weight/size/looks/intelligence etc.


I agree but everyone's is free to have there opion and for years some folk were not allowed to have this . So who are we to tell somone not to say there's. I didn't for years about the church and I won't be silenced by anyone . So don't think we should silence anyone here .

Hi Anonymousfornow

I understand the point you are making.

There is also another view.

If someone has had inappropriate control of your life it can result in real psychological fear. That is made worse in this case where the wrath of God has been invoked against them to make their bully feel more important than they are.

That may be because people with failed dreams, broken marriages and feral and unpleasant children and who have no ongoing success in their lives use any chance they get to be in a position of power to compensate for their grinding feeling of failure and powerlessness. Many dictators fall into that category.

And to see them as they truly are is a route to freedom from their self centred & biblically forbidden control.

So go easy on Esme. She is describing what she clearly sees when looking at that woman and her wannabees. For years she was told not to see what was actually there - but to believe the lies her bully was telling her - a totally fictional account of her valuableness in God.

That it appears nearly destroyed Esme.

The truth may be unpleasant and even impolite but - as Jesus points out - the truth also set us free. Sometimes it is time for that.

Falkirk Bairn - great question about a good experience that made us smile. Yes there were difficult times but it's good to remember the positive too.

I tried to organise a number of things in Glasgow to provide fun social opportunities like I'd experienced both in Church of Scotland and believe it or not in a brethren youth group I had attended previously.

In April 1986 I planned for a group of us to go the Queen Elizabeth Forest orienteering course in the Trossachs. It was typical West of Scotland weather - torrential rain and for hours we were all soaked to the skin. My abiding memory was one of the group turning up in white stilettos. Somehow or another she managed to slither her way round through the woods supported by various people while creating much mirth as she went. How she managed not to fall was nothing short of miraculous.

That was the day the Chernobyl cloud passed over so in reality we were all soaked in radioactive rain. It was possibly that exposure which many years later led to my diagnosis of thyroid cancer. However as they say " I'm still standing".

Anon for now, interesting that you have messaged as you have. I have not at any stage mentioned anyone's weight, height, hair colour. Yes l did say Mrs SPiers was not bright.
What part of the following do you think is bright:

1: Being taken into a darkish vestry by to adults and being bullied.
2: Being subjected to numerous rants every week.
3: Being told l won't succeed because of my dyslexia.
4: Being given extra duties with the Cedars house " to break my will".
6: l make no apology for now being able to find my own identity and voice, bits taken a long time.
7: Yes Piers has qualification but how about basic compassion and dare l say it real love.
8: You have confirmed who l knew you to be and l got too close to the bone for you.
9: Because of the trauma l experienced l had to hide behind humour, but l will never again be bullied.
Thank you FB and Petitor and Rensil in advance.
For this genuinely upset l say sorry to you.
But, having lived through what l did why should l be hiding the truth to keep Piers protected when l wasn't.

Hi Esme - I haven't directly mentioned or messaged you, there are many people posting on this forum.

Hello folks - just to say this is my swansong! I've decided to opt out of the forum from this point onwards. That's not to say by any means that it hasn't been helpful - as Ive said before, among other benefits, it was such a relief to discover over a decade ago that I was by no means alone in my misgivings about SMC.

However, I feel I've said all that can be said, from my relatively limited exposure to Struthers, at least in terms of what might potentially be helpful to others. Also, I've come to the conclusion that nothing I or others have already said, or might say in the future, will make one whit of difference so far as any real change is concerned in the Struthers modus
operandi. That would require nothing less than the complete demolition and rebuilding
of their doctrinal and operational structures at both a personal and institutional level - something I don't see happening. So I really just want to leave SMC fully behind and get on with my life in the real world.

Having said all that, I remain hopeful that individuals who are still trapped within the system (or beginning to hanker after something better) will have the courage to break free. I hope and pray too that any such folk won't end up in a spiritual and emotional limbo (or worse)but will discover as I and others have done that there are healthy, vibrant churches out there - churches with fellow believers who will provide authentic, loving relationships; churches where their gifts and potential will be recognised, appreciated and developed; churches where their hurts can be understood and their wounds healed through a truly caring,
loving, servant-leadership.

Thanks to all the SMC Survivors who have walked with me for part of my own journey.
Phoebe

Phoebe2 - Before you go, thank you for all your insightful posts, both back near the start of the forum and more intensively in the past year. You have given us both historical memories and spiritual, theological context. You've given us suggestions for books to read and inspiring and bible-centred preachers to find on line and listen to. So thank you. I hope you have made connections with some posters that you can take forward outwith this forum. It has been good to share part of the journey with you. You are always allowed to return - and I'm sure you won't be asked to give a testimony about all the terrible things you did while living life to the full, no, typo, backsliding, if you do.

Oh - one last clarification - often in your posts you mention Ireland. Did you mean Rupublic of, or was it colloquial, shortened language for Northern Ireland. The other lady often mentioned, Rosemary Macauley, we know to be Wesley Gault's sister, and his family originated in the north.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2025 02:13AM by RedRoad.

The Greek

Spot on! Airing personal grievances in a somewhat impolite manner can be very liberating for those previously oppressed.

Esmespiers
> Thank you FB and Petitor and Rensil in advance.
> For this genuinely upset l say sorry to you.
> But, having lived through what l did why should l
> be hiding the truth to keep Piers protected when l
> wasn't.


No one should try to silence you. Or anyone else. This is a safe place we can all say what we wish. I'm like yourself no one will ever Silence me again. Yeah at time some try and I do myself but to hell with them all zi will not change for anyone ever again.. Yes at time zi say have i done the right thing speaking up opening a large can of worms.zbut if I help one other person have the strength to speak up and get help I have done the right thing. I really do hope I have helped

Hello and welcome Esme. The rawness and intensity of your posts have left me wondering how to adequately respond. You have written in a clever way, I would hope your English teacher would be able to spot the writing talent, use of literary characters that are well known cultural metaphors of duplicitous living. Any dyslexia you have does not hold you back from communicating your story.

I am going to diverge here and give a bit of personal journey that at first might not seem at all relevant, but it has all splurged out into my mind when I was about to write "I don't know how much help you have sought and received in the years since."

For me, bringing up young children, who demonstrated from an exceedingly young age, their own identity and a different approach to life, caused great emotional pain in my new family. I found myself initially applying, almost unconsciously, the brutal trampling of young life techniques which had been applied to me by both parents and church leadership.

I had a parent who repeatedly used a very similar phrase to the one you quote about "breaking to me". It wasn't the exact same words, and I wasn't supposedly breaking to that parent but to God. This phrase was spoken to me over and over through my teenage years and even after I was a grown adult in my 20s.

Having young children, I slowly realised that I wanted the same thing as my parent had:
I wanted me to be always in charge, for my way of doing something to the correct way to do it.
I initially added in physical punishment too.

I read so many books about how to deal with Strong Willed Children. Lots of them written by American evangelicals who still believed in the use of physical punishment.

I came to realise that I was the strong willed person. My parent had been a strong willed person. The church leadership were strong willed persons. All of us had the capability of bullying. All of us had probably received bullying and were distributing bullying in turn to weaker persons in our care.

I about-turned on my parenting techniques, and decided that unless it was a matter of personal safety, it would be OK to have more than one approach, more than one opinion to every aspect of life in the household. It might take longer to decide something, or it might be that, really, it didn't matter if something was done one way or another. It was really quite unimportant, and it didn't always need to be my way.

This journey has always contained lots of reading, and recent years' reading have been around bullying, emotional abuse, PTSD and CPTSD, spiritual abuse and trauma.

It has been the effect on my children and my own family life that have been the most upsetting to deal with.
To find that I, a recipient of the trauma of growing up in Struthers, was now doling it out to others who I supposedly loved! Very very upsetting.
And very feeling out of control, what could I do, this approach had been an automatic, unconscious, go-to that set of tools out the toolbox.
Could I change? Would my new family stay together or splinter?

Reading of course does not need to be from a kindle or physical book. Most of the books I've read come as audio books too.
I've got one lined up for my summer reading. [www.amazon.co.uk] Walking Free from the Trauma of Coercive, Cultic and Spiritual Abuse: A Workbook for Recovery and Growth
I went for the physical book version and it comes as A3, lots of different visual layouts out the page, journal pages inside for writing your responses to questions.
(I realise dyslexia may cause preference for different techniques to get around excessive written activity.)

Why have I written all that?
Over past few days I have felt disturbed and pummelled and in some ways didn't want to face what you have written.

This post has literally just poured out after I wrote the sentence "I don't know how much help you have sought and received in the years since."

It just came out how layers of emotional brutality, active attempts to break children's wills, physical demeaning servitude, parental abandonment and their implicit/explicit agreement to their child receiving ongoing abuse, parents choosing to allow their family unit to be controlled and contained by SMC ethos and leadership, all these have waves of impact into the next generation, in the survivor's life even tho' they want to leave it all behind, and in no way, want their own children to be bullied or abandoned or coerced.

Everyone is different, so perhaps this is just my experience.
But as a great believer in statistical probabilities, perhaps I am not the only adult church kid who has had such inter-generational impact and things to wrestle through.

I do have a gentle request and push back to you, Esme, which you do not need to respond to - but it is whether you would consider when in writing flow, not to be so openly naming of individuals who have no leadership responsibility and are victims themselves in a dreadful cycle of dependency and being emotionally lost.

All this to say "Welcome, and you are in a safe space, and you are with people who have had aspects of your life experience, and who BELIEVE you."