The Boy In The Box: Child Abuse in Armstrongism

I ran across this tonight.  I do not remember this story at all.  Sadly, this is just one of many hundreds of child abuse cases that went on in Armstrongism.  Just one more sad legacy of the church.

This is from what I assume is a UCG member's blog:  This Hurts You More Than It Hurts Me

Tim’s mother, Debra, wanted to make a better life. She’d had two children, Tim and Donna, in her teens and tried to raise them as a single mum in Washington, USA.

She decided to move state, seeking to reunite with the children’s father and try to have a proper family. Her step-mother, Retha Skyles, offered to help. She said she would look after Tim and Donna in Washington while Debra established a home interstate. She arranged for Debra to sign a document giving her temporary legal custody.

While Debra was away, Retha moved state and told Debra she had signed over all her parental rights to Retha. She wouldn’t tell Debra where her children were. Six years later, with Debra having given up any hope of getting her children back, Retha Skyles returned to Washington with Debra’s children, Tim and Donna, still in her care.

Donna was a child who, by her nature, tended to be obedient with little urging or discipline needed. Tim, however, was a boy who needed more explicit discipline to understand and accept boundaries on his behaviour. Unfortunately for Tim, his new “mother”, Retha, did not know how to discipline a child.

When Tim, now around six years old, disobeyed Retha this is what would happen: He would be made to bend over, bare-bottomed, and receive beatings administered with a wooden cutting board. If Tim cried, the beating would intensify to punish him for crying. This abuse didn’t stop until all crying and negative facial expressions had ceased and Tim was in silent submission.
Retha was confused when this approach didn’t seem to be working with Tim. It had “worked” with her own children, and it seemed to be effective with Donna. But Tim’s behaviour wasn’t improving. He was starting to behave oddly and have strange tantrums of inhuman screaming. Retha took her to a doctor, telling him that Tim was in her care because her daughter had used drugs. The doctor suggested Tim “might” have mild brain damage from the in utero exposure to drugs. Retha, knowing that she did not have legal custody of the children, didn’t dare seek any further professional advice. She determined to devise new methods of discipline on her own to manage this ostensibly brain-damaged child. She was determined to eradicate all roots of his evil, while keeping him protected from his “drug-abusing” mother.

When Tim was 8 year old, Retha moved in with her own mother. Retha’s son, Glen, was already living there. Glen recalls, “One would almost not know that Tim was there. Except for periodical screaming and butt-beating sessions, he’d be virtually invisible except [at church], where he sat quietly, and was always known as a remarkably “good little boy.’”

Retha had discovered isolation seemed to have some effect on Tim. She would seat him inside a circle of chairs draped with blankets. Tim’s behaviour came increasingly odd. He would bite his fingernails and chew holes in the blankets.

Tim had learned not to cry when punished, holding back with a grimace. However, his grimaces were seen by Retha as defiance, and he was beaten more severely for them. Retha asked her son Glen to build a box four feet by four feet by seven feet, with a bed on top. Glen built it, as asked, with one side open. Retha then closed the remaining side and kept Tim inside the box, only allowing him out to attend church and to defecate. He had a jar in the box with him to urinate in. Retha was calling him “the devil’s child.” He was occasionally cleaned with a wash-cloth, and wasn’t allowed to wear clothes. In his box there were no blankets or pillow – nothing for comfort. He would sleep curled in a tight ball.

To pass the time, Tim would imagine what it might be like to go outside. He thought all children lived in boxes, but imagined some mother’s were a little nicer than Retha. One day Glen gave him a stuffed toy dog. It was the first soft thing Tim can remember. “I used to talk to it,” says Tim. “I dreamed that it would come to life and break the lock. I thought maybe it would help me.” Later, Retha cut the toy to pieces with a knife.

Eventually Glen, who had been a victim himself of abusive “discipline”, realised the seriousness of what was happening to Tim. He went to his minister for advice. The minister, having heard his story, sat in silence for a moment. He then accused Glen of a variety of sins and warned him to stop speaking evil of his mother, threatening that there would be serious consequences if Glen told anyone else.

Glen finally went to Child Services, who within reasonably short time removed Tim and Donna from Retha’s care. The story of the “boy in the box” soon exploded in news reports around the world. It was 1987.

The above story was reconstructed from the following accounts:

• Poison Doctrine: the Dichotomy of Armstrongism by CW (contributing writer) on the blog As Bereans Did
• Years locked in boy spur boy’s search from The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, June 9, 1996
• Accusations about boy in box denied from The Daily Record, Ellensburg, Washington, October 12, 1987
• Woman claims boy-in-a-box story ‘twisted’ from the Spokane Chronicle, October 14, 1987.

Retha Skyles was a member of the Worldwide Church of God, a predecessor of my current church. The minister from whom Glen sought advice was a Worldwide Church of God minister in Tacoma, Washington.