Safe to Hope

Season 6: Episode 9 - Carya's Story Part 3

• Ann Maree Goudzwaard

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This episode is one of the most sobering in our 2025 Safe to Hope season. As Carya transitions into life beyond her father’s household, she shares how a new circle of abusers—men in Christian leadership—took over her life with terrifying control. She exposes not only their cruelty, but also how they weaponized orthodoxy, hiding their evil behind sound doctrine and religious influence. In this story, Carya shares a deeply personal and painful part of her journey: her pregnancies and her children. She names the loss, the rage, and the impossible grief. And yet, through her prayers at the end, she reveals the quiet power of lament that trusts a personal, covenant-keeping God even when hope is hard to find.

Please use caution in listening. The material is disturbing—not due to graphic detail, but because of the nature of the abuse. There is an optional early ending point before Carya’s story of her children.

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well, guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

The podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.


Ann Maree
As we resume Carya’s story, I’d like to take a moment and share some information regarding this 2025 season.

This particular season of the Safe to Hope podcast is extremely difficult to hear. Carya’s story is for mature audiences only. We warn those who might be significantly triggered by the difficult topics. This story includes childhood sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, satanic, cultish, and ritualistic abuse. We advise listeners and readers to apply an abundance of caution and discretion as you hear from our storyteller.

Throughout the 2025 season, we will occasionally insert breaks between segments of the story to provide listeners with an opportunity to “come up for air.” At other times, we will offer the audience an opportunity to skip over difficult subject matter.

For more information about how to even process these stories, please listen to Episode 4 and the upcoming Episode 6 on the Safe to Hope podcast.

I’ve asked our storyteller to describe the details she thinks will be helpful so the audience will understand the terror she endured. While this story is hard to listen to, living it was unbelievably hard and horrific. We bear witness as we listen. One of our goals throughout this series is to help the audience understand (specifically knowing good from evil), have compassion, exhibit empathy, and acquire the ability to minister to those in need.

While this type of abuse is less common than others, we listen for two good reasons.

First, it is a reality that we need to be prepared to understand and respond to.

Second, even if we never encounter a similar situation like Carya’s, her experience teaches us, in a concentrated way - about dynamics that are at work whenever people commit harm against others.

The harm we will be discussing during this episode – especially the last third of it – is unthinkable. Despite the inclusion of similar stories found in God’s written word, (Lev 20; 1 Ki 11; 2 Ki 21; 2 Chron 28; & Jer 32) sadly sometimes performed by God’s own people, I don’t think most Christians understand the sheer magnitude of this type of devastation, let alone the fact that the schemes of the devil have not changed. I often say, the devil has no new material. What happened then, continues to happen today.

Because of this reality, and because we are discussing this openly on a podcast forum, we want to alert the audience of the potential harm from today’s story for vulnerable people. We will offer an optional early ending point to this episode for those who choose to refrain from the most difficult part of the story. Yet we also want to make clear that what makes today’s story so difficult are the topics it addresses, and not any descriptions. You won’t hear many details of abuse today, but the type of abuse that will be discussed is particularly disturbing.

Finally, because this part of Carya’s story is so deeply wounding to her, I am not going to interrupt her narrative with any questions or comments. Carya will simply tell us what happened.

Let’s listen to her story.

Carya
So far, most of my storytelling has revolved around the central role my dad played in my abuse. Although there are, literally, more perpetrators than I can count in my story, I’ve focused on him because his violations were particularly devastating, because I lived with him and thus had no reprieve from him, and because he was the one orchestrating the trafficking and satanic abuse that filled my days. But I left home at 16 to go to boarding school for my final two years of high school, and from then on I never again lived under my dad’s roof, except for during the summer months. Even that quickly came to an end; after my sophomore year of college I took a summer job near my school, and after that I only returned home for short visits. It’s not just that I didn’t live under my dad’s roof anymore after age 16; I didn’t even live in the same state. From then on I was a full plane-trip away from him, but my subjugation to the satanic network he was a part of continued for almost two more decades. How? And why?

Today my storytelling will shift away from my dad and toward a small group of men who became the central figures in my abuse after I left home. Collectively, these men took on the day-to-day role that my father had played up to that point by reinforcing my compliance, managing my trafficking, and organizing and participating in my ritual abuse. They did not exactly take over from my father, for he communicated regularly with them and remained involved in making decisions about my life. But these men were not merely executors either, implementing the plans and designs of my father without any exercise of their own will. The reason my dad passed me on to them was precisely because he knew they possessed the creativity, cruelty, skill, and satanic commitment to function on their own.

I also want to make clear that this isn’t just a chronological continuation of the same story. These men were, in many ways, like my dad. But if that’s all they were – just exactly like him – and if my experience after I left home was essentially the same as it was before, there wouldn’t be much point in dragging us all through more stories. I could just say “and the same things kept happening for another eighteen years, just with other men. The end,” and we could move on to the good part of the story, the part where Jesus crawled into the enemy stronghold to set me free. 

But there were important ways that these men weren’t just like my dad, and important ways that my life under their control wasn’t just more of the same. The differences had to do with how this satanic network used me once I was no longer a little girl. The men who took charge of me were chosen because of what their roles were, and what they wanted mine to be. Unpacking this matters to me in my own storytelling, because the story changed when I left home. It was a change long intended by my abusers, so it wasn’t a change in plans. But it was not just more of the same. 

This part of the story is also important for the church to hear. My dad pretended to be a Christian for many years, as I’ve discussed, and he used the church as a cover and a location for his assaults on the things that God loves. The power and control he sought were against God’s people, but he did not lust for positional power within the structure of the church. His role and appetite were to destroy goodness and strengthen wickedness. He sought out others with similar predilections and drew them deeper into the world he lived in. He made everything he touched worse than it was before he started. 

The men who became the central figures in my life after I left home had different roles. They also pretended to be Christians, but most of them worked to undermine the church by leading it, and they sought power and control within it. These men, servants of Satan, hid not among the flock but up in front of it, disguised by shepherd’s cloaks.

My two years of boarding school were transitional years, the fulcrum between a childhood of awful exploitation and an adulthood of being used in a new way. My father intended my two years at boarding school to prepare me for my new role, and he did not leave this to chance. As I said before, he arranged for a handler to take charge of me there, someone who could manage others’ access to me, enjoy unfettered access himself, and organize the rituals that remained a central part of my abuse. Dad didn’t just get lucky and happen to find someone near my school who could take on this role. He steered me toward that school because he knew there was someone nearby who was perfect for this job. 

The way I told this story at the beginning of the first episode was that, during my freshman year of high school, I heard about a boarding school where I could take summer classes and, nerdy kid that I was, applied for the program because I thought summer school sounded amazing. Then, I liked it so much that I wanted to go year-round. That story is true, as far as it goes, but it is far from the whole truth. Remember that my dad was an expert at pulling the strings, controlling things without it being obvious, sometimes even partially fooling me. When I did that summer program my grandfather connected me to distant relatives who lived near the school, and those relatives had daughters my age. When they learned that I was interested in coming back to finish high school, they told me I should go to the school their daughters attended – a different boarding school than the one I was at that summer, and one I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Later, when I got back home and brought up the idea of going back to boarding school to my dad, he acted like it was a great idea and told me to apply. I had no idea he’d piloted me the whole time and made sure I hooked up with these relatives who connected me to the “right” school for his purposes.

Even though I didn’t realize at first that my dad was behind this from the very beginning, I did know, before I started at boarding school in the fall of my junior year, that I would have a handler there. For one thing, I knew my dad wasn’t just going to let me escape by going off to boarding school. For another, he prepared me for it ahead of time, spending weeks training me for that new relationship. But despite that, somewhere in my denial-riddled, desperate mind I clung to a hope that things wouldn’t be quite as bad there. Surely, surely not living with my father – not even living anywhere near him – would mean that things would get at least a little better. Right?  

They didn’t. Boarding school was different from home, but not better.

My dad flew me out for the start of the year, and took me to my new handler’s house very early on the day of new student orientation and registration. It was clear that he and this man had already spoken many times, and as soon as the three of us went in to a spare room in the house, where dad observed as my handler got to know my body – what it could do and what it could take – and I started to learn his – what he liked and what he expected from me. A few hours later, after I’d cleaned up in the shower, dad and I left, driving the mere minutes over to the gymnasium where registration was held. You see, Mr. Dunbar, my new handler, was a teacher at the school, his house right on campus, just a short walk from my dorm. 

I spent a lot of time at Mr. Dunbar’s house. I never had him for class, but he was the faculty advisor for the Christian Fellowship, which was a very small group at that very liberal boarding school. On Sunday afternoons the few students in Christian Fellowship spent hours at Mr. Dunbar’s house to study The Apostle’s Creed or a book of the Bible. The Dunbars also had me over at other times. After learning that I was taking the bus into the nearby town on Saturdays to do my laundry at the one-machine “laundromat” in the basement of the tiny town grocery store, they “invited” me to do my laundry at their house instead. I got to know his family well.

Most evenings, after dinner in the dining hall and some time doing homework in my dorm room or library, I’d walk down to Mr. Dunbar’s to keep appointments. Sometimes these appointments were ones he’d set up with clients, who might take me somewhere off campus or out into the woods that were thick in and around my rural school, or they might use a room in Mr. Dunbar’s house. Often, my appointments were for training sessions with Mr. Dunbar, whose main function as my handler was less about arranging clients than it was about teaching me how to do what would be required of me in the years to come, and reinforcing my compliance. There was a barn behind his house with plenty of space available for this instruction. And, of course, Mr. Dunbar, with the same commitments as my father, arranged and utilized rituals to symbolize, express, and reinforce his and others’ love for what Satan loves and hatred for what Satan hates. 

Usually, when I made my way down to his barn, I had no idea what sort of session awaited me there: one with clients, one for training, or one for ritual worship? Sometimes, even after whatever it was started, it was hard to tell which it was. It all blended together.

I’ll say a bit more about boarding school later, but for now I want to highlight Mr. Dunbar, and his relationship to Christianity and church. Like my dad, he went to church and pretended to be a Christian. Unlike my dad, however, he didn’t just pretend on Sunday mornings. In his role as faculty advisor for the Christian Fellowship he mentored its student leaders. He spent hours every week teaching and leading discussions about the Bible. I said before that if you’d come over to my parents’ house when I was growing up you wouldn’t have seen anything that looked “satanic,” and you wouldn’t have seen anything like that at Mr. Dunbar’s house either. But unlike my parents’ house, Mr. Dunbar’s house had Bibles and religious books in it, and there was even some religious art on the walls.

Mr. Dunbar pretended all the time, even when in private with me, right up until the awful moments he suddenly stopped pretending. If I was down at his house doing laundry, he might have a long conversation with me about what we were studying in the Apostle’s Creed. Then, all of a sudden, he’d step forward and remove some of my clothes, telling me that Satan had given me to him. A few moments later, when he was done, he went back to talking about Bible study while I still stood there partially undressed. There was no shame or awkwardness in his countenance, no acknowledgement of the disjunction from one moment to the next. He went from Christian mentor to rapist and back with ease. 

This particular type of psychological torment and confusion were new for me. I’d spent my childhood going to churches where there were people who acted like they worshiped God but who raped me, even some who acted like they worshiped God but actually worshiped Satan. But none of those people were major figures in my daily life. My dad, my extended family, and the neighbors in our “intentional community” only pretended to be Christians – if they pretended at all – on Sunday mornings. Starting with Mr. Dunbar, this changed. From then on, the most significant people in my daily life were abusers who kept up a Christian facade almost all the time.

My college application and selection process played out similarly to my [quote] “decision” to go to boarding school. My dad subtly steered me toward a college where he had contacts and, indeed, where there was a particular person whom he had already lined up to become my handler. Kurt was on staff with the only parachurch campus ministry that worked at my small campus, so my “public” contact with him was, again, through Christian Fellowship. But unlike Mr. Dunbar, Kurt’s full-time job was to work with Christian Fellowship, which meant he had a lot of time he could devote to me, both publicly and privately. His house was about a 10-15 minute walk from the main part of campus – just a tad farther than I’d been from Mr. Dunbar’s house – and during my first semester I spent one evening there a week in an intensive study of Ephesians with a few other freshmen. I also saw Kurt at least one other time a week for Christian Fellowship meetings, and then a lot more often starting my sophomore year when I was named to the leadership team. I served as president of the Christian Fellowship for 2.5 years, and throughout that time met with Kurt multiple times a week, both one-on-one and for group meetings.

All that, of course, doesn’t count the many times I saw him throughout the week for other reasons. Just like in boarding school, I often walked down to his house to keep appointments, but his house wasn’t the only option. My very liberal, very secular college had no residence hall rules. Dorms and bathrooms were coed, and in those days we didn’t need an ID to access the buildings. Technically the outside doors to each dorm could be locked, but they almost never were, so Kurt, or anyone else, could come and go without any hindrances. There was no curfew or dorm closure, no one monitoring anything. Moreover, most of the dorm rooms were singles, so I didn’t have roommates. Kurt could come anytime of the day or night – or send someone else – and I didn’t even necessarily have to know they were coming. A certain pattern of knocks on my door would inform me that I’d better open it and do whatever, or go wherever, the knocker said. 

The summer before my senior year, Kurt resigned from his campus ministry job in order to start a new ministry that, ostensibly, focused on apologetics. He told me to come work for him once I graduated, and I did, meaning I settled in that area and spent even more time with him. Ever since boarding school I’d lived far enough away from my dad that I only spent extended time with my family a couple of times a year. But, once I was with Kurt, everything felt very similar to the way it did with my father. The two of them spoke often, and Kurt got to know me much better than Mr. Dunbar could in his two short years, almost as well as my dad did. I may not have lived under Kurt’s roof, but he became a lot more like family than just a handler to me – and remember that, for me, family was my least safe place. I spent Easter and Christmas with Kurt’s family, worked closely with him, and even bought his house at his “suggestion” when he and his family moved into a bigger one a year after I started working for him. 

Kurt exerted almost as much control over my life as my dad had, managing not only the hidden things – my clients, my training, and my exploitation in satanic abuse, but also orchestrating publicly visible things like what I did for work, where I lived, and where I went to church. It was at Kurt’s behest that I ended up at the first church I officially joined as an adult, a short time after I graduated from college. It was Kurt’s church, and he knew the pastor – a man like himself, and like my dad – very well. 

Pastor Farrow staked his claim on me the first time I stepped foot into his office. I had my member interview there, conducted with him and two other elders, and it quickly became clear that he already knew what he was getting in getting me as a member. When I walked into the room he apprised me eagerly, then, as I sat down across from him, the look changed to one of hunger while a knowing smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. We went through the formalities of the interview – me affirming my doctrinal agreements with the church and sharing my testimony – but when it was over Pastor Farrow leaned toward me, looked me deeply in the eyes, and told me just how much he, and all the elders, had been looking forward to my joining his church. Then he reached forward and unbuttoned my pants. 

The fact that he was doing it right there in front of the other elders told me everything I needed to know about this church. Kurt hadn’t informed me ahead of time that the member interview was an appointment, but with Pastor Farrow’s one movement I understood that it was, and I knew there was nothing I could do. Indeed, I knew that if I tried to do anything I would pay for it, big time. If I was anything other than perfectly compliant, Kurt would be notified, and he’d arrange a punishment – most likely including Pastor Farrow – that would be far worse than whatever I’d tried to avoid, and one that could easily last all night long. Punishment was a major responsibility of handlers.

I imagine that this will make people wonder why I kept doing what I was told, or why I didn’t go to the police, or do something to try to escape. After all, I was an adult by this time, living under my own roof, with a phone I could have used to call 911, and a car I could have used to try to flee. In my next episode I’m going to get into that, as well as finally address how all this stayed so hidden for so long. The two are closely related. 

But because I think a quick explanation now might help, I’ll just say a couple of things. First, remember that by the time of my earliest memories, abuse was already a normal, daily part of my life. I grew up in a world that seemed like this was all there was, and where there was no such thing as a trusted adult. People dressed as police officers came to the appointment room and raped me. My soccer coach raped me. School wasn’t safe, church wasn’t safe, sports weren’t safe, home wasn’t safe. My entire childhood taught me that there were no safe people anywhere. Second, remember that my dad excelled at pulling strings, and I had seen him do it – or lived with the consequences of him doing it – all my life. Whenever he told me that something awful would happen, it did. Whenever one of my handlers told me that I was in trouble, my punishment was worse than they intimated. 

Put these two things together for 20-plus years, and you get an adult who has no capacity to even wonder if there is someone who might help her, much less to imagine that she could ever be free. I complied because I knew – through costly experience, and without a shadow of a doubt – that whatever would happen if I didn’t obey would make me beg for them to “only” do whatever it was I’d resisted in the first place. 

So, when Pastor Farrow unbuttoned my pants, the only thing to do was just take it. Nothing else even occurred to me. He slipped his hand underneath my underwear, then told me to reciprocate. I followed each instruction and, when he was ready, obeyed his command to come sit on his lap. The other elders in the meeting kept one eye on us so they could enjoy it, and the other eye on the door so they could guard against intruders. I knew this meant that whether it would be right after Pastor Farrow finished, or not until some other time, these men would rape me too. 

I was joining a church where the so-called shepherds served a different master, and the weight of that started to sink in as I straddled Pastor Farrow’s lap under those “shepherd’s” gazes. The next Sunday I stood at the front of the sanctuary during the service, welcomed by them as a new member.

Another key figure joined the church a few years after I did and became the final person to play a critical role in my life. When George joined our church he was finishing his doctorate in seminary, and during that time he and his family befriended me. He also grew very close to Pastor Farrow, and after a brief stint away from our church on a “ministry” assignment he returned and taught at a seminary. George had been involved in rituals since he first came, but after he returned permanently he took on an ever-increasing role. Eventually, when Kurt’s assignments and focus shifted, George became my handler.

These three men – Kurt, Pastor Farrow, and George – were the men around which my world revolved for over 16 years. Their roles in my life, and my relationships with them, differed. Kurt was the most like my dad, and was the only one of the three who was involved in my life for the full 16 years. His role lessened when George took over, but it didn’t stop, and for the 12 years prior to that he ruled almost every aspect of my life. I called him master. In fact, I’d been taught to call all these men, including Mr. Dunbar, including even others, “master” at times, but I didn’t just call Kurt master. He was my master. During my childhood, when I lived at home, my master was my father. He and Kurt told me, and showed me, that I was their personal sex slave. They owned me – my time, body, work, and life – and used me to please themselves and to turn things upside down. The other people that I had to call master during specific instances of abuse could do whatever they wanted with me during those times. But my dad and Kurt, whom I didn’t merely “call” master, could do whatever they wanted with me all the time, at any time. 

Kurt and my dad shared a level of intimacy with me unlike anyone else. As I said earlier, Kurt and his family became like family to me. Even more so than Mr. Dunbar in boarding school, Kurt could switch from Christian mentor to sadistic rapist and back in the blink of an eye. He and I spent countless hours together talking about theology, campus ministry, apologetics, worldview, and discipleship, all the while pretending the hidden world didn’t exist. He knew me better than anyone else, in every way. George also functioned, publicly, as a friend in my life. In my late 20s he had me over to his house almost weekly for a family dinner, where I hung out with his kids and our conversation ranged expansively. 

In contrast, Pastor Farrow and I didn’t have much of a public-facing relationship. I can’t recall more than a passing conversation with him at a church event, much less spending time with him or his family outside of church. He didn’t have a role in orchestrating my public life, and he was never my handler. Rather, his significance comes from his role in the many rituals I endured once I came to his church. I haven’t said much about rituals today, primarily because I don’t think I need to after my last episode. Suffice it to say that rituals of all kinds were a major part of my abuse after I left home at age 16, and my handlers were chosen in part because of their skill in this regard. Kurt was exceptionally good at ritual abuse – creative, inventive, and perverse – which is why my dad liked him so much. George was highly skilled too, and Pastor Farrow also planned rituals, often with him as the central figure in them, and participated in many more. His church – my church – was a major location of my abuse for the 11+ years I was a member there. 

Again, I imagine that people will hear this and wonder how this is possible – how could I (for example) have a work meeting to discuss ministry with someone during the morning, be violently raped by him during lunch hour, then work with him on a project during the afternoon? Again, I plan to address this next time but – again – I think a quick explanation now could help. Simply put, the part of me that lived my visible, daily life and worked with Kurt, attended Pastor Farrow’s church, and went over to George’s house for dinner couldn’t remember the horror of the abuse while I was doing those “normal” things. In what I've come to understand is a mercy, God enabled another part of me to hold the knowledge of my torment behind very high walls until it was time for him to set me free.

Before I continue with the story, I’d like to pause again to underscore my point about one of the things that changed when I left home. All five of the men I’ve now identified as central figures in my story – my dad, Mr. Dunbar, Kurt, Pastor Farrow, and George – shared a few fundamental characteristics: their hatred of God, their deliberate worship of Satan through their abuse, and their delight in using the church as both a cover and a target for their activities. But as I said, there was a distinct difference in their Christian facades. My dad went to church for many years, but if you bumped into him anywhere else, you wouldn’t think he was a Christian. It’s not that you would have thought he was evil, you just would have thought he was a nice, but not religious, guy. His Christian facade was thin. In contrast, if you bumped into the men who were most significant in my abuse once I left home, you would absolutely have thought they were Christians. Their facades were thick, and up almost all the time. 

These men were all Christian leaders, all involved in Christian ministry, and three out of the four were in paid, “full-time” Christian ministry. My dad didn’t bother to talk or act like a Christian anywhere other than church on Sunday morning. These others talked about God all the time. They taught the Bible, they spent their spare time in “ministry,” they even led times of “family worship” in their homes. George has served as a teaching pastor and taught in seminaries. Mr. Dunbar was one of a tiny handful of faculty who identified as Christians at my boarding school, and he used his volunteer time to advise the Christian Fellowship there. Kurt worked in campus ministry, then started an apologetics ministry, and eventually became the pastor of a different church (which is part of the reason I was passed on to George even though Kurt still lived near by). Finally, about halfway through my time at Pastor Farrow’s church, he resigned his pastorate to become the president of a seminary.

Each of these men had really, really good doctrine. I never heard a single heretical thing in all the public talks, lessons, Bible studies, Sunday School classes, sermons, and discussions I experienced with them over the course of the 18 years I was in their collective orbit. In fact, I learned things from them, good things, doctrinally true things, and it’s a confusing labor to distinguish the nuggets of gold these men passed to me – in order to keep up their disguises – from the mud and filth and rot that the gold was nestled in. I came to love the Apostle’s Creed after studying it at Mr. Dunbar’s house my junior year of high school. Kurt taught me how to do inductive Bible study, which I’d never encountered before, and which was right up my alley. He and George helped me see that I love words, and have a gift for using them. From them and from Pastor Farrow I learned Reformed theology.

Unlike my dad, whose role focused on destroying the vulnerable and harnessing others to do the same, these men – Kurt, Pastor Farrow, and George especially – focused on gaining power and authority within the church in order to subtly – oh, so subtly – empty it of its power. To do so they couldn’t use the costume of the affable-but-not-rigorous Christian that my dad used. They had to look the part, through and through. They were theologically astute and seemed very serious about their faith. Some of them homeschooled their kids. They led Bible studies, led churches, led seminaries. Each of them founded at least one 501c3 “ministry” organization, and all of them still lead those “ministries.”

But these same men gathered around me in sanctuaries and made me sing hymns while they raped me, or required me to decide the specific, horrific way each one would violate me, or told me that my anguish and their orgasms were a pleasing sacrifice to Satan. 

It would be really nice if the way this worked was that men who could do the kinds of things these men did were visibly, obviously not Christians. It would be nice if ordination tests were sure to weed them out. It would be nice if their rotten fruit reeked so badly that we could get a whiff the moment they walked into a room. But as in the parable of the sheep and the goats, we often confuse good works with good fruit. We think that if someone’s doctrine is right, then they must be good to go. Kurt, Pastor Farrow, and George were very good teachers, and they had excellent, orthodox doctrine. 

So what does all that make them? False teachers. Not because they spoke heresy from the pulpit or lectern, but because they spoke with their lives that their teaching was a lie. We need to be on guard against those who speak things that are not true, who use words to preach a doctrine other than Christ and him crucified. But we also need to be on guard against those who do things that are not true, who use their lives to preach a doctrine other than Christ and him crucified. Jesus warned us to “watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” (Mt. 7:15). One type of sheep’s clothing is orthodoxy. A few verses later, Jesus says “by their fruit you will recognize them.” Peter told us that there would be false teachers among the church, who will “secretly introduce destructive heresies,” and he warned that many others “will follow their depraved conduct.” (2 Peter 2:1-2). Paul warned the Corinthian church about people who wanted to lead them “astray from [their] sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3), saying that “such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” (2 Cor. 11:13-15). 

If false teachers were easy to spot, scripture wouldn’t warn us about them so repeatedly. If someone’s sound doctrine proved that they love Jesus, we wouldn’t need to think about their fruit. In the passage that I just read, Paul says that Satan and his servants will look like an angel of light and servants of righteousness. We should assume this means that they won’t always go around spouting obvious heresy. Mr. Dunbar, Kurt, Pastor Farrow, and George all spoke one thing, but they did the opposite. They claimed one lord, but served another. Like my dad, they loved the things God hates and hated the things he loves, including his church. But they weren’t just wolves in sheep’s clothing. Instead, these were shepherds who fed on their sheep as Ezekiel 34 says. 

Once again, I’ll ask listeners to consider the logic of Satan: he is very pleased when churches can be used as places to crush the innocent, when altars meant to be used in Christian worship instead hold a child who is subjected to to sexual torture and satanic worship. Does it not make sense that he is just as pleased when churches and ministries and seminaries are led by those committed to him, who with their orthodox doctrine but false teaching drain the life out of the gospel in those places? 

Pastor Farrow shaped his church into a sort of outpost of the upside-down kingdom he was serving, not because everyone there secretly served the same master he did, but because enough did – especially the leaders – to distract the church from its real mission. Now he trains future pastors at a seminary. As far as I know, Kurt still leads a church and still works in apologetics. George also teaches men and women going into ministry. The words that issue forth from their mouths may not be untrue, but their whole lives speak a false gospel. Their real allegiance is to their father the devil, and he is more than willing to use “good doctrine” for his own ends, as he showed when he used scripture to tempt Jesus in the desert. 

We need to know that the false teachers that God warned us would come into our churches can’t always be sniffed out by what they claim to believe. Sometimes false teachers’ doctrine is as pure as snow. Sometimes they tick all of our cultural Christian boxes. Sometimes they seem so much like us. Sometimes, they are deceived, but sometimes they deceive. Sometimes they serve their father the devil.

Now, I’m going to turn to what is the hardest thing for me in my story – my whole story, not just today’s story. I want to reiterate what Ann Maree said at the beginning, that what follows may be particularly painful to hear, because it involves things that happened with pregnancies that resulted from my abuse. But I also want to reiterate that I’ve kept specific details out of this. If this topic could be too much for you, please consider stopping here, or skipping to the prayers at the end.

Click here to skip to the closing prayers.

Besides the religious character of the men who were central to my abuse, the other thing that changed after I left home was how the men who controlled me used me. Throughout my childhood, one of my main purposes in this satanic network was, to put it bluntly, to be raped. They told me this often, and showed me this constantly. Remember that this was the purpose of the ritual I talked about last time, when my father made me believe that he had removed my heart because I wasn’t really a little girl, but a thing made to be raped. Every ritual included rape. Every day included rape. There were endless variations to it, and the rape itself was the means to an end – defying God, pleasing Satan, turning things upside down – rather than the end itself. So, I’m way oversimplifying this. But, fundamentally, in the eyes of my father and all those involved in this cult-like satanic network, rape was what I was for. 

But they never intended that to be the only thing for all my life. As I headed toward adulthood, other things became possible, and the focus of many rituals shifted. Rape itself was still a constant bedrock, but there became things I could give them that they wanted. 

In the early spring of my final year at home, my dad came into my bedroom one evening and told me to undress. At age 16, my body wasn’t a child’s body anymore, and when he wasn’t rushed – as he wasn’t that evening – my dad would spend a long time in preliminaries before getting to whatever it was he really wanted. He often enjoyed forcing me into unwanted arousal, which felt like a betrayal by my own body. This evening he did this repeatedly as we stood facing each other, my clothes in a heap on the floor. While he slowly built things up he talked to me about boarding school and the handler I would have there, timing the reactions he was provoking with certain points he wanted to make. Finally, when he was ready, he put his hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes, grinned with great satisfaction, and said “It’s time for you to bear my child.” Then he told me to get on the bed.

I’d actually been pregnant before, more than once. How could I not have been? My rapists never used condoms, nor did anything to prevent conception. Most of those pregnancies were terminated by violence, whether as a “natural” result of abuse or as abuse directed specifically to that end. I’d even given birth before, my dad taking perverse delight in watching his daughter, still a child herself, endure painful labor before delivering a child into his hands. There were people in the network who had sufficient medical training for a birth, so there was no need to go to a doctor or hospital. It happened off the grid. It’s surprisingly easy to hide a young girl’s pregnancy if you want to. They took the baby away – a little girl – and told me they’d found a family to raise her.

So this wouldn’t be the first time I’d been pregnant. But the look on my dad’s face, the tone of his voice, even his very deliberate preparation, all made this feel new and terrifying. It was clear that he had been looking forward to this for a long time, that it was important to him that he be the one to get me pregnant, and that his intention was that this pregnancy would not be terminated. Indeed, by the time I packed up for boarding school at the end of the summer I was well into my second trimester, and knew – because my dad had told me – that they planned for me to give birth to this baby later that fall. When that time came he flew back out to my school, worked with my handler to pull me out of classes, and conducted an awful ritual around my labor and delivery. 

Listeners may recall that I shared in the first episode that I had started to gain weight before boarding school and, once there, gained a lot more very quickly. Now you know why. But it wasn’t just pregnancy weight; it was weight to hide the pregnancy. I kept that weight, more or less, for most of the next 18 years. I was pregnant a lot during those years. This is one of the biggest things that changed after I left home, one of the things that I could now “give” to or do for these men. I could carry their children.

As I said, it’s not that I became pregnant for the first time at age 16. My biological ability to get pregnant developed earlier, and they exploited it earlier. But after age 16, they didn’t just “take advantage” of it when it happened to occur. It became, so many times, the point. They got me pregnant on purpose, and selected the men who would do so. I know this because, from then on, there were specific rituals focused on conception whenever they wanted me pregnant. During those rituals, only one man had full sexual access to me, because only his semen was allowed inside me. Other participants in these rituals could engage in other kinds of sexual acts with me, but only one could plant his seed. 

Starting with my father, at age 16, the men who got me pregnant over the next 18 years were selected beforehand. Most of them I did not know, and most of the pregnancies were ended, deliberately, sometime before birth. Those terminations, too, became rituals. But in the cases where I carried the child to delivery, I usually did know the father. In addition to my dad, Kurt, Pastor Farrow, and George all fathered children with me who, as far as I know, grew up in families they don’t even know aren’t their own, families where they were made available to the same satanic network that I was. There’s no way my children were placed in healthy families, healthy homes. For those that are girls, I’ve prayed that the Lord would close their wombs, and spare them the grief of motherhood.

Why would these men use me this way? We have to remember, again, that my abusers did not simply suffer from “disordered desires.” They weren’t even “just” sadistic, those who get pleasure from other people’s pain. Their allegiance was to Satan, and they did what they did because they loved what he loves, and hated what he hates. When we can remember to look at this through that lens, it makes perfect, awful sense.

In the garden, God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Every single time I got pregnant I gave life to someone who would either be killed in my womb, delivered early and left to die, or born into a life full of pain. God intends the family to bring forth life, and Satan wants to turn it upside down and use it to bring forth death. Each pregnancy of mine gave these men the opportunity to please and be like their father, the devil and, they believed, to directly counteract God’s purposes. They sought to make life specifically so they could destroy it. They made my womb – intended by God to be an incubator of life – into a graveyard. 

Once again, I’ll say that while these things are shocking, they are not surprising. Given who the serpent is, to whom these men gave their allegiance, the surprising thing would have been if they did not do this. All they can do is live out their true nature. 

Prayers

I said last time that ritual abuse is something I have not talked about, even with those who know some part of my story. Well, up until very recently, my pregnancies and children were also something I never spoke about outside of a tiny circle. I fear that people can’t understand, and even if they can, it’s just far too painful for me. The reason I’ve chosen to share it here is because it’s a critical part of the story, both for me, and for seeing clearly those who participate in this kind of abuse. At the same time, I’m acutely aware of how much I’m not saying right now, how hard it is for me to talk about, and how much I don’t even know what to say.

So instead of trying to come up with a good way to end today, I’m going to share two prayers I wrote almost two years ago, when I first started grappling with my own loss around my children. At my counselor’s suggestion, I planted trees to memorialize them – one tree for the children who died, and another for the children who lived – and I wrote these prayers to go with the plantings. These prayers won’t really explain any more of the story, but they are the best way I know to give insight – to some degree, at least – into what this part of the story has been like for me.  

By ending here I know I’m ending on a sad and sobering note, so let me say something about that. Psalm 88 is one of my favorite psalms. It’s the one, famously, that doesn’t have anything “good” in it – it’s all complaint and lament, with no praise, no hope, no reminders of God’s goodness. This psalm helps me for two reasons: one, because it demonstrates that it is ok to be fully honest with God, up to and including when we are without hope and without the ability to see good. But the other reason is that throughout it, the psalmist addresses God by his personal, covenant name: Yahweh. The psalmist knows the God to whom he complains; he does not view him as a far away, impersonal, abstract deity, but a God who can be known, who knows our trouble, and with whom we can be honest. Yes, the psalmist expresses no hope, but he expresses it to the God whom he knows, and knows by name. A personal God, an intimate God who welcomes the psalmist’s familiarity, a God that knows the psalmist even better than he knows himself. That is an extraordinarily hopeful thing in the midst of great pain, even when words of hope are hard to find. 

So, please hear these prayers in that vein:

Paperbark Maple, June 20

Lord, as I come tonight to acknowledge – out loud, and with my actions – that some of my children have died, I do not want to come alone. I know that you never forsake me, but I have tried to carry this by myself – to manage it by hiding it – and the truth is that I cannot carry it at all. Please meet me here. Stand with me here as I settle this tree into the earth, weep with me here as I gaze upon it and think of the children that should be standing here with me on the earth instead.

In planting this tree in memory of my flesh and blood children, I agree with you that they are real and, like the tree, existed apart from me. Each one was an individual, with his or her own unique personality and identity. Even though they were never officially named – even though I didn’t manage to name some of them even in my heart – you know each one’s name. Each one mattered to you, and you know what they were like. You know who they are. Each one was someone. This is both deeply reassuring and incredibly painful.

In planting this tree in memory of my lost children, I agree with you that their deaths are a loss to me. I did not seek to become pregnant or eagerly anticipate their births once I was. I knew that death or abuse awaited them, and wished instead they might never be born. I was not allowed to raise them or have any kind of relationship with them. I did not know them, and this has made recognizing my own loss and grief difficult. I do not feel that I have the right to count this as a loss, but you say otherwise.

In planting this tree in memory of my murdered children, I agree with you that this is wrong. Instead of gently tucking a tree into the ground, I want to slam my fist into it and scream in rage at the ones who did this. “These were my children! How dare you?!” You are angry too, and planted a tree deep into the ground to hang your son upon, to buy back a people for yourself, and one day to pour out your wrath on all evildoers who reject him.

In planting this tree in memory of my mothered children, I agree with you that I am a mother. Not just a female who has been impregnated and given birth, but a woman rightly identified, in part, in relation to her children. Their lives marked mine, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, and mine marked theirs. This is your design. I have absolutely no idea how to live in to the reality of my own motherhood, and want to hate myself for it rather than embrace it. But somehow, in a way I cannot yet fathom, I think you are pleased with me in my motherhood

In planting this tree in memory of my loved-by-you children, I agree with you that their existence was a good thing. I don’t understand how or why. Their lives were short, brutal, and ended violently. I have no joyful memories of any of them to cherish. But you are the one who made them, not their fathers. Their fathers intended only evil for them and me, but somehow you intend this for good. I’ve chosen a tree that I think is beautiful, one that will make me smile when I see it. I believe you want me to be able to smile when I think of my children, to know that they were beautiful because you made them, to say with you that these image-bearers you made were “very good.”

Lord, plant these truths deep in me, along with the many others I am too confused and heartsick to articulate or even see. Help me to see my children – and myself, as their mother – from your perspective. Nourish and sustain this tree to remind me often of your goodness and mercy; nourish and sustain me to grow into the woman, and mother, you intend me to be.

Northern Tribute Birch, June 24

Lord, as I come this morning to plant another tree, this one for my living children, I am physically and emotionally exhausted. I don’t know what I need, or what I should ask you for as I take this step. Would you remember them with me, pray for them with me, weep for them with me? Would you even do these things for me, as I fear I lack the ability to do them myself?

I’ve never known how to think or feel about these children. I’ve never felt able to think very much about them at all, lest I drown in that terrible sea. Each one was raised by the same kind of abusers who raised me, and must have had the same kind of childhood I had. Some, perhaps, have become abusers in their own right, not just made to hurt others at someone else’s behest, but choosing to do so themselves. Oh God, I wish they had never been born!

Yet you have brought me to a place where I no longer wish for my own death. I walk before you now in the land of the living, and I am glad. You can do the same for them, but it feels too painful to ask or hope for this. Would you give me courage to do so? Oh father, set them free!

The place where I am planting this tree was full of thick roots I cut out, and there must be more below the depth of the hole that I dug. This is not soil well suited for a new tree’s flourishing. The soil of my children’s lives was not suited for their flourishing either. Send their roots deep and wide, around and beyond the things that would choke them, to the places where water and nutrients give life. Lord, call them to yourself! Give them your living water.

The family tree that my children were born into is twisted and diseased. But you grafted me into a new tree. Please do the same for them. Let them inherit my spiritual heritage, and not that of my father or their fathers.

When I think of these children, the main thing that comes is guilt. I’m sorry I gave life to you! I’m sorry I delivered you into the hands of those who would abuse you! I’m sorry that I could not stop it. I’m sorry that my hands dealt pain to you, and that your hearts experienced this as coming truly from me. I’m so, so sorry. If I could exchange myself for you I would, yet at the same time I am doing nothing to save you. There’ isn’t anything I can do, but nonetheless the fact that I do nothing leaves me believing I have no right to grief or anguish or anger. And the pain makes it hard to pray, so my prayers are short, inarticulate, and at times infrequent. What kind of mother am I?

Lord, this tree too is beautiful. Use it to teach me to hope for my children’s beauty, to remember your power over darkness and evil, and to pray for them. Lord, use it however you will to shape me, to reopen my heart to my children. Teach me how to be their mother, though I don’t know them or where they are; though I have no hope for them ever knowing me as their mother; though I’m tempted to believe that they’re better off without me; though I hate myself for my role in their lives.

You are the one who made them. Not me. Not their fathers. And you are the one who allowed them to live, not the ones who killed some but not all of my children. They are yours. But they are also mine; you are the one who made me a mother, and the one inviting me deeper into my motherhood. I don’t know how. All of this looks like nothing but ashes to me. Lord, bring beauty instead. I entrust my children to you.

Ann Maree
Grief is an absolutely appropriate response for today’s story. The incredible weight of evil and death, suffering and loss falls heavy–crushing our hearts. So we grieve. Carya, it might have been easier for you to have kept these memories of your children to yourself. But, you shared each of them with us, and so we thank you. We thank you and we share (to some degree) with you in your sorrow.

I’d ask those listening to join with me in holding these children–in holding their mother!-- in our hearts and in prayers. Trees are a very important part of all our stories. So, perhaps at the sight of a tree as you go about your day, you might be reminded of His incredible provision and abundant grace and plead with the Father on behalf of Carya and her children.

Our next guest is Rachael Denhollander—attorney, advocate, and survivor—whose work has shaped how churches understand and respond to abuse. With deep personal insight and unwavering commitment to justice, Rachael speaks into Carya’s story with both compassion and clarity.  

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Safe to Hope is a production of HelpHer. Our Executive Producer is Ann Maree Goudzwaard. Safe to Hope is written and mixed by Ann Maree and edited by Ann Maree and Helen Weigt. Music in this season is ‘Cinematic Slow Sad Piano | Soundtrack’ by OpenMusicList, licensed via Pixabay. We hope you enjoyed this episode in the Safe To Hope podcast series. 

Safe To Hope is one of the resources offered through the ministry of HelpHer, a 501C3 that provides training and resources for those ministering in one-another care and advocacy for women in crisis in Christian institutions. Your donations make it possible for HelpHer to serve as they navigate these crises. All donations are tax deductible. If you'd be interested in partnering financially with the ministry, go to help her dot help and click the give link in the menu. If you'd like more information or would like to speak to someone about ministry goals or advocacy needs, go to HelpHer.help. That's help her dot H E L P.

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well. guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Help[H]er. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

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