Sexual abuse in the quiverfull movement. Is anyone surprised?
by David Atkins
While repulsive, I don’t think this should be a surprise to anyone:
A leading advocate of the patriarchal Quiverfull movement groomed a teenage girl as his “personal sex object” and then used the purity culture to shame her into silence, according to a lawsuit filed by his victim.
Douglas Phillips resigned last year from Vision Forum and Vision Forum Ministries over what he described at the time as an extramarital affair.
But the lawsuit, reported by Right Wing Watch, revealed more details about this relationship and the ways that women are treated in the Quiverfull movement – which has been popularized by the prolific Duggar family and their TLC reality show, 19 Kids and Counting.
Attorneys claim Phillips, a close friend to the Duggar family and an associate of actor Kirk Cameron, “methodically groomed” Lourdes Torres since she was 15 years old and led her to believe they would be married.
Phillips told the girl this was possible because his wife, Beall Phillips, “was going to die soon.”
Torres appeared in two Vision Forum films, “Alone But Not Alone” and the anti-feminist documentary “Return of the Daughters.”
Right Wing Watch also noted that when Torres graduated from high school in 2003, Phillips wrote a blog post commending her parents for “bringing their daughter into mature Christian womanhood.”
But at the same time, according to the lawsuit, Phillips indoctrinated Torres with the “patriarchal mindset” and “subtly began to manipulate Ms. Torres, so that he could use her for his sexual gratification.”
The suit claims Phillips repeatedly groped and touched Torres inappropriately and masturbated on her, “against her wishes and over her objections,” over a period of years.
“While Ms. Torres would have felt compelled to submit to Douglas Phillips, the purity culture would have meant at the same time, her submission made her ‘damaged goods’ in her eyes, the eyes of her family, and her community — raising the cost for her to come forward to call him to account,” the suit claims. “She was, in fact, in a ‘no-win’ situation.”
That “no-win situation” is exactly what religious patriarchs want women to be in. It’s all about sexual control.
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