Dear Editor, 

I don't know whether this is useful or not but I have had a couple of email battles with Markland.  I was a member of WWCG and recently questioned his beliefs in Herb.  After I mentioned to him that Armstrong was a pedophile, he stopped replying.  Sound strange? 

Thanks for your work, 

Charlie Ezelle

Thanks for the info, Charlie.  Another reader sent information that indicates Mr. Markland has been in and out of court several times since the early 90s.  A couple of those  looked like theft or fraud charges, and once it appears he was the complainant in a case involving a neighbor's dog.  Then, suddenly -- child rape!  Quite a leap.

12/21/06

You're right!  I don't know how that one slipped past us.  Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

12/29/06

Hello,  I have some things to add to the 'You Might Have Grown up in WCG...'  section of your website.  I was in tears laughing as I read it.  I forwarded it to my brother and sister who also grew up WCG (the youngest in UCG and then GCG and then LCG).... They were ROFL as well!  Thanks so much for your site, for bringing information, healing, and much needed humor about our experiences with the abuses of cultism.  Please leave this anonymous, even though I am not ashamed of any of these things, I fear the 'lurker' who may try to contact me to 'set me straight' as my parents are each still members of local WCG/LCG churches.

[name withheld]

Thanks for writing.  For a girl who was discouraged from "thinking too much", I'd say you have a pretty sharp mind.  The way women were treated by the church was positively medieval.  (Oh, yeah...GOOD FOR YOUR BROTHER!)

John B

1/11/07

[name withheld]

Thanks for pointing that out.  I agree, it's a "good 'urn".  Literacy has never been the strong suit of COG types, but in this case it's a simple case of carelessness.  You think Jesus would leave a type-o like that?  I think NOT!

1/14/07

Thank you, K, for passing this on.  The story becomes more interesting by the day.  The email you forwarded is reproduced here, with my editorial commentary.

2/2/07

Hello,

I ran across the Painful Truth by accident just the last couple days. As you might know Dick Wiedenheft is very ill with stage four Hodgkin's Lymphoma. My husband and I are both Ambassador College graduates and attended in the '70's. I was Lutheran background and followed a boyfriend into that mess. Fortunately I had a teaching degree before I attended AC.  It was all wrong from what I observed. My husband had three years at Indiana University before attending AC so he was a bit more open minded than the usual student. Anyway, we left the church years ago after HWA got really crazy and we were already home and into careers. I just retired from teaching. Mike is still working happily with 28 years at CookMedical.  I was looking for some info on when Dick graduated from AC and ran across this site. Stayed up late reading for several days. My sister still attends the UCG and is happy there. None of her kids have stayed in the church and she has five.  My other sister dabbles in it from time to time but both her children did not stay. All are college graduates and into
their careers and have no use for any of the simpleton approach or teachings.

Anyway, I wondered while reading what has become of HWA's daughters and his second wife? My heart went out to the daughter abused for ten years. What a sick experience for her. I was one of the senior girls that served the senior dinners at HWA's house at Pasadena. What an eye opener that was! The daughter named Beverly was often there and she was clearly an alcoholic. She did not eat at all and only wanted her mixed drinks. She would come into the kitchen dressed to the nines in diamonds and Italian knits and a fur and show it all off to the college gals like myself
and we would oooooh and ahhhhh. It was a hoot! Later it occurred to me that the church people were buying all her goodies! She was quite independent and I always loved her indifference to the whole dinner party! She would always sit at the other end from HWA and while he talked about his travels and the church she would just sit and talk too! He wouldn't stop her. She talked about all kinds of shopping on her travels. It was colorful.

Did Stan Rader and Ramona try to remove HWA as some claim? How did HWA meet Ramona and become romantically involved with her? And what happened to the Dean boys? I taught at Imperial Schools with one of their wives at Pasadena. She was so
mean to the children and would paddle, paddle, paddle. If one child did some small thing she would paddle the entire first grade class. After my "worldly" college education I was stunned at how mean religion can cause people to be even to the most innocent among us. I was fed up and graduated and went home to happily teach in the "worldly" schools where I never once saw teachers in our system allowed to discipline in such a cruel and unthinking manner.

Thank you for taking the time to offer a very stimulating web site for those of us who were mixed up in bad religion and need to vent! Dick's diagnosis is not good. They are beginning treatment in a very measured way as his liver is not functioning and is blocked by a tumor they are trying to shrink.

Thanks,

Kathy and Mike Galimore

In answer to your question about Stan and Ramona, I don't really know.  A lot of things happened back in those days and rumors abounded.  The answer may well be found in the pages of Ambassador Report, available at this website.  It's been years since I read the AR so I just don't remember if that question was answered.

I believe I did hear that Dorothy Armstrong Matson had passed on, and I think Beverly Gott has too, but I could be wrong.  I inherited this site when no one else wanted it after the original editor retired, so I confess that I'm not as up to date on matters as many others are.

Thanks for your letter.  Here's wishing the best for Dick Wiedenheft.

John B

2/5/07

 I am so grateful for having found your site, I wish I would have found it years ago.  Although I have 'gotten over' my experience with WCG, and have been increasingly happy and successful in life since my escape twelve years ago (I call it escape as I never willingly entered the cult - was born into it, and fought it since I can remember until shortly before my 18th birthday when I left home and was finally free), I am still finding the information on your site really helpful for putting into perspective the madness that was my childhood and why my parents acted as they did - most of which was fed by 'the church' and certainly Garner Ted's child rearing principles.  I will continue to read and post as much as I can, as this is truly a website with a worthy cause - enlightenment for those touched by the cult, and warnings for those that may be looking for answers within COG's or any other cult.  Keep up the good work.

[unsigned]

I don't mind if you use my first name, but I do like some anonymity.  

I just e-mailed my minister, Ron Weinland, to tell him that I withdraw from fellowship.  Once I did it, the relief was - a relief. 

I entered the WCG world when, at 19, and aimless, I saw HWA on World Tomorrow in 1984.  I was baptized in 86, and for a lot of the time was, in my own definition, more Laodicean than Philadelphian, I'm sure you can figure that one out. 

But in late 2000, after having left UCG in 1995, a friend, whom I love dearly, but know she will never be able to leave, sent me R. Weinland's Time is Running Out.  From that point on, I was in-until now. 

At this point, I'll make it short, but I've come to not only doubt the existance of God and Christ, but am convinced.  I wish there were no religion anywhere influencing the minds of both regular people, and those in power.  I hope there is an existance after death, a peaceful existance-I'm having to adjust to thinking that maybe there is no resurrection, that maybe the dead are dead forever, that one is hard. 

It's now 2007, I'm 42 years old.  I'm looking back over the years with a sense of sorrow, that I gave myself in such a way as to not allow my own creativity to flourish.  Always, always second guessing myself.  So many years... 

To anyone else leaving COG, don't fear.  Leave the fear behind. Live.