I am sure some of you watched the video. As I was watching it, I was shocked and kept thinking about the abusive Mormon God who is nothing but a terrorist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLhHimvx8M&feature=related

I read that the story behind the video is that she had her daughter video tape how she handles her difficult child so she could send it to Dr. Phil as an example of how to discipline children without losing control. No kidding.

Some people thought she sent it in because she was so overwhelmed that she was asking for help. But it was the exact opposite. She made and sent it believing, as most Mormons do, that they have something to teach others. She wanted to show that one can have a thought-out deliberate system of punishment that doesn't depend on being angry in the moment. You can see it in the video, she's sadistically in control, and the child knows exactly what she's going to do to him because its a system she's developed. Her teaching moments, making him repeat back what happens when you make bad choices, is not a woman whose lost control. Imagine her surprise when Dr. Phil and the audience reacted as though she's a child abuser.

On the show you can see her eyes glaze over when it turns out no one there is receptive to her teaching them anything about how to teach children correct principles.

I want to hurt her!

I never watched the show, though. Did she really say that she was sending it as an example of GOOD discipline techniques? (Shudder)

I wonder how she felt when she got reamed by EVERYONE, the audience, Dr. Phil and the attorney who was present.

Wow...

and that makes Dr. Phil a scumbag, too. They could have just reported it to her local child protection agency.

No, and while I agree the Mormon cult breeds several different kinds of insanity, I'm not sure it breeds this particular kind more than any other group. It certainly doesn't teach it.

Most people won't connect it with the religion, anyway.

No doubt the pressure to have a lot of children increases the chances of abuse, but people who think that kind of "discipline" is needed or acceptable or who would resort to it under stress shouldn't even have one child.

Jessica's problem is a mood disorder or bad role models, or both, not Mormonism ... and maybe a personality disorder, too, if she expected positive feedback.

I'm sure she'd be just as bad if she wasn't Mormon. I don't believe she only has a problem with that one child.

I just hope the show is following up, because you can bet she's taking the humiliation out on Kristoff.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 04:33AM by munchybotaz.

They way I put this together in part, including some guesses:

Mother with an adopted, high-needs kid plus 5 other kids.Mom is home with the kids with little help and her husband often unavailable, physically, perhaps emotionally. She has also been busy with church. Mom deals with complaints from school and the child's behavior at home mostly on her own. I bet there is trouble at church, too, so mom is embarrassed in front of her peer group. Mom feels shame, fatigue,frustration, and isolation. She resorts to extreme measures to control the boy.

Father a police officer. Likely very stressed (as police officers often are) with long, irregular hours, and constant contact with the most difficult, depressing, frustrating segment of the public. We have focused on the mom, but I'd like to know more about dad's part in this, and how (if) he engages with his wife and kids at home.

Sounds to me the family, especially the parents, need counseling and some relief.

I also want to mention I did not hear anything while I was in the Mormon Church that encouraged or endorsed this kind of behavior from parents, although I see how certain aspects of Mormonism might feed it (i.e. lot of kids, extra financial stress, perfectionism, peer pressure, emphasis on control). There are very likely a number of socioeconomic factors besides religion that influence child abuse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 12:10PM by robertb.

from her blog that's since been restricted. That child has a special in-home therapist.

munchybotaz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> and that makes Dr. Phil a scumbag, too. They could
> have just reported it to her local child
> protection agency.

To make a living peddling this stuff as 'entertainment' --and if he calls it something else like public service then...well...Christ-- to make a living peddling this stuff as 'entertainment' makes him something much worse and far more dangerous than a 'scumbag', 'douchebag' etc. Much worse. Just look how he promotes this unfortunate family's situation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7jOr1_EC3U&feature=related

Disgusting and manipulative to the extreme. The woman and child need professional help (send in Robertb, for example), not the modern world's stocks and pillory.

Oh, the woman is angry. She doesn't admit she is, but it shows in her sadistic treatment of her son. Her anger is about not being in utter control of her children's behavior. This one of the problems in suppressing and not recognizing anger and then justifying cruel behavior. You also see this in wacko Fundamentalist Christian "discipline."

This sounds like something my wacked -out uber-LDS relatives would do to a kid, expecially one that they didn't spawn. My parents - the exmo and the nevermo-- have had their moments, as most parents are human, but they've certainly never burned me or my brother. If I didn't know it's from a place where none of my relatives live, I'd have to check them out more thoroughly because I'd be sure it WAS one of them.

When my mom was very sick and my dad had to work and I was injured with a compound fracture of my leg and a broken collarbone and had a kidney infection last year, one of my dad's LDS sisters who lives about 200 miles away from us volunteered to care for me for for a week in her home if my dad would pay her because she and her husband were having financial difficulties. I begged my dad not to take me there but he didn't have many other options and wanted to help them out. They stuck me in a cold unfinished attic with no bathroom and gave me six Pampers a day from their 4-year-old's stash. (The child is so overweight that his diapers were actually loose on me.) They gave me inadequate food and water and didn't check on me. My kidneys quit working and I got a serious staphylococcal rash from the diapers. At least my aunt and uncle are no longer allowed to take in foster children. They treat their biological children sligthly better but still not that great.

Interesting data. According to this website Utah fares well in the treatment of kids. CA has more than four times the number of kids below the poverty level than UT, if I read it right, and UT ranks 4 in overall child well-being, while CA ranks 19.

http://datacenter.kidscount.org/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2010 12:20AM by robertb.

I don't even have the words to describe the anger I feel after watching this. This is the kind of crap that leads to a teenager slitting his mothers throat in the middle of the night.
And I dare say she would probably deserve it.

It is clear that she has no love toward this child. I hope there is a full investigation done to protect him.

Nothing a kid can do warrents being treated with such disrespect.

And yes, I have 4 sometimes difficult kids.

I am reposting my comments from another thread about the time this show aired.


I saw the horrific segment and read what earlier posters have surmised and here is what I think are reasonable assumptions:

1. This sick woman did not come to the show seeking "help" or other counseling about RAD or parenting. I can't imagine in my wildest dreams a TBM Primary President writing in to Dr. Phil admitting a coping problem in public and then sending in ANY VIDEO clip that would be in any way embarrassing. Clearly she THOUGHT that the video she sent in was complimentary to her parenting, NOT that it was controversial, and certainly she did not think that she would potentially be providing criminal evidence to the Alaska Division of Family Services. The very fact that she sent this video in unprompted speaks to the vastness of her ignorance. (Not to mention that she also now has a videographer daughter that cannot tell when criminal child abuse is being perpetrated)

2. As others have said, you can watch her reactions as people are crying and horrified at the depictions. She is obviously clueless and stunned that she is getting the reactions she is seeing. In the beginning she says things to Dr. Phil like "you are entitled to your opinion," but soon she realizes that the entire room thinks she should be locked up, so she goes into a passive role -- looking for "better solutions" and wants to turn the conversation to an academic discussion of dealing with Reactive Attachment Disorder, and away from the fact that her behavior and her entire parenting worldview is so far off the mark and she was OBLIVIOUS to this. This is what Dr. Phil keeps returning to: how can Jessica Beagley NOT SEE that this behavior is cruel and abusive -- whether perpetrated on a RAD kid or any other.

3. Dr. Phil is talking to her and giving her the third degree and he is sensing that she is not agreeing with him and not getting it. By the end of the segment Dr. Phil is going at her and verbally doubting whether Beagley gets how outrageous and shocking her behavior is (clearly she doesn't). I would think Dr. Phil is ethically bound to make a referral report to the proper authorities.

4. Beagley's "parenting" in her LDS righteous, ordained-by-god context cannot possibly be confined to only her so-called RAD kid. The depth and extent of her ignorance and naivete HAS to be completely cultural and foundational to this woman -- most likely learned from her own parenting. Also, since the husband, according to Beagley, was apparently consulted on moving from soap to hot sauce in the disciplinary regime, he condemns his own judgment and parenting as well. It's a "families are forever" parenting nightmare! Looking at Beagley's BLOG (I doubt it is still up) one can see that this family has pride in their mormon-ness as an "eternal family", etc, etc. It would not be presumptuous to assume that they (as all TBMs constantly do) have determined that their conduct conforms with the gospel and with the ideals of mormonism -- after all, "obedience is the first law of heaven".

Dr. Phil should want to do a show on how people in cults can become so divorced from reality that they can engage on child abuse and not know it -- THATS THE REAL STORY HERE!

First off, every generation modifies the discipline they received. For example, when my Columbian mother heard that one of my sons was lighting fires inside his captain's bed, she told me (seriously) to light the hair of his arm on fire. She said she would guarantee he would never do it again. I was horrified, and when I spanked him with an electrical cord, in my mind I was giving him appropriate punishment.

People in my generation grew up with two parents that smoked...and no seat belts. Occasionally the "cherry" of the cigarette would fly off when the parents ashed out the car window, and it would fly into the backseat of the car and land on your clothes or in your hair. In today's world, that whole scenario is child abuse. Safety in the car meant you were sitting down facing the front.

When I was raising my children Mormon, I used Binaca mouth spray to keep them quiet in church. It was a "tip" I learned in Relief Society. Just like with dogs, they said, soon all you have to do is show them the tube and they will be quiet. It's all "the end justifies the means."

While not defending Jessica, I want to point out that normal people do abnormal things in a cult environment. We even do things that we KNOW are painful. In the 70's, I forced one of my sons who had long hair to get a "regular boy's haircut". He was hysterical and my husband had to physically hold him down in the chair. I was so upset I had the barber cut my hair the exact same style, "See, I said, this isn't so bad..." Yeah, I was clueless.

He never forgave me and mentioned it periodically until he stopped speaking to me a few years ago. He was my oldest and had the biggest dose of Mormon "wisdom" in his childhood. I messed up his life, for sure, but like Jessica, I thought I was doing the right thing.

I will spare you additional examples--I'm sure others will share more Mormon childrearing "tips" that they now regret.


Anagrammy

When we are young parents we don't know much and we tend to do what our parents did or our peer group does. We are sometimes shamed by others or carry shame from our families of origin for not keeping our kids "under control." I saw some shaming by a few people on this list a few weeks ago when a list member brought up having trouble with a situation in a movie.

So, we resort to more extreme measures when we feel out-of-control. I flirted with Dr. Dobson's (the puke) Dare to Discipline for a while when I was a young parent. Fortunately, I didn't have the heart to carry out the full program and gave it up. There have also certainly been times I am still sorry for when under stress and worn out I was abusive. My kids and I have talked about those moments and they seem to have recovered and forgiven me, but I still wince when I think about it.

There is a lot of bad advice and guilt in parenting.

I often recommend the Love and Logic approach for parenting (and grand-parenting). Used right it is both parent and kid friendly, but it can be abused, too, by parents who are over-focused on control and manipulation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 11:46AM by robertb.

Thanks for reposting your excellent summary, Rodolfo.

I visited the Beagley blog briefly (before they blocked it) and her pictures and comments were 100% Mormon propaganda. It was all manically upbeat; I didn't see any entries that reflected a human person that occasionally had difficult days, or struggled with discipline problems with her three Russian children.

Rodofo is right on the money; Jessica sent in that horrible video clip to show HOW WELL SHE "CORRECTED" THAT CHILD. She was proud of her control.

If a hundred audience members weren't moved to tears and shock, if it was just her and Dr. Phil, she would have tried to justify her behavior and walked out of the session.

The "Alaska Pride" website for November 26, 2010 is an attempt by the Beagley's or the TSCC to try and do some damage control, but the comments at the bottom show a failed attempt there.

Identifying Jessica Beagley as a Mormon who has a "temple recommend" as proof of what a righteous person she is only makes the TSCC look like the clueless, abusive asshats they are.

P.S. If anyone on this site watches the Dr. Phil show, and sees a follow-up clip on the Beagleys, please let us know. Thanks!

Im hoping they replay that episode so my wife can catch it in its entirety. We just watched they end of it.

But I remember it was Dr Phil himself who said he received the video as an example of proper discipline. (The woman had her 10-11 year old daughter shot the video in anticipation of what she was going to do to the boy.) He used it instead for a segment on out of control parents. That's why you see that Jessica starts off defiant and only starts claiming she's overwhelmed by her son when the entire audience turns on her. So as not to be exposed as the sociopath she is.

This is a scary Video. I know kids should to be disciplined somewhat when needs be but this is horrendous.

I've seen it once and I can't face it again.

Did you hear what this Mum said "obey" " listen" "consequences of his choices"

This is EXACTLY what I heard throughout two years of LDS church atendance.

Joseph Smith lied and cheated on his wife Emma when he was screwing around with housemaids, other mens wives and 14 year olds and no one gives a damn about that in the LDS cult and this little kid gets this torture for what??? Nothing at all.

See, I like hot sauce. I like peppers. I enjoy the slight tingling sensation -- makes my mouth feel alive. Eating spicy food makes the body burn more calories. I had several dashes of Tabasco just yesterday on some yummy cheesy eggs -- somehow I managed to do it without ~lying to cover my ass~. I've consumed pepper, hot sauce and salsa for decades probably starting in grade school. It's food. It's not poison. It's not a drug. It's flippin' food. So she put a drop of pepper on his tongue. A drop of pepper? Is that the abuse? So now giving food to children that don't want that is abusive? Better toss out everything in your kitchen folks -- keep only ice cream, chocolate candy and potato chips. See you in Hell brussel sprouts! hoooah!!!! *hurls sprouts into outer space*

Or was it the cold shower? A cold shower in Utah this time of year wouldn't feel very good. I'm positive there would be painful shrinkage. I've personally had painful shrinkage when my Scout Troop visited Camp Bartlett -- that lake was dang cold, but they made me swim in it anyway. My testicles are retreating inward right now just remembering that mild summer day with the unbearable water 20 odd years ago... Geez...my wife's kids throw fits when they have to bathe in clean, warm water and use shampoo. Is making a kid take a shower when they do not wish it considered abusive? Is making them do anything they don't want considered abusive?

I seriously think this world is trying to raise a bunch of pussies and doormats. Disciplined kids end up learning valuable life lessons -- survival, being tough to get through tough times, respect for authority and a bunch I left out. A drop of hot sauce and a cold shower and the Youtube crowd wants her to burn in hell forever. I think it's just too easy for people on this site to jump on any Mormon in view and *express our displeasure with them* in that net-gangbang fashion. I think that's more to do with the anger stage in the steps of a loss than with whether an actual crime took place. I'm sorry. I just didn't see abuse -- he's not bleeding, he's not dealing with broken bones and giant fist-shaped bruises. His internal organs are not shutting down. He's not kicked out to the street in the middle of winter in nothing but his purple jammies and a copy of "On the Origins of Species" to fend off wild bears and pirates all alone. I'd personally rather kids grow up with discipline that teaches them those lessons they need than have yet another user, loser, douchebag, liar, deadbeat bum for the system to support all because the parents spared the rod and in fact spoiled the child.

Just my .000002 cents. No offense intended.

If you are writing satyr, I applaud your humor. If you are serious, however, you are one fucked-up person.

A rule of thumb: if you would not dare do it to an adult, you should not do it to a child. Some people seem to believe that you can scream at a child, torment him verbally, punish him with physical pain, and humiliate him, and he will "resiliently" recover. Kids are indeed different from adults, but not in the sense that they are improved by abuse. Their brains and minds are in the process of being hardwired, and these forms of "discipline" have far greater and longer lasting effects on them than on adults. Read a bit on the childhood of sociopaths and habitual criminals: you'll recognize the pattern.

That woman on Dr. Phil should never have reproduced. Having done so, she should now be in prison and her child(ren) in therapy. That applies as well to people who defend as trivial forms of parental behavior that are in fact illegal in most states.

"If you are serious, however, you are one fucked-up person."

Amen.

It wasn't a "drop" of hot sauce -- she made him take a big mouthful, hold it in his mouth and swish it for several minutes. This can actually cause blisters in young mouths because children don't have the tougher skin of adults.

Two, a frigid shower IS abuse. It is painful and traumatizing and teaches nothing.

Three, there are actual techniques for dealing with difficult children that work on a logical and reasonable level without requiring fear, pain and abuse.

And I agree -- I sincerely hope there are no children in your life.

I've seen children who were treated in the same way and all it did was turn them into angry abusive adults. My grandparents used cold showers and other such actions from the video on my mother, aunts and uncles. You know what happened when they grew up?

One became an alcoholic. One ended up in jail. One developed an anxiety disorder and regularly calls her father telling him he's going to hell for what he did to her. My mother has had depression and agoraphobia for most of her life. God forbid you ever have childre.

Exactly- the only thing this woman is teaching that poor child is that using abuse (physical, mental, verbal) is how to deal with problems. Great example.

I'm all for not mollycoddling kids, but...

She didn't use a drop of hot sauce, it was a big mouthful. She forced him to swish it around and hold it in his mouth while she screamed at him. And it was pretty clear that he doesn't like hot sauce. He was obviously petrified and having to swish it in his mouth was clearly a punishment. When he spit out the hot sauce, it was plain that she didn't just use a drop on the tip of his tongue; it was a big mouthful.

And the cold shower was in Alaska, not Utah. He was screaming the whole time while she held him under the frigid water.

I'd like to see how she would have reacted under the same circumstances.

for a mother to monitoring the shower of a seven year old boy?

What isn't shown, is that this child is adopted, and has a twin brother. When she saw the children before adopting them, she just "knew" and felt attached to his twin, but not him....

The other twin is compliant and very "good" kid. Hmm...willing to bet that this child protects his "good" brother and takes on the brunt of the abuse.

Who the fuck adopts a child out of an abusive situation, and does something like this to them? And worse, allows others to see it?

As others have posted, it wasn't just a drop...and not just a cold shower. This bitch was calculating and the kid knew EXACTLY what was going to happen to him. THAT is abusive...

This woman is sick. I felt physically ill hearing his little screams from the shower.

She seems like one of those clever sociopaths. Notice how she started to play the victim?

On another note, is it just me or are people getting crazy? Is it just the holidays? Everywhere I go, I see people screaming at their kids. It's frightening. You can see the stress on their faces. Kids who are abused end up with PTSD. This kid will be a menace to society if there is no intervention.

I want to cry, i couldnt watch the whole thing.

I saw it too; couldn't make it through the whole thing. As a parent who loves her children unconditionally, unlike the Mormon God (Dallin H.Oax, I'm lookin' at you) it was just too painful. Posted the link to it on Facebook where others were also apalled and outraged. Don't know if any TBM acquaintance saw it; if they did, they were absolutely silent, just like they were when I lambasted Boyd KKK and his horrendous conference diatribe. I don't keep silent anymore about abuses & so forth. I realize that the main issue is the abuse, not this woman's religion, but the fanaticism that Mormonism nurtures & cultivates at its most extreme is undeniably behind her punitive parenting. As so many others have already pointed out, the most chilling thing about it is how absolutely right and justified she felt about what she was doing, to the point of sending it to Dr. Phil as a 'model of good parenting and control'. Thank God she did, so that her true colors were exposed. I also want to seewhat sort of followup there is.

This type of punishment/parenting is not unusual in my ward in Stansbury Park, Utah. One time in Relief Society, different methods of punishment were discussed and quite a few mentioned doing this exact thing. I even tried hot sauce because everyone talked about how effective it was (the sauce I bought wasn't very hot). I never did try the cold shower, just couldn't do that to another human being. I always thought I was a bad parent because I wouldn't try all the various forms of discipline all my morgbot neighbors embraced.
I'm so glad I didn't.
The beginning of the end for me was feeling resentment towards my children for not being able to sit still during sacrament. Then one day, walking home, I realized that if something made me resent my children, it was not something I should include in my life.
Thank goodness for wiggly children.

They're good, the morg is not.

She:
"Hi, my name is Jessica. I am a Mormon".

Everybody, together: "Hi, Jessica".

My TBM mother used to make us put Cayenne pepper in our mouths. And for time out... try sitting in the closet for upwards of 12 hours.

It was sickening.

Here is a link to Dr. Phil's website for some additional information on the episode and Dr. Phil's responses and links to additional tapes and transcripts.

http://drphil.com/shows/show/1545/

A quote from her husband:

"Jessica’s husband, Gary, explains how he feels about his wife’s methods for disciplining Kristoff. 'Jessica is more frustrated than angry, because **we’ve added more kids to the house**. When Jessica gets frustrated, I see her having a shorter temper. Kristoff has not reacted to much of our discipline,' he says.

'The idea for hot sauce came up from my wife talking to a friend of hers. In the military, we use cold showers for discipline, basically to get people’s attention. When Kristoff gets a cold shower, he pays attention at the moment. I feel like I’m strict with my kids.'”

The real problem, imho, is that the church is quite useless at actually identifying this kind of bad parenting and helping people become better at almost anything, except paying tithing and being obedient to church leaders.

I think she was stake primary president, or something.

A lay clergy is almost useless at really helping people become better people.

"Paying attention," my left foot.

He's paying attention to getting out of a freezing shower, and that's about it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 12:28PM by readthissomewhere.

http://mormonism-unveiled.blogspot.com/2010/11/anchorage-lds-mom-jessica-beagley.html


"Appears On Dr. Phil's "Mommy Confessions" To Discuss "Hot Sauce" Child Discipline, Accused Of Child Abuse
An Anchorage, Alaska woman identified as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently appeared on Dr. Phil's program, where her child discipline techniques were discussed. As a result, she has been characterized as a "child abuser". Primary media story published by the Anchorage Press; supplemental story in the Anchorage Daily News. Additional sources of information include the Recovery from Mormonism (RFM) forum and Free Republic. This post is intended to assemble and consolidate all the disparate information from the various sources.

The woman is identified as Jessica Beagley, married to Gary Beagley, an Anchorage patrol officer who was once a detective (there's no indication he was "flopped back into the bag" for disciplinary reasons; APD actually proposes to flop a few more detectives to cope with budgetary constraints). They have six children; one of them, a seven-year-old boy, is a Russian adoptee. They are identified as members of the LDS Church; reference is made to a group photo of the family posing outside the LDS temple in Bountiful, Utah. According to RFM, Jessica was recently the stake-level Primary president.

The controversy came to a head during a November 17th episode of the Dr. Phil showed called “Mommy Confessions”. One of Bagley's other kids shot a video of Jennifer disciplining her seven-year-old Russian adoptee son, Kristoff. On the video, Jessica is observed to be verbally reproving Kristoff for having received three discipline cards in elementary school for throwing pencils, sword-fighting with another child, and acting out in another class, and then lying to Jessica about the in-school discipline"

Jessica is sick, and her parenting style, at the very least, is completetely ineffective. This much is obvious to most everyone but Jessica herself. Hopefully the State of Alaska will help this poor woman and her children.

But I also think this kind of day-time titillation just as sick. I despise the Oprahization of our culture and particularly the Dr. Phil variety of it. Springer was at least a joke. Dr. Phil most assuredly takes himself seriously. I think the latter far more dangerous.

An example of the danger of this kind of "entertainment", why the blatantly manipulative background music during the clip? Why did the Dr. Phil Show feel it was necessary? What effect does it have on the viewer?

What this woman is doing is wrong and is clearly harmful to the child. But a nation watching this shit and getting all self-satisfied and self-righteous over it is even more wrong and harmful. Again, why the manipulative (but very subtle) background music during the clip? What effect does it have on the viewer? Why was it put there?

Human

I agree wholeheartedly. To cause this to happen to a child for entertainment value should be considered a legal issue against the mother.

I am glad that she is not like my mother who left scars still visible 40 years later, but there are a lot of scars that can not be healed that are not visible. I can see them already etched deep in the childs soul. The daughter filming this is sure to become just like her mother- manipulative to the extreme, and reinforced by the awesomeness of being mentioned on television, there is no reason to feel she did wrong.

This mother is a bitch. I can't wait to read the headlines telling us that all of her children have been forcibly and forever removed from her home.