# Granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church's founder escapes \[and others\]. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 28, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634 "2013-01-28T18:35:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2013, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634/41 "2013-02-07T22:52:55Z")
Merged threads and revised thread title. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2013, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634/42 "2013-02-08T00:51:29Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > I’m going to have to take a step back on this one. > > Reading one of the latest things, the woman comes off as “I was a great person before and I’m a great person now!” There is not a hint of humility or true repentance. Just “I don’t believe that anymore” and “I didn’t know I was hurting people” - \*\*NOT \*\*“Oh holy crap, I am _soo_ sorry for hurting people, I was wrong!”. I didn’t see a single word of that. Going from not knowing you’re hurting people to knowing it is a necessary step on the road to being sorry for hurting people. I’m not saying she’s on that road, but I don’t think there’s the evidence to conclude that she’s not. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634/43 "2013-02-09T23:39:23Z")
From this article about Megan: > **[Damsel, Arise: A Westboro Scion Leaves Her Church](https://medium.com/reporters-notebook/damsel-arise-a-westboro-scion-leaves-her-church-d63ecca43e35)** > > Just after 11 last Sunday morning at Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Meeter is starting the Sunday service as he always does. He runs through the opening salutation and the… “That raises the question of regrets and amends, for things they’ve said and signs they’ve held and judgments they’ve passed. “I definitely regret hurting people,” she says. “That was never our intention. We thought we were doing good. We thought it was the only way to do good. And that’s what I’ve always wanted.”” I think she’s still finding her way. It will take some time and some serious work. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634/44 "2013-02-10T00:45:45Z")
> [@thirdwarning](#): > > “I definitely regret hurting people,” she says. “That was never our intention. We thought we were doing good. We thought it was the only way to do good. And that’s what I’ve always wanted.” Sorry, I call Bullshit on this whole idea. She had to have known full well how her hate and evil was being perceived by others and the pain it caused. Never their intent to hurt people? _YOU FUCKING LIAR!!!_ ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634/45 "2013-02-10T01:28:52Z")
I have no reason to like any member of the WBC, I’ve stood cheek by jowl with them as a counterdemonstrator, back in the early 90’s. I’ve heard Fred pretend to be preaching, while he was really mouthing obscenities at us. I’ve heard little old ladies accused of wearing a red skirt “to hide the blood pouring out of their rectum.” But Megan may be telling the truth. Those young people are indoctrinated like you wouldn’t believe. the outside world is presented as being totally against them. You can have no friends “on the outside” Outsiders won’t be real to them. The WBC has picketed at my parent’s church, and my dad witnessed an incident. A woman he knows at the church is an elementary school teacher, who at the time had a young WBC child as one of her students. This kid was at the picket, and through a large picket window saw Mrs. S-----, his teacher. She waved at him, he waved back, and was immediately jerked away by an adult Phelps woman(Mom? Aunt?) When you are “carefully taught to be afraid” of those who are different, by everyone you know, it can be hard to think differently. I’m not making excuses for the grownups, but I am trying to explain. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634/46 "2013-02-11T05:07:10Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Sorry, I call Bullshit on this whole idea. She had to have known full well how her hate and evil was being perceived by others and the pain it caused. Never their intent to hurt people? _YOU FUCKING LIAR!!!_ How? She was brought up to believe that it was their mission to save people from Hell, that it was their most sacred mission. That to do otherwise would harm otherwise. They were basically brainwashed from birth. We’re talking about kids who were kept isolated from anyone else – they had no outside influences. This is all they knew. Read the link from my first post. > [@](#): > > Says Nate: "You known that Lite beer commercial where the guy goes up to the two other guys and gets them to fight over his comparison of two incomparable issues ('Tastes great!/Nope, less Filling!)? My dad does that. “Deep down, my brothers and sisters know they’ve been denied the right to be themselves-free adults-and that combines with all of his abuse and anger toward them until their rage is uncontrollable inside. He helps them find a focus to vent that out. And then he steps aside.” Mark agrees: “Everyone is very angry there. That’s why they overeat. It’s a very charged atmosphere. All that frustrated energy needs to be discharged in some form of conflict.” Though this latter observation is almost 13 years old, it still provides an accurate summation of one reporter’s experience who spent six weeks in daily contact with the family Phelps in the fall of 1993. Fred has a captive family congregation: their fear of hell and fear of him still control them, like the elephant’s rope. His loyal children have fulfilled his ambitions rather than their own. They live at his side and do his work. And since his rage has become their outrage, a wrath they dare not turn back on him, Fred’s kids have eagerly joined in whenever he has sallied forth from Westboro to smite the Adamic race. Margie Phelps admits many in her family have become emotionally dependent on the death-to- gays crusade: “A lot of us have been able to work through emotional problems because of the picketing,” she says. She explains the bonding and the sense of goals have brought them closer and taken each person’s focus off their own personal difficulties. “It would be very hard for them to give up the picketing now,” she observes, and quotes with some apparent relief the circumstances outlined by her father for an end to his grim campaign: the return of Jesus; the capitulation of all homosexuals; “or they kill us. Otherwise it will go on.” He may no longer beat them as he did, but those kids are most likely emotionally and mentally abused. Yikes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/granddaughter-of-westboro-baptist-churchs-founder-escapes-and-others/648634.md?page=2)