Shiny Happy People

I've spent a lifetime trying to explain my life in IBLP/ATI and I was extremely nervous about how this docuseries would present it. The sense of relief and validation after watching Shiny Happy People (several times) is indescribable. I'm thrilled to be able to point people towards this now and not have to explain the abuse and horror over and over again. Thank you to each one who told their story. It's incredible to see other people who I've never met tell of such similar experiences. Trying to navigate the world around me after learning only what Bill Gothard wanted was nearly impossible, and this series pointed out so many of the deeply ingrained reasons why.

After the second episode, I was unable to watch anymore. It is so vile in how children are treated by these adults.

The first episode did not contain much to be alarming. But, the second episode delved deeper into the headlines. Its when the preview of the 3rd episode was shown, I knew I could not watch any more of this show.

Anyone who has experienced abuse should be warned that this is a very intense show.

Given that, people should watch to learn the pain that was and is inflicted on members of this religion. It is not anything a family should expose their wives or children to.

This religious cult needs to held accountable.

If you think that drag queens, trans folks or anyone from the LGBTQ+ community are out to harm your children, think again. If you think this buckle up. I highly recommend that you watch this mini series. Bill Gothard, Jim Bob Duggar, Josh Duggar and folks like them that are still part of the IBLP or anyone that is part of a fundamentalist Christian organization/cult or holds these harmful views, and there are many, are the real child predators. Not to mention how they treat woman. It's pure evil.

This is a very eye opening series to show how male power and ego can destroy peoples lives. Men that demand power and respect are cowards and weak. Full stop!

The blanket training that they preform on babies is sickening and made me angry and nauseated. If the video of the young boy being spanked at a seminar wasn't horrifying enough, that child predator old man's hand lingered way too long on that boys bottom should be. Why haven't child safety organizations, like CPS, swooped in and raided these places and took these children away? Clearly the system is broken.

These folks are being trained to infect politics throughout the USA as well as other parts of the world. The amount of coverups that this organization has goes WAY deeper than these 4 episodes can dive into.

I'm happy some folks have escaped this tyranny. Their CPTSD runs deep. I wish them well. Folks like Derick Dillard that escaped the IBLP are still spreading their hateful rhetoric and infecting people especially youth with their poison.

These people call themselves Christians but they couldn't be further from Jesus. Jesus taught love and compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding, kindness and sharing for everyone. Not just for people that agreed with him. Jesus never taught whatever these people are teaching. They are teaching and living the compleat opposite of Jesus. I wish they would stop doing outrageous things then hide behind Jesus. I'm not religious but I can defiantly spot the hypocrisy here.

These folks and folks like them are the real monsters. There is no question.

I watched the Duggar's show from time to time when its was airing. I always thought they had too many children, mostly because the older ones (particularly the girls) had to parent their siblings and did not have their own needs met. I always thought that Michelle's little baby voice was creepily childlike and submissive, that the children were almost certainly not getting a real education, and that by making sex and the body itself so taboo, they were just going to create problems.

So, when Josh Duggar was found to have molested his sisters and other girls, and then to have moved on to actual child pornography, I was somewhat surprised but not entirely shocked. Like one of the escapees interviews said, monsters are created. They taught him that women should submit to men and children to adults, then built a giant wall around the subject of sex to the point that he grew up with a warped view of it. They also used corporal punishment (I didn't know how bad it was, yikes). I'm not excusing him. The guy belongs in jail. But it is certainly largely his parents' fault that he ended up like this.

I just felt heartsick and angry on behalf of all of the people interviewed who had to live like that for so many years before escaping. Cults like this really do give religion a bad name. I know plenty of people who grew up in large families and/or religious households who were treated with respect and love and grew up to be happy, productive, decent adults. I also know people who were home schooled who got good educations and went on to go to college and be successful. Notably, they were always given social outlets through sports and other activities.

This movement is rotten on every level. And yes, that includes the political wing. Peaking behind that particular dark curtain was pretty disturbing. If a couple wants to have a large family, that's their choice. But it should be a choice, not a method of keeping women barefoot, pregnant and beneath the heels of their spouses and fathers.

I started watching the Duggars when they started on TLC with their series. I was a young mom with two children, and a Christian. I found myself marvelling at how Michelle maintained her level of calm, never raising her voice nor a hand to her brood of children. Homeschooling them. The children being so well behaved, so sweet. It would make me feel substandard as a mom. I would lose my temper with my kids. My kids were not always well behaved. My husband would say, "There's something wrong with this family. Something is not right."

Well that was all before 2015. In 2015 viewers were enlightened that all was not shiny in the Duggar home. Josh had molested five underage girls when he was a young teenager. Then more issues with Josh. He was outed as an Ashley Madison patron. These last few years with the despicable finding of Josh having downloaded some of the worst images of babies and children being SAd, ultimately resulting in his incarceration, viewers see that all is not right in the Duggar home. And yet, Jim Bob continues to protest fiercely. I have never heard Jim Bob or Michelle apologize to their daughters, who were Josh's victims, to his wife Anna, who experienced the ultimate betrayal by his infidelity, nor to the children of his video downloads, who were victimized in the worst way, an unforgivable crime to which I believe his sentence is not long enough.

The docuseries sheds more light on Bill Gothard and IBLP. It's true that the set up is a perfect storm for women to be abused with zero accountability. Actually, for women to feel the burden and the cause of the harm that they endure, all while smiling and minimizing the crime.

IBLP is a cult. People follow blindly. I am glad that they have been exposed. My concern is that the Duggars have made IBLP seem like a wonderful extension of the Gospel, and that more unsuspecting believers have bought the lie and are now involved in it, and subsequently bringing harm to their families. This cult is shrouded in lies and hypocrisy. The first evidence of that is when JimBob is asked to be featured in Parent magazine, and he is not transparent as to the reason why Josh is not at home. He is at an IBLP work camp for molesting his sisters, and Jim Bob simply summons him to return.

What is hidden in darkness eventually comes to light. Unfortunately it came too late. Jim Bob has amassed millions (which he kept for himself, while exploiting children and putting them on tv, which by the way is satanic for the IBLP and verboten in their households), and many many of the vulnerable have been irreparably harmed in the name of religion.

As Jesus said, better to have a millstone hung around your neck than to cause harm to a precious little child.