Monday, March 5, 1990

Member of Good Life Church Says She Thinks She's Doing God's Will

By Mary deZutter, World-Herald Staff Writer

Part 2 of a three-part series.

York, Neb. -- Things are not going Carol Peterson's way.

Mrs. Peterson, 36, has lost custody of her children -- Sadie, 15, Cassie, 11, and William, 6 -- for actions that a district judge deemed to be religiously inspired "abuse." She attends a church that has been accused of brainwashing its members.

She is trying not to worry.

"When you live for God, things don't always go the way you want," she said. "So Sadie and I both have to believe this is what God wants."

Transferred Custody

At the end of January, York County District Judge Bryce Bartu transferred Mrs. Peterson's children to the custody of her former husband and ordered her not to speak to the children about her religion. Testimony in the Peterson case and another child-custody case last summer centered on allegations that the Good Life Pentecostal Church in York, Neb., encourages excessive physical punishment of children and that church members have been subjected to coercion and programming.

Sadie, Mrs. Peterson's oldest daughter, made it clear that she wanted to stay with her mother and continue to attend the church and its tiny school.

She is described as a quiet girl who always has been close to her mother.

"It bothers her a lot that she can't go to (the Good Life) church," Mrs. Peterson said. "Also, we do have a standard to live above sin, and it's hard to find that in the world today."

Mrs. Peterson said she has told Sadie to go to public school and "be the very best Christian witness you know how to be."

Sadie was a child of an earlier marriage but was adopted by Robert Peterson when she was a toddler. Now the girl is "having to stand up against" her adoptive father on some matters of belief, Mrs. Peterson said.

In conversation, Mrs. Peterson comes across as likable, thoughtful and sincerely religious. In a long interview, she said she had searched for something to believe in and had found the truth in the Good Life church.

'Lose Their Souls'

She said she gave up drinking and smoking marijuana. She became "convicted" about her responsibility to make sure her children didn't "lose their souls." She left her husband when he wouldn't follow suit. She learned to submit herself to authority.

She said she genuinely believes she is doing God's will and is "honored to serve him." Her whipping of Cassie might have cost her the custody of her children, but she does not think she punished her daughter too harshly.

Mrs. Peterson admitted that she struck Cassie 43 times with a belt after the girl was suspended from school for picking up crayons during prayer. Mrs. Peterson said the crayon incident was one of a string of incidents in which Cassie displayed a bad attitude.

Mrs. Peterson works part time caring for a disabled man, Winsor Tucker, who said she is a good worker. Religion is a very important part of her life, Tucker said, but she doesn't seem brainwashed to him.

Down a gravel road a few miles outside York live Mrs. Peterson's parents, Clay and Irene Brumbaugh, both 71. Mrs. Brumbaugh testified on behalf of her former son-in-law in the custody case. The farm couple have been trying to get their daughter out of the Good Life church for a year.

"I've been doing nothing but studying cults for a whole year," Irene Brumbaugh said, motioning to stacks of books and papers on her coffee table. She is a slender woman with white hair, glasses and a face etched by age and concern.

Her husband, dressed in faded coveralls, settled his long-legged frame on a straight-backed chair. He has an extra concern today, he said, because the cows are calving.

Study of Cults

Mrs. Brumbaugh said she started her study of cults in the fall of 1988, when Mrs. Peterson, the youngest of the Brumbaughs' four daughters, pulled her children out of public schools to put them in the York Christian Academy, a small, uncertified school attached to the Good life Church.

Of the five people running the academy, only one has finished high school, Mrs. Brumbaugh said, backing up her statement with photocopied state records.

Mrs. Brumbaugh said she first encouraged her daughter's interest in the church because Carol had never had a church affiliation. But by the fall of 1988, the scene had changed.

"We had been having trouble with Carol all summer," Mrs. Brumbaugh said. "She told us, 'You don't know how I feel. Everybody in this family is going to hell except for me.' "

Then grandson Willie became afraid to visit his grandparents and his father, Mrs. Brumbaugh said. "Several times he told me, 'The devil lives here. And he lives at dad's house. He lives in dad's heart.' "

Lawyer Brian C. Bennett of Milford, Neb., was appointed to represent the interests of the children in the custody dispute. In his report to the court, he wrote that Mrs. Peterson "was not willing to try to dispel (Willie's) notion that the devil exists at both Bob's house and her parents' house."

His report also said Sadie had adamantly refused to attend a Methodist church with her father and grandparents because of her belief that the Catholic Church is "the great whore" of the biblical Book of Revelation and that all Protestant churches are "daughters of the great whore."

'Extreme Prejudice'

The Good Life Church, Sadie told Bennett, is neither Catholic nor Protestant.

Bennett wrote that he was concerned about Sadie's "great whore" belief, which he said also was expressed by Mrs. Peterson.

"This type of attitude and teaching tends to instill in people, particularly children, an extreme prejudice against other members of our society," he wrote.

Peterson, a self-employed upholsterer, has found himself suddenly the single father of three. Cassie has been living with him for a year, since shortly after her suspension from the church school. Willie, an easy-going youngster, is handling the change well, his relatives said.

But things are tense with Sadie.

"I need to get some rapport going with my oldest daughter and get some trust going between us." Peterson said. "She and her mother were very close, and she's having a hard time adjusting. She was very convinced there was nothing wrong there to begin with.

"Right now I've got to work with my children. We've got a lot of emotional problems to get past."

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Judge: Children Forced to Obey Doctrine

By a World-Herald Staff Writer

York, Neb. -- York County District Judge Bryce Bartu ruled that Carol Peterson's "religious beliefs have caused a deficiency" in her ability to reasonably rear her children.

In the two years since her divorce, she "has adopted systems of corporal punishment and fear to force obedience and submission of her children to the doctrine of her church," he wrote.

The three children would be likely to suffer physical and mental harm if their mother "were allowed to continue her practice of corporal punishment and fear onto these children," he wrote.

In court filings and in trial Jan. 19 and 24, lawyers for the children's father sought to show that Mrs. Peterson scared and intimidated her children with threats of hell and the loss of their souls and used excessive physical punishment.

Bartu, in his ruling, cited a standard upheld by the Nebraska Supreme Court in 1981: "Generally, courts preserve an attitude of impartiality between religions and will not disqualify a parent because of his or her religious beliefs," he wrote. "However, when such beliefs threaten the health and well-being of children, then the courts have a duty to act to remove children from such abuse."

Bartu ordered Mrs. Peterson not to speak to her children of her religion.

Mrs. Peterson did not have an attorney until the second day of her two-day trial. Richard K. Watts of Osceola, an attorney who has taken the case without fee, said he plans to appeal all aspects of the ruling either in federal court or in the Nebraska Supreme Court.

The federal route is likely to be faster, and the U.S. Court for the District of Nebraska might be willing take up the case because of constutional issues of freedom of speech and religion, Watts said.

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Below are the two other articles in this series.

Tuesday: Social worker who has studied cults says York church fits the description.

Click here to go to the first article.

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Copyright Omaha World-Herald, used by permission, copyright fee paid. Posted November 9, 1997.

Brian Bennett's report    Carol Peterson's brief    Robert Peterson's brief    Supreme Court

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