Remember the Christian Alamo
Evangelist Lester Roloff drew a line in the dirt to keep the State of Texas from regulating his Rebekah Home for Girls. Years later, George W. Bush's plan to free faith-based institutions from government rules handed Roloff's disciples a long-sought victory. But this Alamo had no heroes—only victims like DeAnne Dawsey.
Liam says: As an evangelistic Christian I can understand the perspective of Roloff and his people. However, their treatment of these girls, though "troubled", just does not seem to be very Christian. They do not seem to show the LOVE of Christ. It would seem to me that treatment such as this would do more to chase someone away from the Lord than to draw them to Him. (January 14th, 2009 at 12:10pm)
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On New Year's Eve, 1985, time ran out. A court order stated that Cameron had to obtain a state license for the youth homes or shut them down by January 1. He elected to do neither. Instead, he and several church employees spirited away the one hundred or so teenagers left in the homes, loading them onto a convoy of buses and beginning the long drive north to Missouri, where a state license would not be required. Back at the compound, the Texas flag was lowered to half-staff. A church spokesperson stood on the steps of the empty Rebekah Home and told reporters, "The Roloff Homes are in exile." They would not return for fourteen years.
DEANNE DAWSEY'S MOTHER, DEBBIE, had learned of the Rebekah Home after doing an Internet search for Christian girls' schools. She knew nothing of the home's history, and though she had heard Lester Roloff's name before, she knew only that he had been a famous preacher. Before enrolling her daughter there, Debbie had toured the home and met with Wiley Cameron and his wife, Fay. She was impressed with what she saw. "I felt like I was leaving my child with kind grandparents," she said. "They said, 'We will take care of her as if she's our very own.'" The Rebekah Home seemed to be exactly what she had been seeking: a strict religious school that would provide DeAnne with an education as well as moral and spiritual instruction. Gone was much of the fencing that had encircled the home during its previous incarnation, which might have raised her suspicions. So were some of the crueler punishments. Kneeling was no longer used, and paddling was employed only sparingly—most likely because of the circumstances under which the Rebekah Home and the Anchor Home for Boys had closed in Missouri: The Kansas City Times had run an investigative article in 1987 on physical abuse at the homes. Two days after the article ran, Cameron shut them down and returned to Texas. None of this was known to DeAnne's mother. "I had no idea that this place was a wolf in sheep's clothing," she said.
WILEY CAMERON KEPT HOPE ALIVE that he might someday reopen the Rebekah Home in Texas. He had been a loyal soldier in the Christian Alamo—Roloff referred to the two of them as "Travis and Bowie"—and he saw it as his sacred duty to continue Roloff's fight long after his mentor was dead and gone. "We believe that we have a mandate from God Himself," Cameron said in an interview this fall. "To take a license is to admit that there's someone above God." Having lost his case in the courtroom, however, he knew the only way to prevail was to spur the Legislature to change Texas law. After years of failure, he saw his chance in 1995, when George W. Bush became governor. "For eighteen years we tried to get bills passed that would allow us to operate without a license," Cameron said. "We worked and labored without any results, and then finally Mr. Bush came to help. When he appointed the faith-based task force, we saw an opportunity."
In 1995 Bush convened a fifteen-member advisory task force made up largely of clergy and charged them with two objectives: to identify state laws and regulations that hindered the work of faith-based groups and to recommend ways to lift some of those regulations. The task force was formed after Bush took an interest in an ongoing battle between the Texas Commission of Alcohol and Drug Abuse and a faith-based drug-treatment center, Teen Challenge, in San Antonio. The agency had threatened to shut down the rehab center after citing it for a list of violations, chiefly its failure to hire licensed drug counselors. Teen Challenge instead employed counselors who used prayer and Bible study—not medical and psychological training—as their guide. Bush stepped into the fray and defended Teen Challenge, whose philosophy resonated with his own experience: He had shaken a drinking problem in 1986 after experiencing a profound spiritual awakening and knew the role that faith could play in recovery. Bush was also an admirer of Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas journalism professor whose influential 1992 book, The Tragedy of American Compassion, argued that the war on poverty was a failure and that government should turn to faith-based groups to solve the nation's social problems.
Spurned by the state for more than twenty years, Lester Roloff's ministry at last found a receptive audience in the task force, to which Cameron spoke in 1996. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune, one Roloff surely would have relished. Don Willett, who was overseeing the task force for the governor, had Cameron speak to its members about his theological opposition to state oversight. (Willett would go on to draft the legislation that stemmed from the task force's work.) Cameron was accompanied by several residents from his adult homes, the Lighthouse and the Jubilee Home for Ladies, who spoke about the ways in which the ministry had transformed their lives. When the task force issued its report, "Faith in Action," later that year, it recommended that faith-based child-care facilities be allowed to exempt themselves from state licensure and instead submit to "alternative accreditation"—that is, oversight by a non-governmental body, such as a group of pastors.
Governor Bush, in his 1997 state-of-the-state speech, urged lawmakers to act upon the report. He put forth a faith-based legislative agenda that included a bill—sponsored by Representative John Smithee, of Amarillo, and Senator David Sibley, of Waco, both Republicans—that allowed faith-based child-care facilities to opt out of state licensure. The bill carried no endorsements from any organized religious groups, since all well-known denominations—whether they were Baptist or Jewish, Catholic or Lutheran—had long welcomed state oversight of their child-care facilities. Instead, the primary witness to speak in favor of the bill before the House Human Services Committee was the Roloff Homes' own attorney, David Gibbs III, of Seminole, Florida. But Gibbs never identified his client to lawmakers during 45 minutes of testimony. He stated only that he represented hundreds of churches across Texas. Even when Representative Jim McReynolds, of Lufkin, asked what would keep the bill from being exploited by fringe groups like "the Branch Davidians and the Lester Roloffs," Gibbs—whose firm had represented Roloff and his ministry for 25 years—stayed mum about his firm's association with the preacher. ("I was never specifically asked if I represented the Roloff Homes," said Gibbs in an interview this fall.) One would think the omission was not lost on Don Willett, who had been friends with Gibbs from their days together at Duke University School of Law. There was little debate in committee, and while Cameron registered himself as favoring the bill, he did not testify or say where he pastored. With the backing of the governor, the bill advanced to the House floor and passed easily.
The only legislator to voice deep reservations about the bill was Senator Carlos Truan, of Corpus Christi. In the seventies Truan had chaired the committee that had held hearings on abuse at the Rebekah Home and had supported the Child Care Licensing Act in 1975. "There was no need to undo a law that we had worked so hard to pass," said Truan this fall. "It was passed for a good reason—to protect children from abuse. The idea that suddenly someone could hold up the Bible and exempt himself from the law was outrageous." Truan made his case on the Senate floor, arguing that mainstream religious groups had always welcomed state oversight and that the bill might allow people like Lester Roloff to set up shop again. "Sibley said this was something Governor Bush wanted, and that was the only anointment it needed—there was no debate," said Truan. Moments before the bill was voted on, however, Sibley agreed to a sunset amendment by Senator Rodney Ellis, of Houston: The law would expire in four years unless the Legislature elected to renew it. The bill passed, and Bush signed it into law.
The new law called for private accreditation agencies, rather than the state, to oversee faith-based homes—but the only one to register with the state was the Texas Association of Christian Child-Care Agencies (TACCCA), whose six-person board of directors included none other than Wiley Cameron. The agency did not exist until just after the passage of the bill; it was headed by Pastor David Blaser, a longtime admirer of Lester Roloff's. When the agency applied for state approval, state accreditation officials hesitated, citing the new law's requirement that only "recognized" accrediting agencies be approved. Don Willett, with the governor's office, said that the law was not intended to rule out new agencies, and the state relented after determining that all six board members had experience running child-care facilities. On December 23, 1998, David Blaser wrote the TACCCA's members: "Praise the Lord! We just had a phone call from Austin and the lady in charge of our application said that our application to be an accrediting agency for children's homes and day-care facilities in Texas is approved. God has given us a wonderful Christmas gift. What a blessing it is to know that very soon the Roloff Homes will once again 'help the helpless,' 'encourage the discouraged,' 'give faith to the faithless,' 'guide the lost,' 'trade hope for dope,' and 'preach Christ as the answer for our troubled youth.' . . . Our God hears and answers our prayers."
DEANNE DAWSEY REFUSED TO MEET HER MOTHER'S GLANCE as she was escorted inside the Rebekah Home by two guards who walked on either side of her to prevent her from running. Once inside, she was plunged into a monastic existence that left her cut off from the outside world. "It didn't take long to figure out that this was not an ordinary boarding school," said DeAnne. She was ordered to strip down and told to put on the home's required clothing: a long skirt that covered her legs—no pants were allowed—and a loose-fitting shirt. Then she was taken to the living quarters, where she met many of the 25 or so residents. Some of the girls had been sent there for being in gangs or on drugs, and as they greeted her, they gave her the rundown of how things worked at the Rebekah Home: there were no televisions, no radios, no magazines. Speaking of anything worldly was forbidden, as was singing worldly songs. Meeting eyes with boys in church was barred. Letters going both in and out of the home were read first by the staff and censored. Phone calls, which could be placed only to family members, were monitored. No conversations were private, since staff listened in on the intercoms that were installed in each bedroom. "Just give in and do whatever they want," her roommate told her.
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