Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

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Open Letter to Roy Lessin:

Author of "Spanking:
Why, When, How"

 
 
 

      Beth Fenimore's father illustrated Roy Lessin's 1979 book "Spanking: Why, When, How."   As a child,
Beth's family attended the church where Roy Lessin preached.   Her parents and the Lessins socialized
together and babysat each other's children.  Beth and her siblings grew up with the Lessin's children, Joey and
Lydia.   Beth's parents applied Roy Lessin's "godly" methods of corporal punishment under his personal
tutelage, and in at least one case, Beth was "lovingly corrected" with a switch by Roy Lessin's wife, Charlene
("Char") Lessin.

      In this stunning and courageous letter, Beth confronts the man who taught her parents how to use corporal
punishment to extinguish all outward evidence of childish emotions displeasing to the parent, and how to instill
instant, unthinking obedience based on fear.  She vividly describes the dark cloud Char and Roy Lessin's
methods cast over her childhood, as well as the long lasting psychological, emotional and medical harm which
resulted from Roy Lessin's so-called "loving correction of the rod."

 
 
Beth Fenimore
September 7, 2005
Open Letter to Roy Lessin
Author of Spanking: Why, When, How
 

Dear Roy,

After 19 years I have found the courage to write you this letter declaring how
your choice to teach and write about spanking has affected me. My purpose in
writing you this open letter is to share with you and others that the spanking
approach you recommend is harmful. My parents both know my view on this
issue. I have talked to them, as well, about how their decision to implement your
spanking recommendations affected me. I have a mission. My mission is to warn
new parents who are innocently trying to raise happy, healthy children. Should
just one parent spare their child the kind of pain that I endured at the hands of
my parents implementing your spanking recommendations, my pain will have
more meaning than it does now.
 

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

  "Should just one parent spare their child the

kind of pain that I endured at the hands of my
parents implementing your spanking
recommendations, my pain will have more
meaning than it does now"
I want to begin by talking about your spanking approach so that we'll both be
using the same language. In your book, you describe a process by which a parent
performs a spanking on their child. 

The first step is to use the right instrument; if a parent uses their hand, the
child might become fearful of the parent's hand. 
 
The second step is to spank promptly.
The third step is to find a private place in which the parent can conduct the
spanking. 
 
The fourth step is for the parent to explain to the child why they are going
to be spanked. 
 
The fifth step is to get the child into a good spanking position (when my
parents and other adults—such as your wife, Char—spanked me, the ritual
involved removing the child's clothing); you recommend bending the child
over a bed, or bending a smaller child over the parent's lap. 
 
The sixth step is to hit the child on the buttocks with a stick or other
spanking implement. 
 
The seventh step is to continue spanking until the child yields a broken cry,
which indicates a broken will. 
 
The eighth step is reconciliation. You recommend that parents comfort the
child until sufficient time has passed, and then ask the child to stop crying.
You recommend that parents spank a child who displays a "wrong attitude"
by continuing to cry too long after a spanking.

The language in your book is much more "sugary" than what I've just written.
But my description does not come close to what it feels like to receive a Roy
Lessin spanking. So I'll describe what a Roy Lessin spanking is like.

My first spanking was when I was six months old. My mother spanked me for
crying after she put me to bed. She had to spank me repeatedly to teach me to
not cry when she put me down. I know about this incident because my mother
used to tell all new mothers about how young I was when she started spanking
me. My last spanking occurred when I was thirteen years old. The Roy Lessin

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

spankings that I remember most vividly took place between the ages of three and
seven, because I hardly went a few days without a spanking at that time. I'd like
to share with you, and others, what it was like receiving a Roy Lessin spanking.

The moment I found out I was going to get a Roy Lessin spanking, I felt
physically ill. Because the Roy Lessin spanking is a ritual, the ordeal could take
a long time. (When I refer to a spanking ritual, I'm referring to the steps you
outline in your book.) This was hard for me because I had a child's sense of
time. The dread bubbled up and consumed me, and stayed with me until the
spanking ritual was over. My parents usually sent me to a private room, such as
my own room, and there I would wait until one of my parents came. (My dad
spanked me the most, so in my illustration let's assume my father is conducting
the Roy Lessin spanking.) My father would explain the reason for the spanking.
This was an excruciating process because I had to listen while knowing what
was coming. Since I might face back-to-back Roy Lessin spankings, I had to be
careful not to be disrespectful in my listening to my father. I had already
developed irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and would feel my guts cramp up
with anxiety during his speech. Then he would ask me to take off my pants and
underwear. I would feel deeply embarrassed because my father was not supposed
to see me naked. (My family had a high standard for modesty.) My humiliation
and fear would grow immeasurably as I leaned over the bed, my father's knee, or
whatever was around. My private parts were helplessly exposed as my dad laid
his hand on my back. Trying to pull away and defend myself would only mean
that the spanking would be longer, or I'd get a back-to-back spanking. The stick,
paddle inscribed with scripture verses, or belt would swish violently through the
air before slapping painfully on my buttocks or thighs. I would scream in pain
and anguish. I cannot 
 

 "The stick, paddle inscribed with scripture

verses, or belt would swish violently through the
air before slapping painfully on my buttocks or
thighs. I would scream in pain and anguish."
remember a moment of thinking of resisting, rebelling, or trying to "win"
anything, as you recommend parents should watch for as they hit their children. I
just tried to survive the best way I knew how. The screaming, the hitting, and the
pain would continue for unknown amounts of time. When the gruesome pain
ended, I would begin to battle with my emotions and my body. I knew that
crying too much could mean that my father would start a Roy Lessin spanking
ritual all over again to correct my "wrong attitude."

My parents were never concerned about the marks they left on my body. We
never talked about the painful marks on my body, or how clothing, baths, chairs,
etc. hurt. The message was clear: there was no pain. Pulling up my pants was
incredibly painful, and so was sitting on my father's lap. Because "there was no

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

pain," I had to pretend my buttocks and thighs didn't hurt even though they did,
while my father would wrap his arms around me and "comfort" me. I was not
like the idealized children you describe in your book, not knowing the difference
between the spanking implement and the parent. My father caused me that pain
—not a stick! My father's arms scared me, and I feared my father like I've feared
no other man. His touch repulsed me. I was the same with my mother. (To this
day, I cannot physically tolerate either parent touching me. I feel physically ill at
their touch.) My father would pray, and I could hardly go along but for fear of
yet another Roy Lessin spanking. After we prayed, it was time for me to be
happy. But my insides would be a mess. Tears would threaten to come back and
cause me more pain and anguish. I had to pretend that I wasn't sad, and that I
wasn't in pain. This would be my greatest lesson: to be happy no matter how I
felt inside. It would take me a few back-to-back spankings, but I would learn. It
would be a lesson I'd learn for life—being falsely happy regardless of how my
body felt.
 

  "To this day, I cannot physically tolerate either

parent touching me. I feel physically ill at their
touch."
One aspect of receiving a Roy Lessin spanking is the sexual aspect. It's taken me
years to even begin to allow myself to speak of this aspect. You see, as a child I
had no idea what sex was. I just had this funny sensation that came and went
during the Roy Lessin spanking ritual. To my great dismay, I learned that sexual
stimulation can be cross-wired with the painful ritual of spankings. This cross-
wiring was a real problem for me. Because I couldn't cope with the double
message of love and pain, I avoided developing an intimate relationship with a
man for a very long time. It took years for me to find a healthy sexuality outside
the memories I have of the Roy Lessin spankings. I struggled with this double
message as a child. I feel a deep sense of shame as I remember hitting and
torturing my dolls and Barbies when no one was around. I needed some way to
express the fear, pain, and sexual confusion I felt inside; yet my childish mind
couldn't comprehend the significance of what I was doing.

My parents were your "A" students. They followed your eight steps occasionally
reducing the entire Roy Lessin spanking ritual to a few swats—not very often,
though. My butt and thighs would sting for a long time after a Roy Lessin
spanking ritual, so I'd go into the bathroom and use my mother's mirror to look
at my behind. I remember seeing red stripes crisscrossing my buttocks and my
thighs. At times, I had old marks underneath the new marks. My parents
conducted several Roy Lessin spanking rituals a day when I was a young child. I
remember a teacher at school asking me one day why I didn't just sit still. I
couldn't tell her that it was because the marks on my butt hurt so bad sitting in
the little wooden chair.

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

Now that we've established what a Roy Lessin spanking is and what it felt like
to receive one, let's move on to wrong attitudes. I'd like to begin by telling you a
story of what it was like having an adult, in this case your wife, address my
"wrong attitude."

One day my parents were moving. I was four, and woke up to a house that I no
longer recognized. I asked my mother what was happening. Whatever answer
she gave, I didn't understand. She sent my brothers and me to your house, where
your wife Char was to baby-sit us. On the way out the door, I saw our small
parakeet Chirpy sitting in his cage outside our house near some bushes. Now,
Chirpy wasn't supposed to be outside. A dark feeling of dread came over me. I
was frightened as I walked to the car, looking at Chirpy frantically chirping in
his cage next to a stack of boxes. At some point, at your house, Char put all of
us down for a nap. The confusion and fear filled me, and I wondered if I'd ever
see my home again. When the room was quiet, my emotions burst out of me. I
cried. Char came in and told me to stop, and I couldn't. So she performed one of
your spanking rituals. I went back to my napping spot. I lay there for the
remainder of my nap—unable to sleep, afraid to move, filled with emotions of
dread and fear so large I thought I'd explode. But I had to make Char believe
that I was cheerfully obeying her. I put on whatever face I could to convince her,
and pretended to be asleep. I had to pretend I felt different than I did inside.

There are two points I'd like to make about bad attitudes. The first is that, as you
can see above, adults do not have "powers" that allow them to read the minds of
children. My parents made this mistake over and over again. They weren't much
better at reading my mind or how I felt than your wife was that day I stayed at
your house. You see, parents make mistakes. There's no getting around this. But
when a parent uses a force as violent as a Roy Lessin spanking, mistakes are
truly damaging, especially when the spanking ritual involves breaking the child's
will—or breaking any part of a child's psyche!
 

  "When a parent uses a force as violent as a

Roy Lessin spanking, mistakes are truly
damaging, especially when the spanking ritual
involves breaking the child's will"
The second point about "wrong attitudes" is that you tell parents that their
children will be happy with your mode of discipline, or even prefer being
spanked. I want to say that I didn't experience that joy. I built myself a cheerful,
obedient shell. I lived in that shell, only peeking my head out when I felt safe,
for 30 years. It took me another seven years to actually try taking the cheerful,
obedient shell off—only to run back into it when something felt like the "old
fears of my childhood." I have not been happy living in this shell, constantly
pretending to be happy when I felt miserable inside. When I think of a happy
child, I think of a child who feels free to express their ideas, thoughts, and

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

emotions. I think that a parent's job is to teach a child how to express their
emotions, not hit them with a stick until the child displays the emotion of the
parent's choosing.

You write about parents disciplining children for disobedience. It seems pretty
simple. The parents set up some rules and the children follow them. When
disobedience is based on a child doing or behaving just as the parent asks,
following those rules becomes much harder. As your teachings played out in my
growing-up years, I found that I violated more rules than I could keep track of.
Not only that, one of the rules was to follow through without my mom or dad
asking a second time. So perfection became the rule, and perfection was
something I failed at miserably. Even in the cheerful, obedient shell, I was not
completely safe. The life lesson I took away was that there is no such thing as
second chances. I took this lesson to school, and found that I was afraid to try.
Not that my parents didn't encourage me—it was just that if the encouragement
didn't work, which it often didn't, they'd spank me for getting letters backwards,
words wrong on spelling tests, and so forth. Basically, they spanked me for not
trying hard enough. I haven't even mentioned the hundreds of other issues they
spanked me for. I learned how to live helplessly. Not only did I face my own
internal disappointment at not getting something correct, I faced a Roy Lessin
spanking at home when I wore out my encouragement. I grew up thinking that I
was mentally handicapped. Later, as a grown adult, I found out that I'm dyslexic
—something a Roy Lessin spanking would never cure.

For most of my life, I worried that I'd remembered all this wrong. About eleven
years ago I called Char and asked her to listen to while I recalled a Roy Lessin
spanking for her. I described to her in as much detail as I could remember the
beatings I endured again and again. Char told me that my memories were exactly
what you and she had taught my parents. I had not remembered wrong!

I read your book a few weeks ago. I was again surprised to realize I knew and
remembered your teachings very well. After the years of growing up around your
family and hearing you preach at Outreach, your book brought back your painful
teachings and the painful memories I've been trying so hard to live with. I kept
wanting to grab my cheerful, obedient shell because to this day I feel scared
when I think of all the Roy Lessin spankings and teachings.
 

  "[Your wife] told me that my memories were

exactly what you and she had taught my
parents.  I had not remembered wrong!"
Both Char, during my call with her, and you, in your first book, talk about
spankings having a higher purpose in saving the soul. You reference Proverbs
20:30: "Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost
parts." Those "blows" left horrible marks on my body that made sitting difficult
and bathing with soap sting horribly, and they terrified my spirit.

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

Feeling terrified isn't the only outcome I live with. Ten years ago a
gastroenterologist diagnosed me with IBS, a condition I've had since I was
around three years old. Because of the fierce anxiety I felt because of the Roy
Lessin spankings, I had terrible chronic stomachaches and diarrhea while I was
growing up and as an adult. Five years ago my psychiatrist diagnosed me with
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and I began to work through my deeply
rooted fears of my parents and the Roy Lessin spankings. Later a physician
associate (PA) diagnosed me with asthma and severe allergies from a poor
immune system, a result of my chronic anxiety. The same PA told me that I'm at
high risk for colon cancer because of the years of IBS as a result of my anxiety.
Roy, these problems are all due to my parents implementing your teachings
using Roy Lessin spankings to correct a multitude of childhood blunders and
attitudes. I can't imagine why a parent would want these outcomes for their child.
I may have looked happy and acted lovingly towards my parents, but I was
emotionally and physically sick inside! Your teachings gave me no option but to
live a horrible lie of looking happy when I was miserable.
 

  "I may have looked happy and acted lovingly

towards my parents, but I was emotionally and
physically sick inside! Your teachings gave me
no option but to live a horrible lie of looking
happy when I was miserable."
For almost every day of my life, I fear people. If people like my parents, and
friends of my family such as you and Char, would hurt me this badly, what
horrible things would others do to me? I was supposed to be safe with my
family and friends growing up! I especially fear men in authority roles. I
occasionally look even at people I know, and who I know to be safe, with terror
just because they've spoken in a tone that reminds me of those early times. I fear
making mistakes. I choose not to have children of my own because a child's
screams scramble my insides.

Remember all those sermons at Outreach that you, Don Leetch, Dean Kerns, and
a few others delivered? I still hear children screaming as their parents spanked
them outside the church sanctuary during Sunday morning service during those
sermons. I remember the screams of my siblings. I remember on a Friday night,
someone was preaching and a dad took a baby outside for a spanking, and a
neighbor called the police. We stopped the church service, and you went out
with your bible to explain to the officer why it was fine for the parent to spank
their baby. All of us inside prayed that the officer would understand and not take
the baby away.

As a grown woman I still fear Roy Lessin spankings. I sometimes wake up in

the middle of the night begging my husband to "not let them get me."

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

  "My father and I have talked several times

about Roy Lessin spankings. He has asked for
forgiveness, and is horrified by what he has
done."
My father and I have talked several times about Roy Lessin spankings. He has
asked for forgiveness, and is horrified by what he has done. These conversations
have been incredibly painful for both of us, and I'm now 37 years old! I believe
that he thought he was doing the right thing. You were a leader in the church he
believed in, and you were his friend. Our families socialized together. This was
not some teaching he picked up somewhere, and then went off to make the best
of it.

I hope that by this point you begin to see how your simple, sweet words about
raising children are actually harmful. Perhaps you're wondering if I want to have
a dialogue with you, and talk about what you really meant by your early book.
Perhaps you've adopted a policy of grace, and now recommend that parents
spank less and not on bare skin? The truth is, I don't want to know. If I needed
justification or reasoning for your teachings, I could use your book as a
reference. What I'd like you to do is reconsider your position after carefully
looking at how your teachings affected me. Would a loving parent really want to
raise a child to fear people, to wear a cheerful and obedient shell, or to live with
PTSD and other ailments? I hope the answer you come to is No. I hope that you
realize that hitting a child for any reason is not loving. Then, I hope, you join
the cause to end corporal punishment in the homes of children. I came into this
world a happy, healthy baby. For no other reason than the Roy Lessin spankings,
I now fight for my physical and mental health. Please help others and me so this
doesn't happen
 

  "I came into this world a happy, healthy baby.

For no other reason than the Roy Lessin
spankings, I now fight for my physical and
mental health."
to any more children. Help end corporal punishment. Help end child abuse. If
Jesus said, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it
would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he
were thrown into the sea" (Mark 9:42), I can't image that God would condone
such behavior in people who claim to be loving parents.

Sincerely,
Bethany A. Fenimore

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

Roy Lessin, author of "Spanking: Why, When, How"  with Lydia, Joey and Char, circa 1978.
 
 
 

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

Beth Fenimore: "I remember knowing my mother was watching me and telling
me to smile for the photographer. I felt intimidated by my mother to smile.
No matter what facial expression I had, my eyes seemed to show my anxiety.
Looking at this photo now, I feel deeply sad."
 
 
 

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

Beth Fenimore: "As a kid, I was on the watch  for the moods and emotions of others.
I was usually distracted with anxiety wondering if I had done anything
wrong that would cause me to get a Roy Lessin spanking."

 
 
 

A Letter From Beth's Sister

Chris,

   I have just finished reading Beth's letter to Roy and looking at your website.  I was so struck by
what I read and saw that I wanted to e-mail you my thoughts.  I am Beth's younger sister and have
supported her through this time of confronting both our parents and Roy.  I am so glad that she found
you and your website, and I can see such wonderful and beautiful changes in her life.  She is happier
then I have ever seen her.  I wanted to tell you Thank you for your support against the corporal
punishment toward children.  I support you and Beth fully in this effort. 

   Many times I am struck by how ugly people can be toward the most innocent things in life such as

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Beth Fenimore's Open Letter to Roy Lessin, author of Spanking: Why, When, How.

children and animals.  I feel more empowered to know that there are people out "there" like you and
Beth trying to make a world a better place and make people aware of how their actions cause horrible
problems.

 Thank you to you and Beth for your passion to making this change in the world and our society.

Dorinda

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