Religious Freedom: Pastor’s Book Advocates Beating Kids. Some Were Beaten To Death.

An Evangelical Christian pastor and his wife advocate using a “switch” and rubber plumber’s tubing as whips, and withholding food from young children as biblically-approved discipline methods, calling their tactics, “the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules.” Their book, which also likens training children to training dogs, has been praised by some of the very people who followed it and later caused the death of their young children, in some cases by extensive tissue damage, malnutrition, or hypothermia.

To the pastor and his wife, their religious freedom is central to their child-rearing teachings. “To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity,” write the pastor and his wife, Michael and Debi Pearl, whose book, “To Train Up A Child,” has sold over 670,000 copies. The Pearl’s ministry website, No Greater Joy Ministries, boasts, “Michael and Debi Pearl were both raised in Memphis, Tennessee, in good homes, by parents who were faithful to point them to God,” and adds, “Michael has been a pastor, missionary, and evangelist for over 40 years. The Pearls’ five children were all homeschooled, and have grown up to become missionaries and church leaders.”

The New York Times today writes there is a “storm raging around the country over the Pearls’ teachings on child discipline, which advocate systematic use of ‘the rod’ to teach toddlers to submit to authority.”

The Pearls provide instructions on using a switch from as early as six months to discourage misbehavior and describe how to make use of implements for hitting on the arms, legs or back, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line that, Mr. Pearl notes, “can be rolled up and carried in your pocket.”

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In the latest case, Larry and Carri Williams of Sedro-Woolley, Wash., were home-schooling their six children when they adopted a girl and a boy, ages 11 and 7, from Ethiopia in 2008. The two were seen by their new parents as rebellious, according to friends.

Late one night in May this year, the adopted girl, Hana, was found face down, naked and emaciated in the backyard; her death was caused by hypothermia and malnutrition, officials determined. According to the sheriff’s report, the parents had deprived her of food for days at a time and had made her sleep in a cold barn or a closet and shower outside with a hose. And they often whipped her, leaving marks on her legs. The mother had praised the Pearls’ book and given a copy to a friend, the sheriff’s report said. Hana had been beaten the day of her death, the report said, with the 15-inch plastic tube recommended by Mr. Pearl.

“It’s a good spanking instrument,” Mr. Pearl said in the interview. “It’s too light to cause damage to the muscle or the bone.”

Some of the Williamses’ other tactics also seemed to involve Pearl advice taken to extremes; the Pearls say that “a little fasting is good training,” for example, and suggest hosing off a child who has potty-training lapses. The Williamses have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

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The same kind of plumbing tube was reported to have been used to beat Lydia Schatz, 7, who was adopted at age 4 from Liberia and died in Paradise, Calif., in 2010. Her parents, Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, had the Pearl book but ignored its admonition against extended lashing or harm; they whipped Lydia for hours, with pauses for prayer. She died from severe tissue damage, and her older sister had to be hospitalized, officials said.

The Schatzes, who were home-schooling nine children, three of them adopted, are both serving long prison terms after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and torture and she to voluntary manslaughter and unlawful corporal punishment. The Butte County district attorney, Mike Ramsey, criticized the Pearls’ book as a dangerous influence.

The Pearls’ teachings also came up in the trial of Lynn Paddock of Johnson County, N.C., who was convicted of the first-degree murder of Sean Paddock, 4, in 2006. The Paddocks had adopted six American children, some with emotional problems, and turned to the Internet and found the Pearls’ Web site, Ms. Paddock said. Sean suffocated after being wrapped tightly in a blanket. His siblings testified that they were beaten daily with the same plumbing tube. Mr. Paddock was not charged.

Concern about the Pearls and their methods are not new, but have become heightened after recent deaths. One religious blogger, “Tulipgirl,” herself a product of homeschooling, has been writing about the Pearls since 2005, when she wrote, that people have “grave concerns” about the Pearls, and added: