Michael Farris, HSLDA and Patrick Henry's College's Silencing of Sexual Assualt Victims

HSLDA is an organization that as a young fundamentalist homeschooler, I once admired. I bought Micheal Farris' lines about defending freedom, and fighting for homeschooling rights. Now, Micheal Farris and HSLDA sicken me. When I see his smug, smiling face, I see the face of evil. 

That sound a bit harsh, doesn't it? Well, let me review why I feel this way about him. There's been many recent revelations about him and his organization lately,  including the facts about how they once called a man who forced his children to live in cages "a hero", and how they want to dismantle all legal protections for children, all while campaigning for "parent's rights".

Recently, it also came to light how cult leader Bill Gothard, who is facing some extreme allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment of his staff, was Micheal Farris' mentor.

If you thought it couldn't get any worse, there's been new information coming to light about how not only have there been reports of sexual assault and harassment coming out of Patrick Henry College, the college Farris founded, but that staff tried to intimidate victims into silence, but questioned their accounts, and even out rightly blamed them for what was done to them.

Here's more from a report from the magazine New Republic, titled "Sexual Assault at God's Harvard":

Here's what one student had to say:

“Basically, my issue was swept under the rug, and the assaulter received little else but a reprimand,” says a young woman who attended Patrick Henry between 2004 and 2008. The student fell asleep at an off-campus party where there had been drinking and was awoken by a male PHC student assaulting her. She says she reported the incident to Patrick Henry. “The administration encouraged me to not go to the police and said that, because alcohol was involved and I was violating the rules there, they hinted that I could be expelled if I brought light to the incident,” the student says. “The focus was the alcohol. I drank. I sinned. I deserved to be assaulted in the middle of the night.”

One student, after it came to light that she had been cutting herself because of trauma from a sexual assault that had happened before she arrived at PHC was essentially forced out of the college by Sandra Corbitt, Dean of Student Life: