#122: Trace & Beth Embry

After a series of major figures (Drake to Egnor) we’re currently doing a number of less distinguished miscreants of the looniverse. Less distinguished does not mean less deranged, just that the impact they have occurs at a slightly more local level.

Trace and Beth Embry are, at least, utterly insane. They run what is known as “Shepherds Hill Farm”, which is a “wilderness therapy program”. That is, it is a behavior modification facility marketed as a Christian Boarding School. Here parents, for the modest sum of $58,900, can sign over parental guardianship for their troublesome young (sinners who quarrel with them, fail to honor Jesus appropriately, has some sort of behavioral condition the Embrys don’t recognize as anything but the devil’s work, and so on). Here the kids live without electricity or contact with the world in the forest and are repeatedly told that they are despicable sinners who will burn if they don’t change their sinful ways and that their parents are equally horrible people who have failed them (Trace and Beth are now their parents). The schooling is strictly Christian – science classes are adamant that evolution is a Satanic lie and primarily rely on Kent Hovind’s writings (an emphasis on very careful explanations of the abominable nature of homosexuality). Apart from that, school for the most part consists of reading from the Bible. A personal recount is here.

Myers weighs in candidly here. Of course, the Embrys have absolutely no clue about mental health issues – which is what they appear to claim to deal with at the camp.

Their website is here (at least Trace’s own website). Here you can among other things download podcasts explaining the relationship between depression, ATD, modesty, sin and the Bible. Or there's also this site featuring Trace and one Walt Reed, who must also be indicted as a complete loon.

Diagnosis: Vile, deranged, and insane Jeebus-nazis. They may mean well, but their evil through ignorance is overwhelming (and, heck, their greed suggests that they may not be having the best of intentions either). These people are truly dangerous and would, if reason and moral considerations reigned, have taken down business a long, long time ago.