[pgkdan]

“He had this old barber’s strap and used it so much that the last six inches were frayed, kind of like a cat-o-nine-tails, and he’d hit you with it and it’d wrap around your hips and rip the skin,” Nate says. “By the time I turned eight I remember he had started using a mattock handle instead. Similar to a pickaxe handle, it was about 4ft long and bigger than a baseball bat.” Nate says his father would fly into rages and beat him and his siblings mercilessly: “Then he’d set the mattock down and hit them with his fist.” Nate recalls one particular occasion when he was bent over a church pew backwards and felt like his back was breaking. When he tried to escape, Fred split his head open.

I'm not a psychologist by any means but I beleive this guy's story. It fits with Fred Phelps image of a hateful, vengeful god. A god who cheers the death of Ameerican service people. I'm not denying that God hates sin or that He reserves vengeance unto Himself but I find it very hard to believe that God wants His followers harassing His people while the grieve the death of a son or huisband or father. I have no trouble seeing that it might cheer up a sicko like Fred Phelps though.

[MissTed]

Interesting. Glad he escaped the brutal cretin.

[fso301]

I recently heard another supposedly ex-member of the Westboro clan being interviewed but color me suspicious that these Democratic agent provocateurs aren't trying to change tactics since most people have figured them out.

[Nevadan]

There is a new book out called “Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church”. I haven’t read it yet but expect it to be insightful into this whackjob cult from the pit of Hell.

http://www.amazon.com/Banished-Surviving-Westboro-Baptist-Church/dp/1455512427/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363189013&sr=8-1&keywords=banished+surviving+my+years+in+the+westboro+baptist+church

[vpintheak]

Nate Phelps is one screwed up sad individual. His dad is one extreme and he is the athiest opposite extreme it seems. Now a sad divorced athiest. Pray for his soul!

[ravenwolf]

He is an unlikely looking ex-member of one of the most notorious fundamentalist Christian churches in the world: a large, friendly man with a grey goatee and small hoop earring in his left ear, he looks relaxed as he recounts his horrifying story of mental and physical abuse.

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It is very likely that the father was a psychopath in one direction and as is many cases the son became the same thing in the opposite direction, both of them after notoriety which may lead to financial rewards.