Signed Affidavit

Physical Abuse, Control, and Rage

I was raised in an atmosphere of near perpetual physical abuse. We were spanked very often for minor offences. Often, the only offence was disagreeing with Dean, or expressing ourselves in a way that he did not agree with.

We were usually spanked with a leather belt, bent double. It was black, with spots of paint on it. At times, we were spanked with household objects, including a wooden kitchen spoon, which once broke in half on my brother’s bottom. 

Roxanne was completely complicit in this abuse. If we did something wrong, we were not punished in the moment (being told to sit in a corner for one or two minutes, for example) but were told that Dean would spank us when he got home, allowing the dread of the spanking to hang over us all day. 

It was normal to be spanked 5-10 times. However, we also needed to repent. This meant (to Dean and Roxanne) that we have verbal assent to what they believed, and also mental assent. They believed that they could read our minds by looking at our faces. If we did not “fully repent,” then many more spankings could be added on. With spankings occurring sometimes on a daily basis, we learned very quickly to bury our thoughts and feelings very far down. 

Dean and Roxanne saw this form of extreme control as part of their religion. 

This style of parenting did not let up in our teen years. 

On one occasion, when my brother and I were about 13 and 14, my father told my older brother and I to come back to shore. We had been canoeing. My brother refused, and muttered under his breath, “You don’t even love me.” Dean heard us, and yelled, “Come here, and I’ll show you how much I love you.” We came back, but when he got to shore my brother my older brother tried to run away. Dean chased him down with a canoe paddle, knocked him to the ground, and hit him very hard ten to fifteen times.

On another occasion, my older brother was told to say sorry to me, for running my rhubarbs over with the lawnmower. He refused saying honestly, “I don’t feel sorry.” Dean spanked him several times, but he adamantly refused, and so Dean took my older brother’s guitar, that he had saved over a year to buy. “If you don’t say sorry, I will smash this right here!” He threatened. my older brother refused, and the guitar was smashed. 

One time I had a conflict with Roxanne, in which I told her, “I hate you.” I was warned that Dean would spank me when he came home. He did, and he spanked me several times across the bottom and back of my legs. I was around sixteen at the time.

I saw regular mistreatment of my adoptive sister,  Courtney. Roxanne would often make her do a disproportionate amount of house work. She was extremely cruel in her words towards her. She would often fill the kitchen sink up with scalding hot water, then insist that she do the dishes, mocking her for complaining about the pain. This treatment bothered me so much that I talked to my parents about it on several occasions, but it did not abate until  Courtney ran away from home as a late teenager. 

Our home was also very religious. From the age of eight, we were forced to read the Bible through in a year, which meant reading about five pages of high-school level literature a day. When we got behind, we had to sometimes spend all day reading. If we refused, we were spanked. Our choice of music and books was tightly controlled. We were not allowed to watch TV, play most video games, or read books that were not explicitly Christian. My parents believed that the earth was six thousand years old, and had been covered by a worldwide flood four thousand years ago. They taught us that any scientist or teacher who did not agree with this was trying to deceive us. 

Dean does not believe in reading concordances, consulting scholars, or submitting to church leadership. He believes that God speaks to him directly as he reads the Bible. A reasonable conversation on most serious topics is impossible with Dean, because he honestly believes that his opinions are “God’s will,” and anyone who disagrees with him is either blind, stupid, or sinful. I have received many emails from Dean over the years, as have many pastors in the area, all telling the reader in no uncertain terms, “God told me...” that we must do certain actions. 

After we left home, Dean continued to try to maintain control through angry confrontations, letters, and through threatening to disown me. When my older brother left his faith, Dean told me that I had to fix it. When my older brother got into marriage trouble, Dean and Roxanne jumped into the middle of it, and began pushing for divorce and full custody. On more than one occasion, Dean called me in anger, asking, “Which side are you on?” And demanding that I give money, time, and full support to his agenda for the divorce. I was a young, newly married father at the time, and a college student, living in my own home. I chose to stay out of it. While my brother respected my position, it caused years of tension between my parents and I. 

At the only family gathering our family ever had, which was organized by my wife, my dad promised not to bring up the divorce. However, he soon gathered everyone in a room and began passionately demanding their full support, finances, and time be given to him as he pursued this agenda. He also said very mean and slanderous things about my older brother’s first wife. My wife (Isobella) stood up to him, stating that my older brother’s wife was a good person, and the things he was saying were not true. Dean yelled very forcefully at her, and would not even allow her to speak. Several people got up and left at that point, and my wife shook and cried for hours. She was four months pregnant, and began having contractions. Mercifully, they stopped, but we feared for the baby for several days. The family reunion was ruined, as several people left, and my grandmother never got another. 

Dean forced Isobella to apologize for this incident. Since she had called him a “jerk” and brushed past him, he threatened to disown me if my wife did not repent of her “abusing” him. She did apologize, but he did not reciprocate by apologizing in turn for his actions. 

Outbursts of rage like this are common for Dean, who has been expelled from numerous jobs and churches due to his temper.

He has often attempted to control my actions, and demand access to my family through outbursts of rage, or threatening to disown me. Even when things are peaceful between us, I know that the threat is always there. Every communication with Dean and Roxanne is extremely tiring for myself, as I carefully attempt to remain cheerful, while avoiding topics that may upset them or unleash their terrible anger. 

In August, Dean found out that my older brother’s daughter has “come out” as a bisexual. He called me in a rage, demanding that I fix it by confronting my older brother in anger. I refused, saying that this was not my business. He said he would do so, and looked forward to an angry exchange with him when he saw him later that summer. In these and other ways, Dean continued to try to exert his control over his adult sons. 

“Toxic” behaviours 

Roxanne was often consumed with her own emotional issues, or very distracted by writing her books. She was not available for us when we wanted to talk. I had a very lonely childhood, with toys and pets often being my only friends. 

When she was available, I did not want to talk to her, because conversations always turned into us serving her emotional needs. She confided in me details of her unhappy marriage as young as six years old, and leaned on me for emotional support. Both of my parents shared their financial woes, and asked me to try to fix it: but when I made suggestions, such as putting the monthly budget in envelopes, I was ignored. 

Roxanne had a way of making her children weak. She envied us and would use subtle tactics to tear us down if we surpassed her in any way. I have struggled for years with hypochondria, body-weight issues which counsellors have suggested were likely due to her influence. As a child, she convinced doctors that I had asthma: but when I stopped taking meds, I found that I did not need them after all. I have never had asthma since. 

When I embarked on a health journey as an adult, losing 50 lb, she frequently tried to destabilize me, by criticizing my methods and asking if I was feeling ill. She began her own quest a week after my announcement. She made a big deal of her journey, and chose to use methods that were the opposite of mine. She did not stop until she lost more weight than me. 

Roxanne criticizes, gossips about and slanders people incessantly. She seeks to exert her control through positional leadership, mentoring, passive aggressive control, or church affiliations. Once a person becomes too strong or shrugs off her influence, however, they become absolutely devalued in her eyes, and she harshly criticizes them behind their backs. 

Roxanne has stated in writing that she is slandering me to her church community at this very time. 

As an adult, my parents often missed my birthday, and went for months at a time without communicating as a tactic of punishment and control. However, they always took turns calling me before their spouse’s birthday, to remind me and demand that I call/encourage my mother or father. Failure to serve them in this way could result in them lashing out at me. 

They speak very often of their rights. They think that they have rights to my time, my property, and my money. They have stated that they expect me to pay for their retirement, and they believe that they have a God-given right to see my children, despite the fact that they do not speak to my children’s mother, my wife (with whom I am very happily married). 

My parents used to send my children very lavish gifts. However, around August I stopped taking pictures of the kids opening them. After this, they began giving very cheap gifts. In their discussion of my children, my parents have often loudly stated their right to have access. However, I have never once heard them talk about what would be best for the children. They do not ask how the children are doing in school, and only give educational gifts if we specifically ask for them. They seem to want my children to serve their emotional needs, in the same way that they forced me to. 

All of the above behaviours are what I mean by “toxic behaviours” or “toxicity,” throughout this document. 

Mentally Unwell

Aside from my concerns with toxicity, mentioned above, I sometimes question the mental stability of Roxanne. She has admitted herself that she sometimes “babbles like a fool,“ and even in writing, her sentences are not always completely coherent. She seems to display many of the characteristics of the narcissistic personality disorder. She has been told by numerous doctors that she is a hypochondriac, and she sometimes seems to use physical illness to get her way, or to punish others.

I am also very concerned about the mental state of Dean. His emotions can jump from calm to giddy to enraged and back again very rapidly. While he usually puts on a good face in public, at home his anger could explode at any minute, causing us all to behave very cautiously around him. His displays of rage were not always reserved only for the family: I saw him also yell at my friends when they came over to play. On one occasion, my dad exploded in a verbal attack on a girl in our youth group while driving back from a church function. Her only offence had been that she was being laughing very loudly in the car. I used to try to teach my friends how to behave around my birth parents, so that Roxanne   would not disappear “with a headache,” or Dean would not explode with rage. When we became married, I tried to teach my wife Isobella   how to behave around my birth parents: but she helped me to see that it was their behaviours that were not healthy. I will not try to “teach” my children to behave around my birth parents, passing the dysfunction on to another generation.

When he was younger, Dean seemed genuinely disturbed by his anger, and sometimes asked us passionately not to upset him, because he could not control it when he got too mad. Later, however, he showed me a bible study in which he concluded that his anger was equivalent to God’s wrath in the Bible. From this time on, he seemed not to try to improve his behaviour, but used his anger even more effectively as a tool of control. 

When we would fall and hurt ourselves as children, Dean did not respond in the normal way by empathizing with us. Rather, he would usually laugh. He even commemorated times when we hurt ourselves as children by telling the stories over and over as funny family jokes. Some of these stories include a time when I crashed on my bike, a time I fell down the stairs as a baby, and a time I fell off of a cliff as a young child. These behaviours seem consistent with psychopathic tendencies.

Dean once sent me and my two brothers a letter detailing a time in his childhood when he took great pleasure in torturing and slowly killing frogs. He said that he has not done this for many years, but still has urges that he does not like and cannot fully control. 

History with our children

We have never lived in the same town as Dean and Roxanne  . Since 2010(?), our relationship with them has been strained due to their actions at our family reunion. We lived in Africa and Quebec from 2012-2019. For this reason, Dean and Roxanne   have had very limited access to our children. They have never been alone with our children. 

In 2015, my parents sent a gift with an included letter meant for the children. They gave washable tattoos to the boys with the instructions to, “hide these from your mom — she will probably freak out!” and, “these are only for you boys, not for your sister. You probably think that your sister is gross!” I could not allow communications which were meant to circumvent family structures, sow discord, train in secrecy, and teach distorted views of gender. I have filtered all communication from my birth parents to my children since this time, with the result that my children do not have a relationship with their grandparents. Between 2012 and 2018, Dean and Roxanne had one visit per year, or every other year. Always sleeping apart, never under the same roof, and never lasting more than two days. Our children have not seen Dean and Roxanne   since August 2018. My youngest child has never seen them. 

Pedophelic Tendencies

Dean displays many of the warning signs of pedophiles. He has always been obsessed with children. He speaks to and about children as though he were their peer. He becomes a different person when playing with them: becoming extremely goofy, and childlike. He tickles a bit too much, and does not stop when kids say that they are done.

Growing up, I often saw Dean with a child on his lap, during Bible studies and church. If there was a child, he would always find a way to hold it. 

Dean and Roxanne have a very chauvinistic view of gender. Dean is always making jokes about the role of women, staying or implying that they are less intelligent than men, and meant to serve and be controlled by men. 

For one summer, we had my cousin  Courtney come to live with us. I saw her in her underwear in my parents bed. It was only as an adult that I found this memory very strange. I know that he often cuddled her, and had her on his lap. 

He once told me that he was in the habit of taking young girls from a local assisted-living complex (locally known as “No-Daddy Lane”) for rides on his Goldwing. 

At his last visit, I saw Dean pushing on my girl’s bottom while swimming. Later, while eating ice-cream he put his arm around her and cradled her left buttocks in his hand as they ate ice cream. 

Although I told my children not to go into their camper, my parents got my children into their camper almost immediately. They have a way of controlling children, which is unusual. They continued to try to lure them in the whole visit. In their communications, they are incessant in their requests to have children alone and unsupervised with them in their camper or in a hotel room, even though this has never happened or been allowed. 

It is these actions that propelled me to begin looking further into my fathers actions, and which are the reason that I will not allow him to see my children now.

My fears

This past December I told my parents that I wanted a break from them, and asked them to leave me alone for a time. They responded by sending several emails filled with angry demands and threats, sending packages filled with childhood momentous, and stalking me on social media and critiquing and “gaslighting” memories I shared in sermons/talks online. 

Based on my experience with Dean and Roxanne, I am convinced that when I ask more forcefully for space, they will try everything in their power to force me to reestablish contact. They have already said that they will try legal channels, and will try to shame me by talking about me in their church community. 

They have been sending emails and packages filled with angry words, manipulation, gaslighting, and spiritual abuse. 

Based on my history with him, I am convinced that Dean will attempt to show up in my doorstep in a rage, and try to force me to submit through an angry shouting match. It is possible that he could resort to physical violence, vandalism, or assault with a weapon if I will not submit. 

Roxanne and Dean have also stated that they believe it to be their right to educate my children in their extreme, fundamentalist, anti-science, chauvinistic and homophobic version of Christianity. I am absolutely opposed to this. 

I believe that they would use any method possible to circumvent my parental protections, and try to influence them directly. These methods could include creating a fake account on social media. I also believe that they will try legal methods, as mentioned above. I also believe that when they are in town, they will seek to find my children alone (eg. out biking) and try to engage them directly, or lure them into their camper or truck. 

It is for these reasons that I am seeking a restraining order against them. 

I declare that these statements are true.