“Stop being judgmental and critical. Do not close the doors to your loved ones, especially your children,” Keith Perry said in remarks to his church last year. Pastor Perry is the father of international pop star Katy Perry, whose repertoire includes the hit song I Kissed a Girl.

Today, however, pops sings a different tune.

Katy Perry’s father Keith recently referred to his daughter as a “devil child” and called for “prayers” for the singer who he claims “needs healing.”

The outspoken pastor is currently touring American churches with his pastor wife Mary Hudson. He expressed concerns for Perry, 28, during a sermon in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., revealing that he believes it is “wrong” for fans to worship the singer instead of God.

“I was at a concert of Katy’s where there were 20,000. I’m watching this generation and they were going at it. It almost looked like church,” Keith told congregants. “I stood there and wept and kept on weeping and weeping. They’re loving and worshipping the wrong thing.”

Keith Perry acknowledges that his daughter’s act often raises questions about his own teachings.

“They ask how can I preach if I produce a girl who sang about kissing another girl?” he said.

I’d call that a fair question. Too bad Perry père doesn’t seem to have come up with an answer yet.

[image via fanpop]

The case in our previous post, involving the alleged child abuse in the family of New Jersey’s John and Carolyn Jackson, has eerie echoes of another neglect story. It played out a decade ago. The 2003 events also took place in New Jersey; the evildoers were church-going, god-fearing folk who starved their adopted children; and their last name, improbably enough, was also Jackson.

From NBC Philadelphia:

Back on October 10, 2003, a neighbor found Bruce Jackson rummaging for food in a trash can in Collingswood, Camden County. Despite being 19 years old, Bruce weighed 45 pounds and stood only four feet tall. When police arrived, they found him disoriented, shoeless, cold, and extremely malnourished.

Police raided Bruce’s home where he was staying with his three brothers and adopted parents. Inside the home, [the officers] found 9-year-old Michael, who only weighed 23 pounds, 10-year-old Tyrone, who only weighed 28 pounds and 14-year-old Keith, who only weighed 40 pounds. Officials say the kids were eating uncooked pancake batter and wallboard to survive.

Police arrested their foster parents, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson [photo], charging them with 28 counts of child endangerment and aggravated assault.

Officials say during the time the four boys were starved, no one came forward, even though they were often seen in public. The parents often took the boys to the front row of their church [the Come Alive New Testament Church] in Medford, New Jersey. The family also often attended church picnics and the boys even sang for the church choir. Investigators say the parents claimed the boys were emaciated because of medical problems.

Raymond Jackson, 51, died of complications from a stroke a year and a half after his arrest. Vanessa Jackson ultimately pled guilty and was sentenced to seven years behind bars.

The case has its own Wikipedia entry, which, by the way, NBC’s David Chang appears to have plagiarized without credit or attribution.

[image via Wikipedia]

Two years ago, the hardline-conservative website WorldNetDaily (WND) took up the cause of Army Major John Jackson and his wife Carolyn, devout Christian homeschoolers who claimed they were experiencing terrible religious discrimination when they had their biological, adopted, and foster children taken away from them.

“It’s every parent’s nightmare,” WND said, taking the side of the parents despite allegations of harsh physical punishment for their adopted kids that resulted in bone fractures and severe dehydration.

For quotes, the site only used interviews with the Jacksons and their attorney, Grace T. Meyer, who is affiliated with the Home School Legal Defense Association. No one from the state or from child protective services made it into the WND article, nor did reporter Bryan Fitzpatrick consult children’s advocates or medical personnel; nor did he interview neighbors, or schoolmates of the children, or police officers. Fitzpatrick wrote he had called the child-protection agency and was told that no one could comment due to confidentiality rules — and that was that.

WND presented the Jackson saga as a case about civil liberties and freedom of religion.

Funny story: Yesterday, John Jackson surrendered to federal agents, following his wife’s arrest earlier that day at their home in Mount Holly, NJ.

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement that the couple are guilty of

“…unimaginable cruelty to children they were trusted to protect. The crimes alleged should not happen to any child, anywhere, and it is deeply disturbing that they would happen on a military installation.”

The Jacksons are accused of engaging in a pattern of neglect and cruelty toward three children they fostered and then adopted, one of whom died in May 2008.

Like everyone else charged with a crime, they should be considered innocent until their guilt is established in court.

The U.S. Attorney’s office alleges that the Jacksons physically and mentally abused their adopted and foster children through beatings, breaking their bones, failing to get them medical help, depriving them of water, and training their biological kids to take part in the mistreatment.

After John Jackson was told by a family friend that one of the children had revealed the alleged abuse, he told his wife, authorities said. Carolyn Jackson then retaliated against that child with multiple beatings with a belt, authorities said.

The Jacksons told their three biological children not to tell others of the physical assaults because

…the punishments and disciplinary techniques were justified [they said], as they were “training” the adopted children how to behave. …

The Jacksons assaulted their children with various objects, causing two children to sustain fractured bones, for which the Jacksons failed to seek prompt medical attention, authorities also allege in the indictment.

also withheld proper medical care for their adopted children, withheld sufficient nourishment for two of the children, withheld adequate water from two of the children, and, at times, prohibited them from drinking water altogether, authorities say.

Another form of discipline was force-feeding the adopted children spicy or salty foodstuffs, authorities say. If true, it makes the alleged water-withholding a special kind of cruel.

The couple forced two of the children to consume food intended to cause them pain and suffering, variously including red pepper flakes, hot sauce and raw onion, authorities said. They also caused one child to ingest excessive sodium or sodium-laden substances while being deprived of water, leading to a life-threatening condition, authorities also allege.

According to NBC News,

…the couple even made one of their biological children stand guard to make sure the foster children would not be able to quench their thirst with water from the toilet. …

One child in the Jacksons’ care died in 2008, but details are sketchy. The Associated Press says that

The Jacksons weren’t charged directly with the child’s death but are charged with assaulting the child and failing to seek prompt medical care. The Jackson children are in the custody of New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families, the U.S. attorney’s office said. Kristine Brown, a spokeswoman for the department, said the one child’s death was determined not to be caused by abuse or neglect.

An apparently dormant website protesting the Jacksons’ innocence reports that Carolyn Jackson has a remarkable background for a suspect in this kind of crime.

Carolyn has a BS in Individual and Family Studies specializing in ‘at risk’ families.

It would be interesting to learn what WorldNetDaily, whose readers leapt to John and Carolyn Jackson’s defense two years ago, makes of the latest developments in the case. At present (early Wednesday morning), the site hasn’t reported on the Jacksons’ arrest and on the U.S. Attorney’s case against the couple.

UPDATE: Friday morning — two days later. Still nothing.

[image via NBC News]

Another one bites the dust:

Former Liberty County resident Eddie Shauberger, 58, has been arrested in San Antonio, TX, after being indicted by a Liberty County grand jury on two counts of sexual assault of a child.

Shauberger is the former pastor of Oak Island Baptist Church in Chambers County, Texas.

In May 2009, in a business fraud case, Schauberger was indicted for tampering with a governmental document; in August 2010, for aggravated perjury; and in September 2010, for engaging in organized crime.

A four-year-old article about him in the Houston Chronicle points out that

Although he has no seminary training and his only experience was as a deacon, Shauberger was picked over other candidates to become Oak Island’s pastor because of his stirring oratory, members said.

Shauberger continues to commute to the church from Liberty, where he raised his seven children and ran for public office [as a Republican] a dozen times. He lost each election — including his last one in 2002 for state representative — but never let that discourage him.

Amazing he didn’t get the job; between the mendacity, the fraud, and the propensity to fuck the weak and defenseless, he clearly has all the qualifications to be a successful politician.

[image via Beaumont Enterprise]

Via ABC/WRIC, Richmond, Virginia.