Well, soon the certified letters started coming. Not only had he not paid us for two months, now he was demanding that we pay him 10,000. There was never any communication like "Hey, I don't understand this charge, could we sit down and go over some things." It was straight to not talking and sending very belligerent, over the top, trying to be intimidating certified letters. He was (is) an accountant. I guess he figured we were just young and stupid and he could just terrify us into handing him over $10,000, All his accusations were completely untrue, He was accusing my husband of the most outlandish things.
Well, since we were in the same church it went to the elders. They would call a meeting and my husband would go and the accountant wouldn't show up. He just kept sending certified letters demanding money. I thought surely they would see how really crazy angry he was acting and that my husband was trying to communicate with him. I honestly thought that things would cool down and it would all be settled. But he kept on. He was threatening lawsuits and all sorts of things. It was so weird.
One point they were meeting-at least my husband and the elders, the accountant wouldn't come-and my husband said something about how the accountant was attacking his family. One of the pastors got all riled and basically said he had no right to say he was attacking his family. I don't know how you withhold nearly 15,000 (and then demand another 10,000) dollars from a man who is the sole support of his family and not have that be attacking his family. Let alone sending all these attacking certified letters that his wife gets to receive. How is it not attacking his family when you are not even willing to control your temper long enough to have a conversation, so your response is to assume all the worst things you can thing and go straight into attack mode?
At one point my husband said something to the pastor about 1 Corinthians 6:1-7. Waaeeellll (the pastor has a way of saying well that has a long drawn out drawl to it. It's very dismissive to anyone who disagrees with him.) Waaaeeelll, we don't think it means that.
Now this man can go through some of the greatest scriptural contortions to prove Christians should not buy and sell on Sunday, 8th days and all that, but when something is said plainly he can find some way around it.
This is not how grown up people should behave. If you hire someone to do something and they've been working on it all summer, you can at least be able to control your temper enough to sit down like a grown up mature adult and have a conversation.
And the elders through it all were treating my husband like he was some crook skallywag. Because what I didn't think of at first was the fact that bad temper or no, he was a "good old boy" in the church. He had money. We didn't. He was on the ins. We weren't.
We tried to go through arbitration. He started to and then decided not to. Nope, he was going to take us to the cleaners. He was going to steal my husband's labor for an entire summer, that's what he was going to do. And get money back on top of it. For what he wanted from us, basically he wanted an entire commercial building remodeled for free. (At least the parts he did. We didn't do the stucco outside. I saw it was peeling off and I asked my husband if he did that. "Nope! His contractors. Not us. Good.")
Well, he finally made good on his threats and reported my husband to the CCB. Turned out it was the best thing. The CCB guy was an angel. He told my husband "Just let me do the talking." He walked through, listened to the accountant, and in the end tried to get him to drop it. When he wouldn't he made it so we paid him 1,000. My husband hadn't gotten a contract with the accountant or he said we could have gotten our money from him. But without the contract that was the best he could do for us.
The CCB guy knew that nobody could work as a contractor in the Portland area for 20 years and have a clean licence-not even one complaint-and be guilty of doing the kind of things he was being accused of. It's still the only complaint that he's had.
My husband should have had a contract. That is the ONLY thing he did wrong. Again, we were naive. He had never had anything like this happen. Not because he is perfect, but because if someone was unhappy he would work things out until they were. He has always guaranteed his work. And this was a fellow church member! Oh the naivete of that, huh?
But it's not just about the money to me. It was the way the elders handled it. They treated him like he was guilty. Once I wrote a letter to the pastor, trying to tell him about Rand's good reputation and the pride he takes in his work. Also that this was bringing financial difficulty to our family. He never responded. This man stole almost 15,000 from a family that is not rich by any means. He stole it. Nobody ever asked us how we were doing after that. As soon as it was settled it was forgotten-for them. They didn't have to deal with it anymore. We were still dealing with it when the crash happened.
But that's another symptom of a cult. The leadership is far more interested in preserving the institution that they are in the people that make up that institution.
I wish to God I had, at that point said "Screw 'em. We're out of here." But the kids had friends, and it seemed kind of an admission of guilt to leave at that point. But they didn't care about wondering if they were right about it. They've probably forgotten all about it. Not their problem.
It isn't melodrama when I say this changed my husband. His work has always been a very deep thing to him. He finds a lot of his identity in it. To have it disrespected and devalued in such a brutal way, by the men that made up his community, his pastor that is supposed to care about him and support him, when it was a job he cared so much about. It makes me cry to tell you that he has never gotten that boyish gleam in his eyes over his work again. It breaks my heart.
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