Parenting guru is revered, reviled

Pastor's advice cited in N.C. child's death

PLEASANTVILLE, TENN. -- From a hollow where some residents still drive horse-drawn carts to church, Pastor Michael Pearl teaches hundreds of thousands of parents strategies for rearing submissive, obedient children.

In this small, rural community, Pearl tends a modest flock. It's through a satellite Internet connection and a traveling road show that Pearl captures a following he pegs at more than half a million people. From military bases in Europe to a Pentecostal church in Smithfield, N.C., parents spank their children with rods, "switching" out their bad attitudes, just at Pearl advises. His books on child discipline are sold at home-schooling conferences, delivered to the doorsteps of new moms and passed from pastors to parents in churches across the nation.

That's how Lynn Paddock, a Johnston County mother accused of beating her children with plastic plumbing supply line and suffocating the youngest, learned of Pearl's child-training methods, according to her attorney Michael Reece. He's popular in her church circle, Reece said.

She scoured his books and Web site a few years ago looking for tips on how to control her growing brood of adopted children. Paddock began whipping them with the thin, flexible pipe Pearl heralds as a good substitute for the "rod" described in the Old Testament.

Paddock, 45, is behind bars, charged with first-degree murder in 4-year-old Sean's death. She also faces felony child-abuse charges in connection with the welts that covered the backsides of two of her other five adopted children.

Pearl -- a towering, rugged man with a fuzzy white beard that mesmerizes children -- may face scrutiny in Paddock's case. Reece said he is considering ordering Pearl to testify if the case goes to trial.

"She wouldn't have come up with using plastic pipes on her own," Reece said.

Pearl's methods -- "switching" infants with willow tree branches and older children with belts and shrub cuttings -- make him a controversial character.

Fuss puzzles Pearls

Some parents swear he saved their families, calming frantic mothers and subduing unruly children. Others consider Pearl radical, even dangerous, for steering parents toward practices that Pearl calls the "same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules."

But Pearl, 60, says he can't be blamed for mothers who take his tactics too far and hurt their children.

Paddock and Pearl never met. Pearl's business, No Greater Joy Ministries, can't even find a record that it shipped her their books.

Michael Pearl and his wife, Debi, don't understand all the fuss. Their five children, now grown, turned out well. They are self-assured young men and women raising their own babies to be God-fearing mothers and fathers. Besides, the Pearls say, the top investigator for the Tennessee Department of Human Services inspected their techniques a few years ago and gave them his blessing. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment.

Pearl's books warn parents to never whip in anger, always in joy. Paddock must not have followed instructions, Pearl's son and daughter insist.

By Pearl's math, one-sixth of the nation's estimated 3 million home-schooling families use his training methods.

"The chances of one of them committing a crime is pretty good," Pearl said, shrugging at the question in his churchyard after Sunday services and refusing to say much more.

Rural church his base

There's no sign welcoming visitors to Pearl's Church at Cane Creek. Getting there means driving down a steep ridge where the Tennessee foothills begin fading to plains. Then, it's a left at the hand-painted signs advertising vegetables, crafts and furniture. As the blacktop turns to dirt, a bridge leads to the Pearls' farm. At the foot of a cow pasture, on the bank of a rippling stream, Pearl's loyal base gathers on Sundays.