“Michael Pearl has estimated that one-sixth of the nation’s probable three million homeschooling families use their training methods,” Heimlich writes. “Critics from around the world urge people to ignore what the Pearls preach, but many find the couple’s promises that their methods will bring about complacent children difficult to refuse.”

The author of a book analyzing the phenomenon of child abuse in religious communities has criticized Michael Pearl, an evangelical Christian pastor and author of a book on child rearing using corporal punishment, suggesting that his teachings might be potentially dangerous to children’s health and life.

The Tennessee-based founding pastor of the No Greater Joy ministry has found himself under scrutiny after his controversial book, To Train Up a Child, educating parents to raise their children with the use of corporal punishment, which he co-wrote with his wife, Debi, became linked to several cases of criminal child abuse.

One of those cases was the tragic death of Hana Williams, whose body was found in her parents backyard with signs of abuse. A copy of To Train Up a Child was reportedly found in the parents’ possession.

In the book, which was also linked to the case of the Texas judge exposed recently as beating his daughter with a belt on a video, the Pearls describe their idea of raising a child well and in accordance to the Bible. Their methods involve corporal punishment techniques like spanking children with a plastic rod or depriving them of meals.

Janet Heimlich, a former freelance reporter at NPR, has published a book recently, Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment (Prometheus Books, 2011), in which she reminds readers about accusations directed against Pearl already in 2008, after the death of 4-year-old Sean Paddock of South Carolina. The boy’s foster mother was a follower of the Pearls and the way the boy died was linked to the methods she used to punish him.

“Sean died from suffocation after Paddock wrapped Sean tightly in blankets, a technique witnesses said she used to keep children from getting out of bed,” Heimlich writes in her book. “Michael Pearl does not advocate that parents wrap children in blankets. However, he does suggest that parents spank children with quarter-inch plumber’s supply line.”

Heimlich told The Christian Post Thursday she has profound knowledge about child rearing and abuse theories, after having researched the subject thoroughly and having read “just about every U.S.-based study done thus far,” but she has never encountered anything that would support the methods advocated by the Pearls.

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