"Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." Francis of Xavier, one of the 16th century founders of the Jesuits.

Elizabeth, having spent a far too large portion of my young adulthood on the dark side of the fence, and now becoming a battle scarred old salt of this side of the culture wars, perhaps I can offer my own bit of insight on these questions, for whatever that may be worth. (Probably about what you just paid for it?)

The questions you have presented are honest and valid questions. In any other context, they would be the first things I would want to know. However, after more than twenty years of ever shifting points of perspective on the fundamentalist movement in America, there are certain undisguised hallmarks and markers that manifest themselves in cases such as Miss Vitt's. These are not accidental tells, like a poker player's unconscious giving away of his hand, but rather deliberately cultivated and celebrated badges of pride pinned on children by parents in a manner and for a reason not altogether different than the parking of the brand new mercedes at the end of the driveway rather than in the protection of the empty garage.

From the original article:

loves the singles group at her church

...

Vitt said her decision was made when she was little - one that she has stood by, even when it has been difficult.

...

"You hear everybody say, well, I wish I had waited," she said. "Everybody has their regrets. I don't have a regret about doing this."

...

and after home schooling through her high school years, attended the Potter's School for a theology degree and then took several semesters at Coastal Carolina Community College with a focus on elementary education.

...

"One thing I've always wanted to be is a wife and mother," she said.

...

She grew up with a strong Christian background, she said, and was encouraged to have high standards by her parents. But the decision to save kissing for marriage is one she made on her own.

...

She wants to be able to share something special with her husband one day, said Vitt, and keep herself as pure as she can until then.

...

she has received a lot of support from people at her church who share her high standards.

...

"I've got this list made out of what I want in a guy," she said. If men don't match up with her standards for important things like faith, she said, then dating them is not an option.

Taken individually, or even in small groups, each of these statements is innocuous enough, but the confluence of the entire set is enough to begin to see the pattern as indicative of the whole of Miss Vitt's upbringing.

Self perpetuation and proselytization are the stated goals of fundamentalist religion, and the much heralded method of choice to achieve those goals is unashamedly trumpeted from their pulpits:

"Come out from among them and be ye separate, sayeth the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." - II Corinthians 6:17

This New Testament passage is the basis for the extremists' withdrawal, insulation, and sequestration of their children from society. It is the motivator of the home-school movement and their church singles' groups, the branding of their businesses with Christian verbiage, the marking of their cars with fish containing Greek acronyms. While some of these symbols and practices have been adopted generically by Christianity at large, the sole purpose of such things in this particular subculture of America is to ensure that their children are not exposed to ideas that may cause them to think outside prescribed, well controlled and dictated ideological limits. Should someone overcome all of that and even hint at disagreement with doctrine in the slightest way, whether in terms of biology, history, theology, sexuality, etc. they are immediately shamed with labels such as "liberal" or "apostate" for having "fallen away from the church", commonly referred to as "backsliding". Should the offender fail to return to the marching cadence, the faithful are actively encouraged to "separate" from them, and to explicitly face that person and tell them so. "I can't hang around with you anymore..."

In short Elizabeth, I can honestly tell you that given just these bits of information in the article that no, Miss Vitt had no meaningful access to alternative viewpoints, no useful or meaningful sex ed, and no freedom to do other than she has without serious backlash. It is also unlikely that it has ever even occurred to her that there are legitimate alternatives to her parents' way of thinking, and I will personally streak naked through Time Square at Noon on New Year's Day if she has not been taught that man was created in his present form 6000 years ago by an invisible old man in the sky, bad things happen because Eve ate a piece of fruit, atheists are just mad at God, and muslims are really Satan worshippers, they just don't know that.

I am only slightly less confident that if asked she will tell you that Thomas Jefferson was a Christian just like her, and that America was founded as a Christian nation.

Given all of that, I cannot see that abuse is too strong a description of what has befallen Miss Vitt.

Feel free to read whatever's left of my own thoughts at Crowded Head, Cozy Bed
The Boy in JanieBelle's head