Abstinence Rule

The Abstinence Rule was the male celibacy requirement in Arthur’s code for the inner group, created to avert further accusations of rape after earlier allegations in Pickaway County had led to imprisonment. More than a private moral injunction, it belonged to Arthur’s system of control: he and Ragen would regulate who could take the spot, while every member was expected to follow strict conduct rules. Its stated aim was prevention, but later episodes expose the rule’s limits, its gendered scope, and the difference between an internal prohibition and the experience of women confronted by those who took control.

Formation and Purpose

During the group’s time at Zanesville, Arthur concluded that survival in society required self-control and that rules could prevent chaos. He drew on the youth camp’s disciplinary structure, where the threat of being sent back to a lower zone helped restrain unruly boys. In his view, the group needed comparable limits once its members were on their own.

Arthur presented the code to Ragen as a response to the earlier Pickaway County case. He said that involvement with women had brought accusations against the group and imprisonment, and insisted that the situation must not recur. His account frames the rule as a way to forestall both sexual misconduct and the risk of another accusation; it does not, by itself, establish that the earlier women’s allegations were false.

The rule formed one part of a larger program rather than standing alone. Arthur and Ragen intended to control access to the spot, while Arthur declared that a serious infraction could cause a member to be classified as undesirable and permanently excluded. The group was to avoid lying, treat women and children properly, protect them from harm, devote time to self-improvement, and respect each member’s private property. Celibacy thus operated alongside discipline, protection, work, and ownership as a means of ordering the inner family.

Scope and Enforcement

Arthur’s formulation specifically required the males to remain celibate, so that they would not again be placed in a position where they could be accused of rape. The rule therefore addressed sexual conduct through a sweeping prohibition, rather than through a distinction between consensual intimacy and coercion. Its enforcement depended on Arthur’s and Ragen’s ability to control who occupied the spot and on the threat that a breach could result in exclusion.

That authority was not shared equally. Arthur never explained the rule to Adalana. He considered such a discussion inappropriate, while Adalana knew the rule existed and understood that a violation could make a personality undesirable. She had not agreed to it and did not consider herself bound by its puritanical terms. The code’s claim to govern the whole group was therefore compromised from the outset: its male members were explicitly subjected to celibacy, while Adalana remained outside the agreement and outside its stated reach.

The rule’s logic also appears in Arthur’s later defense of the group during discussion of the charges involving three women. He relied on Adalana’s account that the women had cooperated, had not been injured, had opportunities to leave, and had received some money back. Judy and Gary did not accept that characterization; they understood that Arthur was reporting Adalana’s perceptions, not firsthand knowledge. When Gary asked to speak with her, Arthur refused because she had been banished from the spot. The exchange reveals a contradiction in the code’s operation: the personality whose account Arthur invoked was also unavailable to be questioned, while the women’s accounts were rejected by him.

Conduct Under the Rule

A later encounter involving Kevin and Marlene shows how the prohibition intersected with intimacy and the group’s switching system. Kevin had sold marijuana and returned to the apartment before Marlene visited, worried by what she had heard. As he drew her into a private moment, Adalana wanted Kevin off the spot; what she wanted was holding and tenderness. She understood that Arthur had imposed celibacy on the males and knew that a violation could bring exclusion, yet she had never accepted the rule as her own. The episode makes the rule’s practical weakness visible: control of the spot could be interrupted, and the code did not give all personalities the same understanding of, or commitment to, its restrictions.

The encounter with Polly Newton makes the gap between the rule’s stated protective purpose and actual conduct more severe. After taking Polly along a deserted country road and across a ditch into an overgrown field near a pond, Adalana said she wanted to wait before being dropped off and then stated that she wanted sex with her. Polly began to cry. Adalana also said she would not hurt Polly and disliked hearing of women being beaten, but that assurance did not erase the circumstances of the encounter or Polly’s distress. The rule nominally sought to prevent sexual accusations against the males; it did not prevent Adalana from making a sexual demand while Polly was isolated.

The account of Donna West provides another point of contrast. When Donna recognized how deserted the place was, she feared that she would be raped, shot, or both, and cried while waiting to learn what would happen. The episode places a woman’s fear and uncertainty beside the code’s abstract promise of proper behavior and protection. The evidence here establishes her apprehension in that moment, not the later outcome; it nevertheless shows that an internal rule could not itself guarantee safety to someone taken into an isolated setting.

Limits and Significance

The rule’s consequences depended on who could enforce it, who was bound by it, and whose account was trusted. Arthur made celibacy a collective discipline for males, linked breach to permanent exclusion, and justified it as a safeguard against the consequences of sexual accusations. Yet Adalana was not a consenting participant in that rule, could take the spot, and later made a sexual demand of Polly. Meanwhile, Arthur’s reliance on Adalana’s account of the earlier victims sat uneasily with his refusal to let Judy and Gary speak with her.

A separate episode recounted by The Teacher offers a narrower example of how proximity and conduct could be distinguished. The Teacher described Danny accompanying Gus Holston after girls called for them; one girl vomited on Gus, with some landing on Danny’s trousers. The Teacher said he could not be certain about Gus but had not touched either girl himself. That account does not establish how the Abstinence Rule was enforced in the incident, but it underscores why a general code and a person’s specific account of an encounter are not interchangeable. Across these episodes, the rule remains both a serious attempt at internal governance and an inadequate guarantee: it could prescribe restraint within the group, but its uneven scope and limited control left the question of conduct to be answered in each encounter.