Grandchild of Westboro founder began anew in Kansas City. Then their identity was stolen
The hum of the midday crowd swells at a downtown Kansas City coffee shop as barista Edward “Ed” Griffin forms an intricate pegasus from milk squiggles on the surface of a latte.
Griffin gets lost in creating the latte art. But their thoughts are never far from a different, and unhappier, time and place.
In their memory from two decades ago, Griffin can still hear the cars honking at a Westboro Baptist Church protest in Topeka. They can still feel the gaggle of siblings surrounding them.
At 6 years old, Griffin was too small to hoist the signs the church is known for, like “God hates f-gs” and “thank god for dead soldiers.” Instead, their mother handed them an upside down American flag on a small pole, making the child a pawn of the group the Southern Poverty Law Center once labeled “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America.”
Griffin can still remember the anger that raged through their small body as they ran up to one car, middle finger extended, and cursed at a driver who opposed them.
Even now, after coming out as queer and nonbinary, moving to Kansas City and leaving behind relatives who remain members of the church, they are still ashamed at the memory.
Griffin’s identity, which includes using they/them pronouns, may never have been acceptable to their grandfather Fred Phelps, the late founder of the Westboro church. It’s part of what now separates Griffin, 25, from some members of their family. But it’s only a piece of their story.
In ways, Griffin’s journey is not unlike that of many young people: leaving home, finding a trade, building their own life. In other ways it stands out: an abusive childhood in the shadow of the Westboro church — Griffin calls it a cult — a nationwide tour as an award-winning latte artist and a new beginning unmoored in Kansas City as a young adult.
Now Griffin is being pulled back into the orbit of that infamous family by way of an ugly surprise. They recently learned their mother took out more than three dozen credit cards in their name and racked up thousands of dollars in debt, in what Griffin reported to police as an identity theft.
Griffin pulls on their mustache when deep in thought, including when worrying about the impact the identity theft might have on their finances.
If their mother is prosecuted, Griffin likely won’t be held responsible for paying off the large credit card debt she amassed. But Griffin is still watching their credit score tumble further each day. The necessary visits back to Topeka to speak with their mother and police are filled with anxiety as they learn to confront the ways their old life still seeps into their new one.
Griffin was raised in a family fixated on condemning others based on their interpretation of the Bible. But the true sin, Griffin said, is how Westboro took away their identity and their childhood. Now they’re trying to take it back.
“It was hard to be surrounded by hate,” they said of their upbringing. “Hard to really be denied actual identity. Hard to not be given what one needs to grow and thrive.”
Childhood remembered as abusive
As a child, Griffin imagined being one of only a few kids, birthed by parents who loved one another and loved Griffin.
Instead, Griffin was the youngest of seven children, squeezed into a cockroach-ridden 860-square-foot house in south Topeka.
The childhood Griffin describes is one of abuse inside a cramped and chaotic household.
Their mother, Katherine Phelps-Griffin is the daughter of Fred Phelps. Some of his 12 children have said publicly that he was verbally and physically abusive, hitting and starving them.
Phelps-Griffin left the church as a young adult, then returned soon after. She earned a law degree, just like nearly every one of her siblings did, so she could work for the church.
Griffin was not yet born when their mother had her law license suspended indefinitely by the Kansas Supreme Court in 1994, after she was convicted of writing 30 worthless checks totaling $3,652. She received two years probation, according to court records.
As a result, Griffin said church leaders distanced themselves from their mother, who had been working there as an attorney.
Griffin said they spent their formative years watching their mother desperately try to be accepted into the church again.
For many years, she didn’t succeed, Griffin said. Instead, the Griffin family worshipped alone on Sundays, exiled to the church’s lobby where they heard services through a speaker while everyone else gathered behind a set of doors in the main space.
At 10 or 11, Griffin had a realization about their mother and the religious indoctrination the children were fed: “This is just a crazy woman who’s trying to make us believe what she believes.”
It was a defining moment for Griffin. Maybe they didn’t fit into this world. In middle school, the class read “A Child Called It,” a story of a California child badly abused by his mother. As they took in each page, Griffin felt a deep desire to tell the kids around them what was happening at home.
But Griffin was without friends, without allies and without a refuge at school.
“You can’t really casually say, ‘Oh, my grandfather founded this hateful cult, and my mother abused us and I don’t know my father’s family because he was an orphan,’” they said.
Kids at school used “Phelp” as a derisive nickname and asked Griffin why they hated America. Reflecting on it now, Griffin noticed the kids didn’t also ask why the church hated the LGBTQ community.
“You’re simultaneously experiencing home life where you’re being abused, you’re being secluded, sheltered,” they said. “And then you go to the one place you can kind of get away, and it’s really just kind of worse.”
Griffin was 17 and in high school when Phelps died in 2014, after leading the church for six decades. Griffin didn’t attend the funeral.
Time Magazine topped his obituary with the headline “Good riddance.”
An unexpected escape
Their sophomore year of college, while studying at Washburn University in Topeka and still living at home, Griffin took a job at Starbucks.
Coffee, rather than college, became a ticket out into the world.
Inspired by a Japanese latte artist on YouTube, they saved up to buy a $400 espresso machine off eBay. After a childhood spent deprived of hobbies and art, they found something that sparked their interest and dove in head-first. It became a way to still the mind in the midst of the mess around them. Mostly it was an escape.
Griffin set up the machine in one corner of the cramped house. They were soon churning out dozens of practice lattes late into the night while listening to Brazilian opera on their headphones.
Despite the show of dedication, Griffin’s mother didn’t believe in them. She said Griffin would likely end up in prison or working at McDonald’s.
“You’ll never succeed,” she said.
But Griffin proved her wrong.
The following year, Griffin entered their first latte art competition, driving south to Tulsa in their unreliable 1994 Buick. More competitions followed: Portland, Reno, Seattle, Baltimore. They faced off against other artists, showcasing their skills with top of the line espresso machines before a lineup of judges. Griffin started dreaming of a community, and a future.
By 21, Griffin found themselves among the top prize-winners at the US Barista Championships.
They savored the feeling of sitting in a crowded airport on the way to competitions.
“It felt like I didn’t have to be the person I was at home, which was a victim, was someone small who was meek, just sort of tried to conform or fit in. I felt like I was a part of something different,” they said.
The desire to leave Topeka behind entirely intensified with each passing day.
Putting down roots in Kansas City
When it came time to leave home, Griffin was keenly aware of how many older siblings they were leaving behind.
Five of them remained in that house on SE Girard Street without the financial means or opportunity to leave, Griffin said. It felt wrong, as the youngest, to break out before they did, Griffin said.
Griffin struck up a relationship with a woman who lived in Kansas City, and as that progressed it became a reason to move.
In July 2019, with $400 in their bank account, a bag of clothes and the promise of a job at a coffee shop, Griffin packed up their car and headed east.
Griffin describes the time since as both the happiest and most stressful of their life.
At first, they struggled to find themselves after being repressed for so long. Eventually they learned to gravitate toward people who are quirky and vulnerable, like Griffin. Since their teen years they’ve struggled to define themselves in an environment where they were given little chance to explore.
Coming out as nonbinary – meaning they don’t identify as more masculine or feminine – felt like a good step too, Griffin said.
Griffin built a humble home inside an apartment in the North Hyde Park neighborhood alongside their girlfriend and rescue dog. Money is still tight.
For months, they spent every night listening for the sound of a tow truck taking their car away for expired plates. Only recently could Griffin afford new tags, purchased with prize money from a recent latte competition.
Some nights, after coming home from their shift at Messenger Coffee Co on Grand Boulevard, or spending time practicing latte art with their friends, they wonder what it would take to give their siblings the same freedom. But they know right now, there’s little they can do.
While they succeeded in finding their creative home in Kansas City, Griffin said they continue to tread water financially and emotionally.
Their family, who they kept in touch with, still weighed heavy on their mind as their mother again became more involved with the church.
Their website still locates the church headquarters in Topeka’s Westboro neighborhood, for which the group is named. As of 2016, the church claimed about 70 members, according to an article in Forbes.
While Westboro has made fewer headlines since the death of its founder, they continue to protest, including at concerts.
One of Griffin’s cousins, Megan Phelps-Roper, published a memoir in 2019 detailing their unusual upbringing, and later denouncing the church.
But Griffin doesn’t pay much attention to the happenings in the church. It was a text from their sister, Naomi, that turned Griffin’s world on its head.
Their mother had walked out on the family for the church, she said. Then they found something she had been hiding.
A stolen identity
Tucked away across their childhood home were hundreds of credit cards.
Thirty-eight of them were stamped with Griffin’s name. They would soon learn that as a result, they were staring down $9,746 in credit card debt by late spring, amassed on about 14 of the still-active cards.
While Griffin doesn’t know yet whether they’ll ultimately end up shouldering the debt, they are also watching their credit score slip further below 550 as payment deadlines pass.
Griffin was one of the better off of the family. Other siblings face upwards of $80,000 in credit card debt each, Griffin said; Naomi Griffin has just shy of $25,000 of her mother’s debt to her name.
The discovery was a breaking point for Edward Griffin, who grew up with little and worked hard to afford a life for themselves in Kansas City. Now, they are doubly at a disadvantage.
“I forgive her for what she did to us as children, but I don’t forgive her for what she’s doing to us now as adults,” they said.
Instead, they filed police reports.
At the Topeka police station, Griffin set a plastic grocery bag on the table. Inside were cards opened as far back as 2014, the day after Griffin turned 18.
The officer seemed flabbergasted by the stack. Griffin felt affirmed. None of this was normal, despite what they’d been told for most of their life.
Griffin also filed a report through the Kansas City Police Department, since at least one card was opened after they moved to Missouri. Naomi Griffin filed her own report in Topeka. The complaints, obtained by The Star, accuse Phelps-Griffin of fraud.
When reached by phone, Phelps-Griffin told The Star she wasn’t surprised her children went to police.
“That’s just the sort of people they are,” she said. “They don’t want to take responsibility for anything in life. Neither one of them ever offered a penny to pay for their costs of living, and they lived in my husband and my house for years. I didn’t expect it necessarily, but if they had a shred of decency, they would’ve made some effort.”
Phelps-Griffin said her children gave her permission to open the cards long ago. Edward and Naomi Griffin denied this, saying they and the others didn’t know about the cards until this year.
“Their credit was good because I had established it,” Phelps-Griffin said. “I didn’t miss any payments for years. My situation has changed and I’m not able to carry that debt anymore … It was a process of years that it was an issue of survival, and they understood, maybe not to a degree, that there’s a remedy there, and I told them what the remedy is.”
Her remedy, she told The Star? They should file for bankruptcy.
Asked about allegations of physical and emotional abuse made by Edward and Naomi in conversations with The Star, Phelps-Griffin said, “that’s all a relative concept.”
“My concern is I got them to an age of majority and they forget that there are a lot of children that die, that never make it to majority,” she said. “They ought to be thankful and go ahead on with their lives.”
An uncertain future
Edward Griffin is trying to move on.
On a recent sweltering summer evening in Kansas City, Griffin leaned over a cup of steaming espresso. With one hand they poured frothy milk, starting high so the dairy dove beneath the coffee’s surface, then formed an intricate design at the surface.
In less than a minute, a white pegasus, their signature design customers often request of them, emerged.
In this moment, Griffin wasn’t thinking about their family.
They weren’t thinking of their past, which they’ve hidden for so long from so many, fearing ostracism or judgment because of who they share blood with. Not thinking of the police reports sitting in limbo, or the mounting credit card debt. Not thinking of the GoFundMe they created or the second job they took on to help dig out of their financial woes.
Some days Griffin wants to put their childhood behind them forever and run as far away from their siblings as they can. Other days Griffin wants to help them.
But first they have to help themselves. Maybe that means therapy. Or moving up in the coffee industry through a better-paying job. Maybe it means starting anew in a different city, like New York or Los Angeles.
But for now, the home they’ve fashioned in Kansas City is enough. Making lattes is enough.
Latte art, they said, is an escape, but also an act of service. A pursuit of perfection. Evidence of self-worth.
It’s an identity.
This story was originally published August 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
