Joshua and Rachel Dolezal.
Rachel Dolezal's biological brother, Joshua Dolezal, wrote a memoir in March 2014 that included details of alleged physical abuse Rachel suffered at the hands of her ex-husband Kevin Moore.
In his book, Down From the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging, Joshua Dolezal wrote that Rachel told him she was scared of her husband during their marriage. She filed for divorce from Moore, who is black, in 2004.
In this excerpt, Joshua describes a phone conversation he had with Rachel during her marriage to Moore.
"What's going on? Can you talk, or is he home?" "It's OK," she said, "but I wish you wouldn't write. It makes everything worse." "Makes what worse?" "He hasn't hit me yet, but he's thrown me by my hair twice." "What? That bastard. I had no idea." "I'm scared. The other day I was walking out of the bathroom and he bumped me with his hip and I fell down. He said, 'Look–I can knock you over with nothing but my skinny little ass.' And he wakes me at three in the morning by licking me. Sometimes he's on top of me before I'm even awake. He's done that before, but now it happens every day. It's freaking me out."
Kevin Moore and Joshua Dolezal did not return messages for comment from BuzzFeed News.
In Joshua Dolezal's "Author's Note" he wrote, "To protect others' privacy I have occasionally altered minor details and changed or omitted names. I have conceded most factual corrections suggested by family and friends except for a few cases where my memory differs from theirs. To remember is to reconstruct and interpret, and this is as truthful a story as my memory can tell."
Rachel Dolezal has alleged that her ex-husband was abusive to her and their son, Franklin Moore. In a February interview with The Easterner, Dolezal said that Franklin "would sometimes get thrown across the room" when he tried to stop his father's violence against her.
Joshua Dolezal, 39, wrote that he was worried about his sister and read up on domestic violence. "I murdered him hundreds of times in my sleep," he wrote about Kevin Moore.
A writer and associate professor of English at Central College in Iowa, Joshua Dolezal was charged in Colorado in 2013 with four felony counts of sexual abuse of a minor and is currently on bail awaiting his trial set for August, according to court records obtained by BuzzFeed News. The minor, a black victim, is alleged to be a family member, according to court documents.
Rachel Dolezal told the Spokesman-Review that she was suspicious of the timing of her parents' revelations about her being white — not black, as she presented — because they were made as the "Colorado lawsuit filed by her sister against their brother nears a key juncture," the Spokesman-Review reported.
Rachel and Joshua have one adopted black sister, Esther Dolezal, who said she "fully supports" Rachel in a recent blog post.
The parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, have implied that Rachel is involved in the criminal action against Joshua.
Ezra Dolezal, Rachel's other adopted sibling, told BuzzFeed News on Friday that Rachel was instrumental in the filing of a legal action against a family member who was unhappy with her when she took her parents to court and won custody of Izaiah Dolezal, another adopted brother. Rachel now refers to Izaiah as her own son.
"The family member disagreed with how she claimed Izaiah was her birth son so she's decided to destroy his life with false accusations," Ezra said, adding that he couldn't reveal more details because of the ongoing legal dispute.
Joshua Dolezal allegedly abused the then 6- or 7-year-old victim at Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal's home in Colorado in around 2001 or 2002, according to an affidavit for his arrest warrant obtained by BuzzFeed News. Joshua Dolezal was accused of making the victim perform oral sex on him. The victim also told police that Joshua had "victimized his older sister."
Joshua Dolezal's book, described as a "coming-of-age memoir," details how he and Rachel were raised in Montana by Pentecostal homesteaders "whose twenty-year experiment in subsistence living was closely tied to their faith." He writes about being unable to embrace the "fundamentalism of his parents."
He described a young Rachel as having "my mother's blond hair and my father's face" and said that she was born in a house they built on a mountain. He writes about how both he and Rachel were delivered by their father without a physician or midwife because of their mother's distrust of clinicians.
He wrote that at the end of his senior year, his parents adopted the first of four children, "determined to show their commitment to the pro-life cause."
Joshua Dolezal appeared protective of Rachel in the memoir, particularly concerned about her marriage with Kevin Moore, who she met in Mississippi. He wrote that when her son was 3 years old, Rachel had "given up her art shows." He also wrote that Moore allegedly did not let Rachel and their son out of the house.
An excerpt from the book indicates that Moore checked Rachel's private messages from Joshua:
I wrote to her as soon as I returned home: "How long has he had you shut up in the house? You've got to stand up for yourself." He wrote back: "Protecting my wife is my business, not yours. No one lives with her but me and our son. I don't want you putting ideas in her head." He was reading her messages. Things were worse than I'd thought. My reply: "'Protecting' your wife becomes my business when your wife is my sister and your control interferes with her life. I will defend her right to privacy and freedom. You have no right to deny her that."
He wrote that Rachel refused to leave her husband, saying that "he was trying to do better."
During their divorce, Joshua wrote that his sister was worried about child support payments. "He's behind on child support again," she allegedly said. "But I don't think I can afford more lawyer's fees."
He described his sister as living in "a self-contained hell."
