Children in High Demand Organizations

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April 28, 2005

'Internet evangelist' held on child rape charges

DELAND -- A self-described Internet evangelist who has preached about everything from morality to spirituality on his family's Web site was arrested Wednesday and charged with raping a child younger than 12.

Charles Michael Balfe, 60, was picked up at his job site at 84 Lumber in DeLand, DeLand Police Cmdr. Randel Henderson said. He is being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail without bail.

Balfe, married and the father of three, is accused in three warrants of raping a child younger than 12, Henderson said. The remaining counts accuse him of sexual battery, lewd and lascivious molestation and domestic violence.

Court records show Balfe was divorced in 1998 and remarried in October 1999. While the Web site identifies him as an "Internet evangelist," the site doesn't mention his educational background or his connection to any organized theological group.

On his Web site's Frequently Asked Questions page, Balfe notes he doesn't have "a permanently constructed building that we own and maintain" for church services, but does have "an assembly of other Jesus believers" as members.

To the question of whether he is a Christian, Balfe's response is: "Yes, and also a born-again believer."

On the site, Balfe denies his group is a cult.

As of Wednesday morning, the Web site for the First Christian Church/Disciples of Christ of DeLand listed Balfe as a member and linked to Jesusbelievers.beliefnet.com, which was described as a Web site of the Balfe family's ministry.

But those references were removed from the First Christian Church Web site by Wednesday night, when churchgoers at First Christian attended services.

A group assembled outside the church after the service and most did not want to comment.

Courtney Myers, a 15-year-old member of the First Christian Church, said she was surprised by Balfe's arrest.

"He appears to be a nice man," Myers said.

The Balfe family used to attend Wednesday services regularly, Myers said, but she hasn't seen them lately.

"They would all sit down for dinner and stay for youth services," she said. "They looked like a normal, happy family."

Knocks at Balfe's North Orange Avenue home Wednesday went unanswered and neighbors avoided questions.

Jesusbelievers.beliefnet.com includes information promoting prayer in schools, a What Would Jesus Do? checklist and a discussion about heaven and hell.

The Web site also features a family portrait of Balfe, his wife and their three children and includes the question, "Do you see guardian angels in this picture?"

Circuit Judge S. James Foxman ordered Balfe held without bail on the domestic violence count, which supersedes the $1 million amounts for each of the sexual abuse charges, jail officials said.

Police would not say whether Balfe's wife was the victim of the domestic violence or when the incidents happened, although court records indicate the attacks occurred at Balfe's home in 2000.

Daytona Beach News-Journal, USA
Apr, 28, 2005
Lyda Longa, Staff Writer
www.news-journalonline.com

Posted by Julia at 10:14 PM

April 26, 2005

Tests Show Only One Child Linked to Deya

Only one of the nine children seized from the home of the London-based evangelist Gilbert Deya has been proved as his.

DNA tests carried out on Deya and the children showed that only the genes of one child, identified as David, matched the wealthy preacher's.

UK police carried out the tests and sent the results to their Kenyan counterparts last week.

"Results here show that only one of the babies who were seized from a home in Mountain View last year belong to Deya," said police.

Police are still holding 21 children now known as "miracle babies" in various children's homes in the city pending the outcome of a court case against Deya's wife Mary over child theft.

Similar tests in Kenya showed that only one baby is related to Mary.

Deya, who is in charge of Deya Ministries in the UK, who has been charged with child trafficking, has maintained that the children are his. He claimed the charges were based on malice and jealousy.

Yesterday, police who said they doubted the outcome of tests carried out on the babies and over 50 people claiming them said the exercise would be repeated.

Officials said the tests might have done with faulty equipment, adding that they would repeat the tests either in South Africa or Britain.

"It is expensive but we are trying to have the tests done again because there were obvious cases of relationship between some of the children and claimants," said an officer.

Police last August raided a home in Nairobi's Komarock estate and seized 12 children. The took away nine more from the Deyas home in Mountain View.

Investigations into a suspected child trafficking racket started after a couple claimed they had miraculously given birth to over 10 children within three years.

The couple was also arrested and charged after tests indicated that none of the 12 babies had genetic links with them.

The Standard, Kenya
Apr. 26, 2005
Cyrus Ombati
www.eastandard.net

Posted by Julia at 10:09 PM

April 25, 2005

Polygamy lecture 'disgusts'

The only right they have is to obey their husbands - who have multiple other wives. Their babies are born without limbs and other mutations because the father has been a close relative for many generations.

They don't know the words "I," "me" or "fun," and they have no identity. Those women and children live in Colorado City, Ariz.

Flora Jessop, a child victim advocate with the Child Protection Project, started Friday's lecture on polygamy and child abuse at the James E. Rogers College of Law with an exercise.

"Imagine having an extra room for your husband to make love with your sister, mother, daughter or best friend," she said.

Jessop, who grew up in Colorado City, escaped the community more than 20 years ago and is now fighting to liberate the women and children in the city.

There is documentation of polygamous communities in 38 states, Jessop said, who are religious, racist and have no contact with the "world outside."

These communities are growing rapidly, Jessop said, who has 28 brothers and sisters.

Women are required to have as many children as they possibly can, Jessop said. A woman has 17 children on average, and some men have as many as 70 wives.

"You are female, you have babies," Jessop said. "My mother's innards fell out when she had her last child."

Anyone born into the community has no rights and no identity - all they have is the church, Jessop said.

Children grow up believing society is evil, and they will bleed to death if they tell anyone about the misuse, Jessop said, which is why only very few dare to escape.

Laurene Jessop said she is one of the few who escaped Colorado City five years ago after being institutionalized in Flagstaff four times for rebelling against her husband.

The mother of five children said she has 56 brothers and sisters, and was married at age 14 to a husband who then also married her sister.

"You don't have choices, you are told who to marry," Laurene Jessop said. "We are here in Arizona, we are here in America, but we are locked up."

Getting married between ages 14 and 16 is no surprise, and the youngest girl to be married was 8 years old, Flora Jessop said.

Laurene Jessop was homeless after her escape, but she said fleeing was the only right thing to do.

She had difficulties in building a life "outside," Laurene Jessop said, because there were many rules she was still forced to follow.

Women in Colorado City are not allowed to laugh, they cannot cut their hair, and they have to wear a dress at all times with full-body underwear.

They are told their bodies are disgusting and they are not allowed to touch them, Laurene Jessop said, and many women have genital infections because they only wash their hair.

Laurene Jessop said she signed the custody of her children to her husband when she was put on drugs in the institution, but she now has her children back with the help of the organization Justice for Children and Flora Jessop.

The children have a hard time adapting to society, Laurene Jessop said, because they do not know the words "I," "me" or "fun" and do not believe their mother, because she is "the wicked one," who ran away.

Donnalee Sarda, a regional director of the Arizona Chapter of Justice for children, referred to Colorado City inhabitants as a "special population that is brainwashed" and said they cannot be treated as normal citizens when they escape the community.

Sarda said the case is new to the legal system, and no one knew about the community in Arizona because of their geographical and social isolation.

Jane Irvine, the director of the office for children, youth and families in the Attorney General's office in Maricopa County, said she works closely with law enforcement but is still waiting for laws to catch up.

Irvine said Arizona has worked hard to collaborate with Utah to enable synchronic law enforcement and the goal is to decrease bureaucratic detours to help the victims immediately.

The most difficult but badly needed task is to convince the victims to speak out in court, Irvine said, but most of them are too scared and think they will go to hell.

Most victims feel deprived of help, Flora Jessop said, and bureaucracy ties their hands.

"They say if we help one of them, we have to help them all," Laurene Jessop said regarding the legal system. "There are no resources, and it's a lack of money why they don't prosecute."

Irvine called the case a challenge and said it is something they are just learning about.

"Change is coming," Irvine said. "I hope it's in our lifetime."

Sara Ransom, a third-year law student, said she organized the lecture because she wanted to raise awareness about something that few people know about.

"This is a human rights violation going on in my state," Ransom said. "And nothing is done about it."

Laura Dubrish, a communications senior, said she was shocked when she heard what the women had to endure and said something has to be done.

Dubrish called for zero tolerance of this behavior and questioned the gap in the legal system that allowed for the community to exist.

"I was disgusted," Dubrish said. "This is very uncivilized, very anti-American."

By Djamila Noelle Grossman
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, April 25, 2005

Posted by Julia at 10:28 PM

April 24, 2005

Beyond Bountiful

By Brian Lynch
21-Apr-2005

Keep Sweet revisits polygamy in a small B.C. town

The act of reading opened one of the few apertures in Debbie Palmer’s carefully sealed childhood, which, as her recent memoir Keep Sweet: Children of Polygamy describes in tragic detail, was spent in Bountiful, the now-embattled community of fundamentalist Mormons near Creston, B.C.

Keep Sweet (Dave’s Press, $28.95) opens in the late 1950s, shortly after the author, then barely a year old, moved with her devoutly Mormon family to the newly established cluster of houses and farms in southeastern B.C. At the time, Bountiful was home to a mere 48 Mormon dissenters, all of whom had come to work the land and practise the custom of “celestial marriage”, a tradition of polygamy instituted in 1830 by the Church of Latter-day Saints’ founding prophet Joseph Smith but refuted 60 years later by leaders of the mainstream church in order to placate the United States government.

Bountiful was and remains a “closed” community, encased by its hard-nosed principles of economic and cultural self-reliance and, more importantly, by a theology that places it at the centre of God’s plan for the human species, surrounded on all sides not only by mainstream Mormons, whom it considers apostates, but also by dissolute outsiders hostile to the community’s practice of allowing its patriarchs to amass a collection of wives, many of them mere teenagers.

As Keep Sweet recounts, Palmer was herself married as a 15-year-old to Bountiful’s 55-year-old leader. (Her husband’s subsequent death led to her “assignment” to two more men, before she and her children finally fled the group in 1988.) The book also portrays a childhood punctuated by beatings and sexual assaults that, Palmer claims, are inevitable when a community is turned in wholly upon itself.

And as Palmer recently explained in conversation with the Straight, it was a devotion to reading—practised at first on the few books of Bible stories and fairy tales available to her when she was a child, and later on the newspapers at a local store—that offered not only a psychological escape route from a systematically abusive environment but, eventually, a means to contemplate her fate from the outside.

“The young people I’ve talked to who ended up reading things themselves and being connected with other information from outside the group have had a similar challenge in sticking with its teachings and beliefs,” she explained. “Reading also provides them with a sense of the world being a bigger place, and that other human beings are not as dispensable as you’re taught.”

It was only natural, then, that this self-created, self-preserving love of reading was transformed into a desire to write. Not long after severing her ties to the group, and along with it a family containing some 47 of her half-brothers and -sisters, Palmer moved with her children to Calgary, where a social worker eventually challenged her to set down her memories of a world at that time rarely glimpsed by outsiders.

Palmer started on the manuscript in 1991, turning to it in the scraps of time left over from her deepening involvement in academic conferences and committees on the issues of women, violence, and polygamy. By 2003, after compiling well over 10,000 pages, Palmer realized she could not go forward without help.

It was then that she began seriously discussing her project with Dave Perrin, a man uniquely qualified for the task of extracting Keep Sweet from the stack of paper she had created. As a veterinarian who lived slightly more than a kilometre from Bountiful, and who was married to another refugee from the community, Perrin had known Palmer for decades. He was also the author of three books about his years as a country vet, all of which he had published himself with remarkable success. Nonetheless, as Perrin recalled while talking with the Straight from his home in Lister, B.C., Keep Sweet proved to be an undertaking of an entirely different order.

Perrin described long, intense days of refining and restructuring, and hours on the phone encouraging Palmer to put down the details of the abuse she had suffered. “Sometimes, when it hurts, you don’t want to tell anybody,” he observed, “but sometimes that’s the meat of the whole story.”

This agonizing process may have been cathartic for Palmer—and equally therapeutic for Perrin, who “hadn’t realized the depth of what my wife went through”—but Perrin sensed as he worked on the manuscript that the contents could be explosive, even lethal, in a space as confined as Bountiful and its neighbouring communities.

“I really wasn’t entirely sure that somebody in the community would not want this out enough to maybe do away with me. That was my feeling. I felt safer when it was finished and out there, because if I was suddenly dead, I think it would be bad publicity.” Now, he remarked, “I drive by them, I walk the road every day, and they don’t wave at me as much as they used to. But it’s not quite as bad as I had anticipated it might be.”

Yet Keep Sweet remains a source of difficulty for Perrin. Despite steady sales of the book in Western Canada—buoyed in part by a recent wave of media attention on Bountiful—he has yet to convince the Toronto-based buyers of Canada’s bookselling behemoth, the Chapters/Indigo chain, to stock the item nationwide.

“Here I am one moment dealing with a German television crew that’s coming to town looking for interviews,” he said with a clear note of frustration, “and the next minute the Chapters organization is telling us this is a regional story. I think it’s totally ludicrous.”

The two authors remain convinced that their book’s relevance extends far beyond the mountain valley where it is set. Recent stories in Maclean’s and the Globe and Mail, and the success of Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, suggest they’re right.

Despite the sensational aspects of the story, Palmer’s experience may well be universal. Her account of abuse and survival is, as she put it, “a microversion of what happens in different countries, even across the world”, wherever all-encompassing control over a population is founded on enforced isolation and silence.

“When you’re part of a community like Bountiful, you can’t really identify your culture,” she remarked after citing the plight of First Nations survivors of residential schools as a similar case. “You know you’re defending polygamy, and that it’s supposed to have some connection with what the fundamental teachings and religion were. But the more you learn about it, the more you realize that what they’re saying it is and what it really is are two different things.”

Keep Sweet shows how the space between those two things is most forcefully opened by the printed word and how the private act of reading, with its silent alchemy that joins author to reader, and one reader to another, can remove an individual from even the strongest and most damaging collective bonds.

The Georgia Straight
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=9632

Posted by Perry at 01:35 PM

April 21, 2005

Ghana tumour girl ignites debate

A church has found itself at the centre of a debate between religion and the state in Ghana after a 14-year-old girl with a tumour was taken away from her parents to ensure she receives medical treatment.

Mathias Acquah and his wife Rebecca are unflinching members of the Jesus Christ Apostolic Faith Church in Accra.

Members of the church have no use for doctors and hospitals, because they believe solely in divine healing.

They don't even accept polio immunisation.

Their 14-year-old daughter, Mabel, had not seen a doctor, despite developing a life-threatening tumour which showed up five years ago and is now nearly the size of her head.

The tumour dangles on the back of the girl's neck.

The department of social welfare, backed by the police, has taken custody of Mabel and she is now seeing the doctor.

But state intervention is not backed by all Ghanaians.

Divine healing

Mr and Mrs Acquah were not available for comment, but a member of their congregation, who declined to be identified, said that he would do the same thing as the Acquahs if any of his children were in a similar position.

The church's action - is a violation of the rights of the child
Human rights activist Ken Attafuah

Do you believe in prayer?

"We only pray for them believing God's word and they get healed so if she was my daughter that is what I would do."

"It works so wonderfully... we are very happy to be practising divine healing."

The Christ Apostolic Faith Church has been around since 1941.

Its elders claim that the congregation has suffered very few deaths in decades.

However, a number of people whose relations belong to the church say that claim is exaggerated.

Protection

Ken Attafuah, a human rights activist, says the authorities have no rights to close down the church but it must act to protect children.

"The church's action in constraining the right of the child to medical attention is a violation of the rights of the child," he says

"That is a matter the state ought to take up to stop the church from engaging in such conduct towards this particular child and towards other children in future."

Authorities at the department of social welfare are now considering how to deal with the long-term relationship between Mabel and her parents.

It seems that when religious faith and the law run into each other on a narrow bridge, it is the law that has the right of way.

Should the law take precedence over religious beliefs - especially when it affects children? Have your say. A selection of your comments appear belows and will be broadcast on the BBC Focus on Africa programme on Saturday 23 April at 1700 GMT.

The bible says my people perish because of lack of knowledge. I really don't understand what some pentocostal people think when they hear or read God is your healer. Yes, he is your healer, but the medical doctor was also send for a purpose and i think the law should take precedence over religious beliefs, especially when it affects children and parents refuse to consult medical doctors.

By Kwaku Sakyi-Addo
BBC News, Accra
news.bbc.co.uk

Posted by Julia at 06:03 PM

Pak panchayat weds two-year-old girl to 40-year-old man

In a bizarre incident, a two year old girl has been promised in marriage to a 40 year old man, in Pakistan.

If that seems odd enough, the reason is obviously more absurd. Rabia's fate has been decided by the panchayat, which had pronounced the verdict after finding her uncle Muhammad Akmal guilty of sleeping with another man's wife. The panchayat imposed a fine of 230,000 rupees on Akmal, and ordered him to marry Rabia to the wronged man, 40 year-old Altaf Hussain.

If the verdict goes through, Rabia will marry Hussain, once she crosses 14. Rabia's mother, Maqsood Mai, who is separated from her husband, had no say in the matter, though her other uncles are furious, the Daily Times reported a report in the Guardian as saying.

"This is a terrible crime. This is the first time in the history of our tribe that such a thing has happened," the paper quoted Muhammad Nawaz as saying, adding that he would move the family before Rabia could be taken away.

Officials from Pakistan's Human Rights Commission say that jirgas or punchayats still hold sway in the country's rural heartland. The justice is often rough and generally in favour of the rich, fuelling medieval notions of bloody revenge and feudal inequalities.

"They nearly always decide in favour of the most powerful. In these areas the people are living in the 16th century. And still the state is sleeping. Why?" added Rashid Rehman from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. (ANI)

news.webindia123.com

Posted by Julia at 06:01 PM

Utah-based group under fire: Legislation targets association of schools for troubled youths

A Utah-based organization affiliated with schools for troubled youths is stirring controversy in at least three states and is the target of congressional legislation unveiled Wednesday.

At issue are the persistent allegations of child abuse and claims of questionable business practices surrounding the World Wide Association of Speciality Schools (WWASPS) founded by Robert Lichfield of La Verkin, Washington County.

Lichfield is one of three directors on the board of WWASPS, which officially claims affiliation with seven schools, including facilities in New York, South Carolina, Montana, Utah and Jamaica.

The organization uses behavior modification tactics to curb rebellious behavior in kids and often establishes schools in rural, out-of-the-way areas to deter notions of running away. Monthly tuition is several thousand dollars, on top of admission fees.

The allegations of abuse and questions about the facilities' credentials — all of which WWASPS' president Ken Kay denies or says are overblown — have sparked investigations in numerous states, prompted closures of some facilities and led Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., Wednesday to call for federal legislation invoking more oversight.

It was Miller, the senior Democrat on the Education and Workforce Committee, who demanded in 2003 that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft investigate WWASPS.

The request, made again last year, never gained much traction, so Miller is now pushing for passage of the "End Institutional Abuse Against Children Act," which among other things, would establish federal civil and criminal penalties for abuse against children in residential treatment programs and expand federal regulatory authority to overseas programs operated by U.S. companies.

Miller's legislation is just but one of many recent actions involving WWASPS around the country.

In New York, the organization's Academy at Ivy Ridge had its accreditation suspended last week in the wake of a New York Attorney General's Office investigation that is probing the school's licensing and educational credentials.

A subpoena was issued in February gathering numerous documents for an ongoing probe — an investigation Kay characterizes as a "lack of communication" between Ivy Ridge and state officials.

Whatever the case, Ivy Ridge's accreditation was suspended by the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools in Boise and the school put a disclaimer on its Web site, listing its lack of accreditation and detailing its negotiations with state educational officials to offer sanctioned diplomas.

The disclaimer comes despite the school's existence since 2002, when it opened just outside of Ogdenburg near the Canadian border and since then has promoted two forms of diplomas as an academic offering.

Kay said the problem is unfortunate because the students' education is being sacrificed simply due to "some bureaucratic jousting going on."

The Northwest Association, the regional accrediting agency for Utah and several other Western states, suspended Ivy Ridge's accreditation until the issue is clarified, Kay said.

"They ran gun-shy because they got a threat from the attorney general in New York."

For its part, the AG's office is remaining mum about the extent of the probe, but officials believe several procedural violations may come into play, including the school's failure to properly operate with a certificate of approval issued by the state Department of Education.

The paperwork problems come on top of complaints by parents who have claimed their children are abused.

Kay said claims frequently surface because of the nature of the schools' population. "They make up stories, they fabricate; you are dealing with a difficult part of society."

New York officials did find enough evidence to substantiate criminal charges against two men contracted to transport a teenager to Ivy Ridge last year.

WWASPS says parents routinely use such escort services — in this case Teen Escort from La Verkin — to transport an unwilling child to a facility.

New York officials, at the time, believed WWASPS and Teen Escort to be one and the same. WWASPS denies any connection.

The men were accused of beating the boy while handcuffed in the car after the teenager — who was then free of restraints — grabbed the steering wheel and caused the vehicle to crash.

Initially charged with misdemeanor assault and felony imprisonment, the two men reached a plea agreement in which they admitted guilt to misdemeanor harassment and were fined.

The New York problems with accreditation are continuing to unfold, even while Missouri officials firmly slammed the door on a proposal to establish a boarding school in the town of Boonville.

Kay said the bid to open a school for troubled youth at the site of the former Kemper Military School was completely unrelated to any WWASPS venture, even though it was founder Lichfield who cut the check for the earnest money deposit and a former WWASPS employee who was going to lease the property from Lichfield and run the facility.

"That is what is just the amazing thing because WWASPS had nothing to do with Boonville, nothing to do with Kemper and nothing to do with Mr. Hinton," Kay said, noting that Lichfield became involved by virtue of his real estate investment company, Golden Pond, and there was never any intention of WWASPS' involvement.

Skeptics, including police supervisors who issued a strongly worded memo advising against the sale, believed otherwise.

"Our personal opinion would be to deny any sale to any person associated with WWASP or its affiliates" until an intensive background check could be completed, the memo reads.

One newspaper editorialized against the venture, asking Boonville to think twice before getting stung by "WWASP" and advising that the city should tell Lichfield to take his checkbook and go home.

Enough controversy, including records supplied to officials that allegedly documented restraints used against children such as handcuffs, pepper spray and duct tape, led the Boonville City Council on Monday to unanimously reject Lichfield's offer.

Closer to home, in Washington County, Lichfield has filed a lawsuit against Shelby Earnshaw, her husband and her International Survivors Action Committee (ISAC).

The organization, which acts as a teen help industry watchdog, compiles complaints and documents related to residential treatment centers. WWASPS has frequently been in its bull's-eye.

The suit alleges the Earnshaws and ISAC have defamed Lichfield, invaded his privacy and caused intentional interference with "prospective economic advantage."

Earnshaw, reached at her offices in Virginia, said the suit will not deter ISAC's mission but admits it does have her perplexed.

"I've never even gotten a parking ticket," she said, adding his claim she spread untruths about Lichfield to Utah and Missouri officials is not true.

ISAC does assert at least one other troubled facility is actually a WWASPS affiliate in the conglomerate that bears Lichfield's stamp.

It is an allegation that Kay challenges anyone to prove.

"We are absolutely not affiliated."

But ISAC contends Bethel Boys Academy in Mississippi, most recently going by the name of Eagle Point Christian Academy, has strings to WWASPS. A riot occurred there this month that left seven teenagers injured.

Most recently in Utah, a children's advocacy group called for an investigation last month into WWASPS' Randolph facility — Majestic Ranch — alleging abuse and unsanitary conditions.

State child welfare officials, who were chastised in the group's report, subsequently said they found nothing that rose to the level of abuse or neglect. On Wednesday, however, a mother filed a federal lawsuit against WWASPS alleging that her son had been battered at the ranch.

Copyright 2005 Deseret Morning News
By Amy Joi Bryson
Deseret Morning News
www.deseretnews.com

Posted by Julia at 05:42 PM

No more polygamy with girls under 18, B.C. sect says

Last Updated Wed, 20 Apr 2005 21:42:57 EDT
CBC News

CRESTON, B.C. - The wives of polygamists from a religion-based community near Creston, B.C., defended their lifestyle at a meeting Tuesday night, but also said girls under 18 will no longer enter into "plural marriages."

The women are part of a secretive breakaway Mormon sect that believes one man may have several wives. (The official Mormon Church banned polygamy in 1890.)

They fully admit that their families are breaking the law.

But during the "Summit on Polygamy" sponsored by their church at a recreation centre in Creston, the women said their lifestyle is just another aspect of the multicultural fabric of Canada, and should be respected on freedom-of-religion grounds.

"Our lifestyle is not for everyone, and may not be the right choice for you," Leah Barlow, who was raised in the faith, told non-members attending the meeting. "But for us, this is the right choice."

Critics speak of very young pregnant wives

The 1,000-member community of Bountiful has attracted criticism recently because some older men have nearly 30 wives, some as young as 14.

Larry Corville, who protested outside the meeting with a handful of other people, said he worries about the young mothers he sees visiting Creston from time to time. Some of them are pregnant while they still seem to be children themselves, he said.

"We see them come to town with one in the sack ... and they don't look like they're 15, 16 years old," he said.

Only two girls younger than 16 have ever entered into what the women of Bountiful call plural marriages, the community countered Tuesday night. One was a day shy of her 15th birthday when she married an older man.

Barlow said the congregation has now decided that won't happen anymore.

"Girls will not be allowed to enter into plural marriage until they have reached the age of consent of 18," she said.

Neither the women nor Winston Blackmore, a leader in the sect who acknowledges having "married several very young wives in my life," would explain why that decision has been made now.

Blackmore would only say that in the past, leaders in the U.S. were preaching that the end of the world was about to occur, and teenage girls were anxious to be married before it was too late.

He added that in his case, it was the girls who told their parents they wanted to marry him, and leaders above him told him to comply with their wishes.

Lives described as happy, except for discrimination

The women of Bountiful served homemade cookies as they mingled with Creston residents at the meeting, their braided hair and modest pioneer-style dresses setting them apart.

One after another, they described how happy they are sharing husbands with their "sister wives" and attacked activists who claim they have been brainwashed from an early age to accept polygamy.

The women said the biggest problem they face is prejudice. They told of banks that refused their business, and of physical attacks on their children.

In 2004, provincial officials said they would look into accusations of child abuse, forced marriage and sexual exploitation at the Bountiful commune. They also said there had been complaints about racist teachings in the community's schools.

Posted by Perry at 01:08 AM

Abuse in polygamous town denied

October 11, 2004
By AMY CARMICHAEL

VANCOUVER (CP) - In a huffy note hammered onto the town message board, women from a B.C. polygamous commune have announced they would be "setting the record straight" about abuse they have allegedly been subjected to.

The public notice lashes out against an equal rights group convinced that the women of Bountiful, B.C., have been brainwashed and need to be saved from their husbands.

Eight women living across the province launched a complaint with the human rights tribunal on behalf of their allegedly enslaved sisters who are part of a breakaway Mormon sect in southeastern British Columbia.

One is former colony member Debbie Palmer who says she suffered physical abuse at the commune, was married off at 15 and had seven children by three different men she was assigned to marry.

The complaint accuses the government of failing to protect girls in Bountiful from an oppressive culture.

Under the tribunal process, the complainants were required to plaster the town with notices explaining what they were doing and asking women to come forward with their stories.

Women on the commune, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, are furious that outsiders are judging them and have decided their lifestyle is wrong, let alone oppressive.

"We hope to set the record straight, and to notify the Human Rights Tribunal . . . that it is not the Government of British Columbia that has violated our human rights, but the continued false accusations of a few self-serving activists, fanned by the frenzy of a story-seeking media, that has violated our constitutionally guaranteed rights of religion, association, privacy and peaceful assembly," blasts the notice, which was pinned up over top of one posted by the equal rights group.

The communication, which appeared over the weekend, is a rare response from the cloistered community.

It says that 80 women, "actual members, past and present, of the Bountiful community" have signed a counter-claim being sent to the rights tribunal and the government.

It spells out that they feel they have been given equal protection and benefit of the law and access to public services.

"We have not been discriminated against nor neglected because we are female," the poster reads.

The statement disturbs complainant Jancis Andrews, who believes the Bountiful wives are under the spell of a cult.

"I know that sounds very derogatory, and I don't mean it to be," she said Monday, taking a break from stuffing a Thanksgiving turkey in her home in Sechelt, B.C.

"It's an attempt to understand the mindset of people brought up in a cult. It is not to judge them harshly, we can't judge them by normal standards. We are concerned for them."

She doesn't make such concessions for the B.C. government. Allowing Bountiful to operate as a polygamous town is a great insult to Canadian women, she said.

"They're saying it's OK to lock women in harems, impregnate them and use them as sex artifacts with no control over their own bodies," she said.

Her complaint to the human rights tribunal accuses four provincial ministers of gross dereliction of duty.

It alleges they knew girls in Bountiful were "being denied an education, pulled out of class to become concubines in harems, denied birth control and having motherhood forced upon them."

It also accuses the community school of preaching racism and sexism by teaching students, for example, that "females must obey males or their souls will burn forever in Hell."

B.C. Attorney General Geoff Plant announced in July that an investigation would be conducted into accusations of child abuse, forcible marriage and sexual exploitation at the commune.

Commune members have not commented on the continuing controversy.

Posted by Perry at 01:02 AM

Pitcairn Islanders Challenge British Laws

Monday, April 18, 2005 Updated at 8:17 AM EST
Associated Press

Wellington — Six men from Pitcairn Island launched a challenge Monday to the British laws used to convict them last year of a string of sex crimes that unveiled widespread abuse of women and girls on the tiny island dating back as many as 40 years.

The men were found guilty under British law of a range of sex charges on the tiny Pacific island populated in the 18th century by mutineers from HMS Bounty. They have appealed, contending that British law does not apply on the island.

Sentences of the six men, four of whom face prison terms of up to six years, have been suspended until the appeals have been heard. They have remained free on the island, a dot of land about 1.5 kilometres wide and three kilometres long midway between Peru and New Zealand

As the appeal opened in a courtroom in the northern New Zealand city of Auckland, the convicted sex abusers followed the proceedings from Pitcairn via a satellite video link.

The Pitcairn Court is able to sit in New Zealand under a special law passed by the New Zealand Parliament last year. The men's trials lifted the lid on decades of sex abuse on Pitcairn of young women and girls as young as five.

Pitcairn prosecutors told the court the tiny Pacific island has been subject to British law since the early 19th century.

“The development of Pitcairn law is virtually inseparable from English law ... virtually from the very beginning” of island settlement, prosecutor Simon Mount said.

British jurisdiction over the island began as early as 1838, when island residents sought legal protection from Britain and flew a Union Jack, he noted.

He cited many documents from Pitcairn's legal history to show “why it would be common sense on Pitcairn that English law would apply.”

The documents showed a legal system under which a local island court dealt with minor crimes while serious crimes were handled initially by captains of passing warships, and later by British courts based in the Pacific.

Mr. Mount said the 1897 trial and hanging of Pitcairn islander Albert Christian for the murder of his wife and child was evidence of British law applying in the territory.

In a separate appeal to Britain's Privy Council, the highest appeal court for many British colonies and former colonies, the islanders also have challenged Britain's jurisdiction over the island, arguing it has never had control over Pitcairn and therefore, its legal system does not apply. No date has been set for that hearing.

Pitcairn has long fascinated the world for being the refuge of men who mutinied aboard the Bounty in 1789. They later settled on Pitcairn along with Tahitian brides.

Posted by Perry at 12:49 AM

April 18, 2005

Utah, Arizona Target Polygamists

Lawyers representing the attorneys general of Arizona and Utah plan to be in court today in Salt Lake City to support moves to strip the head of the nation's largest polygamist community of his greatest political and financial assets.

A civil hearing in Utah's 3rd Judicial District Court will be largely procedural, but represents a significant step in efforts to curb the power and influence of Warren Jeffs, self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Jeffs, 49, commands unquestioned loyalty from an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 FLDS followers clustered in two communities astride the Arizona-Utah state line north of the Grand Canyon. He controls virtually all property, jobs and political influence in the twin towns through a religious and charitable trust known as the United Effort Plan.

Today's court hearing involves a request to consolidate motions filed by two different groups seeking to remove Jeffs from control of the UEP.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard and his Utah counterpart, Mark Shurtleff, filed formal notices earlier this year to be recognized as "interested parties" in the cases. The attorneys general told the court they feared the trust's assets were in danger of being siphoned off and used by individuals rather than for the good of sect members.

Those fears were based in part on the fact that Jeffs hasn't been seen at his compound in Hildale, Utah, for months and is believed to be in Texas on a 1,691-acre ranch purchased in November 2003 by one of his closest aides.

The Texas ranch, known as YFZ for a song Jeffs once wrote called Yearn For Zion, is being developed into a mini-town with three 28,000-square-foot dormitories, an industrial-size barn and chicken coop, sprawling crop fields and a massive 80-foot-high stone temple, surrounded by smaller buildings and workshops.

David Allred, the same Jeffs aide who purchased the Texas land, also bought a 60-acre parcel near Mancos, Colo., around the same time and erected several new buildings on the property.

Several months after the land purchases, Jeffs was named in a pair of lawsuits filed in Salt Lake City, accusing him of sodomizing his own underage nephew, covering up serial sexual molestations by fellow FLDS leaders and ruining the lives of scores of young men and boys who were forced from the sect because they were perceived as a threat to older men seeking to marry plural brides.

The plaintiffs in both suits have filed petitions to remove Jeffs from control of the UEP trust, which controls virtually all real estate and financial holdings in the twin communities of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz.

William A. Richards, senior litigation counsel for the Arizona Attorney General's Office, said he would attend today's hearing at which attorneys for the two groups that brought the lawsuits will ask a judge to consolidated their requests to remove Jeffs from control of the trust.

The lawsuits were brought by Jeffs' nephew, Brent Jeffs, and six young men who claimed they were among hundreds whose lives were ruined when they were forced out of the sect.

Investigators have tried for months, without success, to find Jeffs and to serve him with legal documents in the two suits.

If the motion to consolidate is granted today, the judge could order Jeffs to appear in court to argue why he should remain in control of the trust. That would put Jeffs in the awkward position of having to finally appear in court or risk losing his greatest financial and political power base.

In the past, Jeffs has been represented in court by a Salt Lake City law firm, but those attorneys announced they were withdrawing their representation shortly after the two lawsuits were filed last summer. It remains unclear if Jeffs has hired new counsel.

Joseph A. Reaves
The Arizona Republic
Reach the reporter at joseph.reaves@arizonarepublic.com.

www.azcentral.com

Posted by Julia at 09:56 PM

'Eye-popping' look at Smart case

In August 2002, two months after 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart disappeared, Salt Lake police were called to the downtown library to check out a homeless man wearing robes and his two female companions.

"Are you Elizabeth Smart?" the officer asked the young girl with the man.
"No, I'm Augustine Marshall," the girl replied.
The officer took no further action.

Tom Smart, Elizabeth's uncle, said that incident was just one of the many "eye-popping" moments he writes about in his new book, "In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation."

The book, written by Tom Smart and Lee Benson, both Deseret Morning News employees, is available nationwide beginning today. Benson writes a column for the newspaper, and Smart is a longtime member of the photo department. His photos illustrated many of the stories the newspaper printed during the high-profile case.

Tom Smart calls his niece's abduction one of the most incredible stories he's ever been a part of or seen. But the majority of the public doesn't know the whole story, according to Smart.

"There's so little that people really knew about what happened behind the scenes," Smart said. "There are a lot of head-slapping moments in the book. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction."

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped in June 2002. She was found nine months later in Sandy, walking down State Street with Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee.

A state grand jury charged both Mitchell and Barzee with aggravated kidnapping, two counts of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of aggravated burglary and conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping. All of the charges are first-degree felonies except for the last one, which is a second-degree felony.

Barzee, 59, was ruled incompetent to stand trial. But the state now seeks to have her forcibly medicated. A hearing on that issue has not been set.

Mitchell, 51, is in the middle of his second competency hearing. He was found competent to stand trial after his first hearing. His second hearing is scheduled to resume in May.

The book looks at what the Smart family was doing during those rare moments when the eyes of the media weren't on them and also how Salt Lake police handled, or allegedly mishandled, the investigation.

" 'In Plain Sight' details how the Salt Lake police bungled the case from beginning to end," according to a news release distributed by Chicago Review Press.

But Tom Smart said his intention in writing the book wasn't simply to talk about what police did wrong. He said he hopes it will help investigators in future cases learn from the mistakes made. Specifically, he said, the book shows why focusing on one particular theory or suspect, such as one-time "person of interest" Richard Ricci, can be damaging. Ricci had done some work for the Smarts and the investigation centered on him for some time. He ultimately died of natural causes while in prison on unrelated charges.

"Mistakes are made in most major investigations. This is not an indictment of Salt Lake City police," Smart said, noting there were a number of officers who did good work on the case.

But police continued to focus on Ricci, even as Mary Katherine Smart, Elizabeth's younger sister and the only witness to the abduction, said the former Smart handyman was not the man she saw come into the girls' shared room the night of the abduction.

Mary Katherine, according to the book, said as early as October 2002 that she thought another former worker at the Smarts' house, known as Emmanuel, was the abductor.

Salt Lake police detective Dwayne Baird issued a brief statement on behalf of Chief Rick Dinse regarding the book.

"Chief Dinse has no intention of reading the book and has no further comment on it," he said.

Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father, also declined comment. Elizabeth, now 17, was not interviewed for the book.

"In Plain Sight" also shows how the media and the community played a role in the saga, Benson said.

"It tells a story with a relatively happy ending with what happens when everyone works together," he said.

This is the second book written by a member of the Smart family about Elizabeth's ordeal. Her parents, Ed and Lois Smart, wrote a book about the abduction from their perspective a few months after Elizabeth was found. The book was eventually turned into a made-for-TV movie.

Although the cases against Mitchell and Barzee are still outstanding, Tom Smart does not believe the book will have any effect on the legal outcome or influence any potential jury.

Both Tom Smart and Benson said a good-faith effort was made to release the book after the cases against the alleged kidnappers were completed.

"There's no way we thought this book would come out before a trial," Benson said.

Mitchell was originally scheduled to go to trial in February, but the second competency hearing has delayed the process.

Tom Smart said he will donate half of his proceeds from the book to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Rape Crisis Center.

By Pat Reavy
Deseret Morning News
www.deseretnews.com

Posted by Julia at 01:43 PM

Beyond Kool-Aid: Looking at Jonestown and Its Ideals

BERKELEY, Calif., April 17 - After three years of working on "The Laramie Project" - the award-winning show about the murder of a young gay man, Matthew Shepard - Leigh Fondakowski, the head writer, was hoping to avoid another dark, depressing subject. The actor and writer Greg Pierotti, another "Laramie" veteran, shared her concern. He was contemplating a comedy, a Feydeau farce perhaps.

Instead they created a play about Jonestown and what led up to the massacre there.

On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 members of People's Temple, the religious cult led by Rev. Jim Jones, drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. More than a third of the members were children. (The deaths came the day after the group killed Representative Leo J. Ryan, a Democrat of California, who had traveled to Jonestown, Guyana, on a fact-finding mission.)

"The theater is in a unique position to tell the story in a different kind of way," Ms. Fondakowski said. Her drama, "The People's Temple," opens here Wednesday night at the Berkeley Repertory Theater.

As Ms. Fondakowski, who also directs the play, and Mr. Pierotti took a break from rehearsals last week, she recalled her initial reluctance to become involved in the project. She had received a call from David Dower, the artistic director at Z Space Studio, a theater development center in San Francisco, who had long believed that a drama could "open a lens on the way we viewed Jonestown." As soon as he saw "The Laramie Project," he knew Ms. Fondakowski was the person to do it, though she was not so sure.

Later, when she participated in a telephone meeting that Mr. Dower had organized with some survivors in San Francisco, her interest was piqued.

They complained, she said, that when their story had been told before, the approach was always simplistic. They were asked the same questions again and again: How could temple members have taken the poison? How could they murder their children?

Ms. Fondakowski, 35, Mr. Pierotti, 40, the other two writers - Margo Hall and Stephen Wangh - and an archivist spent much of the next three years researching the subject. They pored through hundreds of boxes of letters, fliers, diaries and transcriptions of Jones's rambling speeches, and they interviewed more than 75 survivors, some as many as 10 times. All the play's dialogue comes directly from interviews and documents.

Ms. Fondakowski was 9 when the Jonestown incident occurred. She remembered Jones, his wide sunglasses and the Kool-Aid. But, she said, she hadn't known that People's Temple was a political movement as well as a religious sect. Jones deliberately sought out poor blacks to join the temple, which fed, clothed and housed them and provided health care. Members thought they were building a utopian community. That belief in a larger cause, a blindness to Jones's autocratic rule and a willingness to follow him even in death are the subjects at the heart of the production.

As difficult as it was to research "The Laramie Project," Ms. Fondakowski said, researching "The People's Temple" was harder.

Ms. Hall, who is African American, contacted black survivors. "I came up against a lot of closed doors," said Ms. Hall, who lost two childhood friends at Jonestown. "It was very hard to get people to trust what we were doing." It wasn't until Jim Jones Jr., Jones's adopted black son, spoke to her that others came forward.

When he understood that the play would not focus on the suicides and murders but on, as he said, "Why these people were willing to go to Jonestown and work on something they really believed in," he decided to cooperate.

"The reason they were there was not to follow a madman but to create a new world," Jim Jones Jr. said. "When you look at humanity, isn't that what we all want to do?"

Jones's biological son, Stephan, now 45, was interviewed by the writers so often that he became friends with some of them. "We were a rich, diverse group capable of great highs and great lows," he said of People's Temple, adding that his stay in Jonestown "was the best time of my life." He was 19 when nearly everyone he knew died. "We had our darkness and our light," he said. "I think it's important to put it all out there."

When other former members agreed to talk to the writers, they, along with Jones's sons, spoke about their belief in the integrated community. But they also recounted the spying, the beatings and Mr. Jones's fake healings with chicken livers.

In the play, James Carpenter, the actor playing the temple member Tim Carter says: "Why didn't I just knock over the vat of poison? Why didn't anybody just knock the vat of poison over? It had never crossed my mind. It never once crossed my mind."

Ms. Fondakowski said that the "biggest dramaturgical challenge" was to show that these people were not completely alien. "We don't want people to think of them as 'other,' " she said. "We're trying very hard to show the context within which these things would have been done, to show the mindset behind them."

Early on, Ms. Fondakowski learned that the city of San Francisco had supported the temple. Civic leaders had embraced Jones, who provided busloads of members whenever a politician needed volunteers. When Willie Brown Jr., a former mayor of San Francisco who was a powerful state legislator at the time, introduced Jones at an event, he called him a combination of Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein and Chairman Mao.

In June 2004, the ensemble gave a series of readings for the survivors. Ms. Fondakowski said the overall reaction was positive, but she began receiving a flood of e-mails about costumes, direction and how to tell the story. "It's hard because we took their stories, but we're not a mouthpiece for them," she said. She went into seclusion.

"It's been very difficult to explain that we're making art," she said. "There's a constant dialogue that's still ongoing. People ask, 'How can you tell the story without putting so-and-so in the story?' Well, we can. We're telling the story of a movement. It has an arc. But it's not a history of People's Temple."

To Ms. Fondakowski, it's a story about human nature. "We don't talk about it," she said. "We don't generally like to think of ourselves in that manner, but what one human being is capable of, I believe all human beings are capable of."

By CAROL POGASH
New York Times

Posted by Julia at 01:40 PM

Loyalists not always healed by faith alone

Some ailing End Timers had suffered at home

LAKE CITY - Followers of Charles Meade had much to be thankful for during their first seven years in their promised land.

Meade, the leader of a doomsday sect whose followers were moving to Lake City in increasing numbers, had assured them the world's end is near and his flock - and only his flock - would be saved.

As yet, there had been no great drought, no famine. Nor had a gigantic, steaming sheet of rock spread over the fields and streets of northern Florida. The sky had released no lightning or lava, and no fountains of the great deep had burst forth - although, as their leader dutifully reminded them, such an apocalypse could occur at any hour.

Instead, members of Meade's End Time Ministries had acquired property, were fruitful, and had become numerous.

The most fortunate of Meade's followers lived near him, in a subdivision known as Southwood Acres. In their back yards they had ponds with gazebos, rock gardens with cascading waterfalls, pools with gurgling fountains.

What was going on inside those homes, the townsfolk soon discovered, was not always so pretty.

On March 11, 1989, Michael David Boehmer was born at home. Mothers who followed Meade's teachings about faith healing did not give birth at hospitals.

A day later, Michael's nose began to bleed and did not stop.

His parents tried to staunch the bleeding with cotton. They tried and tried and tried - until, finally, Michael's lungs filled with blood.

He had lived four days.

Word of Michael's death, printed on the front page of the Lake City Reporter, sent a shiver through the county. The dismay, shading into horror, produced in the townspeople two questions: Why hadn't that little boy seen a doctor? Could his death have been avoided?

An opinion on the latter came from two physicians who testified at a medical examiner's inquest in Jacksonville: An injection of vitamin K, standard in hospital births, would have clotted Michael's blood and saved his life.

The case went before a judge, who was to decide whether the End Time couple should be charged with murder or criminal negligence. The doctors' testimony was damning. And yet, the judge noted, the parents had tried to resuscitate the boy. They had called 911 when they saw Michael approaching death.

In the end, the judge ruled that the Boehmers could not be convicted of anything.

Pressure to be perfect

According to former End Timers, Meade did not explicitly order his followers to avoid medical care.

In fact, he urged them not to allow members to die at home of an untreated illness, said Joni Cutler, who was once married to one of Meade's top disciples. But this wasn't because he had doubts about faith healing, she said.

"The idea," Cutler said, "was to protect Charles Meade and the leadership from investigation or prosecution."

In one tape-recorded sermon, Meade had declared: "We're earthen vessels filled up with God. There really shouldn't be any affliction in this body at all ... Truly, down deep, we're not supposed to be sick."

Tom Pearson, 57, who quit the sect in 1993 after more than a decade, said End Timers "felt all this pressure to be perfect all the time. If you stubbed your toe, cut your hand, got sick, then you were, according to Meade, out of God's will."

Meade's first wife, Marie, followed the faith-healing doctrine to her grave.

For at least two years, she refused medical treatment for breast cancer, said Cutler, who left the ministry in 1986 after 12 years in the sect.

Marie Meade died on Oct. 24, 1985, at age 63. On her death certificate, the cause of death was listed as "probable carcinoma of the breast." Twenty-eight days later, Charles Meade, then 68, married Marlene Helen Malthesen, who was 20 years his junior, according to their marriage license.

Sonia's story

Then, in the earliest hours of Sept. 27, 1990, something else happened inside one of the stately homes in Southwood Acres.

Sonia Hernandez, 4, was never a healthy child. A brain disorder left her nearly deaf and blind, vegetative, and prone to fevers and infection.

Shortly after midnight, wearing her pink pajama top and white socks, Sonia died of pneumonia in her mother's arms.

Five hours later at the hospital, the emergency-ward physicians looked gravely on what they saw: the body of the 4-year-old weighed a mere 14½ pounds - about what a 4-month-old baby might weigh.

According to Sonia's medical records, as well as a deposition by her 21-year-old sister, Socorro, the child had not been to a doctor in at least two years - about the length of time her parents, Guillermo and Luz Hernandez, had been members of End Time Ministry.

A jury subsequently found the Hernandezes guilty of one count of felony child abuse. The verdict, however, was overturned on appeal.

As the case snaked its way through the Florida legal system, another child-abuse case involving End Timers broke into the local headlines. This one involved a 16-year-old named Will Meyers.

On Oct. 22, 1990, he was rushed to Shands Hospital in Gainesville by his parents and, upon arrival, was found to be suffering from a heart tumor, kidney failure and a swollen liver. Will's condition had gone untreated for seven months, Columbia County court records show.

The tumor had made it difficult for the boy to hold down food, and his weight had dropped from 135 pounds to 90 pounds. The swollen liver had given his skin a yellowish hue, and his feet were so infected he had been dangling them off the end of a couch to let the pus drip into buckets.

A heart operation saved the boy's life, and he eventually recovered. His parents pleaded guilty to felony child abuse in March 1991, and were placed on five years' probation.

Despite their isolation from civic life, End Timers could not remain out of the news. In January, the citizenry of Lake City was stung by a headline on the front page of the local newspaper: "LOCAL WOMAN DIES AFTER GIVING BIRTH AT HOME."

Kathryn Marie Kennedy, 23, a granddaughter of Meade's wife, Marlene, had bled to death in her bed Jan. 9, after delivering a son.

According to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office, she apparently had difficulty releasing the placenta, and had lain in bed, hemorrhaging, for six hours. At 11 a.m., she lost consciousness and never woke.

Another three hours passed before family members summoned help. When the paramedics arrived, they found Kathryn Kennedy in the master bedroom, cold to the touch.

In adhering to their belief in faith healing, the family had committed no crime, officials decided.

As Brian S. Rix, the investigating officer, succinctly noted in his final report explaining why no one called for help sooner: "Religious reasons."

Case closed.

By Todd Lewan
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.tallahassee.com/

Posted by Julia at 07:14 AM

April 17, 2005

Gardai compare canal murder to London ritual killing

Detectives have examined the case files in London on a so-called ritual killing as part of Garda investigation into the headless body murder on the Royal Canal in Dublin.

The Sunday Business Post understands that detectives travelled to London a week ago to liaise with officers who dealt with the bizarre death of a five-year-old boy, whose headless body was found in the Thames in 2001.

Scotland Yard concluded that the boy was the victim of a religious cult killing.

Garda sources confirmed this weekend that they were now actively examining the possibility of a similar gruesome scenario in Dublin.

Detectives declined to discuss evidence that may point in the direction of a ritual murder.

The man, believed to be a west African in his 20s, has still not been identified.

“It looks like he was not registered anywhere,” one garda said. “He should have turned up on the [immigration fingerprint] files by now.”

The head of the victim has still not been found. Other body parts, the torso, arms and legs, were discovered on Wednesday, March 30, in the Royal Canal.

Separately, detectives believe they know the identities of the criminals behind all three of the gangland shootings that took place in Dublin in the past fortnight.

The latest victim, Terence Dunleavy, was shot in the head just over a mile from his home in Marino on Thursday night.

He is believed to have been gunned down in reprisal for a recent shooting in the north inner city.

Joseph Rafferty was shot dead in west Dublin on Tuesday night because of a personal dispute with a well known gangland figure, according to detectives.

Meanwhile, the chief suspect in the murder of Jimmy Curran in the Green Lizard pub on Francis Street a fortnight ago was arrested yesterday morning. He was being held in Kevin Street Garda station.

They are less confident about finding witnesses who are prepared to testify against the killers of Dunleavy and Rafferty.

By Barry O'Kelly
Sunday Business Post
archives.tcm.ie

Posted by Julia at 06:48 PM

April 16, 2005

Yemen Warns of Secret Extremist Schools

SAN`A, Yemen - Underground religious schools that promote extremist forms of Islam are drawing more than 300,000 young students across Yemen, the country's prime minister said Saturday.

Prime Minister Abdul-Kader Bajammal warned that the religious education promoting the ideas of Wahhabism, a strict form of Islam, "will bring a disaster to Yemen and this generation." He promised to eliminate the underground schools, which he estimated numbered about 4,000 and drew about 330,000 students.

"We are not against the religious education ... but we are against extremism," he said in a speech to teachers and Education Ministry officials.

Bajammal said that the government will not remain silent over what he described as "crimes committed against our children and the next generations."

Like many Persian Gulf countries, Yemen — the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden — largely funded and did not interfere with religious schools before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States

After the attacks, the country initiated an anti-terrorism state policy and began monitoring what was being taught, attaching conditions to financial assistance and shutting down the Religious Institutions Department in the Education Ministry.

Religious officials have condemned the government for its policy change.

It was in the southern Yemeni port of Aden that the USS Cole was bombed in 2000, killing 17 American sailors.

Associated Press
story.news.yahoo.com

Posted by Julia at 07:12 PM

April 15, 2005

KZN couple appears for allegations of child neglect

A couple charged with neglecting their 11-month-old baby girl have made a brief appearance in the Port Shepstone Magistrate's Court, on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.

The couple are accused of tying the toddler's hands behind her back and leaving her lying on the ground next to a puppy. They claim their child was possessed by an evil spirit, and they were acting on the advice of a local priest. The case has sparked outrage from children's rights organisations and religious leaders. This is the couple's second court appearance since child protection members found the baby outside their home last month.

On their first appearance, the 30-year-old man and 26-year-old woman were released on warning. The case has now been remanded until May 27 pending an investigation. Several people have already been questioned about the circumstances surrounding the alleged child neglect. Meanwhile, the toddler is staying in a place of safety.

www.sabcnews.com

Posted by Julia at 03:48 PM

Cult leader rapes little girls under Christian cloak

"He didn't just touch them, he repeatedly raped several of the little elementary school girls. I've heard that there were cases when there would be several little girls sleeping in his office at the same time and he would grab one of them and rape her without waking any of the others. The other girls would be awake, but pretend to be asleep," Chiemi Saga, lawyer for a group of alleged rape victims, tells Shukan Josei (4/26).

The "he" Saga refers to is Tamotsu Kin, the 61-year-old chief reverend of a Kyoto Prefecture-based Christian cult called Seishin Chuo Kyokai. He was arrested April 6 for raping one of his 12-year-old followers, though he denies the allegations, more of which have popped up since he was taken into custody.

"At first, the children had no idea what he was doing to them. But they loved the reverend and put up with what he was putting them through. The more he did it, though, the more they grew to hate it. But there was nobody there that they could tell," lawyer Saga says.

A reporter covering the case that has shocked Japan in the same way clerical rapists have shocked the West in recent years says that the religious man was an expert at brainwashing his followers.

"Kin repeatedly told cultists that he was 'God's Chosen One.' He referred to sex as 'God's Benediction' and, 'An act to test the heart of believers,' condemning them to 'Hell and damnation' if they refused to abide by his will," the reporter says. "Basically what he was doing was controlling their minds."

Regular followers of the Christian church began to notice something was amiss in about October last year as a little girl who was one of Kin's alleged victims began sending e-mail to friends and cult leaders asking them for advice on how to avoid further unwanted ministrations from the man of the cloak. When her correspondence was revealed to the brethren, about 170 members quit the cult immediately.

Kin, however, strongly denied the girl's accusations. Even as the officers who arrested him were dragging him into a police van, the reverend screamed, "The little girl is lying."

As many outlets have been quick to point out, Kin was an ethnic Korean. But he was born and bred in Japan, spending his early years in Kyoto under the strong influence of his deeply faithful Christian mother. He married, used the Japanese surname Nagata, and worked as a regular employee at an ordinary company.

However, God's calling remained strong and eventually won out. At age 38, he headed to his ancestral homeland and eventually graduated from university. He returned to Japan in 1986 and began running his Christian cult from his home in the suburbs of Kyoto. The following year, his cult was incorporated as a religious foundation, exempting it from tax. He borrowed heavily and bought land in the Kyoto Prefecture bed town of Yawata, where at the cusp of the millennium he set up what was to become the headquarters of his Seishin Chuo Kyokai cult. The church's homepage noted it had 10 branches inside Japan and further offshoots in foreign lands such as South Korea, the United States, Canada, Russia and New Zealand. It has 1,200 officially registered members, but by the time of Kin's arrest, the ranks had dropped to around 100.

"The suspect has three children of his own, but divorced his wife about two years ago," a reporter covering the case says. "I've heard the reason for the split came about because of his peculiar sexual proclivities."

Kin apparently targeted Friday nights for alleged sex attacks he is supposed to have called his "religious ceremonies."

"The church had Friday night stay overs in preparation for the Saturday Sabbath. These were seen as a chance for the reverend to get closer to his children followers and their parents," lawyer Saga says. "Nearly all of the violations occurred during these stay overs."

Nobody is quite sure of how many women and girls Kin is purported to have had his way with.

"At the moment, we have officially found less than 10 people who claim to be his victims. He started out working on adult women, then gradually looked for somebody younger. He turned first to university students, then high school girls, followed by junior high school girls and, finally, a few years ago, girls in the upper grades of elementary school," Hisoka Murakami, reverend at the Kyoto Assembly of God and an expert on religious cults, says. "I don't think the final number of victims will fall below 20."

Some people associated with the case have suggested that the Christian leader could have raped as many as 50 people, though their claims are unfounded.

Christians across Japan have been shattered by the case, but none more so than the parents of Kin's alleged victims.

"Doctors heal the body. Clerics are supposed to heal the mind. But this cleric who was supposed to help people did something he should never have done. No sin is greater," the parent of one of Kin's alleged victims tells Shukan Josei. "To sate his own lust, and threaten and cajole children totally ignorant of sex is totally unforgivable. What we are feeling goes well beyond mere anger."

By Ryann Connell
Staff Writer
Mainichi Daily News
mdn.mainichi.co.jp

Posted by Julia at 11:33 AM

US officials want more pressure on Uganda rebels

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More pressure from the international community is needed to end Northern Uganda's cult-like insurgency, which brutalizes and kidnaps children to serve as soldiers, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

State Department Africa expert Donald Yamamoto called for a comprehensive approach, and took aim at problems swirling around rebel leader Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army.

"On good days, he talks to God and on other days he thinks he is God," Yamamoto said when asked by U.S. lawmakers at a congressional human rights caucus meeting whether he thought Kony was a rational leader.

He urged stronger diplomatic, military and humanitarian efforts, particularly from the United States, the European Union and the African Union. "There is no military solution to this," he said. "We need a comprehensive approach."

Kony's rebels are notorious for targeting civilians and kidnapping more than 20,000 children as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

Yamamoto demanded more pressure on Sudan to stop giving the rebels a safe haven.

Hopes for a settlement were raised last year when Betty Bigombe, a former Ugandan government minister, organized talks between the rebels and the government. But these stalled and Kony is believed to be hiding in Sudan.

Leonard Rogers, a senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, called the situation in northern Uganda, a "humanitarian and human rights disaster" where children were the main victim.

Aid organizations gave chilling descriptions of the fate of children in northern Uganda and Rory Anderson, senior policy advisor for World Vision, described it as "hell on earth".

Anderson recalled an 11-year-old boy she met who was forced by the rebels to kill five people.

"The first time he killed someone, he, along with other children, were forced to bite to death one child who had attempted to escape," said Anderson.

She criticized the United States and other nations for not doing enough. "The Bush administration has all but ignored this crisis. It remains a forgotten war," said Anderson. "High-level engagement by Congress and the administration would make a difference," she added.

By Sue Pleming

www.reuters.co.za

Posted by Julia at 08:06 AM

April 14, 2005

Jehovah's Witness, 14, loses fight to refuse transfusions

Damian Inwood, with a file from Jack Keating
The Province Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Cancer sufferer cannot turn down blood, judge rules

A 14-year-old Okanagan member of the Jehovah's Witness church has lost a bitter court battle against receiving blood transfusions.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mary Boyd ruled yesterday that a provincial court judge had the power to authorize emergency transfusions against the girl's will.

Her lawyer, Shane Brady, said the girl's family is "disappointed" and is considering taking the case to the B.C. Court of Appeal.

"The family is disappointed because their position has been, all along, that once the court has found that she is as capable as you and I, that young woman should make the decision," said Brady.

The girl's name and her hometown can't be revealed, due to a publication ban. She was not in court yesterday.

Brady said the girl believed transfusions were a "violation of the biblical command to abstain from blood. The decision is based on her religious conscience."

The girl was diagnosed in December with a cancerous tumour on her right leg. The tumour was removed and she began chemotherapy.

After the girl and her family refused consent for blood transfusions, the case was forwarded to B.C.'s director of Child, Family and Community Service.

In court documents, the girl described how a transfusion would contravene her religious beliefs.

"It's no different than somebody getting sexually assaulted or raped or robbed or something," she said. "You'd feel violated because it's not anybody else's property, it's you."

Lawyers for the girl fought the case on the grounds the girl was not represented by legal counsel and that she was a "mature minor," capable of deciding her own treatment. They also said the girl's Charter rights were infringed by provincial law and she had suffered age discrimination.

Boyd said yesterday that by March 15, the girl's hemoglobin dropped to "well below" levels where a transfusion is normally given.

Boyd found that Provincial Court Judge Paul Meyers was "considered, thoughtful and sensitive" in ensuring the child had a fair hearing on March 18.

Boyd said doctors needed the "safety net" of having a transfusion available to continue with a more invasive cycle of chemo that the girl is due to start tomorrow. Meyers acted properly and "did everything possible to ensure the utmost fairness," said Boyd. That included talking to the girl by phone in her hospital bed.

Boyd said provincial laws allow courts to protect the rights of children in need of medical treatment. "All children are entitled to be protected from abuse and harm . . . the ultimate threat of harm would be death," she added.

Boyd said that while the girl was free to choose and practise her religion, that right was "not absolute" and orders could be made in a child's best interests.

"Ultimately, her religious beliefs don't override her right to life and health," Boyd said.

Raymond Busby, an elder in Burnaby's Capital Hill Jehovah's Witnesses congregation, said religious beliefs come first.

"The Bible has clear standards that we are not to take blood as Christians," he said.

dinwood@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Province 2005

Posted by Perry at 08:54 PM

Psychological Therapy Can Help Maltreated Children

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Psychological counseling does seem to help heal the scars of child abuse and neglect, though the extent to which family therapy prevents future abuse is unclear, according to a research review.

Although there are numerous forms of psychological therapy for child maltreatment -- for both children and parents -- their effectiveness has been unclear. In particular, researchers have so far failed to find good evidence that family therapy can put a stop to abuse and neglect.

The new study, a review of 21 previous studies, found that, in general, children who underwent some form of therapy fared better than those who did not, showing fewer symptoms of anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.

There was also evidence that therapy improved abusive parents' attitudes and behavior.

The findings are encouraging, according to study co-author Dr. Elizabeth A. Skowron of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. "This is the first definitive evidence that, collectively, these interventions are pretty effective," she told Reuters Health.

Still unanswered, however, is the question of whether the benefits last, and whether therapy actually ends the abuse, Skowron said.

Among the studies she and colleague Dawn H.S. Reinemann reviewed, a few did follow families for longer periods -- with one showing that treatment gains could last up to 12 years.

However, with so few data to go on, those results should be "viewed cautiously," the researchers report in the journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice and Training.

Though psychological therapies for child maltreatment have been available since the 1970s, their effectiveness has been hard to gauge for several reasons. For one, Skowron explained, many abused children -- perhaps three-quarters -- suffer several types of abuse and neglect, which is a therapeutic challenge.

"The nature of child maltreatment is complex," she said.

In addition, long-term follow-up of families who enter therapy requires resources. The positive findings of this study, according to Skowron, point to the importance of funding research to find out whether psychological therapy has lasting benefits for children and parents -- as well as to answer questions such as why various types of therapy work, and for whom they work best.

More funding, Skowron added, is also needed to make treatment available to families through social services.

"It would be a mistake," she said, "to think that these therapies are widely available to families."

SOURCE: Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice and Training; Spring 2005.

news.yahoo.com

Posted by Julia at 04:23 PM

Indians Charged for Burying Children Alive

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian police have charged 80 people for burying children alive in an ancient Hindu ceremony known as "the festival of pits."

The ceremony, in which children -- some less than a year old -- are buried alive briefly and then dug up, happened on Monday in southern Tamil Nadu state, The Asian Age reported on Thursday.

Authorities have been trying for years to stop it and people found guilty face up to three years in jail and or a fine of 5000 rupees ($114).

Every two years, parents who have vowed to bury their first-born if they are blessed with a child, take part in the Kuzhimattru Thiru Vizha ceremony.

The children are drugged to make them unconscious and placed in shallow "graves" in temple courtyards. The pits are covered with leaves and dirt and the children are pulled out after Hindu priests chant a brief prayer -- lasting up to a minute.

news.yahoo.com

Posted by Julia at 04:20 PM

Kingston kids to go back to mom

Judge gives her a chance but warns reuniting will take effort.

Saying their future ''rests in your arms, your hands and your love,'' 3rd District Juvenile Court Judge Andrew Valdez ordered the state Wednesday to begin the process of reuniting Heidi Mattingly Foster and her children.

"I do believe you've made some changes," Valdez told Mattingly Foster, who has 11 children with polygamist John Daniel Kingston. ''I'm trying to help you become a better mom, that's all.''

After three days of testimony, Valdez decided Mattingly Foster has made good progress in learning how to protect herself, her children and provide a safe, healthy home for them - though he made clear the work must continue.

He ordered therapists for Mattingly Foster and the children to immediately work out details for starting supervised visits, family therapy and a transition plan that, if she does everything asked, will allow nine children to come home.

In July, one of two teens removed from her home in February 2004, was made the permanent ward of an uncle and aunt. Eight more children were removed from the home in October; an infant remained with Mattingly Foster. Her supervised visits with the children were stopped in early February.

The judge also lifted a no-contact order that since Oct. 22 kept Mattingly Foster away from her church, family and friends, dozens of whom stayed at the courthouse into the evening, praying, as they awaited word of the judge's decision.

As Mattingly Foster, 33, emerged from the courthouse, friends and family, many sobbing, scooped her up in a big group hug.

A weeping Mattingly Foster said she felt "wonderful, happy. I hope [the kids] are watching."

Valdez said that in a two-hour meeting with the children Tuesday, each expressed the desire to go home to their mother and that while one child voiced fear of Kingston, none felt that way about their mom.

And what does Mattingly Foster plan to do when she sees them? ''I'm going to give them some hugs,'' she said.

''I'm really thankful for all of the people who have supported me,'' said Mattingly Foster.

Valdez kept in place an order barring Kingston from contact with Mattingly Foster and his children - though he allowed the couple to exchange a long embrace and kiss in the courtroom, and then hug their oldest daughter.

The judge, who also asked that Kingston begin domestic violence counseling, shook hands with Kingston as the hearing ended.

"I will do whatever I need to do to be with my family, whatever that might be," said Kingston. His attorney, Daniel Irvin, said his client has actually already begun that therapy.

"I miss those children very much," Kingston said. "They are very wonderful, beautiful children. I would like them to get back with their mother first and we will work through whatever we need to do to get them back."

Valdez will review the case again on June 28. He warned Mattingly Foster that her failure to continue complying with his orders could result in immediate action to terminate her parental rights.

Valdez spent a half hour reviewing the state's decadelong involvement with the family and his own efforts to help them over the past year. The case began as a dispute between the couple and their two oldest daughters over ear piercing and led to subsequent findings of ongoing neglect and abuse by both parents.

The judge chided Mattingly Foster and Kingston for trying to blame him, state attorneys and caseworkers for the yearlong welfare case.

"It's not what order you belong to, it's how you treat these kids," he said.

Valdez said he tried to make clear to Mattingly Foster getting back her children depends on "what you do on your own as a mom."

Assistant Attorney General Carolyn Nichols and Guardian Ad Litem Kristin Brewer argued that Mattingly Foster's transformation was merely superficial and that she had not acknowledged maltreatment by Kingston or her past abuse and neglect of her children. After 10 years of intervention, "time is up," as Brewer put it in asking the judge to decide against reunifying the family.

Nichols described Mattingly Foster as a victim of "Stockholm Syndrome."

"From what she has shown here, she still views [the situation] as a joke," Nichols said. "There was and has been no long-term change and if there is no change, the children can't be safely returned home."

But Valdez seemed to take to heart comments by her therapists and several of her children, who said they see positive changes in her and past interventions with the family never reached the extent it has now.

Months ago, Valdez said he didn't expect to turn Mattingly Foster into Marie Osmond overnight.

But on Wednesday he said there was enough evidence to believe she has begun a personal transformation that will allow her to provide a safe, good home for the kids.

"When we tell a mom if you do certain things we'll return the kids, we need to give it a chance," he said. "I hope it works out."

Bonnie Peters, executive director of the Family Support Center in Murray, said over five months of working with Mattingly Foster, she has seen her "get real" and begin "openly sharing and showing emotion."

"She's not totally there yet," Peters said.

Gary Bell, Mattingly Foster's attorney, said the state was hung up on her saying "magic words" to prove she's accepted responsibility for her past behavior. She refuses to do that, he said, because a request for records about her case indicate there is an ongoing criminal investigation.

"It is clear to this court, it is clear to everyone here, that the only way [she] is going to truly show whether or not she's ingrained this concepts would be to put it to the test," Bell said.

As the hearing ended, Valdez listened as the couple's oldest daughter thanked him for what has been a hard but positive experience.

''Because of the last year I've become a stronger person. I have formed my own identity and I want to see the rest of my family do that,'' said the girl.

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2660627

Posted by Julia at 12:26 PM

Panel looks at polygamous sect

AUSTIN, Texas — Expert witnesses warned a House committee Wednesday that a polygamous sect taking root in West Texas is led by a man who poses a danger to women and children in the sect and has the capacity to incite religiously inspired violence.

The witnesses included Mark Shurtleff, the attorney general of Utah, who told the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee that he has spent most of his last term in office trying to bring charges of pedophilia, child sexual abuse and welfare fraud against the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. The church, based in two twin communities on the Utah and Arizona border, is currently completing the infrastructure for a town four miles north of Eldorado, south of San Angelo.

The attorney general told the committee that a code of silence, intimidation and the statute of limitations on sex crimes in Utah have thwarted his efforts to prosecute Warren Jeffs, who refers to himself as the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church. But his ongoing investigation of the sect and a decision by the state of Utah to increase penalties for crimes alleged to have been committed by Jeffs and other sect leaders led to the sect's move to Texas, Shurtleff told the committee.

Shurtleff urged the committee to approve House Bill 3006, introduced by Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrvile, which would change Texas law in areas directed at the practices of the church. Hilderbran called on the committee to raise the age of parental consent for marriage in Texas to 16 from 14, to ban people from marrying their stepparent or stepchild and increase residency requirements for people running for local and district offices.

"This is an evil culture," author Jon Krakauer told the committee Wednesday. Krakauer told the committee he has taken on the Fundamentalist Church after six years of research into the sect led to a book about violence in the world of polygamy, "Under the Banner of Heaven.

"It is like this Twilight Zone where everybody answers to Warren Jeffs. He's a freak. He's a sick guy. He is an evil, evil man."

Jeffs, whose relocation to the Eldorado compound has not been confirmed, is wanted for no crimes in Texas or in Utah and Arizona. Jeffs has been accused in a pending civil suit in Salt Lake City of ritually sodomizing a young male relative in the 1980s.

The eyes of committee members widened as Krakauer described the ritual subjugation of women in the sect, who he said are assigned husbands upon the ruling of Jeffs and are prohibited from having formal education and contact with much of the outside world. Hilderbran's bill, Krakauer told the committee, "will not bring Warren Jeffs to justice, but is an important first step."

While the committee took no action Wednesday, Rep. Toby Goodman, R-Arlington, said Texas would bring all of its resources to bear to protect women and children on state soil.

"I hope this group doesn't think it can come to Texas, which is kind of a law and order state, and commit acts of sodomy and child abuse," Goodman said. "This state will literally go after these people."

Mark Lisheron writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: mlisheron@statesman.com

By MARK LISHERON
Cox News Service
http://www.oxfordpress.com/

Posted by Julia at 07:21 AM

April 13, 2005

Bill targets polygamist sect

The Utah attorney general has offered his help to state Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, who is trying to crack down on multiple marriages among a religious sect building a town-size compound in West Texas.

Mark Shurtleff, who has made investigating the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints the centerpiece of his administration, is scheduled to discuss the implications of Hilderbran's House Bill 3006 today before the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee.

Another church critic, author Jon Krakauer, whose book "Under the Banner of Heaven" recounts the murder of a mother and daughter by two members of a similar polygamous sect, has also been asked to testify. Krakauer said he readily agreed to address the committee to warn Texans about the Fundamentalist Church, which is based in twin communities on the Utah and Arizona border.

"You folks out there have no idea what a time bomb you're sitting on," Krakauer said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I think that the odds of a Texas version of Jonestown are huge, and I don't think many people there realize it."

Church leader Warren Jeffs and other leading officials in the Fundamentalist Church have never granted interviews to discuss positions of the church or its members.

Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, said he crafted his bill specifically to discourage members of the polygamous sect from moving en masse from Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., to the compound they call YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch, four miles north of Eldorado. The sect has built a temple, living quarters with rooms for hundreds of people, new homes, a grid of roads, and water and septic systems.

Officials for the sect have for more than a year insisted that the church was building the Eldorado compound as a religious retreat for, perhaps, 200 people at a time.

"I'm not shy about this: We don't want Eldorado, Texas, to become the next Hildale, Utah," Hilderbran said Tuesday at the Capitol. "We're not targeting their beliefs; we're targeting their behavior so that they do want to go somewhere else. I'm not shy about it."

The bill would raise the age of marriage without parental consent to 16 from 14 years old. Statistics on how many 14- and 15-year-olds marry in Texas were not readily available Tuesday.

The bill also prohibits people from marrying their stepparent or their stepchild. The bill also stipulates that someone can be prosecuted not only for violating the law by entering into illegal marriages but by "purporting to marry" or "appearing to marry."

The language of the bill is directed at the practice of Jeffs assigning girls and women to male church members based on the worthiness of the men. In the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, these marriages performed outside of the law are the way to eternal salvation for both men and women. A man must have at least three wives to reach the highest salvation in the church hierarchy.

The church has allowed marriages of mothers and their daughters and sisters to the same man. Jeffs has on several occasions reassigned wives to other men and in at least one instance assigned the wives of one man to the man's brother.

Hilderbran's bill also asks for the state to require that a person live in Texas for at least two years and in a district for at least a year before running for office. Church leaders in Hildale and Colorado City have control of the political offices, social services, law enforcement and schools. Residents of Eldorado, with a population of 2,000 people, and in Schleicher County, with a population of 3,000, have complained that a large influx of voting-age Fundamentalist Church members could irrevocably alter the balance of power in their region.

"This is the smallest county in my district, and the people there have been through it all," Hilderbran said. "At first they were concerned about recruiting young girls from Eldorado to be their wives, then taking over Schleicher County and the whole fear of another (Branch Davidian-like tragedy in) Waco. It would have been absolutely irresponsible not to do anything about it."

What might be a problem for the bill to gain passage is a lack of concrete evidence about the marriage practices of church members, the eventual size of the community north of Eldorado, the intentions of the church leadership and its capacity for violence, either against outsiders or against its own membership.

While outlawing polygamy statewide was a requirement for Utah's admission to the Union in 1890 and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has renounced the practice, polygamy is stubbornly rooted in breakaway sects like the Fundamentalist Church. According to Shurtleff, there are about 35,000 polygamists in Utah. And in spite of his investigative zeal, Shurtleff has managed to prosecute scant polygamy cases over the past five years.

"I would like to think that they've gone to Texas because we've brought real scrutiny of their activities to Utah, not that I wanted to send them to you," Shurtleff said Tuesday. "I think Rep. Hilderbran's bill will send the same kind of message."

House Bill 3006

•Raises minimum age of marriage from 14 to16.

•Prohibits marrying stepparents or stepchildren.

•Prohibits couples from 'purporting to marry' or 'appearing to marry.'

By Mark Lisheron
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/04/13POLYGAMY.html

Posted by Julia at 07:36 PM

Police suspect Kyoto reverend raped more girls

KYOTO -- Police have questioned several girls over whether they were sexually attacked by the leader of a church who stands accused of raping one girl, officials said on Wednesday.

Kyoto Prefectural Police arrested Tamotsu Kin, 61, leader of the Seishin Chuo Kyokai in Yawata, Kyoto Prefecture, on April 6 for allegedly raping a girl who was a follower of the church.

Police suspect that Kin sexually attacked more girls and adult women who were followers and plan to slap him with fresh charges.

They have already questioned several teenage girls over whether Kin victimized them or not.

Members of a private group designed to help former followers of the church have said Kin began sexually attacking followers 14 years ago.

Kyoto police suspect that Kin initially molested adult women and then targeted young girls. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, April 13, 2005)

Posted by Julia at 07:32 PM

Sex abuse victims target fugitive priests

VATICAN CITY - American victims of clergy sex abuse urged church officials Wednesday to help extradite accused priests who fled to their religious orders in Rome or to foreign countries to escape punishment.

Barbara Blaine, founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said religious leaders have a moral obligation to help prosecutors in these cases, so children are not at risk.

"The place where these men should be is almost anywhere except Rome," said Blaine, speaking at a news conference in a hotel near St. Peter's Square. "This is not about punishment. This is merely about prevention."

The Dallas Morning News reported last year that some religious orders were sheltering accused priests in Rome. They include clergymen who had been criminally charged in the United States or who had admitted molesting young people years before and now face additional claims. The newspaper also found evidence of several priests accused of abuse in one country who then moved to another, where they were working in Roman Catholic churches or ministries.

Supervisors of the accused clergy in Rome told the Dallas paper they were not trying to help the men escape punishment, but wanted to give them a place to live and work away from children.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has declined to comment on the presence in Rome this week of the Survivors Network, which claims 5,600 members and has been pressing church leaders to acknowledge the scope of abuse in their dioceses for more than a decade.

On Monday, Blaine and another victim went to St. Peter's Square to protest the decision by the cardinals to ask Cardinal Bernard Law to lead an important Mass in St. Peter's Basilica mourning Pope John Paul II.

Law resigned as archbishop of Boston in December 2002 when unsealed court records revealed he had moved predatory priests among church assignments without notifying parishioners. He has apologized for his wrongdoing. The pope last year appointed Law archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, a ceremonial but highly visible post.

Some Catholics said protests around the time of the pope's death were inappropriate - and questioned whether anyone in the Vatican was even listening. The cardinals eligible to vote in the conclave have stopped giving media interviews. The election is set to begin Monday.

Marco Politi, a papal biographer and Vatican expert, said the Italian public was generally sympathetic to victims and did not resent their presence.

"I think that these two representatives of SNAP made a very dignified appearance," Politi said. "They were speaking with very great dignity about the sorrow and pain of the victims. They underlined that they didn't want to interfere in the inner life of the church in the conclave. They didn't ask Cardinal Law not to participate in the conclave, but they stressed that he himself should have refused to celebrate the Mass."

Politi also said there were many signs that cardinals understood the depth of the abuse problem, despite accusations of Vatican indifference from some Americans.

Last month, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, one of John Paul's closest aides whose name is mentioned as a possible candidate for pope, denounced "filth" in the church, "even among those ... in the priesthood," during the Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum.

Vatican officials also agreed two years ago to change church law for the United States so bishops had broader power to keep accused priests out of parishes. Those changes are now under Vatican review.

RACHEL ZOLL
Associated Press
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/11384151.htm

Posted by Julia at 06:32 PM

Two brothers receive nearly $2 million in church abuse case

HAYWARD – Two brothers molested by a priest more than two decades ago were awarded nearly $2 million in damages by a jury Wednesday.

The case involving the abuse of Bob and Tom Thatcher was closely watched because it is the first in a series of sex-abuse lawsuits to seek punitive damages.

Bob Thatcher, 34, was awarded $875,000 in compensatory damages and $875,000 in punitive damages. His brother Tom, 33, was awarded $180,000 in compensatory damages and no punitive damages were sought in his case.

While the total award of $1.93 million was far less than the $27 million plaintiffs attorney Rick Simons asked for in closing arguments, he said he was pleased the jury ruled that the Oakland Diocese acted with malice and awarded punitive damages.

"We've done the job we came here to do," Simons said. "The jury found malice on the part of the managing agents. We're really proud of Bob and Tom Thatcher. My congratulations to them and my thanks to the jury."

The jury decided that the diocese should be responsible for 60 percent of the compensatory damages and the Rev. Robert Ponciroli is responsible for 40 percent. The plaintiffs do not expect to receive any money from Ponciroli because he has no assets.

The diocese is responsible for the entire punitive damage award and insurance is not allowed to cover such awards. There was no immediate word on whether an appeal was planned.

The plaintiffs argued that the church knew Ponciroli was sexually abusing children but failed to stop him.

"The jury decided the policy and practice within the diocese of Oakland was to protect pedophile priests over children," Simons said.

Legal observers have suggested that a significant award for the plaintiffs could force the Roman Catholic Church to settle dozens of lawsuits filed against Northern California dioceses, but Simons said he didn't know what impact this verdict would have on future cases.

The former altar boys said they were molested when they were 9 or 10 at St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Antioch by Ponciroli, who lured each boy upstairs to his bedroom after asking them to come to the rectory to pick weeds. Ponciroli, 68, has been removed from public ministry and now lives in Florida.

Diocesan lawyers do not dispute that the abuse occurred, but they disagree the diocese was responsible for the anxiety, relationship and drug and alcohol problems the men suffered later.

Church lawyers suggested that $250,000 to $400,000 for each man was appropriate. Diocesan lawyer Allen Ruby said in closing arguments that the Thatchers did not prove the connection between the abuse when they were children and their emotional problems as adults.

The brothers gave emotional and graphic testimony during the trial, recounting "tickling" sessions in Ponciroli's bed and other inappropriate touching.

Bob Thatcher, who now lives in Arizona, testified about at least three incidents of abuse, including one while driving with Ponciroli, who loosened the boy's belt and pants and touched his genitals. Testimony began March 28.

The Thatcher case is the second to go to trial among 160 lawsuits filed in Northern California that are known collectively as Clergy III. More than 750 civil lawsuits were filed against Roman Catholic dioceses in California after the state in 2002 temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for filing sex-abuse claims.

In the first case, a jury last month awarded $437,000 to Dennis Kavanaugh who was abused in the early 1970s by the Rev. Joseph Pritchard, a former San Jose pastor who is now deceased. A second trial involving more of Pritchard's victims is under way in San Francisco.

The Thatchers' case is the first to seek punitive damages, which are designed to punish the diocese and help deter it from future misconduct.

By Kim Curtis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20050413-1557-ca-churchabuse.html

Posted by Julia at 12:44 PM

April 12, 2005

Witness Abuse: Are Jehovah's Witnesses covering up child molestation?

As Michael Jackson--raised as a Jehovah's Witness--stands trial for child molestation in Southern California, another controversy involving the apocalyptic religion and child sexual abuse is unfolding in Napa Superior Court.

A string of lawsuits accuses Jehovah Witnesses of repeatedly covering up cases of child molestation. The plaintiffs say that not only were they sexually abused by church elders, but that other church officials knew about the abuse and refused to take the necessary steps to report it, instead allowing sexual predators to retain positions of power in the congregation. The alleged abuses span 27 years, from 1970 to 1997.

The Napa case names three plaintiffs, Charissa Welch, 35; Nicole D., 32; and Tabitha H., 30. They are suing the Napa Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses as well as Jehovah's Witness headquarters in Pennsylvania and New York for an unspecified amount of money.

Originally, Sacramento law firm Nolan Saul Brelsford brought 17 cases against Jehovah's Witness churches throughout California, including one in Sonoma County. The firm has dropped 11 cases and the remaining six lawsuits span several counties, including Napa, Santa Clara, Yolo, Placer and Tehama. Because the Napa case was the farthest along in the proceedings, the lawsuits were coordinated and are now being tried in Napa as one large case.

Attorneys for the Jehovah's Witnesses deny the cover-up.

"The church abhors child abuse," says defense council Robert Schnack. "And it denies any liability in these cases, both factual and legal."

So far, the church has lost two motions in court. First, it claimed its status as a religious institution protects it from lawsuits under the First Amendment. Then it claimed it could not be held responsible for what its members did. On April 8, it is expected to argue that church officials had no knowledge of the abuse.

In the Napa case, the alleged abuser was church elder Edward Villegas, who was convicted for child abuse in 1994 and died in prison soon afterwards. Much of the abuse happened in the 1970s and 1980s. During that time, Villegas operated a church-sponsored daycare.

The complaint claims that the church not only knew about the alleged abuse, but "intentionally concealed" it from the police and the congregation and "continued to place Edward Villegas in positions of authority where he could abuse children while pursuing activities within the scope of his appointment."

In 1970, Charissa Welch, then an infant, was placed in Villegas' daycare, which the church used to attract new members. Welch's mother, Betty Hopkins, converted to the religion soon afterward. According to the complaint, when Welch was three or four years old, Villegas allegedly began molesting her by "fondling her genitals, penetrating her vagina and forcing her to have oral sex." The abuse lasted 13 to 14 years. Tabitha H. alleges that she endured similar abuse by Villegas from 1977 to 1980.

In 1971, Nicole D.'s family met Villegas through a church function. Nicole was placed under the elder's guidance. Her family even spent time at his home. In 1978, when Nicole was seven, he allegedly forced her to have oral sex with him.

According to the complaint, Nicole told her father about the abuse. He immediately informed the church. The elders removed Nicole from Villegas' care, but allegedly "took no other steps to hold him accountable or to otherwise notify members. . . . Instead, they intentionally concealed this information. Therefore, Edward Villegas was able to continue to use his position of authority."

The three plaintiffs say they were told they should let the elders handle the abuse. The complaint also says the church keeps "secret archival files regarding sexual abuse" by leaders. By not involving the police and keeping Villegas in charge, the plaintiffs are arguing that the church assumed a level of liability in the abuse.

The Jehovah's Witness church hierarchy has three levels. The first level, pioneers, are the familiar members who go door-to-door attempting to convert people. The second level, ministerial servants, are men who act as deacons, doing grunt work for the church. After three years, a ministerial servant can advance to the third level, elder. The elders make up the church's governing body.

"Elders are viewed as a direct representation of God on earth," says Bill Bowen, a former Jehovah's Witness elder. "To question an elder is to question God."

Because elders develop a trusting relationship with members, they take on the responsibility of protecting and molding character and behavior, especially in the case of children, says attorney Bill Brelsford, who represents the plaintiffs.

"The church takes these children and trains them in how to act," he says. "Through this undertaking as an organization, it has a certain responsibility here."

The Napa cases are not the only ones. In fact, lawsuits accusing Jehovah's Witnesses of covering up child abuse have been popping up all over the country. Spearheading the lawsuits is Texas law firm Love and Norris, which initially approached Nolen Saul Brelsford about the California cases.

Bill Bowen was an elder at a Jehovah's Witness church in Paducah, Ky., when he learned that a fellow elder had molested a child. He reported the incident, but the other leaders told him that since the elder claimed the abuse happened only one time, nothing should be done about it.

"I spoke to the victim and found out it happened multiple times and places, and that the current allegations pointed to another child," Bowen says. "I said to them, ‘Look, apparently he lied to us, there's even physical evidence pointing to another child,' and they said, ‘Well, he denied it, so we have to leave it in God's hands.'"

Bowen went to all the other leaders and even wrote Watchtower headquarters. Eventually, he was told that though the church would remove the man as an elder, Bowen was not to report the crime to the police. In response, Bowen officially resigned as an elder, went to the police, and then started a website, SilentLambs.org, to help Jehovah's Witnesses who have been sexually molested.

As is its custom with all so-called heretics within its ranks, the church excommunicated or "disfellowshipped" Bowen. Family and longtime friends soon started shunning him.

"I haven't spoken to my parents or sister in three years," he says. "If I had any contact with them, they would be disfellowshipped, too."

Over 1,000 people have reported on SilentLambs.org that Jehovah's Witness members allegedly sexually abused them. According to the site, inside sources at the Watchtower office in New York say it has a computer database of reported incidents of child abuse that lists nearly 24,000 child molesters.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York did not respond to interview requests for this article.

Bowen believes that child abuse within the church began as a small problem and has gotten worse over time.

"It probably started out somewhat like it was with the Catholic Church, with the church thinking if we ignore this problem, it will go away," he says. "But it hasn't. And the Jehovah's Witnesses are nastier about it than the Catholic Church was, especially to abuse survivors. They know that if they don't cover it up, it will expose major problems in the religion."

The allegations against the Jehovah's Witnesses are different from the Catholic Church in several ways. For one thing, with just 1 million members nationwide, there are far fewer Jehovah's Witnesses than the 60 million-member Catholic Church. For another, with its door-to-door conversion policy, a sexual predator who is a Jehovah's Witness has more contact with the public at large.

While the church's responsibility in these cases is still up for debate, in some cases--such as with Villegas in Napa, who was convicted of molestation--the abuse is not. At the very least, Bowen feels the Jehovah's Witnesses should make more of an effort to protect its congregation.

He says that in 1992, church members made recommendations to the New York office for a new policy dealing with child molesters. The policy stated that elders should report the abuse to the police first, that abusers should be removed from positions of responsibility within the church and that abusers should not be allowed to go door-to-door.

"That was in 1992," Bowen says. "To this day, not one of those recommendations has been followed up on."

By Joy Lanzendorfer
MetroActive
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/04.06.05/jehovahs-0514.html

Posted by Julia at 09:36 PM

B.C. Supreme Court orders blood transfusion for teen

VANCOUVER - The B.C. Supreme Court on Monday upheld an earlier court order authorizing a blood transfusion for a 14-year-old cancer patient who doesn't want the procedure because she's a Jehovah's Witness.

Though she has consented to chemotherapy, surgery and the possible amputation of her leg, the teen says a transfusion violates her religious beliefs.

But Madam Justice Mary Boyd ruled freedom of religion is not absolute and that the legal system is bound to protect a child's right to life.

The teenager's lawyer Shane Brady says he's disappointed in the decision, but that the girl is hopeful her doctor will choose not to violate her wishes while she completes another three months of treatment.

"The family is disappointed because their position has been, all along, that once the court has found that she is as capable as you and I, that young woman should make the decision," said Brady.

Because of her age, the girl's name and home city cannot be named.

A spokesman for the B.C.'s Child, Family and Community Service department says the judgment upholds the state's responsibility to provide emergency medical care for minors when it is deemed necessary for survival.

The girl was diagnosed in December with a cancerous tumour in her right leg. She started chemotherapy, but she and her family refused to consent to blood transfusions. The case was then sent to the children's ministry.

Her lawyers had argued she was a "mature minor" and could decide her own treatment. They also argued her Charter of Rights were infringed and that she suffered age discrimination.

In court documents, the girl explained why she didn't want the transfusion.

"It's no different than somebody getting sexually assaulted or raped or robbed or something. You'