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November 30, 2006

Bishop reveals clergy abuse case

The Times-Picayune

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/
frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-7/
1164695528124640.xml&coll=1

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

By Bruce Nolan

A Delaware Catholic bishop recently disclosed to his flock that a priest who served in several parishes around New Orleans in the 1980s and '90s was suspended on grounds that he sexually abused a minor more than 26 years ago.

The Rev. Paul Calamari had left New Orleans in 1997 and was living under the jurisdiction of Bishop Michael Saltarelli of the Diocese of Wilmington in 2003 when his privilege to say Mass and perform other priestly duties was lifted, Saltarelli reported in his diocesan newspaper on Nov. 17.

Calamari was among 20 priests the Wilmington diocese removed from ministry between 1985 and 2003 on "admitted, corroborated, or otherwise substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of minors," Saltarelli said.

Calamari was ordained in New Orleans and served at St. Raphael, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary and Our Lady of Perpetual Help parishes, said the Rev. William Maestri of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Calamari was also the archdiocese's director of religious education for a time, Maestri said.

Calamari left New Orleans on medical leave for treatment at St. John Vianney Center in Downingtown, Pa., a psychiatric center for priests and other church ministers, Maestri said.

Maestri said the archdiocese received a complaint that Calamari sexually abused a minor before Calamari's ordination to the priesthood in 1980. Maestri said he wasn't sure when the complaint was received, although he assumed it was connected to Calamari's 1997 departure.

Maestri said Calamari's case was handled under a local sexual abuse policy then in place mandating that a priest credibly accused of abusing a minor would be relieved from ministry, usually with no public notice. Whether he might return after treatment was left to the local bishop's discretion.

The more rigorous standard that a single case of sexual abuse of a minor would forever end a minister's active priesthood came in 2002, in a joint agreement among Catholic bishops meeting in Dallas at the height of the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

Maestri said Calamari was sent for therapy in the late 1990s, and on therapists' recommendations, was allowed to resume limited ministry in Delaware and Pennsylvania with local bishops' knowledge and consent.

The new Dallas standard ended Calamari's ministry. Maestri said that because Calamari remains a priest, the archdiocese is required by church law to maintain his salary. Saltarelli said Calamari's last known address was in Pennsylvania.

Saltarelli's disclosure was the first news that Calamari was credibly accused of sexual abuse.

Since 2002 virtually all bishops have agreed to disclose publicly whether a priest or employee has been credibly accused of abusing a minor. But most, including Archbishop Alfred Hughes, have been reluctant to disclose the names of long-ago abusers, either dead or no longer in ministry. "This is very, very, very painful work, because of the lives involved on both sides of the equation," Maestri said in 2004 about whether the disclosing of past abusers' names would help people.

Saltarelli acknowledged he was disclosing old names "with some hesitancy. . . . These priests can no longer harm anyone."

But "perhaps by identifying deceased priests, some of their victims may be motivated to seek help," he wrote.

Maestri on Monday repeated the archdiocese's standing plea to any victims of sexual abuse to come forward and seek help.

. . . . . . .

Bruce Nolan can be reached at bnolan@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3344.

Posted by Perry at 03:20 PM

November 27, 2006

Controversy Over State Funded Hindu School in UK

By Prasun Sonwalkar

http://www.teluguportal.net/
modules/news/article.php?storyid=22902

London, Nov 27 (IANS) Plans to set up Britain's first state-funded Hindu school are mired in controversy following allegations of racism, threat to environment in Harrow and child abuse against a key member of an affiliated body.

The Department of Education and Skills had announced the faith school in November 2005 and earmarked 10 million pounds for the project. Britain has many faith schools for Muslims and Sikhs.

The Hindu faith school is to be set up in the London borough of Harrow, which has a 20 percent Hindu population. To be called the 'Krishna Avanti Primary School', it was expected to open in 2010.

However, initial plans have been marred by allegations of child abuse against Gauri Dasa, who will be the 'spiritual head' of the school.

He is currently the president of the Bhaktivedanta Manor in Watford - a large temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISCKON).

The school is to be opened by I-Foundation, a charity associated with ISCKON. I-Foundation is reported to be awaiting approval from the School Organisations Committee before beginning construction of the school in Edgware.

Das is alleged to have beaten children while running an ashram in India years ago.

According to Arjun Malik, spokesman of Hindu Human Rights: "We have received email for a while, expressing concerns about allegations that Gauri Dasa used to beat children.

"We do not wish to defame any organisation, but parents will obviously not feel safe sending their children to a school which has such a man involved."

Dasa, however, claimed that corporal punishment was part of the disciplinary structure of ISKCON schools in 1970s and 80s.

He said: "All these allegations stem from an anonymous email sent out to some website. Its contents are full of half-truths.

"In the 1970s and 1980s corporal punishment was part of the disciplinary plans of ISKCON schools in India and the US. It was stopped over a decade ago."

Jay Dilip Lakhani, coordinator of the Vivekananda Centre, said: "None of the allegations against Gauri Dasa have been proven but ISKCON has a poor reputation due to the child-abuse lawsuits filed against it in the past."

But Ramesh Kallidai, secretary-general of the Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB) and described as an initiated member of ISKCON, said: "Gauri Dasa is our spiritual ambassador. We are yet to see any hard evidence against him. We are glad ISKCON is associated with the first faith school."

Nitesh Gor, spokesman for I-Foundation, said: "As for child abuse allegations against ISKCON in the US, there have been child abuse charges against the Roman Catholic Church as well but that doesn't mean the entire institution must be boycotted."

Meanwhile, residents around the proposed site have opposed the school due to the threat it posed to environment and the increase in traffic it would bring. Anonymous leaflets have been circulating in the area.

Residents have warned that the school could also generate racial tension. Recently, councillor Chris Mote faced tough questions at a public meeting to discuss plans to locate the school in the William Ellis playing fields.

Ravi Saran, who lives near the playing fields, told the local media: "I am not against a Hindu school. I have been living in this area for 40 years and enjoy a happy life but we Asians have already started getting dirty looks from white people.

"I fear what is going to happen when the bulldozers start. Does the council want to have riots? Why is Harrow Council ... destroying the environment and segregating the community?"

However, Yuvraj Rana, who supports the school, said: "Everyone has come in here with their own concept and ideas. This was a process by which local residents are involved before it even goes to planning.

"Quite frankly, I think this is racism. These people are very greedy and they should be ashamed of themselves. We are being given the chance to have the first Hindu school in the whole country and they want a better view from their back garden."

Dilip Patel, who is opposed to the school, said: "Already the thought of the school is causing tension in the community but because it is called a Hindu school it is a target for resentment. I think the community is strong enough to overcome it.

"The consequences of the development are more noise and more pollution. The first thing our religion teaches about is to protect the environment we live in."

Posted by Perry at 03:46 PM

Dawkins takes fight against religion into the classroom

Professor Dawkins believes that "it is immoral to brand young children with the religion of their parents".

By Sarah Cassidy

The Independent
http://education.independent.co.uk/
news/article2018755.ece

Published: 27 November 2006

Richard Dawkins, the Oxford geneticist, best-selling author and campaigning atheist, is to take his battle against God into Britain's schools after setting up a foundation to counter the religious indoctrination of young people.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs for teachers to fight the "educational scandal" that has seen the growth in popularity of "pseudo science" and "irrational" ideas.

The foundation will also conduct research into what makes some people more susceptible to religious ideas than others and whether young people are particularly vulnerable. And it will aim to "raise public consciousness" to make it unacceptable to refer to a "Catholic child" or a "Muslim child"; Professor Dawkins believes that "it is immoral to brand young children with the religion of their parents".

The campaign comes after an increasingly bitter battle about the role of religion in public life. Controversial religious groups have also stepped up their efforts to spread their message to more young people.

Truth in Science, a Christian group campaigning to have "intelligent design" - the belief that the universe was created by an intelligent designer rather than natural selection - included in science lessons recently sent DVDs and materials to every secondary school in the country. And earlier this month the leaders of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in the UK attacked people who campaign for the removal of religion from public life - such as Professor Dawkins - arguing they are guilty of an "intolerant faith position". Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of Catholics in England and Wales, believe that religiously inspired activity in public life can be "radically inclusive".

During a recent visit to a bookshop in London, Professor Dawkins attacked what he saw as a penchant for irrational beliefs. Professor Dawkins, whose most recent book The God Delusion has become a best seller, was horrified, although not surprised, to find the shop's shelves packed with books on fairies, crystals and fortune telling - "pseudoscience" outnumbering science books by at least three to one.

"The enlightenment is under threat," he said. "So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organised ignorance. We even have to go out on the attack ourselves, for the sake of reason and sanity. But it must be a positive attack, for science and reason have so much to give."

Secular groups supported the move, arguing that it was vital to counter the growing threat posed by religious groups targeting schools.

Keith Porteous Wood, general secretary of the National Secular Society, welcomed the Dawkins foundation as an "absolutely wonderful idea" and warned that secular groups were "under threat" from religious groups in a way that was unprecedented.

"I think people in science are getting very worried about the intrusion into science of fundamentally unscientific ideas," he said. Andrew Copson, of the British Humanist Association, said there was a dire shortage of resources for teachers wanting to give lessons about atheism. "As a high-profile humanist Richard Dawkins is in an ideal position to do something about this."

But John Hall, dean of Westminster and the Church of England's head of education, said he was concerned that the new foundation was simply a new way for the outspoken atheist to "pick a fight" with the churches.

"He is clearly looking for a fight," Mr Hall said. "His clear intention is to push his view that religion is dangerous and that to bring up a child in their parents' beliefs is a form of abuse. Obviously I am concerned about that. There are good grounds for thinking that this would just be a charitable vehicle for pushing Richard Dawkins' views."

His foundation's aims

* The foundation will sponsor research into the "psychological basis of unreason" that will attempt to answer questions such as why people find astrology more appealing than astronomy, at what age young people are most vulnerable to unreason and what are the correlations between religiosity and superstition and intelligence and educational level.

* It will support rational and scientific education for all ages, and oppose the "subversion of scientific education", for example by efforts to teach creationism in science classes. It will subsidise the publication of books, DVDs and other educational materials.

* The foundation will keep a database of secular lecturers willing to address schools and colleges.

* It will keep a list of secular charities.

* Professor Dawkins wants to raise public consciousness to make it socially unacceptable to label children by the religion of their parents.

Posted by Perry at 03:38 PM

November 26, 2006

Two women who found the strength to defy polygamy

One testifies against 'prophet' Warren Jeffs, the other feels her pain

Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/
story.html?id=0af3cd18-ac35-4694-8d46-e2e87230ed01

Saturday, November 25, 2006

ST. GEORGE, Utah - Sara Hammon wept in a Utah courtroom this week as another young woman testified how she was forced at age 14 to marry her 19-year-old first cousin by Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

"It [the testimony] ripped my heart out," Hammon said.

Eighteen years ago, Hammon was also 14, living in the FLDS town of Hildale, Utah and engaged to be married.

But Hammon escaped, unlike the young woman who is the state's star witness against Jeffs who is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice. Jeffs has an estimated 15,000 followers, including about 500 who live in seclusion in Bountiful, B.C. Another 700 or so fundamentalist Mormons in Bountiful follow Winston Blackmore. The woman, who is now 20 and pregnant, spent four hours testifying against Jeffs at a preliminary hearing this week. The hearing resumes Dec. 14.

Jeffs, 50, is in nearby Purgatory Correctional Centre, where he's been held since his arrest in August. He'd been a fugitive for more than two years and was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted along with Osama bin Laden. In addition to the Utah charges, he's facing six Arizona charges for sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor.

The young woman's testimony included an explanation of FLDS teachings. She said girls in the polygamous cult are taught that their only link to God is through men -- their fathers, then their husbands and ultimately, the prophet, who is the embodiment of God on Earth.

They are taught that when they marry, they must submit unquestioningly to their husbands' will. If men make bad decisions, it is because their wives are not praying hard enough or aren't pure enough.

They aren't taught anything about sex. Even a month after her marriage in April 2001, the 14-year-old had no idea how babies were made.

She was in Grade 9 in April 2001 when her stepfather told her the prophet had arranged for her marriage later that week.

Eighteen years ago, Hammon was also assigned by the prophet, who was also her father Marion Hammon. She had asked to be married to get out of the family home where she says scarcely a day went by that she wasn't sexually or physically abused by her father or someone else in the family.

When she went to her father, she started by telling him her name. She was one of 75 children. Her father was 83.

"He said, 'Can you cook? Can you clean? Are you ready to be a mother? Have you started your period?' I said yes."

Hammon was assigned to an 18-year-old boy and the wedding date was set for just after her 15th birthday.

"I didn't know him that well and he didn't want to marry me ... And I was 14. I was not old enough to know what I wanted."

But the biggest difference between Hammon and Jane Doe, the woman testifying against Jeffs, is that Hammon had another option.

She had a married sister who had left the group and was living in St. George, less than an hour's drive from Hildale. Hammon stayed there on weekends and started babysitting for the neighbours. Before she turned 15, Hammon asked the neighbours if she could live with them and be a nanny to their children. They agreed.

Utah's witness had no options. Her father had been kicked out of the FLDS two years earlier. The witness, her mother and her younger siblings were uprooted from their Salt Lake City home and reassigned to 88-year-old Fred Jessop, who already had 15 wives and dozens of children living in his 40-bedroom house.

They were told to treat their excommunicated father as if he were dead.

Calling him for help was not an option. Even had she contacted him, she had no money and no means to make the six-hour trip from Hildale to Salt Lake City.

When told of her assignment marriage, the girl pleaded with her new father to at least delay the wedding until she was 16. He refused.

She went to Rulon Jeffs, the ailing prophet whose work was being done by his son, Warren. Rulon told the girl to follow her heart, Warren told her that her heart was in the wrong place and that to refuse the marriage was to defy God's will.

She went tearful and terrified to her mother.

"My mother talked me into doing what I needed to do. She told me that the prophet knew best. She said ... she had no power to change it.

"I felt totally powerless, I felt trapped. I did everything I could do to change it, but nothing worked. I was scared because I didn't have anywhere else to go. I felt if I didn't do what I was told I would forever pay the consequences ... and I would never be able to go to heaven."

The marriage took place in a motel owned by FLDS members in Caliente, Nev. The girl refused to hold the groom's hand. Warren Jeffs took it and placed in the groom's. When he asked if she took this man to be her husband, she hung her head and refused to say anything. He asked again. Nothing. Jeffs ordered her mother to stand beside her and hold her hand.

He asked a third time and when the silence became unbearable, the girl said, "Okay, I do."

Over the next three years, the young woman went to Jeffs several times asking to be released from the marriage. She told him that her husband was touching her inappropriately and wouldn't stop when she said no. He told her to obey her husband, who said sexual intercourse was her duty as a wife.

Jeffs told her to have children. That would change everything.

She was pregnant in November 2003 when she went to Bountiful to visit her sister, who at 17 had been assigned to marry a Canadian FLDS member.

There, the young woman had a miscarriage that required months of recuperation. She didn't want to go back to Hildale, but her mother again persuaded her not to disobey the prophet.

In court, she admitted being hurt by her mother's failure to protect her. Hammon still struggles with that.

Her mother put a railway tie separating the backyard from a field. It marked a safe zone for the girls. Beyond that there was no protection from molestation.

Girls caught beyond the railway tie were whipped with a horse bridle on their bare legs.

Girls who were molested and told were then forced to watch as the boys were beaten, reinforcing for Hammon that no matter what happened, it was always the girls' fault.

Yet somehow both Hammon and the state's witness found strength to be defiant.

By the winter of 2003, the young bride had given up trying to being a good wife. She had a separate bedroom in the trailer she shared with her husband, but often she slept in her truck.

She testified that her husband raped her one night that winter, up in the dark red hills above the desert town.

"I told him, you know, I'll never be the same. That's when I decided I was done."

But still she had nowhere to go. She began spending more time with people who had left the FLDS or been excommunicated. One man was kind to her. They fell in love. They sneaked away for a weekend. Her husband found the photos and condoms in her drawer. By then she was pregnant with her lover's child.

That spring, her husband asked the leaders to dissolve the marriage. Jeffs agreed and that same night, the young woman left Hildale for the last time with the other man who is now her husband.

During all of this, she never called police. In August 2005 she called a lawyer wanting to know about her rights. A year ago, she filed a civil suit against Jeffs.

Why did it take so long to complain? Jeffs's attorney, Tara Issacson, wanted to know. Why did she call a lawyer and not police? The suggestion was that she is more concerned about getting money than getting justice?

But Hammon is amazed the woman came forward so soon.

By the time Hammon spoke out, she was 30, well-travelled, well-spoken and established in her career. Her father was dead. Still she was terrified and still she hasn't gone to police to report any of the abuse.

She channels her energy and anger into volunteering with the HOPE Organization, which helps others who have left the FLDS and other polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon groups.

Based on her experience in Hildale and with HOPE, Hammon says the state's witness "represents at least a couple of thousand other women out there going through this even today."

(In addition to the women, HOPE estimates there could be as many as 1,000 boys living in the St. George area, who have been kicked out or encouraged to leave so that older men can have multiple wives.)

Hammon has been called a liar by people who still revere her father as one of God's prophets.

But she was in court this week because she says she knows the truth. She believes her father was a pedophile.

And she believes he was wrong to preach that all children lie, that no child can ever tell the truth.

dbramham@png.canwest.com

Website links:

The HOPE Organization (www.childbrides.org)

Posted by Perry at 03:48 PM

November 24, 2006

Irish archdiocese targeted in California sex-abuse lawsuit

Catholic World News

http://www.cwnews.com/
news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=47744

Nov. 20 (CWNews.com) - A sex-abuse victim in California is seeking financial damages from an Irish archdiocese, in a case involving the defrocked priest who is the central figure in a controversial new film about clerical pedophilia.

The lawsuit, filed in an Orange County court in California, charges that the Archdiocese of Cashel and Ely bears responsibility for the crimes of Oliver O'Grady, a former priest who has been convicted on multiple counts of molesting children in California. The plaintiff, identified only as "John Doe," charges that the Irish archdiocese, where O'Grady was ordained to the priesthood, should have taken action to prevent the disturbed priest from molesting children when he moved to California. That claim, if successful, would mark the first time that a court had allowed an alleged sex-abuse victim to seek damages from a diocese in another country.

In a response to the lawsuit, the Cashel archdiocese has denied responsibility for O'Grady's actions. Archbishop Dermot Clifford also noted that the archdiocese has never had any dealings with the plaintiff in the case.

In the provocative new film Deliver Us from Evil, O'Grady speaks candidly about his years as a priest and his repeated assaults on children. He reports that his bishop in California-- now the head of the Los Angeles archdiocese, Cardinal Roger Mahony-- was aware of his activities but continued to assign him to parish work. Early screenings of the film have fueled new outrage over the sex-abuse scandal, and new criticism of Cardinal Mahony's leadership.

Posted by Perry at 06:10 PM

Pastor accused of sex with girl

Dayton Daily News

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/
content/oh/story/news/local/2006/
11/22/ddn112306pastor.html

By Anthony Gottschlich

Thursday, November 23, 2006

DAYTON, OHIO — A Riverside pastor accused of sexually assaulting female members of his congregation was charged Wednesday with eight counts of sexual battery against a 15-year-old girl.

If convicted on all counts, Dennis Bowling of Kingdom Harvest Church faces up to 80 years in prison, Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck Jr. said.

Bowling, 45, could face additional charges.

"There are at least nine other potential victims that we are aware of," ranging in age 10 to 16, Heck said.

Heck said the assaults involving the 15-year-old include "sexual contact, intercourse and touching" and occurred from September to this month.

Heck believes Bowling has been dismissed as pastor of Kingdom Harvest, 2360 Valley Pike, where authorities say Bowling has served as pastor for 19 years.

Church staff members could not be reached for comment. The church is also the site of the Christian Training Center, a school for grades two through 12 that has 27 students and one teacher, according to the Ohio Department of Education. The "non-public, non-chartered" school receives no public funding and is not required to follow state education guidelines.

Bowling, a Huber Heights resident married with children, was arrested early Tuesday by Riverside police and Miami County sheriff's deputies at a relative's home in northern Miami County. The arrest followed a Monday evening meeting between police and a group of women associated with the church who phoned police with the allegations, claiming Bowling sexually assaulted at least a dozen female church members over the past decade.

Bowling is being held in Montgomery County Jail.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Riverside police at 233-1820.

Posted by Perry at 06:00 PM

Lawyers for polygamist sect leader put on vigorous defense

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=5716160

ST. GEORGE, Utah -- Warren Jeffs may have arranged a marriage, but his lawyers contend he's no accessory to rape.

Jeffs, the leader of a century-old fundamentalist polygamist group, is charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice for his alleged role in arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.

But that's as far as it went, his lawyers argued at a preliminary hearing Tuesday, declaring that arranging a marriage is no crime.

They portrayed the woman as manipulative, trading sex for favors from her husband, and Jeffs as an innocent religious prophet caught up in a domestic dispute.

It was a sign the lawyers plan a vigorous defense for a jailed leader still in control of some 10,000 followers in the border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

The first phase of the hearing was held Tuesday in 5th District Court. The hearing will resume Dec. 14, after which Judge James Shumate must decide whether there is probable cause to send Jeffs to trial.

Wally Bugden, Jeff's lead attorney, said after the hearing that prosecutors are using rape charges to inflame passions, but that a jury would see through it "for what it is _ religious persecution."

"There was no rape," Bugden said on the courthouse steps. "My client, as an accomplice, is not guilty of rape."

It came after nearly a full day of testimony from the woman, now 20 and pregnant by a second husband, who helped her escape the first marriage. The defense team plans to call that husband, along with a sheriff's investigator, to the stand Dec. 14.

On Tuesday, the woman testified she was married by Jeffs over her repeated objections. She said she refused to hold hands or utter "I do" at a wedding ceremony in Nevada. She finally relented, but hesitated to exchange a kiss with her groom. She got through that with a "peck" of a kiss instead.

Then she locked herself in a bathroom.

"I felt completely defeated and trapped," said the woman, who was kicked out of her community sect when her marriage disintegrated after 3 1/2 years. The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault.

She is the key witness against Jeffs, the 50-year-old leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who sat nearly motionless during the hearing, without expression.

Prosecutors completed their case Tuesday with testimony from the woman and two of her sisters.

Then Jeffs' defense team got its chance, questioning the woman's accounts and motives.

They introduced photographs of a smiling, laughing couple and got the woman to acknowledge Jeffs never explicitly ordered her to have sex with her new husband.

One of Jeff's lawyers, Tara L. Isaacson, also introduced sweetheart notes the couple had traded and quoted from the then-girl's journal in which she expressed enthusiasm about being singled out for marriage. The woman testified that the journal entry was written before she learned the identity of her partner, a cousin she says she disliked.

"Was every day with (the husband) miserable?" Isaacson asked.

"Many of them were," the woman said.

Faithful church members revere Jeffs as a prophet and are taught to obey his every command, including marriage instructions, she testified.

Looking gaunt and pale in a dark gray suit, Jeffs smiled slightly at the woman at times during the hearing.

The FLDS church practices polygamy and represents itself as an offshoot of the mainstream Mormon church, based in Salt Lake City. The Mormons, however, disavow any connection and renounced polygamy in 1890 as a condition of statehood.

Raised in the faith since birth, Jeffs' accuser said she felt the weight of the community in the days leading to her marriage. Even her mother encouraged her to go through with it.

"I felt devastated, like no one would listen to me. I felt like a very wicked person. I felt hollow, numb. I didn't know what to do," she said.

Security at the Washington County courthouse was extraordinary Tuesday, with police sharpshooters posted on red rock cliffs over the courthouse. No vehicles were allowed to park on the street.

Posted by Perry at 05:53 PM

'Cult' fights claims of child sacrifice

The Age, Australia

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/
cult-fights-claims-of-child-sacrifice/
2006/11/21/1163871404937.html

by Barney Zwartz

November 22, 2006

AN ANTI-CHILD-SEX campaigner accused an occult religious group of hosting parties at which naked children acted as waiters and at which members had sex with and murdered children, a tribunal was told yesterday.

The obscure group Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) claims Dr Reina Michaelson and the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program described it in a website article as a satanic cult that sacrificed children and ate their organs and blood.

It has complained under Victoria's religious hatred law that Dr Michaelson and her organisation vilified OTO members, causing revulsion, ridicule, hatred and contempt.

According to OTO's statement of complaint, Dr Michaelson said it was not a religion but a child pornography and pedophile ring, that its members practised trauma-based mind control, sexual abuse and satanic rituals to discourage its victims from complaining to the authorities, and that it condoned kidnapping street children and babies and children from orphanages for sex and sacrifice in religious rituals.

The case began at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal yesterday, but was adjourned to today to allow a last-ditch attempt to settle out of court.

The article, still accessible on a website run from NSW, suggests senior politicians and television celebrities are part of a top-level pedophile ring and have been protected by some police. It says some members of the ring pretended to support Dr Michaelson's campaign and became board members of her group to subvert it from within.

Adam Paszkowski, for Dr Michaelson, who was named Young Australian of the Year in 1997 for founding the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program, said the article was published on the website "without her knowledge or consent or authority".

Dr Michaelson last year called for a royal commission to investigate her claims that Victoria Police did not properly investigate pedophile ring allegations.

Earlier complaints led to a report by the police ombudsman in 2004 that was highly critical of two senior detectives.

OTO members follow a religion known as Thelema, founded by occultist Aleister Crowley.

Posted by Perry at 05:48 PM

Ohio Pastor Arrested, Accused Of Rape

http://www.whiotv.com/news/10371359/detail.html#

November 21, 2006

RIVERSIDE, Ohio -- A dozen members of a Riverside church said they were sexually assaulted by their pastor. The pastor is now in the Montgomery County Jail.

Police in Riverside said the allegations involve both children and adults.

The Rev. Dennis Bowling, 45, was arrested around 2 a.m. Tuesday in Miami County after a group of 12 females ranging in age from 10 to adulthood called Riverside police, asking them to go to the church.

Authorities said Bowling was taken into custody at a home in Miami County where he was staying. Investigators said Bowling was booked into the Montgomery County Jail on felony rape charges.

Bowling is the pastor of Kingdom Harvest Church on Valley Street in Riverside. Police said he has been pastor at the church for 19 years.

Bowling is being held without bond, awaiting formal charges.

Posted by Perry at 05:45 PM

U.S. Taxpayers Support Alleged Cult

Manassas Journal Messenger

Sunday, November 19, 2006

By SEAN MUSSENDEN

WASHINGTON -- In the mountains of Haiti, food can be hard to find. Starving children sometimes even eat dirt in an attempt to survive, aid workers say.

Yet thousands of orphans and hungry adults in this destitute country, one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, are kept alive with meals of rice, carrots, potatoes and other vegetables provided by the Pennsylvania-based Church of Bible Understanding.

The meals are financed in part by U.S. taxpayers, a byproduct of the push by President Bush to expand social service grant funding to religious groups providing foreign aid.

Members of the Scranton, Pa., group say the work is vital to the people of Haiti and the church's mission to serve God. But critics say the government made a grave error providing financial support to the church, which for three decades has fought its reputation as an emotionally destructive cult.

"God led us there. It's true religion to help orphans," said Deborah Stempien, a church member who helped the group secure $150,000 in grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development since 2003.

Rick Ross, who heads the Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults in New Jersey, said the taxpayer support of what he called a "pretty horrible group" is extremely problematic.

"It's the antithesis of what (the government) wants to be doing," he said. "On a scale of one to 10 - 10 being Jim Jones - I would put COBU (the church's initials) at a 7 1/2 or 8."

Current members vehemently deny that their church is a cult. Stempien called the charge "garbage" and "old hat."

"We are Christians by the book. We are a faith-based, tax-exempt organization," she said. "They said the same thing about Mormons. They said the same thing about Jesus...those accusations won't stop us from doing Jesus' work," she said.

The church was formed in the 1970s by Stewart Traill, a charismatic leader whose interpretation of the Bible forms the church's core beliefs.

Ross said the issue "is not what they believe; it's about how they behave."

Counselors, former members, and those who have studied the church said leaders berate newcomers and make it difficult emotionally for them to leave.

Former members say the group's ranks have thinned since the 1970s and 1980s, though it's unclear how large its membership is today. Clinical counselor Ron Burks, who specializes in treating ex-cult members, said the group remains an unhealthy force in the lives of its members.

"He (Traill) has one of most effective means of shutting down critical thinking I've ever seen," said Burks, who has treated about a dozen former members of the Church of Bible Understanding. "Of the hundreds of people I've treated, COBU is definitely in the top five in terms of harm and psychological damage."

Members work in group-run businesses -- including, over the years, cleaning services and antique shops. Their wages help fund church programs.

The church also works hard at recruiting. A 1999 story by Philadelphia magazine found that the church highlighted the work in Haiti in recruiting pitches to teenagers.

The church has operated orphanages in Haiti since the late 1970s.

In interviews, even highly critical former members were overwhelmingly positive about the Haiti mission work. Their efforts there are aimed purely at helping locals, not recruting them to join the church, former members said.

Maureen Griffo, who was in the church for a decade before fleeing in the late 1980s, said that working in Haiti was one of her only positive memories of her time there.

"There were people who got helped, there were starving people who got food, and kids who were near death who got medical care," She said.

Despite the positive impact it had, she said she believed church leaders authorized work in Haiti because "people would see (the church) as a legitimate group because they were doing mission work."

The Church of Bible Understanding received its first USAID grant in 2003, the year after the White House set up a special outreach office at the agency to help faith-based groups get access to foreign aid funding. The agency is the government's primary foreign aid arm, working in about 100 countries.

USAID frequently turns to private groups - some small, some large, many faith-based - to carry out its work across the globe. Last year the government gave $706 million in grants to faith-based groups working overseas, $27 million more than in 2004, according to limited White House records.

Stempien said in an interview that she was reluctant at first to solicit government funds but reconsidered when she realized how much good it could do.

Under a "Food for Peace" grant, her group now receives food -- roughly 75 metric tons per year of dehydrated meals - and money to distribute it: $37,000 in 2003, $41,000 in 2004, $22,000 in 2005 and $50,000 this year.

USAID officials could not be reached for comment this week

The funds represent a small percentage of the church's total spending in Haiti. Between 2002 and 2004, the group spent an average of $500,000 each year on mission work in the country, according to tax records.

The group runs several orphanages, and takes in children that "were orphaned, very ill, or even near death...Now they are part of a real family with meaning and purpose," according to its Web site, cbuhaiti.org. It also travels through poorer parts of the country, feeding hungry adults.

"Together with the older children from our orphanage and the Haitian men and women with us, we help the people sit down, learn a Bible scripture for the day and sing and pray together. After this comes the job of distributing the food orderly and urgently so that everyone gets their portion for the day," according to the Web site.

Stempien said her group's sense of mission makes it better suited than secular groups to carry out this work. "God really does lead us. That's our advantage," she said.

Sean Mussenden, a national correspondent in Media General's Washington Bureau, can be reached at 202-662-7668 or by E-mail at smussenden@mediageneral.com

Posted by Perry at 05:37 PM

Underage marriages arranged with polygamists at motel

http://www.komotv.com/news/national/4698586.html

Nov 20, 2006

By JENNIFER DOBNER Associated Press Writer

CALIENTE, Nev. (AP) - Room 15 at the Caliente Hot Springs Motel seems like an unlikely place for a wedding. There are no flower-covered arbors, pews or candles. It is an apartment-style room with a kitchenette, a bed, a dresser, a table and a couch.

But it was in Room 15 that dozens of weddings took place between underage girls and men from a polygamist sect, church insiders say.

The sect's charismatic leader, Warren Jeffs, has been charged with rape as an accomplice for his alleged role in arranging one of those marriages - that of a 14-year-old girl who claims she was forced to wed her older first cousin in 2001.

Jeffs, the 50-year-old leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, will be in a Utah court Tuesday for a hearing on whether prosecutors have enough evidence to try him. If he is tried and convicted, the man some 10,000 followers revere as a prophet could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Jeffs was captured in a traffic stop outside Las Vegas in August after nearly two years on the run. He was one of the nation's 10 most-wanted fugitives.

According to authorities, the bride, identified in court papers as Jane Doe No. 4, stood dressed in white in Room 15 and said, "I do," sealing the marriage with a secret handshake. Prosecutors say the marriage was then consummated back in Hildale, Utah, where members of the sect live.

The girl told Jeffs she didn't want to marry, and later begged to be released from the union, saying she did not like marital relations, authorities said. But Jeffs said the marriage was her religious duty and threatened her with the loss of salvation, according to authorities.

The FLDS claims to be a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church. But the Mormons disavow any connection and renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Jeffs' attorneys have not responded to requests for interviews. But at hearing in September, attorney Walter Bugden said Jeffs believes he is being persecuted for his religious beliefs.

Carolyn Jessop, a former sect member who used to run the motel, said that once or twice a month, beginning in the spring of 1999, she would get a telephone call telling her to plan for a weekend of sect weddings. Some insiders say as many as 10 such weddings were held in a single day.

Wedding parties and church elders would arrive in a caravan of cars about midmorning, not long after checkout time for guests.

"They did not want anybody on the property," said Jessop, whose husband, Merrill Jessop, owned the 18-room motel with her father for seven years until it was sold in 2004.

The drive to Caliente from Hildale is 160 miles, most of it on a two-lane road through the mountains and across the desert. But sect leaders believed Caliente was a safe place - "a way to go under the radar screen" - because Utah and Arizona were passing legislation to address underage marriage and threatening prosecution, Jessop said.

Utah later passed a law making it a felony to arrange a marriage between a minor and an older married person. Arizona has enacted a similar law.

At the motel, the girls usually arrived with their parents, including their fathers' multiple wives. The bridegroom might bring his own wives. In some ceremonies, the first wife might hold the young bride's hand and place it gently in the groom's as a symbolic gesture that she accepted the new wife into the family, sect insiders say.

After the ceremony, sect elders would share a meal cooked by some of the women.

"I can't imagine the trauma that some of these younger girls must have gone through," said Jessop, who left the sect and her husband in 2003.

No charges have been brought against her or her husband. She said she would help set the room up but would not stay around for the ceremonies.

Insiders say the newlyweds would promptly leave and presumably consummate their unions back in Hildale or neighboring Colorado City, Ariz. - dusty twin towns populated by women in long, pioneer dresses and men in long sleeves and buttoned-up collars.

Posted by Perry at 05:30 PM

Sex Cult Custody Battle Will Remain Open To Media

SAN DIEGO, CA

http://www.kfmb.com/stories/story.70904.html

11-20-06

The media will be allowed to report on a custody battle over a four-year-old boy who is allegedly being raised in an Escondido sex cult.

The boy's mother, Angie Staughton, had asked the judge to close the courtroom to the public out of privacy concerns for her son Kyle.

The boy's father claims his ex-wife is raising the boy in a free-love cult that puts the child at risk, but the mother claims her organization, called The Family International, is just a Christian missionary group.

The judge ruled Monday that the case will remain open.

A site inspection report on the Escondido commune where the boy lives will be filed in several weeks.

Posted by Perry at 05:21 PM

LA judge opens way for church sex-abuse cases to proceed

San Jose Mercury News

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/
news/breaking_news/16047502.htm

Nov. 18, 2006

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - After a three-year delay, a court has opened the way for pretrial investigations to begin in more than 100 lawsuits filed by people claiming they were sexually molested by Roman Catholic priests.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley J. Fromholz released the claims for trial after a freeze that stalled discovery and other pretrial investigation. The freeze was imposed as lawyers for victims and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles spent years attempting to settle more than 570 claims, covering 60 years, without trials.

The decision involves 32 priests and only about 20 percent of the claims arising from the church scandal.

Katherine K. Freberg, an Irvine lawyer who represents 41 people who say they are victims, said she sent demands for documents to the church Thursday.

Thirty-three claims have already been settled by religious orders rather than by the archdiocese, and 46 others are near settlement, according to lawyers involved.

"There is only one thing that gets these cases settled: It's having trial dates and full-blown discovery," said M. Ryan DiMaria, a lawyer for several victims. "Therefore this is hugely important."

Without discovery - the subpoenaed production of records, depositions and written documents - "there's no pressure on the defendants to do anything," DiMaria said.

At the heart of the litigation is the claim that the church failed to protect its parishioners from pedophile priests and instead acted to shield the priests from civil and criminal liability.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has acknowledged that in the past, problem priests were sent to therapy and then transferred rather than reported to authorities and parishioners. The Catholic Church has since declared a zero tolerance policy on sexual misconduct by priests.

Also this week, a lawyer representing priests won a courthouse victory, persuading Fromholz to bar accusers' access to psychiatric information in church personnel files. The judge found that the documents, generally written communications between the church and health care providers, are confidential. State law prohibits the disclosure of medical treatment for mental and emotional illness without the consent of the patient.

The ruling was made in the case of Lynn Caffoe, who was suspended from the priesthood after sexual abuse claims were filed against him in 1991.

Posted by Perry at 05:16 PM

Church studies abuse claims against priest

Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/
local/chicago/chi-0611190044nov19,1,7440010.
story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

November 19, 2006

The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and a Catholic religious order are investigating allegations of sexual abuse that have been made against a priest while he was assigned to a Pilsen parish.

The complaints against the priest, a member of the Benedictine order, surfaced after lawyers for a Bellwood man said they reached an undisclosed financial settlement in April with the archdiocese and the Order of St. Benedict.

At a news conference Saturday, Michael Calvin, 47, said that between the ages of 13 and 17, he was molested several times a month in a church-owned apartment that the priest called "the clubhouse."

Calvin was joined at the news conference outside the St. Procopius Church rectory, 1641 S. Allport St., by his attorney, Phillip Aaron, and Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Blaine said she hoped Calvin's story would encourage others who may have been abused by the priest to come forward.

Susan Burritt, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, would not confirm the settlement with Calvin but said the archdiocese was working with the Benedictines to investigate a number of accusations of sexual abuse lodged against the priest.

Aaron said he represents 15 other men who allege they were abused by the priest while he was serving at St. Procopius.

The priest was pastor of the church from the late 1960s until 1986, Burritt said. He is now retired and is not involved in any kind of ministry, she said.

Posted by Perry at 05:10 PM

Life Foundation Guru Alleged Sexual Predator

'Paul was little more than a shell. He was like a zombie'

Sunday November 19, 2006
The Guardian
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1949294,00.html

The flame of the Life Foundation in Snowdonia has been burning for 28 years, a beacon for people searching for inner peace. When Paul Clarke walked through its doors, he thought he'd found a reason to live. A few years later, he was dead. Jamie Doward tells his story

Paul Clarke is glueing together a small, porcelain statue of St Francis of Assisi, smashed into a hundred pieces. It is painstaking work and Paul, 35, is absorbed in the delicate operation. It is likely Paul, who has gentle, green eyes and a thinning mop of fair hair, smashed the figurine in a moment of frustration, something that has become a common occurrence. This is almost the last thing Paul will do with his life. In the next few hours he will write letters, including one to his parents, one to the foundation and one to his nine-year-old son. Then he will take the cord down from a Velux blind and, some time on the evening of the 14 October 1998, hang himself. In the ensuing hours, Paul's body will be found, the police will be called and his parents informed. Paul's valedictory letters, in parts rambling and inchoate, will be dissected by those who loved him as they try to piece together the fragments of his life: a futile attempt to understand his disturbed mental state. Eight years on, one phrase, in the letter to his son, will continue to echo in the void: 'Find a man who can teach you.'

Paul, like scores of other dreamers, idealists and drop-outs, found such a man.

Bethesda, a small, isolated town on the edge of the Snowdonia national park in northwest Wales is the sort of place you drive through rather than to. To the west, beyond the town on the A5, lies Bangor and beyond that Anglesey and the ferry to Ireland. Nestling in a sepulchral valley, Bethesda's rows of grey, stone-clad houses hugging the hillside have seen better days. Several of the shops lie empty, a visual testimony to the area's struggling economy.

Many passing through might not pay Bethesda a second thought if it wasn't for the burning flame standing 8ft tall outside a motel on the outskirts of the town. Surrounded by a pool of water and enveloped in a glass box etched with declarations of peace in a multitude of languages, the flame seems incongruous, its ultra-modern casing clashing with the forbidding backdrop of Snowdonia. A sign tells the curious that if they want further information about the flame they should ask at the motel which adjoins the main retreat of an obscure organisation called the Life Foundation.

Here, they will learn about the benefits of Dru Yoga, the foundation's physical activities programme. There is little mention of the foundation itself, for these days the pacifist organisation, based around Hindu teaching, tends not to trade on its name. Some of the locals have taken against it. Graffiti warning 'sex cult ahead' is daubed on the road outside.

Colin Douglas, 59, a small man with an appealing face and a shock of white hair, spent 10 years with the Life Foundation, one of thousands who has passed through its doors since it emerged in the mid-Seventies.

A musician, Colin lost his ability to perform in the winter of 1988 when he suffered a nervous breakdown. Suicidal and on antidepressants, Colin stumbled across the Life Foundation during a conference at one of its centres in the West Midlands. Instantly he was mesmerised by the foundation's charismatic leader, Mansukh 'Manny' Patel, who was trying to raise funds to build an alternative cancer care centre.

'I was hooked, I shook my wife Anne awake and said "This is it, this is what I've been waiting for all my life,"' says Colin. Within days he had signed up to a meditation weekend at the foundation's retreat in Wales.

'At the retreat someone came up to me and said, "Do you want to talk to Manny?" and I said, "Yes please." He said, "Tell me all about it," and so I did. He said, "I can't do much about your trumpet playing, but I can do a bit about the other." He looked me in the eyes and I saw the whole of creation flash before my eyes. He said, "Go away and be happy," and that was it. I was in a magnificent space. I went home to Anne and my kids and said, "I'm cured." I threw my pills away.'

Colin's story is typical of those drawn to the Life Foundation. Many are teachers or nurses; clever, caring people who want to make a difference by supporting its campaigns for world peace. They are often emotional people, some suffering depression or recovering from breakdowns, searching for something to complete themselves. They are intrigued by the claims made for Dru Yoga and the weekend retreats in Snowdonia with their promises of inner peace. After a few courses many look to spend more time at the foundation's retreats. A number opt to stay and work for the Life Foundation.

In Patel, a tall, handsome 51-year-old, they see a way forward. With his numerous self-help books and belief in providing 'a safe and nurturing environment for each and every individual to express their natural joy and creativity', he holds out the hope of earthly salvation.

Once inside the foundation, followers enter a world of ceremonies devoted to the Hindu god, Krishna. 'You just get pulled in,' says Anne. 'The spiritual part is really strong. It's really attactive if you're searching for something.'

The diet is vegetarian and ex-members claim Patel advocates followers should choose celibacy while living in the foundation's headquarters. For this reason Patel recommends husbands and wives should not live together when they join the foundation. Instead they are taught to focus on Patel, their guru.

'Patel urges his followers to fall headlong in love with him so they could receive the unobstructed flow of his transcendental love and blessings,' recalls Bridget Ancel, a former follower. The foundation maintains Patel has never claimed to be celibate, merely that he says periods of sexual abstinence are part of the yogic tradition.

For many years the foundation has enjoyed a favourable image, with Patel often referred to as the 'young Gandhi' in the local press. The Life Foundation has presented miniature peace flames to Pope John Paul II and Tony Blair. It has made well-publicised attempts to raise money for war victims.

In his publicity brochures, Patel preaches emancipation. 'Each one of us is born to be free. So walk towards freedom; keep heading in that direction; and may that smile that knows all things finally appear across your heart, across your face and in your beautiful eyes...'

The cynical may wonder how people could be drawn to such platitudes. But Colin and Anne, like many others, were hooked. They sold their house in the West Midlands and moved to Bethesda so they could devote their lives to the foundation. Colin did odd jobs at the centre and composed much of the background music for Patel's audio tapes, self-help guides which promise inner peace. Anne helped clean the headquarters and prepared meals. The day they graduated to wearing white robes - a sign that they had risen within the foundation's hierarchy - was a proud one.

The last time Margaret, 69, and Richard Clarke, 70, saw their son alive was the spring of 1998, six months before he died. They took their son and grandson to Anglesey.

On a bitterly cold day, father and son skimmed stones across a lake, trying to find a connection as Margaret and Richard watched from afar, hoping the reunion might drag Paul out of his torpor. But something was very wrong. Paul was displaying signs of acute agrophobia. He had ripped his eyebrows out in frustration. 'He was little more than a shell, like a zombie,' Margaret says. Paul had suffered panic attacks before joining the foundation but his parents had never seen him as bad as this.

Four years previously, Paul had briefly left the foundation and returned home for a few months' respite. He would march up and down ranting, clutching his head and screaming, 'What's wrong with me? I don't want to feel like this,' Margaret says.

Part of Paul didn't want to return to the foundation in Bethesda; part of him felt compelled to go back. It was an ambivalence he had felt from the outset.

In his diaries, Paul talks about his doubts about the foundation. In one entry, he writes: 'Strange feelings have begun to arise about the Life Foundation. I am not sure about it at all inside.' But like many, Paul had seen enough to find something to hold on to.

A bright, gregarious teenager who went to a good school, gained a degree and travelled the world, Paul grew up to become a disaffected twentysomething, profoundly troubled by the times he was living in. 'He was always concerned for others,' Margaret says. 'That's what attracted him to the Life Foundation; they appeared to care for others.'

Soon Paul was dividing his time between his girlfriend and son and the foundation. Paul tried to persuade Lucy to join him, but she was wary of Patel. 'The first time I was invited to speak with him he kissed me full on the lips.

I thought, "You're no guru,"' Lucy says.

The tensions triggered by the competing attentions of his family and the foundation were palpable. Within months, Paul's parents say he went from being a leader to a submissive follower. 'He would make arrangements to see someone outside the foundation and then obstacles would be put in his way,' Margaret recalls. 'He was torn between the duties to his son and family and the foundation, and it tore him apart.'

Over a four-year period, Paul gradually broke the links with his son and Lucy, opting to devote himself to the foundation. 'He would keep wanting to come out,' Lucy says. 'But they were told they had to stay in or else their energy would be diluted.'

For a while there would be the odd, rambling letter to Lucy in which Paul tried to explain how the foundation was helping him 'find' himself. And then nothing: Paul was subsumed within the foundation. This is not surprising. Those with him in the foundation say Paul - like many others - was given no time for a private life; there was simply no space for it.

The foundation maintains its followers are free to come and go when they want. But those who have left paint a different picture. They tell how Patel urges his followers to produce mountains of books, audio cassettes, teaching guides and yoga manuals, most of which are credited to him and sold in new age stores across the UK. Followers organise conferences, sponsored marches and charity fundraising events. Sleep deprivation is a common complaint; ex-followers claim they were expected to perform tasks at all hours of the day. Many grab a few hours' rest on floors, several to a room, wherever they can find space. Paul's home in the weeks before he died was often a caravan next to the foundation's capacious lodge in Yr Ocar, a couple of miles down the valley from its headquarters.

The foundation denies its followers have a punishing workload. But it is clear from those who have left that they felt under pressure to meet Patel's high expectations.

Jenny Clapham, who joined the foundation when she was 17, struggled to find the courage to leave for many months. According to her diaries, which she has shared with The Observer, the foundation made it clear to Jenny that leaving would jeopardise her relationship with Patel and, ultimately, her hopes of finding herself.

'According to Life doctrine, leaving the path of yoga would undo many lifetimes of hard spiritual work and there would never again be such a good opportunity with a guru,' Jenny writes. 'It was expected that the path would not be easy and to be a good devotee meant being strong enough to get through the "challenges" and hard times. To leave would be to admit you were weak and not committed, even though you might be nearly at enlightenment.'

A Life Foundation follower, Dr Allan Forsyth, who was with him shortly before he died, maintains Paul was treated as 'off sick'. 'He felt that the Life Foundation was a refuge that provided fellowship support and a roof over his head,' Forsyth says. 'He had all the symptoms of serious depression and was receiving sympathetic support and encouragement from his friends and colleagues.'

Paul's parents question why the foundation didn't try to contact them as his mental health deteriorated. Those who saw Paul tell of his increasingly disturbed state. One of the foundation's elders, Rita Goswami, would hold Paul in her arms and try to rock him to sleep. 'He would get to the point where he desperately needed to talk to somebody but he couldn't get the words out,' one person who was with him recalls. 'He was very isolated. He was living virtually on his own. He had become a very vulnerable character.'

Goswami says Paul was encouraged to seek outside professional help, and that the foundation put him in touch with a range of therapists including an acupuncturist and a psychiatrist. A letter written by a foundation member, shortly before Paul killed himself, suggests many within the foundation knew he was in deep distress. 'My observation is that his condition is deteriorating... and it will continue to do so unless something dramatically changes,' the female follower writes. 'Can we really sit by and just let him rot? I will not be able to handle it myself (helping Paul) as I am on silence and trying to conserve energy in an attempt to heal my own body.'

By the end, Paul's beliefs had become so confused he could not see how to resolve his increasingly corrosive relationship with the foundation. In a suicide note to his fellow followers he talked about his anguish at taking food that could go to them.

'Love is the way I know,' Paul writes. 'Gurudev [the guru] is the way I know. I feel tortured because I am unable to serve with the ability I know I can. Gurudev please free my mind.'

After Paul's death, Patel told his followers that the Clarkes were grateful to the foundation for looking after their son for so long. 'Paul's life was extended many years longer than he should have been on earth,' Patel told his followers in a recorded speech. 'On my part I have nothing to grieve about, I have already given him an extended stay on earth, and already an extended opportunity. On my part, it's not a problem... I invite you to say that yes, it's an incredible blessing and joy. Paul himself is surrounded by light, you don't need to worry about that, that's not your job, that's my job because he's been ordained by me.'

Whatever the truth, many of those who have left the foundation say Mansukh Patel is not the salvation they were led to believe. They claim he is in fact a sexual predator. Far from observing celibacy within the confines of the foundation, ex-followers claim Patel has his own harem of women often comprising the wives and girlfriends of his male followers.

'My guru and I were alone in a room, I had total trust in him,' recalls Jenny Underhill, now a Franciscan sister who left the foundation in 1987 after two years as Patel's PA. 'He asked me to give him a massage and he stripped naked. He then suggested I become more comfortable by taking off my clothes as well. He told me that I could do anything I wished to him... so I massaged and caressed his face.

'His next move was to suggest that if I wanted to be his 'Radha' I would have to complete the sexual act. At this point I gave in, believing he was doing it for my spiritual progress - after all, he was my guru.'

'I woke up one night to find him climbing into my sleeping bag,' another former female follower says. 'We had sex, I was half asleep. I was confused, I saw him as my guru. I thought, "What's going on here?" He just said, "Trust me."' She felt this was his stock answer to every-thing. To refuse Patel's demands risked isolation, a withdrawal of the love and attention which his followers craved.

Sue Turner left in 2003 after learning of Patel's sexual relationship with other female devotees. Only recently has her daughter, Heather, now a grown woman, confided to her mother that Patel started kissing her when she was around six or seven years old.

Heather says. 'One time I slept in his bed. He told me he was going to take me to Disney World.' Although Patel did not have sex with Heather she became angry at the way her parents devoted themselves to him. 'Dad wouldn't stop smoking, but as soon as Patel asked him to he did. Then he asked him to become a vegetarian and he did. Whatever he said, they jumped. It was very frustrating as a child because they seemed to think more of this guy than me.'

Goswami says the sexual allegations levelled against Patel are 'simply not true' and are 'distasteful'. But many of Patel's followers have left as a result of the lurid claims. They say others want to break away, too, but have, like Paul, found it impossible. 'Some people want to quit but they can't because they don't know how to survive in the outside world,' one former follower recalls. 'It's so sad. We were swept away by love and a thirst for his attention.'

Other former followers, however, defend the guru. Peter Legge, a devotee, wrote to The Observer saying,'In my 64 years I have encountered no better living example of noble behaviour and conduct than Mansukh Patel... In my experience his selfless commitment to the welfare of other people is unfailing.'

Ian Haworth of the Cult Information Centre sees things differently. 'We have been concerned about the activities of the Life Foundation for many years,' he says. 'I have received lots of calls from people concerned about the group, many of whom are ex-members.

The concerns I have regarding this group are the same as those I have about much larger groups, such as the Moonies.'

Margaret Clarke's face tells her own story. There is a sadness in her eyes that speaks of a mother's loss. And there is an anger as well, at the way the foundation treated her son, someone who was searching for answers, but instead received what she feels was only a relentless diet of gimcrack mysticism when he really needed urgent psychiatric help.

It is only now, eight years since Paul's death, and now that his own son has become an adult, that Margaret and her husband have decided to break their silence. They hope that by telling Paul's story they can highlight how vulnerable people continue to be drawn to an organisation whose promises of inner peace are often at odds with the experiences of its followers. 'If we can just make one person aware of what happened then telling Paul's story will have been worthwhile,' Margaret says.

Last month, as the Clarkes packed up their belongings to move to a new home away from so many bad memories, remnants of Paul's life emerged from the attic: the packet of seeds he sent his mother when he couldn't afford flowers; a letter to his father on his 60th birthday. Among the glossy brochures for the Life Foundation there are Paul's diaries and notebooks and tapes - lots of tapes - of his music. And there is one object the Clarkes packed more carefully than most. A porcelain statue of a saint, its shattered pieces glued back together with reverential care.

Posted by Perry at 04:39 PM

Polygamists worry Jeffs case harms image

24 November, 2006

The Benton Crier

By JENNIFER DOBNER, Associated Press Writer

ST. GEORGE, Utah - A criminal court case here paints a polygamist sect‘s leader as a controlling abuser who breaks up families and forces girls to marry men sometimes decades older.

"I think everyone that lives the lifestyle now is guilty by association," said Rachel Young, 45, a polygamist wife and mother of 12, who is a member of the Davis County Cooperative Society, a polygamist group.

"We believe that they are guilty by association, because they are all essentially doing the same thing," said Vicky Prunty, director of Tapestry Against Polygamy, a group that helps women leaving the practice. "It‘s a lifestyle with a lack of choices that is hurting people."

Prosecutors completed their case Tuesday in a hearing to determine if enough evidence exists to send the case to trial. The hearing will resume Dec. 14.

Polygamists say that detail gets lost in the frenzy of media reports, as do differences among the FLDS and other polygamist groups.

The legacy of that split is an estimated 37,000 self-described "Mormon fundamentalists" who live in Utah and other Western states, according to a survey by Principle Voices, a pro-polygamy advocacy group in Utah. Some are members of organized groups or churches while others remain independent.

"But it‘s hard to tell really what‘s going on in some of these groups that haven‘t been targeted. There is so much secrecy," Prunty said, who applauds the case against Jeffs. "I think it‘s also very easy to look in someone else‘s backyard and say they are the ones committing the abuse."

Nationwide, a growing number of fundamentalist Christian polygamists claim no early Mormon roots and don‘t belong to any organized faith, said Mark Henkel of TruthBearer.org, a polygamy rights organization.

"I have to protect my family more than ever," he said in a telephone interview from Maine.

Like Utah polygamists, Henkel said polygamists without Mormon roots disavow Jeffs and the crimes he‘s accused of. Henkel is disturbed that the FBI considered Jeffs such a threat that in May they named him to the agency‘s Ten Most Wanted fugitives list along with such notorious figures as Osama Bin Laden. The designation implies that polygamy is a Top 10-level crime, he said.

"It‘s outrageous," he said. "If you took out the word polygamy and put any other — homosexual or Jewish — and tied it to this very, very important list, the (groups) would be screaming political hate speech."

Utah polygamists fear the immediate impact of Jeffs‘ case could set back work they‘ve done to forge a more open relationship with Utah authorities that were designed to root out criminal abuses and help families access state services.

Young is concerned about the effect on her children. In 1953, when Arizona officials raised the FLDS border town of Colorado City, Ariz., dozens of parents were arrested and their children put in state custody.

"For the kids who are old enough to understand, there‘s a lot of fear," Young said. "They don‘t want to be taken away."

On some level it‘s hard for polygamists to know how to react, said Marianne Watson, a historian raised in polygamy.

Some want to more publicly separate themselves from Jeffs by denouncing him, but there is also sympathy for his obedient followers with whom there is a shared belief and often family ties.

Watson said she‘s angry. She believes Jeffs‘ four-year rule over his faith is dismantling their culture.

Jeffs is revered as prophet who communicates with God and can strip followers of their eternal salvation. He is known for dismantling families on a whim by kicking out unworthy men and boys and reassigning women and children to new husbands and fathers.

"I have seen him turn a community inside out," Watson said. "To see what he‘s done is such a crime ... and they can‘t prosecute him for that."

___

On the Net:

Principle Voices:
http://www.principlevoices.org/index.php

Tapestry Against Polygamy:
http://www.polygamy.org/

http://www.localnewswatch.com/
benton/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=28875

Posted by Perry at 04:02 PM

Les enquêtes tous azimuts de la commission parlementaire sur les sectes créent la polémique/Commission on Sects Creates Polemic

[The English translation that follows was performed by Google Language. It is not 100% accurate and is only included to assist researchers.]

Le Figaro
http://www.lefigaro.fr/france/
20061123.FIG000000046_les_enquetes_
tous_azimuts_de_la_commission_parlementaire_
sur_les_sectes_creent_la_polemique.html

SOPHIE DE RAVINEL.
le 23 novembre 2006

Si la protection des mineurs fait l'unanimité, certaines intrusions dans le domaine religieux irritent.

QUATRE-VINGT MILLE mineurs sont aujourd'hui touchés en France par le phénomène sectaire, selon la commission d'enquête parlementaire sur les sectes. Ce phénomène d'embrigadement des jeunes est au coeur des travaux menés depuis quelques mois par trente députés, toutes tendances confondues, qui ont organisé mardi une « descente » dans la communauté Tabitha's Place, un groupe biblique sectaire installé près de Pau.

Dans leur rapport, qui doit être remis le 19 décembre au président de l'Assemblée nationale, ces parlementaires vont « faire des propositions pour porter un secours légal à ces mineurs hors d'état de se protéger eux-mêmes », affirme le président de la commission, le député UMP du Rhône et ex-juge Georges Fenech.

Caractère «discriminatoire»

Si la visite à Tabitha's Place ne semble pas faire débat, la volonté des parlementaires d'élargir leurs investigations dans le champ religieux suscite la polémique. Le ­président de la Fédération protestante de France, Jean-Arnold de Clermont, est ainsi monté au créneau contre le caractère « discriminatoire » des travaux. Des minorités liées au protestantisme sont régulièrement placées dans la ligne de mire des enquêteurs. « Que le pasteur de Clermont s'occupe de son Église et nous laisse faire notre enquête !, rétorque Georges Fenech. Nous sommes dans un état de droit, laïc, je ne vois pas ce qu'il vient faire dans ce débat. » Des incidents ont émaillé les auditions, venant offrir des arguments à ceux qui reprochent une conception trop étroite de la laïcité. Le 24 octobre, lorsque Jean-Pierre Machelon - auteur d'un rapport sur les relations des cultes avec l'État - a été entendu, le député UMP Jacques Myard lui a demandé s'il était « très proche d'associations religieuses à forte connotation de foi », intrusion modérément appréciée dans la vie privée de l'intéressé. Une semaine plus tôt, Didier Leschi, chef du bureau des cultes au ministère de l'Intérieur, avait provoqué le débat en exprimant sa crainte d'une remise en question de la « liberté de conscience. »

« Tout le monde va être attentif à la manière dont seront formulées les propositions du rapport pour qu'elles soient bien une amélioration des dispositions de protection de l'enfance et non pas une mise en cause des croyances ou du droit des parents à élever leurs enfants selon leurs convictions », souligne un fonctionnaire proche du dossier. Les précédentes commissions de 1995 et 1998 avaient eu leur lot de polémiques. Mais elles ne portaient pas sur la nature de la laïcité.

Commission on Sects Creates Polemic

If the protection of the minors achieves the unanimity, certain intrusions in the religious field irritate.

EIGHTY THOUSAND minors are touched today in France by the sectarian phenomenon, according to the parliamentary board of inquiry into the sects. This phenomenon of enrolment of the young people has been in the middle of the work undertaken for a few months by thirty deputies, all confused tendencies, which organized Tuesday a “descent” in the community Tabitha' S Place, a sectarian biblical group installed close to Pau. In their report, which must be submitted on December 19 to the president of the French National Assembly, these members of Parliament “will make proposals to carry a legal help to these minors out of state to protect themselves”, affirms the president of the commission, the UMP deputy of the Rhone and ex-judge George Fenech. “Discriminatory” character If the visit with Tabitha' S Place does not seem to make debate, the will of the members of Parliament to widen their investigations in the religious field causes the polemic. The president of the Protestant Federation of France, Jean-Arnold de Clermont, is thus ridden to the crenel against the “discriminatory” character of work. Minorities related to Protestantism are regularly placed in the line of sight of the investigators. “That Pasteur de Clermont deals with his Church and lets to us make our investigation! , rétorque George Fenech. We are in a state of right, laic, I do not see what it comes to do in this debate. ” Of the incidents enamelled hearings, coming to offer arguments to those which reproach a too narrow design of secularity. On October 24, when Jean-Pierre Machelon - author of a report/ratio on the relations of the worships with the State - was heard, the deputy UMP Jacques Myard asked to him whether it were “very close to religious associations with strong connotation of faith”, intrusion moderately appreciated in the private life of the interested party. One week earlier, Didier Leschi, chief of the office of the worships to the ministry for the Interior, the debate had caused by expressing its fear of a handing-over in question of the “freedom of conscience. ” “Everyone will be attentive with the way in which the proposals of the report/ratio will be formulated so that they are well an improvement of the provisions of child welfare and not a calling into question of the beliefs or right of the parents to raise their children according to their convictions”, a civil servant close to the file underlines. The preceding commissions of 1995 and 1998 had had their batch of polemic. But they did not relate to the nature of secularity.

Posted by Perry at 03:49 PM

La commission sur les sectes découvre 18 enfants "coupés du monde"/Commission on Sects Discovers 18 Children Cut Off From the World

[The English translation that follows was performed by Google Language. It is not 100% accurate and is only included to assist researchers.]

Le Monde
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/depeches/
0,14-0,39-28890653@7-37,0.html

AFP 21.11.06

Plusieurs membres de la commission d'enquête parlementaire sur les sectes ont découvert mardi au cours d'une visite inopinée dans une communauté biblique 18 enfants "coupés du monde", qui ne vont pas à l'école, ne jouent pas, ne sortent pas et "ne connaissent même pas Zidane", ont-ils dit au cours d'une conférence de presse.

Le président de la commission, Georges Fenech (UMP), le rapporteur Philippe Vuilque (PS), le vice-président Alain Gest (UMP) et le secrétaire du bureau Jean-Pierre Brard (app-PCF) se sont rendus à Tabitha's place, une communauté installée à Sus-Navarrenx, près de Pau (Pyrénées atlantiques) pour enquêter avec l'inspecteur d'académie sur le cas de 14 enfants non inscrits à l'école.

Visiblement émus et "secoués" par leur visite, ils ont trouvé 18 enfants, âgés de 6 à 16 ans, qui sont censés être scolarisés sur place. Ils disent avoir constaté que les enfants savaient lire mais qu'ils ne restituaient pas convenablement le sens de ce qu'ils avaient lu.

Ils ne sont pas vaccinés, n'ont pas de contacts avec les enfants extérieurs à la communauté, ignorent internet, le cinéma, la télévision et ne sortent qu'occasionnellement pour accompagner leurs parents quand ils vendent sur les marchés les produits du jardin, selon la même source.

La petite délégation a pu parler - sans témoin - avec une adolescente de 18 ans qui a un peu décrit les conditions de vie de la communauté. Un médecin scolaire a examiné les enfants et les a trouvés à peu près en forme à part quelques déficiences visuelles.

La délégation a aussi posé des questions hors programme scolaire, ce que ne peut pas faire l'inspecteur d'académie. C'est ainsi que les parlementaires ont constaté que les enfants n'avaient pas idée du monde extérieur et qu'ils ne connaissent ni Zidane, ni les Beatles, ni aucun chanteur actuel, qu'ils n'utilisaient pas internet et globalement avaient peur du monde extérieur, dont ils parlent en disant "chez vous".

On ignore combien de personnes vivent dans la communauté et leurs liens familiaux. Aucun des adultes ne travaille en dehors de la communauté. Celle-ci vit surtout de la vente de légumes et d'artisanat (mobilier de jardin notamment).

Le président de la commission a convenu qu'il était actuellement sans pouvoir face à la situation parce que la communauté se retranche derrière le droit de scolariser les enfants à domicile, ce qui est légal. On ne constate pas de maltraitance physique envers les enfants.

Il a indiqué que la commission, qui rendra son rapport le 19 décembre, ferait des propositions pour que "les pouvoirs publics puissent libérer ces enfants de l'enfermement psychologique".

Il faut avoir les moyens, estime-t-il, de mieux évaluer le nombre d'enfants qui échappent au système scolaire et de connaître leur situation psychologique.

Commission on Sects Discovers 18 Children Cut Off From the World

Several Members of the parliamentary Commission of inquiry into the sects discovered Tuesday during an unexpected visit in a biblical community 18 cut children “of the world”, who do not go to the school, do not play, do not leave and “do not even know Zidane”, have they says during a press conference. The president of the commission, George Fenech (UMP), the rapporteur Philippe Vuilque (PS), the vice-president Alain Gest (UMP) and the secretary of Bureau Jean-Pierre Brard (app-PCF) went to Tabitha' S places, a community installed with Known-Navarrenx, close to Pau (the Pyrenees Atlantic) to inquire with the inspector of academy into the case of 14 children not registered at the school. Obviously moved and “shaken” by their visit, they found 18 children, old from 6 to 16 years, which are supposed being provided education for on the spot. They say to have noted that the children could read but whom they did not restore suitably the direction of what they had read. They are not vaccinated, do not have contacts with the children external at the community, are unaware of Internet, the cinema, television and leave only occasionally to accompany their parents when they sell on the markets the products of the garden, according to the same source. The small delegation could speak - without witness - with a 18 year old teenager who a little described the living conditions of the community. A school doctor examined the children and found about in form besides some visual deficiencies. The delegation also put questions except school syllabus, which the inspector of academy cannot do. Thus the members of Parliament noted that the children did not have idea of the external world and that they know neither Zidane, neither Beatles, nor no current singer, that they did not use Internet and overall were afraid of the external world, about which they speak while saying “on your premise”. One is unaware of how much people live in the family community and their bonds. None the adults works outside the community. This one saw especially sale of vegetables and craft industry (movable of garden in particular). The president of the commission agreed that it was currently without being able vis-a-vis the situation because the community cuts off itself behind the right to provide education for the children in residence, which is legal. One does not note physical ill-treatment towards the children. He indicated that the commission, which will return his report/ratio on December 19, would make proposals so that “the authorities can release these children of psychological enfermement”. It is necessary to have the means, estimates it, to better evaluate the number of children who escape the school system and to know their psychological situation.

Posted by Perry at 03:39 PM

Un gourou polygame américain pour la première fois face à son accusatrice

Le Monde
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/depeches/0,14-0,39-28893382@7-60,0.html

AFP 22.11.06

Le chef d'une secte polygame américaine a pour la première fois comparu devant un tribunal en Utah (ouest) pour une audience préliminaire lors de laquelle une jeune femme a témoigné qu'il l'avait mariée contre son gré à l'âge de 14 ans.

Jeffs est inculpé de complicité de viol. Les audiences se déroulent au tribunal de Saint George, dans le sud-est de l'Etat, à deux heures de route au nord-est de Las Vegas (Nevada), où le gourou avait été arrêté fin août.

"Prophète" de l'église fondamentaliste de Jésus-Christ des saints du dernier jour (FLDS), un schisme du mouvement mormon qui compterait quelque 10.000 membres, Jeffs, 50 ans, est soupçonné d'avoir organisé des "mariages" illégaux entre des adolescentes ou des pré-adolescentes et des hommes plus âgés au sein de sa secte.

Ainsi, l'accusatrice, dont la justice préserve l'anonymat pour ne pas compromettre sa sécurité, a raconté, des sanglots dans la voix, comment elle avait été "mariée" par Jeffs à un de ses cousins, de cinq ans son aîné, dans un hôtel du Nevada en 2001. "J'étais horrifiée", a-t-elle dit.

Le parquet affirme que Jeffs a conclu la cérémonie et donné l'ordre à l'adolescente de "se multiplier et de repeupler la terre et d'élever des enfants dans le respect de Dieu".

Après que son "mari" eut eu des relations sexuelles avec elle, l'accusatrice est allée voir Jeffs pour lui dire qu'elle voulait mettre un terme à l'union, a-t-elle encore raconté.

"J'avais très peur le leur dire non, c'était du jamais vu, parce que si vous alliez contre ce qu'ils vous avaient dit de faire ou ce qu'il disaient que Dieu vous avait dit de faire", a expliqué le témoin.

Deux des soeurs de l'accusatrice ont corroboré ses déclarations lors de cette audience préliminaire, à l'issue de laquelle le juge devra décider si l'affaire mérite ou non un procès.

De leur côté, les défenseurs de Jeffs, qui n'a pas cillé de toute l'audience, ont assuré que le rôle de leur client dans cette affaire n'était que celui d'un conseiller spirituel, comme tout responsable religieux.

La prochaine audience doit avoir lieu le 14 décembre.

Warren Jeffs est aussi réclamé par l'Arizona (sud-ouest) pour agression sexuelle sur un mineur en 2002. Il figurait avant son arrestation sur la liste des dix personnes les plus recherchées par le FBI, la police fédérale américaine, au côté notamment du chef d'Al-Qaïda Oussama ben Laden.

La polygamie est illégale depuis 1862 aux Etats-Unis et a été abandonnée en Utah par les mormons en 1890, alors que cet Etat n'était pas encore incorporé à la fédération.

L'Utah a renoncé, par manque de moyens et crainte d'une catastrophe sociale, à poursuivre cette pratique lorsqu'elle se produit entre adultes consentants. Les autorités de l'Etat estiment qu'il abrite 37.000 membres de familles polygames.

Il est très rare que les victimes d'abus portent plainte; les membres de la FLDS vivent en cercle fermé dans deux villes contiguës à la frontière de l'Utah et de l'Arizona, Hildale et Colorado City, dont la secte contrôle les mairies et les polices locales.

Posted by Perry at 03:34 PM

Polygamist prophet a pimp: prosecutor

Jeffs's lawyers frame it completely differently. They call it a case of religious persecution.

Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
news/story.html?id=15f9377c-a86b-407a
-89e2-6ef8f43258d1&k=20304

November 22, 2006

ST. GEORGE, Utah - Polygamist prophet Warren Jeffs is nothing more than a pimp -- a pimp for God, perhaps -- but a pimp just the same.

That's the position the state of Utah is taking in a case against Jeffs, the 50-year-old leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway sect of the Mormon church. Using precedents from other cases involving polygamy and others involving forced prostitution, Utah prosecutors argue that Jeffs -- who FLDS believe is God's spokesman on Earth -- married a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old man, instructed them to have sex and produce many children.

Jeffs's defence lawyers frame it completely differently. They say it is a case of religious persecution.

"It is nothing less than the State of Utah condemning a culturally different religion. It is a continuation of 165 years of intolerance for a people who engage in different cultural and religious practices," attorney Walter Bugden said Tuesday after the preliminary hearing was adjourned until Dec. 14.

"There is no rape in this case. Officiating at a wedding ceremony does not make Mr. Jeffs an accomplice to rape."

Jeffs is charged in Utah with two counts of rape as an accomplice. Once this case is dealt with, he will then be transferred to Arizona to face five counts of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor.

Jeffs was arrested Aug. 28 in Las Vegas after spending nearly four months on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list alongside Osama bin Laden.

The state's key witness is a young woman who is now 20 and two weeks shy of having a baby. She says she was forced into a religious -- not legal -- marriage with her 19-year-old first cousin, a boy who used to taunt her, calling her Tubby-Tubba.

Over several hours of testimony, the young woman described how in April 2001, as a Grade 9 student, she was dumbfounded when her step-father told her she would be married that week.

"I was so scared, I didn't have any place to go," she said, pausing to wipe her eyes. "Everybody who I respected, every leader made me feel like I was defying God.

"My salvation was in jeopardy, my family, I knew nothing else. I was scared of the outside world and I loved the people there so much. I felt if I didn't do it I would forever pay the consequences and my salvation was in jeopardy and I would never go to heaven."

The FLDS believe that plural marriage -- polygamy -- is the way to the highest realm of heaven. The young woman and two of her sisters testified that they were taught from birth that girls must be obedient to their fathers, the priesthood or church leaders and the prophet, who gets revelations from God.

They are taught not to question, not to defy and not to disobey. They are told always to be sweet and submit to the commands of men.

The victim described how when she refused to say "I do" during the wedding ceremony, Jeffs asked her mother to stand up and hold her hand. When she refused again, she said she could feel Jeffs' eyes drilling into her. "The silence was unbearable so I finally said okay, yes."

To cheer the girl up, her sisters, mother and friends decorated the bedroom in her step-father's house as the honeymoon hideaway where the newlyweds slept on their wedding night. Photos were taken of the smiling couple -- photos that became evidence Tuesday.

Still, the young woman called the marriage "the darkest time of my entire life and one of the most painful things I've ever been through. I have always tried to forget it and I've just wanted to move on and forget it ever happened."

Her entreaties to her step-father Fred Jessop (whose influence in the church was such that before his death he was a trustee of the church's school in Bountiful, B.C.) were ignored. She suggested that he had made a mistake and it wasn't her but one of the older girls in the household of more than 40 children (and at least 15 mothers/sister-wives) who was to be married. She was told to go, pray and prepare for her placement marriage.

She then went directly to Rulon Jeffs, who had married one of her sisters when she was 18 and he was 83. Jeffs by this point was enfeebled by a stroke. The soon-to-be-child-bride knelt down beside him as he ate lunch and told him she was 14 and not ready to be married. Jeffs turned to her and said, "Sweetheart, I didn't hear you, could you say it again."

At that point, Warren Jeffs jumped in and told his father that she was questioning the placement marriage he [Rulon] had decided on. She said, "Rulon looked at him kind of weird and said, 'Just follow your heart, sweetheart,' "and went back to his lunch.

But Warren set her straight. He told her that her heart was in the wrong place and that the prophet had decided the marriage was her mission and her duty.

The couple didn't consummate the marriage for nearly two months.

A few weeks into their marriage and on her husband's 20th birthday, he exposed his penis to her in a park in their hometown of Hildale, Ariz., where close to 12,000 FLDS members were living at the time. She had no idea what a penis was or what it looked like. She ran home shocked and embarrassed. She had always been told it was wrong for people to see each other naked.

When they finally did consummate the marriage, her husband answered her pleas to stop by telling her that sexual intercourse was what married people were supposed to do.

Even though she said there was a period of between nine and 12 months when she tried to be an obedient wife submitting to her husband's demands, on at least four other occasions, the young woman went to Warren Jeffs for help, asking to be removed from the marriage. He did allow her to leave Hildale for several months in late 2002 to visit her sister, Theresa Blackmore and her husband, Roy Blackmore (a nephew of former FLDS bishop Winston Blackmore), in Bountiful. During that visit, the young woman found out she was pregnant when she began to bleed profusely and later miscarried.

But Jeffs's attorney Tara Issacson picked holes in the testimony, getting her to admit that she never directly told Jeffs or anyone else that she had been raped. Issacson got into the record that the victim also has a civil suit against Jeffs and that the state has paid her expenses to relocate. It has paid her rent and even paid for her lost wages.

Issacson tried to discredit the alleged rape victim by getting her to admit she had sexual relations with another man in late 2003 while still married and that when she eventually left Hildale, the FLDS and her husband that she was pregnant with the other man's baby.

The man is now her husband. He is on the defence team's list as a witness and will be heard when the preliminary hearing resumes on Dec. 14.

Issacson also questioned why anyone should believe the young bride was trapped and unable to escape when she had a truck (which she says she slept in to avoid her husband), a driver's licence, and went snowboarding with friends and off to parties.

"You didn't make any effort to leave," Issacson asked.

"I didn't. I couldn't. But I wanted to."

As Loni Deland, a local criminal defence attorney, told the Salt Lake Tribune, "The theory of their [the state's] case is treat him like an ordinary pimp.

But he said: "The state has a particularly heavy burden where he is the leader of a religion and is simply advancing the principles of that religion and the gospel as they know it ... as opposed to renting a motel room and saying 'Go do it, that's an order.' "

dbramham@png.canwest.com

Posted by Perry at 03:28 PM

A Prophet in Purgatory

Will throwing the book at polygamist Warren Jeffs bust up his sect or be a boon to it?

Don Lattin
http://www.sfgate.com/
cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/
c/a/2006/11/19/CMGTTLVBEJ1.DTL

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Nevada Highway Patrolman Eddie Dutchover wasn't expecting much when he stopped the maroon 2007 Cadillac Escalade heading north out of Las Vegas. All the officer wanted to know was why the car had paper tags rather than license plates. But there was something strange about the tall, thin man in the back seat. The guy seemed nervous, so jittery you could see the main artery in his neck furiously pumping blood up into his face. Plus, he was obsessively eating a salad, refusing to make eye contact with the patrolman.

It was a hunch, but the cop was on the money. He had just pulled over Warren Jeffs, the spiritual leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted fugitives, and a man with a $100,000 bounty on his head.

If there is a pope of Mormon polygamy, a powerful prophet who controls the lives of thousands of Americans who still believe in the sanctity of plural marriage, that man is Warren Steed Jeffs. His 10,000-member fundamentalist Mormon sect is the largest of several splinter groups that refuse to accept the mainstream Mormon church's decision more than a century ago to suspend the practice of polygamy.

Today, the vast majority of the world's 12 million Mormons raise their children in monogamous marriage. But for those who live in a string of polygamist communities along the border of southern Utah and northern Arizona, God never changed his mind about the spiritual power that comes from having more than one wife.

Those who know Jeffs say he continues to run his sect from a jail cell in Hurricane, Utah. They also warn that his arrest on Aug. 28, and his forthcoming trial for arranging marriages with underage girls, may strengthen his control over a flock that already believes the government is out to get them -- and their way of life.

Traveling with the polygamist Mormon leader on the night of his arrest was one of Jeffs' brothers, one of Jeffs' wives and a mother lode of suspicious loot. Among items found in the car were clothes, pots and pans, eating utensils, a police radar detector, laptop computers, wigs, walkie-talkies, 15 cell phones and $67,000 cash.

There was also a ledger with a list of families offering money and shelter. Among the papers was a letter from Jeffs to his flock. "So I have to be in hiding in my travels," he wrote. "And when I come to a land of refuge, you must not reveal where I am in your phone calls and your letters.''

Jeffs was born in San Francisco on Dec. 3, 1955. At the time, his mother was hiding out in the Bay Area following a 1953 government raid and roundup of Mormons living in Short Creek, a polygamous settlement at the foot of the vermilion cliffs on the Utah/Arizona state line. Mormon leaders had scattered all over the West -- some took refuge in Canada and Mexico. San Francisco -- just a long day's drive from Salt Lake City -- was a great place to get lost in the crowd but still be close to home.

Today, more than 50 years after the Short Creek raid, the state and federal governments have resurrected its campaign against the diehard polygamists living in the twin towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah -- or at least against those polygamists who have sex with girls under 18.

Jeffs' arrest came four months after the sect leader was put on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list -- placing him in the select company of an even more notorious polygamist, Osama bin Laden. Jeffs was wanted in Utah and Arizona on charges of sexual conduct with a minor, conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor, rape as an accomplice and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Jeffs is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday for a key pretrial hearing on the Utah charges of arranging marriages with underage girls.

Utah and Arizona have different laws and penalties regarding sexual contact with minors, cohabitation and polygamy. Bigamy (attempting to legally marry more than one person) is against the law in both states, but Utah has stronger laws against polygamy. Today, in the United States at least, polygamy often involves a legal, civil marriage to one spouse, followed by quiet cohabitation with additional women -- or girls.

Gary Engels, a special investigator with the Mohave County Attorney's office, has charged nine men in the sect -- including Jeffs -- with offenses in Arizona involving sexual contact with girls younger than 18. "We are not going after them for polygamy," he said. "We are going after them for underage sex."

Engels works out of the "Mohave County Multi-Use Facility," a temporary building erected in Colorado City for investigators with the county sheriff, child protective services and the witness protection program. On the Saturday afternoon following the prophet's arrest, Engels sat behind his desk. Pinned on a bulletin board behind him was the "FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive" poster emblazoned with three photos of Jeffs.

"Tremendous pressure is put on these victims by their family members and friends," Engels said. "These girls are intimidated and indoctrinated. They don't know better. You're taught all your life that what you are put on earth for is to raise children. You do what the prophet tells you to do."

Since his capture, Jeffs has been held under tight security inside the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Washington County, Utah. That's right, the prophet is in Purgatory, and according to his critics, that's where he belongs.

"Warren Jeffs is not a normal human being," said Salt Lake City dentist Dan Fischer, a former polygamist who grew up in the sect and took three wives. "He comes across as sanctimonious, but inside, compassion and feeling are just not in there."

Jeffs, the former head of the sect's Alta Academy in Salt Lake City, solidified his control over the Fundamentalist Church -- along with Hildale and Colorado City -- when his father, the former prophet Rulon Jeffs, died in September 2002.

Hidden away in this spectacular desert landscape between Zion National Park and the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, this community of 6,500 souls doesn't look like much from Highway 59. There's the usual gas station, mini-mart and other roadside attractions found in towns across the Southwest.

Closer inspection, however, reveals one of the most unusual communities in the United States. The first clues are all the sprawling single-family homes -- once-normal abodes that have morphed into mini-mansions as more wives and children were brought into the fold.

The commercial district of Hildale/Colorado City can't be seen from the highway, but again, it doesn't look all that different at first. There's the Food Town Market, a florist, a Radio Shack, another gas station, a health food store and a couple of restaurants.

What make this place unique are the people -- and the clothes they wear. All the women and girls are decked out in pioneer-era dresses that reach down to their ankles and out to their wrists. All the men and boys wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants -- even in the stifling summer heat.

Random residents declined interview requests. A man standing guard at Warren Jeffs' block-long Hildale compound, which is surrounded by an 8-foot-high brick wall, refused to take a reporter's card or announce his presence to anyone inside. Jeffs has never given media interviews, and he continues that policy in Purgatory.

Defending the Practice

Most of the property in these two towns belongs to the Fundamentalist Church, through its communal United Effort Plan Trust. The trust, set up in 1942 by seven church leaders, including Rulon Jeffs, allows faithful followers to build homes on church property, but the legal arrangement has given sect leaders great power over dissident members.

Dissident Ross Chatwin's battle with Warren Jeffs began in 2004 when Chatwin announced that he would fight the prophet's efforts to evict him from his home and force him to leave his family. Chatwin said Jeffs told him his sins were threefold. One, he was full of pride. Two, there was too much junk in his yard. Three, there were complaints about his business dealings with other community members. Chatwin says he cleaned up his yard, tried to be more humble and sought a further explanation of his alleged business transgressions. He was the local car dealer in Colorado City.

Jeffs was not satisfied. He publicly denounced Chatwin as a "master deceiver" and ordered church members to stay away from him.

"Basically, I just fell out of the prophet's good graces. I posed a threat to him," Chatwin said. "I had told someone else that I thought we were putting too much faith and power in the prophet, and that got back to him."

Chatwin, 37, sat in the house of his father, Marvin Wyler, in Colorado City. It's Sunday evening and friends and family have gathered for dinner. After the meal, they move into the family room of this large, kid-friendly home just yards from the Utah state line. Covering the wall behind them are framed, individual photographs of each of Wyler's 34 children.

Much of the conversation is a defense of polygamy -- and the women in the home are its strongest defenders.

"Everyone thinks plural marriage is a sexual thing. But it's a harder trial for the man than for the woman," says Laura Johnson, a friend of the family. "What about a guy who has three or four wives and they all have PMS? I'm serious! Imagine it. If these men were just in it for sex, they'd do what the average American male does. They'd go out and get a barfly."

Charlotte Chatwin, 55, the biological mother of 16 of the family's children, and of Ross Chatwin, agrees. She was just a teenager when she married Marvin Wyler in 1966.

Ross Chatwin, the oldest of the 34 children in the Chatwin/Wyler family, only has one wife and six children, but he hopes to find one or two more women to marry.

"Polygamy isn't the problem here," Chatwin insists. "Warren uses polygamy, but this is really about power and control."

In 1994, the same year Jeffs tried to kick Chatwin out of town, the Colorado City prophet excommunicated 21 other men from the church, ordering them to leave the town and their families in order to "repent from afar." Most of them obeyed.

Chatwin won his legal battle to live in his own home. But then Jeffs' control over the town's real estate suffered a more serious blow when a federal court suspended the United Effort Plan trustees and appointed an outside administrator to run the organization.

Today, Jeffs sits in the Purgatory Jail, but those who know the man and his church warn that while the prophet may be down, the last thing anyone should do is count him out.

Breeding Loyalty

Warren Jeffs' battle to practice polygamy and lead his earthly domain as he sees fit is just the latest chapter in the 150-year-old saga of Mormon polygamy in the West.

His sect -- which also has members in Canada, Mexico, Texas and elsewhere in the United States -- sees itself as the true continuation of a religious tradition dating back to the spiritual revelations and sexual lifestyle of Joseph Smith, the 19th century founder of the Mormon faith. In 1890, the mainline Mormon Church officially suspended the practice of polygamy in a deal that allowed the Utah Territory to join the United States. Today, the 12.3-million strong Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicates members who openly practice plural marriage.

But that does not stop an estimated 37,000 Latter-day Saints who see the taking of multiple wives as one of the central tenets of the Mormon religion.

One of them is Marvin Wyler, who cites Mormon scripture to back up his belief that Latter-day Saints must practice polygamy to rise into the upper reaches of heaven, where Mormons believe man can "be like God."

"In order to obtain the highest level in the celestial kingdom you have to live in plural marriage," Wyler said. "They (the mainline Mormon Church) gave that up. It was too hard for them."

According to historians, Joseph Smith had taken 33 wives by the time he was murdered by an angry mob in Carthage, Ill., in 1844. Among those women taken as wives by the founding prophet were the already-married wives of his top male lieutenants, a practice anthropologists say can actually breed loyalty among the tribe.

That's not unlike what's going down in Colorado City. According to Chatwin and other dissident members, Jeffs reassigns ousted men's wives and children to his most loyal male followers.

Most of the church's longstanding male leaders have agreed to be banished, but their numbers pale in comparison to the exodus of teenage boys from Colorado City. Some of these young men are seen as unwanted sexual competition for the hearts of young women betrothed to older men. They're called the Lost Boys.

"A lot of boys have been kicked out, but more have left on their own," Chatwin said. "They don't see a future here. They know something is wrong here. They see a dictatorship. Warren demands absolute control. If someone is on the edge, Warren pushes them over."

Sam Icke was barely 18 when he was kicked out of Colorado City for his romantic involvement with a female church member.

"I think the decision came from the fact that I knew too much," he said. "I have a good sense for reading people, and they don't like that out there. You can't keep those kinds of people in control. I realized how much of a phony [Jeffs] was, and he saw me as a huge threat."

Icke, now 20, recalled the day Jeffs called him into his office for disciplinary action.

"It was very eerie. He has this drawl. His speech is very dry and collected. It's hard to describe. It's almost like he's speaking in a daze. Almost like he was speaking through a daydream. I looked in his eyes for a minute to see if I could see any truth or conviction that the church was right. All I saw in his eyes were a lot of fear and distrust -- no faith at all. I completely lost faith in the system that day -- completely."

While he was itching for freedom, Icke said getting kicked out of town "really freaked me out."

Like many of the Lost Boys, Icke moved to Hurricane -- the nearest real town to the Hildale/Colorado City enclave. He moved into a tiny trailer with a couple of other banished kids. Like many of his peers, Icke started drinking and drugging. He managed to steer clear of the speed that seriously messed up some of his friends, but he did get into marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.

Icke's story is no surprise to John Larsen, a social worker with the Utah Department of Human Services. He works out of an office in the same building in Hurricane that now houses Warren Jeffs.

"It breaks your heart," Larsen said of the Lost Boys. "These are hardworking kids who are given little education. A lot of them were pulled out of school to work construction. Then, when they are kicked out, they're not supposed to have contact with family until they repent. All some of them want to do is to be able to call and talk to their mom."

Larsen estimates that about 400 young men have been pushed out of the sect in recent years. "Emotionally, they're all over the place," the social worker said. "Some of them don't know what to think. They have been conditioned all their life to obey this man. Some of them are sure they're going to hell."

Getting Out

Icke and dozens of other Lost Boys found a savior of sorts in Dan Fischer, the Salt Lake City dentist, businessman and former polygamist. Since leaving the Fundamentalist Church in the mid-1990s, Fischer has made a small fortune with Ultradent, a dental product business that in the past 12 years grew from a home operation to a 220,000-square-foot facility employing more than 600 workers. He has also set up a foundation to assist young people trying to leave Colorado City.

Few have made that transition with as much aplomb as Fischer, born in 1949 to a family with deep roots in Utah polygamy.

Fischer's grandfather, Charles Zitting, was one of the founders of the religious movement that would eventually be known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What are now Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., were then called Short Creek. The polygamists who lived along the border were known as "Crickers."

Fischer is just old enough to remember the Short Creek raid the night of July 26, 1953 when Arizona Highway Patrol officers, Mohave County Sheriff's Deputies and Arizona National Guardsmen swooped down. Descending upon the settlement were more than 100 law enforcement officers, 25 carloads of reporters and 12 agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Scores of residents were questioned in a makeshift courtroom set up in the Short Creek schoolhouse. Thirty-one men and nine women without minor children were taken the next day to Kingman, Ariz. Later, Arizona state officials decided to take the Short Creek children to Phoenix and put them in protective custody. Their mothers insisted on coming with them, so another 43 women and 177 children were rounded up.

In a plea bargain later that year, 26 of the Short Creek polygamists pled guilty to misdemeanor charges of "conspiracy to commit open and notorious cohabitation." They were given one-year suspended sentences. But it would take more than a year and a successful lawsuit filed by polygamist families until all the women and children were allowed to return home.

Back in 1953, many Short Creek residents, like Jeffs' mother, who moved to San Francisco, escaped arrest by going underground. "Some of them lived in our home in Salt Lake when they were hiding," Fischer recalled. "I remember a baby being born in our house back then. And from then on, we grew up in total hiding. My mother didn't come out of doors for 11 years.''

While Fischer was allowed to attend a public school in suburban Salt Lake, he and his siblings always knew they were not like the normal children of the world.

"Our parents were to raise their kids as 'calves in the stall.' We were covenant children -- preordained to be on the other side to help usher in the millennium and the beginning of the end and the Second Coming of the Savior."

They were also taught to marry whomever the prophet told them to marry. "We were to do whatever the prophet asked. Most of us went on a work mission for two to three years to help build up the town. If you were submissive enough you were given a 'blessing,' meaning a wife.

"You never went to a dance or on a date or interacted with females," said Fischer recalled. "It was pretty extreme."

Fischer's father had three wives and 36 children. His mom had nine of the kids, and Dan was the oldest of the brood.

One day, when he was 17, Fischer was summoned to the offices of Prophet Leroy Johnson, who preceded Rulon Jeffs as the leader of the church. Fischer had his tools ready and was set to go on his work mission to Short Creek.

The prophet was just a short, old bald guy, but to Fischer he embodied the Mormon pioneer spirit. Johnson was born and raised on Colorado River at Lees Ferry, the only place you could cross the Colorado for a couple hundred miles. His family ran the boat that took people across the river.

"Leroy Johnson had a lot of fine virtues," Fischer said. "I won't say I agree with all his teachings today or that everything he did was right, but he was a true grit pioneer. And he had family values."

Fischer found him sitting at his desk on an old roller-wheel chair. The prophet spun around and looked at the teenager for what seemed like an eternity. One of Johnson's little fingers had been broken and never set back into place, so he had had this little L-shaped finger. It was his trademark -- almost an icon -- and there he was scratching his bald head with it.

Finally, the prophet spoke.

"Young man," he proclaimed, "we need a dentist." The rest was history -- and good news for Dan Fischer. He was sent to the University of Utah, and then off to dental school.

He was also sent a wife. That was in 1968 and she was not the girl Fischer would have chosen. His new wife was 18 and had only an eighth-grade education. "My first wife and I were oil and water. It happens in many of these cases. You know nothing about the likes and dislikes of the person."

Fischer's first wife often took ill, so the prophet decided that his second wife should be his first wife's older sister. Fischer married his second wife in 1973 and went onto to have 14 children with the two of them -- seven with each sister.

In 1981, Fischer was blessed with a third wife. "Her father was a prominent guy and had influence with Leroy Johnson. I think the guy expected he'd get a lot of free dentistry out of me. It seems crazy, but that was probably the bottom line."

Fischer would have two more children with wife No. 3. He was making good money by now with his dental business. He built a 14-bedroom house on a 5-acre spread on the edge of Salt Lake City.

In the early 1990s, Dan Fischer found himself living with 17 children and three wives. "I became determined to not go beyond that," he said.

His third wife was not happy with that decision. She took her two kids to Colorado City, and refused to come back. Fischer never saw them again.

"I managed to talk to the kids once, but that was it," Fischer said. "I tried to get access to them through Rulon Jeffs, but he told me she was a fornicator and more married to her father than to me. I was being played on a string. It's one of the things that convinced me to separate from that organization.

"As soon as you go public on something like that, you know you are never going to see your family members again. But I decided to break the cycle and keep my other children from getting into plural marriage."

Fischer had decided long ago that his real wife was his second wife, the older of the two sisters. So he divorced the younger one and legally married her older sister. Today, his oldest child is 36. His youngest is 12.

Over the past few years, Fischer has watched as countless men and boys have been banished from Colorado City. He has also watched as Jeffs reassigned the married exiled men's wives and children to his most loyal subjects.

Fischer sighed. "With the wave of a hand he has reorganized hundreds of families. "Imagine all the scarring in all those children. We'll be paying the price for decades to come -- at least for a generation or two."

There are several theories as to what effect Jeffs' upcoming trial could have on the polygamists in Utah and the rest of the American West. If convicted of just the Utah charges, the leader of the Fundamentalist Mormon Church could be sentenced to life in prison.

And that might be the best thing that ever happened to him and his church.

Benjamin Bistline, a former Short Creek resident and author of "Colorado City Polygamists -- An Inside Look for the Outsider," points out that the legal morass and public reaction against the 1953 government raid only strengthened the polygamist community along the Utah-Arizona border.

"If they would have just let us alone we'd probably have died out by now," said Bistline, who was 18 when the government agents moved on the settlement. "They were just kickin' the mustard tree and scatterin' the seeds."

Perceived persecution often fans the flames of religious faith. That prompts many seasoned observers to predict that Jeffs' arrest and upcoming trial may swell the roster of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

"If Warren plays this thing right, he could have a massive flow of converts," Chatwin warned. "He is going to look like Christ reincarnated and crucified again."

Don Lattin is writing a book on a 2005 murder-suicide involving a religious se