Documentaries & TV

February 28, 2007

Children of Waco

On The Learning Channel Feb 28 and March 1

"They were soldiers in the army of David Koresh. Released in the first week of the 51-day standoff with the FBI, 21 children of the Branch Davidian survived and they'll tell us their versions of that deadly confrontation."

http://tlc.discovery.com/
tvlistings/episode.jsp?
episode=0&cpi=55778&gid=
0&channel=TLC

Posted by Perry at 03:16 PM

February 05, 2007

ESCAPING A CULT

Montel Williams Show
http://www.montelshow.com/
show/?showID=5077

Air Date - February 6, 2007

Last year, on a show entitled “Sex Abuse and Mind Control: Raised In A Cult,” we met former members of a religious group known as “The Family.” David Berg started the group, which was originally called “The Children of God,” in California in 1968. While current members of “The Family” insist they are a peaceful Christian group, ex-members Caryn and Don exposed a dark side of this cult last year. They alleged that physical, emotional, and sexual abuse are common, even encouraged, within the community. Montel offered a promise to help any other ex-members of this group who come forward. Today, Montel will be honoring that promise. Caryn joins us again to tell us how her appearance inspired two women, who perhaps endured the worst abuse in the history of the cult, to finally come forward and speak out. Davida was born into “The Family.” She was raised in David Berg’s home and was eventually married to him for a short time. Davida says she endured sexual abuse from many male members of “The Family.” She was finally able to escape in her mid-twenties but says her emotional scars have not healed. We’ll meet Amy who says her parents joined “The Family” when she was around ten years old. Amy was also sent to live with David Berg and also was Berg’s wife for a short time. Amy says she was regularly sexually abused and was often denied medical assistance. She nearly died when her appendix ruptured as a teen. We will meet a psychologist that specializes in cult deprogramming who will offer advice to all our guests.

Posted by Perry at 03:39 PM

February 03, 2007

Revenge Against Religious Sect

ABC News - 20/20
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/
Health/story?id=2838632&page=1

Young Man Commits Murder and Suicide. What Inspired This Extreme Revenge?

Feb. 2, 2007 — Two decades after a Christian religious sect officially renounced adult-child sex in response to allegations of sexual misconduct, a new British documentary "Cult Killer" is reviving questions.

The sect, known as The Family International, and commonly known as The Family, was founded in the late 1960s with thousands of members around the world.

In January 2005, Ricky Rodriguez, the one-time heir apparent to The Family, fatally stabbed his former nanny and then shot himself dead. He left a chilling videotape alleging that the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child at the hands of members of the group was too much to bear.

On the tape, the 29-year-old could be seen assembling weapons. "It's a need for revenge," he told the camera. "What about the thousands of us who have been f—ed over literally? It happened right before me. It happened to all of you."

Since Ricky's death, others from his generation in the group have become more vocal about their suffering. Celeste Jones, who left the group in 2001, said that when she was 5 and 6, "I also was subject to sexual abuse — adults teaching me mainly to fondle them."

In 2005, The Family spokeswoman Claire Borowik told ABC News that while she was deeply saddened by the murder/suicide, the group was not responsible for Rodriguez's death.

Describing the group's attitudes, she said: "It wasn't really an issue of sex. There was a liberal … liberality that existed in some homes, not most homes."

Borowik also noted that compounds belonging to the organization had been subject to police raids, but that no member had ever been convicted of sexual abuse. Ricky's sister,Techi, a current member of The Family, also issued a letter after his death stating that he had "become severely disturbed…when I knew him he never ever felt any of the things he stated in his video."

'The Story of Davidito'

It's hard to refute that Rodriguez grew up in a sexually charged atmosphere. The group, founded under the name Children of God, promoted a strange brew of biblical prophecy and sexual freedom.

In 1978, the Children of God was formally dissolved and a new group, The Family of Love, with a new organizational structure, was formed. In recent years, this name has gradually been shortened to The Family.

Its charismatic leader, Moses David Berg, once said: "I practice what I preach! And I preach sex, boys and girls." Berg died of natural causes in 1994.

Continue reading "Revenge Against Religious Sect"

Posted by Perry at 06:27 PM

February 01, 2007

CHILDREN OF GOD: LOST AND FOUND

http://www.mcnblogs.com/filmfatale/2007/01/
sundanceslamdance_1_lost_and_f.html

by Justine FilmFatale

January 22, 2007

CHILDREN OF GOD: LOST AND FOUND

A haunting, rigorous exploration of youth in exile -- for good reason -- from their families, from the communities that raised them, and saddest of all, from faith

Born in Brazil to members of the Children of God evangelical Christian cult, director/writer/interviewer) Noah Thompson -- one of eleven siblings - left at the age of 21. Several of his younger siblings have since followed. The story begins with begins with contrasting memories: disturbing, then horrifying news footage (c. 1990s) of the cult leader's exposure as a pedophile, and Thompson's own rigidly cheerful snapshots and home movies--despite the being raised in a regimented commune where fathers and mothers--young, attractive, fresh faced hippies-- went fishing, flirtily, for more followers, and nannies watched over the kids. When Thompson reminds his mother of the "flirty fishing," and that that he and other children had sex with some of those young-ish nannies, the voice on the other end of the line gets a little nervous. "I hope you're not going to make me look like a slut," she says.

Pity that mother for being drawn into an uncomfortable conversation with a camera and audiotape running. Maybe it was my imagination, but there seemed to be a great many people with her on the line, hoping to dissaude the filmmaker not from making the movie. Or maybe it was the audience's communal sorrow at Thompson's next remark: he was only trying to make some sense of his isolated/early-sexualized/accelerated childhood by speaking to other ex-Children of God who'd been raised as he was. What follows isn't a hit piece but a filmmaker's coming of age. As he locates his spiritual siblings - scattered now from Manhattan to Texas to Costa Rica to Brazil - he becomes a compelling figure before the camera, a compassionate listener with reluctant subjects who, paradoxically, seem to have been waiting all their lives to speak.

What they say is heartbreaking. "Look at how cute we were," remarks one young woman, who with her brother, suffered unspeakable treatment by the cult's leaders. "No wonder we got abused."

The cult once bended toward the rapey, criminal enterprise delusions of its leader--but the followers -- now calling themselves The Family International are now merely an isolationist religious cult.

HBO will be airing Children of God: Lost and Found "at a later date," according to the film's publicist.

This is one of those films that leaves you - in a word - stunned. Even if you know a few kids who grew up in really isolated religious groups. What to do afterward: weep or find a bar with a television showing the final minutes of the AFC Championships. Why not both? And this being my first time in Park City, I started down the hill on Main Street and ended up standing there on a Sunday night snowstorm, hearing the news that the New England Patriots had just been scored upon and would not be going to the Super Bowl, and this guy, skinny, good looking in an elfin, angular way, stops next to me and says, "Do the numbers on this street go up or down?"

Still reeling from the documentary, and being only a couple of days in town, I hadn't figured out that while the Main Street hill goes up, the street numbers go down. So I continue despairing (Patriots, cults, altitude), and shrug at this somehow familar looking man and say--like a total upspeaking cinematard: "I don't know. I'm hopeless. Down?"

I walk down the hill. The guy walks up the hill. And that's when I realize it: That man was Kevin Bacon.

One hour later I see him on CNN talking about SixDegrees.org a social networking site that raises money while matches people with others who care about the same charities.

Posted by Perry at 02:38 AM

January 31, 2007

Documentary ambushed during Slamdance screening

The Park Record
http://parkrecord.com/
fastsearchresults/ci_5095527

Cult members hijack Q & A after "Children of God"

Dan Bischoff, Of the Record staff

Park City, Utah - Noah Thomson's five-year struggle to make the documentary "Children of God: Lost and Found" exhausted him physically and emotionally.

"It was an emotional roller coaster ride," Thomson said. "I've lived all over the world and been in trying situations, but nothing has taken me to an abyss like this did."

His film documents the lives of former members of the cult-like group known as "Children of God." Thomson was a former member of the cult, but his mother still belongs to what is now called "the Family."

The reward for his years of work was being accepted in the Slamdance Film Festival. But the question-and-answering session following the screening wasn't a warm welcome to the film industry.

"Obviously, I was blindsided," Noah said.

Family members of Children of God traveled across country to protest the film in Park City. Without ever seeing it, they dispersed flyers on Main Street declaring Thomson a liar. The protest culminated in a heated diatribe following the film.

"It was emotionally-charged and had an element of surprise to it," said producer Randy Barbato, who has also worked on projects such as "Inside Deep Throat" and "Eyes of Tammy Faye."

When Thomson got up to speak, a woman from the audience approached the microphone and took over the discussion.

"She basically attacked him and the film in terms of it being truthful and honest," Barbato said.

Barbato said Thomson kept his cool and let the woman speak for about 10 minutes. The monitor of the event said "this was not a debate" and told her to sit down.

"I said, 'Let her talk, she has her opinion,'" Thomson said.

"Noah never lost his temper even though there was a heated exchange going on and other people in the audience were getting annoyed," Barbato said. "This went on for ten minutes and this woman was yelling and eventually sat down because the audience was booing."

In his movie, Thomson documents his experiences and those of others in the cult.

"Noah, the filmmaker, has been so careful and thoughtful about that. It was a No. 1 concern. Most films or pieces you see about the family are tabloids; you don't see someone talking about the good times he had," Barbato said. "With the good, he included the bad, they don't want anything bad (shown), no matter what."

Thomson talks about his respect of his mother but he couldn't ignore certain circumstances.

"I interviewed someone who was sexually abused at six years old. I say, 'This might hurt my mom, but how can I turn my back on this?'"

Because of Thomson's fairness in the film, they didn't expect the backlash from the Family.

"I never experienced anything like it," Barbato said. "It was such a surprise to all of us. Everyone's eyes were darting around. She was filled with such anger and rage towards Noah, it didn't match the film that everyone had just seen."

As the incident raged on, Barbato noticed the lady had a microphone and another member of the Family carried a video camera. It drew immediate suspicion that they had filmed the documentary.

"Clearly, this girl and another man had an agenda," Barbato said. "She had a camera and that's when I thought, 'What's going on? Did she tape the film?' Any kind of taping is illegal."

It escalated at this point. At the steps of Treasure Mountain were roughly 10 family members. Barbato followed them outside, demanding they turn over their cameras.

"I said, 'We're calling the police,'" Barbato said. "It quickly got kind of heated and they started to leave and we followed them up the street. We didn't want them to leave until the police got there."

The police finally came and it turned out, all they recorded was the discussion following the film.

"The way that Noah was ambushed at the screening, I really think that all of us were taken by surprise and we didn't know what to expect," Barbato said. "Everything that went on was so suspicious, and giving our history of trying to make this film, we were as cautious as possible."

Barbato, however, understands the Family's position but thinks the protestors hurt their image even more by displaying their actions.

"Sadly, for the people and The Family who came out to protest the film, the way they went about it reinforced the stereotypes," Barbato said. "Noah's film does a much better job of representing some of the good work that some of the people in the Family do than the protesters of the film.

"Noah respects a lot of their work," Barbato said. "That's what makes the whole thing even sadder.

Thomson claims he had no intention to make a commentary on the cult as a whole.

"I'm not an activist, I'm a filmmaker and I chose to make a film about my life within the group and after the group," Thomson said.

"I think I expressed that clearly in the film. "The incident was discouraging. I actually hoped that when they saw the film, they would feel it was a fair piece done on them. It's addressing abuse and so forth but I also wanted to humanize them."

Thomson said creating this film may have been a "nail in the coffin" to his dwindling relationship with his mother.

"When it comes down to it, I love my mother and I don't want to misrepresent her," Thomson said. "That whole incident was discouraging as a filmmaker, I told an honest story, my story, and some other people that were hurt by the group and they painted us as being complete liars."

Before "Children of God" came to Slamdance, Thomson told Barbato, "I can never enjoy the success of this film."

"It's a bittersweet moment in a bittersweet journey," Barbato said. "He gets to go to Slamdance and can't move forward in his life."

Posted by Perry at 04:08 PM

January 24, 2007

Cult Members Cause Scene at Screening

Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,2933,246226,00.html

January 24, 2007

By Roger Friedman

Last night, the Park City police were called to a screening of a movie at Slamdance, the alternate film festival on Main Street.

The reason? Members of "The Family," a Christian cult, caused trouble at a screening of an HBO film called “Children of God.”

The documentary, directed by former member Noah Thomson, alleges child molestation at the hands of cult leaders. Thomson says he was one of those children. Another former member was in the audience last night as well, co-producer Fenton Bailey says.

But things got dicey during the Q&A session that followed last night’s screening. A young woman stood up and began screaming that no molestations had ever occurred. On closer inspection, it was revealed that she had a microphone pack on and “was transmitting to a camera outside,” Bailey says.

“There was a fear that she had taped the whole movie,” Bailey says. The police were called and the woman was followed. An audio tape she’d made was produced.

“She’d taped at least the whole Q&A,” says Bailey, who presumably will add security to future screenings. “Children of God” will air on HBO sometime this year.

Posted by Perry at 05:25 PM

Children of God: Lost and Found

Slamdance Film Festival 2007

http://www.slamdance.com/2007/festival/
film_detail.asp?film_id=991


Filmmaker Noah Thomson goes in search of the young adults who have made a life for themselves outside of the controversial Christian cult "The Children of God'. Many children of this cult have failed to thrive in the outside world and committed suicide, unable to adjust to life in a society indifferent to their abuse as children. Noah isn’t just a documentary filmmaker on a mission, he himself grew up in the Children of God before leaving as a young adult, and his search for other former child members of the group leads him on his own heart-wrenching investigation into his own childhood and search for his mother.

Posted by Perry at 05:19 PM

January 23, 2007

Abusive KIDS Rehabilitation Centre Inspiration For Film

The Record - northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/page.
php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVF
eXk2MzgmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcwN
jA3MTgmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3

January 21, 2007

By JIM BECKERMAN - RECORD COLUMNIST

In order to prepare for the movie "Over the GW," director Nick Gaglia had star George Gallagher do a little acting exercise.

"We were reading scenes, and he suddenly grabbed me and pushed me down on my wrists, and it was torture," Gallagher recalls. "I couldn't get up. I was in pain."

What Gaglia was re-creating, for Gallagher's benefit, was an ordeal he went through routinely as an inmate of KIDS of North Jersey -- a controversial, now-defunct rehabilitation clinic in Secaucus (first established in Hackensack) that might be described as combining aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous, Marine boot camp and Jim Jones' retreat in Guyana.

Troubled teens, most with serious drug problems, slept in windowless rooms, were accompanied everywhere from the kitchen to the toilet stall, were often completely cut off from parents, and were subject to physical, emotional and, sometimes, sexual abuse, Gaglia says.

He knows -- he was there for 2½ years.

"You weren't allowed to talk to your parents," Gaglia recalls. "You weren't allowed to look out of the car window. You weren't allowed to read. If you read the back of the ketchup, you got yelled at."

The 24-year-old Gaglia, a Bronx native, tapped into those experiences for "Over the GW," an independent film (Gaglia wrote and directed) that was the opening feature this past Friday at Slamdance, a weeklong independent film festival in Park City, Utah.

"The movie isn't about KIDS of North Jersey, but it's about a facility that mirrors a lot of the abuse that I went through," Gaglia says.

The first-time director, who is still looking for a distributor for his $30,000 indie film, wanted to make sure that the actor playing Tony Serra -- a character partly based on himself -- really had a visceral sense of what the cult-like conditions at the rehabilitation center were like.

That's why he threw Gallagher to the floor and pinned him there. "Five-point restraint," it was called in the KIDS program -- where victims were pinned to the floor by five people in an ordeal that often lasted hours. Gaglia estimates he was restrained this way 100 times or more.

"It brought me someplace," says Gallagher, a Garfield resident. "It was like, that was the whole movie, right there."

Though some KIDS of North Jersey alumni have reported positive results, the list of horror stories – and victims claiming restitution – had grown large even before the center shut its doors in 1998, in the teeth of state investigations.

As early as 1984, "60 Minutes" had run an expose on founder Miller Newton, the former Methodist minister who operated a number of similar franchises around the country. In 1987, then-Bergen County prosecutor Larry McClure investigated the program for nine months and urged authorities to monitor it; in 2000, The Record ran its own investigative piece.

Since closing the doors, Newton and his program have been subject to a number of lawsuits: In 1999, a Wayne woman who had been in the program six years won a $4.5 million malpractice settlement.

"Even when I was in that place, going through all that, I was thinking, 'You know what? This is a great idea for a movie,' " Gaglia says.

For his movie, made over the past year on location in New York and New Jersey, Gaglia went back to the scene of his ordeal for crucial footage -- the now-shuttered KIDS center on Seaview Drive. Not an easy thing, he says.

"I had a paranoia about even going into Jersey, or specifically Secaucus, because of what I went through," he says.

Not that Gaglia wants to paint himself as the angel of the piece.

It was his serious drug and authority problems at age 14 that led his desperate parents, as so many others had done, to seize on KIDS of North Jersey as a last best hope.

"I would stay out all night, smoke weed with my friends, come home drunk, cut school and act up to my parents," he says.

On paper, the KIDS program sounded great. The reality was something else.

Each morning at 6 a.m., Gaglia would be driven from his "host home" in the boroughs, across the George Washington Bridge in a locked car, to the rehab center in Secaucus. There, he would spend the next 12 to 16 hours in support groups that often functioned more like "restraint" groups.

"You were never left alone," he says. "When you went to the bathroom your supervisor had to hold you by your pants, which was called in their lingo 'belt looping.' When you wanted paper to wipe yourself, you had to ask permission."

But worse than all the physical abuse, Gaglia says, was the mental abuse.

"Ultimately, what they were doing was brainwashing you," Gaglia says. "They would drill it into your head that this was the only place that could keep you sober, and if your family members don't support the institution, you could never talk to them. My dad kind of turned away from the place, and they told me you can't ever talk to your father again for the rest of your life. For your sobriety."

In the end, Gaglia had to summon considerable willpower to make his escape.

He did it one Wednesday morning -- on the GW Bridge.

"Before you get on the bridge ... there's a lot of stop-and-go traffic," he says. "I was in this minivan, and on the front-side passenger's seat there was no baby lock on the door. So when we got to the bridge, I sort of pushed everybody away and made it [to the front seat], and of course everybody grabbed me, but I got the door open. That's when the cops came and took me with them."

"Across the GW" has yet to open theatrically, but Gaglia says the MySpace page featuring his trailer has gotten thousands of hits -- not a few from former inmates of Newton's rehab centers nationwide.

"I'm getting e-mails from people all over the world, from Australia and Canada," he says. "People are saying, thank you for making this movie. Thank you for being our voice."

On the Web:

overthegw.com

E-mail: beckerman@north jersey.com

Posted by Perry at 04:43 PM

One woman's heroic journey

Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/
story/LAC.20070123.GOD23/TPStory/
TPEntertainment/Movies/

Kelly Rowan felt it was time to bring the often ugly truths of polygamy to prime time

23/01/07

by GAYLE MACDONALD

Long before B.C. serial polygamist Winston Blackmore creeped out audiences by telling CNN's Larry King about his 20 wives and at least 100 children, Ottawa-born actress Kelly Rowan had vowed to take on a religious sect whose men view women as chattel.

Two full years before Blackmore's debut on Larry King last December, the former O.C. star had knocked on the door of Toronto's Shaftesbury Films, pitching a fictionalized drama about a woman who escapes a commune of fundamentalist Mormons (which bears an eerie resemblance to Blackmore's polygamy stronghold of roughly 700 faithful in Bountiful, B.C.) Sickened by what she had read and watched about polygamist communities in Canada and the United States, Rowan decided that it was time to make a program that lifted the veil on a religion that sanctions men marrying young girls (some under 16) -- and, at times, intermarriage between family members.

"The purpose of the film really was to cause some dialogue," asserts Shaftesbury Films chair Christina Jennings, who shot the film with a $5-million budget. "Kelly's goal -- like ours -- was to make a movie that gets people talking and thinking about polygamy, about how society can possibly justify men having a whole bunch of wives and the taking of young girls."

Rowan, who stars in the film and has a co-executive producer's title along with Jennings, shot In God's Country in and around Hamilton last summer. The finished product, which co-stars Desperate Housewives alumnus Richard Burgi, airs tonight at 9 ET on CTV.

In the TV movie, Burgi plays Bishop Josiah Leavitt, who takes Rowan's character, Judith Joseph, as his eighth wife. The couple have four kids together, but Judith is expelled from her community by her husband after she tells child protection services that her 12-year-old daughter was raped.

Judith struggles to build a new life in a strange world, but is forced to return to the commune when she learns that the Bishop is plotting to wed her 16-year-old daughter (from another marriage).

"Ultimately this is the heroic journey from a woman's standpoint," says Burgi, who started his career playing Chad Rollo on the daytime soap Another World. "You have a woman who's kind of going along with the system, who grew up this way, and ultimately, all systems are saying it's not working.

"She had to muster extraordinary courage and will, in order to really take care of her children the way she believes they need to be taken care of," adds Burgi, who is best known for playing Susan's cad of an ex-husband, Karl, on Desperate Housewives.

"This movie really encapsulates that struggle between what she's drawn to -- which is wanting to do right by her community and by what she's grown up with -- and her own inner voice that's telling her this is not working."

On Larry King, Blackmore showed that there was a lot of truth in Rowan's fiction. He told the talk-show host that while none of his 20 wives are currently underage, some were "just barely" under 16 when he married them.

"There's one that was, and one that lied about their age, but that's not unusual for women, is it?" he said.

Blackmore was investigated by British Columbia authorities early in 2006 over alleged misconduct. In late September, the RCMP submitted a report to the Crown after a long probe into alleged misconduct by some of Bountiful's residents.

The Crown said last fall that it was determining whether any criminal offences had been committed.

So far, Jennings says, she has not received any hate mail or angry protests from fundamentalist Mormons, who are not to be confused with North America's 12-million-strong, mainstream Mormons -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- who renounced plural marriage in 1890.

Fundamentalist Mormons follow the teachings of Joseph Smith, who believed that a man must have at least three wives and as many children as possible in order to reach the highest level of heaven.

Last August, U.S. polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was arrested and is awaiting trial in the States on charges linked to marriages he allegedly arranged between underage girls and older men in both Utah and Arizona.

Polygamy is illegal in Canada, Jennings notes. But for whatever reasons, lawmakers rarely enforce anti-polygamy laws. "I find it extraordinary that polygamist communities exist in North America today," the producer adds.

With a straight face, Blackmore also told King that it's "biblically sound" for just the men in his faith to have multiple marriages. If any of his wives were to take another husband, he added, she would have to leave the society.

Posted by Perry at 03:36 PM

January 21, 2007

Polygamy TV fiction tackles the heavy lifting for us

Vancouver Sun
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
news/editorial/story.html?id=5ece
3458-5cba-435b-8704-264aa75318e2

Daphne Bramham, Special to the Sun

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Polygamy in a religious context raises so many questions about rights, freedoms, familial bonds, choice, informed consent and politics that, at times, it seems easier to just ignore it than puzzle it out.

For the most part for more than 100 years, Canadians and Americans have been doing that -- ignoring followers of Joseph Smith's teaching that only men with multiple wives will enter the highest realm of heaven.

They call themselves fundamentalist Mormons. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- mainstream Mormons -- hate that because the LDS renounced plural marriage in 1890. And nobody is more eager for the fundamentalist Mormons to be forgotten than the 12 million members of the LDS church.

Yet it's almost impossible to ignore fundamentalist Mormons.

They are always doing something creepy or illegal like forcing under-age girls to marry men who are double, triple and even quadruple their age, moving these young brides illegally across international borders, reassigning wives and children, kicking young boys out for the simple offence of falling in love, and bleeding money from the government in child-tax credits, health services and grants for schools that few parents seem to want their children to attend for more than a few years.

But what to do about it seems to paralyze us and our political leaders. And here's where the wonder of drama comes in. Instead of all that mental heavy lifting, it focuses us on what it might feel like to be a plural wife in a polygamous community.

That's what In God's Country does. It's a two-hour drama that airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. on CTV about life in a polygamous community that bears some striking resemblances to Bountiful, B.C.

The main character Judith Joseph (played by Kelly Rowan, who is also one of the executive producers) is a second-generation polygamist, mother of five and eighth and most favoured wife of the bishop. She has little education, knows nothing of life outside the community and is constantly monitored by "sister-wives" and a cadre of young men loyal to the bishop.

In this fictional depiction, the church's prophet forces a 14-year-old to marry a middle-aged man she'd just met. Joseph's bishop-husband makes it clear that their 16-year-old daughter will never be able to marry the young man she loves. And Joseph's 12-year-old is raped by a teenaged boy.

When Joseph tries to report the rape to child protection services, her husband expels her from the community to be shunned until she repents for her sin. Instead, she leaves.

What's notable about the production is that Peter Behrens and Esta Spalding didn't sacrifice the complexities in writing this compelling story. That's why it is such a bracing antidote to HBO's Big Love, a sitcom about a wealthy, suburban polygamist family.

In God's Country offers a glimpse of how powerful religious leaders within this particular cult use faith, scripture and fear of eternal damnation to subjugate "maternal instinct" -- something that we're taught is an innate and unalterable impulse to protect the young.

This is a drama not a documentary, so there are things that don't square with what I know about fundamentalist communities.

Women aren't punished by being sent away with their children. They're guarded even more closely and even put into mental institutions.

Women, children and vans are all deemed to be the property of men. And in many court battles, men have regained not only their vans, but their children from the wives who have left.

Only in the utopian world of television does a woman -- within hours of leaving an abusive situation with five children -- get handed keys to a fully furnished home, money for food and clothes and a cellphone to call for help if her husband comes after her.

In reality, there are no fully equipped homes sitting empty. In fact, few transition homes are even large enough to accommodate a woman with five children.

Finally, although beautifully filmed, it is undeniably and disconcertingly shot in rural Ontario where, as far as I know, there are no fundamentalist Mormons.

Fundamentalist Mormons are concentrated in remote and rugged western locations. They live in log and wood-framed houses. There are no picket fences, red-bricked Victorians or white-painted churches.

People from Bountiful will no doubt find dozens more things "wrong" with In God's Country to try to discredit it.

But they'll lose the public relations war because there is simply too much truth to this fiction.

"I would love it if [as a result of the movie] something could be done to help these young girls." Rowan said when I spoke to her this week.

Ironically, she is not a fan of actors stating political positions.

But this isn't about politics, Rowan says. It's about child abuse and human rights.

dbramham@png.canwest.com

Posted by Perry at 04:42 PM

January 17, 2007

Hand of God

PBS - Frontline
Watch Hand of God online at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
pages/frontline/handofgod/

In "Hand of God," filmmaker Joe Cultrera explores the very personal story of how his brother -- Paul -- was molested in the 1960s by their parish priest, Father Joseph Birmingham, who allegedly abused nearly 100 other children. Producer Joe Cultrera tells the story of faith betrayed and how his brother Paul and the rest of the Cultrera family fought back against a scandal that continues to afflict scores of churches across the country.

"I was inspired by my brother's strength of spirit in surviving his abuse," says Joe Cultrera. "His story was unlike any I had seen in the media. I thought a detailed film about his and my family's experience would prove healing and freeing for others."

Paul Cultrera and his siblings were raised in an Italian-Catholic family in Salem, Mass., and attended Catholic school from kindergarten through high school. From an early age they were immersed in the beliefs and teachings of the Catholic Church.

"There was the Catholic Church, and everything else was hell," Paul recalls. "Everyone beyond the bounds of the Catholic Church was doomed. Everything was presented to you in terms of sin."

At 14, Paul, an altar boy at St. James Parish, came under the guidance of Fr. Birmingham. Birmingham was young and friendly, often taking the boys on trips and inviting them to the rectory for Friday and Saturday night pizza parties. It was during confession that Paul's relationship with Fr. Birmingham changed. Confessing to masturbation led to private "counseling" sessions at the rectory, where Paul was sexually abused. Birmingham also abused him during nighttime rides in Birmingham's black Ford Galaxie and on trips out of town.

"When you're totally wrapped up in the environment of sin and guilt, you internalize it yourself. At least I did. I decided it was my fault. It was something the matter with me," says Paul. "You think you've done something really bad. So you become very adept at drawing a huge circle around that part of your life."

Paul would keep his secret for nearly 30 years, until he decided to finally confront the Church and launch his own investigation into whether the Archdiocese of Boston had covered up allegations against Birmingham, moving him from parish to parish and placing more children in danger.

Paul began to place advertisements in the newspapers of the various towns where Birmingham had been posted, asking the simple quesiton, "Do You Remember Father Birmingham?" The dozens of responses he received were his first indication that he was certainly not Birmingham's only victim.

A homegrown detective story, the film follows Birmingham's trail and the cover-up instituted by his superiors. Balancing faith against outrage, the Cultrera family survive it all with their humanity and humor intact.

"The film created an opportunity for my family to deal with these issues in a very intimate way," says Joe. "We have emerged as a more understanding unit. One of my hopes is that the film will inspire other families to talk."

Posted by Perry at 02:29 AM

January 15, 2007

“Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple” - A Faux-Documentary?

Jonestown Apologist Alert
http://jonestownapologistsalert.blogspot.com/

January 14, 2007

An Appeal To The Academy...

The deadline is over. Best Documentary nominations, and the rest, were all due in yesterday, 5 p.m. It’s time now for a lot of genuine faith, which fits right in with the subject matter, after all.

Just please say it ain’t so, voting members of the Academy. This obscene con job of a film that slithered onto the short-list—“Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple”—you couldn’t have put this thing into the final five.

The “New Religious Movement” hordes naturally have other designs. They must be chanting now, humming, clanging tambourines, and rattling e-meters over the thought of Director Stanley Nelson’s cult apologist film capturing an Academy Award.

We now wait while they count, until January 23. That’s when the official five nominations are announced. Then we’ll have one more sign if the moral depravity meter has risen another notch.

So please focus, all ye readers of sound mind…. Pray that enough Academy members were not lured in like throngs of cult captives or mindless film critics. Grant that the voters fled far and away from this fetid Potemkin Village that Stanley built.

A handful of the critics did, in fact, manage to send a couple of warning flares about “Jonestown.” The media “too-little, too-late” People’s Temple rerun features Newsweek headliner David Ansen, whose ground-shaking revelation was that his favorite films of 2006 “blurred the lines between reality and fiction.”

Bravo, Sir David. No, he didn’t quite come out and say Nelson served up the public a “faux-documentary.” He didn’t need to. Director Stan did it for him. In a recent New York Times interview, Nelson glowed, “What’s fascinating about documentary today is the different ways to approach it.”

He went to qualify exactly what he means: Historical accuracy, in a Nelson-mutated documentary, will be relegated in place of “advocacy.” You see, big change is coming your way. Objectivity…is on the official endangered list.

“Just by being somewhat objective,” said Nelson, “We were being revolutionary.”

“Somewhat objective”?

Yes, that means if you have any understanding about the principles of cult dynamics, or know the background of the unembellished, uncensored history of Jim Jones and the full horror he unleashed, Lord Nelson’s expert sanitizing will disabuse all that. True enough, he IS required to mention some of the requisite “negatives.” But the most destructive cult in American history? Oh, my heavens, no—far be it from that, according to our budding social scientist.

“What I learned from doing this film,” Nelson told Stylus Magazine in an interview last October, “was that one of the most dangerous things is when you join these communities and they deliver on their promise. I think People's Temple delivered on what it promised people. It promised them that they would be part of a big family and live a new way. And it delivered. That’s why they stayed.”

Well, how about that. Yes, “delivered.” It would be interesting hearing reputable cult experts in the field—the late Margaret Sanger, Robert Lifton, Philip Zimbardo, or any others—comment on Professor Stan’s assessment. Closer to the case is Dr. Keith Harrary’s analysis is of this “big family’s new way.”

Dr. Harrary had worked as counseling director at Al and Jeannie Mills’s Human Freedom Center in Berkeley, California, where they offered help to suffering People’s Temple defectors, as well as those from other cults ranging from the Moonies to Hare Krishnas.

[Al and Jeannie Mills (along with their daughter, in 1980, murdered by unknown assailants) had been top defectors themselves, but have been censored in the film—one of scores of the missing pieces in Nelson’s “somewhat objective” history.]

What does Dr. Harrary say about how “motivation” was instilled in someone, so they could continue enduring unspeakable brutality—in California, long before “Dad” shipped them off to his Guyana Gulag?

“Jones had forced them to prove their loyalty by signing blank pieces of paper,” wrote Dr. Harrary in a March, 1992, Psychology Today article, “blank power-of-attorney forms, and false confessions that they had molested their children, conspired to overthrow the U.S. government, and committed other crimes while members of the cult. It was the sort of thing Jones did to control people, like the time he tricked a member into putting her fingerprints on a gun and told her he would have someone killed with it and frame her for the murder if she ever left the group.”

And what about Nelson’s claims of this wondrous “new way,” which he insists was fulfilled in “the beginning,” and masquerades on screen? Again, in the Redwood Valley years well before Jonestown came about, the “new way” was something altogether different.

“There was a deliberate malevolence about the way Jones treated the members of his cult that went beyond mere perversion,” stated Dr. Harrary, “It was all about forcing members to experience themselves as vulgar and despicable people who could never return to a normal life outside of the group. It was about destroying any personal relationships that might come ahead of the relationship each individual member had with him."

“It was about terrorizing children and turning them against their parents. It was about seeing Jim Jones as an omnipotent figure who could snuff out members’ lives on a whim as easily as he had already snuffed out their self respect."

“In short, it was about mind control.”

Mind control. Find any cult apologist on your block, say this phrase three times fast, and they might just slowly spasm up the nearest wall like a crazed spiderman. Pepper them liberally with “cult”--a four-letter profanity spice to which they are allergic--and you got a real spectacle. But be prepared, audience: If you have the odd notion that Nelson’s “documentary” about one of history’s most notorious cults has ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER about cults or mind control, forget it.

The script says it was a “church,” okay? A “revolutionary” church, kind of like Stan’s “objectivity.” Written by Marcia Smith (Mrs. Nelson) and Noland Walker (who had family members in the cult and attended services), they provide Nelson some extra left-wing sizzle—as if he needs more—by incorporating a second official academic cult apologist in film. The first comes from Rebecca Moore, who teaches religious studies at San Diego State University. The second sound bite comes from John Hall, who dishes out his cult apologetics at UC Davis. The following, an excerpt entitled “The Collectivist Reformation,” from Hall’s book, “Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America,” might be the best explanation for Stanley and Mrs. Nelson’s bizarre vision:

“Where People’s Temple deviated much more dramatically from conventional social practice,” writes Hall, “was its members’ high rates of tithing, unsalaried labor, and donation of real and personal assets. In turn, these differences were part of a more profound difference—replacing individualism and the family unit with the communal equation of an organization that pooled the economic recourses of its most highly committed members, and in return, offered them economic security, an extended collectivist ‘family,’ and the opportunity to participate in a politically meaningful social cause larger than themselves."

“Balancing that equation, the Temple demanded commitment, discipline, and individual submission to collective authority.”

Oh, of course, Professor Marx. Logically stated. A “cause larger than themselves.” Today they have to listen to that hooey in those totalitarian hell-holes called Cuba and North Korea. Which is precisely what Jim Jones was for the captives of the Peoples Temple—a modern-day Stalin, whose mandated foreign language lesson of the day in Jonestown was, yes, Russian.

But, once again—Stanley, Mrs. Nelson, and their little comrade, Noland—somehow “forgot” to inform their audience of this little bit of trivia. And a shameful bit more.

Cult apologist, revisionist history with a vengeance. This, a short-listed nomination for Best Documentary of the Year??

Somebody ought to call Hollywood 911.

Posted by Perry at 03:52 PM

January 12, 2007

In God’s Country

CTV - Canada
http://www.ctvmedia.ca/ctv/

Toronto, ON (January 8, 2007) – Kelly Rowan is one of eight wives living a nightmare in a modern-day polygamous marriage in In God’s Country, a remarkable CTV original movie premiering Tuesday, January 23. In the two-hour fictionalized drama, Rowan stars as a woman who confronts the religious traditions of her community and risks everything to protect her children from a future of submission. In God’s Country airs immediately following American Idol at 9 p.m. ET/PT (7 p.m. AT/MT; 8 p.m. CT) on CTV and in High Definition on CTV HD East / West.


Posted by Perry at 03:54 PM