Children in High Demand Organizations

High Demand Organizations

February 20, 2007

One Mother's Tale: Moon & Her Son

http://www.consortiumnews.com/
2007/021707a.html

By Robert Parry
(Originally published in 1997)

Like many parents, Debbie Diglio was nervous when her only son, John Stacey, went off to college. But John was a stable, high-achieving, all-American young man who seemed the sort who might succeed in staying out of trouble.

So when John left their home in central New Jersey and registered at New York University in 1992, Debbie Diglio, a nurse by profession, hoped for the best. But, then, shortly into his first semester, she said, "he went away one weekend and vanished."

She first got a sense of trouble when she called his NYU room with happy family news. "My sister had a baby and I called to tell John," she recalled, still with a quaver in her voice. "His roommate said he had gone away with a few new friends he had met."

The roommate remembered that the "new friends" were from a group, known by the acronym, CARP, standing for the innocuous title, Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles. After learning that CARP was "a front group" for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, Diglio and her husband, John's step-father, began a frantic search.

"I tried to call the church and they said they had no idea who he was."

The Diglios feared the worst, that John would be drawn into the controversial religious sect that has been accused by critics of "brainwashing" impressionable young people into becoming robotic followers of Moon as a new messiah. "When John did call," Debbie Diglio said, "I knew immediately that he was in trouble."

So began a four-year nightmare for Debbie Diglio. Like thousands of other parents in the past quarter century, she had lost a child to the charismatic South Korean who teaches that his movement is building a theocracy that will rule the world. During those four years, Stacey almost completely severed ties to his family and nearly drove his mother to a nervous breakdown.

Though the number of young Americans drawn to Moon appears to be in sharp decline -- his total U.S. church membership in 1997 was estimated at less than 3,000 although church officials insisted the figure was around 50,000 -- the story of John Stacey was a reminder that Moon's controversial recruiting techniques continued.

The Freshman’s Tale

When I interviewed John Stacey four years after his recruitment at a pizza restaurant near his hometown of Piscataway, N.J., the thin, blonde, young man had an edgy way about him, a look that was both vulnerable and cagey. He'd hold my gaze for a minute and then quickly glance away.

But amid the clatter of plates and piped-in rock music, Stacey seemed relaxed talking about his growing-up years as a prototypical Middle American who came from a Baptist background and was close to his family. He was a high school honor student, and when he left for NYU, he said, "my mother was still making me peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches."

Stacey's life detoured when he encountered CARP members on the street near NYU, at the edge of Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "They gave me a survey, and it turned out everything that I was interested in they were interested in," he chuckled. The recruiters invited him to a lecture which stressed positive themes: God, peace, patriotism.

Upset over a fight with his roommate, Stacey agreed to attend a week-long CARP seminar supposedly on "youth decision-making" at a compound located in Queens, N.Y. "They said it was not a religion," he recalled. "They invited me under false pretenses, away from my reference points to another world, it seemed. ... I went there with the impression that all the people there were students like me."

The "students" who surrounded him reinforced the messages from the speakers, while leaders of the group flattered Stacey and attended to his every need. "The seminar is completely rigged," Stacey told me. The other "students" turned out to be Unification Church members who Stacey later learned were "very well trained" in these recruitment methods.

"They gained my trust before I realized they were not worthy of it," Stacey complained. "They used the same tactics that the Chinese communists used. People don't recognize how dangerous it is because they're using mind-control techniques without prior consent. I didn't suspect that they had designs on me. ... It's like a Moonie factory. They sort of clone people there."

Stacey was not held at the Queens compound by force. Rather, he explained, the recruiters employed more subtle techniques of peer-group pressure and isolation. "When I was at that seven-day seminar, I had no idea my parents were trying to find me," he said. "For three months, I never left that property. ... I had five people patrolling me."

Continue reading "One Mother's Tale: Moon & Her Son"

Posted by Perry at 04:05 PM

Cult leader Rael denied residence in Switzerland

AFP
http://www.breitbart.com/
news/2007/02/19/
070219183652.zb2e8qnp.html

Feb 19, 2007

Cult leader Rael, who shot to media prominence in 2002 by claiming to have cloned a human being, has been denied residence in Switzerland for fear of endangering public morals, authorities said.

Rael, a French citizen whose real name is Claude Maurice Marcel Vorilhon, had sought residence in the Canton Valais in the southwest of Switzerland, where he wished to carry out "commercial activities" in a local vintners.

The Valais authorities refused his application because many of his views are at odds with the Swiss constitution, notably his approach to children and sexuality.

Rael preaches a doctrine of "complete sexual liberty" and believes parents should show their children how to obtain sexual pleasure, "which by its nature can lead to sexual deviance with under-age children," the authorities said in a statement.

Human cloning is also legally forbidden in Switzerland.

Rael, who claims to have some 50,000 followers around in the world, said in a brief statement he was considering an appeal at a European level.

Posted by Perry at 04:00 PM

February 19, 2007

Raël jugé indésirable

http://www2.canoe.com/infos/
societe/archives/2007/02/
20070219-123340.html

Associated Press (AP)

19/02/2007

Claude Vorilhon, alias Raël, ne pourra pas s'établir dans le village suisse de Miège. Le canton du Valais a rejeté la demande d'autorisation de séjour du gourou des Raéliens. Les autorités invoquent des motifs liés à l'ordre public et à la protection de la morale. Le Français se dit prêt à aller jusqu'à Strasbourg pour contester cette décision.

Raël voulait séjourner quelques mois par année à Miège, village d'un millier d'habitants, où habitent une quinzaine de Raéliens, a expliqué aujourd'hui à l'AP Allan Tschopp, un des responsables du mouvement en Suisse. Claude Vorilhon, 61 ans, qui n'a pas de domicile fixe annoncé, réside occasionnellement chez un de ses adeptes dans la commune valaisanne. Il a aussi été engagé par une cave viticole pour promouvoir ses vins à l'étranger. Le propriétaire de «la cave du Verseau» a présenté en octobre dernier une demande d'autorisation de séjour en sa faveur.

Les autorités valaisannes la lui ont refusée. «Il nous est apparu que des motifs d'ordre public justifiaient un refus», a souligné Françoise Gianadda, responsable du Service de l'état civil et des étrangers, précisant que la commune de Miège partageait également ces préoccupations.

Les autorités soulignent que l'idéologie de Claude Vorilhon est contraire à la Constitution fédérale. Dans ses écrits, Raël prône l'avènement de la géniocratie, modèle politique basé sur le coefficient intellectuel des individus. Il défend aussi la liberté sexuelle absolue et l'éducation sexuelle pratique des enfants par leurs parents, une doctrine de nature à provoquer des dérives sexuelles à l'égard des mineurs. Il préconise enfin le clonage humain, interdit en Suisse.

La décision des autorités valaisannes ne semble toutefois pas décourager Claude Vorilhon qui s'est dit prêt, dans un communiqué diffusé aujourd'hui, à la contester jusque devant la Cour européenne des droits de l'Homme à Strasbourg. Il a transmis le dossier à son avocat pour faire respecter les accords de Schengen et faire condamner la Suisse.

D'abord chanteur, puis chroniqueur sportif et coureur automobile, le Français Claude Vorilhon a créé le mouvement raélien dans les années 1970. Il se déclare le dernier prophète, le berger des bergers, demi-frère de Jésus. Il dit être venu sur Terre pour diffuser le message des Elohims, des extraterrestres, préparer leur arrivée sur notre planète et sauver l'humanité.

Posted by Perry at 04:58 PM

February 14, 2007

Cult leader faces child sex charges

The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.
com.au/story/0,20867,21225324-
1702,00.html

February 14, 2007

THE creator of a south coast religious community claimed to receive messages from the Virgin Mary and believed a new race of people would be created through him, a Sydney court has heard.

William Kamm, 56, also known as the Little Pebble, is facing trial on five counts of sexual intercourse with a person under 16 under his authority and one count of committing an act of indecency.

The alleged offences occurred between 1994 and 1995 when the alleged victim was 14 and 15, the New South Wales District Court heard today.

At the time, the alleged victim lived with her family at the Order of Saint Charbel, a religious community established by Mr Kamm in the 1980s at Cambewarra, near Nowra on the NSW south coast, Crown Prosecutor Sara Bowers told the court.

Mr Kamm told his followers at the fenced off community he would take 12 queens and 72 princess, all of whom would conceive his children "because he carried the holy seed", Ms Bowers said.

She said Mr Kamm's teachings at the community were of central importance to the case against him.

"The accused claimed that he was receiving messages from the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ," she said.

"He thought the world was about to come to an end but that he and his community would survive and that through the accused a new race of people would come into being."

Acting for Mr Kamm, Greg Stanton told the jury of eight men and four women his client should not be judged on his religious beliefs.

The trial, before Justice Ronald Solomon, resumes tomorrow.

Posted by Perry at 05:25 PM

February 12, 2007

IICD: Humanitarian aid, or money & principles gone awry?

Berkshire Eagle
http://www.berkshireeagle.
com/headlines/ci_5205486

Questions in Williamstown

By Jessica Willis, Berkshire Eagle Staff

February 11

WILLIAMSTOWN — Blink, and you might miss the tip of the iceberg.

The Institute for International Cooperation and Development campus is a collection of small, unassuming buildings scattered on a steep slope off Route 43. Most people don't notice the small sign by the Institute's dirt road. It reads "IICD: develop the world. develop yourself."

The nonprofit, nongovernmental organization has been in Williamstown since 1986, and the school says it offers a rigorous six-month program that trains about 80 students a year to be development instructors in humanitarian aid programs in Africa and Brazil.

But critics say the school is part of a global operation to support the luxurious lifestyle of its charismatic leader, a 67-year-old Danish man named Mogens Amdi Petersen.

Students pay $3,800 to enter the IICD program, and must raise $9,000 more before they can go overseas on their yearlong mission, where they live on a stipend of $150 a month.

To make their goal, the students, who must be at least 18 years old, take fundraising trips to as many as 15 states. And while many Berkshires residents might not know any IICD students, they might
have contributed to their cause by dropping used clothing in one of the dozens of green-and-white boxes scattered throughout the county.

'All sorts of rumors'

Jytte Martinussen, 54, has been IICD's executive director since 2003. At a recent meeting at the school, her smile was both indulgent and guarded; it was the first time a journalist had been invited on campus in her three years there.

"We want the community to know," she said. "A lot of people don't know what IICD is. There's all sorts of rumors. People don't come up here and they don't see the place. There was a nude camp here before us."

Giggles slipped out from the IICD students seated around the table: Alejandro Arredondo, from Phoenix; Beatriz Jaicintho from Sao Paolo, Brazil; Towako Sawada from Ibaraki, Japan; and Francisco Magonagona Pedro, an instructor from Mozambique.

"I just want to teach as much as I can and learn about myself when I'm the outsider (in Africa)," said Arredondo, 18, who was wearing a T-shirt with the words "Knowledge is King" emblazoned on the front.

On this day, the multicultural roundtable group was in good spirits, but IICD has a dark history:

Continue reading "IICD: Humanitarian aid, or money & principles gone awry?"

Posted by Perry at 04:34 PM

February 09, 2007

Police manhunt for cult leader who 'eats girls'

The Daily Mail - UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/
live/articles/news/worldnews.html?
in_article_id=434980&in_page_id=
1811#StartComments

8th February 2007

Scores of police have been sent to the jungles of remote Papua New Guinea to hunt for a cult leader known as the Black Jesus, who is said to have sacrificed three young women to the devil and eaten their bodies.

In one case reported by villagers, a mother who had fallen under the cult leader's spell led her 14-year-old daughter to his hideout, offered her to him as a virgin then stabbed her to death.

The Black Jesus, 31-year-old Steven Tari, started his cult last year after he was expelled from a Bible college for stealing from fellow students.

He has enticed girls as young as 12 from their homes to be sex slaves, and is thought to have more than 6,000 followers who believe in human sacrifice.

Posted by Perry at 05:59 PM

February 05, 2007

Faith in Aum guru resurges as Joyu moves to form his own group

Asahi Shimbun - Japan
http://www.asahi.com/english/
Herald-asahi/TKY200702020372.html

February 3, 2007

By Hiroshi Matsubara, Staff Writer

The Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult may be gone, but it certainly is not forgotten.

Now, Aum's charismatic former spokesman is in the final stages of creating a new religious group based on his own teachings.

Fumihiro Joyu says he hopes to set up his new cult by June. But only a limited number of disciples from the renamed Aleph cult will likely follow him because of a resurgence in loyalty to Chizuo Matsumoto, the Aum founder who orchestrated numerous crimes in defense of his cult as it aimed to foment revolution.

Unless members cut their emotional attachment to Matsumoto, Joyu said the cult system to which he has devoted his life will collapse.

"We need to create a new group right now so that we (Aleph) don't go under when Matsumoto is executed," Joyu said.

Many still revere Matsumoto but are prohibited from meeting with the former guru at the Tokyo Detention House as visitors to each death-row inmate are limited to the individual's lawyers and immediate family members.

Still, members routinely gather in front of the facility in Tokyo's Kosuge district to offer prayers to the man who masterminded the March 20, 1995, sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system that left 12 dead and thousands sickened.

Dozens of followers have been encouraged by former Aum leaders to remain faithful to Matsumoto's doctrine, according to a pro-Matsumoto member.

Given that Matsumoto, 51, could be executed at any time--his death sentence was finalized with the Supreme Court's rejection of his special appeal on Sept. 15 last year--loyal followers likely will react very emotionally when the inevitable happens, observers say.

Without Matsumoto as a living representation of Aum's teachings, die-hard followers may look to his children for inspiration even though they are not involved in Aleph's daily activities at this stage, according to the Aum member and another expert on the cult.

In a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Joyu, 44, said despite the resurgence of faith in Aum's bearded founder, it is unlikely those members would seek to retaliate against society after he is hanged.

Joyu said that is because most of them are drained physically and mentally by the upheaval in their lives since Matsumoto was arrested. He also noted they are getting older.

Aleph says that about 400 members still engage in communal life at roughly 30 facilities across Japan and that fewer than 700 lay followers support their activities through donations.

Joyu said he initially expected that around 100 Aleph members will join his as-yet unnamed cult.

"But now it looks like less than 60 will become my followers," he said.

A key reason for this, Joyu added, is the state of mind of members who are dreading the day they learn that Matsumoto's execution has been carried out.

"When it happens, their emotions will become very unsettled," he said. "I fear for their mental health."

Several pro-Matsumoto members said recently that Joyu's departure will make it easier for them to concentrate on Matsumoto's teachings and publicly state their faith in him.

A key factor for the resurgence of goodwill toward Matsumoto likely lies in the fact that members have been allowed to meet with other former Aum leaders at the Tokyo Detention House who are appealing their death sentences.

One such follower said he had been visiting the facility in Katsushika Ward several times each week since February last year to meet with them and offer prayers to Matsumoto. The man, who is in his 30s, said he regularly meets with Kiyohide Hayakawa, Tomomasa Nakagawa, Tomomitsu Niimi and three other former leaders for "religious advice."

The three he named were all sentenced to death. Until a few years ago, the authorities would not allow such visits, the man said.

"While some of them began expressing their doubts about Aum and their belief in Matsumoto (in court testimony), they have apparently overcome this period of self-doubt," the man said. "It is encouraging for me to talk to them as it strengthens my faith in Aum."

He said many disciples cling to the hope that Matsumoto's children will take the reins of Aleph once public anger toward the guru dies down.

Until then, the man said the members are determined to maintain religious faith and practice Matsumoto's teachings in reclusive communes.

"Increasingly, they will want one of his children to be the new guru," said Hiromi Shimada, researcher of religious studies at the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology. "But I very much doubt that society will let them officially worship a member of the Matsumoto family any time soon.

"In fact, just as Joyu is in a predicament, so, too, is the pro-Matsumoto faction. Essentially, they are both in gridlock," Shimada said.

Joyu was sentenced to a three-year prison term for perjury and released in 1999. Since then, as head of Aleph, he has publicly tried to distance himself from Matsumoto. Joyu said his efforts to rebuild the group meant that he and his followers had to get out from under the guru's influence.

Joyu represented Aum Shinrikyo's interests in Russia until the years leading up to the 1995 sarin attack that was carried out on the instructions of Matsumoto.

However, he is among a handful of former top Aum leaders who were not charged in murder cases.

As a step to forge a new identity with a distinctive name and doctrine, the pro-Joyu group will abandon all books, icons and other items that it inherited from Aum.

Once this is done, no later than the end of February, Joyu will set up an "Internet training hall" to make his own teachings available to a wider audience.

Joyu said the deification of Matsumoto was one of Aum's fundamental problems as it caused followers to blindly carry out his orders, even when "heinous terrorism" was involved. He said his new religion will ban any form of deification of individuals so that members can focus on the "sacredness in all human beings and nature."

Traditional Buddhist statues will replace Matsumoto's pictures, and instruction books written by Joyu will take the place of those used by the former guru.

Members will also do yoga along lines developed by Aum to "experience supernatural phenomenon and ultimately attain enlightenment," Joyu said.

"The problem was that Matsumoto tried to become another Christ," he said. "Other than that, there still are innovative aspects in Aum discipline which can help people to experience supernatural power. It will be a carrot to attract new followers."

Unless the groups attract new followers, neither faction of Aleph will survive, said Joyu, citing the advanced years of members and growing cases of illness.

"Aleph now is much more like a welfare home in which those who can work support the weaker members through donations," Joyu said. "But this structure needs to change for a new group to survive."

Posted by Perry at 03:45 PM

February 03, 2007

Inside Chile's Colony of Terror

OhMyNews
http://english.ohmynews.com/
articleview/article_view.
asp?no=342888&rel_no=1

Neo-Nazi sect abused children under political protection

February 1, 2007

by Marcelo Mackinnon

On a fateful day in 1976, Dr. Ivan Insunza was driving to work along the streets of Santiago, the Chilean capital, when members of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's secret police blocked his car and took him to an unknown location. Insunza was never seen alive again and the only clue about his fate appeared in 2006, when his car was found buried in the "Colonia Dignidad" (Dignity Colony), a large farm with a total area of 17,000 square hectares.

It was precisely during Pinochet's 17-year rule that the Colony increased its power and influence in Chilean society. On Jan. 17, 2007, I was shocked to read in the local press that the Chilean "State Defense Council" has appointed Herman Chadwick, once a high ranking official of the Pinochet regime, as a trustee to manage the financial matters of the Colony.

The "Colonia Dignidad" episode must be the most shameful of its kind not only in Chilean history but also for the world, since a proven murderer and pedophile such as Paul Schaeffer was allowed to carry out his crimes for nearly 50 years.

Paul Schaeffer was born in Germany on Dec. 4, 1921 and from an early age he became notorious for his hatred of women. At age 11, Schaeffer lost his right eye during a fight with a classmate. At the height of the Nazi regime, Schaeffer became a proud member of the "Hitler Youth," but due to his defective vision was rejected entry into the German Army. Instead Schaeffer was posted as a nurse on the western front, where he became an expert in the use of drugs and tranquilizers, a skill that would prove very helpful for him later on.

After the end of World War II, Schaeffer returned to Germany, where he was employed by an evangelical organization that took care of orphaned children. In 1952 Schaeffer was expelled from the organization since he was accused of sexual abuse by several of the children. Afterwards Schaeffer became a traveling preacher, and in 1957 formed his own "Private Social Mission," and ended up in a town called Heide in charge of a home for families that had been traumatized by the war.

At the house, one of Schaeffer's first rules was to separate the adults from the children, and everyone under his control would have to "confess their sins" to Schaeffer every day. He would use this information to blackmail his followers by threatening to reveal their secrets.

Continue reading "Inside Chile's Colony of Terror"

Posted by Perry at 04:47 PM

January 28, 2007

Inside The Moonies: Propaganda and Power

consortiumnews.com

http://www.consortiumnews.com/
Print/2006/122706.html

The GOP's $3 Billion Propaganda Organ

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
December 27, 2006

The American Right achieved its political dominance in Washington over the past quarter century with the help of more than $3 billion spent by Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon on a daily propaganda organ, the Washington Times, according to a 21-year veteran of the newspaper.

George Archibald, who describes himself “as the first reporter hired at the Washington Times outside the founding group” and author of a commemorative book on the Times’ first two decades, has now joined a long line of disillusioned conservative writers who departed and warned the public about extremism within the newspaper.

In an Internet essay on recent turmoil inside the Times, Archibald also confirmed claims by some former Moon insiders that the cult leader has continued to pour in $100 million a year or more to keep the newspaper afloat. Archibald put the price tag for the newspaper’s first 24 years at “more than $3 billion of cash.”

At the newspaper’s tenth anniversary, Moon announced that he had spent $1 billion on the Times – or $100 million a year – but newspaper officials and some Moon followers have since tried to low-ball Moon’s subsidies in public comments by claiming they had declined to about $35 million a year.

The figure from Archibald and other defectors from Moon’s operation is about three times higher than the $35 million annual figure.

The apparent goal of downplaying Moon’s subsidy has been to quiet concerns that Moon was funneling vast sums of illicit money into the United States to influence the American political process in ways favorable to right-wing leaders – and possibly criminal cartels – around the world.

Though best known as the founder of the Unification Church, Moon, now 86, has long worked with right-wing political forces linked to organized crime and international drug smuggling, including the Japanese yakuza gangs and South American cocaine traffickers.

Moon insiders, including his former daughter-in-law Nansook Hong, also have described Moon’s system for laundering cash into the United States and then funneling much of it into his businesses and influence-buying apparatus, led by the Washington Times.

The Times, in turn, has targeted American politicians of the center and left with journalistic attacks – sometimes questioning their sanity, as happened with Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. Those themes then resonate through the broader right-wing echo chamber and into the mainstream media.

Washington Times articles are routinely cited by C-SPAN, for instance, without explanations to viewers that the newspaper is financed by an ultra-right religious cult leader, a convicted tax fraud and a publicly identified money-launderer. Most American listeners just think they’re getting straightforward news.

The Times also has led attacks on investigators who threatened to expose crimes committed by Republican and right-wing operatives. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Times targeted Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who recounted in his memoir Firewall the importance of the Times in protecting the Reagan-Bush administration’s legal flanks.

When journalistic and congressional investigations began uncovering evidence of drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan contra rebels, the Washington Times counter-attacked, too, although in that case the Moon organization may have had a direct interest in containing the probes that could have exposed its relationship with South American drug lords.

Buying Influence

Besides the estimated $3 billion-plus invested in the Washington Times, Moon has spread money around to influential right-wingers, often coming to their rescue when they are facing financial ruin as happened with Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell in the mid-1990s. [See below.]

Moon also has paid lucrative speaking fees to political figures, such as former President George H.W. Bush who has appeared at Moon-organized functions in the United States, Asia and South America. At the launch of Moon’s South American newspaper in 1996, Bush hailed Moon as “the man with the vision.”

Moon has key defenders, too, in the U.S. Congress, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2004, Moon was given space in the Senate’s Dirksen building for a coronation of himself as “savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.” [See The Hill, June 22, 2004]

Though primarily allied with the Republican Right, Moon has tossed money to some African-American ministers to gain favor with a key Democratic constituency.

Moon’s multi-billion-dollar political investments, in turn, have shielded him from sustained scrutiny since 1978 when he was identified by the congressional “Koreagate” investigation as part of a covert Korean influence-buying scheme. As a result of those findings about his finances, he was convicted in 1982 of tax fraud.

Ironically, however, as Moon implemented the influence-buying blueprint exposed by the “Koreagate” probe – investing in U.S. media, politicians and academia – he became an untouchable. He founded the Washington Times in 1982 and quickly put it into the service of Republican power.

President Ronald Reagan hailed Moon’s publication as his “favorite newspaper”; it even helped raise money for the Nicaraguan contras; and President George H.W. Bush invited its editor Wesley Pruden to the White House in 1991 “just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.”

Washington Times defenders argue that the newspaper is independent of Moon’s religion and doesn’t proselytize for his faith.

But the argument misses the point because Moon’s organization is only a religious entity on one level. More substantively, it is an international conglomerate with investments in fishing, restaurants, gun manufacturing, tourism, banks, real estate and media.

Since its finances often operate on the shady side of the law, Moon’s organization requires, most of all, political influence for protection.

Similarly, Moon’s operation is not really “conservative” in the normal sense of the word. While it has worked with everyone from right-of-center Republicans to neo-fascist organizations, it also has joined forces with the reclusive communist leaders of North Korea when that was to Moon’s advantage. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Moon, North Korea & the Bushes.”]

Power Struggle

Veteran Washington Times journalist Archibald as well as other Times employees who recently spoke to The Nation magazine have described a bitter internal struggle at the newspaper.

Times president “Douglas” Dong Moon Joo is standing by Pruden and other right-wing editors who have run the Times for years, while other influential Moon operatives believe it’s time to abandon the newspaper’s hard-right positions.

“A nasty succession battle is now heating up at the paper, punctuated by allegations of racism, sexism and unprofessional conduct, that have implications far beyond its fractious newsroom,” wrote Max Blumenthal in The Nation.

“According to several reliable inside sources, Preston Moon, the youngest son of Korean Unification Church leader and Times financier Sun Myung Moon, has initiated a search committee to find a replacement for editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden – a replacement who is not Pruden’s handpicked successor, managing editor Francis Coombs.

“Preston Moon wants to wrest control of the paper from Pruden and Coombs, according to a Times senior staffer, in order to shift the paper away from their brand of conservatism, which is characterized by extreme racial animus and connections to nativist and neo-Confederate organizations. A Harvard MBA, Preston Moon is said to be seeking to install an editorial regime with more widely palatable politics.”

Archibald’s essay describes Pruden as “an unreconstructed Confederate from Little Rock, Arkansas, who still believes the South and slavery were right and Lincoln was wrong in saving the Union.”

Pruden’s father, Wesley Pruden Sr., was a Baptist minister and chaplain to Little Rock’s segregationist Capital Citizens Council, which spearheaded the opposition to President Dwight Eisenhower’s order in 1957 to integrate the city’s Central High School.

In the 1990s, Pruden’s Washington Times continued to tap into those old segregationist ties, such as “Justice” Jim Johnson, to get salacious allegations about President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary. The mainstream press soon followed, setting the stage for the Republican congressional sweep in 1994 and Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.

In 2000, the Washington Times again was at the center of the assault on Al Gore’s candidacy – highlighting apocryphal quotes by Gore and using them to depict him as either dishonest or delusional. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Al Gore vs. the Media.”]

By then, however, the Washington Times had the help of a rapidly expanding right-wing media as well as mainstream journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post who had come to realize the career advantage of tilting their reporting to the right.

Arguably one of the measures of the Washington Times’ success was how the major U.S. news organizations increasingly seemed to march to the same drummer, even when not under direct pressure to do so.

Over the past half dozen years, it has often been hard to distinguish between the fawning coverage of George W. Bush from the Washington Times and from the Washington Post. Both major Washington dailies bought into Bush’s false claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction with almost no skepticism.

Currently, the Washington Times seems inclined to continue serving as a leading defender of Republican power and thus of President Bush. Calling itself “America’s Newspaper,” the Moon-financed Times also has championed the cause of anti-immigration activists, another hot-button issue on the Right.

But the Times and other right-wing news outlets risk a credibility crisis as more and more Americans turn away from the Bush presidency and are turned off by the right-wing rhetoric demonizing citizens who have objected to Bush’s policies.

Nevertheless, history will surely record that Moon’s $3 billion-plus investment succeeded in buying a remarkable degree of Washington influence – and legal protection – for his dubious political/business/religious empire.

The extraordinary rise of Sun Myung Moon also tells a cynical story about how “respectability” is just one more Washington commodity that can be purchased with enough money.

Known for crowning himself at lavish ceremonies and ranting for hours in Korean about the proper use of sex organs, Sun Myung Moon may have the distinction of being the most unusual person ever to gain substantial influence in the U.S. capital. He has proved that in Washington, money talks.

When Moon became a major benefactor of the American conservative movement starting in the latter half of the 1970s, it was a time when the conservatives desperately needed money to build what they called their counter-establishment.

From a mysterious and seemingly bottomless slush fund, Moon ladled out cash to sponsor lavish conferences, to finance political interest groups and to publish the Washington Times.

Despite his strange goals – including the need to replace democracy and individuality with his own personal theocratic rule over the most intimate details of every person’s life – Moon lured into his circle some of the most prominent political figures of the modern era, including George H.W. Bush who grasped Moon’s value as a deep pocket for the conservative movement and for the Bush family.

Moon began building his political influence in Washington at a time when he was best known to Americans as the leader of the Unification Church, called the “Moonies.” Moon was blamed by thousands of American parents for brain-washing their children and transforming them into automatons who gave up their previous lives to devote nearly every waking hour in the service of Rev. Moon.

Gradually, however, Moon’s money gained him access to the nation’s ruling elite. The worst of the negative press coverage subsided. But few Americans, even those who took his money, knew much about his life and his true allegiances.

Who Is Moon?

Continue reading "Inside The Moonies: Propaganda and Power"

Posted by Perry at 04:17 PM

January 15, 2007

Est-ce une secte ou une religion?

Taïeb Moalla
Journal de Québec
http://www2.canoe.com/infos/societe/
archives/2007/01/20070113-083200.html

13/01/2007

«Tiens fort à ne pas manger du sang (...); répands-le sur la terre comme de l'eau. Ne le mange point, afin que tu prospères, toi et tes enfants après toi, lorsque tu feras ce qui est droit.»

Cette recommandation du Lévithique -un des cinq livres du Pentateuque dans l'Ancien Testament chez les chrétiens ou Torah chez les Juifs- est appliquée à la lettre par les Témoins de Jéhovah. Ces derniers refusent par principe les transfusions sanguines et affirment qu'il existe des «substituts de qualité» à cette opération médicale.

Présents dans 235 pays, les Témoins de Jéhovah revendiquent plus de six millions de fidèles. Depuis 2002, la France considère ce rassemblement religieux comme sectaire.

«C'est très bien ainsi. Cela leur donne juste le droit d'exister, mais ne leur permet pas de bénéficier des importants avantages fiscaux qu'ils ont ici», pense Jonathan Lavoie.

Selon lui, le fait de classer le mouvement dans le rayon des sectes est de nature à protéger la population. «Comme le terme a une connotation négative, cela peut montrer aux gens que ce sont juste des prédateurs qui attaquent des proies en leur faisant un lavage de cerveau», dit celui qui a déjà été Témoin de Jéhovah dans sa jeunesse.

L'approche française critiquée

Pauline Côté, professeure en sciences politiques et auteure d'une thèse portant sur la culture politique chez les Témoins de Jéhovah, ne partage pas ce raisonnement.

«D'abord, il est difficile de distinguer la religion de la secte. On dit souvent que la secte est une religion qui commence et que la religion est une secte qui a réussi», signale-t-elle.

Par ailleurs, l'approche française suscite beaucoup de critiques. «À cause de sa récente législation, la France se fait régulièrement sanctionner par la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme pour discrimination. C'est notamment le cas dans les causes portant sur les transfusions sanguines ou sur la garde des enfants», ajoute la professeure.

Au Canada et au Québec, les Témoins de Jéhovah sont reconnus comme une association charitable et bénéficient, de ce fait, d'importantes exemptions fiscales.

Posted by Perry at 02:47 PM

January 11, 2007

Colorado City, village polygame

Le Figaro
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/
20070111.WCP000000268_colorado_city_
village_polygame.html

De notre envoyée spéciale en Arizona ARMELLE VINCENT.

le 11 janvier 2007

Dans un bourg de l'Arizona, loin du monde moderne, vit une communauté dissidente du mouvement mormon. Ici la polygamie est une règle de vie, les épouses n'ont aucun droit et les enfants sont surveillés de près. Le chef de cette secte, accusé notamment de complicité de viols, attend la tenue de son procès.

Prête à s'enfuir à la moindre alerte, Sara Hammon, 32 ans, s'accroche à la portière de sa voiture des deux mains tandis qu'elle s'entretient avec une femme jeune, et pourtant d'apparence sans âge. La tenue réservée mais féminine de Sara jure avec celle de son interlocutrice qui semble être descendue, la veille, d'un convoi de chariots de l'époque de la conquête de l'Ouest. Chaussée de baskets, accoutrée d'une robe longue disgracieuse au motif floral décoloré par le temps, laissant entrevoir des chevilles soigneusement couvertes par d'épais bas blancs, affublée d'une coiffure non moins démodée formant une espèce d'excroissance sur le haut du crâne et se terminant en une natte, Pam jette des regards craintifs de tous côtés.

Dans ce bourg rural de 5 000 habitants, isolé et ultrafermé des États-Unis, à cheval sur l'Arizona et l'Utah, fondé par des renégats mormons à 170 kilomètres de désert du premier tribunal, l'audace de parler à une « païenne », une « créature de Satan », se paie très cher. Cependant, depuis que, fin août, leur tout-puissant prophète Warren Jeffs, 52 ans, a été incarcéré après un an et demi de cavale, les habitants de Colorado City ne savent plus à quel saint se vouer, à quel tyran soumettre leur volonté. Jeffs est accusé de détournement de mineurs et de complicité de viols. On lui reproche aussi l'arrangement de mariages illégaux à son profit: il aurait 75 épouses.

Fief des membres de la secte Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), Colorado City est peut-être l'unique commune polygame du monde occidental. Ici, des hommes peuvent obliger des adolescentes à partager leur couche, sous prétexte de les avoir épousées religieusement, sans être inquiétés par les autorités. Car même si l'Église mormone a officiellement renoncé à la polygamie en 1890 pour permettre à l'Utah d'acquérir le statut d'État, elle tolère, de fait, les « plural marriages » (unions plurielles) sur son territoire. « Il ne faut pas oublier que de nombreux législateurs de l'Utah et de l'Arizona descendent de familles polygames », explique John Dougherty, un journaliste local.

« Bienvenue chez les talibans américains », raille la jolie Sara qui, comme chaque samedi, est venue rendre visite à sa mère Shari, dixième des dix-neuf épouses de feu son père, Marion Hammon. « C'est ici, dit-elle, que j'ai grandi, avec 73 frères et soeurs, jusqu'à 14 ans, âge auquel j'ai enfin réussi à m'échapper. » Sara est nerveuse. « Ne restons pas là. Généralement, les intrus sont suivis et intimidés », prévient-elle, alors que le parking du modeste supermarché où elle nous a donné rendez-vous est en train de se remplir de clones de Pam, toutes entourées d'une armée d'enfants qui vous dévisagent, éberlués. La stupeur et le malaise sont mutuels. Surtout à l'apparition d'une figure émaciée au beau visage douloureux, qui arpente la rue dans un désoeuvrement apparemment total, engoncée dans la robe réglementaire informe. « C'est Ruth Cook, précise Sara. Elle a été chassée pour avoir osé tenir tête à son mari, une offense impardonnable ici. Ils ont réussi à la faire interner, et ses enfants ont été réaffectés à ses « sisters-wives » (soeurs-épouses). Elle a fini par revenir, car elle ne supportait pas l'éloignement. Mais c'est une paria. »

À Colorado City, seules les rues principales sont goudronnées. Les autres sont en terre battue. Elles sont bordées d'énormes maisons, pour la plupart en continuelle construction. Chacune abrite un homme, ses femmes et leur imposante progéniture. Selon la croyance des mormons fondamentalistes, un homme doit prendre au moins trois épouses pour accéder au paradis, que la femme, elle, ne peut atteindre que sur invitation de son mari. Mais le nombre trois n'est que le minimum requis. Rulon Jeffs, le père de Warren, avait soixante épouses. « Et comme les filles sont données en mariage encore adolescentes et que la contraception est interdite, précise Carolyn Jessop, qui elle aussi a fui ses racines, les foyers de soixante personnes ne sont pas rares. » Dans les jardins des colossales maisons, il est effectivement impossible de compter le nombre d'enfants. « Lorsque mon père rentrait le soir et qu'il croisait l'un de nous, il demandait toujours : « Comment t'appelles-tu, qui est ta mère ? », raconte Sara. Aujourd'hui encore, elle fait référence à ses 19 « mères », en les nommant mère Susan, mère Martha, et ainsi de suite... «Mais depuis que je suis devenue apostate, la seule qui me parle encore est ma vraie mère », avoue-t-elle.

Dans les familles polygames, la vie quotidienne des femmes est un purgatoire. Elles n'ont qu'un droit, celui de se taire pour obéir aveuglément au prophète ou, à défaut, aux sept membres de la prêtrise. « Le prophète les donne en mariage à qui bon lui semble, elles ne peuvent pas refuser », explique Sara. La polygamie étant interdite aux Etats-Unis, seule la première femme devient l'épouse légale. Ses « sisters-wives » sont épousées au cours de cérémonies religieuses. Aux yeux de la loi, elles ne sont que des concubines dont le statut de mères célibataires les autorise à « saigner la bête », c'est-à-dire le gouvernement qui, chaque année, verse environ 17 millions de dollars à la commune en subventions de toutes sortes.

L'inceste, les viols, les violences physiques sont monnaie courante à Colorado City. Mais les femmes sont bien trop terrifiées par les hommes pour oser dire quoi que ce soit. Et elles ne peuvent se plaindre ni à la police, ni aux élus, ni aux quelques éducateurs de l'unique école publique aujourd'hui désertée : tous polygames, ils sont tous complices. Sans plaintes et sans témoins, point d'arrestation. Et puis, c'est la seule existence qu'elles connaissent. Télévisions, radios et journaux sont fortement déconseillés. Quant aux jeunes hommes, ils sont chassés, eux aussi, en cas de rébellion. « Les hommes mûrs veulent garder les jeunes filles pour eux et, comme il n'y a plus assez de filles à se partager, ils se sont mis à excommunier les adolescents les plus forts », indique Sara. La terre appartenant à la secte, personne n'est à l'abri du bannissement. Et après une existence passée à obéir aveuglément, il est souvent impossible de partir. Ceux qui ont osé fuir mettent tous leurs espoirs dans le procès de Warren Jeffs. Ils pourraient bien être déçus. Le témoin principal, une adolescente donnée en mariage contre son gré, refuse maintenant de témoigner contre lui.

Posted by Perry at 01:53 PM

January 08, 2007

Jehovah Witness Suicide

Progressive U
http://www.progressiveu.org/
234028-jehovah-witness-suicide

Jehovah Witness Suicide By Christian Peper

Sunday 01/07/2007

Authors note: If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Teenagers can call the Covenant House NineLine at: 1-800-999-9999. Cries for help should never be discounted or ignored.

There is a long history of suicides within the Jehovah Witness Watchtower organization. Some experts have estimated the rate of suicides associated with the society to be five to ten times the rate of the general population. The exact number of suicides is impossible to obtain for a variety of reasons. Secular intuitions such as hospitals and police departments do not keep track of the religious organizations of the deceased. If institutions began to keep such records they would be accused of religious persecution. The American Psychiatric Association has moved towards a biological model of mental health. This causes non-biological causes of suicide to be discounted or ignored. The totalitarian Jehovah Witness Watchtower society knows of many suicides but will not admit guilt. The society has a long history of covering up damaging information. Evidence of the well documented child sexual assault cover up can be seen at this website: www.silentlambs.org/ Those that dare speak against the organization (Such as myself, Christian Peper) are harassed and denigrated by the cult.

The question must be asked: Why do Jehovah Witness members commit suicide at a rate far exceeding the general population? There are many contributing factors to Watchtower society suicide.

Jehovah Witness society members must devote a large portion of their life to serving the organization. Many members feel that if the society is wrong then they would prefer death to life. The massive investment must not have been in vain. After spending a long time in the organization many feel they have missed out on the things that make life interesting and special. Long time Witnesses have given up friends, family, holidays, education and a normal sex life. Facing what they have done with their lives is hard, suicide is easy. A quick pain then paradise in the cleansed world. Why not do it? If the organization is wrong, the member reason, then suicide is preferable to facing what he has done with his life. If they are picked the correct faith they will live forever on the new cleansed earth.

To a dedicated Jehovah Witness there is no heaven and no hell. There is only an upside to suicide; life in a perfect cleansed world. Witnesses see no downside to suicide. To a Withness having droughts about his faith, suicide makes perfect sense. He may reason: “If this organization is a scam I would rather be dead then live because I have already invested years of my life; if it is the true religion I will be raised from the dead and live in a perfect world”. Suicide for the long time member has a large upside but no down side.

Many worry they can’t make it to Armageddon in good standing with the organization. If the member falls out of favor with the organization then he or she will be killed in Armageddon with the rest of the non-Witnesses. Members commit suicide in the belief that they will only go to sleep for a short time and then wake up after Armageddon. They feel that they won’t really be dead so suicide is meaningless. The organization has told them if they die while in good standing they will wake up in paradise.

Suicide is an excellent way for Witnesses to “hedge” their bets. Suicide takes the place of leaving the organization. Witnesses know former members are shunned by their family and closest of friends. Members know that blackmail material the cult has collected on them will be held forever. Suicide avoids both the embarrassment and the pain associated with ritual shunning. If a Witness leaves the organization then rumors will be spread about their sexuality or other personal issues. Often blackmail material is combined with exaggeration and half truths to make the former Witness appear deviant and evil. Suicide is an easy way to avoid this. There is evidence some Witnesses give a final aggressive push by dedicating all of their efforts to field service before they kill themselves. This way they will be remembered by the society for their excellent record and increase their chance of being brought back to life after Armageddon. Who would not want an end to all worldly problems and then eternal life in a perfect world? Suicide is so easy, so beneficial.

The single most common reason for suicide among Jehovah Witnesses is the cults focus on death and destruction. Dedicated Witnesses want non-Witnesses to be killed. They want their fellow man to be executed by an angry god. Day after day an almost romantic lust for death and destruction is instilled in cult members. This death lust is stroked by a never ending stream of pictures and literature glorifying death and destruction. The following quotes illustrate Watchtower blood lust in action.

In the Watchtower 1952, November 15, (pp.703-704) issue disappointment is expressed that family members cannot be murdered for apostasy: "We are not living today among theocratic nations where such members of our fleshly family relationship could be exterminated for apostasy from God and his theocratic organization, as was possible and was ordered in the nation of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai and in the land of Palestine. "Thou shalt surely kill him; thy hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him to death with stones, because he hath sought to draw thee away from Jehovah thy God, . . . And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is in the midst of thee."—Deut. 13:6-11"

Perhaps if the Watchtower’s New World Order succeeds public executions will be commonplace.

In The Watchtower 1961, December 1 (pp 725-726) issue we read of the mass slaughter of mankind: "Never before in all human history will so many human creatures have been slaughtered. Blood, as representing human lives poured out, will run deep and over a vast distance. Revelation 14:20 paints the appalling picture, saying: "And the wine press was trodden outside the city [God’s organization], and blood came out of the wine press as high up as the bridles of the horses, for a distance of a thousand six hundred furlongs [or, 200 miles]." To a completion Jehovah’s judicial decision will be executed. The nations and their grapes of wickedness will be trampled out of existence, to leave the earth a cleansed place for the righteous to occupy and enjoy. Not all flesh will be in that symbolic wine press. Not all flesh will have its lifeblood trampled out of it. There are those who make Jehovah their refuge and their fortress. These will be kept safe and be preserved, while Jehovah by his King Jesus Christ crushes their enemies and His enemies in the wine press or "low plain of the decision."... With breathless awe they will have looked down from their safe heights into the valley of decision and witnessed how Jehovah gains his magnificent victory by Christ over all the combined nations of Satan’s visible organization."

In the Watchtower 1965 July 1 (p.415) issue cult members learn mankind deserves death: "As during Noah's day when Jehovah tempered his justice by deferring execution for 120 years, so today he tempers his justice by deferring his war, called "the war of the great day of God the Almighty." (Rev. 16:14) Since 1918, he has shown undeserved kindness toward disobedient mankind by holding back his executional forces in the heavens in order that some "flesh would be saved.""

Consider the blood lust within this quote from the Watchtower 1979 September 15. (p 28) issue: "For mere selfish reasons those political "shepherds" and "majestic ones" will "howl," yes, roll about on the ground. As the Sovereign Lord Jehovah calls them to account during the "great tribulation," they will grimly realize that the day has come for them to be slaughtered and scattered!. From the book released in 1984 “Survival Into a New Earth” we learn that dead bodies will feed the birds: True, as a result of the great destruction, the earth will be strewed with those slain by Jehovah. But no one knows better than God what needs to be done to safeguard the health of survivors. He tells us that he will invite the birds of heaven and the beasts of the field to his 'great evening meal' and that they will have their fill from the fleshy parts of those slain. What they do not consume he can dispose of by other means.""

The Watchtower 1999 December 1 (p.19) issue shows Jesus to be an executioner: "In the book of Revelation, Jesus announces several times: "I am coming quickly." (Revelation 2:16; 3:11; 22:7, 20a) He must yet come to execute judgment on Babylon the Great, Satan's political system, and on all humans who refuse to submit to Jehovah's sovereignty, as now expressed by the Messianic Kingdom."

Death to a Jehovah Witness is titillating and exciting; life in the Watchtower is boring. The only source of adventure and excitement for a good Witness is death and destruction. When a cult member finally gets their wish to see someone "executed" the irony is; that someone is them. They have been slowly executed; day by day, month by month, and year by year. Many Witnesses burn with an unnatural lust for death and destruction, when this lust is not satisfied they turn the lust for death inwards and hurt themselves. Long term exposure to the organization causes a desire to partake in the sacrament of death.

On April 2, 1997 Craig Button took off in his Air Force A-10 from an Arizona airstrip. After ending radio contact he flew the plane into the Colorado Rockies. The Air Force has since determined that Captain Button deliberately ended his own life. Why would a young man with so much to live for crash his plane into the mountains? Mr. Button was distraught due to his membership in the Jehovah Witness cult. A Jehovah's Witness publication was found next to Mr. Button’s bead that described the story of Abraham sacrificing his son on a mountain. The devout Jehovah Witness mother of Mr. Button strongly disapproved of his membership in the Air Force. Mr. Button had a desire to give a special “burnt offering” to the Watchtower society by crashing his plane into the mountain.

Often time’s suicide is combined with murder to increase the death rate and thus give a greater sacrament to the Watchtower society. One of many Watchtower murder-suicides took place in McMinnville, Ore on February 23, 2002. A long time Jehovah Witness family of six was found dead, killed by shot gun blasts. Mr. Robert Bryant had murdered his wife and four children before turning the gun on himself. It was learned that the family left California after being shunned by the Jehovah's Witnesses Shingle Springs congregation. There are many many well documented cases of suicide directly attributed to the Jehovah Witness Watchtower cult. What can the reader do? Never discount or ignore cries for help. It is absolutely vital that you warn your friends and neighbors about this cult. The life you save may be your own.

Posted by Perry at 03:44 PM

January 06, 2007

Loss of a Fortunate Son - The Jesus Christians

The Los Angeles Independent
http://www.laindependent.com/

Loss of a Fortunate Son

By ANNA SCOTT 28.DEC.06

Part 1 of 2

Eighteen-year-old Joseph Johnson was an academic star and basketball standout at a Southland high school, seemingly headed for college — before he joined a controversial religious sect you may have already encountered in the supermarket parking lot.

For Sheila Johnson, April 25 began like any other day — with a few exceptions.

She noticed that her son, Joseph, hugged her before leaving the house that morning, an unusual gesture for the 18-year old. And when he backed the car out of the driveway minutes later, Joseph waved good-bye to his parents, also unusual.

At the time, Sheila didn’t think much of it. But when Joseph returned home 10 days later, much had changed.

Things would continue to change for the Johnson family in the days following Joseph’s return, starting with a violent, early-morning confrontation, which led to Sheila becoming a defendant in an unusual “trial” that has brought a new wave of scrutiny to a controversial, religious group called the Jesus Christians. It is a group some believe is a cult, but that Joseph regards as his new family.

•••

By all outward appearances, Joseph Johnson seemed like the last teenager who would be contemplating a major life change. A handsome African-American boy with a wide smile and the lean build of an athlete, Joseph was a popular, straight-A student at his Gardena high school, where he was also a star point guard on the basketball team.

His basketball coach, Dwan Hurt, said that by Joseph’s senior year, prestigious college scholarship offers poured in and Joseph had expressed interest in becoming a doctor.

“He did everything fast,” said his mother, a substitute teacher for the Compton Unified School District, in a recent interview. “When he was about four months old, he made his first conversation, which was basically, ‘I love you.’ I was shocked. He started walking at seven months old; he was potty-trained early.”

That speed became an asset in sports, as Joseph quickly progressed from making his first basket at three years old to competing on basketball, baseball and football teams.

He was also a fast learner.

Joseph’s father, Jared, a math teacher for Compton Unified, began teaching Joseph to count as soon as his son could talk, later moving on to geometry, trigonometry and calculus.

The Johnsons, including Joseph’s older brother and younger brother and sister, attended a Pentecostal church each week and read the Bible together regularly throughout Joseph’s childhood.

In 2004, Sheila was shopping by herself at a Gardena supermarket when a young man approached her in the parking lot and introduced himself as a missionary with a group called the Jesus Christians. In exchange for a donation the missionary gave Sheila a book entitled “Survivors,” written by a man named Zion Ben Jonah, which Sheila took home and promptly forgot about.

A few days later Joseph, then 16, mentioned that he’d read it.

“He told me they had an Internet Web site or something,” Sheila said. “I didn’t think anything; I should have, but I didn’t. I didn’t think I had any reason to be concerned.”

Soon after, Joseph told Sheila he was thinking about doing missionary work for the Jesus Christians himself.

“We thought then, ‘This might be a cult, Joseph, so you better be careful,’” Sheila recalled. “We had a good talk with him … we mentioned Jim Jones and different cults and things like that, and it never came up anymore. Occasionally I would ask him, ‘Are you considering going off with this group?’ and he would say no. We thought that was the end of it.”

In fact, it was only the beginning.

•••

When he read “Survivors,” “the book touched upon truths that I had never come across in my past religious circle,” wrote Joseph — who left the Los Angeles area with the Jesus Christians several months ago and would not consent to a telephone interview — in a recent e-mail.

“Any sincere person would want to learn more from there.”

So Joseph visited the Web site address printed inside the front cover, www.jesuschristians.com. There, he found various articles explaining the philosophies and history of the Jesus Christians, and a public forum where members hosted often lively debates about their beliefs.

Founded in Australia in 1982 by an American, David McKay, and his wife, Cherry, the Jesus Christians define themselves as a “live-by-faith, work-for-God-not-money Christian community” against “hypocrisy and self-righteousness in the church.”

They claim to live by the teachings of Jesus as written, verbatim, in the Bible. Their “Top 40” list of Jesus’ commands, posted on their Web site, include: “Don’t work for food,” “Sell all that you own,” “Don’t charge for what you do,” and “Give to anyone who asks.”

Accordingly, members must give up their worldly possessions and live together 24-7, spending their days doing volunteer work and handing out Bible-based literature written by McKay (sometimes under the pseudonym Zion Ben Jonah) in exchange for donations.

There are only about 30 Jesus Christians in the world, spread out in small, nomadic, commune-like sub-communities in the U.S., Australia, England and Kenya. Each community operates autonomously, though members communicate regularly — with one another and with McKay, who shares an apartment in Sydney, Australia with Cherry — through their Web site forums

Sixteen-year old Joseph, after two weeks of poring over the articles posted on the Jesus Christians’ site, e-mailed a few of the U.S. members based on the West Coast.

One of the first to reply was Jeremy Kronmiller.

•••

Kronmiller, 28, has a crudely printed tattoo near his wrist, which he usually tries to cover with his shirt sleeves or bracelets.

“It says ‘Fortunate Son,’” he said in a recent interview, from the title of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song. “I really liked the meaning of it, so I got it … a friend did it for me and it looks horrible.

“We don’t really have any religious issues with tattoos or piercings or that kind of stuff.”

Kronmiller, who has blonde hair and a scruffy goatee, was seated at the tiny table in the back of the camper he calls home, parked across the street from Santa Monica College. He had spent the past week at the campus with another Jesus Christian named Simon Smith, 23, handing out copies of “Survivors.”

“I like the college crowd,” Kronmiller said. “Students are more receptive; they’re still trying to figure things out, whereas the older crowds are a little less receptive.”

In 2003, Kronmiller took a bus from his home state of Kansas to Los Angeles for a trial week with the Jesus Christians here, who shared a rented house in Compton at the time. He decided to stay on permanently, and not long after Kronmiller’s trial week had passed, the West Coast Jesus Christians decided to “go full-time on the road,” giving up their house.

Now, the group — which rotates as members travel between the U.S. and other countries where the Jesus Christians are based, and usually consists of five to 10 people — spends most of its time in campers.

Usually working in teams of two or three, the Jesus Christians wend their way up and down the California coast and occasionally out of state, “just trying to engage people in discussion and offering them this book [’Survivors’] that we feel has something to offer,” Kronmiller said.

In 2004, after exchanging a few e-mails with Kronmiller and some other members, then-16-year old Joseph decided he wanted to join the Jesus Christians.

“We said, ‘Your parents aren’t going to agree at this point,’” Kronmiller recalled. “‘Until you become a legal adult all we can do is share and encourage Jesus’ teachings with you.’”

For the next several months, Joseph kept in touch with the Jesus Christians while he continued to attend school and play basketball.

“Email correspondence fluctuated,” Joseph wrote in a recent e-mail, “but usually tinkered around once every two weeks.”

Approximately eight months after he first contacted the Jesus Christians, Joseph requested a face-to-face meeting to discuss their way of life. The Jesus Christians agreed, and different members of the group met with the teenager about 10 times over the course of the next year.

Kronmiller was among those who met with Joseph regularly.

“Joe arranged [the meetings],” Kronmiller said. “We’d always meet at McDonald’s or something, and he was still having some struggles with it. He was always worried that someone would be watching; he was always like, ‘I’ve got people that could know me around here,’ because he’s known as a really good basketball player.

“I guess it looked strange … here we are, these older white guys talking with him. So he would try to be discreet.”

In 2005, the Johnsons moved from Carson to Long Beach and Joseph transferred to Serra High School in Gardena for his senior year, where he picked up track and excelled as a sprinter.

He also turned 18 in November of that year.

In April, 2006, Joseph and his parents spent a weekend visiting several California colleges, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, USC and UCLA.

“I was quite worried … as my family, coaches and sports chums were all expecting me to sign with a university,” Joseph wrote in a recent post on the Jesus Christians’ Web site. “Still, I knew that I didn’t want to sign a contract to attend a four-year university; I wanted to join the Jesus Christians.”

So he sent Kronmiller an e-mail saying he finally was ready for a trial week.

On the morning of Tuesday, April 25, one day before the deadline to submit academic college scholarship applications, Joseph wrote a note to his parents saying that he had left to do missionary work and he knew they wouldn’t approve.

Then, instead of going to school, Joseph took a bus to New Mexico to meet up with Kronmiller and another Jesus Christian, 41-year old Reinhard Zeuner.

•••

On May 5, after 10 days with Kronmiller and Zeuner in New Mexico, Joseph was sure he wanted to join the Jesus Christians. The trio was heading back to L.A., Kronmiller says, and their first stop was to be the Johnson house so Joseph could tell his parents the news.

They arrived in Long Beach around 7 a.m., and “it was tense from the moment of arrival,” Kronmiller recalled. “They said something like, ‘How are you going to let these white people … put you back in slavery and bondage?’

Sheila, when she saw Joseph that morning, says she remembers wondering, ‘What in the world has happened to this kid? He seemed like a zombie. He just kept saying, ‘I have to do something for Jesus.’”

The mood became increasingly hostile, until “Eventually, [Jared] starts brutally shouting at us and throwing us out aggressively,” Kronmiller said.

According to Kronmiller, Jared followed Kronmiller and Zeuner outside, where Joseph’s older brother, John, pulled up to the curb in his car. Seeing John start toward himself and Zeuner, Kronmiller jumped the fence and ran.

When he turned back, halfway down the block, Kronmiller says he saw Joseph’s father and brother kicking Zeuner, who was unconscious on the Johnson’s lawn.

A crowd gathered, an ambulance was called and Zeuner — with Kronmiller riding along — was taken to the hospital, where he spent three days being treated for a fractured spine, broken teeth and brain trauma.

Joseph, who says he was held down in his bedroom by his younger brother, Josh, during the fight, stayed behind with his family.

Joseph’s father and brother have since been charged with assault, and Sheila would not comment on the fight because of the pending criminal case.

That afternoon, however, she and Jared took Joseph to the apartment of a Long Beach pastor named Prince Sullivan, whom Sheila had met the week before.

For several hours, “They went back and forth. [Sullivan] tried to read scriptures to Joseph and interpret them,” Sheila recalled. “At some point I can recall Joseph saying, ‘You’re trying to make me feel guilty.’ Whatever they had done, it was going to take longer than three hours to undo it.”

Sheila and Jared checked themselves and Joseph into a local hotel that night, putting their son in a separate room “to get his head straight,” Sheila said.

The next day, May 6, Joseph’s parents checked out, leaving the teenager at the hotel for another night in the hope that while alone, he would reconsider his involvement with the Jesus Christians.

Sometime during the evening of May 6, Joseph called Kronmiller and asked to rejoin his group. Kronmiller reluctantly agreed.

“We could see he still kept defending [his family], their actions,” Kronmiller said. “We said, ‘Look, this isn’t going to help us if you’re siding with them. Reinhard is in critical condition right now. You have to see there’s something wrong with this picture.’”

Nonetheless, the Jesus Christians allowed Joseph to return to one of their campers and stay with them for approximately three days.

During those three days, between May 6 and 9, Sheila says she received an intimidating e-mail from Jesus Christians founder David McKay.

“He told me, ‘You’re not going to hear from your son for a long, long time,’” Sheila said.

Sheila did see her son again, however, when he returned home again on the morning of May 9. That morning, Kronmiller says, “[the Jesus Christians] had to kick [Joseph] out of the community” for defending his family’s actions.

According to Sheila, when Joseph returned home on May 9, he asked her for $15,000 to give to the Jesus Christians.

“Joseph didn’t seem to have a problem with [asking for the money],” Sheila said. “It was like he was under some kind of spell … he just wasn’t himself.”

Later, Joseph went to the library in downtown Long Beach, Sheila says, where she suspects he may have been e-mailing the Jesus Christians.

“I went to pick him up,” she said. “He said he was thinking about getting out of the Jesus Christians … or something like that.”

According to an account posted on the Jesus Christians’ Web site, on May 9, “after leaving the community and returning home, [Joseph] had started to doubt what the Jesus Christians had been teaching, and to believe that he had been conned; but he sat down to pray and to read through the Gospel of Matthew.

“By the time he reached the end of it, he was convinced that … what the Jesus Christians were teaching was definitely consistent with what Jesus taught.”

Either way, Joseph called Kronmiller again that night.

This time, “We determined that it was safe, that he could actually come back and he wasn’t trying to set a trap for us,” Kronmiller said. “He started to work with us again and has been working with us ever since.”

Sheila would not see or speak to her son again until nearly five months later.

Joseph, who was up for valedictorian and salutatorian of his high school class, received a diploma but did not attend his high school graduation in June.

A Jury of His Peers Part 2 of 2

By ANNA SCOTT 04.JAN.07

The Jesus Christians carry out their unusual form of justice.

When Joseph Johnson decided to devote his life to Jesus Christ, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

But he might never have expected it to land him, on Oct. 7, 2006, in a Los Angeles middle school auditorium, waiting for his turn to be whipped.

Last April, just weeks shy of his high school graduation, the 18-year-old straight-A student and star athlete ran away from his parents’ home in Long Beach to join a radical religious community called the Jesus Christians, which some say is a cult.

When Joseph returned to his parents’ house one morning in early May with two other Jesus Christians to tell his family he’d joined the group, a fight broke out.

Jesus Christian Reinhard Zeuner, 41, ended up in the hospital for several days with skull and spine injuries, while Joseph’s father, Jared, (a teacher for the Compton Unified School District) and Joseph’s older brother, John, now face assault charges.

In response to Zeuner’s beating, the Jesus Christians decided to put Joseph’s family on the stand in a special sort of “trial.”

“Even amongst ourselves, we were heavily debating whether to do it or not,” Jesus Christian Jeremy Kronmiller, 28, said recently about the trial, which was held on Oct. 7. “We knew how the public could see it … we’ve gotten a lot of criticism before: ‘Crazy whipping cult.’”

Indeed, throughout their history, the Jesus Christians have been no stranger to controversy.

Continue reading "Loss of a Fortunate Son - The Jesus Christians"

Posted by Perry at 03:20 PM

Exclusive? That's the problem

The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/
exclusive-thats-the-problem/2007/01/04/
1167777215109.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

Barney Zwartz
January 5, 2007

A SMALL religious sect with scarcely 20,000 members in Australia has made a lot of headlines lately. Although members of the Exclusive Brethren are forbidden to vote, they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to influence elections in the US, New Zealand and Australia, both federal and state. They have sought special treatment under superannuation laws, workplace laws and the Family Court, illegally transferred tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and allegedly covered up child molestation.

Former members tell of extraordinary restrictions on Brethren, who are told where to live and work and who to marry, and of the cruel and total ostracism of those who leave.

Many mainstream Christians are a little embarrassed at what is being done by those claiming to share their religion and, with the wider community, a bit bewildered about what this narrow group is trying to achieve.

So what's wrong with the Exclusive Brethren? The answer is right there in the name.

Continue reading "Exclusive? That's the problem"

Posted by Perry at 03:11 PM

December 16, 2006

Self-taught historian offers in-depth views of FLDS

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4848553

12/15/2006

CANE BEDS, Ariz. - Ben Bistline can't see worth a darn, and a wood-trimmer took off the tip of his right index finger, which makes it hard as hell to type words that include, say, "h" or "m" or "j."
Still, the self-taught historian keeps plugging away at a new book about the polygamous sect that straddles the Utah/Arizona state line and its infamous leader, Warren S. Jeffs.
Bistline's previous works about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints aren't best-sellers. His first book, The Polygamists: A History of Colorado City, Arizona, is a roughly written chronicle that is currently No. 565,601 on Amazon.com's sales list. A condensed version, Colorado City Polygamists: An Inside Look for the Outsider, is No. 300,614.
But for those who want insider details about the polygamous sect led by Jeffs, now facing an April trial on two sex-crime charges, and its complicated, fractious history, Bistline's books are must-reads.
"Certainly, there is information there that can't be had anywhere else," said Marianne Watson, a Salt Lake historian and fundamentalist Mormon. "He is as up close and personal as you can get, being one of the people involved, yet far enough away so that is fairly accurate. I don't see bias overwhelming it."
Others do, though. "He definitely has an ax to grind," said Ken Driggs, an Atlanta attorney and FLDS historian.
The books also give a historical overview of the communal trust that owns virtually all property in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., homebase of the FLDS church. Until May 2005, the sect ran the trust and decided who could build or live in homes in the community.
The trust, now overseen by a court-appointed fiduciary, is being dismantled - a process that is of particular interest to Bistline, a plaintiff in a decade-long lawsuit against the trust in the 1980s.

'The Work': Today, Bistline, 71, and his wife, Annie, 68, live in a double-wide trailer off a washboard, red-dirt road in Cane Beds, a small community two miles south of the Utah border.
Cane Beds is a live-and-let-live place; Bistline describes his far-flung neighbors as "mostly rednecks" and "ex-Creeker kids."
As he talks, Annie sits in the kitchen, bottling peaches and filling in details when Ben stumbles for a name or date.
He moved to Short Creek, as the twin towns were once known, when he was 10. Bistline was 18 when Arizona authorities staged the infamous 1953 raid on the community, sending the men to jail and taking custody of the women and children.
Among them: then-15-year-old Annie, whom Bistline planned to marry.
Bistline was among about 40 residents of Utah left behind. He worked at a sawmill near Bryce Canyon and sent off frequent letters to Annie. When she returned to the community in 1955, they married and eventually had 16 children.
As a younger man, Bistline supported his family through timbering and construction. In those days, Bistline was a staunch supporter of "The Work," as the fundamentalist Mormon movement was called.
"I totally believed I needed to be a polygamist to reach the highest level of heaven," he said.
But church leaders rebuffed his requests for a second wife, and by 1975, Bistline had determined that entering plural marriage required the right family connections rather than sincere faith. Doubt set in.
"I began," he said, "to reason things out."

Losing faith: Ever so slowly. It took Bistline 20 years to give up his beliefs and break with the sect, a process aided by friends he made in the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among them: Dale Stout, then-mayor of Hurricane; Henry Richards, then a regional area president for the LDS Church; and Max Anderson, who was working on his book Polygamy: Fact or Fiction, a criticism of fundamentalist Mormon beliefs.
"I started studying everything I could get about fundamentalist history," Bistline said. "I could see Max was right."
But accepting that conclusion wasn't easy. "It was my life, my family, my relatives," he said.
Bistline's final parting came after sect leaders evicted his brother from a home on land owned by the FLDS church's United Effort Plan (UEP) trust, a move he saw as mean-spirited since the brother was in the process of moving anyway.
"That was the point when I decided I didn't want anything to do with these nincompoops," said Bistline, who joined the LDS Church 15 years ago.

Continue reading "Self-taught historian offers in-depth views of FLDS"

Posted by Perry at 03:48 PM

December 15, 2006

Polygamist church battered; April trial set for Jeffs

Dennis Wagner

The Arizona Republic
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/
news/articles/1215jeffs1215new.html

Dec. 15, 2006

When a Utah judge on Thursday ordered polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs to stand trial on charges of being an accomplice in the rape of a 14-year-old girl, it was just one more hurdle in a legal gantlet facing the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and its estimated 12,000 members.

For centuries, forces of nature in the Arizona Strip sculpted rust-colored bluffs overlooking the polygamist communities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. Now, winds of change are ripping at the bedrock of those towns: the FLDS.

As Jeffs, known as the prophet, sits in a Utah jail awaiting the April 23 trial, a wide government campaign churns on against nearly every facet of sect members' lives:

• Eight other churchmen face charges in Mohave County on conspiracy and sexual conduct with minors.

• The Colorado City Unified School District, taken over by a court-appointed receiver and a new board of education, has replaced church members who served as trustees, administrators and teachers.

• The Police Department remains under investigation after allegations that its officers are more devoted to Jeffs than to law enforcement.

• The church and its leaders face lawsuits filed by former members who were expelled amid power struggles.

• Jeffs and his followers have lost control of the United Effort Plan, an FLDS trust that oversees $110 million in assets, including nearly all the congregants' homes and businesses.

• Colorado City and Hildale residents appear to be suffering amid unemployment, tax-collection efforts and faltering businesses.

Some have fled the Arizona-Utah towns to join satellite communities in Texas, Colorado, South Dakota and British Columbia. What remains unclear is whether the government initiatives will strengthen the community's resolve or force it to dissolve.

"I see a huge internal combustion of some sort for the FLDS," said Ed Firmage, a University of Utah law professor who believes polygamy ought to be legal.

Others say church members are becoming more zealous and insular.

"They regard it as a test of their faith, and the more the Lord tests them, the more they're going to prove their faith," said Rodney Parker, an attorney who unsuccessfully defended a Colorado City police officer against bigamy charges in Utah. "True believers, they're sticking with Jeffs."

One example of that attitude is exemplified by a note Colorado City Marshal Fred Barlow wrote while Jeffs was a fugitive. In the letter, seized by authorities, Barlow assures Jeffs that his peace officers are following the prophet's directives. He explains how authorities are investigating and disrupting FLDS members, including the Police Department. Finally, he writes, "I rejoice in the tests, and hope and pray that I will not offend God. . . . I love you and acknowledge you as my priesthood head."

The FLDS is not affiliated with mainstream Mormonism, which bans polygamy.

Critics, including many former members, say the FLDS perpetuates pedophilia, fraud, bigamy and tax evasion.

Defenders say the sect is a victim of religious and cultural intolerance.

Jeffs continues guiding his flock from behind bars, sending directives via letters, calls and visitors. His legal plight, meanwhile, seems to symbolize the fate of his church.

During hearings, police snipers and SWAT members hover around the courthouse in St. George, Utah. Inside, the case hinges on legal intricacies and the words of a young woman who says she was forced into a "spiritual marriage" with a cousin when she was 14.

The accuser, now 20, gave tearful testimony during preliminary hearings, describing her horror when marital bonds were consummated.

Jeffs has pleaded not guilty to two charges of being an accomplice to rape. A trial is scheduled for April 23 in Washington County, Utah.

"The strength of this case is the emotional content of the witness statements," said Parker, who unsuccessfully defended Colorado City police Officer Rodney Holm.

In the Holm case, Parker said that he asserted that the criminal acts may have taken place across the state line in Arizona, but jurors "just had no patience for that type of argument."

In court motions in Jeffs' case, defense attorney Walter Bugden Jr. argued that prosecutors could not prove the accuser had been sexually assaulted by her husband, let alone that Jeffs had directed or sanctioned non-consensual sex.

Defense lawyers may also attempt to paint Jeffs as a victim of religious persecution, a notion that already has been advanced outside the courtroom.

On the other hand, Holm employed some of those strategies in his 2003 trial for bigamy and sexual contact with a 16-year-old, one of three spiritual wives. He was found guilty; the conviction was upheld by Utah's Supreme Court.

Reach the reporter at dennis .wagner@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8874.

Posted by Perry at 05:29 PM

December 08, 2006

Polygamist Leader on Larry King

December 8, 2006 at 9-10 p.m. ET.

CNN - Larry King Live

He was ousted by captured polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and took about half of the church with him. Is Winston Blackmore still living the lifestyle?

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/

Posted by Perry at 02:58 PM

November 24, 2006

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.

Continue reading "U.S. Taxpayers Support Alleged Cult"

Posted by Perry at 05:37 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.

Continue reading "Life Foundation Guru Alleged Sexual Predator"

Posted by Perry at 04:39 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."

Continue reading "A Prophet in Purgatory"

Posted by Perry at 03:08 PM

November 17, 2006

Alleged Cult Sows Seeds Via Campus Event

A religious group hosts an on-campus fashion show, an event that could be linked to a web that includes Interpol, South Korea and alleged rape.

The UCSD Guardian, Issue 11, Volume 118 Friday, November 17, 2006

The official newspaper of the University of California, San Diego.
http://ucsdguardian.org/
viewarticle.php?story=news
03&year=2006&month=11&day=13

By Matthew McArdle, News Editor

Members of a controversial religious group, led by an international fugitive wanted for numerous instances of alleged rape and sexual assault of female members, recently held an event at UCSD, which included a modeling show featuring young women, singing and videotaped religious messages from the group's founder — hallmarks of the group's tactics to recruit new members.

The group, known as the Global Association of Culture and Peace, was established by 61-year-old South Korean national Jung Myung Seok, who also goes by the name Joshua Jung. The group, widely regarded by international press as a cult, also goes by several other names, including JMS, Providence, Setsuri and the Bright Smile Movement.

Jung, who established the cult nearly three decades ago, has been wanted by both Interpol and the South Korean government since 1999 after rape allegations became public, according to several Asian newspaper reports.

Jung was formally charged with rape in 2001, and was captured in Hong Kong in 2003, but posted his own bail and avoided South Korean extradition charges. His whereabouts have been unknown since then, although he is rumored to be hiding in China, according to Peter Daley, an English professor at South Korea's Keimyung University and a dedicated critic of Jung who established an extensive Web site aimed at exposing GACP's activities after his roommate became involved with the cult.

Since the allegations became public, numerous other women have come forward with similar accusations. According to July reports from Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, more than 100 women have said they were sexually abused or raped by Jung under the pretense of religious purification.

"There is a history of abuse with this group," Daley said. "So many girls get raped by its leader."

Continue reading "Alleged Cult Sows Seeds Via Campus Event"

Posted by Perry at 02:28 PM

November 09, 2006

Le gourou et «ses brebis égarées»/ The Guru & His Lost Sheep

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

Le gourou et «ses brebis égarées»
Vénéré par ses proches, l'ancien brocanteur avait édicté les règles de sevrage très dures.

Par Eric FAVEREAU
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/societe/215701.FR.php
mercredi 8 novembre 2006

Libération

Lucien Engelmajer, c'était d'abord un visage, une barbe surtout. L'homme a toujours eu cette allure de grand-père, certes sévère mais si... bon. Les non-initiés l'appelaient le Patriarche ; les proches, Lucien. Ces derniers en parlaient avec chaleur, le vénéraient. Discutaient sans fin de sa disponibilité. Tous avaient eu le même itinéraire. C'est-à-dire des années de drogue et de galères, et pas un lieu qui ne voulait les accueillir. Sauf à la Boère, près de Toulouse, dans le château de Lucien.

Pris en charge. Une bien belle réussite pour cet ancien brocanteur qui décida, au début des années 70, de créer une communauté pour accueillir marginaux et toxicomanes. Une communauté totalement centrée sur lui. On sait peu de chose sur la jeunesse du Patriarche. C'est lui qui édicta, dès 1972, les règles du lieu. Elles étaient intangibles. Quand on arrivait à la Boère, il fallait tout laisser. On prenait vos papiers, votre argent. Pendant cinq jours se déroulait la cure de désintoxication. Dans le secret. Enfermé dans une pièce avec un ex-toxico qui était déjà passé par là. Ensuite ? Le pensionnaire, qui n'avait toujours pas droit de reprendre ses papiers, était pris en charge. Il devait retaper des vieilles fermes, ou vendre le journal de l'association, Antitox . Ils n'étaient pas payés. Mais qui s'en plaignait ? Des médecins de la région lui apportaient sa caution. Et les familles d'un grand nombre de pensionnaires le défendaient avec force, soulagées que leur enfant «ne se détruise plus». Et c'était vrai qu'à l'époque très peu de structures les prenaient en charge.

Pendant des années, cela a marché. Dans l'indifférence, voire la complaisance des pouvoirs publics. L'association s'est développée, a grandi, recueillant dans toute l'Europe des fonds au profit des toxicomanes. Certains des pensionnaires qui s'enfuyaient étaient pourchassés, menacés. Car, lorsqu'on le critiquait, le Patriarche pouvait être d'une extrême violence verbale. Ainsi, lors de reportages pour la télévision, on le voyait hurler contre «ces brebis égarées, sans aucune gratitude». En 1995, l'association détenait, rien qu'en France, 67 centres accueillant près de 2 500 ex-toxicomanes.

Putsch. En 1998, tout a basculé lors d'une sorte de putsch interne, resté bien mystérieux. Le Patriarche, qui vivait alors à Miami, présidait une réunion de responsables de l'association. «Depuis quelque temps, cela n'allait plus, racontait alors à Libération Stéphane Hédiard, longtemps secrétaire particulier de Lucien Engelmajer. Il dérapait. Il n'était plus intéressé que par ses histoires de braderies, de collectes d'argent, et ses investissements immobiliers.» Puis : «Vous savez, il n'était plus en état d'assumer ses fonctions» ( Libération du 25 mars 1998).

Depuis, Lucien Engelmajer n'apparaît plus. Ses proches ont pris la relève. On dit que Lucien vit à Belize. A côté de plaintes pour détournements de fonds, d'autres poursuites sont engagées pour «viols ou tentatives de viols».

The Guru & His Lost Sheep

Release.

Lucien Engelmajer, it was initially a face, a beard especially. The man always had this pace of grandfather, certainly severe but if… good. The uninitiated persons called it the Patriarch; close relations, Lucien. The latter spoke about it with heat, venerated it. Discussed without end its availability. All had had the same route. I.e. years of drug and galères, and not a place which did not want to accomodate them. Except in Boère, close to Toulouse, in the castle of Lucien. Dealt with. A quite beautiful success for this former second-hand dealer who decided, at the beginning of the Seventies, to create a community to accomodate marginal and drug addicts. A community completely centered on him. One knows little thing about the youth of the Patriarch. It is him which enacted, since 1972, the rules of the place. They were intangible. When one arrived at Boère, it was necessary all to leave. Your papers, your money were taken. During five days was held the cure of detoxication. In the secrecy. Locked up in a part with a ex-toxico which had already passed by there. Then? The boarder, who still did not have right to take again his papers, was dealt with. He was to repair old farms, or to sell the newspaper of association, Antitox. They were not paid. But which complained some? Doctors of the area brought his guarantee to him. And the families of a great number of boarders defended it with force, relieved that their child “does not destroy himself any more”. And it was true that at the time very little of structures dealt with them. During years, that went. In the indifference, even the kindness of the authorities. Association developed, grew, collecting in all Europe of the funds to the profit of the drug addicts. Some of the boarders who fled were pursued, threatened. Because, when it was criticized, the Patriarch could be of an extreme verbal violence. Thus, at the time of reports for television, one saw it howling against “these mislaid ewes, without no gratitude”. In 1995, association held, only in France, 67 centers accomodating nearly 2.500 ex-drug addicts. Putsch. In 1998, all rocked at the time of a kind of putsch internal, remained quite mysterious. The Patriarch, who lived then in Miami, chaired a meeting of persons in charge for association. “For some time, that did not go any more, told then with Libération Stephan Hédiard, a long time particular secretary of Lucien Engelmajer. It skidded. It was more interested only by its stories of annual stock sales, money collections, and its investments real.” Then: “You know, it was not more in a position to take up its duties” (Release of March 25, 1998). Since, Lucien Engelmajer does not appear any more. Its close relations took the changing. It is said that Lucien lives in Belize. Concurrently to felt sorry for for embezzlements, other continuations are committed for “rapes or attempts at rapes”.

Posted by Perry at 03:24 PM

Insaisissable Patriarche Fondateur d'une multinationale de la désintoxication est accusé avec quatorze proches d'abus de biens sociaux/Founder of Cult-like Addiction Treatment on Trial

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

http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/societe/215702.FR.php

Par Gilbert LAVAL
Libération
mercredi 8 novembre 2006
Villefranche-de-Lauragais envoyé spécial

Le fondateur du Patriarche, qui savait désintoxiquer les toxicomanes, n'assistera pas à son procès pour abus de biens sociaux et emploi de travailleurs clandestins. A 86 ans, Lucien Engelmajer n'a pas eu le courage de quitter l'Amérique centrale et Belize, dont il est devenu citoyen, pour échapper à deux mandats d'arrêt internationaux. Comparaissent en revanche depuis lundi huit de ses collaborateurs et six de ses enfants pour complicité d'abus de biens sociaux, abus de faiblesse, abus de confiance, blanchiment et recel.

Liechtenstein. Les 14 prévenus présents se pressent dans une toute petite salle correctionnelle de Villefranche-de-Lauragais (Haute-Garonne). Le professeur de médecine, ex-député RPR, Jean-Paul Séguéla dit «ne pas savoir ce qu'[il] fait» sur le banc des prévenus. Il conteste avoir bénéficié de prêts gratuits du Patriarche à hauteur de 6 millions de francs et nie avoir abusé de la carte bancaire de l'Organisation internationale Lucien Engelmajer. Tel comptable du Patriarche comprend à peine qu'on lui reproche d'avoir puisé sur des comptes au Liechtenstein. Telle autre ne voit pas en quoi masquer des prélèvements par jeux d'écritures constitue une complicité d'abus de confiance. Preuve, selon son avocat, de son innocence, François Engelmajer, un des fils de Lucien, est revenu des Etats-Unis, malgré son mandat d'arrêt, pour «en finir une fois pour toutes» avec la mauvaise querelle qui lui serait faite. Quant aux cinq autres fils et filles du fondateur, plaide Me Simon Cohen : «Pourquoi se seraient-ils interrogés sur la provenance des fonds qui étaient régulièrement virés sur leur compte?» Lucien Engelmajer «était un bon père, voilà tout». Il était surtout un magicien du porte-monnaie en même temps qu'un gourou pour ses pensionnaires (lire ci-dessous).

Liquidités. Les cures s'avérant efficaces, dons et subventions ont plu sur les 210 centres ouverts dans 17 pays. Comme les 6,6 millions de francs annuels du ministère de la Santé «sans aucun contrôle ni production d'un rapport d'activité», relève la Cour des comptes. Autre rentrée de liquidités : la vente en Europe des 400 000 exemplaires d' Antitox . Un mensuel conçu et vendu dans la rue par des toxicomanes non salariés. «De l'esclavagisme ?» interroge Me Pesenti, avocat de trente anciens toxicos qui travaillaient à l'oeil. L'instruction indique que 100 millions de francs ont pu circuler entre la Suisse, le Luxembourg ou le Liechtenstein. Il y a aussi la Boère, le château du Patriarche près de Toulouse, au centre d'une galaxie de huit associations en France, 8 sociétés commerciales en Europe et en Amérique et 4 holdings au Luxembourg.
L'inscription du Patriarche au répertoire des sectes dans le rapport parlementaire de 1995 et des plaintes de pensionnaires pour abus de confiance, et même viols, ont enrayé la machine. Le patrimoine immobilier de l'association était passé «de 0 à 41 millions de francs» entre 1993 et 1994. Le procès se poursuit à Villefranche-de-Lauragais pendant une semaine.

Founder of Cult-like Addiction Treatment on Trial

The founder of the Patriarch, who could detoxicate the drug addicts, will not attend his trial for abuse social goods and use of clandestine workers. At 86 years, Lucien Engelmajer did not have courage to leave the Central America and Belize, from which he became citizen, to escape two international warrants for arrest. Have appeared on the other hand for Monday eight of his/her collaborators and six of its children for complicity of abuse social goods, abuse weakness, breach of trust, bleaching and concealment. Liechtenstein. 14 the prevented present ones is had a presentiment of in a very small correctional room of Villefranche-of-Lauragais (Haute-Garonne). The professor of medicine, RPR former deputy, Jean-Paul Séguéla known as “to know only [it] made” about the bench of prevented. It disputes to have profited from free loans of the Patriarch to height of 6 million frank and denies to have misused the bank card of the international Organization Lucien Engelmajer. Such accountant of the Patriarch hardly understands that one reproaches him for having drawn on accounts in Liechtenstein. Such other does not see in what to mask taking away by dummy entries constitutes a complicity of breach of trust. Proof, according to its lawyer, from its innocence, François Engelmajer, one of wire of Lucien, returned from the United States, in spite of its warrant for arrest, “to finish some once and for all” with the bad quarrel which would be made to him. As for the five others wire and girls of the founder, pleads to Me Simon Cohen: “Why they would have wondered about the source of the funds which were regularly transfered on their account?” Lucien Engelmajer “was a good father, here all”. He was especially a magician of porte-monnaie at the same time as a guru for his boarders (to read below). Liquidities. The cures proving to be effective, gifts and subsidies liked on the 210 centers open in 17 countries. Like the 6,6 million frank annual the ministry for Health “without any control nor production of a management report”, raises the Court of Auditors. Another re-entry of liquidities: the sale in Europe of the 400.000 specimens of Antitox. A monthly magazine designed and sold in the street by nonpaid drug addicts. “Of the slave system?” question to Me Pesenti, lawyer of thirty old toxicos which worked with the eye. The instruction indicates that 100 million frank could circulate between Switzerland, Luxembourg or Liechtenstein. There is also Boère, the castle of the Patriarch close to Toulouse, in the center of a galaxy of eight associations in France, 8 commercial companies in Europe and America and 4 holdings in Luxembourg. The inscription of the Patriarch to the repertory of the sects in the parliamentary report/ratio of 1995 and of the complaints of boarders for breach of trust, and even rapes, stopped the machine. The real inheritance of association had passed “from 0 to 41 million frank” between 1993 and 1994. The lawsuit continues with Villefranche-of-Lauragais during one week.

Posted by Perry at 03:14 PM

November 06, 2006

All in the name of God

by Gina-Silva from Los Angeles
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/Gina-Silva/2006/11/02/All_in_the_name_of_God

Nov 2, 2006 | 10:54 PM

They call themselves Jesus Christians. They hand over their possesions, cut ties with their families and some, even give away parts of their bodies. Why? One member tells me, "When you die you lose everything anyway, so why not give it up to God now?" The members are mostly young men following the rules of their leader David Mckay. A former member of the religious group known as "The Children of God".

Some say the Jesus Christians are a dangerous cult. Mckay denies it and he allowed me full access into the private world of Jesus Christians to dispel those accusations. To my surprise, the access was unprecedented. Our cameras captured candid interviews, mind blowing punishments and emotional confrontations with the parents and friends of one young, Jesus Christian.

Monday [Nov 6/06] night on the Fox 11 ten o'clock news, I've got an exclusive report on this group and the devasted families left behind. I'll warn you now, some of the images are disturbing.

[The following link leads to the video. Copy & paste into your browser]
http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/News/
Detail?contentId=1407258&version=2&
locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.1.1

Posted by Perry at 03:35 PM

Ex-wife of polygamist tells tales of greed, murder and escape

Janet O / News4 Reporter
http://www.kxly.com/news/index.php?sect_rank=1§ion_id=559&story_id=6066

Monday, November 06th, 2006

SPOKANE -- When Susan Ray Schmidt’s parents decided to join what she calls a cult, Schmidt says she had no choice but to grow up with Fundamentalist Mormon teachings.

“You live in a situation like this, and there’s a lot of fanaticism and brainwashing,” she says.

Schmidt’s story unfolds like any dramatic Hollywood film, except this is based on real life. It’s a life she details in her new book, “His Favorite Wife”. Her story captures the greed, envy and murders that drove her once and for all to escape.

“I was just a young girl when my mom and dad joined a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church,” Schmidt says. “I was 15 when I became the sixth wife of one of the leaders of the church. His name was Verlan LeBaron.”

In the 1940s the excommunicated LeBaron clan formed the Church of the First Born in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Verlan was one of five LeBaron brothers who started the church. It was Ervil LeBaron who first convinced Susan that God wanted her to become part of the clan.

“He was called the “Mormon Manson,” Schmidt says. Ervil LeBaron masterminded 30 murders, including his pregnant daughter, Rebecca, and the church patriarch, Joel LeBaron.

“He did what was called blood atonement killings,” Schmidt says. “It was a power thing. He wanted to take leadership of the church.”

Her husband, Verlan LeBaron, went into hiding, in fear that he would be next on the hit list. For Susan, even before this breaking point, she says she was jaded with the church teachings and lifestyle. She planned her escape.

“I was very disillusioned, for the church cared for my husband,” Schmidt said. “I did not want my children raised in polygamy.

“Unbeknownst to him, when I asked my father, ‘Please, take me with you on a trip to Utah’, he thought I was going on vacation. I packed my bags and knew I was leaving.”

Schmidt says Verlan LeBaron couldn’t come after her because she knew the law would be on her side. With five children in tow, she decided to start a new life. She now lives in Twin Falls, Idaho.

“Lonely wives, children without a father...I don’t believe that’s God’s perfect will,” Schmidt says.

Schmidt says she wants people to understand what drives people to live a life of polygamy, and what it was like being a part of the LeBaron cult. She hopes her story of strength inspires other young girls from getting trapped in her situation.

Posted by Perry at 03:17 PM

Lucien Engelmayer et Jean-Paul Séguéla jugés à partir de lundi dans l'affaire du "Patriarche" en Haute-Garonne/ Leaders of Alleged Cult to Stand Trial

[A rough online English translation follows]

Nouvel Observateur
http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/societe/20061105.FAP2418.html?2103

05.11.06

TOULOUSE (AP)
Dix-sept personnes sont jugées à partir de lundi devant le tribunal correctionnel de Villefranche-de-Lauragais (Haute-Garonne) pour "abus de faiblesse", "abus de confiance", "recel", "blanchiment d'argent" et "abus de biens sociaux" dans l'affaire du "Patriarche", a-t-on appris de sources judiciaires.

Le principal accusé, absent du procès, sera jugé par défaut. Lucien Engelmajer, dit le Patriarche, fondateur de l'association "Le Patriarche" classée comme secte, est en fuite en Amérique centrale.
Parmi les accusés, figurent huit membres de la famille du Patriarche, ainsi que Jean-Paul Séguéla, ancien d�