- May 10, 2006 'Rita Cosby Live & Direct' for May 9, MSNBC TV
Read the transcript to the Tuesday show...
...cult survivor, Carrie Andreson. Also with us is Bob Pardon. He's a cult exit counselor and the director of Meadow Haven, a center for recovering cult members...
COSBY: Cary, you got involved in a cult, when you were, what, 19 years old, is that right?
CARRIE ANDRESON, CULT SURVIVOR: Yes.
COSBY: What was so appealing?...
...ANDRESON: Well, I was at college. He was very charismatic. He was very fervent in his mission of wanting to help humanity. And that appealed to the good will inside of me.
COSBY: And when you say he, you're talking about the leader himself.
ANDRESON: Yes, he was a grad student at the college I attended...
...ANDRESON: Not at all. I had a lot of misconceptions about cults...I thought that they all were isolated and that they wouldn't be on a college campus. And so I wasn't aware of the signs to look out for...
...COSBY: You know, what did you experience while you were in the cult?
What kind of abuse, physical and mental?
ANDRESON: I would say the mental abuse was the most severe. Although there was a lot of physical torture as well. And because of all the sleep deprivation and the food deprivation, it really beats you down so that you're willing to just buy into a lot of different reasonings that you wouldn't normally.
COSBY: You just break down because you're so exhausted physically and mentally?
ANDRESON: Exactly. You're not able to have time to think, to question your leader. And you're always tattling on one another in the cult, so, really, there's no safe place to be within the cult...
...COSBY: How do they get away? How do they leave the cults?...
- October 1, 2005 MSUM bans suspected cult leader, By Dave Forster, The Forum,
North Dakota
The sighting of a wanted cult leader at Minnesota State University Moorhead has prompted a campus alert for students and staff.
Feroze Golwalla, a 42-year-old man who professes to be a Christian missionary to the Parsee people of Southeast Asia, was recognized near Bridges Hall on Sept. 9, school officials said...
...MSUM officials have asked students to report any sightings of Golwalla. He hasn�t been spotted since Sept. 9, Hamilton said...
- June 20, 2004 Prayer led to pain for cult victims, By Meg McSherry Breslin, Tribune staff reporter, Chicago Tribune, Illinois (When she joined a fledgling missionary group at evangelical Wheaton College, Carrie Andreson expected to grow closer to God.
She and other students would gather mornings in graduate student Feroze Golwalla's apartment to pray and plan for an overseas...)
- March 28, 2004 Wheaton defends cult position, By Dave Wedge, Boston Herald, Massachusetts (Officials at an Illinois Christian college are firing back amid swirling criticism that they allowed a controversial cult leader to recruit students on campus, including three Bay Staters who say they were later tortured.
Reacting to a Herald report on the alleged atrocities of Baruch Ha Shem leader Feroze Golwalla, Wheaton College officials claim they were unaware of any abuse...) (Photo of Feroze Golwalla included.)
- March 26, 2004 College responds to cult claims, Chicago Daily Herald, Illinois (Wheaton College officials on Thursday said they have no knowledge of any abusive acts occurring on campus in relation to an alleged cult leader while he was enrolled there.
College officials released a two-page statement in response to a Boston newspaper's report that the parents of several former Wheaton College students claim their children were lured into a physically abusive cult controlled by another student, Feroze Golwalla, a graduate student there from August 1999 to May 2001...)
- March 25, 2004 Wheaton College responds to cult allegations, Wheaton College News, Illinois (The mission of Wheaton College is to prepare whole and effective Christians for lives of selfless service to church and society. Wheaton College therefore unequivocally condemns abusiveness of any sort. In fact, we consider abuse of the sort alleged in the �Parsee Ministry Team� led by Feroze Golwalla to be particularly egregious, and grieve with the victims of any such abuse and their families.
Feroze Golwalla was a graduate student at Wheaton College from August 1999 through May 2001, when he graduated with a Master of Arts degree. The allegations of abuse that surfaced later appear to relate to events that took place after Mr. Golwalla was no longer enrolled at Wheaton College...)
- March 25, 2004 Parents: 'Evil Cult Leader' Lured Wheaton Students, NBC5.com, WMAQ Chicago, Illinois (CHICAGO -- The families of three former students at Wheaton College said they are considering suing the school, claiming that college officials failed to protect their children from a person they said is an "evil cult leader."
According to the Boston Herald, parents said that the man, 36-year-old Feroze Golwalla, lured their children into a cult that engaged in ritualistic torture. Golwalla, the paper further reported, was known for recruiting students on the campus, and parents reported his controversial practices to college officials on several occasions, ex-members told the paper...)
- March 25, 2004 Ex-Wheaton students flee what they call 'definitely evil' cult, by CATHLEEN FALSANI Religion Reporter, Chicago Sun Times, Illinois via FindArticles
Several former Wheaton College students have escaped from a small, physically abusive cult controlled by a fellow student at the prestigious evangelical Christian college, according to the deprogrammer who helped them regain their freedom.
The deprogrammer, Bob Pardon, a former pastor and founder of the New England Institute of Religious Research, a clearinghouse for cult information in Massachusetts, said the former Wheaton students had been living communally in Maryland and Texas with Feroze Golwalla, 40, the Pakistani-born cult leader who recruited them while he was a graduate student at Wheaton in the early 2000s...
- March 21, 2004 'Monstrous' fanatic lures ordinary folks, By Dave Wedge, Boston Herald, Massachusetts (Andrew Wolfe graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2001 with a degree in linguistics and a minor in biblical translation...
..."Nobody joins a cult. You join an interesting organization and over time it changes," Wolfe, 24, explains.
Wolfe said he joined Feroze Golwalla's Parsee Ministry Team - also known as Baruch Ha Shem - because he felt Golwalla was a "very earnest, zealous man of prayer."...
... The twin brothers and other male followers allegedly were whipped, beaten, molested and tortured by Golwalla, who is wanted on assault charges in Maryland. They were also made to abuse each other, Wolfe says...)
- March 21, 2004 Students' tale of cult 'evil' - By Dave Wedge, Boston Herald, Massachusetts (The cult's leader, Feroze Golwalla, was notorious for recruiting students on the suburban Illinois campus of Wheaton College...Golwalla's controversial tactics had been reported several times to school administrators by parents of students who fled the high-control group, according to ex-members...
...Golwalla, 36, is wanted by Maryland state police on assault charges stemming from severe beatings he allegedly unleashed on Wolfe and his twin brother, Benjamin, in the basement of Golwalla's brother's Mount Airy, Md., home in 2002...)
- October 3 - 9, 2003 FOLLOW-UP, by Chris Wright, Boston Phoenix, Massachusetts (Tracking terror
All in all, it's been a good year for Christina Wolfe.
In May, Wolfe's 24-year-old son Andrew was extracted from a small Christian group � some would call it a cult � headed by a self-proclaimed envoy of God named Feroze Golwalla (see "Bob Pardon to the Rescue," News and Features, June 27). Things got even better for the Wolfe family in June, when Andrew�s twin brother, Benjamin, was removed from the same group. "I cannot put into words how wonderful this is," says Wolfe. "It�s such a relief. A mother could never describe how good this feels."
Spearheaded by local anti-cult activist Bob Pardon, the extraction of Andrew and Benjamin from Golwalla�s group liberated them from a situation that was, as they tell it, the stuff of nightmares � beatings, psychological torture, and depravations the family would rather not reveal in public. Today, the brothers are recovering at Meadow Haven, Pardon�s Massachusetts-based rehabilitation facility. And yet Wolfe is well aware that her boys� ordeal is far from over. "I�m scared at how much they still have to go through," she says. "They suffered terribly. They have to put their lives back together."...)
Link to Another Web Site
- Our Story - www.ferozegolwalla.com - - You may know Feroze Golwalla as Cyrus Kotwal, Kaezad Dadachanjee, John Feroze, John Golwalla, Reverend Feroze Golwalla, "Byram," "Victor," or any host of names...
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