April 2008
Polygamy mothers defend their way of life during rare interviews with ABC. ... Authorities on Thursday wrapped up nearly a week at the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch, where they say a 16-year-old girl had called social workers and timidly recounted being beaten, choked and sexually assaulted by the 49-year-old man who had fathered her child after their "spiritual marriage" last year. Two people were arrested and 416 children were taken into state custody at the ranch -- which is run by founder Warren Steed Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. At the ranch, authorities say, men routinely took multiple wives, and girls as young as 13 were forced into sexual relationships with adult men... February 2008
In 1997, 39 people killed themselves in a house in Rancho Santa Fe. They were members of the Heaven's Gate cult. Paul Magers reports. January 2008
Assertions on Secret Tape and Unauthorized Bio Put the Star's Controversial Beliefs Front and Center New videos leaked on the Internet show Tom Cruise speaking about his committment to the Church of Scientology... You have to watch this video. It shows Tom Cruise, with all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie, making the argument for Scientology...Let me put it this way: if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10...Gawker is now hosting a copy of the video; it's newsworthy; and we will not be removing it. International Cultic Studies Association ICSA's 2008 conference at the University of Pennsylvania has a rich program for former group members, families, mental health professionals, researchers, legal professionals, and others. A charity that is collecting more than 4 tons of clothing each week in Lackawanna County has been the subject of national criticism for its practices and was given a grade of "F" by the American Institute of Philanthropy. The arrival of Planet Aid, which began placing its yellow collection boxes in the area about six months ago... ...Red boxes, which also started to arrive about six months ago ... U'SAgain, a for-profit clothing collection company with ties to Planet Aid, now has 15 to 20 boxes in the Scranton area. Planet Aid organizers refute criticism of the group's practices and say any negative effects on other charities are unintended... December 2007
...Jacques Robidoux was one of the leaders of a small Attleboro cult known as The Body. He was charged with murder after his son, Samuel, died three days before his first birthday in April 1999... The suicide of a young man and the murder he committed before he killed himself are being blamed on a cult led by his mother... ...Karen Zerby, the leader of the sect now known as "The Family International." The sect's activities and history are detailed in a newly released book, "Jesus Freaks." The sect was founded in California in the 1960s by David Berg... ...On a sloping hill in Oakland beneath a towering eucalyptus will be a black and pink granite monument to the people who died in Jonestown. The spot is where some 400 bodies now rest, flown back from the jungle outpost where Rev. Jim Jones oversaw the mass murder of his followers in 1978. After several cemeteries turned down requests to bury the dead, Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland accepted the task.... ...The new landmark should be ready for next November's 30th anniversary date. This article appeared on page D - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle Director Stanley Nelson talks with the son of his documentary subject, Jonestown cult leader Jim Jones. ST. GEORGE, Utah - The split-screen video shows Warren Jeffs in the upper right hand square wearing the jail-issued green and white "pajamas". On the left is his brother Nephi. The conversation was recorded January 25, 2007 in the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Washington County... A Utah judge Tuesday sentenced polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs to two consecutive prison terms of five years to life for his conviction on two counts of being an accomplice to rape, a court spokeswoman said... ...Jeffs, 51, the "prophet" of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, was convicted in September... November 2007
...Dahn Yoga claims to promote health and empowerment. But experts said that beneath the calm lies a cult. "A destructive, deceptive, mind control cult," said cult expert Steve Hassan. The ABC15 Investigators uncovered a link to a younger population operating on college campuses. Monica is a former follower of Dahn Yoga and a student at the University of New Mexico. She said she was recruited into Dahn Yoga on campus... ...Dahn Yoga's expanding influence at the college level, through the Body and Brain Clubs... ...The ABC15 Investigators found 22 Body and Brain Clubs at college campuses across the U.S... ...Statement from Arizona State University... The University of York Christian Union (UYCU) have said they are taking "active measures" to counter the influence of the 'cult' reportedly operating on campus. They believe the group, known as 'The Church with No Name' or 'The Wandering Church', has converted at least one student already... ...The University Chaplaincy has warned that the group is a "dangerous fundamentalist group that take over a person's life in a cloak of authoritarian teachings, and encourage separation from all who do not agree, family included." The group have been known to infiltrate church group meetings... OAKLAND -- A ceremony celebrating the construction of a memorial wall dedicated to American children who lost their lives in a 1978 mass murder and suicide directed by the Rev. Jim Jones in his Jonestown community in Guyana, South America, took place in Oakland today. The Cherishing the Children Jonestown Memorial Wall will be dedicated to the children whose lives were lost as a result of Jones' actions. Of the 900 people who committed suicide or were murdered, 276 were children... ...Jones' congregation, called the Peoples Temple, moved from California to Guyana in the mid-70s... Deleted Scenes from Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple Video - Surviving the Tarmac Shootings (2:24) ...Filmmaker Noah Thomson was raised in a Children of God commune in Brazil but has since left the group...Children of God: Lost and Found is a documentary in which he explores how he and others like him have struggled to come to terms with a childhood that was wildly unconventional at best and abusive at worst. Children of God: Lost and Found was screened as part of the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival... After a highly unconventional childhood in Children of God, a cult that mixed religion with sex, filmmaker Noah Thomson escaped to begin a normal life... ...In CHILDREN OF GOD: LOST AND FOUND, Noah Thomson sets out to interview other ex-Children of God... ...It includes interviews with an Oregon man who was one of five people to escape Jonestown alive, Tim Carter... ...We offer these extended clips from the interview for a more complete picture of Carter's story. Please be aware that Tim Carter is explicit about what he saw in the final hours at Jonestown, and listeners will find some material in the interview disturbing... There are approximately 5,000 cults in the U.S., and they - and their members - may be surprisingly close to home. This is the message behind the new documentary Join Us, which opened to rave reviews at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival. The topic and the positive press are familiar territory for filmmaker Ondi Timoner... ...Join Us follows four families attempting to rebuild their lives after leaving a South Carolina cult, Mountain Rock Church, led by Pastor Raimund Melz and his wife, Deborah. The documentary takes viewers directly into the only accredited residential treatment facility in the U.S. for cult victims, the Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center in Albany, Ohio... Band should not evoke Jonestown Massacre in name... ...Jim Jones, the leader of the Jonestown cult...mislead over 900 people during the late 1970s. Among these people was my aunt who perished in Jonestown, Guyana (where the cult moved to from San Francisco in the late 1970s) with other innocent and brainwashed followers in a mass suicide demanded by Jones... Noah Thomson, raised on a commune in Brazil, takes an emotional ride in his Cinemax documentary. If Ricky Rodriguez had not committed a murder-suicide two years ago, "Children of God: Lost and Found" would probably not have wound up on Cinemax. Rodriguez was the stepson of the late Children of God cult leader David Berg, and his murder of another former "Family member" and subsequent suicide brought renewed media attention to the 40-year-old California-based religious group that had been accused in the past of abusing its children... Pat Lynch, the first female investigative reporter for NBC Evening News...she was taking on another cult: Jim Jones and his followers of the Peoples Temple... ...What revived her desire to get the story out is that recently Lynch has received queries from editors and producers in the U.S. and from Canada, South Africa, and Australia who are embarking on Jonestown-related stories to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the founding of the cult community in Guyana. All have asked the same question of Lynch: "Did you shoot more than 18 minutes of film?" "We shot in 20-minute sections and then put the film in a canister," Lynch recalled. "There were between 20 and 30 canisters. In addition to that, I personally screened more than three hours of dramatic footage shot inside Jonestown by the cameraman who died doing his job... ...She added: "The recent queries from filmmakers have inspired me to start my investigation of the Peoples Temple once again... ...Lynch is aiming to tell "the real truth about the Jonestown massacre" in a book, which would include how her Peoples Temple series was compiled and then scuttled... This article originally appeared in the Southampton and East Hampton (NY) Press. October 2007
...As the NBC Nightly News producer who began shooting a series on destructive cults in March, 1978, the story had come full circle. I personally screened more than three hours of dramatic footage shot inside Jonestown by the cameraman who died doing his job. What happened to it? These queries started my investigation of Peoples Temple once again... ...dangerous story about Peoples Temple was ready for air in October, 1978... ..."NBC BOSS LIFE THREATENED" proclaimed the New York Post banner headline November 2, 1978. "GUARD ON TV CHIEF."... ...On November 18th, 918 people -- including hundreds of children and senior citizens -- were murdered. Some committed suicide... ...So when, 28 years later, I started getting calls about missing NBC footage, the story that haunted me for so many years came back in a rush... ...The Jonestown Institute, which collects primary source information on Peoples Temple...sent me proof they had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that the FBI is in possession of 12 hours of footage from NBC... VICTIMS STILL SEEKING COMPENSATION The bankruptcy proceedings for doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo are now scheduled to conclude in March, which will allow the bankruptcy administrator to find ways to compensate victims of Aum's deadly crimes. At the 15th meeting of victims' representatives and other creditors held Wednesday at the Tokyo District Court, bankruptcy administrator Saburo Abe proposed closing the procedures on March 31, a dozen years after the cult was declared insolvent in 1996... Cults have never been a big problem at Syracuse University, but they are present, said Thomas Wolfe, dean of Hendricks Chapel... ..."We have (in the past) become aware of groups where it's clear they don't have the student's best interests in mind," Wolfe said... ...At first, cults offer unconditional love and acceptance, Wolfe said. They then slowly cause members to lose perspective. Members often feel safe telling secrets they would otherwise never reveal, and groups can use this to exert control over their members, he said. Some try to make members drop out of college, Giambalvo said... ...Wellspring is the only residential facility in the world that treats people who have been in cults or abusive relationships, said Donna Adams, Wellspring's clinical director... ...The Wellspring model describes to individuals how they were recruited and how group dynamics kept them from thinking independently, Martin said... ...Martin, Adams and Orchowski agreed that those who become involved with cults or abusive groups do not have a predisposed weakness and should not be stigmatized... Rabbi Susan Laemmle Dean of Religious Life
Revd. Elizabeth Davenport
Senior Associate Dean of Religious Life ...If it comes to the notice of the Office of Religious Life that a group has violated the terms of the Ethical Framework, prompt action is taken to rectify the situation, and if any students feel that a religious group is making unreasonable demands on them, the deans of Religious Life strongly encourage them to come and talk about it. 2008 Annual International Conference: International Cultic Studies Association The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) seeks paper and panel proposals for its 2008 Annual International Conference to be held at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania June 27-29, 2008. Social work professor Doni Whitsett outlines cult recruitment techniques and ways to identify potentially unsafe groups... ...As part of Parents Weekend, the USC Department of Sociology presented "Sects in the City: Protecting Your Children from Cults" ...with the aim of educating parents about how to help their children avoid cult recruitment techniques. "Cults are known to recruit on college campuses," said the presenter, Doni Whitsett, a professor in the School of Social Work and an independent clinician... ...groups on and around USC's campus - including the LaRouche movement and the Los Angeles Church of Christ - have been accused of cult activity in the past... ...Los Angeles Church of Christ ... a branch of the International Church of Christ... ...tells the story of the impact basketball has had on the son and grandson of The Rev. Jim Jones, founder of Jonestown and leader of the mass suicide in 1978... ...On Monday afternoon, Jim Jones Jr., son of Jonestown founder Reverend Jim Jones, will stop by to chat about an ESPN documentary focusing on his father's life, and his son's basketball career... ...Send in your questions now, then join Jones Jr. on Monday at 3pm ET. Elissa Wall and Her Husband, Lamont Barlow, Talk Exclusively to GMA About Life in Sect... ...While testifying against Jeffs was extremely brave, Wall had already taken the most courageous step of her life by leaving the sect... On Sunday, "Outside the Lines" will present a special documentary, Jonestown: The Game of their Lives, which tells the story of the impact basketball has had on the son and grandson of The Rev. Jim Jones, founder of Jonestown and leader of the mass suicide in 1978... ...the documentary features interviews, home video, photos from personal collections and never-before-seen photographs obtained from the FBI. Watch "Outside the Lines" on Sunday at 9:30 a.m., ET, on ESPN... SAN FRANCISCO - Rob Jones, a former Riordan basketball star and two-time Examiner Player of the Year, will be featured on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" on Sunday. The 19½-minute segment, entitled "Jonestown: The Game of Their Lives," will air at 6:30 a.m. and focus on the effects of the 1978 Jonestown mass murder-suicide. Rob Jones' grandfather was Peoples Temple leader Reverend Jim Jones and his father, Jim Jones Jr., was playing basketball 250 miles away in Georgetown, Guyana, when more than 900 people died deep in the jungle of the South American nation. "This is very personal in the sense that basketball saved my life," Jones Jr. said... ...University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer... ...He was Oregon's attorney general in the 1980s when followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Central Oregon were charged with criminal offenses, including the mass poisoning of hundreds of residents in The Dalles. Frohnmayer said the followers were "an authentic theocracy" that employed religious zeal as a way to bully other people. In prosecuting the guru's followers, as with all matters involving religious faith in the public realm, it's crucial to distinguish between people's beliefs and behaviors, Frohnmayer said. "Thoughts can run wild without hurting anyone," he said. "But bad behavior - behavior that hurts not just feelings but the physical welfare of others - cannot be tolerated."...
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