Best Friends Animal Society’s Dark, Disturbing History

Peta

Members of a cult classified as satanic created Best Friends Animal Society after the group decided that the “best way to raise money” would be “based on taking care of animals”.

Many individuals in the organization have disturbing pasts, including documented histories of mismanaging shelters.

Best Friends Animal Society pushes for policies that harm animals and endanger the public.

According to historians of religion, researchers, and FBI reports, the founding members of Best Friends formed a religious group called The Process Church of the Final Judgment (Process Church) in the U.K., which the FBI classified as a Satanic cult. The group “preached that the world would be ending in 2000 and that Satan and Christ would be united.” Members wore “dramatic black cloaks, adorned with the swastika-like ‘P’ symbol, and the ‘Sabbatic Goat.’”

In the 1980s, according to FBI records, the group decided that the “best way to raise money” would be “based on taking care of animals” to appeal to people’s emotions. In 1991, members disbanded the religious cult and created Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, now doing business as Best Friends Animal Society.

According to a 2020 ReligionNews.com article about a man who escaped from the cult:

After being accused of brainwashing its members, about 30 sect members—and six German shepherds—left England, traveling first to the Bahamas and later to a remote Mexican village. The sect eventually settled in the United States, setting up branches in Boston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago, and other cities, and growing to about 150 people.

Best Friends Animal Society has for years misled the public, promising Americans a “no-kill” nation by 2025.

A recent opinion piece by the organization’s CEO conceded that its position is that “keeping pets out of shelters should be a first-choice management protocol.” This philosophy, which Best Friends Animal Society has pressured shelters across the nation to embrace, has deprived countless animals and people who care about them of desperately needed help.

Using bullying tactics and personal attacks, including the frequent use of the divisive term “no kill” and referring to compassionate euthanasia in animal shelters as “killing,” Best Friends Animal Society has created a culture of hate and resentment toward individuals who dedicate their lives to helping homeless animals, including by alleviating their suffering when that is the most humane option.

Due to funding from well-meaning, caring people like you, who may have believed that “no kill” by 2025 was a genuine promise, the organization’s influence has been significant, and the group has spawned additional, similar if less well-known entities that push the same harmful policies, which lead to terrible animal suffering and even more death—though not painless or peaceful.

Animals left out of shelter statistics may not be counted, but they count.

‘Best Friends’ Spreads Its Agenda

Members of the former cult now profess to be experts in animal care and sheltering and push shelters across the country to adopt their beliefs. However, their recommendations harm animals and endanger the public, because their number one priority is statistics, not animals. Their policy recommendations include:

“Open adoptions” (giving away animals to anyone who will take them, without any effort to ensure that they can provide a loving, responsible, and safe home), including releasing cats and dogs to those who may have violent criminal histories, including charges of cruelty to animals.

Releasing for adoption aggressive dogs with significant bite histories (Even when an animal’s guardian has requested euthanasia following a fatal attack, Best Friends recommends evaluating the animal for adoption, which not only endangers the public but also results in fewer animals being adopted into good homes because it makes the public leery of adopting any animals from shelters. Such practices destroy the good reputation that shelters have worked hard to build over the years.)

Doing away with any manner of behavior assessments, a vital tool used by many shelters to try to prevent dangerous animals from being released to unsuspecting members of the public (This recommendation endangers residents and creates a serious liability for local governments, resulting in numerous lawsuits against Best Friends and other groups that implement its policies.)

Recommending trap-neuter-release (TNR) programs and/or refusing to accept cats—including cats who have not been sterilized or vaccinated and those who are social and have never lived outdoors—just to keep cats out of shelters at any cost to their life or welfare (Cats abandoned in these ways reproduce, exponentially worsening the overpopulation crisis, and suffer, often before dying violently. Best Friends even acknowledges that TNR may violate local ordinances yet still recommends it. Releasing cats, even to the same area where they were picked up, without ensuring that they are provided with adequate care, is considered animal abandonment in most jurisdictions.)

Encouraging vague language in local ordinances, such as changing the word “shall” to “may,” in order to allow agencies to be derelict and refuse to pick up lost or abandoned animals, including those who may be ailing, injured, aggressive, or in imminent danger

Best Friends gives awards and recognitions to shelters based on statistics alone, even applauding facilities that engage in cruel practices. In Wyoming, for example, Best Friends “honored” a municipal facility for reaching “no-kill” status, even though it uses a gas chamber to kill animals. Gas poisoning is a known inhumane method of killing considered so cruel that it has been banned in dozens of states. It can take up to 25 minutes, during which panicked animals gasp for breath, try to claw their way out, and attack other animals who are trapped in the chamber with them. The Wyoming facility has refused to switch to using humane methods exclusively, despite offers from PETA and others to cover the costs.

Gas chamber used for dogs and cats

Gas chambers, like this one that was used in North Carolina, are inhumane—and have been outlawed in that state.

The Dark Past of Best Friends’ Leaders

Best Friends fills its ranks with individuals it hires to act as “experts” and tell municipal animal shelters how they should operate. But many of these individuals have disturbing pasts, including documented histories of mismanaging shelters.

“I came in and changed everything overnight. We got rid of all adoption policies.”

—Makena Yarbrough, former executive director of Lynchburg Humane Society in Virginia and currently a senior director of regional programs for Best Friends Animal Society

For example, Makena Yarbrough, senior director of regional programs for Best Friends, advises communities on how to operate animal shelters. But serious allegations of neglect surrounded her tenure as executive director of the Lynchburg Humane Society in Virginia. Under a contract, Lynchburg Humane also operated the county animal shelter, the Pittsylvania Pet Center. During Yarbrough’s directorship, state authorities reportedly notified Pittsylvania’s shelter that it “could be subjected to fines of up to $65,250” in relation to animal deaths and substandard conditions. Healthy dogs were reportedly found “stored in a designated isolation room meant to separate the sick from healthy.” Records show that animals were found dead in cluttered rooms at the facility and that animals had starved to death while in the county’s custody.

“No-kill” policies typically result in inhumane, crowded conditions, as they did at this facility (photo for representative purposes only)

Another individual listed by Best Friends as “manager, shelter collaborative program” was hired by the group after acting as “director of lifesaving outcomes” at the Palm Valley Animal Society in Texas. That facility implemented Best Friends’ recommended policies and quickly faced a lawsuit after a dog adopted from the facility seriously mauled a child.

Leaving animals to reproduce on the streets worsens the crisis, and can endanger residents.

A Best Friends “senior manager of national shelter support” was hired by the group after working at LifeLine Animal Project, which operates the DeKalb County Animal Shelter in Georgia. Media reports have described the county shelter as being “plagued by repeated issues,” including severe crowding, warehousing, and allowing animals to die slowly in cages (a common practice among facilities that focus on “live release” statistics over the welfare of animals in their custody).

An individual Best Friends lists as “director, East regions” resigned from Animal Care & Control Team Philly in Pennsylvania, where she was executive director, following disputes with volunteers and allegations of cruelty. A petition demanding her resignation alleged that animals had been mistreated, conditions had deteriorated, employees had quit, and the organization had been hostile to volunteers. A state inspector who visited the facility found the sanitary conditions “unsatisfactory,” noting, “A referral for cruelty was made based on the sanitation issues during this inspection” [emphasis added].

Paula Powell was hired and acted as a Best Friends regional senior manager after leaving the municipal shelter in El Paso in utter chaos.

The Devil’s in the Details

When Best Friends operatives “embed” themselves in shelters, the public isn’t likely to hear about all of the fallout—at least not quickly. Best Friends evidently uses non-disparagement agreements, likely to hinder lawsuits and prevent communities and individuals from negatively reporting on the results of its destructive programs.

For example, a grant agreement between Best Friends and a California county states, “Recipient agrees not to disparage BFAS (Best Friends Animal Society) during the grant period and for three years following the last disbursement from BFAS (Best Friends Animal Society) to Recipient.” The contract includes an indemnity agreement that “holds BFAS (Best Friends Animal Society) harmless” in the event of “bodily injury, personal injury, illness, death, property damage, or other losses of any kind or nature whatsoever” as a result of its programs.

A prospective foster caregiver for Best Friends’ Los Angeles shelter opted not to sign a contract that included non-disparagement and indemnity clauses that extended to all their family members, including the family’s children.

This begs the question: What, exactly, is Best Friends so determined to keep quiet? 

https://www.peta.org/features/best-friends-animal-society/disturbing-history/

Still no trace of vanished members of online cult

Max Diekneite

Fox 2 Now

April 24, 2025

"The Berkeley Police Department tells FOX 2 the six people who vanished from a St. Louis County home nearly two years ago are still nowhere to be found.

In August of 2023, six people, including then 25-year-old Makayla Wickerson and her three-year-old daughter, Maliayah, went missing from her Berkeley home.

The four adults involved were part of an online cult called “The University of Cosmic Intelligence.”

The department said the cult itself has been tied to a variety of crimes, including human trafficking. Its founder is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence for child molestation.

Both investigators and the victims’ families are concerned about their well-being. Anyone with information regarding their whereabouts is urged to contact law enforcement immediately.

Makayla Wickerson and her daughter’s disappearance will be featured in the debut episode of “America’s Most Wanted: Missing Persons,” that airs Monday at 7 p.m. CST on FOX 2. 

https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/still-no-trace-of-vanished-members-of-online-cult/

Critics line up against the government’s plan to tax charities

Diana Clement

LawNews

April 23, 2025

A sweeping review of the taxation of New Zealand’s 29,000 registered charities has sparked widespread concern.

Proposals to tax not-for-profits’ business income if it’s unrelated to their charitable purpose – whatever that might mean as this term has not been defined – and tighten donor-controlled charity rules have left many questioning whether this is genuine tax reform or simply a government revenue-grab.

The IRD published its 24-page consultation document Taxation and the not-for-profit sector on February 24, with a tight deadline of March 31 for submissions.

The move has appealed to those who disapprove of the behaviour of charities such as Sanitarium, the Gloriavale Christian Community and Destiny Church, but critics say it’s not the job of the IRD and tax legislation to rein in these organisations and the proposals risk punishing legitimate charities with increased taxes and compliance costs.

Both the proposals and the short time frame for consultation have been criticised by the charity, legal and accounting sectors. Some see it as a tax grab by a government that needs to balance its books before next month’s Budget.

Tax reform of the charitable sector wasn’t part of National’s 100-day plan, but a paper prepared by the IRD for the previous government caught the attention of the coalition, says tax expert Stephen Tomlinson, a partner at Tomlinson Law and member of The Law Association’s Trust Law Committee. The consultation document was pulled together in weeks, he says, and the window to respond was short.

“One could be a little bit cynical about this in that it seems to be driven not so much by the Minister of Revenue but, rather, by the Minister of Finance, Tomlinson says. “It has been quite a condensed process and that concerns us.”

The proposals themselves are also a concern, particularly the plan to tax charities’ unrelated business activities. Even if the profit from unrelated businesses is used for charitable purposes, it will be taxed, along with returns from a charity’s investments.

“There used to be a presumption in charities law and tax law that a charity existed to further its charitable purposes and not to make money,” Tomlinson says.

The proposal to tax investment income is also fraught.

“More recent case law suggests that [the] Inland Revenue’s view is that the same principles that apply for determining whether a taxpaying citizen is carrying on a business [of investing] also apply to a charity. Presumably that will lead to a situation where some investment income is taxed and some still isn’t,” he said. The Catch-22 for charities is that there is an obligation for the trustees to invest prudently.

Tomlinson says unless there is a carve-out for investment income, the proposals will result in larger charities being taxed. “It’s got nothing to do with the perceived competitive advantage that charities enjoy over other businesses.”

If the proposals become law, there will likely be boundary issues for both charities and the IRD. These could be costly for both charities and the IRD as the legislation is tested in court.

Concerns about the behaviour of a small number of charities shouldn’t fall to the IRD to resolve, Tomlinson says. Unlike some overseas jurisdictions, New Zealand has a regulator – Charity Services – which monitors the sector.

The government is looking in the wrong place to balance its books, he adds, and there is a concern that New Zealand might end up “with a knee-jerk reaction …. reform driven by fiscal needs.

“If I were to draw a rather dangerous analogy, it’s a little bit like the Trump administration imposing tariffs without actually thinking through the fiscal effects of those and just thinking that it’s a good idea, based on inadequate research and understanding of these reforms.”

The other area of particular concern for Tomlinson is the taxation of not-for-profit organisations such as credit unions, friendly societies and clubs.

Not-for-profits should have been filing returns since 2004, but many smaller organisations are oblivious to this, Tomlinson says. He questions whether it is worth the time and effort to audit not-for-profits and collect this tax.

If not-for-profits are to be taxed, he recommends the $1,000 exemption, which was introduced in the late 1970s, be increased.

Limited consultation, significant change

Charities lawyer Sue Barker has written a 143-page submission repudiating much of the IRD’s consultation document. But she appeared stumped when asked why the IRD and/or government had come up with these proposals.

“It seems to be driven more by ideology,” Barker says. “The analysis is, ‘I run a business, and I pay tax. This business over here doesn’t pay tax. How can that possibly be fair?’”

The IRD has been trying to tax charities since1967, she said.  “And maybe [the IRD] thought with a right-wing government that perhaps this was its opportunity.”

At the same time, she says, officials have created a belief in the public’s mind that there’s something dodgy going on. “The underlying question as to whether there really is a problem that needs to be fixed, I don’t think it’s actually [been] asked.”

Barker said she couldn’t speak for the IRD or the government but thought the problem was that officials were working from underlying assumptions that hadn’t been properly examined.

Lawyers from all fields should also be concerned about the short timeframe of this consultation, Barker said. It could be repeated in other areas.

“They do this very limited consultation for the most significant change to the tax settings for charities in almost a century. They give charities just over four weeks that coincides with the end of the financial year for most charities. Why the rush?”

The international experience

Barker and others spoken to by LawNews point out that the consultation document assumes New Zealand is an outlier when it came to taxing charities, a subject Barker covers in her submission.

It was other countries that needed to look at this issue because their approaches had been shown not to work, she said. “Canada is looking to move to the way Australia and New Zealand treat their business income.”

She concluded, after an extensive review of overseas jurisdictions, that they serve as a cautionary tale rather than a precedent to be followed.

The concept of an unrelated business income tax had failed all over the world, Barker said. For charities, there is no bright line between a related and an unrelated business and attempts to draw such a distinction are fraught with difficulty that cannot be resolved.

“Outlier” charities that are breaching their fiduciary duties can be dealt with by using rules that are already in place, she said.

“My real concern is that the proposals will not address the perceived areas of concern but what they will do is impose blanket restrictions on the charitable sector as a whole which will stifle a lot of really important charitable work. It will also demoralise voluntary effort without addressing the perceived issues. Even if we had a problem, these measures wouldn’t fix it.”

Her submission outline reasons why the government should not remove the FBT (fringe benefit tax) exemption for charities. Barker said the policy rationale was that it enabled governments to further social objectives such as supporting disadvantaged communities. Removing this concession could negatively impact charities, especially those operating with limited resources. “[It] is an important support for charities that should remain in place for as long as the FBT regime itself remains.”

Charities already struggle to recruit labour and removing FBT exemptions would make it harder, Barker said.

Her submission also highlights imputation credits, which were not analysed in the consultation document. Charities cannot claim imputation credits, as other businesses can, and this affects the “competitive advantage” argument, Barker said.

This non-refundability distorts charity investment decisions, pushing them away from New Zealand companies (where dividends are taxed) and towards investments where their tax exemption is effective, such as interest-bearing debt or foreign companies offering unimputed dividends.

Costs, complications and unintended consequences

Chartered accountant Craig Fisher, an independent director and governance consultant and a former member of the ADLS (now The Law Association) council, acknowledges that objectives such as simplifying tax rules and addressing integrity risks are well-intended but warns the devil is in the detail.

He says the public does not understand the proposals outlined in the consultation document and believes them to be a fix for questionable behaviour by a small number of charities such as Destiny Church and the Gloriavale Christiab Community.

“Charity law is the most appropriate approach to maintain the social licence and public confidence of the charitable sector,” Fisher says. “If abuse of tax concessions is the primary issue, then resource the [Charity Services] regulator sufficiently to investigate and ensure it can take appropriate action.”

He adds that charities already face significant transparency requirements, including financial reporting and service performance reporting. These compliance costs are significantly greater than those for most for-profit entities, which often have no legislated obligations.

“The biggest issue with [the proposals] is the conceptual one in that it’s looking at the support of charities as a cost to the government, as lost revenue. Most studies would show that actually, charities are more effective deliverers of charitable services to society than the government is directly.”

Fisher says as it stands, the principles behind the consultation move New Zealand further away from its simple tax system. “As a rule, exceptions often create complications costs, and unintended consequences.”

He questions the financial analysis behind the IRD’s paper and says from an accounting perspective, it doesn’t add up.

“Late last year, Minister Willis [was quoted in] the press about the charity sector making $2 billion worth of profit that needs to be taxed. That’s a very simplistic statement. If the IRD starts taxing, then in order to be fair I would want, as an operator of a charitable business, to be claiming absolutely every expense that I could to reduce my tax liability. That’s what for-profit businesses do. That would dramatically change the potential level of taxation revenue to the government.

“Is my time worth $500 an hour? Or is it worth the minimum hourly rate?” says Fisher, who is on several charitable boards. “The cost of compliance for both the charities and the IRD would be huge if the proposals go ahead.

“I then have a major conceptual problem with the fact that the government, and not just this current government but repeated governments of all colours over the past 20 years, have made various statements about wanting the charitable sector to be sustainable and self-sustaining. Yet all the funding that charities get generally relies on the charity of others, apart from a charity actually running a business. It’s the only one where the charity has complete control over its own destiny.”

Fisher says he has not seen evidence of predatory pricing by charities or independent studies proving that this is a problem. Charities on the other hand face competitive disadvantages, such as restrictions on raising finance, the inability to claim imputation credits on tax-paid dividends and the inability to offset losses against future profits.

Read the consultation paper here https://www.taxpolicy.ird.govt.nz/-/media/project/ir/tp/consultation/2025/taxation-and-the-not-for-profit-sector.pdf

 https://lawnews.nz/tax/critics-line-up-against-the-governments-plan-to-tax-charities/

Jehovah's Witnesses' Core Doctrines Debunked by Former GB Member (Raymond Franz)

Face The Facts

Exposing the Truth: Former JW Governing Body Member Raymond Franz Debunks Core Doctrines. In this eye-opening video, former Jehovah’s Witness Governing Body member Raymond Franz reveals what really happens behind closed doors. With firsthand experience at the highest levels of the organization, Franz breaks down and debunks key doctrines that millions have followed without question.

https://youtu.be/516_PNJW3-U?si=v7haOYuIR6L2Ee8z

Mass wedding, messier truths: Moonies say ‘I do’ amid cult claims and Japan crackdown

This picture taken on April 12, 2025 shows couples attending a mass wedding ceremony organised by the Unification Church at Cheongshim Peace World Center in Gapyeong. — AFP pic

MalayMail

April 23, 2025

They’ve been called a cult, accused of coercive fundraising, and legally disbanded in Japan. But in a mountainous town nestled in South Korea, thousands of “Moonies” gathered this month for a mass wedding.

Around 1,300 couples from dozens of countries tied the knot at the Unification Church’s sprawling headquarters in Gapyeong, north of Seoul, under the supervision of their controversial leader, known as the “holy mother”.

The spectacular tradition, which dates back to the first so-called “blessing ceremony” featuring 36 couples in 1961, is an integral part of the broadly neo-Christian beliefs held by the church, founded by Moon Sun-myung and now run by his widow, Han Hak-ja.

The church claims these mass weddings can help reverse South Korea’s woeful birthrate, improve family values, and ultimately bring about Moon’s goal of completing the unfulfilled mission of Jesus Christ to restore humanity to a state of “sinless” purity.

“I’m just really grateful,” American Emmanuel Muyongo, 29, told AFP at the ceremony, where he married his Japanese wife, whom he met years ago and grew close to at a church in the United States.

Muyongo’s own parents married at a mass wedding, and he said that he was honoured “to experience what my parents’ experienced”.

“We love you, Holy Mother Han!” the couples shouted in unison at one point during the event, which featured blaring fanfare and confetti cannons.

Han, 82, looked almost eerily calm throughout the festivities, once slowly waving at her excited followers while wearing sunglasses and a green dress.

The church, which was founded in 1954, claims to have around three million followers globally — including 300,000 in South Korea, 600,000 in Japan — and oversees a sprawling business empire encompassing construction, tourism, education and media, among others.

But in Japan, the church has been accused of coercive fundraising, especially after the 2022 assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, allegedly carried out by a man who harboured resentment toward the sect.

A court there revoked its legal status as an organisation last month, although its members can continue to meet.

Abe’s accused killer blamed the church for his family’s financial ruin, after his mother made huge donations. Abe — along with other world leaders including US President Donald Trump — had sent video messages to events linked to the church.

But at the mass wedding this month, followers were unfazed by the recent legal blow, with the visibly emotional couples — including Japanese — radiating joy and gratitude to Han.

After Moon’s 2012 death, Han stepped up to lead the church and is now referred to by members as god’s “only begotten daughter” and the “holy mother”.

The church has links to everything from a major South Korean newspaper to a high-end ski resort used for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. It is also affiliated with esteemed art institutes.

In 1991, Han joined her late husband — revered by followers as a messiah but dismissed by critics as a charlatan — on his trip to North Korea to meet with its founder, Kim Il Sung, to discuss the reunification of the divided peninsula.

When her husband died, North Korea’s current leader Kim Jong Un sent a personal message of condolence. He later presented her with a pair of North Korean Pungsan dogs, a token of his goodwill.

This week, South Korean media alleged that the church had bribed former first lady Kim Keon Hee — whose husband, Yoon Suk Yeol, was recently ousted over his declaration of martial law — with a diamond necklace worth around US$41,970 (RM185,000).

Indemnity

The church has appealed the Japanese court’s decision.

Experts say that Japan, Korea’s former colonial ruler, has long been a financial hub for the sect.

“Usually, religious businesses like Unification Church target isolated lower-middle class individuals,” Vladimir Tikhonov, Korean Studies professor at the University of Oslo, told AFP.

“Their main ‘hunting ground’ is not South Korea, it is actually Japan,” he added.

Since the 1960s, the church is believed to have generated as much as 80 per cent of its global revenues from Japan, according to Levi McLaughlin, a religious studies professor at North Carolina State University.

During Japan’s 1980s bubble economy, its branch reportedly sent up to ¥10 billion (US$70 million) per month to the South Korean headquarters.

Japanese followers are told to “atone” for the country’s colonial past, and McLaughlin told AFP the mass weddings have been framed as a form of “indemnity”.

The church plays a role in match-making couples, experts say, with Japanese women often matched with non-Japanese men — and critics slam the cult-like cutting of family ties that sometimes results.

But this month in Gapyeong, more than 1,000 couples — each bride in near-identical white gowns and modest tiaras — wiped away tears, held hands tightly, and swayed to music as they danced and took selfies.

The couples “started from happiness and love, but it seems that those who don’t understand it well are misinterpreting it and only seeing the negative aspects”, Remi Kosuga, 27, one of the brides, told AFP.

“We simply want to believe in and learn about love. ... I hope people can see that.” — AFP

https://www.malaymail.com/news/world/2025/04/23/mass-wedding-messier-truths-moonies-say-i-do-amid-cult-claims-and-japan-crackdown/174194