Jan 21, 2020

CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/20/2020




Events, LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, Terrorism, White Supremacy

This event will have three tracks: professional counselors, law enforcement and one for the general public. Cultic Experts, Trauma Counselors, Domestic Terrorist Analysts, the Greeley PD Gang Unit, the Colorado State Patrol - Human Trafficking Division, and a Sex Trafficking Research Expert share their knowledge in working with such populations. A panel of survivors (gang, cult, and sex trafficking) will share their story and answer audience questions.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis is involved with efforts to stem Human Trafficking in our state. Interestingly, Human Trafficking falls under the larger umbrella of cultic leadership and dynamics. The conference is February 8, 2020, in Loveland, Colorado, at The Ranch Events Center Complex First National Bank Exhibition Hall. We are inviting State Representatives, District Attorney Offices, Police Departments, Probation Officers, Pastoral staff, hospital staff, jail employees, counselors, social workers, crime victim's compensation representatives, victim's advocates, community leaders, educators, students and the community-at-large to learn about how manipulation has been utilized to coercively persuade individuals to vulnerably join under their leadership. The cost is $40.00 per person with lunch included if registered in advance.

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"Two dead spouses, two missing children and rumors of a cult.

"Confusion is growing around a series of mysterious deaths and the disappearances of a 7-year-old boy and 17-year-old girl that tie back to a couple who have since vanished themselves.

Joshua "JJ" Vallow and Tylee Ryan haven't been seen since September. Lori Vallow and her husband, Chad Daybell, never reported them missing and disappeared soon after being questioned about the children. What has followed is a twisted tale spanning two states that revealed the deaths of both their previous spouses, the couple's doomsday beliefs and children who slowly slipped away from relatives who are desperate to find them.

"All I want before I go is just to see those children, and especially — and I'm being greedy — especially my boy JJ. My little man," grandfather Larry Woodcock said this week at a press conference in Idaho announcing a $20,000 reward for information leading to the kids.

Wife Kay Woodcock's brother, Charles Vallow, adopted JJ when he was a baby. Charles and his wife, Lori Vallow, also raised Lori's daughter from a previous relationship at their home in suburban Phoenix.

Lori Vallow was a hairdresser, always keeping JJ's hair trimmed and styled, Larry Woodcock said. The Woodcocks, who live in Lake Charles, Louisiana, visited their grandson often and shared frequent phone calls and video chats when they couldn't be there in person.

"I do know that Lori always had the best, the absolute best interest in heart for JJ. She and Charles were the absolute best parents," he said.

But things began to change a few years ago, Kay Woodcock said. Her brother confided that he feared Lori was cheating on him with Chad Daybell, an author of several religious-themed fiction books about prophecies and the end of the world.

Charles Vallow eventually filed divorce documents in an Arizona court last February claiming that Lori believed she was a "translated being" and "a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ's second coming in July 2020," the Arizona Republic newspaper reported.

He also accused Lori of threatening to kill him if he got in her way, prompting him to seek a protection order."

"Leaving the Jehovah's Witness religion isn't easy. You know that you will lose family and friends immediately after letting everyone know about your decision. This is a hard, often tragic situation.

After being out for a while, you notice that there are plenty of friends and interests that you can finally be involved with. You enjoy your freedom and the fact that you are alive for the first time.

But, amidst these wonderful times, there are dark days. I don't know how to explain these days adequately. There are days when you feel an "otherness" in your life. You realize what an outsider you are. You don't fit into the JW world and you don't quite fit into the regular world around you.

No matter what crowd you are in, you feel painfully alone. As everyone converses glibly about old college days (that you never had), politics (that you don't understand), funny stories about acting crazy as a teen/young adult (which you never did), the adventures of their children (which you didn't have), great movies and concerts (which you weren't allowed to attend), or other subjects that you have never experienced, you feel isolated, even ashamed of your lack of experience. You are an alien everywhere you go. And, it hurts.

I don't know what the answer to this problem is. I don't have any great suggestions for coping with this feeling because I get overwhelmed by it frequently. My current theory is that you have to keep pushing your boundaries and experiencing things so that you can join in everyone else's conversation someday."

"When Dylann Storm Roof walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, he joined the Bible-study class before gunning down nine African-Americans as they prayed.

Roof still communicates with his admirers on the outside. In jail, he began exchanging letters with a man in Arkansas named Billy Roper. A former schoolteacher and the son and grandson of Klansmen, Roper leads the Shield Wall Network, a group of several dozen white nationalists who organize rallies and conferences — often collaborating with neighboring hate groups — with the goal of building a white ethno-state. "I have a lot of empathy for him. I'm 47, and he's young enough to be my son," Roper said of Roof when interviewed recently for this project. "These millennials and now, I guess, Gen-Zers that are coming up, they are not stupid about the demographic trends and what they portend for the future. That angst, that anxiety that plagues them, drives them to do rash things — whether it's that rash or not — I can empathize with." I would humbly suggest we believe that Roper is being sincere, and that he speaks for many.

Roper and Roof are only two of those affiliated with the 148 white-nationalist hate groups in this country. Though it is impossible to calculate their exact membership numbers (as individual groups either conceal or inflate them), their violence is indisputable. White supremacists were responsible for the deaths of at least 39 people in 2018 alone. And the activity has not slowed this year: not in January, as neo-Nazis plastered flyers outside newspaper offices and homes in Washington State and the Carolinas and an army veteran pleaded guilty to killing a black man in New York to "ignite a racial war"; in February, as Vermont synagogues and LGBT centers were vandalized and a self-described white-nationalist Coast Guard lieutenant was arrested for plotting a domestic terror attack; in March, as WELCOME TO GERMANY and GAS THE JEWS were spray-painted outside Oklahoma City Democratic Party and Chickasaw Nation offices and, on the Upper East Side, classmates handed their school's only black ninth-grader a note reading "n—–s don't have rights"; in April, as a shooting at a synagogue left one dead and three injured and FBI Director Christopher Wray called white supremacy a "persistent, pervasive" threat to the country; in May, as swastikas fell from the sky — on flyers dropped by drones outside an Ariana Grande concert — and were scrawled on public spaces in at least three states; in June, as far-right groups rallied in Portland, Oregon, for the first time that summer; in July, as a man promoted a white-power manifesto on Instagram before killing three and wounding 17 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California; in August, as another angry young man — this one 1,000 miles away in El Paso, Texas — posted an anti-immigrant manifesto online then committed this year's most deadly mass shooting, killing 22 and injuring 24 at a Walmart; in September, as the Department of Homeland Security added white-supremacist extremism to its list of priority threats, the same month a swastika appeared on its walls; in October, as swastikas also appeared on Cape Cod and invitations to a white-supremacist gathering were mailed to Maine residents; in November, as a white-supremacist group filmed a video outside Mississippi's Emmett Till Memorial; nor this month, as students flashed possible white-power signs at an Army-Navy football game."





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