Oct 15, 2021

CultNEWS101 Articles: 10/15/2021 (Totalist Organizations, The House of Yahweh, Obituary, Kenja Communications, Sexual Abuse, Australia, Jehovah's Witnesses, Russia, Legal, Religious Freedom)

Totalist Organizations, The House of Yahweh, Obituary, Kenja Communications, Sexual Abuse, Australia, Jehovah's Witnesses, Russia, Legal, Religious Freedom
Disorganizing our attachment is a form of control used by authoritarians.

" ... Social psychologist Alexandra Stein, a cult survivor and longtime expert on cults, argues that attachment disruption is part of the recruitment tools totalitarian (totalist) leaders and organizations use. Stein, who chronicled her experience in Inside Out: A Memoir of Entering and Breaking Out of a Minneapolis Political Cult, writes about research on totalist systems in the book Terror, Love & Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems.

"The leader's primary goal is to create a set of guaranteed attachments to others," a form of relational control that stems from the leader's own disorganized attachment (p. 16). Although the leader fears abandonment, they will purge the unfaithful—all part of maintaining control over the relationship.

To work, totalist structures require an isolating environment, which serves the purpose of coercive persuasion, keeping group members away from other influences. To determine whether or not an ideology or belief system is totalist depends on structure and function. The structure is exclusive, allowing no other truths, affiliations, or interpretations. No dissension is allowed against the leader's word. The function of the belief system is multiple: to maintain the leader's absolute control, to establish rigid boundaries between group members and the outside world, to justify loyalty, and to prevent escape."
"Hawkins was the leader of a group called The House of Yahweh. He drew national attention after the Branch Davidians standoff in Waco.

Also known as "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, he started the group — referred to as a cult — in 1974 after serving as an Abilene police officer.

The leader predicted the end times on several occasions. The latest was in 2020. He also said he would never die and that he was the "second coming."

'My job is to preach the Message of the Kingdom to the world, whether you will listen or not is up to you," he warned. "Look at how many people listened to Noah; don't let that be you. Read this letter and get on our mailing list, so you don't get caught in the flood.'"

"The leader of a personal development group described by police as a "cult" groomed young girls to be sexually abused by her late husband and gave them antiseptic lollies after ushering them into private sessions with him, a senate committee has been told.

Jan Hamilton operated Kenja Communications with her husband, Ken Dyers, until he died by suicide in 2007 when new allegations of sexual abuse were raised against him, and has run the group by herself ever since.

Dyers was accused during his lifetime of sexually abusing seven young girls during "processing sessions" that were supposed to clear the girls of negative energy. A police strike force formed to investigate some allegations in 2005 formed the position that Kenja fitted the profile of a cult."

"A Jehovah's Witness in Russia was convicted and sentenced to prison for practicing his religious beliefs Monday (Oct. 11). Vladimir Skachidub, 59, was sentenced to four years and two months in prison by the Pavlovsky District Court of Krasnodar Territory.

"I am a Jehovah's Witness, and I am being prosecuted solely for my peaceful religious activities. … I face imprisonment only for the fact that I simply exercised my right to profess religion," said Skachidub during a hearing, according to a statement from the Jehovah's Witnesses world headquarters.

Jarrod Lopes, a spokesman for Jehovah's Witnesses, said in a statement that Skachidub was imprisoned on baseless charges. Skachidub, who is disabled, was formally charged as a criminal, and a case was opened against him by the Russian Federal Security Service in June 2020, after he was found to be preaching his faith. The next month he was added to the federal extremist list."

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