Mar 22, 2023

CultNEWS101 Articles: 3/22/2023 (O9A, neo-Nazi, International Churches of Christ (ICOC), Legal, Sexual Abuse, Jung Myung-seok, Korea)

O9Aneo-Nazi, International Churches of Christ (ICOC), Legal, Sexual Abuse, Jung Myung-seok, Korea

 The former U.S. Army private who plotted with a satanic neo-Nazi cult to ambush his unit in a mass-casualty attack was sentenced Friday to 45 years in federal prison.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had charged Ethan Melzer in June 2020 on criminal counts of supporting terrorism and conspiring to murder U.S. service members after Melzer had sent an encrypted message to a neo-Nazi, Satanist organization — just as his Army unit planned to deploy to Turkey — with sensitive information about his unit's size, weaponry, anticipated travel routes and defensive capabilities.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods on Friday referred to the group that Melzer had messaged, the Order of the Nine Angles, "repugnant." Finding no reason to deviate from the maximum possible sentence, Woods ordered the 24-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky, to three consecutive sentences of 20 years, 15 years and 10 years on the three counts to which he had pleaded guilty last June, totaling 45 years in prison, followed by nine years of supervised release.

"This was not a lark," the Obama-appointed Woods continued after announcing the imposition of the maximum prison sentence of 45 years. "His crimes were committed to destroy civilization."

"I do not trust him," the judge said, stating clearly his concerns that Melzer has not actually moved on from the group's hateful ideology or would not commit another crime.

"I frankly do not believe him," Judge Woods said, noting that Melzer had concealed his violent, pro-jihadist beliefs from the Army and effectively deceived the three dozen comrades in his platoon.

"He could have logged off at any time," the judge remarked, noting that Melzer memorialized his commitment to the white nationalist, neo-Nazi group with a tattoo of the so-called chaos symbol affiliated with the cult's accelerationist worldview.

The black, cross-shaped tattoo of a star with pointed arrows was visible on Melzer's left forearm at the sentencing hearing, not covered up by the short sleeves of his tan prison jumpsuit.

According to prosecutors' sentencing brief, Melzer got the tattoo — "symbolizing 'chaos' a concept consistent with O9A's mission of destroying existing Western civilization to give way to Satanic forces and unrestrained violence" — between the time he enlistmed and reported for duty.

"The defendant sought to end American lives and America itself," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Hellman said at the sentencing hearing.

"Two churches with congregations scattered across Southern California covered up sexual abuse of children as young as 3 years old and financially exploited church members, according to multiple federal lawsuits filed since December.

Sixteen plaintiffs allege that leaders within the International Churches of Christ (ICOC) and the International Christian Church (ICC) knew that their members had sexually abused adults and children, but instead of alerting the authorities they often "actively concealed" the abuse to "avert discovery by child protective services and the police."

Kids Kingdom, the ICOC's children's ministry, "served as a demented playground for sexual abuse," the suits charges. The allegations span 25 years, from 1987 to 2012, and some of the alleged abusers remain active church leaders, according to the suits and church websites.

Of the 16 plaintiffs who have sued claiming sexual abuse, 10 said at least some of their alleged abuse happened in Los Angeles.

The ICOC, a global network of non-denominational Protestant churches co-founded in 1979 by evangelist Kip McKean, has about 5,000 members in the Los Angeles area, according to the church website.

In 2006, after resigning from the ICOC, McKean started the ICC, which has congregations in Southern California from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Both churches are decentralized networks of nondenominational Christian congregations, and in the Los Angeles area, most congregations don't own their own church buildings, five former Los Angeles-area ICOC and ICC members said. Instead, congregations often meet for services in hotel conference rooms or similar venues.

The lawsuits accuse McKean of urging members to keep quiet about the alleged crimes, telling them, "We cannot report these abuses, because it would hurt our church, God's Modern-Day Movement."

One person whom ICOC leaders allegedly allowed to keep preying on children, David Saracino, is a now-convicted pedophile. In the 1990s, Saracino was an ICOC member in Los Angeles and worked in the Kids Kingdom.

In the lawsuits, four women allege that Saracino sexually assaulted them when they were between the ages of 3 and 9."
"This Netflix docuseries examines the chilling true-crime stories of four Korean leaders who claimed to be prophets and exposes the dark side of unquestioning belief. The episodes shed light on the Christian Gospel Mission (JMS named after one man Jung Myung-seok), where the members would call themselves 'God's brides,' a deep look into the Odaeyang Mass Suicide where thirty-two members of a religious sect who believed in doomsday were found dead, a pseudo-religion that left the country speechless, and one man who claimed to be a God of all people. "

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