A court orders the Unification Church in Japan dissolved

MARI YAMAGUCHI

AP

March 25, 2025

"The Unification Church in Japan was ordered dissolved by a court Tuesday after a government request spurred by the investigation into the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The church said it was considering an immediate appeal of the Tokyo District Court’s revocation of its legal status, which would take away its tax-exempt privilege and require liquidation of its assets.

The order followed a request by Japan’s Education Ministry in 2023 to dissolve the influential South Korea-based sect, citing manipulative fundraising and recruitment tactics that sowed fear among followers and harmed their families.

In the ruling, the court said the church’s problems were extensive and continuous, and a dissolution order is necessary because it is not likely it could voluntarily reform, according to NHK television.

"“We believe our claims were accepted,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshiasa Hayashi told reporters. He added that government will continue efforts to support victims of the church.

The Japanese branch of the church had criticized the request as a serious threat to religious freedom and the human rights of its followers.

The church called the court order regrettable and unjust and said in a statement the court’s decision was based on “a wrong legal interpretation and absolutely unacceptable.”

The investigation into Abe’s assassination revealed decades of cozy ties between the South Korea-based church and Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party. The church obtained legal status as a religious organization in Japan in the 1960s during an anti-communist movement supported by Abe’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.

The man accused of killing Abe resented the church and blamed it for his family’s financial troubles.

The church, which officially calls itself the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, is the first religious group subject to a revocation order based on violations of Japan’s civil code. Two earlier case involved criminal charges — the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, which carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, and Myokakuji group, whose executives were convicted of fraud.

To seek the church’s dissolution, the Education Ministry had submitted 5,000 documents and pieces of evidence to the court, based on interviews with more than 170 people.

The church tried to steer its followers’ decision-making, using manipulative tactics, making them buy expensive goods and donate beyond their financial ability and causing fear and harm to them and their families, seriously deviating from the law on religious groups, officials and experts say.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs said the settlements reached in or outside court exceeded 20 billion yen ($132 million) and involved more than 1,500 people.

A group of lawyers who have represented people suing the church welcomed the court decision as a major first step toward redress. They demanded an apology and compensation from the church as soon as possible.

The church, founded in Seoul in 1954, a year after the end of the Korean War, by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who preached new interpretations of the Bible and conservative, family-oriented value systems.

It developed relations with conservative world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as his predecessors Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The church faced accusations in the 1970s and 1980s of using devious recruitment tactics and brainwashing adherents into turning over huge portions of their salaries to Moon. In Japan, the group has faced lawsuits for offering “spiritual merchandise” that allegedly caused members to buy expensive art and jewelry or sell their real estate to raise donations for the church.

The church has acknowledged excessive donations but says the problem has lessened since the group stepped up compliance in 2009.

Experts say Japanese followers are asked to pay for sins committed by their ancestors during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, and that the majority of the church’s worldwide funding comes from Japan.

https://apnews.com/article/japan-unification-church-dissolution-d5e1fdf3cb671d6ffeb45d75620ef8b2

‘Cults like us’: Why cults are as American as apple pie

Gavin Newsham

NY Post

March 22, 2025

“We all have an idea of what constitutes a cult,” writes author Jane Borden in “Cults Like Us – Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America” (One Signal Publishers). “The word cult conjures a mental picture: a group of beautiful young people dancing trancelike in the sun, probably aspiring actors in Los Angeles who took a wrong turn at the beach and landed in an orgy.” 

But that image couldn’t be further from the truth and in “Cults Like Us” Borden charts not just the murky history of cult ideologies in America, but how the country remains a breeding ground for cult-like thinking.

“It informs our suppositions about American identity and our very understanding of the immutable self,” she writes. “It undergirds every vote, purchase, prejudice, and social-media post. Like fish that don’t know water, we swim through it without recognition.”

Ever since the Pilgrim Fathers arrived on the Mayflower in 1620 with almost cultish puritanical beliefs, the nation has been susceptible to cult ideologies.

“But their Puritan doomsday beliefs didn’t go away; they became American culture,” she says.

And, as Borden explains, the meaning of ‘cult’ has shifted from the original Latin, cultus (meaning any religion or religious practice), to something more derogatory, taking in fanatics, enthusiasts and imposters. “Today,” adds Borden, “cult carries strong valences of deception, abuse, and charlatanism.”

But because of the First Amendment and, argues Borden, a nation ripe for indoctrination, non-traditional groups once treated with suspicion, like the Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, are now established and institutionalized religions.

And with that recognition comes many benefits.

“If they can secure church status, we don’t even ask for taxes,” she adds. 

We all know the notorious cults of our time, like the Manson Family and David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, but today the number of cultlike groups in the United States is growing exponentially and Borden estimates there are now around 10,000 such organizations nationwide. 

Indeed, they might now be viewed as integral parts of our national psyche rather than simple aberrations. “Destructive cults and extreme belief systems are not unique to America, of course,” adds Borden. “But Americans certainly tolerate them more.”

Whatever the group, cults share similar characteristics; a demagogue at the helm, notions of exceptionalism, and, invariably, a ‘Doomsday’ endgame.

They also strive to pit members against a supposed adversary, irrespective of any threat posed.

“When cult leaders, con artists, grifters, demagogues, dictators, domestic abusers, or other selfish dillweeds wish to manipulate or exploit others, all they need to do is raise the specter of an outside enemy,” writes Borden.

“Any will do, it doesn’t matter which.”

Some of the case studies Borden examines in ‘Cults Like Us’ verge on the ridiculous.

Take Arthur Bell, leader of California’s Mankind United cult in the 1930s who convinced 14,000 members to part with their cash so he could take the fight against the conspiratorial web of ‘Hidden Rulers’ who, he claimed, were responsible for all the world’s ills, from wars to famines and even the Great Depression.

Like most cults, Bell’s sales pitch was based on a conspiracy theory where the enemy is “unfathomably powerful” and that only he, with the backing of his members, could do anything about it.

As Borden explains, it’s a common theme. “Cults and conspiracy theories are kissing cousins: they share DNA, often look alike, and sometimes get married,” she says.

But it’s this call to rebel against elites targeting everyday folk that has been the rallying cry of demagogues since the dawn of the nation – and will continue to be, says Borden. “Because these fears are deeply ingrained in us, they are often employed to manipulate us,” she writes. 

For cult leaders, it’s personal gain that drives recruitment campaigns. “Voter feelings are all that matter to a demagogue, who stokes fears, bends the truth or outright lies, and builds fanatic followings instead of platforms,” adds Borden.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/22/lifestyle/why-cults-are-as-american-as-apple-pie/

How Satanist Pedophile Groups Strategize To Groom Kids, Avoid Detection On Popular Chat Site

Hudson Crozier

Daily Caller News Foundation.

March 15, 2025

Online Satanist networks targeting children for sexual abuse keep gravitating toward a gaming site that has pledged to crack down on them, according to documents and interviews obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Predatory Satanists are increasingly appearing on platforms popular with young people by the dozens, prompting attention from law enforcement and lawmakers who question the efficacy of online safety policies. The DCNF obtained screenshots of one such band of users on Discord who talked about having a sexual interest in minors, where to find “groomable victims” and how to avoid getting banned.

Discord, an online messaging platform, said in an email that the users’ accounts and chat rooms “were proactively detected and removed” on Feb. 21, meaning the chats were active for at least four days. “The horrific actions of these groups have no place on Discord or in society,” a spokesperson said.

“Discord is committed to providing a safe and secure online environment for all users, and we are taking decisive actions to address harmful content on our platform and to find and remove the users who create such content,” the spokesperson continued. “We are continuously working to improve these measures, and, where appropriate and permitted by law, Discord aims to collaborate with the FBI and law enforcement.”

‘Tempel Ov Love’

Discord has long dealt with safety concerns due to its design of allowing users as young as thirteen — with parental permission — to join private “servers” comprised of one or more chat rooms for group messaging and audio calls, often with strangers. Discord servers are spaces that users create with “text and voice channels” while making their own rules for them, the platform’s website says.

The DCNF obtained images from Feb. 19 and 20 of “Tempel Ov Love,” a Discord server with 26 users and a logo resembling that of “Tempel Ov Blood,” a Satanic, neo-Nazi occult group. Tempel Ov Blood glorifies child exploitation and encourages adherents to commit terrorist attacks. Users in the Discord server discussed how they might find “preys” in other online communities on platforms they did not specify.

Posts and profiles from the server displayed symbols of movements such as “764,” which the Department of Justice (DOJ) calls a global “terror network.” Members of 764 typically groom children in online forums full of violent content and pornography and extort them into harming themselves, according to the DOJ.

An FBI bulletin from March 6 warned the public of a “sharp increase” in 764’s activities, saying the predators operate through “social media sites, gaming platforms, and mobile applications commonly used by young people.” The agency said the 764 network and others coerce “victims as young as 9 years old” to make self-harm videos or sexual content of themselves, carve the names of their abusers into their bodies and even “live-stream their own suicide for the network’s entertainment.”

A symbol denoting the Satanic group 764 is displayed in a Discord server on Feb. 20, 2025.

The 764 predators may move between web platforms and change the name of their movement, but “the core goals and membership remain consistent,” the DOJ previously said.

“These groups are … full of femboys and women with mental health issues,” a Discord user said about other online networks, “Joy of Satan” or “JoS” and “Order of Nine Angles.”

“Actually sounds like the HQ of preys,” another replied — before saying, “so many groomable victims.”

“Everyone there would be so easy to manipulate and mindbreak,” the first user said.

The same two users discussed one underage girl “in the JoS forums who is a minor foid with autism,” using “foid” as derogatory internet slang for a female. One of them said she “is also brain damaged for drug abuse.”

The other user replied, “even more groom[able]” and asked, “Is she good looking?”

The user who first mentioned the girl later said, “I told the foid to show me her boobs and she ghosted me … she probably [reported] me.” Someone else then congratulated that person as the “top groomer” in the chat.

A user in a Satanist Discord server brags about soliciting a minor for sexual material of herself in a chat message on Feb. 19, 2025.

Another post from an unrelated conversation reads, “I would fuck a guy but only if he was good-looking and about the same age as me or a minor.”

Several past and ongoing prosecutions of child abuse cult members have shown some of them using Discord, a platform normally meant for playing video games while talking to friends. They also congregate on other platforms, sparking pledges from companies to crack down on the predatory networks, Wired and the Washington Post reported. An unnamed spokesperson for Discord also told Wired that it closely works with the FBI and law enforcement and that taking down 764 is a top priority.

In one recent case, 764 member Jairo Tinajero pleaded guilty to producing child pornography, racketeering and other federal charges on Feb. 11. Tinajero convinced a minor to send nude pictures of herself through Discord and Telegram, then threatened to show them to her family if she didn’t send him more, a plea agreement says.

Tinajero was also in “an online chatroom” on an unnamed platform that “directed a female who Tinajero and others believed was as young as 12 years old to repeatedly cut herself with a knife,” the document says.

Telegram said in December that it had partnered with the Internet Watch Foundation in December to “continue to effectively delete child abuse materials” and maintains what it calls “a zero-tolerance policy.”

Followers of 764 and similar groups work together toward “destroying civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of youth,” according to prosecutors in Tinajero’s case. A user in the Tempel Ov Love Discord server appeared to take inspiration from 764 cultist Angel Almedia, whom the DOJ charged with exploiting minors in 2021.

A Discord user posts an image of 764 member Angel Almeida on Feb. 19, 2025.

Users also touched on how other Satanists they knew of were “boring” for supposedly being “against pedos,” calling it “sad.”

‘Severe Risks’

A majority of “enforcement actions” Discord takes against accounts and servers are for child safety, self-harm concerns and violent extremism, a 2024 company report says. But employees still “aren’t doing enough at all,” said Becca Spinks, a firearms instructor who has gained notoriety by writing about Satanic predator networks in her spare time.

“Discord makes it ridiculously difficult for investigators like myself to report entire servers for abuse,” Spinks told the DCNF.

The quickest option for users on any device to report illegal activity is clicking a “report message” button on individual posts. Spinks and her research partner, who goes by the name “Paco” online, said Discord users they’ve observed easily evade this system. Paco belongs to a small team of researchers with Spinks and asked not to be named to avoid threats from the Satanic extremist groups. (RELATED: Transgender Teen’s Alleged Shooting Plot Is Latest Linked To Popular Chat Platform)

Paco and Spinks said some groups on Discord often “spam” child pornography in a server together and quickly delete posts before someone can click the report button.

“What people will do is they’ll record the spam and then screenshot, download … take whatever they want, and then leave the server, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Paco told the DCNF in a phone interview.

Paco claimed to have seen this happen in a past Discord server, describing a flood of content containing “gore, beastiality, obviously child pornography, self-harm” and animal abuse material or “animal crush.”

“It was the worst shit you could possibly imagine,” he said.

Paco said he reported that server anonymously to the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children because users were deleting posts too fast for him to report them one by one.

“It’s not an effective method and the fact that it hasn’t been fixed is frankly negligent,” Paco told the DCNF.

Discord has a “Report Server” button in its mobile app, but not for the desktop version. Spinks and Paco said they were not aware of the feature and were frustrated that restricting it to the mobile app creates another hurdle for reporting pedophiles.

Accounts on X, formerly Twitter, helped spread an invite link to the Tempel Ov Love Discord server as early as Feb. 17, with one account later deleting its post, the DCNF observed.

Users in the comments section of one of the X posts suggested ways to evade Discord bans: making alternate accounts, creating VPNs, using a program that creates temporary phone numbers and using an encrypted email service. One person inside the server told others to “delete anything that’s unsafe [or] edgy after like a minute.”

X’s CEO testified to lawmakers in January 2024 that fighting “child sexual exploitation” is “our top priority” during a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation of tech companies. Discord told the committee that it is relying on AI software to detect such content.

Discord said “all [child sex abuse material] reports are reviewed by humans” in comments to the DCNF.

Discord also removed a button on its website in 2023 that allowed anyone to file written reports directly to the trust and safety team, archived webpages show. The company told the DCNF that it did so because the “report” buttons others have complained about make the process “easier and faster.”

“The root of the problem is that Discord systematically fails to prioritize safeguarding on its platform — it fails to effectively, proactively identify abuse networks or activities, and it fails to protect minors on the platform as well,” Haley McNamara, Vice President at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), told the DCNF. “The platform is extremely popular with children, but we highly recommend that minors avoid Discord given the platform’s severe risks.”

“We have recommended that Discord start by defaulting all minors’ accounts to the highest level of safety and privacy available,” McNamara said. She has previously advised federal agencies on combating sexual exploitation.

Paco told the DCNF that parents must “strictly” monitor their kids’ internet activity “every day” to protect them from groups whose methods continue to evolve.

“I have been added, unadded, blocked, unblocked, loved and hated, but never forgotten,” reads a profile from the Tempel Ov Love server.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

https://dailycaller.com/2025/03/15/satanist-pedophilia-groups-on-popular-chat-site-evade-bans-brag-about-grooming-kids/

A controversial Christian church eyes the Philly suburbs for expansion

A Plymouth Brethren Christian Church meeting room in Middletown Township, Delaware County.

Jesse Bunch

Philadelphia Inquirer 

March 16, 2025

A controversial Christian church at the center of investigations into excommunication and rigid control of its members is finding a foothold in the Philadelphia suburbs.

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church has about 54,000 members worldwide and a history shy of 200 years.

The evangelical group has long been known for imposing boundaries on outside life, with some former members going as far as comparing Brethren life to that of a “cult.”

Those allegations have reached larger audiences in recent years following investigations by leading news organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, where the Brethren’s influence is strongest.

Earlier this month, the Telegraph detailed a former member’s account of being shunned after her departure from the church, where “fear overruled my life, really, from about the age of four,” she recounted.

Those who speak out say the process can sever long-standing relationships between mothers and sons, grandmothers and grandchildren.

The Plymouth Brethren have categorically denied those allegations, and no comparable accounts have been shared in major American news outlets. The church has touted something of a modernization in recent years, loosening restrictions and integrating more members into public life.

And even as church membership dwindles across the country, the Brethren — in Delaware County, at least — are growing.

The church increased its membership in the suburban county significantly in the last decade, scooping up a handful of properties around Middletown Township in the process.

“Our relatively small congregation of 150 members has roughly doubled over the last 12 years,” a U.S.-based Plymouth Brethren representative, who asked to be identified as a church spokesperson, told The Inquirer.

That’s due to “our younger members building families, as well as members from outside of the area moving into Delaware County for the wonderful opportunities and lifestyle it offers.”

Who are the Brethren?

The Plymouth Brethren, often called “Exclusive Brethren,” originated in Ireland in the 1820s amid growing dissatisfaction with the hierarchical nature of the Anglican Church.

Groups splintered off over the years, and Brethren arrived in the United States by the 1860s.

Today, Australian multimillionaire Bruce Hales is the church’s global leader.

Brethren have practiced in Delaware County for several decades, according to the church spokesperson, though not at today’s scale.

The church’s “doctrine of separation” has become the subject of multiple media reports in recent years.

Many Brethren are forbidden from consuming secular sources of television and radio, for example. That is in addition to being discouraged from eating with those outside the church, attending college — and, by some accounts, living in homes that share walls with them.

Speaking with the New Statesman in 2023, former Brethren recounted those limitations as well as being “withdrawn from” — the church’s purported method of disciplining noncompliant members through isolation.

“Everything was really regimented and controlled — what you wear, what you do during your day, how you spend your evenings, what you think,” one former member told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in a 2024 report on life within the church.

What does the church say?

Of course, not all Brethren experiences are similar.

Some raised in the church have taken to social media sites like Reddit to soften the worst of those narratives (one user told of being allowed to listen to Taylor Swift, for example), and the church says many of its conservative beliefs are no different from those of other Christian faiths.

And while Brethren mostly avoid social media, members have begun to use it for business endeavors, the spokesperson said.

Brethren are deeply involved in entrepreneurial pursuits where non-church relationships are unavoidable; members own a variety of businesses, so much that well-connected Brethren-linked firms in the United Kingdom were recipients of more than £2 billion in government contracts for personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the allegations of cultlike behavior that have gripped the United Kingdom and Australia, no such accounts have been raised in Delaware County.

But in 2023, as the church eyed an expansion near Chicago, a group including former Brethren protested the sale, citing alleged abuses within the sect.

The Plymouth Brethren denied allegations raised in multiple reports through its U.S. spokesperson.

“To be clear, most of us live normal lives, run normal businesses, have normal families, and work with and alongside many people from outside of our church community,” the spokesperson said.

“The people who are feeding social media and media with stories to the contrary are misrepresenting our way of life. We work, live and interact with others every day as we strive to embody Christian principles in all we do — a free practice of religion like any other, whose tolerance and protection is built into the heart of this country.”

Where are the Plymouth Brethren expanding in Delaware County?

Within the past decade, the Plymouth Brethren have purchased five Delaware County properties through a nonprofit arm called Philadelphia Meeting Room Inc., according to tax and deed records.

The buying spree began in 2016 with the purchase of 40 State Rd. in Media. In 2022, the nonprofit bought a single-story property in nearby Chester Heights.

Philadelphia Meeting Room has since acquired three more properties along Middletown Road in Middletown Township.

One property serves as the Plymouth Brethren’s main meeting hall, the spokesperson said, a space that seats around 300 for weekend services.

Three smaller properties are used as meeting rooms, which the spokesperson described as “hyperlocal neighborhood worship centers for families in the immediate vicinity, used for prayer during the week,” that accommodate between 30 and 50 people.

The church has larger ambitions for the area.

“We are in the process of soliciting contractors for a new meeting hall located in Middleton Township, which we intend to break ground on in 2025,” the spokesperson said via email. “Once completed, we will consider offering for sale our property in Media, PA.”

Those driving by the Brethren’s property at 47 N. Middletown Rd. may also notice a sign for “Campus & Co.” deliveries. The global chain of Brethren-exclusive supermarkets is open only to church members and the stores are managed by volunteers.

Those are in addition to OneSchool Global, the Brethren’s worldwide network of independent schools; the closest campus is in Joppa, Md.

“We feel honored to be members of this beautiful community and will continue to contribute to it for many years to come,” the spokesperson said.

https://archive.ph/cQYLr