JMS Cult Leader, Who Sexually Assaulted Three Women, Gets Sentence Reduced to 17 Years

KBS WORLD

October 2, 2024

Cult leader Jung Myung-seok will spend 17 years in prison for sexual assault and related offenses after an appellate court reduced his sentence.

 

The Daejeon High Court ruled Wednesday that Jung’s original 23-year sentence for preying on women in the religious group was excessive and out of line with sentencing norms.

Conceding to some of the arguments from Jung’s defense counsel, the high court said the lower court went beyond its judicial discretion in sentencing Jung and should have imposed no more than 19 years and three months.  

Jung, the leader of the Christian Gospel Mission, also known as the Providence religious movement or JMS, was found guilty in 2023 of sexually and physically assaulting a woman from Hong Kong on 23 occasions and also of sexually assaulting an Australian woman and a South Korean woman.

The prosecution initially sought a 30-year sentence, saying Jung was a repeat offender who used his position to take advantage of his victims.

https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/news_view.htm?lang=e&Seq_Code=188234

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

O9A, neo-Nazi, International Churches of Christ (ICOC), Legal, Sexual Abuse, Jung Myung-seok, Korea

Courthouse News Service:Army soldier who plotted unit ambush with satanic neo-Nazi cult sentenced to 45 years

 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.

LA Times: Church leaders concealed sexual abuse of young children, lawsuits allege

"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."

Ready Steady Cut: In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal Review – a disturbing look into four Korean cult leaders

"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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Cult Expose: Netflix Defeats Injunction, Airs 'In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal' Documentary on Korean Religious Leaders

Patrick Frater
Variety
March 3, 2023

Netflix and Korean public broadcaster MBC on Thursday defeated a court application for an injunction to stop the airing of their documentary “In The Name of God: A Holy Betrayal.”

The 8-part series began airing from Friday (March 3). It is a Netflix Original, meaning that the streamer has global rights, including in Korea.

The show examines “the chilling true stories of four Korean leaders claiming to be prophets [and] exposes the dark side of unquestioning belief.”

Among its subjects is Christian Gospel Mission, also known as Providence, and also known as Jesus Morning Star, or JMS. It shares those initials with its controversial leader Jeong Myeong-seok (aka Jung Myung-seok) who is currently awaiting trial in Korea for sexually assaulting some of his female followers.

JMS sought an injunction to stop the docuseries from airing, claiming that the show is fictional, that it violates the principle of presumption of innocence and that it undermines religious freedom. However, the Seoul Western District Court said on Thursday that MBC and Netflix appeared to have made the program based on a “considerable amount” of objective and subjective materials.

The first episode pulls no punches. It starts with an audio track of a post-coital conversation in which the man compliments the woman on her wide hips and asks about her orgasm, before going on to boast of his own. It is not immediately clear whether this was a recording made at the time or is the re-enactment of actual events. It gains impact by being intercut with a to-camera interview with former JMS member Maple, who gives her full Korean name and describes her alleged sexual encounters with Jeong. “What he did was so perverted. If he actually loved me, he wouldn’t have done that,” Maple says. “I kept calling out to the Lord as I was being victimized.”

The narrative then cuts to footage of Jeong complete with pointer and tableau explaining the Biblical Adam and Eve story in overtly sexual terms. It is followed by footage of a messianic Jeong saying: “You say you can’t see God. Well, just look at me. Here’s God” and a clip of five naked women calling their “Lord” to join them in the bathtub.

“It is hard to judge that a major part of the program involving JMS is not true, simply based on the materials submitted by the group,” the court said, in reports from the Yonhap news agency.

Jeong previously served ten years in prison for raping three Korean female followers while on overseas trips between 2003 and 2006. He fled Korea when the rape charges were filed, but was deported from China to Korea in 2008. He was jailed in Korea that year and released in 2018, but was required to wear an electronic ankle bracelet.

His current charges include the “quasi-rape” of a woman from Hong Kong and another from Australia. Korea defines “quasi-rape” as sexual intercourse that takes advantage of a person’s unconsciousness or inability to resist. Upon conviction, a prison sentence of at least three years is mandatory.

The alleged rapes are said to have happened between 2018 and 2021 at JMS’s Wolmyeongdong Sanctuary in Geumsan.

JMS has denied the charges and threatened libel action against media which reported unverified facts.

Hong Kong media have quoted activist and anti-JMS campaigner Kim Do-hyeong as saying that the organization has recruited followers in Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and that other women are preparing sexual assault suits against Jeong.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/korea-religious-cult-netflix-in-the-name-of-god-a-holy-betrayal-documentary-1235541909/

IPSO rejects complaint from group accused of being a Korean 'sex cult'

iMediaEthics
by January 27, 2017

In an article that ran last May, the UK Mirror accused an Australian organization of being a “Korean ‘sex cult'” that recruited young girls to be “spiritual brides” for a convicted rapist. The organization, the Christian Gospel Mission in Australia (also known as the Providence and Jesus Morning Star), complained to the UK press regulator the Independent Press Standards Organisation over many aspects of the article. However, IPSO ended up rejecting the mission’s complaint.

The Mirror‘s May 20, 2016 article was headlined, “Korean ‘sex cult’ plucking girls off street to be ‘spiritual brides’ for rapist who claims to be Messiah.” The group’s leader, Jung Myung-seok, was indeed convicted and sentenced to prison in 2008 for rape, Reuters reported at the time, noting that he “fled to China from South Korea in 2001 where he had been charged with selecting followers from photographs and then forcing them to have sex with him.”

The mission denied many of the major claims in the article, including that it recruited followers, that recruits were “brainwashed into ‘sexual devotion’ towards Mr Jung, and were ‘delivered’ to him in prison,” that Jung sent sexual letters and that targeted women were “encouraged” to send photographs of themselves in bikinis to Jung, IPSO reported. It also denied claims about the church made by university lecturer Peter Daley, especially those related to sleep deprivation and families. Daley, who has spent a decade studying the mission, was cited in the Mirror‘s story.

The mission also denied that the Mirror ever contacted its main office for comment. The newspaper acknowledged, during the IPSO investigation, that this was a fair complaint because the reporters contacted the wrong church and didn’t realize this fact until the complaint was filed. The Mirror offered to post an update to its article that would include the mission’s denial of some of the claims, but the mission wasn’t satisfied. Some denials are currently posted at the bottom of the article and read:

“The Christian Gospel Mission denies recruiting women and delivering them to Jung Myung-seok in jail for sex. The church has also previously denied being a cult or teaching that its leader is the Messiah.”

IPSO noted that the Mirror “had taken care” to distance itself from the reporting by clearly labeling claims and allegations and crediting them to whomever said them. Because the Mirror did that and added an acknowledgement in the article that the mission denied being a cult, IPSO ruled that the newspaper’s initial failure to get a comment from the mission was not grounds for accepting the complaint.

iMediaEthics has written to the Mirror and to Jung through his website for comment.

http://www.imediaethics.org/ipso-rejects-complaint-group-accused-korean-sex-cult/