CultNEWS101 Articles: 5/9/2020

Kenja, Legal, Australia, Taipan, Scientology, Covid-19, Ervil LeBaron 

The Sydney Morning Herald: Widow of 'cult leader' loses case against NSW Police over his suicide

"The co-founder of a Sydney "sect" has lost her court case against NSW Police over an allegation her "cult leader" partner took his own life because officers maliciously sent him a letter which caused psychological harm.

Janice Rita Hamilton, 71, co-founded personal development organisation Kenja with her de facto partner Ken Dyers in 1982. The group has been branded a cult, which its members deny.

In 2007, Mr Dyers was yet to face trial on 22 offences, relating to alleged assaults on two underage girls during Kenja counselling sessions, when a third complainant came forward.

The girl had previously denied being abused, but approached police after she left Kenja. She alleged Mr Dyers told her when she was about 12 or 13 she had "sexual degradation in her energy field" and she would be a "psychic slut" if he did not clear a spirit from her by touching her while she was naked.

Police sent a letter to Mr Dyers' lawyer in July 2007 requesting an interview, which was conveyed to him over the phone. The 85-year-old took his own life a short time later.

Ms Hamilton sued the State of NSW in the Supreme Court in 2013, alleging two detectives who investigated Mr Dyers were motivated by malice, did not carry out the investigation impartially, and were guilty of misfeasance in public office.

The claim against one of the officers was abandoned during the case after she gave evidence which showed a "lack of ... knowledge" about the letter.

Ms Hamilton sought aggravated damages and costs for psychological injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing Mr Dyers' suicide.

On Friday, Justice Michael Walton said Ms Hamilton's claim failed because the court was not satisfied "to the requisite standard" that the remaining officer sent the letter "with an intention to cause harm".

Justice Walton said in a lengthy judgment that Ms Hamilton also failed to show that the sending of the letter was the act that caused harm."

ABC News: Cult leader James Salerno wins retrial over alleged sexual abuse of teenage member

" ... James Gino Salerno was last year sentenced to 10 years' jail with a non-parole period of eight years for abusing the girl over a two-and-a-half-year period while the cult resided at a mansion at Aldgate.

He was found guilty at trial of eight counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a child.

But the 73-year-old — known as Taipan by his followers — appealed against his conviction in the Court of Criminal Appeal, which today overturned his conviction and ordered a retrial.

He was then released on bail.

The reasons for allowing Salerno's appeal are yet to be made public.

After the sentence was handed down, the victim — who cannot be identified for legal reasons — told the ABC she felt "justice has been served"."

Underground Bunker: Boarded up and shut down, Scientology struggles to stay relevant in uncertain times

" ... Here was Mike's [Rinder]

cutting insight of what these views mean for Scientology…

This is exactly the sort of situation they so often crow about "solving." And they also claim they are "creating a new civilization" and "clearing the planet." Repeatedly. This is an "Ideal Org" and there is another one in Harlem. Where's the new civilization? There's also an Ideal Org in Minneapolis (actually St. Paul) too that has been "changing civilization." There are half dozen in the LA area. And Atlanta. And so on. Of course, they will change their tune right now — instead of boasting about how they are bringing peace and a new civilization, the unrest will be used for money-grubbing. 'Look at the state of civilization the psychiatrists have created, we need money to fight them.''

Oxygen: Polygamist Cult Leader Uses Wives And Followers To Start Bloody Sectarian War

" ... Polygamous doctor Rulon Allred's 1977 murder was found to be one of several hits ordered by fanatical cult leader Ervil LeBaron.

The 1977 murder of a small-town doctor in Utah pulled back a veil on a bloody conflict between Mormon polygamist factions that stretched all the way to Chihuahua, Mexico.

Dr. Rulon Allred had a small practice in the town of Murray, multiple wives, and 48 children. On May 10, 1977, two young women in wigs and disguises strode into his clinic and shot him to death in one of his examination rooms, according to "Deadly Cults" on Oxygen.

Authorities guessed the murder might be connected to Allred's faith because of a series of threatening pamphlets making the rounds from the Church of the Lamb of God, an extreme offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Repent or be destroyed," one of them read.

The church was headed by Ervil LeBaron, who believed himself to be a prophet, and was based in Chihuahua, Mexico. Authorities weren't familiar with Ervil, but once they started looking into the murder, they uncovered a startling history of violence, former Salt Lake District Attorney David Yocom told "Deadly Cults."

Ervil's brother, Joel, was the leader of the sect, but they clashed over differing visions for their family in 1970, according to BBC. In retaliation, Ervil plotted Joel's murder, Ruth Wariner LeBaron told producers.

Ruth was the 39th of Joel's 42 children and recalled the impoverished living at "Colonia LeBaron." Every member of the sect was taught that it was noble to struggle. "They believe that they're suffering for the greater good and that will help them get to heaven later," Ruth said.

Ervil took some of the family's followers with him when Joel kicked him out, according to Ruth, and he constantly wrote revelations and preached that Joel was a false prophet. And in 1972, several of Ervil's followers carried out their leader's wishes, luring Joel to a house, beating him, and shooting him to death.

But Joel's murder was far from the end of violence committed on behalf of Ervil's fanaticism."

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Mexican police chief arrested in connection with slaying of 9 women and children with Utah ties

The Salt Lake Tribune
December 27, 2019

Authorities in Mexico have arrested a municipal police chief there for his alleged role in the killing of nine women and children in early November, Reuters reported.

The victims were all U.S. citizens who have lived in a fundamentalist Mormon community in the border-area between the U.S. and Mexico for decades. Three mothers and six children were traveling in a caravan of three cars near La Mora, Mexico, when assailants opened fire on the vehicles.

Reuters reports that Fidel Alejandro Villegas, who is the police chief of Janos in the neighboring state of Chihuahua, was arrested for his alleged involvement in the crime. While the news organization says he is suspected of having ties to organized crime, it doesn’t say how he is allegedly linked to the slayings.

Police have said the victims were killed after being swept up in a fight between two feuding drug cartels, and the killings prompted comments from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said the U.S. would help “in cleaning out” the cartels, as well as from those who want polygamy legalized in the U.S.

“If polygamy were legalized,” said Brooke Richey, a 23-year-old Utahn with family living in Mexican Mormon communities, “they probably would come back to the U.S. It just seems like they’re in such a vulnerable place.”

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/12/27/mexican-police-chief/

Escape from madness: Walking away from a cult of killers

Ervil LeBaron as a missionary.

John Hollenhorst 
KSL
March 24, 2017

DALLAS — The daughter of a polygamy cult leader — whose orders led to about three dozen murders in the 1970s and 1980s — has emerged from the shadows decades later to tell her story.

Those killings — including at least three in Utah — were the secretive backdrop to Anna LeBaron's early life.

"We were raised in an atmosphere of fear, chaos and insecurity," she said recently while standing in the driveway of a Dallas home. She lived in the home — briefly, at age 7 — with many children and adult followers of her father, Ervil LeBaron.

"The authorities were after them, and so we moved constantly in an attempt to stay ahead of the law," she said of those days in the mid-1970s when Ervil LeBaron and his followers waged a violent campaign against rivals and turncoats.

Anna LeBaron is now telling her personal story in a new book, "The Polygamist's Daughter." It's a story of abuse, child slavery and fear. But it's also a hopeful tale of a teenager's escape from her father's murderous grip and Anna LeBaron's long struggle to heal her own psychological wounds.
House of fear

The children in Ervil LeBaron's Church of the First Born of the Lamb of God were rarely allowed outside, according to Anna LeBaron. The grown-ups lived in constant fear.

"Even though we didn't know why they were afraid, we could feel it," she said. "We could sense it, and it affected us."

Her family tree is complex, to say the least.

"My dad had 50 children, plus, depending on who you ask and who's counting," she said, seated in her own living room in the Dallas suburbs with dozens of family photos spread out on a coffee table. Her mother, Anna Mae Marston, was one of at least 13 wives joined in "spiritual" marriage to the cult leader. Ervil LeBaron was a father figure for Anna, even though he was absent nearly all the time.

"I can count on one hand the times that I was actually in the same room with him," she said, recalling her first 13 years of life in Mexico, Texas and Colorado.

While LeBaron was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, her father ordered a series of killings that left a trail of bullet holes, bodies and blood across two countries and several states, from Mexico to Utah. Ervil LeBaron was convicted of murder in Utah and died of natural causes in the Utah State Prison in 1981.

But from his prison cell, he ordered killings that continued years after his death.

Retired investigator Dick Forbes tracked LeBaron's crimes for many years for the Salt Lake County Attorney's Office. He has long been considered the leading law enforcement expert on the cult. Years ago he calculated a seemingly definitive number: 28 homicides ordered by Ervil LeBaron, some committed before and some after his death.

"Twenty-eight murders," Forbes said in a recent interview, in which "I know who died, and who did it." But he said other law enforcement agencies recently showed him new information that indicates there were "two to 10 additional murders."

That would make the overall body count at least 30 and possibly as high as 38.

At least two suicides are also attributed to fallout from murders ordered by Ervil LeBaron.

"I was not aware that people had died until I was in my mid-teens," Anna LeBaron said, because the children were kept in the dark by older members of the cult.

She believes those older members lived in constant fear of their own leader.
'Hot lead, cold steel'

Ervil LeBaron did order a few murders outside the cult. In Utah in 1977, two of his wives assassinated rival cult leader Dr. Rulon Allred, gunning him down in front of his patients.

But mainly his killers went after members of LeBaron's own cult. If LeBaron suspected disloyalty, his followers and former followers got what the leader famously called "hot lead, cold steel, and a one-way ticket to hell."

Several of Anna LeBaron's closest relatives plotted murders for her father, including her brother Eddie Marston. Investigators believe Marston was involved in the Utah murder of Robert Simons, who was shot and buried near Wellington, Carbon County, in the mid-1970s.

Marston himself was killed in the 1980s when a second round of murders targeted former cult members.

"He was kind and caring, and I had good memories of him," Anna LeBaron said of her brother. She believes those who killed for her father were good people, victimized by her father's madness.

"Brainwashing," she said. "You think you're doing the right thing and you believe you're doing the right thing. And so you do the things that you're told to do."

In her growing up years, she said the younger kids learned basic scripture. They were even taught the commandments, all 10 of them.

"Thou shalt not kill. Hah!" she said, emphasizing the irony. "That's surprising. But the killing was justified, based on the doctrine of blood atonement. If you had turned your back on the truth, you were blood-atoned because, they were taught, there are some sins that the blood of Christ can't cover.

"I was able to escape before those things became entrenched in my mind."
'Walk away'

In 1982, Anna LeBaron and her immediate family were living in Houston with her mother who was still fervently loyal to Ervil LeBaron. Anna LeBaron was 13 and was just beginning to taste life in the real world outside the cult. She'd grown close to her older sister Lillian and Lillian's husband, Mark Chynoweth. They were quietly drifting away from the cult, losing faith in the teachings of Ervil LeBaron.

A major stress point triggered Anna's decision to escape.

It had started with a good thing; her father was sent to prison in Utah. "My father being put in prison is the best thing that could have happened to any of us," she said.

But when LeBaron died in prison, right-hand-man Dan Jordan moved to consolidate his own authority over the group. Jordan ordered Anna LeBaron's mother to bring her kids from Houston to his home and appliance store business in the Denver area.

Anna LeBaron had previously lived and worked under Jordan and considered him a mean and domineering slave driver. She consulted with her sister Lillian, who advised her to just "walk away."

Anna did just that; she walked away from her mother. Lillian hid Anna in a Houston motel for three nights until her mother left for Denver. At age 13, Anna had walked away from everything she knew.

"When I escaped, I went to go live with my sister," she said of her new life with Lillian and Mark Chynoweth. "They enrolled me in a Christian school. I didn't feel I was rejecting my family as much as I was reaching for something else."

"It definitely took courage, it was such a frightening time," she recalled. "I thought that somebody would follow me and forcibly take me back."

Those fears were not groundless. Even after Ervil LeBaron's 1981 death, he reached out from beyond the grave. His most shocking crime was yet to come, striking at the heart of Anna LeBaron's new life as terrible tragedy caught up with her new family.
Killer becomes victim

Mark Chynoweth had allegedly killed for Ervil LeBaron in the 1970s. Investigators believe he was the triggerman in the Utah killing of Robert Simons. But by 1982, he and wife Lillian were pulling away from the cult, trying to make new lives.

"He was a loving, caring, compassionate, gentle man," Anna LeBaron said.

Mark and Lillian Chynoweth became surrogate parents for Anna and enrolled her in a Christian school. For several years, as she grew into a woman, her life seemed to be getting on an even keel

But then, the murders started up again.

In 1987, the cult's apparent leader, Jordan, was mysteriously gunned down at a family deer-hunting camp in central Utah.

After Jordan's funeral, Mark Chynoweth explained to Anna LeBaron that he and several others were still in the crosshairs of their dead prophet. Ervil LeBaron had wanted them killed because they refused to follow orders he issued from his Utah prison cell several years before.

"When my father was in prison, he had ordered all his followers to come and bust him out of jail, guns a blazing," Anna said. "Obviously that was a suicide mission, so nobody would do it."

Following that refusal, LeBaron issued what amounted to a hit list, written as scripture in the Utah State Prison.

"The Book of the New Covenant," Anna LeBaron said. "And in there was a list of names of people that had turned their back on the truth and would not follow my dad."

When Jordan was murdered five years after LeBaron's death in prison, former cult members realized that some of LeBaron's fanatical sons and daughters were bent on carrying out their late father's hit list.

"It was a very frightening time," Anna LeBaron recalled.

Then, in 1988, the most horrible of the man's crimes was carried out by seven of his sons and daughters. Three teams of assassins struck simultaneously, killing four people in Dallas and Houston. Among the victims of the so-called "4 o'clock murders" were Anna's beloved brother Eddie Marston, as well as her surrogate father, Chynoweth. The killers also targeted Mark Chynoweth's brother Duane and Duane's 8 year-old daughter who happened to witness her father's death.

"This is where Mark was killed," Anna LeBaron said as she looked at a photo of the used appliance store that he ran in Houston. Anna worked there, too, but was home sick on the day of the 4 o'clock murders.

"I would have absolutely been killed had I been with Mark that day," she said.

The murders devastated Mark Chynoweth's widow. Months later, Lillian Chynoweth — Anna's surrogate mother — committed suicide.
Road to healing

In the years since the brutal events of the 1980s, Anna LeBaron somehow had to forgive not only her late father who ordered the murders, but also one of her brothers, Heber LeBaron. He pulled the trigger on Mark Chynoweth. Four of Anna's siblings, half-siblings and stepsiblings are in prison today serving life sentences without parole.

"I have grieved a lot," she said. "I'm not sure that this kind of trauma is ever fully grieved."

Anna LeBaron's escape from the cult started her on a long quest for healing and wholeness through decades of therapy and counseling. She also credits the help she received in recent years from the nondenominational Gateway Church in the Dallas suburbs. She said it finally allowed her to heal some of the deepest psychological wounds.

Pastor-counselor Bob Hamp helped her navigate a life that couldn't have started off much worse. He says it took courage to walk away from family and 13 years of indoctrination.

"Those things are so ingrained from the early, early stages, there's likely to be even a sense of loss of identity," Pastor Hamp said. "So for her to leave that group wasn't just against every message that she'd received, but that was also against a sense of self that had been deeply implanted in her."

To be fully healed, he said Anna had to come to grips with a father who was almost always absent but still projected all sorts of confusing messages. "Like distance, and uncaring, and even abusive and cruel, and yet somehow portraying those things as benevolent," Pastor Hamp said. "That experience of a father somehow had to be replaced by someone, or something."

"That left a hole, you know, in your heart," Anna LeBaron said about her relationship with her father. "It leaves you longing for something that you've never experienced."

Part of the healing was her commitment to a new Christian faith. She said she found a new father figure in God, and it finally healed the wounds.

"I feel like I have overcome that," she said. "I am now proud to be a LeBaron. I am proud of my family because of everything we have overcome."

Anna LeBaron's life is on track, she said. Her marital arrangements have had some ups and downs, but she's had a successful career in the business world, she has a nice home in the Dallas suburbs, and she has five lively kids of her own, mostly grown up.

"Oh, it's absolutely a happy ending," she concluded. "My story is one of redemption, restoration and dreams coming true."

She has even reconciled with her own mother from whom she ran away at age 13. She said Anna Mae Marston lives to this day at age 85 — still a believer — in a polygamist community in Utah. Anna LeBaron shared the manuscript of her book with her mother before it was published.

She'll be in Salt Lake City on March 29 for a book-signing event at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Sugar House.
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=43614598&nid=148

Polygamists cast doubt on woman cited by Utah Legislature as sex-trafficking victim

Mike Noel, rigth, and Michelle Neilson, left,
during discussion of Noel's bigamy bill

NATE CARLISLE

The Salt Lake Tribune
March 7, 2017

Polygamists say that a woman who last month gave emotional testimony to lawmakers about being sex-trafficked through several sects was never involved in polygamy.

Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, recognized Michelle Neilson on the floor of the House of Representatives last month after she testified in support of his HB99, which would increase the penalties for polygamy when it is prosecuted in association with fraud or abuse.

"I was abused within several polygamist groups within the Salt Lake County area here," Neilson told members of the House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 1, after raising her right hand and swearing to tell the truth. "I was trafficked from one group to the other for money."

Neilson said her grandfather introduced her to multiple polygamist sects, including the Apostolic United Brethren, which is headquartered in Bluffdale, where she grew up. She also referenced the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingstons; the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; and the LeBaron Group.

"There is child trafficking going on. I was trafficked from one group to the other for money," Neilson told the committee.

"I also was shown that I would be murdered and killed by their blood atonement if I did not accept their doctrine," she added.

She said one of her abusers was Rulon Jeffs — president of the FLDS before his death in 2002. He was replaced by his son Warren Jeffs, who is serving a sentence of up to life in a Texas prison for crimes associated with sexually abusing underage girls he married.

Later in February, Noel recited Neilson's story before the Utah House, then commended her courage and asked her to stand up while representatives gave her an ovation.

But polygamists opposed to the bill say they have found no evidence that Neilson was ever in, or trafficked by, polygamous sects.

Joe Darger, the person leading the effort to defeat HB99, said he has asked all the polygamous churches he is in contact with to search their records.

None, Darger said, can find any record of Neilson or Michelle Pollak, the other name she has used, according to public records.

Public records confirm Neilson grew up in Bluffdale. A 1971 Tribune article lists Neilson, then 16 years old, as queen of that year's Bluffdale Town Days.

Neilson's ex-husband, Les Pollak, said he doesn't believe her story. They met when they were both Brigham Young University students, he said Tuesday. They were married from 1978 to 1991.

Pollak said he met all of Neilson's immediate family, including her parents and grandparents. They were devout members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which officially stopped practicing polygamy in the late 19th century and excommunicates members found to be polygamists.

"It never came up while I was with her," Pollak said of the polygamy and abuse claims. "It was never discussed."

In a phone conversation Tuesday with The Salt Lake Tribune, Neilson, 62, was adamant that what she said was true. She also said that the police force in Bluffdale and Saratoga Springs are investigating what she called a "cold case" arising from her story.

A spokesman for the police force shared by Bluffdale and Saratoga Springs did not return a call seeking comment about the criminal investigation.

Neilson did say that the abuse wasn't confined to meetinghouses or homes of polygamists. She said she also was abused in sex rituals in Masonic temples in Salt Lake County.

"There was sexual abuse on the altar," she said. "That happened at the Masonic temple."

But she declined to provide details of who abused her, which polygamous sects they were in, or who married her at age 12, as she has asserted. She cited the ongoing criminal investigation as the reason.

"I don't need your verification," she said. "What I have done is expose things that have been done to me and others."

Shirlee Draper, who was at the hearing that night to testify against the bill, said Neilson's testimony sounded strange. Draper is a former plural wife in the FLDS who is now works in social services.

"I was very puzzled," Draper said Tuesday. "I was racking my brain trying to place her because nobody of that description ever came through the FLDS and wouldn't have. We were so closed off from the world, we didn't interact with other groups."

Darger said Neilson appears to be a case of polygamy opponents utilizing someone with a story that helps their cause.

"Because this gets so charged, people listen to it," Darger said. "They can say polygamy and everyone gives them a lot of attention, and this got attention."

After Neilson testified in favor of HB99, it passed the House Judiciary Committee. Bill sponsor Noel did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.

The bill adds criteria for being prosecuted for bigamy: The offender must live with the extra spouse and "purport" to be married. Current state law requires only one or the other.

HB99 would keep bigamy a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, but those penalties could increase to one to 15 years if bigamy is prosecuted in conjunction with crimes such as abuse, fraud or human smuggling. Anyone leaving a polygamous marriage and reporting abuse or protecting a child would receive amnesty.

Those who oppose the bill — including Darger, who has three wives, and the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition — have said it makes criminal behavior of what people who don't purport to be married can do legally. They say that the state already has statutes targeting fraud and abuse, and those wanting to use the amnesty provision of the bill would have to weigh whether they want to expose sister wives or husbands who didn't commit abuse.

HB99 did not receive a hearing in the Utah Senate. To pass there, senators would have to bring it to the floor for a vote. The Legislature's general session ends Thursday night.

ncarlisle@sltrib.com

Twitter: @natecarlisle

http://www.sltrib.com/news/5026328-155/polygamists-cast-doubt-on-woman-cited