Convicted cult leader Malachi York files $2 billion lawsuit

York, the former head of the Eatonton-based Nuwaubian group, is now serving a 135-year sentence on federal child-molestation charges.

WMAZ Staff
December 14, 2018


The former head of a Putnam County cult, now serving a 135-year sentence on child-molestation charges, wants $2 billion.

And he wants it in 20 days.

Dwight D. York filed a lawsuit in Macon's U.S. District Court Thursday demanding compensation from various government agencies. His three-page suit argues that he is a Native American and the U.S. legal system has no jurisdiction over him.

"I am not or never have been a part of this corporate state or their judicial system," York writes.

He adds, "The reason I am asking for the amount of money damages is because I think a message should be sent to everyone in North America that you should not rape, murder, pillage or do treason, sedition, involuntary servitude, slavery, terrorism, fraud, extortion, grand theft, robbery, conspiracy and racketeering against a Native American Moor."

'A pseudo-religious sect'

York was the head of the United Nation of Nuwaubians, a Eatonton-based group that prosecutors called a "pseudo-religious sect."

According to a federal court ruling in the case, "Over the years, the Nuwaubian organization's official philosophy (as well as its name) has changed several times, alternatively finding its basis in Islamic, Hebrew, ancient Egyptian, Yamasee Indian, and various other cultures and religions."

York founded the group in Brooklyn in the 1960s, moved to upstate New York and eventually in the 1990s set up a compound off Shady Dale Road near Eatonton that featured a pyramid replica and other faux Egyptian relics.

Fourteen children testified against York

In 2004, a jury convicted him on 10 federal charges, including racketeering counts and transporting children across state lines for sexual purposes.

Federal prosecutors claimed that York molested and sexually abused countless children who were members of the Nuwaubian group.

Fourteen of those children testified in his three-week federal trial. Judge Ashley Royal gave York the maximum sentence -- 1,620 months or 135 years.

He is currently being held at the federal maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.

After his conviction, federal prosecutors seized the Eatonton compound and demolished it.

'You have 20 days'

Although federal prison records list him as Dwight D York, he filed his lawsuit this week as Malachi Z. York -- one of his aliases.


The federal docket for his 2002 criminal case lists several other aliases -- Isa Muhammad, Isa Alihad Mahdi and "Baba."

His lawsuit cites an 1871 law that allows people to sue local governments for civil rights violations: "I am looking for compensation from Title 42 Statute 1983 in the amount of two billion dollars."

York submitted several attachments with his lawsuit, including several documents arguing that he's not under jurisdiction of U.S. law, a form granting power of attorney to a Michigan man and a manila folder simply marked, "You have 20 days to comply."

As defendants, his suit names the "Macon County Police Department" -- a non-existent agency -- Bibb County, State of Georgia, FBI, an unidentified "Sheriff's Department" and Judge Royal.

No trial date has been set for York's lawsuit.

The federal Bureau of Prisons' website lists York's earliest release date as June 7, 2122.

https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/convicted-cult-leader-malachi-york-files-2-billion-lawsuit/93-623499810

Man enters plea in Gwinnett baby starving death — but still disputes case

Joshua Sharpe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
September 18, 2018

Rather than face trial, a purported Nuwaubian cult member made a plea deal and accepted a life sentence for the 2014 starving death of his 15-month-old daughter.

Calvin Mcintosh, 48, who authorities have said is tied to the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, entered Alford pleas to felony murder and three counts of cruelty to children. The Alford plea allows a defendant to accept punishment for crimes while still maintaining their innocence.

Judge Melodie Conner sentenced Mcintosh to life in prison, with the chance of parole, plus 30 years of probation. “Life” is 30 years in Georgia, meaning that he can seek parole after serving that time.

Charges of starving and false imprisonment of the baby’s mother, Iasia Sweeting, were dropped as part of the plea agreement. Prosecutor Rich Vandever said Sweeting agreed to the terms.

“We had solid evidence to prove those counts,” Vandever told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of the charges related to Sweeting. She weighed only 59 pounds at age 21 when she was rescued from a Gwinnett County hotel in Peachtree Corners.

Sweeting’s family has said she was abducted by Mcintosh in 2010 in DeKalb County though he wasn’t charged, and Mcintosh’s attorney disputes the claim. Sweeting, a former DeKalb School of the Arts student who couldn’t speak or walk after her rescue, has made a remarkable recovery and is looking forward to attending college. She couldn’t immediately be reached for comment after the hearing. 

Her mother Elvis Morgan was conflicted after the pleas.
“I don’t know how to feel right now,” she told the AJC. 

The pleas mark a major step, but not the end of the case. Mcintosh’s daughter, Najlaa, who is also accused of murder in the death of baby Alcenti for allegedly denying food to her, three other children and Sweeting at her father’s order because of some “misbehavior.” No trial date has been set for Najlaa Ncintosh.

The murder case began on Nov. 11, 2014, when Calvin Mcintosh went to a Sandy Springs hospital with the baby and told staff she wasn’t breathing. It was too late to save her, and a nurse said the child looked like a skeleton.

None of Sweeting’s family had ever met the baby; they’d been searching for Sweeting for four years.

Hospital staff notified Gwinnett police, who soon raided Room 310 at the Extended Stay America on Jimmy Carter Boulevard, where the group had been living. They found Sweeting in dire need of medical attention and the other three children malnourished. Police said two of the children were the product of incest between the Mcintoshs, the other was another child Sweeting had with Mcintosh.

In the room, officers also discovered literature about the beliefs of the Nuwaubian group, which authorities have long called a black supremacist cult. The group once had a secretive Egyptian-themed compound in Putnam County until the leader, Dwight York, went to prison for child molestation.

Defense attorney Walt Britt said the Alford plea doesn’t mean Mcintosh is admitting guilt and he pointed out that he had planned to keep the state from bringing up anything about the Nuwaubians.

“Mr. McIntosh, at his plea and sentencing, disputed the state’s case, but determined it was in his best interest to enter a plea,” Britt told the AJC. “I am very sorry the death of the baby...and all injuries and problems that the other children suffered.”

https://www.ajc.com/news/local/breaking-surprise-guilty-plea-gwinnett-cult-baby-starving-death/mUAV0qvqI3mtuzF5UOltxM/

How Fort Lauderdale artist Niki Lopez survived a doomsday cult

Phillip Valys
Reporter SouthFlorida.com
July 13, 2018

Niki Lopez’s home art studio in Fort Lauderdale is filled with elephants. Her workspace at Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts has porcelain figurines of Ganesha, a many-armed, elephant-headed, Hindu deity who is believed to remove obstacles. There are pachyderm-shaped stickers and coffee-table sculptures.

But the biggest elephant in the room lies in Lopez’s “Homegrown,” a waist-high, light-gray sculpture of the artist with her eyes closed. “Homegrown” stands behind a wall emblazoned with handwritten notes, such as “No longer silent” and “Don’t want to be special,” which address her childhood as a sex slave in a New York black-supremacist cult.

Lopez, now 43, creates performance art, sculptures and paintings that bear the scars of her trauma. Five works drawn from her past are featured in Lopez’s art show “What’s Your Elephant?” opening Aug. 18, at 1310 Gallery at Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts. She also appeared in a recent episode of the series “People Magazine Investigates: Cults,” which aired earlier this week on the Investigation Discovery television network. (The episode is available on demand at InvestigationDiscovery.com.)

Between ages 11 and 25, Lopez belonged to an end-times cult called United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, headed by pseudoreligious leader Dwight “Malachi” York. First at his Brooklyn headquarters and later at his Egyptian-themed compound in Eatonton, Ga., York molested Lopez and other children from the 1980s until 2002, when the FBI arrested York. York pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to 135 years in federal prison for transporting minors across state lines for sexual purposes.

The title of “Homegrown,” Lopez says, refers to York’s vulgar term for girls and women he groomed to be his concubines. Her mother joined the cult when Lopez was 11. York raped Lopez when she was 15, taking her virginity, she says.

“The man who abused me taught me to think the world was going to end, that we were going to burn,” says Lopez, who is uncomfortable saying York’s name. “I internalized a lot just to survive. We were voiceless and being tortured for no reason.”

Like many followers of York, a former Black Panther who preached ideas of black supremacy and mystical Islam, Lopez and her mother believed even his most outrageous claims. Over the years, York claimed to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad, to be a member of the Sudanese royal family and to be an extraterrestrial.

“He lied constantly,” Lopez says. “But everyone looked up to him as the spiritual imam of the community.”

“All the Pretty Dresses,” another installation in the “What’s Your Elephant?” show, concerns one of York’s lies. It’s a sculpture of Lopez wearing a gold-and-purple dress, a reference to the cult leader’s manipulative “reward system” of giving soda and clothes to the most obedient girls. “We’d have to perform sexual things on him, and we’d get candy and T-shirts,” Lopez recalls.

For her performance-art video “Caressed,” Lopez appears nude and partially cloaked in shadow, her body bound with wire that presses deeper into her flesh as she recalls one conversation with York. She asked him about an unfamiliar phrase from a song lyric — “caressing your fingertips” — to which York replied, “When you’re older, you’ll find out.” “How was it fine to [be molested], but I’m not mature enough to grasp ‘caressing your fingertips’? ” Lopez asks in the video.

Lopez created “What’s Your Elephant?” five years ago to confront her past, but she’s since used the exhibit’s premise to prompt local artists to reveal the uncomfortable “elephants” in their lives, she says. Artists can submit works for the show through July 23, and Lopez is partnering with Stonewall Gallery in Wilton Manors to present a “What’s Your Elephant?” workshop on Aug. 2. Since her television interview aired, Lopez says her struggle has inspired friends to create fundraisers to cover the exhibition's costs.

“When we hold things in and feel isolated, we always have art to heal us,” Lopez says. “I share the elephants in my life in the hopes that other artists share their own.”

The “What’s Your Elephant?” exhibition will open Aug. 18 at 1310 Gallery inside Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts, 1310 SW Second Court, in Fort Lauderdale. The show will accept artist submissions through July 23. Admission is free. Go to NikiArtStudio.com/Whats-Your-Elephant.



http://www.southflorida.com/theater-and-arts/art/sf-niki-lopez-fort-lauderdale-cult-sex-slave-20180711-story.html

Dead toddler's estate suing hotel in Gwinnett cult starving case

Tyler Estep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 28, 2016

The estate of Alcenti McIntosh, the 15-month-old girl allegedly starved to death by a cult member in 2014, is suing the Gwinnett County hotel where her abuse is said to have taken place.

The hotel "knew, or through the exercise of reasonable care should've known" that the girl was in danger, the suit filed last week in Gwinnett County State Court alleges.

On Nov. 11, 2014, 44-year-old Calvin McIntosh took Alcenti to Northside Hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival. Her death -- and emaciated, 7.5-pound frame -- triggered an investigation that led Gwinnett County police to the Extended Stay America at 7065 Jimmy Carter Blvd. in Peachtree Corners.

Inside they found Alcenti's mother, Iasia Sweeting. Twenty-one years old, she weighed just 59 pounds. Three other emaciated children, ages 3 through 5, were also inside the room, as well as McIntosh's daughter, Najlaa -- who bore two of the children for her father.

Gwinnett County police believe Calvin McIntosh, an alleged member of a cult called the Nuwabian Nation of Moors, kept them all locked inside the room and had ordered Najlaa to withhold food from the others as punishment.

Alcenti's cause of death was ruled starvation. Sweeting and the other children survived.

Calvin and Najlaa McIntosh were arrested on charges including multiple counts of murder and child cruelty. Calvin McIntosh was also charged with several counts of rape, sodomy and incest. Both have been indicted and are awaiting trial. No dates have been set, Assistant District Attorney Rich Vandever said Monday.

The lawsuit filed Thursday names Extended Stay America, three partner companies, five "John Doe" staff members and Calvin McIntosh as defendants. It accuses the hotel of negligence, saying it should have been able to prevent -- or at least stop -- what was taking place.

"Decedent Alcenti McIntosh was born in a hotel room at the Premises in or about August 2013," the suit, which asks for a jury trial and unspecified monetary damages, says. "She was confined in a hotel room at the Premises for her entire life with at least six other people."

http://m.ajc.com/news/news/local/dead-toddlers-estate-suing-hotel-gwinnett-cult-sta/nqtF4/