Manson follower Leslie Van Houten granted parole in notorious murders; Brown will make final decision

Matt Hamilton

Los Angeles Times
September 6, 2017

Leslie Van Houten, who was convicted along with other members of Charles Manson's cult in the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, was granted parole Wednesday by a panel of state commissioners in Chino.

It was the 21st time that Van Houten, 68, has appeared before a parole board, and the second time that commissioners found her suitable for release.

“She’s very thankful and relieved,” said Van Houten’s attorney, Rich Pfeiffer. “She’s going home. There’s no question she’s going home. The only question is when.”

Gov. Jerry Brown must now once again decide whether to release her after more than 40 years in prison. Brown rejected her parole last year, concluding that Van Houten — the youngest member of Manson’s so-called family — posed “an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison.”

Her attorneys have long argued that she was only 19 when she took part in the crimes and that she has been a model prisoner. But release has been strongly opposed by the families of the victims as well as prosecutors and many others.

State officials will begin a 120-day legal review of the panel’s finding, and after the process concludes, the decision goes to Brown. The governor would have 30 days to take one of five options. He could uphold, reverse or modify the decision, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Brown could also send the decision to the full Board of Parole, or he could take no action, which would allow Wednesday’s decision to stand.

THE CRIME

Van Houten has been considered the least blameworthy member of the group and has been portrayed by supporters as a misguided teen under the influence of LSD on the night of the slayings.

A former homecoming queen from Monrovia, she did not join in the Aug. 9, 1969, murders of Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski, and four others at the Benedict Canyon home that Tate was renting.

But the following day, Van Houten was part of a group that stormed into the LaBiancas' home in Los Feliz. As Charles "Tex" Watson stabbed Leno LaBianca, Van Houten and another woman held down Rosemary LaBianca.

After Watson stabbed Rosemary LaBianca with a bayonet, he handed a knife to Van Houten. She testified to stabbing Rosemary in the back at least 14 more times. The blood of the victims was used to scrawl messages on the walls, as had been done at the Benedict Canyon home.

IN THE COURTS

Van Houten, Manson and three others were convicted and sentenced to death, but after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, their sentences were commuted to life in prison.

An appellate court overturned Van Houten’s conviction in 1976, and a second trial the following year ended in a hung jury. She was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of conspiracy in her third trial in 1978 and sentenced to seven years to life in prison. Starting in 1979, Van Houten has gone before the parole board regularly.

In recent years, Van Houten’s attorneys characterized her as a model inmate, earning a bachelor’s in English literature and master's degree in humanities while running self-help groups for incarcerated women.

At parole board hearing in 2002, Van Houten said she was “deeply ashamed” of what she had done, adding: “I take very seriously not just the murders, but what made me make myself available to someone like Manson.”

Manson, 82, and other acolytes involved in the slaying are still behind bars. Charles “Tex” Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel have each been denied parole several times. Susan Atkins, who was denied parole 13 times, died in prison in 2009.

FREEDOM BLOCKED

A two-member California review board first granted parole to Van Houten in April 2016.

In its first recommendation for release, the board based its decision in part on Van Houten’s age at the time of the crime, her length of incarceration, lack of violent crime as an adult and her spotless prison record: She has never been disciplined for serious misconduct while behind bars.

But Brown last year disagreed, saying in his five-page decision that all of these points were outweighed by other “negative factors that demonstrate she remains unsuitable for parole.”

He said the “shocking nature of the crimes left an indelible mark on society” and that the motive — to trigger a race war “by slaughtering innocent people chosen at random — is equally disturbing.”

In his statement, Brown said it remained unclear how Van Houten had transformed herself from a smart, driven young woman to “a member of one of the most notorious cults in history and an eager participant in the cold-blooded and gory murder of innocent victims.”

At her last parole hearing, she said: "I don't let myself off the hook. I don't find parts in any of this that makes me feel the slightest bit good about myself.”

A SECOND BID

‘She’s going home’

Pfeiffer, Van Houten’s attorney, said Wednesday’s decision by the parole board was an important milestone, calling it “the most difficult one to get.”

The panel was aware that the governor had previously rejected her release but still found her suitable for freedom.

Pfeiffer said he was hopeful that this time around, Brown will set aside public pressure and see that his client has been rehabilitated.

“If he rejects it, we’ll go back to court,” Pfeiffer vowed. “I’m not going away, and she’s going home.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-manson-van-houten-murder020170906-htmlstory.html

Rights league to intervene in religious freedom case

Christian Elia

DEBORAH GYAPONG, CANADIAN CATHOLIC NEWS
The Catholic Register
September 7, 2017

The Catholic Civil Rights League has become an unlikely ally of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation in a case coming before the Supreme Court.

The CCRL has received intervener status in a matter with religious freedom implications that will address whether the State can overrule voluntary organizations, including religious bodies, in determining who they accept as members.

A congregation of Jehovah Witnesses has been battling in court to preserve its right to expel a member named Randy Wall. He has argued that his removal and consequent shunning has hurt his real estate business. He wants the court to order the congregation to take him back but the congregation believes the matter is beyond judicial jurisdiction.

After a lower court and the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in Wall’s favour, the case will go to the Supreme Court on Nov. 2. It will determine whether the courts have the last word in determining who voluntary associations, whether religious or non-religious, must accept as members.

The CCRL believes the case has an important religious freedom dimension, said CCRL executive director Christian Elia.

“Freedom of religion for all in a free society must never be relegated to what we do in our places of worship typically once a week,” he said in an email interview. “Freedom of religion entails that religious groups have the right to self-govern in accordance with their faith tradition. The state must not get involved in internal disciplinary measures exercised by religions within the realm of their own clerical system and congregational membership.”

This case is important especially for Catholics because so many of the Church’s faith positions are “seen as counter-cultural today,” Elia said.

“Roman Catholics support an all-male clergy,” he said. “Catholics believe in the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. Catholics believe that gender is not a social construct, that we are created male and female and finally, Catholics believe in marriage between a man and a woman, with the family being the basis of society.”

Though admitting the Church has a way to go in “winning hearts and minds, Elia stressed, “we must, however, maintain that as Catholics we have the freedom to support these beliefs in our institutions, such as schools and hospitals, and we must resist the State’s attempt to curtail our rights to govern ourselves.”

The CCRL will be intervening jointly with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. The two organizations will argue the importance “for religious communities to be able to define their membership and to protect their religious character, identity and integrity,” said the EFC in a release.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has also been granted intervener status and will argue that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Alberta Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of private, voluntary associations to regulate their membership “immune from judicial review.”

"It is an unjustifiable violation of the freedom of association to compel members of a voluntary association to associate involuntarily with an individual that the members have determined does not meet, or no longer meets, the membership criteria the association has established,” said Justice Centre president John Carpay. “The freedom of association necessarily imparts to private associations, whether religious or non-religious, the right to exclude individuals who do not meet the membership criteria....”

https://www.catholicregister.org/item/25980-rights-league-to-intervene-in-religious-freedom-case

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https://youtu.be/bI6mb5ZMh4c

Former Jaffrey woman recounts experiences with, being shunned from Jehovah’s Witnesses

NICHOLAS HANDY
Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
September 07, 2017

Over the past 10 months, Elizabeth Sauer has been doing her best to reclaim her life, learning how to live without the friends and religion that she says shunned her last November.

Sauer, 57, says she was “shunned” and later “disfellowshipped” from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religion she devoted more than 30 years of her life to, after she developed a romantic relationship with a non-member with no intentions of marrying him.

Her strong connection to the faith may be gone – Sauer said Friday that she is still determining her next steps from a religious perspective after realizing she no longer believes in the practices and teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – but she is disappointed and sad that friends and other local Witnesses will no longer speak to or associate with her.

“I lost a friend that I had for more than 30 years,” said Sauer, who said she has reached out to all of her closest friends, but has yet to get a response. “We used to talk weekly, and now she wouldn’t even say hi to me if we saw each other at a grocery store.”

Sauer provided the Ledger-Transcript with contact information for two of her closest friends with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Neither returned a voicemail left on Tuesday.

Finding the Witnesses

Becoming a Witness was not Sauer’s first religious experience, nor was it the first time she struggled with her faith.

Sauer spent her formative years in a Catholic school, but she says she never really “bought in” to the faith.

“I think Catholicism teaches a lot of good values, and I think I got a great, fundamental education, but I found that the religious classes weren’t making a lot of sense,” said Sauer. “It was really mystical to me. The nuns always complained that I asked too many questions.”

Sauer was about 8 years old when she was first exposed to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Living in Somerville, Massachusetts, Sauer would come across a neighbor who was studying and asked if she could sit in.

“It all sounded great. They used Bible verses to back everything up,” said Sauer, who has lived in Swanzey since January after spending almost 20 years in Jaffrey.

Joining the Witnesses was quickly pushed out of her mind after a conversation with her mother – who said Sauer couldn’t join until she was 18. But she found her way back to the religion as a young adult.

“I wanted to join for quite a while, but I pretty much pushed it out of my mind,” said Sauer. “But then when I was about 20, someone had come to my door and it had a ring to it again.”

Sauer said she asked a number of tough questions that day – including asking what the purpose of life was – and found every answer prompt and satisfying.

“She took out a little red book from her pocket that had the answer [to the purpose of life,]” said Sauer, who was baptized in 1981. “It blew my mind. I was at the hall the next week.”

Beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses

There are over 8.3 million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, according to a 2016 service year report on the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ website, jw.org.

The modern-day organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses began at the end of the 19th century when a small group of Bible students in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area began a “systematic analysis” of the Bible, according to jw.org.

While Charles Taze Russell took the lead of the group in Bible education work, Jesus is considered the founder of the religion, according to the website.

Witnesses believe a number of things, including but not limited to: the worshipping of one God named Jehovah; Jesus is the son of God but is not worshipped as the Almighty God; there is no torment in Hell; Earth was created to be mankind’s eternal home; and that “deliverance from sin and death is possible through the ransom sacrifice of Jesus.”

The website says that Witnesses are not automatically “disfellowshipped” for committing a “serious sin,” but someone will be “shunned” or “disfellowshipped” if they do not repent after breaking the Bible’s moral code. Disfellowshipped individuals are still free to attend religious services, and can receive spiritual counsel from congregation elders.

Trials and tribulations

Sauer’s faith was tested within the first year of studying to be a Witness, as she once again began to “ask too many questions.” Sauer eventually agreed to continue her studying after some deep thought.

Sauer admits that she had to clean her life up a bit to conform with the faith. Her largest two struggles upon joining were giving up the occasional cigarette and to stop celebrating holidays. Sauer also said she had to clean up her language.

Being a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses would help Sauer through a number of troubling times throughout her life, namely when it came to her two divorces. Sauer was married from 1977 to 1990 and again from 1995 to 2010.

“[Being a Witness] may have had some part in [the divorce from my first husband,] but he had some other issues,” said Sauer, who didn’t delve deeper into the reasons for either divorce. “I was really committed to both of my husbands, but they were both challenging marriages.”

While the divorces in and of themselves were tough, Sauer said her friends and other Witnesses were supportive in her times of need.

“Some people gave me gifts and some told me not to worry about it. I think they felt really bad for me,” said Sauer.

The final straw

As it would turn out, the final straw for Sauer’s involvement as a Witness would come in the form of housework.

Sauer had hired a local man to do some minor plumbing, painting, and other paid work. That quickly developed into a friendship, and later a romantic relationship.

The problem with such a relationship, according to Sauer, is that Witnesses cannot date non-Witnesses and are expected to marry those they date.

“It was all so gradual and perfectly innocent,” said Sauer, of the formation of the relationship. “People would ask why we weren’t getting married. I have no interest in marriage at this point.”

Sauer said that she struggled with the relationship in relation to her faith, to the point that she broke off the relationship at one point. But after she needed more work done to the house, the relationship quickly started back up.

Sauer eventually turned to the elders of her hall in Keene to speak about the relationship, which is when she said she was disfellowshipped from the church.

“Part of me felt like I deserved it,” said Sauer, of being disfellowshipped from the Witnesses on Nov. 29, 2016.

The Ledger-Transcript left a voicemail at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Keene, but did not hear back from anyone by press time.

Turning the page

Sauer said her future at this point isn’t exactly clear, especially from a religious standpoint, but she is ready to turn to the next chapter of her life.

Sauer no longer believes in the teachings and practices of the Jehovah’s Witnesses but does still believe in creationism and a “loving God.” Sauer said she has visited a few churches, but has yet to commit to anything.

“I still read the Bible… I want to believe that God loves everyone,” said Sauer. “Jesus dined with sinners, after all.”

Sauer said she has no ill will toward the friends and other Witnesses who no longer associate with her, as she understands that they are simply following the tenets of the religion they believe in.

Sauer has learned many great lessons from the Witnesses – not to be materialistic, happiness isn’t status, and many lessons surrounding morality, she said – but she also said she could no longer live in a constant state of fear.

“What bothered me after I left was that I realized I was in fear all the time,” said Sauer, who said many of the lessons taught revolved around the end times. “After I left, I felt so free. I could finally make my own decisions.”

And while she may have lost friends she built over the past 30-plus years, Sauer has been spending much more time with family.

“I can’t remember the last time she was this happy,” said older brother Gerald Barclay. “We rarely saw her when she first became involved, but now she comes to every family event.”

Sauer said she is grateful for the lessons learned and the friendships developed, even if it is unlikely that she ever talks with one of her Witness friends ever again.

“I don’t view any of my life as a mistake,” said Sauer. “It’s all a journey and I’m a very blessed woman. It’s a new phase of my life, the next and maybe final chapter.”

Nicholas Handy can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 235 or nhandy@ledgertranscript.com. He is also on Twitter @nhandyMLT.

http://www.ledgertranscript.com/Jehovah-12204638

Four voices, one concern – Addressing “faith-healing only” in context of HIV

World Council of Churches (WCC)

September 5, 2017

“I believe we need an advocacy strategy to listen, share experiences, and address the issues we face in working for treatment adherence,” said Rev. Dr Nyambura Njoroge, World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy (WCC-EHAIA) coordinator as she addressed a consultation on HIV Treatment Adherence and Faith Healing in Africa on 5 September.

Two days later, religious leaders and governmental organization representatives from across Africa and beyond met in Kampala, Uganda, to explore what it means to be healed and to offer healing, in the context of a disease that has no cure.

At the heart of the issues addressed at the consultation lies the phenomenon of “faith-healing only”, where some faith communities have begun encouraging people living with HIV to stop taking their anti-retroviral drugs, claiming that they can be healed by faith alone – a practice that can have devastating consequences for the work towards overcoming HIV and AIDS.

So how can the issue of “faith-healing only” be understood and addressed, to ensure that people living with HIV adhere to treatment? How can bridges be built to those among “faith-healing only” practitioners who are open to dialogue? And what does it mean to believe, to be healed, in a context where there is no cure?

Medicine and faith healing: science, spirituality or both?

“I believe, to overcome HIV,” said Rev. Canon Prof. Gideon B. Byamugisha from the Anglican Church, Province of Uganda, “we need to overcome the dichotomy between science and spirituality. The God of life is also the God of science. Everything that gives life, that encourages life – and this includes not only the air we breathe and the water we drink, but also the wonders of science, such as medicine and anti-retroviral treatment – we should view as a gift from God.”

Reflecting on the issue of “faith-healing only prophets”, Gideon added, “We should not be afraid that there are those who call themselves prophets. We are all in a prophetic movement. People who are saying human rights and human dignity must be affirmed, that is a prophetic movement. So let us not be intimidated, but pray for the wonders of science too.”

Aisha Usman, Northwest Zone coordinator for the Nigeria chapter of the International Network of Religious Leaders Living with or personally affected by HIV and AIDS, continues, “we need to take a common stand. It happened to me long ago, when I was very sick, I was told I shouldn’t take my drugs, that I should go for deliverance instead. Refusing, I was locked up in a room for two years, until I was discovered by the Catholic Church.”

“What the Catholics did,” Usman said, “was they brought me out, took me to their church and let me stay there, they bought the drugs for me. I took the drugs for a year right there in their church, and I got well. Now that is what I call faith healing.”

From witness to strategy, finding common ground for action

The consultation in Kampala is one of two similar consultations on HIV treatment adherence and faith healing in Africa taking place this month, the second one convening in Kigali, Rwanda on 25-29 September. Among the expected long-term outcomes are a manual on capacity building for people living with HIV and faith leaders on treatment adherence and advocacy on positive use of faith in HIV response; and to inspire a counter-movement against ”faith-healing only”, led by faith communities in each country represented.

Charles Serwanja, programme manager of health and HIV/AIDS at the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda, reflected on the importance of communities from a variety of faiths finding common ground on concerns of health and healing.

“From the Ugandan context, we know that until we as faith-based organizations can come together to agree on common positions, on common messages, common processes together, we will have fragmentations and interventions across the board, and the government becomes suspicious about what we are doing.”

“But we also know that there is a power in religious leaders coming together, generating common positions and speaking with one voice, on many issues, including HIV and AIDS. If we could mobilize those faith communities that are today not part of our inter-religious work to become part of the discussion, I believe many of the challenges we see today, in communities issuing controversial statements on faith healing and encouraging people to stop taking their anti-retroviral drugs, could stop.”

“Because with testing for HIV and for treatment, common messages are very key in mobilizing the communities to uptake services.”

“After two days listening to testimonies, presentations, and crying with people whose stories are so touching,” reflected Julienne Munyaneza, consultant with the PEPFAR-UNAIDS Faith Initiative, “I ask myself if we shouldn’t review our funding mechanisms for some of the issues we are addressing, or the way we are addressing them. Sometimes we seem to be stuck in old stories, in the way we have been doing things, and we miss the new developments around HIV and AIDS, especially in connection with the theme of ‘faith-healing only’.”

“But this theme is not new,” Munyaneza concluded. “It has come up in many of our discussions during the PEPFAR-UNAIDS Faith Initiative. Although we don’t really have the statistics, we know people in various countries have died because of ‘faith-healing only’. But what has become clear at this consultation, is that God uses also medication to heal people, and that there are many different definitions of what it means to be healed. I believe it is time to take this theme and the concerns we have raised and addressed here, to the next level.”

Distributed by APO on behalf of World Council of Churches (WCC).

https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/402564800/four-voices-one-concern-addressing-faith-healing-only-in-context-of-hiv

Canada's Newest Ultra-Nationalist Group Plans Show of Force

SIMON COUTU
VICE
September 7, 2017

The men-only anti-immigrant group, known as the Northern Guard, plans to show its colours in a rally on September 30.

This story originally appeared on VICE Quebec.

The Northern Guard, a new conservative ultranationalist group, intends to protest against what they falsely call "illegal immigration" on September 30 in Lacolle, Quebec alongside the Storm Alliance, and in Ottawa, in front of the federal Parliament. Formed by a number of former members of Soldiers of Odin, this men-only group claims they want to "defend the country against its internal enemies."

I met two members of the Northern Guard at a tavern in Gatineau, Le Petit Canot, which also serves as a regular meeting place for the group. Nationally, they have about 300 members, according to the Facebook page of the group founded in June in Moncton by Nick Gallant, former provincial president of the Soldiers of Odin for New Brunswick.

Last spring, the anti-immigration group Soldiers of Odin (SOO) splintered, as the Quebec chapter left the national organization, saying they wanted to distance themselves from the racist positions of the founder of the group, Finland's Mika Ranta. From this schism was born Storm Alliance and The Northern Guard.

Brian Wallingford, a heavy machinery operator in Maniwaki and former provincial vice president of SOO, is a national recruiter for The Northern Guard. "In Finland, SOO is a group of skinheads," the 43-year-old man, arms covered with tattoos, told me. "We always ended up being treated as racists. So we founded a group with Canadian values. "

However, the group, like many other ultra right organizations such as the 3%ers, are vehemently anti-Islam and have rallied against the thousands of migrants, mostly Haitians, who have crossed the US border since early summer. On the group's Facebook page, there are countless links and comments that associate Islam with terrorism or predict the introduction of Sharia in the country.

The Northern Guard argues that Canada should simply close the door to any form of immigration until further notice. "There are too many," says Eric Brazeau, a resident of Aylmer who is the group's spokesperson for Quebec and Ontario. "We are not able to support our veterans and the homeless. We will not pay for the Haitians. In addition, many are criminals. If they do crimes in our community, we will be there to protect and educate our neighbors."

Last month, the RCMP claimed that less than one percent of migrants who crossed the border since November 2016 were detained because of a criminal record.

Brian Wallingford is currently the moderator of the Three Percent Quebec page , a group of armed anti-Islam "patriots." He hopes that the Northern Guard might adopt a similar approach. "I am pro-arms and I will not hide from it," he said. "If a person has to defend himself for his safety, I want him to be educated in the use of firearms. We want responsible people. If one day we have to defend our country, we must know how. "

Like American groups such as the Minutemen, an armed militia that "patrols" the border with Mexico (not to be confused with the 80s punk band), The Northern Guard would like to do the same to track down Haitians who want to enter Canada. "Our members are ready," said Brazeau. "But we respect the laws, so we will not do it if we are forbidden. "

Listening to both men, you would think North America is in danger of a civil war in the near future. And they want to be ready, with their few dozen members on Facebook.

"The Liberal government is in great collusion with [the Hungarian-American billionaire] George Soros and the Clintons," Éric Brazeau told me, citing a common far right conspiracy theory. "It is a plan that is destroying our free Canada. We are afraid of being Christians. If the government continues to flout our rights, it may be a civil war. Charlottesville, it's just the beginning. "

"We're a brotherhood . In SOO, when Katy Latulippe became president, people did not want to be led by a woman and that divided people. A man who runs a women's gang, or the opposite, does not work," Brazeau said.

The September 30 demonstration is the first official public appearance of The Northern Alliance, which has just embroidered the jackets in the colors of the group. Until now, members were limited to discussions through social networks or around a BBQ. But we expect more from them.

"We do not want keyboard warriors," says Wallingford. "I've seen it too much with SOO and La Meute. We want people to move to help. "

Follow Simon Coutu on Twitter.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/yww8ab/canadas-newest-ultra-nationalist-group-plans-show-of-force

How Canada tricked the world into believing murderous Satanists were everywhere

Michelle Remembers

Michelle Remembers, published in 1980, temporarily convinced the world that society was in the grip of murderous Satanist cults.
Tristin Hopper

National Post
September 5, 2017

A two-decade nightmare just ended for Texas’ Dan and Fran Keller.

The couple, who owned a daycare, spent 22 years in prison on the utterly baseless charges that they had served blood to children under their care, forced them to witness infant murders and flown them to Mexico to be raped by soldiers.

Although they were released in 2013, only this week was the couple officially declared innocent and granted $3.4 million USD from a state fund.

“No more nightmares,” said Fran Keller, now 67.

And the Kellers’ case was not unique. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds if not thousands of other innocent people would fall to varying degrees of similar fates.

British Prime Minister Edward Heath was falsely accused of being a member of an underground cult that murdered and ate 16 children.

A California daycare was shut down and its staff arrested after police received false reports that children had been forced to witness ritualistic killings of animals and babies.

In the small town of Martensville, Saskatchewan, more than a dozen people were formally charged as the members of a Satanic cult that locked children in cages and forced them to witness brutal murders.

There wasn’t a lick of proof to back up any of this: No photos, no guilt-ridden former Satanists stepping forward to confess their crimes, no forensic evidence of the thousands of purported human sacrifices murdered by these cults.

It was, quite simply, a case of temporary global insanity. And it all started with a single lurid Canadian book.

“You never see him all at once—he’s always distorted and he’s not quite substantial, more like a vapor … It turns to look at me and it’s all uhhh l-l-l-like all black …I’m scared! Scared. I’m scared!” goes the passage in Michelle Remembers describing Michelle Smith’s encounter with Satan.

Published in 1980 and written by Smith’s psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazder, it is the purported “true story” of Smith’s childhood as the prisoner of a Satanic cult in Victoria in the mid-1950s.

The entire book comes from 600 hours of Smith’s testimony in Pazder’s office, delivered in the voice of a child while she was in a trance-like state.

In halting half-sentences, Smith told Pazder of being driven into a Satanic cult by her mother at five years old.

“You’re not mine anymore, Michelle. You belong to the Devil,” her mother reportedly says.

Over months of imprisonment, she is forced to drink urine, eat cannibalized flesh, bathe in the blood of dismembered babies, participate in ritual murders and endure a cage filled with snakes and spiders.

In the climax, Smith encounters Satan himself in a “Feast of the Beast” organized by her oppressors, but is ultimately saved by the direct intervention of the Virgin Mary.

The book even came complete with a statement from Remi De Roo, bishop of the Catholic diocese of Victoria.

“I do not question that for Michelle this experience was real,” wrote De Roo. But in a chilling warning, De Roo added “in such mysterious matters, hasty conclusions could prove unwise.”

Unfortunately, the world quickly decided not to take De Roo’s advice.

What followed is now known to history as the “satanic ritual abuse” panic.

Soon, hundreds of similar “Michelles” across the Western world were similarly recalling bone-chilling details of Satanic ritual murder and abuse. It would largely be the fault of a phenomenon known as “false memory syndrome,” in which patients under hypnosis can be led into fabricating elaborate false memories.

Parents. Daycare providers. Teachers. Police officers. Nobody was safe from the sudden accusation that they were guilty of unspeakable crimes.

A common investigative pattern emerged. Children suspected of being Satanic abuse victims would be interviewed and asked leading questions by investigators. As the number and intensity of the interviews progressed, children were led into delivering ever-more elaborate stories of witchcraft, blood-drinking, secret tunnels and ritual murder.

In one case in Rochdale, England, all it took was a small boy to tell his teachers he had been dreaming of ghosts. Soon, social service workers were taking children from their parents in the misguided belief that they were breaking up a Satanist abuse ring.

“One afternoon in 1990 I got a call from my wife telling me our three kids had been taken away because of witchcraft and satanic abuse … I still can’t believe this has happened,” one of the parents, John Herstell, told the Guardian in 2006.

Saskatoon police officer John Popowich was one of the adults falsely accused of running a Satanist underground in Martensville, Saskatchewan.

“Nobody can understand what we’ve gone through and what we’re going through — nobody can … One minute you’re well respected, the next minute, you’re an alleged molester,” he told CBC in 1994.

Geraldo Rivera hosted a late 1980s claiming that the United States was in the grip of a Satanist underground counting more than one million members. “The odds are it’s happening in your town,” Rivera told viewers.

Willi Gutowski, a psychiatrist with Chilliwack General Hospita told the Vancouver Sun in 1989 that Satanist abusers could be found in the ranks of “mayors, lawyers, police, church people – upstanding citizens.”

There was indeed no physical evidence of Satanic murders, but Gutowski brushed it off as a consequence of cults going to “extreme detail in covering up the remains of people that are murdered, especially of babies.”

Michelle Remembers includes accounts of a Satanic cult hosting rituals in Victoria’s Ross Bay Cemetery.

Victoria is a city of retirees; spotting suspicious behavior is one of its strong suits. And yet, Pazder never questions how crowds of cloaked figures ripping kittens apart in an urban graveyard didn’t attract a single call to the police.

Even as his book brutally defamed Smith’s dead mother, Pazder never appears to have contacted Smith’s surviving family, even though the family home was a short walk from his office.

The events of Michelle Remembers describe a teenage girl and an adult woman being murdered, as well as at least six stillborn babies being dismembered in rituals.

No records or press reports from the era describe any missing persons or stolen babies matching the description of the purported victims.

The book also claims that Satanic initiation required cult members to remove a finger. Here again, Pazder did not seem to care that Victoria wasn’t awash in people all missing the same finger.

When Pazder sent Smith for medical examinations to corroborate her tales of constant abuse, specialists found only that she’d likely banged a tooth as a child. A rash that Smith claimed had been caused by the “tail of Satan” was found by a dermatologist to be a reaction to a toxic weed likely aggravated by Lifebuoy soap.

“It simply wasn’t the kind of thing you fabricated if you were crazy or hysterical” was how Pazder justified his belief that a patient of his had met and defeated Satan.

Upon the publication of Michelle Remembers, Macleans’ magazine dispatched a writer to Victoria, who found childhood friends and family of Michelle who were shocked at the characterization.

Ten years later, just as the ritual abuse panic broke in England, Britain’s the Mail on Sunday similarly sent investigators to Victoria. There again, they found a family utterly embittered by the outlandish lies of Michelle Remembers.

“The book took me four months to read, and I cried all the time,” Smith’s father, Michelle’s father, Jack Proby, told them. “I kept saying to myself: ’Dear God, how could anyone do this to their dead mother?’”

There’s no telling how many lives Michelle Remembers damaged, or how much real abuse it precipitated.

In the wake of so many false accusations, law enforcement had to completely rewrite their procedures for identifying and investigating legitimate child abuse cases. No longer could the mere testimony of a child be trusted.

But if there’s one positive legacy of Michelle Remembers, it’s to serve as a guide to everything a psychiatrist should not do.

Faced with obvious delusions from a patient, Pazder embarked on a manic quest to corroborate them — alienating the patient from her family in the process.

Then, he published a lucrative book about it. As Macleans’ reported, Pazder earned a $342,000 USD advance for the book, a sum that is equal to $1.2 million CDN in 2017.

Throughout the pages of Michelle Remembers, Pazder frames himself as the benevolent saviour of a troubled woman. He describes himself as “lithe and athletic” and “warm, manly, soft-spoken.”

The book’s dedication, in fact, almost seems as if it’s an ode to himself. It credits “all who have the heart to hear the cries of children.”

And in a final breach of medical ethics, Pazder would go on to marry his psychiatric patient.

Although it’s never mentioned in Pazder’s account of the triumph of Biblical dogma over evil, Smith and her psychiatrist abandoned their respective families and got married.

When the Mail on Sunday found Michelle, she was now working as the front desk receptionist for Pazder, who had since become a highly sought-after consultant on satanic ritual abuse.

Before reporters could confront Michelle with the evidence that her Satanic past was false, however, Pazder quickly intervened.

“For Michelle to go on talking about these things is too painful. She is totally free of Satan today,” he told them.

• Email: thopper@nationalpost.com | Twitter: TristinHopper

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-canadian-book-that-tricked-the-world-into-believing-they-were-overrun-with-satanist-murder-cults

Polygamist Warren Jeffs ordered to pay $16 million to former child bride who testified against him

Elissa Wall

Nate Carlisle
Salt Lake Tribune
September 5, 2017

A Utah judge Tuesday ordered Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints President Warren Jeffs to pay $16 million to a woman who was 14 when she was pressured to marry her 19-year-old cousin.

Elissa Wall will receive $4 million in damages and $12 million in punitive damages, 3rd District Judge Keith Kelly ordered in the lawsuit Wall first filed in 2005. Wall filed the case under the pseudonym ”MJ” when the events occurred.

Wall’s attorney Alan Mortensen said Tuesday the ruling allows for him and Wall to collect the money from Jeffs or the church. He described pursuing FLDS assets in various states as well as Mexico and Canada.

“It’s so the church feels the pain of what their doctrine has been as to the rape of young girls,” Mortensen said.

Through Mortensen, Wall issued a statement Tuesday.

“The judgment handed down by the Court is a big step forward in the fight for a strong and unmovable statement to the world that no one, especially children, can be sexual[ly] exploited and abused in the name of religion,” Wall’s news release said. ”Today is a victory for many thousands of victims of abuse. Many of us have stood up in our own way to fight for justice and further the protection of children.”

Neither Jeffs nor the church defended himself or itself in the lawsuit.

In his ruling, Kelly noted that Jeffs controlled the church and key aspects of Wall’s life. He arranged the marriage to Alan Steed over Wall’s objections and performed the ceremony. Jeffs also pressured Wall to have children with Steed. Miscarriages and a stillbirth followed.

Jeffs has been incarcerated since 2006. He is serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in a Texas prison for convictions related to sexually abusing two girls he married as plural wives.

Wall testified that she has trust issues and other lingering effects from the relationship.

Wall testified at Jeffs’ trial in St. George. He was charged with rape as an accomplice. A jury convicted Jeffs, but the Utah Supreme Court overturned that conviction.

In 2016, Wall settled the portion of the lawsuit with the United Effort Plan, the trust that holds much of the property in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., the traditional home of the FLDS. Jeffs oversaw the trust at the time of the arranged marriage. The trust agreed to pay Wall $2.75 million in cash and property.

Steed pleaded guilty to solemnization of a prohibited marriage and pleaded no contest to unlawful sexual activity with a minor, both third-degree felonies. He received 30 days in jail and three years of probation.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/polygamy/2017/09/05/polygamist-warren-jeffs-ordered-to-pay-16-million-to-former-child-bride-who-testified-against-him/

Neo-Nazi radicalisation camp held on Sunshine Coast

Rachel Lang
Sunshine Coast Daily
September 5, 2017

AN AUSTRALIAN white power group has hosted a secret "resistance camp" on the Sunshine Coast.

Members of the Antipodean Resistance describe themselves as "the Hitlers you've been waiting for", and appear to have chapters across Australia, including a presence on the Sunshine Coast.

The group is responsible for posting anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, and anti-gay propaganda in cities across the county, and is taking an active stance against the upcoming same sex marriage vote.

In July, the Queensland chapter of the Antipodean Resistance took to Mount Beerburrum to host a radicalisation camp.

The group shared a photograph of its camp on Twitter, showing four members with their hands raised in a Nazi salute with their identities concealed under skull stickers.

"The Queensland lads went on a camping trip on Mount Beerburrum, rounding off a very eventful and successful month for (the Antipodean Resistance)," their Twitter account reads.

According to the group's July 2017 Action Report, Antipodean Resistance members hiked up Mount Beerburrum, had a bite to eat before some "training", and then camped that night in the forest.

"After the hike and views over the Glass House Mountains, we found a camping spot and set up," the report said.

"We then made a campfire, as always using captured enemy propaganda to start it, and sat around it for the night.

"These camping trips will become somewhat of a regular occurrence in the future."

The neo-Nazi group imposes strict requirements on its members: you have to be white and not in a relationship with a non-white as "racial treason is not tolerated".

The group's website describes it as "an organisation of White Men who strive to fulfil their potential, not content with the idea of superiority granted to us by our race, but to live up to our historical greatness through our actions. And that is why we say: being white is not enough."

https://m.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/neo-nazi-radicalisation-camp-held-on-sunshine-coas/3220247/

A Scary Cort Of Bliss

The Ananda Margis­’ ‘path of love’ was strewn with a frightening trail of blood and crime

DOLA MITRA
Outlook
September 11, 2017

ANANDA MARGIS

Cult Of Controversy In 1971, five Ananda Margis, including the founder, were charged with murder. Three others were jailed for attempting to murder the then CJI A.N. Ray.

Until the 1980s, all through the heyday of the spiritual organisation he founded, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar’s impressive convoy of cars regularly charged through the streets of Calcutta in a show of godman power. Then there were the infamous skull marches by his followers, dressed in saffron robes and matching headgear, and carrying swords, sticks and, allegedly, human skulls. Sarkar was the founder of the Ananda Marg sect and an exemplar of the popular image of cultic behaviour with an edge of violence.

In the wake of Ram Rahim’s rape conviction, a few followers told Outlookthat it would be wrong to draw any comparison between the rape convict and the founder of Ananda Marg. However, Sarkar, one of the most controversial gurus in India, had not just been accused of being a megalomaniacal and dictatorial leader to his devotees. He had also been charged with the murder of six of his former disciples. How he went from being a railway clerk who dabbled in amateur astrology to being a proclaimed reincarnation of god, with supporters across the globe, is a tale that is mired in heavy doses of criminality, many conspiracies and several close ties with influential people who made his meteoric rise a possibility.

Sarkar was born on May 21, 1921 in Jamalpur town of Bihar. His family was originally from Bamunpara in West Bengal’s Burdwan district and had migrated to Jamalpur. In 1939, he was admitted to Vidyasagar College in Calcutta, but his studies were cut short by his father’s death. He took up a job as a railway accountant to support his family.

Those mundane horizons didn’t confine him for long as he soon realised palm-reading and spiritual counselling had a huge draw. He decided to learn and start teaching various meditation techniques to small groups. When his following started to grow, he took up the name Ananda Murti (embodiment of bliss) and established Ananda Marg, or the Path to Bliss. Indeed, he claimed it was his philosophy to show humankind the path to bliss.

By the 1950s and ’60s, many from among the wealthy and the influential had been lured by the new path. One of them was the Raja of Garh, Rajasthan, who donated 500 acres of land in Bengal’s Purulia district. That was how Anandanagar, the headquarters of the sect, came into being. What transpired in the confines of this ‘town of bliss’ generated a great deal of suspicion, with frequent allegations that the spiritual society was really a front for criminal activities. Indeed, the Ananda Marg’s enormous wealth has long been attributed to alleged arms smuggling. A fair sprinkling of western converts added to the air of intrigue.

In 1971, Sarkar, along with four other Ananda Margis, was charged with the murder of six of his followers. While Sarkar was lodged in jail, three other Ananda Margis were tried and sentenced to 17 years of rigorous imprisonment for attempting to murder the then Chief Justice of India A.N. Ray. The court found them guilty of having thrown bombs at the car Roy was travelling in, though the ­explosives did not go off. The murder of Indira Gandhi’s railway minister L.N. Mishra in 1975, in a bomb blast at Samastipur, Bihar, produced another conviction as late as 2014—all tied up with rumours of dalliances with global intelligence agencies.

The Ananda Marg sect was founded by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, who was later charged with the murder of six former disciples and put behind bars. 

A ban was clamped on the sect during the Emergency, but its end was the harbinger of another conflict. For, the elements were just right for a natural antipathy with the Left Front government that had come into power in 1977. Clashes between party cadres and Margis were frequent, and dated back to the 1960s.

Things came to a head again with the grisly Bijon Setu massacre of 1982, where 17 Ananda Margis, including two women, were lynched and then set on fire. Ananda Marg blamed CPI(M) goons—and Jyoti Basu cried conspiracy. Other theories included mob fury at rumours of child abduction, though the Margis claim they were only on their way to an educational conference in Tiljala, then a remote marshland. The whiff of global espionage endured with the infamous Purulia Arms Drops case of the ’90s that too was linked to the Ananda Margis.

Sarkar’s philosophy, ‘PROUT’ or Progressive Utilisation theory, rejected both capitalism and communism in favour of a more spiritual Vedic and Tantric approach to living. But Sarkar and other Ananda Margis were believed to nurture ambitions of gaining political control and had specifically wooed members of the administration, the bureaucracy and even the police. But the taint of corruption, crime and even targeted killing of defectors led to a dimming of the aura, culminating in Sarkar’s wife Uma quitting the ashram and declaring to the world that the organisation was a den of ill­egal activities. Though Sarkar survived his trial—he was not convicted and was released from prison in 1978—the stigma stuck to the godman till his death in 1990.

Today his followers are scattered across the country and abroad. Incensed by all the allegations, Ananda Margis say Sarkar was a victim of persecution by the Communist government. “Not a shred of evidence could be found against our guru,” Acharya Madhuratananda, sectorial secretary of the Marga’s Delhi centre, told Outlook. “It was all proven to be a conspiracy against him,” says a devotee. The Margis say they continue the philanthropic work initiated by Sarkar. “We are also present in Bengal but we have faced a great deal of intimidation and torture here in the past.” The Tiljala office is empty now, but the Acharya says that’s because the workers are all away in flood-relief work across the states.

https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/a-scary-cort-of-bliss/299265

Exclusive: Top Steiner school ordered to close by Government over child safety fears

Camilla Turner, education editor
Telegraph News
September 2, 2017

Britain’s flagship Steiner school has been ordered to close amid fears over child safety, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

The Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley had already been banned by the Department for Education (DfE) from admitting any new pupils, following a series of damning Ofsted inspections which uncovered a raft of safeguarding failings.

It comes after Denis McCarthy, a senior staff member who was also a leading figure in the UK’s Steiner school movement, was sacked from the school for gross misconduct.

“He was a senior figure in anthroposophy,” a source close to the school told The Sunday Telegraph. “He was the most powerful person in the school, he had a large following.

“The school did everything that they could to protect him: minimising or dismissing concerns, and deleting safeguarding emails."

The development raises questions about the 34 other Steiner schools in the UK and Ireland, which includes four state funded Steiner academies.

Steiner schools, which are favoured by liberally-minded middle-class parents, base their curriculum on the spiritual philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, called anthroposophy.

A Steiner education emphasises child creativity and the importance of rearing “free thinking individuals”. Actor Mark Rylance sent his daughter Nataasha van Kampen, the filmaker who died in 2012, to a Steiner school in Crouch End, London.

Friends star Jennifer Aniston told Vogue magazine how the Steiner school she attended in America did not allow her to watch television, but she was allowed to go to the theatre.

The Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley charges up to £9,570-a-year in fees and is set on ten acres of grounds on the site of a 13th-century Plantagenet royal palace in Hertfordshire.

The school has issued a public apology to children and their families for “real and serious failings going back several years”, acknowledging that it failed to act on “repeated concerns raised by parents” over safeguarding.

The school was notified in July of the Secretary of State for Education’s intention to remove it from the independent schools’ register, a decision which the school is now appealing. 

The drastic move, which is only used as a last resort by ministers, follows a spate of highly critical inspections over the past 18 months.

Parental concerns about pupil welfare triggered an an emergency inspection last March by the School Inspectorate Service (SIS), which inspect private schools, after which the DfE ordered Ofsted  to take over.

Following the inspection, a school newsletter described school inspectors as “aliens” and told parents that there was much “shuffling of feet” when inspectors asked to speak to the school’s head. 

Steiner schools do not typically have a headteacher, but rather are run by a committee or group of teachers. In November Ofsted inspectors found “serious weaknesses in the school’s management of safeguarding”.

They added that “several” of the 39 formal complaints received from parents from the previous school year alone related to safeguarding.

Inspectors said that “serious allegations of a child protection nature” were already being investigated by other authorities.

In December Ofsted said the school must “urgently” addresses weaknesses in its management of safeguarding issue.

An inspection earlier this year found a series of underlying flaws. “Leaders have failed to identify that the culture of close relationships at the school puts pupils at risk,” inspectors said.

“Leaders have underplayed and misrepresented the school’s safeguarding failings to parents”. The school confirmed that one teacher, Mr McCarthy, had been dismissed in January for gross misconduct “following a series of concerns about safeguarding and SEND [special education needs and disability] provision, reluctance to follow management guidance and a breakdown of trust and confidence”.

Mr McCarthy had taught at the school for 35 years and was in charge of training teachers. He rose to the role of  “Chair of the College of Staff”, meaning he was accountable to the chair of trustees on behalf of staff, and was responsible for ensuring that the school was run in accordance with the educational principles inspired by Rudolf Steiner.

He was also a senior figure in the Steiner school movement, and had served as a  director of the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, which runs all 35 Steiner schools in the UK and Ireland. 

Now he advertises his services online for "Waldorf inspired home schooling”.

Richy Thompson, director of public Affairs and policy at Humanists UK, said that  child welfare issues at other Steiner schools must  be examined.

“For years now we have been aware of concerns about inadequate safeguarding at Steiner schools, including at Kings Langley,” he said.

“We are glad that these concerns are now being taken seriously and hope that other schools similarly come under closer scrutiny.”

Georgina Halford-Hall, chief executive of Whistleblowers UK, said: "The regulators and statutory bodies involved in this matter have missed many opportunities to protect children.

"We have supported whistleblowers at this school.

"They have been confronted with the determination of an organisation to put the protection of its reputation above its safeguarding responsibilities. We welcome the long over due apology issued by the school to them.”

The school’s newly appointed Principal, Tim Byford, said in a statement on the school’s website: “The School and leadership wishes to fully and publicly apologise to those children, and their families, to whom the school failed to provide a safe and supportive learning environment.”

He added: "The new leadership of the School is putting into effect a strategy to address all of the issues identified by Ofsted and others, working closely with parents, staff and all stakeholders.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “All independent schools must meet the Independent School Standards and those that fail to do so must improve or face closure.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/02/exclusive-top-steiner-school-ordered-close-government-child/

Brian Tamaki warns of 'signs of the end of time'

NZ Herald

September 4, 2017

Destiny Church's Brian Tamaki makes a prophecy in 2003 that they will "rule the nation"


Destiny Church co-founder Brian Tamaki has sounded a warning following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey which left 50 people dead.

Bishop Tamaki took to social media to warn followers of signs of the end of time.

"Earthquakes. Floods..Famines..Diseases..Wars and widespread deception are just few of the end time signs," he tweeted on August 30.

"The end comes when Kingdom is preached."

Floods from Hurricane Harvey has displaced tens of thousands of people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes across the US.

Tamaki's message also comes as tensions between the US and North Korea heat up with the rogue state's leader Kim Jong-Un threatening the "greatest disaster" against the US.

In the middle of New Zealand's election campaign, Tamaki also took the opportunity to take a swipe at politics, saying "Politics is the most devious, deceptive and crass activity in society.

"It's all over TV, has our money and rules our lives."

His anti-political views were aired on Twitter despite Destiny Church previously being linked to Destiny New Zealand - a political party formed in 2003.

The party ran candidates in most electorates in the 2005 general election but garnered less than 1 percent of the vote - well short of the 5 percent threshold required to enter Parliament without winning an electorate seat.

In 2004 Tamaki featured on a DVD titled "A Nation Under Siege", decrying what he sees as four problems with New Zealand society: "a Government gone evil, a radical homosexual agenda, the media: 'a modern day witchcraft' and 'the retreat of religion in New Zealand'".

Last year Tamaki blamed earthquakes on gays, sinners and murderers.

He also blamed a gay priest and the people of Christchurch for the devastating earthquakes that hit Canterbury in 2010 and 2011 which killed 185 people.

"The land actually speaks to God. Out of the soil ... Abel's blood spoke to God from a murder. The earth can speak. Leviticus says that the earth convulses under the weight of certain human sin.

"It spews itself up after a while - that's natural disasters. Because nature was never created to carry the bondage of our iniquity," Tamaki said.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11916629

Bill aims to exempt Amish from handgun permit photo rule

Tom Precious
Buffalo News
September 2, 2017

ALBANY – They might not have hired lobbyists in Albany pushing their causes, but members of Amish, Mennonite and potentially other religious sects have gotten themselves an unusual carve out in a new bill: the ability to get a handgun license without submitting a photograph.

A measure by Sen. Catharine Young, an Olean Republican whose sprawling district includes a number of Amish communities, would drop the handgun application rule requiring submission of a photograph for people who are members members of an “established religious sect.’’

The legislation, introduced Wednesday, provides an exemption for the photo ID for people who are members of religions whose “tenants of which prohibit the members from submitting to a photo.’’

“Currently, members of the Amish and Mennonite communities are unable to possess pistols or revolvers in New York without violating the tenants of their religion by submitting to the taking of a photograph which would also be used for identification purposes,’’ states a legislative memo Young submitted in explaining the need for the new bill.

The measure covers people in “established religious sects” who embrace “a long-standing commitment of non-involvement in the matters of established government practices and is conscientiously opposed” to submitting a photograph in order to obtain a handgun permit,’’ the memo states. Those covered by the bill would, instead, have to submit a written affidavit stating that they hold such religious beliefs.

Young said the bill is consistent with other state and federal laws recognizing the “non-involvement” in government practices by Amish and Mennonites, including exemptions from certain labor rules or building code requirements for their community schoolhouses.

Besides being a member of a "recognized religious sect,'' photographs won't be required if those religious organizations "for a substantial number of years" have required members to "abstain from the submission of photographs or photographic images.'' The only religious groups named in the legislative memo are Amish and Mennonites.

http://buffalonews.com/2017/08/31/bill-aims-carve-amish-handgun-permit-rule/

Forget Charles Manson: Why Indian Gurus are a Cult Above the West

India’s godmen make billions, sway political fortunes, and hold entire cities to ransom – as the aftermath of Ram Rahim’s jailing shows. So what’s behind their unholy hold on the public imagination?

scmp.com
September 2, 2017

MORE THAN 250 people were injured and 38 died when violence broke out in parts of North India a week ago after a court found a popular guru called Gurmeet Ram Rahim guilty of rape. The guru’s followers ran amok, the local administration failed to control the violence (which had been widely predicted) and three days later,when Ram Rahim was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the verdict was not delivered in any court.

Instead, the judge and his entourage flew to Rohtak jail to announce the sentence. It was considered too dangerous to have any more proceedings in a courtroom because the threat of violence from Ram Rahim’s supporters was so great.

Why should a convicted rapist who claims to be a guru command such fanatical loyalty from his followers that they are willing to run riot in his name? Well, partly, it is the age-old global phenomenon of cults and their leaders. The followers of Charles Manson, Jim Jones and many other Western cult leaders have done much worse. All over the United States, violent cults dedicated to hatred (which they often cloak in the language of peace) have mushroomed over the past two decades.

But there is something specifically Indian about Ram Rahim and the phenomenon he has engendered. For a start, there’s the man himself. Loud, hairy and bombastic, he favours a blingy wardrobe that would make even the most flamboyant rapper blush. Nor is he an ascetic of any sort. He has produced movies starring himself in which he beats up villains and jiggles his mighty hips to Bollywood-type music. He chose the names of his movies himself. His most famous picture was modestly titled Messenger of God.

For most of India, Ram Rahim is a bizarre joke. And yet nobody can deny his influence or the loyalty he evokes in his followers. It was said a single directive from Ram Rahim could make his followers vote en masse to defeat a hostile candidate. So politicians have always flocked to him, seeking his blessing.

Even as the rape case was in court, regional ministers were reluctant to act against Ram Rahim’s supporters. This was one reason the violence that followed the judgment was so devastating: politicians had been too frightened to take preventive action against the thousands of Ram Rahim’s followers who had camped near the courthouse. And now the guru is in jail, each political party is busy leaking photos of its rivals supplicating before Ram Rahim in happier days.

There are few other countries where cult leaders command the same kind of influence as India’s gurus. Some of this can be attributed to the global cult phenomenon. But it also has its roots in the Indian tradition of the guru-shishya relationship. Unlike many religions, Hinduism has no clergy, no Vatican-like centre and no pope figure. Instead, the religion requires its followers only to look inward to find peace.

But there is also a tradition that gurus, or men (and it is nearly always men) who have reached advanced stages of consciousness or intellectual evolution can take disciples to whom they impart wisdom. And these disciples are required to blindly and obediently follow whatever the guru says.

The modern Indian guru phenomenon takes the most unpleasant elements of the Western cultist mentality and the Hindu tradition of total supplication before the teacher and gives it a pseudo-religious sanction. Though Hinduism makes it clear that no man can be a prophet, let alone a god, many of these gurus pervert that tradition and pass themselves off as semi-divine figures.

Some perform conjuring tricks, claim these are miracles and encourage their followers to believe they have god-like supernatural powers. This has led to the popularity of a peculiarly Indian term – the godman – to describe a guru whose followers believe he has divine powers.

The idea of a guru regarded as a saint by his followers is not new. But, as the author Arun Shourie points out in his recent book Two Saints, gurus who were venerated in an earlier era were respected for their goodness and simplicity. Most were ascetics who had turned their backs on material possessions and dedicated themselves to charity or social service.

By the 1960s however, a new kind of guru emerged: the sort of godman who, far from abjuring material possessions, actually used them to impress his followers. The late Sathya Sai Baba, the most influential godman of the 20th century would conjure up Omega watches out of thin air. His followers regarded this as a miracle.

While Sai Baba was a controversial figure, his followers included top scientists, intellectuals and even presidents of India. And whatever one thought of his miracles, he did encourage his followers to donate generously to the hospitals, colleges and other charitable ventures he established.

But the world of godmen can be competitive. In 1966, when Sai Baba first came to prominence, he was denounced as a fake by Hatha Yogi, another guru/yogi. Hatha Yogi declared only he was the real deal. He could even walk on water, he boasted. A large tank was constructed by public subscription and television crews from all over the world arrived to watch the Yogi match Jesus’ water-walk. Sadly, he sunk to the bottom of the tank with his very first step. Later, Hatha Yogi said Sai Baba had cursed him.

Another of Sai Baba’s contemporaries, Muktananda, attracted celebrity followers from the West and the Indian film industry. But when he died, having chosen a brother and sister as his joint successors, a fierce row broke out at the ashram. The sister’s camp accused the brother of sleeping with American devotees. The brother said his sister’s followers had abducted and assaulted him. Eventually the sister won. She is the guru referred to in the memoir of American author Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love.

The Muktanandas and Sai Babas eventually made way for another kind of guru: the political wheeler-dealer.

The trend was started by then-prime minister Indira Gandhi in the 1970s when she promoted Dhirendra Brahmchari, who was, apparently, her yoga teacher. The state-run TV network (at the time, the only one in India) broadcast the yogi’s lessons every week (from all accounts, he knew his yoga) and the Brahmchari (a term which also implies celibacy, which may have been a bit of a stretch in this case) became India’s most famous yogi. He was such an important figure in Gandhi’s court he was nicknamed the “Rasputin of Delhi” and became a fully fledged political fixer, making use of his proximity to the prime minister.

All gurus have one major advantage: because they are supposed to be holy men, people are reluctant to treat them with obvious disrespect. The pushier ones use this “holy” status to gain access to the mighty and the wealthy. For two decades, India’s most notorious godman/guru was a racketeer with no real mass following, who did not even pretend to understand Hindu philosophy.

Born Nemi Chand Jain and arrested on fraud charges, he quickly changed his name to Chandra Swami, began wearing saffron and gained access to some of the world’s richest people. For many years, he was close to the Muslim Sultan of Brunei, one of the world’s richest men, and the centre of a dispute between two billionaires, Tiny Rowland and Mohamed al-Fayed, for control of Harrods, the famous London store. Chandra Swami later went into business with Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer, and mingled with US congressmen.

When his global ambitions faded, he returned to India, becoming extremely close to two successive Indian prime ministers: Chandra Shekhar and Narasimha Rao. Through it all, he was regularly denounced and exposed in the press across three continents. Yet it made no difference to his hold on political leaders. Eventually though, his luck ran out and he was arrested by the Indian police.

Less global in scope but no less extraordinary is the saga of Asaram Bapu, a millionaire godman with a dedicated (not to say, fanatical) following. Such was Asaram’s importance and wealth at his peak that he could film himself dancing with an Indian prime minister and grant audiences to top politicians. But the law caught up with him. He is now in jail on rape charges. His wealth may be intact, though. His followers routinely organise expensive social media blitzes during which they allege his arrest is part of a “campaign against Hindu saints”.

Most extraordinary of all is the saga of Baba Ramdev. He first came to prominence on a cable TV channel dedicated to “devotional content”. Like Dhirendra Brahmachari before him, he knew his yoga and within a few years became a national figure, rubbing shoulders with top politicians.

His first instincts were to go into politics himself. But when his attempts to run an anti-corruption campaign did not go as planned, Ramdev decided to go into business instead. He had already sold a successful line of organic and yoga-related products. But he was daring enough to enter the fast-moving consumer goods sector, taking on such a global giants as Unilever, Colgate and Nestle.

At first, when he talked big (“they will wet their pants,” he declared, in his usual not-very-holy rhetorical style) the multinational corporations laughed. But to their horror, Ramdev’s products became hugely successful, seriously threatening their market shares. His revenues seem to double every year and although Ramdev says he is much too holy to hold any assets in his own name, his partner/companion/friend Balkrishna (who owns everything, at least on paper) is worth US$3.8 billion, making him one of India’s richest businessmen.

So forget about Jim Jones and Charles Manson. India’s gurus are no mere cult leaders. They sway the electoral fortunes of political parties. They hold entire cities to ransom. And they can become billionaires in a few short years. None of it has anything to do with Hinduism, one of the world’s greatest religions, its traditions abused by these men. It’s just business. And, by God, it works!

http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2109392/forget-charles-manson-why-indian-gurus-are-cult-above-west

Law suits pile up against Guam Catholic church

RNZ
September 4, 2017

More than 100 child sex abuse lawsuits have now been filed against the Catholic church on Guam.

An abuse scandal has consumed the church on the island, where about 85 percent of the population is Catholic.

The Pacific Daily News reported that two more lawsuits were filed on Friday, accusing two former priests of abuse in the 1970s.

One of the plaintiffs claimed a former priest, Louis Brouillard, who faces 58 other cases, abused him on scout camps.

The other accused a different priest, Antonio Cruz, who has since died, of abusing him when he was an altar boy.

The Catholic church now faces 101 lawsuits on Guam, demanding more than $US655 million in damages.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/338611/law-suits-pile-up-against-guam-catholic-church

Survivor takes Anne Hamilton-Byrne cult The Family to VCAT

Chris Johnston
The Age
September 3, 2017

Anne Hamilton-Byrne's notorious Melbourne cult, The Family, has been hit with legal action by a survivor in a bid to probe the group's shadowy finances, compensate victims and remove the dying leader's legal guardians.

The action, which begins in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Tuesday, is the most significant development in the cult's 50-year story since Ms Hamilton-Byrne and her then-husband, Bill, were extradited from America to face charges in Melbourne in 1994.

Ms Hamilton-Byrne is 96. She has dementia and has been in palliative care in an eastern suburbs nursing home since Christmas.

She has led the secretive cult since the 1960s and orchestrated her followers through a campaign of stealing children for adoption from Melbourne hospitals.

Many of the children were drugged with LSD as teenagers. Fourteen were kept at a house beside Lake Eildon, with identical dyed blonde hair and new identities, through the 1970s and 1980s until being freed by police in 1987.

Child survivors of the cult allege they were abused, starved and brainwashed by cult adults under instruction from Ms Hamilton-Byrne.

Former cult child Leeanne Creese, who was given the name Anna Hamilton-Byrne in the cult, has initiated the two-pronged legal attack.

The first hearing in VCAT this week seeks to remove Ms Hamilton-Byrne's legal and financial guardians, who have power of attorney over her affairs.

The cult leader needs these guardians, Helen McCoy and Geoff Dawes, because of her dementia.

The two are also directors of a registered charity, Life For All Creatures.

Mr Dawes, a Hamilton-Byrne loyalist, is the son of the cult's former teacher Leon Dawes.

Ms McCoy, who has claimed she has never been a cult member, is the principal of a school for disabled children in Wheelers Hill.

The cult's assets are estimated to be worth up to $10 million, with properties in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne and the United States.

The cult will be represented at the tribunal by John Howie, an ALP-linked lawyer who is on the board of the John Cain Foundation and has chaired Victorian Legal Aid, Film Victoria, and VicSport.

Mr Howie represented Ms Hamilton-Byrne in a civil case brought in 2007 by the cult leader's granddaughter..

He did not respond to requests for comment.

Said Ms Creese: "I want to dethrone her, and take away her money."

As "Anna", Ms Creese directly led to a renewed police investigation into the cult in the 1980s after escaping from the Lake Eildon compound through a bathroom window.

"I want to show [Ms Hamilton-Byrne] and every complicit person who did her dirty work that they can't get away with it."

Ms Hamilton-Byrne and then husband Bill Hamilton-Byrne were charged with minor fraud offences after being extradited from the US in the 1990s.

More serious charges springing from the allegations of abuse and forced administration of drugs have never been laid.

Survivors are also considering a class action against Ms Hamilton-Byrne's estate in the Supreme Court, seeking compensation for abuse.

They say they may also seek to have Life For All Creatures, run by cult members, stripped of its charity status.

Ms Creese has started a fundraising campaign to help pay for her legal action.

Chris Johnston is the co-author of an investigative book on The Family.

Beatles’ Liverpool museum to celebrate 50 years of the Fab Four at Mahesh Yogi’s ashram

Seema Sharma
TNN
September 2, 2017

DEHRADUN: In welcome news for Uttarakhand residents as well as fans of the Beatles everywhere, the Beatles Story of Liverpool, UK, the largest repository of memorabilia connected to the legendary band, is going to hold a yearlong celebration to observe a half-century of the band, at Chaurasi Kutia in Rishikesh.

The celebrations, which will commence from February next year, will be at the site which has become renowned as Beatles’ Ashram. In 1968, while the band was trying to deal with internal differences, they travelled to the ashram run by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, near Rajaji National Park. They stayed at the ashram for three months, learnt transcendental meditation and wrote 40 songs, 18 of which were later a part of ‘The White Album’. On December 8, 2015, the ashram was opened by the state government to the public for visits.

A delegation including Beatles Story marketing manager Diane Glover visited the ashram sometime ago, following a visit by David Lelliott and his wife. The renewed interest in the ashram has enthused the state tourism and forest departments, who are also planning to contribute to the celebrations.

Tourism minister Satpal Maharaj said, “This is great news for us. Our holy town, Rishikesh, and the whole state will be promoted at an international level. Chaurasi Kutia is an important site for us. So we will also celebrate 50 years of the Beatles with a museum at the ashram containing Beatles memorabilia.”

The ashram, which earlier belonged to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was run by him till 2003. The forest land, which is now in the core zone known as Gohri range of Rajaji Tiger Reserve, was leased to him for 20 years. After the lease expired in 1981, the yogi continued to stay and finally left the ashram along with his followers in 2003. It has been with the state government ever since. There were complications related to getting approval and then funds from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to open the ashram for tourists.

Sanatan Sonkar, director of Rajaji Tiger Reserve said, “We will take permission from NTCA to renovate some of the dilapidated structures such as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s hall and also repair a wall around the ashram. A couple of interpretation centers and cafeteria will also be built. Besides, accommodations including 48 rooms will also be renovated. They will be used for different purposes, including as training centres for forest officials and guest houses for visitors. Soon we will apply to Eco-tourism Development Corporation of Uttarakhand (ETDCU) for funding for the project.”

Managing director of ETDCU, Anup Soni said that the corporation would support this proposal from Rajaji Tiger Reserve, if it has all the required sanctions from NTCA. “We must encourage regulated tourism in Chaurasi Kutia as this heritage property has all the potential to become world famous,” he said.

http://m.timesofindia.com/city/dehradun/beatles-liverpool-museum-to-celebrate-50-years-of-the-fab-four-at-mahesh-yogis-ashram/articleshow/60329226.cms

So-called psychic arrested at Miami International Airport on grand theft charge Gina Marks accused of ripping off $82,000 from woman

Bob Norman - Investigative Reporter
Local 10 News
September 01, 2017

MIAMI - So-called Miami psychic Gina Marks had been on the run since a warrant was issued for her arrest following accusations that she'd ripped off another customer.

But her run ended Thursday, just minutes before she was set to board a plane to Europe.

More Crime HeadlinesMan pays 'psychic' $147K to get rid of evil spirits, police say

Marks, a twice-convicted swindler and author of the book "Miami Psychic," was minutes from boarding a flight to Barcelona on Thursday at Miami International Airport when two Miami-Dade police officers introduced themselves and took her aside 

"They informed her she had a warrant for her arrest and, at that moment, it was like the end of the world. It was total shock on her face," private investigator Bob Nygaard said. 

Marks, a self-described gypsy priestess, was wanted in Maryland on a grand theft warrant, alleging she'd ripped off $82,000 from a woman who believed she had psychic power.

It was the victim's private investigator, Nygaard, who tracked Marks down at the airport and arranged for police to make the arrest. 

"I saw her come in with her husband and then I followed her through the TSA line, went in (and) followed them to the gate just about 15 to 20 minutes prior to her boarding the plane and heading to Europe," Nygaard said. 

Nygaard had been tracking Marks since 2009, and was instrumental in two previous convictions in Broward County when Marks was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2010 and forced to repay more than half a million dollars to her victims.

"I tracked her to New York. I tracked her to Phoenix. I tracked her to King's Beach, California," Nygaard said. 

Marks made her first appearance in court Friday morning.

Marks said at the bond hearing that she wants to fight extradition, so she's going to be sitting in jail for at least a month after the judge set a new hearing for Oct. 2.

https://www.local10.com/news/crime/so-called-psychic-arrested-at-miami-international-airport-on-grand-theft-charge

Louise Hay, AIDS advocate who became leading voice of the New Age movement, dies at 90

California/U.S./WorldLouise Hay, AIDS advocate who became leading voice of the New Age movement, dies at 90

The Washington Post
September 01, 2017

Louise Hay, a self-help guru and AIDS advocate whose book, “You Can Heal Your Life,” preached the power of love and affirmation, sold tens of millions of copies and made her a leading voice of the New Age movement in the 1980s, died – or “transitioned” – on Aug. 30 at her home in San Diego, California. She was 90.

Hay House, the publishing company she founded in 1987, confirmed her death but did not disclose the cause.

Described in a 2008 New York Times profile as “the queen of the New Age,” Hay was a child-abuse victim who had dropped out of high school, given a baby up for adoption, worked as a model and divorced an international-trade expert by the time she discovered “the power of positive thinking” in her 40s.

She read the works of Norman Vincent Peale and early 20th-century mystics, attended the Church of Religious Science in Manhattan, New York, and studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the onetime guru to the Beatles, at his “Vedic city” in Iowa.

Eventually, she developed a belief system based on the idea that medical maladies are inextricably linked with negative thoughts. Alzheimer’s disease, she wrote in her “little blue book,” the 1976 pamphlet “Heal Your Body,” was caused by “a desire to leave the planet.” Leprosy, she said, was related to an “inability to handle life at all.”

Wellness – relief from disease, depression, anxiety and stress – was merely a matter of positive thinking, honed by reciting mantras such as “I approve of myself” several hundred times each day.

It was a lesson that, Hay said, came from her own personal experience.

Diagnosed with cervical cancer in the late 1970s, she chose to go against the advice of doctors and begin what her website described as “an intensive program of affirmations, visualization, nutritional cleansing and psychotherapy,” focusing especially on childhood memories of sexual abuse.

“I . . . had to love myself a great deal more than I did, and I had to clear the patterns of resentment that I had held from when I had been a battered and sexually abused child,” she said in one audiobook, “Cancer: Discovering Your Healing Power.” “It was imperative for me to let go of the blame.”

Within six months, she said, the cancer was gone.

Hay’s account of the disease was central to the rise of her Carlsbad, Calif.-based publishing empire, which offers self-affirming coloring books, can-do desk calendars, inspirational card decks, meditative audio recordings and mobile apps.

A website for Hay offers daily “affirmations” (“in the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete”), and her company organizes conferences and seminars featuring self-described psychics, clairvoyants, “angel therapists” and holistic healers. A streaming radio station was launched in 2005.

Hay House grossed $100 million in 2007, the Times reported, and Hay’s second book – “You Can Heal Your Life” (1984) – has remained a strong performer in print, selling more than 50 million copies around the world, according to its publisher.

The book was given a boost when Hay appeared on daytime talk shows with Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey in March 1988, discussing her advocacy for people with AIDS.

She had been a relatively unknown spiritual counselor in Southern California when, in 1985, she began holding small gatherings in her living room for gay men with the disease. The support group, known as the Hayride, soon ballooned to a Wednesday night gathering of more than 800 people, filling an auditorium in West Hollywood.

Held at a time when AIDS was widely stigmatized, the meetings were “often the only time a person with AIDS might be touched, hugged or massaged with care, not rough disdain,” the Los Angeles Blade wrote in an obituary of Hay.

Hay reportedly presided over the funerals of some AIDS patients – “Who else was going to do it?” she said – but drew the ire of doctors and some members of the gay community for giving the impression that the disease could be cured, and cured with love.

“Love is the most powerful stimulant to the immune system,” she said at one gathering in 1988, the L.A. Times reported. “What we’re doing here is practicing love, unconditional love.”

She was born in Los Angeles on Oct. 8, 1926, and for decades kept her birth name closely guarded. But she acknowledged that her last name was Lunney – “the kids used to call me ‘lunatic,’ ” she wrote in one book – and said that she was beaten by her stepfather and raped by a neighbor when she was about 5.

She dropped out of high school at 15 and became pregnant, giving her infant daughter up for adoption on the day she turned 16. Louise Hay was a name she took after moving to New York in 1950, where she became a model for Bill Blass, Pauline Trigère and Oleg Cassini and married Andrew Hay, an Englishman, in 1954.

Hay reportedly left her for another woman 14 years later, leading Ms. Hay to begin visiting the First Church of Religious Science, a metaphysical institution led by Raymond Charles Barker. She returned to California in 1980, and, according to Hay House, left no immediate survivors.

Hay founded a charity organization, the Hay Foundation, in 1986, and appeared in a 2007 movie adaptation of “You Can Heal Your Life.” For many years, she traveled the country delivering lectures, finishing them by spending hours behind a lectern, standing on her feet while signing books for her fans. She alway stood, she told the New York Times, “because they all want to hug me.”

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/california-us-world/louise-hay-aids-advocate-who-became-leading-voice-of-the-new-age-movement-dies-at-90/