10 Horror Movies Based On Real-Life Cults

The films on this list are all inspired by real, contemporary cults and hierarchical religious or spiritual movements controlled by fiery figureheads.

MEGAN SUMMERS
Screen Rant
February 16, 2020

Charles Manson. Jim Jones. David Koresh. Cults and their egomaniacal leaders are subjects of interest for many horror directors. One person's ability to sway hordes of followers who are hungry for acceptance is full of infinite creative potential. While some horror movies about cults rely on their own unique reimaginings of fanatics organized around a unified cause, other movies make their real-life source material obvious.

The films on this list are all inspired by real, contemporary cults and hierarchical religious or spiritual movements controlled by fiery figureheads. While some investigate what happens when people try to leave cults, others show just how far some followers will go to prove their devotion.

10: The Sacrament (2013)

Ti West is responsible for this found-footage horror film based on the Jonestown Massacre. In 1978, over 900 people who followed Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones to Guyana observed his order to drink cyanide poison en masse. Jones coined this revolutionary suicide, and he joined his believers with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

The scope of the violence at Jonestown, the name Jones gave his settlement, shocked the world and inspired numerous films and television series. The Sacrament tells the story of a group of VICE journalists who venture to Central America to probe into a cult that recently resettled there. After crossing paths with the leader, Father, events take a vicious turn.

9: Helter Skelter (2004)

This made-for-TV biographical drama delves into the horror perpetrated by Charles Manson and his family in the 1960s, culminating in the brutal murders of five people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, at her home on Cielo Drive in 1969. Helter Skelter is a straight-forward adaptation of the nonfiction book of the same name by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry.

Manson, portrayed by Jeremy Davies, infiltrated the hippie movement surging in California at the time, using his charm and rhetoric to develop a movement. His "family" consisted of mostly women, and as it grew in numbers, Manson decided to kickstart an impending race war by orchestrating the heinous murders that would end the lives of Tate and four of her friends.


8: Red State (2011)

Red State was a labor of love for Kevin Smith, known for his off-kilter indie comedies. Smith took his inspiration from the Westboro Baptist Church, a religious organization known for its reliance on hate speech and inflammatory protesting.

Michael Parks plays an even more exaggerated version of Westboro's leader, Fred Phelps, known for employing brainwashing techniques and severe punishments to keep his congregation committed. Red State takes the threats and violence implied by Westboro to their logical conclusion, and it shows what happens when groups sustained by messages of hate decide to take up arms.

7: The Wave (2008)

In this German film, director Dennis Gansel attempts to reconcile with his country's fascist past. As the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler enacted their racialized campaign against anyone of Jewish ancestry, they coerced citizens to fall in line through messages of ethnic superiority. These heinous tactics exemplify cult-think.

In The Wave, a high school teacher must educate his students about autocracy and the evils of fascism. In order to create an impactful learning experience, he conducts an experiment about totalitarianism that opens doors he isn't prepared for, showing just how easy it is for tyranny to spread.


6: Lords Of Chaos (2018)

Lords of Chaos is a hardcore movie based on the true story of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. Not only are they known for their brutal sound, but they are also known for erecting a violent cult of personality based on pre-Christian rituals and beliefs.

Rory Culkin plays the band's central figure, Hieronymous, who compels his bandmates and their friends to start burning Christian churches around Norway in order to stir up controversy. As the flames spread, the cruelty intensifies until Mayhem becomes implicated in suicide and murder.

5: Holy Ghost People (2013)

This creepy feature about Pentecostal snake handlers in Georgia is based on a 1967 documentary about a West Virginia congregation. Pentecostalism is an evangelical form of Protestant Christianity, and snake handling evolved from a literal interpretation of the Bible.

In the movie, a young woman travels to a church up in the Appalachian Mountains in hopes of tracking down her sister. The charming, yet ominous, leader of the congregation executes a plan of manipulation and, eventually, torture, in order to break the woman down in hopes of appeasing his own desires.


4: Sound Of My Voice (2011)

The trippy, elusive cult at the center of Sound of My Voice is influenced by the innumerable fringe groups and secret societies that exist under the radar in the greater Los Angeles area. In the movie, a pair of documentary filmmakers undergo the harsh initial rituals of a particular group in order to get to its leader, a woman named Maggie.

Maggie's cult is based on space-travel theories, and she claims to be from the future, making her way to the past in order to act out an important mission.

3:The Devils (1971)

A controversial film by British innovator Ken Russel, The Devil is both a cautionary tale about religious witchhunts and an arthouse horror feature that examines cult mentalities. 17th Century French priest Urbain Grandier is targeted by a hunchbacked nun as the instigator of a Satanic uprising within the Catholic Church.

Claiming numerous nuns have fallen victim to his evil ways, Grandier is officially charged by church officials, at which point he is subjected to horrendous tortures until he's burned at the stake. Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave both star.


2: The Endless (2018)

Indebted to doomsday cults like Heavens Gate, made infamous after 39 of its members committed mass suicide in 1997, The Endless follows two adult brothers who decide to return to the death cult they grew up in. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead both star in and direct this understated, slow-burn horror feature.

While exposing the effects group-think has on the two men and the people they grew up around, the film also, cleverly, veers from other cult movies on this list by providing an alternate narrative that asks an interesting question: what if the prophesies are true?

1: Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

A gripping psychological film, Martha Marcy May Marlene tells the story of a young woman trying to reclaim her life after escaping a cult in the Catskill Mountains. The unnamed cult's leader is played by John Hawkes, a sinister sexual predator who takes advantage of vulnerable people.

Director Sean Durkin studied the personalities and choices of toxic male cult leaders like Jim Jones and David Koresh. Instead of making a movie about the politics that emboldened these men, though, Durkin focused on the relationships within a cult like the one in the film.


About The Author
Megan is a public librarian by trade obsessed with the intersections between art, culture, and society. She's a nerd for horror, obscure memes, weird history, graphic novels, and binge-worthy science fiction series.

https://screenrant.com/horror-movies-based-real-life-cults/

Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults

Available on Amazon

"In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around.

In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. In their eyes she’s a prophet. And to disobey her means eternal damnation.

The control Whaley exerts is absolute: she decides what her followers study, where they work, whom they can marry—even when they can have sex.

Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s Broken Faith is a terrifying portrait of life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades."

https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Faith-Fellowship-Americas-Dangerous-ebook/dp/B07RPB2XCR

Book reveals new details about NC’s infamous Word of Faith Fellowship ‘cult’

News and Observers
February 5, 2020

"Two award-winning journalists have written a book revealing new details about an infamous North Carolina church — often characterized as a cult — that has been at the center of federal criminal investigations and the subject of numerous news reports and true crime documentaries.

“Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America’s Most Dangerous Cults” by Associated Press investigative reporters Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr takes a close look at the Spindale church and its head, Jane Whaley, and paints a chilling portrait of life inside the secretive organization. Weiss is also a former Charlotte Observer reporter.

Word of Faith Fellowship, near Rutherfordton, has been the center of attention for decades, after former members reported allegations of disturbing mental and physical abuse of children (and babies), intimidation and separation of children from parents and forced labor. In 2018, four congregants faced federal charges connected to an unemployment benefits scheme."

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article239990763.html

ExitUK: NO JUDGEMENT, JUST SUPPORT

"We are all formers who have been members of far-right organisations and know how hard it is to leave. We also know how much better our lives are now we’re out. As we rebuilt our lives and began to have children of our own, we realised how much easier leaving would have been if there’d been an organisation to help us. That’s why Nigel Bromage set up Exit UK in October 2017.

Since then we have worked with many people like you and are committed to providing first-hand, non-judgemental support and advice. We are not the police, and we aren’t aligned to any political movement. Everything you say to us will be treated in confidence and we will never judge you on what you have done, as we have been there ourselves so want you to benefit from our experience and get you the kind of support you need.

We believe being patriotic is a good thing, and while we understand your views, violence solves nothing. And being a member of certain far-right groups such as National Action, Scottish Dawn and NS131 is a criminal act that could land you a jail sentence – get in touch with us before things get that far."

Get help leaving the far right and rebuild your life.

https://exituk.org/

RAN EXIT Gender-specific approaches in exit work

October 22-23, 2019

"The topic of gender has been discussed extensively within and outside RAN over the past few years. The focus has been directed at gender differences and the role gender plays in the process of radicalisation. However, research on gender and deradicalisation has found that 'even though gender is really pushed in terms of policy and CVE policy … it's not something being addressed on the ground'.

This ex post paper sets out the key topics and issues for practitioners considering the influence of gender in their exit work, as well as for experts and policymakers active in this area. It highlights the importance of the role gender plays in exit work with diverse violent extremist (VE) groups: gender informs their motives for joining, their experiences and reasons for leaving, as well as their post-VE needs and identity formation.

The paper also considers gender-specific aspects of disengagement, deradicalisation and reintegration efforts of exit work: the needs, networks and narratives of participants are influenced by the gender norms and gender roles of the communities with which they reconnect."

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/networks/radicalisation_awareness_network/about-ran/ran-exit/docs/ran_exit_gender_specific_approaches_rome_22-23_102019_en.pdf

Fifth - Cost of Doin' Business

Really moving song by a former Jehovah’s Witness, but relatable to many. The price of freedom.

“After all this oppression and depression I learned a lessonI’d rather questions I can’t answer than answers I can’t question...”

https://youtu.be/HYq1eMBszWs 

Jehovah's Witnesses Collection:

https://www.cultnews101.com/search/label/Jehovah%20Witnesses

Watchtower lost in the Netherlands.

Goatlike Personality

Hasidic schools aim to strike a balance between faith and provincial curriculum, court hears

'I'm convinced that we are going in the right direction,' president of home-schooling association says

Benjamin Shingler
CBC News
Februay 17, 2020

Quebec's Hasidic community is trying to strike a balance between preserving its own religious faith and satisfying the educational requirements of the provincial government, the president of Quebec's Jewish Association for Homeschooling told a Montreal courtroom Monday.

Abraham Ekstein was the final witness in the civil case brought before the Quebec Superior Court by Yohanan and Shifra Lowen, two former Hasidic Jews who say the province and their home community of Tash should have done more to provide them with a secular education.

"We strive to maintain our culture, to transmit our culture to our children, to survive as a people," said Ekstein, a Hasidic Jew and father of seven who lives in Montreal's Outremont borough.

"This whole case is so sad for us, in the sense that there are no winners."

The Lowens are seeking a declaratory judgment from Justice Martin Castonguay, to compel the province to do more to ensure children in Tash are taught subjects like math, English and French.

Castonguay will also need to consider whether new rules for home-schooling put in place by the previous Liberal government and strengthened under the Coalition Avenir Québec have helped achieve that goal.

Ekstein was the sole witness called by David Bannon, the lawyer defending schools in Tash, a Hasidic enclave in the suburb of Boisbriand, north of Montreal.

Castonguay had Ekstein leave the courtroom several times during his testimony, to allow debate between lawyers over the relevance of some of what he had said, given that Ekstein doesn't live in Tash and isn't directly involved in schooling in that community. 

Fears of assimilation

As president of the home-schooling association, however, Ekstein said he met multiple times with Tash leaders in recent years and that they are aware of the need to work with the province.

He acknowledged there had been resistance in Tash, which was founded in 1962, over fears the province was trying to "impose assimilation."

However, he said, "I'm convinced that we are going in the right direction and that children will succeed much better."

Children in Tash were the subject of an investigation by Quebec's youth protection agency beginning in 2014, the court heard last week.

The agency found that boys were taught "little to nothing" from the provincial curriculum, while the girls received a balance between a religious and a secular education — learning math, social sciences and English.

Youth protection official Marie-Josée Bernier testified that about 280 of the 320 boys who were assessed were flagged for further monitoring, given their poor level of English and math skills.

The new rules adopted in 2017 led to improved collaboration with the local English school board, the court heard, and after that, fewer than than 100 boys were flagged for further monitoring.

A solid foundation?

Yohanan Lowen testified last week he had spent long days at the school in Tash, rising before 6 a.m. and studying the Jewish scriptures from that time until past 9 p.m. — except on the Sabbath.

When he left the community, he said, he couldn't speak French or English and had no understanding of subjects like math and science.

Ekstein wasn't able to say to what extent education at the religious schools in Tash had changed in recent years.

In a document submitted to the court, an investigator hired by the plaintiffs said the last students left the boys' school in Tash shortly before 9:30 p.m. this Sunday.

While Ekstein said he believed the provincial curriculum was worthwhile, he also argued religious education given to boys laid a solid foundation for the future.

"A child who finishes this rigorous Talmudic education — nothing stands in his way to achieve anything else in his life," said Ekstein, now 41 and on the verge of becoming a chartered accountant.

Closing arguments in the trial are scheduled for Wednesday. A judgment isn't expected for several months.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Benjamin Shingler
Journalist

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-tash-hasidic-lowen-defence-1.5466399

CultNEWS101 Articles: 2/18/2020

Hasidic Jewish, Deradicalization, NXIVM  

CBC News: Quebec knew about religious schools in Hasidic community for decades, trial hears

"For decades, the Quebec government was aware that schools in the Hasidic community of Tash, north of Montreal, were operating without a permit and failing to provide children with an adequate secular education, a courtroom heard Tuesday.
Bruce Johnston, a lawyer for 42-year-old Yohanan Lowen and his wife Shifra, 41, questioned an Education Ministry bureaucrat about the government's years of inaction on the second day of a trial pitting the former Hasidic Jewish couple against the province and the community they grew up in.
The Lowens, now married and living in Montreal, say they missed out on learning the basics, including French and English, math and geography, leaving them ill-prepared for life in the outside world.
They are seeking a declaratory judgment that would force the province to ensure children who attend private religious schools are taught the provincial curriculum." 

Montreal Gazette: Ex-Hasidic woman tells trial she was exempted from secular studies at age 13

"An ex-Hasidic Jewish woman who is seeking a judgment against the Quebec government for allegedly denying her a proper education told a Montreal trial she was terrified to speak out against her former community but came forward because she wants to help future generations of children.

Clara Wasserstein, a former member of the ultra-Orthodox Tash community north of Montreal, told a courtroom Wednesday she decided to bring legal action after seeing how her oldest son thrived when he was finally put into a public school, with access to classes such as gym.

"We had our children in the regular school where they had all these good things and I saw them blossom," she told Superior Court Justice Martin Castonguay.

"I thought it was selfish to think, 'my kids are good,' when so many others are suffering."

Wasserstein, 41, and her husband, Yochonon Lowen, are not seeking damages from the Quebec government. Instead, they want a declaratory judgment stating the Quebec government and several Boisbriand Hasidic schools violated provincial law by failing to ensure the couple received a proper education.

They are hoping a declaratory judgement will help ensure other children in Quebec's ultra-Orthodox schools are given an education that adheres to the provincial standard set for all students."

The Atlantic: Why Extremists Need Therapy

" ... The first part of deradicalization, then, is understanding individuals' psychological state, previous trauma, and personal circumstances—not just their political and religious beliefs. "We used to work with a group who worked in U.K. prisons," Moustafa Ayad, a deputy director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international think tank, told me. "The way they described it was 'deconstructing the terrorist and rebuilding the human.' It's not anything that's set and planned."

One of the hallmarks of a terrorist worldview is its rigidity: us and them, the righteous and the unbelievers. Cracking that is key to deradicalization, according to Rashad Ali, a former member of Hizb al-Tahrir, an Islamist group that Britain has repeatedly considered banning. Ali, now a senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told me that creating a "cognitive opening" to allow people to reevaluate their beliefs was vital.

In the context of the penal system, this is difficult. Muslims are overrepresented in British prisons compared with the population at large, which a government report found "could chime with the radicalisers' message of the victimisation of Muslims." Following the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, the scope of terror offenses was widened to include "glorifying" and advocating terrorism. Those jailed for such offenses—overwhelmingly men—are prime targets for further radicalization in prison, to move them from glorification to action. As well as training prison imams in counter-extremism, the report recommended isolation for the most extreme prisoners."

CBC News: Dozens of Canadians included in lawsuit over alleged abuse by NXIVM sex-cult leadership

"A Vancouver woman who went public with allegations of sex slavery inside a cult-like self-empowerment group is among more than three dozen Canadians who are part of a lawsuit against the organization's inner circle.

Sarah Edmondson is suing the leaders of NXIVM — along with two heiresses of the Seagram's liquor fortune — for emotional and financial harm the actress claims to have suffered as a result of being intimidated and harassed as well as being branded with the initials of group leader Keith Raniere.

Edmondson and her husband are among a handful of named plaintiffs in a lawsuit together with 80 anonymous claimants — including 28 Canadian women and 13 Canadian men.

The lawsuit, filed at the end of January in the Eastern District of New York, claims Rainiere and others created and led a 'Ponzi scheme and coercive community' designed to financially and emotionally abuse followers.

The suit claims millionaire sisters Clare and Sara Bronfman served in leadership positions in NXIVM, investing their vast wealth 'to fund the operations and obstruct the ability of others to uncover the misconduct.'"

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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Lindsay Hansen Park: It helps no one to equate polygamy with slavery

Lindsay Hansen Park
Salt Lake Tribune
February 17, 2020

In the late 19th century, thousands of human hands were systematically amputated from enslaved Africans who failed to meet quotas for extracting rubber in the Congo. Nearly three decades after the United States abolished the practice of slavery, rubber was bought and sold to feed a growing demand in the international tire market created by Dunlop and the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

This is just one small glimpse into the brutal history of the transatlantic slave trade that robbed the personhood and freedom of millions. Millions more were tortured for centuries while black and brown bodies were systematically purchased, exploited, raped and brutalized in state-sanctioned violence. The consequences of this system still deeply impact our world today.

This is likely why comments by anti-polygamy activist Angela Kelly raised concerns at a caucus lunch this week as she advocated to vote against Senate Bill 102, which reduces bigamy among consenting adults to an infraction.

Kelly, a white woman and director of Sound Choices Coalition (a group that seeks to criminalize polygamy), used her invitation to speak with the Utah Legislature’s House Minority Caucus to draw comparisons between Mormon polygamy and slavery. Taking her comparison a step further, she singled out Rep. Sandra Hollins, the only black legislator in Utah, by handing her a name tag that read “Slave” and verbally referenced Hollins’ black skin.

The act drew public outrage for good reason. Not only are Kelly’s words racist and aggressive, they are concerning coming from someone claiming to advocate for the marginalized.

Polygamy is not slavery. Polygamy is its own system with its own unique challenges and we needn’t plunder the traumas of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to highlight those issues.There are plenty that stand on their own.

To effect change and disrupt power structures, we need a working knowledge of how those structures interact. Kelly’s remarks reflect a privilege that lacks important historical distinctions. This context is critical to helping victims and survivors from these communities get the justice they deserve.

My work allows me unique and exclusive access to some of the most isolated fundamentalist polygamous groups in the American West. As a born-and-raised LDS monogamist, feminist activist and researcher on the history of polygamy, I have struggled to accept some of the nuances that challenged my preconceived notions about these communities.

Polygamy is hard. I still don’t like it. It systematically discriminates based on gender. It commodifies women. I’ve seen true horrors as the result of this doctrine.

Hyperbole and aggression often are the result of not feeling heard, but our frustrations don’t have to come at the expense of compounding oppression for others. It would be tempting to draw comparisons to some of the crimes in plural communities to slavery, but it is irresponsible and lazy to do so.

Responsible advocacy requires we set aside our own emotional reactions and work together on solutions that are effective. Sometimes, in our greed for righteousness, the ends justify the means and we become little different from the fanaticism we aim to disrupt.

I, too, am hungry for easy solutions, but am suspicious of them when dismantling systems of oppression. Lawmakers have responsibly considered some of those intersections and the Senate unanimously voted to approve the bill Friday. That was the right move.

It is unfortunate that Kelly continues her comparison, one that is dangerous and irresponsible. She should apologize and find a better way to articulate her goal. We can’t tackle complex issues until we are willing to be honest about the spectrum of challenges that exist within the communities we serve, even if they disrupt the binaries in our passion for justice. It’s not easy or simple, but that is the work.

I’m not arguing for purity in our activism, but accountability. We should advocate for our causes and bring justice to communities without stomping on the painful and complex histories of other marginalized groups.

Lindsay Hansen Park is the executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation and the host of the Year of Polygamy podcast

Lindsay Hansen Park is the executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation and the host of the Year of Polygamy podcast. She lives in Salt Lake City with her family.

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2020/02/17/lindsay-hansen-park-it/

La Luz del Mundo minister says abuse allegations are false

Alejandra Molina
Religion News Service
February 15, 2020

POMONA, Calif. (RNS) — A minister for La Luz del Mundo, a Mexico-based Pentecostal movement that claims 5 million members, said new allegations of abuse against more than a dozen of its leaders are false and meant to disrespect their sacred celebration this week.

“We find these accusations to be absolutely untrue and ridiculous,” said Jack Freeman, a spokesman and minister for La Luz del Mundo. “There is no possible way that those could have taken place.”

At a news conference Friday (Feb. 14), church leaders gathered at the Fairplex in Pomona to address the allegations made in a recently filed lawsuit against the church and its leaders. The media briefing took place as church members flocked to the fairgrounds for the third and final day of the Holy Supper, a sacred rite that church members say memorializes the death and salvation of Jesus Christ.

“Why did she wait until this moment?” Freeman said. “We are in the middle of our most holy and righteous event of the entire year.”

In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday (Feb. 12) in U.S. District Court in California, former church member Sochil Martin alleges that her aunt and a foster mother “groomed her to serve as an erotic dancer and sexual servant” first to Samuel Joaquín Flores, the church apostle and leader, who died in 2014, and later to Flores’ successor, Naasón Joaquín García, the church’s current apostle. Martin and her attorneys announced the lawsuit on Thursday (Feb. 13).

“This case is about a lifetime of manipulation and abuse of a young woman perpetrated by sexual predators and the global institution built around and for the protection of those predators,” the lawsuit states.

García was arrested in June and charged with sex crimes involving minors. He has denied the charges against him and is awaiting trial in California.

The suit claims that Martin, before and after she escaped from the organization, “witnessed or learned of hundreds of other children and young women subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of the LDM leadership, often in horrific circumstances.”

Church leaders, including the so-called Consejo de Obispos (or Council of Bishops), allegedly supplied victims to the apostles in order to gain their favor, according to the suit.

Martin was also forced to spend at least 30,000 hours working for the church without pay, to promote its activities, according to the suit.

The suit claims other church members were required to perform extensive volunteer service to the group.

Freeman said the church is a certified nonprofit that does not force unpaid labor.

“We have individuals in our church that do volunteer their time, and they do it with free will and with a desire to help the church prosper,” he said.

He said the Council of Bishops is “an honorable group” and that he works closely with it.

“In no way, shape or form is any of these accusations in this tremendously created story factual,” he said. “There are systems that are put in place to ensure the safety of children and the sanctity of young ladies and young men.”

Freeman on Friday gave reporters a tour of the Holy Supper ceremony. He said between 20,000 and 30,000 people attended the three-day-long celebration.

The stands at the fairgrounds were filled with white-clad women in veils on one side and men dressed in white on the other. Freeman said women and men are separated to impede any potential distractions during services.

Freeman said people called the Fairplex and contacted local city leaders in protest of the celebration. He also said any plans to smear the church are "backfiring." Freeman said more people than anticipated attended the Holy Supper and that people who stopped coming to church are returning.

"It's creating publicity. Those that didn’t know us, now do," Freeman said.

He said more people are looking into the church and "coming to our houses of prayer and getting to know us and realizing that it's not what they have heard."

Martin, on Thursday (Feb. 13), urged other potential victims to come forward.

“It is time to say 'No more,’” she said in tears during a press conference.

“There are countless more of you like me, and I need your help,” Martin added. “I hope by standing here today, some of you will see yourself in me.”

Martin said her experiences with the church caused her to fall into depression. She said she finds it hard to recount certain things about the church because it takes her back to "really difficult moments."

Freeman, however, attacked her character.

"There is no sincerity," he said. "There is no care for victims. There is no care for abuse.

"She did this directly to affect the celebration," he said.

https://religionnews.com/2020/02/15/la-luz-del-mundo-minister-says-abuse-allegations-are-false/

Disgraced religious order tried to get abuse victim to lie

NICOLE WINFIELD and MARÍA VERZA
February 17, 2020

MILAN (AP) — The cardinal’s response was not what Yolanda Martínez had expected — or could abide.

Her son had been sexually abused by a priest of the Legion of Christ, a disgraced religious order. And now she was calling Cardinal Valasio De Paolis -- the Vatican official appointed by the pope to lead the Legion and to clean it up -- to report the settlement the group was offering, and to express her outrage.

The terms: Martínez’s family would receive 15,000 euros ($16,300) from the order. But in return, her son would have to recant the testimony he gave to Milan prosecutors that the priest had repeatedly assaulted him when he was a 12-year-old student at the order’s youth seminary in northern Italy. He would have to lie.

The cardinal did not seem shocked. He did not share her indignation.

Instead, he chuckled. He said she shouldn’t sign the deal, but should try to work out another agreement without attorneys: “Lawyers complicate things. Even Scripture says that among Christians we should find agreement.”

The conversation between the aggrieved mother and Pope Benedict XVI’s personal envoy was wiretapped. The tape — as well as the six-page settlement proposal — are key pieces of evidence in a criminal trial opening next month in Milan. Prosecutors allege that Legion lawyers and priests tried to obstruct justice, and extort Martínez’s family by offering them money to recant testimony to prosecutors in hopes of quashing a criminal investigation into the abusive priest, Vladimir Reséndiz Gutiérrez.

Lawyers for the five suspects declined to comment. The Legion says they have professed innocence. A spokesman said that at the time, the Legion didn’t have in place the uniform child protection policies and guidelines that are now mandatory across the order.

De Paolis is beyond earthly justice — he died in 2017 and there is no evidence he knew of, or approved, the settlement offer before it was made. But the tape and documents seized when police raided the Legion’s headquarters in 2014 show that he had turned a blind eye to superiors who protected pedophiles.

In addition, the evidence shows that when De Paolis first learned about Reséndiz’s crimes in 2011, he approved an in-house canonical investigation but didn’t report the priest to police. And when he learned two years later that other Legion priests were apparently trying to impede the criminal investigation into his crimes, the pope’s delegate didn’t report that either.

And a few hours after he spoke with Martínez, De Paolis opened the Legion’s 2014 assembly where he formally ended the mandate given to him by Benedict to reform and purify the religious order. The Legion had been “cured and cleaned,” he said.

In fact, his mission hadn’t really been accomplished.

___

Benedict had entrusted De Paolis, one of the Vatican’s most respected canon lawyers, to turn the Legion around in 2010, after revelations that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had raped his seminarians, fathered three children and built a cult-like order to hide his crimes.

There had been calls for the Vatican to suppress the Legion. But Benedict decided against it, apparently determining in part that the order was too big and too rich to fail. Instead, he opted for a process of reform, giving De Paolis the broadest possible powers to rebuild the Legion from the ground up and saying it must undergo a profound process of “purification” and “renewal.”

But De Paolis refused from the start to remove any of Maciel’s old guard, who remain in power today. He refused to investigate the cover-up of Maciel’s crimes. He refused to reopen old allegations of abuse by other priests, even when serial rapists remained in the Legion’s ranks, unpunished.

More generally, he did not come to grips with the order’s deep-seated culture of sexual abuse, cover-up and secrecy — and its long record of avoiding law enforcement and dismissing, discrediting and silencing victims. As a result, even onetime Legion supporters now openly question his reform, which was dismissed as ineffective by the Legion’s longtime critics.

“They always try to control victims, minimize them, defame them, accuse them of exaggerating things,” said Alberto Athié, a former Mexican priest who has campaigned for more than 20 years on behalf of clergy sexual abuse victims, including victims of the Legion.

“Then, if they don’t achieve that level of control, they go to the next level, looking for their parents, trying to minimize them or buy them off, silence them. And if that doesn’t work, they go to trial and try to do what they can to win the case,” he said.

Now, victims of these other Legion priests are coming forward in droves with stories of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse, and how the Legion’s culture of secrecy and cover-up has remained intact.

“They say they’re close to the victims and help their families,” Martínez told The Associated Press at her home in Milan. “My testimony is this didn’t happen.”

___

Martínez, a 54-year-old mother of three, chokes up when she recalls the day she received the phone call from her son’s psychologist. It was March of 2013, and her eldest son had been receiving therapy on the advice of his high school girlfriend. Martínez thought she was about to learn that she would be a grandmother; she thought her boy had gotten the girl pregnant.

Instead, Dr. Gian Piero Guidetti told Martínez and her husband that during therapy, their son had revealed that he had been repeatedly sexually molested by Reséndiz starting in 2008, when he was a middle schooler at the Legion’s youth seminary in Gozzano, near Italy’s border with Switzerland. Guidetti, himself a priest, told them he was required by his medical profession to report the crime to prosecutors.

His complaint, and the testimony of Martínez’s son, sparked a criminal investigation that resulted in Reséndiz’s 2019 conviction, which was upheld on appeal in January. Resendiz, 43, who was convicted in absentia and is believed to be living in his native Mexico, has until the end of March to appeal the conviction and 6 1/2-year prison sentence to Italy’s highest court. His lawyer, Natalia Curro, said an appeal is being considered, and said her client denied having abused Martinez’s son, though he admitted to abusing another boy.

The investigation, however, netted evidence that went far beyond Reséndiz’s own wrongdoing. Documents seized by police and seen by AP in the court file showed a pattern of cover-up by the Legion and the pope’s envoy that stretched from Milan to Mexico, the Vatican to Venezuela and points in between.

Personnel files, for example, made clear Resendiz was known to the Legion as a risk even when he was a teenage seminarian in the 1990s, yet he was ordained a priest anyway in 2006 and immediately sent to oversee young boys at the Gozzano youth seminary.

“He’s a boy with strong sexual impulses and low capacity to control them,” Reséndiz’s novice director, the Rev. Antonio León Santacruz, wrote in an internal assessment on Jan. 9, 1994. “Given his psychological character, he’s inclined to not respect rules without great difficulty and the psychologist thinks it will be difficult for him to undertake consecrated life given he has little respect for rules. He follows them as long as he’s being watched, but as soon as he can, he breaks them and has no remorse.”

A year later, on Reséndiz’s 19th birthday, the seminarian wrote a letter to Maciel -- addressing it as all Legionaries addressed the man they regarded as a living saint: “Nuestro Padre,” “Our Father.”

“I’m having various problems in the field of purity and the truth is I’m having a hard time, because temptations are coming to me,” he wrote. “I’m praying to the Holy Virgin every day for grace and asking her for strength to not offend again; I say again because I have had the disgrace of falling, but with the help of God I will fight to form that pure, priestly heart.”

When Martínez saw such letters in the court file, her heart fell.

“My son wasn’t even born yet,” she said. “How can you put someone like that in charge of a seminary?”

A Legion spokesman, the Rev. Aaron Smith, said the Legion has overhauled its training process for seminarians since Reséndiz’s era, applying more scrutiny before ordination.

“Things are different today,” he said in emailed response to questions.

___

While Milan prosecutors first heard about Reséndiz’s pedophilia in March 2013 when the therapist reported it, the crimes were old news to both the Vatican and the Legion.

The Legion has admitted it received a first report of abuse by Resendiz on March 6, 2011, from another boy who had been a student at Gozzano. The Legion says that boy, an Austrian, had first told a Legion priest of Reséndiz’s abuse. That priest recommended he report it to a church ombudsman’s office in Austria that receives abuse complaints, which he did, Smith said.

Separately, the Legion got wind of another possible victim in Venezuela, where Reséndiz had been sent from Gozzano in 2008, after he abused Martínez’s son.

Italian police were never informed by the Legion or the Vatican. Neither the Vatican nor Italy requires clergy to report suspected child sex abuse.

When police finally did get wind of the case in March 2013, they uncovered elaborate efforts to keep Reséndiz’s crimes quiet. According to one email seized by Italian police — written March 16, 2011, or 10 days after the Austrian claim was first received by the order — a Legion lawyer recommended to one of the Legion’s senior behind-the-scenes bureaucrats, the Rev. Gabriel Sotres, that a Legion priest visit with the victim in Austria.

The aim of the visit, prosecutors wrote in summarizing the email exchanges, “was to speak to the (victim’s) older brother and convince him to not tell their parents and not go to police because this could cause serious problems not only for the Legion but also Father Vladimir, all the other priests involved and the victim and his family.”

Smith, the Legion spokesman, didn’t deny the prosecutors’ account but said that “encouraging a child to keep something from their parents or guardians is contrary to our code of conduct.”

Later in 2011, the Legion arranged for Reséndiz to be transferred from Venezuela to Colombia, and prepared a legal strategy to limit the possible damage if the Venezuelan case escalated. The emails were sent to several Legion leaders, including Sotres, who remain in top positions today. In fact, in the Legion’s current leadership assembly under way in Rome to choose new superiors and priorities, at least 13 of the 89 participating priests or their substitutes were involved in some way in dealing with the Reséndiz scandal, fallout and cover-up, including two priests who are defendants in the upcoming Milan trial.

According to the seized emails, the plan proposed by a Legion lawyer involved reporting only Reséndiz’s name to Venezuelan police to comply with local reporting laws, leaving out that he was a priest, that he was accused of a sex crime against a child, and the name of the Legion, prosecutors said in summarizing the emails. The report would also note that he no longer lived in Venezuela.

The Legion has said Reséndiz was removed from priestly ministry and from his work with young people in Venezuela within days of receiving the initial Austrian report.

But the emails seized indicate that the restrictions weren’t necessarily enforced: One from Dec. 20, 2012, suggests that Reséndiz was hearing confessions in schools and celebrating Mass in Colombia, news that prompted the leadership to ultimately recommend he be sent for psychological counseling in Mexico and later assigned to an administrative position “where they don’t know his situation.”

Eventually, as part of the church’s in-house investigation, Reséndiz confessed — but only to the Legion and Vatican authorities, and only about other boys he abused, not Martínez’s son.

“I sincerely recognize my terrible behavior as a priest,” he wrote the Vatican official in charge of the sex crimes office in 2012, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller. “Truly I lived in hell when these sad facts occurred. I recognize the gravity of the acts that I committed and I humbly ask the church for forgiveness for these sad and painful facts. I can’t understand how it could have happened, and I recognize that I lacked the courage to admit to the problem and advise my superiors of the danger.”

The Vatican defrocked him on April 5, 2013 -- just a few weeks after Italian prosecutors first heard about Martínez’s son.

By October of that year, the Legion was nearing the end of De Paolis’ mandate and clearly wanted to avoid the possibility that the Reséndiz case could explode publicly and jeopardize the plan to resume their independence from the Vatican.

Martínez and her family, for their part, were coping with the trauma of her son’s abuse.

“He would have nightmares. He wouldn’t let me touch him ...,” Martínez said. “He couldn’t stand anyone being close to him.”

Once, he was even prevented from throwing himself in front of a subway train.

Martínez had been in regular touch with the Legion priest closest to the family, the Rev. Luca Gallizia, her husband’s spiritual director. He was serving as the family’s contact with the Legion, after all other priests and members of Martínez’s Regnum Christi social circle severed contact -- apparently on orders from the leadership.

Gallizia traveled to Milan to meet with Martínez on Oct. 18, 2013, bringing a proposed settlement to compensate the family. They met in a room off the parish playground of the Sant’Eustorgio basilica where Martínez worked.

When Martínez read it later that night with her husband, she was shocked.

“It was a second violation, because for all intents and purposes in that letter, they asked us to deny the facts. And for us it was a stab in the back because it was brought to us by our spiritual father. ... He knew everything about us, because my husband confided in him. And that made it even more painful.”

The Legion declined to comment on the proposed settlement, citing the upcoming trial.

The document the Legion wanted Martínez’s family to sign states that her son ruled out having been sexually abused by Reséndiz and regardless didn’t remember. It said he denied having any phone or text message contact with him, and that his ensuing problems were due to the fact that he left the seminary and was having trouble integrating socially into his new public high school.

The document set out payments for the son’s continuing education and therapy and required “absolute” secrecy. If the family were called to testify, they were to make the same declarations as contained in the settlement -- denying the abuse.

A few months later, the Legion realized it had erred in leaving the proposal with Martínez and proposed a revised settlement acknowledging the abuse occurred. Now, though, it required the family to pay back double the 15,000 euro ($16,300) settlement offer if they violated the confidentiality agreement.

It was then that Martínez called De Paolis.

“Both my lawyer and I, our jaws dropped,” she told the Vatican cardinal.

The pope’s envoy said he was surprised as well.

“Yes, but this, this is how it’s done in Italy,” he said.

The mother would have none of it. “It’s not a very nice agreement, signing a lie,” Martínez told the cardinal. “Aside from the fact that I don’t want any money, I’m not signing the letter.”

___

María Verza contributed to this story from Mexico City.

https://apnews.com/8d0cb3ef1cfa0be61378b949811d8c17

Leading Santa Muerte Expert Interviewed on the Fastest Growing New Religious Movement in the West

ANDREW CHESNUT

Patheos
FEBRUARY 6, 2020 BY

What prompted your interest in the Santa Muerte phenomena?*

I am a specialist in the religious landscape of Latin America and was conducting research for a book project on the Virgin of Guadalupe when in March 2009 I saw the news that the Mexican army had demolished 40 Santa Muerte altars on the border with Texas and California. I have more than 3 decades of experience in Mexico so I was already familiar with the Mexican folk saint of death but had no idea that she had become religious enemy number one for the then Calderon administration. I saw that very little had been published on Santa Muerte, particularly in English, so I decided to put the Guadalupe book project on hold and write the first book in English on “Saint Death,” which I did. Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint was first published in 2012 and the second edition in 2017.

You note that it is the fastest growing religious movement in the West – why do you think it is so appealing to so many?

With an estimated 12 million devotees, the majority in Mexico but also large numbers in the US and Central America, Santa Muerte has become the fastest growing new religious movement in the West for several reasons. Most importantly she has the reputation for being speedy and efficacious in performing miracles, the great majority of which are related to health, wealth, and love. Over the years I don’t know how many times I’ve heard devotees tell me they had been asking a Catholic saint for a miracle, often Saint Jude in Mexico, but their petition was ignored. In that context a friend or relative recommends they try Santa Muerte and within a week or so the saint of death grants the miracle in question, such as a better job or healing of a sick family member.

A second important reason is her reputation for being nonjudgmental, the saint who never discriminates. Thus for those who have suffered discrimination, such as LGBTQ folks, a supernatural figure who accepts them as they are is most appealing. Another signficant factor in her meteoric growth is the paroxysm of violence in Mexico since 2006 which has resulted in more violent death, more than 200,000 victims, than any other country except Syria. In the context of the bloody Drug War many turn to Santa Muerte for a few more weeks, months or years in the iconic hourglass that she holds. The idea is who better to turn to for more life than Death herself? On the flipside, other devotees, particularly narcos, ask her to visit death upon their enemies, rival cartel members and law enforcement. Here I must point out that Santa Muerte also has a robust following among Mexican law enforcement, especially municipal police who are on the front lines of the interminable Drug War.

Do you feel Santa Muerte may eventually supplant Our Lady of Guadalupe among Latin Americans, particularly Mexicans, as a devotional icon? If so, what does this mean for Catholicism as a whole among Latin Americans? Between the rise of evangelical Christianity among Latin Americans and the rise of this, is mainstream Catholicism on its way out?

I don’t see that happening in the near future. The rise of Santa Muerte must be seen in the context of the growth of religious pluralism in Mexico and Latin America in which one’s religious identity is no longer necessarily inherited but actively chosen among scores of alternatives which include New Age groups, Pentecostalism, African Diasporic faiths or increasingly no religious affiliation at all, which is a major trend across the Americas.

The Catholic Church has condemned Santa Muerte, but the Church’s pronouncements seem to have little effect – why do you think this is the case? And are there clergy or vowed religious who you’ve found secretly embrace Santa Muerte?

The Church’s condemnations have not put the brakes on rapid growth primarily because most devotees, especially in Mexico, are nominal Catholics who have only infrequent contact with the institutional Church, so many don’t care or know about the Church’s rejection. There’s also the issue that several Catholic saints, as my research partner Dr. Kate Kingsbury and I have documented, also serve as narco-saints for Mexican drug traffickers, such as the Holy Child of Atocha for El Chapo Guzman’s son, Ovidio Guzman. No, I have not come across Catholic clergy who venerate her, though I’ve heard unconfirmed rumors.

What do you think is the most misunderstood aspect of the Santa Muerte phenomena?

The most misunderstood aspect of Santa Muerte devotion is that the majority of devotees are narcos and that she’s nothing but a narco-saint. Most of her devotees are working class folk trying to make ends meet and believe that the Skeleton Saint helps them do that. It is true that she has a significant following among narcos but several Catholic saints do as well.

What do you think the Catholic Church can learn from all this, if anything? The Church has a complex history of both incorporating pre-Christian practices into its own as well as crushing them – why do you think this particular practice has drawn such strong condemnation?

Santa Muerte devotion has drawn such rapid and frequent condemnation because of both religious competition and theological reasons. The Church in Mexico and across Latin America was already in a state of panic over stiff Pentecostal competition and now has to contend with what it views as a heretical folk saint. The theological argument is that veneration of death is anathema to the promise of eternal life made possible by the ultimate sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Moreover only human beings can be saints which means it’s heretical to consider death a saint.

Here, however, I must point out that the other translation of Santa Muerte is Holy Death, which derives from the Good Death of Christ. I believe the Church would do better to explain why it views Santa Muerte devotion at odds with Catholic beliefs rather than issuing acerbic denunciations that only serve to alienate, and as we see have had no effect in slowing growth of the fastest growing new religious movement in the West.

How much of this phenomena is rooted in Indigenous people wanting to reclaim their spiritual roots from Western Christianity, which suppressed many “pagan” practices?

Yes, that’s part of it as Dr. Kingsbury is documenting in research for her book on Zapotec female devotees in Oaxaca. However veneration of Santa Muerte is even more prevalent among Mestizo Mexicans who constitute approximately three-quarters of the Mexican population. Many devotees in Mexico view Santa Muerte as the reincarnation of the Aztec death goddess, Mictecacihuatlwho presided over the Aztec month of the dead before the Spanish conquest and colonization in which the Church imposed All Saints and All Souls Days, the current Days of the Dead in Mexico. Some of these devotees reject Catholicism as a faith imposed by the Spanish colonists and thus try to detach Santa Muerte devotion from its roots in folk Catholicism.

Is the Church and the Mexican government making a mistake trying to suppress this devotion?

Since 2012 the Mexican state has been more tolerant of devotion. However since 2005 all Santa Muerte temples and associations that have applied for legal recognition have been rejected. Continued suppression of the fastest growing new religious movement in Mexico by Church and State will not put a damper on growth and will only increase its appeal among the criminal element. Because there is greater freedom of worship in the US there is more institutional space here for expansion.

*The journalist who interviewed me several months ago didn’t publish my interview.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theglobalcatholicreview/2020/02/leading-santa-muerte-expert-interviewed-on-the-fasting-growing-new-religious-movement-in-the-west/

Cult Twelve Tribes Sydney headquarters raided by police

Alison Piotrowski
9 Now
February 18, 2020

The headquarters of the Sydney-based arm of the Twelve Tribes cult was raided today by detectives as a part of Strike Force Nanegai.

A Current Affair can reveal that police have been investigating the cult known for its strict disciplining of children and lack of medical care since 2018.

Detectives from Springwood Police searched the cult's Peppercorn Creek Farm property in Picton for six hours earlier today, collecting documents and diary entries as evidence.

Numerous investigations into the Twelve Tribes have taken place overseas within the last decade, including a US investigation into allegations of the group forcing their young members to work on farms and factory assembly lines, and a German police investigation into the repeated physical punishment of children.

A Current Affair has heard numerous accounts of Australian children of the Twelve Tribes being beaten with rods from a very young age.

Ex-members have also revealed that they were discouraged from seeking outside medical treatment, and that there are a high number of stillbirths within the community.

The Twelve Tribes operates The Yellow Deli in Katoomba and The Common Ground Bakery in Picton.

A Current Affair has approached the Twelve Tribes for comment.

https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/cult-twelve-tribes-sydney-headquarters-raided-by-police/ee81d5df-c545-4827-8f44-f6e528ba77d5

The Family Survival Trust invites you to attend our Psycho-educational Support Group

February 25, 2020
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM GMT
Manchester Town Hall, Albert Square
Manchester, M2 5DB

This group is open to people affected by a wide variety of cults and extremist/exploitative groups (eg political, therapy, religious/spiritual, business, sports - among others).

A short educational presentation on a topic related to the psychology of coercive control will be the basis for sharing experiences and having reflective discussions. The session will be facilitated by those who have educational and/or personal experiences in this area.

This is neither a therapy/counselling nor 'deprogramming' group, though often attendees report to have found it helpful, at an appropriate stage of their journey, with contextualising their experiences in abusive groups.

• Hearing and sharing of experiences can be illuminating and validating, and at times also evocative and challenging.
• When we meet we'll agree terms of confidentiality at the start of each session.
• There's no obligation to say anything you don't want to.
• You're free to attend without commitment and feedback is welcome.

A donation of £5 pounds would help to cover the cost of the venue; greater or lesser amounts are also welcome. Please do not feel obligated to do so if your circumstances do not allow it.

Please reply for more/address details. Exact address will be communicated to ticket holders on contact.

Confirmation of attendance will be appreciated to help us anticipate numbers for the venue.

Similar sessions are also held in London monthly. Additionally, over the coming months sessions will be trialed in which all attendees will be online via video-conference.

For more details or if you'd like to be added to the mailing list for emails related to these meets please email: thefamilysurvivaltrustuk@gmail.com

The Family Survival Trust
Charity no. 1121388

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/the-family-survival-trust-18774911807