Photos: A Doomsday Cult Bought This Farm to Build Weapons of Mass Destruction

Here's what Australian police found on a property used by a Japanese cult to test nerve gas and mine uranium.

Julian Morgans
VICE
March 17, 2021

This is a small extract from our latest episode of Extremes: a VICE podcast exclusive to Spotify. You can listen to the full story here.

On May 14, 1995, investigators with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) flew to an outback sheep station in the nation’s interior. There they found a large pile of dead sheep contaminated with traces of a nerve agent called sarin, along with a deep pit that was found to be slightly radioactive. Investigators concluded that this had been an attempt to mine the property’s deposit of uranium—although it was hard to know how much had been found, or what it had been used for. Given the property’s previous owners, the evidence was ominous.

The whole thing had come about two months earlier. On March 20, 1995, a formerly unknown terrorist group had released nerve gas onto a series of busy morning trains in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring hundreds. In the ensuing weeks, Japanese officials pinned the attack on an obscure religious sect called Aum Shinrikyo, led by a 40-year-old guru named Shoko Asahara. Shoko had allegedly instructed his followers to attempt to initiate armageddon.

The story of the Tokyo attacks was all over the news, both locally and abroad—and when the proud new owners of a Western Australian sheep station saw it they had a strange thought. They’d bought their property in October the previous year for an absolute bargain. The previous owners had sold it for about $150K less than what it was worth, but wanted to get rid of it in a hurry and didn’t seem to care about the price. Those owners were Japanese, and they’d left several empty sake bottles around the property along with containers of highly toxic chemicals. Concerned, the station’s new owners called the local police, who, to their astonishment, discovered the property had indeed been owned by the cult on the news. The AFP organised a visit.

This is a farm house on Banjawarn Station, which sits about 1,000 kilometres northeast of Perth. When the AFP flew in from the nation’s capital, they brought along a cameraman to document whatever they found. The following images of their investigation have been taken from that video.

According to records, the cult had sold the property after being reported to the Western Australian Pastoral Board for neglecting the property’s livestock. But as you can see from the above image, they’d also let many of the buildings fall into disrepair. At first, there was little to suggest to investigators that the place had actually been connected to the attack in Tokyo, aside from a few Japanese newspapers and a door that had “laboratory” scrawled over it in both Japanese and English.
 

In reality, the cult’s time at Banjawarn was an important stepping stone on their road to violence. As a former member, Naruhito Noda, told VICE for our podcast Extremes, the group bought the property expressly to build and test weapons of mass destruction.

“In 1993, we started talking about building nuclear weapons,” he said. “The first problem was that Japan has hardly any uranium but in Australia, we were told there was much, much more… So we bought a farm, and then traveled to Australia.”

You can see in the below image the evidence of the group’s mining exercises, as discovered by the AFP. A large pit, excavated with a hydraulic backhoe. Noda says they only managed to extract a small sample of uranium—but investigators in 1995 didn’t know this. At the time it seemed possible that the group had somehow managed to cobble together a nuclear bomb.

Those fears subsided through 1995, however, as Aum Shinrikyo’s upper management were rounded up and arrested. By the end of the year the cult had been almost entirely dismantled.

The evidence that most compellingly connected the farm to the subway attack, however, was a large pile of sheep bones and decomposing wool.

Samples from these bones and wool were sent off for analysis, and later came back with a positive result for sarin, which was the same colourless, odourless nerve agent that was used in the subway attacks. This chemical was developed in Nazi Germany, and causes death by seizing up the muscles associated with breathing. Apparently while one group of cult members had spent their time at Banjawarn mining for uranium, another group had been refining their recipe for chemical weapons and testing the prototype on the livestock.

This was the final piece of evidence found on the farm: several sake bottles, and mostly empty containers of perchloric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, chloroform, and potassium dichromate. Presumably these were used in the refinement of uranium and production of sarin.

It’s now been almost 26 years since the attack on the Tokyo Subway. Aum Shinrikyo’s guru, Shoko Asahara, was executed in 2018 by hanging, along with many of the cult’s other leaders. The former member we spoke to for our podcast, Naruhito Noda, served only a year in prison for his involvement, but was ultimately released. He has since written two books in Japanese, describing his process of post-cult deprogramming and his general regret at being a member of such a mlignant organisation. As he said to us:

“It was certainly defined as brainwashing… I got swept up in this concept of his, then suddenly we were making weapons.”

This is a small extract from our latest episode of Extremes. You can listen to the full story here, free, only on Spotify.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epdemz/japanese-cult-aum-shinrikyo-australian-farm-photos

Paradise Recovered

Paradise Recovered which is about a girl exiting a religious cult.

Andie Redwine

A devout young woman learns about faith, living, and love from a surprising source.

"The point on the ideological spectrum where far-left bohemians and right-wing fundamentalists meet is a health food store."

In 2009, filmmakers Storme Wood and Andie Redwine created Paradise Recovered detailing the journey of a young woman's exit from a fundamentalist cult group. 

The filmmakers believe the message of this film remains timely for today's climate and are pleased to share it with you.

The film premiered at Heartland Film Festival and Austin Film Festival in 2010. The team won multiple awards on the festival circuit, including the Grand Jury Prize at deadCENTER Film Festival, Best Picture at Northwestern University's Talking Pictures Film Festival, and Best Feature for Women's/Gender Issues at the Southern Appalachian Film Festival.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW05y8RksiE

EXCLUSIVE: WHY DID CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS JUST QUIETLY DROP TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION?

ARYEH SIEGEL
Religion Dispatches
June 24, 2020

Three years ago, as a part of its mission to teach Transcendental Meditation to a million at-risk kids, the David Lynch Foundation partnered with the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to test whether Transcendental Meditation (TM) could reduce crime and improve school performance. Two thousand students in five high schools located in high crime Chicago neighborhoods participated in the $3 million study through its “Quiet Time” (QT) program.

Earlier this month, in response to a direct email inquiry, RD was notified by a CPS official that “CPS is no longer allowing for the official Quiet Time Program through David Lynch Foundation to be offered in CPS schools.” But why would CPS quietly drop such a high-profile program? 

Though CPS decline to elaborate further, a July 26, 2019 article in the Chicago Tribune provides a clue. Hannah Leone’s article includes some disturbing information about the program based on the harrowing recollections, before the Chicago Board of Education, of Dasia Skinner, a substitute teacher, and Jade Thomas, a fourteen-year-old high school student. 

After hearing their testimony, the CPS chief education officer noted that while she personally visited the QT program at Bogan High School, none of the information reported in the presentations was shared with her. So what didn’t they tell her about this “simple… non-religious technique,” as the David Lynch Foundation’s brochure describes TM?  

According to Skinner, the 60 students she spoke with shared a similar experience, Jade Thomas among them. Thomas told the Chicago Board of Education that her experience began with a mandatory “initiation into the meditation program” (elsewhere in TM materials referred to as a puja, a ceremony performed by Hindus, as well as many Buddhists and Jains). Students are taken by a QT “facilitator,” two at a time, to a dark, incense-filled room with all the windows covered. 

According to Thomas, they were made to hold flowers in their hands while the instructors “chanted in a foreign language, threw rice, seasonings, [and] oranges on a pan in front of a picture of a man,” after which they were to place the flowers on the pan. Following the ritual, they were given their mantras and were told “don’t tell anyone else your word.” (Keeping one’s mantra a secret, it should be noted, is common in some sects of Hinduism.) Thomas also notes that students were told they would be sent to the dean’s office if they declined to participate and that they would be threatened with reduced grades if they talked during the twice-daily QT sessions. She describes feeling uncomfortable about her participation because the ceremony went against the Christian religion she practiced in her home. 

Unless this ceremony departed from the standard TM puja, as described by Business Insider, the man in the picture was likely Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, or ‘Guru Dev,’ with whom the founder of TM, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, “studied the Upanishads, the segments of the four ancient Sanskrit books of scripture known as the Vedas that focus on the self and its relationship to God.” And yet this is “an act that the Maharishi did not consider to be compromising to his practice’s secularity.”

TM’s spotty record in public schools 

According to Professor Candy Gunther Brown, author of Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools, the federal appellate case of Malnak v. Yogi (1979) ruled that teaching TM in public schools constitutes an impermissible “establishment of religion.” Indeed, the court’s ruling against TM left little room for debate:

Although defendants have submitted well over 1500 pages of briefs, affidavits, and deposition testimony…defendants have failed to raise the slightest doubt as to the facts or as to the religious nature of the teachings of the Science of Creative Intelligence [TM’s Hindu underpinnings] and the puja. The teaching of the SCI/TM course in New Jersey public high schools violates the establishment clause of the first amendment, and its teaching must be enjoined.  

TM appealed the decision to a higher court and lost again. According to Dr. Brown, it’s “remarkable” that TM is still being taught in public schools given how little public-school TM practices (e.g. assignment of mantras associated with personal gods, initiation through pūjās that invoke divine aid with chants, bowing, and offerings) have changed since Malnak.”

TM proponents argue that the case is over 40 years old and no longer relevant. In an exchange in the Wall Street Journal 3 years ago, Lynch Foundation CEO Bob Roth wrote, 

“TM is not a religion. Over 8 million people of all religions practice TM. It is taught in public schools, on military bases, and in large and small businesses. In each case, a team of legal experts has done due diligence and researched the accusations and claims and found them to have no basis.” 

When I pointed out in response that the puja ceremony is exactly the same today as it was in 1977, and that the establishment clause has not changed, Roth responded, “In the nearly 40 years since the 1979 court case you cite, tens of thousands of students have learned to meditate as part of voluntary Quiet Time programs with the full support of school boards and parents.” 

That may be strictly true, but given what we’re learning about the Chicago case, that support may be largely due to the fact that TM isn’t entirely forthcoming in what it shares with school boards and parents regarding the explicitly religious content that permeates the program.         

But not all is bliss in the TM world. For example, TM teachers created “checking notes,” as a guide to handle pain and discomfort that might arise even within the first days of TM instruction. The existence and use of the checking notes document that the TM organization is well aware of these potential problems. Shaking and body movements, as well as overpowering thoughts, are frequent enough even during the first few meditations that an entire section of the checking procedure is devoted to these severe symptoms. 

More generally, a non-profit called Cheetah House, which is affiliated with Brown University, Harvard, and a number of other prestigious institutions, exists to provide “information and resources about meditation-related difficulties to meditators-in-distress.” And this is a major part of the mission of a proponent of meditation. In addition, while the UK’s National Health Service notes that meditation can be very helpful in many cases, “The serious, long-lasting nature of some of the negative experiences reported [in a recent study], however, are cause for concern.” These potential issues may be perfectly acceptable for adults voluntarily participating in TM workshops, but for children and adolescents required or even urged to participate it hardly seems appropriate.   

It took three years for CPS to conclude that TM is more than a secular relaxation method to reduce stress. And while it’s still unclear whether they dropped the program due to issues with the establishment clause, potential risks to students’ health, or both, one thing that is clear is that TM proponents will not be deterred from approaching other school systems and institutions. You might say that their belief in the benefits of TM is… religious. 

https://religiondispatches.org/exclusive-why-did-chicago-public-schools-just-quietly-drop-transcendental-meditation/

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FAMILY CARING RESEARCH STUDY

Letter from the Researcher: 

Study on the perceptions and experiences of family members or individuals concerned about a loved one who is or was in a controlling or abusive group or relationship.

Link to the survey: https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/familycaring

Password to the survey: PR87377

Please, be aware that only those responses with valid passwords will be considered.

For more information, contact Carmen Almendros at coercivecontrol.research@gmail.com.

 If you have already received this invitation, please, excuse the repetition. If you have already participated, many thanks! With your help, we hope to give a first research step in this area.

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FAMILY CARING RESEARCH STUDY

Who we are?

This study involves researchers from the Psychology Department of Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) and the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA).

What are we doing?

We are studying the perceptions and experiences of family members or individuals concerned about a loved one who is or was in a controlling or abusive group or relationship. The study’s purpose is to fill a research gap in this area. We hope to increase our knowledge of the specific concerns and needs of families, relatives and friends of those affected by an abusive situation. We want to find new and better ways of understanding family relationships under these circumstances. We hope that the information collected by this study will enhance attention to the needs of those who have/had a loved one in a controlling or abusive group or relationship.

What we ask from you?

You are invited to participate in the research project if you are/were concerned about the past or current involvement of a loved one with a group or relationship you now consider was/is overly controlling or abusive to its members. You may or may not have been involved yourself with the group or relationship. We ask you to respond to a web-survey, which you may complete at your convenience.

What is the web-survey like?

The survey is divided into various separated parts. Part I and Part II include some basic demographic questions (e.g., age, education) on you and your loved one. Part III of the survey includes some instruments inquiring about your concerns, responses and experiences about your loved one being involved in the group/relationship. Part IV includes brief instruments on problems you may have experienced. Finally, Part V includes some questions on the group/relationship your loved one is/was involved.

Overall, it is anticipated that the entire survey will take approximately 35 minutes to complete. Please note that your participation in this study is voluntary, and that you may withdraw at any time, without consequence.

What should you do if you accept our invitation to participate?

Here is the link to the survey:

https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/familycaring

Click on the link to access the survey. Alternatively, copy and paste it into the address bar of the web browser.

Please, use the word “PR87377” as a PASSWORD to the survey. Please, be aware that only those responses with valid passwords will be considered.

More information about the study

If you want to obtain more information about the study or make any comment, you may contact Carmen Almendros at this e-mail address: coercivecontrol.research@gmail.com, or write to: Carmen Almendros, Ph.D. Facultad de Psicología. C/ Ivan Paulov, 6. Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Cantoblanco. 28049. Madrid, Spain.

Thank you so much for your time. Your participation is very important for us!!!

 

Australian Neo-Nazi Fundraises on “Buy Me a Coffee” Website

Counter Extremism Project

March 15, 2021

CEP researchers located a fundraiser for the Australian neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell on the website “Buy Me a Coffee” (BMAC). On March 2, Sewell was charged with “affray, recklessly causing injury and unlawful assault” for an alleged videotaped attack on a television station security guard. Sewell claimed to be fundraising for his legal defense on BMAC and had raised over AUD 1,000 on March 10 after the fundraiser was online for approximately 24 hours. Sewell previously had a nearly identical fundraiser on BMAC the previous week that raised approximately AUD 1,300 but was removed from the site. Both fundraisers used the same profile photo and slightly different variations on the username. The second fundraiser was not removed by the website after it was reported.

Sewell’s group, the National Socialist Network, has stated that they support “white revolution” by any means for the purpose of taking power. The group has previously posted propaganda stickers in the vicinity of a synagogue in Brisbane, Australia, and sought to recruit on social media advertising the action. 

Fact check: Viral ad on marijuana and 'youth joining satanic cults' is a hoax

McKenzie Sadeghi
USA TODAY
March 12, 2021

The claim: Image shows a warning from the Ad Council on marijuana being 'the leading cause of America's youth joining satanic cults'

A viral public service announcement warning on the effects of marijuana and "satanic cults" recently shared to Facebook claims to come from the Ad Council.

"Smoke a 'doobie'? You're smoking with SATAN," reads an image of the purported advertisement. "Marijuana is the leading cause of America's youth joining Satanic Cults, and that's a fact."

The warning continues, "Be Smart, DON'T Start!" Below the text is an Ad Council logo and an image of two people smoking marijuana from a pipe.

The post was shared on March 10 by the page Psycho '78 Productions and the photo has over 900 shares and 700 reactions.

USA TODAY reached out to the page for comment.
Advertisement is fake, not from Ad Council

The viral marijuana warning claiming to come from the Ad Council is fake, and small text at the bottom of the photo suggests that it was created as satire.

Ellyn Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Ad Council, confirmed to USA TODAY via email that the image is not an Ad Council piece.

The text at the bottom of the photo reads, "If you or someone you know is addicted to marijuana, call Domino’s at 215-712-1000, rent a tape and enjoy!”

USA TODAY previously debunked a similar post in November in which an image claimed to show an Ad Council warning on the "murderous" side effects of marijuana.

The nonprofit organization has authentic warnings on its site related to marijuana that warn people to avoid driving while under the influence.
Our rating: False

An image claiming to show a graphic from the Ad Council on marijuana being the "devil's lettuce" is FALSE, based on our research. The Ad Council confirmed that the warning is fake, and similar advertisements on marijuana claiming to come from the Ad Council have been previously debunked.

Our fact-check sources:

Ad Council, Accessed March 11, Drug-Impaired Driving Prevention

USA TODAY, Nov. 29, 2020, "Fact check: Viral warning on marijuana's 'murderous' side effects and Thanksgiving is fake"

Ellyn Fisher, email statement to USA TODAY

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/03/12/fact-check-viral-ad-marijuana-and-satanic-cults-hoax/4650818001/

Chinese anti-cult official who targeted Falun Gong faces corruption investigation

Peng Bo, a former senior figure in the offices for cult affairs and heretical religions, is accused of violating disciplinary rules – a euphemism for graft.

Some reports say Peng had been close of his former boss, the fallen internet tsar Lu Wei.

Teddy Ng
South China Morning Post
March 13, 2021

A former Chinese official responsible for cracking down on religious cults is under investigation, the country’s leading anti-corruption watchdog announced on Saturday.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party’s top disciplinary body, said in a brief statement that Peng Bo, the former deputy director of the party’s office on cult affairs, had allegedly violated disciplinary rules – a euphemism for corruption.

The commission confirmed he was being investigated but did not provide further details.

The office on cult affairs was established in 1999, and its main tasks include cracking down on Falun Gong, a group that was founded in 1992 and was banned as an “evil cult” in 1999.

Peng, 64, has been a party member since October 1980. He had also served as deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the leading online watchdog, before 2012 and 2015, before moving to the party office on heretical religions, where he was responsible for online propaganda and censoring messages spread by cults.

Some media reports have suggested that Peng was close to Lu Wei, the former director of the cyberspace administration , who was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2019 and fined three million yuan (just under US$450,000 at the time) for corruption, and Li Dongsheng, the former vice-minister of public security who was also jailed for 15 years in 2016 for corruption.

A major anti-corruption campaign has been under way since 2012, when Xi Jinping took over as Communist Party chief.

Hundreds of senior officials, including the former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission Guo Boxiong , have been taken down on graft charges since then.

Peng made his last public appearance in September, where he told a seminar that the Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge to guiding public opinion online.

During his term at the cyberspace administration, Peng said the Chinese government would support mobile internet development but warned business operators to practice socialist core values and not spread information that violated China’s constitution or undermined national security, national unity and social stability.

He also said that content that was contrary to the country’s religious policies or those supporting cults, violence and terrorism would be banned, along with pornography.

He also said some illegal websites included “China” or “nation” or the names of national agencies, while others pretended to be “civil rights groups” to gain credibility.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3125337/chinese-anti-cult-official-who-targeted-falun-gong-faces

Tabernacle of Hate: Seduction into Right-Wing Extremism, Second Edition

Kerry Noble

"In the summer of 1984, Noble came within seconds of committing what would have been the largest domestic terrorist act in U.S. history at that time. As one of the founders of the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA), a cult paramilitary group, he carried a bomb into a gay-affirming church, intending to murder over seventy congregants. In Tabernacle of Hate, Noble provides an unprecedented first-person account of how a small spiritual community moved from mainstream religious beliefs to increasingly extreme positions, eventually transforming into a domestic terrorist organization. Written after his release from prison, the author’s cogent narrative reveals the deceptive allure of extremist movements and the unmatched power of charismatic leadership. Noble also chronicles the intense standoff with federal agents at the group’s compound in northern Arkansas in April 1985. Originally published in 1998, this second edition includes an authoritative introduction placing Noble’s narrative and the CSA into the broader picture of American religio-political extremism."

Purchase on Amazon

Tabernacle of Hate

Former White Supremacist KERRY NOBLE

Talk Beliefs

March 11, 2021

In the 70s and 80s, KERRY NOBLE was ranking high in the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord - a far-right, militant organization dedicated to Christian Identity, white nationalism and survivalism.

On an attempt to leave an explosive device in a gay-friendly church, Kerry had a change of heart. His group were not so easy to turn around, leading to a tense standoff with the FBI. 

MARK from Talk Beliefs talks to Kerry about his incredible story, a tale of racism, polygamy and an undying belief that God was on their side.

https://youtu.be/dklhiZFlgZ8

Brahma Kumari’s Chief Administrator no more

Star of Mysore

March 11, 2021

Mysore/Mysuru: Dadi Hridaya Mohini, the Chief Administrator of Brahma Kumaris, passed away at 93 after a prolonged illness in Mumbai yesterday (Mar. 11). 

She was undergoing treatment at Saifee Hospital in Mumbai for the last 15 days, according to a Spokesperson of the spiritual organisation. 

Her body will be brought to the Brahma Kumari’s Headquarters, Abu Road, near Mount Abu in Rajasthan, where the public will be able to pay respects. The last rites will be performed on Mar. 13.

https://starofmysore.com/brahma-kumaris-chief-administrator-no-more/amp/

Religious groups file brief in support of Amish appeal to Supreme Court

The Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty and the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the Amish gray water case.

Emily Cutts
Duluth News Tribune
March 11, 2021

Two national religious liberty groups filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of members of the Fillmore County Swartzentruber Amish community's petition to overturn a Minnesota court's decision that would require them to install septic systems against their religious practices.

The Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty and the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom filed a so-called amici curiae brief on March 5. An amici curiae brief allows those who are not directly involved in a case, but would have an interest in the outcome, to submit arguments to the court in support of a party that is directly involved.

Through their attorney Brian Lipford, four members of the Fillmore County Swartzentruber Amish community filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 20, 2021, asking the high court to consider two questions under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act: Does the government have a compelling interest in regulating the disposal of "gray water," which includes laundry, bath and dishwater; and is a septic system the least restrictive method when 20 states allow mulch basin systems?

The petition comes after years of legal battles in Minnesota's courts against the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Fillmore County over concerns that the agency and county were requiring the Amish to install wastewater systems for gray water that go against their religious beliefs.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency filed a waiver of response with the nation's high court stating it did not intend to respond to the petition. Fillmore County did not respond. Neither party is required to respond to the petition.

The petition is scheduled to be discussed at a judicial conference on March 26. At that point, the high court could grant or deny the petition or ask the government to respond before making a decision.
Amicus curiae brief

The 31-page brief argues that the district court's ruling, and the Minnesota Court of Appeal's decision to uphold it, failed to hold the county and MPCA to their burden under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

The act, also known as RLUIPA, was unanimously passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and subjects any land-use regulation imposing a substantial burden on religious exercise to strict scrutiny, permitting application of the regulation only if the government demonstrates that the imposition is in furtherance of a compelling government interest and that it is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.

"From before the Founding, the United States has offered succor for adherents of uncommon or disfavored faiths," the petition reads. "In the United States, practitioners of diverse faiths are not merely 'tolerated,' but welcomed as members of the community and fellow citizens. To be sure, we have at times fallen short of our ideals of religious freedom."

The brief argues that the county and the MPCA failed to show "that their generic interests in public health and environmental protection were so compelling in this specific application as to justify trampling Petitioner’s religious beliefs," the brief states.

The brief also notes that the county and the MPCA failed to prove that the mulch basins proposed by the Amish as an alternative, and used in 20 other states, were not an acceptable option.

When strict scrutiny is abandoned or misapplied, the brief states, the results can gravely undermine sincerely held religious beliefs.

"This case presents exactly the scenario Congress anticipated in RLUIPA, and the Court should clarify that RLUIPA strict scrutiny forbids the effective exclusion of the Amish from Fillmore County," the brief reads.

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/crime-and-courts/6929984-Religious-groups-file-brief-in-support-of-Amish-appeal-to-Supreme-Court

High court rejects appeal of Aum cult leader’s 4th oldest daughter to receive his ashes

Japan Today

March 11, 2021

TOKYO

The Tokyo High Court has rejected an appeal by the fourth oldest daughter of Shoko Asahara (real name Chizuo Matsumoto), the executed cult leader of Aum Shinrikyo, to receive his cremated remains. Last September, the court ruled that Matsumoto’s second daughter would take possession of her father’s ashes.

Following his execution in July 2018, the cult founder’s remains were stored in the Tokyo Detention House as the Ministry of Justice decided which family member would receive his ashes, Sankei Shimnun reported. Since then, Matsumoto’s widow and second oldest daughter have been in a dispute with the fourth daughter over the handover of the remains, including his hair.

In September 2020, the Tokyo Family Court decided to grant the second daughter possession of Matsumoto’s ashes. However, the fourth daughter lodged an appeal with the Tokyo High Court that was ultimately rejected on Wednesday.

While on death row, Matsumoto reportedly requested that his fourth daughter be the one to receive his remains. Dissatisfied with the ruling, her lawyers are planning to file an appeal with the Supreme Court to overturn the Tokyo High Court’s ruling.

https://japantoday.com/category/crime/high-court-rejects-appeal-of-aum-cult-leader%E2%80%99s-4th-oldest-daughter-to-receive-his-ashes

Yoga in pandemic times: fitness or religion?

Religion Watch

Baylor University Institute for the Study of Religion

Volume 36 No. 4

A legal case in Switzerland is once again raising the question of the religious nature of yoga and similar practices, especially during a public health crisis. A yoga studio in the Swiss canton of Aarau has refused to shut its doors despite federal sanitary regulations temporarily banning sport and fitness activities, including yoga and dance studios. Yoga teacher David Scherwey considers his work a spiritual activity to which the country's rules allowing religious meetings with adequate distance and an upper limit of 50 participants should apply, according to reports in the Swiss media. While yoga and similar practices have been a matter of dispute in a variety of countries and contexts (e.g., in regard to the permissibility of teaching yoga at public schools), the case also touches on wider issues of the boundaries of religion in a time of individualized spiritual practices, writes Simon Hehli in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (February 5). On the welcome page of his yoga studio's website, Scherwey stresses that his teaching has nothing to do with "sports yoga" and asserts the spiritual dimension of yoga to be central.

Moreover, he states that the physical presence of yoga students is necessary to create a sacred space in which individuals can experience themselves as transcendental beings, something that a livestream class cannot replace. Because of this spiritual dimension, Scherwey claims that his yoga studio should enjoy the same measure of freedom granted to religious meetings despite the pandemic. In a legal brief made available on Scherwey's website, lawyer Patrick Villoz agrees that a 2013 decision of the Swiss Federal Court had considered some yoga exercises to be permissible at a kindergarten only to the extent that they were purely physical and not associated with any religious or sacred symbols.

Scherwey has insisted precisely that such practices be explicitly and openly spiritual, however. But such an argument has not convinced the local authorities, who argue that the simple claim that a practice is religious does not constitute sufficient grounds for making it a religion. The police have intervened to close the doors of the studio, but Scherwey has announced that he will not give up, and it looks likely that some judges will once again have to deal with the definition of religion and the nature of yoga.

(Website of Yoga Atelier (in German): http://www.yogaatelier.ch/)

http://www.religionwatch.com/yoga-in-pandemic-times-fitness-or-religion/

Panda Express staff forced to strip at team-building seminar that seemed like a ‘cult initiation ritual,’ lawsuit says

Teo Armus

Washington Post

March 10, 2021

The Panda Express cashier had already been forced to strip to her underwear in front of her fellow staff during a “self-improvement” seminar in 2019, she said, and told to open up to the group about her vulnerabilities.

But when a male colleague broke down crying while trying to do the same, the session’s leaders ordered her to go one step further: She had to “hug it out” with him, both of them still undressed, as others filmed her or ogled at her body, the 23-year-old employee in California said.

That was just part of a bizarre, psychologically abusive four-day seminar that “more and more resembled a cult initiation ritual as time went on,” according to a lawsuit she filed last month against the fast-food chain in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Her allegations underscore the dark consequences of an unusual management style promoted by Panda Express and its co-founder, Andrew Cherng. While the company has earned plaudits for emphasizing self-improvement programs for employees, her lawsuit paints this focus as an obsession that devolved into abuse.

“This was called a ‘trust-building’ exercise, but it was opposite of building trust,” her attorney, Oscar Ramirez, told The Washington Post. “It required employees to subject themselves to dehumanizing activities in order to prove their loyalty to the company.”

A spokesperson for Panda Restaurant Group, the chain’s parent company, said in a statement to The Washington Post that it takes the allegations “very seriously” and is investigating the matter.

“We do not condone the kind of behavior described in the lawsuit, and it is deeply concerning to us. We are committed to providing a safe environment for all associates and stand behind our core values to treat each person with respect,” the statement said.

The company also denied it has ties to the Alive Seminars and Coaching Academy, which led the 2019 seminars and did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post late on Tuesday. In a statement to the Orange County Register, the organization said its training sessions are presented with respect and dignity.

The cashier, whom The Post is not naming as a victim of alleged sexual assault, was less than three years into her job at a Panda Express location in Santa Clarita, Calif., when she learned about the training run by Alive Seminars, the lawsuit said. Her manager told her that she would be considered for a promotion at the fast-food chain only if she signed up for the class.

So she did, using her own free time to attend the seminar and borrowing hundreds of dollars from relatives to pay for the training out of her own pocket, Ramirez told The Post. At the time, she earned an hourly wage of $11.35.

But on the first day of this session — which had been exclusively attended by Panda Express employees — she allegedly found herself stripped of her cellphone, trapped in a room with blacked-out windows, and loudly berated by a seminar leader who told her and others that they amount to “nothing.”

“The atmosphere resembled less a self-improvement seminar than a site for off-the-books interrogation of terrorist suspects,” the lawsuit said, comparing the overall effect to “that of a particularly nasty drill sergeant.”

On one day, seminar participants were told to pretend they were on a sinking ship and that only four of them would survive, the suit said. On the following day, leaders allegedly filmed them while instructing them to act as if a light from above was coming to suck away their “negative energy.”

And then, in front of dozens of other employees, the woman was told to remove her clothing and share her inner struggles, the lawsuit said. Ramirez said that, combined with the forced hug, this particular portion of the seminar constituted both sexual battery and a hostile work environment.

Panda Restaurant Group noted in its statement to The Post that it has no control or ownership interest in Alive Seminars. A spokesperson denied allegations that employees were required to participate in seminars or had to do so as a prerequisite to earning promotions.

But the lawsuit alleges that Panda Express employees at the seminar received materials featuring the fast-food chain’s logo, while attendees were also required to provide their company ID numbers to session leaders.

“Panda Express is on the hook because they were fully aware of what was going on,” Ramirez said.

His client and other staffers who had to pay out of pocket for the session have since joined to file a class-action lawsuit concerning the seminar, he added.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/10/panda-express-california-worker-lawsuit/

They must have foreseen the final sale price: Psychic hotline kings sell Fort Lauderdale mansion for $14M

JORDAN PANDY

The Real Deal

March 9, 2021

The former owners of the Psychic Readers Network sold their waterfront Fort Lauderdale mansion for $14 million, five years after listing it for $27.5 million.

Records show Steven L. Feder and Lou Thomas Trosclair sold the double-lot property at 2501 Mercedes Drive to Dennis R. O’Neil.

Feder and Trosclair owned the Psychic Readers Network, which was home to the popular call-in show Miss Cleo. Psychic Readers Network faced its demise in the early 2000s when the Federal Trade Commission accused it and its parent Access Resource Services of making more than $1 billion while committing multiple consumer violations, including false advertising and overly aggressive collection efforts, according to published reports. In 2002, the companies agreed to pay a $5 million fine and forgive $500 million in customer charges to settle, without admitting any guilt.

Feder and Troslclair purchased the Fort Lauderdale mansion in 2013 for $11.5 million, records show. Built in 2002, it spans 9,320 square feet and has five bedrooms and six bathrooms. Property records show the two waterfront corner lots combined total nearly an acre.

The home was first listed in 2016 with an asking price of $27.5 million, according to Compass. It was most recently listed for $19.8 million in January.

Tim Elmes of Compass represented both sides of the deal. Elmes declined to comment on the buyer’s identity.

The two-story house also features a library, gym and media room, with a pool outside and 450 feet of water frontage, according to the listing.

Recently in Fort Lauderdale, a technology firm founder sold his waterfront mansion for $16.8 million, a barbershop owner bought a mansion for $7.3 million, and the founder of BurgerFi sold a mansion for $7 million.

https://therealdeal.com/miami/2021/03/09/they-must-have-foreseen-the-final-sale-price-psychic-hotline-kings-sell-fort-lauderdale-mansion-for-14m/amp/

How We Survived Growing Up in Apocalyptic Cults

When you’ve been preparing for doomsday your whole life, and the world doesn’t end, how do you go on living?

DAVID EPSTEIN

Slate 

MARCH 06, 2021

Pop culture is obsessed with cults, but what does it actually feel like to grow up in one? On a recent episode of How To!, two former cult members opened up about their childhoods in apocalyptic cults. Michael, our 30-year-old listener from California, shared his experience in the Children of God cult, infamous for celebrity ex-members like Joaquin Phoenix and Rose McGowan, who grew up in it as children, and for its allegations of sexual and physical abuse. Rebecca Stott, meanwhile, revealed what it was like growing up in a cult in England called the Exclusive Brethren, a journey she chronicles in her memoir In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult. What did Michael’s and Rebecca’s childhoods actually look like? And have they ever been able to move on? This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

David Epstein: Michael, why did you reach out to us? 

Michael: For many years now, I’ve struggled to reconcile the fact that I love and care for my family with this shame that they raised us in an apocalyptic cult. I was born in Thailand as one of 12 children. We grew up in what I was told for most of my life was a missionary group; later, I found out it was a cult called the Children of God. We were taught from a young age that the world was going to end—I believed I wasn’t going to live past 6 years old. We were reading about how to prepare for the coming of the Antichrist, the raining fire, the fissure, and the rapture, all that stuff. I just remember being afraid all the time.

How is it that you came to leave the cult? 

Michael: I don’t think we ever left. It was more of a diffusive process where the leadership faltered. It was right after the world was supposed to end, and so then we hopped around from house to house, just kind of surviving. There was no sense of closure. My understanding of it is that my parents didn’t leave the cult. The cult left them.

It’s like how do you keep living when the world doesn’t actually end? 

Michael: Totally. It’s like life became an afterthought.

Have you talked with your family about your time in the cult? 

Michael: So of the 12 of us, there are four who live on the street. I remember asking my father, “How many of their problems do you think are caused by the fact that they were raised in a cult?” And he didn’t have a good answer. It’s almost like he didn’t think it was a problem. I think I’m beyond being hurt now. It’s not really a question of hurt. It’s more that I just want my parents to admit that they were wrong to raise 12 children around an apocalyptic cult full of pedophiles.

Rebecca Stott: Michael, I found that very moving because it’s so similar to my experience in the way you describe your childhood and your confusion. When I wrote my book, I was in my early 50s; it felt like all of my life had been in preparation for trying to write it. I found that as the book was about to be published, I developed laryngitis and lost my voice for a whole month. Whenever I have an interview like this, I can feel the frog in my throat. It’s like there’s something still censoring me and that’s in my own head. I’m still really surprised by the visceral nature of some of this stuff, of my own reluctance to spill the beans—to betray the cult, even if we left it.

Michael: I’m so happy you said that because I’m a pretty confident person, but I’m shaking right now. It’s a body reaction. It’s touching to hear that from someone else.

Rebecca, could you tell us more about your experience growing up in a cult? 

Rebecca: Yeah, so there were really a lot of similarities with Michael’s cult. We were called the Exclusive Brethren. We also were taught that the rapture was coming and that if we weren’t on the right side of the line, we would be left behind to face the tribulations. We read the Book of Revelation again and again. Meetings were an hour long. Women weren’t allowed to speak. The men had absolute authority in their homes and in the communities. You lived in constant threat of being excommunicated. Everything was banned—no radio and television, no holidays, no pets, no wristwatches. We had no radios, but my father liked to listen to the cricket scores in the back of the car, so every now and again we would see him taking a radio out of the wheel section or underneath the car and listening to the cricket scores. I remember thinking, Am I supposed to denounce my father?

I’m 56 now, and I still have nightmares. I still sleepwalk sometimes, and I still have high levels of anxiety. But I would also say I’ve learned to live with it all. God, this is going to sound very twee and a bit Pollyanna-ish, but I’ve learned to use it in my writing. In terms of my imaginative world, as a small child, we didn’t have books, so I spent a lot of time playing these strange biblical fusion games. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I have come to appreciate the ways in which that strange childhood, painful though it was, fearful though it was, actually produced some quite rich things too. I am a unique person because of it. But I still have such a strong impulse to run.

Michael: 100 percent. I’m always looking at apartments in other cities. We would always be on the move. Within a year we’d move like six times. To this day, that’s a sensation that I almost enjoy. I like the feeling of being on the go, but I know it’s rooted in my childhood in the cult, so it’s a bit dangerous.

Rebecca: Yeah. For me, when I’m sitting late at night looking at other houses in other cities, I’m looking for the place that’s safe. Even when I bought this house in Norwich where I live now, one of the things I found myself doing late at night—when I realized what I was doing, I laughed—I was checking for flood warnings. I suddenly realized: You’ve always bought houses on tops of hills because you’re afraid of water-level rise and that’s because you were raised to think the tribulations will bring mass floodings.

Michael: Rebecca, there’s something you said earlier about as a kid you became an expert really quickly at being afraid that made me think of my nephew. He’s living with my parents and he’s just learning about death. And when kids start to be curious about things that really matter, you have the opportunity there as a caregiver, and in many ways I’m a caregiver to my nephew because he was abandoned by his mother. Because of what I went through, I am so aware of what I say to him at this moment is going to affect him for the rest of his life. I remember what it’s like being a kid and just being taught how to be afraid. I don’t have any children of my own yet. But when I do, I just know that because of what I went through, I’m going to make an awesome dad. And that’s not a humble brag. I just know it, you know?

Rebecca: Yeah, that’s beautiful. That’s really beautiful. At the beginning of this, when I was listening to you tell your story my throat was thickening up, but my throat’s clear now. If this is in our bodies, then our bodies also respond to connection and while I haven’t sorted everything—I’ll never sort everything in this life—it’s so precious to talk to someone who has gone through something similar and speaks a similar language.

Michael: Same. I don’t feel the shakes like I did in the beginning.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/growing-up-in-a-cult-the-children-of-god-and-the-exclusive-brethren.html

Sydney party mum on escaping Jehovah's Witness religion

At 40, Sydney woman Trish Carr had slept with one man but after an “epiphany” she escaped into a new world of parties.

Gary Nunn
NEWS.com.au
MARCH 6, 2021

For decades Paul Grundy and Trish Karr lived under a culture of indoctrination, oppression and control.

Both were brought up in the Jehovah’s Witness religion which, they say, kept them naive, scared and submissive right into adulthood.

Upon leaving the religion, both were shunned by their parents who, to this day, refuse to speak to them. Lifelong friends and family members crossed the street to avoid them.

Now they’re using their voice and their platform to help other vulnerable Jehovah’s Witnesses escape the grips of the church, which has 70,000 members in Australia.

The religion denies that it coerces people and says that people who are Jehovah’s Witnesses have free will.

‘AT 40 I’D NEVER BEEN TO A NIGHTCLUB’

Since the 2013 film Witness My Journey documenting her transformation from Jehovah’s Witness to Sydney’s party queen, Trish Karr’s inbox has been flooded.

“I get messages saying your story has helped me in more ways than you know – I’ve decided I’m leaving,” she tells news.com.au.

“I’ve realised I was put on this earth for a reason – to inspire and help people. Ex Jehovah’s Witnesses get depressed and commit suicide because they believe they’ve got nothing in life. I want them to know this: I’m there to help you and guide you, if the religion isn’t in your heart: look me up.”

She describes herself as a “baby” when the religion encouraged her to marry aged 17, and strictly forbade sex before marriage.

It wasn’t until she turned 40 that she had an epiphany: “I’d slept with one man and just realised: I want to live. I don’t want to go to the grave with regrets.”

The Church tried to get her to come back, and visited her regularly, but she’d hide. “They were playing mind games,” she says.

Trish felt a natural affinity with the LGBTQI community: “I related to some being rejected by their own families for being gay. My sister, brother, mother and friends I’d had for 25 years all cut me off 14 years ago when I left. I’d cry over it a lot thinking it was my fault,” she says.

“Then I realised I need new friends who accept the real me that I’d suppressed for so long – I’m a naturally very outgoing person; I love the limelight. That’s when the gays became my adopted family.”

She discovered Sydney’s gay village: “I threw myself onto Oxford Street. I’d never even met a gay person in 40 years. I remember feeling like a kid in a candy store, thinking: wow! Where have I been? My head’s been in the dirt. I’ve been reborn.”

Having worn “knee to neck” clothing all her life, Trish describes the initial shock for her kids, who were 16, 12 and 3 when she left, as she was allowed to wear bikinis for the first time. “I wanted to be the best mum I could. I also needed to get out there and not waste a minute more. At first they were like, what’s going on?! Then they accepted – this is me.”

In 2009, she created Hot Kandi, a series of party nights for gay and straight people to express themselves and have fun.

PLANNING TO GET OUT

Since leaving the church, Paul Grundy, 50, has set up two groundbreaking websites to help disillusioned Jehovah’s Witnesses strategise how to get out: JW Facts and JW Support.

He knows just how hard it can be to make that final decision, and how tough life outside the church’s control initially feels.

“You hate being in it, but think you’ll hate being out of it even more – you’re convinced you’ll lose everything” he tells news.com.au.

Living outside the faith was initially excruciating for Paul. He lost his job, suffered post-traumatic stress and needed therapy.

“Leaving is designed to break you. It’s what the religion wants,” he says. “They hope you’ll hit rock bottom, then come crawling back.”

Today, he urges the religion’s followers against that. “You’ll humiliate yourself for the rest of your life. That’s what kept me in for so many years – they convinced me I’d end up drug addicted or kill myself in the outside world,” Paul says.

“I realised I support gay people and abortion – so I left.”

When (exclusively male) elders heard about Paul’s emerging doubts, they visited him and told him to study, pray and research more. “‘Research’ means their own indoctrination,” he says. “I realised I hadn’t done any actual outside world research in encyclopedias etc.”

Paul went through each topic, starting with their opposition to abortion and working his way through, including their stance against same-sex marriage and blood transfusions. “I realised I didn’t agree with any of their far-right nonsense,” he says.

At 35, he knew it was time to leave. But he was terrified of being shunned.

LIFE AFTER THE CHURCH

The day Paul’s disfellowship was announced, his mum – who’d always claimed she disapproved of shunning – cut him off completely. He was labelled an ‘apostate.’ His sister told him: “You’re against Jehovah.” They haven’t spoken in years.

His entire community ostracised him. On one occasion, a former friend was paying for her shopping and spotted him in the store. “She fled, leaving her shopping at the till. The shop assistant looked baffled!” Paul says.

Under new rules, Paul was only allowed to speak to people from his old life if there was a death or emergency.

When his dad died, he was briefly allowed back for the funeral. But Paul was numb. “I’d already mourned him” he says. “Shunning is worse than when someone dies.

“The irony is, they treat you in this terrible way, but claim they’re the only loving and moral religion. They convince you everyone outside this religion is immoral.”

In his new life, Paul, who describes himself as polysexual, began experimenting sexually with different genders. He also set to work.

“I’d realised this religion is evil. I processed my trauma by writing it all down. Then that became the website JW. Facts.”

HELPING LEAVERS

The website dispels myths and highlights inaccuracies and inconsistencies, such as the date of Armageddon: predicted to occur in 1914, then 1925, then “within our twentieth century”, Paul writes.

Paul initially thought approximately ten people a month would visit. Before long, it had thousands of visitors a week. It’s now helping other Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide to liberate themselves and has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

“Potential leavers need to realise others have done this,” he says. “The religion makes you feel so isolated. Often I’d hear them say, ‘I didn’t know anyone else felt same way as I do’ – they felt stupid, weird or guilty for feeling it,” he says.

Then things started to take a life of their own.

Petrified Jehovah’s Witnesses contacted Paul, pleading him to help them leave, too. And he did, at first.

“There were daily emails from JWs desperate to leave. Every couple of weeks I’d meet in secret with a Witness and help strategise their exit plan,” he says. They’re nicknamed PIMOs – physically in, mentally out.”

But they had high emotional support needs. “Many quickly get into destructive, controlling relationships when shunned by their family,” Paul says. “They’re unsure what they deserve.”

Finally, he couldn’t keep up with demand.

“It became overwhelming,” he says. He also felt pressure from the church which called him for a meeting as the website hit over 50,000 unique visitors a month and demanded to know if it was Paul’s work.

It was then he realised he needed to create a new resource: JW. Support, which specifically helps Witnesses to prepare for leaving.

‘I MOVED COUNTRIES’

One woman helped by Paul’s groundbreaking resources was Hannah Lunnon, 27.

She moved to Brisbane from New York to escape the American Jehovah’s Witness Church.

She remembers feeling “extremely lonely” growing up in the church and wasn’t allowed to call her mates outside the church her friends.

“The word I had to use was acquaintances,” she says.

“I was constantly at war with the criteria of the church – nothing felt right.

“Especially because I was too scared to talk about it with anyone. I couldn’t go to my parents with anything.”

This led to depression and anxiety. But things changed when she met outsiders through the online gaming community and discovered Paul’s websites.

“Through those I realised what the Witnesses were saying about the outside world wasn’t true,” she says. “Not everyone who lives in the outside world is unhappy/miserable/pushing drugs. They gave a very extreme view of what ‘worldly people’ were like.”

Hannah is bisexual and different sexual orientations are forbidden within the church.

“We were told you can have those feelings but mustn’t act on them and must pray the gay away,” she says.

Paul’s resources gave Hannah the confidence to chat online to the Australian who’d become her husband, then 24.

Aged 19, she decided to take the leap and emigrate to Australia, with his help. Her parents tried cancelling her plane tickets. They called airlines and tried to report Hannah to the police, but she escaped.

She now has two children with her husband, who she’d never met in person before boarding the plane.

“Paul’s site taught me to build your support system before you leave. Have somebody who’ll be there for you on the outside. Even a therapist. Anybody so you’re not alone” she says. “I’d have been lost without my husband.”

SEXUAL MISCONDUCT

Trish Carr reminisces uncomfortably about life growing up. “I remember a family friend, another Witness, would get me to sit on his lap. His hands were here [she points to her pelvis]. I was eight. I’ve never forgotten it. It made me feel yucky and dirty.”

Another friend disclosed being sexually abused at 15. “They swept it under the carpet,” she says. “It was reported to the elders and they dealt with it ‘in house.’ They didn’t report it to the police.”

The Jehovah’s Witness Church is the largest of just three organisations refusing to join the Australian government’s national child abuse redress scheme – and the only religion opting out. A total of 450 organisations have opted in.

The Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission found that not a single abuse case was reported by the Jehovah’s Witness Church to secular authorities despite there being 1006 alleged perpetrators investigated by the elders since 1950.

The church refutes this. Tom Pecipajkovski from Jehovah’s Witnesses Australasia tells news.com.au: “Any suggestion that Jehovah’s Witnesses shield perpetrators of abuse, or prefer to deal with it in-house, is false.”

He claims that, of those 1006 case files, 383 were reported to the police at the time they had happened, and 161 had resulted in convictions. “Unlike most religions, Jehovah’s Witnesses take steps to remove from the congregation any who make a practice of engaging in sexual misconduct.”

Mr Pecipajkovski also said: “Jehovah’s Witnesses are well-known for their educational work of sharing the positive message of the Bible.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses have distributed billions of copies of Bibles and Bible-based literature without charge and in more than 1000 languages. Accessing this information does not obligate a person in any way to become a Witness.

“We do not coerce people into changing religions as we recognise that faith is a personal matter. Furthermore, each individual believer has the right of free will to make personal decisions.

“A person can resign from our organisation at any time. No-one is coerced or pressured to remain as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Each person makes his own choice regarding religion.

“We believe that those who worship God must do so willingly, from the heart. This is one of the core religious beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

One of the Commission’s recommendations was for the religion to end shunning “where the reason for disassociation is related to a person being a victim of child sexual abuse”. The church, however will not adopt it, stating if an individual leaves, members will continue to “obey what the Bible says about how such a person should be viewed”.

Their claim that they don’t need to join the redress scheme because they don’t run youth services isn’t accepted by the Commission who state that the abuse occurred in an “institutional context.” But they continue to refuse to join the scheme, which offers victims compensation.

“That says it all,” Trish says. “When I was in that religion, we looked down upon everyone else – we believed we have only true religion and Jehovah will save us.”

Now it’s her doing the saving – helping others to escape its tight grip. “It’s not a loving religion,” she says.



Gary Nunn is a freelance journalist | @garynunn1



https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/sydney-party-mum-on-escaping-jehovahs-witness-religion/news-story/669e3ce4ef0738549b5108c2efc946cb

Mexico Ruling Party Denies Leader Was Part of Sex Cult

Max De Haldevang

Bloomberg 

March 4, 2021

Mexico’s ruling party denied a report in a local investigative publication that its leader, Mario Delgado, had been part of a notorious sex cult.

The Morena party’s press office contested on Thursday the investigation by Animal Politico, which alleged that Delgado was a member of NXIVM, a society whose leader was jailed for 120 years in October for charges including sex trafficking and abuse. The report said Delgado paid for membership and took self-help classes run by a group within NXIVM over a six-month period in 2016.

Delgado was never a member of the group, and only took leadership classes there without knowing the larger organization was involved in trafficking, a press officer said in response to questions by Bloomberg News.

The classes were taken “in good faith” and at a time when the accusations against the group weren’t known, Delgado said, according to a statement posted in his Twitter account.

The party is still trying to determine how many classes he took, the press officer said. Animal Politico alleged Delgado made several membership payments of $50 during the six months, but didn’t specify how many, saying it had deposit receipts of the payments in its possession.

As Morena leader, Delgado is in charge of the party’s strategy as it aims to keep its lower-house majority and pick up governorships in the June 6 midterm elections. The party was founded by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-04/mexico-ruling-party-denies-leader-was-part-of-sex-cult

Indian man accused of beheading teen daughter in apparent "honor killing"

MARCH 4, 2021

CBS NEWS

Indian police have arrested a man and accused him of decapitating his own teenage daughter in a rage over her relationship with another man he didn't like, BBC News reported on Thursday, in what appears to be the latest gruesome case of so-called "honor killing" in the Asian nation. Police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh said Sarvesh Kumar was arrested as he walked toward the local police station carrying his daughter's head.

BBC News said the local police released a video of Kumar confessing to the crime, in which he explains that he was enraged to learn of his daughter's relationship, came home to find her alone, locked her in a room and decapitated her with a sharp object.

Neighbors reported to the police the sight of Kumar apparently carrying his daughter's head through their district of Hardoi on Wednesday after he committed the alleged crime.

Honor crimes are a major problem in India, neighboring Pakistan, and other countries where family members — most often women and girls — are attacked and even killed by their relatives for bringing perceived shame onto the family. Such crimes are more common in rural communities where centuries-old traditions and deep-rooted cultural norms still dictate the rules of everyday life.

According to the BBC, while there are no official statistics, hundreds of people are believed to be killed in India every year by family members over relationships or marriages that went against the wishes of their parents or other elders.

Honor crime is just one aspect of a much wider problem of violence against women and girls that India has been grappling with for years. The BBC said that statistics compiled by India's National Crime Records Bureau showed more crimes were committed against women last year in Uttar Pradesh than any other Indian state.

In March 2020, India hanged four men for the brutal gang rape of a paramedical student in Delhi in 2012. The rape and murder of the 23-year-old woman triggered massive street protests across India and brought global attention to the plight of India's women.

But CBS News' Arshad R. Zargar reported, that little has changed despite the outpouring of public rage. Government data released in September 2020 that showed an average of 87 rapes were reported every day the previous year - a rise of more than 7% from 2018. 

In January an Indian court's ruling that groping a child can't be considered sexual assault as long as there's no "skin-to-skin contact" or "sexual intent" was widely criticized by rights activists.

The ruling by Bombay High Court Justice Pushpa V. Ganediwala cleared a 39-year-old man who had been accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in 2016 of wrongdoing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/indian-man-accused-of-beheading-teen-daughter-in-apparent-honor-killing/

Jehovah’s Witnesses to join redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors

Rebecca Gredley

News Daily 

Mar 3, 2021

Authorities are urging the Jehovah’s Witnesses to contact them to get the ball rolling on the religious group’s decision to join the national redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors.

The organisation says it will sign up because of new rules introduced by the federal government, which mean it would lose its charity status – and subsequent tax exemptions – for continuing to hold out.

“Now that the law requires charities to join the scheme, Jehovah’s Witnesses will comply,” it said in a statement to AAP on Wednesday.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that it is their responsibility before God to respect and co-operate with the authorities.”

A spokeswoman for Social Services Minister Anne Ruston has welcomed the statement but implored the organisation to contact authorities.

“(We) encourage them to make urgent contact with the Department of Social Services so they can make good on this commitment,” she told AAP.

“It can take up to six months for institutions to complete the process of joining and the department would hope to work co-operatively and with haste to facilitate the Jehovah’s Witnesses joining as quickly as possible.

“It is disappointing survivors who have named the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been forced to have their application for redress on hold this long while the organisation has been unwilling to join.”

The federal government has long pressured the religious group to join the scheme by publicly naming it and more recently changing charities rules.

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission governance standard requires registered charities to take reasonable steps to join the redress scheme if an application has been made, or likely to be made, against them.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses did not voluntarily join because we object to the assertion that the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses assumes responsibility for children,” the group said.

“Our objection is based on the fact that the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses does not and has not sponsored any activities that have resulted in children being under its care, custody, supervision, control or authority.”

The multibillion-dollar scheme was designed to deliver redress to the tens of thousands of people sexually abused as children in Australian institutions.

It provides access to counselling, a redress payment and a direct personal response such as an apology from an institution, if the survivor wants it.

But they can’t be given redress unless the institution they were abused by has joined the scheme.

The government is expected to be handed an independent review of the scheme soon.

-AAP

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/03/03/jehovahs-witnesses-redress-scheme/

She Was Seen as a Victim in the Sarah Lawrence Cult Case. Now She's Charged.

Isabella Pollok was one of the students at Sarah Lawrence College who prosecutors said was exploited by a classmate’s father, Lawrence V. Ray. Now she is under indictment, too.


Benjamin Weiser and Ezra Marcus
The New York Times
March 1, 2021

A year ago, Isabella Pollok was portrayed by prosecutors as the victim of a Svengali-like older man who moved into his daughter’s dormitory at Sarah Lawrence College and recruited her friends into a cult, subjecting them to years of sexual exploitation and physical abuse.

Ms. Pollok was only 19 when she fell under the sway of the man, Lawrence V. Ray, prosecutors said. She cut off ties with her family and followed him up and down the Eastern Seaboard for a decade. When Mr. Ray was arrested last year at a house in New Jersey, Ms. Pollok was one of two women living with him.

Now, in a surprising twist, prosecutors have accused Ms. Pollok of being a willing accomplice who assisted Mr. Ray, 61, in various criminal schemes, even helping him collect millions of dollars in profits from one of her former classmates whom prosecutors said he had forced to become a prostitute.

That the government started out depicting Ms. Pollok as Mr. Ray’s victim and now has charged her as his co-conspirator speaks to the complexity of the psychological manipulation he is said to have used and how it may complicate a prosecution.

For Ms. Pollok’s family, the sudden change in her legal status has been bewildering. Her aunt, Liz Jeffrey, said that Mr. Ray brainwashed her niece and it made no sense to her that prosecutors repeatedly described Ms. Pollok, 29, as “a victim, a victim, a victim — up until they want to charge her.”

“I don’t care what they found,” Ms. Jeffrey said. “It is all under duress. She has been under his spell for 10 years.”

Experts on human trafficking and cults said the line between victim and accomplice can be hard to judge.

Taryn Merkl, a former federal prosecutor who supervised human-trafficking cases in Brooklyn, said prosecutors must decide “where duress ends, and victimization can no longer be the understood reason for behavior that crosses the line over to more deliberate criminality.”

Rick Alan Ross, the founder of the Cult Education Institute and an expert on persuading people to leave cults, said that if Ms. Pollok was unwilling to cooperate with the prosecution, “she’s cast her lot with Larry Ray.”

Mr. Ross said the same phenomenon could be seen in the case of Keith Raniere, the convicted leader of the Nxivm cult in Albany, in which some women were branded and coerced into serving as sexual slaves.

Five of Mr. Raniere’s most ardent followers ended up being charged with him and later pleaded guilty to charges like conspiracy and visa fraud. Other former Nxivm members who had been branded stood by Mr. Raniere after his conviction.

The investigation that led to Mr. Ray’s arrest in February 2020 was prompted by a New York magazine article titled “The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence.” It described how Mr. Ray, in the fall of 2010 when he was 50, insinuated himself into the lives of his daughter’s classmates, including Ms. Pollok, whom the magazine identified only by her first name.

Mr. Ray had finished serving prison time in New Jersey on charges stemming from a child custody dispute.

In the magazine article, Ms. Pollok was quoted saying that she sought guidance from Mr. Ray after a breakup. The magazine said Mr. Ray spent many nights in her room.

“I’m 19, I was having a lot of difficulty making sense of things, I wasn’t in a good place,” Ms. Pollok said. “He started to help me kind of process and make sense of a lot of things I just couldn’t make sense of.”

After graduating in 2013, Ms. Pollok spent time with Mr. Ray in North Carolina, New York and at a house in Piscataway, N.J., where she and another woman lived with him, New York magazine reported.

(One of the reporters of the magazine article, Ezra Marcus, is now a reporter for The New York Times and worked on this article. He attended Sarah Lawrence at the same time as Ms. Pollok but did not know her.)

The original indictment, released in February 2020, named Mr. Ray as the sole defendant and said he gained control over the students through lengthy “therapy” sessions, during which he “learned intimate details about their private lives, vulnerabilities and mental health struggles under the pretense of helping them.”

Mr. Ray also subjected them to “interrogation sessions that typically involved verbal and physical abuse,” the indictment said.

The new indictment, unsealed on Jan. 29, for the first time named Ms. Pollok as a co-defendant with Mr. Ray. It said he had recruited her “to join the criminal scheme.”

The indictment charged her and Mr. Ray in various conspiracies to commit racketeering, extortion and sex trafficking.

It said that Mr. Ray and Ms. Pollok tried to gain their victims’ trust “before psychologically manipulating and controlling them,” through threats and violence and by depriving them of food and sleep.

Prosecutors, as well as lawyers for Ms. Pollok and Mr. Ray, all declined to comment. The two defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Last year, prosecutors presented a different portrait of Ms. Pollok.

At a hearing in March 2020, they successfully argued against bail for Mr. Ray, noting that there were still victims under his control at the time of his arrest, including the two women living with him. “Both are women he exploited and abused for years, including physical abuse and sexual exploitation,” one of the prosecutors, Danielle R. Sassoon, said.

Ms. Sassoon did not identify the two women, but the government made it clear that Ms. Pollok was one of them during her recent arraignment in federal court in Manhattan. The other woman who was living with Mr. Ray has not been charged.

In August, prosecutors wrote to the judge, claiming that Mr. Ray, using his father as an intermediary, was sending coded messages from jail to the two women. “Ray also amassed videos that contain graphic sexual content of these two women, including sexual acts performed at Ray’s direction that appear designed to debase and control them,” the prosecutors said.

Mr. Ray’s messages from jail to the women were “plainly designed to tamper with witnesses and deter these women from cooperating in the government’s investigation,” the prosecutors said. In one call, for example, Mr. Ray told his father to tell the women that they had “signed on forever.”

“Most troubling,” the prosecutors wrote, “the calls suggest that Ray’s ongoing communications are designed to ensure the ongoing loyalty of these women and to inhibit their ability to detach from the influence he commanded over them for nearly a decade.”

One sign that Mr. Ray’s influence still looms large over Ms. Pollok surfaced at her arraignment, where her lawyer, Peter M. Skinner, said he was concerned that Ms. Pollok “may not be competent to stand trial,” and suggested the judge order a psychological evaluation of his client.

Then Mr. Skinner noted that Ms. Pollok disagreed with his view. “She feels that she is competent to proceed and doesn’t feel that any hearing on competency is necessary,” Mr. Skinner said.

On Wednesday, the judge, Lewis J. Liman, ordered that Ms. Pollok undergo the evaluation.

Prosecutors have not said why they chose to charge Ms. Pollok now or whether they still are seeking her cooperation against Mr. Ray, perhaps in return for a recommendation of leniency at sentencing. Some counts against her carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Mr. Ross, the cult expert, suggested the prosecutors may be trying to send Ms. Pollok a message.

“The worst place for a cult is in court,” Mr. Ross said. “It’s no longer a place of myths and make-believe and whatever the leader says is right.”

“Regardless of whether she chooses to deal with reality or not,” he added, “reality will deal with her.”

Benjamin Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. @BenWeiserNYT

Ezra Marcus is a reporting fellow for the Styles desk.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/nyregion/lawrence-ray-sarah-lawrence-cult.html

Experts In Cult Deprogramming Step In To Help Believers In Conspiracy Theories

Experts In Cult Deprogramming Step In To Help Believers In Conspiracy Theories

All Things Considered

NPR

March 2, 2021

With disinformation spreading on an unprecedented scale, experts in cult deprogramming are turning their expertise to those who have fallen down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972970805/experts-in-cult-deprogramming-step-in-to-help-believers-in-conspiracy-theories