CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/3/2021 (Trafficking, NXIVM, James Arthur Ray)

Trafficking, NXIVM, James Arthur Ray

Oregon Faith Report: Human Trafficking Lawsuit Filed Against Portland Church

"A 26-year-old woman filed a lawsuit against a Southeast Portland church and its former pastor, alleging sexual abuse, human trafficking, forced labor and battery.

The woman was 20 and just released from rehab when a friend dropped her off at The Living Room Coffeehouse, a business on Southeast Tacoma Street run by the Adsideo Church, which operated out of homes in the Sellwood neighborhood.

Church leaders told her to turn over her phone, all electronic devices, and her purse, according to the Oregonian/Oregon Live.  She lived in a church house with the pastor, Jimmy Ellis Wicks Jr., 53, and his family. Although she worked for the church, leaders kept her wages to cover her room and board and "mandatory church tithing," her lawsuit claims. Wicks sent text messages asking her to masturbate as therapy and let him watch on FaceTime. He also urged her to use sex toys provided by a co-pastor, a woman named in the lawsuit who said she the man described as "a father figure" in the church also victimized her."

A Little Bit Culty: Episode Six - Groundbreaker: Moira Penza on Prosecuting NXIVM

"If you watched "The Vow" or have followed the fall of NXIVM, you know Moira Kim Penza as the prosecutor who brought Keith Raniere to justice. Her accomplishments are mighty: Like Keith's conviction on all counts including racketeering and sex trafficking and a brisk 120 year sentence. Moira's groundbreaking approach to the case has been credited with paving the way for other sex trafficking prosecutions against powerful individuals. In other words: She's a total badass. In this episode, Moira sits down with Sarah and Nippy to talk about what it's like to take on a world-class dirtbag (our wording, not hers) and what really chaps her ass about NXIVM's Voldemort.

More about today's guest: Moira is now in private practice as a litigator, and a partner at Wilkinson Stekloff. Crain's New York business named her in the 40 under 40 list, she's been ranked as one of Bloomberg Law's 40 under 40, and her legal analysis has been featured in The NY Times, CNN, ABC, NPR and Daily Beast." 

A Little Bit Culty: Episode Seven - Guru-Free: Laura Tucker on Safety for Seekers

"In 2009, Laura Tucker attended a Sedona spiritual retreat and sweat lodge hosted by charismatic spiritual teacher James Arthur Ray. It all went tragically wrong, resulting in the deaths of fellow attendees Liz Neuman, Kirby Brown and James Shore. In this episode, Laura chats with Sarah and Nippy about her experience, what it means to practice safe spiritual seeking, and the dark side of self help.

More about today's guest: Laura Tucker is the host of the Free Your Inner Guru® Podcast, a photographer, writer, and a self-described 'recovering coach.' A creative at heart, Laura likes to explore, figure things out, create stunning visuals, and nuanced conversations. As an insight provoking leader and speaker, Laura has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders become more self aware so they can lead more intuitively. She is a former high school teacher, trainer, sales professional, multi entrepreneur, consultant and leadership coach. She survived the 2009 fatal "sweat lodge" at a self help retreat in Sedona. You may recognize her from Enlighten Us, a CNN Films/Netflix documentary about the self help industry and the Wondery Podcast Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment. She has also appeared on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin and William Shatner's The UnXplained."

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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

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Cause of Death Revealed for Mummified Colorado 'Cult' Leader Found Without Eyes

Mystery initially shrouded Amy Carlson’s death after her decomposing corpse was found in a Colorado home, wrapped in a sleeping bag with glitter around her missing eyes.


Daily Beast
Zoe Richards
December 2, 2021

Amy Carlson, the leader of a New Age sect known as Love Has Won, died due to decline brought on by alcohol abuse, anorexia and dosing colloidal silver, according to an autopsy report from the El Paso County Coroner’s Office in Colorado.

Mystery initially shrouded Carlson’s death after her mummified body was discovered in April in a green sleeping bag with its eyes missing in a home in Crestone, Colorado, arrest affidavits revealed at the time. Police had raided the home after being alerted by a member of the group who said Carlson’s body had been transported to a mobile home that served as the group’s headquarters from across the country.

Several members of Love Has Won, who referred to Carlson as “Mother God,” were taken into custody after her body, which had been decomposing for roughly one month, was found. In interviews with law enforcement, the group claimed Carlson was not dead, but was simply “out of communication.”

But, in a report obtained by The Guru Magazine, Dr. Emily Russell ruled that Carlson “died as a result of global decline in the setting of alcohol abuse, anorexia, and chronic colloidal silver ingestion.”

Corporal Steve Hanson of the Saguache County Sheriff’s Office previously said that investigators found human remains with “what appears to be glitter type makeup on around the eyes.”

While conducting an external examination, Russell similarly remarked on the body’s missing eyes which she said were “not appreciated secondary to decomposition,” but showed no evidence of trauma.

At a mere 75 lbs, Carlson had a tie-dye fleece shawl draped around her bony shoulders and a faux-fur scarf and bandana cradling the blue-gray skin around her neck, Russell wrote.

The 45-year-old wore two pairs of socks and donned a gold-colored headband encrusted with blue and green stones, several chains, and a pendant necklace, the report stated. A red scrunchie swept back her reddish-brown hair and she wore grey cotton pants with a “diaper containing red purge-type fluid,” the report states.

County coroner Tom Perrin told The Daily Beast in May that there was nothing to indicate her death was caused by foul play. In July he told the Denver Post that autopsy results had been delayed due to challenges finding a lab that could test Carlson’s body for metals.

Her body was found accompanied by “eight small brown bottles with medicine droppers that were colorfully labeled,” which were retained as evidence and detailed contents of various metals, including colloidal titanium, gold, silver, among others. Love Has Won, which has previously been described by ex-followers and law enforcement as a “cult,” had also hawked colloidal metals for treating compulsive behaviors.

Carolina Noble, a forensic toxicologist at a Pennsylvania lab, said after conducting a test on Carlson’s liver tissue on Nov. 16, that silver was present in her body. She had 470 mcg/g—more than six times the daily average intake (70 mcg) from the environment and diet of an American adult, according to the report.

A toxicology report further revealed the presence of ethanol and acetaminophen and her fluids tested positive for chemicals found in cannabis and tobacco, as well as opiates, including hydrocodone and hydromorphone.

Andrew Profaci, a former member who left the group five years ago, previously told The Daily Beast that she “drank ten shots of vodka a night,” losing her cognitive abilities to the point that she “would fall and walk into walls.”

In September 2020, Carlson told the Dr. Phil show she had advanced cancer. After reviewing her organs, the coroner said that one of Carlson’s thyroid glands contained a nodule “containing clear brown gelatinous fluid,” that she said was “grossly consistent with a colloid,” but found “no evidence” of metastatic cancer.



https://www.thedailybeast.com/amy-carlson-love-had-won-cult-leader-died-of-alcohol-anorexia-and-colloidal-silver-autopsy-shows

Mormon tithing, revisited

When I paid tithing to the church, the logistics of sitting down to do it might take up five minutes of my month. Now, it requires a good deal more time and consideration.

Jana Riess
Religion News Service
November 30, 2021

(RNS) — In this season of giving, I have been thinking about what has changed in my life in the last year since I published a column explaining why I had stopped tithing to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The short version of the story is that I was deeply disturbed two years ago by the revelation that the church had stockpiled more than $100 billion worth of investments and was not utilizing those funds for helping others, but rather to shore up business enterprises such as the City Creek Mall in Salt Lake City.

$100 billion is an almost unimaginable sum of money, and it is fair to say with the tremendous gains in the stock market in the last two years, that could have grown to $130 billion or even more, depending on how the assets are allocated.

I don’t want to have the argument that “The church is already doing so much! Look at all it does for charity.” It’s true the church gives millions of dollars every year to charity. In 2020, it gave nearly a billion (though not, apparently, from the investment fund in question). I have been very proud this year, for example, of the church’s involvement globally with ensuring a more equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to poor nations, to which it has donated more than $20 million.

But compared to what the church has in its coffers, what it gives to charity annually is quite small, less than 1% of what it has in reserves.

Since making my decision two years ago, I have had an awakening of sorts about just how much I had allowed my spiritual center to become divorced from where my money was going. I used to function on autopilot. When I paid tithing to the church, the logistics of sitting down to do it might take up five minutes of my month. Now, it requires a good deal more time and consideration. I have to weigh many different competing goods in order to decide where best to send my tithing.

It is incredibly humbling, actually. The needs are overwhelming. Just this week, for Giving Tuesday, I have received more than 40 solicitations from worthy organizations. From Doctors Without Borders to literacy organizations to “Matthew 25: Ministries,” here in Cincinnati, there seems to be an infinite number of charities that need help.

But rather than feeling weighed down by this, I have been profoundly energized by the process of making choices to combat poverty.

Certainly, the feeling my money is truly making a difference, even saving lives, is empowering. But for me as an individual, it has also been a profound exercise in gratitude.

A middle-class person in the United States who tithes 10% of their income, whether on gross or net (I do net), is likely giving away several thousand dollars every year. Which is actually a heck of a lot, it turns out. Seeing that money go out the door to organizations that truly need it makes me deeply grateful that it’s something I can do. That I’ve been so fortunate to be born into a country of relative ease and prosperity. Those are not thoughts I had in such a visceral way when I was tithing to an already wealthy organization.

People’s feelings about money are complicated, and here’s a truth I’ve been learning: It’s not only the good parts of myself, the gratitude and the joy, that have been revealed through my decision to no longer tithe to the LDS church. What has also become clear is my own control-freakiness.

I’m just not comfortable with the “black box” nature of sending checks to an organization that is never held accountable for how that money is spent (or even if it is spent at all, ever — what has perhaps been most disturbing about the church’s unaccountable wealth has been the fact it is simply sitting there, regarded as something that needs to grow indefinitely for the possibility someone, someday, somewhere might need it).

The control freak aspect of how I tithe now is I like knowing where my money is going. I think most people do. One big irony in all this is even while the LDS church fails to let members know what is being done with our tithing money, the church has become known throughout the U.S. in recent years for its vending machines that “light the world” with charitable giving. This holiday season, there are vending machines in 10 U.S. cities, where givers can purchase items ranging from $5 up to several hundred. The church covers credit card fees and other expenses, so every dollar donated goes to those in need.

The machines are very popular, and it’s not hard to understand why; they provide donors with a sense of immediate problem-solving. You need a goat? I can help with that. You need a coat? I can help with that too. It is all direct, transparent and deeply human.

Since I wrote about my decision a year ago and went public with the fact I am no longer tithing to the church, I have heard from many readers. Some have been angry and defensive, while others have been curious or have wanted to express their own frustration and sadness that the church as an institution seems to donate a much smaller portion of its own wealth per year than it expects of its members as individuals.

I try not to give anyone advice about their tithing situation; I can only speak from my own experience. Sometimes, people ask me if I have had any fallout in the form of discipline because I made this choice and then wrote about it. I don’t respond to that question, partly because it’s no one’s business but also because there is no scenario in which my local leaders deserve the hate mail they would receive from liberal Mormons if I had been disciplined or from conservative Mormons if I had not!

All I can do is try to make the decisions that are right for me personally and that enable me to do the most good in the world. For now, this mode of tithing to multiple charities has broadened my horizons, expanded my heart and made me much more conscious of my own privilege. I’ve been counting my blessings a lot more this year, and my tithing bubbles up from that renewed awareness, rather than feeling like a checklist obligation.

https://religionnews.com/2021/11/30/mormon-tithing-revisited/

This chart on conspiracy theories has gone viral. A local disinformation researcher breaks down what to know

Shannon Larson Globe Staff
Boston Globe
November 29, 2021

When does online disinformation cross a line from mostly innocuous to harmful to others? A Boston-based researcher who studies disinformation and misinformation sought to break it down in a chart that rocketed across the Internet last week, offering clarity to readers in an age when new conspiracy theories seem to pop up all the time.

The chart, which was retweeted more than 18,000 times, is organized to convey both an increasing detachment from reality and threat level, with the top grouping largely rooted in antisemitic views, its creator, Abbie Richards said. She emphasized that her design is “just one of many conspiracy theory frameworks.”

In the time since Richards first designed her framework for understanding conspiracies and conspiracy theories, monumental events like the 2020 presidential election had not yet taken place nor had the coronavirus pandemic become as deeply intertwined with daily life.

“When I made this chart initially, there hadn’t even been an election yet, let alone an entire disinformation campaign that the election was stolen,” said Richards, a 25-year-old Bostonian whose TikToks on climate change have drawn millions of views. “Also back when I made this chart, vaccines weren’t out yet. There’s so much that just changed.”

Richards was prompted to create an updated pyramid as a result. Her audience was even more receptive to the chart she tweeted out last week, with it receiving “more likes and shares and everything on Twitter in one night than it did in an entire year the first time,” she said. (Richards reconfigured the infographic slightly on Sunday, which she emailed to the Globe.)

It is fair game to raise questions about common narratives and interrogate them, Richards said, but “once you get into a point where you’re not questioning anything, there’s no methodology to it, you aren’t going to experts who understand it, you refuse to accept other information about it — that can get really dangerous.”

The chart is broken down into several sections, beginning with events that actually happened — including the Tuskegee Experiment and Big Tobacco lying to the American public about the deadly effects of its products — which Richards noted are “very different from conspiracy theories” as they are based in reality. She said these are “actual proven instances of people in power conspiring and abusing their power.”

As one passes the “speculation line” of the pyramid, they enter into the category where “there are still unanswered aspects” or where questions over said topics remain, and these “can be silly or can be very real,” Richards said. Further up the pyramid, the theories begin to leave reality — but have not yet entered into a zone where they could pose any major hazard to those who believe in them.

But the categories beyond the “reality denial” line contain theories that are not only perilous to those who accept them as the truth, but to the people around them, Richards said. It’s at this point that people begin to deny history, science, and medicine. The top level of the conspiracy chart, when one crosses over the “antisemitic point of no return,” is populated with theories centered around the belief that an evil group of elites “is secretly controlling the world and hiding something from everybody,” and these are “always rooted in antisemitism,” Richards said. Such theories promote both hate and violence toward marginalized groups, she said.

Between people hunkering down and sheltering from an unknown deadly virus to one of the most consequential elections of a lifetime, there has been a heightened sense of isolation and fear in communities across the nation, producing an environment ripe for conspiracy theories to be born and quickly spread, especially online and across social media platforms, Richards said.

“When you feel uncertain about the world it’s much easier to buy into a theory where there’s like very black and white villains and heroes,” she said. “It’s just this like evil boogeyman that you get to beat. And when you’re in a time like this where you’ve been locked inside, the world feels quite desolate and lonelier and scarier — it’s so much easier to buy into a narrative that sells you a simple solution.”

With the holiday season underway and friends and families gathering, Richards offered advice on how to talk to people who may believe in some of the theories highlighted on the chart. She recommends “to always take care of yourself first.”

“Try and approach these issues as empathetically and nonjudgmentally as possible instead of just calling them stupid for believing this,” she said. “You might as well kind of interrogate them on their beliefs and see if you can cast doubt in certain aspects of it. But I wouldn’t engage in arguments about it because you aren’t going to out-logic a belief that’s not based in logical conclusion.”




Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shannonlarson98.



https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/11/29/metro/this-chart-conspiracy-theories-has-gone-viral-freebritney-qanon-local-disinformation-researcher-breaks-down-what-know/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/2/2021 (France, Clerical Celibacy, Daddy Girls, Chad Daybell )

France, Clerical Celibacy, Daddy Girls, Chad Daybell 

RFI: Paris archbishop offers to resign after reports on private life emerge

"The Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, has offered his resignation to Pope Francis due to his "ambiguous behaviour" with a woman, his diocese announced on Friday. Aupetit wrote to the pope this week offering to step down following an investigation by Le Point magazine earlier this month, a diocese spokeswoman said.

"He had ambiguous behaviour with a person he was very close to," the spokeswoman said, adding that it was "not a loving relationship", nor sexual.

The offer to resign was "not a confession of guilt, but a humble gesture, an offer of dialogue," she added.

Clerical Celibacy

Catholic priests are bound to celibacy under church doctrine and are meant to practice sexual abstinence.

The French church is still recovering from the publication in October of a devastating report by the Ciase, an independent commission which estimated that Catholic clergy had abused 216,000 children since 1950.

Dealing with the avalanche of revelations about sexual abuse by priests was one of the biggest challenges that Francis faced when he was elected pope in 2013."

Petty Paige: DADDY'S GIRLS: The Lesbian BBW Cult of TikTok

"So what happens when someone gets drunk with power and influence? They start a CULT.

Today we are going to talk about the lesbian #BBWCult of tiktok #DaddysGirls & even saying that out loud is insane!! Cults on #TikTok aren't the evangelical ones most people are familiar with. Instead, they are open fandoms revolving around a single creator. The biggest difference is that TikTok's cult leaders are not independently famous. They're upstart creators building a fan base on social media. The cults lift up unlikely influencers and allow members to feel complicit in their rise. This type of bond is incredibly powerful."

Arizona: Chandler police release additional info on Lori Vallow case

"... The evidence released by Chandler police in October gave insight into the non-traditional religious beliefs of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell and those in their inner circle."

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Those Cute Cats Online? They Help Spread Misinformation.

A mainstay of the internet is regularly used to build audiences for people and organizations pushing false and misleading information.

Davey Alba
New York Times
December 1, 2021

On Oct. 2, New Tang Dynasty Television, a station linked to the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, posted a Facebook video of a woman saving a baby shark stranded on a shore. Next to the video was a link to subscribe to The Epoch Times, a newspaper that is tied to Falun Gong and that spreads anti-China and right-wing conspiracies. The post collected 33,000 likes, comments and shares.

The website of Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician who researchers say is a chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, regularly posts about cute animals that generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of interactions on Facebook. The stories include “Kitten and Chick Nap So Sweetly Together” and “Why Orange Cats May Be Different From Other Cats,” written by Dr. Karen Becker, a veterinarian.



And Western Journal, a right-wing publication that has published unproven claims about the benefits of using hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19, and spread falsehoods about fraud in the 2020 presidential election, owns Liftable Animals, a popular Facebook page. Liftable Animals posts stories from Western Journal’s main website alongside stories about golden retrievers and giraffes.

Videos and GIFs of cute animals — usually cats — have gone viral online for almost as long as the internet has been around. Many of the animals became famous: There’s Keyboard Cat, Grumpy Cat, Lil Bub and Nyan Cat, just to name a few.

Now, it is becoming increasingly clear how widely the old-school internet trick is being used by people and organizations peddling false information online, misinformation researchers say.

The posts with the animals do not directly spread false information. But they can draw a huge audience that can be redirected to a publication or site spreading false information about election fraud, unproven coronavirus cures and other baseless conspiracy theories entirely unrelated to the videos. Sometimes, following a feed of cute animals on Facebook unknowingly signs users up as subscribers to misleading posts from the same publisher.




Dr. Karen Becker, a veterinarian who shares pet advice on Dr. Joseph Mercola’s website, wrote the article “Why Orange Cats May Be Different From Other Cats.”

Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation, said this kind of “engagement bait” helped misinformation actors generate clicks on their pages, which can make them more prominent in users’ feeds in the future. That prominence can drive a broader audience to content with inaccurate or misleading information, she said.

“The strategy works because the platforms continue to reward engagement over everything else,” Ms. Ryan said, “even when that engagement comes from” publications that also publish false or misleading content.

Perhaps no organization deploys the tactic as forcefully as Epoch Media, parent company of The Epoch Times. Epoch Media has published videos of cute animals in 12,062 posts on its 103 Facebook pages in the past year, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Those posts, which include links to other Epoch Media websites, racked up nearly four billion views. Trending World, one of Epoch’s Facebook pages, was the 15th most popular page on the platform in the United States between July and September.

One video, posted last month by The Epoch Times’s Taiwan page, shows a close-up of a golden retriever while a woman tries in vain to pry an apple from its mouth. It has over 20,000 likes, shares and comments on Facebook. Another post, on Trending World’s Facebook page, features a seal grinning widely with a family posing for a picture at a Sea World resort. The video has 12 million views.







Epoch Media did not respond to a request for comment.

“Dr. Becker is a veterinarian, her articles are about pets,” said an email from Dr. Mercola’s public relations team. “We reject any New York Times accusations of misleading any visitors, but are not surprised by it.”

The viral animal videos often come from places like Jukin Media and ViralHog. The companies identify extremely shareable videos and reach licensing deals with the people who made them. After securing the rights to the videos, Jukin Media and ViralHog license the clips to other media companies, giving a cut of the profits to the original creator.

Mike Skogmo, Jukin Media’s senior vice president for marketing and communications, said his company had a licensing deal with New Tang Dynasty Television, the station tied to Falun Gong.

“Jukin has licensing deals with hundreds of publishers worldwide, across the political spectrum and with a range of subject matters, under guidelines that protect the creators of the works in our library,” he said in a statement.

Asked whether the company evaluated whether their clips were used as engagement bait for misinformation in striking the license deals, Mr. Skogmo said Jukin had nothing else to add.

“Once someone licenses our raw content, what they do with it is up to them,” said Ryan Bartholomew, founder of ViralHog. “ViralHog is not supporting or opposing any cause or objective — that would be outside of our scope of business.”

The use of animal videos presents a conundrum for the tech platforms like Facebook, because the animal posts themselves do not contain misinformation. Facebook has banned ads from Epoch Media when the network violated its political advertising policy, and it took down several hundred Epoch Media-affiliated accounts last year when it determined that the accounts had violated its “coordinated inauthentic behavior” policies.

“We’ve taken enforcement actions against Epoch Media and related groups several times already,” said Drew Pusateri, a Facebook spokesman. “If we discover that they’re engaging in deceptive actions in the future we will continue enforcing against them.” The company did not comment on the tactic of using cute animals to spread misinformation.

Rachel E. Moran, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online misinformation, said it was unclear how often the animal videos led people to misinformation. But posting them continues to be a popular tactic because they run such a low risk of breaking a platform’s rules.

“Pictures of cute animals and videos of wholesome moments are the bread and butter of social media, and definitely won’t run afoul of any algorithmic content moderation detection,” Ms. Moran said.

“People are still using it every day,” she said.

Jacob Silver contributed research.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/technology/misinformation-cute-cats-online.html

Russian coronavirus-denying monk given prison sentence

VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
AP News
November 30, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — A rebel Russian monk who castigated the Kremlin and denied that the coronavirus existed was convicted Tuesday on accusations of encouraging suicides and given a 3½-year prison sentence.

The monk, Father Sergiy, was arrested in December 2020 on charges of inciting suicidal actions through sermons in which he urged believers to “die for Russia,” breaching the freedom of conscience and making arbitrary moves. He rejected the accusations and his lawyers said they would appeal Tuesday’s ruling by Moscow’s Ismailovo District Court.

Father Sergiy reacted to the verdict with a biblical “Do not judge and you will not be judged.”

When the coronavirus pandemic began, the 66-year-old monk denied its existence and denounced government efforts to stem the pandemic as “Satan’s electronic camp.” He has spread the long-debunked conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and described the coronavirus vaccines being developed against COVID-19 as part of a purported global plot to control the masses via microchips.

The monk urged followers to disobey the government’s lockdown measures and holed up at a monastery near Yekaterinburg that he founded and had dozens of burly volunteers, including veterans of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, help enforce his rules while the prioress and several nuns left.

The monk chastised President Vladimir Putin as a “traitor to the Motherland” who was serving a Satanic “world government” and denounced the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, and other top clerics as “heretics” who must be “thrown out.”

The Russian Orthodox Church stripped Father Sergiy of his abbot’s rank for breaking monastic rules and later excommunicated him, but he rejected the rulings and ignored police investigators’ summons. Facing stiff resistance by hundreds of his supporters, church officials and local authorities appeared reluctant to evict him for months.

Father Sergiy, who was born as Nikolai Romanov, served as a police officer during Soviet times. After leaving the ranks of law enforcement, he was convicted of murder, robbery and assault and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He joined a church school after his release and later became a monk.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-europe-suicides-moscow-1fb9bd30f4b1209e07bd61471f16d822

How the pandemic in France has led to an explosion in number of sects

Sam Bradpiece
The Local
December 1, 2021

[Google Translation]

The French government has increased its budget to monitor cults by tenfold after at least 500 religious sects considered potentially dangerous sprung up during the pandemic.

For almost 30 years the French government has had a watchdog dedicated to monitoring religious cults, but now its budget has been increased tenfold to €1 million a year over years about pandemic-related sects.

Speaking on FranceInfo in April, citizenship minister Marlène Schiappa said that the pandemic had led to the emergence of some 500 sectes (religious cults) that could pose a danger to society.

In French, culte refers to a religion. A secte or dérive secte (literally a 'sectarian aberration') is a more official way to refer to a cult in the English sense of the word.

"You have new gurus who are using the pandemic to preach practices of 'well-being'", she said, but are really practising "psychological subjugation and efforts to take money and goods."

"Women are disproportionately targeted by cults because there is sexual predation too and because they are more likely to be in precarious situations."

She also revealed that yoga and meditation groups are fastest-growing methods by which people are being lured into cult activity.

The vast majority of the €1 million in funding will go to the Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les dérives sectaires (Miviludes) – France's national cults watchdog.

Massacre

Mivuludes came into being after a series of reports in France following high-profile cult deaths including the Jonestown Massacre in 1978, in which cult leader Jim Jones instructed 918 of his followers to drink cyanide-laced juice.

The deaths, which took place in Guyana, close to the French overseas territory of French Guiana, sent shockwaves around the world.

In the 1980s, MPs in France worked earnestly on various reports identifying a dozen of so religious groups that presented a danger to society. There were few concrete actions taken as legislators were unsure how to balance freedom of religion while preventing potential abuses – a conflict which continues today.

When the Order of The Solar Temple, another cult, organised another wave of mass suicides in the mid-1990s, in France, Switzerland and Canada, the French government were forced into taking more concrete action .

In 1996, the Inter-Ministerial Sect Observatory was set up to investigate sects, report abuse to prosecutors, inform the public about the dangers.

This organisation was eventually re-named MILS in 1998 and again as Miviludes in 2002. In Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe called on the organisation to take on a role targeting religious extremism in 2017. Earlier this year, Miviludes was tasked with cracking down on practitioners of gay conversion therapy.

Yoga and meditation

The main missions of Miviludes today is to investigate cults, coordinate law enforcement action against them, train and inform law enforcement on sects, educate the public about the dangers and put victims in touch with support services.

Miviludes received more than 3,000 referrals in 2020 – a 40 percent increase over five years. Alerts of cult activity linked Covid-19 were among the most common.

In an interview with Le Monde, Schiappa revealed that around 140,000 adults are currently involved in cults in France.

Minors are by far the most targeted population group when it comes to cults.

It operates under the direct supervision of the Interior Ministry and is seeing a resurgence after years of budget cuts.

The most recent nationwide report from Miviludes, published in July, revealed a number of findings.

The organisation recognised Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, Neo-Shamans, some evangelist protestant groups, some Christian groups, a selection of Christian and Islamic groups, mediums, personal development specialists, multi-level marketers, and even alternative medicine practitioners as belonging to sects.

The report found that yoga and meditation were the fastest growing ways through which the public were being lured into 'sectarian aberrations'.

One testimony quoted in the report comes from a man worried about his partner.

"She decided some months ago, to take a professional yoga course. She seems anaesthetised, robotised sometimes. She has memory loss and is searching for words. She seems like she is not really here – that she is disconnected from everything besides her quest to become a yoga teacher," it reads.

A recent statement issued by the Gendarmerie Nationale and Miviludes states: "The increasing number of yoga, meditation and shamanic initiation retreats generates an enormous risk of sectoral aberrations."

Pandemic

During the pandemic, various yoga practitioners in France supported anti-vaccine positions and issued bogus claims that time spent practising yoga outside reduced the risk of catching Covid. Miviludes observed a significant crossover between yoga practitioners and conspiracy theorists.

A number of sex abuse claims were made against yoga teachers – particularly those of the Sivananda movement – in France last year.

Miviludes and La Famille

A recent media frenzy over La Famille, an insular religious community in the east of Paris, has brought cults back into the spotlight.

La Famille is a religious group of some 3,000 people based in the east of Paris.

The community is composed of descendants of the jansénisme convulsionnaire movement – a mystical sect that was banned in France in the 18th Century but continued practising underground.

Members of La Famille have an insular existence and are wary of 'outsiders'. Various reports conducted over the last two years have portrayed it as a cult.

The gene pool is limited as members must marry within La Famille – most often between cousins. Couples are monogamous and typically have a dozen or more children – who go to school but only up to the obligatory age of 16. Le Parisien were among to publications to have alleged sexual abuse within La Famille.

Miviludes has opened a file on La Famille, noting that while it does not have a guru-like leader nor a proselytising mission, it does have a closed off culture that could lead to the cover-up of sexual abuse.



https://www.thelocal.fr/20211201/france-gives-e1m-to-anti-cults-watchdog-after-huge-increase-in-sects-during-pandemic/

Kyrgyzstan is expected to ban Jehovah's Witnesses publications for 'extremism'

The ban would mark the first time that the country has taken an official stance against the religious group.

Kathryn Post
Religion News Service
November 30, 2021

(RNS) — Kyrgyzstan is expected to ban 13 Jehovah’s Witnesses publications on Thursday (Dec. 2) for extremism, marking the first time the country has taken an official stance against the religious group since the former Soviet republic granted the church national registration in 1998.

Jarrod Lopes, spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses, said the move echoes the tactics employed against the group in Russia, Kyrgyzstan’s historic ally. According to Lopes, the Russian government, which has put several dozen Jehovah’s Witnesses on trial for proselytizing, often takes a first step of declaring any religious group’s literature as extremist before declaring group members extremist themselves.

“Kyrgyzstan is simply following Russia’s model of repression — ban the Witnesses’ literature with the ultimate goal of banning their organization,” said Lopes, who noted that Russia has more than 60 cases pending at the European Court of Human Rights concerning Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“We hope that the court will hold Russia accountable for violating international human rights law, putting other lands on notice that they will also face consequences if they continue to persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses for peacefully practicing their faith,” Lopes said.

A criminal case initiated in 2019 accuses the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kyrgyzstan of inciting “racial, ethnic, national, religious or interregional hatred” and resulted in a March 2021 raid of the Witnesses’ national center in Bishkek, the country’s capital. The raid led authorities to file a civil claim asking for the publications to be banned. The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t have any additional info on the status of the criminal case, but it has not gone to trial yet.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have appealed to Kyrgyzstan’s president in two letters advocating for the right to peacefully practice their beliefs.

“The international community has repeatedly condemned Russia in the strongest terms for such violations of religious freedom and fundamental human rights. Therefore, we respectfully ask that your esteemed government urgently direct that the criminal case be terminated and the court application be removed,” Jehovah’s Witnesses wrote in a Nov. 24 letter.

In July, Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security characterized Jehovah’s Witnesses as “totalitarian in nature” and asked the the prosecutor general to ban the group’s materials and consider a possible ban on the group’s activity.

“Its practices and precepts contravene the basic provisions of the Constitution of the Kyrgyz Republic and legal norms by forcing its members to renounce personal opinions and beliefs, to limit their freedom, to make regular payments as well as to forfeit material assets for their community,” the letter said.

Today, there are more than 5,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kyrgyzstan, where the group has been present since the 1950s. The group’s publications have been available in the Kyrgyz language since 1994, and the faith’s national administrative office was built in 2004. Lopes said that if the publications are banned Thursday, raids and imprisonments will likely follow.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are currently banned in Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

https://religionnews.com/2021/11/30/kyrgyzstan-is-expected-to-ban-jehovahs-witnesses-publications-as-extremist/

Appellate court upholds acquittal of Shincheonji leader

Yonhap News Agency
November 30, 2021

SUWON, South Korea, Nov. 30 (Yonhap) -- An appellate court on Tuesday upheld a lower court's ruling and acquitted a religious sect leader of charges that he obstructed the government's response to COVID-19 outbreaks last year.

Lee Man-hee, the 90-year-old founder of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, was indicted last year for allegedly underreporting the number of Shincheonji followers and church locations to the government when the virus was fast spreading among the followers.

However, both the district and the appellate courts found that submission of such information pertains to the data acquisition process, not the government's epidemiological investigation process, concluding Lee's act is not punishable under the infectious disease prevention act.

"It is also difficult to conclude the accused deliberately omitted requested data," the Suwon High Court said, noting that the church later submitted all requested data to the government.

The court, however, found Lee partly guilty of charges of embezzling 5.6 billion won (US$4.7 million) from church funds to build a new church facility and holding unauthorized religious events at local government facilities from 2015 to 2019.

The high court gave Lee a three-year prison term, suspended for five years, for the offences, a sentence slightly heavier than the three-year term, suspended for four years, handed by the lower court.

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20211130007900315?section=coronavirus/news

Scientology's David Miscavige discusses 'partnership' with Clearwater

A rare meeting between the church leader and city officials yields talk of collaboration. “We are going to put the past behind us.”


Tracey McManus
Tampa Bay Times
December 1, 2021

After a contentious 46-year history in Clearwater, three top city officials and Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige met this week to discuss how to start fresh.

The meeting on Monday at a church office on North Fort Harrison Avenue served as an introduction between Miscavige and Clearwater’s two newest administrators: City Manager Jon Jennings, who took over on Nov. 8, and City Attorney David Margolis, who started on Oct. 25. Mayor Frank Hibbard also took part in the meeting.

“I heard loud and clear from (Miscavige) that he wants to partner with the city,” Jennings said. “From my perspective, a partnership is really that we are going to put the past behind us in terms of any acrimony and so forth and that we are going to develop a place of trust where we can work collaboratively together.”

That partnership would relate primarily to redeveloping downtown, where Scientology has had its international spiritual headquarters since 1975 and where companies connected to the church have purchased large tracts of real estate in recent years. During a sit-down that lasted 3½ hours, Miscavige reintroduced photo renderings and a video simulation of the downtown retail plan Scientology developed in 2017, according to Hibbard.

The plan, created without city input, included Scientology paying to renovate facades of buildings on four blocks of Cleveland Street and using consultants to recruit high-end retailers to empty storefronts. It also included building an entertainment complex along vacant land on Myrtle Avenue with a movie theater, bowling alley and dining.

Miscavige confirmed at the time the church used limited liability companies to purchase the Myrtle Avenue land, a vacant jewelry store and auto garage, a nine-story office tower and a historic theater on North Fort Harrison Avenue for the retail plan.

In March 2017, Miscavige showed the plan in one-on-one meetings to City Council members and then-City Manager Bill Horne. In mid-April 2017, he invited about 70 hand-selected downtown stakeholders and business owners to Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel for a presentation of the plan. Miscavige declined to publish the plan for the general public.

In return for redeveloping downtown, Miscavige asked the city to abandon its plan to purchase a vacant 1.4-acre lot on Pierce Street that sits between the former City Hall and Scientology’s Oak Cove religious retreat.

In a statement to the Tampa Bay Times on April 17, 2017, Scientology spokesman Ben Shaw confirmed Miscavige’s retail plan was contingent on Scientology acquiring the lot to build a pool and other amenities for parishioners.

“Mr. Miscavige also informed the downtown property owners, business owners and stakeholders that if the plans went through, depending on the City’s non-interference with the Church purchase of the Oak Cove lot, the Church will have spent $55 million by the end of the year, 2017, on downtown redevelopment,” Shaw wrote.

But the City Council voted unanimously on April 20, 2017, to buy the lot to include in its now-$84 million downtown waterfront redevelopment project, Imagine Clearwater, which broke ground in August.

After the vote, Miscavige cut communication with city officials for 2½ years. During that period, limited liability companies managed by Scientology parishioners purchased 100 properties in downtown. About half of them are still vacant. Miscavige began meeting with city officials again in November 2019.

Since July 2019, limited liability companies managed by parishioners bought 45 properties in the North Marina Area near downtown, another redevelopment priority area for the city.

Shaw has previously said the church did not orchestrate the downtown or North Marina acquisitions.

Jennings and Hibbard said that during their meeting on Monday, they did not ask Miscavige whether he controls the properties owned by limited liability companies.

But it was clear the properties could factor into a future redevelopment partnership.

“You can bring people along in a master plan,” Jennings said. “That would be on him and the church to aggregate properties if indeed that’s the direction we want to go. ... It wasn’t about getting into the detail of who owns what.”

Jennings said they also did not confirm what Miscavige was asking for this time in return for the redevelopment.

“That would be part of the negotiations,” Jennings said. “He has interests as the city has interests, so those are all things that we would have to work collaboratively on.”

Scientology spokesman Ben Shaw did not respond to a request for comment about Monday’s meeting. But Hibbard said Miscavige provided the city officials with copies of a 2014 Urban Land Institute report, in which consultants wrote that Scientology and the city “must become partners in the future of the city. If they cannot, no one else will.”

Although they did not get into specifics, Hibbard said a potential land swap could be part of a deal. Hibbard said Miscavige made clear he was still interested in acquiring the Pierce Street lot, now owned by the city.

The mayor said he sees certain church-owned properties as prime candidates for a trade to complement the city’s ongoing $84 million buildout of the waterfront park. Those include: Scientology’s Sandcastle religious retreat on North Osceola Avenue, its Coachman Building on Cleveland Street and what used to be known as the “superblock” on North Fort Harrison Avenue across from the Main Library that includes a parking lot and church offices.

In his 35 years as Scientology’s leader, Miscavige has been known to have occasional interactions with city officials. He sat down a handful of times with two of Jennings’ predecessors, Mike Roberto and Bill Horne. But such meetings remain rare.

“It was positive, it was cordial, it was educational,” Hibbard said of Monday’s gathering.

Jennings said his next step is to debrief the other four council members on the meeting and get their feedback on how to move forward in the partnership with the church. He said his priority is to act in a way that is in “the best interest of the city.”

“Taking the Church of Scientology out of this, if any developer came to the city and they own X number of properties and they want to work with the city on a new design, we’d have that meeting every day of the week,” Jennings said. “That’s the way in which I’m approaching this.”

Tracey McManus - Clearwater and Scientology Reporter

https://www.tampabay.com/news/clearwater/2021/12/01/scientologys-david-miscavige-discusses-partnership-with-clearwater/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/1/2021 (Channeling, Children of God, Shincheonji Church of Jesus, South Korean, Obituary, Clergy Sexual Abuse)

Channeling, Children of God, Shincheonji Church of Jesus, South Korean, Obituary, Clergy Sexual Abuse

NY Times:  In Good Spirits

"Last Saturday night, a group gathered at the Flamingo Estate in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles to meet the spiritual adviser Carissa Schumacher."

At the front of an open-air room, a seat awaited Ms. Schumacher under a large floral arch. After guests, including the actresses Jennifer Aniston and Uma Thurman, filled the rows of chairs, others moved to the floor. Andie MacDowell reclined on a rug among a heap of pillows. Ms. Schumacher was supposed to appear at 8:30 p.m. A gospel choir sang while everyone sat around and glanced at Ms. Schumacher's empty chair and at each other.

Since 2010, Ms. Schumacher has worked as a medium, meaning someone who receives messages from people who have died. She doesn't have a website and is often booked months in advance. Her prices are another obstacle, with sessions priced at $1,111 per hour. (She likes the synchronicity of the number.)

Ms. Schumacher might fall under a category of so-called New Age practitioners. But spiritualism — the belief that the living can communicate with the dead — is very old, its popularity surging in times of high mortality rates: in the Victorian era, for example, and after major wars in the United States and Europe.

In late 2019, just as the world was on the precipice of a plague of biblical proportions, Ms. Schumacher said she began channeling Yeshua, a.k.a. Jesus Christ. Transcribed recordings of some of those sessions appear in a new book, "The Freedom Transmissions," out Nov. 30.

The party was for the book, but it was also a chance for her clients, many of whom hadn't experienced the Yeshua channeling, to see what it was all about. Maybe she would channel him at the party. No one was quite sure.

USA Today: "Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult," by Faith Jones (William Morrow, nonfiction)

" ... Raised in the Children of God cult to be part of a religious army preparing for the apocalypse, Jones recounts her time in the oppressive group and her story of liberation."

ABC Australia: Coronavirus is surging in South Korea thanks to an eye-poking sect. That's bad news for Kim Jong Un

" ... The latest surge in South Korean cases has once again been triggered by a controversial sect.

This time, a cluster of infections spread from a little-known religious settlement led by a pastor who pokes his followers in the eyes to heal them."

Boston 25 News: Friends remember legacy of Catholic Sex Abuse Whistleblower & 'Spotlight' source

"Survivors of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church are remembering the legacy of an activist and whistleblower who played a pivotal role in exposing decades of assaults and cover-ups.

Phil Saviano died at the age of 69 after a battle with gallbladder cancer.

The resident of Roslindale passed away at his brother's home in the small Massachusetts community of Douglas – where he endured abuse as a young boy in the 1960s.

Saviano didn't talk about the molestation at St. Denis Church until he was 40-years-old.

Once he went public, he refused to accept a settlement that would have prevented him from speaking about it.

His courage helped set off troubling accusations across Massachusetts, the United States, and around the world.

"All of us were alone at home, not knowing that we weren't the only ones. Phil was one of those first voices who told us we weren't alone, and that's priceless," said Ann Hagan Webb, Rhode Island SNAP representative.

Saviano founded the New England Chapter of SNAP – the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests – in 1997."

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