Voodoo priests, doctors on frontline of Haiti's mental healthcare

Voodoo priests, doctors on frontline of Haiti's mental healthcare

By Anastasia Moloney

Fri Jan 9, 2015

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Five years after a massive earthquake rocked Haiti, killing more than 200,000 people and reducing homes to rubble, few survivors would say they were traumatised or suffering depression as a result of the disaster.

Haitians do not tend to use the word 'depression' to describe symptoms of mental illness. Instead they may complain of a lack of energy or appetite, insomnia, nightmares, a constricted heart or thinking too much, health workers say.

Mental illness is still a taboo in the Caribbean nation, which had no functioning mental health system in place before earthquake. In Haiti, it is common for people with mental illnesses to be locked up in hospital psychiatric wards or, believing they are possessed, to seek help from voodoo priests.

Yet plagued by guilt, fear, trauma and grief, mental illness remains a reality for many Haitians still struggling to cope with the loss of their relatives, homes and even, limbs, in the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010 quake.

"The impact of the earthquake on mental health was huge and unimaginably deep in people's lives. Some lost all benchmarks and references because of their great loss," said Reginald Fils-Aime, a doctor with Zanmi Lasante, a Haitian medical NGO and sister organization of Boston-based Partners in Health.

"We still have people coming to clinics with mental health problems related to the earthquake. They talk about the earthquake, about being under the rubble," Fils-Aime told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview from Boston.

Symptoms of mental illness have been built into a screening tool used by Zanmi Lasante to train health workers, including nurses, doctors, social workers and psychologists, to identify depression among rural communities in central Haiti.

TEN PSYCHIATRISTS FOR TEN MILLION PEOPLE

The earthquake highlighted the urgent need to address mental health but this has been a demanding task in a country with only around 10 psychiatrists for a population of 10 million.

"It was only after the earthquake that the health minister said mental health should be a priority and that the issue was talked about," said Fils-Aime.

In Haiti, a key way to improve mental healthcare is to work with religious leaders from Catholic, Protestant and voodoo faiths, says the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto.

Haiti's voodoo religion heavily influences how mental illness is perceived and treated. For centuries Haitians have turned to voodoo priests for help.

Both male "houngan" priests and female "manbo" priestesses perform ceremonies and sacrificial rituals to treat people.

"Voodoo heals the mind, soul and body. The soul is what we are, which controls everything, all our actions and mind," Max Beauvoir, the "Ati" or supreme leader of Haitian voodoo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Around 70 percent of Haitians are believed to practice voodoo, a religion with roots in Africa. There are more than 60,000 voodoo priests across Haiti, often living in rural communities, Beauvoir said.

At his voodoo temple inside his coral stone-walled home, a 40-minute drive from the capital Port-au-Prince, Beauvoir has treated people with mental health disorders, as well as cancer and other physical illnesses for the past four decades.

Inside the small temple - surrounded by lush bamboo and palm tree courtyards - is an altar with the benevolent spirits' favorite drinks in bottles and where cows, goats and chickens are sacrificed to God and the different spirits.

"Voodoo is the soul of the Haitian people and nothing can be done without that cultural basis. It is a way of life. Voodoo has always been on the frontline. It can provide treatment to people who are both physically and mentally ill," Beauvoir said.

INCREASING BURDEN

Many Haitians attribute mental illness to supernatural forces such as curses or possession by spirits from a past life, and some believe mental disorders can be transmitted to other people.

"Our aim is to have a collaboration, share experiences and see how do you assess, incorporate and improve the chances of people with mental illness like depression and psychosis, getting better, by working with spiritual leaders," said Akwatu Khenti, head of CAMH's Office of Transformative Global Health.

The organization is working with 40 religious leaders in Haiti to deliver cognitive behavioural therapy, a type of psychotherapy to treat mental illness.

Yet hundreds of thousands of Haitians are still getting no treatment for mental illnesses ranging from depression and bipolar disorder to schizophrenia.

"The social and economic impact of the earthquake is still very present and is contributing to mental health problems," Fils-Aime said.

"The mother who lost her husband, or children who lost their parents, and who now are responsible for the whole family, taking children to school and providing food. This transition is still causing stress and depression," he added.

The World Health Organisation says that treating mental illness is crucial, both in Haiti and worldwide.

It predicts that by 2030, depression will become the number one cause of disability, and that the burden will be greatest in poor countries where at least 75 percent of people with mental disorders receive no treatment.

While people with mental health problems still face social stigma in Haiti, there are tentative signs of progress.

"Attitudes to mental health are slowly changing," said Fils-Aime. "There's less stigma among healthcare workers and a greater commitment to provide mental health treatment when doctors and nurses can see people do get better."

(Reporting By Anastasia Moloney, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith and Katie Nguyen)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/09/us-haiti-earthquake-anniversary-mentalhe-idUSKBN0KI1NC20150109

PROFESSING FAITH: Three cults in North Korea

Redlands Daily Facts

By Gregory Elder

01/14/15

 

In our discussion in last week’s column, we considered the religious situation that exists in North Korea, one of the last and most militantly atheistic communist states.

The persecution of the Christians, Buddhists, Shamanists and other faiths is a well-known tragedy. But it would be wrong to say that the totalitarian state has no religion at all aside from the few token sites used as showpieces to visitors. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case. In fact three cults stand out in the bitter Korean regime.

The oldest and least important of the official cults of North Korea is Chondism, which claims about 13 percent of the population and has even been called by the communist government the “national religion” of Korea.

Chondism is a sect of Confucianism, established in the 19th century by the Confucian scholar Choe Jeu. The name Chondism, or Cheondogyo, means the heavenly way and it began as a kind of nationalist religious reaction against foreign missionaries as an effort to call people back to their Korean roots, as opposed to missionary Christianity.

The anti-Western foundation gives an initial clue as to its favor with the current northern regime.

Chondism teaches that all things came to be not by a special act of creation by an external God, but because of generation by an inner god. At the highest level, there is a heaven, which is called Haneullim, or Master Heaven, which exists as the instructor of men and women.

There is no afterlife but humans may improve themselves by personal effort, and as people improve their inner nature, they draw closer to the heavenly ideal.

If there is to be a heaven in the Western sense, it is a world which people must create on earth by moral effort, improving society and a general respect for traditional Confucian values, which have always emphasized submission to male governmental authorities.

In South Korea, there are more than a million Chondists in several hundred congregations. Twice that many exist in the north, and the leaders of the cult are quick to blast foreign imperialism, which they insist is what is currently dividing the Korean nation.

Vastly more popular and less spiritual in nature is the political cult of Juche, or Chuch’e, which is an ideology actively promoted by the North Korean government. Juche is a political philosophy, and like much in North Korean leadership, it has take on mythic proportions.

Juche has its roots in the speeches and writings of Kim Il-sung, the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who began his career as a communist guerrilla and ally of the Soviet Union. With Russian Soviet support, he emerged as ruler of the North and it was he who made war on the regime in Seoul in 1950. Financial and military support kept the North Korean regime going for decades.

The collapse of communism in Europe in the period 1989-91 ended financial support for the Korean communist regime. However economic stagnation began earlier than that. Kim’s response was to teach and inculcate his government with Juche ideology, which emphasized three precepts of political independence, economic self-sustenance and self-reliance in defence.

The mission of the Workers’ Party was to instill these ideals in the masses. In the realm of actual politics, this ideology was used to justify the fact that North Korea had to go it alone without external Soviet support, and presumably this legitimized the economic hardships that the North was undergoing and still suffers from — starvation, lack of electricity and basic necessities and massive spending on a huge military.

The not altogether unbiased official website of North Korea defines Juche as follows: “The Juche idea is based on the philosophical principle that man is the master of everything and decides everything. It is the man-centred world outlook and also a political philosophy to materialize the independence of the popular masses, namely, a philosophy which elucidates the theoretical basis of politics that leads the development of society along the right path.

“The Government of the DPRK steadfastly maintains Juche in all realms of the revolution and construction. Establishing Juche means adopting the attitude of a master towards the revolution and construction of one’s country. It means maintaining an independent and creative standpoint in finding solutions to the problems which arise in the revolution and construction. It implies solving those problems mainly by one’s own efforts and in conformity with the actual conditions of one’s own POLITICS country.”

Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994 led to his replacement by his son, Kim Jong Il, although the younger Kim had been appointed to several high posts including supreme military command while his father was still alive. Kim Jong Il accelerated the cult of Juche, by adding to it the exultation of the head of state, known in Juche as the Great Leader ideology.

Classical communism, the reader will recall, called for the political emphasis to be on the collective and not the individual, and the eventual withering away of the state. Kim Jong Il modified this by asserting that the Great Leader was to be the mastermind, or as he put it, the ”top brain” of the working class. One incorruptible leader, who never commits mistakes, would be the only legitimate “leading force of the working classes.”

It is in the final arena that we might discern the third religious aspect of North Korean ideology, which is the virtual deification of the Great Leader, which since 2011 has devolved onto the current ruler, Kim Jong-un, who has been called Korea’s “shining sun.” He is the son and grandson of the two previous rulers of the state.

The best analogy of this view of the cult of the leader is to compare it to the cult of emperor worship in the later Roman Empire. It is difficult to overstate the role that the Great Leader now holds. Many North Koreans believe that the Great Leader can control the weather by his mood. Others believe that he never needs to urinate.

Children in school are taught that they are clothed, fed and housed by his grace. His birthplace, and graves of the older deceased Kims, are places of pilgrimage, and they command greater devotion than many medieval saints. The sacred images of the three great leaders adorn every schoolroom, government office, street and private homes and they are worn as badges on everyone’s clothing.

A considerable debate exists among scholars of North Korean government as to how many people actually believe this or if it is just window dressing that people must spout to stay alive. This cannot be completely answered, but one story is worth pointing out.

Bradley Martin, a leading expert on North Korea, tells the following story in his book “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader” (Page 287).

On one occasion, one of the ministers of state of Kim Il-sung had rather too much to drink, and while intoxicated informed his wife of some of the various sexual debaucheries of the Great Leader’s son and eventual heir, Kim Jong Il. The prim lady was shocked at such revelations and wrote a stunned letter to the Great Leader asking him to reprove his wayward son for the good of the whole Korean people.

The younger Kim got the letter. Soon after, Kim Jong Il celebrated another drinking party and invited the chatty minister and his moral wife. Ordering the couple before him, the younger accused her of disloyalty and pronounced her guilty of counter-revolutionary treason. He pulled out a side arm to shoot her then and there.

But her now sober husband fell on his knees and begged the leader for her. He pleaded, not for her life, of course, but to beg the honor of shooting her himself. This was granted and he personally shot his wife on the spot.

If this sounds difficult to believe, it should be remembered that the unfortunate couple probably had children or relatives who would have suffered hideously, had not their family loyalty to the Great Leader been redeemed.

The cult of the Great Leader would be well recognized by the ancient Christians, flung into the arena by Caesar.

Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at askfathergregory@verizon.net or follow him on Twitter at Fatherelder.

http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/social-affairs/20150114/professing-faith-three-cults-in-north-korea

 

A Shocking Life Story

Mike Sager
DUJOUR

Heads turn as Hoyt Richards saunters through the low light and fashionable din inside the Petty Cash Taqueria, in Los Angeles’ Fairfax District. Six-foot-one with a chiseled jaw and a dimple, a forelock of gray-blonde hair cascading rakishly over one brow, he makes an immediate impression: That guy must be someone.

And he was. During the 1980s and ’90s, Richards was one of fashion’s most in-demand models. He traveled the world, appearing in campaigns for Versace, Valentino, Ralph Lauren and Cartier and was a favorite subject for photographers like Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton. In 1992, the Italian men’s magazine Mondo Uomo gave him a 58-page spread, while Vogue named him one of the top 25 male models of all time. He worked and socialized with the era’s A-list models, including Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell, and has a ribald story about being sandwiched between the latter two—they were nearly naked; Richards was sporting a bustier—at a birthday party for photographer Steven Meisel. He was, no doubt, the first male supermodel. 

As successful as Richards was professionally, however, he harbored a harrowing secret. For years, he was enmeshed within a shadowy religious sect called Eternal Values, which kept him psychologically enslaved with convoluted forms of love and abuse, reassurance and disapproval. 

Eventually he would save himself, but he would never be the same.  

At the end of the summer between his junior and senior years at Princeton, Hoyt Richards was discovered by a modeling agent and cast in an ad campaign for Jeffrey Banks. He was John Richards Hoyt back then—the professional name change would happen later. “The pictures came out that fall and all of a sudden I was one of the ‘new faces,’ ” he says now. “The agency was calling. They were like, ‘We’ve got a job for you in Tokyo on Tuesday.’ And I was like, ‘Listen, sorry, I’ve got a test.’ ” 

It was an intoxicating experience for an All-American kid who just months before counted Friday night football games as among the more exciting events in his life. 

Richards was the fourth of six children, born in 1962 in Syracuse, New York. His father was a Lehigh University–trained engineer and his mom, Terry, a Mount Holyoke alumna. Both families claimed roots in the American Revolution. When Richards was two, the family moved to a wealthy enclave on Philadelphia’s Main Line. Later on, at Princeton, he majored in economics and played varsity football. 

Richards’ mother, however, had a difficult upbringing that Richards says likely influenced how she related to her own children. When her mother, an alcoholic, died at an early age, Terry Richards had assumed full care for her younger siblings. “When you come from that background,” Richards says, “you try to control everything because you don’t want to ever get hurt again. You develop this kind of bubble that you live in where it’s never your fault, and if anything goes wrong, you’re the victim.” As a child and teen, he tried very hard to please her. “[My mother] was very clear about what she expected me to be,” he says. “In order to get the love I wanted from her, I felt I had to try to become the thing she wanted me to be, even though that didn’t feel necessarily like who I really was.”

A gifted athlete from an early age, Richards gravitated to sports. “I was always drawn toward things that would have a crowd; with sports, you had that stadium,” he says. “All those eyes on me felt like maybe it would heal something. It’s the same reason I think I ended up modeling.”

Like many affluent families, the Hoyts summered in Nantucket, in an area called Shimmo and in a house his mom named Shimmo the Merrier. One day during the summer before his junior year of high school, Richards was at Nobadeer Beach—a kids’ hangout referred to by locals as “No Brassiere Beach”—when he encountered an older but still youthful-looking man drawing a yin and yang diagram in the sand. 

Frederick von Mierers was full of ideas. Tall, gaunt and handsome, he spoke about Eastern philosophy, Hinduism and reincarnation. The attention he paid to the young Richards was invigorating. At the time, Richards was being forced by his parents to transfer out of his public school to attend the prestigious Haverford School, and he was not, he says now, in a particularly good place. “I was 16, he was in his thirties,” Richards says. “When you’re that age, having an adult who will talk to you like an adult gets your attention.”

Von Mierers invited a bunch of the underage kids from the beach back to his place for beer. “I remember arriving there and knowing very quickly that this was clearly the cheapest beer you could buy,” Richards says. “I was not very impressed.” But the next summer von Mierers was back, and again the summer after that, and Richards continued to be drawn to him for reasons he can’t really explain. Freddy, as he came to be called, did Richards’ astrological chart and Richards, in turn, began reading Hindu texts and other books von Mierers suggested. He went from unimpressed to infatuated. “One year I was going to England. He told me the experience would really change my life—which it absolutely did, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out,” Richards says today. “I remember thinking, when stuff was happening to me, Freddy really is clairvoyant!”

While he was at Princeton, and in the early days of his modeling career, Richards began visiting Freddy in Manhattan on the weekends. He and other young acolytes would go with Freddy to Studio 54, where it was impossible to get in without connections. Once inside, the group would see clubbers having sex on the dance floor and doing cocaine in the bathrooms, but Richards and his coterie had nobler pursuits. Freddy was against drinking and drugs. He thought the body was God’s temple. In the wee hours, the group would return to Freddy’s ornately decorated apartment to discuss Eastern philosophy. 

“In my mind I was thinking that I was working him,” Richards says. “I was bringing up a couple friends with me from school, and we knew he could get us into Studio 54 and we could crash at his apartment. I was looking at it like I was taking advantage of this guy!” 

By his senior year in college, Richards had signed with Ford Models and proudly paid for his last two semesters of college tuition himself. He graduated in the spring of 1985 and moved into an apartment in the same Manhattan building as Freddy’s. But there was much more to it than being neighbors. Richards was becoming part of Eternal Values, a cult led by von Mierers that counted a number of the building’s residents among its ranks. Starting then and for years after, Richards donated almost all of his earnings to the group, helping to cover the rent on the apartments Freddy kept in the building, as well as others he began to acquire as the group grew in number. When he wasn’t jetting off to a modeling or commercial job, Richards spent his days and nights doing menial tasks around the building or studying alongside Freddy and, despite his financial importance to the group, sleeping on a mat on the floor.  

Eternal Values was founded in the early 1980s by von Mierers, himself a former model, interior decorator and socialite. An astrologer and self-styled prophet, he claimed to be an alien reincarnated from the distant star Arcturus. He said he had come to Earth to warn people of an impending apocalypse to be triggered by a change in the planet’s magnetic poles, and to train his students to become leaders in the aftermath. 

Based out of von Mierers’ apartment building on the east side of Manhattan—the group also kept a loft in the Bronx and, later, a large house in North Carolina—Eternal Values attracted young, intelligent and often wealthy followers. Most were seeking a greater understanding of the universe; some were rewarded with a life of mind control and fanaticism. At its peak, there were perhaps 100 active members. They spoke in New Age jargon, with much talk about “highly evolved personalities,” “ego renunciation,” “the white light and the violet light” and the coming apocalypse, which made personal wealth and relationships unnecessary. Astrological charts and life readings, performed by von Mierers or one of his acolytes, played a central role. Included was often a “gem prescription,” adopted from Hindu belief in the healing properties of certain precious stones. “The gems are God’s thoughts condensed,” he told Vanity Fair in a 1990 interview.

Von Mierers told followers he had connections for great deals on stones, which he often sold to them for more than $100,000; payments were only accepted in cash or traveler’s checks. “The gems were supposed to be the most pure forms of matter on our planet,” says Richards, who bought a fortune’s worth over the years. “They were supposed to strengthen your inherent weakness and enhance your strengths.” 

Within the group, the number of gems one possessed was treated as a sign of devoutness. “I spent over $150,000,” Richards says. “The gems all came with bogus appraisals. When I sold them later, I found out they were worth less than $8,000.” 

When Freddy’s story was included in a popular 1985 book, Aliens Among Us—“Dazzling true testimony that extraterrestrials are on earth,” the book promised—Eternal Values became a national phenomenon. Thousands of hopefuls contacted Freddy for astrological readings at $350 per session. Hundreds were drawn into his gemstone scams. Richards, then in his modeling heyday, was trotted out for interviews and appearances.

But while von Mierers was getting rich, Richards found in Eternal Values something more grounding. “The economy was kicking ass, there was opulence everywhere: a lot of drugs, a lot of cocaine,” says Richards. “Being in [Eternal Values], you had this sense that there was an alternative to all that. The message was, don’t be attached to this wealth and decadence because there’s really a higher meaning to it all. Freddy was basically saying, ‘Get your head out of your ass because the world is coming to an end—you better get your shit together because you’ve spent lifetimes preparing for this opportunity.’ ”

Gilberto Picinich joined the group in 1981 after hearing Freddy speak on the radio. A lifelong seeker, Picinich remembers the sense of purpose Eternal Values gave him. “We all had the feeling that we were on this critical mission that would help save ourselves, friends and family from the coming apocalypse,” he says. “The message self-validated over the years. You started to fear that if you left, you might miss something important, something that you’ve sacrificed for.”

Because Richards was the group’s golden goose, some felt he was given special privileges, “like flying around the world fucking beautiful models,” says Picinich. Yet while they lived off his money, the group felt that Richards’ work was inherently evil. “The fact that the world puts so much importance on someone who won a genetic lottery—to the point of putting a billboard in Times Square and paying that person hundreds of thousands of dollars—is the exact reason why the world needs to be destroyed,” Richards says in an attempt to explain the cult’s point of view. 

He tried to downplay his secret life with the people he met as a model while making choices those colleagues didn’t understand. “Everyone else was living it up. It was like, ‘Hey, let’s go to Madonna’s for the weekend!’ ” Richards has said. “But I was like, ‘No, no. I can’t. The end of the world is coming.’ ”

As it was with his mother, it was with the cult. Nothing he did was good enough, but Richards kept trying. “More than anything, I felt like I’d made a commitment and I couldn’t give up,” he says. “Freddy had told us that we were responsible for our own lives—which I could deal with—but we were also responsible for the millions of people we were supposed to help, and that was a heavy trip that I couldn’t screw up.” 

The hold Eternal Values had on him became so strong that he stayed on even after von Mierers’ death in 1990 from AIDS-related causes. According to Richards, the Manhattan district attorney’s office was investigating von Mierers’ gemstone scams at the time of his death, but discontinued after he died, when it was discovered that the self-proclaimed alien’s real name was Freddie Miers. He’d been raised Jewish in Brooklyn. 

After Freddy died, there was a power struggle within Eternal Values. Freddy’s successors were even more extreme. As the years passed and the group relocated to a big house on Lake Lure, North Carolina, Richards continued to earn money and fame but the group became increasingly hateful toward him. He was often interrogated for hours on end about what they called his “ego lapses.” 

“He was a good guy and a bit of a people pleaser,” Picinich recalls. “After Freddy’s death, the [new] leader was pretty cruel to him. You could see the toll it took.” Richards recalls some truly terrible behavior: “They said I was resistant and resentful of my chores, and that I was guilty of vanity and looking in the mirror—for that offense they shaved my head,” he says. “Mostly I would do menial jobs like scrubbing toilets and vacuuming. Any job they could think of that was a pain in the ass, they’d get me to do it.” 

The abuse was also emotional. “My nickname was Dipshit. When I wasn’t in trouble, they’d call me Dippy, but generally I was just called Dipshit,” Richards says. “And this was after I’d been financing this thing for 15 years. Sometimes I would have to go out to the end of the dock and do belly flops as a form of self-punishment.”  

Finally, on the night of July 3, 1999—after two previous unsuccessful attempts to leave the cult—Richards escaped, having tithed to Eternal Values the majority of his earnings, estimated at nearly $4.5 million dollars over almost two decades of work. He hadn’t spoken to his parents in 12 years. He turned to an old friend from his modeling days: Fabio Lanzoni, the long-haired and pectorally gifted spokesmodel best known for gracing the covers of hundreds of romance novels. 
“When the shit hit the fan, he knew I would help,” Lanzoni says. “The other models used to make fun of him because he believed in aliens, but I’d tell them, ‘Listen, you shouldn’t make fun of him because there was something that happened in his life that put him in this situation.’ ” Richards lived in Lanzoni’s house in Los Angeles—and drove one of his Porches—for nearly a year. 

On a recent afternoon, Richards sits on the sofa in his West Los Angeles apartment. He’s in bare feet and shorts; his forelock looks a bit limp. He recently wrote, produced and starred in a movie called Dumbbells, playing a guy who escapes from a cult and opens a gym. Another movie, Invisible Prisons, is in the works.

After he left Eternal Values, Richards says, he began doing a lot of reflection. As unbelievable as it sounds, never once during his two decades with the group did he ever consider he might be a member of a cult. In his mind, he was in a special group on an important mission; he believed he was one of the Chosen who would lead the earth into a new era of peace and prosperity. Like anyone suffering from Stockholm syndrome, he had no ability to objectify his experience. The reason he finally left the group, he says, was because he felt like a failure, unable to conform to their standards.

“And then one day I was doing some research, and it hit me,” Richards says, unabashed. “I was like, Oh, my God! I’m a textbook cult victim.” 
In recent years, Richards has sought counseling and worked to build a film career. A civil lawsuit recouped some of his funds and effectively killed the remnants of Eternal Values. These days Richards feels that he’s finally reached a place of peace within himself. “I’ve come to understand that all this didn’t happen because there was something wrong with me,” he says. “It wasn’t because my mother didn’t love me enough. I was able to forgive myself. It’s how I was able to relieve myself of all that shame.” His great hope is that his story will be useful to others, “to make it cool for others to talk about their abusive situations, their fuck-ups.” 

Likewise, he tries to make the best of his years with Eternal Values. “When you meet new people, you’re never quite sure when to mention it,” Richards says. “But I know one thing for sure: If I do bring it up, nobody ever finds my story boring.”

http://dujour.com/news/hoyt-richards-model-cult/

Daphne Bramham: Mormons win battle to distance themselves from B.C. polygamist

Daphne Bramham: Mormons win battle to distance themselves from B.C. polygamist

 

 

Blackmore agrees to end court fight but still faces criminal charges for practising polygamy

 

Vancouver Sun

BY DAPHNE BRAMHAM, VANCOUVER SUN COLUMNIST 

JANUARY 13, 2015

The Mormons have their names back. But it took lawyering up and going to court to wrest them away from polygamist Winston Blackmore.

In the end, Blackmore wasn’t up for the fight. He agreed to give up the names “Mormon” and any variation of the name “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Perhaps that’s because since August, Blackmore’s attention has been more focused on the criminal charge filed against him for practising polygamy.

(His next court date is Jan. 29 in Creston provincial court, where he is expected to appear along with three others from Bountiful. His brother-in-law James Oler is also charged with one count of polygamy, while his brother Brandon Blackmore and Brandon’s wife Gail Crossfield are charged with unlawful removal of a child from Canada.)

It may also be because of the large bill he’s had to pay for back taxes, fines and court costs after failing in his attempt to have Revenue Canada tax him and his followers not as individuals but as a religious commune.

Last September, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a Federal Tax Court decision that Blackmore and his group failed to meet any of the four conditions in the Tax Act that must be met to constitute a religious congregation.

No doubt to the delight of the mainstream church, judges in both the courts determined that Blackmore’s group is not affiliated in any way with the LDS.

The decision also noted that Blackmore’s group doesn’t require all property to be held communally or that all of its members devote their working lives to the activities of the congregation.

The fight over who has the legitimate right to be called Mormon or use the name The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been going on for 125 years.

It’s a fight focused on the most controversial “revelation” of the religion’s founder Joseph Smith — polygamy.

In 1890, the church’s then-president Wilford Woodruff had his own “revelation” and suspended the practice of polygamy — after the U.S. Congress passed a law that would have allowed it to seize all of the church’s assets. It cleared the way for Utah to become a state.

But over the years, there were those who disagreed with Woodruff and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among them were Blackmore’s father, Ray Blackmore, and his uncle, Harold Blackmore. Their disaffection from the mainstream church led to their founding in 1946 of the community known as Bountiful, where like-minded people have openly practised polygamy ever since.

Over the years, those practising polygamy have organized themselves under various names including the United Order, the Apostolic United Brethren and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Winston Blackmore was once a bishop of the FLDS, the largest group in North America. But after his excommunication, he began his own group, which has fewer than 500 followers (almost all of them relatives including many of his 135-plus children).

In May 2010, Blackmore registered the name “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Inc.” in British Columbia.

The Utah-based church, which claims a membership of 15 million in 170 countries, didn’t notice until last year when it went to register the name in Canada.

On Monday, by consent, the B.C. Supreme Court issued an order prohibiting Blackmore and his followers from using the name “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Inc.” or any similar names — known in court-speak as “any other colourable imitation thereof.”

The order also prohibits directing public attention in any way that would cause confusion between Blackmore’s group and the LDS or in any way suggesting that there is an association between the two groups.

Further, it prohibits Blackmore and his followers from “questioning, attacking, challenging, [and] contesting the validity of, and objecting to, opposing or otherwise impugning or interfering in any way, including by way of legal proceedings of any nature” with the Utah-based church’s use of its trademarked names.

Those include: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Latter-day Saints and Mormon.

Blackmore must also immediately change his group’s corporate name to the Church of Jesus Christ (Original Doctrine) Inc.

The mainstream LDS church has succeeded in getting its names back.

But it’s almost certain that one of the defences Blackmore will use when his criminal trial begins is that, as one of Joseph Smith’s true followers, practising polygamy is his religious right.

dbramham@vancouversun.com

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Daphne+Bramham+Mormons+battle+distance+themselves/10726657/story.html

 

From Teenage Angst to Jihad

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

 

From Teenage Angst to Jihad

 

The Anger of Europe’s Young Marginalized Muslims

The New York Times

By ABDELKADER BENALI

JAN. 13, 2015

 

AMSTERDAM — Something snapped. I was 13 years old, dreaming of books and girls and nothing else — a healthy Dutch kid with a Moroccan background who freewheeled through life. Then something happened that made me feel different from the pack. One day in history class, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie became the subject. Our teacher talked about freedom of expression; I talked about insulting the Prophet. There was an awkward silence. What was that Abdelkader guy talking about? Fatwhat?

But our teacher, Mr. Fok, understood me. He claimed the fatwa didn’t make sense. How could somebody be offended by fiction? How could using one’s imagination lead to the death sentence?

I remember standing up, my voice rising as I struggled to make an argument about the holiness of the Prophet to me and my community. And the more Mr. Fok responded with cold and rational analysis the angrier I got. Didn’t he get that this was about more than reason and common sense? Didn’t he get that mocking the Prophet was a moral crime?

My classmates looked at me like a madman. By then I was standing and shouting. I’d never felt such anger before. This wasn’t about a novel, this was about me. About us. I wanted revenge. Mr. Fok just looked at me, amazed by my temper and a bit annoyed, and dismissed me from class.

For the first time in my life I felt what it meant to be Muslim. I didn’t want to feel that way. I wanted to blend in, to look normal like the other kids in my class. After the frustration and anger ebbed, I felt shame — for letting my religion down, letting my family down, letting myself down. Shame for an anger I didn’t understand.

I grew up in a relatively traditional Moroccan family. We observed Ramadan but my father rarely went to the mosque. There were two books in our house, the Quran and the phone book. We never looked at either of them.

We didn’t talk much about the fatwa but it was impossible to ignore. Muslims were marching through the streets of Rotterdam. It was the first time we felt seen as part of a community that had questions to answer: Which side are you on? Why are you offended? Where does this anger come from? Can Islam coexist with Western values?

The world didn’t stop reminding me I was a Muslim. My name, my background, my skin, my family and the events unfolding in the world all led to more self-questioning.

Islam told me God is One and the Prophet is his messenger. Adhere to the five pillars and all will be well. But we were living in a non-Muslim country. But I wasn’t Dutch, nor was I secular. I had to find a way to reconcile my religious background with a secular world. I felt orphaned.

And resolving that dilemma is much harder in a secular society that seems to have stopped struggling with these big questions altogether.

In the end, I didn’t find the answers in holy texts. I found them in literature.

I read Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and Camus’ “The Plague.” I thought back on my younger days lashing out against “The Satanic Verses.” I remembered sneaking into a bookshop and seeing the book piled up ready to be read but my English was insufficient to understand it. The book turned me away; the curiosity stayed.

When I was 17, I found “The Satanic Verses” tucked away in a school library. I grabbed it, started reading and was mesmerized. Here was a young man struggling with his faith in a faithless world — an immigrant son from a deeply religious home thrown into a world where everything is embraced and nothing is sacred. It confirmed what I had felt deep inside: a free and open society is a threat to religious people. Their religion will be mocked — sometimes even suppressed — and this will provoke anger.

And now it’s happening again. The rise of extremists who lure young Muslims in the West with visions of Islamic utopia is creating nausea among European Muslims. Boys and girls are leaving their families and being converted into killing machines. They are leaving not from Baghdad but from Brussels and The Hague. We insist that this can’t be our Islam and if this is Islam we don’t want it. But I know from my own experience that the lure of extremism can be very powerful when you grow up in a world where the media and everyone around you seems to mock and insult your culture.

And European governments are not helping fight extremism by giving in to Islamophobia cooked up by right-wing populists. What I see is a lack of courage to embrace the Muslims of Europe as genuinely European — as citizens like everyone else.

One of the first people the terrorists in Paris killed was one of us: Mustapha Ourrad, an Algerian-born copy editor at Charlie Hebdo. Then they killed another Muslim: the police officer, Ahmed Merabet. The killers didn’t take mercy on them. In the name of Islam they killed Muslims. And every time a European Muslim sees that image of Mr. Merabet’s last moments, he sees himself lying there on the cold pavement. Helpless. And the next question will be: What will I say tomorrow at work or at school?

What happened last week is not about lack of humor, or a failure to understand caricature. Nor is it about hatred of the West. It’s about anger taking a wrong turn.

What makes us human and creative is our doubt. But doubt on its own can turn into anger and fundamentalism.

As the French writer Michel Houellebecq said in an interview: “People cannot live without God. Life becomes unbearable.” The terrorists found their God in a godless society. Charlie Hebdo mocked their God by declaring him nothing more than a cartoon. They came back to rescue their God and left 12 dead behind. They fell prey to a powerful delusion.

It was the same delusion I felt as a teenager: that by attacking the messenger your anger will disappear and you will be victorious. But the only way to conquer your anger is to understand where its roots lie. For me the freedom to doubt, to not choose sides and to feel empathy for characters and people with whom I disagree was liberating. Today I still embrace my Islamic background, but without the dogma, repression and strict adherence to ritual.

Since 9/11, so many European Muslims have also doubted their belonging. Do they belong to the Paris of Voltaire or the Mecca of Muhammad? It’s the wrong question.

Muslims are every bit as European as the Roma, gays, intellectuals, farmers and factory workers. We have been in Europe for centuries and politicians and the press must stop acting is if we arrived yesterday. We are here to stay.

 

Abdelkader Benali, a novelist, is the author of “Wedding by the Sea.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/the-anger-of-europes-young-marginalized-muslims.html?ref=opinion&_r=2

 

 

India's Elite Gurus Have a Rape Problem

India’s Elite Gurus Have a Rape Problem

A surprising number of India's enlightened "godmen" leaders are winding up in jail for sexual assault

 

VOCATIV

Author Murali Krishnan

12/31/14 

 

Security forces had to blow through a wall with bulldozers last month just to get their hands on guru Rampal Singh Jatin. Even then, the estimated 20,000 troops had to contend with 10,000 of Rampal’s fervent followers. After securing his massive ashram, they found the bodies of four women and an 18-month-old child buried on the grounds.

Claims of fraud and inciting violence had dogged the spiritual leader—or “godman,” as self-declared religious leaders of his kind are called—throughout his rise. The raid, the bodies and the following murder charges were only his final step before prison. But beyond all this, there is something else that might surprise Western observers more familiar with the “peace and love” West Coast understanding of Indian gurus.

Slowly, investigators have begun to uncover details about the supposedly holy man’s sex life—a world of abuse and excess as remarkable as anything else in his sprawling empire. Reports of Rampal hosting preferred “hostesses,” whom he called sadhikayaen, are leaking out from law enforcement officials. “We recovered a pregnancy kit from Rampal’s room, besides medicines for improving sexual vitality, and that led us to investigate the goings-on in his hermitage,” says Inspector General of Police Anil Kumar Rao. A 27-year-old woman named Babita Kumari (nicknamed Baby) was reportedly his preferred bedmate. “Now we are trying to establish if these other women followers were sexually abused,” the inspector general says.

Sex and particularly sexual abuse are not uncommon among the massive network of godmen, gurus and swamis in this majority-Hindu country of more than a billion. With the dust barely settling on Rampal’s dramatic arrest, Shyam Giri, the high-profile guru of an ashram in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, is now wanted for rape. Charges stem from a woman’s claims that the guru had “entrapped” and repeatedly assaulted her for nine years, starting when she was 13. Giri had taken the girl under his wing when she was a minor to be trained as a tantric, but she got wiser and realized what was happening to her. The police are still looking for Giri, who is now on the run.

Authorities arrested another self-styled spiritual godman, Asaram Bapu, last year after a teenage girl accused him of rape. She claimed that the guru lured her by promising to cleanse her from evil spirits. It wasn’t the first time criminal charges had been leveled against him. In 2008, two young boys died in his retreat in the western state of Gujarat. His trusted lieutenants, however, say all the charges against Bapu are fabrications.

In September 2013, police arrested Mahendra Giri (aka Tunnu Baba), 65, for illegally confining and repeatedly raping a 24-year-old woman at his ashram over the course of four months. Apparently, the victim’s husband and mother-in-law were his accomplices. All three are now imprisoned.

In sexual depravity, the godmen aren’t all that different from extremist Western religious movements. The cases of Warren Jeffs—the now-incarcerated leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FDLS), an offshoot of the Mormon church—and many others in the U.S. are equally rife with abuse. The difference here is the scale: Bapu boasts 20 million followers, which would be the equivalent to having over 5 million followers in the U.S. With those massive numbers, the groups of men silencing accusers and protecting cult leaders aren’t just a vocal band of enforcers—they’re veritable armies.

So how do these often aged, supposedly holy men take advantage of women while simultaneously preaching against vice? Some feel that it’s because they aren’t even holy in the first place. Rather, many of these godmen in India are simply savvy marketers, men blessed not with enlightenment, but the ability to manipulate.

“They acquire some knowledge of basic religion, have the gift of gab, start preaching and the gullible fall prey,” says Sanal Edamaraku, founder-president and editor of Rationalist International. Edamaraku, who has been exposing godmen for more than three decades, and other critics see these less-than-holy members of India’s massive religious network as scam artists thriving alongside genuine spiritual leaders.

Many godmen begin as preachers from small towns in the country’s rural hinterland where they hold ersatz satsangs—religious discourses open to the mostly poor, uneducated locals. A well-run satsang can offer the sort opportunities for enlightenment hard to come by in these outlying villages.

“In the course of time,” explains Manish Gulati, a researcher from Lucknow who has chronicled the lives of many such godmen, “the gurus cultivate relationships, intervene in family disputes and even match-make. And because some devotees have become so beholden by becoming part of the faithful, it is blind faith that takes over after that.”

The faithful may find themselves doing something as simple as cleaning up the ashram for free or cooking for the guru and his live-in acolytes. Depending on the power and influence of the particular godman, however, things can escalate, with followers donating huge sums of money or even committing crimes for their leader. The potential for sexual exploitation is never far away.

So why do Indians still flock to these powerful swamis—some of whom may wield as much power as the leaders of small countries—even after charges of rape and massive military raids carried out on live television? “Despite the scandals, it does not stop people from stooping to charlatans in robes and matted hair,” explains sociologist Dipankar Gupta. “And the reason is simple: These godmen happily stomp on grounds where scientists fear to tread.”

http://www.vocativ.com/world/india/godmen-of-india-satguru-rampal-scandal/?page=all

 

The Men Behind the Godmen

 

Zee News

By Shobhika Puri 

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

 

Godmen have been dominating our news channels lately, which got me into thinking why. Unfortunately, most of them have been in the news for all the wrong reasons like monetary scams, molestation, fraudulent practices and the like. Is this a recent phenomenon, or has this been around for a while?

Godmen have been around for decades; however, their number and following have increased manifold over the last few years. As is the case with any other area, the advent of 24x7 media has put the focus on them as well. Not only are they newsworthy, they have cult following; thereby increasing channels' viewership and making the Godmen more popular.

So, why is it that their following has increased and continues to increase despite the negative news surrounding many of them? Well, the simplest and the most obvious answer is that it is a matter of faith. Just like a theist believes in the existence of God, an entity whose existence is yet to be proved scientifically, the followers of Godmen believe in the latter. However, common sense says that faith is fine as long as it does not become blinded.

Looking at the popularity and prosperity of many Godmen, many more have taken to it in the hope of making it big even without having the basic qualities, or the will to do service for the mankind. Sadly, many have taken it as their profession, or business. Not only many people follow these Godmen and give them an exalted status, people willingly give out sums of money without even asking any questions. The government too gives them many freebies and exemptions.

Godmen are known by many other names like spiritual leaders, or gurus, or guides, or teachers. In fact, mentors that are usually associated with the professional setup too play a similar role. They all are here to offer guidance, share some life skills and principles, and many times just to lend a ear. With today’s fast-paced life and fragile relationships, people are looking for somebody to listen to them, somebody to guide them, somebody to share their experiences with and somebody to offer them hope. If a Godman, or a guru, or a spiritual leader can offer you that, then why not? This guru could be your relative, or friend, or teacher, or somebody unknown as is usually the case. As long as s/he offers you solace and hope, go ahead. The problem starts when the person you look up to and follow blindly, starts taking advantage of you. There are many Godmen who claim to possess some magical powers and have been able to somehow prove themselves. In fact, there are many frauds who extract money in the name of hope. Like any other relationship, the onus is on you to protect yourself.

Human beings have a herd instinct, and they tend to follow somebody just because there are many others following him/her. Big numbers do not reduce your risk of being duped. After all, in many cases, people do lead their lives according to their gurus. There are some tell-tale signs of fraud like some guru making tall promises, asking for donation quite often, leading a big empire while claiming to live off donations only, leading a luxurious life while propagating austerity, etc. You need to remember, why you are following somebody in the first place? If it is to take guidance, then take that only. If it is to follow some principles, then learn them only. If it is to share your problems, then do that only. If it is to hear somebody’s experiences, then learn from them only. If it is to just talk, do that only. If somebody can offer you hope of a better life, then great; but don’t fall prey to tall promises and shortcuts. If being with somebody, or just listening to somebody gives you peace, then go ahead, but don’t let that person govern your life. You have to use your judgement like you do when dealing with people in other spheres of your life. There is no magical mantra for this, just like there is none for your problems. In short, please don’t make these Godmen, God. There are men behind them like you and me.

It takes only one fish to dirty a pond, and this pond has many such fishes floating around. The onus is on you – the follower – to separate wheat from the chaff. It is a sad reality which is taking away sheen from the genuine Godmen, who have dedicated their lives to the service of others. As a famous Hindi proverb goes, “Gehoon ke saath ghun bhi pista hai,” which means the good too have to pay a price for the penance of the bad as it is difficult to separate the two for the common eye. After all, scepticism is the beginning of faith, and faith isn’t faith until it is all that you are holding on to.

Have faith – in yourself first! The rest shall follow.

(Shobhika Puri is a freelance writer.)

http://zeenews.india.com/blog/the-men-behind-the-godmen_1522366.html

 

Judge warns of huge legal bill in Church of Scientology dispute

Parties in acrimonious High Court case urged to be ‘reasonable’ with each other

Irish Times

Mon, Jan 12, 2015    

 

A judge has warned warring members and former members of the Church of Scientology to “sit down and be reasonable” with each other if they want to avoid a massive legal costs bill.

 

Scientologists Zabrina Collins and Michael O’Donnell have won High Court orders restraining former Scientologists Peter Griffiths and John McGhee from harassing, assaulting or intimidating them in work they do for their church.

 

Mr Griffiths, of Teeling Street, Ballina, Co Mayo, in turn has sued Ms Collins for alleged defamation of character. Ms Collins, the daughter of wrongly convicted Co Donegal publican Frank Shortt, has an address at Parnell Square West, Dublin.

 

Judge Jacqueline Linnane addressed all of the parties in the Circuit Civil Court, which is now handling the case, and told them the clock had already started ticking on a mounting legal bill both on High Court and Circuit Court costs.

 

“I would have thought that a prudent manner of dealing with this would be for people to be reasonable and sit down and talk about it,” she said. “Don’t be surprised if there is a massive legal bill at the end of the day if notice is not taken of what this court is saying.”

 

She said the costs bill had started “tick, tick ticking” and warned all of the parties to hear her words.

 

“Be reasonable and try to reach a solution here to save some money. You can reach an accommodation that is acceptable to each side, ” she said.

 

Mr McGhee, of Armstrong Grove, Clara, Co Offaly, and Mr Griffiths, through his barrister Seamas O’Tuathail, SC, gave undertakings they would not interfere with Ms Collins or Mr O’Donnell, a marketing consultant of Cherrywood Lawn, Clondalkin, Dublin.

 

Mr O’Tuathail, who appeared with John Smith and solicitor Cormac O’Callaigh, said the undertakings would continue until February 2nd when the linked defamation and injunctive proceedings would be heard.

 

Barrister Frank Beatty, counsel for Ms Collins and Mr O’Donnell, had told a pre-Christmas sitting of the High Court that Ms Collins had been intimidated by the two former church members as she handed out anti-drugs leaflets outside the Church of Scientology premises in Middle Abbey Street, Dublin.

 

He said Ms Collins and Mr O’Donnell were scared and frightened “and they should be”. They had been constantly harassed and assaulted by Mr Griffiths and Mr McGhee, he said.

 

Mr O’Tuathail told the court his client denied having done anything wrong. The two cases have been adjourned for hearing until February 2nd.

 

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/judge-warns-of-huge-legal-bill-in-church-of-scientology-dispute-1.2063026