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from Phoenixkidd Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 14:27 (Agree/Disagree?) This raid doesn't seem as well planned out as it should, it's even more frustrating than the raids on family homes because they are all interbred and all have the same race with absolutely no documentation! The Federal government should help fund the state of Texas efforts to rectify this situation once and for all. This has been going on for long enough in Arizona and most of the young boys, age 16 and older that are dumped on the streets of the cities end up in it's Jail system or fall to vice, all while their sisters are married off to old geezers. It's really disgusting when one takes into account the vast amount of funds they have embezzled through their lifestyle, where do you think they got all those funds to move and build that huge development in Eldorado, TX? Cheesemaking factories? I say not but rather through complete embezzlement of Arizona State funds. I hope they send all the guys to jail, and all the women and children can live together for moral support and be funded with federal funds, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what our goverment spends in Iraq each single day. (reply to this comment)

from excerpt from Lynn McFadden affidavit Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 15:44 (Agree/Disagree?) Here is an excerpt from the affidavit of Lynn McFadden. -quote- On March 29, 2008, the Department received an intake report at 11:32 p.m. According to the intake, a teenaged mother (age 16) and her infant child (age approximately 8 months) were requesting assistance to enable them to leave the YFZ Ranch located near Eldorado, Schleicher County, Texas, which ranch is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and which consists of a large compound containing numerous multi­story residential household complexes and other buildings inhabited by a large number of members of that church. The teenaged mother had called a local family violence shelter several times that day expressing the need to leave her current living situation. She reported that she was brought to the YFZ Ranch by her parents about three years ago. She stated that about two years after her arrival on the YFZ Ranch (or about one year prior to the date of this report and when she would have been 15 years old), she was spiritually married to an adult male member of the church (approximate age 49 years old) at the YFZ Ranch. She indicated that the adult male was also married to several other women and that she was wife number seven. The teenaged mother stated that she began to be abused shortly after she started living at the YFZ Ranch. She advised that the adult male would "beat and hurt" her whenever he got angry. According to the caller, this would include the man hitting her in the chest and choking her and that while such abuse was occurring one of the other women in the home would hold her infant child. She reported that the last time he beat her was on Easter Sunday 2008. The report also indicated that, on a previous occasion, the man had beaten her so severely that it resulted in her having several broken ribs, for which she was taken to the hospital. She reported that the doctor wrapped her torso in an ace bandage and told her to "take it easy for a few days". She also indicated that the man would hurt her, explaining that he would force himself on her sexually. She also indicated that she is several weeks pregnant. The teenager mother stated that she was not allowed to leave the YFZ Ranch, unless it was to receive medical care, in which case the man would drive her and one of the other women from the YFZ Ranch would go into the hospital with her. She indicated that she had tried to devise a plan to escape from the YFZ Ranch by pretending to be ill and needing to receive medical care, but determined this would not work since she would not be allowed to take her infant child with her unless the child was also sick. She indicated during the conversations that she was calling using someone else's cell phone and she was reported to be very, very quiet throughout the conversations for fear that she would be overheard and would get in trouble. She stated that her parents do not live on the YFZ Ranch and that she has not had any contact with them to explain that she does not want to continue to be on the ranch. Subsequently, on March 30, 2008, the teenaged mother again contacted staff at a local family shelter. During this conversation, she again stated that she and an adult male resident of the ranch had been married in a spiritual union through the church, but there was no formal marriage, and that the man had three other "wives" living on the YFZ Ranch. She reported that the man had previously gone away for a while to the "outsider's world", but she said she did not know why he left the ranch. The Department, as part of its investigation, subsequently determined that the man identified by the teenager had been indicted in Mohave County, Arizona, on criminal charges of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor in connection with a purported marriage to a minor in Arizona, with whom he had conceived a child. Information obtained by the Department indicated that the man pled no contest in August of 2007 to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor, and he was convicted of that offense. Information obtained by the Department also indicated that, as part of the plea agreement, the sexual conduct with a minor charge was dismissed. The man was sentenced to 45 days in jail and required to serve three years probation. As part of his sentence, he is required to register as a sex offender until he successfully completes his probation. During the March 30, 2008 conversation, the teenager indicated that she was being held against her will at the YFZ Ranch and church members had told her that if she tried to leave, she will be found and locked up. She also expressed during this conversation concerns about what would happen to her if she were to leave the YFZ Ranch. She reported that church members have told her if she leaves the ranch, outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear make up and clothes and to have sex with lots of men. She also indicated that her parents, who had returned to their hometown outside the State, were preparing to send her 15 year old sister to live at the YFZ Ranch. At the conclusion of this conversation, she began crying and then stated that she is happy and fine and does not want to get into trouble and that everything she had previously said should be forgotten. Based on the above information, the Department obtained orders for investigation of child abuse from the 51st Judicial District Judge authorizing the Department to gain access to the YFZ Ranch for purposes of conducting an investigation of these allegations, including transporting and interviewing children located at the YFZ Ranch for purposes of the investigation. In cooperation with a criminal investigation being conducted by law enforcement, the Department began investigating these allegations. Further investigation conducted by the Department has unearthed additional information concerning other minor residents of the YFZ Ranch. While searching for the teenaged mother and her infant child, investigators at the YFZ Ranch observed a number of young teenaged girls who appeared to be minors and appeared to be pregnant, as well as several teenaged girls who already had given birth and had their own infants. Investigators determined that there is a wide-spread pattern and practice among the residents of the YFZ Ranch in which young minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them. Under this practice, once a minor female child is determine by the leaders of the YFZ Ranch to have reached child bearing age (approximately 13-14 years old) they are then "spiritually married" to an adult male member of the church and they are required to then to engage in sexually activity with such male for the purpose of having children. It is the pattern and practice of the adult males to have more than one spiritual wife resulting in them having sexual relationships with a number of women, some of who are minors. Minor boy children are expected, after they reach adult age and when their spiritual leader determines appropriate, to enter into a spiritual marriage with a female member of the church designated by the leader, which female may be a minor. Based on the Department's joint investigation with law enforcement of the circumstances existing on the YFZ Ranch, the Department determined that an immediate danger exists to the physical health or safety of the children who are residents of the YFZ Ranch and/or that the children who are residents of the YFZ Ranch are the victims of neglect and/or sexual abuse and that their continuing to reside on the YFZ Ranch would be contrary to the children's welfare. As set forth in this Affidavit, there is a pervasive pattern and practice of indoctrinating and grooming minor female children to accept spiritual marriages to adult male members of the YFZ Ranch resulting in them being sexually abused. Similarly, minor boys residing on the YFZ Ranch, after they become adults, are spiritually married to minor female children and engage in sexual relationships with them resulting in them becoming sexually perpetrators. This pattern and practice places all of the children located at the YFZ Ranch, both male and female, to risks of emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse. During the investigation, a number of the children interviewed were unable or unwilling to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers and were unable or unwilling to provide information such as their own birthdates or birthplaces. The adults on the YFZ Ranch also, in many instances, provided limited information to no information about parentage of the children or other information identifying the proper name, age or date of birth of children located on the YFZ Ranch. This has made it difficult to determine who are the parents of the children located on the YFZ Ranch. -end quote- http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2008/0408/20080408_033754_FLDS_Affidavit.pdf http://deseretnews.com/pdf/040808_fldsaff.pdf (reply to this comment)

from from Author of 'My Life in Orange' Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 10:16 (Agree/Disagree?) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/13/wsect113.xml Texas sect victims now face a reality shock Last Updated: 1:31am BST 13/04/2008Page 1 of 3 They have escaped from a bizarre world of polygamous sex - but the girls of the West Texan sect may soon wish they could return to it, writes Tim Guest, who spent his own childhood in a notorious religious commune himself Last Tuesday in West Texas, 416 shell-shocked children were ushered by police on to a row of yellow school buses. The kids - the girls with identical plaited hair and long, hand-sewn pastel dresses - were driven through a blue farm gate to temporary shelter 40 miles away. For many, it was the first time they had passed through those gates into the outside world. Difficult journey: women leaving the compound appear so disorientated, they are like time travellers from the year 1870 The investigation began on March 29, when a 16-year-old girl placed a series of calls from a borrowed mobile phone to a counsellor at a family violence shelter. Her barely audible voice told of a forced marriage at 15 and repeated beatings and rape at the hands of her 49?year-old husband, who already had six wives. In the ceremony, her "husband" promised to put her in his care; in fact, he put her in hospital with broken ribs. The girl already had an eight-month-old baby, and was six months pregnant. She was afraid to leave, and wouldn't name her location outright. "Outsiders would hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear make-up and clothes and to have sex with lots of men," she had been told, according to a later affidavit. She did manage to give enough detail, though, to enable investigators to identify her home: the 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch, built on scrubland in 2004 by the 10,000-member Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, formed in 1935 as a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (better known as the Mormons, who have publicly disowned the splinter group). Her phone calls were the start of the largest child welfare investigation in Texas history. Last Sunday a judge issued a warrant, and the affidavit and subsequent court documents have been made public. Investigators found a bed inside the sect's temple, reportedly used for adult men to have sex with girls as young as 12. The girls were "spiritual wives", a term invented by male members of polygamous sects to circumvent US polygamy law. But these children were wives: there were wedding ceremonies, and in one case a 16-year-old girl was mother to four children. The latest findings, revealed in an 80-page list by officials, include pregnancy tests, marriage certificates detailing polygamous relationships, and photo albums containing pictures of older men with several younger women. Videos of a birthing room used by young teenage girls have also been seized. The apparent horror these children have gone through seems to contradict the movement's intentions: to become perfect and self-sufficient - to "yearn for Zion" - in readiness to begin anew after the coming apocalypse. But, as I know from my own childhood, when we set out to build heaven, we also build hell. I grew up in communes around the world under the guidance of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the notorious Indian guru who advocated sex and celebration as a path to enlightenment. We were children of the commune, not of our mothers and fathers. Although some of the younger girls were introduced to sex by adults, the abuse was nothing like as systematic and widespread as in the case of these Texan girls. Still, the dream turned sour in our case, too. In 1984, followers of my mother's guru - whose motto was "Life, Love and Laughter" - poisoned 800 people with salmonella, the biggest bio-terror attack in US history. There were murder plots, guns were smuggled, and when the FBI raided a secret tunnel under the commune residence, they found HIV-infected mice and CIA guerrilla handbooks. Our parents' gaze was turned away from us; more poisonously, the kids from Yearning For Zion had their parents' gaze turned on them. They were taught that the outside world was evil. After their evacuation, it turns out neither the children nor their mothers know how to use a crayon. Food from the outside world is too rich for them: they can't hold it down. Richard Wexler, of the US National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, told the Dallas Star Telegram the girls should be cared for in the same way as refugees from the fall of Saigon. "These children live in a very isolated world of their own and they have no idea of the world they suddenly find themselves in." Yet Jill Mytton, principal lecturer in counselling psychology at London Metropolitan University, believes it may be even more traumatic. Mytton has spent time researching cults, and how to leave them. (She was born into the Exclusive Brethren, a restrictive wing of the evangelical Plymouth Brethren.) She thinks what the children are going through will be more complex than the journey of a refugee. "People born into cults don't have any previous personality to return to," she says. "And they don't have knowledge of the outside world. A refugee is leaving a place they want to leave, but I'm not convinced these children want to leave. So they're not in control. "I remember that lack of control very clearly. I was 16 when my parents took me out of a cult. Any structure to your life you've ever had is gone. "You might argue that where these children were was terrible, frightening and horrendous - and it was - but it was a form of security and structure. It's absolutely right that they're taken out of it, but it's going to be a shock." The pressures of leaving behind an entire world can take their toll. In his book Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers, Robert Snow tells of a US study of 353 former members from 48 cults. After leaving, 93 per cent reported anxiety attacks, 63 per cent had suicidal thoughts, and 23 per cent attempted suicide. The girls will move from a life tilling the fields, quilting and hand-sewing their own clothes, to a world where even supermarkets will seem daunting. They will move from a world where the apocalypse is near, to a world where they have a future. Perhaps they may take heart from others who have been through a similar journey. "If you grow up believing that the world is going to end, you don't ever learn to have a future, or even think about growing old," says Juliana Buhring, who escaped, aged 23, from the Children of God cult. "You have to now plan for your future. You will in fact grow old, and that's hard to imagine. "The children leaving the compound must be terrified. In one way you're terrified of the environment you've been in, but you're also terrified of the wider world. They're probably grateful for being rescued, but traumatised. They need strong, kind people, and counselling. The outside is a dangerous place." Juliana draws parallels from her own experiences in leaving the Children of God. "In the first year especially, these people who have been leading such old-fashioned lives will have to learn everything about how to function in society, from making a telephone call or just stepping into a shop. "The bigger challenge is the mental challenge when you start to realise you've been fed a certain view, a kind of tunnel vision. You have to figure out what you actually believe, what you think about things, what your actual mind is - to try to siphon your real personality from your cult personality. "A lot of my generation still struggle with their identity, with fear of people finding out about their background, that they'll be labelled 'cult babies' and the rest. Then there are the practical issues: lack of education, finding jobs. You don't have a bank account, you don't technically exist. You've never been to a hospital. "Some of my contemporaries still have an innate fear of hospitals, police, anyone who represents authority. It was drummed into us: authority represents evil." Juliana says that her peers who left the Children of God had to sink or swim. "Either they have become hugely successful to prove the Children of God wrong, or they have become a 'self-fulfilling prophecy', as the cult says - a drug addict, a criminal, or they die. Often, because of a lack of education, they are easy prey to predators; they fall into bad situations quickly." I had noticed the same thing among the children who emerged from my own religious background. I asked Juliana what she thought made the difference. "One thing I've noticed is if they find one good person in the outside world, that makes all the difference in whether they succeed or not." In the case of the children from Yearning for Zion, finding someone to trust might be tough: for many, even their grandmothers will have been born into the sect. Now they have been transported in both space and time. "They are like aliens - or we are like aliens to them," was how Helen Pfluger, a Baptist church volunteer who helped to care for the children, describes them. "It was like talking to people from 1870." There is something about the journey from a sect to the wider world that drives people to want to share their story. Pain drives us to narrate, Freud wrote, and pain combined with such a radical world shift perhaps even more so. My childhood, steered by my mother's devotion to Bhagwan, had a different kind of sorrow - absence, of my mother, of structure, even of the guru, who we knew mainly through his empty chair - along with its consolation, a wild kind of freedom that still energises and sabotages my adult life. My own inheritance of abandon took me years to unravel, but writing a memoir, My Life in Orange, was crucial in helping me. After beginning with cynicism, what I found, to my surprise, was compassion, for the dream my mother and her friends tried to bring to life. Juliana Buhring, who last year published the memoir Not Without My Sister, agrees. "Being able to write it is, in a sense, triumphing over it. You've come to terms with it, you've created what your past was. It's out of your system and you don't have to think about it." The children leaving Zion have a long way to go. Texan police are preparing to break open the sect's vaults, looking for evidence of sexual abuse. They will bring prosecutions, hopefully convictions will be made. But the girls themselves, reportedly not even close to being placed in permanent accommodation, are at the start of a long, difficult journey. These children will have to forage their own treacherous route to acceptance, to grow into adults and claim ownership over their wounds. Some journeys, though, are longer and rockier than others. It took me a book to bring to life the boon and curse of my childhood: the oceans of sorrow and the long days of summer delight. That journey helped me to reach my own shakily balanced life, but I never attempted suicide. Juliana Buhring did, more than once. "One thing that helped me, no matter how bad I had it, is there's always something worse," she says. "I do a lot of work in Africa, with ex-child soldiers. It's a matter of where you're born, circumstantially, and all you can do is make the best of it." I asked what her advice to the girls would be. "Get an education," she said. "When I started to educate myself was when my eyes were opened to everything. That's why they don't let you get an education: because knowledge is power." (reply to this comment)

from 48 hours, April 12, 8 pm Thursday, April 10, 2008 - 08:47 (Agree/Disagree?) The Lords Boot Camp! (reply to this comment)

from ameliaes Thursday, April 10, 2008 - 08:24 (Agree/Disagree?) similar in so many ways, so different in irrelevant ways http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_8872380 By Brooke Adams Salt Lake Tribune SAN ANGELO, Texas - Flora Jessop wishes she was wrong. She wishes authorities hadn't found dozens of young girls at a polygamous sect's ranch in west Texas who were already mothers or pregnant. That rumors of abuse were unfounded. That no one had to experience the upheaval that now has beset members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But she also wishes someone - Utah and Arizona authorities, specifically - had acted long before now to stop the sect's practice of arranging marriages between young girls and older men. "Do I wish it on them? Absolutely not," said Jessop, who lives in Arizona. "But if a child is being hurt, the authorities need to be there for the children. They deserve the right to be free from abuse, just like their parents." Utah and Arizona authorities have said they will not prosecute polygamous relationships that involve adults - a position taken because such prosecutions would likely fail on constitutional grounds. But the two states have attacked the sect's practice of underage marriages with some success. Most notably, Utah prosecuted sect leader Warren S. Jeffs in the fall for conducting an arranged marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. He received two consecutive five-to-life terms and is now awaiting prosecution in Arizona on similar charges. Utah authorities also crippled the sect's home base in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., by seizing its communal property trust in 2005. That trust remains under court oversight. Jessop has always maintained the states have not done enough, however. Jessop, who left the sect when she was 16, has spent the past decade helping other teens and women leave the FLDS Church. She won't say whether she knows the teen involved in this case, but Jessop told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday that authorities had identified the wrong man as her husband. She also said the girl's husband had broken her ribs - something later revealed in an affidavit released by Texas authorities on Tuesday. Jessop has called the massive investigation the 16-year-old girl's calls triggered a "colossal mistake" because it smacks of the 1953 Short Creek Raid, in which Arizona authorities took approximately 263 women and children into custody in an effort to stamp out polygamy. She said the women and children who have been rounded up and sent to Fort Concho or the Wells Fargo Pavilion are unlikely to share the sort of information sought by authorities - names of fathers, dates of births, ages. "First of all, they are all terrified they are going to hell if they talk to anybody," she said. "They've been taught their entire lives not to reveal who their mother is, who their father is. It's part of the culture of secrecy. And secrecy breeds isolation." She believes many of the children at the ranch were sent there by parents in other states and claims they were taken from those families and given to "more worthy" ones. In her calls to the New Bridge Family Shelter in San Angelo, the teen said as much. Jessop said one girl put it this way: "The men own the babies, not the mothers." Texas authorities said Tuesday during a news conference that many of the children do not appear to have parents there. Jessop said young teens were enticed to stay at the ranch because their infants were given to other plural wives - women who shared a common husband - to raise. "If they spread the children out to other women," she said, "the mothers are not going to leave." brooke@sltrib.com (reply to this comment)

from rainy Wednesday, April 09, 2008 - 14:12 (Agree/Disagree?) Jezebel's on to it... http://jezebel.com/377740/your-nagging-ancient-mormon-underage-sex-cult-questions-answered-at-last (reply to this comment)

From GoldenMic Wednesday, April 09, 2008, 15:15 (Agree/Disagree?) A friend of mine, Janja, participted in a good article about this: The allegedly polygamous group whose compound was raided this week in Texas is either a religious sect or a full-blown cult, depending on whom you ask. The raided compound was founded by jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who took over in 2002 as prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which broke off from the Mormon church in the 1930s over the issue of polygamy. Authorities have reportedly taken into legal custody more than 400 children and 133 women, deemed to have been harmed or in imminent danger of harm. While the media and some sociologists call the group a religious sect, other experts see it as a clear-cut cult, defined by charismatic leadership and abuse. According to news accounts of the FLDS, pubescent girls were forced into "spiritual marriages" to older men. Inside the compound's walls, researchers say, a new reality was born, with members indoctrinated so fully they had no concept of reality outside the walls. "In the case of the FLDS, we're talking about basically believing that women are there to be baby factories, and you have extreme patriarchal control of that group," said Janja Lalich, a sociologist at California State University, Chico. Lalich told LiveScience she definitely thinks the Texas compound should be called a cult. "If you've got a group that's abusing hundreds and hundreds of women and children, let's call it what it is," she said. Another scientist weighed in on the cult-or-not question. "From what I can understand of this movement in Texas and other places, is that it would probably fall under new religious movement or cult movement," said John Barnshaw of the University of Delaware, who studies collective behaviors such as social movements and cultish behaviors. Why people join Some people have no choice about whether to join a religious group or other ideological group. Many FLDS members were apparently born into the society and have no concept of mainstream beliefs. "These people grew up in this world. They don't have a clue what regular society is about," said Lalich, who has written several books on cults. "They come to believe this kind of behavior is normal even though clearly people leave because they realize this isn't healthy. You don’t give up girls at age 14 to marry some 50-year-old relative in many cases. The women have absolutely no choice. They have absolutely no power in that group." Some adults do sign up with cults voluntarily, but those with stronger social ties to mainstream society are less likely to do so, explained Boston University sociologist Nancy Ammerman. "What we do know is that the more radical kinds of groups are unlikely to attract people who are well-positioned and well-integrated into the larger society," Ammerman said. "People who are middle-aged business owners living in suburbia with a mortgage are less likely to be attracted to joining such a group than for instance a 22-year-old fresh out of college, without a job, perhaps estranged from their family." Cults vs. sects The term "cult," is derived from the word culture and has not always carried today's negative connotation, said Phillips Stevens, Jr., an anthropologist who studies religions and cults at the State University of New York at Buffalo. "The word cult, up until the 1970s, was a respectable term referring to the central focus of a religious faith," Stevens said. "You could speak of the Catholic cult, and in fact, people still do." Beginning in the 1970s, around the time of the UFO-spawned Raëlians and Charles Manson's "Family," cults were associated with "a repressive, exclusive group of people whose members are held emotionally, if not physically, against their wills, led by usually a megalomaniacal leader," Stevens said. The media, scientists and outsiders following the recent news from Eldorado, Texas, spout various labels to describe Warren Jeffs' establishment. "Most social scientists would probably describe [FLDS] as a fundamentalist religious movement or a new religious movement because of the degree of difference between it and any previous existing religious tradition," Ammerman said in a telephone interview. "Social scientists have increasingly not used the term [cult] at all, because it does carry that pejorative value with it," Ammerman said. Instead, the emergence of "new religious movements" serves as an umbrella term for cult-like groups. That way, Ammerman and other sociologists can focus more on the dynamics in a group and beyond, such as the demands placed on members and how the rest of society responds to the group. Meanwhile, many news organizations are referring to the FLDS group as a sect, meaning a break-off from a traditional religion (in this case, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). In contrast, Lalich said she uses the word cult, "and I think it's important that we use the term. I think by not using the word cult to identify these groups we let them hide behind the veil of religion." Lethal leaders Charisma is in some ways what gives cult leaders such power. "The charismatic leader doesn't necessarily need to verify things; it's often based on trust," said Barnshaw, the University of Delaware researcher. "That person is often the lawgiver. They decide on what is right and what is wrong." With that power, cult leaders have persuaded or otherwise convinced members to take extreme measures to reach some sort of salvation. Some cults do things that make them more clearly deserving of the label of cult. For the Heaven's Gate cult, Marshall Applewhite sold his message to 38 members who in March 1997 took their own lives with the promise that suicide would allow them to shed their bodily "containers." They were to hitch a ride on a spacecraft hidden behind the comet Hale-Bopp to reach a higher existence. The leader of the Branch Davidians changed his name from Vernon Howell to David (after King David of the Israelites) Koresh (from the Babylonian King Cyrus). Rumors and later reports from ex-cult members suggested Koresh married several members, some in their mid-teens, and sexually and physically abused members. Rather than the apocalypse Koresh spoke of, a 1993 FBI raid on their Waco, Texas compound left 76 dead, more or less resulting in the disappearnce of the group. In Lalich's view, the distinction between a legitimate sect and a cult is simple: It depends on what or whom you worship. "In a healthy or legitimate religion or sect, you are presumably worshiping some higher principle or some higher authority," Lalich said, "whereas in a cult people tend to end up worshipping that living human leader." She added, "Your salvation is tied up with that particular living leader, and obeying orders and not breaking the rules, and subjecting yourself to whatever personal transformation you're expected to go through to be on that correct path to salvation." Why members stay Once they become members of a cult, individuals become more and more isolated from society and from reality-checks found in a diverse world. "You take on new reality, this new interpretation of the world," Lalich said. "It doesn’t mean you have to live in a compound in the middle of Texas. But you've closed your world view. Everything you're interpreting, you're interpreting through the cultic belief system." One former member of the Eldorado group echoed this. "Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it,'' Carolyn Jessop, an ex-FLDS member, told the Associated Press. Jessop was one of the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex, before leaving in 2004. One reason for the seeming lifelong loyalty, Lalich suspects, is fear. "A lot of these groups operate on fear. You're afraid of whatever punishment you might get from the group," Lalich said. "But more so, you're afraid that you're going to be missing out on that path to salvation, whatever that salvation might be." Often, Barnshaw said, cult members are made to believe the outside world is evil. The leaders will set up a dynamic of "insider versus outsider," and "interworldly versus otherworldly." This internal world "is the path to righteousness, as opposed to the external world, which is wicked and harmful and detrimental to our society," Barnshaw said. Regarding the FLDS group in Texas, this type of lens apparently was a powerful force. "There was a strong distrust of anyone who this group perceived as being an outsider," Barnshaw said. The allegedly polygamous group whose compound was raided this week in Texas is either a religious sect or a full-blown cult, depending on whom you ask. The raided compound was founded by jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who took over in 2002 as prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which broke off from the Mormon church in the 1930s over the issue of polygamy. Authorities have reportedly taken into legal custody more than 400 children and 133 women, deemed to have been harmed or in imminent danger of harm. While the media and some sociologists call the group a religious sect, other experts see it as a clear-cut cult, defined by charismatic leadership and abuse. According to news accounts of the FLDS, pubescent girls were forced into "spiritual marriages" to older men. Inside the compound's walls, researchers say, a new reality was born, with members indoctrinated so fully they had no concept of reality outside the walls. "In the case of the FLDS, we're talking about basically believing that women are there to be baby factories, and you have extreme patriarchal control of that group," said Janja Lalich, a sociologist at California State University, Chico. Lalich told LiveScience she definitely thinks the Texas compound should be called a cult. "If you've got a group that's abusing hundreds and hundreds of women and children, let's call it what it is," she said. Another scientist weighed in on the cult-or-not question. "From what I can understand of this movement in Texas and other places, is that it would probably fall under new religious movement or cult movement," said John Barnshaw of the University of Delaware, who studies collective behaviors such as social movements and cultish behaviors. Why people join Some people have no choice about whether to join a religious group or other ideological group. Many FLDS members were apparently born into the society and have no concept of mainstream beliefs. "These people grew up in this world. They don't have a clue what regular society is about," said Lalich, who has written several books on cults. "They come to believe this kind of behavior is normal even though clearly people leave because they realize this isn't healthy. You don’t give up girls at age 14 to marry some 50-year-old relative in many cases. The women have absolutely no choice. They have absolutely no power in that group." Some adults do sign up with cults voluntarily, but those with stronger social ties to mainstream society are less likely to do so, explained Boston University sociologist Nancy Ammerman. "What we do know is that the more radical kinds of groups are unlikely to attract people who are well-positioned and well-integrated into the larger society," Ammerman said. "People who are middle-aged business owners living in suburbia with a mortgage are less likely to be attracted to joining such a group than for instance a 22-year-old fresh out of college, without a job, perhaps estranged from their family." Cults vs. sects The term "cult," is derived from the word culture and has not always carried today's negative connotation, said Phillips Stevens, Jr., an anthropologist who studies religions and cults at the State University of New York at Buffalo. "The word cult, up until the 1970s, was a respectable term referring to the central focus of a religious faith," Stevens said. "You could speak of the Catholic cult, and in fact, people still do." Beginning in the 1970s, around the time of the UFO-spawned Raëlians and Charles Manson's "Family," cults were associated with "a repressive, exclusive group of people whose members are held emotionally, if not physically, against their wills, led by usually a megalomaniacal leader," Stevens said. The media, scientists and outsiders following the recent news from Eldorado, Texas, spout various labels to describe Warren Jeffs' establishment. "Most social scientists would probably describe [FLDS] as a fundamentalist religious movement or a new religious movement because of the degree of difference between it and any previous existing religious tradition," Ammerman said in a telephone interview. "Social scientists have increasingly not used the term [cult] at all, because it does carry that pejorative value with it," Ammerman said. Instead, the emergence of "new religious movements" serves as an umbrella term for cult-like groups. That way, Ammerman and other sociologists can focus more on the dynamics in a group and beyond, such as the demands placed on members and how the rest of society responds to the group. Meanwhile, many news organizations are referring to the FLDS group as a sect, meaning a break-off from a traditional religion (in this case, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). In contrast, Lalich said she uses the word cult, "and I think it's important that we use the term. I think by not using the word cult to identify these groups we let them hide behind the veil of religion." Lethal leaders Charisma is in some ways what gives cult leaders such power. "The charismatic leader doesn't necessarily need to verify things; it's often based on trust," said Barnshaw, the University of Delaware researcher. "That person is often the lawgiver. They decide on what is right and what is wrong." With that power, cult leaders have persuaded or otherwise convinced members to take extreme measures to reach some sort of salvation. Some cults do things that make them more clearly deserving of the label of cult. For the Heaven's Gate cult, Marshall Applewhite sold his message to 38 members who in March 1997 took their own lives with the promise that suicide would allow them to shed their bodily "containers." They were to hitch a ride on a spacecraft hidden behind the comet Hale-Bopp to reach a higher existence. The leader of the Branch Davidians changed his name from Vernon Howell to David (after King David of the Israelites) Koresh (from the Babylonian King Cyrus). Rumors and later reports from ex-cult members suggested Koresh married several members, some in their mid-teens, and sexually and physically abused members. Rather than the apocalypse Koresh spoke of, a 1993 FBI raid on their Waco, Texas compound left 76 dead, more or less resulting in the disappearnce of the group. In Lalich's view, the distinction between a legitimate sect and a cult is simple: It depends on what or whom you worship. "In a healthy or legitimate religion or sect, you are presumably worshiping some higher principle or some higher authority," Lalich said, "whereas in a cult people tend to end up worshipping that living human leader." She added, "Your salvation is tied up with that particular living leader, and obeying orders and not breaking the rules, and subjecting yourself to whatever personal transformation you're expected to go through to be on that correct path to salvation." Why members stay Once they become members of a cult, individuals become more and more isolated from society and from reality-checks found in a diverse world. "You take on new reality, this new interpretation of the world," Lalich said. "It doesn’t mean you have to live in a compound in the middle of Texas. But you've closed your world view. Everything you're interpreting, you're interpreting through the cultic belief system." One former member of the Eldorado group echoed this. "Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it,'' Carolyn Jessop, an ex-FLDS member, told the Associated Press. Jessop was one of the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex, before leaving in 2004. One reason for the seeming lifelong loyalty, Lalich suspects, is fear. "A lot of these groups operate on fear. You're afraid of whatever punishment you might get from the group," Lalich said. "But more so, you're afraid that you're going to be missing out on that path to salvation, whatever that salvation might be." Often, Barnshaw said, cult members are made to believe the outside world is evil. The leaders will set up a dynamic of "insider versus outsider," and "interworldly versus otherworldly." This internal world "is the path to righteousness, as opposed to the external world, which is wicked and harmful and detrimental to our society," Barnshaw said. Regarding the FLDS group in Texas, this type of lens apparently was a powerful force. "There was a strong distrust of anyone who this group perceived as being an outsider," Barnshaw said. (reply to this comment)

from rainy Wednesday, April 09, 2008 - 13:08 (Agree/Disagree?) I've been following this story eagerly since it broke. I really hope those children are able to begin "normal" lives. Sounds like the women want out too? (reply to this comment)