30 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010
decisions about serious matters of any nature,
much less insane proposals of collective suicide”
(Cobb v. Peoples Temple... 1978: 14). Despite
this kind of accurate prediction, Hall’s
discussion of the group’s punishment of children
did not locate Peoples Temple’s obvious abuses
within a framework of anticult concerns, but
rather attempted to place them within a context
of conservative Protestantism. In doing so,
however, Hall juxtaposed Peoples Temple with
two other groups whose abusive practices had
attracted considerable anticult attention and
concern.
The forms of child abuse that Hall identified in
Jonestown were numerous, but his accounts of
the physical and psychological abuse of children
and teens understated the severity of their group-
inflicted punishments. Hall reported that, on one
occasion, a Temple defector indicated that
Jones’s pathological cruelty manifested in
“forcing a child to eat his own vomit” (Hall,
1987: 121). Child-beatings also took place by
1975, in which “children sometimes were
subjected to extensive paddlings” in the context
of public meetings in which the entire
congregation agreed to them (of course, with
Jones’s approval [Hall, 1987: 122]). After
parents signed release forms that supposedly
absolved Peoples Temple from any liability for
administering the paddlings, children received a
wide range of what Hall called “whacks.” “For
example, “several small boys received ‘twenty-
five whacks’ for ‘stealing cookies’ in a
supermarket” (Hall, 1987: 124). Another boy of
indeterminate age “took 70 whacks” for calling a
member “a crippled bitch” (Hall, 1987: 124).
One teenager even asked Jones to “administer
seventy-five whacks” for an offense that she
believed she had committed, but Hall was not
clear whether she ever received them (Hall,
1987: 123–124).
Beyond these paddlings, beatings, or whackings,
Hall was imprecise about exactly what happened
to children who faced punishment, saying only
that they could expect to receive it
for stealing, for lying, acting
‘irresponsibly,’ making fun of people
for their handicaps, physically
threatening or attacking others,
especially adults, associating too
intimately with outsiders, and breaking
the laws of the larger society, especially
in ways that reflected on Peoples
Temple. (Hall, 1987: 123)
He mentioned boxing or wrestling matches as
forms of punishment, but was not clear whether
children (rather than just adults) had to endure
them (Hall, 1987: 123, 124). Hall, for example,
did not provide an age of “one ‘cocky delinquent
type’” who successfully fought several
opponents before one beat him (Hall, 1987:
124).
Critiques of Hall’s Accounts of Child
Corporal Punishment
Two fundamental problems exist with Hall’s
account of the child abuse that occurred in
Jonestown prior to the murders of the children.
First, it seems highly likely that he dramatically
under-presented what the children actually
suffered. One of Hall’s sources, cited in his
bibliography, is Jeannie Mills’s 1979 book, Six
Years with God: Life Inside Reverend Jim
Jones’s Peoples Temple. Her accounts of
beatings are explicit and numerous. Although
Hall was vague about whether the teenager who
supposedly requested “seventy-five whacks” got
them (Hall, 1987: 123–124), Mills recounts in
painful detail how Jones ordered and oversaw
her daughter’s beating with a board, seventy-five
times, for hugging “a girlfriend whom Jim
[Jones] considered to be a traitor” (Mills, 1979:
267).10 Mills’s account of this public beating
10 Other differences exist between Hall’s and Mills’s accounts.
Hall stated that the teenager Linda Mertle (who was Mills’s
daughter) “wrote a letter requesting seventy-five whacks for
greeting a lesbian adult friend of the family who had left People’s
[sic] Temple several years earlier” (Hall, 1987: 123). Mills,
however, made no mention of a letter requesting punishment, but
instead said, “Our sixteen-year-old daughter Linda was called up
for confrontation. She had hugged a girlfriend whom Jim
considered to be a traitor. Linda stood before Jim and admitted that
she was guilty.
“Jim looked at her sternly. ‘You have been unwise, in the
past, in your choice of friends, and it is important that we teach
you a lesson you won’t forget…. In order to help you learn this
lesson, you will get seventy-five whacks with the board’” (Jones,
quoted in Mills, 1979: 267).
Even if Hall is accurate in stating that Mertle wrote Jones and
requested the beating, it still is outrageous that Jones had it carried
out. Likewise, the sexual orientation of the person she hugged
should have been of no consequence to anybody, and neither
should the fact that she had left the group.
decisions about serious matters of any nature,
much less insane proposals of collective suicide”
(Cobb v. Peoples Temple... 1978: 14). Despite
this kind of accurate prediction, Hall’s
discussion of the group’s punishment of children
did not locate Peoples Temple’s obvious abuses
within a framework of anticult concerns, but
rather attempted to place them within a context
of conservative Protestantism. In doing so,
however, Hall juxtaposed Peoples Temple with
two other groups whose abusive practices had
attracted considerable anticult attention and
concern.
The forms of child abuse that Hall identified in
Jonestown were numerous, but his accounts of
the physical and psychological abuse of children
and teens understated the severity of their group-
inflicted punishments. Hall reported that, on one
occasion, a Temple defector indicated that
Jones’s pathological cruelty manifested in
“forcing a child to eat his own vomit” (Hall,
1987: 121). Child-beatings also took place by
1975, in which “children sometimes were
subjected to extensive paddlings” in the context
of public meetings in which the entire
congregation agreed to them (of course, with
Jones’s approval [Hall, 1987: 122]). After
parents signed release forms that supposedly
absolved Peoples Temple from any liability for
administering the paddlings, children received a
wide range of what Hall called “whacks.” “For
example, “several small boys received ‘twenty-
five whacks’ for ‘stealing cookies’ in a
supermarket” (Hall, 1987: 124). Another boy of
indeterminate age “took 70 whacks” for calling a
member “a crippled bitch” (Hall, 1987: 124).
One teenager even asked Jones to “administer
seventy-five whacks” for an offense that she
believed she had committed, but Hall was not
clear whether she ever received them (Hall,
1987: 123–124).
Beyond these paddlings, beatings, or whackings,
Hall was imprecise about exactly what happened
to children who faced punishment, saying only
that they could expect to receive it
for stealing, for lying, acting
‘irresponsibly,’ making fun of people
for their handicaps, physically
threatening or attacking others,
especially adults, associating too
intimately with outsiders, and breaking
the laws of the larger society, especially
in ways that reflected on Peoples
Temple. (Hall, 1987: 123)
He mentioned boxing or wrestling matches as
forms of punishment, but was not clear whether
children (rather than just adults) had to endure
them (Hall, 1987: 123, 124). Hall, for example,
did not provide an age of “one ‘cocky delinquent
type’” who successfully fought several
opponents before one beat him (Hall, 1987:
124).
Critiques of Hall’s Accounts of Child
Corporal Punishment
Two fundamental problems exist with Hall’s
account of the child abuse that occurred in
Jonestown prior to the murders of the children.
First, it seems highly likely that he dramatically
under-presented what the children actually
suffered. One of Hall’s sources, cited in his
bibliography, is Jeannie Mills’s 1979 book, Six
Years with God: Life Inside Reverend Jim
Jones’s Peoples Temple. Her accounts of
beatings are explicit and numerous. Although
Hall was vague about whether the teenager who
supposedly requested “seventy-five whacks” got
them (Hall, 1987: 123–124), Mills recounts in
painful detail how Jones ordered and oversaw
her daughter’s beating with a board, seventy-five
times, for hugging “a girlfriend whom Jim
[Jones] considered to be a traitor” (Mills, 1979:
267).10 Mills’s account of this public beating
10 Other differences exist between Hall’s and Mills’s accounts.
Hall stated that the teenager Linda Mertle (who was Mills’s
daughter) “wrote a letter requesting seventy-five whacks for
greeting a lesbian adult friend of the family who had left People’s
[sic] Temple several years earlier” (Hall, 1987: 123). Mills,
however, made no mention of a letter requesting punishment, but
instead said, “Our sixteen-year-old daughter Linda was called up
for confrontation. She had hugged a girlfriend whom Jim
considered to be a traitor. Linda stood before Jim and admitted that
she was guilty.
“Jim looked at her sternly. ‘You have been unwise, in the
past, in your choice of friends, and it is important that we teach
you a lesson you won’t forget…. In order to help you learn this
lesson, you will get seventy-five whacks with the board’” (Jones,
quoted in Mills, 1979: 267).
Even if Hall is accurate in stating that Mertle wrote Jones and
requested the beating, it still is outrageous that Jones had it carried
out. Likewise, the sexual orientation of the person she hugged
should have been of no consequence to anybody, and neither
should the fact that she had left the group.
