International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010 41
for the Attorney General’s office or Social and
Rehabilitation Services to specify the names or
specific locations of people or possible evidence.
The group members “file [tax] returns as if they
were one family” (Harrison, 1984: 61), and they
acted as a unified front against all of the state’s
authorities and institutions designed to protect
children.
Comparing the detailed media and professional
accounts of child physical abuse within the
Northeast Kingdom Community with the
scholarship on the group, it is clear that most
scholars have buried or dismissed the former
Commissioner’s thoughtful statement about his
perspective on the raid that his office had
conducted. If researchers, therefore, try to
contextualize the child punishment in Peoples
Temple and Jonestown by following Hall’s
suggestion and looking at the Northeast
Kingdom, then they likely will find articles by
Swantko, Palmer, and a few others that
conveniently neglect to portray the severity with
which that group apparently disciplined children
and teens. Hall greatly understated the severity
of the group’s abuse when he stated that
members’ use of “rods and switches” sometimes
“left marks on [children’s] bodies” (Hall, 1987:
125), since in reality the beatings apparently also
left bloodied and bruised children with scars.
This level of corporal punishment clearly
exceeded community standards outside the
narrow confines of some Protestant (mostly
fundamentalist and evangelical) circles, which
Hall overlooked when he used the group’s
corporal punishment actions as indicative of a
“Puritan standard” that was not excessive (Hall,
1987: 125). These actions were excessive and
potentially harmful to the children themselves,
as historian Philip Greven realized. In Spare the
Child (1991), Greven highlighted many of the
beating allegations, and mentioned the raid as
“the result of several years of intense but
frustrating investigation by the Department of
Social and Rehabilitation Services” (Greven
1991: 35). When discussing the harms caused by
such beatings, Greven identified the causal
connection between corporal punishment
techniques involving “spankings, whippings and
beatings” of children and the development of
sadomasochism in adults (Greven, 1991: 174–
186). “For many adults,” Greven observed,
...sadomasochism in both erotic and
nonerotic forms is a direct consequence
of the confusions generated by the
combination of love and pain in
childhood, the long-tem outcome of the
normal assaults and abuse associated
with physical punishment from infancy
to adolescence. (Greven, 1991: 174)
Illustrating this point, Greven concluded,
...the association of love, fear, and pain
begin early and remain embedded in the
unconscious mind for life. Children
from Island Pond, Vermont, who have
been beaten for disobedience, have
sometimes insisted that painful
punishment is the proof of love.
(Greven, 1991: 175)
He quoted a disaffected member who told a
reporter, “’I have an eight-year-old girl who is a
masochist. She equates love with beatings’”
(Greven, 1991: 175, quoting Juan Mattatall in
Sexton, 1983: 36). The ex-member had audio-
taped that daughter insisting to him:
‘I know, the Lord wants you to spank us
[herself and her younger sister] if we’re
disobedient. If you love us ...then you’ll
spank us. If you spank us, then you love
us. If you don’t spank us, then you don’t
love us…. That’s what it says in the
Bible.’ (Greven, 1991:175, quoting
daughter of Juan Mattatall in Sexton,
1983: 36)22
Greven concluded his section on the
implications of Northeast Kingdom Community
disciplinary procedures by observing that “the
association of love and pain is inescapable when
corporal punishments are used” (Greven 1991,
176). It seems wholly inappropriate, therefore, to
continue Hall’s use of fundamentalist and
evangelical Protestantism to normalize the
22 In one of many ironies involving the people and incidents
surrounding the Island Pond raid, the ex-member father Juan
Mattatall, who taped his daughter making these statements, would
be murdered several years later by his own mother (who then
killed herself), apparently because she feared that her son would
have ongoing problems around his pedophilia (Palmer, 1998: 196).
for the Attorney General’s office or Social and
Rehabilitation Services to specify the names or
specific locations of people or possible evidence.
The group members “file [tax] returns as if they
were one family” (Harrison, 1984: 61), and they
acted as a unified front against all of the state’s
authorities and institutions designed to protect
children.
Comparing the detailed media and professional
accounts of child physical abuse within the
Northeast Kingdom Community with the
scholarship on the group, it is clear that most
scholars have buried or dismissed the former
Commissioner’s thoughtful statement about his
perspective on the raid that his office had
conducted. If researchers, therefore, try to
contextualize the child punishment in Peoples
Temple and Jonestown by following Hall’s
suggestion and looking at the Northeast
Kingdom, then they likely will find articles by
Swantko, Palmer, and a few others that
conveniently neglect to portray the severity with
which that group apparently disciplined children
and teens. Hall greatly understated the severity
of the group’s abuse when he stated that
members’ use of “rods and switches” sometimes
“left marks on [children’s] bodies” (Hall, 1987:
125), since in reality the beatings apparently also
left bloodied and bruised children with scars.
This level of corporal punishment clearly
exceeded community standards outside the
narrow confines of some Protestant (mostly
fundamentalist and evangelical) circles, which
Hall overlooked when he used the group’s
corporal punishment actions as indicative of a
“Puritan standard” that was not excessive (Hall,
1987: 125). These actions were excessive and
potentially harmful to the children themselves,
as historian Philip Greven realized. In Spare the
Child (1991), Greven highlighted many of the
beating allegations, and mentioned the raid as
“the result of several years of intense but
frustrating investigation by the Department of
Social and Rehabilitation Services” (Greven
1991: 35). When discussing the harms caused by
such beatings, Greven identified the causal
connection between corporal punishment
techniques involving “spankings, whippings and
beatings” of children and the development of
sadomasochism in adults (Greven, 1991: 174–
186). “For many adults,” Greven observed,
...sadomasochism in both erotic and
nonerotic forms is a direct consequence
of the confusions generated by the
combination of love and pain in
childhood, the long-tem outcome of the
normal assaults and abuse associated
with physical punishment from infancy
to adolescence. (Greven, 1991: 174)
Illustrating this point, Greven concluded,
...the association of love, fear, and pain
begin early and remain embedded in the
unconscious mind for life. Children
from Island Pond, Vermont, who have
been beaten for disobedience, have
sometimes insisted that painful
punishment is the proof of love.
(Greven, 1991: 175)
He quoted a disaffected member who told a
reporter, “’I have an eight-year-old girl who is a
masochist. She equates love with beatings’”
(Greven, 1991: 175, quoting Juan Mattatall in
Sexton, 1983: 36). The ex-member had audio-
taped that daughter insisting to him:
‘I know, the Lord wants you to spank us
[herself and her younger sister] if we’re
disobedient. If you love us ...then you’ll
spank us. If you spank us, then you love
us. If you don’t spank us, then you don’t
love us…. That’s what it says in the
Bible.’ (Greven, 1991:175, quoting
daughter of Juan Mattatall in Sexton,
1983: 36)22
Greven concluded his section on the
implications of Northeast Kingdom Community
disciplinary procedures by observing that “the
association of love and pain is inescapable when
corporal punishments are used” (Greven 1991,
176). It seems wholly inappropriate, therefore, to
continue Hall’s use of fundamentalist and
evangelical Protestantism to normalize the
22 In one of many ironies involving the people and incidents
surrounding the Island Pond raid, the ex-member father Juan
Mattatall, who taped his daughter making these statements, would
be murdered several years later by his own mother (who then
killed herself), apparently because she feared that her son would
have ongoing problems around his pedophilia (Palmer, 1998: 196).
