42 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010
corporal punishment at Jonestown. Such intense
beatings are physically and emotionally harmful
to children regardless of the religious or secular
context in which they occur.
Moving beyond Hall’s analogy involving
corporal punishment in Jonestown and
conservative Protestantism, other forms of
extraordinary discipline took place under Jones’s
supervision that have no Protestant parallels.
Hall had to downplay or ignore these other
forms in order for his analogy to Protestantism
to appear superficially credible. I am not aware
of Protestant children being lowered into wells
and terrified by adults hiding within them or
within surrounding bushes, and I am not aware
of Protestant children being forced to eat their
own vomit. I have not seen any reports of
Protestant children being punished by ingesting
hot peppers or having those peppers rubbed on
their rectums. Nor have I encountered examples
of Protestant children being placed in leg
shackles and having their heads shaved. Hall’s
effort, therefore, simply failed when he
attempted to ‘normalize’ the child physical
abuse inflicted by Jones and his followers by
equating it to practices in conservative
Protestantism. Rather, the attempted analogy
heightened awareness of how uniquely brutal the
Jonestown environment was on children. The
brutality reached its apex, of course, with the
child murders.
The Child Murders
To his credit, Hall included information about
the child murders that took place as adults
administered the poison to infants and children
(Hall, 1987: 283–287). He reproduced some of
the debate between member Christine Miller and
Jones in the minutes before the final act, in
which she told Jones, “’I look at all the babies
and I think they deserve to live’” (Christine
Miller in Hall, 1987: 283 see Hall, 2000: 37
and for a transcription of these final exchanges
between Miller, Jones, and others, see Maaga,
1998: 147–164). Concerning a retort that Jones
gave soon afterward to another member’s
question about how Jones could allow his
precious little boy (John Victor, who was the
subject of an ongoing paternity battle [see Hall,
1982: 48–49]) to die, Hall reported Jones as
saying that he could not put the child’s life
above the lives of the others. Hall surmised that,
“for the children, Jones held, life was worse than
death: ‘we give them [i.e., the governmental
authorities] our children, then our children will
suffer forever’” (Jones in Hall, 1987: 284 see
also Jones quoted in Smith, 1982: 117). He
described the actions of the first two adults to
pour poison down the throats of their children,
and he reproduced the comments of a Jonestown
member who instructed, “‘the older children
help love the little children and reassure them.
They’re not crying from any pain it’s just a little
bitter tasting’” (Judy James, quoted in Hall,
1987: 285 see Hall, 2000: 37). When yet
another man tried to speak to the crowd, “the
shrieks of the children yelling ‘Noooo!’
swallowed up his words” (Hall, 1987: 285). As
Hall concluded in an early book chapter on
Jonestown, “many Jonestown residents did not
willingly commit the suicide” (Hall, 1982: 54).
Despite Jones’s pronouncement that the cyanide
would not cause convulsions, Hall mentioned
the action of Odell Rhoades, who “helped carry
a young boy out to the yard and gently laid
down the life jerking with convulsions” (Hall,
1987: 286 see a longer account in Feinsod,
1981: 198). Curiously, however, Hall did not
provide the exact number of children—around
276—who fell victim to the poisonings at
Jonestown, even though one of his sources was
Kenneth Wooden’s The Children of Jonestown,
which provided this number in the first sentence
of its prologue (Wooden, 1981: 1 cf. Smith,
1982: 108, and Chidester, 2003: 154, both of
whom gave the number of infants and children
at 260). Most of the 234 unidentified bodies
were the murdered children (R. Moore, 1988:
107, 109). Not always included in the body
count were Sharon Amos and her three children,
who were away from Jonestown at the time of
the murder/suicides. After receiving instructions
over the short-wave radio to follow the lead
provided by her comrades, she slit the throats of
her children, and then cut her own wrists
(Feinsod, 1981: 210 see B. Moore, 1989: 183).
The most detailed examination of the dead
people’s ages appeared in a 2004 study by
Rebecca Moore, who lost two sisters and a
nephew (i.e., a sister’s child) among the 918 or
corporal punishment at Jonestown. Such intense
beatings are physically and emotionally harmful
to children regardless of the religious or secular
context in which they occur.
Moving beyond Hall’s analogy involving
corporal punishment in Jonestown and
conservative Protestantism, other forms of
extraordinary discipline took place under Jones’s
supervision that have no Protestant parallels.
Hall had to downplay or ignore these other
forms in order for his analogy to Protestantism
to appear superficially credible. I am not aware
of Protestant children being lowered into wells
and terrified by adults hiding within them or
within surrounding bushes, and I am not aware
of Protestant children being forced to eat their
own vomit. I have not seen any reports of
Protestant children being punished by ingesting
hot peppers or having those peppers rubbed on
their rectums. Nor have I encountered examples
of Protestant children being placed in leg
shackles and having their heads shaved. Hall’s
effort, therefore, simply failed when he
attempted to ‘normalize’ the child physical
abuse inflicted by Jones and his followers by
equating it to practices in conservative
Protestantism. Rather, the attempted analogy
heightened awareness of how uniquely brutal the
Jonestown environment was on children. The
brutality reached its apex, of course, with the
child murders.
The Child Murders
To his credit, Hall included information about
the child murders that took place as adults
administered the poison to infants and children
(Hall, 1987: 283–287). He reproduced some of
the debate between member Christine Miller and
Jones in the minutes before the final act, in
which she told Jones, “’I look at all the babies
and I think they deserve to live’” (Christine
Miller in Hall, 1987: 283 see Hall, 2000: 37
and for a transcription of these final exchanges
between Miller, Jones, and others, see Maaga,
1998: 147–164). Concerning a retort that Jones
gave soon afterward to another member’s
question about how Jones could allow his
precious little boy (John Victor, who was the
subject of an ongoing paternity battle [see Hall,
1982: 48–49]) to die, Hall reported Jones as
saying that he could not put the child’s life
above the lives of the others. Hall surmised that,
“for the children, Jones held, life was worse than
death: ‘we give them [i.e., the governmental
authorities] our children, then our children will
suffer forever’” (Jones in Hall, 1987: 284 see
also Jones quoted in Smith, 1982: 117). He
described the actions of the first two adults to
pour poison down the throats of their children,
and he reproduced the comments of a Jonestown
member who instructed, “‘the older children
help love the little children and reassure them.
They’re not crying from any pain it’s just a little
bitter tasting’” (Judy James, quoted in Hall,
1987: 285 see Hall, 2000: 37). When yet
another man tried to speak to the crowd, “the
shrieks of the children yelling ‘Noooo!’
swallowed up his words” (Hall, 1987: 285). As
Hall concluded in an early book chapter on
Jonestown, “many Jonestown residents did not
willingly commit the suicide” (Hall, 1982: 54).
Despite Jones’s pronouncement that the cyanide
would not cause convulsions, Hall mentioned
the action of Odell Rhoades, who “helped carry
a young boy out to the yard and gently laid
down the life jerking with convulsions” (Hall,
1987: 286 see a longer account in Feinsod,
1981: 198). Curiously, however, Hall did not
provide the exact number of children—around
276—who fell victim to the poisonings at
Jonestown, even though one of his sources was
Kenneth Wooden’s The Children of Jonestown,
which provided this number in the first sentence
of its prologue (Wooden, 1981: 1 cf. Smith,
1982: 108, and Chidester, 2003: 154, both of
whom gave the number of infants and children
at 260). Most of the 234 unidentified bodies
were the murdered children (R. Moore, 1988:
107, 109). Not always included in the body
count were Sharon Amos and her three children,
who were away from Jonestown at the time of
the murder/suicides. After receiving instructions
over the short-wave radio to follow the lead
provided by her comrades, she slit the throats of
her children, and then cut her own wrists
(Feinsod, 1981: 210 see B. Moore, 1989: 183).
The most detailed examination of the dead
people’s ages appeared in a 2004 study by
Rebecca Moore, who lost two sisters and a
nephew (i.e., a sister’s child) among the 918 or
