International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010 45
180–181 Weightman, 1983: 177–178). If,
however, members of the anticult movement are
in fact looking at issues related to child abuse in
Jonestown and other ideological organizations,
then they are pursuing an important, and often
neglected, research and social agenda. At this
moment, however, no comprehensive academic
study of the child abuse within Peoples Temple
and Jonestown exists for future generations to
read. In a discussion a decade ago about why
scholars were not ready to ‘close the canon’
concerning Jonestown, nowhere in lists of issues
and data still needing study were the plights of
children (and for that matter, the elderly)
mentioned (R. Moore, 2000: 17, 22). Surely
their lives and their deaths demand careful and
thoughtful attention.
As I conclude this article, I return a final time to
one of the groups, the Northeast Kingdom
Community, that Hall used when he attempted
to normalize the physical beatings that Peoples
Temple and Jonestown children suffered. An
important glimpse into the “subuniverse” of that
group—one that casts additional doubt upon its
validity in providing normative child-rearing
practices, comes from a surprising source—a
child-turned-young-adult who had intimate
knowledge of the world in which spokesperson,
lawyer, and scholar Jean Swantko lived.
Swantko not only is the group’s lawyer, but also
is a convert who (in 1991) married a leader,
Charles “Eddie” Wiseman. She had met
Wiseman when she was a Vermont public
defender assigned to defend him on charges of
simple assault, after he allegedly was involved
in the beating of a 13-year-old girl (a case that I
mentioned earlier [Johnson, 1995: 24]). This
beating/
whipping allegedly took place over a seven-hour
interval, and the girl and her father “told state
officials [that] she had 89 welts” from it
(Clendinen, 1984).25 A court dropped the
charges, however, in 1985 because the defendant
had not received a “speedy trial” (Swantko,
2004: 185), but the state’s case had been
25 Palmer (1998: 207 n.2) claimed, “the testimony of ‘eight or nine’
welts on her skin, read out by the judge with a heavy Maine accent,
was transcribed as ‘eighty-nine’ welts.” I cannot verify or
disconfirm the claim.
damaged badly when the father of the girl
retracted his initial statements about the beating
(Donnelly, 1984).
Years later, Swantko went so far as to indicate
that “Members do use corporal punishment, but
abusive punishment is not taught or condoned”
(Swantko, 2004: 185). Certainly she was in a
position within the group to know about this
corporal punishment, since she became a
stepmother to Wiseman’s children, one of whom
was Zebulun (or simply Zeb) Wiseman. In 2001,
Zeb fled the group and spoke to a reporter.
“‘Growing up in there, I saw the inside scoop.
There’s [sic] a lot of things there that weren’t
right…. Spanking kids, locking them up’”
(quoted in Wedge, 2001). Academics are likely
to believe Swantko, who dismissed allegations
of abuse, but her own stepson, and others of his
generation, have a different tale to tell.
Academics who ignore their voices run the risk
of producing scholarship that, in the future, will
prove to be simply, demonstrably, wrong.
Jonestown was a dramatic reminder for people
worldwide that demagogic, emotionally and
psychologically imbalanced (see Lys, 2005), but
charismatic individuals can both attract
followers and do tremendous harm to them and
their children. Their deaths were the clearest
possible warning that unaccountable leaders can
spiral downward with their flocks into
destructive, even murderous behavior. The
clarity of this warning to future generations must
include accurate accounts of what the youth
experienced, and it is highly regrettable that
people in generations to come will receive
information that downplays the Jonestown
children’s suffering. It is equally regrettable that
similar diminishments of child abuse appear in
accounts about young lives in other groups.
Academics who write apologetic or misleading
accounts of life in sectarian or ideological
groups do an injustice to the lives of the people
about whom they write and a disservice to their
readers in the years and decades to come.
Victimized children deserve more and so, too,
do the persons who were (and are) active in
anticult groups and who try to sound the alarm
about children’s plights.
180–181 Weightman, 1983: 177–178). If,
however, members of the anticult movement are
in fact looking at issues related to child abuse in
Jonestown and other ideological organizations,
then they are pursuing an important, and often
neglected, research and social agenda. At this
moment, however, no comprehensive academic
study of the child abuse within Peoples Temple
and Jonestown exists for future generations to
read. In a discussion a decade ago about why
scholars were not ready to ‘close the canon’
concerning Jonestown, nowhere in lists of issues
and data still needing study were the plights of
children (and for that matter, the elderly)
mentioned (R. Moore, 2000: 17, 22). Surely
their lives and their deaths demand careful and
thoughtful attention.
As I conclude this article, I return a final time to
one of the groups, the Northeast Kingdom
Community, that Hall used when he attempted
to normalize the physical beatings that Peoples
Temple and Jonestown children suffered. An
important glimpse into the “subuniverse” of that
group—one that casts additional doubt upon its
validity in providing normative child-rearing
practices, comes from a surprising source—a
child-turned-young-adult who had intimate
knowledge of the world in which spokesperson,
lawyer, and scholar Jean Swantko lived.
Swantko not only is the group’s lawyer, but also
is a convert who (in 1991) married a leader,
Charles “Eddie” Wiseman. She had met
Wiseman when she was a Vermont public
defender assigned to defend him on charges of
simple assault, after he allegedly was involved
in the beating of a 13-year-old girl (a case that I
mentioned earlier [Johnson, 1995: 24]). This
beating/
whipping allegedly took place over a seven-hour
interval, and the girl and her father “told state
officials [that] she had 89 welts” from it
(Clendinen, 1984).25 A court dropped the
charges, however, in 1985 because the defendant
had not received a “speedy trial” (Swantko,
2004: 185), but the state’s case had been
25 Palmer (1998: 207 n.2) claimed, “the testimony of ‘eight or nine’
welts on her skin, read out by the judge with a heavy Maine accent,
was transcribed as ‘eighty-nine’ welts.” I cannot verify or
disconfirm the claim.
damaged badly when the father of the girl
retracted his initial statements about the beating
(Donnelly, 1984).
Years later, Swantko went so far as to indicate
that “Members do use corporal punishment, but
abusive punishment is not taught or condoned”
(Swantko, 2004: 185). Certainly she was in a
position within the group to know about this
corporal punishment, since she became a
stepmother to Wiseman’s children, one of whom
was Zebulun (or simply Zeb) Wiseman. In 2001,
Zeb fled the group and spoke to a reporter.
“‘Growing up in there, I saw the inside scoop.
There’s [sic] a lot of things there that weren’t
right…. Spanking kids, locking them up’”
(quoted in Wedge, 2001). Academics are likely
to believe Swantko, who dismissed allegations
of abuse, but her own stepson, and others of his
generation, have a different tale to tell.
Academics who ignore their voices run the risk
of producing scholarship that, in the future, will
prove to be simply, demonstrably, wrong.
Jonestown was a dramatic reminder for people
worldwide that demagogic, emotionally and
psychologically imbalanced (see Lys, 2005), but
charismatic individuals can both attract
followers and do tremendous harm to them and
their children. Their deaths were the clearest
possible warning that unaccountable leaders can
spiral downward with their flocks into
destructive, even murderous behavior. The
clarity of this warning to future generations must
include accurate accounts of what the youth
experienced, and it is highly regrettable that
people in generations to come will receive
information that downplays the Jonestown
children’s suffering. It is equally regrettable that
similar diminishments of child abuse appear in
accounts about young lives in other groups.
Academics who write apologetic or misleading
accounts of life in sectarian or ideological
groups do an injustice to the lives of the people
about whom they write and a disservice to their
readers in the years and decades to come.
Victimized children deserve more and so, too,
do the persons who were (and are) active in
anticult groups and who try to sound the alarm
about children’s plights.
