Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2002, Page 48
soon recruited their first batch of overseas volunteers. The enthusiastic recruits each paid
$5,000 in tuition, and raised much more for the opportunity to volunteer abroad.
''As we became successful in North America, the Danish folks that we worked with got more
and more eager,'' Ted Lewis said in a telephone interview from the San Francisco-based
nonprofit group, Global Exchange, where he now works. ''I was summoned to a meeting on
a visit to Denmark and there was Amdi,'' he said of Pedersen.
Exploiting Idealism
''There is sort of a mysterious quality to this guy,'' Lewis said. ''He traveled secretly. He was
introduced to me as a comrade. It was obvious from the way that he was treated and the
things that he was saying and the way that he moved that he was a very special person.'' At
that meeting, Lewis said, Pedersen motivated him to stay another year at the International
Institute for Cooperation and Development, even though he had become increasingly
disillusioned.
In the end, Lewis resigned, because Humana kept calculating the institute to be in debt, and
because of the strange way that he said his supervisors had interfered with his private life.
''I've never been certain if it's any more evil than an ordinary American corporation,'' he
said of the group. ''But what I've always resented the most is that fundamentally, the
resource that they were exploiting was young people's idealism.'' (Farah Stockman, Boston
Globe, 4/7/02, Internet)
Kaeda Juku School
Cult Leaders Get seven Years in Failed Faith Healing
Two Japanese members of a faith healing ―cult‖ were sentenced to seven years each in
prison for the deaths, through neglect, of a young boy and a baby, whose corpses were
then allowed to mummify in the hope that they would come back to life.
The Miyazaki District Court passed the sentence on Junichiro Higashi, 58, head of the
private, ―cult-style‖ Kaeda Juku school in Miyazaki, southwestern Japan, and Akemi
Togashi, a 51-year-old female senior staff member of the school.
Beliefs and Practices
The pair were found guilty of taking into their custody in December 1997 a six-year-old boy
after promising his parents that they would cure his acute kidney problem without
medication. During the trial, the prosecution said that the defendants tried to ―exorcise the
boy‖ with prayers, but that he died the following month. The parents demanded the return
of the boy's body, but the defendants locked it in a room at Higashi's luxury villa, insisting
that the boy would come back to life.
The prosecution said that the defendants had blamed the boy's illness on "karma" and
barred the parents from using drugs or hospitals which they said were "full of evils." The
two were also found guilty of causing the death, through neglect, of a premature baby born
at the school in 1999, by failing to provide necessary medical treatment to the infant, the
ruling said. The bodies of both the six-year-old boy and the premature baby were found
mummified.
Higashi and Togashi abandoned and mummified the bodies "because the accused were
afraid that if the bodies were discovered, they would lose the trust of their school pupils,"
who believed Higashi had supernatural powers, the judge said.
The case was the second involving a cult and mummified bodies in as many months. In
February, the 63-year-old Japanese leader of Life Space was sentenced to 15 years in
prison for the murder of a stroke victim who was bound [wrapped] as part of a "religious
soon recruited their first batch of overseas volunteers. The enthusiastic recruits each paid
$5,000 in tuition, and raised much more for the opportunity to volunteer abroad.
''As we became successful in North America, the Danish folks that we worked with got more
and more eager,'' Ted Lewis said in a telephone interview from the San Francisco-based
nonprofit group, Global Exchange, where he now works. ''I was summoned to a meeting on
a visit to Denmark and there was Amdi,'' he said of Pedersen.
Exploiting Idealism
''There is sort of a mysterious quality to this guy,'' Lewis said. ''He traveled secretly. He was
introduced to me as a comrade. It was obvious from the way that he was treated and the
things that he was saying and the way that he moved that he was a very special person.'' At
that meeting, Lewis said, Pedersen motivated him to stay another year at the International
Institute for Cooperation and Development, even though he had become increasingly
disillusioned.
In the end, Lewis resigned, because Humana kept calculating the institute to be in debt, and
because of the strange way that he said his supervisors had interfered with his private life.
''I've never been certain if it's any more evil than an ordinary American corporation,'' he
said of the group. ''But what I've always resented the most is that fundamentally, the
resource that they were exploiting was young people's idealism.'' (Farah Stockman, Boston
Globe, 4/7/02, Internet)
Kaeda Juku School
Cult Leaders Get seven Years in Failed Faith Healing
Two Japanese members of a faith healing ―cult‖ were sentenced to seven years each in
prison for the deaths, through neglect, of a young boy and a baby, whose corpses were
then allowed to mummify in the hope that they would come back to life.
The Miyazaki District Court passed the sentence on Junichiro Higashi, 58, head of the
private, ―cult-style‖ Kaeda Juku school in Miyazaki, southwestern Japan, and Akemi
Togashi, a 51-year-old female senior staff member of the school.
Beliefs and Practices
The pair were found guilty of taking into their custody in December 1997 a six-year-old boy
after promising his parents that they would cure his acute kidney problem without
medication. During the trial, the prosecution said that the defendants tried to ―exorcise the
boy‖ with prayers, but that he died the following month. The parents demanded the return
of the boy's body, but the defendants locked it in a room at Higashi's luxury villa, insisting
that the boy would come back to life.
The prosecution said that the defendants had blamed the boy's illness on "karma" and
barred the parents from using drugs or hospitals which they said were "full of evils." The
two were also found guilty of causing the death, through neglect, of a premature baby born
at the school in 1999, by failing to provide necessary medical treatment to the infant, the
ruling said. The bodies of both the six-year-old boy and the premature baby were found
mummified.
Higashi and Togashi abandoned and mummified the bodies "because the accused were
afraid that if the bodies were discovered, they would lose the trust of their school pupils,"
who believed Higashi had supernatural powers, the judge said.
The case was the second involving a cult and mummified bodies in as many months. In
February, the 63-year-old Japanese leader of Life Space was sentenced to 15 years in
prison for the murder of a stroke victim who was bound [wrapped] as part of a "religious
