Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 40
members of the JRG via speakerphone. We created an e-mail communication network. We
discussed various options for getting members out of the JRG and agreed that under no
circumstances should any of our families kidnap their children.
In 1998, 40 people representing 19 families met at an airport hotel in Chicago, IL. For the
first time, a former member of the JRG, Jim Guerra, participated in our meeting. The father
of a member, who had been searching for his daughter for four years, discovered that she
was in the JRG a few weeks before our meeting, and he came. He persuaded the parents
group that we needed a Web site, and he had it set up and running two weeks after the
meeting (http://members.tripod.com/~nfishel/index.html). We had a heated discussion
about whether we should assist ABC Prime Time Live in airing a segment about the JRG. In
the end, a few families decided to participate.
In 1999, 46 people representing 17 families met at a religious retreat center near Orlando,
FL. Dr. Michael Langone, Executive Director of the American Family Foundation, did a
presentation about cults. Six former members of the JRG participated, including 3 who had
left the group that year. The ABC Prime Time Live segment had aired, and it included
photos of unknown members of the JRG and links to the AFF and Parents Group Web Sites.
Fifteen families contacted us after discovering through that program that their loved one
was alive and a member of the JRG.
In 2000, 44 people representing 19 families met in a religious retreat center near Denver,
Colorado. Six former members of the JRG participated, including three of the four members
who had left the group that year. Six families had visits and seven received letters from
their JRG member. TRGPN was mentioned in several media articles and programs all
around the U.S. Through contacts made on the Parents Group Web site, we were able to
intervene and prevent two new recruits from joining the JRG. As a result of the extensive
media coverage of the JRG and TRGPN, strangers began to contact the Web Site and report
sightings of JRG members.
In 2001, 49 people representing 20 families met at a religious retreat center near Seattle,
Washington. Ten former members of the JRG participated, six of whom had left that year!
A total of 11 members left the JRG, and we prevented one new recruitment. TRGPN was
mentioned in several new media presentations. The ABC Prime Time Live segment
continues to air several times each year on ABC 20/20, the Discovery Channel, and A&E.
In 2002, 33 people representing 17 families and 2 former members met at a retreat center
on Lake Geneva in Williams Bay, WI. Six members left the JRG that year, and a total of 17
have left since May, 2001! Four families had visits and two received loving phone calls.
Some 42 people contacted the TRGPN Web site with information about JRG sightings.
Our support group is now called The Roberts Group Parents Network (TRGPN). The mission
of TRGPN is: ―Release the members from the control of the Roberts Group and establish
two-way communication and an open and loving relationship between the members and
their families.‖
The TRGPN Web site includes the following information:
 a profile of the JRG
 information on JRG recruiting
 quotes from scripture which they use
 pictures of unidentified members of the JRG
 a letter from a former member to the current members
 letters from parents to their children

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 41
 lists of contacts and links to other web sites TRGPN activities include:
TRGPN activities include:
 exchanging fliers with pictures of one another‘s children
 ―searching‖ for JRG members
 ―sure shot,‖ photos and information about JRG members on 4‖ x 6‖ cards
 surprise visits with JRG members by their families (and no kidnapping!)
 an e-mail network
 many media interviews
 publication of From Dean‘s List to Dumpsters: Why I left Harvard to join a Cult
 an annual conference
The TRGPN mailing list now includes 75 individuals representing 49 families in 24 states, as
well as 45 former members of the JRG and four expert consultants. We have information on
38 members of the JRG whose families are known and 44 other members, about whom we
have some information, for a total of 82 members of the JRG that we know about.
Since 1996, we can document over 50 members who have left the JRG.
Part IV: Ideological Totalism in the Jim Roberts Group (Joseph P. Szimhart)
In this section I try to show that the JRG has destructive cultic features and behaves like
groups that operate as eccentric ideological social movements, many of whose former
members testify to various forms of abuse. My information comes from several sources. I
have initiated many personal interviews with active members of the group and interviewed
20 or more ex-members since 1986. I have also interacted with dozens of concerned
persons from families of group members and conducted several interventions to assist
group members or fringe members to reevaluate the group. Extensive reading of nearly all
the significant literature about the group bolsters my view. The latter includes the book,
From Deans List to Dumpsters: Why I left Harvard to Join a Cult, by ex-member Jim Guerra
(2000) and the unpublished, 300-page manuscript, Free Lunch, by former member Jim
Robinson, who broke with the group after participating from 1985 through 1986. Guerra
was in the group from 1976 to 1986. I have gotten to know both authors personally.
Though they did not know one another while members, it is not unusual for even long-term
members of the group to be unaware of who ―belongs,‖ despite the group‘s relatively small
size, which fluctuated from fifty to two hundred members.
Several features stand out when I reflect on the movement formed around the teachings of
Jim Roberts, a Bible-based group known as ―the Brethren‖ or ―garbage eaters‖ to outsiders.
Members rarely call themselves anything but ―the brothers and the sisters,‖ yet they regard
themselves as perhaps the only true vanguard of the Gospel on the planet.
Feature one is the appearance of the members, who wear drab colored clothes. The women
wear their hair and dresses long, and they cover their hair with a scarf or shawl. The men
sport long beards with relatively short haircuts and are distinguished by a kind of tunic or
long shirt. Their intent is to appear modest. In general the group has been nomadic for the
past 25 years, often living and moving in small cells around the United States. The leader,
Jim Roberts (also known as Brother Evangelist), founded the sect in the early 1970s as an
end-times ministry dedicated to living and spreading a primitive form of Christian life.
Roberts first established the group as a moving commune of sorts, but negative publicity
after an accident caused a death in the late 1970s led him to break the group into cells. He
governed the members by connecting with sub-leaders (leaders are always ―brothers‖ as he