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standard $200 fee. One ―insisted‖ on donating $250,000 and another paid $500,000. (Jesse
Hyde, Deseret Morning News, Internet, 7/5/04)
NXIVM
Criticism Can Stay Online
The Colonie, NY-based NXIVM human potential organization has lost a suit aimed to keep
critics from analyzing a confidential NXIVM manual online. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit in New York City said the commentaries, by psychologist Paul Martin and
psychiatrist John Hochman, on the website of [cult observer] Rick Ross, represented
criticism, and therefore ―fair use‖ under copyright law. (Dennis Yusko, Albany Times-Union,
Internet, 4/23/04)
Order of the Solar Temple
Refusal to Reopen Investigation
Saying there is no new evidence, a French prosecutor in Grenoble has refused a request by
some victims‘ families to reopen the investigation of the 1995 murder-suicides in France of
16 members of the Order of the Solar Temple. The families believe someone from outside
the group, rather than the deceased members who are alleged to have played leading roles
in the deaths, were responsible. The families cite a recently commissioned private report
saying the bodies were burned with a flamethrower. (AP, Internet, 3/25/04)
Palo Mayombe
Convicted of Cemetery Theft
Miriam Mirabal, of Newark, NJ, has been found guilty of stealing human remains from
cemeteries for use in Palo Mayombe religious rituals, which involve placing the remains in
cauldrons so practitioners can invoke the spirits of the deceased to harm selected
individuals. (AP, Internet, 5/3/04)
Poeticized Union for Developing Social Happiness (PORTOS)
Leaders Convicted for Whipping Children
Two leaders of a utopian community near Moscow, the Poeticized Union for Developing
Social Happiness (PORTOS), have been convicted of whipping children in the group for
disobeying sect rules. Vladimir Belanenko received a one-year suspended sentence and
Alexei Merkulov was ordered to serve two years in prison.
The formal charge against the two was forming an organization that infringes on a person‘s
rights of privacy. As punishment in the group, children were forced to write poetry and keep
an ―outer conscience‖ diary, and lashed for the ―minutest‖ misconduct. The Poeticized Union
attracted teenagers by promising to pay for their educations and to provide high-paying
jobs when they graduated. (Moscow News, Internet, 10/15/04)
Polygamy
Greene Paroled
Tom Greene, the Utah polygamist convicted of marrying and having sex with his then 13-
year-old wife, has been freed after serving six years of a possible life term. The parole
board chairman said: ―If there was any message to come out of this hearing, it would be
that you cannot just marry children, regardless of your religious affiliations.‖
Greene, who denounced polygamy at his parole hearing, was apparently not affiliated with a
polygamous church, although he believed in polygamy on religious grounds. Parole officers
will supervise him to make sure he has no inappropriate contact with underage girls or

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women other than his wife, now 32, who has chosen to live with him once again. (AP in
Casper Tribune, Internet, 8/27/04)
Green Admits Guilt
Tom Green, a polygamist convicted of first-degree felony rape for marrying his wife when
she was 13, has told the Utah parole board that he now realizes, after long reflection, that
what he did was wrong, and that he would certainly not let his young daughters enter into
such marriages. His wife, now 32, and the mother of seven children, previously maintained
that she had not been victimized by her early marriage. Now, she says Green‘s
imprisonment made him a better person and that she forgives him and wants to continue to
raise their family with him. (AP, Internet, 8/13/04)
State Supreme Court Upholds Green Conviction
The Utah Supreme Court has finally rejected Tom Green’s pre-prison claim that the state‘s
anti-polygamy law infringed on his First Amendment right to practice his religion. The law,
according to the court, ―does not attempt to target only religiously motivated bigamy. Any
individual who violates the statute, whether for religious or secular reasons, is subject to
prosecution.‖ The court acknowledged that the law has ―an adverse impact on those wishing
to practice polygamy as a tenet of their religion,‖ but that this was not enough to prove a
First Amendment violation.
The court also said that the bigamy law helped protect people, especially children, from
exploitation and abuse. Critics of the law maintain that polygamists should be charged with
various abuse crimes, if they have committed them, but not for having multiple wives.
(Angie Welling, Deseret Morning News, Internet, 9/4/04)
Rajneesh
New Book on Youngster’s Life in Rajneesh
Tim Guest‘s recently published My Life in Orange (Granta, 2004) recounts life as a
child with his psychologist mother in several of guru Bhagwan Rajneesh’s residential
ashrams in the 1980s. It is a story of a childhood ―standing on tiptoes looking for my
mother in an orange crowd,‖ and of surviving ―a life of sexual precociousness without
behavior boundaries.‖ The movement was really ‗for adults only,‘ and children
depended on one another to survive, he says. (Nesta Lloyd, FAIR NEWS, 1, 2004, PP.
18–19)
Rajneesh‘s ashram in Poona, India, now called the Osho Meditation Resort, caters to
trendy European professionals and holds workshops for executives of companies like
Airbus, Mercedes, and Nike. The organization is trying to shake off the ‗sex guru‘
image and change with the times. (The Times, London, in FAIR NEWS, 1, 2004, p. 19)
Remnant Fellowship Church/Weigh Down Workshop
Leader Says Critics and Police Want to End Her Ministry
Franklin, TN-based Remnant Fellowship Church leader Gwen Shamblin, founder of the
associated Weigh Down Workshop, says that she is the real target of an investigation
into the death of an 8-year-old child whose parents are being accused of child abuse after
following alleged church teachings on discipline. Shamblin says that police, critics, and cult
experts have made former church members believe they were members of a cult, and while
she accepts the ―prophet‖ label, she derides the notion that she uses mind control on her
followers. She also said she believes the parents in the case, who say their child ran into a
banister and died of a seizure.