Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, Page 12
serving Jesus Christ, being in this mission which is the most important thing that‘s
happening on the face of the earth, or going back into the world and serving those kids‖
(Kent interview with Margaret, 1989:15). Within the hour, the mother had abandoned her
kids, whom her own parents subsequently raised for several years until she left the group.
She had lost the ability to value the emotions of her own offspring.
This loss of ability to empathize with others likely is a key element in other-deindividuation,
and is not one of the characteristics that Stahelski discusses. In essence, adults‘ abilities to
understand the needs of their children were severely distorted by misattribution concerning
charisma, depluralized activities—if there were any at all—with their families, and damaged
understandings of their own individualities. In extreme cases, adults completely
misunderstood their children‘s needs and even offered them over to charismatic leaders who
violated them under the guise of spiritual growth and education. Fundamentalist Mormon
fathers in the American West, for example, routinely give over their young, often underage,
daughters to older men as polygamous marriage partners, despite the very real possibilities
of sexual, emotional, and physical harm befalling them (Kent, forthcoming). At least one
mother in the Branch Davidian compound gave her ten-year-old daughter to David Koresh,
knowing that he was going to make her one of his ―brides‖ by having sex with her (ABC
News, 2003 Bunting and Willman, 1995). Women in Austria‘s free-love commune,
Friedrichshof, procured, and even chased down and dragged back, girls as young as
fourteen so that their leader, Otto Műhl, could have sex with them (Soul Purpose
Productions, 1999). Clearly, as they facilitated statutory rapes in the name of spiritual
benefit, these women, as well as others in their respective communities who saw similar
things going on, had no appreciation of children‘s emotional needs.
The most egregious example of parents demonstrating the inability to empathize (certainly
in an appropriate, healthy manner) with their children is the mass poisonings and murders
that parents perpetrated on their children at Jonestown. According to the most detailed
account of Jim Jones‘s movement, at the final event in Guyana,
The children were brought forward first. A nurse directed the crowd and
addressed them in a taut voice: ―There‘s nothing to worry about. So
everybody keep calm and try to keep your children calm. They aren‘t crying
out in pain. It‘s just a little bitter-tasting.‖
Youngsters were bawling and screaming. Some were fighting, pulling away
from their elders. Some had the potion shot to the back of their throats with
syringes, where the swallowing reflex would bring it home. Parents and
grandparents cried as their children died—not quickly and not painlessly. The
doomed convulsed and gagged as the poison took effect. For several minutes,
they vomited and screamed, they bled (Reiterman with Jacobs, 1982:559).
It appears that some parents may have realized the horror of their actions, but many
offered up their children willingly and assisted with their poisonings. Sources provide
different figures, but at least 260 (and possibly as many as 276) children were among the
913 (or 914) people who died in that November 1978 tragedy (Lattin, 2003:96 Wooden
1981:1 see Reiterman with Jacobs, 1982:571).
While adults in the Solar Temple also took at least seven children and three teenagers to
their deaths along with them (Hall and Schuyler, 2000:141, 144), the number of teen
deaths would have been higher had it not been for the failure (in March 1997) of a
mechanism designed to set afire a house. Apparently, three teens awoke (along with their
parents) the morning after this device failed, and the teens realized what had happened and
that the adults were going to try again. They ―told their parents that they did not want to
go‖ via fire to the star Sirius, so the parents allowed them to remain outside as they retried
(this time successfully) to ignite their house. ―The children voluntarily took medication,
serving Jesus Christ, being in this mission which is the most important thing that‘s
happening on the face of the earth, or going back into the world and serving those kids‖
(Kent interview with Margaret, 1989:15). Within the hour, the mother had abandoned her
kids, whom her own parents subsequently raised for several years until she left the group.
She had lost the ability to value the emotions of her own offspring.
This loss of ability to empathize with others likely is a key element in other-deindividuation,
and is not one of the characteristics that Stahelski discusses. In essence, adults‘ abilities to
understand the needs of their children were severely distorted by misattribution concerning
charisma, depluralized activities—if there were any at all—with their families, and damaged
understandings of their own individualities. In extreme cases, adults completely
misunderstood their children‘s needs and even offered them over to charismatic leaders who
violated them under the guise of spiritual growth and education. Fundamentalist Mormon
fathers in the American West, for example, routinely give over their young, often underage,
daughters to older men as polygamous marriage partners, despite the very real possibilities
of sexual, emotional, and physical harm befalling them (Kent, forthcoming). At least one
mother in the Branch Davidian compound gave her ten-year-old daughter to David Koresh,
knowing that he was going to make her one of his ―brides‖ by having sex with her (ABC
News, 2003 Bunting and Willman, 1995). Women in Austria‘s free-love commune,
Friedrichshof, procured, and even chased down and dragged back, girls as young as
fourteen so that their leader, Otto Műhl, could have sex with them (Soul Purpose
Productions, 1999). Clearly, as they facilitated statutory rapes in the name of spiritual
benefit, these women, as well as others in their respective communities who saw similar
things going on, had no appreciation of children‘s emotional needs.
The most egregious example of parents demonstrating the inability to empathize (certainly
in an appropriate, healthy manner) with their children is the mass poisonings and murders
that parents perpetrated on their children at Jonestown. According to the most detailed
account of Jim Jones‘s movement, at the final event in Guyana,
The children were brought forward first. A nurse directed the crowd and
addressed them in a taut voice: ―There‘s nothing to worry about. So
everybody keep calm and try to keep your children calm. They aren‘t crying
out in pain. It‘s just a little bitter-tasting.‖
Youngsters were bawling and screaming. Some were fighting, pulling away
from their elders. Some had the potion shot to the back of their throats with
syringes, where the swallowing reflex would bring it home. Parents and
grandparents cried as their children died—not quickly and not painlessly. The
doomed convulsed and gagged as the poison took effect. For several minutes,
they vomited and screamed, they bled (Reiterman with Jacobs, 1982:559).
It appears that some parents may have realized the horror of their actions, but many
offered up their children willingly and assisted with their poisonings. Sources provide
different figures, but at least 260 (and possibly as many as 276) children were among the
913 (or 914) people who died in that November 1978 tragedy (Lattin, 2003:96 Wooden
1981:1 see Reiterman with Jacobs, 1982:571).
While adults in the Solar Temple also took at least seven children and three teenagers to
their deaths along with them (Hall and Schuyler, 2000:141, 144), the number of teen
deaths would have been higher had it not been for the failure (in March 1997) of a
mechanism designed to set afire a house. Apparently, three teens awoke (along with their
parents) the morning after this device failed, and the teens realized what had happened and
that the adults were going to try again. They ―told their parents that they did not want to
go‖ via fire to the star Sirius, so the parents allowed them to remain outside as they retried
(this time successfully) to ignite their house. ―The children voluntarily took medication,
