32 ICSA TODAY 33 VOLUME 10 |ISSUE 3 |2019
chapel, a kaleidoscopic congregation of Chinese migrants
gather to pray. Among them are underwear importers, health
workers and operators of the controversial new $3.8 billion
Chinese-built railway that slices through Kenya, the country’s
biggest infrastructure project since independence—and a sign
of China’s growing investment and footprint on the continent.
Some have married Kenyans, others have Chinese children
who speak Swahili as well as they do Mandarin. But they all
share two things. Each person here has re-rooted their life from
Communist China to Kenya, a leading African economy where
80% of the nearly 50 million people are Christian. And they
have all decided to openly embrace God….” (CNN, 04/28/19)
After 14 years, legal battle over FLDS Church’s land is finally
over
“One of the longest running court cases in state history
involving Utah’s largest polygamous church has ended. A judge
on Tuesday ended court oversight of the Fundamentalist
LDS Church’s United Effort Plan [UEP] Trust after 14 years.
Dozens of FLDS members, wearing their traditional prairie-style
dresses and long-sleeved shirts, packed the courtroom to hear
his ruling. ’Things are operating the way I had hoped it to,’ 3rd
District Court Judge Richard McKelvie said. ‘It was never my
intent to be the de facto mayor of Short Creek.’ The UEP Trust
controls homes, businesses and property in the border towns of
Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. (and some in Canada). Its
assets are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Originally created under the early-Mormon concept of a ‘united
order,’ where members consecrate what they have to the church
and it’s doled out according to wants and needs, the UEP Trust
oversaw everything with a network of storehouses, homes
and properties. But in 2005, the Utah Attorney General’s Office
asked the courts to take over the UEP. They alleged FLDS leader
Warren Jeffs and others within the church were mismanaging
it and using what was meant for members for their own gains.
Jeffs, at the time a fugitive, instructed his followers to ignore
court orders. Over time, the trust was reformed by judges who
implemented a board (made up of mostly ex-FLDS members) to
subdivide property, carving out the religious intent of the UEP.
After 14 years, Judge McKelvie argued, it was time to end court
oversight….” (Fox 13, 06/18/19)
Victim claims “father figure” Haynes manipulated her in
sex-trafficking case
“A woman who prosecutors say is the victim in a sex-trafficking
ring involving three pastors testified Tuesday that the man
who vowed to protect her abused her instead. Now 19, the
woman took the stand in the case against former Greater Life
Christian Center pastor Anthony Haynes, 40, who is charged
with child-sex trafficking. The Blade does not identify victims
of sexual assault. On Tuesday, she outlined before a judge and
jury in U.S. District Court in Toledo how her relationship with
Mr. Haynes quickly grew manipulative and how she became
involved with other pastors—Kenneth Butler, previously of
the Detroit-based Kingdom Encounter Family Worship Center,
and Cordell Jenkins, former pastor at Abundant Life Ministries.
A family friend who helped discover the sex-trafficking ring,
FBI agents, and Butler also testified on Tuesday….” (The Blade,
03/26/19)
Disgraced guru, 51, convicted of murdering journalist who
exposed rampant sexual abuse
“An Indian court Friday convicted a disgraced but still-powerful
religious sect leader of murdering a journalist after he exposed
rampant sexual abuses by the guru. Gurmeet Ram Rahim
Singh, who headed the powerful Dera Sacha Sauda sect with
millions of followers worldwide, is already serving a 20-year
prison sentence for rape. The court on Friday found 51-year-
old Singh and three of his close aides guilty of killing local
newspaper journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati in 2002. ...
Since 2015, Singh has also been on trial for castrating 400 of
his followers, who alleged that they were promised spiritual
gains….” (The Daily Mail, AFP, 01/11/19)
A secret database of child abuse
“In March 1997, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the
nonprofit organization that oversees the Jehovah’s Witnesses,
sent a letter to each of its 10,883 U.S. congregations, and
to many more congregations worldwide. The organization
was concerned about the legal risk posed by possible child
molesters within its ranks. The letter laid out instructions
on how to deal with a known predator: Write a detailed
report answering 12 questions—[including] Was this a
onetime occurrence, or did the accused have a history of
child molestation? How is the accused viewed within the
community? Does anyone else know about the abuse?—and
mail it to Watchtower’s headquarters in a special blue envelope.
Keep a copy of the report in your congregation’s confidential
file, the instructions continued, and do not share it with anyone.
Thus did the Jehovah’s Witnesses build what might be the
world’s largest database of undocumented child molesters:
at least two decades’ worth of names and addresses—likely
numbering in the tens of thousands—and detailed acts of
alleged abuse, most of which have never been shared with
law enforcement, all scanned and searchable in a Microsoft
SharePoint file. In recent decades, much of the world’s attention
to allegations of abuse has focused on the Catholic Church and
other religious groups. Less notice has been paid to the abuse
among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian sect with more than
8.5 million members. Yet all this time, Watchtower has refused
to comply with multiple court orders to release the information
contained in its database and has paid millions of dollars over
the years to keep it secret, even from the survivors whose
stories are contained within….” (The Atlantic, 04/05/19)
Judge rules Jehovah’s Witness who posted criticisms on
Reddit can remain anonymous
“A Jehovah’s Witness whose online postings were intended
to stir debate about the religion’s practices fears that he, or
she, would be excommunicated and shunned by friends and
family members if named publicly. A federal magistrate in San
SPECIAL REPORTS
Note:
References for specific sources cited in Special Reports are
available at icsahome.com/elibrary/icsatoday/references
Report From Poland
Poitr T. Nowakowski
On July 13, 2019, Agnieszka Huf published on the Catholic
portal Aleteia an article titled Sekty werbują nawet na
pielgrzymkach! Warto znać ich strategie (“Cults recruit even on
pilgrimages! It is worth knowing their strategies”). The author,
Agnieszka Huf, describes methods of recruitment used by cults,
methods of mind control, and in the last paragraph focuses on
the issue of the preventive potential of healthy relationships
within the family. “A child who grows up believing that he can
talk to his parents about any problem and will not be ridiculed,
criticized or ignored will probably share with them the
information that he met new, interesting people. Such parents
will have time for talks with their child and possible [preventive]
actions before the relationship with the group becomes too
strong,” writes Huf.
Report From Spain and Latin America
Luis Santamaría
Translated by Erika Toren and John Paul Lennon
Training on Cults
The Omar Ibargoyen Paiva Foundation in conjunction with
members of the Spanish-American Network for Cultic Studies
(RIES) in Uruguay, organized a training course on the cult
phenomenon from April to May of 2019 in their Montevideo
office. During the five-session course, Alvaro Farias and Miguel
Pastorino shared information on this topic.
On July 4 and 5 of this year, the Spanish National Police
Academy and the Universidad Catolica in Avila, during the
Summer Campus II on Public Safety and National Defense (the
Chair of Police Studies), presented a course entitled “Spanish
Cults: Understand to Respond,” taught by two members of RIES,
Luis Santamaria and Vicente Jara.
Between August and December, the Faculty of Theology at the
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile offered a
course called “Cults and Concerning Topics: The Magic Boom
and Esoterics in Modern Society.” This course is part of basic
training under the direction of Juan Daniel Escobar Soriano, a
member of RIES.
Christian-Based Groups
In March, The Seventh Chamber of the Santiago (Chile) Court
of Appeals authorized the San Jose Hospital to perform all
necessary treatments, including blood transfusions, in order
to protect the life and health of a minor who was born on
February 28 with respiratory problems, anemia, and serious
brain hemorrhage the child’s parents were opposed to the
process because of their beliefs as Jehovah’s Witnesses. n
NEWS SUMMARIES
Aum Shinrikyo spinoff group Aleph ordered to pay 1.03
billion-yen bill to victims
“The Tokyo District Court has ordered Aleph, a spinoff group
of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, to pay over one billion
yen in compensation to victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin
attack that killed 13 people and injured thousands, as well as
victims of other crimes committed by cult members in the
1980s and 1990s. Shizue Takahashi, 72, who lost her husband
in the March 20, 1995 sarin gas attack, told a press conference
Wednesday: ‘I hope that Aleph adheres to the court’s ruling and
begins proceeding with the payments. People are still suffering
the effects of their crimes.’ The victims group filed a damage
suit after Aleph failed to pay 1.03 billion yen in compensation
as ordered by the court in 2009, Fuji TV reported. The court
ordered Aleph to pay this amount in full and cease stalling….”
(Japan Today, 04/11/19)
Pope Francis accepts the resignation of Cardinal Ezzati of
Chile, accused of abuse cover-up
“Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal
Ricardo Ezzati, the archbishop of Santiago, Chile, the Vatican
announced on March 23. He has appointed a Spanish born
Capuchin friar, Bishop Celestino Aós Braco of Copiapo, as
apostolic administrator of the archdiocese, the Vatican stated.
The pope’s decision came hours after the eight judges in an
appeals’ court in the Chilean capital yesterday unanimously
rejected the request of the cardinal’s lawyers to dismiss the
charges of cover-up in cases of abuse of minors by three
clerics in the archdiocese. The cases relate to the abuse of
minors by the former chancellor of the archdiocese, the
Rev. Oscar Muñoz the Marist brother, Jorge Laplagne
and a former assistant in the cathedral, the Rev. Tito Rivera.
It seems that much of the evidence that had led to the
cardinal’s incrimination came from documents obtained by
the prosecutor, Emiliano Arias, when he ordered a raid on the
archdiocesan offices last year. Last July, the cardinal opted
for silence when asked to give testimony before a public
prosecutor….” (America, The Jesuit Review, 03/23/19)
Chinese Christians find religious freedom in Kenya amidst
Communist Party’s war on religion
“Every Sunday morning in an affluent suburb of Nairobi, Kenya,
the soaring song of Chinese hymns fills the empty corridors
of a Monday-to-Friday office block. Inside a small makeshift
News Desk
chapel, a kaleidoscopic congregation of Chinese migrants
gather to pray. Among them are underwear importers, health
workers and operators of the controversial new $3.8 billion
Chinese-built railway that slices through Kenya, the country’s
biggest infrastructure project since independence—and a sign
of China’s growing investment and footprint on the continent.
Some have married Kenyans, others have Chinese children
who speak Swahili as well as they do Mandarin. But they all
share two things. Each person here has re-rooted their life from
Communist China to Kenya, a leading African economy where
80% of the nearly 50 million people are Christian. And they
have all decided to openly embrace God….” (CNN, 04/28/19)
After 14 years, legal battle over FLDS Church’s land is finally
over
“One of the longest running court cases in state history
involving Utah’s largest polygamous church has ended. A judge
on Tuesday ended court oversight of the Fundamentalist
LDS Church’s United Effort Plan [UEP] Trust after 14 years.
Dozens of FLDS members, wearing their traditional prairie-style
dresses and long-sleeved shirts, packed the courtroom to hear
his ruling. ’Things are operating the way I had hoped it to,’ 3rd
District Court Judge Richard McKelvie said. ‘It was never my
intent to be the de facto mayor of Short Creek.’ The UEP Trust
controls homes, businesses and property in the border towns of
Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. (and some in Canada). Its
assets are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Originally created under the early-Mormon concept of a ‘united
order,’ where members consecrate what they have to the church
and it’s doled out according to wants and needs, the UEP Trust
oversaw everything with a network of storehouses, homes
and properties. But in 2005, the Utah Attorney General’s Office
asked the courts to take over the UEP. They alleged FLDS leader
Warren Jeffs and others within the church were mismanaging
it and using what was meant for members for their own gains.
Jeffs, at the time a fugitive, instructed his followers to ignore
court orders. Over time, the trust was reformed by judges who
implemented a board (made up of mostly ex-FLDS members) to
subdivide property, carving out the religious intent of the UEP.
After 14 years, Judge McKelvie argued, it was time to end court
oversight….” (Fox 13, 06/18/19)
Victim claims “father figure” Haynes manipulated her in
sex-trafficking case
“A woman who prosecutors say is the victim in a sex-trafficking
ring involving three pastors testified Tuesday that the man
who vowed to protect her abused her instead. Now 19, the
woman took the stand in the case against former Greater Life
Christian Center pastor Anthony Haynes, 40, who is charged
with child-sex trafficking. The Blade does not identify victims
of sexual assault. On Tuesday, she outlined before a judge and
jury in U.S. District Court in Toledo how her relationship with
Mr. Haynes quickly grew manipulative and how she became
involved with other pastors—Kenneth Butler, previously of
the Detroit-based Kingdom Encounter Family Worship Center,
and Cordell Jenkins, former pastor at Abundant Life Ministries.
A family friend who helped discover the sex-trafficking ring,
FBI agents, and Butler also testified on Tuesday….” (The Blade,
03/26/19)
Disgraced guru, 51, convicted of murdering journalist who
exposed rampant sexual abuse
“An Indian court Friday convicted a disgraced but still-powerful
religious sect leader of murdering a journalist after he exposed
rampant sexual abuses by the guru. Gurmeet Ram Rahim
Singh, who headed the powerful Dera Sacha Sauda sect with
millions of followers worldwide, is already serving a 20-year
prison sentence for rape. The court on Friday found 51-year-
old Singh and three of his close aides guilty of killing local
newspaper journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati in 2002. ...
Since 2015, Singh has also been on trial for castrating 400 of
his followers, who alleged that they were promised spiritual
gains….” (The Daily Mail, AFP, 01/11/19)
A secret database of child abuse
“In March 1997, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the
nonprofit organization that oversees the Jehovah’s Witnesses,
sent a letter to each of its 10,883 U.S. congregations, and
to many more congregations worldwide. The organization
was concerned about the legal risk posed by possible child
molesters within its ranks. The letter laid out instructions
on how to deal with a known predator: Write a detailed
report answering 12 questions—[including] Was this a
onetime occurrence, or did the accused have a history of
child molestation? How is the accused viewed within the
community? Does anyone else know about the abuse?—and
mail it to Watchtower’s headquarters in a special blue envelope.
Keep a copy of the report in your congregation’s confidential
file, the instructions continued, and do not share it with anyone.
Thus did the Jehovah’s Witnesses build what might be the
world’s largest database of undocumented child molesters:
at least two decades’ worth of names and addresses—likely
numbering in the tens of thousands—and detailed acts of
alleged abuse, most of which have never been shared with
law enforcement, all scanned and searchable in a Microsoft
SharePoint file. In recent decades, much of the world’s attention
to allegations of abuse has focused on the Catholic Church and
other religious groups. Less notice has been paid to the abuse
among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian sect with more than
8.5 million members. Yet all this time, Watchtower has refused
to comply with multiple court orders to release the information
contained in its database and has paid millions of dollars over
the years to keep it secret, even from the survivors whose
stories are contained within….” (The Atlantic, 04/05/19)
Judge rules Jehovah’s Witness who posted criticisms on
Reddit can remain anonymous
“A Jehovah’s Witness whose online postings were intended
to stir debate about the religion’s practices fears that he, or
she, would be excommunicated and shunned by friends and
family members if named publicly. A federal magistrate in San
SPECIAL REPORTS
Note:
References for specific sources cited in Special Reports are
available at icsahome.com/elibrary/icsatoday/references
Report From Poland
Poitr T. Nowakowski
On July 13, 2019, Agnieszka Huf published on the Catholic
portal Aleteia an article titled Sekty werbują nawet na
pielgrzymkach! Warto znać ich strategie (“Cults recruit even on
pilgrimages! It is worth knowing their strategies”). The author,
Agnieszka Huf, describes methods of recruitment used by cults,
methods of mind control, and in the last paragraph focuses on
the issue of the preventive potential of healthy relationships
within the family. “A child who grows up believing that he can
talk to his parents about any problem and will not be ridiculed,
criticized or ignored will probably share with them the
information that he met new, interesting people. Such parents
will have time for talks with their child and possible [preventive]
actions before the relationship with the group becomes too
strong,” writes Huf.
Report From Spain and Latin America
Luis Santamaría
Translated by Erika Toren and John Paul Lennon
Training on Cults
The Omar Ibargoyen Paiva Foundation in conjunction with
members of the Spanish-American Network for Cultic Studies
(RIES) in Uruguay, organized a training course on the cult
phenomenon from April to May of 2019 in their Montevideo
office. During the five-session course, Alvaro Farias and Miguel
Pastorino shared information on this topic.
On July 4 and 5 of this year, the Spanish National Police
Academy and the Universidad Catolica in Avila, during the
Summer Campus II on Public Safety and National Defense (the
Chair of Police Studies), presented a course entitled “Spanish
Cults: Understand to Respond,” taught by two members of RIES,
Luis Santamaria and Vicente Jara.
Between August and December, the Faculty of Theology at the
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile offered a
course called “Cults and Concerning Topics: The Magic Boom
and Esoterics in Modern Society.” This course is part of basic
training under the direction of Juan Daniel Escobar Soriano, a
member of RIES.
Christian-Based Groups
In March, The Seventh Chamber of the Santiago (Chile) Court
of Appeals authorized the San Jose Hospital to perform all
necessary treatments, including blood transfusions, in order
to protect the life and health of a minor who was born on
February 28 with respiratory problems, anemia, and serious
brain hemorrhage the child’s parents were opposed to the
process because of their beliefs as Jehovah’s Witnesses. n
NEWS SUMMARIES
Aum Shinrikyo spinoff group Aleph ordered to pay 1.03
billion-yen bill to victims
“The Tokyo District Court has ordered Aleph, a spinoff group
of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, to pay over one billion
yen in compensation to victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin
attack that killed 13 people and injured thousands, as well as
victims of other crimes committed by cult members in the
1980s and 1990s. Shizue Takahashi, 72, who lost her husband
in the March 20, 1995 sarin gas attack, told a press conference
Wednesday: ‘I hope that Aleph adheres to the court’s ruling and
begins proceeding with the payments. People are still suffering
the effects of their crimes.’ The victims group filed a damage
suit after Aleph failed to pay 1.03 billion yen in compensation
as ordered by the court in 2009, Fuji TV reported. The court
ordered Aleph to pay this amount in full and cease stalling….”
(Japan Today, 04/11/19)
Pope Francis accepts the resignation of Cardinal Ezzati of
Chile, accused of abuse cover-up
“Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal
Ricardo Ezzati, the archbishop of Santiago, Chile, the Vatican
announced on March 23. He has appointed a Spanish born
Capuchin friar, Bishop Celestino Aós Braco of Copiapo, as
apostolic administrator of the archdiocese, the Vatican stated.
The pope’s decision came hours after the eight judges in an
appeals’ court in the Chilean capital yesterday unanimously
rejected the request of the cardinal’s lawyers to dismiss the
charges of cover-up in cases of abuse of minors by three
clerics in the archdiocese. The cases relate to the abuse of
minors by the former chancellor of the archdiocese, the
Rev. Oscar Muñoz the Marist brother, Jorge Laplagne
and a former assistant in the cathedral, the Rev. Tito Rivera.
It seems that much of the evidence that had led to the
cardinal’s incrimination came from documents obtained by
the prosecutor, Emiliano Arias, when he ordered a raid on the
archdiocesan offices last year. Last July, the cardinal opted
for silence when asked to give testimony before a public
prosecutor….” (America, The Jesuit Review, 03/23/19)
Chinese Christians find religious freedom in Kenya amidst
Communist Party’s war on religion
“Every Sunday morning in an affluent suburb of Nairobi, Kenya,
the soaring song of Chinese hymns fills the empty corridors
of a Monday-to-Friday office block. Inside a small makeshift
News Desk
