VOLUME 4 |NUMBER 2 |2013 27
News Desk
John Mouhalos, who in 2010 broke his
2-year bond for aggravated assault and
firearms charges, in April became the
first member of Rocco Leo’s now
dissolved Agape Ministries’ doomsday
cult to be taken into custody. Leo and
the rest of his inner circle fled to Fiji,
refusing to return to Adelaide to face
criminal charges and civil law suits. The
Australian taxation office stripped Agape
of its tax-exempt status as a religion and
demanded $4 million in back taxes.
(Australian, 4/15/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
While the now-jailed Tony Alamo was
still running his organization,
Christhiaon [sic] Cole told how he, still a
teenager, and his mother, both on hard
times, met Alamo at a restaurant bar,
wondering who would have the
cash to pay for [the beer]. She
moved him in, and that’s how his
‘Foundation’ started. I will never
forgive myself for helping them
put this together. All it was
supposed to do was give them an
income—not elect them king and
queen of the world. So why would
I say what I’m saying now? Because
you are about to give up your
children for a huge lie... Little girls
...are not brides. They are babies
being raped by perverted thugs
hiding behind the Bible. Little boys
are not men who have committed
crimes, to be held down and
beaten bloody... If you are one of
the kids, and you read this... you
think that you are all alone ...that
...you must have done something
to deserve this. That also is not
true. The truth is that you will be
found and there are people who
care about you.
(alamofoundation@csj.org, 2/16/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
An attorney for the jailed Tony Alamo
has told a judge that property in Fort
Smith, Arkansas, should not be
auctioned off to satisfy a $30 million
judgment against the former evangelist
because it belongs to his ministry and
not to him. The lawyer for the former
Alamo followers who have sued him
says, “That’s just a new angle to avoid
paying his creditors.” (Arkansas
Democrat Gazette, 4/3/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The Tokyo District Court has ordered the
Metropolitan Government to pay
damages and apologize to Aleph,
previously known as Aum Shinrikyo, for
releasing an investigative report in 2010
suggesting that the organization was
behind a 1995 attempt to murder the
national police chief. But the court
refused to order the chief of the time to
pay damages and apologize. Aum
founder Shoko Asahara remains on
death row. (Japan Times, 1/16/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Samuel Mullet, Sr., the Amish leader
who led hair- and beard-cutting attacks
on fellow Amish in Ohio, has been
sentenced in Cleveland to 15 years in
prison. Fifteen of his followers were
sentenced to terms ranging from 1 year
to 7 years. The government said the
attacks, which it defined as hate crimes,
were retaliation against Amish who
defied or denounced Mullet’s
authoritarian style. Mullet and his family
emphatically denied that their
community is a cult. (Washington Post,
2/8/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Vassarion Christ, who says, “I am Jesus
Christ,” leads a community of some 4,500
mostly Russians, many with professional
backgrounds, who reside in several
villages in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region.
The members live ascetically, obey the
leader’s every instruction, and wait for
the apocalypse that he has predicted.
Vassarion is one of a number of popular
religious figures who have drawn
numerous followers to Siberia and from
within the vast territory in recent years.
Former followers, organized as Shamans
of the Last Testament, accuse Vassarion
and his priests of living in luxury while
his people live in relative poverty. Says
the Russian Orthodox Church’s
Alexander Dwokin, “If tomorrow Torop
[Vassarion’s birth name] tells his
followers to go and kill themselves, they
will.”Then there is Vladimir Sobolev,
head of a neopagan cult, who says he’s
the reincarnation of Confucius. There are
also numerous apparently unconnected
groups of people who worship the
Siberian goddess Anastasia, a naked
blonde deity. Her legend has in the past
few years inspired thousands of Russians
disillusioned with government and
urban society and the vacuum of values
to join a new-age, back-to-the-land
movement. Whereas foreign religions
such as Scientology, Mormonism, and
Jehovah’s Witnesses drew membership
in the early post-Soviet era, the new,
millennial groups have more appeal
today. Pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov
says, “Feeling spiritually hungry, people
create their own tiny islands of survival.”
Prime Minister Medvedyev indicated
government concern when he said, on
the eve of the Mayan calendar’s
predicted date of the Apocalypse, “I do
not believe in the end of the world, at
least not this year.” Leaders of some of
these cults have been convicted or
accused of crimes: Konstantin Rudnev,
convicted of sexually abusing 15
followers and followers of Primorye
Partisans, a violent back-to-the-woods
group outside Vladivostok, accused of
killing two police officers. (Newsweek,
12/17/12)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Konstantin Rudnev, leader of the
Ashram Shambala in Novosibirsk,
Siberia, has been convicted in a closed
trial of rape, drug trafficking, sexual
assault, and “creating an organization
that infringes on people’s personality
rights.” He is said to have talked converts
out of their personal property in
exchange for esoteric and occultist
teachings and the opportunity to “clean
their energy channels” in mystical rituals.
Shambala, founded in the 1980s, grew
to number 20,000 at ashrams across
Russia. Followers, some of whom
thought they were signing up for yoga
classes, were urged to use drugs take
part in orgies centered on Rudnev reject
conventional lifestyles of work, study,
and children sell their apartments and
cars give him their cash and break with
their relatives. Originally arrested in
1999, Rudnev escaped from a psychiatric
26 ICSA TODAY
REPORT FROM France
Guillaume Garih
More people rely every day on Web-
based searches to find information
about their health or that of their loved
ones. The French senatorial commission
investigating cultic organizations’
influence in the domain of health
released a report that sheds light on
alarming issues associated with this
kind of Internet searches. The report
points out that a lot of readily available
information criticizes modern medicine
and teases interest for nonconventional
forms of therapies. Furthermore, search
engines such as Google do not
systematically list results objectively,
nor do they censor bogus sources of
information. The report goes on to
recommend the use of technical
strategies for governmental
organizations to enhance their Web
sites’ ranks. Ultimately, the report
advises that all Web-based searches
related to nonconventional forms of
therapies should lead to governmental
Web sites that provide objective
information.
In February, Luxembourg passed an
anticult law very similar to that of
France and Belgium. The word cult is
not employed in the text, but the law
criminalizes the “abuse of a person’s
weakness. The law’s stated purpose is
to reinforce prevention and repression
of cultic groups. There are no other
such laws at a European level. In fact, it
could be said that Europe as a whole is
going in the opposite direction since a
recent decision from the European
Court of Human Rights has mandated
that France pay 4 million euros in
damages for violation of freedom of
religion. This sanction was imposed on
the basis of France’s refusal to grant tax
privileges to religious organizations that
it did not recognize as such.
REPORT FROM Spain and
Latin America
Luis Santamaria and Erika Toren
Just last March, Vita Brevis published the
book, The Jehovah’s Witness: A Guide for
Catholics, written by a deceased Catholic
priest named Teodoro García González.
The book is the first in a collection by
the Red Iberoamericana de Estudio de las
Sectas (RIES) [Latin American Network
for the Study of Sects].
On the 21st of March, a federal judge in
Puerto Rico ordered all local districts in
his country to help Jehovah’s Witnesses
access closed subdivisions. According to
the order, each subdivision should give
the group a key, door code, or beeper so
it can access restricted houses. This
measure has generated a great uprising
among citizens, but there will be
sanctions against those who do not
follow the new regulations.
A 74-year-old female retired doctor who
had been hit by a bus on the 27th of
March died on the 31st in the Hospital
de Urgencias de Córdoba (Argentina)
alter she refused a blood transfusion
because she was a Jehovah’s Witness.
According to the Law of Patient’s Rights,
the hospital had to follow her wishes.
A judge in Granada (Spain) decreed in
March that the file is open against the
guru Antonio Javier Ruiz Plazas, leader of
Vaidika Partisana Sangha (also known as
Yoga House). The guru’s attorney
discredited some of the witnesses’
statements when they accused him of
manipulative psychology, slavery, and
sexual abuse. The witnesses have since
presented two complaints against the
judicial decision—one promoted by the
mother of a victim and another
presented by RedUne, a national
association against sectarian
manipulation.
On January 25th, 2013, the National
Institute of Migration in Mexico
detained more than twenty leaders and
members of Defenders of Christ,
including some minors, on charges
related to immigration laws. This group
mixes Christian elements with New Age
doctrine. Their leader, a Spaniard
named Ignacio González de Arriba, says
he is Jesus Christ reincarnate he offers
courses, healing miracles, and
opportunities for personal
improvement. According to accusations
by former followers, González exploits
the women, converting them to sex
slaves and requiring their participation
in prostitution.
The media in Mexio brought to light in
February that the Human Rights
Commission in the state of Morelos
(Mexico) was holding workshops on
“Meditation for Peace” for soldiers of
Isha Judd, a well-known Guru accused
of mental manipulation of his followers.
In Uruguay and Argentina, there have
already been court cases against Isha
and his healing and illumination
courses. ■
Correspondents’ Reports
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VOLUME 4 |NUMBER 2 |2013 29 28 ICSA TODAY
hospital after having been sent there for
evaluation. He was detained again in
2005, but followers refused to give
evidence against him. When he was
arrested again, in 2010, 15 devotees
decided to speak out. He has been
sentenced to 11 years in a high-security
prison and ordered to pay £80,000
compensation to victims. The money will
come from selling his eight cars and two
houses, which the state has confiscated.
He says he’ll appeal. (Telegraph, 2/8/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Forensic anthropologists from the
University of South Florida are searching
the burial ground of the Arthur G.
Dozier School for Boys, an organization
notorious for brutal beatings, forced
labor, neglect, and deaths from the time
it opened in 1900 to when it closed in
2011. The effort was spurred in part by
parents and relatives of young people
who died at the facility over the
decades, and by former students who
have come forward to tell how they
suffered at the school. The families of
the dead want to know exactly where
their children are buried in the
graveyard, how they died, and whether
their deaths were accidental or
intentional. Some want the bodies
brought home. A 2008 State
investigation neither refuted nor
substantiated the abuse charges the
families called this outcome a
whitewash. Florida Senator Bill Nelson
now urges the Justice Department to
get involved: “I want to see if potential
crimes were committed.” (The New York
Times, 2/9/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Sarah Baughn is suing hot Yoga pioneer
Bikram Choudhury for sex-based
discrimination and sexual harassment.
She says she was denied the judge-
determined title “International
Champion” in 2008 because she refused
to submit to Choudhury’s “repeated
demands for sex,” and because she
successfully fought him off when he
sexually assaulted her. Baughn’s lawyer
says Choudhury, who founded the
widely popular Bikram Yoga in 1976,
used the yoga stardom he subsequently
achieved to exploit young women.
“These girls are young ...he seems to
have a hold over them that’s not unlike
what you see in some of the religious
cases. They see him as some spiritual
leader, and there’s a control that
happens.” (ABC News, 3/22/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
LaRhonda Renee Smith has pleaded
guilty to taking part in two 2010
murders that allegedly involved a black-
supremacist group led by Peter Moses,
who is said to have been guided by the
tenets of the Black Hebrews. Smith was
sentenced to between 23 years and 29
years in prison. Prosecutors said she
helped cover up Moses’ murders in 2010
of a child and an adult he suspected
were homosexuals. (News &Observer,
2/18/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Three devotees of senior guru
Gyaneshwar, of Chouli Monastery, in
southern India, committed suicide in
April so they could “join” the guru, who
had killed himself 2 months earlier.
Understanding that intrigue can be rife
at Hindu monasteries, where great
wealth and property assets sometimes
lead to deadly disputes, a local police
representative said Gyaneshwar ended
his life because of “attempts by real
estate agents to usurp the monastery’s
property in connivance with some
monastery disciples who wanted a share
of the deal.” (NDTV, 4/8/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
A Chilean judge has ordered the arrest
of eight former police and army officers
in connection with the 1985 kidnapping
of Princeton University hiker Boris
Weisfeiler. They allegedly took him to a
secret police-torture center at Colonia
Dignidad, the German enclave founded
by an ex-Nazi nurse, the late Paul
Schaefer, where, according to witnesses,
Weisfeiler was tortured and executed. It
is believed that his abductors thought
he was working for antigovernment
militants because he was wearing
military garb. Schaefer’s close links to
Chile’s rulers allowed his colony to
operate with impunity as a “state within
a state,” rife with child abuse and other
crimes, according to a Chliean
congressional report. (BBC News,
8/22/12)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The multiracial North Christian Church
in Johannesburg—like the Grace Gospel
Church, in Durban, an affiliate of the
Mauritius-based Church Team Ministries
International (CTMI), is allegedly
involved in rape, the surgical sterilization
of congregants, and arranged marriages.
CTMI was founded by Miki and Audrey
Hardy, who live on Mauritius in what a
former follower calls a “palatial estate,
with tennis courts, stables, an affinity
pool, and a hill behind the house stocked
with deer for hunting” built mostly by
artisans who belong to the church, some
of whom worked “out of love” and for no
pay. Research provides evidence to
allege that CTMI brainwashes educated
young people and encourages them to
abandon their families and studies and
move to Mauritius. Yet a series of 2009
interviews found “young, spirited people
desperate to defend the church against
mind control allegations.”“The church
saved my life,” several claimed, and
church leaders, described by members
as “polite, and even warm towards me,”
firmly denied the allegations. It was clear
that many members had not had any
damaging experiences. When reporter
Victoria John went to Durban late last
year and called the local leader to
arrange a meeting, he said, “Are you
married, Victoria? No? Do you have a
boyfriend? If you are not prepared to
answer these questions, then how can
you ask us such personal questions
about our lives? You need to question
your own heart.”Yet descriptions of life
in CTMI churches mirror, in excruciating
detail, the life-controlling features of
what we have come to call cults. CTMI
claims to have 1,000 churches, mainly in
Africa, but also in the United Kingdom
and the United States. (Mail and
Guardian, 12/21/12)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Mexican authorities in January broke up
the Defenders of Christ, a small cult
near Nuevo Laredo led by Spaniard
Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba, who says
he’s the reincarnation of Christ. The
action followed allegations that children
in the group, consisting of 14 foreigners
and 20 Mexicans, were forced into sex.
The possibility of human trafficking is
also being investigated. The National
Migration Institute said that all of the
foreign members of the group were
forced to work and tithe. The Support
Network for Sect Victims identified
Gonzalez’ deputy as Jose Arena Lozanger
of Venezuela. The Network says Gonzalez
forced women into prostitution, forbade
followers to bathe, and made them eat
raw animal parts such as heart, liver, and
tripe. According to the Support Network,
followers were indoctrinated through
hours of viewing videos of Gonzalez’
teachings. Men were encouraged to take
several wives, and women were forced to
take part in orgies. Members who
wanted to become “apostles,” with
privileges, had to pay as much as
$100,000. A former member said, “They
broke you down, punished you by not
letting you eat, and denigrated you.” (IOL
News, 1/31/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
“Olivia” tells how she was “forced into
extortion, mental torture, and sexual
depravity ...as one of thousands of
Mexican victims of the international
Defenders of Christ cult, led by Spaniard
Ignacio Gozalez de Arriba, who claims
to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
The sect attracts followers by offering
classes in “bio-programming” and other
pseudoscientific health care modes. The
classes, suggested by Olivia’s husband, at
first helped her deal with her depression
but when she was hired as an assistant
following completion of the third level of
the course, she says she began to suffer
psychological violence when her pay
was withheld for the slightest mistake.
Soon, she had to tithe once a week, then
every day, and “they made us believe
Ignacio was the master, a great being of
light. They wanted to establish the
Defenders of Christ as a religion, but in
Mexico it could not have been possible
because Ignacio is a foreigner. She said
that Gonzalez de Arriba, who discoursed
on polygamy, believed that women’s
bisexuality was good, and that the
apostles (followers) could each have
seven women—but that he could have
up to 10. He spoke of supernatural
power and magic, “catalyzed by sex.” She
recalled, “They told us that we should
have sex with women.”When Gonzalez
de Arriba said he had a heart condition
and was losing his power, “I had to go
out to the bars and clubs to find
prostitutes, seduce them, and take them
to Ignacio” for sex. “I lost my dignity and
my family fell apart.” (Metró, 2/21/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The Utah Supreme Court has cleared the
way for the state to break up the real-
estate trust, now held in receivership, of
the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). The
court rejected an appeal from certain
FLDS members who were trying to block
the sale of an FLDS farm, ruling that the
appellants had no standing to challenge
the sale because they don’t own the
farm as individuals. The court ruled
previously that the FLDS could not stop
the takeover of $100 million in church
assets. Meanwhile, a 5th District Court
judge in St. George allowed a former
FLDS member to occupy 20 acres of land
he originally donated to the church. The
receiver actually sold the land to the
ex-member two and a half years ago, but
local authorities [controlled by the FLDS]
initially refused to give him water or
electric service. (Deseret News, 1/29/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Although the Supreme Court of British
Columbia has upheld the constitutionality
of the law criminalizing polygamy,
religious and propolyamory [sic] activists
will still forcefully argue against
criminalization, this despite the studied
disagreement of civil libertarian Craig
Jones, who represented the British
Columbia Department of Justice in the
matter. In his book, A Cruel Arithmetic:
Inside the Case Against Polygamy, Jones
says that in a polygamous society such
as the Bountiful, British Columbia
offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(FLDS), the criminality is inherent in the
closed system. Every time a man takes
an additional wife, another man in the
community is left with no one to marry.
And as the adult females are married off,
younger and younger wives are taken.
This leads to child trafficking, sexual
exploitation of minors, and “lost boys”—
young men who are marginalized and
even expelled from their homes. Jones
believes that the state must take action
not only against “bad” polygamy, which
involves coercion and abuse in
polygamous marriages, but also against
polygamous societies. Those against
criminalization feel that the court’s
decision outlaws all polygamous
relationships rather than just
polygamous relationships that break
other laws on the books, such as statutes
against child abuse. (Canadian Lawyer
Magazine, 1/21/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne is
investigating the possibility that
marshals in Colorado City, Arizona and
adjacent Hilldale, Utah are forcibly
preventing women from escaping the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Horne lost
an attempt in the Arizona Legislature last
year to abolish the Colorado City
Marshal’s Office and replace law
enforcement there with deputies from
the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office. He
allocated funds for limited patrols by
deputies and will soon ask the
legislature to take up the bill again. (ABC
News, 1/23/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Utah Third District Judge Denise
Lindberg has given initial approval for
the creation of a trustees board to
oversee the properties of the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) on the Utah-
Arizona border. But until Utah legislators
pay $5.6 million to the receiver, his
attorneys, and other firms hired to
liquidate the assets of the trust once run
by FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, the process
of deciding how to redistribute the $100
million in property owned by current
and former members remains
gridlocked. Some suggest it will be
difficult to put together an impartial
trustee board since many of the
estimated 7,500 people living in the
towns where the properties lie are
followers of Jeffs, who continues to run
the FLDS from jail. Utah prosecutor
David Wolf said authorities would ensure
that board members are capable of
thinking for themselves, and an attorney
for the trust said that safeguards were in
place to prevent members from blindly
following Jeffs. (AP, 3/5/13)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The dozens of security cameras on the
streets of Hilldale, Utah and Colorado
City, Arizona—towns controlled by
followers of the Fundamentalist Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—are
designed to monitor community
members and keep them loyal to FLDS
leadership, according to former follower
William Jessop, who runs a school in
town for families that have quit the
church. The US Department of Justice
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