Danish evangelical Christian cult accused of abusing children

Snips & Bytes from Denmark: (blog)

August 27, 2008

Our Father's House

by Bent Lorentzen

Newspaper headline translation: Keeps Children Like Slaves: The Cult Behind the Youth House Brainwashes its members

Last year I wrote a couple of articles that revealed the reasons for the Copenhagen youth protests that grew into riots for a week in March, 2007. In those articles, as well as describing Faderhuset (translated: Our Father's House) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faderhuset as a potentially dangerous cult, I described the history to the house on 69 Jagtvej (Hunter's Road) in the Nørrebro district of the city. The now-demolished 4-story building once housed the office of one of Denmark's most influential workers union at the turn of the 19^th century. It was also the site where the International Woman's Day was first launched for the world just prior to WW I.

blog image of Ruth Evensen with Copenhagen mayor, Ritt Bjerregaard, with demolished Youthhouse in background

In an odd unwinding of history, the woman who leveraged the house away from its residents decades after it had been given to a youth group by a former mayor of Copenhagen, Christian Evangelical cult leader, Ruth Evensen, is coming under fire from her own daughter. In an interview on national Danish TV today (TV-2: August 27, 2008) her daughter, Sophie, suggests that police now ought to investigate her mother's Fadershuset cult for perhaps planning a mass suicide, or at least that its children are being seriously abused. In the surprise interview, where she has just returned to Denmark from her American home with her husband, Sophie stated that she saw the very same tattletale turning brother on sister type of torture being implemented in the American evangelical Christian church as with the Danish one she grew up under as the daughter to its cult's leader. “Whatever mom says has to be taken as the word of God,” stated Sophie. “No one but no one must argue with her... I'm really worried about a mass suicide... because suffering into death like the tortured saints is hammered into everyone there."

It was worse than just tattletaling on one another, if for example one parent's child had worn clothing not prescribed by my Mom, stated Sophie in Danish. It was where if a little baby that didn't behave the way some would want, the infant was subjected to horrific screaming, “so as to drive away Satan.”

Sophie Evensen, with husband Edwin Ogenio

In recent months, according to Danish investigative media, the evangelical Christian cult – which gets its home-schooling material from the anti-natural sciences, Tennessee-based ACE, Accelerated Christian Education - has withdrawn all its children from all previous involvements with public schools and child care. “That is how the church controls people; by isolating the children,” stated Sophie, who just published the autobiography, Afsløring (Revelation).

“I'm not out to get my mom,” stated Sophie to one of Denmark's most read dailies, Jyllands-Posten. I believe that this is a dangerous cult which leaves many damaged people in its wake.”

This is potentially a hot potato for Copenhagen mayor, Ritt Bjerregaard, who okayed the sale of the property last year, to the cult, which then resulted in the youth riots. At first, Ruth Evensen stated that Faderhuset would create a place on the property that would contribute to the community, but once the protests died down, she immediately tried selling the property. As of now, the value of the property has fallen sharply, Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard has given the youth another clubhouse, and all but a handful of the hundreds of protesters arrested last year have been given monetary compensation by the State's Attorney for false arrest by the police.

Sophie is married to Edwin Ogenio, who himself does not come without controversy. He has been accused of playing a central role in a cult in the Netherlands, called God's Pleasure, while also being lead singer to a heavy metal group. Edwin has been rumored by several sources to have been involved in that cult's sexual abuse of minor girls, and that when he left the Utrecht, Netherlands cult to America when his power abuse and extortions were challenged, his rooms were filled with pornographic material. In the past several years, Edwin Ogenio has stated that he has an apostolic prophetic calling, mostly among New York City's fashion and designer World. Though the book suggests that he and Sophie have travelled extensively across the US, some sources suggest that they keep reinventing themselves on the heels of some rumor, for example, in San Diego.

Edwin rebuts these rumors with: "I would love to set the record straight when it comes to allegations directed to my person posted by some of you. About 17 years ago God called me to start a ministry among young people in Holland. The name we gave it was God’s Pleasure...

...During this process I acknowledge that I and my staff have made mistakes, partially also due to our inexperience and lack of wisdom in how to administrate and balance the right care and help for so many diverse people and therefore have hurt some of them. At that time a great majority of the Dutch religious Christian establishment didn’t particularly approve of the way we were reaching out with the Gospel using tools like heavy metal music and radical preaching. In 1994 God called me to go to Houston, Texas and I told my staff at the time that I wanted to resign. They felt it wasn’t the time. But after all I believe it was me sinning against God by not obeying his call to resign and leave for the US. Right after two girls came to the ministry and wanted to be admitted to the girls-houses. I didn’t have peace about that but was weak enough to be persuaded...

...The mother of one of these girls started a big media persecution against me and we suffered greatly for that. Later we found out that this lady was well known among Christian leaders and was clearly controlled by the Jezebel spirit, also persecuting several other churches. Taking these girls in also ultimately led to my wife at that time falling in sexual sin with one of the girls... It was obvious that the Devil was doing whatever he could to discredit and destroy me...."

(well, Edwin Ogenio's justifications keep piling -BL)

It is not an unusual phenomenon for the children of cults to themselves take the cultish mentality they despised, go against it, only to reinvent them for themselves so as to give meaning to their world view. But even if this is the case with the daughter and her husband, that does not change the fact that Faderhuset and its USA evangelical ties need now to be seriously looked at by the police and social services. Ruth Evensen has frequently stated that she has been grateful for the American evangelical movement's influence in Denmark. Last year, the cult's charismatic leader founded the Freedom political Party, with making abortions illegal as its central platform.

Psychothrapy, often with peer who themselves have been in the same boat, can lead a full life without the intensely religious, controlling guilts that often accompany such childhood experiences.

This article was found at:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=
281474977431748