Sex cult leader lived in West Virginia

The Charleston Gazette - August 22, 2008

George Feigley released from Pa. prison last week

by Gary Harki | Gazette staff writer

A convicted child rapist and the leader of a sex cult, who led his followers from a compound in West Virginia after escaping from prison in the 1970s, has been released from jail after serving out his sentence.

George Feigley is now 68 years old and living in Harrisburg, Pa., where residents protested his release Aug. 15. But 30 years ago he was a convicted sex cult leader hiding from police on a compound near Grafton.

"If it hadn't been for a parent of one of the children there, they could have operated a long time," said Joe Long, editor of the Mountain Statesman newspaper in Grafton at the time. "We thought they were religious types."

In 1975 Feigley was convicted of raping three girls who were students at a private school affiliated with the Neo American Church, which Feigley ran from his Harrisburg home, according to The Associated Press. At the time, prosecutors called the school a sex cult.

The following July, Feigley escaped the Pennsylvania Correctional Center at Rockview, where he had been serving his 10- to 20-year sentence, according to Gazette reports at the time.

He then set up his Neo American Church at a 100-acre farm in Thornton, Taylor County. He may have had well over 100 followers, according to Gazette reports at the time.

He lived there more than a year, even going before the Taylor County school board - under the alias Dr. Daniel Bamburg and claiming to be a West Virginia University professor - to get approval to open a parochial school, just weeks before he was arrested.

"He was very quiet, very intelligent, very well spoken," said Long, who remembers attending the school board meeting in 1978. "He had religious garments on, robes, skullcaps. ... He came across as very religious."

Long remembers going through the house with investigators after Feigley and his followers left. There were large computers in the basement of the main house and a huge library, he said.

"There were little houses out back and some kind of ritual circle that he had made," Long said. "He had this doomsday theory that was fascinating, that California was going to slide off into the ocean and send a tidal wave from west to east. The spot, the mountain where Thornton is would be safe. He had writings to support it. ... The guy was a genius, a maniacal genius."

Among documents found at the commune were extensive volumes on sex, from biological studies to pornography. Under his alias, Feigley used nationally circulated advertisements to find mates for young women in the cult.

According to reports at the time, Feigley kept two wives and a girl, referred to as his "Nazarene," who helped perform ritual encounters. Followers at the commune referred to him as "The Master."

On Sept. 22, 1978, police searching for Feigley tracked him to the farm in Taylor County and arrested him.

He would not be in jail long. One month later, Feigley convinced James Lee Gilbert, who was serving a six-month sentence for petty larceny, to break him free from jail.

Gilbert returned early from a work release job and pulled a gun on the jailer, then locked up a trustee, bound and gagged the jailer and left with Feigley.

In February 1979, Feigley and Gilbert were arrested at a farm in Tennessee.

Gilbert was convicted of pulling the pistol on the Taylor County guard. While in prison, still apparently under Feigley's control, he demanded special foods and took to wearing a yarmulke, the traditional Jewish skullcap.

Gilbert was released in 1983 after serving his sentence. A few months later, on Aug. 1, 1983, he and another cult follower entered a storm sewer outside the prison where Feigley was being kept, in an attempt to break him out of jail.

Heavy rain flooded the sewer and drowned both of them. Their bodies were found the next day, along with digging equipment.

For the next 25 years Feigley would remain in prison. When he was released a week ago today, he returned to the Harrisburg home where he lived when starting the sex cult. About 15 people blocked his driveway, shouting and holding up signs protesting his return to the neighborhood.

Police say Feigley's movements can't be restricted because he served his full term. He isn't required to register as a sex offender because his crimes occurred before that law existed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article was found at:

http://wvgazette.com/
News/200808211744

Child Sex 'Cult' Leader Freed From Prison

ABC News - August 14, 2008

Harrisburg, Pa., Learning Of Sex Case That Time Nearly Forgot

By LINDSAY GOLDWERT and TERI WHITCRAFT

On Friday, after serving 33 years for sex crimes against children, George Feigley, 68, will exit prison and reenter society.

Because of the timing and the nature of his crimes, he is not subject to Megan's Law restrictions. He will not be ordered to check in with police or with a parole officer. He will not wear a tracking device.

He is expected to return to his house at 1316 Derry St. in Harrisburg, the residence where in 1975 prosecutors say he sexually abused children while acting as the charismatic leader of a sex cult and advocating the use of children for sexual gratification, according to police reports.

Feigley, who used aliases such as "G.G. Stoctay Ph.D." and "the Angel of Light," has long maintained that his Neo American Church was never a cult. But he had a group of devoted followers who risked life and limb for him.

In 1976, he engineered a daring escape by scaling a prison wall and fleeing to West Virginia where he'd started a commune and school. Police and FBI caught up to him in 1978, but he escaped again less than a month later while awaiting extradition. Nabbed again by the FBI in Tennessee, he was behind bars again in two months.

In 1983, according to newspaper reports, two of his followers died in what was believed to be another attempt to spring him from prison. A man and a woman crawled into a sewer line close to the Western Penitentiary only to drown when the Ohio River swept in.

In 1994, Feigley and his wife, Sandra, were back in court. Prosecutors said Feigley had been orchestrating the abuse of a minor from prison. While speaking on a prison phone, Feigley gave commands to his wife and another man on work release to have sex with a 14-year-old girl.

Feigley was found guilty and sentenced for conspiracy to commit involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. Because of problems with the search warrants, Feigley's wife and the girl's mother were able to plead guilty and receive probation.

In the 1970s, everyone in Harrisburg knew the name of George Feigley and the Neo American Church, which prized sexual pleasure above all else, on Derry Street.

Church of Child Abuse

"Back then, it seemed like someone always knew someone somehow involved," said Scott Portzline, a concerned citizen who has followed this case since the 1980s. "It seemed like everyone had a friend or a cousin or a girlfriend with some sort of affiliation."

Now, in 2008, it is an old and strange case that few remember. But because of a flurry of recent media attention surrounding Feigley's release, Harrisburg is getting a history lesson on the details of crimes against children committed by Feigley and his followers.

The tenets of Feigley's Neo American Church, not to be confused with a church of the same name founded by Timothy Leary in the 1960s, included an emphasis on achieving mystical experiences through orgasm. It also included a sinister point of view on the sexuality of children and how they should be used for pleasure.

Feigley founded the church and the school in 1971. But in 1975, after receiving complaints from one of the parents, the police became aware that something wasn't right on Derry Street. Feigley was arrested on multiple counts of statutory rape, indecent assault and corrupting the morals of minors, for which he was sentenced to 10 years to 20 years in prison.

His wife, Sandra, was also found guilty of corrupting the morals of minors.

According to court documents, "the defendant's design was to operate 'church oriented school' free from government regulation for the ostensible purpose of education when their real goal was to gratify their own deviant sexual desires."

When the Derry Street home was raided in 1983, authorities were stunned to find young children playing with sex toys, boxes of child pornography and tracts allegedly written by Feigley describing his ethos on children and sexuality. Feigley's wife, Sandra, and others pleaded guilty to corruption of minors and were sentenced to prison.

ABC News was not able to speak with any of the victims of Feigley and the Neo American Church, but according to reports from The Patriot-News, a Harrisburg newspaper, there is legitimate fear for their safety upon his release.

"I spoke to one of his victims who's now scared out of her wits," said Annette Antoun, publisher of the weekly Paxton-Herald in Harrisburg. "She wants to change her locks."

From Cult to Prison

Sandra Feigley still lives on Derry Street. ABC News' attempts to reach her for comment were unsuccessful. Still his loyal defender, she runs and writes for a Web site called www.prisoners.com.

The site, whose aim appears to provide an outlet for Pennsylvania inmates to voice their complaints on the penal system, is, not surprisingly, also an outlet for George Feigley to pontificate on such subjects as the war in Iraq, the corruption of the judicial system and, more worrisome, his views on how the motivations for rape and rapists are misunderstood.

Also a cause of concern is the fact that his wife still sells old tracts from the Neo American Church on her own Web site. According to the site, all proceeds benefit www.prisoners.com.

According to Dauphin Country District Attorney Ed Marsico, who described Feigley as an "intelligent, well-spoken" man, there is nothing to be done about George Feigley in 2008. "He's served all of his time. He's maxed out."

Feigley has been "grandfathered" out of Megan's Law because his original sex crimes occurred in the 1970s. In a strange legal twist, his 1994 conviction on conspiracy to commit involuntary deviate sexual intercourse doesn't fall under Megan's Law either.

Marsico admits that because the court is aware that Feigley's followers were abusing children as recently as the mid-1990s, there is cause for concern. "We have a plan," he said, "but we're glad for all the media attention being paid to this case."

Law enforcement is working to get up to date on this bizarre case that preceded most of their tenures. What was a shocking case in the mid-1970s has been collecting dust in the annals of Harrisburg history until now.

John Goshert, now the chief county detective for Dauphin County, says that this case has largely been forgotten in Harrisburg, save for its elder members.

"There's been a lot of recent concern," he said. "People are reading the news now and can't believe it. No one even knows who this guy was. But he's done his time. He's got his rights."

Harrisburg residents and neighbors who have never heard of George Feigley or the Neo American Church were taken aback when they read about the case and heard the news that this man was returning to their area.

Protect Neighborhood Children

Angel Fox, a 27-year-old counselor who works with abused children, was shocked to learn that not only was a convicted sex offender and alleged cult leader moving back to her neighborhood, but he was moving right next door.

"I'd never heard of him, none of us had," said Fox. "Once we read about the story in the newspaper, I started a petition. We've been getting a lot of support from the schools and from local organizations."

Fox has organized a protest for Friday. "We want him to know that he and his religious whatever is not welcome here. "

Fox also made the point that back in the 1970s, the abuse of children was more of a taboo topic. Not anymore, she says.

"We've got a lot of single mothers and grandmothers raising children in this neighborhood now," said Fox. "It's not like it used to be. We're here to tell him that we're not having it, not now, not ever."

While the name of George Feigley is a new one to many in Harrisburg, there are some who never forgot his early crimes.

"I think the cult will regroup," said Portzline. "There might only be half a dozen left, but they're the hard-core ones."

Goshert is more optimistic. "We can only hope that he is rehabilitated and that his years in prison have put him on the right track."

No one can be sure whether Feigley still has followers in Harrisburg. Feigley is nearly 70 and reportedly in poor health.

According to Sandra Feigley's former attorney Allen Welch, she has indicated that the two of them just want to get on with what's left of their lives.

"He's not in the best shape from what I've heard," said Welch. "I can't believe he's the charismatic guy he once was."

This article was found at:

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5575131&page=1

Law pushed to keep sex offenders off street after they get out of prison in response to planned release of sex-cult leader & child rapist

The Patriot-News Pennsylvania
August 13, 2008

by Carrie Cassidy

A state lawmaker is pushing legislation that would keep potentially dangerous sex offenders off the streets after their release from prison, in response to Friday's planned release of a Harrisburg sex-cult leader and child rapist.

George Feigley's pending freedom from prison has prompted plans for protests outside his Harrisburg home and a petition drive, calling for authorities to do something to keep him from returning to their Allison Hill neighborhood. But residents' fears reveal a problem with laws, authorities said.

Prosecutors try to find ways to monitor potentially dangerous sex offenders. And, like the Allison Hill residents led by Angel Fox, residents can post fliers, protest or do other things they think will keep their neighborhood safe. But no other tools are in place to protect Pennsylvanians from sex offenders who served their maximum sentences and don't fall under the state's Megan's Law.

Stories in The Sunday Patriot-News highlighted the problem and prompted a state lawmaker to take action. Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Susquehanna Twp., and his staff are drafting a bill that would address cracks in regulations. He wants authorities to be able to confine potentially dangerous sex offenders even past their release dates. Dauphin County District Attorney Edward M. Marsico Jr. supports the idea.

Eighteen states have implemented civil-commitment laws since 1997, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a similar measure in Kansas. The laws permit the confinement of sex offenders in mental health facilities when they complete their prison sentences but are still deemed a threat to society.

Feigley, 68, is a convicted sex offender who ran a school that authorities called a sex cult, which he started in the early 1970s in his Derry Street home. It's the same house to which he plans to move after his release from prison. Feigley, who raped three girls, will not only be free from prison, but he will also be free from monitoring. That means no probation or parole, and no Megan's Law, even though authorities still consider him to pose a danger to the public.

Megan's Law is named for Megan Kanka, 7, of New Jersey, who was raped and killed in 1994 by a twice-convicted sex offender who lived across the street. Pennsylvania's Megan's Law requires the state police to make a registry of sex offenders and predators who live, work or attend school in the state, available to the public on the Web site pameganslaw.state.pa.us.

"Up until now, I have always thought that Pennsylvania's criminal justice system provided sufficient tools to deal with sex offenders, such that civil commitments were not necessary," said Fran Chardo, Dauphin County's first assistant district attorney. "This case has demonstrated an unfortunate loophole. Regrettably, George Feigley fit through it."

Piccola's proposal calls for a one-year involuntary commitment for sex offenders who might still be dangerous but who cannot be monitored by authorities. Those offenders would be subjected to an annual review by the court with the possibility of one-year extensions to their involuntary commitments, he said.

Piccola had the idea several years ago after his staff helped draft a similar law for potentially dangerous juvenile sex offenders who turn 21 and are supposed to be released from the system. A Lebanon County boy prompted lawmakers to act after he told keepers that he planned to rape after he left the system. Feigley's case is an example of why civil commitments for adults are needed here, Piccola said.

"Clearly, this is a case that, because of its age and its intensity, has escaped ... statutes that we drafted that apply directly to sexual offenses," he said.

Experts, however, wrestle with the legal and ethical dilemmas that civil-commitment laws raise. For example, the New York Times reported last year that the city's legal bar published a policy paper saying that such laws could be abused and that misplaced fears could keep sex offenders incarcerated for years after their sentences and could represent a threat to civil liberties.

Statistics kept by the U.S. Department of Justice show that as little as 5 percent of sex offenders reoffend within the first three years after their release, but prosecutors and Feigley's victims say they don't want to take the chance Feigley won't return to his old ways. Residents of the Allison Hill neighborhood where Feigley plans to live must walk a delicate line in how they prepare for his return, said Witold Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. The line between free speech rights and harassment is a delicate one, he said.

"Harassment is one of those legal words that is difficult to define. ... Figuring out where the line is between free speech and unprotected harassment has consumed many courts," Walczak said, adding that he believes Fox's efforts to inform her neighbors of Feigley's return through fliers and a planned protest is protected speech.

Fox said she never thought she'd be the face of an effort to highlight a problem that has been overlooked for so many years. She's just doing it for her children, she said.

"I think what we're doing is informing the public in a positive way," Fox said. "Whether the system steps up and gets [Feigley] out of our neighborhood or not, at least we're doing something to protect our kids."

MEGAN'S LAW LIST

Not all sex crimes land an offender on the state Megan's Law list. Here are examples of offenses that will result in a criminal being on the list:
10-year registrations:

Kidnapping in which the victim is a minor
Luring a child into a motor vehicle
Institutional sexual assault
Unlawful contact with a minor
Sexual abuse of children
Sexual exploitation of children

Lifetime registration:

Offenders with two or more convictions for any of the 10-year registration offenses
Rape
Involuntary deviate sexual intercourse
Aggravated indecent assault
Offenders designated by the court as sexually violent predators
Sexual assault

Source: State Sexual Offenders Assessment Board

This article was found at:

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2008/08/_a_state_lawmaker_is.html

Cult leader rapist to be released from prison

The Patriot-News Pennsylvania

August 9, 2008

Harrisburg rapist to be released from prison

by Carrie Cassidy



She lived in a world where parents willingly gave up their children to a man who declared himself "The Light of the World."

A world where children were beaten for letting anyone but fellow cult members see them, and their genitals were pierced with a lock to be controlled by this so-called prophet. It was a world unimaginable to most people, but it was her reality for seven years, from the time she was 5 until her mother broke free of George Feigley's grip.

Three decades later, that world still haunts her through dreams occasionally featuring Feigley and his flock of followers. She was shocked to learn from a reporter that the man who beat her, made her call him "Master," and photographed her in graphic sexual poses would be released from prison this week.

"He's not a man who should be out with society," said the woman, who asked to be called "J." The Patriot-News has a policy of not identifying the victims of sexual crimes. "He preys on -- at least he did -- the people who believed in him."

And he could do it again, said J, other victims and prosecutors.

On Friday, Feigley, 68, will leave the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands, a minimum-security prison near Somerset, a free man. He will not be on probation or parole, and he will not have to comply with Megan's Law when he returns to his home near 13th and Derry streets in Harrisburg.

He will have served the maximum time to which he was sentenced for rape convictions in 1975, and subsequent convictions for escapes and conspiracy to commit a sex crime while in prison.

The state Board of Probation and Parole has turned down Feigley's requests every year since he became eligible in 1990. In its March 1996 denial, the board said Feigley had failed to benefit from a treatment program for sex offenders.

"You are a serious risk to the safety of others, particularly children," the board said in denying his request, which was opposed by the prison, the district attorney and the judge.

The board reaffirmed that decision, based on those factors, in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001.

Sandra Feigley said she and her husband did not want to be interviewed for this story. But she released a statement saying her husband has had several heart attacks and is in a wheelchair, and that their family has been torn apart.

Feigley, who was a rare-book dealer, denied that the Neo-American Church he started at his Harrisburg home was a sex cult. He also denied abusing the girls and told a newspaper reporter in March 1984 that his conviction and charges filed later against the women in his group were part of a conspiracy to destroy the religion.

His victims and his prosecutors, however, have the scars and the evidence to prove otherwise.

Basing his description on personality tests given to Feigley after his conviction, a psychologist described Feigley as a "very bright, imaginative, self-centered, self-seeking, grandiose, highly motivated, but confused man" who was seemingly guilty of a "neurotic need for continuing support and love."

Words written by Feigley, whose IQ is above average, to his flock of at least 20 show the power he wielded even from prison:

"I require total devotion to my desires. You may not have a will nor desire of your own which do not project my wishes. I expect this complete commitment from my wives, my concubines and my children ... Make yourselves my delight. If there is discord among you, I will have you whipped."

He concluded the letter by saying, "I love you. May my peace abide with you. G."

Police learned about the extent of Feigley's control from one of the children who experienced it.

Feigley started to abuse her at 4 years old, when her mother turned her over to his group, the woman told police in 1995. He had sex with the children or beat them whenever he wanted, she said.

When he was in prison, his followers made printouts from a copier of the children's hands, and if they weren't wearing the ring he gave them, they'd be in trouble.

"I just know that I feared him," the woman, then 23, told police.

Feigley wielded fear like a conductor's baton. He forced the children to obey his commands for sex with him and other cult members, often with onlookers and to be photographed using sexual devices.

One of the cult children contacted for this story declined to be interviewed out of fear, even though only a few cult members, including Feigley's wife, remain.

Some of the cult children, who are now grown, have moved away from the Harrisburg area, but one, a girl known as "Sunflower," continues to associate with them.

Fear is one way psychopaths like Charles Manson and Jim Jones keep a stronghold on the people they victimize, said Mark Safarik, who spent 22 years as an investigator in the FBI's behavioral sciences unit.

Safarik can't say for certain whether Feigley is a psychopath, because a person must be tested for that, but he concluded after reading about the case that Feigley possesses many psychopathic traits.

What makes Feigley so dangerous, Safarik said, is his charismatic personality and his ability to identify those, particularly those with low self-esteem, who would be receptive to him. Then he grooms them.

People like Feigley can't be changed in prison, he said.

"In fact, psychopaths get better in prison. They learn what they're supposed to do and the responses they're supposed to give," Safarik said. "When they release him ... he'll say
all the right things, but underneath it all, he'll go back to the same behavior. He'll turn up again."

There are several public bus stops in the block where Feigley plans to live, at least for a bit, after his release from prison.

A couple who live not far from the home at Derry and 13th streets often walk with their 3-year-old daughter to the one closest to 14th Street.

They were surprised to learn that a convicted sex offender would be moving into the neighborhood.

They did not want to give their names for the story, citing fear for children's safety, and neither did the grandmother, who was holding the hand of her 3-year-old granddaughter and pushing a stroller carrying one a year younger.

The woman, who said she grew up in the neighborhood, said it scares her.

"We have enough to worry about with these young kids doing what they're doing these days without having someone like that living here," she said.

After hearing that Feigley would not be supervised after he leaves prison, three men sitting at a concrete table off 13th and Derry streets wondered how the children who run up and down the block can be protected.

Dauphin County authorities said they are trying to find a way to protect the community from a man they can no longer keep behind bars.

First Deputy District Attorney Fran Chardo said his office is "coming up with a game plan" that he declined to discuss. Being released from prison doesn't mean Feigley's no longer one of the county's most notorious criminals.

"His ardent belief that there is nothing wrong about the unspeakable criminal acts and the fanaticism of his followers set him apart," Chardo said.

J sees hints of the same maniacal thinking she grew up with in the postings on a Web site the Feigleys started in 1996.

The site has postings that rail against prisons and the prison system's staff.

Other entries talk about sex, including one entry written by G.G. Stoctay, an alias, that says: "The injury done to children by sexual molestation is trivial. In most cases, the sexual molestation is little more than "education" or, at worst, annoyance. ... The men who are prosecuted as sexual offenders show by far the greatest injuries, of course."

Feigley's site advocates abolishing all sex crimes, except those that cause "excessive injury."

A lifetime of living with pain and fear should be considered "excessive," J said.

She was still under Feigley's psychological hold in 1986, a year after she and her mother left the cult. She started to heal then by removing the head scarf she was supposed to wear as Feigley's "Nazarene."

J showed Feigley that he no longer controlled her by attending his sentencing hearing in 1995. She and another of Feigley's victims purposely sat behind the prosecutor's side of the Dauphin County courtroom to show him that she had the power. He looked more like an old, weak man than the monster she remembers from her childhood.

Since then, she has tried to put her life with the cult behind her. Even her closest friends don't know about the extent of the abuse she endured. But she's happy with the life she has made for herself.

"Eventually, I realized ... the past is the past. You have to get over the bad things that happened to you," she said. "I'm taking responsibility for myself because that's true power."


This article was found at:

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2008/08/convicted_rapist_to_leave_pris.html