Six minors placed in state custody after raid on Tony Alamo cult

New York Times - September 21, 2008

Pornography Is Target in Raid on Ministry

by the Associated Press

FOUKE, Ark. (AP) — Six minors have been temporarily placed in state custody as part of a child pornography investigation after a raid on a ministry here, officials said Sunday.

The children will be in the custody of the Arkansas Department of Human Services as investigators interview them, a spokesman for the state police, Bill Sadler, said.

Mr. Sadler did not say how long the interviews would last but did say that courts would decide the children’s status in the event of any “long-term separation” from the property of the ministry, Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in rural Fouke.

He did not say how old the children were, but an e-mail message that the authorities inadvertently sent to news organizations last week referred to 12-, 13- and 14-year-old girls.

The move comes after a raid Saturday by more than 100 federal and state law enforcement agents. Investigators said their two-year inquiry into accusations of child pornography and abuse focused on a convicted tax evader, Tony Alamo, and his ministry, described by its critics as a cult.

Mr. Alamo said Saturday that the investigation was part of a federal push to legalize same-sex marriage while outlawing polygamy. He also said for girls having sex, “consent is puberty.”

The authorities’ search of the Fouke complex, in southwest Arkansas, ended after midnight Saturday, and Mr. Sadler said officials had no plans to search the buildings again. The authorities have not indicated any plans to search other ministry locations.

Sunday afternoon, a van ferried members back and forth from a nearby 15-acre compound to the church on U.S. 71. Two women, one pushing a stroller, entered the building with several children.

The United States attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, Bob Balfe, declined to comment when asked whether an arrest warrant had been issued for Mr. Alamo or other members of his church. Mr. Balfe said before the raid that he expected a warrant to be issued for Mr. Alamo, 74.

Mr. Alamo and his wife, Susan, were street preachers along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1966 before forming a commune near Saugus, Calif. Susan Alamo died of cancer in 1982; Mr. Alamo claimed she would be resurrected and kept her body on display for six months while their followers prayed.

Mr. Alamo was convicted of tax-related charges in 1994 after the Internal Revenue Service said he owed the government $7.9 million. He served four years in prison. Prosecutors in the tax case argued before sentencing that Mr. Alamo was a flight risk and a polygamist who preyed on married women and girls.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, describes Mr. Alamo’s ministry as a cult that opposes homosexuality, Catholicism and the government.

This article was found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/22raid.html?ref=todayspaper

Federal officials raid the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries Church

Texarkana Gazette - September 20, 2008

Federal officials raided the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries Church and neighboring homes Saturday in Fouke, Ark., about 12 miles southeast of Texarkana.

Officials said Alamo was not at the compound.

Authorities said entry into the compound went without incident.

Among other things, authorities said they were investigating reports of child pornography. Authorities stated FBI and Ark. Department of Human Services officials are interviewing and assessing the children.

Officials said every effort was being made to keep children and parents together.

The raid started shortly before 6 p.m. and involved multiple state and federal agencies including the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Ark. State Police and the Ark. DHS.

About 100 law enforcement and Department of Human Services officials were involved in securing the area.

Alamo has been described in national news media accounts as a “charismatic evangelist.”

He was convicted and served a federal prison sentence for evading federal income taxes before his presence in Fouke.

Alamo has been well known in Arkansas and California for decades for, among other things, his bizarre behavior upon the death of his wife Susan in the early 1980s.

Alamo and his wife Susan met and married in Los Angeles, where they began their evangelistic work among the homeless and drug addicts of southern California in the 1960s, according to news accounts.

They eventually moved the foundation to Crawford County, Ark., where Susan Alamo was born. The foundation thrived, providing housing and jobs for followers, and a mansion for the Alamos was built. The foundation’s religious services and radio shows were popular.

The foundation raised money through several businesses in Dyer and Alma, Ark.

The main business was a restaurant just off Interstate 40 in Alma and the sale of expensive denim and rhinestone jackets, according to records.

In April 1982, Susan Alamo died of cancer, and her body was interred in a crypt on foundation property in Dyer.

Susan Alamo’s body disappeared Feb. 15, 1991, when reportedly Tony Alamo ordered his followers to leave the Dyer compound before a raid by federal marshals, who were to seize foundation assets to satisfy a $1.3 million federal court default judgment against Alamo in an alienation of affection and child abuse lawsuit brought against him by former foundation members, according to a report in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Susan Alamo’s body remained missing until 1998 when Alamo followers turned it over to law enforcement authorities. The body was interred in Tulsa.

In September 1994, Alamo was sentenced to six years in federal prison after he was convicted in U.S. District Court at Memphis of willful failure to file an income tax return and of knowingly filing a false return. He was also fined $210,000 and ordered to remain on probation for a year after his release.

Alamo previously told the Gazette he was “railroaded into prison on false charges of tax evasion.”

“The government used a bunch of backsliders to testify against me and let some out of prison to falsely testify against me,” said Alamo.

While serving his federal prison sentences, Alamo was transferred to the federal prison in Texarkana, Texas.

“A lot of the people of the church and family wanted to visit me and back then the hotel accommodations in Texarkana were not as great as they are now,” said Alamo.

“They bought an inexpensive house in Fouke. I had nothing to do with that. When I got out, the people liked it here and organized a church out here and it had a grocery store. It was cramped and they used scrap lumber to build an addition on the house.

He has lived in the area for nine years.

The ministry donated $60,000 to build a city park, donated the money to purchase the “Jaws of Life” extrication equipment and during the ice storm of 2000, Alamo rented a generator to provide electricity on an emergency basis in Fouke.

On the Website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which characterizes Alamo Ministries as a hate group, an article called “The Ravening Wolf” outlines some of the Alamo beliefs that got him on the SPLC watchlist.

It reads:

“Alamo blames the Catholic Church for every evil imaginable, including communism, Nazism, the two world wars and even the Jonestown Massacre. "Narcotics, prostitution, pornography, booze and black market—every filthy thing—can be traced right back to the Vatican," the cult leader has written.

“Hatred of Catholics isn't Alamo’s only unorthodox belief. In 1993, he published a tract called "The Polygamists" which argued, "the Holy Scriptures proclaim polygamy to be righteous." Fourteen years later, he still pushes that message, producing daily radio broadcasts that are beamed around the country and the world and proclaim a holy man's right to take multiple wives ...”

Earlier this year a similar raid drew national attention.

On April 3, Texas law enforcement and child protection authorities raided the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints ranch, Yearning for Zion, in Eldorado, Texas, removing more than 400 women and children. The raid stemmed from claims of child sexual abuse and forced marriages of underage girls to older men in the group, which practices polygamy. These claims were similar to those for which FDLS leader Warren Jeffs has been tried in Utah.

The FDLS are not associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as Mormons. The Mormon church disavowed polygamy many years ago. The FDLS are also not associated with the Tony Alamo Ministries, although Alamo has been sympathetic to Jeffs and also Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh.

In the time immediately after the raid, authorities removed children from their families until they could sort out family relationships and abuse charges. Most of the women and children have been released from custody and reunited with their families.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office is preparing its response to FDLS claims that the raid, subsequent arrests and custodial care of the YFZ followers amount to unreasonable search and seizure.

See Sunday’s edition of the Texarkana Gazette for more details of what happened in Fouke on Saturday.

(Jim Williamson, Lynn LaRowe and Ethel Channon contributed to this report.)

This article was found at:

http://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/Breaking-News/2008/09/20/update-feds-raid-alamo-ministries-
in-fou-76.php

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


RELATED ARTICLES ON THIS BLOG

Claims of torture against Faderhuset sect in Denmark

Evangelist sect will sue Danish broadcaster over child abuse documentary

Child abuse allegations for religious groups

Preventing violent extremism. "We must teach young people how to recognize totalitarian groups."

New Statesman - UK
September 8, 2008

There is no single, or simple, demographic or psychological profile of those likely to be recruited to take part in acts of terror argues academic Alexandra Stein

by Alexandra Stein

We now have a new record: last month Britain’s youngest terrorist was convicted. Hammaad Munshi was only 15 when he was recruited by the then 20 year-old Aabid Khan. Khan, according to the Guardian, had “links to proscribed terrorist groups” including al-Qaeda, and is believed to have visited a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

A recent MI5 report confirmed what many scholars of terrorist and cultic groups have long known: there is no single, or simple, demographic or psychological profile of those likely to be recruited. Social psychologists such as Philip Zimbardo have for years argued that it is the strong situation of increasing isolation within closed, coercive groups that creates these dangerous behaviors. This is what is critical, not the particular psychology or disposition of the individual.

Further, and contrary to Mark Sageman, a former CIA agent, these are not simply “bunches of guys” who organise themselves into suicidal acts of terror. What we are seeing is the deliberate targeting and recruitment of youth by well-organized internationally-linked extremist groups, as, for instance described by Ed Husain in his book The Islamist, or by Masoud Banisadr in his account of the Iranian Mojahedin.

How then do we protect both the potential victims of these acts, and the young people who are recruited into these extremist groups? We know young people are being recruited in further education colleges and now, like Munshi, at even younger ages. How are we preparing these young people for these assaults on their autonomy and, eventually, on their lives?

Social psychologists, such as Zimbardo, who study extremist groups, cults and coercive persuasion understand that the key to prevention is education. This is education about the structures and processes of totalitarian, ideologically extremist groups.

I recently taught a course on Cults and Totalitarianism to two groups of students at the University of Minnesota in the midwestern US. We covered the social psychology, structures and processes of groups as varied as Lyndon LaRouche’s right-wing political cult, the sexually abusive Children of God, and Pol Pot’s totalitarian and murderous regime in 1970s Cambodia. Several students stated that during the term of the course itself they had cause to use this new information to help either themselves or friends and family to stay away from dangerous groups. Other students asked me why this sort of information hadn't been made available at an earlier stage in their education.

We must teach young people how to recognize totalitarian groups. Drawing on work from Hannah Arendt, Robert Jay Lifton and others, we can start with this five point definition:

• The group is led by a charismatic and authoritarian leader


• It is isolating and has a closed, steeply hierarchical inner structure


• The group adheres to an absolute and exclusive belief system (a total ideology)


• Processes of coercive persuasion are used to isolate followers and control them through a combined dynamic of “love” and fear


• Followers are exploited

These groups succeed because they operate based on universal human (and usually adaptive) responses of people seeking comfort and connection when afraid. The process unfolds by isolating recruits from prior sources of comfort, establishing the group as the new safe haven, and then instilling fear to create what is known as a trauma bond. This is now well-understood by social psychologists. It can be taught in interesting and understandable ways to young people.

We must take a strategic view to introduce this into the curriculum. Educators must collaborate with experts in this field to train teachers in both the classic social-psychological studies as well as the most up-to-date research available and work to develop materials and curricula for classrooms at various age levels.

For over 60 years social scientists have been developing a broad knowledge base about these fundamental human vulnerabilities and the groups and situations that exploit them. In her 1987 volume, Prisons we choose to live inside, nobel laureate Doris Lessing argued for disseminating this knowledge to our children in order to challenge our “most primitive and instinctive reactions” -- those reactions which so often have led us to act against our own interests and our own survival. We cannot wait any longer to take this on.

Perhaps then a future 15-year-old – one who has had some basic education in the structures, processes and dangers of totalitarian groups – will be able to recognize and turn away from a recruiter who promises liberation and glory but who will deliver only suicidal sacrifice.

Alexandra Stein is visiting lecturer, Birkbeck, Faculty of Lifelong Learning

This article was found at:

http://newstatesman.com/international-politics/2008/09/groups-recruited-social-young

Hosanna Church rites described as cultlike

The Advocate - Louisiana
August 29, 2008

by Debra Lemoine

AMITE — The Hosanna Church child-rape trial defendant is the former leader of a Christian cult with congregants who veered from mainstream charismatic teachings by focusing on prophetically inspired public confessions and by vomiting in order to cast out demons of sin, three defense witnesses testified Thursday.

Their testimony in the trial of Louis D. Lamonica offered insight into the decline of Hosanna Church from the spiritual center built by Lamonica’s father into a cult that witnesses said had lost touch with reality.
Lamonica’s attorney, Michael Thiel, has maintained that his client falsely confessed to child rape because he was being controlled by a woman claiming to have prophetic visions. The state’s case, presented by Assistant District Attorney Don Wall, includes accusations that children were molested as part of satanic cult rituals.
Lamonica, 49, of Hammond, faces four counts of aggravated rape of his two sons when they were age 11 or younger. He is the second of seven church members indicted in 2005 for their roles in an alleged child-sex ring to be tried in the 21st Judicial District Court.
Two young woman, Karen Bushey and Desireé Louque, testified Thursday that their membership in the Hosanna youth group was solely about worshipping God. They testified they never saw any satanic symbols or rituals at the church.
Even though they had been named as participants by some of the suspects and Lamonica’s sons, both women said they never had sex with Lamonica or other church members.
Instead, they described what they referred to as a Christian cult.
Once Lois Mowbray became Hosanna’s associate pastor, sermons ended and Sunday worship services varied from praising God for many hours to altar calls where Mowbray claimed God had told her of a sin that a congregant had to confess publicly, Bushey and Louque said.
“People would go up, start kneeling at the front praying,” Bushey, 24, of Tickfaw, testified. “The worship team would crowd around them and pray over them. This would make them start to throw up.”
Mowbray, 56, formerly of Ponchatoula, had been arrested by the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office in May 2005 and booked with being an accessory after the fact to rape and failure to report a felony. She was never charged with the crimes by the District Attorney’s Office or a parish grand jury.
Toward the end of the church’s existence, strangers seeking to drop in on services were turned away at the doors, the women said. In fact, they, too, had no contact with others outside the church.
Bushey moved out of her parents’ home and into the residence of the youth pastor after her parents had an argument with Lamonica and told her to leave the church or get out of their home.
Six months later, Bushey said, she contacted her sister in order to visit her on her birthday. Before she knew it, Bushey said, she was dropped off at a park where her mother picked her up.
No one at the church talked to her again, she testified.
Louque’s break with the church came after she told her boyfriend, Christopher Labat, that she was tired of Labat’s practice of confessing every aspect of their personal relationship to Mowbray.
Labat, 27, of Hammond, is the former Tangipahoa Parish sheriff’s deputy who faces child-rape charges in this case.
Six months later, Louque, 23, of Hammond, said she hung out with Labat for a couple of hours. The next day, Labat, after confessing his visit to Mowbray, arrived at her place of employment and pulled her aside, she testified.
Labat then cut off the head of a rubber snake and handed the head to her, Louque tearfully related.
“He told me it was me,” Louque said.
Harvest Family Church Senior Pastor Bray Sibley testified he was concerned when Lamonica decided to become pastor of his late father’s church after Hosanna Church began to decline under the senior Lamonica’s successors.
Sibley leads a nondenominational church along Interstate 12 in Hammond with more than 3,000 members.
However, Sibley once ran a ministry near Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond that was a “seed” planted from Hosanna’s congregation and later became the Harvest Family Church. Previously, Sibley had been a youth pastor at Hosanna under Lamonica’s father.
Lamonica had participated in a church praise band but had no pastoral experience, Sibley testified. But Lamonica had a “fever dream” in which his dead father asked him to finish his work, Sibley said.
“I know it was frustrating to him watching his father’s church disappear,” Sibley said. “I knew he felt an obligation with this dream he had.”
At some point, the founding families left and Hosanna no longer was part of the Assemblies of God affiliation, two moves that worried Sibley because it reduced the accountability of the church leadership, Sibley testified.
The lack of the authority of the others and the accountability created an environment where a person with spiritual gifts could misuse them to control others, Sibley said.
“You need a church with accountability,” Sibley said. “You can’t have people become hyper spiritualized because they lose touch with reality.”
The trial is scheduled to resume today in state District Judge Zoey Waguespack’s courtroom.
This article was found at:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/27646729.html?
showAll=y&c=y

Sex Abuse Trial Takes Bizarre Twist

ABC26 WGNO News - New Orleans

August 22, 2008


by Jon Huffman



AMITE — THE TRIAL OF A FORMER PASTOR FROM PONCHATOULA ACCUSED OF MOLESTING HIS TWO YOUNG SONS TOOK A STRANGE TWIST THIS MORNING.

IN OPENING STATEMENTS, DEFENSE ATTORNEYS PORTRAYED THE CHARGES AS THE DEMENTED FANTASIES OF ONE POWERFUL CHURCH MEMBER WHO CONVINCED OTHER CONGREGANTS IT WAS TRUE.

THEY PAINTED A PICTURE OF THE HOSANNA CHURCH AS AN ALMOST JIM JONES-LIKE CULT HEADED BY A CHARISMATIC LEADER.

FIRST UP, PROSECUTORS PROMISED JURORS THEY WOULD SEE VIDEOTAPES OF FORMER PASTOR LOUIS LAMONICA'S TWO SONS DESCRIBING SEXUAL MOLESTATION BY THEIR FATHER IN GRAPHIC DETAIL.

AND, THEY ADDED, JURORS WOULD READ LETTERS OF CONFESSION WRITTEN BY LAMONICA HIMSELF.

BUT THEN THE DEFENSE GOT ITS TURN, PAINTING THE SHOCKING PICTURE OF A PENTECOSTAL CHURCH TURNED INTO A FANATICAL CULT HEADED BY A SELF-DESCRIBED PROPHET NAMED LOIS MOWBRAY.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY MICHAEL THIEL CLAIMED MOWBRAY VIRTUALLY IMPRISONED FORMER PASTOR LAMONICA INSIDE THE CHURCH AND SUBJECTED HIM TO SLEEP DEPRIVATION UNTIL HE MADE FALSE CONFESSIONS OF CHILD RAPE, ANIMAL SACRIFICES, AND SATANIC RITUALS.

THIEL SAID MOWBRAY TOLD THE DEFENDANT "IF YOU THINK OR DREAM ABOUT SOMETHING, THEN YOU'VE DONE IT. YOU MUST CONFESS...I'VE HAD A VISION WHERE GOD TOLD ME YOU ARE MOLESTING YOUR TWO SONS. YOU MUST CLEANSE YOUR SOUL BY WRITING A CONFESSION."

THE DEFENSE CLAIMS MOWBRAY HOUNDED THE FORMER PASTOR FOR MONTHS UNTIL HE BROKE DOWN AND CONFESSED TO FALSE ACCUSATIONS.

BOTH OF LAMONICA'S SONS WILL BE CALLED AS WITNESSES, AND DEFENSE ATTORNEY THIEL PROMISED JURORS BOTH WOULD TESTIFY THAT NO MOLESTATION EVER HAPPENED.

HOWEVER, PROSECUTOR DON WALL TOLD JURORS THEY WOULD SEE VIDEOTAPES IN WHICH BOTH BOYS DESCRIBE MOLESTATION BY THEIR FATHER IN GRAPHIC DETAIL.

THE TRIAL IS EXPECTED TO LAST WELL INTO NEXT WEEK.

This article was found at:

http://abc26.trb.com/news/wgno_news_082108sexabusetrialstarts,
0,790313.story

Todd Bentley: "I was involved in a sexual assault ring"

National Post - Canada     August 19, 2008

Bentley bends

B. C. healer, televangelist withdraws for his own healing

Brian Hutchinson | National Post 

VANCOUVER -It wasn't his outrageous claims of raising the dead that finally landed Todd Bentley in trouble. Not the contradictory sermons, or even his criminal past. Not the face piercings, the neck-to-knee tattoos, the biker-dude lifestyle. His followers could live with all that; it was part of the act.

And what a performance it was: For the past few months, Mr. Bentley, a 32-year-old former drug addict from Canada's west coast, was the hottest thing going on the global televangelist circuit. A hog-riding faith healer with a devil-may-care attitude.

Then he failed his flock, the old fashioned way: By consorting with another woman.

Mr. Bentley is now taking a long time out from his ministry, for some healing and reflection. The news was delivered on the weekend. "We have discovered new information revealing that Todd Bentley has entered into an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff," reads an Aug. 15 letter from his church, Fresh Fire Ministries, based in Abbotsford, B. C., an evangelical hotbed.

The letter, posted on the Fresh Fire Web site, followed another online note three days earlier acknowledging that Mr. Bentley's marriage had unravelled. "Todd and Shonnah Bentley are presently experiencing significant friction in their relationship and are currently separated. We want to affirm that there has been no sexual immorality on the part of either Todd or Shonnah, nor has there ever been," it reads.

The news comes just as Mr. Bentley's ministry -- which began a decade ago on the streets of Vancouver's miserable Downtown Eastside -- had found a worldwide audience. In April this year, the stocky preacher received an invitation to travel from Abbotsford to Lakeland, in southern Florida, to take part in a series of Christian revival meetings.

Audiences there were dazzled. Mr. Bentley was asked to stay. So began what became known as the Lakeland Outpouring, an unfettered expression of charismatic fervour that quickly became a full-fledged phenomenon, with 8,000

people daily packing into a baseball stadium, then inside a church building. Twice a day, seven days a week, through the spring and summer, with Mr. Bentley taking centre stage, yelling and exhorting, and sometimes smacking around the ill and infirm.

GodTV, a specialty on-line service dedicated to Christian worship, quickly made room for the Lakeland Outpouring in its broadcast schedule. Millions of potential worshippers were exposed to Mr. Bentley. Among others, people with health problems travelled alone or with church groups to Florida for his sermons, loud and aggressive multi-media performances punctuated with faith-healing demonstrations and requests for financial contributions.

Mr. Bentley claims that God uses him as an instrument to heal the sick. He demonstrated this capacity at one Outpouring meeting by taking a run at a professed cancer patient and planting a knee hard into the man's gut. The man fell to the floor, grimacing.

At another meeting, Mr. Bentley laughed about kicking a woman in the face in order to help deliver God's healing touch. He spoke of his encounters with angels and prophets. He waved letters in front of his audiences, claiming they were written by relatives of people declared dead. Their dead kin had risen, he explained, after being exposed to his sermons, via GodTV broadcasts.

"I have in my hands the 13th testimony as a result of this Outpouring, of somebody raised from the dead," he said a few weeks ago. "I'm saying to the media, the dead are being raised…Are you ready to hear the 13th story? Now, many of them, we've been following up. We still haven't had a chance to verify this. I can read it to you as I received it."

At last count, Mr. Bentley had been used by God to resurrect 20 people -- verifications still to come.

His claims have attracted plenty of skeptics, some of whom have carefully parsed his sermons, looking for what might be considered heresy, or simply false statements. Internet bloggers certainly found inconsistencies in his stories; for example, Mr. Bentley seems to confuse dates and events when describing his various visits with angels and his discussions with God.

His skeptics learned of a terrible incident. In 1991, Mr. Bentley, then 15, was convicted of sexual assaulting a seven-year-old B. C. boy. The case was outlined in The Report newsmagazine 10 years later; confronted with the facts, Mr. Bentley consented to a discussion of his conviction. "I was involved in a sexual assault ring," he told The Report, now defunct. "I turned around and did what had happened to me. I was assaulted too."

He said he considered the matter closed. "It's something that's dead and buried for me."

In June, FOX TV snoop Geraldo Rivera interviewed Mr. Bentley. The matter of his conviction did not come up; rather, Mr. Rivera asked for verification that he had helped heal the sick.

Again, Mr. Bentley waved a fistful of papers in the air but offered no names, no proof. ABC's Nightline examined Mr. Bentley's claims in July and was met with similar obfuscation.

But others have bought in. Several of Mr. Bentley's colleagues in the televangelism trade--including fellow Canadian Patricia King -- vouched for him, even after the unflattering FOX and ABC exposure.

"The healing of the sick, the casting out of devils, the raising of the dead, the cleansing of lepers, this was all taking place" at the Lakeland Outpouring, Ms. King insisted last weekend, during a sermon broadcast on her Extreme Prophetic Television program.

Ms. King, who is also based in the Abbotsford area, went on to describe in the barest of detail Mr. Bentley's latest transgression and fall from grace, and said that any form of sin is intolerable.

No one from Fresh Fire Ministries or its affiliate church organizations in Abbotsford responded to interview requests yesterday. Mr. Bentley is reportedly in California, staying with friends.

He will not offer any public ministry for at least a year, according to the latest Fresh Fire letter. He will not return to Florida for the rest of the Outpouring; it winds up on Saturday, after a 143-day run. A stadium tour across the United States has been cancelled. Gatherings in the U. K. have been "postponed."

There is no talk of resurrection, or revival. Just the hope of forgiveness.

This article was found at:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=732617


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The Vancouver Sun - Canada   August 15, 2008

Abbotsford faith healer proves divisive for Christians

Followers of controversial B.C. preacher line up and pray for a miracle

by Douglas Todd | Vancouver Sun

With his full-body Jesus tattoos and facial piercings, Todd Bentley looks more like a bike-gang member or World Wrestling Federation fighter than an evangelical preacher.

But in the past few months, the burly B.C. bad boy has turned into the hottest, most divisive Christian faith healer in North America.

Bentley, 32, who preaches about once being a young criminal in Gibsons and who now bases his ministry in the Bible Belt city of Abbotsford, has drawn roughly 300,000 people since April to his wild revival meetings in southern Florida.

Up to 10,000 people a day have been flocking to a Florida baseball stadium to lose themselves in ecstatic music and appeal to Bentley for divine healing, which the T-shirted, bling-wearing redhead sometimes offers by kneeing the sick in the stomach or kicking them with his biker boots and shouting "Bam!"

Despite drawing tremendous crowds to his mesmerizing, rock-music-filled services, Bentley has sharply polarized North American evangelicals.

A number of rival conservative Christian radio hosts, apocalypticists and charismatics have attacked the Canadian preacher for, among other things, claiming to have gone to heaven and met and talked with angels, Jesus and the apostle Paul.

Those critics have called his ministry "demonic," "occult," "deceitful" and "plain silly."

Bentley's growing legions of defenders, however, say God often uses "flawed people" to perform miracles and heal the sick.

Bentley's controversial revival meetings, which have been running every day in Florida for more than 18 weeks -- replete with people writhing on floors in religious ecstasy -- have also taken a toll on Bentley's family.

His large Abbotsford office, called Fresh Fire Ministries, acknowledged Monday on its website that Bentley and his wife, Shonnah, who have three children, have separated.

His wife and children have returned to Canada.

Bentley also announced he will end his Florida revival, called The Outpouring, on Aug. 23.

The revival has been mostly running in Lakeland, Fla., east of Tampa Bay, both at Ignited Church (where it started) and on the spring training ground of baseball's Detroit Tigers.

Bentley's imminent departure from The Outpouring, so he can instead travel throughout North America and to Britain, has come in the midst of rising media coverage questioning the authenticity of his healings.

London's Express on Sunday started a campaign last month to keep the Canadian revivalist out of Great Britain and, as of this week, Fresh Fire Ministries "postponed" a planned gathering in Birmingham, England.

Bentley was not available for an interview Thursday with The Vancouver Sun. An official at Fresh Fire Ministries, Bruce Merz, avoided answering questions, directing The Sun to the ministry's website for information.

The Fresh Fire website said the intense "worldwide awakening" started by Bentley in Florida has created "pressures and burdens ... which have helped to create an atmosphere of fatigue and stress that has exacerbated existing issues in [the Bentleys'] relationship. We want to affirm that there has been no sexual immorality on the part of either Todd or Shonnah."

- - -

How did this once-troubled young man from B.C. become the most dramatic Canadian faith-healer to hit the United States since Ontario's Aimee Semple MacPherson first stormed Los Angeles in the early 20th century with a mixture of Hollywood show biz and Christian revivalism?

Bentley preaches in public about his rough-and-tumble early days, including near-fatal drug overdoses, criminal burglaries and stints in prison.

Bentley has acknowledged in the conservative Christian publication, Charisma, that at age 14 he was arrested for sexually assaulting children in B.C.

In addition, Fresh Fire Ministries' website says: "In his late teens, Todd had a dramatic encounter with the saving and delivering power of God. This experience brought Todd out of a lifestyle of drug and alcohol addiction without cravings or withdrawal symptoms. He was also delivered from a lifestyle involving criminal activity, youth prisons, drugs, sex, satanic music and bondage."

Charisma magazine (which serves so-called charismatic Christians, including those who speak "in tongues" -- indecipherable utterances that are considered God-given) reported in an earlier article that Bentley was making a name for himself as a faith healer in B.C. almost 10 years ago, particularly in Kelowna and Abbotsford.

Internet videos of Bentley's faith healing in Florida reveal the intense emotion and theatricality of his revival meetings. The videos, available online through YouTube and other sources, show Bentley running toward a man with colon cancer and kneeing him in the stomach. The man buckles, wavers, smiles wanly and finally falls on the stage.

Bentley then tells the man, in front of the cheering congregation: "I had to be obedient to the Lord, sir. Why did the preacher just knee you in the gut? I tell you the Lord is working in you. You felt a quivering."

Several videos show people falling on the stage after Bentley heals them in a variety of ways, including by apparently punching one and kicking another.

Another video, which compares Bentley's events to a "rave," shows a thin woman dancing to pounding drum music while in an apparent trance. She repeatedly mimics shooting at the congregation with a gun.

In one of many Bentley books, CDs and DVDs that are available on the Fresh Fire website, the B.C. evangelist amusingly describes meeting the apostle Paul in heaven.

"As unbelievable as it may sound, I actually saw the apostle Paul come walking toward me onto the bridge," Bentley says.

"You might be wondering how I knew immediately that it was Paul. I just perceived it by divine knowledge and revelation. People have asked me what he looked like, and so I will attempt to describe his appearance. He was short, not more than 5'1" or 5'2" (I'm 5'6").... Looking very Jewish with a short, trimmed, white beard, my first thought was of a monk in a monastery! He actually had jolly cheeks and I thought: Paul, you've got a little weight on you! I mean he wasn't fat but he looked a little pudgy!"

Bob Burkinshaw, of Trinity Western University in Langley, an evangelical independent school, says he is aware of people who are "quite excited" about Bentley, who has drawn thousands to his revival meetings at a Pentecostal church in Abbotsford.

"But I suppose I'm one of those who is moderately skeptical. These things are rarely black and white," said Burkinshaw, a specialist in Canadian church history at the private evangelical university.

Evangelical Christians believe God does heal the sick, but "the issue is one of method," Burkinshaw said. "Many say, 'God doesn't do command performances.'"

Bentley's on-the-edge faith-healing appeals to "people on the margins of respectable society," a U.S. subculture Burkinshaw says was drawn to revivalism during much of the early 20th century, before evangelicalism expanded into the middle- and upper-classes.

Rather than thinking of Bentley's followers as gullible, passive sheep, Burkinshaw suggested understanding them as people who come to the events planning to build on the mesmerizing music and passionate preaching so they can "experience God's presence."

Told about Bentley's marriage breakdown and plans to end the four-month long revival in Florida, Burkinshaw said, "I'm sure the demands of that kind of life can be extreme, putting pressures on families."

Bentley's most recent posting on the Fresh Fire website makes it clear that, although his plans are changing, he's nowhere near giving up his mission.

Bentley will be conducting faith healing events in Spokane, Wash., and then Abbotsford on Sept 17. He also expects to lead revivals at dozens of other North American, and possible British, venues in the coming months.

Sounding as enthusiastic as ever, Bentley reassures his followers and asks for their continued support. "Pray for us as we walk the land, carrying the precious ark of His healing presence for His glory into those fields white and ripe for harvest. More details will be forthcoming!"

He signs off his message:

"BAM!"

dtodd@vancouversun.com

To read Douglas Todd's blog, go to www.vancouversun.com/thesearch

This article was found at:

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=d598a543-4156-4d31-907b-0f0b4d840ab9


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A UK court has ordered evangelical preacher Gilbert Deya back to Kenya to face five counts of child stealing.

BBC News - November 8, 2007

The mystery of 'miracle babies'

By Caroline Mallan


The self-proclaimed bishop of a congregation with 36,000 UK members claimed he could give infertile couples 'miracle babies'

The children's true parentage remains unknown.



Gilbert Deya said the babies were "beyond a human imagination"

It is also unclear how Mr Deya and his wife convinced churchgoers that they were pregnant when they were not and how they believed that they had given birth in backstreet Kenyan clinics.

Kenyan police say Gilbert Deya Ministries is an international child trafficking ring.

A British family court judge agreed, saying infertile couples and congregation members were "deceived" by Mr Deya and that he was motivated by "the most base of human avarices: financial greed".

Mr Deya regards the children as miracles given to him by God for his followers.

"The 'miracle babies' which are happening now in our ministry is beyond a human imagination but it's not something that I can say - I can explain because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by human beings," he told BBC Radio 4's Face the Facts programme in 2004.

He denies all charges and plans to appeal against extradition, saying he is the victim of a Kenyan political vendetta.

Kenya sought Mr Deya's return in 2005 after his wife, Mary Deya, and two other women were arrested in Nairobi on child stealing charges.

That followed a raid on the Deya home when 10 children were taken into care.

Mr Deya told British police he was the children's natural father and his 57-year-old wife was their mother - DNA tests proved negative and forged birth certificates were found in his home.

The three women were found guilty and Mr Deya's wife has been sentenced to two years in prison - she is appealing against this.

British and Kenyan officials say vulnerable church members were convinced that Mr Deya had the power of prayer to make them pregnant although they showed no outward signs.

They say he used trickery to convince women they had delivered babies.

A former stonemason who moved to London from Kenya in the mid-90s, Mr Deya developed 14 churches in Britain along with African and Asian branches.



Gilbert Deya's wife, Mary, is appealing against her conviction

His blend of charismatic, performance-style preaching and promises of miracle cures proved enticing and raised large sums of money.

A ministeries advertisement said: "God has blessed us with miracle babies that the world has never seen anything like before. Your donation is very useful to your miracle.

"Please send your donation and expect your miracle. Ten pounds, a hundred pounds, a thousand pounds - make cheques payable to Gilbert Deya Ministry".

Desperate women, some past the menopause and others who were infertile, were convinced that being prayed for by Mr Deya and travelling to Kenya would result in a child.

Once there, they were convinced by Mrs Deya and others that they were in labour and taken to illegal clinics where they underwent what they believed to be childbirth.

In a related case heard in a London family court, a baby was removed from a couple who belonged to Deya Ministries after their local GP alerted authorities when the woman tried to register him. The woman had not been pregnant and returned from a brief stay in Kenya with the child.

Mr Justice Ryder granted custody of the child to Haringey Council and publicly rebuked the church's practices.

"The funds of his ministry have been generated at least in part by the tithes collected from a congregation that, on the facts I have found, have been deceived by the claims that have been made about Mr and Mrs E's miracle births," Mr Justice Ryder said, referring to the couple in that case.

Mr Deya's extradition hearing was told that the women who believed they had given birth had been assaulted in illegal clinics in Nairobi slums.

Kenyan police believe this explains unclear recollections about their 'birth' experience.

Millie Odhiambo-Mabona, executive director of The Cradle, a Kenyan children's rights charity, said no-one is sure where the 'miracle babies' came from.

None of the children taken from the Deya house have been identified.

She believes the women who became convinced they had given birth were simply devout, not wilfully naive.

"Some believe in the power of witchcraft and those who are Christian believe in the power of God," said Mrs Odhiambo-Mabona of the intense level of spirituality in some African countries, including Kenya and Nigeria.

"They believe Bishop Deya is a serious man of God so if he prays for them and then they have babies for them it is a religious reality."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7074007.stm


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Controversial spiritual group seeks government loan

The Press - New Zealand

August 4, 2007

Christchurch City councillors will decide this week if a controversial spiritual group should be granted an interest-free loan of $162,735 to fund a conference.

The Subud spiritual group has 12,000 members in 60 countries and was described as a "charismatic group" by Christchurch scientist Dr Stephen Urlich in a 2005 report.

The group, which has 204 members in New Zealand and 89 in Christchurch, hopes to hold a world conference in the city in 2010.

It has applied for a bridging loan from the city council so it can book the Christchurch Convention Centre and Town Hall for the event before money starts to come in from conference delegates. The loan would be repaid before the conference opened.

The Urlich report raised concerns about a practice in the group known as latihan. According to Urlich, the practice involves "uninhibited weeping, shouting, writhing, moaning and speaking in tongues".

His report also raised concerns that children raised in Subud households face potential identity conflicts and family rejection if they choose not to join as young adults.

Christchurch Subud chairman Hammond Peek, who has won two Oscars for his sound-mixing work on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and King Kong, said the latihan practice allowed members to "independently receive their own unique form of worship".

He said the group was not a cult. "Subud is an international association of men and women dedicated to the worship of God. Subud is neither a religion nor a cult, does not put forward a dogma or systems of beliefs and is open to people from all religions, cultures and nationalities, as well as those with no religion," Peek said in an email.

A decision on the conference funding request was deferred by councillors just over two weeks ago so more information on the group could be compiled.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4147914a6530.html