Cult News

The largest settlement ever paid in the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses occurred this past October, but no news outlet has yet reported it.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is the umbrella organization over 6 million Witnesses worldwide, paid the estate of Frances Coughlin $1.55 million dollars rather than let a jury decide the wrongful death lawsuit.

Frances Coughlin’s surviving family sued Jehovah’s Witnesses, also known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, in State of Connecticut Superior Court at Milford (CV-00-0072183 S).

The principle defendant was a “Bethelite,” or full-time ministry worker, who drove recklessly in bad weather and killed Ms. Coughlin, a mother and grandmother, on October 8, 1998.

That Bethelite Jordon Johnson was traveling between “Bethel,” which has housing for its full-time workers in Patison, New Jersey and Brooklyn, New York, to a Witness Kingdom Hall he was assigned to in Derby, Connecticut.

Johnson was found guilty of vehicular manslaughter, but only served 30 days in jail and was sentenced to two years probation. Subsequently, he and Jehovah’s Witnesses faced a civil suit filed by Ms. Coughlin’s surviving family for damages.

Why was the Witness organization willing to pay more than $1.5 million dollars?

Apparently because a much larger issue of “agency” was at stake.

Agency is the word used to express a relationship between a principal party and its agent, through which the principal party projects its power and/or advances some purpose. And a principal party may be held liable for the actions of its agent.

Jehovah’s Witnesses contended that Jordan Johnson acted on his own and was not their agent at the time he caused the fatal car wreck.

But plaintiff’s counsel, Joel Faxon of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, claimed on his client’s behalf that Jordan Johnson was serving as a Bethelite and agent of the organization at the time and advancing their purpose, therefore Jehovah’s Witnesses was responsible for his actions.

Internal documents were obtained through the discovery process and testimony was given through depositions, which clarified and substantiated Faxon’s view.

I was retained as an expert witness and consultant for this case by the plaintiff’s counsel.

My role was to assist in the discovery process, provide research and generally help to form a basis for an understanding of how Jehovah’s Witnesses employ, use and control Bethelites and others within their organization. Ultimately, I would have also testified as an expert in court.

That testimony would have included explaining how the organizational dynamics, indoctrination and objectives of Jehovah’s Witnesses impact individual members and more specifically full-time workers such as Bethelite Jordan Johnson.

But on the first day of trial Jehovah’s Witnesses decided they didn’t want a jury to decide this case and instead $1.55 million was paid to the plaintiff.

The organization that claims it is waiting for the ever-eminent “end of the world” decided to settle in a pragmatic move to protect its long-term interests and more than $1 billion dollars of accumulated assets.

Again, why would the Witnesses do this if they actually believed they had no meaningful liability?

Certainly the cost to complete the case in court would be far less than $1.55 million dollars. Why not let the jury decide?

But the seemingly shrewd Witnesses realized that there was just too much at stake and didn’t want to risk a “guilty” verdict.

Currently the organization known as Jehovah’s Witnesses faces a growing number of lawsuits filed by former members who feel the organization has hurt them.

The personal injuries were allegedly caused by elders and others acting in accordance with the organization’s policies and doctrines, which include such matters as blood transfusions and sexual abuse.

Seemingly to protect its assets the Watchtower Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses and its many Kingdom Hall congregations have in recent years created a myriad of corporate entities to apparently contain liability.

That is, each corporation is seemingly only responsible for its own specific actions and not the action of others. Again, this appears to be a rather pragmatic legal approach to protect the assets amassed by Jehovah’s Witnesses over more than a century.

But what if Jehovah’s Witnesses are nevertheless responsible or liable for the actions of its agents, which would include elders and others throughout its vast network of districts and Kingdom Halls?

Well, now you can see why the check was likely cut for $1.55 million in the Coughlin case.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were apparently concerned about what legal precedent a jury might set that could ultimately affect other claims pending or potentially possible in the future against the organization.

Many people seem to think that Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is focused on the end of the world and a coming kingdom. At least that’s the impression many have when its members come knocking at the door.

But through the Coughlin case a different view of the organization emerges, which looks more like a business protecting its worldly assets and focused on the bottom line.

A puff piece was run about an old and now relatively obscure “cult” group called the “Love Israel Family,” within the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The reporter offers up virtually any apology the group and/or its leader use to explain its current status of financial ruin and Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

But the truth seems to be that leader “Love Israel,” who all the group members are named after–just blew it.

It looks like the guru, previously a salesman named Paul Erdman, is simply a bad businessman and failed thinker.

Love Family once had hundreds of members at its peak, but now has only 55 diehard followers left, living on land that may be foreclosed upon sometime soon. The group owes one bank more than a million dollars.

But maybe bankruptcy will finally bring members “salvation,” just not the kind they envision.

The final remnant still clinging to Love Israel after a mass walk out amidst allegations of corruption in 1983, may be forced to let go of their guru and get an independent life of their own.

Aging Israel 62, may then be forced to get a day job.

40,000 to 50,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses are “disfellowshipped” annually, but half that number “repent” each year and return to the organization, reports Oregon’s Register-Guard.

The national spokesman for the Watchtower Society, the umbrella organization that dictates Witness policies, describes the purpose of the practice as “a discipline…to correct what is wrong…All spiritual relations and all social relationships are severed, and, by extension, business relationships.”

That is, an effective end of any meaningful communication and relations between practicing Witnesses and someone so disfellowshipped.

This can be a deeply painful experience for the person disfellowshipped, which can easily lead to isolation, estrangement from family members and depression.

It appears that this Witness practice may be cited in part as a defense, to explain why one man murdered his family in Oregon. It appears to have driven others to suicide.

A longtime apologist for cults and controversial religious groups Rodney Stark said, “It seems far more likely that, rather than disfellowshipping being a cause, it was just one more symptom of someone with serious problems.”

That may be so, but despite that apology disfellowshipping is also often a way Witnesses silence critics and suppress dissent, within the tightly controlled organization.

The discipline of disfellowshipping seems to be a tool employed by the Witness hierarchy to excise its troublesome members who raise critical questions about its doctrines and practices.

Witnesses have been disfellowshipped for questioning and/or somehow opposing the organization’s admonishment not to accept blood transfusions. And recently it appears to have been used to silence questions about the handling of sexual abuse complaints within congregations.

Obviously by cutting off and isolating critical members, the leaders of Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t have to deal with dissent and don’t need to worry about the subsequent effect it may have regarding other members.

This makes damage control within the organization comparatively easy.

Disfellowshipping essentially often replaces the need for leaders to have any meaningful dialog with members that don’t agree with them.

Jurors awarded the victims of a “cult” millions of dollars, reports the Associated Press.

Gordon Winrod, leader of “Our Savior’s Church,” was found guilty last May of “using mind-altering techniques” to “meld” a destructive mindset in the plaintiffs, which caused them personal injury.

Winrod’s victims were his grandchildren.

The property of the “cult” leader is now being liquidated to satisfy the judgement, while Winrod himself is serving a 30-year prison sentence for kidnapping.

It is likely that Winrod now 74, will die in prison.

It appears the “cult,” known for its anti-Semitic, anti-government rant and hate-filled newsletter, may have been effectively wiped out by the lawsuit–or at least let’s hope so.

A Scientologist has opened up a “mission” in a strip mall between a nail salon and hairdressing shop, reports the St. Petersburg Times.

Ardent adherents of Scientology often underwrite the group’s outreach through such missions established to recruit new members. This was done by TV stars Jenna Elfman and Kirstie Alley, who opened missions in their hometowns.

Now some rich Scientologists in Florida are following in Alley and Elfman’s footsteps. They have already opened up one storefront shop for this purpose and the plan is to continue with at least four more.

The person running the mission said, “Our purpose is to introduce new people to what Scientology can do for them.” She described what the organization provides as “hope for man.”

But what hope or help did Scientology ultimately afford Lisa McPhearson?

McPhearson is the long-term member that died in Florida while Sceintologists tried to help her. The surviving family later filed a wrongful death suit, which is still pending.

It seems potential patrons might be safer getting a manicure or a haircut at neighboring businesses then stopping in at the new mission. And those services would certainly be cheaper and perhaps more cost-effective in the long run.

In an unusual twist two cult members in California have requested “deprogramming,” reports the Marin News.

Both women were followers of Winifred Wright, a leader that once controlled four women and their twelve children in a type of family cult located in a house near San Francisco.

The women and children endured reportedly horrific abuse. One child died from complications brought about by rickets, an illness that is a direct result of malnutrition.

Wright and two of the mothers were found guilty of criminal charges in court. Sentencing will take place later this month.

But the two women convicted now want treatment at Wellspring Retreat, a noted rehabilitation center for former cult members.

Wellspring does not actually “deprogram” cult members, but rather offers a focused program for recovery in a residential setting. The retreat is a licensed mental health facility in Ohio.

It is sad that these women and/or their families did not seek help earlier. Perhaps intervention long ago might have effectively ended the abuse and avoided a needless death.

But like so many cults, the Wright Family only received meaningful attention and intervention after a terrible tragedy.

In a tacit acknowledgement that the women were “brainwashed” by Wright, the judge has already granted one mother temporary release to attend Wellspring.

Many Davidian followers of David Koresh remain in denial a decade after their “sinful messiah’s” demise.

Despite failed prophecies and an end Koresh did not predict, some still expect a “resurrection,” which would allow the cult leader to somehow fulfill his supposed supernatural role.

Davidian Catherine Matteson now 87 is still waiting. She claims, “Things are going to change soon. He is going to return. He is going to be resurrected,” reports the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Matteson insists her one-time leader was the “last prophet” and that he knew “God’s mind.”

But Koresh’s explicit prophecies long ago expired. And the judgement that he claimed would immediately follow his death never came.

However, this doesn’t deter determined Davidians, who have invested their lives into the now essentially defunct group. Many lost family members and it’s difficult if not impossible for them to face that such a loss was for nothing.

Davidian Clive Doyle still lives near Waco and is waiting devotedly for the return of the man responsible for the death of his 18-year-old daughter.

Doyle like Matteson clings to a belief in a coming Koresh resurrection, hoping his lost daughter will also return to life. He says, “There will be a resurrection, and those of us who died in the past will be brought back,” quoted the Dallas Morning News.

Ironically Doyle himself may have been personally involved in the fire that took his daughter’s life.

Davidians who spread fuel oil and ignited it at three different locations started the fire. This was recorded by infrared aerial photography and additionally substantiated by audio recordings recovered through bugging devices within the compound.

According to court testimony Doyle had traces of fuel on his clothes after he escaped. But the loyal Davidian refuses to accept what happened. And says instead, “I’m not ashamed of who I am and what I’ve been.”

But shouldn’t Davidians like Doyle be ashamed of David Koresh?

The cult leader was certainly a criminal and sexual predator. Some Davidians even cooperated with the purported pedophile, at times providing him with their own children for his sexual gratification.

How do Davidians today deal with such facts?

Koresh’s once estranged mother Bonnie Haldeman now seems to be a true believer. She attempts to explain away her son’s sexual abuse of women and children by claiming it was somehow “justified by scripture.”

Haldeman says, “He showed it to us…We had studies and studies and studies and had to accept that.”

But weren’t those “studies” just “brainwashing“?

DNA evidence has firmly established Koresh fathered at least one child with a minor and the testimony of a teenager established that he molested children as young as ten.

Doyle makes it clear that Koresh’s “Golden Rule” regarding his behavior was essentially, “My way or the highway.”

He states, “We have had to wrestle with that, but we got to where we accepted it as God’s instruction. If people couldn’t accept it, they walked away.”

Bonnie Haldeman also believes her son was a benign influence and a kind man. She told a reporter, “David didn’t have a mean bone in his body. David did not believe in murder,” reports Associated Press.

McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch sees things differently. He negotiated a cease-fire with the Davidians and says, “There was no religion as you and I understand it. He was using religion to stir up hate against the federal government. He preached if you die fighting the beast, you’ll be immediately translated to heaven.”

But Davidian Sheila Martin who lost her husband and four children in the standoff insists, “We could see the logic in all these things.”

Former ATF spokesman Jack Killorin concluded, “It’s not surprising that Osama bin Laden could employ people to commit suicide and fly planes into buildings. … Waco is a monument to our understanding that such things can and will happen,” reports the Dallas Morning News.

Not only the Davidians lost loved ones in the 1993 raid and subsequent standoff. Four BATF officers were killed.

Jane McKeehan the mother of one of those officers says of Koresh and his followers, “They were wrong. They were breaking the law.”

But Clive Doyle doesn’t see it that way and probably never will. He claims, “People died here for what they believed in, so for those of us who are living, it would be a dishonor to their memory to give it up.”

No doubt Daividians died for something they sincerely believed in, but as Killorin observed so did the followers of Osama bin Laden on September 11th.

Doyle commented that the Davidian compound today is “like a magnet for would-be prophets…poor deluded souls.”

Expect the remaining Davidian diehards to soldier on much like al Qaeda, “poor deluded souls,” invested so deeply in their delusion that as Doyle says, they will never “give it up.”

Catherine Wessinger, a religious studies professor that has been called a “cult apologist,” offers her analysis of another so-called “new religious movement.”

This time it’s David Koresh’s Branch Davidians.

It seems Wessinger can be depended upon for an apology no matter how bizarre and/or destructive the cult.

Today in the Waco Tribune-Herald’s second installment of its nine part series about the Branch Davidians she once again offers her unique spin on a cult’s demise.

What does Wessinger make out of the Davidian cult tragedy?

Well, she says it was largely about “the militarization of law enforcement and the problems … and abuse that arise from such militarization.”

Right.

Apparently this college professor doesn’t wish to acknowledge the implications of a purported “psychopath” leading a cult group.

Wessinger admits, “I’m not trained in psychology so I don’t articulate those opinions…I’m sure he [Koresh] had some psychological issues.”

What an understatement.

Wessinger offers her usual apologetic spin. She has previously attempted to explain away cult tragedies such as Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown.

Wessinger once said, “If Jones and his community had succeeded in creating their Promised Land, they would still be here. But due to the attacks and investigations they endured, they opted for the Gnostic view that devalued this world.”

Again, no meaningful blame is placed upon the deeply disturbed cult leader and the inherent destructive dynamics of his control over the group.

Apparently almost any cult and/or cult leader’s behavior may be largely excused according to Wessinger’s reasoning under the general heading of “persecution.”

The professor’s new book is titled “Millennialism, Persecution and Violence: Historical Cases (Religion and Politics).”

Wessinger’s conclusions about the Branch Davidians within this context come as no surprise.

The supposed scholar says, “Koresh would have emerged from the compound peacefully, as promised, once he completed his work inside interpreting the Seven Seals in the Book of Revelation. To have come out earlier, she says, “might have compromised Koresh’s need to conform to strict biblical prophecy.”

Obviously such a conclusion strains credulity and ignores the facts.

Koresh broke the law, failed to comply with a warrant, murdered federal officers and then refused to surrender for 51 days, despite the repeated pleas and guarantees of law enforcement. In the end he chose instead to kill himself and all his followers within the compound.

The cult leader’s behavior had little if anything to do with “biblical prophecy” and his “work” was really more about criminal violations of gun laws and sexual abuse than the “Book of Revelation.”

However, “apologists” like Wessinger apparently ignore such facts in favor of speculation based upon specious, but supposedly “politically correct” views, instead of reality.

A United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI) minister has been named in a lawsuit regarding sexual misconduct reports the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Rev. James Manning of Solid Rock Ministries is accused of sexually abusing a girl beginning at the age of 12.

Manning denies the claims and no criminal charges have been filed.

But the Pentecostal preacher has resigned from his position as district superintendent of the Missouri office of the UPCI.

Manning continues to pastor his church. And that church has also been named as a defendant in the suit.

This is the second sex scandal to rock the UPCI in less than a year.

The first hit when the denomination’s worldwide Sunday school Director Rev. Oree Nation, was arrested for sexual misconduct in a public park.

Nation plead guilty to a misdemeanor and was given probation. He was initially suspended without pay, but quickly opted for retirement.

The UPCI is known for its stringent code of “holiness” that mandates members must dress and groom in a certain conservative manner. For example, women usually wear no makeup and don’t cut their hair. Men are typically clean-shaven and wear short haircuts.

The denomination also believes that Christians who accept the trinity are in error and will be damned, unless they renounce that belief and accept the UPCI proscribed doctrinal formula for baptism.

Salvation is a fairly exclusive club according this Pentecostal group, but it looks like a few of its ministers need to worry about more than their haircuts.

For more than a hundred years teenage girls have been married off to polygamist men in the United States, often old enough to be their fathers.

But Lu Ann Kingston rejected her lot as a polygamist wife and walked out. Now she is sharing her history in an effort to promote legislation and make such practices a serious felony, reports the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Kingston who became a fourth wife at the age of 15 says, “Polygamists know there is a penalty, but it’s not that great.”

Under the proposed legislation marrying a second wife who is a minor will become a second-degree felony, with a possible 15-year prison term.

The legislation cleared the Utah House Judiciary Committee this week and seems likely to become law.

Such legislation is long overdue in Utah, which contains large groups of polygamists.

There are about 50,000 polygamists living in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The largest concentration of adherents is in Arizona and Utah.

But what about the leaders who make these girls marry?

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff claims, “We’re not bluffing. We’re not just going after the husband, but also the prophets or leaders — whoever is commanding these young girls to get married.”

And after decades of ignoring polygamist abuses Utah has taken some action in recent years, but only after much media coverage and corresponding outrage.

In 1999, David Ortell Kingston was convicted of two felony counts for having sex with his niece. Kingston is a key leader of one of Utah’s largest polygamist groups. He was sentenced to prison, but will be released soon in June.

David Kingston’s brother was also sentenced to 7 months in jail for beating up his daughter when she refused an arranged marriage with her uncle.

Lu Anne Kingston, once a member of the same notorious sect, says that at 15 she was forced into marriage and had two babies by the age of 20.

She said, “It’s not easy to leave. There’s such a great fear of leaving [the girls] are told that [plural marriage] is the way to heaven.” And failure to submit to such practices potentially places that person in “outer darkness” for eternity.

Because of such unreasonable fears, which are indoctrinated from earliest childhood, few polygamists seriously question their lot in life and/or rebel against group authority.

Polygamist sects are most often ruled over by authoritarian “prophets” who essentially speak for “God.” They are absolute authoritarian leaders not unlike those that head purported “cults.”

Though the modern Mormon Church reflects an evolution of devolving power and greater accountability, these polygamist “prophets” remain much like the early Mormon leaders of the 19th Century, such as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Both men were polygamists and their word was law amongst Mormons.

Perhaps Mormon history has made it difficult for Utah to face the dilemma of polygamy today?