Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology From: dennis.l.erlich@support.com Subject: THE RIGHT TO BE LEFT Message-ID: <9507281050.0F8IE00@support.com> References: Organization: L.A. Valley College Public BBS (818)985-7150 X-Mailer: TBBS/PIMP v3.35 Distribution: world Date: Fri, 28 Jul 95 10:50:44 -0700 Lines: 133 referen@ibm.net (Diane Richardson) >Lest we forget the children, here's a brief excerpt from Margaret >Thaler Singer's new book, "Cults in Our Midst" (c1995, Jossey-Bass >Publishers). I blush to admit that I was a little leery of Dr. Singer >after hearing all the scieno dead-agenting of her. You don't have to >read too far into this book to realize the woman knows what she's >talking about and expresses herself well. I know Dr. Singer personally. She counselled one of my daughters, virtually for free, for several months. Margaret is one of the sweetest, most intelligent, compassionate and competent women I have ever had the pleasure to befrend. >"Children of Jonestown > >Of the 912 members of the Peoples Temple cult who died, 276 were >children. At the cult's jungle settlement in Guyana, the children >lived in crowded physical conditions that resembled quarters on slave >ships. Food was barely edible; medical care and clothing inadequate. >Children were separated from parents and siblings and cared for by day >care and nursery school teachers and house parents, who supervised the >children in groups of about twelve. > >Children were allowed to see their parents only briefly at night, so >that they would place their allegiance instead with Jones and his wife >and look upon them as father and mother. Children were rewarded for >spying on their parents. > >Those above the age of six had to do 'public service' -- hard labor >including working in the jungle fields and on construction crews from >7 A.M. to 6 P.M. in temperatures as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit. >Teenagers did over half of the heavy construction work at Jonestown. > >As punishment, children were thrown into a dark well after being told >that snakes awaited them there. They were kept in a plywood box >measuring six feet by three feet by four feet for weeks at a time. >They had teeth knocked out in public beatings, were forced to dig >holes and then refill them, and were imprisoned in a small cellar. >Jones often watched security guards beat children with switches, >belts, and a long wooden board. Young girls were stripped and forced >into cold showers or a swimming pool. Children had electrodes wired >on their arms and were administered electric shocks. In one case, two >six-year-olds who had tried to run away had chains and balls welded to >their ankles. > >Peoples Temple children were frequently sexually abused. While the >group was still in California, teenage girls as young as fifteen had >to provide sex for influential people courted by Jones. A supervisor >of children at Jonestown had a history of child sexual abuse, and >Jones himself assaulted some of the children. If husbands and wives >were caught talking privately during a meeting, their daughters were >forced to masturbate publicly or to have sex with someone the family >didn't like before the entire Jonestown population, children as well >as adults. > >Jones gave the children powerful mind-altering drugs. They were also >subject to the terror of forty-two mass suicide rituals. Until the >last one, the final White Night, they never knew if the ritual was a >practice or the real thing. > >Jones had begun to plan the ending of the cult as a murder-suicide at >least five years before it happened. In 1971, he told cult member >Grace Stoen, "Everyone will die, except me, of course. I've got to >stay back and explain why we did it, for our belief in integration." >Jones told teenage member Linda Myrtle, "We're all to commit suicide, >killing the children first, then ourselves." By late 1975, Jones >began the White Night suicide drills in which members wre given drinks >and then were told they had been poisoned and would die in a few >minutes. Guards were around and no one could leave. These drills >began in San Francisco and continued in Guyana. > >About 5 P.M. of the last day, Jones assembled everyone at the >compound. The camp doctor and two nurses had filled hundreds of >syringes with a cyanide-laced sweet drink -- yellow for infants, pink >for children under ten, and purple for the older children and adults. >Jones had audiotaped the last hours to memorialize them, and on the >tape cult member Christine Miller can be heard protesting, "I look at >all the babies, and I think they deserve to live . . . I have the >right to choose and I choose not to commit suicide." > >I noted as did others who studied the tape that Jones turned it off, >then on again, repeatedly. Soon Jones was yelling, 'I want my babies >first. Take my babies and children first. Get moving, get moving, >get moving. Don't be afraid to die.' The nurses reportedly took the >syringes and squirted the cyanide down the throats of the babies. >Stanley clayton and Odell Rhodes, who hid and survived, provided >accounts of the last minutes. Clayton reported that 'the nurses >plucked babies right out of their mothers' arms.' The infants gave >out piercing, tormented screams, and a nurse called out: 'They're not >crying from the pain. It's a little bitter-tasting.' Mothers poured >cyanide-baced Fla-Vor-Aid down the throats of their infants and young >children. On the final tape from Guyana, Jones's voice tells mothers, >'Hurry, bring the little one up here. Hurry, mothers, hurry.' > >The Jonestown settlement is gone, but the nightmare of cult life >lingers on for many small children and teenagers caught in other >cults." >______________________________ > >Dr Singer also mentions that many of the Jonestown children had been >placed by the California courts as foster children in the care of Jim >Jones and his Peoples Temple. > >No doubt perceptive readers will notice the similarities between what >is said about the condition of children in the Peoples Temple and what >we've heard described here about the Cadet Org children of Sea Org >members. Absolutely chilling! For those on the Waco thread, I'd say the above crimes against children, if done by a US citizen or within the borders of the USA, would constitute the federal crime of depriving them of their constitutional rights to freedom by engaging in slavery, torture and other federally outlawed activities. The similarities between the Cadet Org condietions and those in Jonestown are startling. (no suicide drills for the scieno kids - its "Repel Borders Drilling" for them) >Diane Richardson >referen@ibm.net +--------------------------------------+ Rev. Dennis L Erlich * * the inFormer * * dennis.l.erlich@support.com + inForm@primenet.com "tar baby"