Latest news with #cult
The Sun
a day ago
- The Sun
I was beaten with a stick from age 2 on Jesus Army farm where paedo ‘prophets' abused kids & ‘deserters' turned up dead
TO casual visitors the Jesus Army's communal farms in a quiet Northamptonshire village appeared idyllic. Children played in the fields, picked fresh fruit and did not face the pressures of the modern world. 12 12 12 But for the kids who grew up in rural Bugbrooke under the terrifying regime of wild-haired preacher Noel Stanton, it was a nightmare. Children weren't allowed toys, crisps, television, radio, hobbies, sugar or even to visit museums. A new BBC documentary titled The Rise and Fall of the Jesus Army reveals how children were beaten on a daily basis if they broke these rules and told they were 'possessed'. Even worse was the sexual abuse in a Christian community that was supposed to value celibacy. The controversial church, which began life as the Jesus Fellowship in 1973, closed its doors for good in May 2019 following over 600 allegations of abuse. Founder Stanton, who died in 2009 aged 82, was among the powerful men accused of assaulting the flock. Breaking the spell Stanton's cult had over them is difficult. Nathan, 38, who was born into the Jesus Army and sexually abused by a 'man in his 40s' from the age of ten, says that Noel is 'still someone I respect". He explains: 'It was my whole life basically. I would spend hours with Noel shouting at us that you would go to Hell for stupid little things you did as a kid.' Stanton, originally from Bedfordshire, ran a stationery business before becoming pastor of the Baptist church in Bugbrooke in 1957. I was trapped in a cult & forced to give all my money to leaders who made me unwell with their 'cruelty' Over the following decade he attracted increasingly 'unorthodox individuals' to his evangelistic sermons. Earlier follower John says: 'He claimed he was a prophet speaking God's will.' Fervent believers would speak in tongues and think they had been touched by Jesus. The congregation were expected to be totally devoted to the Jesus Fellowship. John continues: 'It wasn't just a case of just going to church, it was a case of belonging to the church.' 'Extreme and dangerous' 12 12 12 That devotion went further in 1974 when New Creation Hall and New Creation Farm were opened. Stanton's disciples sold their home and all their worldly goods to buy these properties, which they didn't own. The homes would be shared by any of the followers living there. Magsy, who was brought up in nearby Upper Stowe, recalls: 'We were playing in the fields and picking fruit. It was beautiful.' But Philippa Barnes, who was aged seven when she moved there, could sense something was wrong. She says: 'We were very tightly overseen by Noel. You didn't have time with your mum. It was extreme. It was dangerous.' Families were split up, with some children placed with strangers and married couples slept in separate beds. The women were separated from the men, who were in control of the community. Elders, who were always male, were expected to enforce the rules. Magsy recalls: 'There were no crisps, no worldly things because that was inviting the devil in.' In the evening Noel and other elders would purge people of their 'sins' as they writhed about on the floor convulsing like something out of The Exorcist movie. Magsy continues: 'There would be people who looked possessed, people laying hands on them, Noel crying out 'the devil'.' Suspicious deaths 12 This remained hidden from the outside world until Stephen Orchard, 19, died in suspicious circumstances in 1978 after leaving the 'cult'. His injuries suggested he had lain on a railway track in the path of a train less than a mile from Bugbrooke, but the coroner recorded an open verdict. Stephen wasn't the only one. Eighteen months earlier David Hooper, 24, had died from exposure to freezing temperatures at the farm after being outside partially clothed in early December 1976. Then in 1986, Jesus Army member Mohammed Majid was found floating in an underground water tank on the grounds. There would be people who looked possessed, people laying hands on them, Noel crying out 'the devil' Magsy The publicity around Stephen's death did nothing to quell interest in this new way of life. By 1980 their communes had over 430 residents and were running a string of businesses, including a hotel and health food shops. With followers working for the love of the religion, the coffers swelled. For the children who could not escape, it was a brutal upbringing with regular punishment beatings. Magsy, who was beaten with a stick from the age of two, says: 'I was rodded every day. The brothers decided if you were defiant.' Sexual abuse 12 12 12 John was the first of the disgruntled grown-ups to leave and to go public with his concerns. As a result the Jesus Fellowship was thrown out of the Baptist Union and the Evangelical Alliance in 1986. Unperturbed, Stanton launched the Jesus Army the following year in a bid to bring in fresh converts. Church members were sent out into cities such as London to find waifs and strays in need of a bed. They opened up a Battle Centre in the capital and more communities in places such as Sheffield. Next up were raves in warehouses, with people singing 'we are generation J' and talking about getting a 'natural high' from God. But word got around paedophiles that the Jesus Army offered easy access to young children. And the elders failed to crack down on reports of sexual abuse. Sarah recalls how brazen one senior member of the church was. She says: 'He would put his hand on my thigh under the table while his wife was across the room. He just shut me down.' When Philippa told the police that a Jesus Army member had sexually assaulted one of her friends he was sentenced to six months in prison. But he only served half of that time inside and was welcomed back as leader. After Noel died the new leaders introduced safeguarding training and safeguarding officers. The damage, though, had been done. An investigation by Northamptonshire Police titled Operation Lifeboat uncovered 214 allegations of abuse. Only five of the abusers were prosecuted and only two of them received custodial sentences, the longest being Nigel Perkins and Alan Carter, who received three year jail terms in 2017 and 2018 respectively. DC Mark Allbright explains: 'It was difficult, there was closing of ranks.' An independent review in 2017 carried on behalf of the Jesus Army found that Stanton had abused boys and that the leaders had failed to act. Facing hundreds of compensation claims the church closed two years later. Those cases are ongoing and many more victims are yet to come forward, with one in six children in the Jesus Army believed to have experienced abuse. The Jesus Fellowship said: 'We continue to hold out an unreserved apology to anyone who has been affected by abuse and failings of any kind in the Jesus Fellowship. 'In 2013 we, as the senior leadership of the church, initiated a wide-ranging process that invited disclosures of any kind of abuse, both historic and recent, and referred all such reports to the authorities.'
Japan Times
16-07-2025
- Japan Times
Tens of millions of yen found at home of Aum Shinrikyo founder's wife
Police in Saitama Prefecture have found tens of millions of yen in cash at the home of the wife of the now-defunct Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult's founder Chizuo Matsumoto, who went by the name Shoko Asahara, informed sources said Tuesday. The cash was found when the Saitama Prefectural Police searched the apartment of Matsumoto's 66-year-old wife and 31-year-old second son, the sources said. Matsumoto was executed in 2018 over a series of incidents involving the cult, including the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway system.
Times
15-07-2025
- Times
Constance Marten wanted to expose ‘cult that broke her'
Constance Marten told a friend she wanted to return to the cult that 'broke' her in order to expose it for a documentary. Marten, 38, who on Monday was convicted of killing her baby, joined the Christian preacher TB Joshua's Synagogue Church of All Nations in Nigeria (Scoan) as a 19-year-old in 2006. Angie, a fellow disciple who shared a dormitory with her, told the BBC that the church was 'a place of torture, psychological abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse' under Joshua's leadership. Marten was thrown out of Scoan after four months, with Joshua telling others that she was a 'CIA spy'. On Monday Marten was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter following the death of her baby Victoria. The baby died while Marten and her partner Mark Gordon spent weeks on the run in fear that the authorities would take the child away after social services took her previous four children into care. After leaving the church and graduating from university, Marten worked as a researcher at the Al Jazeera news channel, where she tried to make a documentary about Scoan — a project she mentioned in messages sent to Angie in early 2013. 'I really want this film to give an understanding to viewers of how cults work, and the very subtle manipulation that happens, so subtle that you can't even notice it,' Marten wrote. She said Joshua's 'hoodwinking of innocent people' must 'come into the light'. • Who is the real Constance Marten? A life that led to tragedy Bisola Hephzibah Johnson, another former disciple, told the BBC that she persuaded Marten not to return to Scoan in 2013 to carry out secret filming for her documentary because it would be too dangerous. In further messages to Angie, she wrote: 'I haven't spoken to anyone about what happened at the synagogue. All my university friends are secular, and if I told them about what I'd seen in Lagos, they'd think I was lying or mad!' Marten said she had tried to deal with what she experienced 'silently and with a lot of confusion'. 'It's taken me years to get back to normal,' she wrote. She said it would be a great help 'both emotionally and spiritually' to talk to Angie, who replied and later met Marten twice. Angie said: 'It's no wonder she just ended up distrusting normal institutions, because clearly something broke within her at some point.' Marten, and Gordon, 51, went on the run with their daughter Victoria in early 2023 after their four other children were taken into care. Police had launched a nationwide hunt after their car burst into flames on the motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester. • Constance Marten's partner says couple are victims of racism The couple travelled across England and went off grid, sleeping in a tent on the South Downs where baby Victoria died. After seven weeks on the run, the defendants were arrested in Brighton, East Sussex. Following a desperate search, police found their baby dead amid rubbish inside a Lidl bag in a disused shed nearby. They will be sentenced at a later date.
News.com.au
14-07-2025
- News.com.au
Controversy as notorious Jonestown cult site where 918 died becomes tourist attraction
Warning: This story includes details and photos which may be distressing Jonestown is seared into the American psyche as one the darkest tragedies of the modern era, where 918 people 'drank the Kool Aid' and ended their lives under the command of cult leader Jim Jones. Located in the remote Guyanese jungle, the site where the army first discovered the mass of dead bodies of People's Temple members in 1978 is now opening as a somewhat morbid tourist attraction, the New York Post reports. It is designed to pay sombre tribute in the manner of Auschwitz and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The curious can pay $US750 ($A1140) to visit the clearing where Jones' religious cult, mostly US citizens who had travelled with him to Guyana in South America, unravelled in the most gruesome way imaginable. And there were survivors — although the overall story of Jones' followers poisoning themselves with cyanide-laced fruit punch (it was actually an off-brand version of Kool-Aid called Flavor-Aid) is notorious, lesser known are how around 80 of Jones' acolytes survived. Some did it by getting lucky and being out of town when the poisonous drinks were served, including Jones' son Stephan Gandhi Jones, who was at a basketball tournament. Others slipped out unseen, running into the jungle or hiding in the camp's cupboards. About 18 of Jones' followers took Congressman Leo Ryan – whose visit to the camp sparked the mass suicide – up on his offer to leave the religious enclave with him. Jordan Vilchez, now 67, who joined the People's Church at 12 and remained there until the end, was fortunate enough to be in Guyana's capital, Georgetown, when the mass suicides went down. 'I created a job for myself, talking about Jonestown to the Guyanese community. That task was acceptable to the leadership, and it allowed me to not spend so much time in Jonestown,' she told The Post. Hearing over a CB radio the Jonestown suicides were happening, she was horrified but not entirely surprised. 'There had been discussions about a mass suicide,' said Ms Vilchez, who lost two sisters and two nephews to the forced killings. 'In some circles, there were practice drills. There was talk of 'Revolutionary Suicide'. There was a running narrative of us being persecuted. 'Unbeknown to us, the world was closing in on Jim. Because of his pathological narcissism, he was not going to go down alone. People were stuck and emotionally drained – I got caught up in it and was not going to escape. Over the years, we got more hooked in. We were told that America would become a police state and our safety was in being part of this group.' Ms Vilchez is against the new tours to the site – where little remains, apart from a commemorative stone and the entrance archway. 'It seems silly. It's something that people will make money from. It seems like an abuse.' The Guyanese tourism company behind the trips, Wanderlust Adventures GY, defend their position. 'We want to present things in a way that is responsible and educational,' Roselyn Sewcharran, founder of the company, told The Post. During the overnight trip to Jonestown 'we talk about the social and political issues, the dangers of following with blind faith and the lessons learned from the Jonestown tragedy.' The People's Temple was founded by Jim Jones, a Communist sympathiser, in Indianapolis, in 1955. He put on fake healings to generate income and promoted the idea that all races and ethnicities would be welcome. In 1961, with the cold war top of mind for most Americans, Jones claimed to have a vision that Indianapolis would be decimated by nuclear attack. The People's Temple relocated to California, with its main headquarters in San Francisco. Jones began proclaiming, 'I am come as God Socialist [sic].' Once in the heavily hippie-fied Frisco, Jones began dabbling in illicit drugs and his sense of paranoia is said to have ratcheted up. Jones, who had a particularly magnetic personality, put up a convincing argument for belonging and in 1974, the People's Temple rented more than 3800 acres in Guyana, a tropical country which borders Venezuela. Jones promised to create a 'socialist paradise,' and reminded followers how he'd read that in the event of a nuclear war, South America was the safest place to be. He sent a cadre of followers to set things up, while he led the church in San Francisco. Things went fairly smoothly at first. 'It was great,' said Thom Bogue, who moved to Guyana in 1976 at the age of 15 with his family. 'I'd work eight hours a day, helping to build cottages and overseeing my own crew in the plant nursery. Then I'd go in the jungle and play before having a nice meal.' Mike Touchette, another Jonestown survivor, agrees. 'We built a community out of nothing in four years,' he told the Chicago Tribune. 'Being in Jonestown before Jim got there was the best thing in my life.' However, in 1977 an article filled with accusations appeared in New West magazine – including that a member's teenage daughter was beaten so badly 'her butt looked like hamburger,' driving Jones to flee to Guyana. Within a year, things on the commune got harder, and weirder. Survivors say there was a feeling of victimhood, perpetrated by Jones. His rambling meetings went on for hours, workdays seemed endless and it became all about ideology rather than Utopia. 'It steadily got worse … Ninety-five per cent of the people had no idea what was going on. It was like being stuck on an island,' Mr Bogue said. However, some did escape and word got back to California, prompting that state's congressman Leo Ryan and a group of journalists to arrive in November 1978, intending to investigate complaints from escapees. Mr Bogue's father was already hatching an escape plan, but when Mr Ryan offered an opportunity to leave with him, the family said they'd join. 'It was a very high-risk opportunity,' Mr Bogue, now 63, said about his family proceeding with Mr Ryan and others to a landing strip where a plane waited to fly them out. 'But maybe it was the best opportunity.' When the group assembled at an airstrip to leave, cult members, including one named Larry Layton, opened fire on them. Mr Ryan was shot dead as were three journalists and a temple member hoping to escape. Layton was later extradited, found guilty of wounding two people and served 18 years in a California prison. Mr Bogue, then 17, was inside the plane when its tires were shot out. He got up from his seat just as one member was shot in the head. Bogue took a bullet to the leg. When the shooting seemed to have abated, he and his sister ran off into the bordering jungle. Back at camp, knowing he'd be implicated in the death of a US senator, Jones gave the command to his faithful that it was time for Revolutionary Suicide. Syringes of cyanide were squirted into juice and sandwiches and consumed by the congregation – the children first. Jones shot himself in the head. Despite his injury, Mr Bogue survived in the jungle for three days. 'I was saved by maggots. They ate the gangrene. And then, during the third morning, I became delirious. I lost all sense of direction. But I was with my sister and three others from [another] family.' They were found and he was reunited with his father. They made their way back to the US shortly after. Nearly 47 years later Bogue works as an auto mechanic and serves as vice mayor of Dixon, California. 'I think it's great to turn it into a tourist attraction and a memorial,' he said, 'I've already been back there three times and the jungle is starting to reclaim the area. I would love to be a consultant on something like that.'
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sex Trafficking ‘Smallville' Star Ties Knot After Prison
Allison Mack, who spent two years behind bars for her role in a cult sex trafficking scandal, is putting the past behind her. In fact, the Smallville star just said 'I do' to a man named Frank, two years after she was released from prison. Her new chapter with Frank also comes five years after filing for divorce from Battlestar Galactica actress Nicki Clyne, whom she wed in 2017. Mack, who played Chloe Sullivan on the 2000s Superman series, was arrested in 2018 for crimes relating to the NXIVM sex cult. The cult, led by Keith Raniere, presented as a self-help company but was a front for sex trafficking and forced labor. Its subgroup, DOS, was an all-female secret society in which women were allegedly forced to be sexually subservient to Raniere. When Mack wed her ex-wife Clyne, NXIVM's one-time publicist told People that the union was at Raniere's behest. Mack pled guilty to recruiting sex slaves for Raniere. In a tearful 2019 apology, she said that she would 'take full responsibility' for her actions. 'I'm very sorry for who I've hurt through my misguided adherence to Keith Raniere's teachings,' she said at the time. Mack was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021. But she only served 21 months in a California correctional institution before she was released early in July 2023. Us Weekly reported that Mack wrote a letter addressed to NXIVM survivors: 'It is now of paramount importance for me to say, from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry. I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Raniere with everything I had. I believed, wholeheartedly, that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself. I devoted my loyalty, my resources, and, ultimately, my life to him. This was the biggest mistake and greatest regret of my life.' The actress, now 42, enjoyed early freedom due to a Donald Trump-era 2018 law called the First Step Act (FSA), which aimed to reduce prison overcrowding. Federal inmates can earn time credits toward early release through participation in programs and productive activities. Mack married Frank in an intimate ceremony, wearing a halter-neck bridal gown with wildflowers pinned in her updo, TMZ reported. Frank donned a gray suit. The pair made their vows underneath a traditional Jewish chuppah.
