Polygamous sect leader sentenced to 10 years
Jeffs convicted for role in arranged marriage between teens

Associated Press Nov 2007
ST. GEORGE, Utah - A judge sentenced a polygamous-sect leader Tuesday to two consecutive terms of five years to life in prison for his role in the arranged marriage of teenage cousins.

Warren Jeffs, 51, was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in the marriage of a 14-year-old follower and her 19-year-old cousin in 2001. It will be up to the Utah parole board to decide how long he actually stays behind bars.

Jeffs’ attorney, Wally Bugden, asked the judge for concurrent sentences but lost the argument.

“This was all about religion,” Bugden said outside court. “The foundation of this case was the prosecution of Mr. Jeffs because of placement marriages.”

Jeffs is head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose members practice polygamy in arranged marriages that have often involved placing young girls with older men. Most FLDS members live in the twin communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., about 350 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

Washington County prosecutors said Jeffs enticed Elissa Wall into marriage and sex against her will by telling her that the relationship was commanded by God and that any refusal would place her salvation at risk.

Jurors said Wall’s age was a major factor in their decision. Under Utah law, a 14-year-old can consent to sex in some circumstances. But it is not considered consensual if a person younger than 18 is enticed by someone at least three years older.

Wall, now 21, testified that Jeffs failed to help her when she protested the marriage and when she later asked for a divorce because she was uncomfortable having sex with Allen Steed.

Steed, now 26, told a different version of events. He said Wall initiated sex and denied that she had cried during their wedding ceremony.

As a victim in the case, Wall had the right to receive $5,000 from Jeffs as restitution, but she declined Tuesday.

“My restitution is knowing that I spoke the truth and that you and the justice system have done your job,” she told state Judge James Shumate.

The Utah parole board’s first opportunity to review Jeffs’ case comes in 2010, although it could decide to wait longer. And when his case does comes up, the board will deal only with the first sentence, said Jim Hatch, a state parole board spokesman.

The average for Utahns convicted of rape or other first-degree felony sex offenses is seven years, Hatch said.

Weeks after the Sept. 25 verdict, the judge unsealed court documents that disclosed a suicide attempt by Jeffs in jail. He apparently attempted to hang himself in January, months before trial. Authorities have declined to discuss the events, although Jeffs was taken to a hospital for just a few hours.

The documents also included selected jail transcripts of phone calls and visits between Jeffs and members of his church. Although he has been president, or prophet, since 2002, following the death of his father, Rulon, Jeffs said in jail that he had not been worthy of the “priesthood” for decades.

“I was immoral with a sister and a daughter when I was younger, so the Lord showed me I’m one of the most wicked men on the face of the Earth since father Adam’s time,” Jeffs said.

He never elaborated on the immoral acts.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who allege sexual abuse, but Wall has made several public statements about the case using her maiden name. Citing safety concerns, she and her attorneys have declined to disclose her current legal name. Wall was granted an FLDS divorce by Jeffs after she became pregnant with another man’s child; she left the faith and is married.

Steed was charged with rape the day after Jeffs’ conviction. His case is pending.

Jeffs faces similar criminal charges in Arizona.

The mainstream Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, renounced polygamy more than a century ago, excommunicates members who engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS church.

Russian Doomsday sect members continue to emerge

By Russia correspondent Scott Bevan

Posted Thu Apr 3, 2008 7:10am AEDT

More followers of a Doomsday sect in southern Russia have come out of a cave they have been been living in for the past five months.

A woman and two children are the latest to resurface.

In November, 35 members of a Doomsday sect barricaded themselves inside the underground cave to wait for the world to end, which they believe will happen next month.

But now, there are just 11 still in the cave.

A woman and her two children, one just a toddler, have resurfaced.

The exodus from the cave began last Friday when seven left, then on Monday another 14 returned to the outside world as run-off from melting snow caused parts of the bunker to collapse.

New head of voodoo brings on the charm

April 3, 2008
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: The goat tethered to a tree outside of Max Beauvoir’s home is doomed.

Beauvoir, tall and majestic with closely cropped white hair, is a voodoo priest who was just named the religion’s supreme master, a newly created position that is aimed at reviving voodoo.

His grand residence on the outskirts of the Haitian capital serves as a voodoo temple for practitioners and a late-night hangout for those paying customers eager to take in an exotic evening of spiritual awakening.

Called the Peristyle de Mariani, it is where Beauvoir and his followers dance around a giant totem to the beat of drums. It is where they light bonfires to summon the spirits. And it is where they drain the blood of animals like that scrawny white goat to, among other things, heal the sick.

On a recent night, Haiti’s voodooists convened for a special ceremony. With music blaring and devotees dancing with all their might, two children threw white rose petals on a red carpet. Then along came Beauvoir.

Popular in Haiti even among many of those who attend Christian churches, voodoo lacks the formal hierarchy of other religions. Most voodoo priests, known as houngans, operate semi-independently, catering to their followers without a whole lot of structure.

But many of Haiti’s houngans recently came together into a national federation and named Beauvoir, 72, as their public face. He is now the spokesman for a religion that followers believe too often gets a bad rap and is in dire need of an image overhaul. (Think “voodoo economics.”) Even before he got the job, Beauvoir was a voodoo promoter extraordinaire. With his own Web site, www.vodou.org, and a following among foreigners intrigued by voodoo, Beauvoir is criticized by some purists as too much of a showman.

“My position as supreme chief in voodoo was born out of a controversy,” Beauvoir said, explaining how Haiti’s elite have marginalized the houngans that generations ago wielded significant influence in society. “Today, voodooists are at the bottom of society. They are virtually all illiterate. They are poor. They are hungry. You have people who are eating mud, and I don’t mean that as a figure of speech.”

Beauvoir, a doctor’s son who was not particularly interested in spiritual matters in his youth, left Haiti in the mid-1950s for the City College of New York, where he studied chemistry. Then he went off to the Sorbonne for graduate study in biochemistry. After various jobs in the New York area, he returned to Haiti in the early 1970s to conduct experiments on traditional herbal remedies.

It was then that voodoo called.

His nonagenarian grandfather was dying and the entire extended family had gathered around his bed. Before he went, though, the old man pointed at Beauvoir and ordered him to take over his duties as a voodoo priest.

Beauvoir said he was taken aback. He did not know the man well and could not understand why he had been selected from the 20 or so other family members in the room. And he knew almost nothing about voodoo.

But that was decades ago. Beauvoir has devoted the rest of his life to studying the religion, a mix of Christianity (introduced by slaves to mask their paganism from their masters) and animism that traces its origins to West Africa, which is also where Haitians, descendants of slaves, originated. The more he learns about voodoo, Beauvoir said, the more convinced he is that it can, and should, play a role in resolving Haiti’s problems, especially given the religion’s reach among the most disenfranchised people.

As it is now, he said, the government seeks the input of Catholic and Protestant leaders when grappling with societal issues. “But do they call for the input of the voodooists?” he asked, shaking his head.

Haiti has long been a battleground for Christian missionaries who view voodoo as devil worship and work tirelessly to convert the population to Christ. Voodoo also has one god, modeled on God of the Christian Bible, but it incorporates pagan elements that make Christians uneasy: casting spells and catering to spirits that are seen as the major forces of the universe.

To turn things around, Haiti’s voodooists decided they needed to organize themselves and confront voodoo-bashing head on.

“We decided to come together and form a new voodoo structure,” Beauvoir said. “We Haitians want to move forward in life. We need to find our identity again, and voodoo is our identity. It’s part of our collective personality. We feel the government we have is relying too much on foreigners to fill their pockets.”

Voodoo and politics have long been intertwined in Haiti, with some past leaders reaching out to voodooists as a way of burnishing their populist credentials. Beauvoir has himself been linked with Franc,ois Duvalier, or Baby Doc, the dictator who fled the country in 1986 after a popular uprising against him. And Beauvoir opposed Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s rule, becoming a hated figure among loyalists of the former Catholic priest.

In “The Rainy Season,” her book on Haiti, Amy Wilentz portrays Beauvoir as an opportunist who preys upon his people and has “the oily manner of a man whom you wouldn’t want to leave alone with your money or your child.”

Beauvoir waves off such criticism. He acknowledges that he received death threats from political opponents in the mid-1990s and was worried enough about his safety - and that of his wife and two daughters - that he fled Haiti for the United States. He settled in Washington, D.C., where he continued with voodoo ceremonies from his apartment not far from the White House. Recently, though, he returned home and wasted no time in grabbing the voodoo spotlight.

Speaking of the current crop of political leaders, Beauvoir is as harsh as some are about him.

“They have been seduced by Western attitudes,” he said of current leaders. “They believe foreigners think that way so they have to think that way. They fear that if they don’t oppose voodoo, they won’t get a dime in their bowl.”

The movie industry is another focus of Beauvoir’s wrath. And he speaks as something of an insider, having helped the anthropologist Wade Davis with his investigation of voodoo, which first became a book, “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” and later a Hollywood movie.

On the big screen, zombies are scary monsters, Beauvoir complained, and not the carefully controlled subjects of voodoo science that he believes them to be.

“The voice of Hollywood has grown beyond the border of the United States,” he said. “It’s everywhere. The voice of Max Beauvoir is very small compared to that.”

LAS SIMILITUDES SON TANTAS, QUE ES RIDICULO NO DARSE CUENTA...

Records: Polygamist sect married at puberty 
Court documents allege sexual abuse at Texas ranch; two men arrested

Associated Press, April 9, 2008

LDORADO, Texas - A polygamist compound with hundreds of children was rife with sexual abuse, child welfare officials allege in court documents, with girls spiritually married to much older men as soon as they reached puberty and boys groomed to perpetuate the cycle.

The documents released Tuesday also gave details about the hushed phone calls that broke open the case, by a 16-year-old girl at the West Texas ranch who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. Days after raiding the compound, officials still aren't sure where the girl is.

Officials have completed removing all 416 children from the ranch and have won custody of all of them, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner told reporters in San Angelo, about 40 miles from the compound in Eldorado.

Court documents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound were pregnant, and that all the children were removed on grounds that they were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse." Another 136 women left on their own.

"Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them," read the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective Services investigative supervisor.

McFadden said the girls were spiritually married to the men as soon as they reached puberty and were required to produce children

An unknown number of men were being held at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor's office and housing units.

Church lawyer Patrick Peranteau did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.

A call for help
The compound was raided Thursday after the 16-year-old girl called a local family violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else's cell phone and speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden's affidavit said.

The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was ill. She told the shelter that her husband would "beat and hurt" her when he got angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby.

The girl also said that her husband sexually assaulted her and that she was several weeks pregnant. The girl told the shelter her husband went to "the outsiders' world" but didn't know where.

Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who is believed to be in Arizona, but the girl's husband is not identified in the court documents released Tuesday.

In the March 30 call, the girl told the shelter she was being held against her will. If she left, church members told her, "outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and (modern) clothes and to have sex with lots of men."

At the end of the call, she began to cry.

Trying to find her
Meisner said the agency still didn't know whether the 16-year-old was among the children removed from the ranch. Child welfare officials have been interviewing the children in search of the girl and to investigate allegations of abuse.

Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.

The boys were groomed to be ready to marry underage girls upon adulthood and engage in sexual activity, "resulting in them becoming sexual perpetrators," the affidavit said.

Children in the sect were deprived of food and forced to sit in closed closets as a form of discipline, the affidavit said.

Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints predicted an uneasy adjustment to foster care. They are likely the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those taken by Arizona authorities 54 years ago in a similar raid.

That raid a half-century ago and the one this week pulled children of polygamist families from the only community and culture they'd ever known — an event that decades later a former community member recalls as traumatizing.

"It was total misery for them," said Ben Bistline, now 72. He was 18 when authorities raided the remote community of Short Creek — now known as the twin towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. Authorities took 200 children into custody as part of an effort to wipe out a "nest of polygamy."

Gilberto

Como siempre nos traes un comentario excelente. Me parece que tu comentario está muy claro, el que tenga oídos que oiga!
Verdaderamente no deben desmayar las fuerzas de los que valientemente han dado esta lucha porque la verdad salga a la luz publica para el conocimiento de la toda la sociedad y por defender a la iglesia.

Sería bueno que al igual que lo han hecho los ex-miembros de hacer las denuncias publicas, también otros expromulgadores que todavía no hemos salido publicamente a denunciar a la misión nos decidamos a hacerlo.  Se que son mucchas las razomes las que quizás nos impide denunciar a la secta de frente como lo han hecho algunos exmiembros, pero tenemos que pensar que Dios nos pedirá cuentas por lo que pudimos haber hecho y en vez de hacer algo nos quedamos de brazos cruzados, indiferente a toda esta situación. Yo quiero decirle a los ex-miembros que pueden contar conmigo para lo que sea. De ahora en adelante me uniré a luchar por la verdad porque de la misma manera que antes tenía que cumplir con mis metas y todo para una secta y para cumplir con los caprichos de JAC, pues ahora debemos de atrevernos a denunciar por el bien de todos. Además  de que al hacerlo estoy seguro que sentiremos una liberacion total. Nos quitaremos un gran peso de encima. APOYEMOS A  LOS EX-SECTARIOS!

No quisiera poner un “copy-paste” de otras discusiones aquí.

Hable especialmente con Cecilia Vaderrama, Tony O´Connor, Coral Villazon, sobre el  tema y conozco perfectamente el sentido del sacrificio dentro de la misión. Y la visión distorsionada, sectaria y manipuladora que se le trata de dar a los “promulgadores”.

Además esto, del “sacrificio” esta fuera del tema. Esta discusión es tratada en otro tema del foro, que habla específicamente del sufrimiento, sacrificio y penitencia.

El tema sobre oración, sacrificio y penitencia, creo ha quedado debidamente expuesto tanto desde la óptica del grupo “la misión” de la Virgen del Rosario del Pozo, como desde un contexto de análisis a ese mismo punto de vista.

No es desde una visión reduccionista de la doctrina donde el sacrificio ejerce un papel  de “fórmula mágica” para lograr una anhelada santidad. Al contrario, ejercer el sacrificio con este pensamiento en mente, nos resultará en actitudes farisaicas y de engrandecimiento de ego. Pudiera decirse quizá “soberbia espiritual”, la cuál es totalmente inútil y estéril.

Los casos de algunos usuarios de este foro lo confirman así.

Tenemos personas aquí que debido a las enseñanzas del grupo “la misión” se flagelaban, ayunaban, comían alimentos como chiles, ajos, cebollas crudas, etc. Y tenemos como resultado que simple y llanamente no tuvieron ningún tipo de “crecimiento espiritual”, pudimos ver algunos de nosotros personas del grupo “la misión” que hacían mucho sacrificio, y simplemente reflejaban en su conducta actitudes no cónsonas siquiera con una actitud de trato civilizado.

Queda abierta la prueba a comerse algo desagradable y observar si en algo cambia nuestra actitud. Y si cambia, ¿Es porque nosotros lo quisimos por voluntad propia cambiar?, o Porque el chile actuó como una especie de “magia” y de repente ya no sentimos el mismo impulso de “portarnos mal”. ¿Mito o realidad?  O más chusco aún, ¿Creemos que Dios “nos abona” “más gracia” a nuestro favor cada vez que castigamos nuestro cuerpo?

Quizá para muchos esto les suene inverosímil, pero para los del grupo “la misión”, estoy diciendo herejías. Pero por eso invito a estudiar el tema. ¿Qué dice la Iglesia Católica de esto? ¿Esta realmente la Iglesia Católica siendo “light”, siendo “cobarde”  por no poner el tema del sacrificio como tema central?

Ahora por otro lado no estamos diciendo que el sacrificio y menos el sufrimiento o la penitencia sean malos. Por supuesto que no. Lo que estamos diciendo es que el sacrificio, tomado como camino tanto de purificación, como camino de perfeccionamiento, es algo reduccionista. Es una visión miope de la grandeza de lo que es la caridad, el amor, la autodonación. El sacrificio debe ser tomado como una consecuencia a un ejercicio de mejoría. No es malo, tampoco es un fin.

Es bueno, sí, en el sentido de que despegarme de cualquier afecto desordenado produce y conlleva un sacrificio, una disciplina. Si en la práctica de ese perfeccionamiento y esa disciplina tengo que hacer un sacrificio concreto,  ese sacrificio entonces adquiere el valor de herramienta efectiva, no hay nada místico ni sobrenatural en ello.

No podemos volar, cuando hay problemas para gatear. Así mismo igual, no se puede hablar de teología mística, de teología ascética, cuando simple y sencillamente yo como persona me creo superior a mi hermano.

No solo estas personas “del pozo”, se creen superiores; se creen el último recurso de “la anunciación”, se creen tienen –textualmente- “la verdad absoluta”, por tanto, se creen tienen una función mesiánica. Simple y sencillamente si eso fuera verdad, en primer lugar ellos serían los primeros en guardar una tremenda prudencia y tratarían de pasar inadvertidos. Pero es filosóficamente imposible. Es un auténtico disparate cualquiera que nos venga con el cuento de que “Cristo lo envía ahora, para dar a conocer al mundo un mensaje para toda la humanidad” y cosas por el estilo.

Por tanto: Santidad y Sacrificio corporal no es directamente proporcional.

No es más santo el que mucho hace, sino el que más lucha.

Sin embargo, si es directamente proporcional la humildad, la caridad, la paz interior, etc.

Son 3 cosas distintas el sufrimiento, el sacrificio y la penitencia.

No me vengan con que yo dije que el sacrificio no era bueno. Ojo yo nunca he mencionado eso. Creo estos conceptos de la caridad, el sacrificio implícito, es algo muy básico. No veo porque tomarlo con apasionamientos ni fanatismo.

Son simples principios de la vida, que simplemente creo es bueno todos independientemente de nuestra forma de ver las cosas podemos poner en práctica y hacernos los unos a los otros la vida mas feliz.

HOLA A TODOS!

Hace tiempo que no venía por aquí, pero ya estoy nuevamente en el foro.

Bueno eso del arcoiris patas arriba que han visto en coamo pudo ser alguna alucinacion que han tenido los sectarios por falta de descanso, alimentación y tranquilidad  Si vivieran sus vidas tranquilos fuera de esa secta dejarian de ver cosas extrañas. Están tan fanatizados que cualquier estupidez que le dice el ricardo ramos pesquera se la creen como tontos. Me imagino que como están en la espera de la lluvia de fuego se pasaran mirando para el cielo esperando que que caiga, lo mas que puede pasar con este anuncio de la lluvia de fuego es que terminen los prom con espasmos musculares por estar mirando para el cielo y por la tension que le debe causar la machaca de que viene la lluvia de fuego y de cuando ocurrira. Dejen de estar mirando para el cielo esparando la dichosa lluvia esa tan anunciada por JAC y cuiden la retina de los ojos porque el lagartijo flaco es dentista y no oculista para que les cure los ojos 

SIGNOS DE LOS TIEMPOS SON LOS QUE HA DEJADO LA SECTA MISION VIRGEN DEL POZO: MALTRATOS, ABUSOS, HUMILLACIONES, VIOLACIONES POR PARTE DEL SUPUESTO VIDENTE, FRAUDES Y UN LARGO ETC.


saludos a mis compañeros del chilingui del antiguo chat, en especial a penelope y morivivi