Smallville Star Arrested for Role in Branding Cult

Allison Mack Gazes at Keith Raniere in Deeply Weird Video

Keith Raniere may be discovering that there's a downside to following the Scientology model of recruiting celebrities into your cult. For whatever credibility and popularity they may initially bring to your organization, if things go pear-shaped, fame becomes infamy. A few weeks ago, the NXIVM founder was extradited from Mexico on sex trafficking and other charges. There was a flurry of news coverage, as noted here. But when "Smallville" star Allison Mack was arrested on Friday, a media firestorm ensued.

This is not the first time Raniere's cultivation of the rich and famous has backfired. It may be what put him on the road to ruin. India Oxenberg, an aspiring actress from a royal bloodline, must have seemed like a real get, until her much more famous mother Catherine Oxenberg went public. Her plea for her daughter's safety was covered by the New York Times, People, Megyn Kelly TODAY, and 20/20. And suddenly that "branding cult" was water cooler talk.

The unflinching, in-depth coverage in the media also forced New York authorities to begin taking complaints seriously, that they had previously dismissed as "consensual." Roughly six months later, NXIVM's most famous member is facing 15 years to life and so is Keith Raniere.

Previous to this graphic, public outing, Raniere's organization had been chugging along pretty quietly in Albany, making millions, and silencing former members with lawsuits and intimidation tactics, thanks to the very deep pockets of Seagram's heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman. Although their wealth and social position had also brought him a spate of bad press. But suing your victims into silence and bankruptcy is a less effective tactic when some of them are famous and well-heeled, something Scientology is learning the hard way with its futile attacks on Leah Remini.

Bleeding the Beast That Is Warren Jeffs

Members of the FLDS really don't like to pay taxes. They don't readily cooperate with the government, or acknowledge its authority. FLDS children are taught that Warren Jeffs is president of the United States. They will take financial support from illicit government forces, though, as we recently saw with the food stamp case, which ended in generous plea deals and the possible rapture of Lyle Jeffs. Their pattern of tax evasion and collecting millions in benefits is part of a "bleeding the beast" philosophy.

FLDS may be waging a slow war of attrition against the government, but it's one they appear to be losing. That sword cuts both ways. In fact, their lack of cooperation with federal and state government can mean that they're cutting off their noses to spite their collective face. Secular forces are gradually eating up their land and property wealth and it's their own refusal to cooperate with these forces, which in many cases are trying to help them, that could cost them everything.

Case in point, Short Creek, the FLDS stronghold made up of Hilldale, UT, and Colorado City, AZ,  is currently seeing an exodus of FLDS faithful. They would rather leave their homes than sign agreements and pay their property taxes.

"The Crick" is managed through a trust called the UEP (United Effort Plan). Originally set up by Warren Jeffs, the UEP was seized by the State of Utah, which argued that it was being egregiously mismanaged. Among the problems, those who were excommunicated were made homeless. As a state run trust, the UEP no longer applies a religious test, and some FLDS "apostates" have been able to reclaim homes in their old community, alongside those who remain devoted to "Prophet" Warren Jeffs. But FLDS members are in arrears.

The Enemy Within the Codependent Heart

BBC America has been celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek by playing full, uncut episodes of the original show. I must confess that it dominated my television screen for an entire weekend. I think I may have even begun to convince my teenage daughter of its genius.

A standout episode for me is "The Enemy Within." Captain Kirk is split in two after a transporter accident. His "strange alter-ego," his dark half, becomes a sentient Kirk look-alike. But, no one sees this Mr. Hyde materialize on the platform moments after a very normal appearing Kirk has left the transporter room. He goes about functioning much as our internal shadow does, with neither Kirk, nor anyone else aware of his existence. Yet, a drunken, rampaging lout, who looks a lot like Captain Kirk, begins acting out his worst impulses.

Kirk's better half seems at first to be in every way the Kirk they all know – the split-off shadow like some foreign monster, "a thoughtless brutal animal" that the apparently normal Kirk would rather live without. But, it rapidly becomes clear that this calm, reasonable Kirk has lost some key components of his personality. He's indecisive. His instincts are dulled. "Good" Kirk is unqualified for command.

Eventually, the disowned shadow does what it will do. It overpowers the weakened, good-natured Kirk and takes command. It takes all that's left of his strength and support from his crew for the saner Kirk to confront and embrace his dark nature and reintegrate it.

"I've seen a part of myself no man should ever see."  ~ Capt. James T. Kirk

Shadows Before Despair

A little birdie delivered some screenshots to me last night. Apparently, there was a little dustup on Teal Tribe. It was quelled pretty quickly. The unintentional instigator either quit or was banned in short order. (In the third screenshot, you can see the little grey check that indicates that this former triber has left the building.) So, what was the cause of this well-contained incident? Once again: the shadow work.

Click Image to Expand

Shadows Before Suicide

I've always found the theme song from M*A*S*H to be darkly compelling. Beautiful and melodic, it is an oddly seductive paean to ending it all. Reading the latest from the marvelous Gaby Petris, it occurs to me that for many people, Teal Bosworth Scott Swan's relentless obsession with suicide has a similar allure for many of her followers. She is far more dangerous. When she speaks of suicide as, not only painless, but blissful, she does so without tongue in cheek. Hers is a kind of siren song pulling her many suicidal followers closer and closer to the rocks.

I want to show you a precarious vortex that is massing around the teacher Teal Swan. Within it suffering people seeking an answer are circling. I want to communicate a sense of its dangerous undertow. That pulls people in. And under.

I first became aware of Gaby's writings, when her first post on this topic was recommended to me in a comment on my last post on teal. It is also must reading. When I learned that she was working on a more in-depth piece, my only question was, how can I help? Together, Gaby and I sorted through screenshots we've both collected of Teal Tribe discussions about the suicide option, and about the 22 year-old triber who recently took his own life.

When I really delve into the patterns of teal's communication with her flock, the picture that emerges always proves to be so much worse than I'd thought. I am eavesdropping, I know, as I look at these snapshots of Teal Tribe conversation. I am not a tealer or a triber. I am an observer, a rubbernecker, watching accidents occur in slow motion. And it is an awful thing to see the train coming and be so unable to stop it.

Teal Tribe is brimming over with creative, intelligent, even brilliant, people. Many are also wounded and vulnerable. And, far too many are suicidal.

Breaking the TEAL SPELL -- UPDATE: The Noncasts

Update: The Noncasts (See Below)

Further Update: Blake Addresses Jason Freedman Mystery (See Below)

Yet Another Update: Kicking "Tealers" Down the Memory Hole (See Below)


Some years ago, when I was doing the Flower of Life teacher training with Drunvalo Melchizedek, one of my fellow travelers shared with me that he was troubled by what he called the "Drunvalettes." The term was his own invention but there was no mistaking his meaning. He even pegged a few of our classmates with that term. He liked Drunvalo quite a bit but that there was this kind of adulation by some Flower of Life folks made him uncomfortable. He had some concern that Drunvalo might have been fostering this unquestioning sycophancy. So one day when we were enjoying a break, he asked Drunvalo very directly how he felt about his Drunvalettes.

Dru shook his head and sighed. "I just try to stay out of it," he said.

That's one approach. There's a conversation to be had, for sure, about whether ignoring the phenomenon and trying to distance oneself from it is enough. Is it necessary to more actively discourage such behavior? But I think the one thing we were all in agreement on -- Drunvalo, myself, and the gentleman who raised the concern -- was that such hero worship was not a good or healthy thing.

The term "tealer" has similarly been thrown around to describe those who've drunk the "teal-aid." Some of her more passionate and angry defenders who've posted on my blog have been quite pejoratively labeled "tealers" by other commenters. So imagine my horror when I read this in a recent TEAL post about her seminar in Atlanta.

I am struck by how much the imprint of the days of slavery still remains on some of the older buildings and railways here in town. It has soaked its way especially into the old wood that dots the brick walls. The venue for yesterday’s workshop was one such a building. It was a fitting energy, seeing as how the theme of the entire workshop was self-liberation.

This group which is being called the “Tealers” is the most open minded, eccentrically intellectual group I have ever beheld.  I think it is now my favorite part of holding these workshops.  Long-term friendships are formed.  People find their place to belong. And I get to witness the fact that this world is in good hands.  All across the globe, they form a supportive web of awakening.  They touch the lives of the people in the cities they live in.  It is like a little legion of enlightened spirits, whose practice is that of non-resistance and expansion.

You're Freeeee! Wait. Not so fast.

Is TED a Cult?

I never gave a whole lot of thought to TED. I've seen a few lectures because they went viral. Some were good. Some not so much. I never had the time or inclination to research the organization. But over the past few weeks, they've drawn my attention less because of some of the excellent presentations they've posted than because they've censored that excellent content. So, I'm learning about TED just in time to watch it jump the shark.

As I wrote yesterday, they censored two excellent lectures by Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake. Weeks ago I watched a brilliant talk by Nick Hanauer that I saw posted on a thread with a very high recommendation. But as I was watching the video, I noticed other videos in the sidebar about how it had been censored, and began picking through that morass.

In watching the drama unfold between Hancock and TED, so many of the patterns are familiar. I've seen this with a lot of the big sites through the years: the in-group/out-group dynamics, the condescension and derision from site administration, the accusations that people who complain are basically spammers, the exasperated indifference from site administration, the sense from administrators that they are displaying benevolent largesse by even allowing criticism and discussion of their backroom decision, the refusal to answer direct questions, the bald-faced bullshitting...  I could go on but, really, it's so tiresome.

I've long thought that large web communities were ripe for some sort of study into the psychology of influence. They so rapidly devolve into authoritarian hierarchy. I see a lot of it displayed on the web-based arm of TED. But I have to admit that I was brought up short by the Joe Rogan interview I saw posted last night in response to TED's censorship of Graham Hancock. If this is what's going on at the actual conferences, TED is so much worse than I thought.

Rogan interviewed TED refugee Eddie Huang, who brought tales of cult-like behavior within TED. Huang compares it to Scientology. If you can get past the profanity -- not an issue for me but it merits mentioning -- this is a very interesting discussion. If Huang's experience is even remotely reflective of what goes on behind the scenes, there are some very troubling indicators here:

• TED conferences are closed environments and none of the fellows are allowed to leave the conference
• Forced camaraderie and inability to be alone ~ TED assigns everyone a roommate and won't allow fellows a private room even if they're willing to pay for it
• Sleep deprivation ~ lectures, networking, and forced fun, make for very long days and full participation is overtly demanded
• Exclusivity ~ TED is very, very special and, as part of TED, you can be special, too

Also troubling are the financial elements Huang touches upon. As discussed, TED caters to wealthy donors and, it would seem, censors accordingly.  But the financial architecture indicated here is disturbing. The heavily cultivated audience members -- who are also made to feel very, very special -- shell out thousands of dollars a piece. Fellows -- aka., the people whose lectures are the TED product -- are paid nothing. Their only remuneration is wide exposure -- should TED put their lectures out on video rather then censor them -- and the opportunity to rub shoulders with their wealthy donors.

TED also gives fellows a packet with, ahem, helpful advice, like, "don't just ask them for money," because they apparently think their brilliant speakers are idiots. And, obviously, this is not really about helping out their fellows. It's about not upsetting their big money donors, by plaguing them with crass attempts by fellows to convert their time and energy expenditure into something resembling remuneration.

So what does TED give their talent? Free room and board to participate in a week-long event, which has the possibility but not the promise of advancing their work. What does TED take from their talent? Their time, their ideas, their energy, their names... I'm reminded of Al Franken's warning to users of social media like Facebook and Google: "You are not their client, you are their product."

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Dethroning the Hierophant

Article first published as Dethroning the Hierophant on Blogcritics.

A few years ago, I observed that the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was hitting a critical point, as a glut of news reports was beginning to directly implicate the Vatican. I suggested then that what was happening in the Catholic Church was an indicator of the dismantling of hierarchical systems more broadly and that in the Motherpeace Tarot, such patriarchal, spiritual authority is represented by the Hierophant.

At its root, the word "hierophant" means bringer to light of sacred things. In the traditional Tarot, the Hierophant represents a priest or Pope, the paternal religious authority.... Representing a hierarchical view of religion, the Hierophant stands on a pedestal, raised up from the earth, above the common person. In the Motherpeace image, he has taken over the robes and skirt of the High Priestess, along with her breasts which symbolize her sacred power, but he has forsaken her "Sophia" or wisdom.... The authority of the Hierophant is based, in large part, on repression of women and the natural instincts that women symbolize.

The The Motherpeace Tarot Playbook explains how to read the card when it comes up in a spread.

The Hierophant represents spiritual authority. He represents ritual and ceremonial magic which manifests as organized religion in this culture. Or he represents the psychic control exercised by mostly male, authority figures in our culture, such as psychiatrists, gurus, doctors and courtroom judges. Since he is also the internalized parent or superego authority, he represents conventional morality.

The text goes on to explain how to read this card when it presents as reversed, or ill-dignified.

The reversal shows a full-scale rebellion. You can no longer tolerate external roles and conventional morality; you have begun to call on your deeper conscience for advice You are able to stop kneeling to the priest or the doctor or the father, choosing instead to take your own advice, heed your own counsel.

Unpacking the Zen Scandal

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A recent blog post on The Huffington Post lends more insight into how the Joshu Sasaki scandal unfolded within the Zen community. Adam Tebbe is the editor of Sweeping Zen, which published Eshu Martin's article and started this firestorm. Tebbe discusses what it was like being caught in the backdraft. Both he and Martin were subjected to the hostility of a Zen community bent on shooting the messengers. I suppose that anyone in a position to tell bitter truths should be prepared for that reaction.

Eshu's initial piece was an icebreaker of sorts, a shot across the bow that quickly grabbed the attention of many. Martin alleged a history of abuse and cover-ups involving his former teacher that stemmed his entire career. He received considerable backlash for his piece, accused of being nonspecific in his accusations. And, while it was partially true, readers did not know that at the time there was more information at his disposal which would and could be used if necessary. It was not released instantly because much of it needed to be said by Giko David Rubin, a priest ordained by Joshu Sasaki and his translator of many years (see: Some Reflections on Rinzai-ji). When Giko's reflections on his experiences at Rinzai-ji and of Sasaki were first published, the mood was rather somber. It remains one of the most detailed and painful articles I've ever had to publish in my work at the website.

Rubin's piece does indeed make for painful reading -- not just because of the detail it provides on Sasaki's behavior and peoples' varied reactions to it. It's an extremely honest revelation of the author's process of disillusionment over a period of years.

This passage actually made me wince.

Joshu Roshi also has the ability to sometimes know exactly what a student is experiencing without having to be told. This is quite remarkable, and I believe gives his students a feeling they are in the presence of someone with extraordinary spiritual power. As a young man I sat in zazen and felt my hand spontaneously open on my outbreath, and felt my sphere of consciousness expand with it. Then on the next in breath my hand unwillingly closed to a fist. The next time I saw Joshu Roshi, I bowed in silence as usual, and sat up. At once he looked me in the eye, open and closed his hand, and said, “Now you can be a Zen teacher.” How could I not feel this man knew me better than anyone could? I believed I could I trust him completely.

Maybe it's because I'm psychic for a living but immediately my inner cynic piped up. That's it? He knew you opened and closed your hand? Really? This was, of course, hideously unfair of me. And, sitting with that forced me to deal with why I felt tweaked. This is precisely the kind of thing that people who do this kind of work need to be extremely cautious about! What is a very basic level of intuition for someone who does psychic and healing work, can bring life-changing moments for the people receiving that insight. That makes disseminating this kind of information an awesome responsibility. Like all births and rebirths, these moments are very sensitive. Transformational expansion leaves us vulnerable as we shed one skin and await the firming of the next layer. And while these should be moments of personal empowerment, too often people discovering their own power can't seem to give it away fast enough, which looks to be what happened here. Rubin took exactly the wrong lesson in that moment. What was important was that he had been through a spiritual initiation that prepared him to teach. He made it about the teacher who gave him that insight. And Sasaki let him.

It is so important for those of us who do any kind of spiritual teaching to take our egos out of it and keep the focus on clients and students. Sasaki was very good at telling other people that they needed to break down their egos -- often by grabbing their breasts, apparently. No matter how gifted a spiritual leader you are, you are not the source of anyone else's reality. If you didn't tell someone what they needed to hear, they would source another teacher to tell them, simply because they were ready. None of us is indispensable.

Instead, it seems like a whole lot of people were catering to Sasaki's massive ego. There was a very complex architecture of deceit put in place to protect him from consequences for a vast number of sexual assaults over decades.

To keep his inner circle in line, he used blatant emotional blackmail. When confronted he would just threaten to stop teaching (abandonment). This happened on many occasions but reached a fever pitch in 2007, and the realization of how closed Sasaki really was to meaningful change, pushed Rubin to the door.

After the meeting Joshu Roshi began calling people who wanted to discuss his sexual activity his “enemies (taiteki in Japanese). It seemed he was helping to form a party line; to criticize Joshu Roshi is blasphemy. To say he has a serious sexual problem means you don’t understand his teaching. If you are working to have Joshu Roshi face his problem and change then you don’t love him and should leave. The sentiment I remember hearing the most from other Oshos was some version of, “We must weigh the good of Joshu Roshi’s teaching against the bad. The good is incredibly good. He is probably the most enlightened person alive in this world. There is no way to stop the bad, only contain it. He will never change. The good, however, far outweighs the bad. If we try to guide Joshu Roshi towards changing his behavior he will resign and stop teaching, and all the good will be lost.”

He's the "most enlightened" person in the world, but he'll never change his bad behavior. I guess I have a different idea of what enlightenment means. 

When Rubin tried to air his concerns, he was heaped with scorn by Sasaki's devoted following and by Sasaki himself.

When I “came out” and raised my concerns about Joshu Roshi’s sexual conduct some Oshos told me I had no Zen understanding and should be beaten with sticks; I was an arrogant blind fool; I had “kindergarten understanding” and obviously had never passed even one koan. Joshu Roshi told me I would never get enlightened if I thought about these things. I was told by one Osho and one senior student I would be blamed for Joshu Roshi’s death if I tried to make him change his behavior, and that I would be responsible for ruining his legacy. “You are killing him!” was shouted at me more than once. Another Osho told me that Joshu Roshi had demanded I do a special repentance ceremony if I ever wanted to practice with Joshu Roshi again. When I asked the Osho if he had argued my case to Joshu Roshi, or even asked for an explanation he said he hadn’t. I was banned from coming on the property of one Zen Center, and banned from teaching at another. Joshu Roshi began calling me “attached to honesty,” and “bakashoujiki” (meaning “stupidly honest”) to others and to me. [emphasis mine]

I have noticed, through the years, in my dealings with American Buddhists, that the ideal of "non-attachment" tends to be whipped out whenever some Buddhist doesn't want to take personal responsibility for something. It's funny how that works. If it's something you don't want to do, suddenly it's "attachment." It's a hideous distortion of a spiritual principle. But this is not just some American kid being ignorant and hypocritical. This is one of the foremost Buddhist teachers in the Western world abusing a central teaching and in a thoroughly puerile manner. What gives the obvious lie here is that Sasaki was clearly very attached to his power over his monks and to his compulsive pattern of sexually abusing women.

Rubin's article is a strong piece of writing, heartrending and sincere. I can't help noticing that throughout he still refers to Sasaki by the honorific Roshi. It is so hard when we find out that people we admire have feet of clay. Healing from that can be a very long process, especially when there's that much clay.

I just feel the need to point out that Sasaki's behavior is not some little foible. Groping and fondling people against their will is sexual assault, for which any number of his victims could have filed charges. These are sex crimes. He's a criminal, not an old man with a bad habit.

I also have to say, as I learn more about the progression of this unfolding scandal, that I think it telling that women complained for years but it took male teachers of some authority coming forward for the problem to be taken seriously. Sexism, it seems, is alive and well in the world of Zen Buddhism... as is basic, human denial. No, it ain't just a river in Egypt. So I will just close with this passage from Adam Tebbe's post because it's excellent.

I know that many Zen practitioners would like to see this coverage go away. To many, it's time to move on. I get why they want that. This whole thing appears to reflect undesirably on the Zen tradition, and many have criticized the mainstream press for having stereotyped the entirety of our Zen institutions. There's some truth to that. With that said, this isn't exactly a story that lends itself well to backslapping. And, moving on? I thought that's how we got here.

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Pigs in Zen

I've been so immersed in events erupting from the the scandal-plagued, power-abusing Vatican all week, I missed the news about scandal-plagued, power-abusing Zen teacher Joshu Sasaki. Funnily enough, the latter story broke wide with an article in the paper of record the same day Pope Benedict's resignation was announced. Of course, rumors had dogged the aging leader since the 1970s, but it was in January of this year that an announcement from senior teachers was posted on the Sasaki community website.

In early January, the senior teachers of Sasaki's community admitted in an on-line statement that the community "has struggled with our teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi's sexual misconduct for a significant portion of his career in the United States."

In truth, to call them rumors is generous. It seems the living legend's inappropriateness was known about and actively enabled for decades. Then, in November of last year,  Zen priest Eshu Martin, who had studied under Sasaki for over ten years, threw down the gauntlet with a post on the Sweeping Zen website. The title, "Everybody Knows – Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi and Rinzai-ji," is an obvious allusion to one of Sasaki's more famous students, Leonard Cohen. This reference does more than point to the fact that Sasaki's behavior was common knowledge. Cohen's masterpiece speaks to the ubiquity of deceit and injustice in this game of life we are all participating in.

Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the founder and Abbot of Rinzai-ji is now 105 years old, and he has engaged in many forms of inappropriate sexual relationship with those who have come to him as students since his arrival here more than 50 years ago. His career of misconduct has run the gamut from frequent and repeated non-consensual groping of female students during interview, to sexually coercive after hours “tea” meetings, to affairs and sexual interference in the marriages and relationships of his students. Many individuals that have confronted Sasaki and Rinzai-ji about this behaviour have been alienated and eventually excommunicated, or have resigned in frustration when nothing changed; or worst of all, have simply fallen silent and capitulated. For decades, Joshu Roshi’s behaviour has been ignored, hushed up, downplayed, justified, and defended by the monks and students that remain loyal to him.

Everybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you've been faithful Ah give or take a night or two Everybody knows you've been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knows ~ Leonard Cohen

As is so painfully typical in these situations, abused women who complained were shamed and shunned, while the abusive leader was venerated. From the New York Times story:

Many women whom Mr. Sasaki touched were resident monks at his centers. One woman who confronted Mr. Sasaki in the 1980s found herself an outcast afterward. The woman, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, said that afterward “hardly anyone in the sangha, whom I had grown up with for 20 years, would have anything to do with us.”

. . .

Several women said that Zen can foster an atmosphere of overt sexism. Jessica Kramer, a doula in Los Angeles, was Mr. Sasaki’s personal attendant in 2002. She said that he would reach into her robe and that she always resisted his advances. Surrounded almost entirely by men, she said she got very little sympathy. “I’d talk about it with people who’d say, ‘Why not just let him touch your breasts if he wants to touch your breasts?’ ”

Almost more appalling is the blatant subversion of Buddhist teachings Sasaki used to manipulate women and justify his sexual acting out.

In the council’s report on Jan. 11, the three members wrote of “Sasaki asking women to show him their breasts, as part of ‘answering’ a koan” — a Zen riddle — “or to demonstrate ‘non-attachment.’ ”

. . .

“He would say something like, ‘True love is giving yourself to everything,’ ” she explained. At Mount Baldy, the isolation could hamper one’s judgment. “It can sound trite, but you’re in this extreme state of consciousness,” she said — living at a monastery in the mountains, sitting in silence for many hours a day — “where boundaries fall away.”

Not the first time I've heard a spiritual leader reinterpret the surrender to spirit as a surrender to himself. If you don't surrender to his ego, you're just too much in your ego. Get it? But most appalling was this gem:

One monk, whom Ms. Stubbs said she told about the touching, was unsympathetic. “He believed in Roshi’s style, that sexualizing was teaching for particular women,” Ms. Stubbs said. The monk’s theory, common in Mr. Sasaki’s circle, was that such physicality could check a woman’s overly strong ego. [all emphases mine]

Uppity bitches. Someone had to knock 'em down a peg or two. The irony here is the implicit admission that sexual abuse is not about sex. It's about power and dominance.

Grace Schireson, who was on the "witnessing council" that issued a report on the problem in January, cites the Westernization of a Japanese practice. Interviewed by the Times, she claimed that the Japanese view their teachers with a healthy dose of skepticism and are less inclined to put them on a pedestal. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the Japanese are less deferential to authority than Westerners. I think that basic problem is more a facet of human nature than culture (See Milgram). I put the question to my husband who has spent years studying martial arts, and is fairly well acquainted with Japanese teachers and customs. Leave say, he did not find that to be so. If anything, he found that Japanese teachers are more expectant of deference and that his own teachers were surprised by the "many questions" American students ask.

I have little knowledge of Japanese culture, but I do know that it is notoriously male dominated and incredibly sexist. Groping women on trains is so common in Japan that women-only cars had to be established. Such violations are fetishized, pornogrophized, and popularized in manga.

That said, the report offers a very insightful take on the dynamics that allowed this problem to go on for decades.

When ongoing questions of misuse of sexuality or power unfold in a spiritual community, it is rarely a matter of one person’s actions. Reading through the painful and heartfelt accounts documenting Joshu Sasaki’s sexual relationships with students at Rinzaiji down through the years, we see how, knowingly and unknowingly, the community was drawn into an open secret, and people’s ability to practice the dharma suffered. Despite individual and collective attempts to address boundaries, repentance, and rectification, these behaviors appear to have continued over more than four decades. We have reports that those who chose to speak out were silenced, exiled, ridiculed, or otherwise punished.

Understanding that our practice is to bear what is unbearable and not to turn away from reality, how could this be so? We suggest it has something to do with a view of spiritual authority and “enlightenment” that we in the West have created in the name of Zen. To be fair, this is not just a problem of Zen. It arises in various Buddhist communities, and more widely in other religious congregations. We are unfortunately susceptible to enthrallment, which is hardly "seeing things as they really are." There are certain problems that may arise when one sees a teacher as comprehensively enlightened and fails to deal with the certainty that he or she, like oneself, has a shadow or deluded aspect. We imagine that “enlightenment” is separate from or outside of ourselves. The community may attempt to protect the teacher, the seeming embodiment of enlightenment. If we hold such a model, it is often impossible to recognize or admit that there has been an abuse of power. We fear the loss of our enlightened teacher and thus the opportunity to become enlightened ourselves.

It is not about a single individual, but about a very toxic synergy of power dynamics that can arise in any hierarchical structure. Even a deeply pathological leader cannot maintain a grip on a community unless he is enabled by followers. And even leaders who start out with the best of intentions can be seduced and subverted by the adulation of their followers. (See Zimbardo.) The search for enlightenment is subject to any number of pitfalls if we aren't keeping track of the shadow. (See Jung.)

This scandal put me in mind of a similar one at the Kripalu Institute many years ago -- not because these things are uncommon. They aren't. But because I was a fly on the wall for some of the aftermath of the Kripalu scandal. I spent a week at the Massuchusetts ashram shortly after the whole thing went down. I was just there for some yoga, rest, and relaxation, but it ended up being quite a lesson in the dynamics of disillusionment.

I did a little googling to refresh my memory on some of the details and I came across some interesting perspectives. But first, for those unfamiliar with the particulars:

In 1994, [Amrit] Desai resigned after admitting to having sex with followers.^[2][5][7][8] Kripalu paid $2.5 million to settle a purported class action lawsuit brought by more than 100 former residents who had served as unpaid staff. Kripalu financed the payment partly by selling its adjacent Foxhollow property, which it had acquired to provide housing for its most senior members.^[5][9]

One New York Times article pointed to yet another, more recent yoga scandal. The author manages to completely miss the point.

But this is hardly the first time that yoga’s enlightened facade has been cracked by sexual scandal. Why does yoga produce so many philanderers? And why do the resulting uproars leave so many people shocked and distraught?

One factor is ignorance. Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.

Hatha yoga — the parent of the styles now practiced around the globe — began as a branch of Tantra. In medieval India, Tantra devotees sought to fuse the male and female aspects of the cosmos into a blissful state of consciousness.

The characterization of Tantra as a "sex cult" is extremely reductive, but that's not the dumbest part of the article. The author goes on to explain that Hatha increases circulation in the pelvic area and heightens the passions, which is true. Of course the same could be said many forms of physical exercise.

Where the article really enters the realm of the absurd is in the suggestion that sex scandals like the one at Kripalu were simply the result heightened sexual appetites. The idea that this was just a bunch of sexually adventurous people doing what comes naturally is absurd. Heightened and spiritualized sexuality could just as easily enhance committed relationships and increase closeness and intimacy between partners, as is, indeed, often the case.

The problem is one of dynamics and abuse of power, not human sexuality. In the case of Kripalu and similar scandals, many women claim to have been intimidated and coerced. Victims who complain are ostracized. Many lies are told and secrets kept. This is not about consensual sexual activity, openly engaged in by willing participants.

More to the point, as the subject of this post illustrates, these scandals are hardly unique to the world of yoga.

Finally, I read some excerpts from a book that addresses the Kripalu crisis. Steven Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self speaks brilliantly to the group dynamics and larger lessons learned when people are ready to take their power back.

It was not the scandal that forced the death of the old forms of yoga at Kripalu. Quite the opposite. It was the impending death of the old paradigm that required the scandal. It is clear that the fact of Amrit Desai's affairs had been in the unconscious of the community all along. It was not new information. Quite a few individuals held the secret. It was simply information that could not be brought to the light of consciousness until the community was more or less ready for it.

In 1994 when the scandal erupted, Gurudev had not suddenly changed. In fact, the sexual misconduct was by that time many years old. Amirt was who he had always been -- ambitious, brilliant, sometimes a sincere yogi, sometimes just a smooth performer, too often a teacher who was too charming for his own good. It was the community's own capacity to see and bear the truth that had changed.

The bonfire was just as much a sign of success as of failure.

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Religious Abusers in Prison Maintain Strict Authority

Incarcerated FLDS leader Warren Jeffs is maintaining an iron grip on followers even as his prophetic proclamations fail to manifest. I say that only because it's 2013 and the world hasn't ended.

“The consensus seems to be that Warren is indicating that by the end of the year, the end of the world will be here," Brower said.

A CNN reporter dispatched to the community's main enclave in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, was rejected by FLDS members who refused to speak to him. Meanwhile, the abrupt closing of the area's only grocery story and "central gathering" point for the community has added to fears Jeff's followers are gearing up for doomsday, according to the report.

The global cataclysm appears to have been rescheduled after an earlier prediction that would have ended the world on December 23rd also failed to pan out.

There is nothing exactly new about Jeffs's apocalyptic prophecies. As his former FLDS follower Isaac Wyler points out, it's one of his best techniques for ramping up fervor in his followers.

“They are all supposed to make these grey or blue backpacks, 2x2x1, pack them with essentials,” Wyler said. “Be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

Wyler said he’s heard it all before: “it’s just Warren whipping them up into another frenzy to gather money.”

And when the end doesn’t come? Wyler said Jeffs will still be right and blame his followers for not having enough faith for it to happen.

Yes, Jeffs seems to have hit on a winning formula for maintaining control. All of his failures can be blamed on his followers for not being obedient enough. They become more submissive than ever and Jeffs's inaccuracy is explained away.

The mutability of doomsday prophecy is hardly unique to Jeffs's FLDS. It's long been known that such spectacular failures can increase rather than decrease loyalty in cult followers. Originally published in 1956, When Prophecy Fails described the seminal research of Leon Festinger, et al., who infiltrated a UFO cult as they awaited alien rescue from a global flood. When neither event occurred at the appointed time, a new revelation from their prophet explained that by their demonstration of faith they had averted the world-ending cataclysm. The group's faith was not only renewed but intensified.

Festinger pointed to this case study as validation of his "cognitive dissonance" theory. As discussed here, when our thoughts, feelings, and actions, are in conflict, we need to resolve the disconnect and regain our equilibrium. When people have sacrificed much of their material lives -- jobs, families, education -- to wait for a prophesized UFO rescue that doesn't come, they are highly motivated to find validation for the tangible commitments they've made, rather than upend their lives again.

In the case of FLDS followers, the commitment is multigenerational. This is the only way of life these people have ever known and they are materially dependent on the continuation of the larger community. They're thoroughly acculturated to the beliefs and morés of the church. To let a little thing like the continuation of a world that was supposed to have ended overwrite the belief and commitment that not only defines but dictates their lives would be far more complicated than simply accepting Jeffs's explanations and trying harder to follow his edicts.

As discussed, FLDS has been subject to increasingly demanding edicts and called to dramatic demonstrations of devotion. FLDS schools now do almost nothing but indoctrinate fanatical devotion to their incarcerated leader.

You may have heard how the FLDS have been told their righteousness and faith will free their prophet, Warren Jeffs, from prison.

Attorney Roger Hoole on Wednesday showed reporter Jim Dalrymple and me a drawing that illustrates the point well. The drawing is of a rose with six words written across it.

"Uncle Warrens Deliverance Depends Upon Me!" The last word is underlined. And, yes, there should be an apostrophe before the final letter in "Warrens."

Hoole says he found the drawing in the Holm School, where many FLDS sent their children until the private school’s leader was excommunicated on Dec. 15, 2011.

As Jeffs becomes more and more demanding, the potential for just how far his followers go to resolve whatever disequilibrium has resulted from his continued incarceration has surrounding communities and law enforcement on high alert.

While much of Jeffs' predictions [stet] seem like the mere rantings of a man who will not have the opportunity for freedom until his 93rd birthday, former member Wyler said the continuing obedience of some in the FLDS community is unpredictable and frightening in its strength.

“There’s always that fear that Warren would see how far he could take them,” Wyler told KUTV. “I’ve got a brother-in-law who once told my sister ‘if the prophet told me to I’d slit your throat without even thinking about it."

Meanwhile, in the Amish sect that people have similarly compared to a potential Jonestown, followers await the sentencing of the unfortunately named Bishop Mullet and his merry band of haircutters. A number of the men and women convicted last October remain free on bond until sentencing but are busily making arrangements for their many, many children should they receive jail terms. As per the New York Times, it looks like sentencing was pushed back to February 8 -- I had recorded a date of January 24. They are praying for miracles like short sentences and probation for some members.

One hopes that Bishop Mullet at least will go to jail for a very long time. It seems likely. Judge Dan Aaron Polster has wide discretion due to the kidnapping charges and he has shown little inclination towards leniency with these defendants. He recently refused to grant Sam Mullet a new trial and affirmed his certainty that jury's verdict was correct.

“Suffice it to say, the evidence at trial conclusively established that defendant, as bishop of Bergholz, ran his community with an iron fist,” the judge wrote in a ruling on Dec. 6. “Nothing of significance happened without his knowledge and approval.”

Sam Mullet continues to claim that his only error was in not stopping the attacks once he learned of them. He now even claims that he might have been victimized by his own parishioners if he'd protested their behavior.

“I guess I didn’t want my beard cut off, and that probably would have happened if I had tried to stop them,” he said. “The only thing I did wrong was that I didn’t tell them to stop.”

The suggestion is risible. But Sam Mullet has been casting himself as a hapless victim from the beginning. To hear him tell it, he and his entire community were treated unfairly by all the other Amish, by the police, and now by the criminal justice system. But when push comes to shove, the Bishop is more than willing throw his followers under the bus. He is a victim among victims.

What strikes me over and over with Bishop Mullet is how not characteristically Amish he is. When I was reading up on the disturbing prevalence of sex abuse in Amish communities, one of the things I found most fascinating was the willingness of perpetrators to come clean when pressed. And not just within their own process of repentance and reconciliation. Even police have found them to be surprisingly open about these utterly shameful crimes against children. The Amish consider all sin forgivable and don't seem to see any reason to lie. Coming clean about transgressions is part of their process and part of their culture.

Sam Mullet, on the other hand, lies shamelessly, even when the evidence against him is overwhelming... which it was. He still claims that he did not endorse the haircutting attacks, despite having been caught on tape laughing about future raids and warning followers to keep their mouths shut. He relegates claims that he slept with other men's wives to "lurid rumor" by "rival Amish" despite the fact that when the FBI arrested him, he was in his bedroom with one Lovina Miller, whom he may have impregnated.

Sam Mullet is a "you gonna believe me or your own lying eyes" kind of a guy.

I was surprised early on at the Bishop's willingness to appear on camera. And as the above video demonstrates, his followers are also very open to being filmed and photographed. It seems the surrounding Amish are very aware of how far from traditional Amish values and practices the Bergholz clan is, and find them terrifying. But Bishop Mullet and his followers are convinced that they are the ones who are truly Amish and that it is everyone else whom "God is not with."

The Bergholz community is in a mutually reinforced version of reality that is very much at odds with the world outside of it. And that, even more than the degrading punishments, the sexual exploitation, and the attacks on "sinful" outsiders, is reason for concern in the months and years ahead.

It's very clear from the New York Times coverage that they are sticking by Sam Mullet and are still taking orders from him even as he regales them with sad stories about the horrors of prison life.  Daughter Wilma explains, “No matter if he gets life in prison, he will still be our bishop here.”

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The Trip from Bountiful

As discussed, Warren Jeffs appears to be totally losing it. Deranged proclamations, paranoia, mass excommunications, and propaganda blaming members for his continuing incarceration, have raised the concern of social agencies and law enforcement near his Yearning For Zion Ranch and other strongholds around the US. Now comes news that Canadian officials are also dealing with the fallout of an FLDS spinning out of control as the compound in Bountiful, British Columbia shows similar signs of distress.

Jeffs's earlier edict prohibiting sex and marriage for all but fifteen of his most faithful stewards and their selected females has resulted in hundreds of husbands and fathers being excommunicated and their families shattered. Numerous teens have also been excommunicated for innocuous offenses like wearing short sleeved shirts or improper hairstyles. Most tellingly, socializing with their friends is now a banishing offense. Wives have been reallocated like the chattel they are.

Six men from Bountiful, B.C., went to Provincial Court in Creston this week pleading for access to their 40 children after having been excommunicated by Warren Jeffs, the jailed leader of North America’s largest polygamous sect.

Earlier this year, the fathers were deemed to be “unworthy” by Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some of these men are actually risking their own legal standing because they're practicing polygamy -- and not necessarily willingly.

One told [attorney Georgialee] Lang he loves his first wife and had never wanted a second wife.

He told her how he’d been taken from his home one night and driven by church leaders on a circuitous route that ended in Nevada, where he married a woman he’d never met before.

One of things that is coming clearer as the curtain is peeled back on this insular sect, is that the men in FLDS are as much victims of Jeffs's tyranny as the women are -- except for those at the top of the food chain. As of now that would seem to be the fifteen men who have their pick of all the women, married or not.

Children are also being shuffled around and one of the petitioners believes four of his kids are living in the care of a woman other than his wife, who has since been reallocated.

In addition to banning all sex except for his chosen fifteen, Jeffs has also prohibited all intimacy and affection, except for handshakes. It's just so very 1984.

Mothers and fathers have been ordered not to touch or hug their children and toys, recreation, and games are no longer permissible.

The Bountiful elementary and secondary schools have, for the first time, refused government funding, opting to run the programs they desire. Reports have surfaced that school hours are now filled with YouTube videos of Jeffs’ preaching.

Yes, the children even have to watch telescreens of Big Brother Jeffs.

All of this is a test of faith. Followers must adhere to these guidelines until Jeffs is released from prison because, as discussed, he is blaming his incarceration on his followers.

While it's sordid and deranged, none of this is hard to figure out. It's simple divide and conquer. People who are able to form strong bonds with each other -- family, friendship, romantic love -- have split allegiances and won't be totally subservient. And the more powerless Jeffs feels, locked away in his prison cell, the more he intensifies his grip on his remaining followers. And anyone who he perceives as a threat to that authority has to go.

As discussed, I think this reallocation of wives to his fifteen chosen enforcers is a reward -- he's buying their loyalty with women's bodies. But there is something else it does which is in some ways more pernicious. It keeps those men from establishing strong emotional bonds. How can they with all those women and children and such totally imbalanced power dynamics. They don't have wives. They have sex objects and breeding stock.

These bizarre edicts are also a window into Jeffs's twisted psyche. He's in jail, unable to have sex with any of his many, many wives, so he's restricting sex. He's lonely so he's breaking down intimate relationships and friendships. I don't think this is just about his incarceration either. Jeffs's life story is one of isolation. He was a sickly child who did not play well with others. He was also a Peeping Tom, lusting after girls from a safe distance. He's odd, even by FLDS standards and was never so much part of a community as he was a power figure by inheritance. 

Perhaps the most telling of his bizarre new rules is his restriction on affection with children. Men are not allowed to touch any children at all. He has redefined touching children -- affectionately or even innocuously -- as adultery and its an excommunication offense. Note that it's adultery, not pedophilia. And then consider that Jeffs is a child molester. Not only was he convicted of marrying and impregnating underage girls, the court heard testimony that he had molested prepubescent children, including his then 5 year old nephew.

Many of the rulings Jeffs is dispensing from his jail cell are not exactly breaking new ground. He's been reassigning wives and families since he assumed leadership in 2005. What has changed is the scope and intensity as he struggles to keep his grip on power.

So far the displaced men of Bountiful are not having much luck through the courts. Interim orders have granted some visitation and have prohibited the wives from taking the children out of the district, but no other custodial rights have been granted to the frustrated fathers as yet. Meanwhile, they wait and pin hopes on signs like wives who are also considering leaving. Of course, it's much harder for women to get out than men.

There are signs that Jeffs's increasingly draconian leadership is backfiring and accelerating the fragmentation of his church. But shattered lives, damaged children, and at least one suicide, are a horrible price to pay. And it will most likely get a whole lot worse.

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FLDS Getting Stranger and Stranger

The behavior around Warren Jeffs's stronghold in Texas and among his remaining followers has been increasingly strange -- a no sex edict for most, numerous excommunications, a tower built and then demolished... Now come reports that people are relocating and concern is that it is tied to end of the world prophecies from the incarcerated leader. To my mind, the assembled reports indicate that FLDS is falling apart. Jeffs has lost control of his circumstances and is tightening his grip on those he still deems to be faithful. If there was ever a reason to fear a Jim Jones type incident, now is when I'd really start to worry.

Jeffs is being painted as a martyr and the loyalty of his followers is being called into question. At least that is the way I'd read the flyer that turned up in a school near the Utah, Arizona border. The flyer (above) asks of members, what are you doing about Jeffs's imprisonment? Observes Lindsay Whitehurst of the Salt Lake Tribune:

It reflects what people have been telling me about the message from FLDS leaders: Warren Jeffs is a martyr. He could be free if only the people's faith was strong enough.

. . .

That mind-set that turns any questions about Jeffs back on the doubter, and helps to turn people against each other.

What we're seeing now is a cult purge, as a rapidly decompensating Jeffs projects his shadow onto anyone he can blame for his self-destruction. The truly frightening question is what will he demand of his followers next as proof of their loyalty?

One of the key indicators that FLDS is in a fairly rapid decline is that it appears to be losing its financial footing. And it owes Willie Jessop $30M. Jessop, the former FLDS spokesman who fell out with the sect and became a very public critic, sued Jeffs and two other church leaders for breaking into his business. Similar attempts to intimidate apostates have included things like the recent torture killing of a kitten left on one Isaac Wyler's property. But the most alarming thing about Jessop winning the suit is that it was a default judgment. They never even mounted a defense. And they're continuing to ignore the problem, which may make it a tad difficult for Jessop to collect.

Things are a little different when the defendants are the secretive leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They’ve thus far ignored the suit, prompting a 5th District Court judge to grant Jessop the default judgment.

"Our belief is the leadership is moving assets around," James said Tuesday. In addition to the Warren Jeffs judgment entered July 26, Jessop has also won default judgments Jeffs’ brother Lyle Jeffs, who has been considered a leader in the sect’s border town home base of Colorado City, Ariz. and Hildale, Utah; and John Wayman, a top aide to Warren Jeffs thought to have succeeded Lyle Jeffs in leadership. They share legal responsibility for the $30 million judgment.

It's fairly clear that they don't think the law applies to them but they have to know on some level that the walls are closing in. And that's exactly how they're acting. They're constricting, consolidating, and withdrawing ever more from outside world. They recently stopped paying legal fees for two Colorado City officials charged with misuse of public funds, and left them to file as indigent. They may also be relocating their communities.

Last month members at the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas demolished a tower days after completing it. When I read about this at the time, about all I could say was, huh. Although I was rather struck by the Babel Tower imagery. But with other signs of relocation, I'm wondering now if the tower -- which to my eye is very obviously a watchtower -- was built because they thought they'd have to defend their position but have been directed to quit the area instead.

The Eldorado Success reported Wednesday a noticeable decrease in activity at the “Yearning For Zion” Ranch and other FLDS properties in the area. The newspaper reported liens have been filed against FLDS members for unpaid bills, and construction has picked up at other properties, including South Dakota and Colorado.

“It seems like there’s been kind of a gradual exodus from Texas,” said Sam Brower, author of “Prophet’s Prey” and a private investigator who works for lawyers suing the FLDS Church.

“They truly believe, and Warren has been telling them, that the end of the world is coming,” he told FOX 13. “And I believe that they’re preparing for that.”

The whole thing reeks of escalating paranoia. Jeffs is acting like a cornered rat and there's no telling what could happen next.

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Religious Abuse: The Amish Hair-Cutting Trial

The trial of the Amish hair-cutting ring is set to start next Monday, August 27th. And prosecutors will be able to present evidence of Sam Mullet's abuse of his own parishioners: sex with other men's wives, paddling, the chicken coop, all of it. The government's argument is that these things are evidence of Sam Mullet's control over his flock, making him culpable for the hair-cutting raids on other Amish communities.

"His ability to convince those women, as well as their husbands and parents, to permit him to do so, establishes the extent of defendant Mullet's control over the community," the government said.

Based on that, the government said, the jury can conclude that Mullet was aware of 2011's attacks and approved.

In addition to the sexual conduct issues, alleged paddling rituals and punishing members by sending them to a chicken coop "are not inflammatory; they are undisputed facts" that the jury should hear, the government said.

Defense attorneys had moved to have much of this information excluded on the basis that it was unproven and prejudicial. But Judge Dan Aaron Polster has largely agreed with the prosecution. He found that Mullet's treatment of his own people is an element in the crime in question and testimony about that treatment can be heard by a jury. He did agree with the defense that prosecutors not use prejudicial language to describe the Bergholz clan which has been characterized by many as a cult. Witnesses, however, will not be so constrained.

Federal prosecutors will be allowed to question witnesses about Amish leader Sam Mullet’s sexual activities when the hate-crime trial of Mullet and 15 followers begins next week, a federal judge ruled Monday (Aug. 20).

U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster also agreed to allow testimony about Mullet’s use of corporal punishment to control followers, but forbid prosecutors from describing his group with words such as cult, sect, clan, band, schism, faction, offshoot, breakaway, renegade, rogue or splinter group. Witnesses, however, can use any terms they choose.

Judge Polster also upheld the request by defendants that they not be required to swear an oath, in deference to the Amish prohibition against swearing oaths. They will have to verbally affirm their truthfulness.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting case. Once again, what we're looking at is the psychology of influence and how evidence of that can and can't be used in court. As with the James Ray trial, testimony is being presented about a charismatic leader with a sadistic streak about a mile wide. And, once again, we have a defense team arguing that it's not a cult and that the word cult should not be used. Of course, the punchline in the Ray case was that it was the defense which kept using the word and battling a straw man that was never actually argued by the prosecution.

The cult question seems to be coming up a lot, not least in the political sphere, where Mitt Romney's Mormonism has raised concerns about how independent his choices might be were he to become president. I just watched The Mormon Candidate on Current, which asks that question of Mormons and disaffected ex-Mormons, alike. Many, including Mitt Romney's own second cousin, Park Romney, have deep concerns about the hold the Church of Latter Day Saints has on its members' psyches. Says the outspoken ex-Mormon, "I don't really think they understand the degree to which they are engaging in brainwashing. These are masters of mendacity."

Therein lies one of the trickiest bits when it comes to the psychology of influence. Not only don't followers realize they are being manipulated, many leaders don't realize they are participating in manipulation and that their own thoughts are not, in fact, their own. This, of course, raises larger questions about how all of our thoughts are influenced, by whom, and the point at which that becomes dangerous -- let alone a possible element in a crime. As I've said repeatedly, these are very tricky First Amendment questions.

The upcoming trial looks not to be just a trial about a hate crime that arose out of a sectarian conflict. Sam Mullet's crime is being framed as a case of religious abuse, whether or not that terminology ever becomes explicit. The charges against the senior Mullet will only really stick if it can be proven that he either actively or tacitly encouraged his followers to assault the members of other communities with hair clippers.

Religious abusers are dangerous and concerns have been raised by the local sheriff and some of the local Amish that there are shades Jim Jones in the Berghoz community. But I would also caution against the common assumption that religion is a necessary element in this kind of psychological tyranny. Bear in mind that the two landmark studies into the psychology of influence, the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment, had nothing whatever to do with religion. Abuse of authority can arise in any case of leaders and followers.

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Religious Abuse: Animal Cruelty Edition

The Banality of Evil

Nearly a year ago, after Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison, I wrote something about the phenomenon of religious abuse and speculated that Jeffs's incarceration would not stop the cycle of abuse. Obviously, I was proved right. News of Jeffs's continuing influence keeps trickling out. But I really wasn't prepared for some of the horrors that are occurring under the control of this megalomaniacal pederast. Colorado City and other FLDS communities remain as Jeffs's fiefdoms, with a substantial membership acting as brutal enforcers. The latest casualty? A kitten. Yes, that's right. Some follower -- or followers -- of Jeffs tortured a kitten to death simply to send a message. (This link contains graphic images. Click with care.)

Controversial Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints (FLDS) leader Warren Jeffs’ polygamous sect is accused of sending a cat buried alive in a bucket of concrete to a former church member as a threat. Jeffs was convicted last year on felony charges related to sexual relationships with underage girls, according to The Blaze. A dangerous fast landed the FLDS leader in the hospital in critical condition after his incarceration began. The fundamentalist church once again made headlines after a cat in concrete was sent to a man who had “abandoned the radical sect” as a warning.

AZ Family notes that other former FLDS followers claim to have received similar shocking threats. Isaac Wyler was excommunicated in 2004. He recently discovered the kitten buried in a concrete bucket inside a pipe in his yard. Wyler considers the incident a “threatening message” to “encourage” his silence about the FLDS. Since leaving the FLDS, Wyler has been very outspoken in his opposition to the polygamous sect.

Isaac Wyler has been a thorn in Jeffs's side for years and has been on the receiving end of a lot of threats and intimidation by FLDS enforcers. One of the more telling details in this atrocity points to the scope of the problem. (This link contains graphic images and video. Click with care.)

Chatwin, who left the FLDS 13 years ago, believes the cruel act was done by members of his former church. He claims both the threats and the animal killings have been going on for years.

Chatwin also claims that when he reported the cruel act to Colorado City sheriffs, they didn't seem too concerned.

"[The officer] kind of chuckled and laughed a little bit and then he said that if it was up to him, he'd just throw dirt on [the cat]," Chatwin said. "And this is coming from a city marshal who's a member of the FLDS Church."

To be clear, the kitten was not yet dead. It died later under veterinary care. It was suffering, with most of its body stuck in hard cement, and their "solution" was to "throw dirt" on it. This is not the first indication that the police and other civil authorities, in FLDS strongholds like Colorado City, work for Jeffs, not the citizens of those communities. The problem has gotten bad enough to require intervention from the federal government. In June they filed lawsuits against two FLDS dominated towns.

According to the Justice Department sect members in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hill Dale, Utah have been forcing nonbelievers out. The feds call it discrimination and they want it to stop.

They say it's happening because FLDS members control everything that counts in these places from the town hall to the tap water.

. . .

"The police force in Colorado City is, without a doubt, the most crooked police department in the country," said private investigator Sam Brower.

Arizona's legislature had attempted to deal with the problem of Colorado City by passing a bill that would have dissolved any police department that had lost half its membership to legal problems. Six of twelve Colorado City cops were decertified for crimes like bigamy and child abuse. The bill passed the State Senate but died in the House when reps from the area defended the FLDS community. Said reps seem to have no idea what actually goes on in Colorado City and spend their visits there at invisible little league games in a town that has no such thing.

Armed with the Justice Department's legal action, Arizona's Mohave County last week added its own police patrols to Colorado City.

The patrols come after a complaint was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the Colorado City government and local marshal’s office alleging civil rights violations.

The complaint, which was announced on June 21, alleges the Colorado City Marshal’s Office “routinely uses its enforcement authority to enforce the edicts and will of the FLDS; fails to protect non-FLDS individuals from victimization by FLDS individuals; refuses to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies’ investigations of FLDS individuals; selectively enforces laws against non-FLDS; and uses its authority to facilitate unlawful evictions of non-FLDS, among other unlawful conduct.”

Apparently, that includes conduct like laughing off the torture of small, defenseless animals.

The involvement of federal authorities puts me in mind of another ongoing dispute I've been watching unfold with no small degree of fascination, in a region not far from where I grew up. The FBI recently became involved in a local fracas within the seemingly quiet Amish community. Federal prosecutors brought hate crime charges against Bishop Samuel Mullet and a group of his enforcers for cutting the hair and beards of Amish citizens in other local communities. Thus far, those charges have stood up to legal challenge.

It's dicey. At what point does this become a church/state issue? This is exactly what the Amish defendants are arguing -- that both the local and federal governments are intervening in religious matters. But the crimes are horrible, even sadistic. Cutting of hair and beards violates Amish religious custom. And there are reports of Bishop Mullet putting his own male parishioners in chicken coops and sleeping with their wives as punishment for various infractions.

We're back to the conundrum that always arises when dealing with mind control cults. Are people exercising freedom of religion when their decisions are manipulated or coerced by a charismatic leader? What legal intervention is fair in those circumstances and how much of the internal process of any religious group is protected under the First Amendment? In both of the above cases, however, the crimes affected people who were not directly under the religious authority of the religious sects involved, which would seem to open up a pretty clear legal path. And other legal interventions have occurred when crimes were committed that are clearly not First Amendment protected. The sexual abuse of minors has been a prominent feature in both instances and landed Warren Jeffs in prison, most likely for the rest of his life. Fairly, I think.

Sex abuse and other thoroughly degrading offenses are at least as typical in cases of religious abuse as in an any top-down, authoritarian, insular, environment. And, of course, the seamy underbelly of the Catholic Church, continues to be exposed in one horrible revelation after another.

One of the biggest embarrassments for the Vatican has been the Legionaries of Christ, whose charismatic leader Marcial Maciel Degollado turned out to be a pedophile and drug addict with multiple mistresses and children under a false identity. He was most likely a psychopath. They can be so charming. But the entire enterprise had to be brought under Vatican control when what was long known by Church insiders became public. Just recently it was learned that their new leader Rev. Thomas Williams had fathered a child. Now come new charges of horrible abuses at a Legionaries facility here in the US.

Dozens of women who attended a high school run by the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order have urged the Vatican to close the program, saying the psychological abuse they endured trying to live like teenage nuns led to multiple cases of anorexia, stress-induced migraines, depression and even suicidal thoughts.

The women sent a letter this weekend to the pope's envoy running the Legion to denounce the manipulation, deception and disrespect they say they suffered at the hands of counselors barely older than themselves at the Rhode Island school. For some, the trauma required years of psychological therapy that cost them tens of thousands of dollars.

The Immaculate Conception Academy in Wakefield, RI, is one of a number of Legionarie feeder schools. It's numbers have now dwindled to the point where it has had to be blended with a sister school in another state. Very few girls had the dubious honor of graduating and moving on to the "consecrated" level. For many who were rejected the shame was intolerable. One shares that for her it was tantamount to rejection by God. But this was after a long process of psychological softening.

A number of the former students have compiled a blog to tell their stories. The most intriguing insight into what happened at the school comes from one of the counselors who tortured these girls.

Those of you who were told you didn’t have a vocation probably did not feel the mold of the perfect 3gf or you weren't easy to brainwash - you thought for yourselves and were not "docile." If any of you had an obvious best friend, we got really scared and concluded you did not have a call. If you had a “particular friendship,” you would be asked to leave, or we would be overly strict with you so you would decide to leave on your own. We all definitely thought we were doing God's will. Sometimes something we said to a PC came directly from a vicedirector or director who asked us to mention it to a certain PC, sometimes we didn´t even know why, but we trusted... No one saw you as an END, only as a MEANS to benefit the Movement and enlarge the numbers for the consecrated life.

. . .

We had very clear guidelines on our role and on how to lead you, but authority was given too much power and too little responsibility. Everyone was taught to treat those in authority like little gods and never to question them, correct them or doubt them. That was unbalanced and made our defects, flaws, mistakes and egotism influence our actions and attitudes. No one consciously thought she was damaging the PCs, but I bet many of us did question if those means were right.

. . .

Once upon a time, a territorial director came to visit. The topic of one of the meetings was that we realized we had divided PCs in 3 groups (accidentally): "future formators" (leaders, good recruiters or very obedient PC's who influenced others), trouble/issue/always sick/reluctant PCs and THE NORMALS!!! hahahahaha We realized we were not dedicating time or attention to the normals because we had our hands full with all the goals they gave us to form the FF and trying to make peace with the trouble PCs. So we had all these resolutions to attend to the "normals". Believe it or not, if you were on the "normals" list, you are probably not hurting much now, did not feel pressure to leave or stay, we did not worry if you never went for dependence and we did not inform much about you. [All Emphases Added]

Identified by the Associated Press as Lourdes Martinez, the former counselor fleshed out the details in a press interview. She is forthright about the wrongs she had committed and how they fit into a pattern of overall abuse. She also drops a bomb about some of the "informing" counselors did. It included giving intel to the priests who heard the girls' confessions and used the confessional as God's own echo chamber.

Often, information from the weekly reports written about each girl's development would be shared with the priests who heard her confession – a striking violation of privacy. The priests could then reinforce the directors' decisions in confession with the girls, she said.

"So she's hearing this from everyone and thinks it's the Holy Spirit talking. And we would say `Yes, of course,'" Martinez told the AP in a phone interview from Monterrey, Mexico.

Martinez described an almost "Lord of the Flies"-like situation in which the counselors were barely older than the girls under their care, with no experience in adolescent development. The counselors themselves lived with the fear that they must obey the rules and their superiors or risk violating God's will.

And that last is what makes Martinez's honest recounting so fascinating. She seems like a well-meaning sort but she participated in horrible abuses that she and others knew weren't appropriate when they were doing them. And this is how abuse, including religious abuse, becomes institutionalized and becomes part of a self-sustaining system that subsumes identity and diffuses individual responsibility. It's the bulwark for the banality of evil.

Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.^[1] Her thesis is that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

Explaining this phenomenon, Edward S. Herman has emphasized the importance of "normalizing the unthinkable." According to him, "doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on 'normalization.' This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as 'the way things are done.'"^[2]

Marcial Maciel didn't need to be in Rhode Island and Warren Jeffs can cause a kitten to die even as he's babbles incoherently away in a prison cell. Once these systems are in place, the tyranny pretty much runs itself. This is because a) the fish rots from the head down, and b) any hierarchical system can become an abuse factory. Let me repeat that: Any hierarchical system can become an abuse factory.

The fact that anyone can devolve into an abuser is the reason that Phillip Zimbardo had to abort the Stanford Prison Experiment. He, himself, began to act in an aberrant manner, despite the fact that he was a brilliant educator and researcher who knew the objectives of his own study. He was seduced by adulation. He fell into the trap of power. Very fine people can and do become abusers when they receive enough encouragement to do so. What both Stan Milgram and Phil Zimbardo have demonstrated clearly with their work is that human beings have some pretty dark impulses and when the power of a system absorbs the responsibility and gives us permission, we tend to play them out. And when you have a charismatic leader sitting at the top, setting the tone for sadistic behavior, all bets are off.

As an experiment, try reading Martinez's post in full and then watch the video I've posted below, which contains footage from the study and Zimbardo's commentary. (Warning: It's graphic and disturbing. I've seen the documentary. I don't want to watch it again. Chilling.) The parallels are hard to miss. For instance, near the end of the video, Zimbardo explains how when a new participant was brought in midway, who hadn't been conditioned the way the others had and displayed resistance, it became the singular objective of the "guards" to break down that "prisoner." As Zimbardo says, "He should have been the hero." It is exactly what Martinez describes in her blog post -- the students who weren't "docile" were targeted. In any hierarchy conformity and submissiveness to leadership are the goal. It's only a matter of degrees.

It is easy to blame the people who carry water for dangerous, charismatic leaders. They're responsible for their actions, for sure. And when they have integrity, they come forward and make amends, as Lourdes Martinez has done. But we're kidding ourselves if we think we'd do better. Except that I know, that I know, that I know, that I would never pack a live kitten in cement. That's unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

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