Decompressing from DeCult

Bronwyn Rideout - 29 October 2024

It has been a busy week for me, and today has been the first day I’ve been able to unwind and reflect on everything that has happened. It has been good, but it has been a week bookended by two conferences, a board meeting, and a UFO lecture where I’ve had to do a lot of code-switching from professional skeptic, to professional disabled/Autistic person, to skeptical UFO enthusiast, to midwifery PhD researcher and lecturer, and finally back to skeptic. I am unreserved in enjoying the DeCult conference, and am pretty happy that I got to see 95% of the talks I wanted to see.

My own talk was well received, although we suffered from some typical conference technical snafus - and I am very appreciative to Dave Booda for going with the flow and being enough of an entertaining speaker that I think it distracted people enough from the technical issues with my slides.

Since I had officially agreed to talk about Highden and ISTA several months ago, my presentation felt like it was on shifting sands regarding timing, length, and expectations about what I would discuss. It was a weird place to be in as, unlike other talks on offer, I would have been the only presenter without lived experience in a cult. About a month out, an opportunity arose to not only lengthen the talk, but also to bring in someone who has attended an ISTA course, Dave Booda, who had recently written about his epiphany about the group using Large Group Awareness Training. Booda was part of the Safer Sex-Positive and Spiritual Communities team that went into mediation with ISTA over a year ago; a move seen as controversial, or even reprehensible, by many.

For an Autistic person, I think I’m fairly flexible with change, but I was taken back by the amount of space I had to hold for others’ opinions: There were things people wanted me to say in my talk, spaces they wanted the talk connected to, images and videos they wanted included, and feelings about Dave Booda they wanted me to voice. I also had to balance avoiding copyright infringement and defamation, with bringing a lot of neophytes up to speed about a group that has been able to avoid NZ media attention thus far. Due to the opening address running late, and the transition period running long, we ran out of time for questions. As my session wasn’t live-streamed, I’ve alternated between anticipation and dread over the possible second wave of opinions that may come, and have taken to distracting myself with mulling over a couple of the ideas that came out over the conference.

One suggestion at the conference that I’ve been mulling over has been Dennis Gates’s call for the removal of children from Gloriavale - an approach that has been largely unsuccessful overseas.

How unsuccessful?

1953 Short Creek Raid (USA)

The largest mass arrest of polygamists/Mormon fundamentalists in American history. In July 1953, 102 soldiers and state officers removed between 164 and 263 children from the 400-strong Short Creek community. Most were returned to their families by 1954 but some remained in foster care and never returned. Within two years, the community had rebuilt and renamed itself as Colorado City. In 1991, this sect formally became the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). The FLDS would eventually be led by Warren Jeffs…

Two girls stand with their mother as she is questioned by an officer and Arizona Attorney General Ross Jones (seated) after the 1953 Short Creek raid.

2008 Yearning for Zion Ranch/El Dorado Raid (USA)

An FLDS-owned property led by Warren Jeffs, housing 500 people from Short Creek and Hildale, another FLDS enclave. A prank call to a domestic violence hotline initiated a large-scale response by state troopers and child welfare officers. 462 children were removed in March, with an additional 100 women leaving to accompany the children. However, evidence presented in court suggested that the children were not in danger, and they were ordered to be returned to their families by May 2008. A handful of senior leaders were fined and sentenced to jail for sexual assault, often for fathering children with 15 and 16-year-olds. The number of children removed put stress on local facilities, as the children were spread out between 16 group homes and foster homes. Within a year of the March raid, two thirds of the families were back at the ranch, and a final report found 1 in 4 pubescent girls were in an underage marriage, including the 14-year-old who was married to Jeffs when she was 12.

1984 Island Pond raid (USA)

1983 House of Judah (USA)

66 children were temporarily removed from the House of Judah compound in Michigan after the death of a child. The congregation of Black Hebrew Israelite Jews came under fire after the beating death of 12-year-old John Yarbough that July but their leader, Prophet William Lewis, would face child enslavement charges. Most parents were found to be well-adjusted, and the children to have strong bonds. All children were eventually returned to their parents, upon the parents’ agreement to certain stipulations, which included an end to all excessive punishment, repairing certain commune/camp facilities, attending a six-week parenting course, and allowing certain court officials and social workers to visit and inspect the property at any time. Soon after, Lewis and several commune members relocated to Alabama until Lewis died in 2004.

William Lewis after his arrest

1993 Branch Davidians (USA)

Somewhat different from the other examples in this article. There were concerns about the wellbeing of children before the February 1993 siege, as a local newspaper published a series about David Koresh and accused him of physically abusing children and having child brides; however, the chief concern of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was the alleged stockpiling of weapons by the sect. 19 children were initially released without their parents, early in the group’s stand-off with the government. After those children were interviewed, it was claimed that the child abuse had continued amid the chaos; then-Attorney General Janet Reno leaned on this to get approval from the President to launch the April 19th tear gas attack that may have started or accelerated the fire that saw 76 Branch Davidians, including 28 children, killed.

2013 Lev Tahor sect (Canada)

And the successes?

1987 The Family (Australia)

Six children were removed from an Australian cult controlled by former Yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne. Over 2 decades, Hamilton-Byrne and her followers engaged in adoption fraud and even kidnapping for Anne to grow her collection of children. Anne claimed 28 children as hers over that period. However, adjustment to the world outside the cult after the raid was difficult for the children, and in one case, a birth mother put her loyalty to Anne above reuniting and reconciling with her son. Anne and her husband also got off with minor convictions for forging birth certificates, and were only fined $5000 each.

Hamilton-Byrne (far right) and “her” children

1981-1987 Ant Hill Kids (Canada)

Led by Roch Thériault, the Ant Hill Kids was a horrifically abusive cult to all of its members, including the children. Recollections of the abuse are graphic, so you are being forewarned before seeking out information for yourself. After the 1981 death of a child due to botched circumcision, Quebec police were informed and promptly removed 9 children; when offered the chance to regain custody if they left the cult, parents refused. Roch and others were sentenced to jail, and the site of the cult’s compound was razed. Upon his release from prison in 1984, Thériault reunited with his remaining members and rebuilt their commune in Ontario. The local Children’s Aid Society (CAS) started to investigate the group after the death of Roch’s five-month-old son in 1985. An attempt was made to remove children from the compound by the CAS between 1985 and 1987, but an independent assessment ordered by the court recommended that the children be returned immediately, and accused the government of persecuting the group while also celebrating Roch’s experimental attitude towards sexual education. In 1987, all children were removed and made wards of the Crown. But it wasn’t until 1989 that Roch was finally arrested for abuse, amputating a limb of one commune member, and the murder of another. There is limited information about the surviving kids, but two of Roch’s sons did write a book.

The drive to remove children from cults is understandable and incredibly human but, ultimately, a toothless maneuver that is often undone by the nuances of law. Unless the legal case is airtight, children are frequently returned, and the community sometimes just moves away from the state, province, or even country that seeks to persecute them. It’s the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff style of response that doesn’t resolve the fact that the group, leader(s), or even the idea underpinning the cult/group, will persist even when the children are gone.

New Zealanders have witnessed the arrests, and subsequent returns home, of Bert Potter and Neville Cooper, but the removal of children is a different matter. Child uplift and the protection of children in care are contentious topics at the best of times in New Zealand, and this exacerbates the question of whether there is any safe third space for the younger members of cults. Leaving a cult, with or without their parents - especially the quantity entailed by Gloriavale - entails a demand on our child welfare system that New Zealand isn’t prepared for in terms of resourcing, manpower, and possibly psychologically. Images and reports of crying children from the Short Creek Raid were so upsetting to the American public that it ruined at least one political career, and was the last time the LDS church actively supported action against polygamist fundamentalists.

And if the parents do leave with the children? Then parents are just incentivised to go underground with their beliefs, because they are leaving under duress and not by choice. Similar to what I wrote about deprogramming in September, child uplift may be seen as another test of faith, or an opportunity to demonstrate loyalty to the leader in the face of external attacks. Despite her waning influence, Anne Hamilton-Byrne retained a retinue of loyal supporters up to her death decades later, and they have acted as if the former child captives are the villains. Also, a majority of the adults and children ended up returning to their FLDS community after both the 1953 and 2008 raids.

I have no alternate solutions to this conundrum. Local council and government pressures have often been how communes and communities have been disbanded or disestablished in New Zealand, i.e., Centrepoint, Camp David/Full Gospel Mission, and James Baxter’s commune at Jerusalem. While the 2022 Wellington protest ended with an eviction action, it could be seen as a window into how a dramatic mass child removal might progress both in terms of Government response and also in the possible public counter-response from other Christian fundamentalist and evangelical groups.

Something something history, something something doomed to repeat it.

Rather than being the ambulance waiting for people to be hurt, I’m more aligned with many of the suggestions of another speaker, Ulrike Schiesser, regarding the formation of a national office for cult affairs that would provide support and reorientation for cult leavers. But more importantly, or ideally I should say, it would keep the discourse of cults/high-demand and high-cost groups out in the open. I hope it would also encourage an ongoing conversation about critical thinking and the demand for extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims made by these groups.

A final piece I’ve been mulling over from the conference is one that could impact the work we do as Skeptics. During the panel on Survivor-focussed cult reporting, University of Canterbury Law professor Ursula Cheer commented that the application of Tikanga Māori may allow the family of cult leaders to prevent the publication of negative press after the leader’s death, to protect the mana of all parties and successive generations.

The irony and timeliness of that statement was not lost on me.

33 years ago, in September 1991, the Family Violence Prevention Conference was held in Christchurch. During that conference, the members of the Ritual Abuse Group gave multiple presentations about ritualistic and satanic abuse in cults. The resulting media and moral furore that followed have been implicated in the arrest and conviction of Peter Ellis. As I reflected on the various DeCult sessions, I continually asked myself whether a similar tipping point may happen after this conference; how can participants and the media ensure that they’re critically evaluating the information about cults, and not getting swept up in salacious rumours, a la Pizzagate?

Peter Ellis died in 2019, before his Supreme Court appeal was accepted. Normally, an appeal would not move forward after the appellant’s death. However, Ellis’ counsel argued that the appeal should move forward based on Tikanga Māori, because it remained important to restore his name and mana posthumously. As we know, the Supreme Court quashed Ellis’ conviction - but just one day after the DeCult conference, it was reported that the Minister of Justice would not be compensating or apologising to Ellis’ family.

It seems Tikanga will only go so far.

I will continue to write about the history of cults as I please, as will other Skeptics, but I am uneasy about the possibility of this dimension of our work being silenced. Maybe we will have the infamy of being a test case.

Watch this space.