OT: Another Waco in the Making?

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Sounds eerily familiar... ****************************************

Feb 5, 2000 - 05:57 AM

Child Abuse Claims Prompt Alabama to Launch Probe Into Commune By Jay Reeves Associated Press Writer

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A state investigation begun last month into possible child neglect at a sprawling west Alabama religious commune has resulted in the arrest of a deacon who allegedly used a piece of lumber to beat a boy. The continuing probe started after claims were made that children at the Sumter County commune known as Holyland were also and forced to sleep outside in subfreezing weather, police said on Friday.

Five children have died in fires at Holyland, the heart of a multimillion-dollar business. For years, opponents have accused founder Luke Edwards of mistreating the poor blacks who live there.

Edwards denies any wrongdoing and says he believes criticism is rooted in jealousy of the group's financial success.

Scores of people live at Holyland, an isolated complex of plain wooden buildings, mobile homes and old vehicles. Residents support the enterprise by working in Holyland-related businesses and traveling the nation begging for donations.

Until now, state regulators have largely ignored the commune, saying they lack jurisdiction because it is tied to a church pastored by Edwards in Meridian, Miss.

The Alabama Department of Human Resources confirmed on Thursday it was investigating Holyland along with law enforcement, but a department spokesman declined to elaborate.

Sumter County Deputy Howard Rhodes said the state review began after a Holyland resident contacted police last month complaining that her children had been beaten.

The deacon, Albert Roberts, was arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge for allegedly hitting the woman's 13-year-old son with a board as two other youths held him, Rhodes said Friday.

The youth was struck after trying to stop his little brother from being hit by the man, Rhodes said. Roberts' trial is set for Wednesday.

Rhodes said the assault charge led to the discovery of photographs that showed two boys about 6 years of age sleeping outside under a building on a night when the temperature was supposedly in the 20s.

Children at the Holyland are separated from their parents, who live elsewhere in motel-style rooms.

A 1998 blaze killed four children in a dorm for girls and babies. The fire was ruled an accident, as was a November blaze that gutted a boys' dormitory. Another accidental fire broke out in 1976, when a 2-year-old died in a fire at a mobile home owned by Edwards.

A woman who answered the phone Friday at the Holyland office refused to comment. Holyland attorney Drayton Pruitt did not return a telephone call, and a spokesman for the organization, Jerry Brown of Eutaw, also did not return a call.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), February 05, 2000

Answers

Why are the children being kept away from their parents? hmm that really does make one wonder.

Though I believe the atrocities that took place at Waco are completely wrong, let's not forget about Jim Jones and the Guyana tragedy where many innocent people lost their lives at the hands of that madman.

-- cin (cinlooo@aol.com), February 05, 2000.


Did the people at Guyana follow Jones voluntarily? Did the people at Waco follow Koresh voluntarily? If so, it is not our place to be judge and jury because people decide to follow someone we do not agree with. At the same time, it is not the facist state's duty to inflict it's rath on these people either.

-- Dave (champeaudavid@yahoo.com), February 05, 2000.

Well spoken, Dave. Since when does the government become the final judge of truth? Sounds like repackaged Nazism to me. If the pastor made the boys sleep outside in freezing weather, that's another thing and he should be thrown in prison.

-- X (X@X.com), February 05, 2000.

Did the children at Jonestown willing follow J Jones or were they forced by brainwashed parents to guzzle cyanide laced kool aid?Even at Waco, with the Govs incredibly stupid overreaction and bungled coverup, Koresh did in fact have an illegal arsenal and was banging every teenage girl who caught his fancy. Sometimes the "fascist" state has to intervene.

-- Ralph Kramden (and@awayWeGo.com), February 05, 2000.

Making them sleep outside in the cold is not right, but that piece of lumber could have been anything made out of wood. Anybody around fifty years old can probably remember parents and teachers that had wooden paddles that were flat and about 2 feet long and were used quite often on younger kids that wouldn't mind or caused trouble constantly. They worked! You didn't have nose,belly,eyelid,and ear rings. Rubber bands were sent flying in the middle of science class instead of 9mm caliber bullets and a milk shake was what you had after school rather nose candy and wacky grass. Now they hire counselors and try to talk them out of being how they are. Discipline has been out the window for forty years and we'll never see it on the agenda again!

-- John Thomas (cjseed@webtv.net), February 05, 2000.


Ralph: You don't know what you are talking about. You should study the WACO matter and learn the truth. There were no illegal weapons at WACO. Members of the BATF had 'gone shooting' with Koresh, at his invitation, just a few weeks prior to the raid. Koresh had a license to deal in guns. They bought and sold guns to raise money to buy food. Some members of the Koresh group were at a gun show to sell guns at the time of the raid. As for the child abuse issue, the Koresh group was investigated more than once by local county officials and no evidence of any abuse was ever found.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), February 05, 2000.

Dave, obviously someone upset with the treatment of her child voluntarily called the authorities, yes? And are these children in this commune voluntarily submitting themselves to this "chastisement?"

I'm assuming the above _is_ battery, and not "mere" corporal punishment. For myself, I think c.p. is overused/abused, and doesn't actually accomplish much except drive certain undesireable behaviors and attitudes underground and teach kids by example that administering physical force is a viable "certified" option when children demonstrate misbehavior or willfulness, thus perpetuating the practice of c.p. regardless of its actual utility in regulating behavior. I think it's mostly ineffective and unnecessary in moral instruction. (And the danger with c.p., of course, is that it can get out of hand and become something else.) I choose not to use c.p. with my child, but corporal punishment is legal in my state and I could if I wished to.

On the other hand, battery and physical abuse have specific characteristics and legal definitions and are clearly illegal. Because they're practiced against young humans by adults and institutions (by encouragement or direct application) from rationalizations of "religious responsibility" does not reduce their illegality, I would think. You can't beat or freeze or burn a child to serious injury or death to save him or her from Sin and Perdition.

Let me speculate a little and piss some of you off and express my opinion that violence in the context of "righteousness" is at heart designed to satisfy the practitioner's psychosexual needs and/or extinguish the child's will to resist fascistic-fundamentalist indoctrination. (It's certainly not grounded in benevolence towards the child.) Let me speculate further that the kid in the above example may have understood at some level what was going on and acted courageously and morally to protect his brother from the sick behavior of this psycho-deacon, regardless of what attitudes or problems this teenager might exhibit elsewhere and in other circumstances. For this responsible action he was beaten.

Does anyone here really consider putting 6 year-olds -- whatever their offense(s) -- outside unsheltered in 20-degree temperatures the behavior of rational authority? (I'm assuming here that the purpose wasn't to teach the children how to bivouac in cold weather.) Does freedom of religious practice and affiliation allow for this? Shouldn't someone be empowered to intervene to protect children who are trapped in these and other similar circumstances? Don't we have a responsibility to do so?

Generally speaking, I'm surprised many kids survive with their emotions intact the battery-violence adults levy on them, particularly in the casual manner and with the frightful intensity and frequency it's practiced in our society.

Many children don't survive the battering, of course, and for some of those who do, well.... For a look at a few of the long-term emotional and behavioral effects of arbitrary violence against children, let me recommend Mikal Gilmore's memoir, _Shot in the Heart_ (1994), a very readable, well-written, non-clinical history of his family and brothers, especially Gary. In Gilmore's case, as I remember, there was very little religious context to the family violence, but it's not hard to generalize from this example what happens when true battery against kids is justified as an alleged rubric of God-observance.

You folks so concerned about the abuses of TPTB -- and there are abuses, of this I have no doubt -- also need to focus your attention on TPTW (The Powers That Wannabe), and stop excusing and enabling these wormy little trailer-trash Hitlers and their christianoid cults and rationales. Voluntary submission to an autocratic religious community by adults is one thing, even if they treat each other sadistically; sick violence directed against children who have not chosen their situation is another matter entirely.

As for Mr. Koresh and Waco: The jury is still out, but I don't as yet have a clear sense of what the man believed he was defending or protecting himself and his flock against during the siege, if indeed his motivations were so benign. Was he hiding something? What? Were children being abused for "religious" purposes in the compound? What did he think would be revealed or would happen if he surrendered to the authorities? Litigation? Incarceration? Death? For what? Seems there was something very important at stake for Mr. Koresh, and I'm not convinced it was freedom of religious expression or the welfare of his ministry. Perhaps someone here can enlighten me.

And, as I recall, most of those who took the punch at Jonestown did so under duress, as Jones had an armed contingent enforcing his order. The choice for them was either grape-flavored potassium cyanide or a bullet. Over 900 people died, including a number of children; some people wouldn't take the poison willfully and had to be injected with it or shot. How voluntary was that?



-- panjandrum (panjandrum@samfoote.net), February 05, 2000.


Great post panjandrum! I appreciate your candidness. thanks

-- cin (cinlooo@aol.com), February 05, 2000.

cin, thank you.

pan

-- panjandrum (panjandrum@samfoote.net), February 05, 2000.


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