Cults Inside Out: How People Get in and Can Get Out Read online

  But bin Laden would eventually become completely fixated on religion, first through Wahhabism, a very strict Islamic sect prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Later he created his own idiosyncratic amalgam of beliefs much like other cult leaders. Osama bin Laden also saw himself as someone on a divinely mandated messianic mission. His holy war against the “infidels” began in Afghanistan. First, he fought the Russians, and a mythology soon developed around him. The former playboy was now cast as a heroic figure. However, bin Laden spent most of the war as a fund-raiser in relative safety. “He was not a valiant warrior on the battlefield,” according to one source, who said bin Laden actually “fought in only one important battle.”135

  According to the Cult Information Center of Great Britain, al-Qaeda indoctrinated its members and formed a closed, totalitarian society.136 This was accomplished by putting recruits through months spent at isolated training camps.137 These camps served much like cult compounds, which have historically produced brainwashed followers after periods of isolation and information control coupled with rigid indoctrination. One captured al-Qaeda member, Al-Owhali, testified that he was first trained within an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan for a month and then was moved to a “jihad camp.” Only after the conclusion of his training was the possibility of a “mission,” discussed, one that might lead to his “martyrdom.”138 This evolving process of training coincides with the often-deceptive pattern of coercive persuasion used by groups called “cults.” Initiates may not come to know the group’s ultimate goals and their role in that agenda until the group has manipulated their thinking and molded a new mind-set.

  Osama bin Laden once admitted this fact to his supporters in a discussion recorded on videotape. He said that the men who conducted the 2001 World Trade Center attack only knew that it was “a martyrdom operation” in America. Bin Laden said, “We did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the plane.”139

  Much like the way Jim Jones used Christianity, bin Laden operated through a facade of “Islamic beliefs” and the cause of “liberation.” His disciples were told that Muslims were under attack and that Islam itself was in danger. “The snake is America,” bin Laden told al-Qaeda members, “and we have to stop them. We have to cut the head of the snake.”140 But the establishment in Saudi Arabia rejected bin Laden’s brand of religion. In 1991 the Saudi royal family officially expelled and denounced bin Laden. And he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994. From 1991 to 1996, he lived in Sudan until that country also asked him to leave.141

  Islamic scholars have denounced the religious premise of bin Laden’s violent beliefs. “It violates the very foundations of Islamic law,” said Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University.142 The grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdulaziz bin Abdallah al-Sheik, also questioned what the al-Qaida leader taught his flock. “Jihad for God’s sake is one of the best acts in Islam, but killing oneself in the midst of the enemy, or suicidal acts, I don’t know whether this is endorsed by Sharia [Islamic law] or whether it is considered jihad for God. I’m afraid it could be suicide.”143

  Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis of Princeton wrote in a 1998 article for Foreign Affairs that at no point do basic Islamic texts even consider “the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.” Sheik Muhammad Rafaat Othman, who teaches Islamic law at the most prestigious Islamic school in the Middle East, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, stated emphatically, “You can expose yourself to a situation where you might get killed. But you can’t knowingly take your life. Attacking innocent, unarmed people is forbidden. Prophet Muhammad demanded that we not kill women, children or the elderly. Attacks should be against soldiers and armed civilians. I don’t see any evidence of exceptions to this rule.”144

  Despite the established beliefs of Islam, bin Laden, like Shoko Asahara, created his own spin on religion. In a video distributed among his supporters, he said, “Yes, we kill their innocents and this is legal religiously and logically.” He then referred to the World Trade Center’s twin towers as a “legitimate target” and his hijackers as “blessed by Allah.”145

  Four al-Qaeda members were later found guilty of staging the 1998 suicide bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people. Bin Laden was charged in the 308-count indictment as the leader of the conspiracy. A $5 million reward was offered for information leading to his arrest.146 Ultimately Afghanistan would become both bin Laden’s refuge and new home. When the fanatical religious sect known as the Taliban needed money, bin Laden gave its leader, Mullah Omar, $3 million.147 He had basically bought himself a safe haven for planning and launching terrorist attacks.

  After 9/11 Osama bin Laden was a hunted man. Pinpointing his exact location took the CIA years, but finally in 2011, he was found inside Pakistan. The al-Qaeda leader was living comfortably in an affluent suburb of Islamabad within a walled villa. A military operation was organized, and an elite American military group (Navy SEALs) raided the compound by helicopter at night. Osama bin Laden “resisted,” and a bullet to the head killed him. A military detachment then buried him at sea.148

  2002—Nuwaubian Child Sexual Abuse

  In May 2002 federal agents arrested Malachi York, the founder and leader of an African-American separatist group called United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, in Georgia for “transporting minors across state lines for sex.”

  The 116-count indictment a Georgia grand jury handed down against York included 74 counts of child molestation, 29 counts of aggravated child molestation, 4 counts of statutory rape, 1 count of rape, 2 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, 1 count of influencing a witness, and 5 counts of enticing a child for indecent purposes. Four of the children York had victimized tested positive for sexually transmitted diseases.149

  York, once called the “Master Teacher,” was convicted on multiple criminal counts and received a 135-year prison sentence.150

  Like other cult leaders before him, Malachi York made exaggerated, egotistical claims. He said he was “the supreme being of this day and time, God in the flesh.”151 York also had a penchant for titles, such as “the Imperial Grand Potentate” and “the Grand Al Mufti Divan.”152

  Malachi York, once known as Dwight York, Melki Sedec Isa Muhammad, and dozens of other aliases, was born on June 26, 1945, in Boston, Massachusetts.153 He started his Nuwaubian group in Sullivan County, New York, during the 1970s. The group was then called the Ansaru Allah Community in Brooklyn just before it moved to Georgia. The York group was exclusively African-American and observed some Muslim traditions. York wove science fiction into his religious belief system. He told his followers he was an extraterrestrial from “the planet ‘Rizq.’”154

  York also had a criminal record. He had served three years in prison in the 1960s for resisting arrest, assault, and possession of a dangerous weapon.

  According to former members, the abuse began long before York created his compound in Georgia. In New York children were brutally beaten, and living conditions were horrible. A young woman described her childhood in the group. “We slept on floors. We had to eat with our hands. We ate what [York] wanted us to eat.”155 And York had sex with “whomever he chose.” In Georgia he chose children. One witness at his criminal trial said York began sexually abusing her when she was eight. He called it a “religious ritual.”156

  Many of York’s followers and even his victims have defended him despite his criminal behavior. Former group member Saadik Redd explained, “The ultimate success of a con man is to make the person who’s being conned make excuses for the con man. If I can get you to deny reality, then I have in fact controlled your mind.”

  Using the free labor of his followers to create businesses and accumulate assets, York became wealthy. At the time when his home and the group compound were raided in 2002, authorities found $430,000 dollars in cash. The 476-acre Nuwaubian compound was valued at $1.7 million. York also maintained a private residence in an affluent neighborhood in nearby Athens, Georgia.157 The
York house was later sold for $695,000 at auction.158

  US attorney Maxwell Wood, who prosecuted Malachi York, pronounced the convicted felon a “con man.”159 York’s son, Malik, seemed to confirm this description in an interview. His son said that York told him, “I don’t believe any of this [expletive]. If I had to dress up like a nun, if I had to be a Jew, I’d do it for this kind of money.” 160

  Malachi York (inmate 17911-054) is currently incarcerated at the US Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. His projected release date is April 2122.161

  2005—Polygamistic Child Abuse

  In June 2005 an Arizona grand jury indicted Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor. Jeffs was accused of arranging a marriage between a teenage girl and an older man.162 Some polygamistic groups, such as the FLDS, have been called “cults.”163

  The FLDS is believed to be the largest organized polygamistic group in North America, with an estimated membership of ten thousand primarily located in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and neighboring Colorado City, Arizona.164

  Jeffs went into hiding after his indictment. Arizona authorities then charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Meanwhile the attorney general of Utah froze the assets of the FLDS, valued at $110 million. A judge appointed a fiduciary to manage the FLDS trust, called the United Effort Plan (UEP), which controls its holdings. Utah and Arizona authorities then announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to Jeffs’ arrest. He would be named one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” criminals.165

  In August 2006 the Nevada Highway Patrol apprehended Warren Jeffs near Las Vegas. He was traveling as a passenger in a 2007 Cadillac Escalade. Inside the vehicle officers found more than $60,000 in cash, fourteen cell phones, a radar detector, two GPS units, three wigs, a laptop computer, several knives, three iPods, multiple credit cards, and seven sets of keys.166 Mark Shurtleff, Utah attorney general, called Jeffs’ arrest a victory for his victims, “who had the courage to stand up against a man some consider God on Earth.” He added, “The message is nobody is above the law.”167

  But the FLDS and other polygamist groups had been able to operate with relative impunity, seemingly “above the law,” for decades. It wasn’t until 1998, when a badly beaten sixteen-year-old girl escaped the fifteen-hundred-member polygamistic Kingston Clan, known as “The Latter-Day Church of Christ,” that the general public began to realize the extent of child abuse within these secretive groups. The teenager testified in court that her father had brutally whipped her for refusing to marry her uncle. “10 licks for every wrongdoing,” she said. After twenty-eight lashes across her back and thighs, she reportedly lost consciousness. The judge called the treatment she endured “torture.” The Kingston Clan reportedly controls a $150 million financial empire in Utah and Arizona.168

  In Utah alone there are reportedly fifty thousand polygamists, and many of them proudly trace their ancestry back to the early days of the Mormon Church (LDS), which officially banned the practice of polygamy in 1890. At that time Wilford Woodruff, the president and officially proclaimed prophet of the Mormon Church, said he had received a revelation to end polygamy. But many Mormons disagreed with that edict and left the church, creating splinter churches and communities led by their own self-proclaimed “prophets.”169

  Lawmakers and law enforcement have often seemed ambivalent about these Mormon splinter groups, which often refer to themselves as “Mormon fundamentalists.” For example, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who has expressed some sympathy for polygamists, is the great-grandson of polygamist and former Utah governor Michael O. Leavitt.170

  The FLDS faction Warren Jeffs has ruled over has a long history in Arizona going back more than sixty years. Jacob Lauritzen, a cattle rancher, founded the town of Short Creek, which is now called Colorado City, in Arizona in 1913. It eventually became a stronghold for what was known as the Lee’s Ferry polygamists. The LDS Church excommunicated this group in 1935 after they refused to sign an oath against polygamy. The Lee’s Ferry polygamists liked the location of the group, largely due to its isolation. It is buffered by the Grand Canyon and a hundred miles of barren desert between the polygamists’ town and the nearest law enforcement in Kingman, Arizona. Being so close to the state border also afforded the polygamists easy refuge in Utah if there was trouble with the Arizona authorities.171

  There was trouble in Short Creek in 1953. Howard Pyle, Arizona governor, hired private detectives to investigate the community and concluded, “Here is a community…dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood with men of all ages for the sole purpose of producing more children to be reared to become mere chattels.” Pyle ordered a police raid. Polygamist men from Short Creek were jailed in Kingman, while their plural wives and children stayed behind. Arizona officials took days trying to sort through the families and determining who was related to whom. The raid became a public relations nightmare for Pyle when people saw newsreels of distressed children separated from their parents. The net result was only one year of probation for twenty-three polygamist men. The bad press and political fallout helped the Arizona polygamists avoid interference from law enforcement for many years to come.172

  Perhaps it was because of the failed raid in 1953 that more than forty years later the Kingston and FLDS polygamist groups believed they would also ultimately prevail. David Ortell Kingston, however, was sentenced to five years in Utah State Prison for having sex with his sixteen-year-old niece. Rowenna Erickson, a former Kingston bride, said, “Their whole structure is beginning to quake, it’s like a low-level earthquake.”173 The FLDS would also feel those reverberations.

  Warren Jeffs succeeded his father, Rulon Jeffs, as the “prophet” and absolute leader of the FLDS shortly after Rulon’s death in September 2002. Only a month later authorities revealed that they had been extensively investigating underage marriages within the FLDS communities.174 That investigation would eventually lead to sex charges against numerous men and Warren Jeffs. They would face sex charges in both Utah and Arizona.175

  Jeffs ruled over his FLDS kingdom like a ruthless tyrant. He threw out more than one hundred men, stripping them of wives and children, whom he then reassigned to other men who were loyal to him. Jeffs banned school and forbade the color red and use of the word fun. He also banned television, rock music, short sleeves for men, and trousers for women. Jeffs, like other purported cult leaders, sought to control every aspect of FLDS life. He controlled the homes of all FLDS members through the UEP trust.176 The police of Colorado City and Hildale were his loyal followers.177 When asked to explain the dynamics of the group, Warren Jeffs’ nephew, Brent Jeffs, told a news correspondent, “The entire cult, as I would put it, is run by complete fear. Everything they do is run by fear. They control the women and the children all by fear…The men in there that have brainwashed these women and children, have convinced them ever since they were babies that this is right. Because they think in their minds they have nowhere else to go.”178

  As authorities began to close in on Jeffs, the polygamist leader sought a special refuge. In November 2003 David S. Allred, acting as a surrogate for Warren Jeffs, bought a remote 1,691-acre ranch in western Texas near the small town of Eldorado. Locals were initially told it was to be a “hunting compound,” but it wasn’t long before massive construction began and the “Yearning for Zion” (YFZ) FLDS stronghold took shape. Three three-story houses, each comprising ten thousand square feet, were quickly completed and would become dormitories. Soon there was a cheese factory, medical clinic, grain silo, commissary, and sewage treatment plant. The perimeter included watchtowers, infrared night-vision cameras, and walls encircling the compound, topped with spikes. A huge limestone-clad temple would become the centerpiece of the new, completely contained polygamist community populated by hundreds of FLDS members J
effs had handpicked.179

  The people of Eldorado recalled that another rural compound in Texas, run by a cult leader named David Koresh near the town of Waco, had ended in tragedy. They shuddered to think that the same situation might develop again in their own area. Like Koresh, Warren Jeffs had made a doomsday prediction that Armageddon was coming in 2005. Local rancher Lynn Meador, sixty-two, said, “Those people came under false pretenses to our area…I think people deep down were afraid this thing would end up like Waco. We were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”180

  The anticipated corresponding response finally came during April 2008. Authorities descended on the polygamist compound in a massive, well-planned, and carefully coordinated raid, the largest law enforcement action concerning polygamists since the Arizona raid of Short Creek in 1953. Hundreds of agents, including the FBI, the Texas Rangers, and the San Angelo police, highway patrol, and sheriff’s department, converged on the YFZ ranch. Authorities used an armored vehicle for personnel, K9 dog units, and multiple ambulances.