http://www.examiner.com/article/twelve-tribes-child-abuse-cult-serves-different-kind-of-beverage

-’Vicki’ has lifted the lid on the commune she escaped from in 2005
-Then a vulnerable, single mother, she was ordered to beat her son
-The commune is linked to the controversial US Twelve Tribes cult
-Forty children were taken in to care at two German branches recently
-The NSPCC has now raised concerns with Stentwood Farm in Devon

By David Jones for the Daily Mail

The first mists of autumn have descended on the Blackdown Hills, and next weekend one of the alternative communities who have gravitated to this moody, legend-steeped part of the West Country will attempt to lighten the spirits by staging a seasonal festival.

The two-day event, at a rambling farmstead near the small Devon village of Dunkeswell, will feature such local traditions as circle-dancing and apple-pressing to make fresh juice, and it will end with a play — a homespun morality tale enacted by the group’s 20-odd children.

To many villagers, news of this performance has come as a surprise. For although members of the Twelve Tribes, a controversial, US-based cult, began squatting at abandoned Stentwood Farm 14 years ago, and have built it into an impressive smallholding, with a quaint tea-room serving home-baked food, their children are so seldom permitted to leave the commune — hidden down a little-used lane — that few outsiders knew so many live there.

While their baggy-smocked parents greet passing hikers and cyclists with a cautious wave as they do their chores, and the chosen few are permitted to sell their locally-renowned bread and cakes at markets and pop festivals (at the same time trying to recruit converts), for their sons and daughters, contact with non-believers is severely restricted.

Dressed puritanically in bonnets and canvas trousers, they are not permitted to attend local schools, join sports teams or clubs, watch TV or use the internet, much less make friends beyond their closed community. Indeed, they are forbidden from playing any game involving imagination or fantasy.

To most parents, this controlled upbringing alone would be cause for concern. Yet it is not the darkest trial facing the Twelve Tribes children, as they have to conform to the cult’s stultifying doctrine.

In recent weeks, via an undercover TV documentary screened in Germany (where similar communes have been raided) and later by personal accounts of former members — including a British mother who escaped the Devon commune with her son — details of the brutal discipline to which they are routinely subjected have started to emerge.

Supposedly to cleanse them of sin and prepare them for salvation when the world ends (the cult insists it will, within the next century or so), they are repeatedly ordered to bend over to be thrashed on their bare bottoms with a willow rod soaked in resin to make it more pliable.

And as these so-called ‘correction’ sessions are central to the cult’s beliefs — a mishmash of Judaism and Christianity devised by its messianic leader Eugene Spriggs, a former carnival showman from Tennessee — the children are often thrashed several times a day.

They are ‘spanked’ for even the most minor infraction, such as talking out of turn, and according to the former Devon member, Vicki (who wants her surname withheld) the thrashings are very painful, leaving ugly red and purple weals. The cult’s aim, she says, is to break their children’s resistance and it begins almost from the day they are born.

As babies, if they repeatedly drop their bottle, for example, or won’t stop crying, parents are told to grasp their heads tightly and push them forwards and downwards — as if they were puppies being trained.

Or they might be swaddled tightly to restrict their movement. Then, when they reach an age where they are deemed capable of understanding instructions — which might be before their first birthday — the ritual beatings begin.

Eventually they become a meekly accepted part of a cult child’s daily life, so that, by the time they reach their early teens, they are so totally conditioned to being hit that they not only accept their punishment but actually ask for it to be administered when they have misbehaved, fearing God will punish them if they don’t atone for their sins.

‘I want it to be clear we are not talking about the occasional smack for a naughty child here,’ Vicki told me.

‘I think every parent has the right to discipline their child as they see fit, and use the occasional smack if they wish, but this is something entirely different. This is systematic conditioning — a sort of aversion therapy of the most brutal kind.’

In Germany, the child protection authorities clearly agree. Shocked by scenes in this month’s TV documentary, immediately after it was screened they raided the cult’s two Bavarian communes and took all 40 children into protective care, where they remain pending court proceedings.

Given that the law prevents German parents from striking their children at all, and the film showed a four-year-old boy being led to a punishment cellar and caned until he screamed for mercy — simply for refusing to admit he was ‘tired’ — they are likely to remain in foster care.

The NSPCC is sufficiently ‘anxious’ over claims that children are being similarly mistreated at Stentwood Farm that it has alerted Devon social services. This week a spokesman said it had launched a ‘review’ in conjunction with the police, and the Mail understands that they plan to inspect the commune.

However, the 2004 Children Act allows British parents more latitude than Germany’s, permitting ‘reasonable punishment’, and as no action was taken when Vicki first made allegations of child abuse, after leaving the cult in 2005, she fears the beatings will continue with impunity.

In the light of the story she told me this week, this would beggar belief.

Like many of Twelve Tribes’ 3,000 worldwide devotees, Vicki was vulnerable when she was enticed into its gentle embrace nine years ago. Then in her 20s, unemployed, and caring alone for her six-year-old son, she was a disillusioned Christian searching for fulfilment.

Attracted by the cult’s website, which promised a new way of living that would restore the spiritual and communal values of Israel’s original 12 tribes, she made visits from her home in Bournemouth to the Devon commune — always greeted with hugs and fruit in her room — and, in the summer of 2004, she was baptised.

Up to that point, she says, she had not been told about the beatings, and certainly not that she would have to thrash her son. Whenever guests came to stay, members made sure they couldn’t hear the swishing of willow and muffled the children’s cries.

But soon after her induction her allotted ‘shepherd’ — a bearded American named Lawrence Stern who remains among the commune’s hierarchy — told her it was time to begin ‘correcting’ her boy.

‘I can’t remember what he was supposed to have done wrong, but he was only six and it was something very minor,’ she recalls.

‘I was told he must touch the floor with his hands so his bottom was in the air. Because he was young and just starting to be disciplined, I was told “only” to hit him five times, and to explain to him beforehand why I was doing it: to cleanse his conscience. It’s all supposed to be done very calmly, never in anger.

‘But when you hit a child [with a stick] for the first time, they instinctively drop to the floor and curl up to protect themselves, so I went to Stern and said I was having difficulties.

‘He just said that if my son wouldn’t let me complete all five strokes I would have to keep going back to the beginning and starting again, even if I had got to number four, because a child who hadn’t willingly accepted the discipline hadn’t been cleansed.

‘Eventually, my son stopped resisting, but I had to hit him a lot of times. He had stripe marks and bruises.’

Vicki says the willow rods would sometimes snap as a child was being beaten, but Stern’s wife, Chassida, kept a stock of replacements.

Children weren’t only beaten by their parents, she says. If they were being looked after by another adult in the group, that person was also permitted to ‘correct’ a child with the stick.

Today, living a new life in Yorkshire with her son (now in his teens and remarkably well-adjusted, she says) Vicki is clearly ashamed of her actions. But she was then so thoroughly ‘brainwashed’, she says, she was convinced she was ‘saving him from Hell’.

Had she known the dark secrets she has since learned about the Twelve Tribes and its dubious leader, Spriggs — or Yoneq, as he prefers (all members have ancient Israelite names) — she might have been less gullible.

Now a wizened 76-year-old with a straggly grey beard and shoulder-length hair, Spriggs was a high-school guidance counsellor as well as a carnival front-man before dropping out and living as a hippy in California, where he formed his own church.

Then, 40 years ago, reputedly declaring himself to be a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah, he decamped with 1,000 followers to Vermont and set up a commune, later sending missionaries to start 12 new ones in Europe, Australia and South America: each representing an original tribe of Israel.

They are run on the profits of a string of bakeries, delis and small factories, and it has been reported that the cult has a sizeable fortune, stashed in offshore accounts. Though it must be said that by comparison with other American religious cult leaders, Spriggs appears to live relatively modestly.

The scandal surrounding him concerns his private life. Along with homosexuality and racial equality (both of which go against Old Testament teaching, the cult claims) the greatest sin in the TT’s eyes is adultery, which is punishable by banishment. According to former members, however, the rules abruptly changed when Spriggs discovered that his younger fourth wife, Marsha, had enjoyed illicit affairs with at least two young ‘disciples’.

Perhaps fearing a mass defection, Spriggs ordered her transgressions to be covered up, it is claimed. When the truth emerged, in an email from one of Marsha’s lovers, he forgave her.

All this is documented on anti-cult websites. Among followers, however, their prophet is beyond reproach, not least for his stance in the Twelve Tribes’ greatest victory. It came in 1984 when, alerted to the child beatings and other alleged offences, state authorities raided the Vermont compound and took 114 children into care.

Quoting Proverbs 13:24 — from which derives the adage ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ — Spriggs stood defiant, hiring a slick lawyer (who later joined the cult) to persuade a judge the state had acted unconstitutionally and order the children’s release.

Since then, the U.S authorities have tolerated the cult’s child-rearing methodology, which is now enshrined in a 147-page manual, littered with Biblical references which supposedly justify ‘spanking’, as the group call it.

Entitled ‘Our Child Training Teachings’, the parental handbook is adorned with happy family photographs, glossing over another uncomfortable truth: that many Twelve Tribes families have been torn apart by their views over whacking their children.

For Vicki, the iniquity of striking children in the name of religion dawned as she witnessed the fear of two of Stentwood Farm’s youngest infants.

One was a four-year-old girl, whose ‘sin’ was to bundle up some rags (since dolls are banned) and pretend she was cradling a baby in her arms. The other, also four, was a boy who, though suffering from some form of autism, wasn’t taken for professional help, for the Twelve Tribes only resort to that in the most desperate circumstances (in France one couple were jailed for failing to seek medical treatment for a child who died of a heart defect).

Instead, he was regarded as persistently naughty, and suffered the painful consequences. So after living amid this regime for six months, Vicki sunk into a deep depression, the cult-prescribed therapy for which was that she must ‘roar like a lion’. It only lifted after she and her son fled the farm.

A few weeks later she gave a nine-hour statement to a police child protection officer, reporting not only the beatings, but circumcisions carried out without medical training and other apparent offences.

Social services were alerted, but to her disgust nothing was done. This week, a spokesman for Devon council told the Mail: ‘They [the allegations] were looked into but we were unable to substantiate the concerns which were raised then.’

Now, he said, a fresh review had been launched and they would ‘gather as much evidence as possible . . . from any possible source’ and decide whether to begin a formal investigation.

But the commune’s elders told me they had nothing to hide and would gladly open their doors to the authorities. Yet they were deeply discomfited by my arrival, demanding I leave the supposedly welcoming tea-room.

But before I left the farm, one of the elders — I believe he was Stern — told me: ‘We do correct our kids when they are wrong, but we believe this promotes love, like the Bible says. We want to learn to love one another. We don’t go out on the streets and tell other people how to live their lives. We’re not closed about our methods but we aren’t trying to shove them down people’s throats to change society.’

Had I been permitted to meet the children, Vicki says they would probably have seemed deceptively well cared-for, having been cowed into an almost robotically tranquil state.

This may also explain why, even as they were being snatched from their parents, the German children seemed devoid of emotion.

So, next weekend, when they have the rare privilege of staging a play, villagers will doubtless be charmed by the seldom-seen tribal children — never suspecting how they might suffer once the curtain falls.

Additional reporting by Simon Trump

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2444736/Devon-cult-canes-children-cleanse-sins-Mothers-testimony-lifts-lid-mysterious-commune.html

In 2001, Matthew Klein – an Australian – was a member of the Twelve Tribes community in Winnipeg. We reached him in Sydney, Australia.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Manitoba/ID/2566536592/

A Winnipeg religious group is concerned about a letter circulating in the Wolseley area alleging that they abuse children.

“Whoever wrote it, they were so inconsiderate they didn’t even put their name on it,” said Maurice Welch, a member of the Winnipeg arm of Twelve Tribes, a Christian sect with communities around the world.

“The allegations are false. There’s no substance to that whatsoever.”

Welch and the other Twelve Tribes members, who live together at a house on East Gate, have reported the letter to police.

Other Twelve Tribes communities outside Winnipeg have also come under fire in the last few years over allegations children are beaten with canes.

Welch said the group does use a thin rod as part of how they care for their children, but he noted that ”it’s biblical.”

“We discipline our children with a balloon stick. It’s a thin, reed-like rod,” he said

The group invites anyone who’s interested to come visit and ask questions about their way of life.

To that end, Welch and other members held a meeting at the Cornish Branch of the city’s public library on Monday night to refute the letter and take questions from people.

“We were thrilled by how warm and supportive our neighbours were,” he said.

Abby Flackman, who lives in the Wolseley area, said she has always had positive encounters with the group.

“I don’t feel threatened by who they are and I never have. I know they’re always inviting and always welcoming people into their homes,” she said.

But Nicholas Bala, a law professor at Queen’s University and an expert on corporal punishment issues, says Twelve Tribes may need some education on how children can be disciplined in Canada.

“If people are getting up and saying that they are doing things that are clearly criminal acts, that are criminally unacceptable in Canada [and] have the potential to be harmful for children, some investigation and response is appropriate,” Bala said in an interview.

In a statement sent to CBC News on Tuesday afternoon, the Manitoba government says the welfare of the children at Twelve Tribes will be looked into by Child and Family Services Department staff.

Watch video here

Author goes undercover to learn about insular group

I have encountered the Twelve Tribes several times over the years, usually at the booth they would set up at public events like Ciclovia, or the annual Peace and Justice Festival. On one occasion I visited their restaurant on Sherbrook Street and had an enjoyable meal there. I had always had it in the back of my mind to visit their Friday gatherings at their homes in the East Gate area, but never quite got around to it.

• Twelve Tribes religious group targeted by child abuse allegations

In the spring of 2013, I happened to cross paths with an old acquaintance, a young mother of two. I remember her being very active with the environmental community. We had collaborated on some actions together about six or seven years ago. Shortly afterwards she volunteered with us for a time as a reporter and host at the campus-based radio station CKUW. On one occasion, the two of us managed to gain admittance to a public talk in Winnipeg and managed to level some pretty tough questions at then US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins.

This woman, who I’ll refer to as Stephanie, was now ardently involved with the Twelve Tribes of Israel. She had embraced a Hebrew name, embraced their lifestyle and religious views, and lived in the community.

While I was surprised, I accepted her decision to live her life as she saw fit.

A little later, I received an email from a friend who started referring to the Twelve Tribes as a child-abusing cult. He had been a regular visitor to the community’s get-togethers. As a health practitioner, he treated a few of them on site. Moreover, his partner, the mother of his child, had chosen to join the community.

He filled me in on the details, and sent me a list of links detailing the nature of the abuse as he saw it.

I took some time to study up on what was available on the internet about this group. The links I received from my friend spoke of the repeated spanking of children with wooden sticks, as well as a practice called ‘scourging,’ in which children would be hit repeatedly with a stick to the point of bruising.

Entering the community

I took a leave of absence from my work at CKUW and prepared to enter the community. If the allegations that my friend was making, based on testimonies from ex-members and a German documentary were true, then I owed it to Stephanie, her children and anyone else who may have entered this arena to ascertain the truth.

By early July this year, I made the decision to reach out to them with a request to live among them. I talked to a ‘shepherd’ who I had connected with at a Friday gathering. I told one of the shepherds, as they are called, about the recent death of my father and how I was starting to rethink many of my life priorities. We started talking scripture. I was invited to stay with them for as long as I wished.

My very first night at their house on East Gate, I wandered around the premises a little to scope out the place. That very first evening I managed to find five of the rods that were described by ex-members. They are slender wooden sticks roughly 60 centimetres long. I found one above a cabinet in the main floor washroom, one in the classroom they turned into a guest bedroom for me, and three in the basement.

Over the course of the next six weeks I would locate as many as 20 different rods. Usually they were in places you wouldn’t run across them as a casual visitor. It was unsettling to come across these rods and hold one in my hand. I was not anxious to see corroboration of this one unpleasant detail of community life.

On a typical day, community members would get up early, in time for the 6 a.m. ‘Minha.’ This is a gathering in which the disciples receive teachings, pray together, and in which everyone is encouraged to openly share their thoughts and feelings. After a communal meal in fellowship, everyone would set off for the tasks of the day.

Most of us, males anyway, would work at their five-storey building on Des Meurons Street in St. Boniface. The work was quite labour-intensive. Some of us worked in the deli part of the establishment. Others would work in the back either in the machine shop, the on-site bakery, or the room where they packaged their Yerba mate, a kind of tea. Winnipeg is one of the main distribution sites in North America.

After the first week, I was moved to the farm near Rosser, Man. I took on a number of tasks there from milking goats to extracting honey from the beehives to general household duties.

Members feel outside world has failed them

For some people, the community does have a certain allure. The people are very friendly and hospitable, and seem to put a lot of emphasis on transcendent realities. They strive to be spiritual. During my time there, I got to meet members who seemed to be lost in the outside world. Some had come from damaged places. One man, as a twelve year old, learned of his father having an affair with a friend’s mother. Another had a history of drug abuse. Still another struggled with sexual addiction. A common theme was that they felt that the outside world, including and especially orthodox religion, had failed them.

During my time in community I frequently felt conflicted about what I was doing. It was hard for me to see these sweet people as villains, and it felt wrong being not completely up front with them. It was most assuredly the most deceitful thing I’d ever done.

I believe there were positive aspects to the community that deserve recognition. Parents spend more time with their children on average than a lot of parents on the outside. There are no iPods, televisions or other electronic gadgets interfering with relations between and among community members. As well, I for one see the merit in involving young people in all aspects of community life. I have a particularly fond memory of participating in a volleyball game where young and old got physically active together.

The Tribes’ views on corporal punishment do not sit well with me, however, and I would not recommend it as a place to raise my young nieces and nephew.

Moreover, the Tribes subscribe to a very fundamentalist view of biblical teachings. Based on passages from the gospel, new disciples are expected to sell their possessions and contribute to the common purse. I am aware of at least one individual in the Winnipeg community who contributed thousands of dollars to the community when he agreed to join. The community, for whatever reason, felt compelled to expel him, leaving him angry at the loss of his funds.

It goes without saying that they consider homosexuality a sin.

Insular community

The community is very insular, and seems to view outside authorities with suspicion. Every single day they would pray for the community in Germany which had their children taken away by the child welfare authorities based on a documentary depicting the spankings. They anticipate the same kind of persecution descending upon their community here.

The community has control of what members have access to. No television, radio or newspapers. There is limited access to the internet as it is necessary for running their business. Likewise, certain members have access to cell phones, though their use is for the most part discouraged.

Children are trained to be absolutely obedient to their parents.

But they were in an environment that does not promote independent or critical thinking. It is an insular community that allows strangers to walk and work among them. High elders are rarely questioned.

People giving over their life savings to their common purse cannot expect to be compensated if they choose to leave the community years later.

They subscribe to a fatalistic view that the apocalyptic events of the Revelations and the book of Daniel will take place in the near future. According to prophecy, as they see it, the Tribes’ children are expected to do battle with the forces of the ‘Evil One.’

Members admit spanking takes place

I entered the community in the spirit of a private citizen attempting to ascertain whether the people I knew and their children were in good hands. I left the community feeling remorseful about my deception, even though I reasoned, such deceit was a necessary evil.

I am of the view that the people I knew and liked were decent for the most part. There is an allure to the place that I felt.

However, Tribe members have admitted to me that spanking takes place. I came close on two occasions to catching them in the act, both times at the shop.

But the insular nature of the community, the fundamentalist religious beliefs, the suspicion of outside authorities, the fact that strangers with checkered backgrounds are frequently invited in their midst, and the stories from ex-members in other communities around the world about physical and sexual abuse leave me concerned that this is not a place I would wish for children to be raised.

Michael Welch is a Winnipegger, the News Director at CKUW 95.9FM and a long time community activist. He spent six weeks living within in the Winnipeg Twelve Tribes Community.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/my-six-weeks-with-winnipeg-s-twelve-tribes-community-1.2809431

Child and Family Services says it’s looking into allegations children might be abused

A Winnipeg religious group called Twelve Tribes is defending the way it physically disciplines children, using a type of stick.

Manitoba’s child welfare authorities said they are looking into the group after CBC’s story earlier this week.

The group’s spokesperson, Maurice Welch, said the law interferes with parental authority.

• Twelve Tribes religious group targeted by child abuse allegations

But a Winnipeg man who counted some of the community’s members as friends is also raising concern about the group.

Michael Welch (no direct relation to Maurice Welch) became concerned about similar allegations and joined the group undercover last summer to investigate for himself.

• My six weeks with Winnipeg’s Twelve Tribes community

Michael Welch said he lived with the group for more than six weeks in Winnipeg’s Armstrong’s Point neighbourhood.

He said while he knew he was deceiving them by not telling them he was trying to learn the truth about how they treat their children, he felt he owed it to his friends in the group to find out.

“If the allegations … were true, then I owed it to Stephanie [his friend], her children and anyone else who may have entered this arena to ascertain the truth,” he wrote in an opinion piece for CBC.

Sticks easy to find in living quarters

Welch said it didn’t take long to find the instruments the group’s critics allege were used on children.

“That very first evening I managed to find five of the rods that were described by ex-members. They are slender wooden sticks roughly 60 centimetres long. I found one above a cabinet in the main floor washroom, one in the classroom they turned into a guest bedroom for me, and three in the basement,” he said.

He said he found 20 rods over the course of his stay.

Welch said while the people were kind to him and he never saw children being disciplined with the sticks first hand, he is sure it was happening.

“Tribe members have admitted to me that spanking takes place,” he wrote. “I came close on two occasions to catching them in the act, both times at the shop [on Des Meurons Street].”

In an interview with CBC on Wednesday, Michael Welch maintained the children and adults in the insular community are at risk.

“The kids seem very closed off from the wider world, so if there was something happening in the community I’m not necessarily satisfied that it would be dealt with in a responsible way,” he said. “There’s a risk to children and to adults.”

Group numbers about 70 people in Winnipeg

The sect which has been around some 50 years, has about 70 members in Winnipeg, 20 of whom are children.

They live in two homes in Armstrong’s Point and they own in a farm outside of Winnipeg as well as a shop on Des Meurons Street.

On Wednesday, the group declined to do another video taped interview, but did speak with CBC by phone.

Maurice Welch was asked about whether he realized the group could be breaking the law by disciplining children with a stick.

“We are aware of that,” he said. “But we are basing on what we do on the word of God. And the scriptures make it very clear.”

Welch said Twelve Tribes welcomes Child and Family Services investigation.

Welch maintains the group answers to a higher authority and has no plans to stop using rods to on its children.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/twelve-tribes-defends-use-of-sticks-to-discipline-children-1.2809619

By Kattie Shumaker-Ellis

This is an expose on some child abuse that occurred in the original founding of the Twelve Tribes, a religious group in 50 countries with a well-defined lifestyle which includes community living. They began in 1972, coming from the Jesus movement in Chattanooga, TN. They can be seen in many farmers’ markets and run the Yellow Deli chain of natural food restaurants and cafes.

In describing themselves, their website says they are a tribal people. “We believe in the God of Israel and follow in the steps of a man who had faith, who burned with a passion for something more than what he saw existing in the world around him. He walked away from the confined, leveled mentality of the society in which he lived, in the hope of finding a new beginning. He looked forward to the start of a new nation of people who were connected to their Creator and to one another. His name was Abraham. Most people know him as the father of the nation of Israel.”

They leave everything behind, all of their former lives and possessions in order to follow Yahshua (Jesus) and form “a new nation.”

Removed from mainstream religion, the founder Gene Spriggs, was later attacked as a cult leader. They began holding their own services called, “Critical Mass,” baptizing people and appointing elders on their own.

In an interview with former members Michael Painter (for 15 years) and Jame Howell, they say part of Spriggs teachings was that no one on earth has a valid viewpoint except for members of his church. They also emphasized that, though very charismatic, he controlled everything and everyone.

In 1983 in Vermont, Eddie Wiseman, elder, was accused of child abuse which resulted in a raid by the police in 1984 where 112 children were seized. The charges were dropped, having been ruled unconstitutional.

In an article entitled “Yoneq and the Twelve Tribes,” it explains how Spriggs stole two-year-old Lydia Mattattall from her parents and kept her as his own and his barren wife. Spriggs took the child to Europe where he later beat her until she was blue and showed the “brand marks of Yahshua” This was done since she refused to present her thumb to be cut off because she was sucking it. This is one interpretation of “discipline.”

From Spriggs’ Execution of Justice Teaching:
“Unless your son has blue wounds, by this standard, you know what kind of a standard is in you — it is the spirit that hates your son. If one is overly concerned about his son receiving blue marks you know that he hates his son and hates the word of God.” No date – Execution of Justice – Page 1

This article says Eddie Wiseman beat a 13 year old girl for seven hours, while her father was forced to watch. Another incident is when Michael Painter was forced to have his wife beat their 18 month old daughter until she “broke.” Her entire body and even the bottom of her feet were black and blue while her eyes were red. Painter said she was close to death

In another video with these two, Michael Painter explained further that in this messianic religion, as they called it, a child could be beaten for refusing to eat any more cereal, even if they were full or they had an “attitude.”

The belief and peer pressure was that the children have to be broken by the time they were four years old.

The practice of “scourging” is the only acceptable method of discipline in this religion, claiming verbal or hand punishment is of no use and will not force the child to obey. In their book called, “Our Child Training Teachings,” in the chapter called “Chastisement,” it goes on for eight pages repeating the same refrain over and over with little else to add, describing how to train their children. What is striking is that their “training” consists exclusively of beating them with rods until they submit to obeying their parents. Here is a quote from the book:

“The only way to stop the sting of the rod is to submit. That is exactly what the child will do — submit to his parents’ will and end his rebellion. Parents should teach their child about God’s design of the rod as the symbol of their right to rule.”

Although the book stresses that the beatings should not cause harm, it’s easy to see Spriggs, Wiseman and others got a little too enthusiastic.

On Sept 5, 2013, there was another raid in Germany where children were taken into custody but only because they were being home-schooled. There was no evidence of child abuse. As of Jan 2014, 23 children are still in custody. In Germany, it is against the law to physically punish children.

In Dec 2013, there was another raid there and seven babies were seized and taken to several locations. Parents were not allowed to see their children and some were mistreated. Other younger children were separated for so long, they were forgetting their parents.

It appears that the gross abuse of children under this religion seems to have occurred mostly under the influence of its founder, Gene Spriggs. On the other hand, the German seizing of their children, including nursing babies, with no proof of abuse is just as cruel and inhumane.

The real point here is that this particular philosophy on how to raise and train children as well as the unfair seizure of children by the state both bear a clear and disturbing resemblance to a totalitarian state where you are forced to obey. In either case, the child loses his sense of self.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tribes_communities

http://twelvetribes.org/publication/twelve-tribes-tribal-life

http://yattt.blogspot.com/2008/01/open-letter-for-pilgrum-current-tt.html

http://www.cesnur.org/2014/12tribes.htm

http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2014/03/05/the-twelve-tribes-religion-or-child-abuse/

We speak with ex Scientology members as they blow the lid on one of the most famous cults of all time!

‘Exposed: Ireland’s Secret Cults’ airs Tonight Monday 26th September, 2011 at 9pm on TV3

‘Exposed: Ireland’s Secret Cults!’ takes a close look at a number of cults operating right here in Ireland.

The first of these cults is Christiana Gallagher’s House of Prayer in Achill Co. Mayo. We go undercover to examine the source of her seemingly lavish life style and look at the credibility of some of her “God given” predictions about the future of the world, as well as those running ‘The House of Prayer’ in her name.

Also exposed in the documentary is perhaps the most famous cult of all, ‘Scientology’! We look at their methods of extracting money from new recruits and how they manage to keep members loyal to the cult. We also speak to ex members who have worked within ‘Scientology’ itself and find out what attracts the likes of Tom Cruise to join such a cult!

Finally, we expose perhaps the most mysterious of them all the ‘Palmarians’. ‘Palmarians’ originate in Spain but attract a large number of followers here in Ireland! We look at the cult’s wealth and very strict rule set that can separate children from their parents.