Boston Herald September 11, 2001 Laurel J. Sweet At a community forum to refute allegations from former members about his religious sect’s practices in a Herald series on Twelve Tribes last week, Eugene “Yoneq” Spriggs boasted of reforming homosexuals and whacking children with wooden rods to keep them in line. “What do you think is…
Boston Herald/September 7, 2001 By Dave Wedge A former Twelve Tribes member who didn’t want his child raised in the controversial cult fled the country with the boy five years ago and is still being sought by Boston police, records show. “He was afraid that if they got into a drawn-out court battle, then the…
Boston Herald Dave Wedge September 5, 2001 A New York man, distraught over his friend’s total immersion in the Twelve Tribes, has set up an “underground railroad” to help teens flee the allegedly abusive, mind controlling cult. “When we pick these kids up, they’re afraid,” Kevin Coughlin said of the former members he has helped…
Source: Boston Herald, Sep. 5, 2001 Former hippie Joellen Griffin left her home in the Midwest in 1975 for a booze and drug addled road trip with friends, but ended up taking a 21 year detour into the bizarre and dangerous world of Elbert Eugene Spriggs and his Twelve Tribes cult, she said. “I would…
Source: Boston Herald September 5, 2001 Dave Wedge While his loyal followers toil in shops and factories or work the fields for the common good of the Twelve Tribes, the controversial cult’s elusive leader Elbert Eugene “Yoneq” Spriggs travels the globe, bedding down in palatial homes in southern France, Brazil and Cape Cod, former members…
Boston Herald September 4, 2001 Dave Wedge The Cult Next Door: Teen Shares Chilling Tale Of Alleged Abuse Inside The Twelve Tribes Sect After years of being abused, forced to work in factories, brainwashed and denied a normal childhood, Zebulon Wiseman finally found the strength to run from the “high control cult” he says robbed…
But truth be told…. Factnet NewsBlog editor’s note: I just recently worked with a reporter from NBC in Kansas City, Mo. on a spot he was doing about the Twelve Tribes. His story was focused on the “child abuse aspect” of the Tribes until he found how many different destructive traits he could have investigated…
Scandal NY Post .com Jeane Macintosh April 9, 2001 A bizarre upstate cult that uses kid laborers to churn out products – some in Robert Redford’s catalog – is under scrutiny by state labor officials following a Post report on their practices. In the wake of the Post’s report Sunday on the Twelve Tribes cult’s…
New York Post Jeane Macintosh April 8, 2001 For some children of the Twelve Tribes, the beatings begin in infancy and sometimes don’t stop until they’re old enough to have kids of their own. They start working as young as 2 or 3, and by 13 or 14 are expected to quit home-schooling to work…
NY Post Jeane MacIntosh April 8, 2001 A Robert Redford catalog company unwittingly sold products made from a firm that uses child laborers – all members of a controversial upstate cult – to make some of its products. The children are part of Twelve Tribes, a racist, isolationist Bible-based cult that believes in beating kids…