Reclusive Leader Defends Twelve Tribes Practices

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 wrong with America today?  People don’t discipline their children,” Spriggs told horrified parents crowding the cafeteria of South Middle School.

Springs, 64, said Twelve Tribes has “former” gays in its community, “but they don’t practice that anymore.  They’ve been redeemed.  That’s why we’re here, to give someone a new life so they won’t have to pay for their sins.”

Clean – scrubbed young women in plain, loose dresses offering cookies and tea greeted Residents – some who have frequented Twelve Tribes’ Common Sense health food and furniture store in downtown Plymouth.

Thumping a threadbare Bible and spewing threats of fire and brimstone, the usually reclusive leader of Twelve Tribes went to-to- toe in Plymouth last night with his controversial cult’s doubters.

But Plymouth residents turned the cafeteria into a court of public opinion and put Twelve Tribes on the stand.

One woman said she went to Common Sense seeking a food donation she could give an Irish homeless family, but an employee told her the Irish are “sinners” because they drink and the family was paying for that “sin.”

The crux of the heated questioning, however, centered on alleged child abuse and Twelve Tribes’ home schooling of children.  “We don’t go to college because college just teaches people more and more and about less and less until they know nothing at all,” said member Yoshiyah Jones.

But David Taylor, who joined Twelve Tribes when he was 10 and left when he was 18, said nothing the group taught him, was of use in the outside world.  “When you leave, you have no school or work history, no place to start at all,” he said.