• By Taku Dzimwasha

June 20, 2015 14:44 BS

Twelve Tribes members accused of beating children in France (Twelvetribes.com)

The French chapter of The Twelve Tribes Christian fundamentalist sect was closed down this week after members were accused of abusing children in a climate of violent and racistextremism.

The group’s Pyrenean chateau in the village of Sus, near Pau was raided by police who arrested 10 adults and placed four children in foster care after doctors found bruises on their bodies.

The children were beaten from the age of two by adults for even the slightest infraction or hint of defiance, alleges to Maitre Jean-Francois Blanco, a lawyer representing a former member whose lawsuit against the community prompted an investigation that led to this week’s arrest.

They were forbidden from crying or tensing their muscles while they were beaten on the buttocks, the palms or the soles of the feet.

“I think this sect should be closed. The children are in danger,” said the lawyer.

The former member of the French branch of The Twelve Tribes who left a few years ago described how life in the community was torturous for children, the Times reported.

“I was beaten more often than I can say,” the former member – who did not want to be named – said. “I was beaten until I gushed blood. Once, I couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks.”

Twelve Tribes was founded in the US in 1972 by Gene and Martha Spriggs, protestant fundamentalists who wanted to “restore the spiritual 12 tribes of Israel”.

It has an estimated 3,000 members across the globe who live in isolated communities. There are branches in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, Argentina, Canada and the Czech Republic.

In 2013, the German wing of the sect made headlines after 40 children were taken into foster care after some members were filmed beating children in a cellar.

The Twelve Tribes has faced accusations of racism and the former member said that followers were taught that the black race was inferior, according to the Times.

-’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

Source: LIVEMAG UK

• Bradley Smith
• 06/11/2014

We sent out Live contributor Bradley to make a documentary on new religious movements (known to some as cults), for the first episode of White Noise, a series uncovering issues affecting young people that mainstream media are ignoring. Here is what he discovered

The process of making the first White Noise, Live’s series of documentaries (this one on cults or ‘minority religions’ in the UK), was one of discovery and having my opinions completely shattered.

I’ve always been fascinated by extreme cults, how a collective can completely brainwash people into believing strange ideas and at times control their lives with horrific consequences. The mass ‘suicide’ of the Jonestown Massacre is probably the most famous example of when a cult can lead to tragedy.

I had assumed that cults were an American phenomenon. This was the first opinion that was shattered. According to Ian Haworth of the Cult Information Centre, there are between 500 and 1,000 ‘cults’ operating in the UK. Inform, the independent think tank on new religious movements or ’cults’, has over 2,000 groups listed on its database.

I’d assumed that only vulnerable people or those who were susceptible to suggestion were the easiest recruits for these groups. Again, apparently the easiest people to recruit are intelligent, well-rounded individuals (the case with Freedomain Radio which you’ll see in the documentary showed this). The average person, according to CIC, can be broken down in 4 days. Another opinion shattered.

“These groups should in fact be treated separately and not tarnished with the same brush. They exist on a spectrum ranging from dangerous to (arguably) no more harmful than any large, organised religion.”

Perhaps the most important discovery was that these groups are not the same. A reactionary dismissal of them as absurd and dangerous fails to appreciate their differences. These groups should in fact be treated separately and not tarnished with the same brush. They exist on a spectrum ranging from dangerous to (arguably) no more harmful than any large, organised religion. Each one should be carefully considered, their beliefs listened to as well as their criticisms.

This documentary is notable not only for the groups we feature, but also for the groups we were unable to feature. Happy Science essentially believe that all religions are true, that they all believe the same thing and should stop fighting each other. A valuable belief if you ask me.  On the other hand, they also believe that their master is the latest incarnation of God and could talk to dead people. He had interviewed Margaret Thatcher and Osama Bin Laden (once they had died) to name a few.

Twelve Tribes were an interesting case study: An evangelical Christian group who live on a commune in Devon. They had caused controversy when a documentary filmmaker exposed their beating of children in Germany. After similar allegations here in the UK, the NSPCC found insufficient evidence and closed the investigation. They have ways different to our own, live secluded in their farm community and invite anyone to come and stay.

These are only two of the groups that we couldn’t include for different reasons (believe me there are more). My experiences with them are now secrets that only alcohol can reveal. But these examples and the documentary are simply meant to give a taste of the spectrum of new religious movements or ‘cults’. These groups do exist, they are out there, some are dangerous and others may offer meaningful spirituality. This White Noise hopefully makes the unknown a little more knowable.

If you or someone you know have been affected by any of the issues raised in the film you can get support and information from the Cult Information Centre, Inform or Family Survival Trust.

As social services launches an investigation, a mother’s shocking testimony lifts the lid on the mysterious commune squatting on a farm

• ‘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

Published: 22:25 GMT, 4 October 2013 | Updated: 23:18 GMT, 4 October 2013

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.

+4

Harsh: Children in a German commune similar to the one being probed by social services in Devon

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.

+4

Founder: The Twelve Tribes cult was formed by US man Gene Spriggs, who believes in strict corporal punishment

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.’

+4

Correction: The cult claims the punishment sessions are designed to cleanse children of sin

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.

+4

Beatings: Parents at Stentwood Farm are encouraged to physically discipline their children

‘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

Published 30 May 2014

The Twelve Tribes sect is based at Stentwood Farm in Dunkeswell, near Cullompton

AN investigation into the possibility that children were beaten with canes at a religious community has ended due to “insufficient evidence”.

Police officers and Devon County Council began a “thorough review” of information received about the about the Twelve Tribes community, which runs the Common Loaf Bakery at Dunkeswell in Mid Devon.

The investigation followed concerns raised to officials at the county council’s Children’s Services by the NSPCC.

The children’s charity approached the council after the community’s belief in their right to use the cane as a form of punishment was highlighted in a national newspaper report.

Starting in October, a team of council officers visited the commune on a number of occasions and spent a day with the families and the children alone.

The information gathered led officers to conclude that there was insufficient evidence to take matters any further at this time.

The article followed the removal of 40 children from two communities at Klosterzimmern and Wornitz in Germany, following an investigation by an undercover reporter.

The community near Honiton is one of several across the world belonging to the Christian organisation, which was founded in the US.

It follows teachings in the old and new testaments of the Christian Bible as “God’s direct word” and says its vision is “to form a new nation – the 12 tribe nation of Israel”.

On its website, the organisation explained “because we love them (our children) we spank them”, with a “small reed-like rod which only inflicts pain not damage”.

It continued: “We have seen from experience that discipline keeps a child from becoming mean-spirited and disrespectful of authority.”

A Devon County Council spokesperson confirmed that a team of officers had been tasked with “looking very carefully” into the case.

A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesperson said because the issue was a safeguarding matter the council remains the lead agency, and therefore they would not be commenting further.

In October, police confirmed that no allegations had been received and there was no formal investigation.

A member of the group, which call themselves the Community at Stentwood Farm, previously said he had no comment to make on the issue.

At the time, Tony McCollum, manager of Honiton Market, where the group has a bread stall where leaflets about them are available, said the revelations about the police investigation came as a surprise to him.

He added: “You couldn’t ask for nicer people.

“They seem very family orientated – I find it hard to believe they would mistreat their children.”

At the time, Phillip Noyes, director of Strategy and Development at the NSPCC, said: “Caning of children or the threat of caning is a completely unacceptable method of disciplinary action to take with any child.”

A council spokesperson added: “The council takes all allegations of abuse extremely seriously.“

A team of trained and experienced children’s officers have looked very thoroughly into allegations of child abuse at the community and have found insufficient evidence to take further action at this time.

“If any further allegations are made to us, we will look into them.”

Source: Express and Echo

Stentwood Farm near Honiton, Devon where the Twelve Tribes sect is based

A DEVON County Council and police probe into whether children have been beaten with canes at a religious community near Honiton has concluded due to “insufficient evidence”.

In October officers started working with Devon County Council to “thoroughly review” information received about the Twelve Tribes community, which runs the Common Loaf Bakery at Dunkeswell.

A team of council officers visited the commune on a number of occasions and spent a day with the families and the children alone.

The information gathered led officers to conclude that there was insufficient evidence to take matters any further at this time.

Related content

• Police probe allegation of physical child abuse at Christian sect near Exeter

The investigation followed concerns raised to officials at the county council’s Children’s Services by the NSPCC.

The children’s charity approached the council after the community’s belief in their right to use the cane as a form of punishment was highlighted in a national newspaper report.

The article followed the removal of 40 children from two communities at Klosterzimmern and Wornitz in Germany, following an investigation by an undercover reporter.

The Honiton community is one of several across the world belonging to the Christian organisation, which was founded in the US.

It follows teachings in the old and new testaments of the Christian Bible as “God’s direct word” and says its vision is “to form a new nation – the 12 tribe nation of Israel”.

On its website, the organisation explained “because we love them (our children) we spank them”, with a “small reed-like rod which only inflicts pain not damage”.

It continued: “We have seen from experience that discipline keeps a child from becoming mean-spirited and disrespectful of authority.”

A Devon County Council spokesperson confirmed that a team of officers had been tasked with “looking very carefully” into the case.

A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesperson said because the issue was a safeguarding matter the council remains the lead agency, and therefore they would not be commenting further.

In October, police confirmed that no allegations had been received and there was no formal investigation.

A member of the group, which call themselves the Community at Stentwood Farm, previously said he had no comment to make on the issue.

At the time, Tony McCollum, manager of Honiton Market, where the group has a bread stall where leaflets about them are available, said the revelations about the police investigation came as a surprise to him.

He added: “You couldn’t ask for nicer people.

“They seem very family orientated – I find it hard to believe they would mistreat their children.”

At the time, Phillip Noyes, director of Strategy and Development at the NSPCC, said: “Caning of children or the threat of caning is a completely unacceptable method of disciplinary action to take with any child.”

A council spokesperson added: “The council takes all allegations of abuse extremely seriously.

“A team of trained and experienced children’s officers have looked very thoroughly into allegations of child abuse at the community and have found insufficient evidence to take further action at this time.

“If any further allegations are made to us, we will look into them.”

Read more: http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Investigation-Devon-religious-community-accused/story-21159558-detail/story.html#ixzz3nTVjP3Y4

Festival … Apple Day at Stentwood Farm

EXCLUSIVE
By RACHEL HALLIWELL
Pictures by ADAM GRAY
Published: 15th October 2013
On a small stage in a converted barn in rural Devon, 11 children perform a play for family and
friends.
They could easily pass as kids in a school production, stumbling over their lines and nervously avoiding eye
contact with their audience.
But these youngsters do not go to school and are at the centre of a huge controversy.
The reclusive community they live in — an off-shoot of a 3,000-strong US-based religious cult — is facing an
inquiry into alleged physical abuse.
As members of the Twelve Tribes sect, their parents believe God wants them punished for misbehaving by being
hit across their backsides with willow canes.
Last month the NSPCC called on local authorities in Devon to investigate the possibility this goes far enough to
be considered child abuse — putting the 40 adults and children living together at Stentwood Farm under close
scrutiny.
It follows raids in September on two Twelve Tribes communities in Bavaria, Germany, when police and social
workers took 40 children into foster care after an undercover journalist filmed youngsters being beaten with
sticks.
Now, Devon County Council is carrying out its own enquiries into what goes on at Stentwood Farm.

Performance … cult kids put on their play

Last weekend photographer Adam Gray and I paid a visit, posing as passers-by who had stumbled across the
place, to see at close hand what life is really like at the commune.
The group was holding an “Apple Day”, where locals are invited to bring fruit to be pressed and bottled, eat
home-cooked food and be entertained with music, dancing and a play performed by young members of the sect.
The event is advertised on the group’s website, along with an insistence that, despite current controversy, the
commune holds its doors permanently open to visitors.
“We have nothing to hide, and the fruit of the way we raise our children can be observed by anybody who wishes
to know,” it states.
But that open invitation does not, it would seem, extend to journalists.
Adam and I arrived at the farm just as a police van turned up, apparently called by Stentwood Farm having just
discovered two male reporters among them.
The police looked on as a senior Twelve Tribes member accused the journalists of trespass, insisting that they
leave.
As they did, Adam and I were asked by other members why we were there. In no doubt we would also be sent
away if we revealed our true identities, we stuck to our cover story. We said we were visiting a local airfield and
had spotted signs for the farm’s tearooms while looking for somewhere to eat.
Satisfied with our explanation, they pointed us to a field surrounding the rambling farmhouse where the group
lives. Here we found simply dressed men, women and children — many in old-fashioned looking smocks —
dancing in a circle.
Pizzas were cooking in a wood-burner, there was a craft stall where little ones were making clay models and
building small constructions with chickpeas and cocktail sticks. Elsewhere, locals were lining up with apples they
had brought from their trees at home for their hosts to turn into fresh juice.
On the face of it, this seemed like any other country festival. Only it soon became clear that everyone there was
either a member of the sect or people they know and trust.
Adam and I found ourselves repeatedly questioned by men of the group.Bearded, and with their long hair tied back, they call themselves shepherds — and wanted to know why we were
there and what we knew about them.
The quizzing was intense but unsurprising considering the stress they must be under as their way of life is
subjected to public scrutiny.

Pressed … fruit is juiced on farm
And like accomplished politicians, they firmly batted away any questions we asked about the set-up at Stentwood
Farm, with a further barrage of questions about our own backgrounds.The female members were far more forthcoming, talking openly about how they raise their children. One told me
they home-school so their young are not tainted by the consumerism of the outside world. They follow their own
curriculum, focusing largely on learning about the natural world.
“This way our children can grow up with ‘pure pressure’ instead of peer pressure,” she explained.
“We don’t have computers or televisions. They aren’t brainwashed into thinking they need to own the latest
trainers or whatever the latest fashion is in clothes. It’s much better for them.”
The group funds its way of life by selling the bread it bakes at markets and festivals. On-site tearooms also
provide an income. They grow much of their food and are self-sufficient.
But beyond selling loaves with adults from the commune, the children have no opportunity to explore the world
beyond the farm.
I asked another mother whether she worried her son, aged nine, was missing out on normal social interactions
outside of this tight-knit circle. “Not at all,” she insisted. “He has everything he needs here and is very happy. How
would trips to McDonald’s and spending time with children obsessed with computer games and MTV make his
life any better?”
But, tellingly, she added: “Our children are never left alone. From the moment they wake until they go to sleep,
there is always an adult with them.
“If you leave two children alone together they will get silly. They’ll egg each other on and fool around. They might
get into mischief.
“If they always have an adult guiding everything they do then this doesn’t happen.”
But surely fooling around and getting into scrapes is a natural and important part of child development?
“No,” she told me firmly. “Children are like apple trees — they need to be pruned so they can grow tall and
straight.
“They should always have someone older and wiser alongside them, keeping them busy so it doesn’t even occur
to them to be silly or misbehave.” And if that doesn’t work and they still play up? At this point she clammed up,
some urgent business elsewhere pulling her away, leaving me to assume this is where caning might arise.
It is something Twelve Tribes makes no apologies for on its website, stating: “We love our children and consider
them precious and wonderful.
“Because we love them we do spank them. . . When they are disobedient or intentionally hurtful to others we
spank them with a small, reed-like rod.”
Having seen the children at Stentwood Farm for myself, there is no doubt they are deeply loved and well cared
for. They are beyond polite and respectful.
I observed genuine warmth between them and the adults they live with. These people were also generous and
kind to us.
But as a mother who would not raise a hand to my three children, let alone whack them across the bottom with a
wooden stick, I cannot reconcile myself to the way these youngsters are disciplined and their freedoms restricted.
At no point did I see children playing wild and free in the safe green fields surrounding their home. There were no
secret hedgerow dens nor kids larking about away from the adults.
Just as we had someone at our shoulder wherever we went on the farm, so do these youngsters, day in, day out.
So I would imagine they rarely do feel the sting of a wooden stick, because I cannot see what opportunities they
get to be naughty.
When I asked what happens when these children become teenagers — surely some must rebel — I was told
rejection of this life happens rarely. And when it does?
“We let them go. But most of them come back again, because they realise they don’t want to be part of the world
outside.” At the end of the afternoon we were invited to watch the children perform in a play — a morality tale that
taught the audience how much God loves the meek.
Meek is certainly how I would describe the children at Stentwood Farm. Unfortunately, that seems to be a
permanent state for them.
And my biggest fear is that if they cannot act freely at this tender age, what hope is there that they will ever feel
free to leave the cult their parents chose to join?
Devon County Council confirmed that reports of abuse at Stentwood Farm are “being looked into”.A spokesman said it was “too soon to say” if a full-blown investigation would occur. “We are looking into it to see
if there is anything that needs investigating,” he added.
John Cameron, the NSPCC’s head of child protection operations, confirmed the charity is concerned about
reported practices at Stentwood Farm. He said: “We are asking for the local authority to look into those concerns,
which we are satisfied they are now doing.”
How clan grew to 3,000 members

TWELVE Tribes is a Christian fundamentalist group founded in America more than 40 years ago by Eugene
Spriggs .
Now 76, he set up the first commune in Tennessee. It later moved to Vermont, and from there sent out
missionaries to start others in Europe, Australia and South America.
Twelve Tribes now has around 3,000 members. There are settlements in Germany, France, Spain, the Czech
Republic, Australia, Argentina and Canada.
On joining, members must hand over all they have of value and abandon their birth names. Their possessions
are sold and used to support the group and they are given ancient Hebrew names.
The community at Stentwood Farm was created 15 years ago.

Source: Mid Devon Gazette  

|  Posted: October 08, 2013

Stentwood Farm where the Twelve Tribes are based

POLICE are investigating whether children have been beaten with canes at a religious community near Honiton.

Officers are working with Devon CounCy Council to “thoroughly review” recently received information about the Twelve Tribes community, which runs the Common Loaf Bakery at Dunkeswell.

The investigation follows concerns raised to officials at the county council’s Children’s Services department by the NSPCC.

The children’s charity approached the council after the community’s belief in their right to use the cane as a form of punishment was highlighted in a newspaper report.

Related content

• Probe into religious community accused of caning children concludes due to ‘insufficient evidence’

The article followed the removal of 40 children from two communities at Klosterzimmern and Wornitz in Germany, following an investigation by an undercover reporter.

The Honiton community is one of several across the world belonging to the Christian organisation, which was founded in the US.

It follows teachings in the old and new testaments of the Bible as “God’s direct word” and says its vision is to “form a new nation – the 12 tribe nation of Israel”.

On its website, the organisation explained “because we love them (our children) we spank them”, with a “small reed-like rod which only inflicts pain not damage”.

It continued: “We have seen from experience that discipline keeps a child from becoming mean-spirited and disrespectful of authority.”

A member of the group, which call themselves the Community at Stentwood Farm, said he had no comment to make on the issue. Tony McCollum, manager of Honiton Market, where the group has handed out leaflets, said the revelations about the police investigation came as a surprise to him.

He added: “You couldn’t ask for nicer people.

“They seem very family orientated – I find it hard to believe they would mistreat their children.”

Phillip Noyes, director of strategy and development at the NSPCC, said: “Caning of children or the threat of caning is a completely unacceptable method of disciplinary action to take with any child.”

A police spokesperson said: “Devon and Cornwall Police and Devon County Council are working together to thoroughly review the recent information received about the welfare of children in the Honiton area.

“At this time, this is a safeguarding matter and Devon County Council remains the lead agency.

“No allegations have been received at this time nor is any formal investigation currently underway.”

Source: BBC 2013