Twelve Tribes: Redford catalog sold cult's goods - News about religious cults and sects

A catalog company owned by Robert Redford unwittingly sold products made by a firm that uses unpaid 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 religious group that believes in beating kids with resin-dipped rods to discipline them. From a young age, the kids work alongside parents in its various cottage industries.

Twelve Tribes - whose teachings say blacks were meant to be servants and homosexuals are "disobedient" - recently began migrating from New England to New York, settling in several small towns, including the Catskills hamlet of Coxsackie, where it has refurbished an old riverfront factory to make Common Wealth wood furniture, some of which has been sold through Sundance catalog.

Launched by Redford in 1989, the eco-friendly Sundance sells clothing, organic products, hand-crafted furniture and jewelry.

Sundance has sold Common Wealth furniture since 1999, but only recently learned of its potentially illegal work practices - and cult ties - after cosmetics giant Estée Lauder quit doing business with another Twelve Tribes offshoot amid questions about the age of its workers.

Twelve Tribes denies it violates labor laws.
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The only Common Wealth-made item slated for sale in Sundance's upcoming catalog has been pulled.

"We are as surprised and distressed as everyone else to learn about this and are taking steps to immediately address the issue and sever ties with this group," a Sundance spokesman said.
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Former member and upstate resident Laurie Marrano Johnson, who wrested her two sons from the group in 1997 after their father hid them within Twelve Tribes for eight years, said by the time her kids were 6, "they were working in candle and soap factories, and the leather works. It was considered 'occupational training.'"

Abduction charges against the children's father, Stephen Wootten, which had been dismissed by a Vermont court, were reportedly reinstated last year by Vermont's Supreme Court.
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Twelve Tribes hawks its homespun wares through various businesses, including Common Wealth, Tribal Trading, which makes candles, and Common Sense, which makes natural products - none of which disclose its cult ties, say those who've done business with them.
Like all Sundance vendors, Common Wealth was required to sign papers affirming compliance with state and local laws and regulations. "The documents specifically mention child labor laws," the Sundance spokesman said.

In February, msnbc.com reported Estée Lauder had severed long-term ties with Common Sense.

An inspection reportedly turned up minors working in the group's Cambridge, N.Y., factory, which made Estée Lauder's Origins Dead Sea Salt scrub and Step Lively foot cream.
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All-American outfitter L.L. Bean and Trader Joe's, a popular national grocery store chain, also have done business with the sect.

L.L. Bean had sold Twelve Tribes' natural soap in its stores and a home catalog, but no longer does, said a spokesman. Sources outside the company said customers alerted L.L. Bean to the product's cult ties. Trader Joe's stopped selling Tribal Trading beeswax candles, but was unaware of the Twelve Tribes connection. "Their product was just too expensive," said a company exec.

Twelve Tribes - which is also known as The Messianic Communities - was founded in the early 1970s by Elbert Eugene Spriggs.
In the group, children obey parents, blacks obey whites, women obey men - and everyone obeys Yoneq.

"They take truly nice people, and start them down a very dangerous path," said Robert Pardon, executive director of the New England Institute of Religious Research, who has studied Twelve Tribes for nearly a decade. "They're psychologically beaten up - there's no room for flexibility. You do what you're told."
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Cult members give up their possessions and money to the group and get room and board in exchange for work in the group's cottage industries. There are 2,500 members in the U.S. (with five New York communities) and overseas.

Members usually live together in one large house. Spriggs, meanwhile, jets between homes in Brazil, France and the United States, checking on the flock that finances his heavenly crusade.
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"Gene Spriggs is the ultimate hustler, and Estée Lauder and Sundance bought into that hustle," said Rick Ross, a top cult expert and intervention specialist. "Spriggs' success was based, almost from the start, on free labor."
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Spriggs believes children should be beaten from infancy to instill discipline. Swantko, the group's spokeswoman, told The Post:
"Parents in the Twelve Tribes communities spank their children in love according to the Word of God. An undisciplined child is an unloved child, and an unloved child is an abused child. Members of the Twelve Tribes do not practice or condone abuse or neglect of children. . . . Time and time again, the parents of the Twelve Tribes have been exonerated of child-abuse claims throughout the world."

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