» Continued from Part 2

=== Other News
26. Suicide-Cult Tale Spurs NYPD Alert
27. Bizarre cult-suicied threat chills city hall
28. Man Justifies Attack In Ranting Statement
29. Russia registers 9,000 religious groups
30. Students Fail To Prove Yale Violated Religious Rights
31. ISKCON's free meals get kids back to school
32. Santeria Priests Predict Stormy, Lusty 2001
33. Better Future Predicted for Nigeria
34. Rapist, Inspired by Bible, Cuts Off Penis

=== Death Penalty
35. The Death Penalty's Days Are Numbered (Robert Jay Lifton)

=== Noted
36. In Japan, spirituality search can lead to cults
37. Support for people leaving sects
38. Teen virginity pledges surprisingly effective, study says

=== Other News

26. Suicide-Cult Tale Spurs NYPD Alert
New York Daily News, Jan. 4, 2001
http://www.nydailynews.com/

A bizarre tale by two oddballs who claimed to be part of a doomsday cult planning a mass suicide on the steps of City Hall prompted a full-scale mobilization there yesterday by the NYPD.
(...)

The story presented by Eric (Black Hole) Storm, 21, and Michael Lewis Aldridge, 22, who said they were members of the ''Survivor'' cult from Stroudsburg, Pa., turned out to be total fiction.

But not before it gave city officials a very real scare.

''They kept telling us 10 to 20 people planned to meet on the City Hall steps and drink poison to promote 'the cause,''' said a police source. ''But they would not tell us what 'the cause' was.''

Police eventually learned that Storm and Aldridge both have histories of mental illness, including numerous suicide attempts, as well as lengthy rap sheets in the Poconos.
(...)

Police in Stroudsburg said they were unaware of any suicide cult and were dubious about the other claims. ''We don't have a suicide cult here,'' said Stroudsburg area regional Police Chief Keith Carr. ''And we cannot support anything about their stories.''

But the NYPD took the story seriously enough to circulate within the department a photograph of a man identified by Storm and Aldridge as the cult's leader, sources said. The picture was accompanied with the warning: ''Subject may attempt massive suicide on the steps of City Hall.''
[...more...]


27. Bizarre cult-suicied threat chills city hall
New York Post, Jan. 4, 2001
http://www.nypostonline.com/

City Hall looked like an armed camp for five hours yesterday after two mysterious Pennsylvania men told authorities they were members of a cult planning a mass suicide on the front steps.
(...)

The bizarre drama began about 2 a.m. when Eric Storm and Michael Aldridge, both 21 and from the Stroudsburg, Pa., area, showed up at NYU Downtown Hospital and told personnel they were members of a group called The Survivors. They said cult members were planning to poison themselves in front of City Hall.

Storm, a carnival worker who twice tried to commit suicide by swallowing spoons, and Aldridge said they and their leader, Dave Thomas, had taken a limo to the city Tuesday.

They said their plan was to hook up with nine or so other group members who were supposed to travel here yesterday for the mass poisoning.
(...)

Police said there is no evidence The Survivors - which the two men also called The Black Holes - exists.

And a high-ranking NYPD official said Thomas, the alleged cult leader, is considered a ''pathological liar'' by Pennsylvania authorities.

Sources said Alrdridge and Storm told New York cops that a cult member had killed his own 2-year-old daughter by throwing her out the window of a moving car and that the cult also killed a 15-year-old boy by stabbing him to death.
[...more...]


28. Man Justifies Attack In Ranting Statement
New York Daily News, Jan. 3, 2001
http://www.nydailynews.com/

The ex-mental patient charged with trying to handcuff himself to Archbishop Egan defended himself in a rambling written statement yesterday as the religious leader shrugged off the New Year's Day attack.

A Manhattan judge jailed Timothy Byrne, 38, of Hoboken, N.J., without bail and ordered him to undergo psychiatric tests - and to stay away from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Byrne, who allegedly once threatened to behead President Clinton, seemed unrepentant about the Egan incident in a two-page, handwritten statement filled with anti-Catholic diatribes.

''With any luck, Christianity won't last out the year,'' wrote Byrne, who said he concocted the plan to ''arrest'' Egan after watching a Discovery Channel show questioning whether Jesus Christ existed.

After reading the statement, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Ellen Coin sternly warned Byrne, who seemed calm and lucid in court, not to send E-mails or faxes to Egan.
[...more...]


29. Russia registers 9,000 religious groups
BBC Monitoring, Dec. 31, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 30 December: Russia has completed the re-registration of religious associations. According to preliminary data of the Ministry of Justice, more than 9,000 organizations have been registered in the three years since the law ''On freedom of conscience'' was adopted. This is around 60 per cent of the number of groups that proclaimed themselves as religious in the democratic process of the 1990s. The head of the religious associations section of the Ministry of Justice, Viktor Korolev, told the ITAR-TASS correspondent in an interview today that most of those have either broken up or have failed to present sufficient information to get themselves re- registered.

As regards the classification of faiths, there are now about 60 confessions in Russia (there were 40 a decade ago).
(...)

Some organizations which have been the subject of litigation in recent years, including the so-called Unification Church established around 50 years ago by the Korean Sun Myung Moon, have been registered.

Detailed statistics on the number of religious organization in Russia will be published in February after data from all Russian regions has been processed.
[...more...]


30. Students Fail To Prove Yale Violated Religious Rights
The Record, Jan. 4, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/

Four Orthodox Jewish students who said a sexually immodest atmosphere at Yale University's coed dormitories violated their religious beliefs have lost a court challenge.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims that Yale discriminated against the students or violated federal antitrust law by requiring unmarried freshmen and sophomores under age 21 to live on campus.

''Plaintiffs insist that there is no substitute for a Yale education, and in a collegiate sense that is undoubtedly so,'' the court ruled.

But the appeals court noted that students can pick from other top schools.

''If some of them, including the plaintiffs, were dissatisfied with the Yale parietal rules, they could matriculate elsewhere,'' the court said.

Their lawyer, Nathan Lewin, said he may ask the court to reconsider, even though all but one of the students have graduated since the original claim was brought in 1997.

Some of the students got around the rule by living in off-campus apartments but still paying Yale more than $6,800 for their unused dorm rooms. They sued to get refunds and exemptions to the housing policy.
[...more...]


31. ISKCON's free meals get kids back to school
The Times of India (India), Dec. 26, 2000
http://www.timesofindia.com/

Bagalore: Frail arms hanging out of thin frames, their clothes in in tatters, cracked soles, bare-footed, hungry faces. These are schoolchildren at some of the government schools around the city who benefit from the ISKCON's (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) free meal scheme.
(...)

These are among the 10,000 destitute children in government schools who receive hot plate meals -- rice, sambar and curds, from ISKCON.

Started in July this year, the programme is a battle against hunger. ''Hunger is all around us, only we do not see it,'' explained Madhu Pandit, president of ISKCON.
(...)

This reporter went to five of the government schools where stark poverty was obvious. The schools have realised that as a spin-off of the free feeding, their attendance has gone up, in schools in Bhovipalya, Mahalakshmipuram, Peenya, Sidanhosahalli, Maakali and other areas spread in a radius of 20 kilometres around the city.

``Attendance and active participation in class has increased by 10-20 per cent,'' the headmasters said.
[...more...]


32. Santeria Priests Predict Stormy, Lusty 2001
Reuters, Jan. 4, 2001
http://news.excite.com/

Havana (Reuters) - Priests of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion have prophesied a potentially turbulent 2001 for Cuba and the world, including stormy weather, threat of war, migratory chaos, marriage woes and growing promiscuity.

Making public their traditional New Year forecast, or ''Letter of the Year,'' the priests this week urged Cubans to unite and organize to face the challenges.
(...)

Such forecasts were likely to have strong resonance in Cuba, whose relations with the neighboring United States over four decades have been characterized by mutual hostility and recurring crises of Cuban migrants fleeing the island.

Cuba's President Fidel Castro already has announced that he expects nothing good for U.S.-Cuban relations from U.S. President-elect George W. Bush, who has vowed to maintain the 38-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Havana.
(...)

Santeria priests say the prophecies are not absolute but are open to interpretation and are intended merely to indicate the spiritual forces governing the year and to provide clues to how the year might progress.
[...more...]


33. Better Future Predicted for Nigeria
P.M. News (Nigeria), Jan. 4, 2001
http://allafrica.com/

As Nigerians await what the year 2001 has in stock for them, the founder, Christ Apostolic Church, Agbala Itura Worldwide, Prophet (Dr.) Samuel Kayode Abiara has warned the people to beware of prophesies that portent negative things.

Prophet Abiara who made this known yesterday while fielding questions from journalists said people should be wary of prophecies that bring bitterness, death, war, diseases and famine, assuring that God has made this year a safe and crisis free year for the nation.

According to him, prayers, revivals and other supplications being offered at the recently concluded Winners Convention in Canaan Land, Ogun State and Open Heavens of the Redeemed Christian Church of God as well as other religious rites by different sects were meant to herald a new beginning for the country. He added that there was no need to nurse any fear over what will befall the country in the current year.

The man of God revealed that the new year will be a ''year of abundant blessing, prosperity and peace for Nigeria'', pointing out that the people only needed to be closer to God.
[...more...]


34. Rapist, Inspired by Bible, Cuts Off Penis
Reuters, Jan. 5, 2001
http://news.excite.com/

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A convicted Brazilian rapist sliced off his own penis and flushed it down the toilet, saying the amputation would bring him closer to God.
(...)

Santos Cruz said he was inspired by the Bible.

''It is written in Bible that if a part of your body distances you from God, and makes you commit a sin, you should cut it off,'' he told local news wire Agencia Estado.
[...more...]


=== Death Penalty

35. The Death Penalty's Days Are Numbered
Los Angeles Times, Jan. 3, 2001 (Opinion, by Robert Jay Lifton, Greg Mitchell)
http://www.latimes.com/

The prevailing wisdom--that America is fiercely in favor of executions --is dead wrong. You'd never know it from the views expressed by most political figures and media pundits, but many Americans are uncomfortable with the notion of the state as killer, and this number increases with every death row inmate released when new evidence establishes his innocence. Most Americans now prefer another method to punish the wrongdoer and protect society: life without parole.

After talking with scholars, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison officials and murder victim families, we have concluded that even as America executes prisoners at an appallingly high rate, the death penalty's days are numbered. The public still embraces the death penalty in theory, but looks at it with an increasingly critical eye.
(...)

The past year has been a turning point, with the continuing rise in the number of executions forcing the public, the media and religious figures to confront the issue.
(...)

Although polls are drifting in the anti-death penalty direction, lawmakers and candidates continue to embrace the death penalty, convinced it would be political suicide to act otherwise. But they are increasingly reluctant to carry on their own shoulders the moral and psychological burden of state killing. A recent Gallup poll found support for capital punishment at its lowest level in 19 years, down to 66% today. Support plummets when tough alternative sentencing, such as life without parole, is an option.
(...)

Many recent polls have shown that support for the death penalty drops to about 50% when those polled were asked to choose between execution or life without parole for convicted killers.

The growing support for life without parole signals the beginning of the end for capital punishment in our society. The number of those opposed or ambivalent about executions will grow so large that the U.S. Supreme Court, or dozens of state legislatures, will move against executions.

Even if opposition to the death penalty does not reach majority levels, that doesn't mean that executions can't be outlawed in America. Capital punishment had majority support in many Western nations, such as France, England and Canada, at the time they abolished the death penalty, and yet there was no widespread protest.
(...)

Evolving support for life without parole as a preferred alternative to executions could change the way judges, lawmakers and the media respond to this issue on every important level, especially if new cases of innocent prisoners on death row come to light. This will foster the growing realization that, since the justice system can never be 100% right, it must not be allowed to administer a punishment that's 100% irreversible. America would then join most of the modern industrial world, which has abandoned capital punishment as a savage relic of a less enlightened age.
- - -
Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell Are Authors of ''Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience and the End of Executions,'' Just Published by William Morrow
[...more...]


=== Noted

36. In Japan, spirituality search can lead to cults
Chicago Tribune, Jan. 5, 2001
http://chicagotribune.com/

KISARAZU, Japan -- The cure came to Tsuneo Kikuchi in the form of a dapper, silver-haired messiah--''His Holiness'' Hogen Fukunaga, who promised Kikuchi long life and a place among the chosen when ''the world falls apart.''

In the guru's private chamber, an austere room with a ceiling of painted stars, Fukunaga, known to his followers as the Voice of Heaven, ordered Kikuchi to take off his socks so he could examine his feet.
(...)

The kind of metaphysics preached by Fukunaga, 55, has attracted millions of Japanese, many disillusioned by the decline of Japan's economy and the social displacement that has followed. Sociologists say many questionable spiritual organizations are operating in the vacuum created by a protracted recession that has eroded the confidence of this work-oriented society.

For generations, many Japanese workers believed that their future in their nation's hierarchical corporate system was guaranteed and that their jobs would last forever.

These assumptions have been shattered.

Unemployment and economic uncertainty have created feelings of betrayal and insecurity that have led large numbers of Japanese on a search for spiritual guidance. In some cases, the search has led to membership in a cult.

''In Japan moral precepts have collapsed,'' said Masahiko Nakamura, a psychology professor at Ehime University. ''Parents have lost authority. Teachers cannot control their students. Older people have naught to cling to. Nothing has replaced the old spiritual education since the war, and no one has taught us about God or the power behind mankind. The Japanese are lost. We don't have the Christian belief that God is watching over us,'' he said.

The search for a new credo and an alternative to corporate cradle-to-grave security has spawned a bevy of individuals peddling their own weird brands of salvation. These spiritual gurus run organizations structured on the corporate system of strict hierarchy. Most seem determined to export their credos to branch offices abroad.

The worst of these organizations are the doomsday cults. Secretive and often brutal in preventing desertions, they prophesy Armageddon or promote a ''new world order.''
(...)

The most notorious of the doomsday gurus is Shoko Asahara, 44, now on trial for murder in the subway attack. The incident allegedly was part of a plan to destroy the ''old world'' and make room for a new creation--populated by Asahara's disciples.

Police were told Asahara was trained by the Agon-shu sect. Fifty members of the Unification Church sect allegedly joined Aum, including arms dealer Kiyohide Hayakawa.

Another cult, Sukyo Mahikari, sees Japan as the cradle of a new world order. Yoshikazu Okada, who reinvented himself as ''Savior of Mankind,'' founded the group. Today it has branches worldwide, including in the U.S.

Okada was exposed before his death in 1974 as the lieutenant colonel in the Japanese Imperial Army who devised the strategy for the so-called Rape of Nanking, in which Japanese troops allegedly murdered 300,000 Chinese and raped 20,000 women after conquering the Chinese city in 1937.

In an effort to crack down on sects, Japanese police in November charged Koji Takahashi, founder of the Life Space Cult, with the murder of a 66-year-old follower. When the member suffered a brain hemorrhage, the guru tried to cure him by beating on the patient's head.
(...)

Meanwhile, Fukunaga has been charged with fraud and illegally practicing medicine.
(...)

All Kikuchi, 69, had been looking for was a cure for his high blood pressure.
(...)

What happened during the next 12 months to Kikuchi is not unusual for victims of neo-religious cults and sects anywhere in the world. He lost his self-respect and some $150,000 to the Ho-No-Hana Sanpopogyo--Way of the Flower/Three-Teachings cult.
(...)

Kikuchi was a man of means. He owned several restaurants in this small coastal town 50 miles south of Tokyo. Today he claims he was coerced during a number of visits by cult officials to shell out another $22,000 for a five-day training seminar at the cult's sprawling headquarters below Mt. Fuji.

The purpose, he said, was to ''purify'' his mind and body.

''I was a fool,'' said a rueful Kikuchi. ''I paid all that money to be brainwashed and tortured. The instructors kept 28 of us awake day and night, making us repeat Buddhist mantras, making us write mantras into a 100-page notebook and chorus for hours the guru's seven commandments and the slogan: `I am happy and healthy, I'm happy and healthy...' ''

Any lack of enthusiasm was punished with latrine cleaning

At the end of the seminar, tired, groggy and ready to accept or do anything, the trainees were asked to state if their minds had been liberated. Kikuchi said he felt no different.

''So they retrained me twice and all the other trainees started screaming and yelling at me until I admitted I now felt different. They are very determined people and made me sign a piece of paper pledging to recruit someone else within 72 hours. I would have signed anything,'' he said.

He recruited his wife. She paid another $22,000 and recruited their daughter-in-law who in turn recruited her husband, who, in desperation to find a recruit, offered as trainees his three children ages 9, 11 and 13.

''It didn't stop there,'' Kikuchi said. ''They told me to join a private school at 7 million yen [$6,900] per adult. But we had become suspicious by then. The Voice of Heaven never told us anything about the future. All he ever said was: `Who can you bring to us next?'
(...)

Investigators said that over the past decade the cult accumulated cash and assets worth $870 million from 30,000 members who paid consultation fees and bought fake remedies and icons peddled as cures for anything and everything.

So far 1,100 former followers have filed lawsuits claiming damages totaling $546 million. A court in central Fukuoka district already has awarded one group damages totaling $227,000.

Fukunaga might yet face manslaughter charges in the deaths of four recruits who died during rigorous initiation rites at Mt. Fuji.
[...more...]


37. Support for people leaving sects
St. Galler Tagblatt (Switzerland), Jan. 3, 2001
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/010103a.htm

An institution which helps former sect victims to find their way back into normal life came into existence in the German city of Leibenstadt. There has also been strong interest in Switzerland for that institution.
(...)

German social science scholar Inge Mamay describes the problem which people leaving sects have, ''Most of those who have fallen into the hands of a totalitarian group with a religious background have lost all relationship to the outside world, no place to live, no job, no social security or retirement.'' Those are the people she wants to help, for which reason she founded the ''Odenwaelder Wohnhof'' in Leibenstadt. From the beginning experts in the area of the topic of sects have formed the backbone of the institution. For instance, journalist Hugo Stamm from Switzerland is a member of their committee.
[...more...]

» Counseling resources for ex-cult members

38. Teen virginity pledges surprisingly effective, study says
CNN, Jan. 4, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/

(CNN) -- Remember those public pledges that millions of teen-agers made to remain celibate until marriage a few years back? Turns out that a lot of them did -- at least for awhile.

''We didn't expect to see any effect from these pledges, but it was just the opposite,'' Dr. Peter Bearman, a sociology professor at Columbia University and lead author of a study on the issue.

Making such a pledge was most effective for 16- and 17-year-olds, Bearman and his colleagues found. Virginity pledges had no effect among those 18 or older, and the effect on younger participants was variable.

Results of the study are being published in this month's issue of the American Journal of Sociology.
[...more...]