Speaker 1: Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast
Speaker 1: that is that is still legal under the Joe Biden
Speaker 1: HUNTA Robert.
Speaker 2: Did you uh get something that I just texted you?
Speaker 3: What was? What was?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: Is it? A screenshot that says Robert Evans podcast host
Speaker 3: manager Sophie Lichterman.
Speaker 1: Wow, uh yeah? But it also says my location is
Speaker 1: virtual pissed.
Speaker 2: That specific standard time you hack this is virtual?
Speaker 1: It says, I think I have to be no. I
Speaker 1: think what it's saying because it's like virtual pissed comma or,
Speaker 1: which probably means I have to be allowed to work
Speaker 1: virtually or I will get pissed.
Speaker 2: I mean, fair enough.
Speaker 1: I love that you have access to my work email.
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to log into it for months.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, so sorry. That was really personally fun
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 4: Hi Alex, Hello, I just remembered a time. I don't
Speaker 4: even know if this is worth telling, but I just
Speaker 4: remember at a time that I was at a cafe
Speaker 4: in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and I overheard someone talking about
Speaker 4: listening to and loving Behind the Bastards, but that they
Speaker 4: weren't quite sure if they could trust the show anymore
Speaker 4: because of how rich podcasters are.
Speaker 3: There was once Robert what was that thing that there
Speaker 3: was like an article that said how much Robert's networth was?
Speaker 2: How much was it?
Speaker 1: It was so much money, sixty four million dollars. This
Speaker 1: is what the internet estimated.
Speaker 4: I just was. I was just hoping I would have
Speaker 4: an opportunity to address that person. And this is the
Speaker 4: perfect time because they may be listening.
Speaker 1: Don't, guys, if you're worried, don't because you'll know the
Speaker 1: instant I'm a multimillionaire, because you will not hear from
Speaker 1: me anymore. Like, Yeah, I've never understood guys like Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: like you could be you could be hiding in the mountains,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, hunting your fellow man for sport.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It just shows how deep like just psychosexual compulsion runs. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Eon is this wealthy and needs to uh have all
Speaker 4: these ploys for attention every day?
Speaker 3: Same like fucking JK. Rowling, just shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1: Why are you doing this? Yeah, it just goes to
Speaker 1: show how deeply broken so many, so many people are.
Speaker 1: And I am also deeply broken, but not that kind
Speaker 1: of deeply broken.
Speaker 3: Because because if we would, you would never hear from
Speaker 3: us again.
Speaker 1: You'd be like absolutely not.
Speaker 3: I'd be okay, you remember those people and they'd be like,
Speaker 3: oh did I dream that?
Speaker 1: It's like exactly, yeah, they got rich and they fucked
Speaker 1: off the way people who aren't out of their minds too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like George R. Martin, what's George R. Martin up to?
Speaker 1: He lives in a fucking like lighthouse. He bought a
Speaker 1: lighthouse and now he doesn't go out in public anymore.
Speaker 4: He got so rich he's like, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: complete the things that got me rich.
Speaker 1: That's admirable and it is. It is quite a flex Yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Also please could you please finish it, sir? Respectfully?
Speaker 1: Now at this point, at this point, I just enjoy
Speaker 1: the standard he's set for all authors, Like, once you
Speaker 1: sell your show to HBO, fuck off. Just go write
Speaker 1: something right, literally, anything other than what people want from you.
Speaker 1: All right, back to the episode at hand. So, in
Speaker 1: part one we went into significant detail about what Jeane
Speaker 1: Spriggs had to say about child abuse, and it was
Speaker 1: a lot. This was not, as I noted, out of
Speaker 1: step with other Jesus Movement churches. Where Jane really went
Speaker 1: off though, was in the field of biblical racism. Now,
Speaker 1: the religious right always has a solid grounding and being
Speaker 1: racist as hell, the singular cause that it launched, like
Speaker 1: the religious right in the United States became a political
Speaker 1: entity as resistance to forced integration. Right, it was the
Speaker 1: idea that religious schools would have to let black kids in.
Speaker 1: Like that is where the religious right comes from. This
Speaker 1: is not like debatable specifically, like yeah, anyway, the religious
Speaker 1: right comes after the Jesus Movement right, which feeds into it,
Speaker 1: but also like chunks of the Again, this is not
Speaker 1: like a uniform set of beliefs because some of the
Speaker 1: churches that come out of the Jesus Movement are extremely
Speaker 1: anti racist. Right, that is a chunk of like who
Speaker 1: comes out of this, And I should note that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they don't suck, because a really good example of
Speaker 1: an anti racist church that sucks ass is the Westboro
Speaker 1: Baptist Church. They were as hateful in their heyday as
Speaker 1: hateful an abuse of a church as has ever existed
Speaker 1: in this country. If you're not aware of them, if
Speaker 1: you ever saw people holding up those God that hey,
Speaker 1: you know, slur signs outside of like funerals for gay
Speaker 1: people and stuff, that's the Westboro Baptist Church. They are
Speaker 1: terrible people, but not racist. Founder Fred Phelps in fact,
Speaker 1: got his start as a civil rights attorney. He was
Speaker 1: like a very active and prominent lawyer fighting for equal
Speaker 1: civil rights for black people in the United States. He
Speaker 1: was an outrageous bigot and an extreme child abuser. It's
Speaker 1: just proof that you don't have to be racist in
Speaker 1: those things. Like, you know, I'm not saying this to
Speaker 1: praise the man. He was a monster. It's just to
Speaker 1: show you, like different people, like the kind of splinters
Speaker 1: off of the Jesus Movement are not uniform in their
Speaker 1: attitudes here. Likewise, Jim Jones is cult right, which is
Speaker 1: definitely a part of this conversation. Also founded as like
Speaker 1: a kind of a big part of what drew them
Speaker 1: together was like resistance to the racism of like American
Speaker 1: mainstream culture. A lot of members of his community were
Speaker 1: mixed race relationships. He really recruited heavily from black people
Speaker 1: and from like folks who were like ostracized and abused
Speaker 1: by mainstream American culture. That was a big thing of
Speaker 1: like what brought them together and why they eventually felt
Speaker 1: the need to go to Guyana. So the Twelve Tribes
Speaker 1: would seem to have a lot in common with Jones
Speaker 1: on the surface, but Jean Spriggs is the opposite, like
Speaker 1: were some of these other sort of cult movements that
Speaker 1: form out of this, this this Jesus movement are very
Speaker 1: much reacting to the Civil rights era, and Gene is
Speaker 1: more on the side of, you know, what's going to
Speaker 1: become kind of the mainstream religious right thing where you're
Speaker 1: you're very one way or the other, very kind of
Speaker 1: like Koily being a bigot. Jane does not have any
Speaker 1: like he's not cloaking this in anything. He's not doing
Speaker 1: this like, oh, we're against integration because it's you know,
Speaker 1: the state taking over from the church and like what
Speaker 1: is a religious you know, educational institution. He is just
Speaker 1: outright hateful of black people, right, Like that is the
Speaker 1: that is the teachings of the Twelve Tribes. And as
Speaker 1: the tribes begin to spread out, first of Vermont and
Speaker 1: then to locations in the Carolinas and then overseas to Germany,
Speaker 1: France and beyond, Gene begins preaching more vehement strains of hate.
Speaker 1: It starts with his lectures against homosexuality, which by the
Speaker 1: late eighties had evolved from aids as God's punishment to
Speaker 1: gay people need the death penalty. That's the official Twelve
Speaker 1: Tribes teaching here. He also increasingly clamps down on the
Speaker 1: freedom of his female followers. Women over the years are
Speaker 1: banned from using birth control and then banned from giving
Speaker 1: birth without painkillers, and his justification is women shouldn't be
Speaker 1: using painkillers to give birth because they have to atone
Speaker 1: for Eve's original sin. The only way for women to like,
Speaker 1: you know, make up to God the fact that they
Speaker 1: ate that apple, is to not use medicine when they
Speaker 1: give birth. Wonder what Adam's atonement for original sin is?
Speaker 1: Why does he get to take Do men get to
Speaker 1: take painkillers? Still?
Speaker 4: Question, Well, Adam didn't come. It's not Adam's fault. Like
Speaker 4: that's I think that's truly, that's the rationale, right, Like
Speaker 4: Adam wouldn't have done it if Eve wasn't connising and
Speaker 4: listening to the devil so forever, like you can just
Speaker 4: do what you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So the commonality between all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, all of these different kind of things
Speaker 1: that are really toxic about the Twelve Tribes is Jene's
Speaker 1: obsession with obedience gay people, in his eyes are refusing
Speaker 1: God's command, and so they have to be destroyed. That
Speaker 1: is the penalty for disobedience women. Obviously, you can't destroy
Speaker 1: women because you need them to make more cult members,
Speaker 1: but they still have to pay for the sin of
Speaker 1: Eve's disobedience. Right Like's, it was such a crime that
Speaker 1: all women have to atone for it. Children who do
Speaker 1: something as mild was pull away when they're a baby
Speaker 1: being wiped also have to be beaten, because any kind
Speaker 1: of disobedience to authority is the devil. Right, this becomes
Speaker 1: Jane's favorite topic. He wrote often about Miriam, Moses's elder sister,
Speaker 1: and Aaron, Moses's brother, who had opposed Moses when he
Speaker 1: wanted to take an Ethiopian wife. God was livid at
Speaker 1: their disobedience and cursed Miriam with leprosy. And this is
Speaker 1: like one of Jean's favorite stories because it illustrates how
Speaker 1: it illustrates in his eyes, how like sharp and immediate
Speaker 1: and violent the punishment for any kind of disobedience has
Speaker 1: to be. And Jean would often use the story of
Speaker 1: Miriam and Aaron when he would talk about the responsibility
Speaker 1: children have to obey without thought or question quote. This
Speaker 1: is him talking about Miriam and Aaron. They did not
Speaker 1: know our authority. They knew about it, but didn't know it.
Speaker 1: Since the knowledge of authority seals mouths and settles matters
Speaker 1: and many problems, doesn't it? Children in youth? Though Miriam
Speaker 1: spoke against Moses, her words were restrained. Therefore she could, finally,
Speaker 1: after being leprous and sent outside the camp, find repentance
Speaker 1: and be restored. When Miriam turned white with leprosy, she
Speaker 1: was ostracized and took it as discipline. But some rebellious
Speaker 1: people were not restored to fellowship because they did not
Speaker 1: or could not repent. Now, the people he's talking about there,
Speaker 1: the rebellious folks who were not restored to fellowship because
Speaker 1: they refuse to repent, are black people, particularly black people
Speaker 1: who refuse to submit to white masters. Now, like many
Speaker 1: racist denominations of Christianity, the scriptural justification for Jean's bigotry
Speaker 1: is a biblical character named Ham or Cham. Both names
Speaker 1: are correct. Apparently I'm not a Bible guy, but you
Speaker 1: can call it either way. So the short version of
Speaker 1: the story is that Ham's son Canaan, gets cursed by
Speaker 1: Noah and people who suck have long interpreted this curse
Speaker 1: as the darkening of Canaan's skin. So they're like, this
Speaker 1: is how black people were created, right, this guy does
Speaker 1: a bad thing, he gets cursed by Noah, and that's
Speaker 1: where black folks come from. The Curse of Ham is
Speaker 1: a frequent justification for the enslavement of black Africans. Probably
Speaker 1: the best known modern example of this is the LDS Church,
Speaker 1: the Mormon Church, which since the time of Brigham Young
Speaker 1: has taught that black people were under the curse of
Speaker 1: Ham as well as the curse of Cain, which justified
Speaker 1: slavery and also meant they could not be members of
Speaker 1: the priesthood. Church banned black people from being members of
Speaker 1: the priesthood until nineteen seventy eight. So we are we
Speaker 1: are not talking about like ancient history here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like the other day.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, for reasons I don't like, that's the that's
Speaker 1: how old Ron DeSantis is. That's how long that the
Speaker 1: Mormons have been letting.
Speaker 4: That's when Superman won with Christopher Reeves came out in
Speaker 4: the theater.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Maybe that's what made them do it.
Speaker 1: So for reasons I don't fully grasp and again are
Speaker 1: not important. Gene always uses the name Cham for Ham,
Speaker 1: which seems to be valid, although in more recent articles
Speaker 1: when members of the Twelve Tribes are interviewed about this,
Speaker 1: they always use the name Ham. I couldn't tell you why.
Speaker 1: The actual story as to why Noah cursed Ham's sons
Speaker 1: is incredibly funny, though, like it leads to a lot
Speaker 1: of racism, or it justifies a lot of racism. But
Speaker 1: it's very funny because the story is that Noah, if
Speaker 1: you remember your Bible, like when we like depict Noah
Speaker 1: in you know, popular culture, he's always just like austere
Speaker 1: bearded wise man. He's a total fuck up in the Bible.
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of Noah's thing is he's fucking up
Speaker 1: all the time, you know. And so basically, as the
Speaker 1: story goes, he gets housed one night, just absolute blackout drunk,
Speaker 1: and he wakes up bare ass naked, and like Cham
Speaker 1: walks in and like sees his dad with his fucking
Speaker 1: dick out. And the first thing that occurs to Cham,
Speaker 1: because he's disobedient, is like he runs to his brothers
Speaker 1: and he's like, guys, guys, you gotta see this. Dad's
Speaker 1: like fucking hanging grain right now. So he tries to
Speaker 1: pull them in and they're like, no, you know it's
Speaker 1: not You're not supposed to see your dad naked. That's disobedience.
Speaker 1: Gene writes about this moment quote Cham was insubordinate of heart,
Speaker 1: always expecting authority to fall. So he got his chance
Speaker 1: to show what was in him. He revealed his father's fault,
Speaker 1: and this proved that he was not at all in
Speaker 1: subjection to his father's authority. His subjection to his father
Speaker 1: was merely eye service or lip service. His submission was
Speaker 1: only half hearted. So when the opportunity presented itself, seized
Speaker 1: it to expose his father. There was a Satanic principle
Speaker 1: working in him. So in Chan's in Cham's son, his
Speaker 1: offering was cursed to bond slavery, an indentured servitude. For
Speaker 1: this entire age, from the flood to the end of
Speaker 1: the age, Cham's descendants only hope of recovery was through
Speaker 1: submitting to their masters from the heart, not just giving
Speaker 1: eye or lip service, but wholeheartedly serving. After the flood,
Speaker 1: our father gave hope to mankind to be obedient to
Speaker 1: the addition to the Second Covenant that there would be
Speaker 1: no half hearted submission to anyone in authority in the world.
Speaker 1: But Cham retained his sin of having a problem with authority,
Speaker 1: submitting outwardly but still retaining his hidden rebellion. So afterward
Speaker 1: Cham's descendants would be under the rod, and those who
Speaker 1: received it learned submission to authority and loved their masters,
Speaker 1: and were prepared for the eternal age, where many of
Speaker 1: them will be kings among the nations. So what he's
Speaker 1: saying here is that because of this sin of Cham,
Speaker 1: all of his descendants black people need to be slaves,
Speaker 1: right Like, it is their moral duty to be slaw
Speaker 1: and love it. Right, that's the That's what his argument is.
Speaker 1: That's what he believes, and that if they're good slaves,
Speaker 1: if they're totally obedient, then they'll get to be kings,
Speaker 1: you know, when Jesus comes back. Right Like, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the argument. Pretty shitty, pretty bad guy, right Like,
Speaker 1: that's that's fucked up stuff. We don't need to like
Speaker 1: belabor the point.
Speaker 4: Not ideal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I didn't know. I I don't know any of that
Speaker 4: background that this is how folks have reverse engineered rash. Yeah,
Speaker 4: for slavery being.
Speaker 1: Time, Yeah, one of the web Yeah. Yeah. So in
Speaker 1: Gene's theology, one of the things he writes is that
Speaker 1: slave masters are actually the most burdened because of the
Speaker 1: cursive ham because it's they have so much more response.
Speaker 1: All the slave has to do is be obedient and happy. Right,
Speaker 1: The slave master has so much to keep caught, like
Speaker 1: to deal with. You know, you got all these slaves
Speaker 1: to take care of, right, That's that's the real difficult job, right.
Speaker 4: It's more cultivating. You're cultivating as as they're is important. Obedience,
Speaker 4: which is the most the most godly thing to yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's interesting because he talks about like the
Speaker 1: responsibility that a slave master has, but it's a responsibility
Speaker 1: to God. He has no responsibility to the human beings
Speaker 1: that he holds in bondage. Lincoln, Gene taught, was an
Speaker 1: evil emperor, damned by God for his refusal to accept
Speaker 1: the holy order of slavery. Again, cruel and incompetent. Confederate
Speaker 1: slave masters had no responsibility for like the fact that
Speaker 1: they destroyed themselves. It's all Lincoln's fault because he's he's
Speaker 1: usurping this like rightful order of the world. Likewise, the
Speaker 1: apartheid government of South Africa bore no responsibility for its
Speaker 1: brutality and corruption. Instead, the Black Africans who fought for
Speaker 1: civil rights have damned all black people to endless generations
Speaker 1: of suffering by removing apartheid.
Speaker 4: This is why they moved to Vermont, Like, I mean Vermont.
Speaker 1: They stay. I think that's part of why they pick it.
Speaker 1: But they move all over the place, right, Like they're
Speaker 1: going to be in call eventually, like twenty something states.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Wow, So yeah. I found a fascinating article published by
Speaker 1: the Cult News Network in twenty twenty one, the year
Speaker 1: Gene died that gives us an idea of how his
Speaker 1: teachings continue to be carried on in the modern day.
Speaker 1: The author set in sat in on a worship session
Speaker 1: which included a lecture on sham slash ham from a
Speaker 1: church teacher named Mevesser quote the Twelve Tribes. Teacher also
Speaker 1: explained that all of the slaves before the Civil War
Speaker 1: were happy and care free and grateful to be under
Speaker 1: the tutelage of the white man. Meveser taught that even
Speaker 1: if a slave was being whipped by his or her
Speaker 1: master on some plantation, all of the other slaves were
Speaker 1: happy that this errant slave received discipline and grateful that
Speaker 1: their master had provided it. Meveser said once that the
Speaker 1: evil Lincoln set the slaves free, poor Ham did not
Speaker 1: know what to do since he was no longer under
Speaker 1: the loving hand of Jaffeth, and so society in the
Speaker 1: United States turned into a total mess, according to the
Speaker 1: Twelve Tribes, because it devis from this divine doctrine. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Nice nice folks. Now, the study group
Speaker 1: here included one black woman, the only African American member
Speaker 1: of that particular Twelve Tribes community, Bummer.
Speaker 4: I was just thinking about her, yeah, in the situation.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Well, it's so I know who this person
Speaker 1: is because of other articles I've read. But I do
Speaker 1: want to read this quote about her from this article
Speaker 1: because I find it like both very unsettling and sad
Speaker 1: and kind of worth discussing. Mebser then called the only
Speaker 1: female African American member of the community are Mammy and
Speaker 1: praised her for being a humble Mammy servant. He stated
Speaker 1: his conviction that the only way in the world that
Speaker 1: shem Ham and Jayfath could truly live together in peace
Speaker 1: and harmony is in the Body of the Messiah aka
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tribes, not mixed up together in the Satanic
Speaker 1: world where godly boundaries have been erased, where the races
Speaker 1: will only fight amongst themselves. Ultimately, according to this Twelve
Speaker 1: Tribes doctrine, Ham left on his own will only self
Speaker 1: destruct unless he has Jfth to guide and protect him.
Speaker 1: That's white people. At the meeting, one African American disciple
Speaker 1: in the room thirty or forty people were there, stood
Speaker 1: up and confessed hesitantly that he was feeling offended in
Speaker 1: his flesh. He said, we're always talking about welcoming Ham
Speaker 1: into the body of the Messiah, but most folks who
Speaker 1: are aware of the nation of Ham would be very
Speaker 1: offended by this teaching. He continued, Black folks were not
Speaker 1: happy about their situation, and they certainly did not enjoy
Speaker 1: being slaves. And I don't want to leave this room
Speaker 1: with people thinking that it's true. So it's not like
Speaker 1: especially now. And again this is twenty twenty one, which
Speaker 1: I think may factor in why there was some resistance
Speaker 1: to this, But that's they're still teaching the same things
Speaker 1: that Spriggs was writing, you know, in the early eighties
Speaker 1: about this stuff. It's pretty fucked up.
Speaker 4: I have a hard time wrapping my head around like
Speaker 4: being like everything else than this is cool, but their
Speaker 4: ideas of race aren't great, Like I and then to
Speaker 4: speak and then to get up and speak about that
Speaker 4: seems like it would take like a particular kind of bravery.
Speaker 1: It's strange, right, it is like it is. I think
Speaker 1: about it a little bit like how you've got these guys,
Speaker 1: you know, every now and then you get a Republican
Speaker 1: who's into all of the other shitty stuff that the
Speaker 1: right does. But like John McCain, they don't like torture,
Speaker 1: right because, like they have, that is a personal thing
Speaker 1: they've experienced with. So he's not going to be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: people are amazing. Our capacity for compartmentalization is bitterly unmatched.
Speaker 4: I've gotten this far with a very well honed ability
Speaker 4: to compartmental Yeah.
Speaker 1: Truly remarkable. As the Twelve Tribes continued to buy property
Speaker 1: and create new communes around the United States and the world,
Speaker 1: child abuse continue to be a regular fact of life.
Speaker 1: In June of nineteen eighty seven, Patricia Jones, David Jones's wife,
Speaker 1: had her fifth child, a daughter named Shoa Shua shuah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess. She recalls this as being a particularly
Speaker 1: good time. For the most part, the colt was not
Speaker 1: yet as extreme as it would become. They were able
Speaker 1: to go like camping on the weekends, you know. They
Speaker 1: families would do swimming trips to the lake. You know
Speaker 1: there was the discipline was severe, but you also still
Speaker 1: had something of a life. This gets clamped down on
Speaker 1: as the years grow on and Jeane Spriggs gets older.
Speaker 1: He starts to restrict his followers from more and more pleasures.
Speaker 1: First he bans holiday celebrations, then he abans birthdays. After
Speaker 1: several followers who had owned substantial property and loaned it
Speaker 1: to the church left, taking their property with them, he
Speaker 1: forbade members from owning any money or private property from
Speaker 1: now on. As soon as you join, you are expected
Speaker 1: to sign over your house, your car, your basic appliances,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like your refrigerators and stuff to the
Speaker 1: Twelve Tribes. The former member who wrote that article in
Speaker 1: the Chattanoogaan, who I cited last episode, recalled how this
Speaker 1: process worked even for people who had very little to
Speaker 1: sign over. All I had was an old, bashed up
Speaker 1: car and seventy dollars. I had no problem giving them
Speaker 1: my car, but I did not disc the money I
Speaker 1: had because it was all that I had, which you know,
Speaker 1: she does eventually get out, so that's this person does
Speaker 1: eventually get out, so that's good for them. But like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll take your like beat to shit old car. If
Speaker 1: you've got a house, they'll take that. If you've got
Speaker 1: a business, they'll certainly take.
Speaker 4: That, right And it seems like a very it's like
Speaker 4: very popular cult behavior too. Yeah, with assets and then
Speaker 4: put it into your real estate portfolio. Yes, because you
Speaker 4: said what they had thirty six million dollars in.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, they've done quite well for themselves. Spriggs commanded
Speaker 1: ever more frequent punishments for his members. Shiwa recalls being
Speaker 1: spanked for pretending a rolled up towel was a doll
Speaker 1: because this was this is both she had violated their
Speaker 1: prescriptions against private property because now she has a doll.
Speaker 1: But also you're not allowed to imagine things like it's
Speaker 1: a sin to imagine. So she gets beaten for pretending
Speaker 1: that towel is a doll. She's also hit when she
Speaker 1: doesn't eat enough. She's hit when she's taking caught taking
Speaker 1: food from the refrigerator. She's hit from her parents and
Speaker 1: from other adults when she's not respectful enough at communal dinners.
Speaker 1: And this is the kind of thing where this Spriggs
Speaker 1: encourages parents to abuse their own and other people's children.
Speaker 1: And he also every time there's a gathering, he will
Speaker 1: pressure the adults to hit their kids more. He'll tell them, quote,
Speaker 1: you should be proud of these wounds that your children bear.
Speaker 1: If you love your children, you will not be spare
Speaker 1: be swayed by their screams, which is I don't know,
Speaker 1: you could kind of sum up America that way, right,
Speaker 1: Like you love your children, he will not be swayed
Speaker 1: by their screams. Very very appropriate line for this country.
Speaker 1: But not all parents go along with the escalating violence.
Speaker 1: Mary Wiseman, wife of the second in command of the cult,
Speaker 1: grew increasingly unhappy after Spriggs paddled her six year old daughter.
Speaker 1: She threatened to take her kids and leave. Ultimately, she
Speaker 1: decides not to go. I think it's just because doing
Speaker 1: that would mean getting cut off financially and losing all
Speaker 1: all of her family members right the whole everything she
Speaker 1: knows at this point, she's lived here so long, like
Speaker 1: you have to give up all of your connections if
Speaker 1: you leave right, and so she doesn't take her kids away. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Wiseman is going to die very young at age thirty
Speaker 1: nine of cervical cancer. She dies in part because Spriggs
Speaker 1: will not let her receive modern medical care. When she dies,
Speaker 1: he then tells his followers that her unconfessed sin of
Speaker 1: bucking authority was what had killed her. Quote guilt and
Speaker 1: unconfessed sin is how you get sick. This is why
Speaker 1: people die young.
Speaker 4: Pretty cool, Yeah, I have I have such a like,
Speaker 4: my feelings towards people who are in a cult for
Speaker 4: a long time are complicated. Yeah, because like largely because
Speaker 4: you're like, there is there seems to be a point
Speaker 4: of no return for being able to get out in
Speaker 4: a real way, And then you have kids and you
Speaker 4: pass it on to them in one way or another,
Speaker 4: and you're just like, ugh, like it's.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's also why if you talk to and
Speaker 1: the whole field of like cult deprogramming is complex and
Speaker 1: uh sure to a degree, pretty fucked up, but like
Speaker 1: one of the things that is really durably true and
Speaker 1: really maybe the only good advice I would give someone
Speaker 1: who was like, I have a family member and a
Speaker 1: cult is past a certain point, don't argue with them,
Speaker 1: don't fight about it. Just tell them, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: if anytime you want to talk about anything, like I'm here,
Speaker 1: make sure they know they have a door open, like,
Speaker 1: because you can't, you can't fight it out of them.
Speaker 4: Right, that's great almost everything, Yeah, that's great. It's just
Speaker 4: like just be there. Yeah, functionally, if you're able to.
Speaker 1: Be, Yeah, don't fight them, you know, because again, past
Speaker 1: a certain point. I'm not saying like, if they're early in,
Speaker 1: don't try to warn someone, don't try to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I found this fucked up info. But like, if they
Speaker 1: are straight up in the cult, the most important thing
Speaker 1: is that they know they can talk to you, right,
Speaker 1: because then maybe they'll be able to get out the stories.
Speaker 1: When you read about stories people who escape from the
Speaker 1: Twelve Tribes, it's generally like they'll wind up at some
Speaker 1: family member's house who they you know, hadn't talked to
Speaker 1: in years, but knew that they could you know, count on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah. The people who never get out are generally
Speaker 1: the people who don't have that right.
Speaker 4: Right, because like you, if you leave, you know, I
Speaker 4: just can't imagine in a lot of ways, a less
Speaker 4: forgiving society to be dumped off into. It's like you
Speaker 4: leave the cult, you have nothing, and now you're just
Speaker 4: in America with.
Speaker 1: Nothinghing, Yeah exactly, it's yeah, a desperate situation. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: to be entirely so Gene, you know, Wiseman becomes kind
Speaker 1: of this nexus of revenge against him. But luckily for Jean,
Speaker 1: she gets cancer. He stops her from getting medical care.
Speaker 1: And this is I think there's a degree to which
Speaker 1: this was tactical for him, Like if she dies, he
Speaker 1: loses a problem. But he is going to quickly extend
Speaker 1: this rule across the entire flock, right, it is it
Speaker 1: is pretty from a pretty early stage, like you are
Speaker 1: not allowed to go to the doctor if you're in
Speaker 1: this organization, especially children. Part because he doesn't want children
Speaker 1: to go to doctors because doctors will report child abuse,
Speaker 1: right the blue marks. Yeah, and the way he just
Speaker 1: he's like, well, look, you don't need to go to
Speaker 1: the doctor. If you're following God in your heart too,
Speaker 1: you can't just is not just enough to do the
Speaker 1: right things you have to. If there's rebellion in your heart,
Speaker 1: then that's why you get sick. So if someone gets sick,
Speaker 1: you can just say they must have rebelled in their
Speaker 1: heart right, they must not have. Yeah. Now, if you're wondering,
Speaker 1: did this policy cause any kids to die? Yes, it
Speaker 1: sure did. And I'm going to quote from Pacific Standard
Speaker 1: magazine here. Sorry, Sophie, we made it a long stretch
Speaker 1: of that. I know, a bunch of dead kids.
Speaker 3: Last episode, when you started mentioning certain things, I was like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: said kids have died.
Speaker 2: Okay, but here here it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, Sophie, this is this is going to be.
Speaker 1: This is the high body count episode a medium medium
Speaker 1: body count.
Speaker 2: Also take an ad break to prepare.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know who won't force children to avoid life
Speaker 1: saving medical care?
Speaker 3: God? I hope not the.
Speaker 1: Sponsors of the Unless it's the Reagan Coins people. We're
Speaker 1: back and we're talking about our coins. Sorry, before we.
Speaker 4: Get into the before we get into the brutality of
Speaker 4: this next phase. How genuinely professionally curious, How do you
Speaker 4: too take care of your mental health and dealing with
Speaker 4: what you deal with every day? Like I feel like
Speaker 4: you talk you're really talking about some stuff like do
Speaker 4: you do you go on long walks or do you
Speaker 4: uh you have a therapist on retainer.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been playing the boulders Gate the new recently.
Speaker 1: That's been that's been great.
Speaker 2: We have animals and stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's fine, you know, that's very good. I just
Speaker 4: want to make sure. I just want to make sure
Speaker 4: you have an outlet.
Speaker 3: I produced the opposite of the show, which is cool
Speaker 3: people who did cool stuff, And.
Speaker 4: Oh that's a cool.
Speaker 1: And I'm just fundamentally okens fine, h well all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, rob People who can't see Robert's just been lifting
Speaker 4: weights this entire time, so I think that's probably how
Speaker 4: he gets through it.
Speaker 1: It's nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not wrong.
Speaker 1: So okay, here we're back and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about all these dead kids. Here's Pacific Standard magazine. During
Speaker 1: a whooping cough epidemic that swept the community in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties, Bruce Wittenberg grew alarmed when his fifteen
Speaker 1: month old became sick. He had more than a half
Speaker 1: dozen former and current members say he consulted the elders,
Speaker 1: who told him if God wants her to live, he'll
Speaker 1: save her. She died a few hours later. It was
Speaker 1: the worst thing that happened to us, said Wittenberg, who
Speaker 1: left the tribes in two thousand and one. During her
Speaker 1: second pregnancy, another former member, Ruth Williams, developed placenta previa,
Speaker 1: a dangerous condition in which the placenta blocks the birth canal.
Speaker 1: She was told that if she prayed hard enough, God
Speaker 1: would move the placina out of the way. Despite beseeching
Speaker 1: God on her hands and knees, Williams started him when
Speaker 1: she went into labor and lost consciousness, at which point
Speaker 1: she was driven to a hospital, she says, and dumped
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk outside the emergency room. She woke to
Speaker 1: the news that her son had been stillborn. Another woman
Speaker 1: who labored for days was only brought to a hospital
Speaker 1: after her first child died inside her.
Speaker 4: So pretty bad, did the person who do we know
Speaker 4: if the person who is dumped on the sidewalk left
Speaker 4: the call or did she have to walk back? Did
Speaker 4: she have to go back to the cult?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think this is how she left, right, Like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so Wiseman's brief spring of resistance had horrified
Speaker 1: Sprigs right, so he clamps down like She is generally
Speaker 1: seen as the dividing line between a lot of the
Speaker 1: more like abusive and restrictive things that he puts in
Speaker 1: for his cult. Like basically, before Wiseman, you're kind of
Speaker 1: able to have some sort of a life even though
Speaker 1: there's these very harsh rules about child abuse. And after Wiseman,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want people doing anything that can give give
Speaker 1: them even a second of happiness because that it's the
Speaker 1: root of a disobedience. Right, if you have anything in
Speaker 1: your life at all besides his teachings, you know that's
Speaker 1: that's not going to work for him.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of I'm surprised in a way it ended
Speaker 4: up making it as long as it did, because like
Speaker 4: usually you have some like something like something to like
Speaker 4: have people be able to have an outlet that goes
Speaker 4: against all of your other authoritarian tendencies. But this person
Speaker 4: just seems like, top to bottom, the worst authoritarian.
Speaker 1: I think there are. For one thing, it's different communities
Speaker 1: are a little different, so they're not all as strict
Speaker 1: as they're supposed to be on paper. A lot of
Speaker 1: it is that the people who join, Like I read
Speaker 1: one account of a dude who's like the father of
Speaker 1: a kid who gets pulled into the cult and he's like,
Speaker 1: it's a cult. I know that they've done bad things.
Speaker 1: My kid is bipolar and troubled and was living on
Speaker 1: the streets before he found these people, so like, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it was. I think net it's been a
Speaker 1: positive for him because now he has like a place
Speaker 1: in the structure. Like again, I'm not like commenting on that.
Speaker 1: That's just what this guy said, And I do suspect
Speaker 1: I think based on interviews I've read, there are a
Speaker 1: number of people who are like, yeah, there's things that
Speaker 1: are bad or fucked up or like you know that
Speaker 1: you have to skirt around, but like, it is a community,
Speaker 1: we have a life. You know, you're not exposed to
Speaker 1: the vicissitudes of existing under capitalism as much. You get
Speaker 1: to kind of hide from the hard parts of life totally.
Speaker 4: Like this is the out This is like one of
Speaker 4: the outcomes of having next to zero social safety. Yes exactly,
Speaker 4: yehople step in, people step in, and then it becomes
Speaker 4: an alternative.
Speaker 1: There's a lot that's bad about this, But what am
Speaker 1: I going to do, like find out how to make
Speaker 1: like rent and stuff on my own? I've been in
Speaker 1: this culture. I don't have like marketable skills. I don't
Speaker 1: feel a lot of people I think that is kind
Speaker 1: of where this goes for them. So by the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, law enforcement in several states had tried and
Speaker 1: generally failed to investigate and act on allegations of abuse
Speaker 1: in the cult. The only realistic threat to janes control
Speaker 1: of these kids came from dis affected parents who had
Speaker 1: custody of their children. In the years that followed Mary's death,
Speaker 1: tribal elders started telling parents that they were not fit
Speaker 1: to raise their own kids. Children were sent away to
Speaker 1: other communes to be raised, and married couples were forced
Speaker 1: to split up. One example of this particular horror comes
Speaker 1: from a family at a Twelve Tribes community in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two. Noah, Yoshia, and Ezra were three brothers aged
Speaker 1: seven to twelve. One day, they were all playing in
Speaker 1: a tree when an elder's wife told them they had
Speaker 1: to stop. They made the mistake of telling her that
Speaker 1: their dad had given them permission, and according to Spriggs,
Speaker 1: this was an act of Satanic rebellion. So the elder
Speaker 1: married to that woman came by and he grabbed them.
Speaker 1: He locked Noah in the furnace room of a house
Speaker 1: and told him to write down a comprehensive list of
Speaker 1: all of his sins. This took a full week. Since
Speaker 1: Noah was nine, he didn't have that many sins, right,
Speaker 1: So he's going to keep locked in there until the
Speaker 1: list is long enough, so he has to keep start
Speaker 1: making up sins, right, So he's like writing about stealing
Speaker 1: pennies and shit just to like fill paper while he's alone,
Speaker 1: and he's being like starved here, right, He's in a
Speaker 1: furnace room, he's shitting in a bucket, he's getting one
Speaker 1: meal a day while he continues to expand this list
Speaker 1: of sins until it's long enough for the elder. But
Speaker 1: the elder is not willing to accept like this because
Speaker 1: this is like a little nine year old church kid's
Speaker 1: idea of sins and they're just not bad enough for
Speaker 1: this guy. So this guy's like, no, I know what
Speaker 1: you must have done. You must be having gay sex.
Speaker 1: And Noah, being a nine year old who has been homeschooled,
Speaker 1: is like, I don't know what that is. And so
Speaker 1: this elder then sits down and explains in like very
Speaker 1: pornographic detail, like you get the feeling this is like
Speaker 1: a kink for this guy, right, Like you get stories
Speaker 1: like this in these cults, we will be talking about
Speaker 1: more of them. So after this whole experience ends, all
Speaker 1: three boys are taken from their parents and sent to
Speaker 1: different homes. Noah goes on like he's put in another
Speaker 1: commune in another state, and he's like paired up with
Speaker 1: other boy his age who are called his brothers, and
Speaker 1: their main job is to beat the shit out of
Speaker 1: him all the time because he's a corruptor, right because
Speaker 1: he's gay. Now, according to Yeah, this one of the
Speaker 1: elders in the church, he's not allowed to rejoin his
Speaker 1: parents for more than a year. Spriggs was nearly as
Speaker 1: concerned with the possibility of sexual contact between heterosexual kids
Speaker 1: as he was with you know, the other kind. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he forbade all physical contact between non married and non
Speaker 1: related males and females. If children were caught in the
Speaker 1: act of making any other kind of physical contact with
Speaker 1: other kids of the opposite sex, they would be beaten.
Speaker 1: If young adults or adults treated as such, had any
Speaker 1: kind of sexual contact, which in the Twelve tribes included
Speaker 1: holding hands and kissing, the punishment was marriage. Like if
Speaker 1: you catch like a boy and a girl holding hands,
Speaker 1: they have to get married now, right, do.
Speaker 4: You know, do we know like what their ORG chart
Speaker 4: looks like? Like who is enforcing this stuff? Is there?
Speaker 4: Is there like a mayer of the tribe or what.
Speaker 1: Is the each each commune has a group of elders
Speaker 1: who seems like make decisions in common. And then Spriggs
Speaker 1: is obviously Spriggs and his wife are are the big
Speaker 1: overall leaders. Now there is a degree to which the
Speaker 1: org chart is a little bit of a mystery. Still,
Speaker 1: I think in coming years, as more and more people
Speaker 1: leave and we get more detailed, we might will probably
Speaker 1: know more. That's what I can tell from from what's
Speaker 1: the research?
Speaker 2: You said young adults? But what's that? What is what
Speaker 2: is that considered here?
Speaker 1: I mean it seems like thirteen to fifteen year olds
Speaker 1: are not uncommonly getting married off. So I would say
Speaker 1: when they say young adults, some of them are adults
Speaker 1: and some of them are what we would.
Speaker 2: Call children, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now sometimes they are being married to other kids their age.
Speaker 1: But like this is a you know, it's not uncommon.
Speaker 2: For the other old hands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, I must be, I must I'm also I'm
Speaker 4: sorry if I'm getting ahead of us here, but are
Speaker 4: are these kids working like are they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, as soon as like you, they only do
Speaker 1: a few years of school, you kick them out of that,
Speaker 1: like you don't even really need him to.
Speaker 2: Read for punish Kids with marriage are also doing.
Speaker 4: Child Yeah yeah, yeah, I was. I'm curious if this
Speaker 4: had to do with adding to their real estate portfolios.
Speaker 4: These kids, these kids must be working for free problems. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and a lot of situations.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. In the early days, boys and girls could
Speaker 1: at least socialize to some extent during the homeschool educations
Speaker 1: that they received. But this also made Sprigs uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: so he bans co ed education, which coupled with the
Speaker 1: absolute lack of any sex ed for children, led to
Speaker 1: some peculiar behavior from the young men of the community.
Speaker 1: To be specific, they started fucking the farm animals. This
Speaker 1: is This is a problem in Germany, in the United
Speaker 1: States and multiple different like state communes. This is like,
Speaker 1: there's like this outbreak of bestiality. Now it's Pacific standard
Speaker 1: bag just say that, like, yeah, these kids start experimenting
Speaker 1: with bestiality. It is unclear to me if they actually did.
Speaker 1: For one thing, this cult defines two kids holding hands
Speaker 1: as sexual content, right or kissing or whatever. That's not sex,
Speaker 1: we can all say, right, reasonable people, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's not sexual contact like kiss another kid or whatever
Speaker 1: or hold their hand. So I don't know if actually
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bestiality going on or it, Like.
Speaker 4: I do want to note. This just came up the
Speaker 4: other day I reread The Last Picture Show, which I
Speaker 4: hadn't read since high school, by Larry McMurtry about kids
Speaker 4: in Texas. I was not prepared how much this, like
Speaker 4: classic American novel had cow fucking in it, Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: it was like pages pages dedicated to fucking guys.
Speaker 1: And look, that's accurate. I come from Texas. I grew
Speaker 1: up on a cow farm. You know, that's just what
Speaker 1: people know. But we don't know if I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: it is what they do, right a group hysteria in
Speaker 1: which were yeah, I don't yeah, And that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's actually a lot of kids
Speaker 1: having sex with animals or if this is like a
Speaker 1: moral panic, because maybe they're like forcing kids to come
Speaker 1: up with new sins that they've done, right, sure, and
Speaker 1: so some kids like, yeah, maybe that's how it starts.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's not certainly not impossible, Like
Speaker 1: there are like that a bunch of confused kids would
Speaker 1: experiment with animals too, like it could happen. Right. The
Speaker 1: main evidence that supports the idea that some abuse of
Speaker 1: animals took place is although, honestly, when kids are this abused,
Speaker 1: I don't know that i'd describe what they're doing to
Speaker 1: the animals as abuse, like you have so fundamentally damaged
Speaker 1: these children like I wouldn't. I wouldn't like want to
Speaker 1: morally condemn them from for the sheer confusion that must
Speaker 1: be growing up in this this circumstance. But in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, Spriggs ordered the young men accused of
Speaker 1: bestiality to execute all of the animals they had allegedly molested.
Speaker 1: This includes thirty sheep, multiple cows, goats, and chicken. So
Speaker 1: you know, if it was something that was made up,
Speaker 1: they went quite far in suppressing it. Now, God, it's
Speaker 1: valuable to contrast the severity with which Spriggs treated these
Speaker 1: allegations of bestiality to how he and his cult leaders
Speaker 1: handled allegations that adult members had molested children. Right, Because
Speaker 1: a lot less seriously as it actually turns out, Because
Speaker 1: you know, fundamentally it is not necessarily a sin in
Speaker 1: the same way in their eyes.
Speaker 4: Right, is it only a sin just because it's sex
Speaker 4: and it's like extra not extra marital, Like I'm sure
Speaker 4: it seems like having sex with children against Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: not sex, Like raping children is probably like only bad
Speaker 4: because of the carnal nature, because kids don't seem like
Speaker 4: they're even humans in their eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't. I think it also might be more
Speaker 1: that like there's this the idea that a kid would
Speaker 1: be able to turn down or stop an adult from
Speaker 1: molesting them is kind of impossible within this belief system
Speaker 1: because children are it cannot cannot disobey an adult. So
Speaker 1: I think that I think that there is this like weird,
Speaker 1: this situation created for Spriggs where there's a way in
Speaker 1: which they cannot take this as seriously right because of this,
Speaker 1: this this theology he's built of abuse. So one spring
Speaker 1: morning in two thousand and two, cult member Kimberly Peck
Speaker 1: noticed her husband, Jeff Leonard, who she had recently married,
Speaker 1: heading into her daughter's tent early in the morning. Now,
Speaker 1: Peck had joined the Twelve Tribes as a single mother.
Speaker 1: Right She'd been married to Jeff after like he'd basically
Speaker 1: been picked for her right, and they lived in she
Speaker 1: had She had a quantcet style hut with Jeff, and
Speaker 1: then her kids lived in another hut. And this is
Speaker 1: on a Central Florida compound earned owned by the colt.
Speaker 1: After several mornings of watching Jeff leave early to fetch
Speaker 1: their daughters for the day, she decided to follow them.
Speaker 1: She got suspicious, and I'm going to quote now from
Speaker 1: an article in the Broward Palm Beach New Times. As
Speaker 1: Peck watched in fear, forty five year old Leonard began
Speaker 1: caressing one of the girls, kissing his stepdaughter intimately, and
Speaker 1: rubbing his hands over praise the place as he shouldn't,
Speaker 1: she told authorities later, when he was finished, he moved
Speaker 1: her over to her younger sister, Peck claims. Peck says
Speaker 1: that she would have tried to stop it if she
Speaker 1: weren't so alone in the woods. Soon Peck would learn
Speaker 1: how alone she was. Peck spoke to her children, and
Speaker 1: all three of them, two daughters and a son, said
Speaker 1: that they had been molested by their stepfather. Peck went
Speaker 1: to the elders in twelve tribes. She wanted justice. Instead,
Speaker 1: the tribe elders who claimed to be so strict about
Speaker 1: cardinal relations that couples found holding hands are forced to marry,
Speaker 1: covered up the abuse, and protected Leonard from the criminal charges.
Speaker 1: They hid him at another of the Colt's properties in Georgia,
Speaker 1: Peck says, with the concurrence of prosecutors and police. So,
Speaker 1: you know, not an unexpected story, entirely very Catholic church
Speaker 1: vibes in a lot of ways, like moving them to
Speaker 1: another parish effectively, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I feel like it's it seems like a
Speaker 4: logical outcome of treating children like they're inhuman and like
Speaker 4: they're only there to serve you and to serve God. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: like you can't take it seriously because if you take
Speaker 4: it seriously, it reveals that it was inevitable due to
Speaker 4: like the structure of your organization anyway, So you ultimately
Speaker 4: have to hide it. Like that's why this keeps happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Now it is, like obviously, it's
Speaker 1: hard to think of an environment more suited to predatory
Speaker 1: pedophilia than the one that Spriggs has created here. Right.
Speaker 1: Pedophiles thrive in environments in which children are isolated from
Speaker 1: mainstream society so that there are not adults who might
Speaker 1: notice and report their behavior. They also thrive in cultures
Speaker 1: where children are punished for disrespect because then they're less
Speaker 1: likely to try and fight back. So that you know, again,
Speaker 1: by the everything that that Spriggs has done here has
Speaker 1: created like an ideal place for predators to thrive.
Speaker 4: Right well. And in this case where there is a
Speaker 4: concerned mother, where that mother has like no power or
Speaker 4: recourse eye, oh yeah, like that's like this whole other
Speaker 4: thing is that it's like you can, yeah do it
Speaker 4: and if you get noticed, even if you get noticed,
Speaker 4: those people don't have records.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Peck eventually left the cult because
Speaker 1: this was the only way she could press charges against Leonard.
Speaker 1: He was finally arrested and charged and convicted in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, but he was far from the only
Speaker 1: culprit of child abuse with it like child sexual abuse
Speaker 1: within the cult. Around the same time as all this
Speaker 1: was happening, another cult member, David Drew's, was charged with
Speaker 1: fondling a girl at the colt's West Palm Beach compound.
Speaker 1: Police and prosecutors in DeSoto County claim that cult leadership
Speaker 1: ignored reports against both men and took steps to impede
Speaker 1: their investigations, and there are numerous stories from similar behavior
Speaker 1: within cult communes around the country. The Denver Post reported
Speaker 1: on this case of abuse from twenty eleven. Sometimes a
Speaker 1: man accused of sexual abuse will be kicked out of
Speaker 1: the cult, ex members said, but sometimes he will be
Speaker 1: forgiven and allowed to stay. How a case is handled
Speaker 1: often depends on how much status the abuser has within
Speaker 1: the cult. Frequently, children who report sexual abuse are not believed.
Speaker 1: Some are punished and told the abuse was their fault.
Speaker 1: Anderson said that as a small girl that she is
Speaker 1: a small girl, told a woman she trusted about being
Speaker 1: sexually abused. That woman brought it to other adults, and
Speaker 1: Anderson was questioned by a male elder. She kept silent.
Speaker 1: Another elder's wife then took her aside and questioned her.
Speaker 1: She said, how do you have intercourse? And that's what
Speaker 1: threw me off. I said, what is intercourse? And why
Speaker 1: would I have it? And then she said is it
Speaker 1: anal or vaginal? Anderson didn't know what those words meant,
Speaker 1: and the elder's wife concluded that she was lying about
Speaker 1: being abused in an attempt to get attention. Anderson said,
Speaker 1: it's like make up your mind, like is this sinful
Speaker 1: to teach people? And thus they shouldn't be expected to
Speaker 1: answer questions about it or or are they lying if
Speaker 1: they don't know what sex is? Like what is it's
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess you don't have to be
Speaker 1: consistent if you're a fucking cult member whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean I think that that's kind of
Speaker 4: like one of just it's one of the ways that
Speaker 4: the power structure works is like not giving you the
Speaker 4: tools that you need in order to report and then
Speaker 4: using the fact that you don't have the tools against you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like a big thing with a lot
Speaker 1: of Republican governance too, right, taking away people's tools to
Speaker 1: have any kind of resistance to a lot of these
Speaker 1: power structures. It is interesting to me that when they
Speaker 1: have been forced to comment on these cases, representatives of
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tribes tend to emphasize the importance of forgiveness
Speaker 1: in their faith, a kind of mercy they rarely to
Speaker 1: seem to extend to small children. Quote. The judge agreed
Speaker 1: to set a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bail
Speaker 1: for Leonard tribe elder Nelson says members haven't decided whether
Speaker 1: to post the bail since they would likely have to
Speaker 1: put up some of the tribe's property as collateral. As
Speaker 1: Nelson spoke, several members worked in the blazing afternoon sun
Speaker 1: building what looked like a drainage ditch to the goat pen,
Speaker 1: and a woman in an Amish style dress brought them
Speaker 1: water in a bucket. Nelson said the tribe will help
Speaker 1: members like Leonard face their sin. He had come to
Speaker 1: the place where he had surrendered himself to God Yeshua,
Speaker 1: and so we will always help him. Nelson said. It
Speaker 1: seemed that he Leonard was being very upfront and honest
Speaker 1: about his situation. So that's Nelson's this cult the elder,
Speaker 1: and he's like, look, no, we'll support him through all
Speaker 1: of his legal trials because he feels bad for repeatedly
Speaker 1: molesting children. You know, that's all that matters. He's given
Speaker 1: himself because again, it's not disobedient for an adult to
Speaker 1: molest a child, because children have to be obedient to adults,
Speaker 1: and it's not as long as his disobedience was to
Speaker 1: God and as long as he's truly sorry about that
Speaker 1: has repented to God. Then yeah, then he's still one
Speaker 1: of us. Right, you know who's still one of us? Podcasters?
Speaker 1: Not child Moleston cults. Here's ads.
Speaker 2: Wow, that was really bad.
Speaker 1: One of my better pivots. I feel thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Here's ads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh we're back. So by the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tribes had at least three thousand members, probably
Speaker 1: closer to four thousand. They operated communes in twenty two
Speaker 1: states and several other countries, including England, Spain, Australia, and Germany.
Speaker 1: The latter state Germany is where they faced one of
Speaker 1: their most serious acts of state. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: wrote repression here, but like, I don't call it's not
Speaker 1: really like it's one of the only times that a
Speaker 1: state actually acted against them, right, in an effective way.
Speaker 1: Corporal punishment is illegal in Germany, right, so all of
Speaker 1: their teachings about hitting the shit out of kids, you
Speaker 1: actually can't teach that, right, Like, you are breaking the law,
Speaker 1: not but just by doing it, but by like spreading
Speaker 1: this material. And so in twenty thirteen, a reporter for
Speaker 1: RTLTV infiltrates one of the Twelve Tribes communes in Germany.
Speaker 1: Now getting into these communities, is not hard. The cult
Speaker 1: recruits by inviting people in. Right. A lot of journalists
Speaker 1: have gone to other meetings of theirs. Right, you can
Speaker 1: come in, you can stay for a worship session. This
Speaker 1: journalist pretended that they were like interested in joining, right,
Speaker 1: that basically they were one of these disaffected people who's
Speaker 1: maybe looking for a cult. And they This journalist stays
Speaker 1: in there for two days and in that brief, like
Speaker 1: and she's filming undercover. Right, in two days captures on
Speaker 1: video fifty individual incidents of child abuse. That's how frequent
Speaker 1: this case, Like two that's not a lot of time.
Speaker 1: It's hard to find fifty examples of anything in two
Speaker 1: days filming, like, yeah, it's wild, Yeah, it's it's quite
Speaker 1: quite an intense number. In one case, a little girl
Speaker 1: is beaten for saying I'm tired because that's disobedient. Right,
Speaker 1: So kudos don't say this often on this show. Kudos
Speaker 1: to Germany. Here they seize all forty children and put
Speaker 1: them in foster care. Right, they get those kids the
Speaker 1: fuck away from their parents. This sparks a police raid
Speaker 1: on another tribe's commune in France, where four children are
Speaker 1: taken after evidence of abuse is uncovered. These rare prosecutions
Speaker 1: and raids, while you know, kudos to everyone involved in
Speaker 1: that in France and Germany, do not seriously harm the
Speaker 1: overall structure of the cult. The Twelve Tribes were supported
Speaker 1: primarily by the businesses they started in every New State,
Speaker 1: in town where they bought property, the yellow Deli was
Speaker 1: the model, and restaurants were always a profitable endeavor. Well,
Speaker 1: we're always a profita little endeavor in that they bring
Speaker 1: in people, right, Another yellow Deli is started in Boulder,
Speaker 1: where it gets a reputation for serving really good food
Speaker 1: and continuing to draw in troubled, hungry youngsters. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of rail travel through Boulder, a
Speaker 1: lot of like train hopping kids and stuff in that town.
Speaker 1: Like it's a good place to recruit in this way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, you can get some you can get
Speaker 4: some crust punks in.
Speaker 1: Your yeah, exactly. Yeah. They also ran a cafe called
Speaker 1: Matte Factor, matt Factor, m ate Factor in Manitou Springs,
Speaker 1: and these are again the profit from these businesses is
Speaker 1: that they bring in recruits.
Speaker 4: Wellam that you can and that your dishwashers and waiters, etc.
Speaker 4: Are probably working for free.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although you know, even if you want to know
Speaker 1: how hard it is to run a restaurant, even when
Speaker 1: you have pure slave labor doing all of the work.
Speaker 1: Their restaurants like don't really run a profit usually, like
Speaker 1: it's consistent loss lead for them, right, you have to
Speaker 1: subsidize the restaurant because it's just it is fucking hard
Speaker 1: to make money with a restaurant, like even if you're
Speaker 1: this cult. Right, So these yellow Delis are basically their
Speaker 1: loss leaders, right, while they make their real money, millions
Speaker 1: of it through an industry that does not exactly fit
Speaker 1: with the crunchy Jesus free kippie vibes that they put
Speaker 1: on in public. I'm going to quote from Pacific Standard
Speaker 1: magazine again here. Most of the Colorado Community's money comes
Speaker 1: from construction companies, the ex members said. One business, Commonwealth Services, LLC,
Speaker 1: was formed in twenty sixteen and registered to member Matthew
Speaker 1: Morgan at the group's Boulder County compound on Elder Dorado
Speaker 1: Springs Drive. According to records from the Colorado Secretary of
Speaker 1: State's Office, the business uses the trade name CWS Excavating.
Speaker 1: Its website says it's a family owned and operated septic
Speaker 1: installation company. It's one of a number of construction companies
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tribes is operated during the last five decades.
Speaker 1: A Massachusetts based company, BOJ Construction LLC, pulled in several
Speaker 1: million dollars a year at its height in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands and drove the group's funding. X members said
Speaker 1: young men in the cult would travel the country for jobs,
Speaker 1: rent a little house for everybody, and work nearly around
Speaker 1: the clock without pay until the job was done. So
Speaker 1: that's how it's construction, right, They're like the fucking mob. Right,
Speaker 1: They've got this gold The.
Speaker 4: Gold standard of the cult job is the Heaven's Gate
Speaker 4: mid nineties web development.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, groundbreaking web design. Got to hand it to
Speaker 1: Heaven's Gate. They knew what they were doing.
Speaker 4: They had the best hearing this that it's like, it's
Speaker 4: like uncompensated construction. Oh yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fucking nightmare. Yeah. Now, if you'll remember, these
Speaker 1: folks have a little bit of Judaism mixed in with
Speaker 1: their fundamentalist Christianity, right, so they're.
Speaker 4: Not supposed to work, so probably still anti Semitic, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I haven't.
Speaker 1: Actually run into that allegation. I don't know, get like.
Speaker 4: I imagine they're kind of like like Christian Zionists who
Speaker 4: are like, yeah, we'll use the pieces that are important outwardly. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like behind closed doors were still you know.
Speaker 1: I will say one of the things is interesting to
Speaker 1: me about them because I've read they have a website
Speaker 1: that I've been reading, and they do make a big
Speaker 1: point of being like, we're actually not one of those
Speaker 1: cults who believes everyone who's not a Christian goes to Hell.
Speaker 1: They believe that there are the thing that they specifies
Speaker 1: there are righteous people who are obedient to their conscience
Speaker 1: even if they're not Christians, and those people get to
Speaker 1: go to one of the heaven levels. They do kind
Speaker 1: of this Catholic thing where I think there's a contributory.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on their esk on the you know,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, I did. That is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a difference from some of the other things I
Speaker 1: found anyway, because there's this, you know, little sprig of
Speaker 1: Judaism mixed into everything. They're not supposed to work on
Speaker 1: the Sabbath, right, you know, right, so that that and
Speaker 1: spring the fact that sprigs it's also mandatory to attend
Speaker 1: two prayer meetings every single day. That gets in the
Speaker 1: way of sweet Lady capitalism, right, Like, you're losing a
Speaker 1: lot of work time if you're doing two prayers a
Speaker 1: day and you're not working one day of the week.
Speaker 1: That's just unacceptable if you're running a business in Spriggs's eyes, Right,
Speaker 1: So they have to find some way. How do you
Speaker 1: justify making people work on the Sabbath when, like God
Speaker 1: was pretty clear. You know, if you're a Bible guy,
Speaker 1: this is not there's not really like a lot of
Speaker 1: fucking around room here.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: There's like ten to twelve rules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's not a lot of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a big one, but the two rules.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Spriggs and other cult leadership were known to
Speaker 1: declare pushes, and a push is like an exemption, a
Speaker 1: temporary exemption for their working members from attending worship sessions
Speaker 1: or from taking off the Sabbath. One former leader told
Speaker 1: an interviewer, Geene would say, if it's for a good cause,
Speaker 1: God will forgive us for working all the time. What
Speaker 1: basically happened was everything became a push. Right, They're just
Speaker 1: doing this all the time now because it's the money,
Speaker 1: so good right, you're you would crease your profits by
Speaker 1: so much. Businesses were held by the church or church
Speaker 1: elders via a dizzying series of interlocking LLCs, which ensured
Speaker 1: that no own members actually owned property or the means
Speaker 1: to make a living for themselves. This means that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of cases of like former cult members
Speaker 1: who will like build a business that makes millions of
Speaker 1: dollars for the cult and then they'll leave because it's
Speaker 1: abusive and they've got nothing, right, like absolutely nothing, you know.
Speaker 4: Wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And again I should note here it is illegal
Speaker 1: to have people work for free. It is illegal to
Speaker 1: even be like, oh, well they're donating their time, right,
Speaker 1: This is like like you cannot do that. It is
Speaker 1: against the Now people don't get punished for it, right
Speaker 1: because this is the kind of crime that rich people commit, right,
Speaker 1: and these are rich people now, Sprigs is wealthy. This
Speaker 1: is a multimillion dollar cult, so it never becomes a
Speaker 1: prime And they also there's also some exemptions of like
Speaker 1: if you're a business owner, you can if your kids
Speaker 1: work to some extent, and like there are like but
Speaker 1: like you can't make people work for free, which is
Speaker 1: what the cult does. They have been in violation of
Speaker 1: the law to a massive extent the whole time they've existed.
Speaker 4: This is like, I mean you you had said it
Speaker 4: in reference to the construction thing that it's like the mob,
Speaker 4: but like the other place where it feels like the
Speaker 4: mob is like they had to have a lawyer help
Speaker 4: them set up those outs. Yeah, for sure, they had
Speaker 4: to have a lawyer and be like, here's how you
Speaker 4: keep your money safe within a network of lls because
Speaker 4: you don't one a layman does not know that. Now,
Speaker 4: so they had they had like outside help in order
Speaker 4: to set up this structure to work in this way.
Speaker 1: Is yeah bonkers. So yeah, this is very much illegal again,
Speaker 1: but it's also the kind of crime the government has
Speaker 1: very little interest in prosecuting because it's it would be easy.
Speaker 1: I think part of why nothing happens is that it
Speaker 1: would be pretty easy for a Christian themed cult like
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tribes to cry religious persecution and pull ind
Speaker 1: support from the mainstream evangelical right. That hasn't really happened,
Speaker 1: but I think it's because the government never prosecuted them
Speaker 1: for this kind of shit, you know. Pacific Standard magazine
Speaker 1: talked to one man who used his considerable skills to
Speaker 1: create a multimillion dollar construction business for the cult and
Speaker 1: ran it for years or a massive profit of the church. Quote.
Speaker 1: He ran a construction company that made three or four
Speaker 1: million in revenue annually, he said, which paid for about
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars in monthly expenses for the community he
Speaker 1: lived in at the time. He'd send whatever was left
Speaker 1: to Hidden Nite, which is the cult headquarters. I started
Speaker 1: that business and ran it all, but I was having
Speaker 1: a hard time buying socks for my daughter. That's what
Speaker 1: I mean about not paying labor. You're eating millet for
Speaker 1: breakfast and you can't buy clothes for your kids. And
Speaker 1: one of the black box things about this cult that
Speaker 1: like I just don't have a satisfying answer for you,
Speaker 1: was like, are they fucking living it up? Is there
Speaker 1: like some leadership right in a separate location and they're
Speaker 1: like living the high life. There are rumors that Spriggs
Speaker 1: spent a significant portion of the aughts living in luxury
Speaker 1: and the Mediterranean. I have not seen hard evidence of this, though.
Speaker 1: He dies on a cult compound, right, or he's like
Speaker 1: brought to the hospital from a cult compound or something
Speaker 1: like that. So he's in the States near the end
Speaker 1: of his life. I don't know, like, is he does
Speaker 1: this all turn into a financial con Is this all
Speaker 1: about the money? A little bit unclear to me. But
Speaker 1: the money's going somewhere, right, Like a lot of money
Speaker 1: is being made, and that somewhere is the headquarters of
Speaker 1: the cult, right, they are getting everything so well.
Speaker 4: In some cases, the money is just the power that
Speaker 4: allows you to do the thing that you get off on.
Speaker 4: And that's what I mean, that's I don't know because
Speaker 4: I only have what you've told me to this point.
Speaker 4: But like that to me is what it sounds like.
Speaker 4: Like this guy sounds like a true believer who also
Speaker 4: is probably like really getting off on the power pieces
Speaker 4: that he's able he's able to facilitate by way of
Speaker 4: being in this position, and he's able to maintain that position.
Speaker 4: To your point, like if you have that much if
Speaker 4: you have that much money in ultimately in real estate,
Speaker 4: no one can really touch you unless unless you're robbing
Speaker 4: other people with money. Like that's when the government intervenes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: After Waco, the government doesn't really intervene in this sort
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 1: Now, I mean, I got that is one of the
Speaker 1: tough things when it's like, what do you do about this?
Speaker 1: Because obviously it's not okay to just let it happen,
Speaker 1: But also the government has a terrible track record of
Speaker 1: handling cults. I'm not sure that it's better for everywhere
Speaker 1: right about these kids? Are you saying sending the FBI
Speaker 1: in to rescue these kids as better? Well, that hasn't
Speaker 1: always worked in the past. Sometimes they all burn to
Speaker 1: death in a basement. So I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know how we fix this with the long arm of
Speaker 1: the law right and honestly, the thing that is ultimately
Speaker 1: fixing it in the long run, like by some accounts,
Speaker 1: basically all of the children raised in this cult over
Speaker 1: the last twenty years have left, like the vast, vast majority,
Speaker 1: like it is dying out according to numerous reports, just
Speaker 1: as a result of how harsh it is. Like ultimately,
Speaker 1: the thing that always ends this kind of shit is
Speaker 1: not the cops, it's not the Feds. It's former members
Speaker 1: and their support networks and family helping each other get
Speaker 1: out and move on.
Speaker 4: Like that's just how it is, which is which is
Speaker 4: absolutely the truth, and and I agree, I mean, it's
Speaker 4: like the government doesn't have a great track record of
Speaker 4: interviewing inn sh no, no, I know that well, but
Speaker 4: it's it's so it's so disheartening because really the truth is,
Speaker 4: if you want to start an abusive cult and gain
Speaker 4: a lot of power and and be sort of horrendously
Speaker 4: abusive to all the people around you, you can do
Speaker 4: and get away with that for like a generation in
Speaker 4: this country. Yeah, that's it's there's no recourse, there's no
Speaker 4: way around it outside of just like it'll burn out
Speaker 4: events and it's tough.
Speaker 1: Like obviously, I think there's a lot that could and
Speaker 1: should be done in ri stuff, Like I think it
Speaker 1: would be there's a lot to do about like how
Speaker 1: what like there's probably presumably probably ways to like mandate more.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I honestly, legally, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you fix this. Somebody else will have to solve
Speaker 1: that for me, or if there is like realistically, can
Speaker 1: you have a society that has religious freedom in the
Speaker 1: way that we do and doesn't offer people a way
Speaker 1: to basically drop out of society with their kids? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you how do.
Speaker 4: We simultaneously need a society that you do? There isn't
Speaker 4: such a strong and realistic urge to want to drop
Speaker 4: out of as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah I anyway life, So as kind
Speaker 1: of you get these stories about the later years, you
Speaker 1: start to hear some more mixed things about Gene, including
Speaker 1: the fact that like maybe he had stepped away from
Speaker 1: direct control and was just kind of living out his days. Uh,
Speaker 1: these are kind of mixed. Some former members will be like, no,
Speaker 1: he was like holding on right up until the end.
Speaker 1: I don't know who's right. A lot of the confusion
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: Marcia Spriggs, Jean's wife is caught having cheating on him
Speaker 1: like a bunch, Like she is. She is getting a
Speaker 1: rad own that cult, which I gotta say, trailblazer for women,
Speaker 1: right being the wife of the cult leader cheating on
Speaker 1: him a bunch right now, that's groundbreaking, you know, I love, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we stand a feminist icon March's Are you getting away?
Speaker 4: I mean, I understand she was caught, but like I will,
Speaker 4: like one time would be hard to get away with.
Speaker 1: Some people will say she was running things right, that
Speaker 1: she was really the power, especially maybe Jeans getting kind
Speaker 1: of like sick and old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was waiting for you to be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: but like she's a she's she's the real she's the
Speaker 3: real villain.
Speaker 1: I mean she may be. There's debate about this, like
Speaker 1: different like and honestly, all of the formers they're not
Speaker 1: they don't tend to be of like high leadership. So
Speaker 1: I think it's, you know, to get a different perspective.
Speaker 3: If she wasn't the one calling the shots, how the
Speaker 3: fuck is she going away with it?
Speaker 1: Right? Absolutely? No, No, I agree, She's definitely powerful. There's
Speaker 1: no debate about that. It's a question of like, was
Speaker 1: she basically doing running it for.
Speaker 2: Jane and aggressively horny?
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently so, but a trailblazer nonetheless, So she gets
Speaker 1: caught and this is earthshaking inside the colt One. A
Speaker 1: former member later explained it wasn't that she was human
Speaker 1: and had fallen into sin. It was that she had
Speaker 1: personally been involved in sending away a lot of other
Speaker 1: families from much less serious infraction. So people are pierced
Speaker 1: and Jeanne this might be some evidence that like she's
Speaker 1: the power behind the throne. Jean makes a big public
Speaker 1: statement about how she's been forgiven for her sins and
Speaker 1: a lot of folks are unable to accept this, and so.
Speaker 2: Whole families who forgave her for her sins.
Speaker 1: Oh he didn't and thus did God.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I was like, how is this mathmthing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is the straw that breaks the camel's
Speaker 1: back for a lot of people. Whole families start to leave,
Speaker 1: and it becomes quickly clear that the tribe is in
Speaker 1: the process of losing. The tribes are losing most of
Speaker 1: the people who had been born and raised there. Jean
Speaker 1: respond by launching a raft of even more restrictive rules.
Speaker 1: He bans his followers from eating chocolate, from hiking, from
Speaker 1: going to the beach with their families, and from the
Speaker 1: only music they've been allowed was traditional Irish music. Oh
Speaker 1: but he bans them from this too, so you don't
Speaker 1: get any more fucking h fucking fields of athern rye
Speaker 1: or whatever. I don't know how traditional are getting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is the rules that they're only allowed to walk
Speaker 3: at a certain pace and definitely Noah.
Speaker 1: Hill only allowed to like work and worship. That's it.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I can't just that impulse is so
Speaker 4: bad where it's like we're losing everybody cut chocolate.
Speaker 1: We gotta be real pieces of shit. Yeah. I mean again,
Speaker 1: the larger dynamics that play in our culture as the
Speaker 1: Right loses power is like we have to make more
Speaker 1: and more restrictibles. Yeah. Yeah. So there's controversy between a
Speaker 1: number of formers as to how many of these new
Speaker 1: rules our genes will and how much of this is
Speaker 1: Marcia and maybe a council of other elites who are
Speaker 1: ruling in his stead. The next decade in change have
Speaker 1: been described as a total lockdown by one member, and
Speaker 1: the Denver Post reports that some followers claimed Jan himself
Speaker 1: started to express soft frustration with the changes. Quote In
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, the year before Wiseman left the Colt, he
Speaker 1: confessed to Spriggs, who used the name Yonick, that he
Speaker 1: drank beer with his wife against the Colt's rules. He said,
Speaker 1: just don't talk about it, Wiseman said. The ex member,
Speaker 1: who left in his thirties, said he met one on
Speaker 1: one with Eugene Spriggs as a teenager in the mid
Speaker 1: nineties and told the man about horrific childhood abuse he'd
Speaker 1: endured in the Twelve Tribes. He said the founder wept
Speaker 1: silently as he shared details of the abuse, but after
Speaker 1: just five minutes, Marcia Spriggs burst into the room and
Speaker 1: sent the member out. She spoke to her husband briefly,
Speaker 1: then cornered the member in the hallway. She comes out
Speaker 1: and says, if you ever tell Yonick anything like that again,
Speaker 1: I'll send you away that day, like make you leave
Speaker 1: the colt. So years later, that member sneaked out of
Speaker 1: a twelve Tribes commune in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: with a duffel bag of his clothes. He waited in
Speaker 1: the bushes for a write from a man who left
Speaker 1: the colt years before, and that night he slept on
Speaker 1: his friend's floor started his new life outside of the colt.
Speaker 1: And that's what I mean when I talk about what
Speaker 1: what is the solution to this? Well, the most durable
Speaker 1: one is formers help other people get out, right, That's
Speaker 1: what happens in this case. He makes contact with somebody
Speaker 1: who's already made it out. That guy takes him to
Speaker 1: let him crash in a friend's place. Like these are
Speaker 1: the support networks that dismantle these cults. You know, it's
Speaker 1: maybe not as satisfying as imagining the Feds rushing in
Speaker 1: and freeing everybody, but like that doesn't happen. It just
Speaker 1: doesn't realistically happen. You know, this is what actually happens.
Speaker 1: Eugene Spriggs dies on January eleventh, two thousand, or January eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. He was eighty three years old. According
Speaker 1: to a death certificate issued by the state of he
Speaker 1: lived way too long based on his skill. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot. He's like, it's respiratory arrests that gets him.
Speaker 1: Based on like the exact list of contributing causes to
Speaker 1: his death, Yeah, they think it's it's probably COVID. He
Speaker 1: probably gets COVID. Oh so, oh my god.
Speaker 4: I remember there was like a there was like a
Speaker 4: race car driver from the town I grew up in
Speaker 4: who was like real against all of it, you know,
Speaker 4: who was like really against lockdowns and stuff. And he
Speaker 4: got that like convenient pneumonia in yeah, the middle of
Speaker 4: two thousand. It's like a lot of people just got
Speaker 4: sneaky pneumonia. Yeah, that's what it sounds like here.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, I think that is the case. So there
Speaker 1: you go. At present, the Twelve tribes continue to hold
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars in real estate and operate
Speaker 1: multiple businesses. It is unclear how many members remain, although
Speaker 1: the Denver Posts suggests most of the youth have already left.
Speaker 1: More of the quotes that claimed Gene as something other
Speaker 1: than a total dictatorial cult leader have come more recently,
Speaker 1: and part of me suspects they may be encouraged by
Speaker 1: some extent by the remaining leadership, who seem to want
Speaker 1: people to feel as if Gene himself is not the
Speaker 1: center of things. The truth of this will become clearer
Speaker 1: in time, especially as more scrutiny is dedicated to the group.
Speaker 1: For now, I want to by finishing that story from
Speaker 1: the ex member. The Denver Post interviewed, who left in
Speaker 1: his thirties after enduring terrible childhood abuse within the colt.
Speaker 1: After spending the first free night of his life on
Speaker 1: his friend's floor. Quote in the morning he woke up,
Speaker 1: he drank a cup of coffee forbidden in the colt
Speaker 1: and realized he was, for the first time in his life,
Speaker 1: completely in charge of his own choices. I felt like
Speaker 1: I could float away, he said that feeling. It's impossible
Speaker 1: to describe that feeling of freedom, and honestly, I feel
Speaker 1: that on some level every day.
Speaker 4: Hmm man. Anyway, he must taste so good.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, can you imagine that first cup of
Speaker 1: coffee out of the colt.
Speaker 4: That's a banger right there, holding a hand, eating a
Speaker 4: piece of chocolate, drinking some coffee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listening to all the Irish music you want, you
Speaker 1: take this fife and shove it up your ass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got an Irish Rover's record on repeat. Just listening
Speaker 1: to the fucking Unicorn song for days.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, man, that's wild. That is that was
Speaker 4: a journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, good cult, pretty good cult. I gotta say, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm powerful. I haven't heard and I've heard not one thing.
Speaker 4: Even though they started they they did start the fire.
Speaker 1: They did start this that fire.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's still an agree to which that may
Speaker 1: still be being investigated, but at present, the states like
Speaker 1: we're not pursuing charges because like authorities signed off on
Speaker 1: the burn.
Speaker 3: Anyway, whatever, I do feel like they hit a lot
Speaker 3: of the like the pillars of being like, well that's no,
Speaker 3: that's a motherfucking cult. You're like, oh yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: blames Jesus child aboose fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's there.
Speaker 2: It's just h yeah, terrible, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Out of money, tied up and tied up in investments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sketchy businesses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, yeah, but uh see it?
Speaker 2: What's not as terrible as you? Alex? Do you have
Speaker 2: any Hell yeah, you'd like to plug here?
Speaker 4: I would love for people to listen to you are
Speaker 4: good at Feelings podcast about movies where we talk about
Speaker 4: feelings and therapy related stuff by talking about movies.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, hell yeah absolutely. Anyway. I have a novel.
Speaker 1: It's called After the Revolution. Buy it wherever books are sold,
Speaker 1: or read it for free at atrbook dot com. It's
Speaker 1: all free. You don't have to buy it, but you can.
Speaker 1: You can also go to Hell I Love You.
Speaker 2: We also have a series I'd like to plug that is.
Speaker 3: Out now and depending on this when this drops, it
Speaker 3: could be recently out or a couple weeks out that
Speaker 3: Garrison Davis did on it could happen here, falling up
Speaker 3: on the stop coop city movement in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Check that out.
Speaker 1: Excellent, Yeah, and again go to Hell.
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