watch 20/20 tonight
According to an article on movingon.org, 20/20 will be showing the whole "Cult Killer" documentary and this is part of a special two-hour two-part episode of 20/20 and the second one will be the one about Rick Rodriguez.

However, the tvguide.com summary just refers to excerpts - I guess we'll find out soon enough.

20/20 showing reaction
My wife was watching TV on turned on to the 20/20 episode and yell at me. " You belonged to a group of child molesters! How sick! " She continued to scream and yell for a while about how perverted and sick the Family is and why did join them.
"No, that didn"t happen when I was in," and found I was not only defending myself but the group. Oh well, can't explain everything, who would belived it anyway. The truth is stranger than fiction.

If you were in the cult during the 1970s and 1980s, then it _was_ happening and all around you (unless you left in the early 1970s and were not a leader). It would be been virtually impossible not to notice the "sharing schedules" (posted in public places; i.e. in the kitchen) which almost always had adults with minors. It would have been impossible to miss the "Glorify God in the Dance" nights featuring women _and_ children dancing nude.

It would have equally been impossible to not notice the other forms of child abuse happening all the time all around you: Public beatings, silence restrictions, exorcisms, forced hard manual labour, etc, etc.

A lot of this stuff continued right into the early 1990s! I left the cult in the early 1990s, so that is all I can say about when it stopped. They continue to claim that they "completely banned" adult sex with minors in 1986. This is simply _not_ true! I remember and I was there when they sat all of us teenagers (and children) down and specifically said "no more" . . . that was in 1989!

I remember us "JETTS" and "teens" getting lectures about not flirting with the adults and trying to have sex with them. We were told there was nothing wrong with it, but it could get them in trouble with the police. I was kind of disgusted. I do remember sharing schedules when I was kid - I was six. I do remember public beatings. I remember being embarrassed by the porn. I was shy and would go hide when the turned it on for us kids to watch.

Ah, such memories... They can't erase them with their white washed sperm of J-man.

Oh and, thanks for the heads up about the TV shows, Peter.

Re: 20/20 showing reaction


There are probably quite a few 1st gen ex members who can relate to your remarks. It's a difficult thing to discuss with most people; having been a member of a cult. There were some of us who were there for the right reasons. Those same reasons motivated us to leave.

Thorwald, when I left in 1978, I had never seen, or heard of "sharing schedules", nor did I ever know of any "Glorify God in the Dance" nights. I never saw anyone beaten and the only exorcism I recall was my own, shortly before leaving TF. I am certainly not saying that there was no abuse happening during the 70's. We all know it was. However, the adult with minor sex was not commonplace among the general population until sometime after '78, at least that's something I never personally saw, or knew of either.