Re: Is the Family International still like that??
sisco_luxon wrote:I'm not doubting you at all. I have older brothers and sisters who grew up in TFI and I know for a fact that sexual abouse has occured within the group. I'm simply stating that, to my knowledge, TFI is no longer like that. In fact changes made to The Charter, the principle document of TFI stating the rules and regulations of the group, are now in effect, as far as i know, which make any sexual contact with minors a permanently exommunicable offense.
A cursory evaluation of the Family's policies, as outlined in its "Love Charter" and other publications, regarding the rape of children reveals that these "rules and regulations" do virtually nothing to protect children in The Family from the risk of being raped or experiencing other types of child sexual abuse that do not involve sexual contact between and adult and a child. It is not particularly groundbreaking or impressive for a cult, under scrutiny from law enforcement and child protection agencies and in a society where behavior such as murder, cannibalism and child rape are generally regarded as both criminal and morally wrong, to publicly state that it has enacted a policy forbidding its members from continuing to rape children. To determine whether or not children are safe living in communities that are part of an organization whose members openly practiced child rape and child sexual abuse for decades, one needs to know whether the organization has demonstrated that it has a strong commitment to protecting children and whether it has and will do everything it possibly can to make sure that that child rapists and other abusers are both held accountable for their crimes against children and not allowed to have any access to more potential victims.
To understand just how completely The Family International has failed to protect children from abuse and how it has gone out of its way to protect child abusers, it is helpful to review the fundamental components of what it calls its "stringent policies." While I don't have time for a full review, one of the key features of their policy is not excommunicating those who raped children before the date on which they claim to have enacted a policy mandating excommunication for the rape of children. They now claim they enacted this policy in July 1989 although they have previously claimed it was enacted in other years including 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1988. Many people believe that it is incredibly dangerous, risky and highly irresponsible to allow those who have raped children to have access to children. The Family International clearly either disagrees or simply does not care.
Over the years, spokespersons for The Family International have claimed that the cult has adopted a policy mandating the "excommunication" of any adult Family found to have sexually abused a child by having sexual contact with a child. While it is unfortunate the forms of child sexual abuse that do not involve adult-child sexual contact are completely excluded from this policy, those who are unaware of the extraordinary deception practiced by this cult and its spokespersons and the lengths they will go to protect child molesters might be forgiven for thinking that this is a step in the right direction and that The Family International has made a commitment to protect its children by expelling every adult member who it knows has raped a child. However, a lengthy October 2007 series of "Mo Letters" ("The Family's History, Policies, and Beliefs Regarding Sex, " ML 3671-3673, GN 1234-1236) by top cult leader and child molester Steven Douglas Kelly (aka "Peter Amsterdam" and "Christopher Smith") that was published and distributed to members in December 2007 makes it clear that The Family International has no intention of ever expelling any of its members who raped children before July 1989.
In this publication series, it was made clear that the excommunication policy was not applied to those who raped children before July 1989:
Quote: 60. (Question:) How were cases of sexual interaction with minors handled that occurred before the excommunication policy was announced in 1989? Was this policy applied retroactively?
61. As I explained in the second GN of this series, infractions of the 1986 notice disallowing sexual interaction between adults and minors became excommunicable in 1989...
62. When the list of excommunicable offenses was published in July 1989 (see ML #2531, Vol. 19), there were 22 offenses which could result in excommunication, depending on the gravity of the offense. These were not published so as to apply them retroactively...
Source: Family's History, Policies, and Beliefs Regarding Sex, The?Part 3 GN 1236 FD/MM/FM 3673 10/07 [Published/distributed December 2007] http://archive.xfamily.org/docs/fam/gn/gn-1236.htm
Family leader and child molester Steven Douglas Kelly went on to offer a lengthy justification of The Family's policy of not excommunicating those who raped children before July 1989. Here are some excerpts:
Quote: 64. Once it was announced to the Family that any sort of sexual interaction with minors would result in excommunication, this became the Family's "law?" and infractions were dealt with accordingly. You may wonder why we didn't focus our efforts on investigating past incidences of sexual interaction with minors and seek to excommunicate any individual that had acted on the understood allowance for this in some of the pubs.
[...] 67. As a second point, there are many precedents in history of societies that made moral turnarounds on issues, and created laws that were opposite to the preexisting cultural understanding and norms. It often took people quite some time to adjust their perspectives when such change represented a radical departure from the previously accepted status quo. In implementing these changes and creating new laws, the government did not penalize people for the preexisting behaviors and norms. [...]
70. Could the government of that day, in all fairness, go back in time and seek to penalize those who had been operating within the accepted moral code of their day? Once laws were enacted, those who had previously discriminated against African Americans, and enforced segregation laws, now had to abide by the new laws that mandated the exact opposite. If they repeated their former actions, they could be penalized according to the law, though it even took some time for the attitude of the courts to change in many parts of the country. But the courts generally could not go backwards in time and penalize those who had been technically operating according to the laws and morally accepted code of behavior of their day, even though those laws and behaviors were clearly wrong.
71. Courts very rarely apply laws retroactively, as it's generally deemed unfair to judge individuals by incidents and actions that occurred during a different moral and legal clime by the yardstick of the present laws and norms. It's not possible to qualify every instance of the past based on the context of the present or new legislation. Similarly, it was not possible for the Family to revisit every case that had occurred before our policies were in place? and attempt to judge those situations based on the legislation enacted in 1989.
72. In making this comparison between the moral turnaround the Family experienced on the issue of sexuality and minors, and similar ones that have occurred throughout history, it's important to bear in mind that we were a culture dropped out of the System? and for the most part, we followed the laws that the Lord and Dad had laid down, and considered those to be the guiding force of the Family.
Source: Family's History, Policies, and Beliefs Regarding Sex, The?Part 3 GN 1236 FD/MM/FM 3673 10/07 [Published/distributed December 2007] http://archive.xfamily.org/docs/fam/gn/gn-1236.htm
In the aforementioned 3-part publication series, Family leader and child molester Steven Douglas Kelly went on to explain that most Family members who raped children before July 1989 were ?most likely acting in good faith? but acknowledged that there may have been a few child rapists in The Family who ?not operating in good faith:?
Quote: 131. As SGAs, you need to understand that any FGAs in the Family today who had sexual contact with a minor back in the late 1970s or early to mid-1980s were most likely acting in good faith. They had no intention of causing you harm. For the most part, in the absence of Dad's writings they would have never taken part in such interaction. And once it was banned? they completely discontinued interaction of this nature and supported and upheld our strong policies against it.
132. There may have been a few FGAs who were not operating in good faith, and whose actions clearly contravened the guidelines of the Law of Love in place at that time. The sexually liberal climate of the Family during that era may have unwittingly given access to minors to such individuals who acted abusively, and their actions were harmful and coercive. Such actions were never condoned or given allowance for under any circumstances in the Law of Love at any period of the Family? and were a direct contravention of everything that Dad taught us about loving and caring for others. Mama and I sincerely apologize to any who suffered due to the lack of safeguards to protect you from such harm. We are confident that the excommunication policies enacted in 1989 were successful in expelling any such individuals from the Family many years ago.
Source: Family's History, Policies, and Beliefs Regarding Sex, The?Part 3 GN 1236 FD/MM/FM 3673 10/07 [Published/distributed December 2007] http://archive.xfamily.org/docs/fam/gn/gn-1236.htm
In making a distinction between two types of child rapists (those who raped children in ?good faith? and those who raped children in ?bad faith?) and only defining one type of child rapist as acting ?abusively? Kelly makes it clear that he, like most pedophiles, does not understand that raping children is abusive and harmful regardless of the intentions of the rapist. Because, according to The Family International, the ?excommunication policies enacted in 1989? excluded those who raped children before July 1989, it is simply impossible for them to have been ?successful in expelling any such individuals.?
It is also worth noting that laws criminalizing the rape of children were enacted long before the Children of God was founded in 1968 and the concept that raping children was wrong and that children lacked the capacity to consent to sexual activity was not, as The Family International would have us believe, a new idea that civil society didn't accept until the late 1980s.
In a chapter titled "Prosecution of Child Sexual Abuse in the United States" in Critical Issues in Child Sexual Abuse: Historical, Legal, and Psychological Perspectives (Sage Publications, 2002), John E.B. Myers, Susan E Diedrich, Devon Lee, Kelly Fincher and Rachel M. Stern noted that "laws designed specifically to protect children from sexual abuse appeared by the end of the Middle Ages:"
Quote: Laws designed specifically to protect children from sexual abuse appeared by the end of the Middle Ages. These laws stipulated that children lack capacity to consent to sex. "Consensual" intercourse with an underage girl was rape (Laiou, 1993, p. 125). Phipps (1997) writes,
'The first significant discussion of sexual crimes against children occurred during the maturation of canon law in the Middle Ages. Teachers of canon law taught that sexual intercourse with a girl who was under the age of consent to marry was rape even if the girl consented and failed to protest the intercourse? Canon law from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries continued to prohibit sexual intercourse with children. (p. 8) .'
In England, two influential acts of Parliament dealt with sex offenses against children. First, in 1275, the Statute of Westminister I provided, "The King prohibiteth that none do ravish, nor take away by force, any Maiden within Age, neither by her own consent nor without." Ravish meant rape. "Within age" meant girls under 12, which was the "age of consent to marriage" (Coke, 1671/1979, p.163).
Source: Conte, Jon R. Critical Issues in Child Sexual Abuse: Historical, Legal, and Psychological Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications, 2002.
) which one could say belong to the occult. 
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