Cult Leaders As Sex Predators

Pocono Record
September 19, 2012

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120919/NEWS04/209190327

Cults are nothing new. Religious or secular, their leaders seek power and often employ the same techniques: isolation flacked as exclusivity, fear — and sex.

Amish splinter group leader Samuel Mullet Sr., of eastern Ohio, appears to be no different. A jury is now deliberating whether Mullet and some of his fellow believers are guilty of hate crime charges involving the beard- and hair-cutting of other Amish they allegedly don't consider worthy. But even before the trial, former members of the group told federal officials that Mullet had locked them into chicken coops for punishment and instructed adult members to correct each other with heavy wooden paddles. Mullet also held himself out as a couples counselor, preferring to work with women. Part of the counseling, The New York Times reported, involved having them live with him — and have sex with him.

That's just Mullet. Remember Charles Manson? He attracted a following of addled women and men in the late 1960s who specialized in random murders, including the brutal killings of actress Sharon Tate and Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger. Manson believed in an approaching race war he called "Helter Skelter," and directed the murders to hasten the battle. Sex played a big role in the sway Manson, who's still in jail, held over his female followers.

David Koresh of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, gathered his own group of gullible people and fathered an unknown number of children, by his own count 12, with various "chosen" women before perishing in 1993 in a fire during an FBI raid of his compound.

Then there's the Jeffs family, a breakaway Mormon group. Rulon Jeffs ruled the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) until his death in 2002, leaving behind 19 or 20 wives and as many as 60 children. His son and self-appointed successor, Warren Jeffs, spent time on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, suspected of setting up illegal marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls. Warren Jeffs was convicted last year in Texas of child sexual assault for intercourse with a 15-year-old and of aggravated sexual assault for intercourse with a 12-year-old. News media reported in June that he issued an edict from jail proclaiming that only 15 men in his group will be permitted to father children.

Sadly, faithful and devoted members of obscure and sometimes not-so-obsure groups like to think that they're special — alone recognizing the right way to live, even chosen by God.

They're chosen, all right. But it's not by God. As Mullet shows yet again, these misguided souls frequently are hand-selected by a creepy, self-appointed leader with a passion for power, driven by delusion and, all too often, an outsized sense of entitlement about sex.