A french bishop has acknowledged the issue of spiritual abuse in religious communities. Also: the Scientology cult has removed an illegal sign from a temporary building, but makes no promises.
Self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Brown, who notoriously claimed Amanda Berry was dead, has died.
Plus: Saudi Arabia’s religious police demonstrate the effects of religious insanity.
Nearly 200 people gathered at Oakland’s Evergreen Cemetery on Sunday to dedicate a newly completed memorial to the victims of the 1978 mass murder and suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, organizers said.
Controversially the memorial includes the name of the Peoples Temple cult’s leader — mass murdered Jim Jones.
At the 32nd annual Jonestown memorial, held at an Evergreen Cemetery mass grave for Peoples Temple victims, a schism among mourners led to competing ceremonies – one led by a woman who lost 27 family members in the mass suicide in Guyana, the other by Jim Jones Jr.
While reading an exposé about San Francisco preacher and cult leader Jim Jones in 1977, Ken White was surprised to see mention of Michael Prokes, an old friend who had become a spokesperson for Jones.
Prokes killed himself a few months after the mass murder/suicide took place at the cult’s compound. White has now turned his friend’s story into a play.
It has taken more than 30 years, but the government of Guyana has erected a memorial plaque at the site of the Jonestown cult massacre, a dark episode the South American country had long sought to downplay.
A simple, white stone plaque was unveiled with little fanfare Wednesday at the jungle clearing where more than 900 members of the cult led by the American preacher Jim Jones died in a night of mass murder and suicide on Nov. 18, 1978.
30 years ago more than 900 men, women and children were massacred in a murder-suicide ritual thought up by cult leader Jim Jones.
On Nov. 18, 1978, members of the Jonestown security unit shot and killed congressman Leo Ryan, three journalists and one defector as they attempted to leave an airstrip near the settlement on two planes. The gunmen injured 10 other people, including Speier, who sustained five gunshot wounds.
By the time the airstrip gunmen returned to Jonestown, Jones had gathered his people in the pavilion and had begun preparing them for the end. He used news of Ryan’s shooting to convince the throng that they had no hope, no future, no place to go. “The congressman has been murdered!” he said. “Please get the medication before it’s too late. Don’t be afraid to die.”
Of all the comebacks on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jackie Speier’s ranks among the most unexpected. Her first stint here, 30 years ago, nearly killed her.
In November 1978, Speier, then a 28-year-old legal aide to Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.), accompanied the maverick lawmaker, a handful of reporters and concerned family members into the jungles of Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult. Cult members attacked and killed Ryan and several members of the entourage.
Speier was shot five times and left for dead, and more than 900 cult members committed mass suicide at the urging of their leader, Jim Jones.