Stranger Things

March 3: Investigators Launch Second Raid at PPP HQ Over Shincheonji Allegations (Korea JoongAng Daily)

March 11: Investigators Again Raid Shincheonji Sect Over Alleged Collusion With Politics (Yonhap News)

March 12: Shincheonji defectors: "Family & Friends Are a Huge Help in Returning to Normal Life." (CBS News)


March 17: Shincheonji Marks 42nd Anniversary: "From a Basement Beginning to a Denomination Growing by Tens of Thousands Every Year" (Shincheonji Press Release - Adelaide, Australia)

March 26: Investigators Raid Shincheonji, 12 Tribe Offices in Political Bribery Case (KBS News)

QuoteSources within legal circles told Yonhap News on Thursday that investigators had raided the headquarters of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, as well as the offices of its 12 tribes, including the so-called John Tribe, to collect data and evidence related to tax payments.

The search-and-seizure warrant lists charges of tax evasion and embezzlement under the Specific Crime Aggravated Punishment Act against the organization's founder, Lee Man-hee, according to the report.

In 2020, the National Tax Service imposed a fine of 12-point-two billion won, or approximately eight million U.S. dollars, for failure to pay corporate and value-added taxes covering the period from 2012 to 2019.

March 5: YOU'RE NEXT: Do Nothing (The Monarch Report/UC Members)


In Japan, a court dissiolved a religious organisation with millions of members. In China, churches were raided across seven cities on the same day. Muslims, Buddhists, and Christains face the same machine. ... And in North Korea, owning a bible is allegedly punishable by death. South Korea is just starting. Japan has set the legal precedent. China is the origin. North Korea is the end. Same road, different mile makers, and people from every faith are on it.

March 6: Japanese Court Dissolves UC. Will Korea Be Next? (UPI - Owned by Preston Moon)

QuoteSouth Korean President Lee Jae-myung ordered the Ministry of Government Legislation to review the legal grounds for dissolving religious foundations that violate the constitutional principle of church-state separation last December. That scrutiny will likely intensify in the wake of Japan's decision.

Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon, eldest living son of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Movement, said such scrutiny is called for. In a recent interview held in Korea, he broke his 15-year silence on the matter, stating that the Unification Church is a "criminal entity" and that the Korean government should dissolve the organization and remove its religious status.

"No religious, sincere people of faith would have done all the things that the Unification Church did in the name of religion." Dr. Moon expressed support for the dissolution proceedings already underway in Japan and potentially forthcoming in Korea.

He explained that his father never intended to create another traditional religion or denomination but envisioned a movement of high ideals based on universal principles and shared values. As he worked closely with his father as the sole legitimate heir to his spiritual authority, he said, leaders and elders within the movement resisted reforms and instead, established the Unification Church as an institutional religious structure. The internal division arose as a result, according to Moon. "They hijacked key movement entities, and I chose to continue the path that our movement was always on."

While supporting the dissolution of the Unification Church's religious status, Moon expressed his intent to reclaim the entire organizational foundation built by his father, himself, and by sincere members worldwide and reform the entities to serve their original purposes.

March 6: Japan Court Dissolves UC; Korea Branch Could Face Financial Strain (The Korea Times)

March 6: Japanese Court Dissolves UC. Will Korea Be Next? (UPI - Owned by Preston Moon)

QuoteSouth Korean President Lee Jae-myung ordered the Ministry of Government Legislation to review the legal grounds for dissolving religious foundations that violate the constitutional principle of church-state separation last December. That scrutiny will likely intensify in the wake of Japan's decision.

Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon, eldest living son of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Movement, said such scrutiny is called for. In a recent interview held in Korea, he broke his 15-year silence on the matter, stating that the Unification Church is a "criminal entity" and that the Korean government should dissolve the organization and remove its religious status.

"No religious, sincere people of faith would have done all the things that the Unification Church did in the name of religion." Dr. Moon expressed support for the dissolution proceedings already underway in Japan and potentially forthcoming in Korea.

He explained that his father never intended to create another traditional religion or denomination but envisioned a movement of high ideals based on universal principles and shared values. As he worked closely with his father as the sole legitimate heir to his spiritual authority, he said, leaders and elders within the movement resisted reforms and instead, established the Unification Church as an institutional religious structure. The internal division arose as a result, according to Moon. "They hijacked key movement entities, and I chose to continue the path that our movement was always on."

While supporting the dissolution of the Unification Church's religious status, Moon expressed his intent to reclaim the entire organizational foundation built by his father, himself, and by sincere members worldwide and reform the entities to serve their original purposes.

March 6: Hundreds of Thousands of UC Believers Deprived of Places of Worship (Patricia Duval for Bitter Winter)

QuoteWhile some had claimed the dissolution would only strip the church of its tax-exempt status, liquidators have already closed down 260 places of worship.

That's misleading. There has always been talk of the liquidation of UC assets to provide money to compensate victims. It took me five seconds to find this:

March 4: Tokyo Court to Decide Whether to Order Ex-UC to Disband (NHK News)

QuoteIf the order is issued, procedures will be put in motion to dispose of its assets and compensate people who suffered financial damage from the group.

Also from the Patricia Duval's piece:

QuoteTwenty liquidators arrived at the church headquarters in Shibuya, Tokyo, and closed it down. Employees were no longer allowed to enter the church and were ordered to stay at home.

I didn't believe the "ordered to stay at home" part, and a member with family and friends in Japan in the UC thought it just meant "employees were told to go home".  But it does seem that some employees were ordered to stay home incase liquidators had any questions. Perhaps that just happened to some more senior members. That is mentioned in this Asahi Shimbun here as well as below after the quote from Teddy Hose on March 10.

May 1: Dispatch Claims J.Y. Park Lied About His Affiliation to Religious Cult Members Who Faced Charges in the Sewol Ferry Tragedy (All K-Pop)

May 2: JYP Entertainment Shares Nosedive on Cult Religion Reports (The Korea Herald Investor)

Sept. 5: Security Command General Arrested for Alleged Surveillance of Civilians (The Korea Herald)


April 17: What Went Wrong in the South Korean Ferry Disaster? (New Yorker)



Jan. 16: Meeting A Survivor from S. Korea's Biggest Maritime Disaster (Korea Now)


Jan. 17: Ex-Semo Chairman's Family Ordered to Pay 70% of State Expenses on Sewol Ferry Disaster (Yonhap News)

July 23: South Korea's Most-Wanted Man Seized in New York (The New York Times via The Seattle Times)

July 24: Fugitive Arrested in New York in Investigation Into 2014 S. Korean Ferry Sinking (Yonhap News)

Second Son of Sewol Ferry Owner Seized in NY (The Korea Times)

Central Figure in Sewol Sinking Scandal Arrested in the US (KBS World Radio)

This review of Michael's book by a fellow Unificationist is quite interesting as he explains in detail what he feels is worthy of praise along with some criticisms:

A Friendly Biography About An Extraordinary Man" Michael Breen's Sun Myung Moon: The Early Years, 1920-53 (Michael L. Mickler)

QuoteNevertheless, Breen approaches his subject, at least in part, as a professional historian might. That is, he attempts to confront the past on its own terms. He does not seek to impose meaning from without or occupy a privileged vantage point. He rather seeks to immerse himself in the period, bringing it to life as it was experienced. This diverges from the tendency in most church accounts to project present understandings or theological presuppositions about Rev. Moon into the past, according immense significance to what may have been obscure and unnoticed details at the time.

Breen, however, claims his book is "the work of a journalist."' To him, this primarily means the sustained quest to be factual and objective. He, thereby, presents details "with a minimum of comment," and expresses hope that his work will "help readers in making their own assessment." At the same time, having striven "to avoid hagiography," Breen contends that he is "not required to remain neutral" and, in a memorable turn of phrase, conceives his book "as a friendly biography about an extraordinary man." In true journalistic fashion, Breen bases the information in the book "mainly on interviews... conducted over several years." Those interviewed include "Moon's family members, fellow prisoners, and early followers, some of whom are still with him and some who later opposed him." All of his sources, he tells us, were "primary" and he "took no account of commentators who did not have first-hand experience." He also expresses skepticism about written Unificationist sources, most of which, he contends, were published "for the purpose of uplifting or converting audiences" and "are suspect as history." ...

Breen's "middle ground" has no more place for distinctive Unification teachings about Rev. Moon than it does for the allegations of critics. For while Breen is content to treat the young Sun Myung Moon as authentically "spiritual" or even "extraordinary," he stops short of any explicit acknowledgment of him as the Second Coming of Christ, which of course is the crux of the matter for Unificationists. More than that, he dismisses accounts that so depict Rev. Moon, terming them "suspect" as history. Thus, Breen gives as little credence to insider treatments which type Rev. Moon as the Lord of the Second Advent as he does to external attacks which depict him as a social menace. Breen maintains that his biography is not "neutral" but "friendly." However, any approach which isolates facts from faith or sets facts and faith in opposition can only be regarded by Unificationists as self-defeating. For most insiders, it would make little sense to gain credibility at the expense of losing transcendence.

Breen's failure to address the fundamental concerns of Rev. Moon's critics and followers is exceeded by his failure to probe very deeply into the young Sun Myung Moon's character. Biographies typically afford authors the opportunity to explore intricacies of personality, sometimes in minute detail. This is not the case in Breen's book. Instead, the narrative and setting take precedence.

I read Michael's book maybe 20 years ago, and I recently skimmed a few parts. It is a certainly a friendly biography, and that is of course to be expected as he was a member then. I do recall there were some interesting details scattered throughout, but it certainly isn't full-on propaganda like the "official" autobiographies of Moon and his widow, Han Hak-ja.

As Michael L. Mickler in his review noted: "narrative and setting take precedence": something happened here, then something else happened over there, Moon went somewhere, he went somewhere else, and someone said this, then someone said that, then Jesus said to Moon "I've got a very important job for you" etc.

That sections is worth quoting. We are also treated to insights into Moon's thinking at the time although Michael did not have access to Moon when writing his book, which is hence described as an unofficial biography:

QuoteOn April 17, 1935, he was praying on South Hill, which was half a mile from his home, when Jesus appeared to him. Addressing Moon's youthful ambition, Jesus asked him to make its fulfillment his life's work. He refused. To dream is one thing, but to promise to God is something else altogether. He was not one to make promises lightly, out of a desire to please or in the awe of spiritual experience. Jesus asked him again "This is my work, my mission and I want you to take it over."

Moon refused again. Jesus asked him a third time: "There is no one else who can do this work." His meditations of a world in perpetual suffering returned to him. From the comfort of his youthful ideals, he peered over the abyss of the difficulties that would lie ahead and decided. "I will do it," he promised."

With this pledge, his life was forever changed. While, like any normal child, he studied, fished and played sports with his friends and cousins, he lived an inner life he could share with no one. None would have understood the mission he had resolved to undertake. Had he revealed it, his family and friends may have tried to tease or persuade him to be more down to earth, and thereby destroyed his developing dream, as easily as a tree is crushed underfoot when it is still a seed.

1993: The Korean War and Messianic Groups: Two Cases in Contrast (Choe Joong-hyun, Ph. D - Syracuse University)

1999: Sun Myung Moon, The Early Years, 1920-53 (Michael Breen)

The two histories are vastly different in style and intent. Dr. Choe's dissertation covers more ground in both time and scope - exploring the growth of groups and self-proclaimed messiahs before Moon came along and continues past 1953, the year Michael Breen ended is early history. Dr. Choe does explore that briefly and explores theories regarding how such groups arise and disappear. And Dr. Choe isn't just concerned with Moon's group, but also The Olive Tree Movement, which was much more successful than Moon's group in the 1950s. Lee Man-hee, the leader of Shincheonji, was a member of that group, and I'm sure he learned a few tricks of the trade while he was there.. Whereas Michael's book, as his title announces, is just concerned with the early history of the UC.

One interesting tidbit is that Dr. Choe mentions that at the time of writing, other UC histories made no mention of Moon's first wife. Breen corrects that ommission and mentions her.

I'll provide a few quotes that I find interesting. This first one could perhaps be related to the scandals in Japan with members making large donations to "liberate" their ancestors and safely see them to heaven:

Chapter 2, Page 30:

QuoteAs his faith developed, a nascent desire to free the world from suffering crystallized within him. Around him he saw material hardship and spiritual suffering. People were not joyful or fulfilled. At the ancestral shrine on the hill above the village he wondered about his ancestors and felt that they, too, had suffered, and that their spirits still suffered. Death did not bring perfection. In the spiritual world, a man continues as he is in life. His descendants, too, would struggle with the same problems for generations, unless liberated.

At the very end, the surprising origins of the group's name are given:

Chapter 10, Page 159:

QuoteDuring this time, an elderly woman in the Taegu group, Lee Jae-gun, was asked by a Christian which church she belonged to. "The Unification Church," she said, making the name up on the spot. In the following year, Moon chose as a legal title for his group, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.

I was sure I had a thread here about Aum Shinrikyo, but I must have been thinking of my earlier site. Anyway, there are no shortage of resources!

I just came across this, and it very much reminded me of the recruitment tactics of Shincheonji and some other cults. That is no surpise of course, but it is a good example of the tactics a cult will use when it has something to hide from new targets. In this case, they have more to hide that most!

Recruitment activities by Aleph (Ministry of Justice - Japan)


May 6, 1995: Alleged Persecution of Cult Investigated: US Activists Visit Tokyo (The LA Times/Internet Archive)

Oct. 31, 1995: Japanese Cult Had Network Of Front Companies (The Washington Post)

QuoteFrom offices in New York, Japan, Russia, Australia and Taiwan, the Aum Supreme Truth cult was able to purchase advanced technology, arrange military training for its members and engage in other illicit or questionable activities for several years -- all without attracting the notice of any government's intelligence service, investigators said.

The five-month study by the Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations indicates the group's efforts to develop a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction -- in the improbable belief it could then take over the Japanese government -- were more carefully planned and further along than previously confirmed.

Jan. 31, 1997: Commission Preserves Aum Shinrikyo From Ban (The Japan Times/Internet Archive)

Dec. 2012: Aum Shinrikyo: Insights Into How Terrorists Develop Biological & Chemical Weapons (Center for New American Security)

2017: The Risk of Skilled Scientist Radicalization and Emerging Biological Warfare Threats (NATO Science for Peace & Security Series - Abstract)

Sept. 29, 2018: Involvement of Doctors in Aum Shinrikyo (The Lancet)

May 21, 2022: US Removes Aum Shinrikyo from Terror Blacklist, Retains al-Qaida (Asahi Shimbun)

June 27, 2024: Japan Authorities Remain on Alert Over Aum Successor Group (Jiji Press)

Quote"Basically, nothing has changed," an official of the government's Public Security Intelligence Agency who investigated Aum Shinrikyo said of Aleph. The assessment comes as altars decorated with a portrait of Matsumoto, headsets purported to inject the cult leader's brain waves into wearers and videos of his sermons have been found in on-site inspections of Aleph facilities.

About 45 pct of Aleph worshippers are in their 20s to 30s. The group is believed to have succeeded in attracting young people by soliciting them through yoga classes and psychology seminars while hiding its name.

The cult-awareness scene has changed so much since I first became interested pre-YouTube.

A teaser - released Jan. 5, 2026, for an upcoming documentary due later this year.  The trailer itself is super informative. The guy talking about God appearing in the flesh from a nation in the east, well he could be describing dozens of Korean, Japanese, and Chinese cults.

Cult Apologists/Cult Defenders (Apologetics Index)

I can't find a date for this next link, I'm guestimating sometime in the late 1980s or 90s:
   
T.F.P.'s Reaction: The Invention of the "Anti-Cult Conspiracy" (Miguel Martinez/Kelebekler.com)

July 1998: Blind, or Just Don't Want to See? / "Brainwashing", Mystification & Suspicion (Alberto Amitrani e Raffaella Di Marzio, from the roman seat of G.R.I.S.) 

Regarding the phrase in the above title "Blind, or just don't want to see", I'm reminded of some phrases that have come to mind in the past when reading about cult apologists: "eyes wide shut with their heads in sand"

Note to self: Among the references in the above is: Michael D. Langone. (add details of meeting him and book cover)

1998: When Scholars Know Sin: Alternative Religions and Their Academic Supporters (University of Alberta - Dr Stephen Kent)

(Undated): Lawyer Massimo Introvigne Whines About My Professional Fees (University of Alberta - Dr Stephen Kent)

April 11, 2018: A New Academic Book Takes Apart Scientology & Pop Culture, & The Apologists Hate It (Tony Ortega - The Underground Bunker)

A lot of mentions of Massimo in the above piece. Here's a quote, but please explore the article for further context and details. And that goes for all the articles I quote in this thread and others.

QuoteAnd our favorite example of Introvigne being either dishonest or clueless (or both) was this passage when he slams Susan Raine's chapter on the connections between Hubbard's science fiction and Scientology....Well, that's pretty rich, since Introvigne apparently has no idea what he's talking about.

Dec. 4. 2000: Hurray!! Like the Germans, Massimo Introvigne Takes Me Seriously!! He Put Me on CESNUR's Website!! (University of Alberta - Dr Stephen Kent)

Now, finally, to the topic at hand, and these first posts about apologist scholars and Aum Shinrikyo is relevant today as - minus the gassing of course, Aum's reaction and efforts to scream "persecution" and counter negative press are similar to the Unification Church's recent efforts to counter the investigations into them in Japan and Korea.

Scholarship, Aum Shinrikyô, and Academic Integrity (Ian Reader - Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 2000), pp. 368-382)

QuoteIn a volume about the criminal activities of the Japanese new religious movement (NRM) Aum Shinrikyô, the Japanese lawyer and social activist Takimoto Tarô expressed his contempt for the conduct of scholars of religion during the Aum affair by putting the Japanese word shûkyôgakusha ("scholar of religion") in quotation marks to suggest that this was a misnomer rather than a valid title or profession. Moreover, he asserted that such scholars had operated as a "support team" for Aum Shinrikyô in its activities. Takimoto's criticisms were directed most particularly at Shimada Hiromi and Nakazawa Shin'ichi, two Japanese scholars of religion who had made positive statements about Aum prior to the Tokyo subway attack of March 1995 that brought Aum to international notice. They had, Takimoto claimed, failed to produce an accurate analysis (by which Takimoto meant a critical and condemnatory account) of the movement. Instead they had whitewashed it, thereby contributing to Aum's criminality and subjecting many people in Aum to what Takimoto called "mind control." It was not only Japanese scholars of religion who came under fire, however, for although Takimoto did not state it in so many words, the activities of a group of scholars who visited Japan from the U.S. soon after the subway attack also received immense criticism in Japan. ...

Aum Shinrikyô had, for a number of years prior to March 1995, received very critical press coverage in Japan. It had been widely accused of civil rights violations and infringements of Japanese law, and was suspected of involvement in the disappearance of noted opponents of the movement. Although all these charges have subsequently proven to be accurate, the movement adamantly denied them, aggressively dismissing any accusation against it as religious persecution and as the product of a corrupt media.

In its counter-offensive against the media, Aum gained the support of academics as well as public personalities. Asahara gave interviews to a small number of Japanese scholars and television personalities in the early 1990s, winning them over with his charm and impressing them with the strength of his convictions and the dedication of his followers. The fact that Aum's followers engaged in strict ascetic disciplines of a level rarely found in modern Japan impressed some observers and convinced them that Aum was a benign and sincere religious movement. As a result, Aum was able to use the supportive comments of scholars such as Nakazawa Shin'ichi, a specialist in Tibetan Buddhism who had met Asahara on occasion, to counteract critical media reports.

After the sarin attack, Shimada appeared on television programs discussing the Aum affair and was widely criticized as a defender of the movement. Eventually, he came under pressure from his own university and was forced to resign his position. Shimada has since responded to these criticisms by admitting some errors of judgment, criticizing other scholars in Japan for their failures in the affair, and claiming that he had been deceived by Aum and hence was something of a victim himself.

The apparent complicity, at least in the public mind, of Shimada and Nakazawa with Aum was damaging to the general reputation of scholars of religion in Japan. This problem was further compounded when two scholars of NRMs, accompanied by a scientist and a human rights lawyer—all four American—visited Japan in April 1995 at Aum's invitation and expense. At the time, Aum was protesting the charges leveled against it and claiming this was yet another part of a massive conspiracy against the movement that involved the Japanese and U.S. governments, the Japanese Imperial family, the Freemasons, the Jews, and numerous other groups and individuals.

Besieged by the authorities and with hundreds of its members being arrested and held without charge, Aum appealed for help to the Association of World Academics for Religious Education (AWARE), an American organization established "to serve as a kind of religious Amnesty International." AWARE's founder, James R. Lewis, was one of the group that visited Japan under the association's auspices. The visit was well-intentioned, and the participants were genuinely concerned about possible violations of civil rights in the wake of the extensive police investigations and detentions of followers. At the time, while there was widespread public certainty about Aum's guilt in the subway attack and other crimes, there was no absolute proof, and Aum's vociferous protestations of innocence might have suggested to an outsider that it had been set up. The visit, however, had the unfortunate effect of simply reinforcing the publicview that scholars of religion were naïve support teams for dangerous religious groups.

More about James Lewis and another American academic, J. Gordon Melton, who also attended the CESNUR conference I attended. I had more interactions with Melton both during and after the conference, and I found him to be a very intelligent and thoughtful academic. There is an interesting story related to the presentation he gave at the conference which I will explore later. He certainly took a small sip of the Aum Kool-Aid, but thankfully, he spat it out quite quickly. From his wiki page:

QuoteIn the press conferences, Fisher and Lewis announced that Aum could not have produced the sarin with which the attacks had been committed. They had determined this with their technical expert, Lewis said, based on photos and documents provided by the group. British scholar of Japanese religions Ian Reader, in a detailed account of the incident, reported that Melton "had few doubts by the end of his visit to Japan of Aum's complicity" and eventually "concluded that Aum had in fact been involved in the attack and other crimes"; The Washington Post account of the final press conference mentioned Lewis and Fisher but not Melton.

May 5, 1995: Tokyo Cult Finds an Unlikely Supporter (The Washington Post/kelebekler.com)

QuoteAs new evidence seems to implicate the secretive Aum Shinrikyo in case of terrorism, murder and kidnapping the sect's leaders have found an unlikely supporter: an officer of the American Bar Association.

Barry Fisher, a lawyer in Los Angeles who said he is chairman of the bar association's subcommittee on religious freedom, traveled to Tokyo with three other Americans [including J. Gordon Melton] - Aum paid the bill - to warn that the Japanese police were threatening the group's religious freedom.

The Americans said Monday that they spent three days in Japan talking to cult officials and others, but were not permitted to visit the sect's chemical factories or its headquarters campus. ...

One of the Americans, James Lewis, told a hostile and evidently incredulous roomful of Japanese reporters gathered at an Aum office Monday that the cult could not have produced the rare poison gas, sarin, used in both murder cases. He said the Americans had determined this from photos and documents provided by Aum. ...

Mr. Lewis said it was "outrageous" that some children had been removed by the police from an Aum dormitory where they were housed apart from their parents. He also said he was not familiar with details of how the children were treated at the cult.

The children of Aum members have said they were permitted two meals a day and four hours of sleep a night. They did not go to school, were not permitted to contact friends or relatives who were not cult members and were not permitted to play outside because the cult's leader said his enemies were attacking the group with poison gas.

Those last two paragraphs are certainly consistent with my impression of James based on a brief meeting and the question he asked me at the end of my presentation which quite frankly left me speechless.

May 6, 1995: Alleged Persecution of Cult Investigated: US Activists Visit Tokyo (The LA Times/Internet Archive)

QuoteIn extensive raids, police have seized more than 1,000 drums of toxic chemicals and petroleum, scoured the group's laboratory facilities and examined cartons of documents--seizing evidence which they say proves that the group made sarin, a Nazi nerve gas suspected in the attack, according to Japanese press reports.

More than 150 people have been arrested on unrelated charges, such as trespassing and possessing expired car registrations. Authorities have removed numerous sect children from their families, saying their welfare was endangered. Japanese officials have announced that they will seek to remove Supreme Truth's status as a religious entity, which has given them special protections and tax benefits.

Fisher said scandals taint religious groups worldwide, "but that didn't bring about a government calling for an end to a religion, and that is precisely what is being done here. There seems to be no one rallying to protect innocent individuals."

Defending Aum was not the first time James expressed complete ignorance of a subject he claimed expertise in.

June 2, 1993: 'The Family' and Final Harvest (The Washington Post)

QuoteAt least one outside observer -- James R. Lewis, a senior research associate at the Institute for the Study of American Religions in Santa Barbara, Calif. -- also questions the charge of child sex abuse. After visiting the La Habra Heights commune, he said, "I just came away feeling if there ever was any abuse it wasn't condoned or promoted by the hierarchy. It was isolated."

June 27, 2018: Children of God cult was 'Hell on Earth'(The Guardian)

QuoteVerity Carter says growing up in a secretive cult that encouraged sexual contact between adults and children was "hell on earth". The 38-year-old says she was abused from the age of four (circa 1984) by members of the Children of God cult, including her own father.

Alexander Watt was convicted in February after admitting four charges of sexually abusing Verity and another child in Renfrewshire and on the east coast of Scotland in the 1980s.

Verity told BBC Scotland's Kaye Adams Programme: "He wasn't the only one who did things to me when I was growing up. I had much worse done to me by many others. There was a bit of closure in him getting a conviction but at the same time it felt like I wanted more."

She said she hoped her father's conviction would encourage others to come forward to expose the actions of the cult in Scotland.

The Children of God began in the United States in the late 1960s.Its founder, David Berg, told members that God was love and love was sex, so there should be no limits, regardless of age or relationship. "It actively encouraged sexual activities among minors as young as two or three years old," Verity says.