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In Reply to: I disagree with much of his assessment posted by Donny on November 22, 2002 at 19:54:04:
He is a she. Her name is Beth Peterson. She does suggest in the e-mail to me, that looking at, at some point what you did do under the influence is needed. This could apply for any age. I suppose that this is a default disagreement in that the majority of FGA posters at this board would feel as you do, and I am in the minority here on this.
By the way, this person (BP) is the one the SGAs refer to on their board regarding her writing on Ultra-Authority.
I do not discount the individual SGAs and any steps they may want to take with their particular abusers. But I do find the generalized anger towards most FGAs as being misdirected.
Also, I saw Sara Davidito when she joined. She was attending Univ. of TX and was very idealistic from what I remember, and very young as were most FGA's, and a very nice person without pedophiliac tendencies. What she did was horrible, but I am certain she would never have done it had she not been under the influence of the family and sucked up into the inner circle vortex. I did not enjoy having her as a leader when I was in Spain, either. But by and large, peoples personalities were much different under the influence than before family training. And we did live in the cult 24/7. James Penn is one who had to be very much under the influence to have defected from such a high position. Those who had greater position had more to deal with upon leaving. I know that when I left, the majority of the people I was around had read the letters (Sara Davidito) but would not act them out on their children or any others, and in fact, had strong aversions to it. I also know that we were taught that our gut feelings were weaknesses and of the devil. Therefore, we would not have reported it. Even if we had, it would have had to be proven as far as who to specifically press charges against. Not being under top leadership, this behavior (child sexual abuse) would not be reinforced. But had the majority of FGAs lived under Bergs roof, well, when we were in the family, that would have been thought of as a great honor and I shudder to think of what I might have done. I am very grateful that I don't personally have that to deal with. IF i did, I would want to make amends to whoever I offended even if it was under Family influence, and it would be up to them to choose how to proceed, whether to forgive, press charges or whatever. Thanks for your comments. I guess we can agree to disagree.
Maybe expressing it like this would help: If a saw a family person out balooning, I would not call the cops on them but would probably ask them if they wanted a break and buy them a meal if I could. During that meal I would use an approach similar to Steve Hassan's approach now, kinder and gentler hoping to get them to think. You never know when that person might be ready to hit the door and who they might have as family outside of the cult who would like to have them out. Or maybe they have no one, and see the outside world as out to get them, just like leadership has painted.
