The Family, Past and Present

Last week at NDN we closed Crossfire. We opened a new forum up called "Open House" with stricter behavior guidelines, and we are starting to have some meaningful discussion with the folks who hang out there about The Family.

As I mentioned farther down on this board, my opinions about The Family have changed dramatically as I've been able to review the many personal stories that have appeard online over the last few years.

Over at "Open House", I was responding to a message that seemed to present the idea that as bad as the Family is, it still continues to do some good. I used to buy into this, but I just can't anymore. Since I know that many of you don't visit NDN anymore, I thought I'd post it here, since a lot of you were a big part of opening my eyes to the facts.

Here is the message:

Interesting comments.

As I've mentioned in other messages, Jane believed for about twenty years that her past experience in The Family had been positive. As a result, as a pedestrian, I gained an opinion that The Family was basically a good organization that had some kind of strange ideas. But, I believed that the good far outweighed the bad.

I've revised that opinion, following the review of many written personal experiences that have been published here and on other websites, not to mention mainstream press and books.

Of course, the most persuasive evidence that The Family was bad comes from the second generation who publish horrific reports of sexual, physical and mental abuse. These accounts include incidents of actual torture at the Victor Camps and in some homes. All of this was apparently endorsed by, encouraged by, and continue to be defended by Family leadership.

The case presented by the SGA's and published at the movingon.org website is compelling enough. But, then you have to take into account the number of adult women who became prostitutes at the encouragement of Family leadership, and the adult males who became their pimps. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of these men and women would not have engaged in this activity had they not been convinced that it was part of God's highest calling.

Yes, I agree that some good was produced, and continues to be produced by The Family. But, I also think that the cost was and is too high. It is possible to produce good without sexual abuse, torture of children, prostitution, or even masturbating to Jesus. Groups like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army do it every day.