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In Reply to: James Penn on Family Severence Pay posted by Reposter on August 24, 2004 at 15:01:22:
From what I've read the whole thing started when Ricky (Davidito) posted again & admitted that he had demanded money from his mother or he would *talk* & tell the whole world where she was. So she slipped him thousands of dollars of hush money. Maria had done a buck-toothed weepy video to debunk & discredit Ricky saying that the only reason he was speaking out now was because WS was no longer giving him any money. Whereas the truth was that he was speaking out because he had finally woken up to how horrible the Family & his own mother was & felt a responsibility to speak out given what he knew.
So now it looks like James Penn has posted to basically say that Maria is in the the habit of paying hush money to those who *know too much*. I see both he & Ricky are taking heat over accepting money when most of the rest of the SGs & probably most of us here on this board didn't get any cash & in fact left the Family with the shirts on our backs & nothing to cushion the blow of landing in the real world.
But this reminds me that paying *hush money* is an old practice with the Family. Remember how Berg used to pay a monthly check to his sister Virginia with the understanding that she would be positive toward the Family & him -- & when she gave Deborah infomation for her book, Berg lashed out at Virginia & said the checks would now stop? And they did.
I wasn't given any hush money when I left but I approve of both Ricky & James Penn taking the money & running & speaking out later. The only problem is that Maria didn't give a cash payout to everyone who left the cult.
