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In Reply to: Re: Who are the five? posted by Joseph on June 03, 2006 at 15:25:10:
Well, Joseph, as you may have learned in many years of dealing with TF and its survivors, many times things are not as they look, and they may not be as JLM says they are. He really does not have credibility and his way of framing the issue about the 'five' seems misleading to me.
It makes for a good soap opera for sure (WHO are the five? Stay tuned and you'll find out) but it does not really highlight the condition in which people live in high demand organization or what it takes to come out of that frame of mind when one is able to make a decision to leave.
If people did not want it to be known that they had taken money, they would not say it, right? He says they 'admitted' it.
If you worked for an organization for years and years with no pay (as a volunteer or missionary, but really getting screwed and exploited) if they gave you some money when you were about to leave it may not necessarily be "criminal" for the person. It is a matter of interpretation.
People do what they can do to survive in the situation they are in at the times things happen. People who have left the upper echelons are invariably extremely damaged people. On top of this, if someone who left Berg's household were to immediately de-freeze from their cult enculturation, do you think Smith and Smith would not have their plans in place on how to get away?
It has always been that way. So to demonize people who took money in situations that we do not fully know and taking the issue in a VACUUM without considering all the circumstances involved seems naive and another tactic to throw dirt at others to try to look good.
There are several people who left during the many years TF has been in place. Some of them tried in so many different ways to denounce what was going on in various places. What happened?
Ask yourself one thing: if today with all this information, the Internet, documents at your fingertips at the click of a mouse, tons of affidavits given to the FBI, if today after all the dead and the people who are clamoring for justice nothing has happened YET (!! is it possible? and I DO hope it happens) perhaps the problem is not that people have not done enough or that people are not doing enough. The problem is more complex than what it seems, because it has to do with the way society operates.
It has taken decades for victims of abuse of the Catholic Church to find some vindication. SOME. The Catholic Church does not have secret homes and churches, and their identities are known.
If it took SO LONG for those victims, and believe me people have suffered and TRIED to do something for decades, what do you think it will take for TF?
I think JLM has got nothing better to do than to find a scapegoat, a new twist in the plot, some sensational National Enquirer for exmember stuff that can put him AGAIN in the center of the attention.
This is to be continued. I have got more to say about all this because I just cannot stand manipulation and the self-centered construction of 'the news' the framing of an event for one's personal greed for attention.
And let me make this clear: I have never taken ANY money from TFI. They took a lot away from me.
