Legal info

In Reply to: Improbable History posted by Peabody on November 14, 2006 at 18:06:28:

The Family has not always been cleared of all charges in courts of law. Although The Family claim they never lost a court case, this is not true. Contrary to their PR statements, very few (if any) of the child abuse cases that were prosecuted against Family adults resulted in an acquittal or complete exoneration of the defendants. Most cases of child abuse were dismissed on legal technicalities or tried in absentia. Several cases were settled out of court. There was never a full hearing of the evidence by an impartial jury.

• The Children of God/Family has to date not paid up $1 million in damages granted to a plaintiff.
• At least one member was found guilty for contributing to the delinquency a minor/minors.
• In just one court-case alone, the judge investigating The Family found them to be overtly responsible for promoting child/adult sex and lying in court. Major reforms were forced on the entire movement, in order to ensure the safety and basic human rights of its adherents and those born into the group, human rights which were not being observed.
• The Family did not technically win custody of the child in the uk case either, as the child became a ward of the court. Some conditions stipulated for allowing the child to be in the mother's care can be understood to be willfully ignored - if this is true it means, had the timing been relevant, under appeal the court's decisions can be reversed.
• When a member gets deported, this is usually the result of an order signed by a local magistrate, a small court dealing with small routine matters, but nevertheless a court of law.
• The Attorney General of the State of New York launched an investigation into the movement, and by September 30, 1974, a Final Report on the Activities of the Children of God was submitted by the Charity Frauds Bureau. Although the Children of God organization was subpoenaed, it refused to cooperate and did not submit financial books and records, nor reveal locations of their communes or any demographic data.
  
  The insightful report documented the "metamorphis [sic] of COG from the religious bible oriented group to a cult subservient to the whims or desires of ...Berg." Among other things it details:
  
  • the Children of God, Inc. was refused tax-exempt status in 1972, and their corporation dissolved; the group's subsequent use of front organizations for tax-exemption and funneling of funds to its leaders; their extremely guarded secrecy regarding finances
  • obstruction of justice; blatant defiance by the movement towards civil and law enforcement authorities; how members are taught to lie and use chicanery to circumvent legal process
  • the arrests of 21 members of the group including Berg's sons Jonathan Berg and Paul Berg for violations of California Penal Code(s), their jumping of bail and arrest warrants issued; Berg's wife Jane Berg wanted on assault charges in England
  • organized draft dodging of 101 members through "spurious ordination" and the issue of ministerial "licenses"; guidance on how to dodge authorities
  • the central doctrine of hatred against parents taught to all converts; the doctrine that all governments are evil; the belief that education is evil; the policiy that laws do not necessarily need to be obeyed, and that obstruction of justice is justifiable.
  • the policy of converts "forsaking all" and handing over proceeds to leaders to further the group's financial goals, the subsequent doctrine of total dependency on charity and handouts, and leaders urging the continued solicitation of funds from parents of converts absorbed into the group
  • the use of fatigue, uncertainty, fear, manipulation and mind-control mechanisms; advanced indoctrination methods taught to leaders; physical coercion and solitary confinement; mental coercion; the buddy system; the censorship and screening of incoming/outgoing mail and phone calls
  • Berg's secretive publications re: sex; the focus on sex and beginnings of a sex cult; Berg's promotion of incest and disregard of the institution of marriage; rape, molestation and coercion by leaders, including Berg, of several teenagers
  • 
    the facade of respectability towards the public and the media; faked friendliness with the Catholic church
  • the cloaking of identity through the use of front organizations
  • the deception perpetrated on new converts
  • Berg's anti-Semitism
    
  
  
• several (ex)members in several countries are wanted for child abduction.
  
  • Peter Bevan Riddell, is known to have been convicted of crimes relating to child abduction. In 1984, the Australian government canceled Riddell's passport and he was deported from Japan to Australia, where he was convicted of committing forgery and making false statements to facilitate unlawful abduction.
  • Another Family member, Brian Edward Pickus, has been wanted for decades on an Interpol warrant issued by the United States and the state of Hawaii for kidnapping, burglary and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
  • A New Zealander was wanted in Singapore for kidnapping his daughter and abandoning his Singaporean wife who decided to leave The Family on reading Berg's "Sex with Grandma" in the early 80s.