Daniella grew up in The Family, then joined the army — where she experienced toxic control, again

Daniella grew up in The Family, then joined the army — where she experienced toxic control, again

The Conversation / By Martine Kropkowski Thu 26 Jan 2023

Daniella Mestyanek Young's first day of military training, she stands among her fellow recruits holding a duffle bag high in one arm above her head.

As she ponders the other bodies lined up in her peripheral vision, all struggling to maintain the same pose, it gradually occurs to her that this feeling — of being owned, coerced, programmed — seems unsettlingly familiar: "Have I just joined another cult?"

This sense of suspicion forms a pattern in Mestyanek Young's life, which she documents with remarkable insight in her memoir, Uncultured, exploring the systems of control in which toxicity can thrive.

Mestyanek Young was born into religious cult the Children of God, also known as The Family. (Not to be confused with Anne Hamilton Byrne's Australian-based cult, also known as The Family.)

Mestyanek Young spent her childhood shuffled from compound to compound in Brazil, Mexico and the United States. At 15, she fled what she would come to recognise as a cult, made her way to Texas and put herself through school and college, eventually graduating as valedictorian and joining the US army, where she served as an intelligence officer.

Daniella Mestyanek Young explores the systems of control in which toxicity can thrive, from within a cult and then the US army.

But this book is not simply a survival story. It's an exposé of the abuse that can run unchecked within cults. It's a story about trauma, a war memoir, a meditation on the difference between culture and cults. And it's a searing indictment of groups that continue to view those who are not men as subservient to those who are.

But at its core, Uncultured is a book about groups. It asks readers to look closely at the power mechanisms at work within the communities we call our own

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The Children of God

Mestyanek Young describes her childhood as a third-generation cult member (one of the "children of the children of the Children of God") in chilling detail — but also striking detachment. The cult, also known as The Family, is infamous for its widespread and systematic abuse, especially of children.

The hierarchy cited the proverb, "Spare the rod, spoil the child", to justify its exploitative treatment of children. It subjected children to routine beatings and demanded they remain perpetually available to satiate the sexual impulses of the cult's adults. Mestyanek Young's father was 49 years old when she was born; her mother was only 15.

Even as a young child programmed from birth, Mestyanek Young intuited that something about her world was deeply wrong. At just six years old, already questioning the legitimacy of the Bible, Mestyanek Young was locked in a room and repeatedly raped and beaten by one of the cult's men, a distinguished "uncle".

Despite the cult's coercion tactics, however, Mestyanek Young was able to observe its inner workings from an unusually critical perspective, haunted by a sense that "even though I was the one getting punished, somewhere deep inside I suspected the wrong thing wasn't me".... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-27/daniella-cult-the-family-joined-the-army-toxic-control/101895164 

Jehovah's Witnesses: abuse, Sex Cult - Child Rape - Children of God Church, Priest Risdale 38 charges

- Inside the Jehovah's Witnesses: A 'perfect storm' for abuse
"They love bomb you. They sell you this vision of a perfect community. It is anything but. It's indoctrination. It's a cult, it really is. But they convince you it's a religion."

-  Life after a sex cult: 'If I’m not a member of this religion any more, then who am I?'
Children of God church "The report documented Berg’s proclivity for incest and witnesses testified that child rape was used as an excuse to “increase the tribe”, leading to many pregnancies in various communes."

- Ridsdale's fresh charges grow in number 
"More historical sex abuse charges have been laid against disgraced former Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale. 38 charges, rape, buggery, indecent assault and assault offences against boys and girls"


Inside the Jehovah's Witnesses: A 'perfect storm' for abuse
Rachel Browne March 10 2017

Then one morning a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on the door to spread the word of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. That was when Jodi's nightmare began.

"These nice people were promising a community with no drugs, no alcohol and no crime – it sounded very appealing," said Jodi, who asked that her name be withheld.

"They love bomb you. They sell you this vision of a perfect community. It is anything but. It's indoctrination. It's a cult, it really is. But they convince you it's a religion."

The Jehovah's Witness church and its overarching body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, came to the attention of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse with a 2015 case study hearing more than 1000 allegations of paedophilia had been made against the organisation over 60 years yet not one complaint was reported to police.

This echoes Jodi's experience. Now 35, she says she was abused by a church elder and his daughter when she was eight years old. When she was 13 she mustered up the courage to report the abuse to church authorities but was not believed and branded a liar. She left the church shortly after.

"They preach love but they don't show love," she said.

Another former member, Lara Kaput, describes the Jehovah's Witnesses as "cruel".

Ms Kaput, 44, was raised in a Jehovah's Witness family in Victoria where close contact with people outside the church was discouraged, women were taught to obey men and the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society were unquestioned.

She left the Jehovah's Witnesses when she was 19 and was shunned by the community. Over the past 25 years she's had only sporadic contact with family members who are still involved in the church.

"You are ostracised from your entire family and friend network," she said. "Prior to (leaving) they incorporated me as a regular family member. After that I was dead to them."....

The commission has referred information about 514 alleged perpetrators within the Jehovah's Witnesses to the police since the initial hearing....
http://www.smh.com.au/national/inside-the-jehovahs-witnesses-a-perfect-storm-for-abuse-20170309-guukur.html  


Life after a sex cult: 'If I’m not a member of this religion any more, then who am I?'

Michael Young grew up immersed in the Children of God church, which was labelled as a sect by the FBI and dogged by child abuse allegations
Sophia Tewa  Saturday 11 March 2017

f his eight siblings, Michael Young was the most zealous street missionary. As a child growing up in Monterrey, Mexico, he preached up to 10 hours a day, three to four days each week. He spoke to strangers on the streets and often went door-to-door. He’d ask them, in broken Spanish, if they wished to go to heaven. If they said yes, he would pray for them. If they said no, he would ask for at least a donation to The Family International, a church formerly known as the sex cult The Children of God.

Young’s parents, devout American missionaries who moved to Mexico in 1998, told him that such work was his destiny and duty. The alternative was an afterlife spent in the slums of heaven, a place only slightly better than hell.

When he was eight years old, in 2000, Young’s family moved to Texas and started their missionary work anew in mini-malls and Walmart parking lots, handing out theological tracts about the imminent apocalypse that would soon wipe out the unbelievers.

Young says he was happy. “I was spiritual in a way that was kind of very obsessive and very determined,” he says.

But Young was unaware that his parents’ church was labelled as a sect by the FBI and hounded by child abuse allegations. In a 1974 report, The New York attorney general’s office had also called the Children of God a “cult”. The group’s practices drew investigations from the FBI and Interpol, which were on the hunt for its leader, David Berg. One anonymous informant spoke of rape, incarceration, kidnapping and incest inside the group....

The report documented Berg’s proclivity for incest and witnesses testified that child rape was used as an excuse to “increase the tribe”, leading to many pregnancies in various communes.

“A 14-year-old runaway who spent nine days at a COG commune testified that she was raped and because of her refusal to cooperate with the elders, was held in solitary confinement on no less than three separate occasions,” the report states.

The late actor River Phoenix, who grew up in the Children of God, told Details Magazine in 1991 that he was four when he first had sex while in the group....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/11/children-of-god-church-sex-cult-texas-mexico-fbi 


Ridsdale's fresh charges grow in number                                                                
Andi Yu - AAP on March 10, 2017

More historical sex abuse charges have been laid against disgraced former Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale.

A prosecutor in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Friday said two new charges had been filed last week and this morning, adding to the original total of 36.

The 38th charge relates to the sexual penetration of a child under 10, the lawyer said.

Other charges include rape, buggery, indecent assault and assault offences against boys and girls across the state.....
https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/34606087/ridsdale-faces-another-36-abuse-charges/#page1