FAMILY UPDATE NEWS #3--JULY, 1993
D.O.--Babies Torn from Moms' Breasts by Cops!
AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France (FNN--Family News Network)--On June 9th at 6:00 a.m., 200 policemen raided two D.O. Family Homes in Aix-en-Provence and Lyon, as well as a number of TSers. They took a total of 120 Family Members into custody. Following are excerpts from reports written by Family Members. (Editor's Note: Preliminary reports on the raids indicated that the Home raided was in Marseille. It is actually in nearby Aix.)
Our lawyer contacted a lawyer friend to represent us in Aix, while he represented us in Lyon. Between the Aix & Lyon Homes, a total of 95 D.O. members were taken into custody, approximately 20 adults, plus 75 teens, JETTs & children. In addition to this, there were also 4 TS Homes taken in, representing a further 25 Members, roughly 10 adults & 15 children. The charges seemed to be lack of proper medical insurance, the possibility of psychological abuse & immoral sexual education.
After the initial raid, the police in Aix spent about 10 hours in the Home searching for evidence, & all they were able to come up with were a couple of MOPs found in the children's room with "For Adults Only" stamped in the front. The police obviously were quite frustrated that they'd not been able to turn up any "evidence" against us. The Home Schooling Kit was given to the judge, who commented that it was very well done & recommended that it be brought to court as it would be a help in our case. The judge was also given four Statements. By law, the judge has to read this material before the first hearing.
Apparently what provoked the raid at this time was a phone conversation that the police were listening to while tapping our Family telephones, in which one of the brethren was trying to provision a mini-bus. When the police heard this they panicked, thinking that the Home was going to move, so they stepped up their plans for a raid right away! (The police had planned to raid the Home last year, but then the Family had moved to a new & nicer location, which set them back, as well as frustrated what has turned out to be their two-year investigation into the Family.)
News coverage after the raid was quite extensive, with regular spots on TV news. In most cases the authorities stated that they had not found any evidence of abuse in the Homes. Besides the local French press, the "International Herald Tribune" also did a short article on the raids.
By Saturday, June 12th, all the adults in Aix were freed, as were the majority of the brethren from Lyon, & plans were underway to release various TSers who also lived in southern France. All children (that is, those under 18 years of age) were still being held in the care of Social Services.
In Aix, our new lawyer gave a TV interview saying that we're innocent of all charges & that she expects all adults & children to be released soon. Our Paris lawyer put out his own press release to the French press, likewise proclaiming our innocence. (The Family in England had done the same.)
The landlord of the Lyon Home appeared on a TV broadcast & spoke out very positively about us, testifying that he was glad to have us as renters & that we were good people. Meanwhile, a very negative article came out in Paris-Match, a weekly magazine. Our lawyer has been in contact with them about printing our rebuttal.
The Family in Aix, where most of the media attention seems to be focused, did well in dealing with the press, especially as they do not have a great deal of experience. On one TV appearance, Samuel put a notice in the window of the car stating that "We are innocent & want our children back!" which the media cameras picked up on, as well as his mate Heidi crying. GBT!
The entire Aix Home appeared on local TV, along with their lawyer. Samuel & Heidi's parents, who up until this point had been somewhat antagonistic against the Family, took a stand in our favour due to recent events & got involved in trying to contact a minors judge in their town to ask him to get involved in our behalf.
The Family in other areas of France prepared media packages for all the major newspapers & magazines. One Home reported that when their provisioners went to the market, they were thrilled to find out that almost all of the contacts were gung-ho in their support, & knew that the charges were false. A friend of the Family also called to say that she wanted to give a good-sized donation towards the fight. All over France, friends of the Family pledged their support!
The Minors judge in Lyon went ahead with hearings on June 16th, and on the 17th the children were released to their parents, PTL! One of the officials in the Minors Court made an apology for the treatment of the children.
The children in Lyon were released on the condition they would later be subjected to psychiatric tests. The main issue with the children appears to be socialisation, with the authorities coming from the angle that we isolate our children too much. The brethren have their passports, but part of the conditions of their release was that they are not to leave France.
What has been especially agonising is the extremely cruel and Gestapo-like tactics that the police used when they raided the Homes, especially in Lyon. They deliberately did all they could to terrorize Family Members.
The French police, many dressed in combat fatigues, were yelling out orders in military style & flashing their machine guns around, which really freaked out our children. When they first burst into the house, Rose had gathered her little group of children into a closet, as she thought they were terrorists, all of which was quite traumatic for the children.
They broke down the door of the Home, handcuffed the brethren, & dragged them out of the house & down the gravel road, scraping their knees and elbows, to police vans! The men were kept manacled all day, like common criminals. Next to the Home there is a large senior citizen's home, the residents of which had always been very friendly to the brethren. During the raids one old man came over & started taking pictures. However, the police grabbed the old man's camera & confiscated the film!
It was very cool in the morning & the children weren't properly dressed, having just been dragged from bed, but despite the parents' pleas, the children were made to sit outside on the cold ground. Then when they took them to the police station, they had to sit outside for several hours on mattresses, many adults & children still without proper attire.
The police had also refused to let nursing babies be with their mothers, even with the mothers demanding it, explaining that they were nursing! The police had even pulled screaming babies from their mothers' arms & were deaf to the mothers' pleas to return them! The raid in Aix was conducted less brutally.
The police questioning was very harsh, with lots of shouting. One brother was roughed up & struck on the face during questioning. The police also lied to the brethren & said that they had witnessed different ones molesting young girls in the group & that they could prove it, in order to try to get them to admit to something. Thank the Lord, none of our DO Family fell for this tactic, but at times the police would scream & yell & try to intimidate them further. Some policemen very threateningly brandished their Uzi machineguns at the brethren's heads!
(Comments from Dad: The Family in France ought to shout from the roof tops to the television stations & newspapers & radios about all of the cruelty & harsh treatment they received from the police. Let's sock it to them! Now is our chance to protest all this abuse! Talk about child abuse! They were the ones abusing the kids! You just tell them to sock it to'm! Carry on! Fight! Stand up & fight! Take pictures!" If people would see them doing things like that to us, we'd get a lot more sympathy! (Mama: Even if they can't do it during the raid, they should do it immediately after the fact.) Tell them to stand up & fight! Expose them! This is our chance! When they attack us, that's our chance to hit back! We need to do it to expose how dirty & cruel they are! People have an exalted opinion of their System. Let's show them what it's really like. The more I read about this stuff the more furious it makes me! It makes me want to fight! --I do have a temper!--And it really riles it when I read that kind of stuff! Whew!
(Lord, You sock it to'm! You can do it & make them regret every blow they struck & every inch they dragged them & every door they broke down & every one of those babies they took away from their nursing mothers, & every one of those children they took away from their weeping parents, & every evil thing they've done to us, Lord! You make them pay! You promised to make them pay many times over! So You do it! You do it! Expose them most of all! That's the thing they hate to be--exposed! Expose their dirty tricks! Confuse their politics too, as You have done in a lot of cases. But help us hit the newspapers & the TV & the media, Lord, with exposs of all their dirty System & their damn dirty ACs & their damn dirty media & all the rest of it!
(Thank You Lord for giving us a chance to fight back! The worse it gets the harder it helps us to fight, & the worse we can portray them, Lord.
********
(Let's be sure to help anyone who is suffering & hurting from these things. Let's try to send them all we possibly can to help them through it. We're a Family & we've got to help. There are all kinds of records in Acts of the Early Christians helping each other when one had money & the other didn't, or one had famine & the other didn't, etc. That's the advantage of being a Family--helping each other.)
The police's line of questioning was also quite deceitful. For example, they would ask one question like, "At what age are the children able to read the MOPs?" When they received the answer, "14 or 15 years of age," then the next question the police asked was, "What age do the kids have sex?" Our brethren noticed that the police then wrote down the answer of the first question, so as to make it look like we were confessing that 14 & 15-year-olds have sex!
Police repeatedly told the adults they would never see their children again, & gave indications that certain of the adult men had already "confessed" to molesting children, etc. etc., all in a deceitful attempt to get the brethren to say something that would incriminate them.
Heidi said that one man that interviewed her was the same man that she had caught peeping over the wall of their Home in another part of France a couple of years ago, & they recognised each other. So obviously the police have been watching us for quite awhile. During the interviews, the police lied to the various members, for example saying, "Oh, we know about all your other Homes, you can confirm to us where they are & give us names & addresses" etc. Thank the Lord they were not able to get much information to use against us, despite these attempts to do so.
One mistake some of the brethren made was answering questions when it was not legally necessary for them to do so without having a lawyer present. (French law states you do not have to answer any questions for the first 20 hours, & that you can wait until your lawyer is present before saying anything.) It was recommended that all the Homes in France have a camera ready so that someone could take photos in the event of a future police raid.
When the children in Lyon were returned to their parents, they recounted more gruesome details of how cruelly they had been treated at the hands of the authorities. 18-year-old Magdalene had been taken to a juvenile hall in Lyon rather than being allowed to stay with the younger children. She had been treated quite badly, but released after 3 days, at which time they put her in a run-down apartment all by herself, lied to her by telling her that everybody was still in jail, as well as holding onto her passport. Thank the Lord she got a check to call the Home & found that they were all there, & they came & picked her up. They also brought along a camera to take pictures of the apartment, as it was filthy, including the floors, refrigerator, stove, etc. with wallpaper falling off the walls.
The police in Lyon are already known for their brutality. A month ago the police arrested a fellow & he ended up mysteriously dying while in police custody. It was quite a scandal & the Minister of Justice had to formally apologise since the public was really up in arms against the police.
Each of the Family Members in Lyon was able to tell the judge the manner in which the raid was conducted, & he was so taken back he said he just couldn't believe it! Of course all of their stories about what happened were identical, & the judge said he will look into it. Please pray for this judge to be a help in our situation & to be a positive influence on the Aix case.
As it now stands in Aix, the children have still not been released. It seems they want to ask the children questions first before letting them go. The hearing to determine any charges against the adults is scheduled for September. Please pray for the Aix children to be released as soon as possible. The Aix Judge said he wanted to keep the children for another 3 months!
Thank the Lord that our lawyer in Aix is finally getting the big picture of what our enemies are up to, & when she heard about this development, she has now pushed for an appeal to his decision to keep the children longer.
Daniel Welsh & Samuel Ajemian appeared on Envoye Special, a very negative TV show broadcast by French TV 2. It showed footage of the old Paris show group, pictures of Dad and footage from the U.S., featuring Mene and Bithia. The show ended with footage from a Home in France, but most of the actual talking by the Family Members was drowned out by the commentator's negative commentary. The last scenes were nice witnessing shots with some of our YAs leading souls to the Lord & passing out Posters. After this, the commentator introduced the reporters who made the documentary, who both had very negative comments.
The brethren have been picketing & holding demonstrations both in Aix & Lyon. We all feel this is what the Lord's been showing us, as it will get the media as involved as possible in our fight for the children. The media team has sent out a French mass mailing, including a local persecution tract which exposes the forces behind the persecution, as well as a one-page appeal explaining our need for lawyers who want to help preserve religious freedom in France, media people who want to help the other side be heard, & Home Schoolers who want to protect their rights to teach their children themselves.
LONDON, England (FNN)-- The police raids on Family Homes in France received wide media coverage in England, as some of the Family members taken into custody were British. A Family member did a radio interview with the BBC. ITN (British TV) did a very unfavourable primetime broadcast featuring an interview with Marie-Christine Haworth. (She was a member of the Family for a short time several years ago, and is now the wife of British deprogrammer Ian Haworth.)
While the French media was initially somewhat fair & made it clear that no charges had been laid & there was no real evidence to substantiate the accusations, the British media later painted a very black & negative picture, trying to liken it to Waco. It was reported that Scotland Yard & the FBI are working with the French government to try & wipe out the Family in France!
VIENNA, Austria (FNN)-- The Family had a booth at the UN Conference on Human Rights. The teens put together a program of songs & also made some good contacts!
When news of the police raids in France became public, Family Members distributed a Press Release, decrying the injustice and police brutality that Family Members in France suffered.
LOS ANGELES, USA (FNN)-- The Family in California reports that our enemies there are doing their best to spread their lies to the local media. They write:
On the 15th of June, we saw a newsclip on the local L.A. news about the persecution in France. It showed the Family singing, the police taking the literature, & then a sister named Rose making a statement denying all CA allegations. Right after the French story, they had a follow-up about the "California connection" & said that the COG began in Huntington Beach, & that there are presently about 200 of us in the area. Prior to viewing this program, we received a call from the producer of this TV station, who was very rude.
We dropped off a package of Statements with the producer, & prayed that her attitude would become more positive.
We then got another phone call from this station, Channel 9, this time from a different reporter who asked us for an interview. We got together to pray & ask the Lord for His direction, & He gave us the faith to go ahead with the interview. TTL, this reporter was completely different from the other person we'd talked to, & the report seemed to go real well, although she was a shrewd interviewer.
We socked it to her about our enemies. We explained that these people & CAN were manipulating government agencies in France & around the World to persecute us, & that we were going to take legal action against our detractors for conspiring to violate our civil & religious liberties.
The Family was the lead story on the news the evening of the 16th, with our side getting in a good share of the points & ending on a positive note--that is, that we'll be suing our detractors & that our enemies admit that they don't have any evidence to back up their claims. The "Quotations From Father David" Statement that the Media Team faxed to the producer of the station seemed to be a real key, as the TV show splashed some of Dad's quotes on various subjects across the screen to back our position. PTL! A radio station in the area picked up on the story on the 17th & has mainly just been broadcasting our side of the story!--What a miracle how the Lord turned the intended wrath of Man to praise Him!
*The Family sent a very detailed rebuttal to the producers of the "Geraldo" show, refuting the lies of Mene and Deborah.
*The Washington Post reporter who did a favourable article on the Family received a complaint from CAN the same day it was published!
LIMA, Peru (FNN)-- The Family reports local media coverage of the raids in France in various South American countries. A brief report also aired on CNN on June 17th.
MANILA, The Philippines (FNN)-- The media in most of the countries in South East Asia reported extensively on the raids in France. An article on the front page of the "Jakarta Post" had a photo of a Family girl saying, "Give us back our children, we have done nothing wrong." All of the articles were fairly negative.
TOKYO, Japan (FNN)-- A short article appeared in the Shukan Bunshun on June 23rd. The main thrust of the article was the situation in France. Needless to say, it was quite negative.
MOSCOW, Russia (FNN)-- A newspaper with a large circulation throughout the entire Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) did a negative article on the Family. The article was entitled "The Sect", & although it didn't mention "The Family", only "Children of God", it was nevertheless quite a slam, derived from a French book. The Family delivered a rebuttal to the newspaper. The Family feels that the Lord is using this article to cause them to come out more in the open in Russia.
BARCELONA, Spain (FNN)-- The court case involving the Family Members started on June 14. (Editor's Note: As all charges of child abuse have been thrown out, the authorities are accusing Family Members of fraud in their provisioning.) Family Members report:
The Lord really answered prayer, as Judge Oscariz, who is presiding over the panel of three judges in our case, has been directing the sessions in a very unbiased way. He is not allowing the D.A. to attack the Family as a group, but is keeping the questions in line with specific accusations against the brethren who are actually on trial.
On the first day's hearing, Judge Oscariz made some of the following statements when the D.A. was questioning the brethren, "We are only judging the 10 accused here, we are not analysing a group for its beliefs", "If the kids had a teacher sleeping [in the room] with them, what is wrong with that? I attended a Jesuit school & we also had a professor sleeping with us at night," & "This is not a religious nor a civil court, so please concentrate on the facts."
Judge Oscariz even read parts of the Spanish penal code on the subject of being an illegal association & attempted to clarify that in order to be considered illegal in that sense, you have to be doing something against the government, like terrorism, for example. He went on to say that the press had already judged the brethren, but the final judgement will be rendered in the courtroom. GBH!
The judge's comments have had quite an impact & created a real controversy in the media. Judge Oscariz, it's been reported, is not reading the newspapers, as he does not want to be influenced by them.
The American consul attended the morning session. The Director of the anti-cult group, Pro Juventud, & others from her group were also in attendance.
The judge asked the D.A. if there was any new evidence or new witnesses to be presented, & the D.A. requested for Miriam Padilla to be called. After allowing this, the judge said that no more evidence nor other witnesses would be accepted from this point on.
The brethren were called one by one & thoroughly cross-examined, & did really well. A few provisioning contacts were also cross-examined & what they said was all in our favour, explaining that they had understood that we were doing missionary work & asking for goods for our community, & they were never forced to donate anything, & also they had been invited to the Home.
All in all, the first session was quite positive, & the following day's media coverage was quite good, though a few TV channels tried to present things in a rather negative way. Our lawyer also brought up the fact that our brethren had sent reports to Amnesty International to complain about the way their children suffered, so we passed around to the media copies of some of these reports, which were also mentioned in a few newspapers.
The second day's session began with more provisioning contacts being called, & their answers were similar to the previous day's. Then Miriam Padilla was called & she tried her best to give a horrible picture of the Family. TTL, our lawyers were able to expose quite a bit of the background of her being called as a witness. Miriam explained that just four days before coming to Barcelona, the Catalonian police had contacted Cult Information Centre (CIC) in England & Marie-Christine Haworth from this group had asked her to come. The judge took note of the countries where Miriam lived while she was in the Family, & recorded the fact that she was never in the Barcelona Home.
That afternoon, some of our children were called in front of the judges, & the judge requested the media not to take pictures. The kids explained that they'd never been told the truth when first separated from their parents by the authorities, but had been given the impression that they were being "taken for holidays". They also talked about the problems they encountered having to take their schooling in Catalan.
A few members of the Catalan police were called to explain about the investigation, & the police chief in charge of the operation, Castellvi, said that they did not find any evidence whatsoever of crimes committed by the brethren during the time prior to the raids. The police based their investigation on a file from 1985, as well as a testimony of two backsliders who left the Family in 1977. These two backsliders were called to appear in court, but did not.
The French TV channel, TV2, was in the court room filming the trial. John did an interview with the TV2 reporter to expose Miriam Padilla's lies, & the next day Channel 2 went to John & Josue's Home to film. We also had prepared a press release with excerpts from the Statements explaining our Work & our support, our position against CA, our history of FFing, etc, mainly related to the allegations against us in this court case. We passed the press release out to the media.
On Spanish TV Channel 3, one of the main national channels, there was a very good program about our court case, with Josue giving some powerful Statements about the Family & the case. Judge Oubina made a statement to the effect that "the authorities involved didn't recognise their mistake, & therefore, the children suffered a cruel separation". There were also beautiful pictures of Josue & John's families. They also put on excerpts of the dance videos stolen from the PI.
On the 16th, there was only a morning session in which Jansa, the anti-cult fake psychologist from Pro Juventud, & another psychologist, Monasterio, were presented as experts for the other side. They stated all kinds of lies about the kids & the brethren, such as that the children didn't know who their parents were, & that some of the kids thought that Moses David was their father, etc. Esperanza called them "liars" & was warned to be quiet by the judge!
We had three psychiatrists &/or psychologists who testified on our behalf, & requested the judges to nullify the reports done by Jansa & Monasterio. They said that the brethren were normal people, that the level of socialisation of the children was proper, & that the kids' separation from their parents was brutal. They said that although the brethren are non-conformist, it is not to the degree that would cause any type of psychological damage. Media coverage from the day before was quite good, in spite of Miriam Padilla's testimony against us.
(More to come in FUN #4, DV!)
***
Please keep the Family in France in your prayers, especially their precious children, who may still be in bonds! "Desperate prayer that is full of faith is the most powerful weapon we have, and can radically alter any situation or heart" (MOP 97:83).
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family