Former cult member speaks from graveJan 18
...
In the video, Ricky Rodriguez sits in his apartment, and from his kitchen table, documents his plan -- to hunt down and kill several members of a religous sect he claims sexually abused him and other children. Rodriguez says, "There is this need... I have a need. It's not a (explitive) want. It's a need and I wish it wasn't, but this need for revenge, it's a need for justice."
Loading bullets into magazines, the 29-year-old talks about the abuse. "
Thousands of us, some worse than others, I had it good in many ways" As a toddler, it been reported that Rodriguez was being groomed to lead the group, but he managed to break away several years ago. Leaders of the sect have admitted publicly that
as of 1986 the rules were changed to ban sex with minors.
...
By far the most chilling part of the tape is when Rodriguez vows revenge on the group's leader,his own mother.
"My mom is going to pay for that. She is going to pay dearly one way or another. If I don't get to her...man if I don't get to her and life goes on, I'm going to keep haunting her in the next life."
Angela Smith's body was discovered in Rodriguez's apartment on Sunday, two days after the videotape was recorded.
http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=2826894And from an earlier LBN thread about the story:
I've cribbed this from Alex Constantine's book,
Psychic Dictatorship in the USA:
Chief Inspector Juan Carlos Rebello, who led police in the Children of God raids (in Argentina), said "we found evidence suggesting that the Family was funded by influential businessmen worldwide." One Argentine magazine found that some financial supporters of the cult were "well-known and powerful people," and pondered whether Berg's disturbed mental state "is being exploited by a network of powerful people to sexually control an army of children....
According to the Washington Post for June 2, 1993, "the Family's leadership follows a policy of lying to outsiders, is steeped in a history of sexual deviance and has even meddled in Third World politics." Edward Probe, a Canadian who once edited Family publications, worked in the Philippines from 1986 to '88. He told the Post that "Family officials openly sympathized with right-wing military officers who tried to overthrow the government: What we were doing was supplying all the moral support." One former member from Costa Rica told Argentina's Gente magazine: My father used to have certain privileges inside the organization. He was considered a very important person for public relations. His paternal grandfather...was a close friend of Pinochet and Juan Carlos, the king of Spain." Pinochet and Carlos became financial and political benefactors of the cult.
In the United States
the political pull of the sect extended to the Bush administration. A chorale of Family children (in 1978 the COG changed its name to the Family of Love) kicked off a Christmas show in 1992 for Barbara Bush in the East Room of the White House, for which they received certificates of appreciation signed by President Bush. The sect also sang for Bush after he toured the ravages of Hurricane Andrew in south Florida. It wasn't the first time Bush's name arose in connection with a child prostitution cult....
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1153791#1154082