Tag: cults

Inside the Bizarre and Dangerous Rod of Iron Ministries

Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon’s childhood was, to put it mildly, far from typical.

He grew up cloistered in his family’s 19-acre church compound in Westchester County, outside of New York City. Because of security threats his family faced, Moon recalls in a 2018 book, he was “not permitted to wander the neighborhoods, hang out with friends, or ride our bikes outside.” His outlet from bitter isolation — home, he writes, “seemed like a prison” — was self-defense training, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, of which he’s now a blackbelt, and, eventually, firearms.

Sean’s father, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was the founder and leader of the Unification Church, the conservative global religious movement founded in South Korea. The elder Moon presented himself as a biblical messiah, and famously presided over mass “wedding” events in which believers were purportedly absolved of sin. For the elder Moon, homosexuality was a grave trespass against God, and he compared gay men to “dirty dung-eating dogs.”

In the United States, the elder Moon overcame legal troubles — he was once sentenced to 18 months in prison for filing false tax returns — and founded the conservative Washington Times, which he used to cultivate political power inside the Beltway, including forging close ties to the Bush family. In a bizarre 2004 ceremony, Moon was coronated inside the Dirksen Senate building, declaring himself God incarnate in front of more than a dozen members of Congress.

When the patriarch died in 2012, it sparked a bitter succession battle for control of the Unification Church and its vast business enterprises. Moon’s wife, Hak Ja Han, known to followers as the “True Mother,” consolidated control. She boxed out her son Sean, who’d trained at Harvard Divinity school and insists he was his father’s handpicked successor.

Feeling betrayed by his mother, whom he now likens to the “Harlot of Babylon,” Sean launched his own sect in 2013. The younger Moon’s church has evolved to fetishize AR-15s, rebranding in 2017 as “Rod of Iron Ministries.” The church burst onto the national consciousness with a 2018 ceremony in which members were invited to bring their assault weapons to church, held just days after the school massacre in Parkland, Florida.

Moon, who wears a crown of polished bullets made for him by a religious follower, preaches that the AR-15 is the biblical “rod of iron” — an instrument of divine power. This bizarro reading of the bible springs from passages like Psalms (“You will break them with a rod of iron; you will dash them to pieces like pottery”) and Revelations (“And He shall rule them with a rod of iron.”)

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A Year After QAnon Surfer Killed His Kids, Members of His Church Fear More Violence

In the early hours of Aug. 9, 2021, Matthew Coleman woke his 2-year-old son, Kaleo, and 10-month-old daughter, Roxy, in a room at the City Express Hotel, where they were staying in the Mexican seaside resort town of Rosarito. He bundled them into his van and drove them to a remote ranch a short distance away. Then he murdered them both by stabbing them over a dozen times each with a spearfishing gun.

This is what Coleman himself told FBI agents just hours later, when he was arrested crossing the border back into the U.S. He immediately tried to justify his actions by citing QAnon conspiracy theories, claiming he believed he had to kill his children to “save the world.”

A year later, despite this confession, the Department of Justice is still making up its mind about whether or not to seek the death penalty, and any possible trial in the case is still months away. A recent court filing reviewed by VICE News suggested that an update on the case won’t be available until October. The lack of progress on the case has left the community of Santa Barbara, where Coleman and his wife, Abby, ran a surf school, in limbo, unable to process what has happened.

In particular, the insular and often secretive church communities to which Coleman belonged have failed to address the heinous crime. Now, some members of those communities fear that if Coleman was radicalized within the church, similar acts of violence could happen.

“I really think that the church let this family down, let these children down, and it should be a clarion call to all the churches within the Santa Barbara community that if this can happen to a loving beautiful young family that was really entrenched in the cultural aspects of Santa Barbara, it can happen everywhere. And we need to be aware of the warning signs and I do not believe that it’s been addressed yet,” a Santa Barbara resident who knew the Colemans and attended some of the same churches told VICE News. The source was granted anonymity to speak openly about sensitive issues. 

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Adam Driver’s Wife Allegedly Has Ties To Manhattan Cult Facing Trial For Abuse Accusations

Adam Driver and his wife, Joanne Tucker, may have ties to a secret Manhattan cult that is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.

Tucker’s mother, Cynthia May, is rumored to have ties to The Odyssey Study Group, a for-profit group that allegedly recruited wealthy New Yorkers while its leader kept unpaid workers and inflicted various forms of abuse.

Adam Driver’s wife, Joanne Tucker, and his mother-in-law will allegedly be witnesses in the Odyssey Study Group trial.

Popular celebrity gossip site, Crazy Days and Nights, shared an anonymous tip that is allegedly about the upcoming trial of the group’s leaders.

“When the Manhattan cult case goes to trial, front and center as witnesses will be the mother-in-law of this A-list mostly movie actor and the wife of the actor, both of whom are very prominent members of the cult and were ‘teachers’ of several victims,” the submission reads before naming Driver, Tucker and May.

Neither the actor nor his family are named in a class-action lawsuit taken by former group members nor are they mentioned in “Manhattan Cult Story,” a book that accuses The Odyssey Study Group of being a cult.

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Infamous ‘Cult’ Leader Arrested After Dead Body Found in Home

Far-left activist Gazi Kodzo rose to internet notoriety last year with a series of bizarre online pronouncements he made as the leader of a fringe communist group called the Black Hammer Organization. Kodzo’s online declarations, including the claim that Holocaust victim Anne Frank was a whiny “Karen,” seemed designed to go viral as proof of left-wing activists out of control, and earned mentions from Fox News and other conservative outlets.

But on Tuesday, Black Hammer, dubbed a “cult” by some former members, culminated in tragedy. That morning, an anonymous caller in a suburban Atlanta home rented by Black Hammer contacted police to report that they were being held against their will. When police searched the home, they ordered Kodzo and nine other people outside. In the houes, they found an 18-year-old man named Amonte T. Ammons dead of what police call an “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”

Now Kodzo, a 36-year-old whose legal name is Augustus C. Romain, faces a bevy of criminal charges, including aggravated sodomy, two counts of conspiracy to commit a felony, two counts of false imprisonment, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault, and two counts of criminal street gang activity, according to a press release from the Fayetteville Police Department. Further details on the charges weren’t available Wednesday from the police.

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Utah Ritualized Sexual Abuse Investigation: The Mormon Church And Child Sexual Abuse

An investigation into ritualized child sexual abuse was first announced by the Utah County Sheriff’s Office on May 31st. The USCO released a statement detailing how “multiple county and federal agencies are investigating reports of ritualistic child sexual abuse from as far back as 1990”. I have been following the investigation since the initial announcement and reporting on various angles of the story. I encourage readers to spend time with the previous four parts of this series, particularly the third report on the history of similar allegations in the state of Utah.

For this report I will be looking at the historical record, including lawsuits, church records, and previous reporting from other outlets to document the history of allegations involving members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon Church. I have spoken with current and former members of the Church who hold varying views regarding allegations of ritualized child sexual abuse.

Some former members of the Church of Mormon believe the church itself is corrupted at its root which allows for these types of activities to happen in the first place. I have also spoken with members of the Church of Mormon who acknowledge that the church has a pedophile problem, but do not believe the core structures of the church are infected by pedophiles.

I want to make it clear that this investigation is not intended to be an attack on anyone’s religious beliefs, or individual Mormons. Nor is this piece intended to paint the picture that the entire Church of Mormon is aware of the reports of child sexual abuse. Although some former members of the church have gone so far as accusing the Church of Mormon of being a front for Masonic and/or Satanic activity, I am not ready to make such a judgement. However, I do believe these controversial claims warrant further investigation.

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Neo-Nazi Satanist Cult Is a Terrorist Group, Feds Say 

In the end, the self-professed traitor blinked. On Friday, June 24, former Army Pvt. Ethan Melzer pleaded guilty to three terrorism-related federal charges for a macabre, Satanist-inspired plot to have his former unit attacked by jihadi militants during a deployment overseas in 2020. The thin, bearded 24-year-old entered his change of plea in the Lower Manhattan courtroom of U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods a little over two years since his high-profile arrest in June 2020, and just 11 days before the scheduled start of what would’ve been a first in American jurisprudence: the federal government’s foremost terrorism prosecutors trying an adherent of the shadowy Far Right Order of Nine Angles (O9A) sect.

The Order of Nine Angles, founded in the 1960s by British Satanists, has spread throughout the world in the succeeding decades. Over the past five years, the ideology became intertwined with neo-fascist terrorist groups like the Atomwaffen Division, National Action, and the Base. O9A’s followers stand accused of murder, pedophilia, rape, terrorism, and other crimes in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, and elsewhere. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also indirectly helped accelerate the spread of O9A by employing Joshua Caleb Sutter, the head of the Tempel ov Blood nexion and prolific publisher of O9A-related books through his Martinet Press imprint, as a paid informant for almost 20 years.

Melzer’s conviction is significant: He embodied the worst fears of military and law-enforcement leaders of an “inside threat” intent on inflicting lethal harm on his fellow Americans. Melzer even joined the military in what O9A refers to as an “insight role” to gain weapons and tactical training while using his position in the Army to subvert or damage the institution. The former soldier’s conviction is the first time American authorities have articulated and prosecuted actions driven by a Satanist sect that has inspired millenarian neo-Nazi domestic terrorists and led to several homicides overseas. British law enforcement is so alarmed by the noxious ideology that the Home Office is under pressure to formally ban the Order of Nine Angles as they have done to Al Qaeda, National Action, and other terrorist groups. The importance of Melzer’s case was signaled by the dozens of federal law-enforcement officers in plainclothes present in court last Friday to watch the disgraced G.I. plead guilty.

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These Mormons Have Found a New Faith — in Magic Mushrooms

On a Sunday afternoon in March, a group of 30 strangers huddle under a park pavilion in Salt Lake City, Utah, sipping hot cocoa and shaking hands shyly as snow clots the cottonwoods. A clean-cut gang of mostly white professionals, they are united by their interest in the Divine Assembly, a two-year old church with 3,000 members that considers psilocybin its holy sacrament. 

The church’s co-founders, husband and wife Steve and Sara Urquhart, mingle quietly with the psychedelic-curious, many of whom are either new to tripping or considering their maiden voyage. Steve sticks to the sidelines, every so often reaching to smooth a conical white beard that, combined with his blue eyes and bearlike frame, make him look like a punk Santa Claus. The long beard is the only outer marker of his new identity: Before pivoting to mushroom churches, Urquhart was one of the most powerful Republicans in the Utah State Legislature, serving from 2001 to 2016, with a stint as majority whip in the House before eventually moving over to the Senate. Former colleagues and friends recall his small-government brand of Republicanism as “rock-ribbed.” He was also, like more than 60 percent of Utah and approximately 86 percent of the Legislature in 2021, deeply, devoutly Mormon. 

“We were all the way in,” Urqhuart says of the proudly peculiar American religion with about 6.7 million adherents in the U.S. and about 16.6 million globally. Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 during the Second Great Awakening in upstate New York, Mormonism (or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as church authorities requested it be called in 2018, though many Latter-day Saints, or Saints for short, still use the term “Mormon”) bases its teachings on the revelations of Smith, whom they consider a prophet. According to Smith, who claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon from a pair of gold plates inscribed with “reformed Egyptian,” Latter-day Saints are God’s chosen people destined to restore the original Christian gospel — a gospel that included, they professed up until 1890, polygamy. 

“I knew all the secret handshakes,” Urquhart later divulges after one shot of tequila, and he means it quite literally, demonstrating a dizzying pattern of grips, bumps, and daps that look straight out of a Monty Python skit. 

In all likelihood, Urquhart and others believe now, Smith lifted those handshakes and many other ceremonial elements from the Freemasons, the then-popular secret society that counted Smith as a member. Urquhart also believes, 100 percent seriously, that the LDS Church (the mainstream one he and Mitt Romney are from, not the fundamentalist offshoots depicted in Under the Banner of Heaven) is a cult. Specifically, he says, alluding to the church’s polygamist history and fact that some bishops still ask teens if they are masturbating, “a sex cult with really bad sex.”

Church or cult, Urquhart crashed out of it around 2008. In the park that Sunday, he is in good company. Although the Divine Assembly is not limited to former LDS members, or “post-Mormons” as they refer to themselves, the majority of the crowd by default is, and they’re aching for a new kind of spirituality to fill the void. One couple, Yesenia and Guillermo Ramos, tell me they left the LDS Church in 2012, after it began to feel like the opposite of what they thought it stood for. “God is love,” Yesenia says with conviction, but within the church, she says she felt judged for her decision to be both a mom and a nurse, rather than a stay-at-home mom. Furthermore, Yesenia says, she was sick of the pressure to appear perfect all the time, a common complaint among LDS women that Dr. Curtis Canning, president of the Utah Psychiatric Association, has called “Mother of Zion Syndrome.”

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Utah Ritualized Sexual Abuse Investigation: Is There a History of Ritual Abuse in Utah?

As the Utah primary draws near, the investigation into “ritualized child sexual abuse” has garnered more than 120 tips related to claims of ritualistic sex rings. Let’s examine the history of these allegations in Utah.

In the nearly 4 weeks since the Utah County Sheriff’s Office announced an investigation into allegations of “ritualized child sexual abuse” in three Utah counties, they have received more than 120 tips in the form of phone calls, texts, and emails. UCSO Public Information Officer Sgt. Spencer Cannon told the Salt Lake Tribune that the office has “pulled in” sergeants with experience in sex assault cases to help review the information.

The Last American Vagabond (TLAV) has been following the unusual situation since May 31st when the Utah County Sheriff’s Office announced they were working with multiple county and federal agencies investigating reports of ritualistic child sexual abuse from as far back as 1990. The Sheriff’s Office said the investigation began in April 2021. The investigation subsequently discovered previous reports alleging “similar forms of ritualistic sexual abuse and trafficking” that occurred in Utah County, Juab County, and Sanpete County during the time between 1990 and 2010.

Following the  announcement of this investigation by Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith, Utah County Attorney David Leavitt held a press conference where he shared a 151-page document titled “victim statement” related to a 2012 case involving allegations of sexual abuse of children. Leavitt and several other people are named in the statement as being involved with a group practicing ritual child sex abuse. He claimed the Sheriff’s investigation was a political attack on him related to the June 28th primary elections in Utah.

As TLAV reported last week, courtroom records revealed that Utah County Attorney David Leavitt lied when he said the 2012 case was dismissed by his predecessor because it was “unbelievable,” lacking evidence, and the story of a “tragically mentally ill” woman.

The Salt Lake Tribune has also reported that USCO Sgt. Cannon said the report that Leavitt was referencing was not what started the sheriff’s investigation last year. “We had a victim come forward and disclose abuse of this nature,” Cannon told the SLT. “And so that’s what started our investigation. The case that David Leavitt spoke about is not the case we initially started investigating. It’s not the case that we became aware of in April of last year.”

Cannon did acknowledge that the detectives became aware of the 2012 case and the allegations against therapist David Lee Hamblin, but did not say if the case was part of the current investigation.

As Utahans prepare to vote in the primary on June 28th — a race in which both Sheriff Mike Smith and Utah County Attorney David Leavitt are both up for re-election — we wait to see if there will be any additional announcements, indictments, subpoenas or any official action taken.

To better understand this current investigation, we have examined hundreds of pages of Utah government documents, articles, and allegations of ritualized sexual abuse to paint a picture of this history.

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Google Worker Fired For Blowing The Whistle on ‘Spiritual Organization’ Within Company That’s Been Accused of Sex Trafficking

Google fired one of its employees for blowing the whistle on a “doomsday” cult-like “spiritual organization” within the company.

The employee, Kevin Lloyd, a video producer who worked in the Google Developer Studio, is now suing the tech giant, claiming he was unfairly fired in retaliation after he raised alarm about the religious group.

Lloyd warns the group called the Fellowship of Friends has increasingly gained power at the company by hiring members of its cult-like organization to fill key positions.

Members of the Fellowship of Friends believe they are called to create a new civilization following a doomsday event and implores its followers to attain enlightenment to transcend a state of “waking sleep” state.  The group, which has approximately 1,500 members internationally,  also believes enlightenment is attained by embracing arts including ballet, painting, opera and wine. Friends of Fellowship

The alleged cult-like organization, which collects 10 percent of its’ members’ income, was founded in the 1970s by Robert Earl Burton, who has been sued for sexually assaulting male members of the group.

“Once you become aware of this, you become responsible,” Kevin Lloyd told the New York Times while recounting his decision to sound the alarm on the group’s infiltration of Google. “You can’t look away.”

In his lawsuit, which was filed in a Californian Superior Court in Silicon Valley, Lloyd claims Peter Lubbersthe, director of the Google Developer Studio and a member of Fellowship of Friends, is funneling money from Google to enrich the religious organization and that he was wrongfully terminated for informing his supervisors about the issue.

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