Tag: religion

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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Shinzo Abe’s Murder Suspect Claims Motive Of His Attack

Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, was unemployed and had served in the Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) for three years until 2005, according to police.

He was arrested in the Japanese city of Nara where he allegedly shot Abe, who was delivering a campaign speech ahead of the July 10 upper house election.

Yamagami, when apprehended, admitted his intention to kill Abe whom he believed was connected to a religious organization that had bankrupted his family, The Asahi Shimbun reported, citing investigative sources.

“My family joined that religion and our life became harder after donating money to the organization,” Yamagami was quoted as saying by the sources.

The suspect told investigators that he initially targeted the organization’s leader, “but it was difficult,” so he decided to change target.

“I took aim at Abe since I believed that he was tied [to the organization]. I wanted to kill him,” he said. Yamagami also admitted that he attempted to make explosives.

An unnamed source, who was identified as Yamagami’s relative in the report, said the suspect’s family “fell apart” because of the religious group, and that he was “convinced that Yamagami suffered damage from the organization.”

The suspect used a handmade gun measuring 40 centimeters in length and 20 centimeters in height. Police also found similar guns, explosives, and cylindrical objects during searches at Yamagami’s apartment in Nara.

Yamagami had previously worked as a dispatched staff worker for multiple companies after resigning from MSDF. He started working at a manufacturing company in the Kansai region in 2020 but left in May for health reasons.

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War on churches: Pennsylvania town cracks down on feeding the homeless

A lot of powerful people in this country think it’s really important to put religion in its place. They reduce the free exercise of religion to the freedom of worship, and they argue that faith should be strictly private. They also believe that a church building must be exclusively for worship and not for any of the other aspects of people living out their faith.

Pottstown, Pennsylvania, is a working-class town of 20,000 between Philadelphia and Reading. It has more than its share of poverty, which is why Christ Episcopal Church and Mission First Church run robust aid programs, especially during and after the pandemic. The churches give out free meals to the public once a week, provide counseling and mental health support, and hand out groceries, toiletries, and other staples for free.

But the Pottstown government is having none of it. According to local law, a church building can be used only for worship and “those accessory activities as are customarily associated” with worship. In June, a zoning officer sent a violation notice instructing the churches that they must cease their good deeds or go through the zoning hearing board to seek a variance.

“Civil action will commence with the Districts Justice if these violations are not corrected,” the zoning officer wrote in a letter.

Local governments have a long and storied history of stopping religious congregations from serving the poor. Mike Bloomberg wouldn’t let a synagogue donate bagels to homeless shelters. Dozens of other cities have outlawed feeding the homeless.

Pottstown’s actions against the churches are particularly striking because they don’t even involve a safety or food regulation. Instead, the town is attempting to weaponize the very definition of what a church building is in order to prevent worshippers from using it to follow the command of Jesus Christ: “When I was hungry, you fed me.”

“It is the opinion of this office that the use of the property has changed and, by definition, is more than that of a Church,” the zoning officer wrote. He included the zoning code’s definition of a church: “A building wherein persons assemble regularly for religious worship and that is used only for such purposes and for those accessory activities as are customarily associated therewith.”

It’s a horribly crimped view of what a church is, and it’s a view the churches’ leaders reject.

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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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Scientism, Not Science, Drives Technocracy And Transhumanism

Science has long been regarded as a stronghold of logic and reason. Scientists don’t draw conclusions based on emotions, feelings or sheer faith. It’s all about building a body of reproducible evidence. Well, that’s what it used to be, but as technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, it has brought with it its own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science. Sheldon Richman with The Libertarian Institute writes:1

“The popular slogan today is ‘Believe in science.’ It’s often used as a weapon against people who reject not science in principle but rather one or another prominent scientific proposition, whether it be about the COVID-19 vaccine, climate change … to mention a few …

The clearest problem with the admonition to ‘believe in science’ is that … well-credentialed scientists — that is, bona fide experts — are found on both (or all) sides of a given empirical question … Moreover, no one, not even scientists, are immune from group-think and confirmation bias …

Apparently, under the believers’ model of science, truth comes down from a secular Mount Sinai (Mount Science?) thanks to a set of anointed scientists, and those declarations are not to be questioned. The dissenters can be ignored because they are outside the elect. How did the elect achieve its exalted station? Often, but not always, it was through the political process …

But that’s not science; it’s religion, or at least it’s the stereotype of religion that the ‘science believers’ oppose in the name of enlightenment. What it yields is dogma and, in effect, accusations of heresy. In real science, no elect and no Mount Science exists.

Real science is a rough-and-tumble process of hypothesizing, public testing, attempted replication, theory formation, dissent and rebuttal, refutation (perhaps), revision (perhaps), and confirmation (perhaps). It’s an unending process, as it obviously must be …

The institutional power to declare matters settled by consensus opens the door to all kinds of mischief that violate the spirit of science and potentially harm the public financially and otherwise.”

Technocracy News also added a comment2 to Richman’s article, noting that “Scientism is at the root of both technocracy and transhumanism, indicating that the revolution waged against the world is religious in nature.”

Whether the war against humanity is truly underpinned by religion or not is open for debate and interpretation. But what is clear is that something has shifted science away from its conventional foundation into something that very much resembles religious faith. In other words, it’s a belief even in the absence of evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, and this is a very serious problem.

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Megachurch Leader Sentenced To 16 Years For Child Sexual Abuse

The leader of the La Luz Del Mundo Church was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for the sexual abuse of teens. Naasón Joaquín García was sentenced in Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday, after he pleaded guilty to three felonies just days before his long-awaited trial.

Garcia plead guilty to two counts of forcible oral copulation involving minors and one count of a lewd act on a 15-year-old child. He was scheduled to go on trial Monday. He faced 23 felony counts that included allegations of human trafficking to produce child pornography and rape, but he accepted a last minute plea deal from the California Attorney General’s office.

When he took the plea deal, some of his victims who wanted to testify against him became enraged. They were promised that no plea deal would be offered. In return for the guilty plea, the DA dropped the most serious allegations of five victims from 2015 to 2018.

“As for the Jane Doe, at this point I apologize,” said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen. “My hands are tied. Lawyers do what lawyers do.”

La Luz Del Mundo is the largest evangelical church in Mexico and has branches in more than 50 countries. To his more than five million followers worldwide, Garcia had been considered an “apostle” of Jesus Christ. To his victims, he was Satan incarnated.

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Southern Baptist Religious Leaders Release List of Pastors Accused of Sexual Abuse After A Multi-Million Dollar Investigation

On Thursday, the Southern Baptist Convention released a list of ministers who have been protected for more than a decade after committing sexual abuse against congregants. 

The list, released by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), followed a report that contained more than 700 names, with more than 400 included via direct affiliation with the religious denomination. 

On the list are four individuals who remain in leadership positions within the denomination’s churches. The list was primarily a secret until Guidepost’s report was made public on Sunday. 

“Releasing this list is a symbolic gesture. ‘This is the bare minimum thing we can do,’” said Todd Benkert, an Indiana pastor in the SBC.

Much of the information in the release is redacted at present; the redacted information is expected to be released at a future date. 

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