Bob Ortega
The Republic | azcentral.com
Thu Jul 11, 2013 3:01 PM
James Arthur Ray, the self-help author convicted on three counts of negligent homicide in the so-called “sweat-lodge” deaths near Sedona in October 2009, is to be released Friday morning from the Lewis state prison in Buckeye.

He will have served just under 20 months of the three concurrent two-year terms to which he was sentenced in November 2011 for the deaths of Kirby Brown, 38; James Shore, 30; and Liz Neuman, 49.

The three died of heat stroke and organ failure after a sweat-lodge ceremony Ray led as part of a five-day spiritual retreat at the Angel Valley resort.

At the trial, Ray's attorneys called the deaths a tragic, unavoidable accident and argued that some unknown toxin might have caused the deaths. But jurors didn't believe that theory. Several said afterward that Ray had ignored plenty of warning signs of danger at the event. Brown and Shore died of heat stroke after they passed out and their bodies were left unnoticed in the sweat lodge for 20 minutes after the event ended. Liz Neuman died of organ failure at a Flagstaff hospital nine days later.

At his sentencing, Ray apologized but said he didn’t know anyone was dying.

"There's not one single day that passes that I don't relive the moments of that night in my life, asking what I missed, what I could have done differently,” he said. Ray declined an interview request yesterday by The Republic. His family members didn’t respond to messages.

Three years ago, Brown’s family created a nonprofit, Seeksafely, to educate the public about risks due to the unregulated nature of much of the self-help industry, and to promote professional standards. On Monday, in anticipation of Ray’s release, the family issued a call on self-help practitioners to sign a promise to provide truthful and accurate information to participants, and to keep them safe at self-help events.

Since Monday, the group said, it has directly contacted 150 leading self-help practitioners, including Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and Joe Vitale. So far, three practitioners have agreed to sign the promise, said Ginny Brown, Kirby Brown’s mother. Seeksafely will announce the promise at an event in New York on Friday.

But, Brown said, “we understand people may not have had a chance to get back to us, people may be on vacation. We want to encourage them to join us in making this industry safer. ... This is bigger than James Ray. We want to empower seekers to ask more questions, and we hope the announcement tomorrow will encourage those we’ve contacted to see whether they can promise to behave in this particular manner.”

The group’s website, seeksafely.org, tracks which self-help practitioners have or haven’t signed the pledge.

People be vigilent.

Here is the thread for the James Ray discussion.

[forum.culteducation.com]