Quote
Kevin
When Dave starts projecting paranoid conspiracy theories, evidence is
often gathered that might support that opinion, but anything that
appears to contradict this theory has a tendency to be viewed as a
deliberate attempt to obscure that truth. I feel something similar
occurs on the RR forum, where my accounts have been dismissed as my
"interpretation", representing the conditioning of my father, or even
a deliberate attempt to disseminate false information.

This post will seek to address the facts as I understand them in
relation to comments made on both forums.

It has been claimed on the RR forum that Dave has fabricated his
connection with the COG and never actually joined. The current view
seems to be that he minimised it and may have an association that
precedes coming to Australia.

There is no doubting the COG represents a significant influence over
my father. He claimed to have only joined them very briefly, I think
three weeks was the initial figure. This certainly minimised a more
significant association. But the quest to find a link that proves a
connection that preceded him coming to Australia raises the risk that
an agenda may interfer with a real discovery of the facts.

I was too young to be a direct witness to my father's life before he
came to Australia, but I have relatives who were, and my memories of
meeting the COG were vivid enough to be sure there is no connection
prior to the one that occured while we were living in Queanbeyan. This
dates back to mid 1972 at least. He was working for the Bible Society
in Canberra and made contact with the COG as a result of them
introducing themselves to the church establishment (Minister's
Fraternal?). We made several trips to Sydney to meet them, and as Dave
now admits, a few stayed in our house where he would have joined,
except they told him they were not equipped to accommodate a whole
family. I would not be surprised if they picked up that he was not
exactly a team player.

"Mo Letters" are what the printed articles were referred to in the
COG, that were commonly distributed as tracts for donations. A far as
I am aware Dave received a single personal letter from the COG leader
and I recall it coming because Dave had painted the name Children of
God on the side of a tiny caravan we were travelling in (late 1972 -
early 1973). The COG in Sydney were upset by the unauthorised use of
their name and sent a letter demanding that he remove it. Dave wrote
to the leadership to protest this. The reply purporting to be from Mo
himself, advised that there was no law against him using the name, but
for the sake of expediency it might be better to accommodate the
wishes of the guys in Sydney. The name was subsequently changed to
Gypsies for Jesus, or Jesus Gypsies.

My parents went through a very difficult period in Broken Hill. In
1974 my father asked me to come with him to Adelaide where he said he
was going to join the COG. I was in year four and wrote a letter to my
teacher about this, before deciding to stay with my mother. Dave now
says he was in the group for about three months. This may be true of
his period under the direct leadership of the "colony" in Adelaide. I
understand it was not a happy fit for either my father or the people
he was trying to work with. He was sent out on outreaches, which
allowed him to return to Broken Hill and visit us.

In the end as Dave has acknowledged he exploited a loophole that
allowed him to operate as an independent "colony" by listing myself
and my siblings as his disciples. He opened a PO Box in the name of
the Children of God and received "Mo letters" directly from Sydney.
Due to our remote location, direct contact with the organisation was
minimal. The odd outreach team come to stay for brief periods and
there were a couple of contentious visits with COG leaders.

I recall a family Bible study when reading a passage from one of
Paul's epistles that mentioned how one should not eat with adulterers,
and Dave explained that on this basis the COG would no longer stay at
our house. Perhaps Cherry's resistance to the COG helped strengthen
Dave's hand on this matter. I don't know. There have been suggestions
that the free sex doctrine was well established long before this.
Brian will tell you that the COG in the early seventies was not very
well connected, so it could have taken time for the "liberties" that
were exercised at the top to filter down as a doctrine and even then,
the "all things are lawful but not all things are expedient", line and
"according to each person's faith" seemed to result in a certain
slipperiness that I understand made it difficult to nail down the
issue, particularly for someone on the relative fringes in an
Australian outback town. Dave claims it was not until the Arthur
letters that the issue was plainly stated. I know that he's made this
a defining point of difference ever since.

But perhaps there were other issues. I know that the COG were critical
of Dave working in a "system job" as an editor at the Regional
Advertiser, that they felt he had a problem with pride and needed to
"forsake" his writing. This prompted him to parcel up and send off to
the COG what I remembered to be a paraphrase of the book of Jeremiah,
and what Dave says was a manuscript for book titled "All Systems Woe".
He also used unsold advertising space to print Mo letters in the
paper. I delivered thousands of these papers and as Dave indicated,
this resulted in our names being listed in the COG newsletter, New
Days News "World Shiner" list (circa 1975).

It's difficult to date exactly when Dave left the COG, (I think this
is true of many xJCs as well) but I do recall him commenting on how he
was surprised that he was still receiving literature after a final
confrontation with the leaders, and kept the PO Box active for some
time after this. By late 1976 Dave had moved to Alice Springs to begin
working on an alcohol rehabilitation centre through the Aboriginal
Congress. The PO Box would have been closed down around this time.

It seems a final COG publication was included in the Regional
Advertiser earlier in 1976 and this has been the basis to suggest Dave
was still involved with the group at this time, and that I have lied
about some dates. I have a vague recollection of a Babylon Bob cartoon
strip, or something of a prophetic nature, which Dave justified for
its content. Remember the contact address was actually Dave's PO box.
Like the Children of God caravan, there was an element of thumbing his
nose at the COG whilst also proving himself to them. The reprinting of
entire articles in the Baby Book series of 1997 is another example of
this.

Many ex-JCs carry mixed feelings about their time in the Jesus
Christians. I don't doubt the same is true of Dave in relation to the
COG. Dave kept the individual Mo letters in folders covered with wood
grain contact paper. But he received a massive paper back compilation
from COGs that we bumped into in Townsville in late 1977. Perhaps this
was where he also received two leather bound volumes, red and blue
that must be what Malcolm recollects? In 1998, soon after expelling
the entire Oz team, Dave purged a lot of stuff before moving house.
This included a box of the COG lit described, which Craig collected,
but which I subsequently disposed of.

There is speculation regarding the use of cartoons to lure in young
people - associating this with pedophiliac practice. You can pick up
practically any newspaper and find political cartoons and comic
strips. This seems to be the medium of social commentary, satire and
subversive comment, which appeals to people of all ages. But since I
was the primary illustrator, and a relative young person I tended to
use illustrations that appealed to me. My sources were initially the
COG artwork, however I enjoyed Asterix and Obelix as a kid and Mad
comics. The Simpsons would become a later influence for the Liberator,
among other sources.

As for Dave's use of the exclamation "Ha" to emphasise a point. It
seems to convey derision and a petty need to score. It may be that
it's something he picked up from the MO letters. But I can't figure
out the significance of the connection that is being made with what I
understand is a victim of COG pedophiliac practice, other than to
suggest they may both be mirroring back the expression used by the
leader of that organisation, unless it was a more common Americanism
of that era.

Dave has sought to blame me for questioning the ambiguity of quotes he
made regarding pedophilia for the various allegations that have
followed, and even suggested I initiated this discussion out of the
blue. This is not true. The original discussion began in response to a
poster on the JCs forum asking why the JCs considered it a sin for
consenting homosexuals to enter relationships comparable to
heterosexual marriage. This woman suggested that morality needs to be
based on minimising harm with the example of rape in which the use of
force against someone is manifestly wrong. Dave was trying to suggest
some things are immoral just because God/society says so. The problem
was that in comparing pedophilia to homosexuality and in the argument
that so-called "seduction" negates the issue of force, Dave appeared
to fail to grasp the issue of coercion and the sense of real harm that
occurs when an adult abuses the trust of a child.

Perhaps in Dave's mind he was just having an intellectual discussion
and so it was not fair to try and analyse what he says beyond that.
But a point is not justified just because you can spin an argument to
defend it, and the isolation of Dave-speak from the real world seems
to be part of the problem. How else can you explain the whipping trial
that went ahead it seems against the good counsel of his own members?
Dave seemed to lose sight of the forest with his interest in the trees
in this conversation, and I felt the same myopic logic resulted in a
convicted pedophile operating without the necessary supervision
required to stop him from re-offending in India. The experiment to see
if a pedophile who was accepted into a community where he would be
denied the private liberties of living on his own and where he was
surrounded by healthy adult child relationships might be
rehabilitated, failed. There were no community children in India, and
so it seemed he was largely unsupervised when he went on to trains to
sell Easy English books and encountered vulnerable street urchins.

The response against this individual when he voluntarily confessed his
crimes was swift and absolute. It may be argued that he should have
been handed over to Indian authorities and the involvement of the
group that this person came from in handing him over to Australian
authorities represents an attempt to distance himself from the
situation, but the severity of the jail sentence stands in contrast to
the minimising cover-ups that appeared to be common in the Catholic
church.

I recalled Dave's resistance to informing community members of this
person's history for fear that the stigma may interfere in his
acceptance into the community (Cherry's counsel ultimately reigned),
and one parents horror in discovering they had left their two children
in his direct care in ignorance. As a consequence I overstated the
extent of that problem, for which I apologised. However, the account
of another pedophile being sent on outreach with a mother and her
children some years later who had not been notified of his history
suggests the original issue that I raised might represent a relevant
concern.

The main point in the forum discussion where Dave denied "force" in
relation to the coercion inherent in pedophilia, was that it might
reflect a blind spot in his own behaviour in influencing young people
to do things they may not have otherwise chosen to do. Dave has argued
that parents have had a whole childhood in which to influence their
son or daughter's thinking and if they have failed in this regard he
is entitled to compete as an influence. Children are exposed to all
kinds of influences and we can't wrap them up in cotton wool. But I
don't think its normal for a 12 year old child from an Indian village
to be told they can come for a visit to Australia where they will be
sent to school, but find themselves sent out to flog literature on the
street instead and told, when they beg to return home, that they are
choosing between serving God or Satan... much less be maligned, after
thirteen years service, with the accusation that she joined with
ulterior motives and left when she saw the prospect of a better life,
taking her husband with her. [Comments posted by Ross and defended by
Dave]

I think comments where Dave minimises the nature of sexual perversion
in the COG comes from the perception that critics have exaggerated the
common experience, and individuals should take responsibilities for
their complicity in the activity they were part of. Strangely this
seems to result in Dave trying to blame xJCs for things they did under
his leadership and acting like a victim when confronted by anyone who
takes offence at his various attempt to demean and demonise those who
oppose his excesses.

I am not seeking to join a lynch mob or have anyone publicly flogged
for his "errors of judgement". But the truth is the truth and it might
be in Dave's interest to swallow a little pride and accept a little
personal responsibility for his actions, instead of always blaming
other people for his failings.

Quote
Stoic
There is no blood on their hands, they made a decision that you disagree with.

If you ever truly considered what 'blood on your hands' meant, you would not use such a phrase so lightly, to describe a difference of opinion.