"i suppose you could have said that about david koresh and his cult. maybe you weren't taught some of the things we were, eg: survival, military tactics, how to shoot an M16, or why you need a 6 inch blade on your knife. i don't know how much has changed, MAYBE they don't have a 'stockpile' in maine anymore; but not everyone knew about that either! "
Whoever ex-follower is, well, it appears your comments are full of the same old smug, self-righteous attitude of that of the " Abensur family"....your comments sound especially condescending..may I quote "maybe you weren't taught some of the things WE were"...yes we probably weren't taught the things you were because for some unknown reason "we" were excluded, placed in positions to feel inferior, which is where the heart of the abuse by this group lies...
Any group or individual who defines themselves as "chosen", "special" is ripe for abusing those that they define as being not chosen..."the goy" so to speak. (Maybe a read of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is in order)
It is the hypocrisy of Hickman and his cronies that disgusts people like myself. You see I and a few others were always kinda of very close, very close to people in the group with power including Hickman...but never quite accepted...no matter how much I practiced Jewish Law, brought new members in, gave money...it didn't seem to matter...but there were those who seemed to do whatever they wanted...eating "Kosher" Maine lobsters, stealing from other people in the name of the messiah no less,sexual acts,etc...and they were rewarded with elderships, titles of "Princes" etc, I can re-call one of your fellow "youth" members a "chosen" young Prince who engaged in behaviors that Hickman railed against in his sermons, but he remained a "Prince", perhaps banished for a time, but always returned a "Prince"....as I look back I think more depended on having a cute a-ss
than anything else.
In your comments to the individual above you have given yourself away...you seem to be still mired in the "I posses something you don't attitude" Am I judging? Yea, guess I am...oh,yea, why DO you need a 6 inch blade on your knife?? care to tell us??? or is that still a "secret" that only "certain" people know.

sorry, i didn't mean to sound smug or condescending.
when i said 'we', i was referring to the '30 yrs ago, we'. i assumed 'by myself' is not of that era; and that he might think things have changed. i was making the point that the 'roots', the beginning, in the old days, there were certain things taught and believed. and back then some didn't know, so don't assume there aren't still secrets. jeez, it was based on secrets. (mostly, jack's delusions)
i wasn't a prince or elder, but was friends with a few. but most of what i wrote about was common knowledge. there were classes on military. southhold was a 'survival training camp'. M16s were put in the hands of teenagers in group 'classes'! 'princes' sat at a service w/ bows.
if you think those people aren't dangerous, look at the roots. the so-called 'leaders' are not the type to change!
are you judging? whatever. am i defending myself? yea, a little. again. sorry if my writing sounds that way, maybe its the anger you hear.
and to answer you - we were told, "a 6 inch blade can go under the ribs and still puncture the heart. so buy your knives accordingly."

That's Ok I'll pass on the knife..geeze I swerve to avoid hitting a squirrel and I'm gonna stab a guy under the ribs to reach his heart,lol,lol...I almost bought a bow off Cory, can't remember his last name, but I do remember Lou R and Bob G saying, Cory was the only guy who knew what he was doing with the Bows & arrow thing..mostly because if I re-call he was a deer bow hunter for years before he became involved with Shoresh. He had a bit of a Scandinavian accent if I re-call correctly. He was instructing Kenny U, and a number of the "youth" back then on how to shoot with a bow. I have a vague memory of either going to his house, or maybe it was Southhold to watch him shoot the bow and teach some of the young "Princes.". He gave me and my friend a brief lesson, not because we were being "chosen" for anything but Cory was a nice guy I think and he didn't want us to feel left out of the group that day....a far cry from others who would walk straight up to people and tell you to leave, "who invited you?" that sort of thing. I witnessed that a few times, but it never happened to me because I was good friends and "prayer partner" of someone Jack and Lou took great interest in....why they had an interest in him is beyond me..I was never told but it eventually broke up our friendship, one that went way back to Jr. High school.

I've been following the dialogue between Surfer54 and Exfollower with interest and some concern. I have already stated a few times that I was an elder for the last few years of the family before everything broke loose. There was definetely a militaristic theme to some teachings that focused on the "end times". We were taught to be prepared for surviving in a world that would be violent and without all the trapping of modern life such as electricity, cars, electronic devices, etc. There were winter camping trips that I took part of where we taught others how to live in that environment, there were bow and arrow hunting lessons as well as lessons on how to kill and butcher animals such as deer. This was done so we could survive. Self defense was also a focus as far as security and safety. I personally never saw or was part of any education in killing another person. It was certainly a topic of discussion when safety and security came up, but an actual lesson or instruction is not anything I saw. Everyone was taught that we were special and selected by G-d to be his servants but then so are so many other groups. I keep reading of the abuses done by JH and others, the sexual violations of young men while they were minors, they severe beatings, private trips to Maine, "kosher" maine lobsters (really?) and so many other horrible things that it makes me glad I was not included in them even when I was an elder. I am saddened that apparently some faction of the family still exists and fale teachings still go on. It has been 30 long years since that night when everything was revealed (as a good friend of mine has termed it "Sunday Bloody Sunday") and yet I still read on thissite that so many people are still strugglnig with what happened to them and their family. So many good and decent people were mislead and lied to. Where did all the good intentions and beliefs go, I have no idea. Also where did all that money go. There was real estate, houses, possiions, bank accounts, etc. Where is all that capital now and who controls it. I wish more people who were part of it back then would be open and agree to meet so we can all verbalize what happened and maybe we can help each other. I have my name on my posts as I am not afraid of anything from back then and am not hiding anything or guilty of any violations to anyone. Please let others come forth and be open so we can dilogue in person one day.
Thank you.

You know, I was really excited when I found this forum a few months ago to share and just get the whole big ugly off my chest without being judged. But that doesn't happen here. Half the people here found sanity themselves, way back in the 80's, saw the abuse and took the next trip to sane with apparently some backward glances. My parents didn't, and they stayed and could have fucked up my life had I been born under a different zodiac or chinese year or something. I said "some backward glances" because an alarming amount of you ask what is being taught now. Some of the questions seem frenzied, particularly the ones in my inbox. Have I responded? No. And I will not. There is no valid reason why what is being taught should be shared and allowed to pollute anyone else than it already has. If you want to know if the FBI has a case on this group, then call them. There is a thing called the freedom of information act and Jack is dead, they will release the information.

The other half of the people on here are just now finding out the truth about their entire lives,(and yes they also call themselves the "youth"). When you are born into a thought control pattern, you don't know that there is difference. You might suspect that what is being told to you, the guilt you live with, the burden you continually bear to be special, and perfect, and secret, and "a light" and all the other garbage is somehow wrong, but you don't know. As a child we learn about new things based on how they relate to things we already know, by association. So when you act the aggressor to the people on here who have just had their entire basis for reality stripped away because the things they based every truth in their life on are actually untrue, have a care.

If someone just wants to say, wow. This is cool that there are other people I can interact with about this whole crazy thing, then we should let them say that. No one here is any better than anyone else. You are not for having left back on sunday bloody sunday exfollower, and I am not for having left after reading that article 28 years later. We are not important because we hung out with the Ramus or Smestads or the Grosses. We are not special because we had a prayer partner or were consecrated as a Beer Sheba or a Michael. These things are not REAL. What is real is that we all listened to our tiny little voice called intuition, stood up for ourselves, called a spade a spade and got the hell out, be damned the lost friends and connections.

That kind of thing takes real guts. Getting up every day and not talking about being a "Cult survivor" is something I strive for. Personally people who call themselves victims or survivors make me sick, because they still want to associated with the negative instead of creating a new personal identity. I gave my entire life and mind to this garbage, and I don't want to give any more. I also don't want to see anyone else ridiculed for how they are dealing with it.
Please for the sake of sanity and not polluting your mind with delusions, please stop asking about the teachings. Its the same muddled up garbage with a new bow on top.

Can't we just use this forum to talk about that painful and important process of moving on. Let's talk about how you build trust again, how you learn to have friends that don't degrade you or falsely pump you up. Let's talk about the really difficult religion and faith decisions that people had to make after leaving.

But let's leave the pissing match style of "I knew more about this than you did" bullshit out of it. The people who care about that stuff are the people that still harbor remorse about leaving and maybe have an elitist complex.

Am I being a hypocrite? Sure. But I don't think you all realize how agonizing it is to read over and over again who you used to hang out with, and how you were close to the inner circle. I have this song playing in my mind when I read these posts, its the posts that never end! Yadda Yadda Yadda. But your posts don't sound like you are happy to have left, and you must have been lucky to have dodged that adoption bullet. They sound more like you regret not having been "good enough" to be chosen. You should thank your lucky stars or whoever/whatever it is you pray you, or it could have been your young virgin ass being sodomized by a delusion pedophile.

I think it is important to note that the path to healing from such an ordeal as being a victim of a mind controlling cult becomes different or personal for each individual. All of us who have moved on in our lives from this ordeal, whether you moved on 30 years ago or last week suffer from or maybe experience is a better term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a psychiatric condition. Like all psychiatric conditions, the symptoms run a long a spectrum from mild to severe, that is defined by the level of severity the symptoms impair your ability to function in 3 main areas of life. Personal relationships, your vocational life (can you work,attend school, be productive, contribute to the general good of society) and third your physical/mental health. Probably the most severe forms of any psychiatric condition severely impacts all 3 areas. If you ran a spectrum line along a continuum of severe to mild psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia would be on the severe end of the spectrum while anxiety/affective disorders would be on the lesser severe end....I'm talking the severe forms of psychiatric disorders, not things like adjustment disorder which is basically fancy terminology for someone adjusting to a change in their life like a child moving to a new school district, etc.
The good news for us is PTSD, depression are psychiatric disorders that respond favorably to treatment(s) which may or may not include medication, psychotherapy, behavioral therapy, self-help groups (like this forum).....The path to healing has different time frames and levels for each individual. A therapist once told me, "You can never put it behind you, but you can put it beside you.."..Iv'e come to believe through my own experience and working with PTSD patients that that is indeed the case. It is very possible to integrate the trauma into your life so it makes sense for you and you can move on to a productive, over all healthy quality of life. I do not have a certificate from my therapist, or "shrink" that I have achieved that, because I think I will continue to do that till the day I die.
Please understand Dissillusioned, that it is vital for PTSD victims to tell THEIR stories. Especially to other people who have experienced the same trauma. That is why for example, Vietnam War veterans respond more favorably and probably faster to treatment offered by other veterans themselves. It is an enormously powerful, cathartic experience to tell your story and place it in the overall context of your life. I can only say that is all I was doing by telling my stories as I did above. You're right do I think it matters who I hung out with in this group 30 years ago, No, it means nothing, only to me, because I lost a dear friend over it and yes, that stays with me to this day, in the close friendships I have cultivated in my life. It takes time, therapy and yes telling your story to others and sheer will of just trusting people to figure out not everyone is out to steal your money or take away the human need to be accepted, loved for who you are, plain and simple.
This forum is healing for different people in different ways. Telling the stories, bizarre as some of them are are the individual's reality and to tell them to others who lived it in some way and to be believed is the part of the healing process. You see, PTSD victims are victimized twice when they tell their stories of the abuse to other people, even professionals, and are not believed. The worst thing anyone can do to a child who comes forward with an accusation of abuse, is to NOT believe them, to dismiss them, to minimize the abuse. The person in essence is de-humanizing the victim, the typical response to a child who says "Uncle whoever, touched me and did this to me", is "Uncle whoever wouldn't do that"....the abuse to the victim already seems un-real to them and now others are telling them it really is un-real...the victim comes to doubt their experience, their emotions, their memory, etc...it can be so severe the individual develops a psychosis, or disassociates from reality.There is some evidence the most severe example of this is multiple personality disorder. The victim literally takes on another personality, identity to avoid living their own painful identity.
So in conclusion, we all heal differently and at a different pace. What this forum did for me and I suspect some others is provide a means to tell "my" story to others who came from a similar experience. Not exactly the same experience, because as I said your experience is your reality, I cannot and will not judge you as to whether or not it was or is "real". It's real for you and that's all that matters. As I have said in older posts, I strongly suggest therapy for victims of this phenomenon of living in/with a cult. I cannot begin to even pretend to know the pain, emotions of the individuals like yourself who were raised, immersed in the life of this cult "community." I had a life before this Hickman cult, and I have a life after it. As you so astutely point out, that life is all you ever knew and know. I only wish you well, but as I said above, you really need to talk to a therapist, who you can at least begin to try and form a trusting, helpful relationship with. It is vital to your healing process, in my professional opinion. I apologize to you and anyone else on this forum if my past
posts, telling my story, hurt you, or caused you pain, they were not meant in that spirit. As I wrote those posts of the "stories" I didn't realize how much they were a part of my healing, until I read your comments. So, on that note I thank you for that and for again- another revelation that I too am still progressing in my healing process.

This is mostly in response to disillusioned 1's last post. I am not sure of other people's motives in speaking about their history with Jack and inner circle, elders, etc. I did mention some of my connections in my other post, mostly as a way of letting everyone know that (1) I was really there and (2) not just on the outer fringes. My intent was not to compete with anyone, but to give some credibility to what I have to say. There is the possibility that those mentioning names are trying to connect with old friends they've lost touch with.

I do understand that the experience of the current youth is different from our experience in the 70's and 80's. Both experiences are valid, although I can only imagine that having been born into this makes it harder to seek another way of being and harder to leave. I also do not understand the importance of what is being taught now to those who have been gone for such a long time. Maybe the people who ask those questions can explain why it is important to them.

I would like you to know that you will wake up one day (although it may be years from now) and not think about being a cult survivor. There will be days that go by and eventually weeks when it hardly crosses your mind. I don't know what your connection is with your family or friends that remain members of this cult, how often or even if you can have contact with them, but I know you will figure that out. Any loss like this takes time and you need to mourn. I'd like you to know that 25+ years later, sometimes I don't think about it until someone asks me, "so how do you know so and so?" or "where did you meet your (ex) husband?"

But I can remember the pain of those first years, the fear of some of my friends, the confusion of us all. For me there was a shutting out of anything spiritual or religious for a long time. I would say, "I did enough for G-d in those 10 years of my life." But I have eventually come back to having a spiritual life although not specifically religious. I have friends that converted to Judaism and some whose path has led them to other religions. For us one of the things that drew us to the "community" was that we were spiritual seekers to begin with.

I can tell you that I am extremely happy to have left, although I don't regret the experience. What did it teach me? The value of community and good friends who can support each other through some tough times. To be suspicious whenever I hear someone say they know The Truth or The Way. The ability to take the good out of the bad and painful.

I don't care about the teachings or the money, I do care about the people still there who want out and the youth and their children that may feel that "out" is not even a choice. I would be glad to listen about just how hard this is for you and may be able to shed a little light on the positive things the future can hold for you, or things that might you get through.

I didn't think you sounded hypocritical. I agree that this would be a great place to share how it's going for those who have recently left, how those who left a long time ago dealt with it, and for those thinking about leaving to share there thoughts about the confusion they may be having.

I agree with dkj17 without even knowing who she is. These things happened a long time ago and so many of us have moved on with our lives and grew and prospered. Certainly the first several years, or even decades, were tough on many of us. Some of us went through terrible times with our flesh and blood families who could not accept or understand what we were doing. My own parents and immediate family of aunts and uncles were all holocaust survivors and could not accept or wanted to even hear about my involvement with "the family" no matter how much of a jewish spin I put on it. They were so relieved and happy when I left and returned to conservative judaism. I then went through a long period of guilt over what I put them through when I realized the errors in the teachings I was receiving. I would love to become part of a face to face meeting with any other remaining memebers of the community who are still in the Long Island area. Not to rehash and relive those years but to share our stories on life as we now have it and what we learned over the years. perhaps we could help others still having issues. I, as did dkj17, learned a lot of good things back then such as the value of a family-like community where we could depend on each other, the true love and friendship we felt for each other but also the need to question things when an "expert" says them. I could go on and on but this forum is not the place for that. A real life meeting would be great.
Thanks for listening,
Marvin

Quote
dkj17
This is mostly in response to disillusioned 1's last post. I am not sure of other people's motives in speaking about their history with Jack and inner circle, elders, etc. I did mention some of my connections in my other post, mostly as a way of letting everyone know that (1) I was really there and (2) not just on the outer fringes. My intent was not to compete with anyone, but to give some credibility to what I have to say. There is the possibility that those mentioning names are trying to connect with old friends they've lost touch with.

I do understand that the experience of the current youth is different from our experience in the 70's and 80's. Both experiences are valid, although I can only imagine that having been born into this makes it harder to seek another way of being and harder to leave. I also do not understand the importance of what is being taught now to those who have been gone for such a long time. Maybe the people who ask those questions can explain why it is important to them.

I would like you to know that you will wake up one day (although it may be years from now) and not think about being a cult survivor. There will be days that go by and eventually weeks when it hardly crosses your mind. I don't know what your connection is with your family or friends that remain members of this cult, how often or even if you can have contact with them, but I know you will figure that out. Any loss like this takes time and you need to mourn. I'd like you to know that 25+ years later, sometimes I don't think about it until someone asks me, "so how do you know so and so?" or "where did you meet your (ex) husband?"

But I can remember the pain of those first years, the fear of some of my friends, the confusion of us all. For me there was a shutting out of anything spiritual or religious for a long time. I would say, "I did enough for G-d in those 10 years of my life." But I have eventually come back to having a spiritual life although not specifically religious. I have friends that converted to Judaism and some whose path has led them to other religions. For us one of the things that drew us to the "community" was that we were spiritual seekers to begin with.

I can tell you that I am extremely happy to have left, although I don't regret the experience. What did it teach me? The value of community and good friends who can support each other through some tough times. To be suspicious whenever I hear someone say they know The Truth or The Way. The ability to take the good out of the bad and painful.

I don't care about the teachings or the money, I do care about the people still there who want out and the youth and their children that may feel that "out" is not even a choice. I would be glad to listen about just how hard this is for you and may be able to shed a little light on the positive things the future can hold for you, or things that might you get through.

I didn't think you sounded hypocritical. I agree that this would be a great place to share how it's going for those who have recently left, how those who left a long time ago dealt with it, and for those thinking about leaving to share there thoughts about the confusion they may be having.

WOW! i couldn't have said it better. that's why i quoted the entire thing. perhaps my writing does not communicate what i want to say or what i feel.

unfortunately, for y'all, that won't stop me from trying. let me again say i don't mean to offend. and i certainly don't think i'm better than anyone else. also, re: "pissing contest" - i doubt any of us think of it that way... that would certainly be a contest no one wants to win!

Although I left Hickman in '78 I have a lot of nightmares about it. But my mom once told me, "That was the best one you had!"

Fight back against mind control, manipulating leaders and those who would exploit you. Take control of your own destiny. Before you get involved with a religious movement, investigate it thoroughly first.