Tag Archives: christian ritual abuse

LOCKED IN: by John Huddle

At the 2014 conference for the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), I was in a conference filled with cult survivors. We were sitting in a large circle, some of us child survivors, some parents who had been lured, yet all of us had one commonality, we were victims. We shared openly, and a comradely connection swept through the room.

There was a man with a great sense of humor who seemed to interject at just the right time with softly funny quips that seemed to break moments of heaviness.  He had a gentle smile and kind demeanor.  John Huddle, survivor of Word of Faith Fellowship cult and author of LOCKED IN, ended up spending time with our group of survivors.  It was a great connection of healing and realizing that none of us were alone.  I was thrilled to meet another author, and we exchanged our books with each other.

Huddle’s book, LOCKED IN, opens with a young John, innocent minded, with a heart to do good in his community, a working man who volunteered at his local church.  He meets a like-minded woman and soon marries.  Life seems fulfilling, with Christian oriented goals of giving and helping in the community.  But this simple life quickly takes a turn when a woman named Jane Whaley enters the scene. John’s church, formerly led by Gerald and Linda Southerland, merges with the Whaley ministry and morphs into what would be re-titled as Word of Faith Fellowship.   Jane Whaley rules her congregation with an iron fist.  Her intensive and extensive set of rules are strenuous, dictating everything from styles of dress to her members’ employment, relationships, how children should be disciplined and much more.  In time, John and his wife have a family, but as his family grows, so does the sadistic, abusing and controlling environment and rituals set out by Jane Whaley.  The congregation travels to Brazil on recruiting trips. Over time, John becomes conflicted.  He struggles to come to terms with the truth of what he is embedded in.  Eventually, John is forced to make a decision that will ultimately change his life forever.

LOCKED IN is an excellently written, compelling and fast read.  Well-crafted with a style that can be related with, LOCKED IN allows the reader to follow the slow unfolding of religious based mind control on an adult.  The question of how an adult is slowly lured, turned and trapped into an abusive cult is lain out with brilliant precision.  With an informative forward by Lorna Goldberg, L.C.S.W, Psy.D, former President of International Cultic Studies Association, and quoting cult experts such as Janja Lalich, PhD, LOCKED IN tells the story of how innocent humans are preyed upon by swindlers who use religion to extract everything they can from their victims.

I recently had the honor to guest host one of their broadcasts and sit down to talk with John about the experiences he details in LOCKED IN.  John also discussed the current court case involving assault victim, Matthew Fenner by members of Word of Faith Fellowship.  Click below to listen to John’s interview.

John’s blog is a hub which details the history and the current drama involving the criminality of WOFF.  To stay abreast with the current events of the WOFF criminal case, follow John’s blog.  Word of Faith Fellowship has been deemed an extremely brutal cult and is currently charged with human trafficking of its Brazil members.

Vennie Kocsis is the best-selling author of Cult Child and the hostess of Survivor Voices Show and her live Sunday broadcast Off the Cuff. She is an advocate, poet and artist.

The Horror at 1379 Milepost

If you take a drive from Fairbanks, Alaska, an hour down Richardson Highway, through Delta Junction, you will arrive at 1379 Milepost. There you will turn onto a solitary road. At the end of that road is a religious commune with a history so horrible, the average person can only listen with radical acceptance, in order to grasp the total truth about the roots of this cult.  Child Abuse.  Sexual Molestation.  Mental Brainwashing.  Torture.  Public Humiliation.  Sleep Deprivation.  Control.  Triangulation.  All orchestrated in a patriarchal society of narcissists.

Three years ago, a couple of young reporters made a trip out to two of the Alaska compounds. At the 1379 Milepost compound, where I lived from the ages of seven to fourteen, they were met by a man named David Johnson, Their eyes were wide with disbelief. What my fellow survivor and I had told them was in fact, truth. There are compounds deep in the Alaskan woods, secluded, patrolled and controlled, a place where they were not allowed to step foot anywhere, except the office inside of the Tabernacle.  A tour of that compound was out of the question, according to David Johnson.

Plans for The Land Cult Compound 76-74

The original survey plans for “The Land” cult compound at 1379 Milepost, Delta Junction, Alaska

The compound I was on had several names including, but not limited to, Dry Creek, Living Word Ministry, The Farm, Game Creek or as we referred to it when we lived there, “The Land”. They quit claimed the deeds back and forth, most likely to avoid taxes, changing names, hustling land parcels together. Douglas McClain, Jr was just a child on this compound with me. His father, Douglas Sr, groomed him on a path into prison, where he sits today, awaiting appeal. They were hustling a drug derived from goat’s blood. You can read the actual court complaint here:

Security and Exchange Commission vs Stephen D. Ferrone, Douglas A. McClain, Jr., Douglas A. McClain Sr., and et al.

Doug McClain Quit-Claim Deed

This is just one of several deeds I have showing the quit claim sell of The Land between Douglas McClain and George Harris.

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Sam Fife in the green coat, with his wife and their private plane, scoping out “The Land”

The words the main reporter used to describe his brief visit to the compound felt familiar to me:

“Creepy.”
“The energy was so thick and heavy it could be cut.”
“An air of sadness hovering.”
“Desolate.”
“Isolated.”

Indeed. I nodded. I know. I remember David Johnson, with his slit eyes and foul energy. He doled out a few beatings.  Many of the adults where abusers. It was, after all, God’s will to strip a child of its flesh, as Brother Sam Fife would instruct. If we weren’t being punished, we were being humiliated, gossiped about, and any sexual abuse that was found out in later years is blamed on the victim.  Still today, the mentality remains the same. Religion cloaking forced insanity.  We were monitored, lived in continuous fear and told the “night watchmen” were there to keep the bears out.  Yet, the compound was so large, it was impossible for them to watch everything at all times, hence my brother’s success on his second escape.

Bryce and Pat Alloe

Young men at “The Land” approximately, 1980/1981, monitoring with guns.

Three years ago I was there as an adult, hunkered down in Fairbanks, Alaska, just miles away from so many people who had either abused me directly or who I had witnessed abuse other children. I wanted to drive onto that compound myself. I remember the layout like the back of my hand. I could navigate it in the dead of night. I wanted to find Marilyn Hagley and ask her why she beat me so much when she was my teacher.  Maybe if abusers experience what they have doled out onto children, they will get a notion of the affect it leaves behind.

Not far from The Land at 1379 Milepost is another compound owned by this cult. It is controlled by a man named Bill Grier.  Whitestone Farms is located not far from The Land. Some cult apologists have adamantly denied being associated with Sam Fife. Yet, Whitestone is on the cult’s Convention schedule, and Bill Grier’s criminal record began in the 1970’s. Their website proudly boasts about the man who helped broker their land; a man named Doug McClain.  When the pieces fit, they fit.  When the puzzle reveals the picture, it’s existence cannot be denied.

History of Whitestone Screenshot

ScreenshotBillGrierArrestedforExorcism

Press release naming Bill Grier in the use of exorcism on children in school from “Today’s World”, edition dated: 5/23/1974

I remember conventions. Six, sometimes eight hours of sitting with no breaks or food. My mother sometimes kept mints in her purse.

“To give us all a little sugar so we won’t get faint.” She’d say.

Conventions are hardcore mind control sessions with the Elite Move Leaders all gathering, vying for the position to preach their sordid interpretation of Biblical text. None of it matters. It’s all just long sessions of angry preachers feeding the fear of Hell and counter love bombing with the concept of Heaven and God for the good people.

Conventions provide a chance for the Movite “big wigs” to cavort with one another and shake their peacock feathers to impress the gathering of cult members, who often travel thousands of miles to attend the conventions and participate in lengthy frenzies of speaking in tongues, singing and serving their religious Handlers who feed their minds controlled instruction.

I wonder if the poor children still have to sit like we did for hours, on hard, backless benches or folding chairs. We sat so long, our hips ached.  Do they at least break for meals now?

There are mini countries inside of America. They make their own rules. They abuse children and swindle their “citizens”.  They are mind terrorists who get away with abuse under the guise of religious freedom, and American citizens have chosen to look away for too long.

I wonder when people will begin to care about the cult no one ever talks about?

When Cult Members Attack

Peeling off layers of truth about growing up in a cult which still exists has also released an influx of opinion, perspective, experience and much more from those who were also involved in this cult.

Since first publishing “Cult Child”, I’ve been examining the ways in which my fellow cult survivors have reacted to my publication. Now that I am speaking out more vocally on forums such as the radio, they are seemingly reacting more.

One of the main observations I’ve gathered is that those who were older when the cult began, have a differing perspective than those of us who were either children taken into the program or born into the cult, with those same adults being either our parents, caregivers and/or present and influencing adults.

We children have a differing set of circumstances as we witnessed and experienced horrible abuses. The adults who doled out or stood by and did nothing live in deep denial, often lashing out, calling us liars and being accusatory.

When I say adults, some of them were in their early twenties and participating in the severe beating and abuses of children. I see them for where they stand, deeply mentally ill and having to carry the horror of what they either did to children or did not do to help them.

Just as we victims carry the images of what was done to us, likewise our abusers must carry the images of what they did and/or witnessed.

Another way that I am attacked is individuals leaving poor starred reviews on my book where they can. Luckily Amazon requires one to be a purchaser of a product for the review, so in the least, I get a small compensation for having to be re-abused and attacked for telling the truth about my abuse.

I am not one to be intimidated by gang stalkers. When they call me a liar, I ask them which farm they grew up on? Who did they know? Were they a child? Who were their parents? What specifics can they give to prove, first off, that they were a part of the cult at all. After all, one must have been there, to factually call me a liar.

Furthermore, if they were not on the exact same compounds as I was, they can speak nothing of my life or the experiences of my family. Since stories of abuses have come from every compound Sam Fife and his cronies created, then I ask, if the person was an adult, why they did nothing to turn in the child abusers? So, this attack is easily lain to rest for me.

Another avenue that is used, is to say that I am out for money, made from the backs of other people who suffered in the cult as well. First, aren’t most authors hoping to make a living from writing, after all, writing is our passion? Why then are we not allowed to make a living from what we are bestowed to do?

Secondly, when one reads “Cult Child”, it takes but one page turn to understand that this is the story of me and my family. Every story contained in the first book of this set, yes, there’s a sequel coming, is related, and pertains directly to my family.

However, if I chose to write a book telling the stories of others who survived, I have the legal right to do so. It is not, however, my intention. Not just because their stories are not mine, but because I have other projects that I look forward to delving into. So, this attack is easily lain to rest for me.

My family owns the originals of all photos which are contained in my books. If you happen to be in one of those photos, luckily for you, I chose to blur faces. Luckily for you, there is a disclaimer in the front of my book that states I have changed names for privacy and liability purposes.

Luckily for me, I am well informed, have consulted an entertainment attorney before publishing and scoff at the ideal that anyone related to Sam Fife’s Move of God thinks they in any way hold any rights to the story or photos containing and relating to my family.

As for the statements made about me that return in the circle that is my support network, I somehow feel a great sorrow, for old people who make statements that we children were seductive, leaving me to understand that the pedophilistic mindset this cult built its roots on, still exists today.

It amazes me most that our abusers never stopped to consider we would grow up one day. Did you not think we would have a voice? Did you not think we would have something to say?

You don’t get to say “Yes, it was bad and all but…”. There’s no “but” which follows sexual abuse, demon possession casting out rituals, beliefs in end times, beatings, sadistic mental manipulation, sleep deprivation, brainwashing, demonology, spanking of babies, Old Testament animal sacrifice (Ware, MA) and more.

You see, I am not alone in this truth. I just happen to be the most outspoken. We children are now adults in a gathered tribe, quietly supporting one another, and we are large in numbers.

The network of survivors is so vast that the messages I get which are attacking of me, either myself or someone I know, remembers the person doing the attacking. These people were adults or elders children, seeking to silence the truth about the hidden horrors of Sam Fife’s Move of God.

It never fails to be consistent, that those who step forward to attack me were in some way an abuser, worked in a nursery where they could abuse children, were mean spirited, witnessed the abuse of children, and did nothing. Now, they have grown into bitter, self-righteous things who remain the same abusive evil they were when I was a child.

You don’t think we remember you, the things you said and did? Nothing has changed in regards to your existence, except now, you don’t get to silence me. And you won’t. Abuse is silent. You will never abuse me again.

EDIT 11/25/16: For those who took part in the free download of “Cult Child”, thank you.  For those who missed it, sign up at: http://VennieKocsis.com to be notified of the dates for the next free download days.  There will be one 5 month. Thank you for such an immense interest this month!  I am honored that you are interested in understanding the cult abuse of children.