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Does anyone know TWI's current position on this issue? How do they explain the firing of John Schoenheit for rightly dividing the word on adultery? Surely, they don't dispute the thesis of his paper. EDIT: JuniorCorps wasn't alone in leaving over this issue. How does TWI defend against this legitimate reason. They must be prepared. After all, those postcards about "coming home" were sent to former dupes they must know left because for this very reason.

Thanks. I just put that on my list of re-reads.

If anyone wants to read my first-hand account of being on staff at HQ and talking with John right after he was fired, it's in Undertow, Chapter 54: Clampdown. I got his permission to use his real name in my book.

Thanks WordWolf for filling in the blanks of what I remembered hearing.

Thanks for the belly laugh waysider .

In light of the “Blast from the Past” thread in About the Way, this thread in the Atheism subforum is a way to ask rhetorical questions about topics like clerical sexual abuse. A rhetorical question (RQ) is asked to make a point, rather than get an answer. When it comes to God, many questions are rhetorical because only God knows the answers which he may or may not reveal in the afterlife which is not helpful in the hear and now. One of the heinous part of CSA is the cover up that is done within the religious group (like what happened in twi). CSA became well-known in the cases of the Catholic Church scandal, and the Julie Roys website below gives examples of this happening in protestant churches as well. Catholic Church child sexual abuse scandal Julie Roys There are now laws, and often civil lawsuits, against those involved in cover ups because of the seriousness of turning a blind eye to victims in order to protect the church/ministry instead of the flock. So here's my RQ. If it's so important to hold humans responsible for not immediately revealing abuse so the abuser can be stopped and held accountable, what about Christ? How is it that as head of the church who sees all is not being held responsible as well? Christians might consider this an absurd question because the spiritual world does not work in the same way as the physical world. God's absolute judgments come in another life. However, I think as a rhetorical question, it can make the point that this problematic scenario of Jesus being the head while abuse is frequently occurring is an impossible one since Jesus, as the resurrected son of God, cannot even be proven to exist (that is outside of the claims of the bible and claims are not evidence). So, what seems to be left is the continued abuse of children and adults under Christ's watchful eyes where questions as to why this is must become rhetorical ones because they simply can't be answered in this lifetime.

Simple. Write: The Teacher Box 666 New Knockabout, Ohio

I get this which makes Schoenheit's "Forward" interesting to read. "In 1982 or 1983 Rev. Ralph Dubofsky and Rev. Vince Finegan came to me. Dr. Wierwille had asked them to do some work on the subject of adultery. Ralph and Vince wanted to know what I knew and if it would help them. I was genuinely surprised at how little I knew about the subject from the Word of God. This paper is the result of those years of study." "As I struggled to control my mind, I realized that I did not have a scripture to grab onto for support. I literally was not completely positive as to what the Word of God had to say on the subject." This was understandable, because after all, vp never taught it in the Christian Family and Sex class so how were people supposed to know.

And then there was the one who didn't. edit: Different situation, but dealt with in the same manner.

That's where vpw's cadre of sin came in. First, they procure the victim and get them to go to him in private. Afterwards, one of them "coincidentally" ran into her as she left, trying to make sense of what happened. This exit counselor, so to speak, can tell her how she was privileged and so on, and watch her for signs of exploding. If she seemed ready to spill the beans on having been raped/sexually assaulted, then the exit counselor passed word. Quickly, she's announced as unworthy in some way and kicked off grounds. This attacks her self-esteem while she's trying to make sense of things, and let's some innocent people possibly see she was kicked out for supposedly some weakness on her part (kept vague, of course.) She's immediately put on a nice, slow bus. That's really cheap, and since they're in the middle of nowhere, it will take her a day to reach home if she is close, dayS if she is not. That gives the twi propaganda machine lots of time to contact all the leadership in the person's home area and destroy her reputation. That way, if she says something to them, they've already "poisoned the well." Furthermore, it isolates her further, damaging her self-esteem even more. Any time someone was any kind of liability, twi shoved them on a bus. Sometimes it meant a person took a WEEK to get home, because they were in no shape to go home alone, and got lost somewhere in the US. That happened a few times. lcm documented vpw doing it in his book "VP and Me." (We discussed that in the thread "VP and Me in Wonderland.") A man in residence evidenced some sort of event- he was incoherent. Any normal place- where having a fiduciary responsibility to care for people they accepted responsibility for- would have had him taken to a hospital and evaluated. What did vpw do? He CONFRONTED the man! As if this was a sane response. Then he sent the man home on a bus. lcm worried about the man getting home, but vpw told him to stop worrying and the man would get home. A WEEK later, he turned up at home. That's the most anyone at twi knew about what happened to the man. He showed up at home a WEEK later. I wish we had details about his ordeal, and about what medical situation had happened. Was it acute malnutrition or sleep deprivation? Was it some undiagnosed brain condition? Was it something else? We'll never know, and vpw never cared. We know at least one woman got sent home (IIRC, after getting raped hitchhiking on LEAD when she was sent alone on someone's vehicle) and she was a mess psychologically when she left. Nobody cared. She was in no shape to take care of her connections, and she got lost somewhere in the US. Several days later, she made it home.

We left not only because he had to write this but because he was fired for it. It made no sense. It made me turn my back on TTW after 15 years. That's how stupidly they handled it.

That's where the reasons given in the Appendices come in. What should have been so obvious became overshadowed by deceit, lies and powerful positions in twi.

"the spiritually mature can handle anything and that anything done in the love of God is okay." This also serves as a form of gaslighting in that if a victim does feel bad afterwards (instead of being "blessed" for having been chosen by the man of God), she has to see herself as spiritually immature for not having enough love of God in the renewed mind. It's called shifting the blame. I've read something along the line that if a victim of vp couldn't deal with it, she would be kicked out of the ministry for some made-up reason and then lies are told about her being "off the word" so others will want nothing more to do with her.

This was the catalyst to us finally deciding to leave. I was young but I remember thinking "I didn't know we needed this research paper? That's kinda crazy. How is this not the most obvious thing in the world?"

A bestiality fetish. Not a problem for the spiritually mature with a mind so renewed... Yet some are aghast when I say victor squatted over and defecated into the mouth of God. What? Scat play by the spiritually mature is off limits? Hey! I didn't REwrite the book. Victor did.

I was born and raised as a Roman Catholic, and attended their schools. I bought into their belief’s and even thought of becoming a priest, in other words I was sold on their doctrine. UNTIL the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Prior to this no Catholic could eat meat on Friday, and if they did it was a mortal sin. A mortal sin would send you to hell if you did not confess the sin to a priest. So if a Catholic was to eat a bologna sandwich for lunch on any Friday, and on the way home they were killed in a motor vehicle accident, their soul would immediately be damned to hell for eternity. Pretty severe for sure and not very comforting for their surviving Catholic family. Then, the Second Vatican Council decreed that eating meat on Friday, except for Lent, was no longer a mortal sin. In other words, you can eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and rib steak for dinner, and no longer commit a mortal sin. How in the name of fairness and common sense, could a loving God cast his children into everlasting hell for eating meat on Friday prior to the Second Vatican Council, and not post Second Vatican Council? That opened my eyes to the ridiculousness of this teaching and started me on a very long journey realizing that trying to explain a loving God was also ridiculous. There are several thousand Christian religions that all disagree on how to obtain eternal life. Plus all the other world religions all have their way of salvation. If you can’t prove one is tight then all must be wrong.

"spiritually mature"

It seems very unlikely that Mrs. Wierwille was present at that pj party. "He played a porn video followed by a talk on how a Christian can so renew their mind that this stuff wouldn't bother them, the spiritually mature can handle anything and that anything done in the love of God is okay." I've heard that he would tell a victim that she was chosen because she was spiritually mature enough to be with him. And then, in order to keep his abuse secret, he would also say to keep what happened between them in a lock box because there were others who were not spiritually mature enough to handle knowing about it. OMG, Holy ...., and twi today still honors this evil man as the founder of their ministry.

TWI's sedative to the conscience - About The Way - GreaseSpot Cafe T-Bone, 9-12-2008 "What is Libel" thread. What is Libel? - Page 3 - About The Way - GreaseSpot Cafe Fact: On September 13th 1984, TWI's Rome City Indiana Campus, I was at a pajama party hosted by vp. In attendance were some two hundred Family Corps [both adults and teenagers]. He played a porn video followed by a talk on how a Christian can so renew their mind that this stuff wouldn't bother them, the spiritually mature can handle anything and that anything done in the love of God is okay. After the talk, he lightened up things by telling a few jokes and showing a porn pen to a sixteen-year-old girl. -------------------------------------------------------------- T-Bone 3-10-2008 "A note on forgiving" thread. And you know – it's not like I've brought up anything that happened on a remote island, a long time ago…in a galaxy far, far away...and so maybe you think I don't have all the facts straight…My stuff is written down…They encouraged us to keep a journal while going through the Corps program. Man oh man did I write stuff down! I'm working on "My Story" – don't know if I'll ever post it here – but it's been very therapeutic for me to articulate my experience. I'm up to chapter 5 of "My Story" – my Corps experience…Yecch! I'm reviewing my Corps journals. I can tell you the exact "day and time and hour " when vp showed our Corps the porn video at the pajama party. Wanna hear something really scary? At what point in our Corps training do you think he showed it to us? It's on the third page of my first Corps journal – Tonto and I had only been in residence eleven days!

tonto, 1-31-2005, When was the first time you knew of sexual abuse/harrasment - About The Way - GreaseSpot Cafe Right after we left TWI in '86 we talked with a girl who had been groped by veepee when she was in rez in the 70's. We heard of other accounts and suddenly all of those incidents that never sat well with me rushed to the forefront. Like the in rez pajama party where he showed porn flicks, (and I mean the ones with a woman and a horse) to us in the corps with the junior corps present. There were other incidents throughout the years which should have been huge red flags, but when you don't connect the dots because you think you are part of the single most important spiritual movement of our time, you become blind to reality. Shoot, I can't believe how duped I was. ================================================ T-Bone, 3-3-2006 https://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/9344-why-you-cant-sweep-it-under-the-carpet/One memory hit me real hard – VPW having a pajama party at our campus. He shows us a porn movie [a dog and a woman]. He invites one young lady up to the front to show her a porn pen he has . What do you think of that?!?! How appropriate is that? Imagine your local pastor having a sleepover and doing things like that? Kind of scary – okay make it an uncle or a neighbor – yeccchhh – still creepy. Oh – wait I forgot one more little sordid detail – I neglected to tell you this was the Indiana Campus – the Family Corps! There were teenagers in this pajama party. Oooops – I'm sorry another little detail – the young lady VPW was showing the porn pen to – I think she was 16. Oh – I can hear it now – a TWI screw-with-your-head-ism – "Get your head out of the gutter – I've just so renewed my mind that I don't think like that." Yeah, you just so f---d your conscience that it doesn't bother you. tonto, 5-27-2005 VPW, Cancer, and Gartmore - Page 5 - About The Way - GreaseSpot Cafe Uh, a "pajama party" to which VP specifically invited the junior corps, was the setting for this particular screening of the beastiality film. Shortly before its' screening a pajama-clad VP called an extremely shapely pajama-wearing 16 year old junior corps girl up to personally see the porno pen he had in his hand. Yeah, we all needed to see that "shocking wake-up call". Oh, and monkeys might fly out of my b*++. ======================================================= T-Bone 4-3-2007 Does twi need to be good? - Page 7 - About The Way - GreaseSpot Cafe Jean – I know this is a lot to take in. This stuff sounds so appalling…shocking…unbelievable…and unless a person was a member of the Way Corps [the people who were trained by and worked for TWI] they may never fully understand how VPW sabotaged people's moral compass and laid the groundwork for sexual predators like himself. I was in the Family Corps – and if you have a hard time believing first hand accounts because you do not know the person – you may want to consider the implications of something that was experienced by all Corps and on occasion even some TWI followers who were not Corps…At some point during Corps training everyone gets to see one of VPW's favorite videos – a dog having sex with a woman. VPW's Christian Family and Sex Class was only a hint of his lascivious attitudes. When I was in residence – VPW had a pajama part [an informal setting for making a good soft-sell of his perverted lifestyle] and showed us that porn video – remember I said I was in Family Corps – there were teens present! At one point during the pajama party VPW invited a sixteen year old girl to the front of the room and shows her this pen as he describes to the rest of us that it has little figures of a man and a woman having sex and you make them do it by moving the pen up and down. VPW's very presence always had the power to sedate the intellectual and moral functions of his most devote followers – there we were cutting up with jokes during the video – he's laughing along with us – all the while slipping in all that nonsense about how he's so renewed his mind that this doesn't bother him or shock him.

Not only was NOTHING like that ever taught in CFS, but I don't remember ever hearing anything like that anywhere in twi. Admittedly, I wasn't everywhere, but nobody seems to have seen it in all the posts I've ever read. I'm not keen to endorse everything in the Catholic catechism, but what you quoted is a lot more sound than vpw's version of things. In 7 sessions of "Christian Family and Sex". there was less than 1 episode on "Christian Family" and 6 full episodes on sex.

I should… I mean, I want to… I just can’t… People still call this schmuck “Dr.” Even John Schoenheit does. WITAF!?!