Day of the Cults
After the cautionary tale of the Iowa corn planters, Court TV turned next to cults, specifically one based in Taunton, Massachusetts, called The Body. The defendant, a young cult member named Karen Robidoux, was charged with second degree murder. Her husband Jacques, though still in his 20's, was an "elder" of the cult -- it is a tiny group -- and he had already started serving a sentence of life without parole for the same crime. These two parents of the infant Samuel Robidoux had allowed him to suffer extreme hunger and eventual death just before his first birthday, because they felt that they had to adhere to a "leading," a decree that the cult leaders claimed to have received from Above.
The Court TV people got in the way here even more than they had in the Iowa case. Unhappy with letting the witnesses tell the story, and despite the big thing they make of calling the viewing public the "13th Juror," the commentators found it necessary to keep cutting short the various testimonies, in favor of bringing in "experts" and educating us and themselves on the subject of cults, between their own copious opinions. But cults have been motes in the American eye so often and for so long that I wondered why so much of that review was necessary.
Certainly anyone who was an adult in 1978 and paid attention to things heard an indelible thing or two about that most extreme of cults, the one headed by Jim Jones that came to a truly apocalyptic climax in Jonestown, Guyana. For younger people the 1980 film "The Guyana Tragedy: the Story of Jim Jones," does a great though chilling job of telling that story.
When they weren't educating us, the Court TV people kept applying the standards of the larger society to the case, and they struck me as being fully willing to see Robidoux receiving the same sentence as her husband without further ado. They had trouble buying the proposition that she was almost as much a victim as was her late son, because she had suffered abuses of the cult world from an early age, and they were gratified by the many emails they received that expressed the same outlook, overwhelmingly from women. In fact, the prevailing view seemed to be that all the cult members should be jailed, for watching the crime happen and doing nothing about it.
Undoubtedly it is among the worst of crimes to see your child going hungry and to know that he's suffering, but, because of some belief impressed upon you by others, you feel obliged to continue feeding him on an ultimately fatal diet while you hope for a miracle. Still, in terms of practical effect, I would think that a trial like this is like a court of geese trying a duck because it isn't a goose. Doesn't punishment of the guilty parents amount to the larger society wreaking the revenge of the child upon his parents and nothing else?
Realizing that vengeance has its limitations, legal people insist that, even more importantly, trials and the resulting verdicts and sentences serve as object lessons with a deterrent effect. And that may be true -- but in this kind of case that element is absent, though it's necessary to carry on with the proceedings as if deterrence is possible anyway.
People who enter cults have entirely thrown off the belief systems of the larger society, and that includes their assessment of the consequences of their actions. Often a cult is an extreme reaction and a complete denial of those belief systems. So, what the larger society maintains means little or nothing to a true cult member, and that includes feeling the expected remorse for their actions, even while they are suffering the pain of their punishment. They are in an almost literally different world.
Cults, however, figure to be always with us. Weren't all the big, recognized religions of today looked upon as being cults in the beginning? There will always be weak-minded and lazy people who will be glad to cast aside all responsibility for thinking for themselves and instead remain content in allowing everything to be decided for them by one central, charismatic leader. So, even in the unlikely event that cases like this will be known to them, that still won't mean much to the believers of tomorrow.
This trial took place several months ago, in February. K. Robidoux was convicted only of assault and battery, a misdemeanor, for which she was given the maximum sentence of two and a half years. But, as she had already served close to three years in a mental facility, she was set free. Meanwhile she had also lost custody of all four of her remaining children.
The wide disparity between the sentences dropped on the two parents is striking.
All I know is that the line between the insanity defense and a cult like this is hard to detect.
Once, before taking a long group auto trip to Maine, everyone in the Body had to leave their valuables behind in a trash bag, including their glasses and all their money. When one of their cars ran out of gas in the backwoods of Maine, they all put their hands on the hood and prayed, in the expectation that the tank would suddenly be filled.
The Court TV people got in the way here even more than they had in the Iowa case. Unhappy with letting the witnesses tell the story, and despite the big thing they make of calling the viewing public the "13th Juror," the commentators found it necessary to keep cutting short the various testimonies, in favor of bringing in "experts" and educating us and themselves on the subject of cults, between their own copious opinions. But cults have been motes in the American eye so often and for so long that I wondered why so much of that review was necessary.
Certainly anyone who was an adult in 1978 and paid attention to things heard an indelible thing or two about that most extreme of cults, the one headed by Jim Jones that came to a truly apocalyptic climax in Jonestown, Guyana. For younger people the 1980 film "The Guyana Tragedy: the Story of Jim Jones," does a great though chilling job of telling that story.
When they weren't educating us, the Court TV people kept applying the standards of the larger society to the case, and they struck me as being fully willing to see Robidoux receiving the same sentence as her husband without further ado. They had trouble buying the proposition that she was almost as much a victim as was her late son, because she had suffered abuses of the cult world from an early age, and they were gratified by the many emails they received that expressed the same outlook, overwhelmingly from women. In fact, the prevailing view seemed to be that all the cult members should be jailed, for watching the crime happen and doing nothing about it.
Undoubtedly it is among the worst of crimes to see your child going hungry and to know that he's suffering, but, because of some belief impressed upon you by others, you feel obliged to continue feeding him on an ultimately fatal diet while you hope for a miracle. Still, in terms of practical effect, I would think that a trial like this is like a court of geese trying a duck because it isn't a goose. Doesn't punishment of the guilty parents amount to the larger society wreaking the revenge of the child upon his parents and nothing else?
Realizing that vengeance has its limitations, legal people insist that, even more importantly, trials and the resulting verdicts and sentences serve as object lessons with a deterrent effect. And that may be true -- but in this kind of case that element is absent, though it's necessary to carry on with the proceedings as if deterrence is possible anyway.
People who enter cults have entirely thrown off the belief systems of the larger society, and that includes their assessment of the consequences of their actions. Often a cult is an extreme reaction and a complete denial of those belief systems. So, what the larger society maintains means little or nothing to a true cult member, and that includes feeling the expected remorse for their actions, even while they are suffering the pain of their punishment. They are in an almost literally different world.
Cults, however, figure to be always with us. Weren't all the big, recognized religions of today looked upon as being cults in the beginning? There will always be weak-minded and lazy people who will be glad to cast aside all responsibility for thinking for themselves and instead remain content in allowing everything to be decided for them by one central, charismatic leader. So, even in the unlikely event that cases like this will be known to them, that still won't mean much to the believers of tomorrow.
This trial took place several months ago, in February. K. Robidoux was convicted only of assault and battery, a misdemeanor, for which she was given the maximum sentence of two and a half years. But, as she had already served close to three years in a mental facility, she was set free. Meanwhile she had also lost custody of all four of her remaining children.
The wide disparity between the sentences dropped on the two parents is striking.
All I know is that the line between the insanity defense and a cult like this is hard to detect.
Once, before taking a long group auto trip to Maine, everyone in the Body had to leave their valuables behind in a trash bag, including their glasses and all their money. When one of their cars ran out of gas in the backwoods of Maine, they all put their hands on the hood and prayed, in the expectation that the tank would suddenly be filled.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:55 PM
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