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03/03/93
Negotiations with cult drag on; Released youngsters comforted
By Jeffrey Weiss / The Dallas Morning News
State officials labored Tuesday to reduce the suffering of children traumatically removed from a life under a man who said he was Jesus.
By nightfall, 18 children had been released by self-proclaimed messiah David Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult. Shortly after 8 p.m., federal and state officials gave conflicting reports about 20 more children emerging from the compound.
State officials had said earlier in the day that they expected no more than 38 children. The ages of the first 18 ranged from 3 months to 11.
All the children would be placed in foster homes or institutions, state officials said. Karen Eells, regional director of the state Children's Protective Services, said her agency is seeking temporary custody because the children faced immediate danger to their "physical safety or well-being.'
The first custody hearings are scheduled for Tuesday, she said.
Published reports say that cult life included child abuse. Waco
law enforcement officials said Tuesday that they had been investigating similar reports of abuse for several weeks.
In addition to the alleged abuse, these children also endured the shootout Sunday between their parents and federal authorities that left four federal agents and an unknown number of cult members dead.
Some law enforcement officials in Waco said Tuesday that the children who had been released had warmed quickly to the counselors.
"They pretty well toed the doctrinal line when they first came in, but after a while they loosened up and started acting a little more like kids,' one law enforcement authority said.
Ms. Eells said her counselors told her that the children showed few immediate signs of their ordeal. Some of the children carried notes identifying them and giving names of grandparents, she said.
"The kids are in good physical health,' she said. "They're reacting very well. They're able to talk about the gunbattle. They're able to talk about hiding under the bed and talk about the bullets flying by.'
Counselors who have worked with troubled children warned that the scars of these youngsters may be deep and may take years to expose and heal.
"There's a stage of denial kids go through when they have this kind of trauma,' said Dr. Ron Aldridge, executive director of the Dallas Child Guidance Center.
Beyond the difficulty of living with the memory of what former members of the cult said was violence and physical abuse, the older children must come to grips with the religious component, experts say.
"The hardest thing for them to recover is that individual ability to make decisions. I'm not just talking about the normal day-to-day decisions. I'm talking about emotional decisions, philosophical decisions,' said Bob Larson, an author on cults and a radio host who discusses cult issues during his daily Denver-based religious talk show, carried in Dallas on station KVTT-FM (91.7). "Somebody has to sit down with these kids and talk to them about what is good and what is evil.'
The destruction of their religious underpinnings will create hidden damage, said Russ Wise.
Mr. Wise is researcher for Probe Ministries, a Richardson-based conservative religious think tank, and has been a foster parent for more than 60 children. Cult leader David Koresh's use of Christian doctrine will make it difficult for the children to believe in the truth of any religion, Mr. Wise said.
"In effect, they have become innoculated against the truth of the
Bible and what theology can teach them,' he said. "They will say, "If
this is Christianity and this is what happened to my family, I don't
think I'll take a second helping.' '
Ms. Eells said her counselors' first concern was making the children feel safe.
"They're going to a foster home where they won't be shooting guns,' she said. She added that her counselors were attuned to the special problems these children may pose.
"We have to remember that their perspective on the world is different than the children raised in the world at large,' she said.
People who track cults and their members warn that Texas taxpayers may be asked to pay a hefty bill for the care of these children.
Cynthia Kisser, executive director of the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network, recounted a 1988 case. An Oregon group calling itself the Ecclesia Athletic Association was broken up after an 8-year-old girl was killed. At the time, 59 other children were taken into state custody.
"Sadly enough, it did cost the state of Oregon more than $1 million to take care of those children,' Ms. Kisser said.
Without proper care, the costs to society could be even greater
Left without a moral compass, some former cult members are
susceptible to other, even more sinister groups, Mr. Larson said.
"These types of kids ironically become prey to other kinds of cults, particularly satanic cults and cults that operate on principles of hate and revenge,' he said.
Anita Strand, who has a private family counseling practice in Plano, said she survived what she called a "more moderate cult' than the Branch Davidian. She said that the children may look normal but will be anything but that for many years.
"They'll have a lot of confusion over who to trust. They will be living in hell,' she said. "These kids coming out of that are going to be like ghosts. You're going to see their bodies, but they're just going to be floating around.'
Because the abuse originated from a man who claims to be Jesus, the children will have a particularly hard time understanding why it occurred, she said.
"If your abuse comes in the name of God, where do you go to appeal?' she asked.
But Ms. Strand said that even victims of the most evil cult can be brought back to a more normal life.
"You can always get out,' she said. "I'm a believer that one drop of love is stronger than a ton of evil.'
Staff writers Lee Hancock in Waco and Judith Lynn Howard contributed to this report
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