|
03/21/93
Ideas vary on cults' appeal to women; Experts agree members face pressure to forsake kin, values
By Victoria Loe / The Dallas Morning News
WACO-The images of Kathryn Schroeder were striking: a small, simply groomed woman in a shapeless jail uniform, struggling along in shack-les between two towering law officers.
The images raised questions. How did this woman, who looks so harmless, come to be held as a material witness to the slaughter of four federal agents?
What kind of women join cults that force them to submit to a life of backbreaking work, loneliness and deprivation?
What kind of women forsake their husbands for the bed of a man who, by society's standards, is debasing and abusing them? What kind of women take up arms and risk their lives to defend that man?
Experts are divided on the question of who is susceptible to personality cults such as David Koresh's, now in an armed standoff with federal agents at a rural compound near Waco.
Some say almost anyone can become caught in their snares. Others believe that they attract primar-ily damaged, marginal people.
But experts agree on one issue: Anyone who joins a true cult is subjected to pressures designed to destroy their moorings not only to friends and loved ones but also to the values they held.
And when a group believes, as the Branch Davidians do, that the world as we know it is about to end, theology can become the handmaiden of licentiousness.
"Millenarian groups have a tendency to anti-nomianism-a rejection of the law as such,' said Dr. Michael Barkun, a sociologist at Syracuse University in New York.
In particular, Dr. Barkun said, Mr. Koresh's assertion that he has been singled out by God to usher in a new millenium allows him to tell his followers, "Whatever you were taught was sin is no longer sinful, because I operate with God's direct authority.'
Thus, the sociologist said, "one stroke transforms the forbidden to not only the permitted but the commanded.'
In this, cults are much like youth gangs, said Dallas clinical psychologist Sylvia Gearing.
"It's almost as though the more outrageous their behavior is, the more they belong,' she said.
With Mr. Koresh at the helm, behavior among the Branch Davidians became outrageous indeed.
People who have left the cult tell of a draconian lifestyle in which men and women live in separate quarters. Virtually every aspect of the women's lives is dictated by Mr. Koresh's tastes, from their dress and hair styles to their diet and exercise regimen.
Mr. Koresh has confirmed that he has had sex with many of his female followers, including some mother-daughter pairs and several women who were married to other men.
Mr. Koresh told them that they were honored to spawn a race of warriors who would rule in the new kingdom to come, said some former followers.
"Jim Jones did the same thing,' said Cynthia Kisser of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago. "It was supposed to be a great honor to have sex with him.'
Selective breeding
Students of political religious movements say it is not uncommon for break-away groups to enforce rigid sex roles and even to practice selective breeding.
For instance, both white separatists and fundamentalist religious sects often assign women a subservient role, Dr. Barkun said.
Even in the Oneida Colony in New York, the most famous 19th-century utopian community, sexual partners were selected by a committee that chose them for their supposed genetic compatibility.
But in personality cults, something else is at work, the experts say, and that something is exploitation.
Although the Branch Davidians' sexual customs may scandalize the public, Ms. Kisser said, they are simply one among many forms of exploitation practiced by Mr. Koresh. Beyond slaking his lust, his conquests are designed to bond the women more closely to him while severing their other emotional ties, Ms. Kisser said.
"In a cult, personal relationships are taboo,' she said. "The manipulation of sex destroys the possibility of meaningful relationships except with the leader.'
And the victims need not be women. Gay leaders of some cults demand sexual access to their male followers, Ms. Kisser said.
"The key isn't that women are exploited,' she said. "The key is that the leader is willing to use mind control to gain personal satisfaction and power. Anyone who's in the group is exploited.'
In return for their submission, said Dr. Gearing, members get the things they crave most: "safety and protection.'
Defiance terrifying
Dr. Gearing is among those who hold that most cult members are insecure, ineffectual people, many of whom were abused in childhood.
"These are not your cheerleaders and class presidents,' she said.
Once such people have given their lives over to a charismatic
leader who promises safety for all e-ternity, Dr. Gearing said, the thought of defying him or separating from him is too terrifying to bear.
"They feel they will fragment and lose control if they are not with this man,' she said.
For instance, the FBI has cited Judy Schneider Koresh, who has a wounded finger and has threatened to chop it off rather than leave the compound to receive medical treatment.
In many followers' minds, allegiance and survival are one, said Russ Wise, a researcher for Probe Ministries in Richardson. He described his group as a research and resource organization for religious scholars.
In that context, it's not surprising that some women joined in the armed defense of Mr. Koresh, he said.
Some of the children who have left the compound said women were among the shooters in the initial firefight with federal agents, state officials have said.
"The ones he's taken as his wife would be more likely to bear arms,' Mr. Wise said. "They would defend him at all costs.
"The more intimate you are, the more deceived you are-the more entangled in the web he's spun.'
The price of defection, members are told, is spiritual-if not physical-death. Former followers have said that they believed they would burn forever for betraying Mr. Koresh.
Mr. Wise said, "We're talking about losing face in the spiritual realm for all eternity.'
Therefore, said Dr. Gearing, "it has taken tremendous courage' for the few, such as Kathryn Schroeder, to leave the Branch Davidian compound.
Mrs. Schroeder told negotiators that she was willing to venture out to see her youngest child, who remains in state custody.
That desire, to be reunited with their children, may be the only lever that authorities can use to dislodge other women from the compound, Dr. Gearing said.
"The only window is the welfare of their children,' she said.
|
Back to Top
