Rick Ross

You know, well, I've testified in these custody cases, and in most of the cases that I've testified in, of course, I am working for the parent who is not a witness. One case, for example, that I worked on, the father had become a witness even though he wasn't one when he married his wife and they had their children, and it became a source of friction.

And the end result was that the wife divorced him. And I testified about how the witnesses and their beliefs would impact the children and how it would affect them. For example, they couldn't be a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout. They couldn't be in Little League. They couldn't celebrate holidays. They couldn't go to a Christmas party, and so on.

So the mother ended up with primary custody, and the father had visitation. And his visitation was Prescribed in the sense that he could not take the children and indoctrinate them in the witnesses. And he could not go with them, for example, door to door, as witnesses do, handing out tracts and trying to recruit people. Because the witnesses, unlike most religions, are intolerant of other people.

religious beliefs in a way that is very extreme, that creates an impossibility of compromise. Whereas most parents could work that out, it's very difficult for the parent who is not a witness to work it out with the witness parent. And so I've seen a number of divorces, child custody battles over situations like that.

And also the courts have had to intervene to get a child life-sustaining blood transfusions because a parent who's a witness believes that by getting a blood transfusion for their child, they have committed a horrible wrong. and they're encouraged by the leaders in their church, their kingdom hall, the elders, not to do that.

And so the courts have had to intervene at times and order that a child does receive a blood transfusion. And I guess the premise for that would be that the child has a right to life. The parents have a right to believe as they wish to believe and as adults to refuse a blood transfusion, but they do not have the right to make that choice for their child who has a right to live.

And so the courts have intervened in a number of cases like that. So there have been a number of things that have occurred like that. And also the witnesses have had a problem similar to the Catholic Church, in regards to sexual abuse of minor children within the witnesses. And that is their refusal to go to the authorities to have people arrested and instead to kind of keep it within

the witness community. And that has caused a lot of people who have suffered from abuse to feel that they were betrayed by the leadership of the witnesses.

when they know this is happening? Within the witnesses and within certain groups, they would say that it is in the best interest of the group and that the ends justify the means. We are the witnesses. We are Jehovah God's established organization on earth. We should not suffer scandal. This would discredit us. This would cause problems for us.

And in the better interest of the group and its larger goals, we will make that sacrifice. Now, there are cults that actually have mandated sexual abuse. Mandated sexual abuse? There was a group, the Children of God,

that was started by a man by the name of Moses David Berg, who's now dead, River Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, were at one time included in this group because their parents joined, and they were involved in the group. And the leader was a pedophile, and he mandated that adults in the group molest children. And he molested his own children, including his granddaughter, who I met, and his daughter.

who I also met. And this was an insidious, horribly destructive cult. And they would escape accountability to the authorities by creating kind of isolated communities and cutting their people off from any means of reporting. But the mandate was, this is holy, this is right, this is what we do. And within this controlled environment,

where people were cut off from an outside frame of reference, from feedback from others, and children were being raised in this environment. And this was their normal. This horrible things went on within that community. And I've talked to many young people, young adults that were raised within children of God and suffered horribly.

And felt very conflicted because they would say to me, Rick, you know, I love my dad and I love my mom, but at the same time, I hate them because they brought me into this organization. I know they were true believers and they themselves were tricked and, you know, controlled by the group. But horrible things happened to me. I suffered sexual abuse as a child, and it was mandated by this group.

And I wouldn't have been in it if my parents hadn't joined. And I think one of the things we often forget is that there are children that are being raised within groups that have been called destructive cults, and they have no option.

They turn to their family, their parents, for protection and a sense of safety, but their parents are manipulated and controlled by the leaders of these groups, and they're not there to protect their own child. Wow.

In the case of Children of God, it was just a bizarre twisting of scriptures. So this was a way of showing love. This was some kind of divine love that they were sharing. You know, and Berg, Moses David Berg, would also tell the women in the group that they should recruit men by offering themselves sexually. And this was called flirty fishing. And then later, they would actually charge for sex

with men that they would try to recruit, and they were called hookers for Christ. And I mean, this sounds bizarre, but this is how bizarre some of these groups are. Probably one of the most insidious groups was the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, the FLDS. And that is the polygamist organization that was led by Warren Jeffs, who's now in prison in Texas.

And there were thousands of people that followed Jeffs. And these were people that were raised within polygamy for generations. Some of these groups go back 100 years. and they lived in relatively isolated communities where the group controlled the police, they controlled the school, they controlled everything. One community was Colorado City, Arizona, another was Hilldale, Utah.

Now these groups have been kind of dealt with through the law, and Jeffs is in prison. But for the children, they don't know any other life. For their families, they don't know any other life. And there were girls that were literally raped by Jeffs and others in the group. and they were minor children. So only in recent years has law enforcement began to really deal with these communities.