Rick Ross

No other pastor is preaching authentic beliefs according to the Bible, only us. And so the mother felt, I am giving all this to God. I'm giving it all to the one and only organization that is true to God. And my daughter should join as well because this is the truth. I mean, that is the level of indoctrination and control that these groups have over the thinking of individuals that are involved.

And it's very difficult to unwind that kind of programming, but that is... an answer to your question, why would someone do that? And in the case of the doctors, I know there were two doctors I worked with that were in a particular church called Victory Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota. that was run by this couple.

And it was a total, just a personality cult in which they had no accountability and they controlled all these people and lived off of hundreds of people that were in this church called Victory Church. And I would eventually be hired by first one doctor who had doubts, and then I would help him, and then I would deprogram his children.

And then he would convince the other doctor to invite me to his home. And then I would work with him and his family as well. And then they in turn convinced a cardiologist who was also in the group to leave. So this was kind of a domino effect. And eventually I would do an Oprah Winfrey show with former members of Victory Church, and Oprah Winfrey would expose the group nationally.

and eventually it would crumble and cease to exist. And I have to give Oprah some credit because the group sued Oprah Winfrey and tried to keep her from airing that program. And Oprah Winfrey said, no way. I am airing the program. And actually, the lawsuit attracted more attention, as lawsuits like that often do.

And the show aired, and it was the undoing of that Victory Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Oh, yeah. That's the Canadian cult leader. Is Oprah involved in that one? You know, it's interesting. I've done the Oprah show a couple of times, and Oprah has done some really good work regarding the one show that I did involved Jehovah's Witnesses in which she exposed some of their excesses.

The other show was about this group called Victory Church in North Dakota, which ended that church effectively. But then Oprah has done other shows where she brings on people of very questionable backgrounds. For example, James Arthur Ray, who led these training seminars, and three people died. in one of his training seminars.

And he was a featured guest on Oprah and largely traded on that to promote himself and promote his seminars, which he became a millionaire selling. And so Oprah at times has been involved with kind of fringy, new agey gurus who end up not being so good, John of God would be another example. What is John of God? John of God is a kind of a faith healer, someone who claims that he can heal people.

And he's now being accused of sexually exploiting and abusing women. And so to the extent that Oprah Winfrey thought that John of God was of God and a man of God, you know, he traded on her show and exposure through her show to promote himself. And I think Oprah should do a kind of mea culpa where she gets on her show or does some show where she says, you know, at times I've made mistakes.

I've had people on that turned out to not be really that good. And I need to apologize. I mean, I don't think that she was aware of how bad these people were. and they would later be exposed. But I think it means that perhaps she should have been more reluctant to feature them and to promote them the way that she did. I mean, I speak from the standpoint that I was an expert consultant

in regards to the prosecution of James Arthur Ray. So I work with the prosecutor. Eventually, Ray would be convicted for negligent homicide. And even though three people died, he spent two, three years in jail. And that was about it. And as far as I know, he's back out selling his seminar training again.

The most terrible situation I ever dealt with where a parent gave up a child was Kerry Jewell. I met her. When she was 10 years old, her mother gave her to David Koresh, the leader of the Waco Davidians, and he raped her. And she would eventually testify in a congressional hearing when she was 14 about what happened. And I remember doing the Phil Donahue show with Kerry during the standoff.

And we were all talking about whether or not David Koresh would ever surrender and come out from the compound, which he never did. And at the time, he asked each person on the panel, how do you think this is going to end? And when he got to Carrie Jewell, she said, they're all going to die. And I've made my peace. My mother will never come out. And I was shocked. But she was right.

She was absolutely right. And I think that her father, David Jewell, who was a very brave man and who rescued his daughter from the compound before the raid and before the standoff occurred, and she was safely with him in his custody when all that happened, that she knew and David Jewell knew just how totally brainwashed the people were in that compound.

Because this woman, I'm sure, was a loving mother, but she was so programmed by David Koresh to believe that he was the seed, the Davidic seed, the Messiah, that she thought that giving her child to the Messiah was a godly thing to do. And they were told that he was planting the seed of David in these victims that he raped.

And I think one of the reasons why he did not surrender was he knew that when they did DNA testing, they would establish that he was a pedophile and that he had sex with minor children and that they had children when they were children.

First of all, the Waco Davidians, for a long time, were a totally peaceful, benign group, kind of unusual. They followed the teachings of a man named Victor Howdoff. And after Howdoff died, his widow took over. And after her, a man named George Rodin took over. And after that, his wife, Lois Rodin, took over. And for years and years, they were peaceful.

and they lived outside of Waco on a kind of ranch area on the outskirts of Waco. Then came Vernon Howell, later named David Koresh. And he became very close to Lois Roden at the end of her life. And then he took over. And that's when the trouble started because he tried to kill her son, George Roden. And he was tried for attempted murder, but a hung jury was the end result.

And the prosecutor said, that guy is going to be trouble. And he went back to the compound. He was stockpiling weapons. And unbeknownst to me, he was also raping children and abusing women in the group. That would later come out. So the BATF then did an investigation. And I had deprogrammed one of the Waco Davidians.