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International Cultic Studies Association
News Summaries: group
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Vol. 1, No. 1, 2002 |
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| _______________________________________________ |
| News Summaries |
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News Summaries: February 16-28, 2002
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Group: The Family, Rastafarianism |
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Founder: Winnfred Wright, aka Rasheen Nyah |
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Category: |
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Topic: children, legal, abuse |
"The Family" of Rasheen Nyah
"The Family" Guru Allegedly Used drugs and Guilt to Dominate Female Recruits
Three members of "The Family" a group of women and children dominated by a Winnfred Wright, aka Rasheen Nyah appeared in court in mid-February on charges of second-degree murder and child endangerment in the death of his 19-month-old son at the group's home in Marin County. Mary Campbell is the mother of the dead boy; Deirdre Hart Wilson and
Carol Louise Bremner lived at the group's home; a fourth, Kali Polk-Matthews, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse. Campbell and Wilson are pregnant.
Rasheen/Wright, also scheduled for arraignment on the charges, apparently used his women to recruit more female followers in San Francisco's Sunset District. His women offered prospects free spiritual sessions, or a chance to be photographed for a "world mural" depicting 90 different women. After agreeing to come to the home, a visitor would be introduced to "Rasheen,"
the lone male of the house, as well as to the other women, and children. The visitors would be offered, variously, tarot card readings, Bible study, crack cocaine, or sex, according to accounts provided to San Francisco police in the early 1990s.
Methods
A decade ago, San Francisco police asked cult expert Margaret Singer to analyze the group, for despite several encounters with The Family, they found themselves powerless to act. Singer learned that Wright espoused "a mishmash of Rastafarianism, karma, and white guilt. The white women who lived with him "had to work off the white mistreatment of black people. It was
their responsibility to work off their karma."
A woman had told investigators that when she went to the house in Marin she met two others who appeared to have bruises, and one who had a black eye. The visitor found herself alone with a man introduced as "Rasheen" who smoked an odorless substance from a glass pipe. After donning a kimono, she underwent a massage but repeatedly refused requests to disrobe. At one
point, as she read from the Book of Revelation, she looked up and saw that Rasheen had exposed himself. She left, was persuaded to return and left again at dawn and went to police.
In another incident, the hosts lighted incense and offered herbal cigarettes. The visitor told authorities that after a massage, she felt drugged and ended up having sex with Rasheen, who was depicted as "Adam" to her "Eve." She reported the incident to police, but later refused to press charges.
Police also knew of the 1990 death at the home of an infant girl, whose lifeless body was kept in a hammock for three days before the medical examiner's office was summoned. A year later, the child's mother left the group, taking her 2-year-old son and her 4-day-old daughter with her, and got a restraining order against a member of the group, which is when police were
first told about The Family.
Singer, a clinical psychologist and author of Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives [and member of advisory committees of AFF, publisher of the CSR], said that the frightened ex-member told how Rasheen would spend $1,200 for two days' worth
of crack. Singer also related that one woman's trust fund was being "smoked away." The women in the group were ruled through domination, according to the one who left. "He walked around the house with a riding crop he used to beat the women." According to Singer, "he once beat a woman so hard he broke his arm."
In 1993, police officers checked out reports of possible child neglect at the home, but found no problems. A few hours later, a neighbor of Wright's came to the police station and said that after the officer left, Wright began "to rant and rave." That bitch f-- with the wrong person," Wright screamed from a patio, according to a police report on the incident. "She f--
with me?? I'm gonna f-- her up! . . . If I can't get her, than I'll get my niggas after her. I got lotsa niggas!"
Who Were These Women?
Exactly what drew the four women in custody to Rasheen/Wright is unclear, but their backgrounds indicate a level of sophistication that is puzzling, considering the condition of the 12 other children in the Marin house some of whom were suffering from rickets, a disease rarely seen in North America.
Bremner, 45, was an impassioned leader of the protest movement against South African apartheid when she studied political science at the UC Berkeley in the mid-1970s, yet she was so sweet-natured she was known as "Carol the Saint."
"What's mystifying and horrifying is how somebody, certainly on the left and very purposeful about politics, could have fallen into what looks like a tragic abyss," said Bennett Freeman, who was part of the protest movement with Bremner and continued in politics after college he was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state by President Clinton. His
friend had "an instinctive sympathy for poor people, oppressed people," said Freeman. "She was very selfless."
Campbell, 37, mother of the baby who died in November, worked at the Hotel Nikko as a sales assistant in the late 1980s. "Mary always had a smile and was a bit on the outrageous side, showing up for work at this conservative hotel in short skirts and Raggedy Ann stockings," said a friend from those days, who didn't want to be named. "She was pretty suggestive.
Liked to (have sex) and didn't mind telling people about it." The friend said the starvation of Campbell's child was all the more puzzling "since at the hotel we used to get free food and she was always eating everything she could get her hands on."
Wilson, 37, is the granddaughter of the Xerox corporation founder. And Polk-Matthews, 20, was a once-promising student at an exclusive San Francisco high school.
Kali Polk-Matthews, at 20 the youngest and evidently the most recent addition to the group, was a standout soccer athlete and scholar at the private Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco. She attended one year at Spelman College in Georgia, but last summer "took a year off to go travel with friends," a close friend said. "Kali was the sweetest teenager I ever
met," said the friend. "She organized clothing and food drives for battered women and their children, with no help from adults," the friend said.
Expert's Analysis
Singer, who said she was called in by San Francisco police in the early '90s to debrief the woman who fled the group, said that Rasheen/Wright attracted women by his charismatic personality. He then kept them and their children enthralled "the way so many of these guys do, by convincing them that being with him was the best thing in the world, . . . that he has
special powers, special knowledge, and that leaving him would be horrible."
Of the woman she interviewed, Singer said, "I was surprised, but not much, that a woman of her education and with a very upper-class East Coast background had gotten involved with a man like this. She had gotten away from the cult and the police wanted me to learn how this guy had gotten this woman to do what he wanted. "My answer was the same as with so many of
these situations: glib talk."
"Groups like Rasheen/Wright's are different from cults like, say, the Heaven's Gate UFO suicide cult, Singer said, in that they do not spread beyond a small clan and a charismatic leader. Often, there is nothing overtly illegal going on, although they seem strange. "I've seen more and more of these kinds of little cults in the past five, 10 years," Singer said.
"They are not religious in nature. They are mostly these little guys, like Wright, who see the big cults and think, 'Hey, I can do that too.' (Wright himself came from a modest background and "had no money," said Singer, who is well known for interviewing and analyzing the Charles Manson "Family," and Patricia Hearst after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.)
Defense
Jack Rauch, representing Bremner, insisted that depictions of the group were wrong. "From what I know, this doesn't look like a cult," said Rauch, whose client has been with Rasheen/Wright for 20 years. "The one lady who decided to leave left of her own free will and volition. My client raised two happy, healthy teenage daughters. They were just very private in the way
they lived because they felt people would not understand."
Rauch said the group kept to itself for fear of being mocked. "The whole group is devastated," he said. "It's their lifestyle that's interesting to everybody, not what was done. . . . "Sex and race seem to be what is titillating here, but it really has to do with their vegetarianism and their slowness in seeking traditional medical treatment." There were 12 children
living in the Marin home when the defendants were taken into custody, many of whom were malnourished. (Jaxon Van Derbeken, Peter Fimrite, Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle, 2/14, 15/02, Internet)
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| ____________________________________________ ^ |
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___________________________________________^ |
| |
|
International Cultic Studies Association
News Summaries: group
|
|
|
Vol. 1, No. 1, 2002 |
|
| _______________________________________________ |
| News Summaries |
|
| |
News Summaries: February 16-28, 2002
|
| |
Group: The Family, Rastafarianism |
|
|
Founder: Winnfred Wright, aka Rasheen Nyah |
| |
Category: |
|
|
Topic: children, legal, abuse |
"The Family" of Rasheen Nyah
"The Family" Guru Allegedly Used drugs and Guilt to Dominate Female Recruits
Three members of "The Family" a group of women and children dominated by a Winnfred Wright, aka Rasheen Nyah appeared in court in mid-February on charges of second-degree murder and child endangerment in the death of his 19-month-old son at the group's home in Marin County. Mary Campbell is the mother of the dead boy; Deirdre Hart Wilson and
Carol Louise Bremner lived at the group's home; a fourth, Kali Polk-Matthews, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse. Campbell and Wilson are pregnant.
Rasheen/Wright, also scheduled for arraignment on the charges, apparently used his women to recruit more female followers in San Francisco's Sunset District. His women offered prospects free spiritual sessions, or a chance to be photographed for a "world mural" depicting 90 different women. After agreeing to come to the home, a visitor would be introduced to "Rasheen,"
the lone male of the house, as well as to the other women, and children. The visitors would be offered, variously, tarot card readings, Bible study, crack cocaine, or sex, according to accounts provided to San Francisco police in the early 1990s.
Methods
A decade ago, San Francisco police asked cult expert Margaret Singer to analyze the group, for despite several encounters with The Family, they found themselves powerless to act. Singer learned that Wright espoused "a mishmash of Rastafarianism, karma, and white guilt. The white women who lived with him "had to work off the white mistreatment of black people. It was
their responsibility to work off their karma."
A woman had told investigators that when she went to the house in Marin she met two others who appeared to have bruises, and one who had a black eye. The visitor found herself alone with a man introduced as "Rasheen" who smoked an odorless substance from a glass pipe. After donning a kimono, she underwent a massage but repeatedly refused requests to disrobe. At one
point, as she read from the Book of Revelation, she looked up and saw that Rasheen had exposed himself. She left, was persuaded to return and left again at dawn and went to police.
In another incident, the hosts lighted incense and offered herbal cigarettes. The visitor told authorities that after a massage, she felt drugged and ended up having sex with Rasheen, who was depicted as "Adam" to her "Eve." She reported the incident to police, but later refused to press charges.
Police also knew of the 1990 death at the home of an infant girl, whose lifeless body was kept in a hammock for three days before the medical examiner's office was summoned. A year later, the child's mother left the group, taking her 2-year-old son and her 4-day-old daughter with her, and got a restraining order against a member of the group, which is when police were
first told about The Family.
Singer, a clinical psychologist and author of Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives [and member of advisory committees of AFF, publisher of the CSR], said that the frightened ex-member told how Rasheen would spend $1,200 for two days' worth
of crack. Singer also related that one woman's trust fund was being "smoked away." The women in the group were ruled through domination, according to the one who left. "He walked around the house with a riding crop he used to beat the women." According to Singer, "he once beat a woman so hard he broke his arm."
In 1993, police officers checked out reports of possible child neglect at the home, but found no problems. A few hours later, a neighbor of Wright's came to the police station and said that after the officer left, Wright began "to rant and rave." That bitch f-- with the wrong person," Wright screamed from a patio, according to a police report on the incident. "She f--
with me?? I'm gonna f-- her up! . . . If I can't get her, than I'll get my niggas after her. I got lotsa niggas!"
Who Were These Women?
Exactly what drew the four women in custody to Rasheen/Wright is unclear, but their backgrounds indicate a level of sophistication that is puzzling, considering the condition of the 12 other children in the Marin house some of whom were suffering from rickets, a disease rarely seen in North America.
Bremner, 45, was an impassioned leader of the protest movement against South African apartheid when she studied political science at the UC Berkeley in the mid-1970s, yet she was so sweet-natured she was known as "Carol the Saint."
"What's mystifying and horrifying is how somebody, certainly on the left and very purposeful about politics, could have fallen into what looks like a tragic abyss," said Bennett Freeman, who was part of the protest movement with Bremner and continued in politics after college he was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state by President Clinton. His
friend had "an instinctive sympathy for poor people, oppressed people," said Freeman. "She was very selfless."
Campbell, 37, mother of the baby who died in November, worked at the Hotel Nikko as a sales assistant in the late 1980s. "Mary always had a smile and was a bit on the outrageous side, showing up for work at this conservative hotel in short skirts and Raggedy Ann stockings," said a friend from those days, who didn't want to be named. "She was pretty suggestive.
Liked to (have sex) and didn't mind telling people about it." The friend said the starvation of Campbell's child was all the more puzzling "since at the hotel we used to get free food and she was always eating everything she could get her hands on."
Wilson, 37, is the granddaughter of the Xerox corporation founder. And Polk-Matthews, 20, was a once-promising student at an exclusive San Francisco high school.
Kali Polk-Matthews, at 20 the youngest and evidently the most recent addition to the group, was a standout soccer athlete and scholar at the private Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco. She attended one year at Spelman College in Georgia, but last summer "took a year off to go travel with friends," a close friend said. "Kali was the sweetest teenager I ever
met," said the friend. "She organized clothing and food drives for battered women and their children, with no help from adults," the friend said.
Expert's Analysis
Singer, who said she was called in by San Francisco police in the early '90s to debrief the woman who fled the group, said that Rasheen/Wright attracted women by his charismatic personality. He then kept them and their children enthralled "the way so many of these guys do, by convincing them that being with him was the best thing in the world, . . . that he has
special powers, special knowledge, and that leaving him would be horrible."
Of the woman she interviewed, Singer said, "I was surprised, but not much, that a woman of her education and with a very upper-class East Coast background had gotten involved with a man like this. She had gotten away from the cult and the police wanted me to learn how this guy had gotten this woman to do what he wanted. "My answer was the same as with so many of
these situations: glib talk."
"Groups like Rasheen/Wright's are different from cults like, say, the Heaven's Gate UFO suicide cult, Singer said, in that they do not spread beyond a small clan and a charismatic leader. Often, there is nothing overtly illegal going on, although they seem strange. "I've seen more and more of these kinds of little cults in the past five, 10 years," Singer said.
"They are not religious in nature. They are mostly these little guys, like Wright, who see the big cults and think, 'Hey, I can do that too.' (Wright himself came from a modest background and "had no money," said Singer, who is well known for interviewing and analyzing the Charles Manson "Family," and Patricia Hearst after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.)
Defense
Jack Rauch, representing Bremner, insisted that depictions of the group were wrong. "From what I know, this doesn't look like a cult," said Rauch, whose client has been with Rasheen/Wright for 20 years. "The one lady who decided to leave left of her own free will and volition. My client raised two happy, healthy teenage daughters. They were just very private in the way
they lived because they felt people would not understand."
Rauch said the group kept to itself for fear of being mocked. "The whole group is devastated," he said. "It's their lifestyle that's interesting to everybody, not what was done. . . . "Sex and race seem to be what is titillating here, but it really has to do with their vegetarianism and their slowness in seeking traditional medical treatment." There were 12 children
living in the Marin home when the defendants were taken into custody, many of whom were malnourished. (Jaxon Van Derbeken, Peter Fimrite, Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle, 2/14, 15/02, Internet)
|
| ____________________________________________ ^ |
|
|
___________________________________________^ |
| |
|
International Cultic Studies Association
News Summaries: group
|
|
|
Vol. 1, No. 1, 2002 |
|
| _______________________________________________ |
| News Summaries |
|
| |
News Summaries: February 16-28, 2002
|
| |
Group: The Family, Rastafarianism |
|
|
Founder: Winnfred Wright, aka Rasheen Nyah |
| |
Category: |
|
|
Topic: children, legal, abuse |
"The Family" of Rasheen Nyah
"The Family" Guru Allegedly Used drugs and Guilt to Dominate Female Recruits
Three members of "The Family" a group of women and children dominated by a Winnfred Wright, aka Rasheen Nyah appeared in court in mid-February on charges of second-degree murder and child endangerment in the death of his 19-month-old son at the group's home in Marin County. Mary Campbell is the mother of the dead boy; Deirdre Hart Wilson and
Carol Louise Bremner lived at the group's home; a fourth, Kali Polk-Matthews, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse. Campbell and Wilson are pregnant.
Rasheen/Wright, also scheduled for arraignment on the charges, apparently used his women to recruit more female followers in San Francisco's Sunset District. His women offered prospects free spiritual sessions, or a chance to be photographed for a "world mural" depicting 90 different women. After agreeing to come to the home, a visitor would be introduced to "Rasheen,"
the lone male of the house, as well as to the other women, and children. The visitors would be offered, variously, tarot card readings, Bible study, crack cocaine, or sex, according to accounts provided to San Francisco police in the early 1990s.
Methods
A decade ago, San Francisco police asked cult expert Margaret Singer to analyze the group, for despite several encounters with The Family, they found themselves powerless to act. Singer learned that Wright espoused "a mishmash of Rastafarianism, karma, and white guilt. The white women who lived with him "had to work off the white mistreatment of black people. It was
their responsibility to work off their karma."
A woman had told investigators that when she went to the house in Marin she met two others who appeared to have bruises, and one who had a black eye. The visitor found herself alone with a man introduced as "Rasheen" who smoked an odorless substance from a glass pipe. After donning a kimono, she underwent a massage but repeatedly refused requests to disrobe. At one
point, as she read from the Book of Revelation, she looked up and saw that Rasheen had exposed himself. She left, was persuaded to return and left again at dawn and went to police.
In another incident, the hosts lighted incense and offered herbal cigarettes. The visitor told authorities that after a massage, she felt drugged and ended up having sex with Rasheen, who was depicted as "Adam" to her "Eve." She reported the incident to police, but later refused to press charges.
Police also knew of the 1990 death at the home of an infant girl, whose lifeless body was kept in a hammock for three days before the medical examiner's office was summoned. A year later, the child's mother left the group, taking her 2-year-old son and her 4-day-old daughter with her, and got a restraining order against a member of the group, which is when police were
first told about The Family.
Singer, a clinical psychologist and author of Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives [and member of advisory committees of AFF, publisher of the CSR], said that the frightened ex-member told how Rasheen would spend $1,200 for two days' worth
of crack. Singer also related that one woman's trust fund was being "smoked away." The women in the group were ruled through domination, according to the one who left. "He walked around the house with a riding crop he used to beat the women." According to Singer, "he once beat a woman so hard he broke his arm."
In 1993, police officers checked out reports of possible child neglect at the home, but found no problems. A few hours later, a neighbor of Wright's came to the police station and said that after the officer left, Wright began "to rant and rave." That bitch f-- with the wrong person," Wright screamed from a patio, according to a police report on the incident. "She f--
with me?? I'm gonna f-- her up! . . . If I can't get her, than I'll get my niggas after her. I got lotsa niggas!"
Who Were These Women?
Exactly what drew the four women in custody to Rasheen/Wright is unclear, but their backgrounds indicate a level of sophistication that is puzzling, considering the condition of the 12 other children in the Marin house some of whom were suffering from rickets, a disease rarely seen in North America.
Bremner, 45, was an impassioned leader of the protest movement against South African apartheid when she studied political science at the UC Berkeley in the mid-1970s, yet she was so sweet-natured she was known as "Carol the Saint."
"What's mystifying and horrifying is how somebody, certainly on the left and very purposeful about politics, could have fallen into what looks like a tragic abyss," said Bennett Freeman, who was part of the protest movement with Bremner and continued in politics after college he was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state by President Clinton. His
friend had "an instinctive sympathy for poor people, oppressed people," said Freeman. "She was very selfless."
Campbell, 37, mother of the baby who died in November, worked at the Hotel Nikko as a sales assistant in the late 1980s. "Mary always had a smile and was a bit on the outrageous side, showing up for work at this conservative hotel in short skirts and Raggedy Ann stockings," said a friend from those days, who didn't want to be named. "She was pretty suggestive.
Liked to (have sex) and didn't mind telling people about it." The friend said the starvation of Campbell's child was all the more puzzling "since at the hotel we used to get free food and she was always eating everything she could get her hands on."
Wilson, 37, is the granddaughter of the Xerox corporation founder. And Polk-Matthews, 20, was a once-promising student at an exclusive San Francisco high school.
Kali Polk-Matthews, at 20 the youngest and evidently the most recent addition to the group, was a standout soccer athlete and scholar at the private Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco. She attended one year at Spelman College in Georgia, but last summer "took a year off to go travel with friends," a close friend said. "Kali was the sweetest teenager I ever
met," said the friend. "She organized clothing and food drives for battered women and their children, with no help from adults," the friend said.
Expert's Analysis
Singer, who said she was called in by San Francisco police in the early '90s to debrief the woman who fled the group, said that Rasheen/Wright attracted women by his charismatic personality. He then kept them and their children enthralled "the way so many of these guys do, by convincing them that being with him was the best thing in the world, . . . that he has
special powers, special knowledge, and that leaving him would be horrible."
Of the woman she interviewed, Singer said, "I was surprised, but not much, that a woman of her education and with a very upper-class East Coast background had gotten involved with a man like this. She had gotten away from the cult and the police wanted me to learn how this guy had gotten this woman to do what he wanted. "My answer was the same as with so many of
these situations: glib talk."
"Groups like Rasheen/Wright's are different from cults like, say, the Heaven's Gate UFO suicide cult, Singer said, in that they do not spread beyond a small clan and a charismatic leader. Often, there is nothing overtly illegal going on, although they seem strange. "I've seen more and more of these kinds of little cults in the past five, 10 years," Singer said.
"They are not religious in nature. They are mostly these little guys, like Wright, who see the big cults and think, 'Hey, I can do that too.' (Wright himself came from a modest background and "had no money," said Singer, who is well known for interviewing and analyzing the Charles Manson "Family," and Patricia Hearst after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.)
Defense
Jack Rauch, representing Bremner, insisted that depictions of the group were wrong. "From what I know, this doesn't look like a cult," said Rauch, whose client has been with Rasheen/Wright for 20 years. "The one lady who decided to leave left of her own free will and volition. My client raised two happy, healthy teenage daughters. They were just very private in the way
they lived because they felt people would not understand."
Rauch said the group kept to itself for fear of being mocked. "The whole group is devastated," he said. "It's their lifestyle that's interesting to everybody, not what was done. . . . "Sex and race seem to be what is titillating here, but it really has to do with their vegetarianism and their slowness in seeking traditional medical treatment." There were 12 children
living in the Marin home when the defendants were taken into custody, many of whom were malnourished. (Jaxon Van Derbeken, Peter Fimrite, Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle, 2/14, 15/02, Internet)
|
| ____________________________________________ ^ |
|
|
___________________________________________^ |
|
News Summaries - group