Morningland sect seeks to move founder’s remains to L.B.

From The Long Beach Press Telegram, 1/25/2004

Daniel Sperato,

founder of Morningland who was also know as Master Donato, is buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park in Escondido. Followers of Morningland want to have Sperato’s remains exhumed and buried under the church in Long Beach.

Steven Georges / Press-Telegram

Religion: But son’s opposition prevents the church from exhuming body.

By Wendy Thomas Russell

Staff Writer

LONG BEACH — For nearly 27 years, Daniel Sperato’s bones have lain beneath a triangular tombstone in an Escondido cemetary.

His son says that’s where they belong, and that’s where they should stay.

Not everyone agrees.

In life, Sperato was the founder of Morningland, a Long Beach religious sect that combines Easter and Western religions, metaphysics and astrology. Called “Master Donato,” Sperato was a revered teacher who brought hope to some hippies in a generation searching for a spiritual path. His mantra: “We are all one.”

In death, the minister’s's existence took on new meaning. He was elevated to “Donato the Christ,” and his church — under the leadership of his wife, Patricia — evolved into a controversial commune; some call it a cult.

Daniel “Master Donato” Sperato, founder of Morningland, a Long Beach religious sect, is buried in Escondido. His wife, Sri Patricia, shown in 1979, is buried in the Long Beach church.

Past members describe an almost militaristic atmosphere where men were encouraged to get vasectomies, family ties were intentionally shattered and hundreds were excommunicated for no clear reason. Donato, members were told, was in a spaceship hovering 25 miles above the earth’s surface, sending telepathic messages to a few chosen “disciples” below.

Whether Sperato would have supported Morningland’s evolution is a source of much disagreement. His Long beach followers, who continue to operate a church at 2600 E. Seventh St., say he would have. Sperato’s son, Marcus who now lives in Colorado, says he would not.

The disagreement came to an unlikely head this month.

Six months after the death of Patricia Sperato, or Sri Patricia as she was known, members of Morningland formally requested that Daniel Sperato’s body be exhumed and placed in a crypt under the church’s altar.

Sri Patricia has already been buried there, and Morningland officials say they are merely trying to follow the desire of their founders.

“It’s their wishes,” says one member, who calls herself Zentare. Church officials she says, want to carry out those wishes — “as you would for anyone.”

They’ll have to get around Marcus Sperato first.

Marcus, now 40, rarely saw his mother over the last two decades and doesn’t doubt that she wanted to be buried in her church. But he says his father chose his resting place a long time ago — and it wasn’t on Seventh Street.

“I would not want them to move my father,” he says.

Unless the church decides to seek a court order, Marcus’ opposition may be all it takes to prevent the transfer, according to city and cemetery officials.

The altar of Morningland church, seen in 1979, shows how believers of the sect, which combines Eastern and Western religions, correlated Daniel Sperato to Jesus Christ. Nearly 27 years after Sperato was laid to rest in an Escondido cemetary, Morningland followers say his remains should be exhumed and placed under the church altar at 2600 E. Seventh St. in Long Beach. Sperato’s son Marcus opposes the idea.

Action unusual

Dewey Ausmus, the general manager for the cemetery district that includes Oak Hill Memorial Park, where Daniel Sperato is buried, says the situation is a rarity. Most exhumed bodies, he says, are transferred to other cemeteries at the request of families, not followers.

“We were contacted last week in person by a couple from Morningland who indicated that they were interested in transferring (Sperato’s) body,” Ausmus says. “They seemed to be wanting to do it fairly soon.”

But, for now at least, the son’s opposition will keep San Diego County from approving a permit to move the body, says Elizabeth Reyes, supervisor in the county’s death–registration office.

“If there’s a will, or if there’s somebody who has custody of the person’s estate, then they’re the ones that have authority.” she says. “If there’s a conflict there, they would probably have to settle that through the court.”

The burial of Sri Patricia was a different matter.

Mike Qualters, a records supervisor at Forest Lawn Memorial Park & Mortuary in Long Beach, which handled the burial says Sri Patricia’s body was transferred to Morningland church July 21 for burial at the request of a church member who had been given her durable power of attorney for health care. Forest Lawn, Qualters says, doesn’t even have her next of kin on record.

While unusual, burying Sri Patricia in her church required no special authorization, says Michael Johnson, a support services manager for the Long Beach’s Health and Human Services Department, which approved the burial permit.

“Under state law, church organizations are allowed to conduct burials on site,” he says. “And they qualify under state law.”

Zentare says Morningland officials don’t care to discuss details of the burial plans, or to allow the press inside the church.

“We’re not really interested in any publicity,” she says. At its peak of popularity, Morningland boasted up to 2,000 members and had chapters in Escondido and Crestline. (plus small chapters in Salinas and Riverside -webmaster)

Former temple

In 1977, the church, a nonprofit organization called Morningland corp., bought the Seventh Street property, a former Jewish temple with several adjacent storefronts between Molino and Ohio avenues, for $119.000. The store fronts were used by Morningland to sell clothes and books. The church had a publishing arm to dispense its own material.

Today, Morningland’s membership has dwindled to less than 100, and the property — assessed at $750,000 — is almost entirely without distinguishing features. While the landscaping is well-kept and attractive, the yellow stucco building has few windows left, and storefront doors have been tastefully covered.

The only indications the Morningland still exists inside are some pictures of angels adorning a window near the front entrance, and a modest poster advertising “Morningland Community.”

UFOs supplanted

Angels replaced UFOs as a central force in Morningland’s dogma in the 1990s, after members of the Heaven’s Gate cult in Rancho Santa Fe committed mass suicide in an effort to ascend to an awaiting spaceship in the sky.

They backed off UFOs,” says Anne Spera, a former member and good friend of Marcus Sperato. “Now, they’re into angels. ‘Angels’ is this key word now.”

Zentare, of Morningland, says membership totals are elusive, especially because so many people attend only on occasion. She describes today’s Morningland in straightforward language.

“We’re a simple prayer group,” she says. “We have meditations. We teach simple meditation.”

That wasn’t always the case.

Shortly after her husband’s death, Sri Patricia began redefining Morningland. In addition to aura, numerology, tarot card and palm readings, Morningland also began to tout miracles and mind-reading. Sri Patricia, who claimed she could read people’s thoughts and communicate with her dead husband, proceeded to “purge” all those members accused of not putting Morningland above themselves.

Al Stone,
Former member

The excommunicated, many of whom believed that the only way to heaven was to be one of Donato’s disciples, were devastated. At least one committed suicide, according to Al Stone, a Santa Monica acupuncturist and ex-member who runs a Web site called www.ex-morninglanders.com. Others tried to return and were turned away. Dozens sought psychiatric counseling and now they say they believe they were led astray at best.

“I was fooled”, says Stone, who was forced to leave in 1982. “Had they kept me around. I think I’d still be there. It’s a blessing (that I left), even though at the time it felt like a curse.”

In addition to advertising miracle healings, the church also made public predictions about the future.

One high-ranking official, called a gopi, told a group of Long Beach residents in January 1978 that it looked “very good” that former Gov. Jerry Brown would be the next president (it was Ronald Reagan), and that “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” would surpass “Star Wars by $10 million at the box office (it didn’t).

Multiple scandals

For the last decade, scandals plagued the group.

In 1980, a San Diego County grand jury indicted Sri Patricia and Morningland’s longtime attorney, Ed Masry, on charges of attempting to bribe Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally. The alleged bribe — $10,000 of church money — was to be laundered through Masry’s office and used to set up a rigged state Assembly committee to investigate possible police harassment of non-mainstream religious groups, authorities said.

Masry, who since has become famous thanks to a movie based on the life of his real-life assistant Erin Brockovich, strongly denied the accusations and eventually was acquitted. Dymally never was charged, though he later said he believed the scandal injured him politically. Officials dropped their case against Sri Patricia.

Morningland’s claim of miracle healings also drew fire.

Marcus Sperato,

Founder’s son

In 1986, an AIDS patient said he paid Morningland more than $700 in 2.5 months to be healed of his disease, only to find his condition worsen. At the time, Sri Patricia was advertising that she could heal AIDS, but later said she never suggested patients stop seeking medical attention.

Also, in the mid-’80s, ex-Morningland members began breaking the sect’s code of silence and speaking out about the group. They described an extreme form of “free love,” in which men were encouraged to get vasectomies, couples were encouraged to break up and pair with members of the same sex, and marriages were sometimes arranged.

“The peace and love gave way to discipline and obedience,” Stone says.

In December 1986, the controversy surrounding Morningland came to an explosive climax.

Bomb planted

A Bellflower man named Thomas McCoy placed a bomb just outside the church, and partially detonated it, shattering windows and blackening a nearby wall. A bomb squad spent the next seven hours trying to defuse the bomb, so that the rest of it wouldn’t explode and destroy the entire city block. They eventually detonated it safely.

McCoy told authorities he was trying to protect his sister, who allegedly was threatened and harassed after breaking up with a Morningland member and leaving the group. McCoy was sentenced to three years in prison.

Since then, Morningland has stayed relatively low-key. Members have purchased an apartment complex across Seventh Street, where some live. And they still hold services, classes and seminars. But without Sri Patricia at the helm, Morningland’s future remains uncertain.

For Marcus Sperato, the church holds more bad memories than good.

He says he fondly remembers his father, who directed the North Long Beach Boys Club for years, even after founding Morningland.

“My dad actually started the church to help people,” Marcus said. “People were looking around to find something that felt good for them, find something different. … He was real good with people.”

But Marcus says he strongly believes his mother’s greed corrupted the church — and damaged him. He describes how, as a child, his mother made him spy on the other members of the church, and how she disowned him after he chose to leave, even though he was only 18.

“My mom saw the power that was there,” he says, “and she took it to the extreme. Everything got twisted around, and everything went down real quick. … Dad wouldn’t have supported it.”

Marcus could be talking about himself.

Although he doesn’t say much about the sad turn his life took in adulthood, his friends — who are sympathetic and deeply protective — say he spiraled into drug addiction and alcoholism. Without a family connection, they say, he didn’t stand a chance.

The say the saddest part is that he doesn’t have the money or means to assert his rights as an heir to Morningland. He says the church didn’t inform him of his mother’s death or the burial plans, and he has no way to gather his parents’ personal effects. Marcus is also searching for his sister, Lynn Connell, with who he lost contact years ago. (Lynn and Marcus have, since the appearance of this article in the paper, reconnected with each other. We’re very happy with this development. -exml webmaster)

The church, he says, won’t return his phone calls or letters, and he’s confident he would be turned away at the door.

Zentare contends that the church would give Marcus permission to come inside, and she says she’s not sure why no one has received Marcus’ recent telephonic and written messages.

Distinctive tomb

Today, Daniel Sperato’s headstone in Escondido bears the unmistakable mark of Morningland. The pyramid-shaped stone reads “Master Donato” and includes two dates: one indicating his “Avesha” in 1971, the other indicating his “Maha Samadi” in 1976. Both are Sanskrit terms used in yogic literature and refer to the day Sperato gained his power as a master, and the day he departed the living and “ascended” as a saint. The words are accompanied by Morningland’s symbol — a triangle with a rising sun and a flame in the middle.

And, of course, it includes his favorite incantation: “We are all one.”

Marcus Sperato said he doesn’t go to visit his father’s grave site often. But he likes the idea of knowing he can.

Ed Masry has a million stories from a life and law career that have added a few hues to the word colorful, but right now he’s focused on the invisible thing that’s made him famous.

It’s in a glass of iced tea that Masry holds during lunch at a tony Westlake Village eatery.

“We know as I drink this that there is chromium 6 in there,” Masry said. “Is there enough chromium 6 in here to kill me? I don’t think so, because otherwise I wouldn’t be drinking it. The question is, ‘How much does it take?’ We don’t know that.”

Masry, still a neophyte on the Thousand Oaks City Council, uses this to illustrate why he insists on continued testing of the city’s drinking water supply for chromium 6.

But the iced tea imagery is steeped so much deeper. Chromium 6 is the chemical that Masry — pushed by his brassy investigator, Erin Brockovich — alleged poisoned residents of Hinkley, a small desert town near Barstow.

They won a record $333 million settlement, on behalf of more than 600 townsfolk, against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It spawned the movie “Erin Brockovich,” starring Julia Roberts in the title role and Albert Finney as Masry. Both actors are up for Oscars at tonight’s Academy Awards; the movie is up for best picture. Masry and Brockovich both will attend.

If you think that’s all the Hollywood to Ed Masry, think again. He’s in negotiations with a production company for a TV series based on his 40-year career as an attorney.

It will not lack for electricity.

Masry has represented politicians, judges, prostitutes and pimps, a stripper named Lucky Wynn, a religious cult, a television evangelist, former “Baywatch” and sex-tape star Pamela Lee and, at one time, more than half of the Los Angeles Rams football team. He once owned part of the rock band Steppenwolf of “Born To Be Wild” fame.

Just one of Masry’s many dabblings includes all of this: kidnapping (his word) two kids in Hong Kong and taking them to Australia by “dubious means” on behalf of a client in a religious group, burning a court order on television, and being accused by the state Attorney General’s Office of bribing a lieutenant governor and theft of funds.

Masry trafficks in lucrative, high-stakes poker games called environmental tort cases, where eight- and nine-figure sums are tossed around like idle chatter. He sues giant companies such as PG&E, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin on behalf of the little guys he says are getting “shafted.” The potential reward for Masry runs into the millions — as does the risk, he quickly notes.

This from a man who hasn’t tried a case in a courtroom in 11 years.

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, then the law has its share of unusual relationships. The same lieutenant governor Masry was accused of bribing has been a friend of Masry’s for 34 years. And about the time Masry was starting work on PG&E’s alleged poisoning of Hinkley’s water, he represented a marina owner accused of dumping toxic batteries into Lake Arrowhead, also used for drinking water. One involved real pollution, and one didn’t, he offered in defense of the flip-flop.

By his count, Masry has been jailed five times — and comedian Danny Thomas once saved him from 60 days in the clink.

“I’ve represented such a diverse cast of characters, from the very good to the very bad — or make that allegedly very bad,” Masry said. “I am probably the most jailed attorney in California who’s never been convicted of a felony or ever been brought before the state bar for a hearing on any misconduct.”

After all this, Masry is asked why trifle with the Thousand Oaks City Council, not exactly known for its civility. He echoes a familiar refrain heard throughout Ventura County in recent years: He hears the San Fernando Valley’s footsteps coming and doesn’t like that.

“I’m 68 years old, and I don’t want to move again,” he said. “I’m not going to be chased out of Thousand Oaks by the developers.”

‘A very endearing guy’

In the movie, Finney portrays Masry as a sort of bumbling, crusty guy who has a heart. Masry liked the performance, likes the actor.

“Albert Finney is the kind of guy you can have a beer with,” Masry said, his open-collar, shoeless casual look and occasionally salty language offsetting his well-appointed Westlake Village law office. “Of course, he’d prefer a glass of wine; I’d be the one having the glass of beer.”

His famous chief environmental investigator, now remarried and going by the name Erin Brockovich-Ellis, said Masry is laid back, accepting of people as they are, but definitely not bumbling. She jokingly called Masry “a snake.”

“Just the other day he was on the phone with my husband, going, ‘That god-damned Brockovich so and so,’ ” she said with a laugh. “Then he pulls this endearing teddy-bear act and you can’t be mad at him. You can’t be mad at Ed Masry. He’s a very endearing guy.”

But that does not apply to those on the other side of the aisle or an issue, she said.

“I’ve seen a side of Ed as an attorney that frankly is frightening,” Brockovich-Ellis, who lives in Agoura Hills, said. “It’s not that he has a temper, it’s that he just will not give up. He will hang in there until the bitter end. I wouldn’t push him around.”

Masry hired Brockovich-Ellis in 1992, and she said she’s “grown to like him more in the last nine years.”

In the movie, the two argue a lot. In real life, both say they have a love-hate relationship.

“Some days, you just want to strangle Erin Brockovich,” Masry said, smiling.

Former state legislator, lieutenant governor and congressman Mervin Dymally characterized Masry as no-nonsense, loyal, principled, a fighter and “a man of great integrity.”

“He’s a very, very interesting guy,” Dymally said. “He enjoys life. He goes into any project with a whole lot of gusto.”

Played track and football

Ed Masry was born in New Jersey in 1932 to a Syrian father and a French mother who had met while he was in the U.S. Army in World War I and she was fleeing the German army in France. The family moved across the country to Southern California in 1940 in two old Fords, sometimes sleeping along the road.

At first, they lived in Venice. Masry remembers going out to the end of the Venice Pier with friends and diving into the water for pennies, nickels and quarters that people threw into the ocean.

“The water was so clear you could see the money floating down,” he said. “That wouldn’t happen today.”

They went on grunion runs and skipped school to see the circus when it came to town. Masry became a child actor because the family knew someone in the neighborhood who had played Valentino’s mother in a movie.

When he was in seventh grade, his father bought land on what is now the Van Nuys Airport. The family stayed in a bungalow that Masry recalled was smaller than his office, so small that he slept outside in an adjoining tent for three years.

Masry graduated from Van Nuys High School and then tried to join the Marines, but his parents wouldn’t let him. He wound up going to Valley Junior College on a “fluke” athletic scholarship, and played track and football. A 1950 roster lists Masry as playing center and weighing 158 pounds; offensive linemen today, he noted, weigh more than twice that much.

Masry served in the Army during the Korean conflict. After returning, he took classes at UC-Santa Barbara, UCLAand USC. He did not receive a bachelor’s degree, but Masry said he was admitted to Loyola Law School on the basis of high placement scores and was graduated in 1960. In January 1961, he was admitted to the California State Bar.

Contempt of court citation

In the early days, Masry was a struggling criminal defense attorney, taking on “anyone who came through the door and said they were innocent.”

The same year he was admitted to the bar, Masry defended a rug merchant in Indio who subsequently was sentenced to jail by a justice of the peace for carrying a concealed weapon. Masry’s client, a member of an orthodox church, had no prior record and Masry thought the sentence was stiff. When he told the judge that, they got into an argument and Masry was cited for contempt of court and sentenced to 60 days in jail.

As it so happened, comedian Danny Thomas was a member of the same church. He showed up in court, went into chambers with the judge and not only erased Masry’s jail time but got probation for Masry’s client.

“I got my first lesson that sometimes it’s important as to who you know and not what you know,” Masry said.

Masry once represented a stripper named Lucky Wynn, who opened a topless bar in Santa Monica only to be threatened with arrest and closure. Masry won the case — and Lucky won the right to take off her blouse in a club.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Masry was an agent for Merlin Olsen, Roman Gabriel and other members of the Los Angeles Rams, as well as other National Football League players. He poked around in league antitrust issues, helped players gain free agency and bumped heads with powerful NFLCommissioner Pete Rozelle.

“He and I did not get along,” Masry recalled of the late commissioner. “He and I exchanged four-letter words. But you always knew where you stood with Pete Rozelle. EPete Rozelle had a mean streak in him, but he was the best thing that ever happened to pro football.”

Masry once successfully defended a doctor against murder charges.

“He was black in the days when that wasn’t a popular thing to be, especially when you were giving abortions to white women,” Masry said.

He also represented two South Americans in an alleged drug-money laundering case — Masry claimed it was a CIAoperation — that made the cover of Time magazine. The “monstrous case,” Masry said, lasted a year; his closing argument went three days. Ultimately, his two clients went to prison; one died there, and the other is still there.

“My fights have always been the little guy vs. the big guy, David vs. Goliath,” he said.

It wasn’t until Hinkley that Masry realized how lucrative that could be.

Make — or lose — millions

Ed Masry’s math goes something like this.

He says he won’t accept an environmental pollution case unless it has the potential of at least $70 million in damages. Win, and his firm, Masry & Vititoe, takes 40 percent of the damages awarded. Lose, and the firm gets nothing — and is out expenses.

It’s both a calculated risk and a crapshoot.

“Let’s face it, there’s a lot of money in it, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t like the money,” Masry said. “We make big money and we roll big money. When we roll these cases, we roll millions of dollars.”

In the $333 million Hinkley settlement in 1996, the math added up to quite a chunk of change. Using the 40 percent take, and the fact that it was split among three firms, that leaves Masry’s firm with roughly $40 million — an estimate he won’t confirm but doesn’t deny, either. (Brockovich-Ellis received $2 million in bonuses.)

“People say, ‘Oh God, they made $40 million,’ but they forget what we risked,” Masry said.

The Hinkley case wiped out the firm’s operating capital. Masry sold a second home, drained his life savings.

“If we had lost Hinkley, it would have cost the firm about $25 million,” he said.

It’s easy to spend $5 million just on small cases, Masry added.

Flush with success in Hinkley, Masry and company filed similar cases in the late 1990s against Rocketdyne in Simi Valley and Unocal in Avila Beach — and didn’t fare nearly as well.

Masry alleged that rocket and nuclear tests over the years at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Simi Valley polluted ground water, caused illnesses in people, including cancers, and damaged property. The case is dead — a judge dismissed it — and the firm lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“We flat out got beat,” Masry said. “That’s our one big failure, and I feel sorry for the people who are sick.

“My own opinion: Did Rocketdyne poison people? Yes. Can we prove it? No. Rocketdyne was too smart. They destroyed everything. That happens in too many cases. There are a lot of people getting shafted out there.”

Rocketdyne spokesman Dan Beck called Masry’s legal claims “patently ridiculous.”

“They offered no scientific evidence that we endangered public health, and we don’t think there is any danger,” Beck said.

In Avila Beach, much of which is contaminated with oil, Masry got some money for some 60 residents there, but many were dissatisfied with the amount and critical of Masry’s performance and tactics. Masry said he did the best he could.

“Did our clients get a fair settlement? No,” he said. “I didn’t like the settlement either, but we got something.”

Today, Masry & Vititoe has 13 attorneys. Five people, including Masry and Brockovich-Ellis, are licensed to handle and sample chemicals. The firm conducts its own chemical tests.

Masry ticks off a list of pending environmental tort cases: one in Hawaii, one in New Hampshire, two in West Virginia, three in New York state, one in New Jersey. Companies involved in those include Dole, Del Monte, Shell and Dow. In California, he’s taking on Pepsi in Willits, as well as aviation giants Lockheed Martin in Redlands and McDonnell Douglas in Sacramento.

Roll the dice. It could come up seven, it could come up snake eyes.

“You gotta know what you’re doing,” Masry said.

Though best known for the environmental cases, Masry also deals in other legal facets, including entertainment law. He’s helping Pamela Lee fight distribution of two private, but downloaded, sex tapes she made — the first with Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and the second with Poison singer Brett Michaels.

“We’re representing both Tommy and Pamela on the Tommy tape, and we’ve resolved litigation on the Brett tape,” Masry said.

Alleged extortion

Since the release of “Erin Brockovich,” Masry and company have found themselves to be targets of criticism and lawsuits.

Critics say it’s impossible that one chemical, that chromium 6, caused all the illnesses in Hinkley, and that chromium 6 is only dangerous when inhaled. Brockovich-Ellis responded that the people of Hinkley did inhale.

Like the large corporations he sometimes targets in environmental cases, Masry claims people are after him because he has money.

Last week, Masry and Brockovich-Ellis testified in a $310,000 extortion case involving Brockovich-Ellis’ former husband and former live-in boyfriend. The pair allegedly demanded the money in exchange for not telling tabloids about a supposed sexual relationship between Masry and Brockovich-Ellis — an affair both deny.

Also pending is a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed against him last year by a former attorney at the firm, Kissandra Cohen. Cohen, now 22, claims that she was fired in late 1999 for refusing Masry’s sexual advances — a charge Masry denies.

In her lawsuit, Cohen — a former child prodigy who graduated from college at age 17 and became one of the youngest people ever to pass the bar exam — also alleges that a sexually charged and anti-Semitic atmosphere existed at Masry & Vititoe.

Andre Jardini, a trial attorney representing Cohen, said that Masry also is being sued for defamatory remarks about Cohen.

“In my mind E he’s just being a bully,” Jardini said.

Masry claims he has 65 witnesses lined up to refute Cohen’s various charges.

“She’s not going to get a dime off me,” he said. “When this is over, I’m going to take the transcript to the state bar and recommend they take disciplinary action against her.”

State bar spokeswoman Kathleen Beitiks confirmed that Masry has never been disciplined by the licensing association — or even had a notice of charges filed on him for violations of rules governing professional conduct.

That includes what follows.

Burned court order on TV

In the late 1970s, Masry came to represent television evangelist Gene Scott, as well as a group called Morningland, deemed by some to be a cult. His involvement produced a complex story involving civil disobedience, bribery and theft allegations, airline tickets to Hong Kong, the state Attorney General’s Office and Dymally, the lieutenant governor at the time in the Jerry Brown administration.

In the San Diego County town of Vista, Masry defended Morningland members against accusations of murder and kidnapping.

Around the same time, Masry and Scott’s church were battling the Attorney General’s Office over whether the state had rights to examine and control church financial records.

When Scott and Masry received a court order to turn over the church’s records, the two went on television and burned the order. Masry also threatened to hold a protest parade through downtown Los Angeles.

“It was civil disobedience,” Masry recalled. “After that, the A.G.’s Office wanted me so bad they could taste me.”

Later, acting on behalf of a female Morningland member, Masry flew to Hong Kong and kidnapped her two children, who were taken there by her husband in a custody battle. Masry took the children to Australia — and that’s when things really broke loose.

Masry had waived his attorney fees, but the flights cost $15,000 and the church group put up the money. So the Attorney General’s Office, arguing that it had authority over church finances, prosecuted Masry. Masry also was accused of bribing Dymally with $10,000 in church funds on behalf of the Morningland people.

Masry was indicted by a San Diego County grand jury for embezzlement of “underlying” state funds and convicted in a Superior Court trial, but was granted a new trial on the basis of juror misconduct. That one ended with a hung jury and the charges went away.

“No one ever ended up being convicted of anything,” said Nathan Barankin, communications director for the Attorney General’s Office.

Paul Gordnier, the prosecutor in the case, declined to comment for this story.

“It’s time we broke bread and had a beer,” Masry said of Gordnier. “It’s been 20 years, and I have nothing against him. He was just doing his job.”

Dymally said the bribery charge was bogus. He recalled being at a dinner with Morningland people, and the group included a plant from the Attorney General’s Office.

“First of all, if a politician is going to take a bribe, he’s not going to do it in front of (a bunch of) people and say, ‘I need $10,000,’ ” Dymally said. “It was so untruthful. It made me very skeptical of conspiracy trials. It just really shook my faith in the system.”

The battle over church finances and records ended with nonprofit religious organizations securing greater freedom and control. What “broke the attorney general’s back,” Masry said, was when more and more church groups joined the fray.

“We started a religious uproar,” Masry said. “If the attorney general tried this today, he’d be lynched.”

Among other things, the Morningland people believed that their founder awaited them in a spaceship orbiting above the Earth. But Masry preached a lesson in tolerance.

“Depending on your point of view, who is nuttier — me or the Morningland people?” Masry asked. “That’s something we all have to understand — the other person or group’s point of view.”

But some people in Thousand Oaks say Masry doesn’t respect people who disagree with him.

Will never try another case

Masry and his second wife, Joette, moved to the Conejo Valley in 1996, and Masry brought his law firm to Westlake Village the next year.

When not involved in various battles, the couple enjoy taking trips to Hawaii, Las Vegas and Europe. It was to Joette that Masry promised he would never try another case in court after the draining 1990 money-laundering case. Masry now mainly handles final negotiations, works on trial preparations and delegates trying the cases to others. He never tried the Hinkley case, for example.

Masry also is somewhat limited because he must undergo kidney dialysis three times a week, which takes over five hours and drains away 10 to 15 pounds each session. He’s also a colon cancer and heart-bypass operation survivor, but says he is in good health overall.

Masry’s involvement in local politics started with contributing money to causes and supporting former Councilwoman Elois Zeanah in a recall drive. He filed lawsuits over such issues as the steepness of Borchard Road.

Masry surprised himself and friends by running for a council seat.

Masry, who took office in January, has dived right in. The drinking water in Thousand Oaks, he says, is just fine and nothing to be alarmed about — the testing is just a safety net.

At a recent council meeting, Masry criticized a proposed agreement involving the Western Plateau and adjustments in developer subdivisions — a deal fashioned by Councilman Andy Fox. Masry said he trusts almost no one among city staffers.

Masry said he has problems with the performances of City Manager MaryJane Lazz and City Attorney Mark Sellers and wants to discuss that in closed session at this Tuesday’s meeting. Sellers, Lazz and Fox all declined to comment on Masry for this story.

At least two public speakers at the last council meeting blasted Masry for his insulting and accusatory manner. One called him a “cheap-shot artist” and said Masry is not worthy of serving on the council. Some rumble about launching a recall drive against Masry.

Responded Masry: “You’re looking at an old soldier. When people get upset with me, it just rolls off my back.”

Councilwoman Linda Parks, aligned with Masry on the panel, praised him for helping the underdog in various activities and defended his approach.

“We all have our own styles,” Parks said. “He’s willing to say that the emperor has no clothes when it’s not politically correct to do so.”

Brockovich-Ellis said Masry reminds her of her father.

“He’s a constant,” she said. “In the world we live in today, that’s a most pleasurable quality. I love him.”

Dymally believes Masry ultimately will not seek re-election in 2004 because it is taking too much time away from what he loves — the law.

Masry, as mayor pro tem, is in line to become Thousand Oaks’ mayor next year — though that is subject to council vote.

Masry said it’s too early to tell what his council career will bring, noting that he’s still “getting my feet wet.”

But if it in any way approaches his law career, it could be more Hollywood fodder.

– Brett Johnson’s e-mail address is

bjohnson@insidevc.com.

On the Net: For a Masry biography and a list of his numerous awards, try

www.masryvititoe.com/Masry.htm.

What exactly I am going to do next year, when I find myself stuck for column inches, I do not know, but this week I’d like to take a serious look at the Y2K issue.

With half the IT industry toiling away trying to making systems compliant and the other getting tooled up with lawyers in case they fail, have we have overlooked something?

For instance, in the States a lot of people seem to believe that the world as we know it will end at midnight on December 31, 1999.

They call it “The End of the World as We Know It” – or TEOTWAWKI for short, which surely in itself indicates the parlous state of their minds.

They believe that when the first second of the Year 2000 arrives, computers controlling just about everything in the civilised world (and America) will go beserk – and things will never be the same again.

So they’re reacting in the same way that they react to any other potential end of the world situation by stocking up with baked beans and arming themselves to the teeth. Understandably so, there’s all sort of crazy people out there.

The Y2K thing has thrown up all sorts of crackpots. I saw one report recently which mentioned a Californian community called Morningland (presumably nothing much happens there after lunch) whose members allegedly believe that the dawn of the Millennium will be a signal for Jesus to arrive in a spaceship to deliver their souls from earth.

This would inadvertently solve the Y2K date problem as presumably it would no longer be 2000 years after Christ Anno Domini but 0000AD . Which is perhaps what the computers have been trying to tell us all along. Those COBOL programmers where smarter than I thought.

The only problem is we’ve just spent the last five years fixing everything, or rather breaking it, so TEOTWAWKI is back on. Perhaps we’ll need that space ship after all.

Of course, we’ve heard this kind of stuff before – while the Hale Bopp comet was making its way past earth, members of another US based cult, the Heaven’s Gate community, all committed suicide.

This turned out to be a process which their leader had decreed would see the cult transported up to a spaceship lurking behind the comet. Why they couldn’t use the tele-transporter like everyone else I don’t know.

What’s worrying me is that both these organisations seem to have more than their fair share of technologists – one of the main sources of income for the Heaven’s Gate community was designing web sites.

In doing the usual extensive research for this column, I found a Web site put up by “Ex-Morninglanders”, who, I guess, had started feeling all together more optimistic about the future – perhaps they had finally completed all their supplier’s Y2K audits questionnaires. Or perhaps they had just got fed up with all those early starts.

But I suspect that since TEOTWAWKI is unlikely to arrive on Jan 1, 2000, people like these – and all the other Y2K nuts – are going to have to find some other reason for behaving as they do. Sadly, I’m sure they will.

Chris can be contacted at chris@webxpress.co.uk. Previous articles can be found at http://www.webxpress.co.uk.

By Alex Heard and Peter Klebnikov

With 1999 almost on us and the year 2000 starting to awaken, growl and plod fatefully toward the camera lens, you can count on 12 months of panicky millennial excitements. The personnel are certainly out there, ready to go. According to a 1997 Associated Press poll, nearly 1 in 4 adult Christians — upward of 26 million people — expect Christ to return in their lifetimes, fulfilling the complicated End Times scenario that many people glean from prophetic Bible texts like Revelation and Daniel. The Christians are joined by lesser but impressive numbers of apocalyptic others, with their own scripts of doom and redemption. Ted Daniels, a folklorist in Philadelphia whose Millennium Watch Institute has monitored millennial activity for years, says that his database alone holds the names of more than 1,200 self-proclaimed prophets. In light of disasters like Heaven’s Gate, that sounds alarming, and millennialism can be troublesome, as some people in the pages that follow vividly demonstrate. But despite their extraordinary flash and strangeness, apocalyptic movements have a long, relatively peaceful history in American life. The meaning of the Greek word apokalypsis is ”to uncover,” and the motive force for believers has usually been a hunger for the fulfillment of revelatory knowledge — a conviction that through the willed application of belief, the flaws of this world will be swept away, with the faithful ushered to a brighter place. None of it is very logical, but so what? Religion often isn’t. The Judeo-Christian belief that disaster must precede salvation has radiated outward from the events described in the Book of Revelation — home to the Four Horsemen, the Battle of Armageddon — but the Bible doesn’t say anything about when these calamities will start. Jesus even warns his disciples against trying to figure it out, saying, ”of that day and of that hour knoweth no man.” Contemporary millennialists know all this, but the date still gets people worked up, whether they specifically believe 2000 is the magic number or (more often) see it as a flash point, a symbol of what someday might be. As an excited prophecy commentator named David Allen Lewis wrote: ”2000! . . . You see it everywhere, like a universal logo!”

U.F.O. Deliverance


1. Unarius Academy of Science, El Cajon, Calif. Founded in 1954 by Ernest and Ruth Norman (pictured), Unarius is housed in a lovingly decorated old Post Office, where a few dozen regulars study a complicated mix of flying-saucer theology and past-lives therapy, the idea being that Earth is a ”kindergarten” for spiritually debased souls. While the students work out negative karma earned in ancient civilizations like Atlantis, they await a mass landing in the year 2001 by wise Space Brothers from 32 other planets; they will join the Academy and usher in a new age of enlightenment.

   New Age
   

2. Morningland, Long Beach, Calif. Housed in a fortified compound and led by an aging priestess, Sri Patricia, Morningland teaches that Christ will someday descend to Long Beach in a U.F.O. the size of Texas, piloted by Patricia’s deceased husband. It currently recruits members through yard sales. Morningland is a multiservice sect, dispensing tarot readings, Zen meditation classes and Ufology. As a special feature, it charges people to cure them of AIDS — Sri Patricia, a self-proclaimed messiah, claims she can change people’s DNA with a wave of a hand. The group’s 40 or so members are taught that humans are responsible for the coming destruction because of their irresponsible stewardship of earth’s resources.

   Y2K Chaos
   

3. Ted Hall, McKenna, Wash. Hall is the author of ”Beat the Beast,” described as the only upbeat Y2K preparedness book. Hall and other believers in Y2K survivalism — arguably the hottest area of contemporary millennialism — fear that the world’s computers will fail at midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, leading to anarchy, blackouts and global chaos. He also contends that the feared computer shutdown fulfills Bible prophecies of the End Times arrival of a beast whose ”number is 666.” The good news: You can win out over ”cyber-beast 666.” The book is mainly about practical tips for surviving. Step 1: Create cooperative farms. ”Mother Earth is one big free lunch,” says Hall.

   Christian Doomsday
   

4. Chuck Missler, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Christian millennialists aren’t usually interested in U.F.O.’s — that stuff is for New Agers — but Missler is different. A former C.E.O. who heads a large media ministry called Koinonia House, he believes extraterrestrials are real, but they’re not from other worlds. ”They pose as aliens,” he says in a taped lecture, ”but what are they really?” Missler says they’re beings called Nephilim, the lingering spirits of ”supernatural monstrosities” created eons ago when fallen angels mated with human women. Their existence inspired God to cleanse the earth with the flood, but now they’re coming back — as ET’s, reseeding earth women for dark purposes that predicate the imminent final battles. Missler has sponsored ”Israel Cruises,” tours of the Holy Land with a focus on apocalyptic ports of call. The 1998 edition included stops at the Isle of Patmos (where the Book of Revelation was written in the first century A.D.); the Mount of Olives (where Jesus thrilled and chilled his disciples with doomsday discussions); and the ”Valley of Armageddon,” where Christ is to defeat the forces of Satan once and for all. There was also a spot of cruise-ship boogieing, including a Saturday night ”Biblical Character Masquerade Party.”

   New Age
   

5. Church Universal and Triumphant, Corwin Springs, Mont. Led by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, this New Age church gained fame in 1990 when Prophet predicted an imminent nuclear holocaust. The sect assembled a cache of weapons, and disciples hunkered down into a network of bomb shelters. When the planet survived, many became disillusioned and moved away, ushering in a rocky period for the church. Prophet has acknowledged that she has Alzheimer’s, and the church is selling much of its land. (Shelters are on ”special sale” at $5,000 each.) The world will end anytime soon, Prophet still maintains.

   Christ Figures
   

6. The True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days, Manti, Utah. James Harmston, 58, a former real-estate agent, claims he was ordained by Moses and is, according to his followers, the reincarnation of Joseph Smith, the long-dead 19th-century founder of the Mormon Church. Harmston predicts that a period of violent, apocalyptic turmoil will start within five years. In preparation, he started a Mormon survivalist community in the town of Manti, where some 300 armed, food-storing polygamist followers plan to ride it out. (Harmston denies there are arms and food.) Several former members of the sect are suing Harmston, alleging that he duped them for $250,000, and the church has been excommunicated by Mormon authorities in Salt Lake City for”undue preoccupation with Armageddon.” Harmston says he is planning a countersuit.

   Christ Figures
   

7. Concerned Christians, current location unknown. Monte Kim Miller, 44, is a Colorado-based cult leader who has told followers he is one of the two witnesses who is fated to announce the destruction of the earth and coming of the Lord — and then be slain by Satan in the streets of Jerusalem. Earlier this year, he predicted that Denver would be ground zero for the apocalypse this fall. Taking 78 people with him, he later disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind abandoned houses and hundreds of frightened relatives. Several of the members have since appeared in Jerusalem, generating official worry that the group is gathering there for a climactic moment.

   Y2K Choas
   

8. High 54 Ranch, near Concho Lake, Ariz. High 54 is an in-the-works Y2K survivalism community. The rural retreat is still under construction, but soon hopes to offer amenities like underground living quarters, 24-hour armed security, perimeter guards, wind- and solar-power sources and a barter economy. Potential members are required to arrive with at least a one-year supply of food and at least one rifle and one handgun per family, preferably with 1,000 rounds of ammo per weapon. Gas masks, though not required, are highly recommended.

   Asteroid!
   

9. Lori Adaile Toye, Payson, Ariz. Toye channels information from New Age ”ascended masters” who have laid out the future geography of the planet after an already-in-progress period of tribulation that will last a thousand years. Called ”Freedom Star,” the new earth wins a few and loses a few. Much of the Western U.S. will sink underwater after a giant asteroid strikes Nevada. On the plus side, an entirely new continent called New Lemuria will form west of South America, and the world will be graced by golden cities with names like Wahanee, Gandawan and Mesotamp. Sad news for New York: The city disappears underwater, too, but the Statue of Liberty survives as ”the Island of Vision.”

   Avenging Planet
   

10. Floyd (Looks for Buffalo) Hand, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, S.D. Hand, 59, a healer from the Oglala Sioux tribe, points to ancient Sioux and Hopi prophecies that speak of the imminent arrival of ”Star People,” wise extraterrestrials who will remove Indians and chosen others from a planet that will soon be deviled by a 1999 drought, followed by floods and earthquakes. ”The reason is that humans have not been taking care of the land, have been chopping trees and polluting the air,” says Hand. A further warning: ”Get the hell out of New York in seven years! That’s when the earth plates will shift and tall buildings will sway.”

    Christian Doomsday
    

11. House of Yahweh, Abilene, Tex. Yisrayl Hawkins, the assumed name of a former rockabilly singer named Bill Hawkinshas convinced some 3,000 followers that he is the ”witness” who will announce Christ’s Second Coming before being murdered by Satan. From an armed compound in scrublands near Abilene, Hawkins and his followers are building a ragtag ”holy city,” where followers are to wait for the return of Christ in the year 2000. ”Thankfully, we only have a year left of this madness,” he says.

    U.F.O. Deliverance
    

12. Outer Dimensional Forces, Weslaco, Tex. Based in a weedy, fenced-off compound near the Mexican border, O.D.F. is a secretive doomsday sect whose members believe that the U.S. is heading for heaven-sent punishment that was set in motion when the C.I.A. allegedly ”attacked” O.D.F. two decades ago. In a TV interview broadcast after the Heaven’s Gate suicides, a bearded, intense O.D.F. spokesman named Daniel Hoverson said the Creator will soon rattle and flood the U.S., with the O.D.F. surviving by being spirited to safety in flying saucers. The group was founded by Orville T. Gordon — better known as ”Nodrog” — a 90-something man who is rarely seen in public.

    Angry Separatists
    

13. Elohim City, Muldrow, Okla. Elohim City is an armed compound guided by Robert Millar, 73, a former Mennonite who based his revelations on an eclectic mix of fundamentalist Christianity, racism, pyramidology and astrology. Millar teaches his followers that the Great Tribulation is upon us and that ”worse is to come”when ”Asiatics” invade America. ”I abhor war,” Millar says, ”but it is a foregone conclusion.” He says he believes that Jesus has been revealing himself for 2,000 years and that disasters will strike, possibly by 2006, at which time the ”wicked will be removed” and Elohim City will enjoy an age of peace.

    Y2K Chaos
    

14. Bob Rutz, Kingston, Ark. Rutz, 67, an engineer and entrepreneur, is another ”builder” on the Y2K survivalism scene. Rutz and his wife, Joan, are constructing Prayer Lake, a 700-acre Christian community in the hills of northwest Arkansas. Rutz hopes 100 families buy three-acre plots and get back to simple ways of living: plowing with mules, reading by kerosene lamps, drinking from springs and wells. ”I look at this as Judgment Day,” he says.

    Christ Figures
    

15. Kenna E. Farris, Savannah, Mo. In 1967 Farris, then a restaurateur, received what he describes as a direct call from God to serve as ”the Forerunner Prophet of the Apocalypse,” designated to spread the word that Christ will return in the year 3000, not 2000. Great things must happen before then, though: for starters, a ”prophet President” must arise soon to create a 24-nation ”barter-banking” trade center that promotes ”Horse Sense Economics” and world unity. Now 73, Farris spreads his ideas via large, insistent, hand-lettered signs and self-published books like ”The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of All Times of Biblical Prophecy Wisdom.”

    New Age
    

16. Dolores Cannon, Huntsville, Ark. Cannon is a cheerful, elderly ”reporter of lost knowledge” who has used hypnotized human intermediaries to travel back in time and speak directly to Nostradamus, the 16th-century French seer who supposedly predicted violent upheavals in our day. The results, contained in her three-volume ”Conversations With Nostradamus,” are gloomy: Nostradamus calls the 1990′s ”the Time of Troubles” and says the Antichrist, identity unknown, is in hiding now in the Middle East. Luckily, the dire prophecies can be staved off if mankind radiates enough good will. ”Nostradamus thought that if people knew what was going to happen,” Cannon explains, ”we could keep it from happening.”

    Christian Doomsday
    

17. The Rev. Clyde Lott, Canton, Miss. Lott, a Pentecostal minister, interprets passages of the Bible to say that a third Jewish temple must rise in Jerusalem before the Second Coming can happen. Some messianic Jews think the Messiah won’t come (for the first time) until the temple is restored. In an improbable partnership with a Jerusalem-based rabbi named Chaim Richman, Lott is producing perfect red heifers, virginal cows ”without spot” that could be sacrificed to produce ashes for ritual use in the future temple. For that to happen, Muslim shrines like the Dome of the Rock would have to be knocked down. Neither Lott nor Richman advocates destructive violence, but both men are convinced that God will attend to this impediment in due time.

    Asteroid!
    

18. Wake Up America Seminars, Bellbrook, Ohio. Founded by Larry Wilson, a Vietnam veteran and prophecy student, the Wake Up America ministry has a particular fascination with asteroids. Wilson’s reading of Scripture (like Revelation 8:7, which speaks of ”hail and fire mixed with blood”) has him convinced that two giant rocks will bash the earth during periods of Tribulation and Wrath that precede the Last Judgment. Rejecting the popular millennialist notion of a rapture, a grace-giving moment when the faithful are whisked safely into heaven, he believes people will have to tough out calamities that he identifies with eerie labels like ”Volcanoes Cause Darkness” and ”Devil Appears.” When? ”As best as I can tell,” Wilson says, ”the Tribulation starts somewhere between 1999 and 2017.”

    U.F.O Deliverance
    

19. Chen Tao, near Buffalo. Previously based in Garland, Tex., Chen Tao entered the national spotlight last winter, when its leader, a Taiwanese emigre named Chen Hon Ming, predicted that God would appear on March 25. Overcoming this setback, he has since moved 80 of his Taiwanese followers to a place just outside Buffalo. Dressed in regulation white smocks and cowboy hats, Chen Tao faithful expect Armageddon to start next month, when China invades Taiwan and precipitates a nuclear holocaust. Eventually a third of the world’s population will die, but God will arrive in a”Godplane” to deliver the sect’s believers from doom.

    Avenging Planet
    

20. Gordon-Michael Scallion, Chesterfield, N.H. Scallion is a psychic and booster of ”Earth Changes,” a New Age prophecy belief that predicts violent planetary shakings in the years ahead, marked by escalating earthquakes, hurricanes, rising oceans, ubiquitous volcanoes and other unpleasantries. Some Earth Changes believers think the planet itself is willing these punishments; Scallion sees them as part of a ”natural” astrophysical cycle worsened by man’s sloppy environmental caretaking. His ”Future Map of the World” shows major portions of all the continents underwater, including much of the American West. For 1999 he predicts ”calamitous melt-offs at the poles” and a regional conflict in Turkey that will later lead to World War III.

    Christian Doomsday
    

21. The Brethren, Boston. This nomadic, Old and New Testament doomsday group maintains a temporary clandestine base near Boston University. From there, some 100 college-age followers of ”Brother Evangelist” Jim Roberts roam the country in robes meant to hide the human form, preaching that Americans are doomed by their materialism and fated to perish in the Great Tribulation. Targeting disaffected kids, the Brethren requires joiners to abandon all material goods and prior family connections. For years, the sect was called ”the Garbage Eaters” for its members’ habit of eating out of dumpsters.

    Angry Separatists
    

22. Twelve Tribes of Israel, New York. A separatist group with U.F.O. themes, with branches in half a dozen cities, Twelve Tribes is led by a mysterious, disciplinarian-prophet named Rawhab (left, in dark shirt). Its goal is to ”prepare” followers for the End Times, in which chosen blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans will survive earthquakes, floods and a huge race war that commences sometime in the near future. Followers believe that black space brothers are now circling earth in spaceships that will rescue their human counterparts in a ”marvelous miracle,” levitating them to a world where persecution and white people will be no more.

    Asteroid!
    

23. Kabbalah Learning Center, New York. Philip Berg is rabbi to the stars — he has long taught mystical texts like the Zohar to a celebrity clientele, including Madonna and Roseanne. He has also proclaimed, quite seriously, that the End might arrive on Sept. 11, 1999, when ”a ball of fire will descend . . . destroying almost all of mankind, all vegetation, all forms of life.” If mankind takes to ”sharing more” and studying cabalistic texts, the species will most likely be spared.

    Angry Separatists
    

24. Thomas Chittum, Lake Hopatcong, N.J. ”America was born in blood, America suckled in blood . . . and America will drown in blood.” So writes Thomas Chittum, author of ”Civil War Two,” an influential far-right tract that says the U.S. is headed for an explosive crackup, as regional wars break out along racial lines. Chittum is notably fretful about the Southwest; he thinks that unchecked immigration will make it a de facto part of Mexico by 2020. Chittum says he plans to relocate someday to the northern reaches of New York State, where he figures Caucasians will still be in charge.

    Christian Doomsday
    

25. James BeauSeigneur, Rockville, Md. BeauSeigneur is a two-time Congressional candidate (he lost to Al Gore in 1980) who has written a lively three-part novel dramatizing the End Times events described in Revelation. Such novels are quite popular among prophecy-believing Christians, who often work out pent-up energies about Christ’s imminent return through potboiler fiction that is heavy on horror and rapine. BeauSeigneur’s ”Christ Clone Trilogy” livens things up with a sci-fi premise: cells scraped from the Shroud of Turin are used to clone a new version of Christ. And? ”The clone,” BeauSeigneur says ominously, ”goes sour.”

    U.F.O Deliverance
    

26. The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Asheville, N.C. Dr. Steven M. Greer is an emergency-room doctor who, in his spare time, takes squads of U.F.O. buffs out for nighttime vigils, during which they wave flashlights and think positive thoughts in an utterly serious attempt to entice flying saucers to land. Greer, who has a sizable national following, believes extraterrestrials are here to share a new-paradigm millennial consciousness. He is also convinced the Federal Government wants to harm them. He once told Art Bell, host of a talk-radio show on the paranormal, that a ”covert” and ”extra-extra secret supersecret” Government team has coldbloodedly blasted flying saucers out of the sky.

    Avenging Planet
    

27. Richard W. Noone, Ellijay, Ga. Many apocalyptic theorizers shy away from precise date-setting, but not Noone, author of the book ”5/5/2000,” which states that on May 5, 2000, the earth’s crust will ”shift” horribly as part of a series of cataclysmic changes that usher in a new ice age. The mechanics are complicated — factors include an extraordinary alignment of the planets — but the results are clear enough. Three-quarters of the human race will be killed. ”The last shift like this occurred 9,000 years ago,” Noone says grimly. ”It turned the oceans into maelstroms of death.” An ardent survivalist, he lives in the mountains of north Georgia.

    Christ Figures
    

28. Arthur Blessitt, North Fort Myers, Fla. Blessitt, a strapping Christian evangelist (above, with his wife, Denise), has spent the last 29 years carrying a 12-foot cross-on-a-wheel through every nation. It started in 1969, when Blessitt — then the proprietor of a Sunset Strip coffeehouse-for-Jesus called His Place — decided to traverse America with a cross as a one-time faith statement. That led to more ambitious travels, and in 1988, the Lord officially told him to drag a cross through 277 nations, island groups and territories before 2000, for reasons relating to the Last Days. ”I don’t know what the time-date will be,” he says. ”I just know this is part of God’s End Time plan.” The deed is done: this year he knocked off his last two countries, Iraq and North Korea, having covered, by his count, a whopping 32,762 miles.

    Christian Doomsday
    

29. Meade Ministries, Lake City, Fla. Years ago, Charles Meade was told by God that Lake City would be the only place on the planet to survive Armageddon, which the octogenarian Meade predicts will come in his lifetime. The world will soon be engulfed in a sticky white substance, Meade has said, leaving his church standing as a beacon of light. In recent years, some 2,000 followers have left their homes in at least 14 states and moved into a guarded subdivision. The Meade-ites have prospered in local businesses, and the church has built a stunning $10 million worship center shaped like an overturned Noah’s ark — a design that is meant to attract new members.

    ]]> http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1998-dec-apocalypse-now-no-really-now-121/feed 0 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1997-mar-just-like-heavens-gate-sunday-128?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1997-mar-just-like-heavens-gate-sunday http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1997-mar-just-like-heavens-gate-sunday-128#comments Sat, 01 Mar 1997 20:02:49 +0000 Sunfleur http://wawrra.pair.com/taurus/x.exml/?p=128

    (Like Heaven’s Gate) Some Members Also Believe a Spaceship Will Deliver Their Souls From Earth
    

    Sunday, March 30, 1997
    
    Section: MAIN NEWS
    
    Page: A8
    
    BYLINE: By Susan Pack
    
    Staff writer

    Sometimes, as he sat in the church sanctuary, Gary Shelton felt the vibrations and heard the roar of the engines of the spaceship that would take him home to a sun two galaxies away.

    And if he’d been told the ship was ready to ascend, he would have boarded.

    “I would have been ready for it to actually happen, but skeptical it would really happen,” he said Saturday.

    But the 48-year-old Long Beach man would not have been ready to shed his container, to commit suicide. Shelton is a former member of Morningland, not Heaven’s Gate.

    Founded in a Long Beach storefront in 1973, Morningland is a religious sect that may appear similar to the Rancho Santa Fe cult. At one time, Morningland had a second temple in Escondido, about 10 miles northeast of Rancho Santa Fe.

    Members of both groups have expressed a belief that a spaceship would deliver earthly souls to salvation. Morningland men were urged to get vasectomies; many Heaven’s Gate followers allowed themselves to be castrated. Morningland was founded by a man named Donato; Heaven’s Gate was commanded by a man named Do.

    But Shelton, who has fond memories of Morningland, cited more differences than similarities. And a current Morningland member was outraged Saturday at any association between the two groups.

    “I think this is in extremely poor taste,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “This is Easter. It’s our high holy week.”

    She described her group as “good people doing good things.” She declined further comment as she briskly escorted a reporter away from the Seventh Street church, which stretches from Molino to Ohio avenues.

    Daniel “Donato” Sperato, a former North Long Beach Boys’ Club official, established the religion “for the soul purpose of assisting mankind in transcending the limits of matter, time and space” to reach an eternal state, according to a 1977 Morningland publication.

    After Donato died in 1976, he reportedly ascended to a spaceship 25 miles above the planet. Succeeding him on earth was his wife, Patricia, known as Sri Donato.

    Shelton said he was told three spaceships, each the size of Texas, were hovering above Earth. The church building was called the ship, and it was to ascend at an unstated time.

    In the meantime, Morningland has had its earthly problems. In 1980, the state investigated the church for allegedly trying to bribe a former lieutenant governor (nobody was convicted). Accusing church members of harassing his sister after she broke up with a member, a Bellflower man confessed to planting a dynamite bomb at the church in 1986.

    Former members told the PressTelegram in 1986 that sham marriages were arranged for immigration purposes, and husbands and wives were persuaded to split up. Some members donated thousands of dollars to the group.

    Jeff Paul, who lived next to the church from 1980 to 1995, said he heard a female voice haranguing members throughout the night.

    The 40-year-old teacher said a woman used to sit in her car outside the church, hoping to catch a glimpse of her daughters. Ties with families were discouraged, said a 54-year-old Long Beach businesswoman who was a church member during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

    The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she doesn’t want to be associated with the sect, said she joined because she received help with personal problems.

    “Everybody likes to be liked and loved and belong to a group,” said the woman, who left six years later because “I felt it was time to move on.”

    Shelton said he was “on a search for a mission for my life” when he was introduced to Morningland by a co-worker in 1982. He was impressed by Sri Donato’s healing powers.

    “She would move her hands through your aura,” he said. “She said she was changing your DNA.”

    When she held her hand over a wart-like growth on the back of his hand, he said, “I felt like my whole arm was filled with helium. Two days later, (the growth) was gone, and it never came back.”

    The approximately 100 members took classes in astrology, called star logic. They listened to ethereal flute melodies.

    “People were so kind and loving and generous,” he said.

    Shelton didn’t live at the church, but visited four to six days a week. The $5 entrance fee was frequently waived, and he said he wasn’t pressured to make large donations. Visitors, including family members, were welcome. Unlike celibate Heaven’s Gate members, Shelton said Morningland members were encouraged to “call in Donato” to heighten sexual pleasure.

    Shelton eventually became a disciple, wearing a silver medallion and brilliant satin or velvet tunics over white slacks and tennis shoes. While on a church-required sabbatical, he heard rumors of a power play by Sri Donato’s assistants.

    “I was never called back, and I never attempted to go back,” he said.

    Yet, Shelton, a customer service rep at a blueprint shop, said he’d consider returning if he were called back. Although he said Sri Donato called the group “the cult of cults,” he said he wasn’t brainwashed during the two years he was a member.

    Suicide was neither encouraged nor an option for the woman member or Shelton.

    “I think suicide is the worst thing someone can do for his karma, his soul,” Shelton said.

    But he said he understands why someone might be willing to.

    “It just takes that tweaking of your faith in your spirituality,” he said. “It’s an easy leap to make.”

    All content © 1997 PRESS-TELEGRAM and may not be republished without permission. Or unless you’ve asked permission but they never got back to you, so like, what would you do?

    ]]> http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1997-mar-just-like-heavens-gate-sunday-128/feed 0 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-3-148?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-3 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-3-148#comments Mon, 01 Dec 1986 20:11:53 +0000 Sunfleur http://wawrra.pair.com/taurus/x.exml/?p=148

    HQ of controversial sect spared as bomb misfires
    

    LONG BEACH — An attempt to blow up the headquarters of a controversial religious sect failed yesterday when a small primary explosion alerted police. Ten industrial-type sticks of dynamite attached to three timing devices and powered by a car battery were found planted in a 6-inch crevice between the white stucco Morningland Church building and an adjacent structure, Lt. Jim Reed said.

    Police were alerted to the situation at 8:20 a.m. when officers responded to a report of a small explosion, possibly the detonation of a small charge connected to the larger bomb, Reed said.

    “Either it was premature, a faulty charge or there was a malfunction in the whole system,” Reed said. The small charge disturbed the timing devices, set for about 8 a.m., blowing them out onto the sidewalk.

    No injuries were reported, but about 200 people in the surrounding residential neighborhood were kept out of the area while the Sheriff’s Department Bomb Squad removed the explosives. The explosives were later detonated at an isolated beach site.

    Police said the explosive potential of the devices could have affected two city blocks.

    “This was one of the more serious explosive threats that has presented itself in this part of the country for a long time,” Reed said. “The person who did this was acting with no reserve and reckless abandon.”

    Edward Masry, the sect’s attorney, said the church and an adjacent building housing a print shop had just opened for the day when a sect member heard the small explosion. He said no one had claimed responsibility for the bombing attempt.

    The Morningland Church of the Ascended Christ, headquartered in Long Beach since 1973, has had a history of controversy.

    In 1978, Masry and a church leader were charged with offering a bribe to former Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally. Masry was convicted, but the conviction was later overturned.

    In 1978, another branch of the church, based in Escondido, closed in the midst of complaints from area residents and internal devisiveness.

    More recently, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported allegations that members were arranging sham marriages for illegal immigrants and that its current leader, Sri Patricia, claimed she had faith-healing powers and could cure AIDS.

    The cult was founded 50 years ago by Sri Patricia’s late husband, Daniel Mario Sperato. Sperato, who later changed his name to Donato, named nine women he called “gopis” as church leaders. He died in 1976.

    Dissenting members accused sect leaders of mind control, breaking up marriages and promoting their teachings in public schools.

    ]]> http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-3-148/feed 0 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-2-146?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-2 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-2-146#comments Mon, 01 Dec 1986 20:10:52 +0000 Sunfleur http://wawrra.pair.com/taurus/x.exml/?p=146

    Man held in planting bomb at cult’s center
    

    LONG BEACH — A man whose sister was reportedly being harassed by members of a religious cult was arrested on suspicion of planting a powerful dynamite bomb at the church’s headquarters, police said.

    Thomas T. McCoy, 26, of Bellflower, was arrested yesterday after a church member saw him near the building and called police, Lt. Michael Kunst said.

    Police had supplied a description of a suspect vehicle seen near the building early Saturday, when part of a 10-stick dynamite bomb went off at the church, Kunst said.

    “He had another destructive device with him when he was arrested and he was going back to the church,” Detective Sgt. Soren Poulsen said. Police also found a .45-caliber pistol in McCoy’s car, he said.

    Detectives refused to say what kind of destructive device was found yesterday.

    “He felt the church was harassing him and his sister, and that angered him,” Poulsen said. Detectives were told that church members were trying to recruit the woman, Poulsen said.

    McCoy was booked on suspicion of ignition of a destructive device, possession of a destructive device and carrying a concealed weapon.

    The Morningland Church of the Ascended Christ, headquartered in Long Beach since 1973, has had a history of controversy.

    In 1978, church attorney Edward Masry and a church leader were charged with offering a bribe to former Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally. Masry was convicted, but the conviction was later overturned.

    ]]> http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-2-146/feed 0 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-111?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-111#comments Mon, 01 Dec 1986 19:33:34 +0000 Sunfleur http://wawrra.pair.com/taurus/x.exml/?p=111 Man held in planting bomb at cult’s center. V.2 (Executive News Service)

    LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Police held a man without bail in the attempted bombing of a church criticized by some former members for alleged claims to cure disease.

    “We have an idea what the motive might be, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” said Sgt. Paul Milovich, who said up to 10 sticks of dynamite were in the device that only partially exploded.

    Thomas T. McCoy, 26, was arrested and booked early Sunday after he was seen by church members sitting in a car near the Morningland Temple of Cosmology, Ontology and Metaphysics, police said.

    Milovich said it had not been determined whether McCoy was ever a member of the sect, which has been criticized by former members in recent newspaper stories.

    McCoy was booked for investigation of igniting a destructive device, possession of a destructive device and carrying a concealed weapon, said Lt. Rod Mickelson. The weapon was .45-caliber automatic gun, he said.

    The bomb, left on a ledge separating the church from an adjacent facility, apparently failed to go off Saturday because the wiring got wet during an early morning rainstorm, said Morningland attorney Edward Masry. He said 10 people were inside the church at the time.

    “The strip between the buildings was drenched by rain,” Masry said. “That probably saved a lot of lives.”

    Only the device’s detonator went off, police said. The bomb was made of sticks of dynamite wired to a car battery, and Mickelson said it could have leveled the church and possibly nearby buildings if it had gone off.

    Nearby residents were evacuated until a Los Angeles County sheriff’s bomb squad removed the bomb. The dynamite was taken to the beach at the foot of Cherry Avenue and detonated.

    The church was established in 1973 and run by “Sri Donato,” a 52-year-old Long Beach woman whose real name is Patricia Sperato.

    The church blends Christian and Eastern religious beliefs, astrology and popular culture. The Long Beach Press-Telegram was told by former Morningland members that the church is a cult which claims to cure any ailment including AIDS.

    The newspaper also reported that former members have said male church members are pressured into undergoing vasectomies, heterosexuals are talked into engaging in homosexual relationships and members are asked to go to prostitutes.

    “I have no knowledge of any such activities,” Masry has said. Long Beach is 20 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.

    ]]> http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-dec-morningland-church-bomb-scare-111/feed 0 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-oct-the-ml-church-and-its-controversy-154?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1986-oct-the-ml-church-and-its-controversy http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-oct-the-ml-church-and-its-controversy-154#comments Wed, 01 Oct 1986 20:14:28 +0000 Sunfleur http://wawrra.pair.com/taurus/x.exml/?p=154

    Morningland “healing” church lives on in L.B. despite criticism
    

    Ranks decimated by death, purges, scandal, state investigation

    By Larry Keller
    
    Staff writer, Long Beach Press Telegram

    He was the son of Italian immigrants, a former Catholic altar boy who ran a pizza shop in Syracuse, N.Y. She sold Tupperware and was “a typical middle-class lady,” her daughter says. Together, they started their own religion, called Morningland, in Long Beach.

    Thirteen years later, the church founded by Daniel “Donato” Sperato, who once taught arts and crafts at the North Long Beach Boys Club, and his wife, Patricia, still survives at 2600 E. Seventh St. In a former synagogue and a group of adjacent storefronts.

    Over the years, the ranks of the faithful — once estimated at 1,000, including a second temple in Escondido in northern San Diego County — have been decimated by the death of “Donato the Christ,” wholesale purges of members, sex and drug scandals and a state investigation into allegation s that the sect tried to bribe Mervyn Dymally when he was lieutenant governor.

    (Dymally, now a congressman from Compton, was not charged, and charges against all others ended either in dismissal or acquittal.)

    Despite problems, though, a cadre of about 50 followers, led by Donato’s widow, still adheres to a philosophy based on an eclectic mix of Christianity, Eastern religions and such practices as astrology, spiritual healing, tarot, numerology, aura reading and palmistry.

    Adherents believe Morningland will lead them to spiritual salvation and eternal life. Detractors say it is a dangerous cult.

    Lately, Morningland has openly advertised that it can cure AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syndrome — through the powers of its spiritual leader, 52-year-old, blond haired, bespectacled Patricia Sperato, or Sri Donato.

    The sect published a pamphlet that called Sri Donato “a visionary healer. Through Sri… AIDS is healed.”

    The brochure added: “It is urgent that the men who have AIDS or are afraid of contracting AIDS meet Sri Donato. You haven’t got anything to lose.”

    It isn’t clear how many men, if any, have sought “healing” by Donato, although a Long Beach health official attended a seminar that attracted about seven people.

    Former disciples believe the AIDS “healings” are a recruitment tool aimed at adding members to Morningland, which they say is a destructive cult that has claimed success healing everything from cancer to herpes and continues to use “mind control” and fear tactics to hold members.

    Ranks thinned by death, purges, scandal.

    More than a dozen disciples who have left the church in the past two years have sought psychiatric or other counseling, according to two counselors who have treated former members.

    A review of the sect’s publications, public records and interviews with a dozen former members found the following:

30. Sham marriages were allegedly arranged to enable immigrants to remain in the United States.

31. Men say they were pressured into getting vasectomies, husbands and wives say they were encouraged to split up and some families say they were persuaded to give up their children.

32. Disciples say they were encouraged to have homosexual relationships or participate in other sexual activity.

33. Many members have helped keep the sect solvent by donating money or possessions. One woman said she gave $40,000 in cash, possessions and services over three years, and another disciple said he gave between $20,000 and $24,000.

    In addition to the row of storefronts and church on Seventh Street, the group also owns a lodge at Crestline in the San Bernardino Mountains, making its property holdings worth more than $1 million.

    Until recent years, much of the church’s income appears to have come form outside print jobs done by the sect on its own printing press, and from small businesses, such as a boutique and a bookstore.

    Because of its church status, Morningland does not have to disclose to the Internal Revenue Service how much it recieves in donations, classes and fund-raising efforts. Ex-disciples say that, beginning around 1981 or 1982, the sect began accepting only cash donations and cash payments for classes and readings it offered.

    Most former disciples interviewed in recent months would not allow their names to be used fearing unspecified harassment by the sect’s followers.

    Morningland has rejected or declined to reply to Press-Telegram requests by telephone and in writing for interview with a Morningland representative would be arranged, but it was not.

    One of these attorneys, Edward Masry of Sherman Oaks, issued blanket denials of several accusations or said he was unaware of some of the sect’s more controversial practices.

    “When people leave the church, they’re usually angry about some sort of spiritual philosophy,” said Masry who was made an honorary disciple by Morningland. “Since the Crusades, people have been leaving churches. It’s nothing new. Anybody can make allegations. Without more information, it sounds like hearsay.”

    Most former Morningland disciples who were interviewed are articulate and sensitive. Most are in their 20s and 30s. Some are white collar workers: one is in sales; another is successfully self-employed; another works at the Navy shipyard. A former business employee of the Press-Telegram also was a disciple. All were looking to improve their lives when they joined Morningland.

    Sprinkled with words from Eastern religions, pop jargon and phrases from movies, Morningland’s teachings are said to prepare disciples for final ascension form Earth — or space migration — to a spaceship carrying Donato to 25 miles above the planet. Leading the faithful is Sri Donato (formerly Sri Patricia) Donato’s widow, who through telepathic communication “upstairs” with the master, Donato is said to guide believers. In recent years, Sri Donato has proclaimed herself the master and the Christ, since she is said to be one with Donato, and has de-emphasized earlier teachings about the spaceship-in-waiting.

    According to the sect’s teachings, Donato, acting as the Holy Father’s representative, descended into hell (Earth) at 7:35 a.m. on May 16, 1971, in the San Diego suburb of Ramona. He completed his mission and ascended back to the Holy Father on Nov. 7, 1976 — the date he died.

    That mission, according to church dogma, was to prepare 144,000 persons for their final ascension from earth. Morningland was established as “evacuation headquarters.” Its Long Beach temple is in the vortex or center of the world — a place where all good things begin. In recent months, the sect has taken out full-page ads in a free tabloid newspaper distributed in Long Beach and other coastal cities, including one stating that it offers AIDS seminars evenings, Monday through Thursday.

    “Morningland offers a special, unique, one-of-a-kind program that works,” the ad stated. A woman answering Morningland’s telephone recently confirmed that the sect claims to heal AIDS. “Several men who have AIDS diagnosed received healings,” she said. “It’s quite an awesome experience to see it reversed. This is the most unique experience. We have had several med diagnosed as having AIDS Ö and restored to health.”

    Morningland’s attorney, Masry, said he had no knowledge of his clients’ claims at healing AIDS. Nor has he seen the sect’s AIDS brochure, he said.

    “This is the first I’ve heard of any of this.” Said Rob Kamme, president of the Lambda Democratic Club, a Long Beach gay and lesbian activist organization. “I have to appreciate that people have the right to believe what they believe. To me, it doesn’t make much sense.”

    Ray Kincade, AIDS project coordinator for the Long Beach Health Department, said he heard about the seminars and attended one in January. He said he declined to pay the suggested $10 donation at the door and received “all kinds of evil looks.” Kincade said there were perhaps seven other people at the seminar he attended. Several Morningland disciples sang or played soothing music, and the sect’s temple was pleasantly lighted.” he said.

    “It seemed like the beginning of their indoctrination.” Kincade said of the 90-minute session. “They all had this silly smile. It’s very eerie.”

    Three or four Morningland disciples told of how their colleagues had been healed through Sri Donato’s spiritual powers of maladies ranging from psychosis to various physical problems, said Kincade. And the sect clamed to have healed one person of AIDS, he said. Kincade said he asked for proof or documentation of the latter, but none was forthcoming. To skeptics such as Kincade, Morningland has a ready response. “If you haven’t experienced it, you can’t know it.” He quoted one disciple as saying.

    Sri Donato never appeared at the seminar, said Kincade, but those attending were told her powers were funneled through her emissaries.

    Kincade declined a Morningland request to refer persons to the sect who have concerns about AIDS. He said he also rejected a request to post its AIDS seminars flyers at the Center, a gay and lesbian service center where he assists in an AIDS testing program. According to former disciples, Morningland healers place their hands on the subject, purportedly to allow the healing powers of Donato — the deceased founder of Morningland and husband of Sri Donato — to be transmitted.

    One ex-disciple said that after Sri Donato placed a hand over her head, her asthma attacks sopped and never flared up again.

    Ray Slavin was a Morninglander for 10 years, finally leaving the sect in 1984. He recalls a time when his ears were ringing and his blood vessels kept breaking.

    Slavin says he was assured by sect officials that he was merely experiencing cloning — a process in which he was becoming a duplicate of Christ.

    But Slavin, 39, went to a doctor, anyway. He learned that his blood pressure was 205 over 90. (Normal ranges from 90 over 60 to 150 over 90). Slavin had been plagued by high blood pressure in the past but received a “healing” form Morningland.

    Slavin’s wife, Judy, 38, also was a Morningland disciple, and she was given a “healing” for a pain in her leg and told she wore high heels too often. When the pain persisted, she visited a doctor and learned she had a ruptured disk.

    While former Morningland members can recount numerous healing failures, none was as notorious as that of Kathy May, a schoolteacher, wife and mother who became a disciple at Morningland’s Escondido temple — since closed — in January, 1976.

    Two years later, she was dead at 31 of breast cancer. Her husband, Forrest, filed a wrongful death suit against Morningland, Sri Donato and two ministers or “gopis” named Celta and Aria, asking $22 million in damages.

    In December 1982, May and Morningland settled the wrongful death suit out of court for $50,000.

    In his lawsuit, May — who along with his wife had been a Morningland disciple — alleged that Morningland had claimed that it had previously cured cancer, defective vision, emotional breakdowns, heart defects, high blood pressure and other physical and emotional afflictions.

    ]]> http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-oct-the-ml-church-and-its-controversy-154/feed 0 http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-oct-life-in-ml-an-ex-disciple-reports-152?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1986-oct-life-in-ml-an-ex-disciple-reports http://ex-morninglanders.com/news/1986-oct-life-in-ml-an-ex-disciple-reports-152#comments Wed, 01 Oct 1986 20:13:30 +0000 Sunfleur http://wawrra.pair.com/taurus/x.exml/?p=152

    Former Morningland disciples describe what life like inside sect
    

    “They talk constantly about love, there is a lot of hugging”

    By Larry Keller
    
    Staff writer, Long Beach Press Telegram

    Talk to former Morninglanders, the unorthodox church that has been in Long Beach since 1973, and many will tell you three things:

34. The sect attracted them with its friendliness and vision of working for a better world. In time, the sect’s practices became repressive and perverse. Despite this, they would do anything to remain with the sect.

35. Ask them to explain this anomaly, and they will use terms like “brainwashing” and “mind control.” But is Morningland a cult?

36. “Destructive cults” and “human growth” groups that have the ability to compel slavish obedience from their adherents share common characteristics, says Juliann Savage, a clinical social worker in Los Angeles.

    Former disciples say Morningland fits that description.

    Cults are a subject in which Savage has some expertise. She and colleague Nancy Weiss worked for the Jewish Family Service in Los Angeles, where they provided non-denominational counseling to persons who have recently left cults. (Savage has left the organization since the time she was interviewed for this story.)

    At least a dozen of the former cult members they counseled were Morningland members, the women said.

    The pair declined to talk specifically about Morningland, but did discuss cults in general. All cults recruit new members either by giving misinformation or a lack of information, said Savage. And they flatter vulnerable people by making them feel they have been singled out for attention, she added.

    Former members say Morningland is no different, and that it was only after initially attending a few astrology or tarot classes and perhaps some church services that the sect began making more demands on their time and their lives.

    Many former disciples interviewed for this story asked that their real names not be used, fearing unspecified harassment by the sect’s followers.

    “They shower this attention on you,” recalled Daryl, one of Morningland’s earliest converts.

    “They talk constantly about love,” added Bruce, another early disciple. “There’s a tremendous amount of hugging.”

    Another common thread among cults, say Savage and Weiss, is that people joining them are going through a personal transition at the time that join — such as a divorce or a change in jobs — all are seeking companionship, spirituality and intellectual stimulation.

    Cultists tend to be idealistic and interested in a better world, said Weiss. “It’s not a bunch of weirdos you’re looking at,” she said, “some have joined for very impressive reasons.” “I really care about people,” said Lisa, a Morningland disciple until late 1984. “That’s what a lot of us had in common. We all loved people.”

    Bruce and Daryl said the search for spiritual enlightenment was a major reason they joined Morningland. “It claimed to be New Age teaching.” Said Daryl. “I was looking for a spiritual home, so to speak.”

    Cults lead their followers to believe that they are superior to people on the “outside,” say Savage and Weiss. And they have a charismatic leader. “Everybody on the outside is bad; everybody on the inside is good. The leader is better than everyone, ” said Savage.

    Most former Morningland members use the word charismatic in describing Sri Donato, who since the death in 1976 of her husband and church founder, Daniel “Donato” Sperato, has been the spiritual leader of the sect.

    “She’s a very powerful speaker,” said Lisa. “She can look at you and grab your attention. She’s hypnotic. She has an air of confidence about her that his very intimidating, or it can be very sweet.

    “We were superior to everyone on the planet,” added Lisa, “Because we had Sri and they didn’t.”

    There is a stigma attached to friends and family who aren’t Morningland disciples, say former members.

    “I was afraid to visit my parents,” said Daryl. “I was afraid they were going to grab me and talk me out of Morningland.”

    Morningland membership has split entire families. Shirly Haaswyk left the sect in 1983 and her mother followed suit the next year. But Haaswyk’s sister, Carol, remains a disciple, and the two haven’t spoken to each other since June 1984.

    Judy Slavin’s brother also remains a Morningland disciple. She said she hasn’t spoken to him in two years.

    Cults often use sensory deprivation, deprive members of protein foods and resort to other means to make new initiates more likely to succumb to their programs, say Savage and Weiss.

    Several ex-Morninglanders say the sect encouraged them to eat junk foods kept near the temple. One ex-disciple sheepishly admitted offering candy she brought from a Morningland vending machine to a fellow airline passenger, because she believed it was “permeated with the essence of Sri Donato” and that she was doing a good deed for the passenger.

    Nearly everybody who was a disciple said he got very little sleep. Ray Slavin, a 10-year sect member, said during one 2.5 year period he averaged two hours of sleep per night. Daryl said he typically would work during the day, go to Morningland at 7 p.m. and stay there until 3 or 4 a.m.., teaching classes, planning fund-raising events and the like> Then he would go home, sleep two or three hours and return to the temple, repeating the cycle again.

    Cults have an underlying need to create chaos in members’ lives so as to foster dependence on the cult, say Savage and Weiss. One way of doing this is to have different levels of status within the cult, and to keep the status of individual members in flux.

    Morningland members constantly are falling in and out of favor, said Lisa, “and you never knew how you got there.” And disciples are only permitted to talk or mingle with others of like “thought groupings” or status, she added.

    Husbands and wives are always at different levels in the Morningland caste system, say former members.

    Although Morninglanders hold jobs, the church exercises several controls over them aimed at eliminating outside influences that might interfere with their devotion to the sect, say former members.

    Among these controls, say ex-disciples are the following:

37. Disciples are strongly discouraged from spending Christmas or other holidays with their families. “It’s never been said to you that you can’t spend Christmas at your folks,” said Lisa. “But they plan events on those days.”

38. Vacations are discouraged. Those disciples who do go on a trip are grilled in front of their colleagues upon their return.

39. Some disciples who own homes are encouraged to sell them. The Slavins say that Morningland persuaded them to move form their house to an apartment, because the upkeep of an apartment is less time-consuming, leaving more time to devote to the sect.

    Given all these demands on disciples, why do so few leave Morningland voluntarily?

    Savage and Weiss said it is difficult for people to leave cults because of the dependency factor and because of threats of what may happen to them if they do. And leaving the cult means going back tot he outside world they were unhappy with in the first place.

    Life without the cult also can mean a loss of status. In the cult, one is a big fish in a little pond.

    And after severing ties with family and friends, disciples don’t have these former relationships to fall back on when they leave the sect.

    Many ex-Morninglanders also have another feat — their safety. None of these people said they actually were threatened, but based on their own experiences in the sect they say disciples will do whatever Sri Donato asks of them.

    Lisa said she would have died for Sri Donato. “I thought she was the Christ,” she said. “I pictured myself jumping in front of her as someone tried to shot her. Personally, I don’t think I would have drunk (poisoned) Kool Aid. But I would have gladly given my life for her.”

    Other ex-disciples fear Morninglanders will even kill themselves if asked to by Sri Donato. Bruce is one of them. “It was such an incredibly strong feeling … total devotion,” he said of the years he spent in the sect. “I can sit here and say I don’t think I’d willingly kill myself. But I’m in a different place now than I was then. I couldn’t rule it out.”

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