Word: koresh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When young Davidians strayed from his commands, their punishment was severe (though one survivor insisted such redress was basic "Christian discipline"). Disobedience frequently brought out the "helper," a paddle often wielded by Koresh's "mighty men" in the "whipping room" just off the first floor. The instrument left circle-shaped lesions, an inch across, on the children's buttocks. Koresh's son Cyrus, when he was three years old, once refused a command and, according to a former cult member, was starved for two days and forced to sleep on a garage floor where Koresh told him large rats prowled...
...children were usually split off from their mothers (fathers never lived with the families). Brothers and sisters were separated to live with other same-sex companions. They ate fruits and vegetables, but rarely warm food. Chocolate was prohibited, and ice cream, which Koresh enjoyed regularly, was granted only occasionally to the children. The boys were awakened at 5:30 a.m. for "gym," a series of paramilitary marching and drills; in addition, fights between the boys were staged possibly in preparation for man-to-man combat in an apocalyptic war. If they did not participate vigorously enough, discipline followed. Girls were...
...ensure his control, Koresh undermined family attachments. The children were told to consider him their only father -- their parents were called "dogs." When psychiatrists later asked for drawings of their families, the confused children sketched clusters of "favorite" people. "One of the most disturbing qualities observed in the children . . . was the . . . apparent weakness in their attachments to adults (sometimes including parents) in or out of the compound," says Bruce Perry, the Baylor College of Medicine psychiatrist who headed the team of 12 medical volunteers that studied the children for two months following the Feb. 28 raid...
Education consisted of home schooling and hours-long twice-daily biblical lessons taught by a rambling Koresh. Sometimes he jumped from the chapel stage to paddle young ones who were crying or being disruptive. "You never knew what he was going to be," says Kiri Jewell, 12, who was taken from the compound by her natural father in 1991. "One minute he was nice, and the next he was suddenly nasty." The children also learned songs filled with violent apocalyptic imagery. War and martial-arts films proliferated in the cult's video library. Koresh preached that the world was full...
Girls were singled out early as Koresh's sex-partners-to-be. Some as young as 11 wore a plastic Star of David around their neck, while others wore a thin gold band on their finger. Koresh spoke openly about the details of sex to prepare them for intercourse. "Sexual themes were associated with pleasing Koresh," says Perry, "and procreating ((to fill)) the earth with his glorious seed...