Word: koresh
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...fire, the tales of life in Mount Carmel come mostly out of the mouths of babes. As stories from survivors, former Davidians and a psychiatric report on the children confirmed last week, the Ranch Apocalypse experience was one of deprivation and fear. Denied traditional family bonds and exposed to Koresh's warped teachings, the children became compliant playthings, expected to live by every word issuing from the mad messiah of Waco...
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...
...DAVID KORESH WASN'T A REAL MESSIAH: HE COULDN'T TURN water into wine, and perhaps that's why he so valued his private stash of Scotch whisky. TIME has learned that three Branch Davidian cultists who left Ranch Apocalypse before the conflagration and surrendered were forced to leave by Koresh for getting into the would-be prophet's Scotch cache. At first Koresh punished the three -- Kevin Whitecliff, Brad Branch and Oliver Gyarfas -- by ordering them to bury a rotting corpse. Finally the Scotch-drinking cult leader had them thrown out. The trio are being held in jail...