Word: koresh
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Dates: during 1993-1993
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Having convinced his followers that he was the messiah, Koresh went on to persuade them that because his seed was divine, only he had the right to procreate. Even as Koresh bedded their wives and daughters -- some as young as 11 -- in his comfortable private bedroom on the second floor, the men were confined to their dormitory downstairs. Behind the mind games and psychological sadism lay the threat of physical force. In addition to the paddlings, administered in a utility area called the spanking room, offenders could be forced down into a pit of raw sewage, then not allowed...
...amount of adulation seemed to satisfy Koresh, whose egomania apparently disguised an emptiness at his center. Fallen-away follower Marc Breault, who sometimes played bass in the rock band Koresh organized at the compound, says that even practicing together was difficult because Koresh threw tantrums when he hit a wrong note in front of the others. "It's very difficult being in a band with God's messenger," says Breault...
...Davidians stockpiled guns and ammunition, Koresh's theology centered more obsessively upon the coming Apocalypse, binding Koresh and his followers in a vision of shared catastrophe in order to maintain their focus and resist the overtures of the authorities outside the compound. "Koresh would say we would have to suffer, that we were going to be persecuted and some of us would be killed and tortured," recalls David Bunds, who left the compound...
...Koresh and his followers heightened the melodrama, their ties with the outside world became irretrievably broken. "The adulation of this confined group works on this charismatic leader so that he in turn spirals into greater and greater paranoia," says Murray Miron, a psychologist who advised the FBI during the standoff. "He's playing a role that his followers have cast him in." In the end, Koresh and his flock may have magnified one another's needs. He looked to them to confirm his belief that he was God's appointed one, destined for a martyr's death. They looked...
...Koresh's final writings, the text of which has obtained, the cult leader spoke in a ranting voice...