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In Reply to: Re: Another cult leader charged with sexual abuse of minors posted by PB on February 14, 2007 at 18:11:19:
I recently had the good fortune to talk with a social worker who has specialized in working with SGAs in cults. She's even done a comparision case study between a small sample of fundamentalist Mormons from Warren Jeffs' group and SGAs from TF for publication.
Since she knows so much a polgymous groups in general--or, I should say, a whole lot more than I do--I asked her about the sex thing that goes on in cults like TF and the fundamentalist Mormans. When I brought the subject up, I was relating it to religiosity, i.e., the way some groups that suppress sex (Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses)end up abusing kids just like groups like fundamentalist Mormans or even TF.
Her take on this topic was very interesting. Sex is such a powerful force in a person's life and has a unique capacity to create loyalites within the group and outside the group that supercede group loyalty. There's basically three ways to get control over sex and mediate its threat to group loyalty and cohesion: 1) Sex between everyone, aka One Wife, or nearly everyone as in Morman polygamy 2) No sex with anyone, aka Heaven's Gate, 3) Sex only with the leader.
