Jesus People USA: Former Members Allege 'Rampant' Sex Abuse At Commune

[AngryAmish]

"UPTOWN — Police recently investigated a Christian commune in Uptown following allegations of sexual abuse from former members — and one alleged victim hopes to shine a spotlight on the tight-knit religious community he once called home with a documentary due out this summer.

Jesus People USA, founded in 1972, remains as one of the last vestiges of the Jesus Movement of the 1970s. The group started as a ragtag bunch of evangelized hippies who embraced Christ, urban missionary work and communal life.

More than 400 people live in the Jesus People community, whose main residential building sits at 920 W. Wilson Ave. in Uptown. Group members share goods, hold a common bank account, run several local businesses and social service agencies and reside together in dormitory-style housing."

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130712/uptown/jesus-people-usa-former-members-describe-rampant-sex-abuse-at-commune

I spent two years living around the corner from these freaks. The depressing thing is that they were not the worst things in the immediate neighborhood. There were constantly lunatics walking around because they were housed in several buildings nearby - just walking around, talking to themselves and smoking. The drug dealers kinda sucked too. The crazy lady across the street screaming all the time.

I am so glad I no longer live in the shithole known as Uptown.

[Trillo]

1. Those folks don't seem like hippies to me

"evangelical" and "hippy" are kind of mutually exclusive.

But Prater said that when he told church leaders what happened they treated him "like a criminal." He was accused of lying and isolated from other children, confined to either a solitary room or his parents' room, Prater said.

"church leaders"? Weren't hippies "anti-authoritarians?"

According to wikipedia, the initial results of milgram showed that "65% of its participants would lethally harm another human being if they were ordered to do."

[siligut]

2. Sexual abuse in cults is rampant

Predators use the dream of utopia to draw in the weak and innocent.