Examples of media attention focused on the Exclusive Brethren are very hard to find in the United States. The ability of the group that Kevin Rudd, now the Australian Prime Minister, described as “an extremist cult and sect” to “fly under the radar” is well-known. Peebs.Net, has attempted to ‘pull back the covers’ since the site started in May 2004. As you might imagine, this process has not been encouraged!
Unlike the USA, most citizens of Australia and New Zealand know of the Exclusive Brethren and of their track record in recent years. Perhaps the closest the US press came to looking at this “dangerous group” in any detail was following the secretive activities surrounding the ‘Thanksgiving 2004 Committee’, a political 527 group that funded pro- G.W. Bush advertisements in various US papers during the last president’s second run for office in 2004.
Today in Burlington, Vermont a news article appears that shows signs that this lack of exposure might change. The Burlington Free Press describes what it calls a ‘Contentious Lawsuit’ that has been raging in the New England state since early 2007.
As far as Peebs.Net is concerned, it is vital to maintain Truth and therefore, it is interesting to note how quickly the Exclusive Brethren resort to the smear tactics that has brought them increasing negative press exposure in Australia and New Zealand.
It is estimated that there are now over 46,000 Exclusive Brethren members worldwide, with as many as 10,000 located in USA. The closest North American Exclusive Brethren gatherings to Vermont are Boston, MA and Montreal, Quebec.
Secretive worldwide sect battles Vermonter in court
The Burlington Free Press, USA
By Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer
April 5, 2009
Timothy Twinam of Williston says he just wants to tell the truth about what’s really going on inside the Exclusive Brethren, a well-heeled, reclusive evangelical Christian group with 43,000 members around the world.
“This is a very closed group,” said Twinam, 54, a native of Great Britain. “They don’t circulate much with people, and over the years they’ve become ever more exclusive and cultish.”
The Exclusive Brethren says Twinam is a malcontent, a former church member who stole confidential documents to display them on www.Peebs.net, a Web site Twinam admits he created to encourage people to abandon the organization.
“The guy is a master of misdirection,” said Matthew Kirtland, a Washington, D.C., lawyer for the Bible & Gospel Trust, a charity run by the Exclusive Brethren. “As a lawyer, he’s tough to stomach. He has engaged in such bad conduct it’s distasteful.”
The deepening feud, involving constitutional free speech and copyright issues, is the basis of an unusual lawsuit in federal court and was the subject of a hearing Friday before Judge J. Garvan Murtha in Brattleboro.
The litigation also marks the first time a court will be employing Vermont’s SLAPP law, passed in 2006 and designed to prevent an entity from using the threat of a lawsuit to silence its critics. SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
The Exclusive Brethren wants Murtha to make Twinam stop publishing the group’s copyrighted material and pay damages for the trouble he’s caused, according to papers filed with the court.
“He has admitted that from the inception of this litigation, he made misrepresentations to the court (or ‘ruses’ as he said during his deposition) as part of a tactic to try to get rid of the lawsuit,” the Exclusive Brethren’s charity claims in court papers.
Twinam contends he has done nothing wrong. He said the Exclusive Brethren is trying to muzzle criticism of its practices. He said the “proprietary materials” at issue, including a poem written by his father, were documents he obtained from public sources.
“Given the importance of secrecy to the Exclusive Brethren and their willingness to litigate to further that interest, I take great care to operate Peebs.net in accordance with the law,” Twinam said in an affidavit on file at the court.
Mystery of ‘Brethren’
By all accounts, the Exclusive Brethren is a very closed society.
The group, which broke away from the evangelical Plymouth Brethren of Great Britain in 1848, requires its members to live, work and socialize separately from nonmembers.
Efforts to interview a representative of the Exclusive Brethren last week were unsuccessful but, according to the group’s official Web site, it has members in many English-speaking countries, particularly in Australia and New Zealand.
Under the group’s teachings, members are not allowed to marry people from outside the group. Only men can work outside the home and only in businesses controlled by the Exclusive Brethren. Women, once married, are responsible for birthing and raising children.
The Exclusive Brethren also prohibit members from having televisions, radios or access to the Internet in their homes or watch any movies. The group runs its own education system and teaches youths that homosexuality is wrong.
Members can only eat meals with other members, cannot go to restaurants — except in emergencies — and must stay with other members’ families when they are traveling away from home, according to the Web site.
Twinam said the group’s rules also include isolating those who have fallen out of favor with the Exclusive Brethren and banning them from having further contact with members in good standing, even their spouses and children.
That’s what happened when Twinam’s father raised questions about the leadership of the group in 1970 and found himself “withdrawn from” the Exclusive Brethren shortly afterward.
“My dad is one of the most Christian people I’ve ever known,” Twinam said. “They insisted he had insulted a man of God.”
Twinam, 16 at the time and living in Great Britain, said he left the group when his father did and drifted about the world for years afterward, becoming what he described as a “floppy Christian.”
“I didn’t want to belong to anything,” he said.
He steered clear of the Exclusive Brethren until the late 1990s when he began following a Web site run by a critic of the group. When the Exclusive Brethren succeeded in getting that Web site shut down, Twinam decided to create another one to take its place.
“I just felt if I don’t do this, it’s not going to happen,” he said.
Contentious case
Kirtland, the lawyer representing the Exclusive Brethren’s charity in the lawsuit, said his client is only concerned about protecting its copyrighted and proprietary materials. He said the insertion of SLAPP in the case is a diversionary move by Twinam’s lawyers.
“His whole story is a complete shell game,” Kirtland said. “It’s all based on mischief and lies.” He said the materials that Twinam had allegedly taken from the group amounted to speeches and essays authored by Exclusive Brethren leaders.
Ron Shems of Burlington, Twinam’s lawyer, said the case is important particularly because it will test the effectiveness of SLAPP law. The state Attorney General’s Office has filed a brief in support of the law’s application in the case.
“They’re using a big international law firm to try to shut down someone who dares to speak out against them,” Shems said, referring to the Exclusive Brethren. “And this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to shut down a Web site like this.”
Kirtland is a partner in the law firm of Fullbright & Jaworski, which has offices in China, Europe, the Middle East and Washington, D.C. The late Leon Jaworski, a founding member of the firm, was a special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal.
Kirtland said the Exclusive Brethren should not be blamed for aggressively defending their copyrighted materials.
“The Brethren would just like to protect their legal rights,” Kirtland said. “In the absence of doing that, there would be willy-nilly violations of copyright laws.”
Source – Burlington Free Press – Secretive worldwide sect battles Vermonter in court
Those in this area (NZ)are fully with you Tim.
Any group PRETENDING to be preaching the gospel of salvation while deliberately fleecing the community for free rates, concealing child abuse etc, should be forced to open their books to both the community and government. Telling the TRUTH will achieve this goal. Once evil is exposed by truth, God never covers it up. We stand with you both, little by little.
Kind regards, Nev.
Please send your stories, websites to local newsjournalists in the US.
Warren Jeffs of FLDS Cult is now doing time for child abuse and rape.
Wayne Bent is doing the same
http://www.newschannel10.com/Global/story.asp?S=10073108
Tony Alamo waits behind bars for his trial for sex with minor children and child abuse as well. Arrested this past September 08.
The world (and US) are getting sick and tired of paedophilic, megolomaniacal abusers continue to make victims of children and innocent victims.
Thank you for your website.
Dyann
Clearly, if what the exclusive brethren were doing was good and right, they would be happy to have it published anywhere for everyone to see. Whenever someone wants everything hidden there is a reason for that. Usually, some type of corruption is involved.
Having grown up in the exclusives I know that we were always taught to keep everything the brethren do secret, now that I have left I see clearly why, because so many things they do and have done are so evil.
The exclusive brethren are one huge business for the leader and they are all kept so well controlled from the time they are born that they sadly don’t even realize that they are completely under another man’s control.
The reason I am concerned about taking our family’s story public is having to deal with the terrible harassment that it brings on from the exclusives to our family inside as well as us.
Having been raised in a family that was in the E.B. and having seen so many shocking happenings and evil goings on, I simply say keep up your good work until you have destroyed these evil parasites. If you don’t, God will.
I am now a very happy Christian, which I could never say when involved in that cult.
God bless ~~~ Ray
Mr Hales and the rest of you guys, could you tell me how you sleep at night? I don’t buy some of the wilder rantings about child abuse etc. But you must know (as we all do) that this case isn’t really about copyright, but all about silencing your critics. Have to be careful to be completely truthful about this, because you know what the bible says about liars.
While on the subject of the bible, there are a lot of scriptures that can’t be reconciled with a wealthy and avaricious cult, can you honestly say that this is not what you have become?
kind regards
Gerard
This is a most interesting thing I’ve stumbled across. I was born and raised in what I call the Closed Brethren. We have TVs and Computers, and have free will to do what we please. It is our choice on what life we want to lead. We need to make those decisions that honor God, and leave the ones that do not, out!
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It is hard issue to talk about but; some aspects are right and some are very wrong.
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We cannot excommunicate believers from family. We can from the table, and we should for those who are not there for Him, and, offend Him. But family…? How in Gods eyes, when he sent His Son give GRACE to this world when it was so wrong? Look at what you do, and ask yourself are you in tune with God, is your grace as great as His?
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We are selfish creatures, that is who we are.
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To those who are in the “Exclusive” Brethren:
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Answer me this… what will you say before Him, when you are held account for your actions?
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Look into your heart… what will you say?
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I know that I could walk away from Him today… ignore Him… shun Him…
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But when he comes again, I would meet him in the sky. When I stand in front of Him that day I will give an account! No matter what I’ve done… where I’ve been… what I’ve said. I am saved by his grace.
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“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”
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You can take family away on earth, but we are all one through Him. Him and Him alone, you will give an account, before the very people you have: hurt, ripped up, destroyed, and mutilated.
Best Regards,
– Dan
I was targeted by an exclusive brethren cult leader who was also a teacher in the public school I attended. The man put me through a nightmare of emotional and spiritual abuse that went on for years. There is not a doubt in my mind that this is an extremist cult that does not hesitate to take away the rights of others and follows a script designed to stalk and murder the soul. The leaders know exactly what they are doing – they practice their craft, greed, deception and narcissism with diligence and stealth.
My husband’s family left the E.B. in England (Malvern) in 1970, after Aberdeen (Taylor’s adultery). They lost everything, including their mortgage and home, and all relationships with their family. My husband was never able to speak to his grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins again. A business is correct. Despite all the rules, the women were supposed to wear chanel perfume, because Taylor had shares in it! We live in the USA now. Curious about what goes on with the E.B. in the USA.
I am with the Open Brethren now, having been with the Closed brethren for over 15 years in northern California, many meetings have now moved to the grave yards for they have all passed away, I attend an open meeting for there are over 20 assemblies that are thriving, the largest assembly has two teaching meetings on the Word, on Sunday and two Breaking of Breads each and every Sunday for there are almost 400 in fellowship there. So the assembly has two assembly meetings in one place. The assembly started a work in the South in San Jose which has aprox 200 now as well. That used to be apart of the larger one in north San Jose. The reason of the growth is in the Gospel. That assembly is on 3 College campuses with an outreach called Salt Works, that feeds into the home studies which feed into the assembly,
The average age at Hillview Bible Chapel is aroung 29-35 many children and new borns and young marrieds. They have a prison ministry, college Ministry, High School Ministry and Childrens Ministry, All the northen California assemblies own a Bible Camp together where the Gospel is preached and even more are added to the greater northern California assemblies from the conferences and the camp work there. Thats how you grow! They man Kiosks on “God Talk in the Malls” where they pass out tracks and share the good news right in the mall at the Kiosk and invite people to the assembly showing Gods Love.
I can visit many of the grave yards in america where many assembly testimonies have gone, because those who held the responsibility were not responsible at all, and its the family that live on with less and less in a home assembly until its too small and your death will end it all. Read the demise on that Epitaph.
As a prison preacher in California attending the assembly in San Jose, I can say this affectionately, there is a reason why the Evangelist comes before the Pastor and Teacher in Ephesians four. The reason is, that without Grace and Love there is no Gospel. Its an acrostic I use, G-RACE O-F S-ALVATIONS P-LAN E-MPHASIS ON LOVE. You take the G and the L off of that word you have “of salvations plan” and there are many today that will teach you another way of salvations plan, only in Jesus Christ do we find the Grace and His love that secures our salvation through His name.
May the Lord give the assemblies the courage today to stand up for Jesus not hide away among ourselves, or we too will find ourselvs faced with sculpturing an epitaph for our own Grave. Its a dillemma of a testimony that will move each day closer and closer to the place where they will bury you. You will be the only family left in that assembly, and after you pass away, so does the testimony. Oh that those who are called “responsible” brethren or even “House Father” will be faithful in what has been committed to you from Christ Himself. I challenge you tonight consider these things.