FF-2-88-A – 88B
[Editor’s note: This statement appears at FF-2-88-A – 88B on page https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=138390, at FF-12-A-98 – A-99 on page https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=123663 and at FF-9-B-51 – B-52 at https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=109018.]
From the time I entered into the Santa Rosa Junior College (Peoples Temple sponsored) dormitories, I came under the viciousness of the so-called leadership of the dormitories: Jim Cobb, Terri Cobb, Wayne Pietla [Pietila], and Terri Cobb’s protégé Mickey Touchette. Myself, along with several others, were new in Peoples Temple. We were kept up night after night by these people for counseling. We were screaming at and called “honkies” or “uncle toms” or “aunt janes” all night because we were not revolutionary. Terri Cobb got one of the girls so incited in revolutionary fervor that she play-acted out a scene where she was demonstrating what she would do to me if I betrayed and pretended to hold a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. If we defended ourselves when being “confronted”, as they called it, we would have to stand up in the middle of the room for hours usually until daybreak four until we confessed to being a honkie or uncle tom or aunt jane. When different ones of us started reacting to this terrorism and fascist dictatorship, we were told that Jim Jones knew everything that went on, which was absolutely untrue we found out later. They threw Jim Jones’ name around whenever they wanted to throw in some inhumane rule. We were told that we would get into a lot of trouble if we went to Jim Jones about this because it showed that we didn’t trust him (Jim Jones). I would have left if I hadn’t gone to church services during the weekends and midweek because I would see that Jim Jones was a sensitive compassionate man who preached about egalitarian living, and that concern for others was the essence of living. This was not the same Jim Jones that Jim Cobb, Terri Cobb, and Wayne Pietla showed me, and I would return to the dormitories confused and yet terrified at what new mental torture we would be put through an our all night meetings.
The all-night meetings usually centered around someone being confronted about something as insidious as one of the more studious persons not helping out one of the leadership on a test by cheating for them. They told us to steal also, because to steal from the system wasn’t bad.
Mickey Touchette was a popularity climber. She always like to be noticed, but she was a nothing at the dorms until she started an active lesbian course by having an affair with Terri Cobb. Terri Cobb, who was married to Wayne Pitla, always like to break in new females at the dorms. Terri Cobb and Mickey Touchette had their affair for months and even continued it after Mickey Touchette started an affair with Jim Cobb who was by this time married to Sharon. Jim Cobb had no more than gotten married then he started screwing Mickey Touchette and tried to get me to screw him too.
Jim Cobb took me to a park on our way home from school just to look at the ducks. This occurred after Sharon and he had gotten married. He pulled me over and started kissing me and trying to feel my breasts. I protested that this wasn’t what I wanted, but he insisted that this was how “comrades” got to know each other. Jim Cobb always picked females with blonde hair and blue eyes and called everyone a racist if they didn’t bend to his will.
Guerrilla training became a major emphasis on the college students. We were being trained for the revolution that we were going to start. Wayne Pietla would dress up like Che Guevara and shout revolutionary slogans such as, “Traitors never live”, “we’ll kill anyone who betrays the revolution”, “the ends justify the means”, and he was always saying, “I am a communist.” We didn’t even know what they were talking about, but if we didn’t want an all-night session in the middle of the floor being screamed at, we had to go along with it. We were drilled in leadership skills in guerrilla warfare; night runs and marches were taken in empty fields to test our ability and doing invasion maneuvers. On one hike that we took, we were being trained in guerrilla fighting and also in abilities to take on leadership responsibilities. Jim Cobb was in charge and beat a girl with a stick because she became too exhausted to keep up with the whole group.
Our meetings in the dorms were not without violence being inflicted on someone who disagreed with the way the fascist regime was ruling there in the dorms. A girl was slapped up against the wall by someone who was caught up in the emotion of proving that she was not a coward, and that she supported the dormitory leaders.
Racial animosity was encouraged as a way of controlling the people at the dorms. The dark complected people were called Uncle Toms or Aunt Janes if they did not call light complected people “honkies” and keep animosity stirred up. The light complected people were never allowed to sit in the front seat of a car unless there was no choice.
The reason this continued for so many months was because of the long distance between the church and our school dormitories.
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FF-2-88C
[Notes by Paula Adams in advance of writing above statement]