I\u2019ve written extensively about life as a Peoples Temple survivor. Anyone can read it in Snake Dance: Unravelling the Mysteries of Jonestown<\/i>. I also revealed many a dark corner of Peoples Temple and its leader Jim Jones \u2013 including his abusive treatment of me<\/i>. I \u201cwithheld nothing,\u201d to put it mildly.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t because I relish public confessionals. More because of what I knew by that fateful November night; what I felt entrusted to do; how breathtakingly delayed that became; the macabre game of \u201ccatch-up\u201d now. And I wanted to pre-empt anticipated damage control rather than to let the rumor mill run amok.<\/p>\n
I retained a cache of documents which would shockingly filet a one-sided media story into two. I experienced that last year-and-a-half not in Guyana, but as part of a small crew still in San Francisco, and witnessed first-hand an orchestrated conspiracy against people I loved and whose dreams and accomplishments I shared. I had keys to unlock hidden agendas and cover-ups.<\/p>\n
I was also a threat to the feds and believe me, they\u2019ve let me know it! Even (or especially) <\/i>in recent years. Just ask my husband.<\/p>\n
But I always knew that my especial vulnerability personally<\/i> was what was done to me by Jim Jones Christmas, 1975 in L.A. Like if people can just paint you as a circus freak, then they don\u2019t have to listen to a word you say!<\/p>\n
From Snake Dance<\/i>, p. 283:<\/p>\n What I felt towards \u2018L.A.\u2019 wasn\u2019t the reservoir of past feelings one might envision it to be. Rather it loomed before me like a huge, ill-placed stumbling block. Now, what he [i.e., Jim Jones] had done to me was no longer an internal matter \u2013 not ever. Were I to speak, it would become living history.<\/p>\n But now this early on [because I spoke out very early], I had to decide. Decide what would happen if I spoke up publicly and someone decided to expose that ghastly incident in L.A. That an opponent could use the very tactics of my mentor<\/i> [i.e., Jim Jones] to twist and wring my heart into public view, as well as to twist and wring my words into a discredited silence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed, it began early. I was working with the editor of a prominent New York newspaper shortly after the tragedy and within days of an article coming out, he was feeding back to me what \u201csomeone\u201d had told him about L.A. \u201cto discredit me into silence.\u201d<\/p>\n But to still have this happening at such late date, and not even at the hands of \u201cpros\u201d \u2013 just casually cruel \u201cfellow survivors\u201d\u2026. And then to discover that it was widespread in back-door gossip, in talk to producers, etc., much not even traceable, just pervasive\u2026.<\/p>\n That\u2019s been dismaying.<\/p>\n I want these reckless people to know that when you denigrate a good person, it is your own good name that you have hurt, not mine.<\/p>\n But since so many <\/i>have done this, even publicly, then yes, I will make it a public matter because I know who I am and my own good motives and I have nothing to hide.<\/p>\n As many are aware, I suffered a notorious incident in Peoples Temple, in Los Angeles in the wee hours of December 26, 1975. It was thrust onto me by not only Jim Jones, but by virtually everyone<\/i> \u2013 I was forced to undress, then ridiculed and castigated, a debacle designed to silence <\/i>me (and over what?<\/i> most relevant question!), <\/b>and with no one coming to my defense.<\/p>\n Precious few survivors have asked me about it; instead, I\u2019ve been made the butt of gossip and at least three survivors exhibited disturbing behavior in the Nelson film, as if I were a dead person who could not even speak for myself.<\/p>\n One smugly said I had \u201cpassed up a love note\u201d (no \u201clove note\u201d \u2013 never happened); one spoke with seemingly great authority about my naked body when she wasn\u2019t even there!; a third leered sadistically as though my pain was his pleasure.<\/p>\n A fourth (independent of the film) did not let 48 hours pass after my husband and I left the Bay Area in 2005 (an emotional return after 27 long years!) before she was spreading a new lie that \u201cLaurie was also beaten [never happened] but she still kept slavishly serving Jim Jones\u201d (that never happened either).<\/p>\n A fifth survivor believed an absolute fiction spread by a liar (not the survivor) more than thirty years back, that I had allegedly condoned my own torture(!!!) and he has told who knows how many people ever since that that was \u201ca fact.\u201d<\/p>\n Lest \u201cthe movie stars\u201d think that they were performing a public service by tattling on Jim Jones, let me inform them that Mr. Jones is long since dead but I\u2019m still very much alive, so the only person whom they were hurting was me<\/i>. The same for the gossip circuit and the rumor mill.<\/p>\n It is tragic to lose loved ones and friends, but why doesn\u2019t enduring tragedy make people better? <\/i>It is dismaying if people who have suffered so much have really learned so little. If they all hated Jim Jones so much, then why do they emulate<\/i> him? <\/b><\/p>\n I set the record straight on the incident in Snake Dance.<\/i> I knew that I was entrusted with a greater task, daunting enough without added roadblocks; and I feared that \u201cbad people\u201d (like the feds, for instance) would use that incident against me. Little did I imagine that amongst \u201cthe bad people\u201d would be my fellow survivors!<\/p>\n It\u2019s not even the story that they think it was. <\/i><\/b>But since so few seem to have read my book and the gossipers resist any accountability, I will set the record straight yet again, now in a more traveled public forum:<\/p>\n I\u2019m not designed to move in lockstep \u2013 it has never been my way. And as I wrote in my own book: \u201cI would not put up with for seven minutes <\/i>now what I put up with for seven years <\/i>then.\u201d<\/p>\n Back then of course, there was a well-oiled lockstep machine, as well as Jim Jones\u2019 unique capacity to turn his own Planning Commission into a lynch mob. To say I was a lamb amongst wolves would be putting it mildly.<\/p>\n Yet I loved the work and wanted it to succeed; so I was horrified to be cast as \u201cthe enemy,\u201d and that \u201cthe remedy\u201d was psychological destruction. Peoples Temple did have real (political) enemies \u2013 the old saying, \u201cJust because you\u2019re paranoid doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re not out to get you!\u201d But I of all people had no enmity towards this group or its leader, either one.<\/p>\n One doesn\u2019t just turn on a dime either, and begin counterattacking \u201cfriends.\u201d Or as I put in my book, \u201cIf I needed to go through this any time in my life, why not at the hands of Nazis?\u201d That might have been easier to process. No grey areas, no conflicts. They\u2019re Nazis.<\/p>\n So how and why did that wrongful spectacle happen? And why to me who never hurt anyone, who never threatened anyone, who never demanded anything of Jim Jones, sexual or otherwise?<\/p>\n Well, this was Jim Jones\u2019 night of derangement, not mine, so let me offer this backdrop:<\/p>\n This man was an incredible humanitarian every moment of his life that his pathology was not getting the better of him. And that was confusing for people. People don\u2019t process angels and demons together very well (I don\u2019t, either!); and Jim Jones seemed to have an abundance of both.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dark side\u201d was his sexual pathology. Indeed, it was not only key to the wrongful torture of me<\/i> that night, but also underlies how\/why Peoples Temple ended in mass suicide.<\/i> <\/b><\/p>\n Oh, it\u2019s clear \u201conce you see it\u201d; but like filling in chunks of a picture puzzle (first you see the trees, then the river, then the sunset, etc.), you don\u2019t \u201csee the whole picture\u201d until its details are successively sequenced in.<\/p>\n That will be appearing in a separate piece, \u201cCriss-Cross: The Anatomy of a Psychotic Break.\u201d It\u2019s a needed backdrop to the tale of not just that <\/i>night, but to the treacherous night of November 18, 1978.<\/p>\n For now, however, a summary must suffice \u2013 enough to preface the notorious incident in L.A. And yes, that may mean assertions hard to absorb in a gulp. \u201cThe whole picture\u201d is filled in step by step. Just on a separate palette, referring the reader to \u201cCriss-Cross.\u201d<\/p>\n And \u201ccriss-cross\u201d is literal \u2013 like \u201chaving one\u2019s wires crossed.\u201d The expressed goal of Peoples Temple was racial and economic equality<\/b>; indeed, most were sterling in its fulfillment. So was Jim Jones! Indeed, a role model.<\/p>\n So the subject of mass sex with the leader<\/b>, the theme of that ghastly night, was a painful detour, then as well as now. What could one possibly have had to do with the other?<\/p>\n Well, they didn\u2019t, they shouldn\u2019t have, but they did. As will be laid out in \u201cCriss-Cross,\u201d the roots were in Jim Jones\u2019 own personal life history, whereby he fatally \u201ccriss-crossed\u201c the two.<\/p>\n Here it\u2019s but the backdrop. To how a sensitive, wholly innocent young woman (namely, me<\/i>!) was \u201cthrown under the bus\u201d that night, and \u201cthe wrong bus\u201d at that.<\/p>\n I should not have been thrown under any<\/b> \u201cbus.\u201d Nor is there any onus of embarrassment on me<\/b>. That was on Mr. Jones; and now on his former followers who still don\u2019t seem to know the difference.<\/p>\n This is a thumbnail version from \u201cCriss-Cross\u201c:<\/p>\n I believe from Jim Jones\u2019 wealth of disturbing patterns that he was brutally raped by his own father as a child, <\/b>an unresolved trauma leading to projections, denials, overcompensations, addictions, fixations, and the like.<\/p>\n Basic psychology: People \u201cre-play\u201d unresolved traumas. (Note<\/b>: even more so if the trauma is blocked from conscious memory.<\/i>) They try to \u201cfix\u201d what they could not process at the time. Like I had \u201ca bad father\u201d so I will be the ultimate \u201cgood father,\u201d but \u201cI\u2019ll do it by repeating the bad patterns in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither doable nor \u201ca fix\u201d! But from this tortured psyche: Instead of being a shattered, humiliated, disempowered, abused and violated little boy, I\u2019ll be the sexual stud who will \u201ccompassionately help others <\/i>face their homosexuality.\u201d Sort of like \u201ca kinder, gentler rape.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus did \u201cFather\u201d sleep with his \u201cchildren,\u201d women and men alike, with Jones projecting that his followers were all homosexual themselves, never him of course!<\/p>\n Now if that sounds twisted, then welcome to the sex world of Jim Jones! This was someone in need of major therapy before he ever hit puberty.<\/p>\n And how did the \u201csolution\u201c of mass incest <\/i><\/b>fix anything? It just seemed to drive this man to Quaaludes and whatever else he was taking. Since his followers, however devoted, could not just twist themselves into pretzels against their own sexual orientation.<\/p>\n Indeed by that night in L.A., clearly \u201cthe program\u201d was going poorly, but no one was telling <\/i>him that. He had so proclaimed that this was a strategy;<\/i> that no one was thinking, no, this isn\u2019t a strategy<\/i>, it\u2019s a pathology<\/i>. Verboten to \u201cgo there.\u201d<\/p>\n Much less to see that these practices (meant to \u201cprotect\u201d us, we were told) were dangerous<\/i>, how, or why. Of course the mass sex practices were highly <\/i>dangerous, because this man\u2019s psyche harbored a hidden criss-cross between racial <\/i>abuse and sexual <\/i>abuse.<\/p>\n And although we are admittedly skipping steps covered in \u201cCriss-Cross\u201c:<\/p>\n The end game was that for racially<\/i>-abused people (= his own people later on in life), \u201cwilling to die\u201d is to die resisting their oppressors, whereas for sexually<\/i>-abused people (= himself as a child, projected onto his own people), \u201cwilling to die\u201d is\u2026\u2026suicide<\/i>. <\/b><\/p>\n (There\u2019s a glaring \u201cmissing piece\u201d here as well, but be patient. We\u2019ll get to it.)<\/p>\n Childhood histories of this kind can also create <\/i>suicides. Just ask any psychiatrist. Even (or especially!) sexual conquests (= sexual addiction) do not make this better. They just re-enforce the underlying pathology. <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Thus did this man harbor \u201ca time bomb\u201d in his psyche, inflamed by his own sexual practices. His inner circle, meanwhile, was clueless that that torment came from a childhood sexual calamity un<\/i>-related to \u201csaving the world\u201d at all; <\/b>they were just molded into a warp, so to speak, by this excessively dominant man.<\/p>\n Now when someone that powerful harbors a pathological \u201ciceberg,\u201c and then he himself releases the floodwaters (i.e., the mass sex \u201ctime bomb\u201c), then that\u2019s when that person (however altruistic, however sacrificial otherwise<\/i>) can endanger others.<\/p>\n How? Well, anyone can have subjective fixations \u2013 like \u201cthis is the way the world <\/i>is\u201d \u2013 because this is how I believe that my<\/i> world is. But if the fixations are sexual and it\u2019s you with the iron will, then you can project<\/i> them onto your sex partners.<\/p>\n Once the sex partners buy into the wrong fixations, you\u2019ve got presto chango cult! <\/b>Before you know it, they\u2019re risking their lives for \u201cthe cause\u201d not just because of how the<\/i> world <\/i>is, but because of how the leader re-routed that world through his own pathology.<\/p>\n Here a pathology dangerous to others<\/i> in its subterranean \u201ccriss-cross\u201d between racial and sexual humiliation. The tragic intersection, so to speak, between a civil rights leader and the leader of a mass suicide. (Remember, for racially<\/i>-abused people, \u201cwilling to die\u201d is to die resisting an oppressor; for sexually<\/i>-abused people, \u201cwilling to die\u201d is\u2026.. suicide<\/i>.)<\/p>\n Of course we were never told any secret life history. Well, actually we were<\/i>. No one can be psychologically \u201crun\u201d by such a core calamity and not be brimming over with \u201cclues.\u201c (To be explored in \u201cCriss-Cross.\u201c) But these were just people, not trained psychiatrists; and no, we were never outright told<\/i>.<\/p>\n This is all we saw on the surface:<\/p>\n Jim Jones actually rarely <\/i>humiliated black people. He thought that a racist culture had humiliated them enough. Yet he thought that sex with him was humiliating<\/i>. He had had more humiliation in the childhood rape than any little boy could bear; but now it was he who was \u201cFather\u201d having sex with his \u201cchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is why most of his sex partners were white. <\/i>He thought that white people couldn\u2019t relate to what blacks endured in a racist culture. So he resorted to projecting his own Waterloo of humiliation onto the whites: sex<\/i>.<\/b><\/p>\n I was in fact there when he said (triumphantly, to boot!), \u201cIf you want to be with me, prepare to be raped!\u201d So much for \u201cFather\u2019s love.\u201d<\/p>\n Then \u201cthe lucky sex partners\u201d were made miserable, guilty, tormented, working day and night. Like surrogates for him<\/i>.<\/p>\n At first it was just a tiny group of white women sex partners simply called \u201cstaff.\u201d No one could utter a word against them. Just don\u2019t<\/i>. Peoples Temple needs these few for the work to survive.<\/p>\n But if we were all about racial and economic equality, then why was \u201cstaff\u201d locked into his sexual <\/i>teachings? As they were, with more converts to come.<\/p>\n By the time of Jim\u2019s meltdown that notorious night in L.A., he was soliciting \u201cconfessions\u201d from sex partners, but they looked so frightened that I thought if anyone said he was a bad lover,<\/i> it would be equated with being \u201cagainst racial and economic equality<\/i>\u201d!<\/i><\/p>\n For by then, everything, all of it \u2013race, sex, economic equality, everything\u2013 was coming to a boil as \u201cJim Jones\u2019 unbearable sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n It should have been broken down into: sacrifice for a better life for others, good; \u201csacrifice\u201d to re-enforce rather than reverse one\u2019s own pathology, bad. But it never was. <\/b><\/p>\n Nor did anyone probe why sex with Jim Jones was supposed to make heterosexuals realize that they were homosexuals. (Much less white people realize that they were black! Be patient. We\u2019re getting there.)<\/p>\n To the contrary. It was more like sleep with Jim Jones and be imprinted with his mind-set<\/i>. Then whatever your commendable sacrifices, the mind-set <\/i>in which it was done was his.<\/p>\n Am I saying that had he not created a coven of sexual <\/i>enablers, that a mass suicide plan would not have evolved, but rather what people under attack (however <\/i>dire their straits) do \u201cnormally\u201d \u2013 like self-defense or at the least, passive resistance? Or even worst case scenario, die trying to protect others?<\/p>\n Yes, I\u2019m saying exactly that. <\/b>I know it because the first I heard of mass suicide was not in the mock drill in 1976 (\u201cthe grape juice incident\u201c), but at a Planning Commission meeting way back in September, 1973, just after the college students left the church: \u201cHow would you all feel about jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge?\u201d<\/p>\n And it was made to be about politics<\/i> \u2013 like who would they talk to, to destroy us politically<\/i>. The press, influential right-wingers, who? And which favorable reporter might we choose to reveal why we did it post-mortem?<\/p>\n Yet the very next meeting, ashen-faced women (from \u201cstaff\u201d) passed out blank paper for us all to write out not<\/b>, \u201cI\u2018m a socialist and I\u2018m ready to die for the cause,\u201d but rather, \u201cI fucked with Jim Jones and I loved it.\u201d Whether we had or hadn\u2019t, did or didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not politics<\/b>. That\u2019s protecting sexual secrets against blackmail: \u201cIf you out me, I\u2019ll out you.\u201d<\/p>\n Is that <\/i>why we were being asked if we would jump off the Golden Gate Bridge? No one asked.<\/p>\n Just protect the secret<\/i>. No one ever probed the unspeakable \u201csecret beneath<\/i> the secret.\u201d <\/b>I don\u2019t think that even those closest to him knew.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s still not the whole story. Bad enough thinking that heterosexuals could be turned into homosexuals, but how could white<\/i> people (i.e., the sex partners) be turned into black<\/i> people? Can you just humiliate <\/i>a white person into being black? And through sex<\/i>? Something that is supposed to be pleasurable<\/i>?<\/p>\n And how could that have come from being raped by his own father? His father was white. Jim was dark-complected but not black. So why criss-cross sex<\/i><\/b> with race? <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n O.k., here\u2019s the most vicious twist: The father was racist, Ku Klux Klan and, I learned privately, had been a violent alcoholic brute. Well, he undoubtedly did not rape his young son silently<\/i>. Best bet? That young Jim tried to help a black<\/i><\/b> person, only to be met with the likes of, \u201cYou little N-lover! You wanna be a N? I\u2018ll show you what it\u2019s like to be N!!\u201d As he <\/b>raped<\/i><\/b> him. His own father. <\/b><\/p>\n That would mess up the kid forever and set up \u201cthe criss-cross\u201c between race and sex in the process. The kid, hating everything his father was, goes on to not just \u201cidentify\u201d with black, but to be<\/b> black (he claimed emphatically); and racial humiliation \u201cequals\u201d sexual humiliation.<\/p>\n That<\/i><\/b> would \u201ccreate a Jim Jones.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n And again (painfully): For racially<\/i>-abused people, \u201cwilling to die\u201d is to die resisting the oppressor; for sexually<\/i>-abused people, \u201cwilling to die\u201d is\u2026.. suicide<\/i>.<\/p>\n Still, members saw the empowerment, not the pathology \u2013 the tireless help, aid, counsel, resources, support, and especially the implacable commitment to black people and against racism. You had no reason to suspect that \u201cthe world of wonders\u201d was (in his own life experience)<\/i> one massive, superhuman transcendence of \u201cthe world of horrors\u201d \u2013 a world that was never <\/i>surfaced, never <\/i>aired, never <\/i>healed.<\/p>\n How the world of horrors was so infused into the world of wonders as to cause mass suicide, <\/i>will be detailed in \u201cCriss-Cross.\u201d It doesn\u2019t need airing here except to note that the same mind-set pounded into people unaware of its origins at Jonestown, happened with the lynch mob swayed against me<\/i> that night.<\/b><\/p>\n Understand, I neither had any role in, any appetite for, nor did I in any way collude with my own torture that night. My situation, as I will clarify, was impossible, irresolvable, unfixable <\/i>before I ever even stepped into that room.<\/p>\n Nor was I part of the sexual maelstrom swirling around Jim Jones \u2013 not ever. By which I am not, understand, condemning or judging others who were. Sane people did, regrettably, get their brains twisted regarding sex, mostly because:<\/p>\n Jim Jones\u2019 story was that he only went into sex to get people out<\/i> of it, i.e., into humanitarian concerns. And as marriages crumbled beneath his feet, with people now 24\/7 helping others, that seemed <\/i>to be true.<\/p>\n No one saw Jim Jones\u2019 own internal war; and by the time he had converted enough sex partners <\/i>to his world view,<\/i> no one could. His world view was then \u201claw.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus it was the creation of a (at first tiny, then expanded) cadre of \u201cenablers\u201d based in his sexual<\/i> pathology, that kept this group as a \u201ccult\u201d rather than the mainstream implosion that Jim Jones (and many others!) had hoped it would become.<\/p>\n O.k., that\u2019s where the Planning Commission came in<\/i><\/b>. <\/i><\/b>The forum where the notorious incident happened.<\/p>\n These were the people who ran the church\u2019s many departments. But it also became a breeding ground for \u201cenablers.\u201d Most fiercely loyal, with a mix of reasons good and bad. Others bolted, which became dangerous.<\/p>\n My own induction into \u201cP.C.\u201d was Jim Jones reciting his sexual<\/i> practices, including news of an \u201caccidental\u201d child. A wife threatened ruin of her well-placed mate; he bedded her to defuse her. Then he bedded the husband because \u201cmen need this too.\u201d<\/p>\n Then came scores of others \u201cto bring them to socialism.\u201d Including bedding a beautiful, kind-hearted young white woman and \u201cfucking her for eight hours to get her over being hung up on me.\u201d He even arranged that they be discovered, so that humiliation <\/i>could finish off her \u201chang-up.\u201d<\/p>\n I was shaken! I went to \u201cthe lucky recipient of the eight-hour fuck\u201d (a friend) with, \u201cAre we supposed to be asking<\/i> for sex?\u201d She told me, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about any of this, Laurie. We\u2019ll all get to die soon.\u201d (Comforting, yes?)<\/p>\n Then she revealed that the \u201cerotic, ecstatic\u201d marathon that Jim had claimed, was a horror of frigidity for her, followed upon by endometriosis requiring surgery. Apparently (I only learned in later years) a hysterectomy. In her early twenties.<\/p>\n I was aghast. I wouldn\u2019t pass on \u201cthe bad review\u201d to Jim \u2013 I wanted to protect her<\/i>. So I just wrote Mr. Jones that \u201cIf this is happening, it\u2019s happening, but I would rather not have known.\u201d And that sooner or later, someone was going to stab him in the back. (No brownie points for Laurie, this.)<\/p>\n Or stab all<\/i> of us in the back. I was unsettled from the start \u2013 not just because I thought the mass sex scenario strange (wasn\u2018t racial and economic equality what we were all about?), but because I thought it dangerous<\/i>.<\/p>\n For sex was not just Jim Jones\u2019 pirating of his flock\u2019s energies and a disturbing way to create allegiance. It was also fraught with backfires! Indeed, many an \u201cenemy\u201d came from the cadre of scorned ex-lovers who (however <\/i><\/b>unwittingly!) went to work with government agents to do in a politically <\/i>vulnerable group. Which endangered everyone:<\/i><\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you wind up in isolation, militarily defenseless, under siege and with children<\/i> to boot, as Peoples Temple did. Then if you do have real political enemies (as Peoples Temple did), they send someone to threaten mass extermination (they did that, yes); you have a former insider assuring said enemies that \u201cYou can count on Jim Jones to overreact\u201d (that happened too, yes); they kill the Congressman themselves as the \u201ctrigger\u201d (as they did); and then are glad for a pathological implosion and (let\u2019s be frank here) relish the results, dead children and all. \u201cSaved them the trouble.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cSpeculative\u201d? Taking seventeen hours<\/i><\/b>to send a MEDEVAC plane to the airstrip, when it had taken perhaps one hour<\/i><\/b>to fly the Congressman in just the day before? Not even send the MEDEVAC until the CIA radioed from on-site that Jonestown was \u201call dead\u201c? Per the U.S. government\u2019s own log. Not<\/b> \u201cspeculative.\u201d<\/p>\n My God, the assassination hit the news by 7 p.m. in the States! I heard it myself on an AM radio. It was a Saturday night. 7 p.m. (San Francisco time) services were called off because it was already all over the news. By then 11 p.m. in Guyana, but still ten hours before the airstrip survivors got any help!<\/p>\n So none of this is \u201cspeculative.\u201d Just foul. Nor is it \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d Other people not adding up two plus two and getting four doesn\u2019t make me<\/i> \u201ca theorist.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, but aren\u2019t we moving far afield? Not really. As I\u2019ve said countless times, this was a symbiosis<\/i>. Mad-dog leader on the one side; mad-dog intelligence agencies on the other, community crushed as in a vice.<\/p>\n Back to the notorious incident:<\/p>\n That night in L.A. was \u201ccrunch point\u201d in the States \u2013 when Mr. Jones\u2019 pathology came to a boil. And me, I was \u201cit\u201d that night. Just not for any reason that was claimed, especially <\/i>by Jim Jones.<\/p>\n O.k., by the time of the L.A. incident, Peoples Temple was hardly at the end of its rope (to the contrary \u2013 on the upswing!), yet this leader\u2019s pathology was of course <\/i>dominant in \u201cthe notorious incident.\u201c And as I wrote in my book, that\u2019s when I began viewing him as \u201ctwo people\u201d because the schisms were by then laid bare.<\/p>\n So back to the beginning we go, to what I called in Snake Dance<\/i> , \u201ca huge, ill-placed stumbling block\u201d \u2013 the notorious incident in L.A. that I feared would torpedo my credibility on Jonestown.<\/p>\n I have no fear of that now. If people are still into back-door gossip, then what more can I say than \u201cshame on them.\u201c<\/p>\n Not that that incident was not devastating for me. It was. And no one helped me. They were told, \u201cNo one talk to her. No one sympathize with her,\u201d and these were people who followed instructions pretty well.<\/p>\n Indeed, I could have been locked into hatred, resentment, on the one hand; denial or evasion on the other. On its surface, the incident was a brutal rejection of me personally<\/i>. It was crushing.<\/p>\n I just doubt that it was me personally that Mr. Jones was trying to \u201ckill off.\u201d This was more like torture to \u201cbreak\u201d someone \u2013 so they renounce who they are, or suddenly start telling you what you want <\/i>to hear rather than what you cannot bear<\/i> to hear.<\/p>\n For that\u2019s who I was that night \u2013 the embodiment of what Jim Jones could not bear to hear \u2013 an anathema<\/i>. That\u2019s<\/i> why he attacked me that night, not over sex. Sex was just a bad side show to try and nullify the unwanted message.<\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s a strange, unexpected tale, so let me just tell it. Then maybe you the reader can relate to my catbird seat re everyone\u2019s <\/i>pathology: both Jim Jones\u2019 personal <\/i>pathology; and (through the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project) the ideological and government <\/i>pathology which played its own key role in destroying Jonestown.<\/p>\n Back to the issue at hand \u2013 that fiercesome night of December 26, 1975, the notorious incident in L.A.:<\/p>\n Jim Jones\u2019 sex life wasn\u2019t my<\/i> scene \u2013 I was just thrown into a maelstrom where I did not belong then<\/i>. Nor should I have been demeaned in a nationally-released film now<\/i> with thoughtless cruelty by people who should know better.<\/p>\n But since so many seem to have been wrongly titillated by a wrongful spectacle to the point of wrongly denigrating me,<\/i> then yes, I will set the record straight publicly and then maybe those people can re-evaluate their actions.<\/p>\n This is what happened that night:<\/p>\n \u201cIn the one corner\u201d you had ringmaster Jim Jones; \u201cin the other corner,\u201d shy, fragile, insecure me. Everyone was corralled to yell and scream, although I guarantee that had you asked them what I was guilty of, not one intelligible answer would have emerged.<\/p>\n An unfair fight par excellence<\/i>. All the more painful in that I had never intended the rift. I didn\u2019t want<\/i> a fight. Indeed, I had asked Jim for help<\/i> and was rebuffed. I hadn\u2019t realized (how could I?) that I was treading on the very fault line of \u201cthe earthquake\u201d that would later swallow up even him<\/i>: namely, what was to happen years later on in Guyana.<\/p>\n Jim Jones didn\u2019t hate me, however it seemed at the time. What he was (it took me ages to realize) was threatened<\/i>. I was the proverbial \u201cmessenger\u201d; and I had recently delivered supremely UN-welcome news:<\/p>\n \u201cThe message,\u201d delivered in a most eerie way (namely, psychically-channeled poetry), was that Peoples Temple would be going down to worldwide condemnation and ruin \u2013 not glory, not martyrdom, not acclaim. <\/b><\/p>\n I was shown, told, recorded (via word-for-word \u201cdictation\u201c) the tragedy exactly <\/i>as it would happen years later on, complete with a thousand rotted corpses sent to mass unmarked graves (\u201ca thousand unmarked graves\u2026. [due to] foul-decaying flesh\u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n I was told to entitle the work, \u201cAllegory,\u201d perhaps because it alludes to myth and is drenched in pathos akin to an ancient Greek chorus. In that sense, it\u2019s hardly \u201ca documentary.\u201d It\u2019s surreal<\/i>.<\/p>\n But it also tells in minute detail, what was to happen (years later on) at Jonestown<\/i>. I was impelled to transcribe the work even though I myself was battling denial, pained with heartbreak, and DID NOT WANT <\/b>this to happen.<\/p>\n (Note:<\/b> I have proof. <\/b>I read \u201cAllegory\u201d to Marceline Jones on her last trip to San Francisco [pre-tragedy obviously] a tape finally converted to modern format in recent years. See the \u201cTapes\u201c section of this website. Better still, listen.)<\/p>\n \u201cAllegory\u201d also arrived at Jim Jones\u2019 door at a time when his own pathology had reached critical mass. Namely, the self-created mass sex disaster which was neither sustainable nor fixable; indeed, its real causation never broached.<\/p>\n So this was the night of \u201cbringdown.\u201c How it was made everyone\u2019s fault but his own.<\/p>\n He began that night by soliciting confessions about \u201cthe honor\u201d of sex with Jim Jones. (Again, everyone looking frightened<\/i>. Sex with this man apparently did not equal joy!)<\/p>\n He rehashed his \u201csacrifice,\u201c how people drained him, manipulated him, congratulated a hetero man (who wasn\u2019t even sleeping with him!) for \u201cbeing so comfortable with his homosexuality that he ejaculates in the bed\u201d and a subservient woman for \u2018just lying there and fucking\u201d instead of bothering him with talk, etc., etc. By now a full-blown horror story of a pathological sex addict who could never resolve his own life history and kept trying to work it out (unsuccessfully at that!) through other peoples\u2018 bodies.<\/p>\n All about him. All about sex. That night anyway. I don\u2019t even doubt that his pain was real. People working through their pathologies is painful, whoever they are. People not<\/b> working through their pathologies, but still repeatedly crashing through the same wrong doors is excruciating<\/i>.<\/p>\n Oh, I had not yet deciphered the pathology. I just saw the king of sacrifices (unrelated <\/i>to sex) who was now pained beyond endurance. So I wrote a note retracting <\/i>a request to phone someone who had flirted with me at an airport, saying he was wealthy and wanted to be a contributor.<\/p>\n I realized that I had made the request partly because I was wounded by a previous (equally wrongful!) \u201cconfrontation\u201d and I wanted some time off. Now I thought I shouldn\u2019t ask when his pain had to be worse than mine. That\u2019s all. It was a \u201cgirl scout\u201d note. I was the most innocent person in the room.<\/p>\n I could not have foreseen his 180-degree twist of my words in my wildest dreams. I could not yet even fathom his ire towards me in the prior episode. Because I had never done anything to hurt him<\/i>. Nor was that my intent now<\/i>.<\/p>\n Do you remember \u201cThe Pelican Brief\u201d? A young law student stumbled upon the truth of a double-assassination and suddenly became \u201cfair game.\u201c Well, that wasn\u2019t quite my situation then (oh, my later stumbling on the truth of the Congressional assassination<\/i>, yes \u2013 that \u201csays it\u201d!) but I did know the truth about something<\/i> and it had already provoked Jim Jones\u2019 rage before.<\/p>\n What I knew that so threatened Jim Jones, understand, was nothing that could just be \u201ccleared up\u201d or even aired. It was literally what was to happen years later on in Guyana: \u201cAllegory.\u201d <\/b>Which someone (not me) had brought to him and he was furious<\/i><\/b>with me for having written.<\/p>\n And maybe there was nothing <\/i>I could have said or done that could have countered, \u201cThis can\u2019t possibly be true. She must just want me dead\u201d on the part of this paranoid, overwrought man.<\/p>\n I also could not have known that \u201cAllegory\u201d was a prophetic work. Yet I could not renounce it either, whatever upset it had already caused, again now, and yet later on. The surreal was still \u201call too real\u201d and its Source too sublime.<\/p>\n I suppose that my real, unspoken \u201ccrime\u201d was heresy(!);<\/i> with my prime imperative being to \u201cnot crack under torture.\u201d (And I didn\u2019t. I spoke all of twenty-five words that night.)<\/i><\/p>\n His<\/i> imperative was to scapegoat me in a fury then shun me into oblivion so that no one would ever even know what this was really all about.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n a\/k\/a \u201cKILL THE MESSENGER\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Tyrants throughout history have done this to dissidents. Except that I wasn\u2019t<\/i> \u201ca dissident\u201d \u2013 I was a real<\/i> \u201clover\u201d but in a different sense \u2013 my heart was broken as I listened to the outpouring of grief from an \u201cimpossible\u201d time and place.<\/p>\n I was in a time warp relationship to this man. \u201cFuture Girl.\u201d I had to be killed off lest I come true.<\/p>\n So you\u2019re the leader and you receive a supremely UN-welcome message. Then how do you \u201ckill the messenger\u201d? <\/b><\/p>\n First, what you don\u2019t<\/i> do is to dignify the message as credible, especially if you yourself are frightened or threatened by its contents. You don\u2019t even say what the message is! You just kill the messenger on other grounds and \u201cspin\u201d the messenger\u2019s (alleged) motives accordingly. Like \u201cWhen did you stop beating your wife?\u201d when no one had lifted a hand, much less a weapon.<\/p>\n Or you say that they did or meant something else; you pick something that you can<\/i> relate to. Something that gives you control, because if you accept the message at face value and it\u2019s that frightening or threatening, then you\u2019re lost.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s say you paint the messenger as a bank robber. Then it becomes, \u201cOh yeah, I remember her. Wasn\u2019t she the one who robbed a bank?\u201d No one can tell you which bank or when (or if!) it happened or even if the alleged culprit was there. Everyone\u2019s just angry and upset because \u201cshe robbed the bank.\u201d<\/p>\n But Jim Jones wasn\u2019t a bank robber \u2013 he was a sex addict. So I wasn\u2019t \u201ca bank robber.\u201d I was \u201ca sexual manipulator.\u201d And purportedly of the very worst kind<\/i>. Indeed, [apparently] if he didn\u2019t meet my [imaginary] demands for sex, I wanted him dead!<\/p>\n This was insane. I had had no<\/b> sexual contact with that man. He never made any advances to me, I never made any to him. Indeed, this was the second time that he had exploded at me publicly for (the first time) saying that I had had sexual fulfillment with someone else<\/i>; and (now) asking about seeing someone else<\/i>. Not him. Someone else.<\/p>\n Confused? Let me cut back to what the year just past had been like for me. What epiphany had put Jim Jones and me at sword\u2019s point by that treacherous night. \u201cThe real story,\u201d so to speak.<\/p>\n Otherwise you (and frankly everyone at the time!) thinks that it was about \u201cthe sexual zoo,\u201d which it wasn\u2019t. Not only that, but then I remain denigrated when \u201cthe message\u201d should have been elevated, not demeaned, in the first place. <\/b><\/p>\n This was what led up to that notorious incident in L.A. and having nothing whatsoever to do with sex: <\/i><\/p>\n Life in Peoples Temple had already turned freak-out for me before that fateful night in 1975 and for reasons beyond \u201ccult.\u201d I was in an unprecedented \u201cCassandra\u201d position and forced into isolation by an environment where my sensitivities were an anathema.<\/p>\n Few know what it is like to be approached by a spiritual (non-corporeal) Being, especially an extraordinary <\/i>Being. Not an ordinary human disincarnate \u2013 what we commonly call \u201ca ghost.\u201d Enough people have experienced that for some common acceptance.<\/p>\n But I know of no parallel to this <\/i>\u2013 a heart-rendering text given word for word revealing the deaths of people I loved, a scenario which came to pass exactly as it was pre-recorded. <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Nor can I convey what it was like to \u201clive in two worlds\u201d during that time period. I was vulnerable, isolated and had \u201cno human guide,\u201d so to speak. I was a channel from a higher Being Who told\/showed me the tragedy exactly as it would unfold four years later on in Guyana.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t have borne this happening to me (seeing the deaths and to boot, in worldwide condemnation, not acclaim!) except that its Author was so sublime and the poem shrouded in hypnotic language of great beauty.<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the stranger tales in the history of the world. I was a poetic rendition of \u201cCassandra\u201d \u2013 even despite myself! I wanted the tragedy to not<\/b> happen; I was battling denial all the way. I was transfixed, awed by the visitations but felt powerless in their face.<\/p>\n Note that there is nothing vague about \u201cAllegory.\u201d It\u2019s the one-by-one dying of everyone, including children: <\/i><\/b>\u201ca nation is dying\u2026I see them fall, one by one\u2026weep not, my little child, though this day your dye is cast\u2026 \u201c; the lament of \u201ca thousand unmarked graves\u201d due to \u201cfoul-decaying flesh\u201d; Jim Jones discredited worldwide:<\/i><\/b> \u201cand though all men may revile your name\u201d; of the stunned aftermath, \u201ca dirge too low to justly grieve, a song too weak for too-wrong deaths!\u201d<\/p>\n Just days after<\/i> the tragedy happened, I opened it randomly to \u201ca thousand unmarked graves\u201d and I finally knew for certain what I had done. But it was the Fall of 1974, four years earlier, <\/i><\/b>when it was written.<\/p>\n It also highlighted the child custody \u201ccause celebr\u00e9\u201d bringing the Congressman to Guyana, but well before either legal parent defected.<\/p>\n It showed a thriving paradise overseas: \u201ca cool green garden-home\u2026. where little children come to play,\u201d at a time when brush was barely cleared.<\/p>\n It showed a community now trapped and under siege: \u201cThey are surrounded by a wall that is both massive and clothed in heavy guard\u2026 There is no known means of escape!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAllegory\u201d began just minutes before the deaths (\u201cthe penultimate hour of tribulation,\u201d) even including the final futile outcry (as later recorded on tape!) to \u201c\u2019Leave this place!,\u2019 a suppliant cries.\u201c<\/p>\n It even included the assassination as \u201cthe trigger\u201d for the one-by-one mass suicides: \u201cMy heart, laid waste, would cry, bleed, drain \u2018neath the dead weight of slain men\u2019s bones [the airstrip killings]\u2026. Hush no recourse waits, my heart has known its last reprieve\u2026.. And one died<\/i><\/b>\u2026 Another died\u2026 Yet another died\u2026<\/i><\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t any scenario that Jim Jones wanted! He wanted Peoples Temple to be a world-wide cause celebr\u00e9, maybe even planetary transformation thanks to the daring, vision and courage of this man. This was much the opposite. <\/b><\/p>\n The work itself has raw emotional angst \u2013 both then and now. But the Being Himself held no fear for me \u2013 to the contrary. He was loving, compassionate, enfolding, supportive, protective, serene.<\/p>\n It was Jim Jones who was the terror for me! If this came out, would I be branded \u201ctraitorous\u201c? \u201cInsane\u201c? I quavered at transcribing \u201cAllegory\u201d at all. I thought I might be pilloried.<\/p>\n But then one evening (this man having great gifts himself \u2013 just \u201csplit\u201d), Jim walked up to me, really just walking past<\/i> me, not even stopping and he said, \u201cNo one will ever understand you. No one ever understands me.\u201d <\/i>His voice was gentle, reassuring, calm.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t even like a person <\/i>talking to me\u2013 more like a Spirit. Coming just as I anguished, \u201cHow can I let myself do this?\u201d Now I knew that I had<\/i><\/b> to complete the work because doing <\/i>it was the imperative, not how it was received. (Even, apparently, by Jim Jones himself!)<\/p>\n Of course now we have sophisticated sci-fi scripts about changing events through time travel. If only we could go years back and change one detail, then none of where we are today would have happened. If only beings from the future came to warn us, we could be kept from blowing ourselves up tomorrow. Etc., etc.<\/p>\n This Being was from the past-present-future \u2013 best I can express it. But He never, once, ever, told me to warn or prevent. He just said, \u201cThis is for all of America when Jim Jones is gone.\u201d He also told me to keep \u201cAllegory\u201d in the States \u2013 which somehow helped keep me<\/i> in the States.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, we had a pressured environment with its own mental, emotional, social, psychological demands. And although I was a perfectly loyal devoted follower in any other respect, this was not tenable<\/i>.<\/p>\n So despite my trepidation, I asked Jim (in writing) for help<\/i>. I said I had been shown mass death, including his <\/i>death, and that it was \u201cfrightening\u201d to me. Naively, I thought he might respond not just because I explicitly said \u201cfrightening,\u201d but that he had once told me, \u201cYou can write one great work,\u201d adding gently, \u201cSome day people may be able to relate to your eloquence.\u201d<\/p>\n I repeated to him \u201cone great work\u201d \u2013 that you <\/i>said that and that this is \u201cit.\u201d Well, apparently he had no recall (he rarely recalled \u201crevelation\u201d) and the next I met his eyes, he looked at me like I was mad. And never responded to my plea.<\/p>\n I went along for six months until I felt to no longer bear it alone. I assembled a tiny group for a reading. I told them, \u201cThis is about the death of Jim Jones and many of our people.\u201d<\/p>\n But this was a bit deceptive in that \u201cAllegory\u201d is so beautiful linguistically, so powerfully rhythmic and with such haunting metaphors, that it\u2019s possible to be transfixed and not immediately snap in with, \u201cThis is about death<\/i>, folks. Mass death.\u201d<\/p>\n So one woman in that tiny audience was entranced and borrowed \u201cAllegory\u201d to show her husband, a close confidante of Jim Jones. And yeah, a little bizarre in that there\u2019s a child next to Jim at the opening of \u201cAllegory\u201c \u2013 identified as his \u201cprogeny\u201d \u2013 who later turned out to be the child that brought the Congressman to Jonestown. And the woman entranced with the work was the mother of that very child, with her husband the later arch-enemy who claimed \u201cJim Jones\u2019 progeny\u201d (which no, my friends, was hardly based on a poem!) as his own.<\/p>\n But somehow I still got the review of \u201cTim says this is just like Shakespeare!\u201d (Maybe God just has a strange sense of humor\u2026) So I thought well, that\u2019s probably good. Tim Stoen is rating it as \u201cShakespeare,\u201d so how much trouble can I be in?<\/p>\n Then someone came and said, \u201cBring your poetry to the next P.C.\u201d I had no idea of the planned ambush. Mere days later, Jim exploded at me in fury and turned the whole Planning Commission against me for\u2026.. writing poetry!! <\/i>He launched his attack against such a \u201cnarcissistic\u201d pursuit, like I was fiddling while Rome burned. Everyone joined in.<\/p>\n Then once he thought I was demolished from the assault, he threw in: \u201cIs it sex that you want?\u201d <\/i>I was stunned. My fear had been of being branded traitorous or insane. Now suddenly I was thrust onto the wrong playing field. <\/i>I was \u201ca narcissist\u201d to be trivialized and ridiculed, or even a sexual <\/i>manipulator? This was mad. And why was he so enraged<\/i>? Because of my\u2026.. writing poetry??<\/i><\/p>\n On the other hand, if he had said outright why he was so upset, namely \u201cLaurie\u2019s written poetry about my death,\u201c it would have been worse by far!<\/p>\n But that\u2019s what it was about \u2013 not sex<\/i>. I never asked Jim Jones for sex \u2013 to the contrary. One night he made us all write out how did we feel about him sexually and did we want to be with him. Big chance, make one\u2019s case.<\/p>\n Well, I couldn\u2019t do it. Yes, I was young, lonely, driven. Yes, I felt rejected, alienated, frustrated. Yes, I loved this man for everything good <\/i>he was doing in the world. But no, I wasn\u2019t up for \u201cbeing taught a lesson\u201d in lieu of love. My gut kept saying that that could turn out badly.<\/p>\n So I just wrote him that I had had sexual fulfillment with other men and that now I felt like part of my life was missing.<\/p>\n I guess that made the oft-repeated \u201cIf you\u2019re only honest with me, I\u2019ll never embarrass you\u201d fly out the window! The next P.C. began in a cold fury: \u201cLaurie. Stand up.\u201c Then, \u201cLaurie says she had sexual fulfillment with a man other than me. This is audacious <\/i>and presumptuous<\/i>.\u201c I even remember fanatical Sharon Amos shrieking in the background, \u201cNo one has orgasms with anyone but Jim Jones!\u201d<\/p>\n (I didn\u2019t walk then? Unclear why. But life was a little more complex. I thought there were greater concerns than my neglected sex life.)<\/p>\n Indeed, on that deadly night in L.A. (shortly following \u201cthe poetry confrontation\u201c), Jim was not<\/i> upset with me for \u201ccoming onto him\u201d (as he falsely claimed) at all, but because I had asked to see another man \u2013 someone else \u2013 not him!!<\/i> The wealthy stranger who had flirted with me at the airport and said he might want to contribute to our cause. So I asked Jim about calling the stranger.<\/p>\n By then I had been made so miserable, that I might have been happy to flirt with anyone! <\/i>But I wasn\u2019t courting Jim Jones. Whatever his liaisons with others, he made no advances to me. Why would I come onto a man who radiated blockage and fear, not interest or openness? What\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n So why his cruel, devastating attack upon me? Well, he could not, would not acknowledge any real \u201cCassandra\u201d in our midst, so \u201cit must be that she wants me dead.\u201d<\/i><\/b>Which not only was false, but \u201cAllegory\u201d had less than nothing to do with sex. (Obviously.) <\/i><\/p>\n But being paranoid by nature, he had to project \u201cwhy<\/i> she must want me dead.\u201d And of course he assumed that since he<\/i> lied about sex, anyone <\/i>would lie about sex; so he lunged at me with, \u201cDid that man [at the airport] even exist?\u201d<\/p>\n What was he thinking? That I had made up a fiction about a flirtation as a manipulation to trap him<\/i> into a bed? The \u201cevidence\u201d being that I had written the tour de force<\/i> about his (well, not just his!!) <\/i>death, so \u201cthat<\/i> must be why she did it\u201d? Like \u201csleep with me or die\u201d?<\/p>\n That \u201cconclusion\u201d still boggles my mind! I was grieved<\/i> at the thought of mass death; at the thought of his<\/i> death as well. I needed comfort, support, reassurance, not this<\/b>. But this so shattered me, that it took ages to decipher a caliber of twistedness which had no basis in my<\/b> being, only his<\/b>.<\/p>\n Yet that\u2019s all that was left as \u201can explanation\u201d: \u201cShe must want me dead because I\u2019m not screwing her!\u201d<\/i><\/b>That that\u2019s <\/i>why he tortured me that night with brutal humiliation, enraged screaming, contempt.<\/p>\n At the time, of course, I could barely even process our beloved leader morphing into \u201cDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.\u201d I had witnessed saintly kindness across the years; now under sexual <\/i>pressures (notably homosexuality<\/i>) the debut of a brutal, sadistic bully. (Of course. His own father<\/i>.)<\/b><\/p>\n Even had a word been let in edgewise (it wasn\u2019t), where was my \u201cdefense\u201d? When he claimed (as he did) that I had \u201ccome onto him\u201d (never happened), was my retort to have been, well no, folks, that <\/i>never happened \u2013 I just told \u201cFather\u201d that he and most of his followers were slated for death accompanied by worldwide ridicule and scorn? I didn\u2019t want to believe that myself.<\/i><\/p>\n And then I would have exited that room alive how,<\/i> whether clothed or not?<\/p>\n When the L.A. catastrophe befell me, it was to boot, superimposed onto what I already could not handle: <\/i>\u201cAllegory,\u201d which in the melee went into deep-freeze denial until almost<\/i> the time of the tragedy. (That story of how and when it resurfaced is in my book.)<\/p>\n How could I process that phenomenal <\/i>epiphany in a setting only poised to brand me traitorous or mad or a liar or an outcast? Oh, there wasn\u2019t a thing about channeling \u201cAllegory\u201d that was not innocent, heartfelt, authentic on my part. But I had no grounding, no on-site human support, <\/i>for such an unprecedented encounter.<\/p>\n Nor had I any standing<\/i> \u2013 like \u201cshe has psychic gifts\u201d or the like. That would be \u201cblasphemy.\u201c I would be \u201ctoast\u201d before I got a sentence out of my mouth.<\/p>\n And the subject matter? Oh, my God! Especially if I had no grounding or standing. That means no credibility. That means \u201cfiction.\u201d And who would \u201cproject\u201d such a fate? Unless maybe they had some terrible motive? <\/i><\/p>\n I had read \u201cAllegory\u201d to that tiny group at random, on an impulse, on instinct. That only led to trouble, of course; now even worse. The processing of that \u201canathema,\u201d rather than being aided, was now compounded <\/i>by having to process (mentally, emotionally, socially, psychologically) the L.A. disaster that Jim Jones created for every wrong, twisted reason of his own.<\/p>\n I was fragile to begin with, the earth now crushed beneath my feet. And not a soul moved in to help. I wasn\u2019t even offered (the famous) \u201cPeoples Temple counseling.\u201d The orders as people departed the room that night were \u201cNo one talk to her. No one sympathize with her.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Jim Jones himself arose from his chair, cold, contained, not even glancing my way, and departed with his entourage. I was the last one left in the room that night, nearly unable to move. I could have collapsed into hysteria and no one would have noticed or cared.<\/p>\n But if anyone thinks that somehow I<\/i><\/b> caused that horror show, like there was fault or blame, that\u2019s daft. I just wound up with a double-helping of \u201csituations no one could handle\u201d: \u201cAllegory\u201d and the notorious incident in L.A. In short, I couldn\u2019t be allowed to be who I was or speak what I knew, so I was painted as being \u201csomeone else\u201d and terrorized into silence.<\/p>\n It was years before I was finally clear that this was all just a good old-fashioned \u201ckill the messenger.\u201d <\/b>Jim Jones didn\u2019t hate me. He was threatened <\/i>by me. I know that now.<\/i> Then it was unthinkable. It was he who was all-powerful. I was a just a shy, fragile, insecure young woman.<\/p>\n Also at low ebb \u2013 flattened by the previous shocking \u201cpoetry confrontation\u201d; and that I had just returned from back East to see my father who was dying of cancer and no one even cared.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, how could I have succumbed to such an outrage? Well, once you heed an enraged demand to disrobe before a mixed group, you\u2019re probably already \u201ctoast\u201d \u2013 defenseless by design. But nudity in and of itself wasn\u2019t threatening to me. I had gone skinny-dipping with strangers as a hippie. Like big deal.<\/p>\n I guess I thought that if it was about nudity, I could handle it. Unfortunately, it soon enough became clear that what it was about was cruelty. <\/i><\/p>\n There\u2019s a famous short story called \u201cThe Lottery.\u201d In it, every year a village chooses a scapegoat by lot and that person is stoned to death. It\u2019s ritualized \u2013 like that one person could purge all the evil amongst them, so they count their ritual as good<\/i>.<\/p>\n But then, right<\/i> then, I wasn\u2019t even thinking \u201cscapegoat.\u201d The room that night, thick with repression, silence, fear, just made me unbearably sad. (And what were people supposed<\/i> to say? That they were pretty sure that they were heterosexual<\/i> pre-Jim Jones, now they\u2019re \u201chomosexual,\u201d<\/i> and \u201chow wonderful and thank you Father\u201d?)<\/p>\n This scene was really bad, really sad, but at least there was no yelling or screaming. Yet.<\/i><\/b>Right then, right there, \u201ckill the messenger by turning her into<\/i><\/b>the scapegoat\u201d would have been too twisted, too diabolical to even occur to me!<\/p>\n So I thought at first o.k., God knows why he\u2019s doing this (bizarre hazing ritual? whacked-out loyalty test?) but I\u2019ll somehow endure. Nor did he seem to be on the attack over \u201cAllegory,\u201c an even scarier <\/i>prospect.<\/p>\n But Jim Jones was relentless in his assault, his cruelty, his accusations, his swaying the lynch mob. He pulverized me for TWO HOURS<\/b>. By the time he got to, \u201cWhat do you <\/i>have to offer? Who here wants to fuck her<\/i>?,\u201d it was getting extremely <\/i>threatening. But by then it was also too late.<\/p>\n Finally that night (were anyone listening instead of just attacking <\/i>me), he voiced what was really <\/i>bothering him \u2013 that I mustn\u2018t write<\/i><\/b> anymore. He was emphatically, aggressively upset about my writing<\/i>. \u201cWhy are you always writing<\/i>? Say \u2018I have no special talents.\u2019 Say it!!<\/i>\u201d<\/b> (Which would have altered reality\u2026. how?)<\/i><\/p>\n Finally, at the tail end of the TWO HOURS <\/b>of torture, came the real point: \u201cYou want me to die, don\u2019t you?\u201d <\/i><\/b>I had been silent, mute, motionless. But now tears came streaming down my face: \u201cI don\u2019t want you to die, Father.\u201d<\/p>\n Honestly, I didn\u2019t want anyone<\/i> to die. That was the whole point!!!!<\/p>\n Yes, my fear of his bringing up \u201cAllegory\u201d had become paralytic. I was more terrified of that even than of the horror show that he was creating. If he had held \u201cLaurie says she is foretelling our doom\u201d up to public ridicule, then the incident in L.A. might have looked like a picnic.<\/p>\n Oh, he never did<\/i> bring up \u201cAllegory\u201d directly. But now he didn\u2019t have to. \u201cYou want me to die<\/i>, don\u2019t you?\u201d said it all.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, this man was sleeping <\/i>with every Tom, Dick and Harry, Susie, Kate and Sally, yet could not find a moment to talk <\/i>with me about my frightening visions of mass death? Just publicly rant that \u201cshe must want me dead\u201d?<\/p>\n \u201cThe final straw\u201d was a tirade over the church-wide P.A. system in San Francisco more than a year after <\/i>the L.A. incident. It was March, 1977, just weeks before Jim left for Guyana. Not a word had been murmured about poetry since the incident in L.A.; I was just now upset about senior staff spying on me and ordering me around.<\/p>\n Next I knew, I heard Jim Jones\u2019 voice booming over the church wide P.A. with, \u201cThe people here are saying that she must want you to die,<\/i><\/b> Father. Why don\u2019t you just drop me in boiling oil?\u201d<\/p>\n Then he sent someone to me to ask if I had anything to \u201cconfess.\u201d I approached him startled. I had nothing to \u201cconfess.\u201d What did he want me to say?<\/p>\n \u201cWarn\u201d those people? How might that have been done, exactly?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n (Or as my wonderful, sane husband and I sometimes quip: \u201cMaybe you should have just taken the poem to the police.\u201d Yeah, right.)<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also confounding when you identify as \u201cfamily\u201d for so many GOOD reasons. When you think that the stakes are so high for everyone and it\u2019s almost like you <\/i>would rather die than to damage a movement which meant so much for others<\/i>.<\/p>\n In fact, it was impossible for me to turn against Peoples Temple. Everything that came through in \u201cAllegory,\u201d however tragic, excruciating, heartbreaking, was in the spirit of identify, identify, identify<\/i>. When I transcribed \u201cAllegory,\u201d I was hardly functioning like \u201ca court reporter.\u201d I was functioning as an<\/i> empath<\/i>. <\/b><\/p>\n Now my emotions were shipwrecked. My only saving grace was that I\u2019m not fragile mentally<\/i>. So when Sharon Amos came to me \u201cpost-catastrophe\u201d feigning a partial backtrack of \u201cJim\u2019s sorry about what happened. It was a new kind of therapy\u201d (what would \u201cthe next therapeutic step\u201d have been? shoot me in the head?), I looked at her incredulously, said I was \u201cfine\u201d (I wasn\u2019t), but then added, \u201cTell Jim I\u2019m saving the poem about his death. I want to know from him that that\u2019s all right.\u201d<\/i> <\/b><\/p>\n She went up front to ask him and came back with a ghastly-uncomfortable \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n Then \u201cthe inner circle\u201d concocted stories to justify the horror show: Sharon screamed at me that \u201cYou wanted a dog dead because you didn\u2018t like its owner.\u201d (I what<\/i>????) Karen came up with, \u201cLaurie fantasizes about Jim\u2019s death.\u201d Carolyn (who had had the leader\u2019s child!) decided that celibacy was fine for me because \u201cYou\u2019ve already had your chances to screw around.\u201c (And whenwas that<\/i> \u201clast hurrah\u201c? My early twenties?)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, another follower believed <\/i>Sharon Amos waving a piece of paper right after<\/i> the incident, saying that I had immediately written Jim condoning him torturing me! Something like, \u201cI realize that you had to do this because I know that you love me especially and if you didn\u2019t do this to me, then all the other women would be jealous\u201d(????)<\/p>\n And I only find out about that recently? <\/i>I was horrified even at such late date, that anyone could be that wicked \u2013 namely, that when I could still barely walk, move or breathe, she was busy fabricating \u201cdamage control\u201c for Jim Jones??<\/i> <\/b>But the (now-) survivor she told the lie to has told who knows how many people ever since. People who feel free to scorn<\/i> me over yet more lies to this day!<\/p>\n Much of what I had feared had now come upon me: I was (allegedly) a liar, a manipulator, a narcissist, an outcast and wanted the leader dead \u2013 oh, not even to mention being the (alleged) scapegoat for the mass sex disaster that I had had no role in creating.<\/p>\n Though I can also tell you that the Being Who gave me \u201cAllegory\u201d was so much higher than Jim Jones, that I\u2019ve never regretted \u201cthe epiphany\u201d \u2013 to the contrary! I am profoundly awed to this day. Despite the torture treatment over it. Even despite that where it landed me emotionally, socially, organizationally, was impossible<\/i>.<\/p>\n For the gift that I was given was so much greater \u2013 to know that our fate was seen and known in advance and our people watched over, greatly loved and blessed. To know that despite our perilous missteps, that Beings of immense wisdom watch over us and pour out their compassion, has been \u201cthe pearl of great price\u201d and more.<\/p>\n I only wish that it had not fallen on deaf ears. (It didn\u2019t with Marceline <\/i>Jones, but that was a later, different tale.) But sometimes you can know profoundly what you cannot yet even handle, you can trust the unseen, let the hurricane blow past you \u2013 all you lose that way is your home, not your being. Fighting it would have made it even worse.<\/p>\n Yet I could not leave this group either. How could I abandon others in such treacherous waters, dangerous straits? At heart, I very much wanted the Guyana endeavor to succeed<\/i>. It was a world of hope for so many. And there wasn\u2019t a thing I wrote that I wanted <\/i>to happen. Indeed, I grieved over it years in advance. I grieved over that exact tragedy, detail for detail, exactly as it would later happen, years in advance. <\/i><\/p>\n I was also incredulous at what was done to me because I would never do that to anyone else. In fact the only brief thing that I did write Jim about it later on, was that I would survive, but to please never do this again to anyone else.<\/i><\/p>\n Ironically of course, my stoicism also won me a \u201cstay out of Guyana and live\u201d ticket. Jim personally invited me overseas in the fall of 1977 upon my collapsing into hysteria Stateside after he left. (Because I missed him? Because I felt abandoned? No!! Just because it was finally safe to do so!!)<\/i><\/p>\n He had tried to rush in with a \u201cspin\u201d (all the way from Guyana!) that the incident in L.A. had only happened \u201cout of love, faith and trust in you.\u201d Well, that\u2019s when Laurie suddenly turned calm. I told him point blank, \u201cI\u2019m not that much of a masochist, Jim. I\u2019d rather you had put a bullet through my brain.\u201d And that \u201cI have nothing more to prove. If you don\u2019t know what I\u2019m made of by now, when will you ever know it?\u201d<\/p>\n And (since I had been given a choice),<\/i> that I was \u201cneeded Stateside because no one else can fill in for my work.\u201d (That was actually true.)<\/p>\n He let that be. Then he showered me with praise from then until the end. How much he appreciated my work, how I could again do creative work in Guyana; that when packets were sent overseas, he always read mine first<\/i>; that I would be given important projects into the future; even \u201call his love and concern\u201d (whatever that meant \u2013 how could someone who had taken no time to know me, just to ruin me, possibly \u201clove\u201c me or be \u201cconcerned\u201c for my wellbeing?)<\/p>\n But every new snippet of praise stabbed me through the heart, even though I thought that maybe he was trying to make amends. It hurt me so, that he couldn\u2019t just say, \u201cI\u2019m so sorry for what I did to you, please forgive me,\u201c that I was pulverized at any prospect of rejoining him<\/i>. I was happy and proud for the accomplishments at Jonestown. But any thought of going there myself made me feel trapped.<\/p>\n But even all that<\/i> didn\u2019t mean that I didn\u2019t weep my heart out when the tragedy happened. I did.<\/p>\n So to those who demeaned me in the Nelson film over the L.A. incident, as though I were dead and could not even speak for myself: You did this to me publicly, so maybe you can now have the decency to step forward and apologize. I\u2019m right here and you had no right to speak in my stead, especially in the disgraceful manner in which it was done. I had to go to a public movie theatre with my husband to see that?<\/b><\/p>\n I also want people to understand that this is still<\/i> \u201ckill the messenger\u201d \u2013 \u201ckill the messenger redux\u201d<\/b> if you will. These people would not have done gratuitous public humiliation to each other<\/i>. No way. These locksteppers stick together like glue \u2013 \u201cone happy family.\u201d Well, just so long as they are not threatened by unwanted revelations. <\/i><\/b>Then it\u2019s apparently hard, cold and mean.<\/p>\n \u201cCult\u201d all over again? \u201cEx<\/i><\/b>-cult\u201d? Hard to tell the difference. And that\u2019s the bizarre irony of it:<\/p>\n That the \u201cin\u201d people at that time were \u201csure\u201d that the problem was that \u201cLaurie must want Jim dead.\u201d Now \u201cthe in group\u201d is \u201csure\u201d that \u201cLaurie must just be defending Jim Jones.\u201d I mean, why would I even suggest that it was the CIA who killed the Congressman instead of the Peoples Temple men that \u201ceveryone knows they did it\u201d? Doesn\u2019t that mean that I must have some terrible motive? <\/b><\/p>\n Well, what if it\u2019s rather that the on-site NBC film footage shows the opposite!!<\/i><\/b> Which it does. So why not JUST LOOK?? The project is called \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d and it\u2019s not<\/b> \u201cspeculation.\u201d The assassins were filmed head-on by NBC and they did not<\/b> include the man who said \u201cWe [including \u2018I\u2018] did it!\u201d! (See<\/i> \u201cEyewitness Identifications?: There Was No Bob Kice.\u201d)<\/p>\n Indeed, the assassins were not from Jonestown at all. They were strangers. Professional assassins. Unless some fellow survivor would like to come forward and identify the seven-foot-tall lead assassin dressed like a walking rain forest. <\/b>From Jonestown? Not a shadow of a chance!<\/p>\n Yet people have been smearing me for years with the likes of \u201cJim Jones defender this\u201d and \u201cdeluded that\u201d and \u201cconspiracy theory that\u201d and it\u2019s been frustrating, even maddening. Especially in that even with thirty years of claims, even I wasn\u2019t in a position to lay this scenario out cold in a verifiably, visually, factually credible way <\/i>before now. Because I lacked that key piece of proof \u2013 the on-site NBC film footage of the assassination.<\/p>\n But now that has changed. No one from Peoples Temple killed that Congressman. It was an agency operation \u2013 so-called \u201cblack ops.\u201d Look at \u201cIn Plain Sight.\u201d This is now proven<\/b>.<\/p>\n So whereas the survivors were grieved <\/i>about what happened, various evil bastards with political <\/i>agendas were relieved <\/i>at what happened. Children and all. \u201cCollateral damage.\u201d (And<\/i> got away with a Congressional assassination\u2026.) <\/b><\/p>\n Now if anyone wants to know why I\u2019ve landed down as I have over the past thirty years, or thinks that it was even slightly <\/i>due to not recognizing the pathology in Jim Jones, there\u2019s your explanation in a nutshell. <\/b><\/p>\n Besides, how could I have filled both<\/i> spots \u2013 then \u201cwanting Jim Jones dead,\u201d now \u201cdefending Jim Jones\u201d? I can\u2019t. In fact, I am innocent of either one<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n Nor am I up for being shoved into \u201cboxes.\u201d Unacceptable both then and now. I had no appetite, inclination, nor acceptance of \u201ckill the messenger\u201d then; nor do I have it now.<\/p>\n All I want now is to emerge with a clean spirit out of so much mud and pain, and to speak from both heart and mind as best I can. So whatever issue people think they have with me, surely it is not with my character or my integrity. Maybe they need to examine their own.<\/p>\n And yes, people\u2019s behavior has given me pause as to why do this thankless mountain of work on \u201cIn Plain Sight.\u201d Yet doing the project for a precious few very good, injured people in spite of \u201cthe crowd,\u201d and of course for the dead (and for history), will have to be good enough. They so very much would have wanted this done.<\/i><\/b> If there were <\/i>anything they would have wanted done, this is it: <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n This was the twistiest mess of inept amateurs versus polished pros, whereby (tragedy on top of tragedy!) the community did not realize that they were being framed. And that knowledge, that proof (let\u2018s be clear: it\u2018s now proven<\/b>), is of course <\/i>emerging way too late to save anyone\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Yet anyone who cares about the humanity,<\/i><\/b> not just \u201cthe victimization\u201d of the deceased, can appreciate that were it not despair, hopelessness and self-culpability layered onto the panic and fear of that night, but rather rage at those bastards who killed the (anti-CIA) Congressman to then frame it on \u201cthe cult crazies\u201d (who were also headed to Russia and \u201chad to be stopped\u201c) in a remote third-world jungle where no one would even investigate\u2026.<\/p>\n Or is anyone so \u201csure\u201d that knowledge of a frame would not have overridden even Jim Jones\u2019 pathologies, at red-hot heat that night, to live and set things aright \u2013 that there was something right-at-hand, urgent and exculpatory and not<\/b> despair, but rather fierce pride, to live for<\/i>\u2026.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s maybe the most bizarre twist of all: That these people might have actually been \u201cten minutes to martyrdom,\u201d yet bungled their way into infamy instead.<\/p>\n So how do we judge what panicked, defenseless, fearful, loose-cannon people expecting a retaliatory invasion,<\/i> did? How do we judge the people (a majority contingent of those!) who may have preferred<\/i> death to being forced back to the States? Because of the<\/i> conditions <\/i>they left, not because they were \u201cslaves to Jim Jones\u201d? How do we judge people thrown into despair because they were \u201csure\u201d that they had just killed a U.S. Congressman and would be made to pay for it forever?<\/p>\n Or what about the government agent (Joseph Mazor) who came into Jonestown and threatened \u201cmass extermination\u201d just two months earlier, making Jim Jones\u2019 claim of \u201cEither we<\/i> do it or they<\/i> do it\u201d plausible <\/i>to frightened people with no way out?<\/p>\n Well, maybe that\u2019s the whole point. That maybe we need to judge less and comprehend more.<\/b><\/p>\n And yes, of course <\/i>it is confounding that someone, or many \u201csomeones\u201d had not long since stood up and said, I don\u2019t care what <\/i>happens \u2013 framing, torture, slaughter, defenseless, isolated, trapped, whatever<\/i><\/b> \u2013 I still will not lay a hand on a child<\/b>. I\u2019ll defend young and old with sticks and stones if needs be; but lay a hand on our own children, never<\/b>. Any bloodshed will be on them,<\/i> not us. <\/i><\/p>\n There is scarce record that that kind of protest was ever lodged. Their self-enclosed world endangered them physically, politically, emotionally, into a state of siege with no way back. So tragically, they followed a man who was yes, a magnificent catalyst for their new lives, but with pathology that worsened along with his physical health \u2013 a pathology that was predisposed <\/i>to a suicidal end<\/p>\n But they also did the best they could with perilous odds on all sides. And I believe they passed on to a good place \u2013 that \u201ca flood angels [did] wing them to their rest\u201d (from Hamlet<\/i>).<\/p>\n And if we can finally comprehend<\/b>, not just \u201csit in judgment,\u201d is that not a better way for us all?<\/p>\n As for me, I\u2019ve learned from experience I know first-hand what it\u2019s like for \u201cfriends\u201d to throw rocks at me while despicable people get away with infamy. Along with the pitfalls of feeling trapped into hatreds and resentments and powerlessness.<\/p>\n Should we not at long last just step out into the light and become better humans?<\/i> If we don\u2019t comprehend our life experiences, how can we grow, evolve, change? And always it is better to know<\/b> than to not know.<\/p>\n And surely not<\/b> to play \u201ckill the messenger redux.\u201d Because at least I know, if others don\u2019t, that messages supercede, even outlive messengers. I\u2019m not the right target and I never was.<\/p>\n Nor is anyone saying that it\u2019s \u201ca good thing\u201d that Jim Jones was part humanitarian saint and part pathological bastard. It wasn\u2019t. It was dangerous, deadly, costly!! But to see everything as it was and to learn from it? Yes, that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n And anything exculpatory for the people who died (and there is very much <\/i>exculpatory), that\u2019s a good thing too. Especially, if they were considered expendable (again, it\u2019s called \u201ccollateral damage\u201d) by powerful political<\/i> elements, that should not be covered up just because of (however tragically and of course <\/i>it was) pathological <\/i>elements on the part of Jim Jones.<\/p>\n Nor for that matter, should the intelligence agencies\u2019 infamy be covered up because defectors who worked with government agents (again, however<\/i><\/b> unwittingly!) to destroy Peoples Temple are threatened by unwanted revelations and want to protect themselves<\/i> with \u201ckill the messenger\u201d games.<\/p>\n So I ask the survivor group, you don\u2019t care about the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project that breaks the original NBC on-site film footage down frame-by-frame, so we can see who the assassins were (and were not<\/i>)? Which has now been done for<\/i> you and you won\u2019t even look? You don\u2019t care<\/i> if the CIA framed these people and the FBI covered it up? You just reject it out-of-hand and \u201ckill the messenger\u201d? Then who are you in relation to the people who died? <\/b><\/p>\n Yes, you care about yourselves and you care about your own losses and that\u2019s all very tragic of course<\/i>. But why don\u2019t you care about their<\/b> story, the story they could never live to tell? The story they would have wanted to have told for<\/i> them?<\/p>\n Do you really think that the elements who duped the Congressman to his death cared if anyone <\/i><\/b>at Jonestown survived? Do you really think that the people of Jonestown had a better chance with those nice CIA folks orchestrating the seventeen-hour time delay? <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Does anyone remember from the old song, \u201cNobody\u2019s right when everybody\u2019s wrong\u201d? But it\u2019s the people of Jonestown who were caught in the middle between every <\/i>deadly side and that<\/i> was the tragic humanity of their fate. <\/b><\/p>\n So I\u2019m committed to the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project \u2013 the very project I envisioned all those years back (yes!!!)<\/i><\/b>, only now able to get it done. And I\u2019m so very grateful for that. It\u2019s been a burden of conscience and love and now I can finally discharge it and do it right.<\/p>\n What else matters anyhow? A travesty from long ago that people who should know better decided to compound <\/i>rather than heal?<\/p>\n Personally I\u2019m past that episode long since. I\u2019ve just been wounded by the wrongful hits on my credibility<\/i>. Especially by of all people, fellow survivors. There is nothing more dismaying than people who have suffered so much, yet apparently learned so little \u2013 apparently, not even so much as the golden rule.<\/p>\n Yet if people still do not \u201cget\u201d why all of this is appearing in the same article\u2026\u2026 Namely, why is the only deciphering ever<\/i> of Jim Jones\u2019 psychotic break appearing in the same article vindicating me<\/i><\/b>? I want to be clear on that:<\/p>\n The message is that whatever pounding I\u2019ve taken from questionable people that \u201cOh, don\u2019t listen to her, she just defending Jim Jones,\u201d I was in no way, shape, or form responsible for Jim Jones\u2019 psychotic break. Nor do I excuse it, defend it, justify it, nor do I merit any of the other wrong, hurtful accusations that have been hurled my way.<\/p>\n To the contrary<\/b>. Apparently I\u2019m the only one to decipher the psychiatry at all!!;<\/i> and God knows, could I have seen then what I see now, and been the person then that I am now, I might well have acted<\/i> on it. Others might have too.<\/p>\n At the same time, no one should presume that Mr. Jones\u2019 psychotic break justified or excused or defends those dangerous political <\/i>elements (still with us today!!) who had callous disregard for anyone<\/i> at Jonestown just so long as they destroyed Jim-Jones-political-threat; and (a bone to throw to the defectors) falsely promised that they would \u201crescue\u201d individual relatives.<\/p>\n Well, they had seventeen hours to mount a rescue, but deliberately delayed until everyone was confirmed dead. <\/b>That\u2019s on their own official log (to appear on \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d). So there was no intention to \u201crescue\u201d anyone, was there? Children? \u201cCollateral damage.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as getting away with the assassination of a U.S. Congressman in the process! The vehicle for that expose being the \u201cIn Plain Sight project.<\/p>\n I mean even a psychotic Jim Jones valued those precious lives. He just threw them off his own psychotic cliff when he himself was tossed into a pressure-cooker with no escape valve. And yes, of course <\/i>its roots were self-created. That\u2019s the whole point of a psychiatric expose in the first place!! <\/b><\/p>\n Take this parallel. (Hardly perfect. Just to make this one point.) Look at Andrea Yates who drowned her own children in the bathtub. In a non-psychotic state she probably loved her kids. Even though she killed them. She did it. \u201cGuilty.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet if someone had set up a loudspeaker in her home broadcasting, \u201cKill your own kids! Kill your own kids! We\u2019ve threatened to kill you off before and now we\u2019re ready to do it,\u201c then you probably would not<\/b> have called that<\/i> party \u201cinnocent.\u201d Much less the champion of children\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n Oh, Leo Ryan personally was undoubtedly sincere in his championing of \u201cConcerned Relatives.\u201d He was just not in a position<\/i> to do that. He was used and duped himself. He was a target<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n But what was done to Jonestown from the outside<\/i>? No better than an evil masquerade. Threaten to kill the community yourselves, frame them to cover up your own assassination of a hated Congressman (hated for forcing the CIA to report black ops to Congress), and then HOPE<\/b> that a maddened leader offs his own people \u201cto protect them from invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, and to protect yourselves<\/i> against investigation. That too. You\u2019ve \u201ckilled two birds with one stone\u201d (anti-CIA Ryan; pro-Soviet Jones) and no one even suspects.<\/p>\n Indeed your front group, \u201cConcerned Relatives\u201d (with every <\/b>due respect to personal losses) is cast as tragic heroes. After all, \u201cthey tried to stop it, didn\u2019t they\u201d?<\/p>\n And is this all nasty, convoluted, ugly? Of course! But even if I leave this topic for good (big temptation!), no one will be able to say that I didn\u2019t explain anything. I\u2019ve tried to \u201cexplain the unexplainable\u201d at every turn.<\/p>\n Nor do I plan on walking away from this subject wrongly \u201cdiscredited\u201d at all; now with this, the psychiatric expose and the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project, I don\u2019t have to. I am so very credible. Now it\u2019s all right there. Just LOOK<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve written extensively about life as a Peoples Temple survivor. Anyone can read it in Snake Dance: Unravelling the Mysteries of Jonestown. I also revealed many a dark corner of Peoples Temple and its leader Jim Jones \u2013 including his abusive treatment of me. I \u201cwithheld nothing,\u201d to put it mildly. It wasn\u2019t because I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":31476,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31371","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31371"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56197,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31371\/revisions\/56197"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}