Messages By: wonderboy

  Yes actually! I'm a 26 year old second generation former member of TFI who left the group six years ago.  

  My brother was kicked out of his home when he was 14 for merely being a witness to an assault case that another teenager had filed against one of the adult members in that home. At the time he was in the process of rejoining the cult so that he could be close to his personal family after being completely kicked out of the group at the age of twelve for supposedly being an instrument of the devil. All he did was stand up for himself and others when he saw all the crap that was going on(he also wore a hand-made cloth cross around his neck that certain leaders said was carrying demon spirits.) 

  Anyway, I don't know what it's like now but I'm sure that if any current member tried to pursue legal action against another member they would immediately be black listed as a divider of the close brotherhood of TFI and would probably leave of their own volition, or at least be strongly pressured to do so. 

  We are talking about an organization that takes an attack on one as an attack on many, which explains why they haven't turned over child molesters to authorities for prosecution(it doesn't help that their direct leadership is also culpable). This all for one mentality that we were raised with since infancy is really a fine example of the oppression of free will; if one cannot decide for themselves what is right or wrong, then one loses their free will. What was right is whatever the cult told us was right. I'm thankful now that I know better. 

 The family is what I like to term a fatalistic cult: They view themselves as the leaders in the biblical end times and ultimately the chosen people of god. They were even more fatalistic 20 years ago when they really didn't imagine that their second generation members were ever going to grow up and get smart, teenagers between the ages of 11 and 14 are given the acronym JETT's(Junior End Time Teens.) simply because they viewed us as being their shining light in the last days of the world before the coming of Christ. It isn't hard to imagine that such a cult, with such a high opinion of itself, would care very little or nothing for the legal system, or the psychological implications that go hand in hand with the abuse that those of my generation encountered. It is simply a matter of accountability and TFI's lack of it in the crucial time that me and my peers were growing up. 

  I can't remember where I heard or read it, but I once learned that the mark of a person who never grew up is when they ignore a problem or uncomfortable situation in the hope that it'll go away. The Family is an organization that is still trying to be those fun-loving hippies who never grew up, and as a consequence their word means nothing. Until TFI takes action that is indicative of a responsible religious organization neither I nor any free willed individual in the world will see them as anything less then a manipulative cult.