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Home/ stevenwarran's Library/ Notes/ January 1976, National Enquirer, Multi Millionaire minister woos children from their families to beg for him on the streets, by Jan Goodwin,

January 1976, National Enquirer, Multi Millionaire minister woos children from their families to beg for him on the streets, by Jan Goodwin,

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January 1976, National Enquirer, Multi Millionaire minister woos children from their families to beg for him on the streets, by Jan Goodwin,

Brainwashings . . . abductions . . . beatings . . . a suicide.

Controversy has swirled around the Unification Church and its founder, multimillionaire religious leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon ever since he arrived in the U.S. in 1972 and began converting tens of thousands of young people into devoted disciples called “Moonies.”

The 54-year-old Moon set himself up in an $850,000, 25-room mansion on a 22-acre estate in Tarrytown, N.Y. He is chauffeured around in a new Lincoln Continental limousine – a gift from his followers who sell candy, flowers and actually beg for money on the street for Rev. Moon and his Unification Church.

Swayed by the grueling, non-stop preachings by his followers, new members have left their families and joined the movement in the fervent belief that Rev. Moon – a Korean industrialist – is the new prophet.

“It’s frightening what these Moonies can do to the family unit,” said Rabbi Maurice Davis of White Plains, N.Y. He has formed a national anti-Moon organization called Citizens Engaged in Reuniting Families. It has a membership of 500 families who have “lost” their children to Rev. Moon.

“I get letters from parents all over the country telling me the same story,” said Rabbi Davis. “The kids are swept along by his outfit and then taken away for a few days to a ‘workshop.’ By the time the parents see their kids again – if they can manage to see them – the kids are starry-eyed and ready to take on anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a form of hypnotism.

“There is something very unhealthy going on.”

New Jersey insurance commissioner James Sheeran lost three daughters to Moon’s church. When Sheeran tried to get them to return home, he said, he was beaten up by Moonies.

“These Moon people are bent on breaking up the institution of family and my daughters have been brainwashed into believing them,” Sheeran declared.

“They used to be normal, happy girls and now they want nothing whatever to do with their family.

“These Moonies even resort to violence to keep the kids there.”

A former Moonie named Steve attests to the violence – he says he spent six weeks in the hospital with four broken bones in his face after Moonies attacked him.

“I just couldn’t believe their teachings any longer,” he told The Enquirer, fearful that allowing his last name to be used would result in reprisals against him.

“I just realized that what they were telling me was not true and I got outspoken. One day while outside one of their centers, a group of them beat me up. I’m just glad I got away with my mind.”

William Daly, 23, of Long Island, N.Y., wasn’t so lucky. He was a Moonie for five months when he threw himself in front of a train last April.

Daly’s heartbroken mother told Rabbi Davis, “I just don’t know what those people did to my son.”

New York psychiatrist Dr. Ernest Giovanoli, who has helped straighten out the minds of ex-Moonies, said that one young man committed suicide because he didn’t consider himself worthy of the Moon cause.

“Many young people exposed to the sect’s incredible influence had to be literally ‘deprogrammed’ over a period of days before they were capable of resuming normal life in the outside world,” the psychiatrist said.

Despite these shocking reports, the Moonies’ influence is spreading across the country at a startling rate.

“We are the most controversial movement in the U.S. today, but our numbers have swelled to 30,000 in American in just three years,” boasted Mike Runyon, secretary-treasurer of the Unification Church, in New York.

“We have at least one center in every state and in 50 other countries, too. And our worldwide membership is over 3 million.

“Rev. Moon realized his mission in life after Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision on a Korean mountainside in 1936.

“Through prayer and meditation he put together the ‘Divine Principle’ which gives new meaning to the teachings of the Bible and to history. He began to spread word of his Divine Principle in 1948. He took his teachings to Japan and started a world tour in 1965 and then came to the U.S. to live in 1972.”

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