CHAIN THE DOGMA

Religion and Child Abuse News - November 20, 2009

Miss World 2009 contestant, Miss Indonesia, is a member of evangelical cult with history of child abuse

by Perry Bulwer

On June 6, 2009 Kerenina Sunny Halim was crowned Miss Indonesia 2009 as part of the Miss World pagaent, which is scheduled to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa on December 12, 2009. That in itself is not remarkable news. What is remarkable, however, is the fact that Miss Halim is a current member of a religious cult that was prohibited from prosyletizing in Indonesia because of its extreme doctrines, many of which led to systemic physical, psychological and sexual child abuse. In a Jakarta Globe article dated June 14, 2009, Halim refers to her current membership in The Family International, a fact she has not disclosed in any other media report or on her online profiles.

The Family International was previously known as the Children of God but changed its name in an attempt to distance itself from its corporate history of child abuse. The group also operates under numerous front organizations around the world, which is a common cult tactic designed to deceive the general public into thinking they are unrelated groups, and to disguise practices such as unethical fund-raising or underground prosyletizing in countries where it is forbidden.

In the 1980s, Children of God communes in Indonesia were raided by government agents in response to public unrest over their activities. The group was subsequently prohibited by the Indonesian government from distributing its printed and audio/video materials in Indonesia. That effectively meant they were banned from operating there since it is through those materials that they recruit and indoctrinate new members, and solicit donations to further their mission to convert people to their extremist version of Christianity. Consequently, the group went underground to continue its evangelism using different tactics and names. As recently as January 28, 2009, Jasman Panjaitan, of the District Attorney's Legal Information Center in Jakarta, was cited on an Indonesian news website comparing the banning of the Children of God sex cult in the 1980s to a more recent Islamic sex cult operating in the country. However, the article does not mention that the Children of God still operates there under the name Family Care Indonesia, and there seems to be no awareness of this fact by government officials, the media or Indonesian's in general.

The main front organization for The Family International is Family Care Foundation (FCF), which was created in the late 1990s to give the group non-profit, tax-exempt status in the U.S. and elsewhere, and to hide their true identity from potential donors who often fail to discover, through due diligence, the connection between those two groups and the Children of God. You can read here a detailed exposé of the connections between the Children of God, The Family International, and Family Care Foundation.

Today in Indonesia, The Family International operates under the front Family Care Indonesia. Whether or not the Indonesian government is aware that those two groups are the same as the once banned Children of God is not clear. What is clear is that the group has really only changed in name only. While they claim to have abandoned some doctrines and practices such as religious prostitution, which they called Flirty Fishing, they have added other doctrines and occult beliefs that continue to endanger children. They also continue to secretly proselytize in countries like Indonesia, though they deny it when confronted.

For example, in an article in the Phnom Penh Post dated July 2, 2009, the spokesperson for Family Care Cambodia, Ann Soldner, declared that "there isn't a direct link, per se" between Family Care Cambodia and The Family International, and claimed “... that while other Family Care Foundation projects may emphasise Christianity, hers does not set out to convert.” This is typical of the way group members dissemble the facts and is no surprise to those familiar with their doctrine, Deceivers Yet True, which instructs them to lie and deceive outsiders as to their true nature and purpose. The fact is that evangelism always has been, and remains, the primary mission of The Family International, and evangelism by any definition sets out to convert people.

Evangelism is a specific requirement of membership in The Family International, listed in their Charter under Part 1. Responsibilities of Individual Members, section G: Engage in Evangelism, which they define as “zealous preaching and dissemination of the Gospel, such as through missionary work.” They believe that evangelism is a Biblical mandate that must be obeyed. This primary mission of evangelism was recently re-emphasized by the top leaders of the group, known as Maria and Peter to members, but who have used numerous aliases while in hiding.

In June, 2009, they came out of hiding and both spoke at a Center for the Study of New Religions conference in Utah as part of their public relations campaign to gain mainstream tolerance for their extremist brand of Christianity. It was Maria's first time to ever talk to an outside group in the 40 years or so she's been a leader of the cult, or new religious movement as conference attendees would call it, which says a lot about the secrecy of this destructive religious group. Despite continual claims over the years that they have changed their unethical and abusive methods and practices, they spoke at the conference of their desire to preserve their “unique and unconventional doctrines”. In effect, they want mainstream acceptance even while they denounce mainstream society in their literature, deny their children educational, religious and other rights, and hold on to doctrines, or create new ones such as Loving Jesus, that are responsible for widespread physical, psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse. Peter emphasized in his speech that one of the three main objectives the group is now focused on is “... maximizing [the] effectiveness and productivity in our mission of evangelization.” Any member of the group, regardless of which front organization they operate under, that claims they do not evangelize with the intention of converting people to their perverse version of Christianity is simply lying.

An excerpt from an internal newsletter provides a glimpse into The Family's clandestine evangelical methods. The document, dated June 2003, contains member's accounts of evangelizing around the world. Under the heading, One Heart at a Time – The Missionary Calling, a person named only Daniel writes about their tactic in Indonesia:

Over the past few months we have gone over the Family origins with four of our close friends, and it has been very exciting and quite a challenge. ... We felt it best to use the Statement "Our Origins" in Indonesian to make sure everything was clear, and give a good explanation of our history. We also filled them in on our past persecution in this country, as all of them had heard about us. We found that putting all our cards on the table about this made it much easier for them to understand why we don't tell this to everyone. Once we took this step, we were then able to get into a much deeper feeding and start introducing our more radical doctrines. ... The ones we targeted first with the meat were friends we had known for a while and who had become fairly close to us. This made it easier because they had seen the fruit in our lives, and we had a personal connection with them. This eliminated a lot of questions and defused any fear of the unknown. [emphasis added]

Notice how they contextualize past government raids and prohibitions as 'persecution'. This is an important step in their recruitment process. By characterizing any criticism, sanction or legal action as religious persecution, and coupling that with scriptures promising that the “godly will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12), so-called persecution becomes a badge of honor and 'proof' to the new recruit that the group must be 'godly'. Notice also how they groom new recruits slowly, targeting those they have befriended, and only after some assurance they can be trusted do they introduce their “more radical doctrines”, which they also refer to as “meat”. Given the group's recent re-emphasis on evangelizing, there is every reason to believe that this kind of secret conversion process continues in Indonesia, as well as in other countries, despite any claims to the contrary.

The language controversy surrounding Miss Indonesia 2009

Initial reports in the mainstream Indonesian media indicated there was some controversy surrounding Kerenina Sunny Halim's pageant win, but not because she is a member of an abusive, secretive cult. Two Jakarta Post articles, one dated June 9, 2009 and the other July 6, 2009 refer to the fact that Halim, who has spent nearly her whole life in Indonesia, could not speak Indonesian well enough to understand the judge's questions, and that she was unfamiliar with certain aspects of Indonesian culture. However, Jakarta Post reporters did not pursue this issue, and instead simply accepted Halim's rather lame explanations for this oddity, which did not include the fact of her cult membership. Even though online comments posted to that first of the Post articles revealed Halim's membership in the Children of God/The Family International, those comments did not prompt the Post to dig deeper into this controversy. An article on the Indonesian news website, Indonesia To Go, dated June 12, 2009 was more indignant over this language controversy, but it also made no mention of Halim's cult connections.

Those three articles refer to the fact that Halim cannot speak Indonesian, even though she has lived most of her life in Indonesia. The excuse she gave to the Post reporters is that she speaks English everyday, and the excuse given by her brother is that she was home-schooled and rarely goes out of the house. This is classic cult dissembling and presenting half-truths. The article also mentions that she has six diplomas, which immediately begs the question: how did she earn those diplomas without leaving the house and what institution issued them?

The real reason why Halim cannot speak Indonesian is because she was raised in the Children of God/The Family International. The group does not believe in formal or higher education for their children. Members are warned constantly in their literature about the dangers and evils of formal education systems and urged not to send their children to school. Instead, they give them an inferior education by home-schooling them with their own sub-standard materials by untrained 'teachers'. Most children in the group, regardless of the country they reside, learn English as their first language. It is very common in the group that children born to nationals are unable to speak their own national language because of the prominence of and priority given to English as the group's lingua franca.

Regarding Halim's diplomas, they are not from an accredited institution, but are issued by the group itself using their own course materials based on the perverse teachings of their prophet, David Berg. If you look at the list of her diplomas in that first Jakarta Post article above and on her profile page on the Miss World website, and then compare them to the courses at this Family International website you will see that they are identical. Her diplomas are not from any credible institution, but are issued by the same cult she is part of. Despite this lack of creditation, Halim's Miss World profile page claims that she teaches elementary school, and her Facebook page claims that she is a high school teacher. If these schools Halim teaches at are credible schools, then perhaps the administrators of those schools have neglected to adequately vet her. Would they hire her if they knew she remained a member of an evangelical cult with a history of child abuse and whose founder, David Berg (referred to as the Lustful Prophet by one academic) promoted such things as incest, pedophilia and child brides? On the other hand, if those schools are really just the cult's own schools in which they indoctrinate and intellectually abuse their children, then certainly Halim is being duplicitous with the Miss World organizers and the Indonesian people she represents.

According to the Miss World website: “Charity work is integral to the Miss World ethos and part of the brief to contenders in each country is that they volunteer their time or fundraise for charity.” One would assume that organizers would vet each national contestant to ensure that the charities they are involved with are legitimate, transparent and accountable. That is simply not the case with The Family International and its various front groups. If it is a credible charity organization, as they claim, then why is Halim not being open and honest about her involvement with them?

While it is true that she revealed her membership in the group to the Jakarta Globe, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, sources in Indonesia inform me that that is the only media report in which she has done so. In all other media reports she neglects to mention that information, referring only to non-specific social work and charity work. This is likely a manipulative tactic on her part, as the Jakarta Globe, the newest English newspaper, has a very small circulation, considering the country's population, and is “... marketed primarily at cosmopolitan and well educated Indonesians and expatriates.” The largest English newspaper, the Jakarta Post, has a circulation of a mere 50,000, in a country of well over 200 million mostly non-English speaking people.

Since very few Indonesians read the Jakarta Globe, admitting her membership in The Family International in that article accomplishes two things for her: news of her cult membership can be contained within an extremely small demographic that is less likely to care about this issue, and if she is ever confronted on the issue of secrecy, she can point to that article to deny that she deliberately deceived reporters about her cult connections. It seems her policy is “if they don't ask, I won't tell”, and if reporters and pageant organizers do not ask her specific questions about her affiliations and so-called charity work she's not going to offer the information. Presenting half-truths and disingenuous answers is in keeping with the group's policy on lying and deception previously mentioned.

Clearly, Halim demonstrates a lack of transparency and honesty concerning her involvement with a dubious organization claiming to be a legitimate charity. Anyone involved with a legitimate charity organization would not find it necessary to refrain from naming the charity. In fact, the opposite is true as most charities invite publicity as a way to increase donations. Halim, however, has not revealed her membership in either The Family International (with that one small exception) or Family Care Indonesia. There are even photographs of Halim on the Family Care website, yet she has not publicized that fact in media reports or her online profiles. If they truly did such marvelous charity work in Indonesia as they claim, then why would Halim hide her involvement in that good work from both the pageant organizers and the Indonesian people?

The Indonesian media has so far failed to inform Indonesians that the woman chosen to represent them on the world stage is a member of a deceptive, evangelical sect who couldn't speak Indonesian. Certainly, many would be outraged if they knew the facts presented here. Indonesians deserve to know the truth about the woman who represents them as Miss Indonesia 2009, Kerenina Sunn Halim, and the subversive cult she belongs to.

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Two weeks ago I contacted the Miss World organizers through their website for their response to this information concerning one of their contestants, but so far they have refused to comment.