Deprogrammers Took, Beat Her, Woman Says

A 22-year-old Carlsbad woman said Tuesday that she was abducted by her parents and deprogrammers and was beaten because they thought she had been brainwashed by a religious cult.

In fact, says Ginger Kay Brown, she is one of 16 members of a tight-knit and well-financed Bible study group that hopes to one day blossom with its own television evangelism ministry.

An exhausted Brown showed cuts, abrasions and bruises on her legs, arms, hip and head as she said that she had been beaten as her parents and a sister watched.

“All they said was, ‘We love you. We’re doing this because we care for you,’ ” said Brown, quoting her parents.

‘Attempted Murder’

“I don’t call it deprogramming. I call it attempted murder,” said Brown, seated beneath a painting depicting the biblical event of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

Brown’s parents, Earl Brown, 56, and Dorothy Brown, 57, of Santa Cruz turned themselves in to sheriff’s deputies in Encinitas shortly after their daughter was released late Monday. Her father was arrested on suspicion of kidnaping and false imprisonment; her mother was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment, said Sgt. Manny Castillo of the Sheriff’s Department.

The couple were released on their own recognizance shortly after noon Tuesday from the County Jail in Vista. Neither they nor their attorney, Saul Wright of San Diego, could be reached for comment.

Ginger Brown said she was kidnaped at 5 p.m. Thursday as she left her job as a computer analyst for an Encinitas real estate firm. As she walked toward her car, she said, she was confronted by a man “as big as a tree.” She said she tried to escape through a row of cars, but fell down an embankment and was jumped on by her father.

She said she pleaded to her father “who was holding me down, squishing me, to let me go. I cried out, ‘You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me!’ ”

She said she was put inside a van and blindfolded and, while screaming, was put in a head hold that nearly caused her to pass out. “One guy told me, ‘Shut up or I’m going to kill you,’ ” she said. And her father, she said, twisted her thumbs backward and “threatened to break my legs.”

After more than an hour of driving, she said, she was ushered into a home in a desolate, hilly area she believed to be somewhere near Escondido.

‘Hit My Head’

For the next four days, she said, she was beaten and knocked about. “They’d turn me upside down and hit my head on the bathroom counter,” she said, showing bruises behind her right ear. At other times, she said, she was knocked against the headboard of her bed in an upstairs room.

“They said they were trying to deprogram me, but all they were doing was physically mutilating me,” Brown said. “There was constant pain to my body.”

At no time during the supposed deprogramming, she said, did anyone try to talk to her about her involvement with the religious group.

“During the four days, 15 or so people came and went, and I tried to show them how I’d been battered, but nobody seemed to care. They just watched,” she said.

Finally, late Monday, her kidnapers said: “You win,” and drove her to a liquor store not far from her home, where she called for help, Brown said.

The experience, she said, has all but ended her relationship with her parents.

“For a few months a while back, I lived with them up in Santa Cruz to show them that I was just fine, that I wasn’t under some kind of mind control,” Brown said. “I said, ‘Go ahead and ask me questions. Let’s talk this out.’

“But, because of the seriousness of what they’ve done now, I can’t speak to them anymore. We’ll have to talk in court now, through attorneys.”

And she said she wouldn’t mind seeing her parents behind bars “if that’s what it will take for them to see what they did was wrong.”

Great Among the Nations

Brown is one of 16 members of a Bible study group calling itself Great Among the Nations, which formally incorporated two months ago under the leadership of 44-year-old Benjamin Altschul, a Danish Jew who converted to Christianity when he was 18 and immigrated to the United States in 1972.

Altschul, who said he became an ordained minister through the Bethany Temple Evangelistic Church, said he began speaking to Bible study groups in San Diego about three years ago and soon developed a following.

A core of group members and he settled in a Tierrasanta neighborhood but were forced to move about six months ago because of harassment from neighbors and parents of group members following an unfavorable television report at the time which characterized the group as a cult, Altschul said.

The members now live in neighboring units of a new apartment complex just east of La Costa.

The group’s assets include a luxurious motor home, a Mercedes-Benz and television recording and production equipment that will be utilized for the TV evangelism ministry, Altschul said.

The motor home and luxury sedan, Altschul said, were purchased with group consent because it does much traveling and needs to transport television equipment.

Altschul said he draws a salary of about $18,000 a year and that, through tithing and other cash offerings, the group has a budget this year of more than $80,000. The motor home, the Mercedes-Benz and the television equipment were purchased with about $200,000 in specific, earmarked donations by group members--not unlike how members of other religious congregations may specifically pay for an organ or capital improvements to their church, he said.

Fundamental Evangelists

Altschul and other group members, who gathered around Ginger Brown on Tuesday in the group’s apartment-office, said they are bonded by shared devotion to Jesus Christ. They describe themselves as fundamental evangelists who, rather than distribute Bible tracts on street corners or evangelize door to door, are focusing their financial and spiritual efforts on television evangelism.

They said that, despite their small numbers, they believe their goal is attainable because, as member Gilbert Barron said, “We believe in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is a miracle worker. We’re going on faith that the money will come in as it is needed.”

In advance of the television work, they said, they will begin holding public Bible study meetings in September in a room of the Performing Arts Center in the San Diego Civic Center.

Members say they are considered religious “deviates” because their group is so financially committed to its mission, yet is small, is not associated with a mainstream church and because of the love they profess for one another within the group.

They insist, however, that they are not followers of Altschul himself, but simply turn to him for leadership and Bible instruction. “We’re here for the love of Jesus, not Ben,” said Elvera Davenport.

“It disturbs people that we’re as close as we are to one another, but it’s hilarious that they think we’re a cult,” Shirley Zambaldi said.

Members said they were frustrated that deprogrammers have learned of the group and have won the confidence of members’ parents in trying to get them away from Altschul.

‘Minds of Vegetables’

“They tell our parents we have the minds of vegetables,” said Zambaldi, 33. “Deprogrammers have stirred all this up and made it all sound so ugly. It took me three weeks with my parents to convince them that I’m really quite normal. Still, it’s scary, wondering if one day I’ll be the one thrown inside a van and driven away.”

Greg and Anetta Herringshaw said that after they began meeting with Altschul’s group when he was holding Bible study sessions in Los Angeles and they lived in the San Joaquin Valley town of Visalia that they were kidnaped by both sets of their parents as well as other family members. Later, they were released, and no criminal charges were filed, Greg Herringshaw said.

“I saw my parents a few months ago and they still don’t think that what they did was wrong,” he said. “They’re so led to believe that we can’t think straight, because of a constant pounding in their head by deprogrammers that we can’t think on our own.”

Said Altschul: “There are hundreds of Bible study groups in California, and thousands in the United States, just like ours. We call ourselves fundamentalists. We study the Bible, we meet and we discuss it. I think what God has called me to do is to preach to the world, to love my brothers and sisters and to translate all this into TV so others can be a party to it.”

He said he has gotten followers “by convincing them not to believe in me, but to believe in what I believe. We haven’t programmed each other. We love each other. Our closeness comes in our shared love for Jesus Christ.”

Brown said she will be meeting with Sheriff’s Department investigators to try to determine the location of the deprogramming house, which, she said she was told by those who abducted her, would be used for other deprogrammings.