January 24, 2010
Someone Who Supports You
[We have received this and other encouraging email in recent days. Some people have eyes to see with. -Jeff]
Dear Michael,
What started as a passing curiosity one day while watching the documentary about your family has turned into a great interest for me. I have read almost all of the information in your archive and the more I read the more outraged I become for the unfair treatment and sentence you have received. The fact that you were charged with a crime that was so obviously of a spiritual nature is ludicrous.
I am a sixty year old woman. This means that like you I am Baby Boomer. Can you remember the communes that were so common in the sixties, where free love and nudity were the norm? Children seemed to thrive in some of these communities. Some were bad but some eventually produced successful members of society and some great doctors, and humanitarians. No one attacked them, it was just accepted. I saw your community as very moral, as well as spiritual. There was a great love and caring for one another.
As for child abuse, if these children were being abused why did they time after time choose you over their own parents when they could have easily left? What kind of parents would leave their children behind if they felt that their children were in danger? These parents seem to retrieve and abandon their children at their whim.
I saw other signs of the innocence of your group by little things around your compound. I noticed an older model car parked outside your trailer, not an expensive car that someone interested in gleaning money from his followers would drive, no stockpile of weapons such as those of the cults they compared you to. I saw a simple, lovely little mobile home with a teapot on the stove, no trappings of great wealth.
You are vegetarians like myself so I know that you care for the welfare of animals. I am so sorry that you were judged so harshly and I hope that you will be soon vindicated. I don’t consider myself a Christian of follower of any faith but I respect all beliefs. I don’t know if you are a Messiah or not but it is not for me to judge. All I know is that there is a light in your eyes and in the eyes of the people that love you that is very beautiful. You have a glow about your countenance and you seem like a very gentle man. I wish you much peace.
Sincerely, E.G.
