And that was when the paths started to separate. The man in Texas they were referring to was David Koresh. The reason they were talking about him was that he had actually visited England with his right-hand man - scouting for members who would join his budding sect.
It's understood that David Koresh came to England around along with his trusted lieutenant - a man called Steve Schneider. They sought a fertile recruiting ground for their message of the imminent coming of the apocalypse, or "Revelation" as it is depicted in the Bible.
So he knew that his starting point in England would be there. He gave talks at a Seventh Day Adventist college in Berkshire called Newbold, without permission, and kept his identity a secret from its staff. It was there that three students had their lives changed forever.
From there, the power of Koresh's message on their minds would ripple out to families across England. At the time, one of these students was dating a Manchester girl called Diana Henry. She was from a large family of five brothers and sisters; her father was a bricklayer in Old Trafford. Diana had just finished her degree in psychology when her boyfriend sold her Koresh's message of a utopian life at his Texas commune. As her father Sam remembers: "Her boyfriend wasn't a flippant lad, he was a serious lad.
And so she thought well, if that's what he says, it's got to be right. She was hooked. She dropped her studies and would have followed this man anywhere. Diana would make several visits to Waco, slipping away during term time to meet David Koresh without her father's knowledge, before coming back to Manchester one last time. Sam remembers how on that occasion she became instrumental in spreading Koresh's message herself. She organised meetings in a semi-detached house in a Manchester suburb called Cheetham Hill at which dozens of young people attended.
Koresh's lieutenant was there, giving a charismatic talk, and saying "he needed to take his instructions from God". This is not right. And when I tried to interrupt the speaker to ask questions, they were like 'Woooah! Why are you challenging this man? George Taylor saw what was happening to Sam's daughter Diana. He tried to change her mind - to stop her from being seduced into the would-be prophet's message. In time, Sam Henry would make a frantic journey to Waco to try and convince her to return.
He said come here - the authorities will never find you. He tried everything. But she didn't listen. None of them listened.
But worse was to come. Diana had in fact convinced her mother and four siblings to also leave their father and journey to join her at the commune in Waco, not long after. The cult spreads i n Britain. Back in Britain - in Nottingham - Devon Elliott was trying to talk his sister out of going over to Waco. A cheerful, gentle man in his mids, one would never assume that he more than many others suffered the most terrible pain of Waco. They had each been entranced by Koresh's message at Newbold College.
That apocalypse, he taught, was imminent. It was Houteff who first purchased the compound in Waco, Texas, that he called Mount Carmel, after the biblical mountain of the same name. There, Houteff led a small Christian religious community that believed Mount Carmel would be the center of a new divine kingdom following the apocalypse.
Only in did Vernon Howell — the man who would soon change his name to David Koresh — join the Branch Davidian community. A troubled child from an unstable family background, Howell had become a born-again Christian in the s. Only then did he encounter the Davidians. When George Roden went to prison for murdering another rival, Howell — who changed his name in to commemorate biblical Kings David and Cyrus Koresh — assumed complete control of the group.
This is important because it contradicts a major element of what has by now become the Waco narrative: the idea that the faith of the Branch Davidians of Waco was inextricable from their relationship with Koresh.
As Gary Cartwright wrote:. For nine years, Koresh had relentlessly drilled his followers to prepare for Armageddon, had preached its inevitability, had forecast its imminence. This was the ending that Koresh had prayed for and staked his reputation on — the final battle, the trial by fire. Anything less would have been a monumental betrayal of his claim to be David Koresh, Angel Warrior of the Armageddon.
Did anyone really expect the prophet of Ranch Apocalypse to meekly surrender his sheep to the enemy and come out with his hands up? While Koresh did, ultimately, possess an extraordinary amount of power within the Branch Davidian community, he was not its only representative.
A number of Branch Davidians exist today, many of whom see Koresh as a splinter leader from their own legitimate tradition. And many of the Branch Davidians who ultimately died at Waco had been longstanding members of the community, practicing their faith long before Koresh was even born. David Koresh taught that he was a messiah and that, furthermore, any children born of the messiah would be sacred.
In the years following the massacre, a number of additional children who had grown up among the Branch Davidian community reported that Koresh had molested them. That said, at the time of the Waco siege, the evidence to support any sexual allegations against Koresh was far more inconclusive. Multiple probes into alleged sexual abuse at the Mount Carmel site went nowhere. What happened next remains unclear — both surviving Branch Davidians and surviving agents claimed the other side fired first — but the raid resulted in a bitter gun battle that killed five ATF agents and five Branch Davidians, and injured an additional 16 agents.
Malcolm Gladwell, writing on the siege for the New Yorker , captures the sheer scale of the operation:. Customs officers, fifteen U.
Finally, on April 19, the FBI raided the compound, using military-grade weaponry such as armored tanks, as well as tear gas. A fire broke out — the source of which remains disputed — and 76 of the 85 Branch Davidians, including Koresh and a number of children, were killed.
By and large, the public treated the ending of the siege of Waco as the story of a crazy cult that had gotten the end it deserved, similar to the mass suicide at Jonestown. But for some, the Waco tragedy was the foundation of a different narrative: a story of unlawful government overreach, and of the consequences of federal aggression. Two years later, he had taken over the group, encouraging the use of guns and preaching an ever increasing brand of apocalyptic prophecy.
He believed that the group would someday be under attack by the U. Former followers said Koresh truly believed he was on a mission from God and was the only one who could interpret the bible and its true meanings for the masses.
Former followers said women had to wear long blouses, and no make-up or jewelry could be worn. They said Koresh would tell them where to sleep and what food they could eat — sugar, processed flour and dairy products were forbidden.
Former followers said discipline was constantly administered. Everywhere is fear. Koresh had his own children too. Dana Okimoto, who gave birth to his son Sky Okimoto, told ABC News in a interview that children were kept in line by a wooden paddle and faced severe beatings for minor infractions like spilling a glass of milk.
She said she remembered being so under Koresh's control that she beat Sky until he bled.
0コメント