▲ Me as an au pair in 1989.

In the mid 1980’s at the age of 21, I was an au pair in California, United States. I lived in Mill Valley, a fancy neighborhood north of the Golden Gate bridge.

In my free time I used to go to the Swedish Church, located on Hyde Street between Lombard Street and Fisherman’s Wharf, in downtown San Francisco. The church was a safe haven for au pairs and other folks from Europe who had gone out to explore the big world.

One day I stumbled into two Norwegian siblings who had come to the States to look for their younger sister. Some years before she had been caught up in a Korean cult called the Unification Church and they were very concerned about her well-being since they’d lost all contact with her.

▲ Mr. and Mrs. Moon greet the Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa. A handshake that according to the movement legitimized Sun Myung Moon as being the Messiah.

Sun Myung Moon founded the Unification Church. He passed away in 2012; he was a self-proclaimed Messiah who said he had met the biblical Jesus and now had his mandate to establish God’s Kingdom on earth. [ LINK to Moon and Jesus ]

As a Moonie you serve Mr. Moon, also referred to as ‘True Father’. You do this by recruiting new members, raising money to the movement and eventually you marry a partner chosen by Mr. Moon.

A true win win-situation for the cult.
 If you are truly blessed you can give away your children through adoption. This is a true win-win situation, because by doing so a childless couple somewhere out there finally becomes a real family and you can once again give ‘True Father’ your full attention without the distraction of a child. This is the ultimate proof of love and devotion.

The cult had a recruiting base downtown and a training camp in the mountains a few hours’ drive north of San Francisco. Since the siblings would not be welcome into the cult’s surroundings, they asked me if I wanted to make my way into the organization by allowing myself ‘to be recruited’ by the cult. Hopefully, on the inside, I would be able to locate their sister, so that they could take action and arrange for her to be kidnapped and deprogrammed by a special team that was standing by. And oh, could I barely wait!

The Preparation I prepared myself by watching interviews with ex-members on videotape so that I knew what special treatment I could expect.

I learned about how love-bombing – overwhelming and unmotivated love and attention – in combination with little sleep and a tight schedule would serve their purpose to indoctrinate me and make me one of them.

I also met with psychologists and deprogrammers who showed me things I should be aware of, and take precautions against.

The plan was simple.

We would arrange for me to be picked up by a Moonie in Union Square in downtown San Francisco – a place where they recruit many new members. I would then agree to come along to their student camp in the mountains.

▲ Union Square in San Francisco

Once in the camp I would take a lot of pictures, without attracting unnecessary attention. Lots of parents around the world had children hidden in the cult, and if I could return with picture proof that their sons and daughters were in the camp, captors stood ready to steal back the young people to their families.

Most important of all was that I went home when the weekend camp was over. I was under no circumstances allowed to stay after the four day long camp ended. Though, I was told that both the car and the phone were always ‘broken’ on the last evening of the camp – to prevent people from leaving. The reason was simply that they occasionally needed more time to break some of the visitor’s mental defenses.

The Recruitment


One Saturday we got to work. I dressed myself typically Swedish (neon-colored shorts), took a visible stand at the square, unfolded a big tourist map and waited. All supervised by the kidnappers who stood at a safe distance.

After approximately 15-20 minutes I hear a voice behind me; ”Hello?”
I turned around and meet Ted for the first time, my ticket into the Unification Church.
By coincidence the next camp started next Thursday

Did I need help, I seemed lost? Was I only passing through? Ah, I came from Sweden, that’s sounds nice. Ted told me that he belonged to an international Student organization.
And by the way, would I be interested in sharing a cup of coffee at their office nearby?


A few hours later I had finished my coffee, seen the picture of the Organization’s founder on the wall and met countless of smiling students who all spoke inspiringly of a camp in the mountains.

By coincidence the next camp started next Thursday. Ted asked me if I wanted to come along. Of course I wanted.

After a few hours’ drive in an old minivan filled with young people, we reached our destination – Maacama Hill.

▲ The girls’ building at Camp K, Maacama Hills

▲ The kitchen at Camp K

The pace was rapid right from the start with early mornings, late nights, and intense activities all day long. I was not left alone for one second.

New boys were constantly shown attention by the sweetest Moonie girls — and new girls shown the same by the most charming Moonie boys.

▲ Camp K leaders, Susan on the left.

As time went by, the small talk more and more turned towards existential questions. Had I ever thought about the meaning of life? Was I satisfied with my life?

Then we were introduced to the first lecture in the class room. Participation was voluntary, of course, but not going to the lectures was simply not an option.

Soon we spent more time in the classroom than we did on the volleyball court. The purpose of the teaching was to prove that Sun Myung Moon was the new Messiah.

Now it was getting really hard to do this spy thing. It was emotionally hard. I felt as if I was betraying the new young people in the camp since I saw them becoming prey for the cult without being able to warn them. But how could I?

I had been sent into the camp with a mission and I simply could not reveal my true identity without endangering my assignment.

And besides, what would the leaders do if they found out I was a spy? My quest was to take as many pictures as possible, lay low and get a ride home on Sunday night. Period.

▲ Lecture on the Divine Principle: “Jesus failed, since he died on the cross, right? So a new Messiah would have to complete the Mission, right?” (Picture: HERE)

Everything became more intense as we got closer to Sunday. The generally held “Good to see you” songs at breakfast were replaced by religious songs with lyrics about the ‘True Father’. A short prayer was held before every meal and the discussions became more personal and intrusive, the breaks got shorter and the lessons longer.

On the Saturday evening we had a barbecue on the river bed. When all the sausage and marshmallows were eaten, there was a revival meeting.

▲ I am wedged between two Moonie friends. (Picture: HERE)

Two dark-haired sisters sang religious songs with empathy, and with tears running down their cheeks, they explained how they had found the true meaning of life in the Unification Church.

▲ Happy sisters. (Picture: HERE)

Then one of the leaders gave a short sermon with such passion that the fire next to him faded in comparison.

▲ Camp K mini-store

______________________________

How did Petra get out?

Full story and more photos:

https://petrahellsing.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/search-for-a-moonie/

______________________________

Camp K, aka Maacama Hill, Unification Church recruitment camp

Moonwebs by Josh Freed (the book was made into a movie)

Crazy for God: The nightmare of cult life by Christopher Edwards

Ford Greene – the former Moonie became an attorney

My Time with the Oakland Family Moonies – by Peter from New Zealand

Testimony of Ingo Michehl – assault by Japanese leader caused lung collapse

The Moonie recruitment camps in Northern California

Resources for Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships

▲ The ‘Moonie’ Ranch in Boonville, 1975. The sign says ‘Welcome,’ but visitors weren’t.

By Gaye LeBaron  The Press Democrat  1993 

The phone call from a worried friend in Berkeley was about a camp in Sonoma County. A young Czechoslovakian visitor, he said, had been diverted from his itinerary by an impromptu invitation to visit this camp with a young man he had met on the street in San Francisco.

My friend wanted to know what I knew about this camp. My first reaction was to say, “Nothing at all,” but then I thought back a dozen years, recalled the headlines and wondered: Were we talking about the Moonies again?

There was a time when we talked about Moonies a lot around here. (Sudden thought: Has it been so long that we must explain that the term “Moonie” is shorthand for the followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church?)

The news of the last decade has been mostly about the Rev. Moon’s trial and subsequent prison term for tax evasion [and document forgery]. But the clip files from the ’70s are fat with controversy centered around two Unification Church properties in our own back yard.

In 1975 [Papasan Choi] purchased a 600-acre ranch near Boonville, which the Moonies called the New Ideal City Ranch. The property was a home base for a sales force of young converts who peddled goods (mostly roses and terrariums) in the Bay Area as well as Santa Rosa and Ukiah. Newsweek had just published an article about the Unification Church. It told of the members’ belief that the Rev. Moon may be “a second messiah,” and of the formation of a new organization for parents who feared their children were being brainwashed by church members. Reporter Vicki Allen, working in the PD’s Ukiah bureau, interviewed two of the peddlers, who told her the money went to pay for buses to bring people from population centers and for food for the weekend visitors.

The Moonies and their recruiting practices were coming under more scrutiny nationwide. Young people virtually disappeared from homes and college campuses after going off to visit “a camp” with people they met on city streets, in airports or bus terminals. The barbed wire fences around the Boonville ranch lent a sinister aspect.

In the fall of the year the media learned another new word — ‘‘deprogrammer.” Ted Patrick, who specialized in reversing the brainwashing techniques, was hired by a Lake County couple to rescue their daughter, who had joined the Moonies while a student at the University of Oklahoma. Patrick deprogrammed the young woman, who told her story to The Press Democrat, confirming the worst fears of many parents, that people who fell under the influence of the group ‘‘no longer knew their own mind.”

Patrick was a controversial figure. The drastic measures he used ultimately resulted in a conviction for false imprisonment and a kidnapping charge, of which he was acquitted. His work, he said, required desperate measures. Moon’s recruitment system, he charged, constituted ‘‘psychological kidnapping” and reduced converts to ‘‘mindless robots.”

The drama of deprogramming was a gripping story and, as the word spread, frightened parents came to Mendocino County looking for sons and daughters who had come to visit the New Ideal City Ranch and never come home. Throughout the mid-1970s, Ukiah courts were seldom without petitions for conservancy from families hoping to bring their children home.

Sheriffs deputies went to the ranch on one occasion and, by court order, removed two sisters, ages 19 and 21. In a dramatic trial, their mother was named conservator while the Moonies sat together in the courtroom, locking hands across the rows of seats.

Camp director Noah Ross, who had earlier testified that conservatorship and deprogramming were the same as kidnapping, told the press he was pleased with the judge’s action since the girls seemed “impressionable and immature.” In subsequent interviews Ross accused the press of bias and denied that recruits were being brainwashed.

▲ These five were held under a conservatorship order. Four of them left the Moonies.

Meanwhile, a significant court case was in progress in San Francisco where five adult Moonies, ranging in age from 21 to 26, were turned over to their parents, by court order, for 30 days. Religious libertarians were appalled at the court decision to turn adults over to their parents’ care. Some compared the persecution of the Moonies to the Salem witch trials. Other theologians charged that the Unification Church was not a true Christian church. Ultimately the decision was overturned by the state Court of Appeal, but not before four of the five had abandoned the Moonies and returned to their families.

Parents kept coming. But now the Mendocino County DA’s office had people to work with them in attempts to quietly reunite them with their children. Cases of young people being hidden from parents were reported. In one case, a hired deprogrammer abducted the wrong girl. Deprogramming, which had been aimed primarily at Moonies and Hare Krishnas, spread to other religions. In Texas, parents actually hired a deprogrammer to lure their daughter from the influence of a Baptist Church. More and more people were questioning the authority of parents over adult children. The ACLU became involved.

But as more young people abandoned the ranch, more stories of misrepresentation and abduction were told. One woman reported that her new friends told her they were taking her to the Oakland bus depot and brought her to Boonville instead.

The camp was under scrutiny from county planning officials. They needed a permit to operate a religious retreat. They were ordered to produce an environmental impact report. And, finally, in 1977, the New Ideal City Ranch was ordered closed.

They moved to what they called “Bambi Land,” the Mendocino Woodlands State Park, east of Caspar, where they used the campground for their training sessions for up to 100 people.

The Moonies came to Sonoma County in the fall of 1977. New Education Development Systems Inc. of Berkeley, an affiliate of the Unification Church, bought Camp Maacama, the former Camp Fire summer camp on Highway 128 and Maacama Creek east of Alexander Valley.

The new training center was made to order. There was only one entrance, across a narrow footbridge, and it had a permanent permit to operate as a camp. By the end of 1978, camp director Ross estimated that more than 10,000 young people had attended weekend seminars there. He did not say how many had actually joined Moon’s church.

... After the People’s Temple tragedy at Jonestown in November of 1978, the Moonies’ profile became ever lower. [Camp K, for Camp Korea, was later renamed Maacama Hill.]

The Boonville ranch became a farm. Most of the land is now leased for cattle grazing. A few followers of Moon still raise chinchillas [for fur] there.

[Hak Ja Han owned, or had a close connection to, a luxury clothes store, Christina Bahn Incorporated, in New York selling dresses, coats, skirts, hats, stoles, muffs all made of fur. Wholesale furrier 401 5th Ave. Registered Agent: Haengmi Skulstad – Nicholas Skulstad, see below, may be her son.] 

In Napa County, where the Moonies now owned the 600-plus-acre site that had been Aetna Springs in Pope Valley, the county denied them permits to expand.

In ’80 and ’81, parents still came occasionally to fetch their sons and daughters. One Canadian boy leaned over the fence to talk to a friend and pleaded with him to leave the Moonies. “Moonies?” he said, turning to the camp residents behind him. “Are you the Moonies?” They acknowledged that they were connected. He climbed over the fence and rejoined his friend. On another occasion, in what would be the last news story of the activities of the Moonies here, a family came from County Donegal in Ireland to reclaim their daughter, Mary Canning a Dublin school teacher, who had joined the Moonies while on a visit to the United States.

They had a confrontation at the bridge with church members carrying crowbars and broomsticks. They retreated. Their efforts to see their daughter were thwarted. She, in fact, was returned to Dublin, to stay with a Moonie couple who lived there, before her family left Sonoma County. [She was soon “deprogrammed”.]

So you see, when my friend called about the young Czech man who had gone “to a camp in Sonoma County,” it brought back some vivid memories. Pleased to report, he returned to his relatives in Oakland at the end of the week, called it all an interesting experience and flew home to Czechoslovakia.

Not like the old days. Thank heavens.

____________________________________________

Christina Bahn in New York sold dresses, coats, skirts, hats, stoles, muffs all made of fur. Hak Ja Han connection.

____________________________________________

UC leaders stole passports from guests at California workshops.

I recently had one of my neighbors reveal to me that he was Roger, the infamous troll … He also revealed that he had stolen my passport and ID from my luggage under direction from Noah Ross at Camp K / Maacama Hill in [Northern California – the Oakland family]. This among other things, resulted in my deciding to stay in the Creative Community Project for a while. Well… 25 years or more to be exact. He also told me that Noah, Jennifer and Nicolas routinely got him and others to do the same to all of the foreign workshop guests at Camp K. This wasn’t provided in the manner of a tearful confession but rather like a boast in order to have a dig at my expense. …

Frank Frivilous

____________________________________________

Hyung Jin Moon follower, Nicholas Skulstad, accused of ramming car off the road in Ossining and threatening police

A Westchester man – accused of ramming an MTA car off the road and having a kill list – appeared in White Plains Federal Court Thursday.

The federal government accused 33-year-old Nicholas Skulstad, of Dobbs Ferry, of ramming the MTA car off the road in Ossining on April 5.

He then allegedly jumped out of his car and shattered the window, before threatening several Ossining police officers, according to court documents.

Skulstad’s aunt told News 12 he follows Hyung Jin Moon – a self-proclaimed messiah, who leads a pro-Trump, pro-gun religious cult.

Read more: 
https://longisland.news12.com/dobbs-ferry-man-accused-of-ramming-mta-car-off-road-having-kill-list

____________________________________________

I was asked to search for a missing Norwegian girl caught up in the Moonies – Petra

Barbara Underwood and the Oakland Moonies

Papasan Choi and Boonville’s Japanese origins

Life Among the Moonies [in Oakland] by Deanna Durham

Mitchell was lucky – he got away from the Unification Church

Testimony of Ingo Michehl – assault by Japanese leader caused lung collapse

Sun Myung Moon invested nearly $3 million in a cruel chinchilla farm at Boonville

Resources for Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships

Frank Frivilous (an alias of a former member originally from Canada, now resident in the US.) : “I recently had one of my neighbors reveal to me that he was Roger ... He also revealed that he had stolen my [Canadian] passport and ID from my luggage under direction from Noah Ross at Camp K in [the Bay Area]. This among other things, resulted in my deciding to stay in the creative community for a while. Well........ 25 years or more to be exact. He also told me that Noah, Jennifer and Nicolas routinely got him and others to do the same to all of the foreign workshop guests at Camp K. This wasn’t provided in the manner of a tearful confession but rather like a boast in order to have a dig at my expense. I’ve decided to take it as a confession and forgive with confidence that nothing we do can be hidden and kept secret for very long. It all eventually comes out in the wash one way or another. Call it Karma if you like but the point is you have to maintain your self respect if nothing else and you won’t be doing anybody any favors sitting on the information for the next 25 or 30 years. ...”

http://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/120984342467/this-is-important

________________________________________________

Camp K, aka Maacama Hill, Unification Church recruitment camp

Crazy for God: The nightmare of cult life by Christopher Edwards

▲ Papasan Choi with followers in San Francisco on January 1, 1969

Michael L. Mickler’s research is the best source on the UC in the Bay Area: A History Of The Unification Church In America, 1959-74 – Emergence of a National Movement

Although Mr. Papasan Choi’s Re-Education Foundation was the dominant presence of the Unification Church in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and beginning years of the 1970s, his Re-Education Foundation (later the International Re-Education Foundation) was only one of three regional developments of the Unification Church in America. …

Again, if the anti-Communist movement served to bring Mr. Kim closer to Miss Kim’s group, it further alienated him from Mr. Choi, for whom the conflictual elements of an anti-Communist crusade simply were not appropriate. For Mr. Choi, Communism and Capitalism were both wrong, if not irrelevant. What the world needed was an international ideal city built on conscientious common sense.

On April 25, 1971, four of these couples met at Edwin Ang’s place where they “discussed the San Francisco situation in case that Mr. Choi and his wife intend to do their work independently from HQ. Seoul, Korea. . . .” 267 This suspicion was more serious than all of the charges Mr. Kim’s group had leveled at Miss Kim. Rather than his methods, Mr. Choi’s loyalty was being questioned. …

At the same time, there had been significant developments during the period. Most important were the moves beyond evangelistic witness into economic, cultural, and political activities. This full scale advance continued, though in markedly different fashion following Rev. Moon’s third world tour. That tour, begun in late November, 1971, not only inaugurated a unified American movement but also radically restructured priorities. As one of Mr. Choi’s Re-Education members wrote, “I sensed some heavy changes were coming.”

Chapter 5 https://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/Huca/Huca-05.htm

______________________________________

Onni Durst had had a long and close relationship with Sang-Ik Choi / Papasan Choi.

The UC of San Francisco and Boonville’s Japanese origins

My email to Camp Director: Hatching new ideas for the chicken coop/garden expo! ...

---

Camp Director email to Me: Sow it begins. [with an attached picture of seedlings in soil trays]

---