The Body is back.
Accused molester John Geoghan and his Catholic Church scandal may be the biggest scoop in recent Boston news. But another longtime religious controversy reemerged from the shadows last week when a female member of Attleboro sect, The Body, was brought to court because the state can’t find her child.
That’s right, the nearly 25-year-old Attleboro Bible-study cult known simply as The Body has returned to haunt the thoughts of native Bay Staters who just want a little peace and quiet. Of course, it’s too late now; it’s been too late ever since Feb. 7, 2000, when The Body first hit the newswires with the horrific story of two dead babies and a couple of disenchanted members ready to squeal why.
The babies, both boys, had enough bad luck to be born into an Attleboro duplex brimming with a breed of firebrand crazies who disavowed medicine, technology and, well, the rest of the evil world. It was reported that one baby died stillborn during a complicated pregnancy, and the other only after weeks without food. Insiders claimed both were buried in the woodlands of Baxter State Park, Maine.
Ever since that little revealing incident, a number of watchdog groups (along with the police) have kept a steady eye on the zealots in Attleboro.
It seems Roland Robidoux, dead Samuel’s grandfather, began the cult after a break from the Worldwide Church of God, and after parting ways with his former pastor partner, Brian Weeks, who heads the Jericho Christian Fellowship in Middleboro.
Robidoux became more antisocial with age. He hung his number in the rafters and left the game for good, running to Attleboro with a number of his devoted followers. Together, they scorned society and technology alike, spat on medicine and worshipped the words of the Old Testament. “They really believe God is in charge,” Brian Weeks told The Boston Globe, “and that God is speaking to them.”
To raise money, members of the community did odd masonry jobs in Attleboro, kept a chimney-sweeping business and, of course, were skilled carpenters. No small task considering sect members were prohibited from wearing eyeglasses (despite, as one sharp cookie from the Sun-Chronicle noted, “the near-sightedness of some of its members”).
Indeed, mind control within The Body is a hot topic. Robert Thornburg, former Marsh Chapel dean, once said, “It appears they are a group that does not allow the individual to make distinctive moral personal decisions apart from the leader.” Like Koresh for the Branch Davidians, Robidoux has led his believers further into seclusion.
This isolation remains so complete that The Body’s members don’t move to recruit new members. Instead, they sit back in their sparse rooms and languish over the ideals spread by the Old Testament, all the while dreaming of the Promised Land, of Zion, of God’s Great Kingdom. Of Maine.
I wouldn’t lie to you. The Body believes Maine is THE holy land. It has the significance to these people that Jerusalem holds to other, more traditional religions.
Maine, I agree, is a beautiful land. See Mt. Katahdin or the Allagash River and you’ll understand why. In fact, so long as I’m never again threatened with imprisonment by state troopers outside Bailey’s Campground Resort in Scarborough, I’d consider spending a great deal more time there. Hey, I didn’t mean to spill a pint of bourbon into the hot tubs during family hour. It just happened.
Besides, it’s about time I can get to a holy land via Amtrak.
I really can’t defend The Body beyond that. Offshoots of traditional, mainstream society can always be interesting and informative, and it is the right of every man and woman to privately recognize whatever gods they deem appropriate, but The Body just doesn’t sound like much fun.
I would rather a brand of Koresh-inspired pyrotechnical privacy battles than all the tired, old abuse allegations that bring The Body to the headlines. Koresh had sex appeal; the ladies loved him and the men wished they had his cojones. The devilish Davidians had guns and ammunition, and they had Texas.
The Body doesn’t have any guns. After all, they’ve denounced the “seven systems” of modern society: education, government, banking, religion, medicine, science and entertainment. I’m not the biggest fan of government or religion, and I can’t say I feel happy in hospitals. But education and entertainment, if not science, should be kept around to give us something to think about. Or to, at the very least, keep us out of the bars on Wednesday mornings.
My advice to The Body is this: start recruiting. Get a fancy upgrade, contact an advertising firm, start networking.
Soon Rebecca Corneau — mother of one of the dead babies – will be ordered to hand over her second child to authorities. Judges have done this before. Fourteen children have been seized from Body-member parents; Corneau is just the latest. With stats like that, there won’t be another generation of upstart misanthropes for The Body to feed off unless they get some fresh blood in the pan.
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