Nya Wermlands Tidningen
Steffan E. Ander,
Chefredaktör och ansvarlig utgivare
Box 28
651 02 KARLSTAD
OFFICIAL COMPLAINT
21 June 2006
A1. This letter letter follows receipt of a copy of the Nya Wermlands Tidningen newspaper (10 June 2006) sent to me by your reporter, Gustav Sjöholm, 10 days after its publication which I have had translated.
A2. The article written by your reporter was a hate-filled, libellous and defamatory account full of lies and misrepresentations. This letter is therefore a demand that you publish an apology and a retraction before this matter is taken to higher authorities and legal action is taken to ensure that I receive adequate compensation for the harm you have done to me. Copies of this letter, along with the whole case material, are being sent to these authorities and to interested legal, journalistic and professional parties in the USA and UK.
A3. I have no problem with people holding contrary views to mine, or even holding those contrary views passionately provided they do it in a civilized manner and observe certain codes and standards of decency common to all. We live in a pluralistic society where minorities are protected and where people with contrary views are allowed to live their lives in peace. Sadly, we also live in a society where those with dishonest and unscrupulous intent are also, at times, tolerated whilst their lies are believed.
A4. I am happy to openly discuss my views with journalists who do not have a dishonest agenda (or with anyone for that matter of the same disposition) and I have entertained such in my home over the years, as I have already done so here in Sweden. We had one such reporter from Värmlands Folkblad here who was given the freedom of my home and who behaved decently and reported fairly and neutrally. However, I have every right to refuse those whose intent I discern to be dishonest and malicious. And there are plenty of good journalists here in Sweden. But if there is one thing I cannot abide, it is a liar and a defamer of character. I have no objections to reporters in general, but yours, whom I presume is freelance, is clearly a young opportunist willing to go at any lengths at the expense of truth and people's feelings in order to get a 'scoop'. His methods are dishonest, he reports inaccurately, sets up straw men, twists the meaning of words to make them mean something entirely different to their original intent, does sloppy research work, takes material out of context, unashamedly publishes lies, creates propagandistic photographs deliberately calculated to promote the mood and tenor of his biases and malicious intent, all of which can easily be proved it in a court of law. Instead of sneaking around at night like a prowler, your newspaperman could have sent an honest reporter like the man from VF. In fact I couldn't believe that an old and respected newspaper like WNT could publish such trash. However, this is more than trash - it is defammatory and libelous.
A5. The following is a perfunctory answer to the newspaper article (10 June 2006, pp.1, 4-5), the details and other evidence being left to any court action I may choose to initiate if I am not given satisfaction by your reply and actions.
B1. The Photography
Your journalist could have taken an ordinary full-frontal picture of our house in daylight instead of going deep into the surrounding woods at twilight so that the house, barely visible, was obscured by dark trees and deliberately made to look sinister. We know your reporter could have done so because he drove up close to the house and photographed the banners over our front door. Instead, he deliberately created a 'mood' to match the false atmosphere he conjured up in his article.
B2. Refused Telephone Interview
I did indeed change my mind about a telephone interview and a photographic session, and rightly so, when I received a list of questions from him (which I will be publishing soon) and I could see what his intent was. I have met this kind of man before and I had every right to refuse such a disreputable rogue into my home. And I would unapologetically do the same again.
B3. Isolated
Our home is no more 'isolated' than any other property in rural Värmland. We have neighbours all around us, one within 100 yards of us and visible from our grounds. The whole village of Hillringsberg is little more than 200 yards from us. The property was purchased, as I informed your journalist, because it was of the size we wanted, and at the right price. If we had wanted to be 'isolated' we could have gone to the wilderness of Finnmark, northern Sweden or the Sahara desert. We were examining a property in Norway before we moved here, right in the middle of a small town, but rejected it because it was too expensive. Otherwise it would have served our needs perfectly.
B4. The Local Lutheran Priest & Church and Social Contacts
B4.1. I was appalled at the way your journalist manipulated the local Lutheran minister to give the impression that we are entirely cut off from our local community. He failed to note (because he wasn't bothered to find out as it would have gone against his agenda) that the minister and one of our cooperative members used have had close contacts swimming together with their children, met once at the circus, going to each other's birthday parties (we have the photographs to prove it), and attending kindergarten (Förskolan) together. Furthermore, we attend the local Luthern Church from time to time with visitors, attend summer musical concerts there when we are able to, and used to know, and were on friendly terms with, the former pastor's wife before her husband retired because of illness and they moved to Arvika. Obviously the different adult members of the cooperative pursue different interests like attending local plays and the like and are not, as Sjöholm alleges, forced to give outside interests up.
B4.2. The children of the cooperative are members of, and participate in, the local footballing activities of SvFF (Svenska Fotbollsförbundet) and are, most years, members of the Landslagets Fotbollskola. Three of the children were awarded SvFF Diplomas last year.
B4.3. Members of the local community, who have nothing to do with our beliefs, are coming in and out of the cooperative all the time. It is quite open. It is true that we don't know large numbers of the local community but that is partly because we travel a lot and are involved with other activities, and it is in any case the nature of most tight-knit rural communities, where lots of inter-marrying takes place, to be suspicious of new people, especially foreigners, moving in. We understand that and do not begrudge it. We had the same experience in Norway and doubtless the same is true all over the world. We were good friends with the Norwegian manager of the next door herrgård who visited and ate with us frequently he had nothing to do with our beliefs and was an atheist), and we with him before he moved. Indeed one of our cooperative members designed a website for him and for two other businesses in the village.
B4.4. The local minister, and anyone who is willing to mutually treat us as equals, irrespective of their beliefs or politics, is welcome here any time. It has always been so. Some of our family members and friends are Lutherans.We have friends from many denominations, religions and with no religious beliefs at all. The vast majority of people who come in and out of the cooperative are local people totally disconnected to our beliefs. Out of respect for local sensitivities we have never attempted to evangelise them except when we arrived here in 1997 when we put booklets in hundreds of letter boxes inviting them to attend our meetings if they wanted to, and we published who we were in a local Arvika newspaper offering Bible courses. All of this is documented. We have had, and still have, an open door policy for everyone who sincerely wants to be friends with us or know about our beliefs. Simply because we are not pushy or aggressive means just that we respect the way of living of the people in this country and not for some ridiculous ulterior motive.
B4.5. We frequently welcome parties of former school members in the summer, mostly pensioners, who studied at our premises before it was sold several decades ago. We welcome them, exchange photographs and other information about former pupils and the school building, as we take a lot of interest in local history, especially our own school building. All this is documented in photographs. As time permits, we are hoping to write up some of our historical discoveries. We knew a local poet who shared his experiences of Värmland and knew another who translates Värmland poetry into English for publication. I personally take a lot of interest in local scenic art and attend exhibitions in Arvika. I have done some landscape photography (photography being one of my interests) and hope to publish some of these one day of the magnificent Glafsfjord.
B4.6. Your journalist has simply decided to dishonestly define us the way he wants to, taken the word of a so-called 'cult deprogrammer' who has never met us, knows nothing about us, and spoken to one young man who was a guest here for a week in 2005, a man she tried to brainwash into accepting her own religion (denials to the contrary) by subjecting him to hours and hours of contionuous video tapes, got our theology completely wrong, and terrorised the man's mother into believing all kinds of false scare stories about us. We never telephoned the mother's son at 4 a.m. in his home country warning him of some 'attack' - this is a complete fabrication. And whilst Crapo may very well have exposed some genuine cults and helped their victims, yet she remains in association with a criminal charged and found guilty of embezzlement and kidnapping whose records can be examined in the US courts. We are in contact with the people who took him to court and won. So with all due respect, she knows nothing about our lifestyle or social contacts, and has her own biases and religious agenda. Ironcally, we agree with most of what Crapo believes about cults and had she actually been here would have seen that we are not the way the slander website has portrayed us from which she has doubtless obtained most of her information. Your prejudiced journalist simply gave her carte blanche in the same way she very unwisely gave carte blanche to the slander website run by a man who remains anonymous and unaccountable. When the young man returned briefly here this summer, before returning home to see the World Cup, he discovered for himself that everything this woman had told her we were was not true, which is hardly surprising.
B4.7. Given this information, it should be obvious to anyone with any sort of intelligence that we are neither trying to be inconspicuous nor trying to isolate ourselves. Obviously, we involve ourselves in those activities which interest us and don't attend those which don't, like ordinary human beings do.
B4.8. Therefore the headline and material claiming that we are isolated is a malicious lie, deliberately inserted to promote the crafted image of a cult based on misinformation, bad research and dishonest intent.
B5. Your Article, Page 1
Almost every single paragraph in Sjöholm's article contains a lie or a distortion in which words are carefully manipulated.
B6. Your article, pages 4-5
B6.1. Throughout this lengthy article, Sjöholm sets out to create an image - a false one created in his own fantasy - of a dangerous Jim Jones-type cult who at any moment might compell its members to do something drastic drink poison and commit suicide. It is pretty obvious that that is his intention from the way he writes. He tries to create a picture of a dangerous cult steered from a sinister looking building in the middle of the Swedish wilderness luring people to its headquarters to get slave labour and doubtless to steal their money too. The fact of the matter is that in 9 years of being in Sweden we have lived a frugal lifestyle, with a tiny income, with 6 permanent adult members, half of whom were old age pensioners (until one died and the other was transferred to a home- both retired pastors) to whom we devoted our time and efforts to take care of (as ther local people all know). They were/are all quite ill, we work together voluntarily to make their life as pleasant as possible. The others serve here without coercision, to serve our ministry abroad.
B6.2. We are little more than an office that answers enquiries, distributes literature, raises money for our orphanages, and invites pastors to come for training, as stated in a letter to Sjöholm. We have actually met far less than 1% of our members. Our congregations govern their own affairs and do nothing more than send an annual report of activities. They pay us no tithes or offerings because they are too poor and we do not expect it of them anway, as is clearly documented on our website They elect their own officers, evangelise in the normal way (outdoor preaching mostly), and actually have very little access to internet. People come and go all the time, they know exactly what we believe from our detailed website, and I have never met anyone who was 'surprised' to find we believed different things to what we have published, or have 'secret rules', because they weren't surprised and there are no secret rules. Discipling and residency is by consent, not compulsion. Sjöholm, however, has bought into the misinformation Crapo (herself seemingly influenced by the unaccountable and libelous slander site on the internet), and simply chosen to believe what he wants to.
B6.2. If our little office were to fold up, I doubt most would even notice. They would probably miss our weekly sermons but that is about all. Members and friends would fellowship online as they do in this Group. We are not some centrifugal hub on which all our members are totally dependent with which can 'manipulate' or 'control'. Indeed, our policy is the very opposite of what Sjöholm would like people to believe: we encourage all our groups to be self-sufficient and independent.
B7. "Views as destructive and dangerous"
B7.1. In view of what I have written on brainwashing and conditioning above, a heading in bold face such as this is downright conditioning. There is no balance in the article anywhere. There are no interviews with any of our thousands of ordinary members or pastors. Nowwhere. Instead, the only people who are interviewed are one or two untested and uninvestigated critics, an anonymously produced and unaccountable website, some local people who have nothing bad to say of us (because we have good relations with our community) except a Lutheran Pastor who, according to Sjöholm's (clearly demonstrated inaccurate) reporting implies she has no contact with us, when in fact she knows one of our cooperative members very well and has visited us, and we her.
B7.2. We can present testimonies from dozens of members and non-members alike who actually know us and have stayed with us and can say just what we are like. And I myself have numerous character witnesses from professional people, who have known me intimately over many years, who have no connection with my religious beliefs and who in many cases have no religious beliefs at all, who will vouch for my own character. They are all published on-line and Sjöholm was directed to them, but clearly ignored them.
B7.3. Using Crapo as an authority, someone who does not know us, who has got our theology completely wrong (no doubt because of the 'research' done for her on an anonymous slander site, which we have extensively critiqued), has not made a cross-sectional study of our people (her reasons are another matter and the subject of another investigation) Sjöholm makes many ad hominem accusations through suggestion (read 'conditioning'). If either he or Crapo had wanted to test their theories, they could have joined our online discussion groups openly (and not dishonestly, either they or their 'informants' lying in order to gain admission, as we know they did), and openly asked questions of anyone on the groups. There they would have discovered (and know it, actually, Sjöholm never reported it) that people are free to expore any way they want and to criticise me. There are numerous posts criticising my beliefs by non-members and members alike.
B8.1. "Change of Personality"
So-called 'cult deprogrammers', who make a great deal of money out of their profession in some cases, as I have unapologetically alleged, themselves display cult-like tendencies, brainwashing and conditioning. In fact, it has been conclusively proved in courts of law in the USA and various watchbodies are strongly advising that 'cult deprogrammers' be closely monitored alongside the cults they seek to expose. I supplied this information to Sjöholm who was clearly not interested in the truth and only made passing reference to 'my' allegations, ignoring the public watchdogs themselves. Indeed, he nowhere recognised or so much as hinted that the public was very concerned about the 'deprogrammers' and simply reported that I had stated my disbelief in their impartiality.
B8.2. Sjöholm cites only two cases in his entire article and then, using his biased criteria, conditions Migrationsverket to think along his lines as well. He fails to note - because he is not interested - that Migrationsverket has already accepted the basis on which we recruit assistants from abroad as a result of negotiations with them in the past. All of this is documented. He also failed to note that we insist that visitors to our co-operative can finance a return air ticket and maintain savings to that they can resume their career or education in their home country should they wish to return. Indeed, as he would testify, a recent convert, who is not an official member, whom Sjöholm reports anonymously in his article, was told by us that he should leave all his savings back home in case he wanted to travel back and forth or permanently return home. This he can verify. But Sjöholm is not interested in anything that would make his "destructive, dangerous and isolated" cult theory look absurd, as indeed it is. And if he had done his research properly on our website, he would have read that anyone wanting to settle at the cooperative (remember, no new people have settled in the whole of our 9 years in Sweden) are given a considerable numbers of rights, including the right, should they leave, to take the equivalent of all they brought with them materially and financially.
B8.3. As for a "change of personality", as I have stated elsewhere, people change all the time. The vast majority of people report huge positive changes in their lives who come here. A handfull of others, who have personality problems associated with drug abuse, alcoholism, and psychological problems stemming from abusive and unhappy homes, come and go. One of our ministers works exclusively on the streets of Oslo helping drug addicts, works closely with the local municipality ot kommun and rehabilitation organisations, and occasionally brings clients here for weekends to get out of the city atmosphere with all its drug temptations. Of course, Sjöholm is not interested in this. If there are psychiatric visitors, we involve the parents if they are alive and interested (we've had three in total), who are usually not members, as much as we can. Last year we had a woman from the Balkans visit us for 2-3 months with psychiatric problems with whom we worked with the full cooperation of her parents, the father a renowned poet in his home country - neither parent belong to our church. B8.4. When it was clear that she would be best served by professional counsellors, we sent her back to her parents, who have written positive and affirmative testimonies of us. But of course such material would have spoiled Sjöholm's imaginary world of a "dangerous, destructive sect". In this particular case, there was no personality change at all.
B9. "Undermining Freewill"
B9.1. In another example of Sjöholm brainwashing and conditioning, he cites Crapo again, arguing from his bogus 'isolationist' theory, who says: "Many groups exist without being noticed. What people do not know is that they undermine people's free will". I am sure many do just that. But as Sjöholm very well knows - or would have known if he bothered to do an honest day's work and do his resaerch work properly - is that people know who we are, visit us, and have received literature from us telling them of our beliefs.. Until she moved to Arvika, a Pentcostal lady (who never joined us) from the nearby village, used to meet with us.
B9.2. I am not sure what Sjöholm is trying to accuse us of here, but if it is that we deny people free will, this is a total lie and fabrication. We are the total opposite. He has not one iota of proof that anyone is ever denied free will. If, on the other hand, he means that people coming to the cooperative cannot drink alcohol or play violent computer games are somehow denied their 'free will', then it should be pointed out that visitors know the rules before they come. People are free to say 'no' if they don't like the rules and don't want to come or want to leave. That is free-will.
B9.3. So once again, Sjöholm is trying to condition the readers' minds with devious techniques by making indirect implications. Clearly he knows something about human psychology and how to manipulate an audience. At any rate, it is dishonest and bad journalism.
B10. Slavery
B10.1. Sjöholm knows very well that we do not believe in slavery though he is determined to flog a dead horse for all its worth without bothering to find out what we mean by such terms. He likes to spice up his fatastic pot of alleged cultic ingredients with anything 'spicy' that he can find. He seems to have no idea that 'slavery' in New Testament culture refers to indentured service, and probably doesn't even know what that expression means. Indentureship is a mutually agreed contract sealed by two or more parties. When you hire someone to do a job, that is 'indentured service', or 'slavery' as some Bibles translate it. That is what we believe in. The Gospel we teach is one of voluntary service by mutual arrangement. In fact, we are a lot more generous than your average contractor. If someone wants to break their contract and leave our fellowship, we let them go and send them with our blessings. There are no penalties.
B10.2. Slavery and a few other topics are just Sjöholms straw men. He is very subtle and devious in the way he attempts to character-assassinate. He has broken the law in his article and knows it.
B11. The Beliefs of Other Minorities
B.11.1. People believe in different things for different reasons. Sjöholm is quick to point out our beliefs about the occult, tarot cards, violent TV games, Hinduism, Islam and the sexual practices of people we don't agree with. What he doesn't tell you - because it would destroy his carefully crafted false image of us - is that we believe that people should be free to practice their own religions and sexual lifestyles any way they want to so long as they do not try to coerce me into them. What Sjöholm doesn't tell you is that I have friends who are Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, occultists, new agers, homosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians, and many, many others. They all know what I believe in, I know what they believe in, we disagree with each other, and interact in those spheres of life that interest us both, respecting one another, agreeing to disagree. We do not hate or persecute each other even though there are for sure persons with similar beliefs who are abusive and hate-filled. I am sure, however, that Sjöholm would like his readers to believe that we totally shun these people or would wish to harm them. And I am quite sure that he would not like his readers to know that one of our leaders was a celibate gay. The fact is, we embrace nearly all people, meet them where they are, share our beliefs, and let them decide what they want to believe and go where they want to.
B12. Not Interested
B12.1. At the conclusion of his article, Sjöholm reports that I told him that the leading deprogramming group, with which Crapo is affiliated, "has been judged for insurance fraud, kidnapping and breach of human rights". He carefully omits "by the US courts" to give the false impression that this is just my own personal allegation. This man is a very dishonest reporter indeed. I gave him extensive references to all the facts (and they are facts, and not mere allegations - many of these people are genuinely dangerous criminals known to have imprisoned and raped the 'cult victims' they were 'deprogramming') about the 'deprogrammers'. However, for obvious reasons, he did not want his readers to make their own investigations, let alone summarise the truth about the deprogrammers. He has a single agenda - to make us look like a "destructive, dangerous, and isolated" cult.
B12.2. No, indeed, I am not interested in criminals who are guilty of hate-crimes, abuse and kidnapping. I have all the information. It's all on the net and in court records of the USA. I am in contact with lawyers who have defended religious minorities who have successfully prosecuted the 'deprogrammers'. The facts are available for everyone who is honest enough to get the whole story and expose the lies. You would be shocked at the personality profiles of some of them.
C. Summary
C1. Sweden is a pluralistic society. It tolerates diverse lifestyles, freedom of thought, and its laws protect minorities. We respect that and honour it. We believe in sharing our opinions and criticising those we don't accept, which is the basis of true democracy. When people refuse to allow criticism, you have the basis of a dictatorship. However, criticism must be moderated by certain standards of behaviour. And the conduct of Sjöholm is outrageous and scandalous. His reporting belongs to the type of gutter press that civilised countries refuse to have anything to do with.
C2. And whilst we do indeed believe in a world to come that is very different from the world we live in, we happily accommodate ourselves to this one, making sure we do not go out of our way to disturb people who do not want to be disturbed, and interacting with all those who want to friendship us. One of the reasons we evangelise in the West using the internet is because it allows people to come and go as they please - they find us, rather than the other way round. And whilst Sjöholm likes to find some sinister implication with this (along with everything else we do in order to make his 'story' as spicey and alarmist as possible), the facts remain. In fact, we warm people who might find their life style or beliefs criticised not to read any further and require them to take personal responsibility for their choices. We believe in 'live and let live', and whilst we certainly believe God (with a capital 'G') will create the world in the way He wants it in the future, it certainly should not be a problem for those who do not believe in Him to simply let peacefully-minded minorities live the way they all want to. They can call it religious fiction if they want to, it really doesn't matter. At least it is honest, unlike Sjöholm's reporting.
C3. I demand redress and satisfaction before I take this further. I wish to state for the record that I will not tolerate this kind of harrassment and as a free citizen I mean to defend my rights along with those who share my views against the likes of Sjöholm and the current NWT editorial staff. I am hoping that this was a careless and thoughtless error on the part of NWT which it will correct and save its reputation.
C4. This letter is to give your newspaper the opportunity to discipline your employee and editor, retract and publish an apology prior to further action being taken. In the meantime I have sent a dossier with full information to the Pressombudsman.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher C. Warren, M.A.(Oxon)