there was growing nationwide concern about the emergence of cults. With its strange practices, and the intense focus on Spriggs as its leader, the Vine Community Church became a target. Members of other Christian groups were advised to avoid Spriggs and the Vine followers, and not to eat in any of the Yellow Deli restaurants.
Spriggs, who was increasingly disillusioned with the churches anyway, took this criticism very badly and responded by calling all churches the ‘whores of Babylon’. He cut any remaining ties with these institutions, and the Vine Community Church became more and more inward-looking. Spriggs’s beliefs were also becoming more extreme. He claimed that mainstream Christianity appeared to have renounced religion itself, and that the world outside of his own church was dark and evil. His followers must be protected from this outside world and therefore contact with families and friends who did not share the firm beliefs of the church was to be discontinued, or at the very least limited. These people were harmful and viewed as enemies.
THE NORTHEAST KINGDOM COMMUNITY CHURCH, ISLAND POND
With the Chattanooga society becoming increasingly suspicious and uneasy about the activities of the Vine Community Church, Spriggs decided it was time to leave. He had been offered a position as a pastor in northern Vermont, which he did not take, but which encouraged him to look to Vermont for the next stage of his mission. He settled in Island Pond, and his followers from Chattanooga began to join him in stages. The group adopted the new name, ‘The Northeast Kingdom Community Church’.
As they had done in Tennessee, Spriggs and his followers began setting up businesses in this new location. These were again used as both money-raising enterprises as well as for evangelical purposes.
But just as the group had met with disapproval and mistrust in Chattanooga, so the residents of Island Pond began to feel the same. Not only had a couple of hundred new people arrived in their small town, capable of upsetting the balance of the quiet and closely-knit community, but many religious leaders had been monitoring the practices of Elbert Eugene Spriggs, and word had spread that his church was unconventional and had been very unpopular in Chattanooga.
DISCIPLINE
One of the most controversial practices employed by Spriggs and The Northeast Kingdom Community Church was their harsh discipline of children. Spriggs believed that it was God’s will for disobedient children to be physically punished and he neither made excuses for it, nor tried to hide it from the distressed residents of Island Pond. He told his followers that when disciplining a child, it was necessary to ‘bend his neck and bruise his ribs while he is young’.
The fundamental belief of the Twelve Tribes is in the return of ‘Yahshua’, the Messiah. Everything they practise is done in preparation for his coming and this is the reason they feel they must keep their children so pure and wholesome. Yahshua must have a following (The Body or The Bride) of perfect individuals, therefore children must be disciplined severely in order to keep them righteous. Children are to be punished the first time they commit sin or are disobedient to an adult. Their punishment is to be beaten with a wooden rod, intended to cleanse the conscience. Following their beating, the child is expected to thank whoever administered it, normally a parent, for correcting them, and certainly not to cry. The only rule which governs this punishment is that it be conducted out of love, and with self-control.
Children are not allowed to play with toys or invent their own games. They cannot watch television, or eat sweets. They are however, permitted to play with building blocks and practise with sewing kits. They are educated at home.
In spite of threats of violence made against them by the Island Pond locals, and even intervention by the State who raised issues regarding their treatment of children, Spriggs’s church did settle successfully in the area, and went about their primary objective of serving God peacefully. They believed themselves to be the restoration of the Messianic Jewish New Testament Community of the first century, God’s people on earth. They instituted a standardized dress code of loose-fitting clothes, and head-scarves for the women, and consequently became quite conspicuous and recognisable as a group. Spriggs decreed that, on entry into the community, all members had to give up their material possessions. He claimed that this was in pursuit of harmony – they had to live together equally, sharing everything they owned, as the Christian disciples had done before them.
By the early 1980s therefore, the now quite affluent Spriggs had acquired a lot of property and began to expand into New England, forming communities in Boston and Nova
Scotia, amongst other places. In keeping with the belief that they were the restoration of God’s people, they re-named the group ‘The Twelve Tribes’, representing Abraham and the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
CHILD ABUSE?
With the growing size and success of the group, knowledge of its treatment of children also became quite widespread and when stories of child abuse hit the headlines, the American public turned decidedly against the group. In 1983, Spriggs’s ‘deputy’, Eddie Wiseman, was charged with assault on a 13-year-old girl. He had reportedly whipped the girl for seven whole hours as a punishment for disobedience. Before the case could come to trial though, the girl’s father dropped all charges, retracted his first statement and refused to testify if brought to court.
In light of continued reports of suspected abuse, the State authorities raided the communities in 1984 and took more than 100 children away from the church. However, having acted illegally in doing so, the State was forced to return every child to their family within 24 hours. The warrant obtained for the raid on the group was declared ‘grossly unconstitutional’ by the judge in the case, and he was provided with no evidence to support the allegations of child abuse. It appeared that the group had just been targeted by their enemies, and that none of the charges were true. Spriggs saw the outcome as a triumph. But it neither satisfied nor appeased those who were still convinced that something very sinister was going on behind the closed doors of the Twelve Tribes.
Accusations of child abuse are registered frequently against the group, and include allegations of both beatings and paedophilia. Yet, the charges are always dropped before the cases come to court. Ex-members of the group vehemently denounce the practices of Spriggs and claim that the abuse within the community is widespread.
NEGLECT
Charges of abuse by neglect are also regularly reported. One baby, suffering from spinal meningitis, was diagnosed by the group’s improvised health facility as having an ear infection. The infant died as a result of insufficient treatment. Several babies are known to have died at the community, one of which was aged eight months but weighed a mere 13kg, and are buried in unmarked graves. Most of the babies in these graves were stillborn – an apparently common occurrence at the Twelve Tribes.
Authorities also investigated the case of one young mother who endured labour for five days before it was eventually decided that she should be taken to hospital. By the time she reached the hospital, the baby had died inside her. No charges were pressed.
Serious childhood illnesses such as whooping cough and hepatitis have also gone undetected and therefore untreated, leading to death. One couple who did receive a prison term for causing the death of their son were Michael Ginhoux and Dagmar Zoller, whose 19-month-old son died of malnutrition and a curable heart disorder.
Zeb Wiseman, the son of Eddie Wiseman, eventually left the group and spoke out about
the death of his mother within the Twelve Tribes. She had been suffering from uterine cancer but was denied medical care, and had died a drawn-out and painful death. The young Zeb was beaten, locked up, and told that his mother had died because she was a sinner, and because she had once voiced her disapproval of the apostle Spriggs.
Also accused of practising child labour, Spriggs does confirm that children are asked to assist their parents in the factories and the farms from a young age, yet he claims that the group is not in violation of any child labour laws. The group formerly supplied furniture to Robert Redford’s Sundance mail order catalogue, but this range has since been cancelled. Estee Lauder also pulled a huge contract from them when they discovered that children were being used to help make their products.
No amount of negative media attention has yet brought down the Twelve Tribes or Eugene Elbert Spriggs, and the group continues to grow. There are currently more than 25 communities across the world, mainly in the US, but also in England, France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and Canada. Across these nine countries there are an approximate 2,500 members – it is estimated that half of this number are children under 15 years old.
