A Dangerous preacher and cult allegations surround a church in Hamilton
Pastor Dale Morgan
A Dangerous preacher and cult allegations surround a church in Hamilton*
There's a raging debate in Hamilton, Ontario about just what the
Dominion Christian Centre is. But wide agreement on what it's not.
Chad Derrick, Associate Producer, W-FIVE
Updated: Sat. Oct. 29 2006 7:10 PM ET
TORONTO —
CANADA - There's a raging debate in Hamilton, Ontario about just what
the Dominion Christian Centre is. But wide agreement on what it's not.
The D.C.C., as it's known, is no ordinary church. No hymns here. Every
Sunday service begins with a one-hour rock concert - complete with power
vocals, driving guitars and pounding bass.
The man on the drums is the pastor. Peter Rigo came to Hamilton, he
says, "on a mission from God."
"When He said to come, He said - drop a plumb line and establish a
people that know me and that live for me," Rigo told W-FIVE.
The pastor's voice drips with disdain and sarcasm when he talks about
other churches and how they spend most of their time competing for
parishioners.
"And then we compete with the world -our God is better than yours. Our
girls give better b-jobs, that's right, we get laid twice as quick in
Christian school. Our God's better than your God."
Sexual references aside, Rigo's version of Christianity could be seen as
an extreme version of evangelical Christianity.
"My desire is to see every man and woman on earth come to know Jesus
Christ as their lord and personal savior."
Rigo says 'My desire is to see every man and woman on earth come to know
Jesus Christ as their lord and personal savior.'
What sets him apart is the extent of Rigo's zeal for his version of the
truth. W-FIVE challenged Rigo with the notion that, "some people might
like nothing more than to turn the whole world into an Islamic state."
Rigos answer: "Yeah. And it's going to be a war right down to the end."
And that's how it is at the D.C.C. Black and white. For Rigo's
followers, it's also pretty much a full time job. Spending every spare
hour at the church--living the word of God. Unlike those 'other places.'
In his sermon at the D.C.C., Pastor Rigo says, "For the most part,
Church is just a nice outhouse. You simply go once a week, move your
conscience bowels, get a little relief and go back out and eat like a
pig for another seven days. That's why churches mainly stink."
Rigo went to Bible College but never graduated. He was affiliated with
the Open Bible Faith Fellowship, a network of evangelical churches
across North America, but they recently kicked him out.
Rigo tells W-FIVE, "I don't accept what we've called Christianity to
date. A lot of teaching goes on in the name of God. Very little living.
So the standard that I read in a relationship of God and of the Word is
- if you love me, you'll obey me. Not, if you love me, you'll learn
about me."
Lucie and Renato Brun del Re have learned a lot about Peter Rigo's
concept of obedience. They've been left with a huge hole in their lives
- a hole left by their daughter Mirella.
Like many young people from religious families - Mirella was on a
spiritual quest, and hungry for answers. That quest ended in Hamilton.
She told her parents that she'd finally found what she was looking for.
Lucie explains, "After going through different churches, she came to me
and said: 'Mama, I did find the church,' the right one, the true church,
she called it."
At the Dominion Christian Centre, Mirella found truth and a place in the
band as the violinist. What her family was finding was a very different
Mirella.
Lucie recalls a conversation with her daughter, after she'd joined the
D.C.C.
"`God is talking to me and is telling me that we are all going to be
moving to Hamilton.' And I said, what do you mean, what are you talking
about?"
Lucie started to worry.
"And you could see the transformation on her face, like someone was
talking for her. So that's when I started to worry that something was
wrong - the way she was thinking, analyzing, talking. And she became
more distant."
The family was concerned about what was happening to Mirella. Giancarlo,
Mirella's brother and also her best friend, decided to check out the
D.C.C. for himself. He didn't like what he found one bit.
"I was just sitting there. And then the pastor starts singling me out in
front of the whole church." Giancarlo continues, "And asking me if I'm
saved and if I have Jesus in my life. And it was kind of intimidating
because he's singling me out in front of everyone else. And it got to
the point where he got closer and closer with his microphone in front of
everyone and then he ended up kicking me out."
Publicly humiliated, Giancarlo walked out - expecting his sister to
follow. She didn't.
Giancarlo says, "She waited another two hours until the service was done
to come out, which struck me as odd. And so we're driving home, and I'm
like Meece - we stick together on everything. Why didn't you come out?
And she was like - the pastor was right."
By now Mirella was spending every spare minute at the D.C.C. - helping
out in the kitchen, anywhere she was needed. Anywhere except with her
family.
"I couldn't believe what was happening. It was like in a movie. You
can't even try to make some sense out of it. It was so difficult," said
her mother.
And as time went by, Lucie noticed that Mirella's indifference towards
her family was turning into something darker.
"The hate she developed towards the siblings, the family - the
arrogance, the hate towards us. Like we didn't mean anything any more.
She was in another world," she said.
Her father, Renato, was starting to believe his daughter was being
brainwashed. "She was fed a lot of information. And when you tend to go
to church every day, or close to every day, there's a lot of time when
you get indoctrinated."
Cole and Nettie Brown
Cole Brown say 'There was one way, or it was the highway. It was, do it
like this - or there's the door.'
Mirella's parents began to wonder if their daughter's thoughts were
still her own. And when the Brun del Res began to ask questions, they
found they weren't alone with those concerns. They met Cole Brown and
his wife, Nettie - both former members. When he attended the D.C.C.,
Cole was Peter Rigo's right hand man.
At first, Cole found the D.C.C. to be a good and caring place. He
remembers when things began to change, starting with Pastor Rigo himself.
"There's the old saying, power corrupts. And the more people who come,
the more power you have," Cole told W-FIVE. "There was one way, or it
was the highway. It was, do it like this - or there's the door."
Cole remembers that as Rigo began to exercise more and more control over
the lives of his congregation, the Pastor's own behavior was becoming
increasingly bizarre.
"I've seen him pick up chairs in the sanctuary and whip them across the
room in a rage, an angry rage, trying to stop someone from doing a
certain thing."
When Cole told Peter Rigo that he'd had enough and was leaving the
church, Cole told W-FIVE that Rigo tried to separate wife from husband.
"He went to my wife and he told her that I'm leading her astray. I'm
going to have an affair on her. He would tell her 'you better watch if
your husband leaves the church, you're going to have to leave your
husband.'"
It didn't work. The couple left the church together and remained
together. But others were starting to raise alarms about the church and
its Pastor.
When interviewed by W-FIVE, Peter Rigo insisted that there were never
more than a few malcontents.
"This sound is being made by a handful. I can't name you more than five
people in here that have any difficulty with their family. Yes, lots
have come through and decided not to stay - parishioners." Rigo
continued, "There's certainly far more people for us than against us."
Other Parents Speak Out
But that's not what W-FIVE discovered, when an invitation to attend a
town-hall meeting was issued to anyone dissatisfied with the D.C.C. More
than 70 people showed up, most of them devout Christians. And almost all
said their lives had been negatively affected by the D.C.C. and by Peter
Rigo.
Shared and disturbing experiences quickly began to emerge, mainly the
separation of families.
"Over the space of a year, it was little by little by little. Until she
came to a point where she went to my younger children and said: 'I'm
sorry, I won't ever see you again,'" said Peter Spiering, who hasn't
seen his daughter, Sherry, for more than seven months.
Other members had similar stories. "Nathan used to come to the house and
he doesn't anymore. I have to pull his teeth. He refuses to come to
dinners. And that's not the Nathan I knew," said Dave Rozon about his son.
And what does Peter Rigo have to say about all this? Basically, that
it's all God's will.
He told W-FIVE, "The gospel separates families. Jesus said very clearly
in His word: 'I did not come to bring peace and unity, I came to bring
division with a sword. And whoever loves the father or the mother, their
husband or wife, brother or sister more than me is not fit to serve in
my kingdom.'"
Control
Sarah Muller talks about how D.C.C. members relied on the pastor to make
decisions.
Another theme that emerged during our town hall was the complete control
that many say Peter Rigo exercises over his congregation.
At the town-hall meeting, Sarah Muller talked about how D.C.C. members
relied on the pastor to make decisions.
"And it came to a place where you didn't even know how to function
without asking the Pastor - what should I do? Or, what colour should my
hair be? You know, down to stupid things, you needed to ask them about
everything."
From the most serious spiritual decisions to the most mundane details
of life, Rigo said the ex parishioner controls it all. That included his
restrictions on dating.
Kendry Bilston explained, "From day one, the day I walked in there, it
was - girls and boys together is bad. You're not going to end up with
anybody in here, you will not date, you will never be with a boy, it
will never happen."
In W-FIVE's interview with Rigo, he defended his policies.
"When you talk about a standard, the standard is - there is nobody in
here screwing around with each other. There is no couple sneaking off
and doing stuff. It's clean here, and once water's clean, you don't
really want to dirty it."
But what if you want to leave it? Again, another disturbing theme
emerged from W-FIVE's town-hall meeting. According to the D.C.C.'s
ex-members, Peter Rigo intimidated members who tried to leave.
Allen Bilston recalled a conversation he had with Rigo about leaving the
D.C.C.
"If I leave, then some of these other young people might leave with you.
You might as well just tie a stone around your neck. And he said - you
might as well just cut your throat, because the Bible says if you lead
any of these people out of here, you're as good as dead. You're going to
hell."
Joe Ricottone told the town-hall what the pastor said when one
particular member left to help set up another church.
"He went on a tirade and he basically said - who does he think he is?
That man will die within a year of a heart attack. And that was how he
blessed him when he left the church."
Other former members of the D.C.C. spoke up regarding the accusations
they say Rigo had made against people who left or were thinking of
leaving the church.
Sarah Muller described how Rigo affected her relationship to her father.
"It came to a place where I couldn't even be close to my father because
I thought there was something going on there." She said that Rigo told
her, "That my father saw me as a wife and lusted after me in inordinate
affections. Because my father had gone to the church and he left."
Another ex-member of the D.C.C. added, "It's a dangerous place
psychologically. And when you have a so-called man of God threatening
death on people, they're scare tactics and people are living in fear in
that environment."
Peter Rigo tells a different story. He told W-FIVE that he doesn't force
anyone to stay -that he encourages the part-time Christians to leave,
before they corrupt the full time flock.
"I actually saw people try to take them out, right within our own
church. So you can imagine my message started to get stronger and
stronger with - we got to live this, get in or get out. Find the floor,
get a hold of God, or find the door."
A Cult?
An extreme interpretation of Christianity? Perhaps. But add to that the
control, the isolation, the shunning of loved ones. And the people who
attended W-FIVE's town-hall meeting came to one disturbing conclusion -
they believe the D.C.C. is, without question, a cult.
"I think cult is ridiculous," responded Peter Rigo. "I went down Rick
Ross's cult 10 warning signs of how to know that somebody is in a cult,
in a religious cult. And we didn't match any of them."
The Rick Ross Institute is a U.S.-based organization that provides
on-line information about what it considers to be destructive cults and
controversial groups.
But the D.C.C. does match some of the warning signs listed by that
website and by other organizations that inform the public about cults.
Some of the warning signs? The church is everything. And those who don't
belong, even family and old friends, are to be shunned.
Cole Brown believes that determining whether the D.C.C. is a "cult" is
less important than understanding what actually goes on there.
"Spiritually, there's absolutely no accountability. No one to even ask
him how he's doing or there's no one outside - no parents, no friends,
no other pastors, no one. And again that makes for a very unsafe,
unstable place."
Mirella's Story
Mirella Brun del Re told W-FIVE that it's her parents, and all the other
concerned families who are being manipulated by 'the enemy.'
But that's not at all how Mirella Brun del Re sees things. She agreed to
sit down with W-FIVE and give her side of the story for the first time.
Mirella insisted that she's not being used or controlled by anyone. She
told W-FIVE that it's her parents, and all the other concerned families
who are being manipulated by "the enemy."
"Who's the enemy? Satan is the enemy. You have the Devil who's against
everything God is doing," she told W-FIVE.
It was eight o'clock in the morning on the Wednesday before Christmas,
2005. Mirella Brun del Re says she was walking to work in downtown
Hamilton, Ont., when she was approached by a man, asking for directions.
He wasn't alone.
"All of a sudden I realize there's five men that have surrounded me.
They're all wearing black coats. Some of them are wearing toques and I'm
looking around. I'm like - oh my gosh, I think I'm going to be robbed or
raped, or something horrible is going to happen. I had no idea what was
going on. I was just fighting and I was pushed into a van that just
pulled up right beside me," Mirella told W-FIVE.
Mirella claims she was grabbed by a group of men, a black hood thrown
over her head, and shoved into a waiting van.
"And I was just held back in the chair and I looked up and I was
handcuffed."
Mirella claims that she was handcuffed to her own brother, and that she
was driven to a cottage in the country where she was held a virtual
prisoner for nine days.
"I was handcuffed all the time. So, eating, drinking, doing everything -
I was handcuffed basically."
Mirella says that her family subjected her to an intensive deprogramming
regime, showing her videos about cults and reading fromMary Alice
Chrnalogar's book "Twisted Scriptures."
Mary Alice Chrnalogar makes her living as a full time deprogrammer.
Mary Alice Chrnalogar makes her living as a full time deprogrammer.
Mary Alice Chrnalogar makes her living as a full time
deprogrammer--reversing the effects of brainwashing. She's an expert of
Christian cults and wrote a book about them. It was to her that
Mirella's parents had turned for help.
"They had a very good cause (to worry about) Mirella. Anybody that's in
a cult goes through turmoil. You struggle. You struggle terribly. And I
think that any parent should be concerned if they're in a group like
this," Chrnalogar told W-FIVE from her home in Chattanooga.
"I think they're an extremely destructive cult. The kids are struggling
to stay there. They talk about how they might have to leave, but they
don't want to - because they may be condemned or go to hell."
The Brun del Res' worst fears were now confirmed. Their only daughter -
part of a cult. Chrnalogar said she could help but she needed to be face
to face with Mirella.
At the parents' request, Mary Alice Chrnalogar agreed to fly to Canada
to see if she could help - but on the condition that Mirella would be
free to leave if she wanted to.
Lucie Brun del Re admits that it didn't go well.
"So after talking to Mirella for four hours, finally Mirella says - are
you finished now? So Mary Alice says, well we're not keeping you. She
said, oh, you're not? Okay. So, she took her bag and she started walking
out. And I was after her, holding her, and saying - where are you going?
We're not finished. Wait for Papa. And I was in tears because I didn't
want her to leave."
Mirella told W-FIVE that she understands her parents' motivation.
"I understand what they want. They want that old Mirella back. The one
that lived the façade of what religion is and just accepting life as is.
And I don't want that life! I want to live true because now at this
point I've - I've seen behind the curtain. I've seen that there is a
real god and I have to live up to what I've seen." "Because I believe
that and I want to believe that," she added.
Charges laid
Their daughter gone, it seemed that things couldn't get any worse for
the Brun del Res. But they did. They were summoned to the Hamilton
police station where criminal charges were laid, including kidnapping
and forcible confinement.
W-FIVE asked Mirella about how she felt about the charges facing her
parents.
"They could go to jail. Yes."
"That's up to the court to decide whether they should or not," Mirella
continued.
The Brun del Res are devastated. Mirella - strangely matter of fact
about the whole thing.
W-FIVE asked Mirella if she'd be willing to testify against her family.
"I may have to. Yes, I am prepared to do that. Absolutely."
The courts will ultimately decide the guilt of the Brun del Res.
At W-FIVE's town-hall meeting, some of the families indicated they'd
thought about trying to rescue loved ones from the D.C.C.
Randy Fricker actually tried to rescue his son Josh.
Randy Fricker actually tried to rescue his son Josh.
Randy Fricker actually tried to rescue his son Josh.
"I phoned the lady down in Chattanooga who wrote the book, "Twisted
Scriptures", and she said - if you can get him in the car and get him
down here in four or five days, I can deprogram him."
But Randy only made it halfway to Windsor before his son bolted and
ended up back at the D.C.C.
Randy recalled, "He was frantic. He didn't know what to do. He was like
a fish out of water. I said - Josh, you have to trust me on this. I love
you. I want to see you back home. This isn't right what he's doing. But
all he knew was Rigo."
Mary Alice Chrnalogar feels that parents are justified in attempting to
rescue their loved ones.
"Parents are absolutely justified. And if I had a child that got in a
cult, I would not hesitate in going to get my son or daughter and give
them information that maybe the rest of their life, that they could be
free."
Chrnalogar worries that things could get worse at the D.C.C. and so do
the families who attended W-FIVE's town-hall meeting.
Dave Rozon says of his son Nathan, 'Even if I have to fight for him, I
will.'
"I'm not going to lose him," said Dave Rozon of his son Nathan. "Even if
I have to fight for him, I will. And that's the truth and God be my
witness."
And Kelley Wells, another concerned parent, admitted that she's scared
to death of what her instincts are telling her.
"As a mother, you will do anything to try to save your child from
something that extreme because we have a gut instinct that there's
something wrong, and he's trying to push it away from us. We know what
our kids are going through. And I ask - what will it take? Until one of
these children commits suicide?"
Back at the Dominion Christian Centre, Rigo and his followers laugh off
the suggestion that they are a destructive cult.
"I'm talking with the neighbor yesterday and he's like - if you're an
f-ing cult, I'm joining it. I know you can't say that word on TV, but
you sure can in the house of God," said Rigo during a Sunday service.
"People just say the word cult because it's something that they don't
know. It's different and that's just what they can relate it to because
they don't know it. They don't understand it. Oh, it's a cult," said one
young man.
Another member challenged W-FIVE's reporter. "You've got a code of
ethics and standards and probably a policy manual that you have to abide
by. Well our policy manual is the word of God. It's the bible. So if
that's a cult, yeah you know what, I'm in a cult," he said.
W-FIVE asked if anyone felt they were being forced to stay at the D.C.C,
or if they were being controlled.
"Not at all," answered a young woman.
Another D.C.C. member, a singer in the rock band, added: "I'm here seven
days a week. And I love this place. I mean, I work around here, I eat
here. It's basically become my life out of my choice."
W-FIVE asked him if the D.C.C. is a place that people could participate
in part-time.
"Well, I mean you can, but you definitely feel like an outsider after a
while with all these people. Most of us live the same way. We're here
all the time," he said.
One middle-aged woman added, "If this is controlling, it's absolutely
wonderful, because before coming here I was very uncontrolled. I was
going to church all my life but my life was out of control."
And they all insisted they're free to leave at any time. That's a
refrain cult deprogrammer, Mary Alice Chrnalogar, says she has heard
many times before.
"You don't feel like you're being controlled because you've been taught
this is the right way, this is God's way, this is Jesus' way. And
therefore you never feel like you're being controlled, even though you
are," she said.
Chrnalogar believes that part of that control comes from being convinced
to shun family and friends who don't belong to the church.
The D.C.C. members who spoke to W-FIVE after the church service
confirmed Chrnalogar's, and their families, worst fears.
Dominion
When W-FIVE asked about the cost of belonging at the D.C.C, one member
said, "The cost of giving up life in the world. It has cost you friends.
And it has cost us certain freedoms that, in the olden days, you could
do whatever you want."
"It's cost me family. It's cost me my own way of thinking. But it's not
really a cost. It's more of a privilege to lose those things," said another.
Those words are a red flag for Chrnalogar.
"It absolutely can get worse and more dangerous because they're a closed
society. The only thing that's right, good and true is what comes from
the leader. He calls the shots. And once you get into a closed system,
anything can happen," said the cult expert.