Raven

by Reiterman, Tim

  As Grace’s status in the church improved, her relationship with Tim deteriorated. She had grown tired of asking Stoen for time and attention, of hearing him say she was a shabby socialist or too possessive. Once in Los Angeles, when she asked for a few minutes together, he brushed her off. It did not matter that Jones had put him up to such behavior with the rationale that it would harden Grace, make her a better socialist. Chasing her own husband humiliated her, and Grace gave up on him. They stopped living together.

  Tim Stoen’s mere presence raised those old inferiority feelings in Jones. He was many things Jones was not. But he also was naive and prone to zealotry and idealism, and Jones exploited that. Having elevated Stoen to the highest standings, Jones made his fall all the more calculating and cruel.

  Jones went after Stoen’s sexual identity. As if getting his signature on the paternity document were not enough, Jones tried to get Stoen to admit homosexuality publicly, as had other church members, under bullying and false logic. At one point, he tricked Stoen into going out and buying some women’s undergarments, while at the same time letting the word slip to Grace that Tim had transvestite tendencies. The trap worked: when she saw the clothes, Grace reported Tim in writing.

  In 1975, Jones also wanted Stoen to proclaim his “homosexuality” at a church meeting. To Stoen, it would have meant, at the very least humiliation, at most the kiss of death for any future political aspiration. Once Jones was able to lead him through a logical sequence, to make Stoen acknowledge that there were male and female traits in everyone and a certain latent homosexuality in all, but the lawyer always balked at the final step. Stoen was the sort who could not even have a fleeting homosexual experience without being consumed by guilt. Jones had pushed his lawyer’s pride too far. Though Stoen would not act on the incident for two years, it planted a seed of disillusionment.

  Talk of sex was not confined to the planning commission or the council; Jones made policy from the pulpit, with a graphic and witty style. He gave earthy commentaries that made the audience howl. With a clever sense of humor, he tossed off all pretensions of piety, adopting the language, intonations and vocabulary of his inner-city people and mixing it with a vocabulary nearly as florid as his mother’s writing. The brew was spellbinding. No subject grabbed his congregation like sex.

  Whereas an ordinary preacher might have been uncomfortable with the subject, Jones spoke with candor, giving off the sexual magnetism of a crooner. Women of all ages adored the good-looking preacher in dark glasses and satiny red or blue religious robes from New York religious suppliers, and the men admired and envied his macho, straight-talking manner. The bawdy words and gestures provided vicarious thrills.

  Whatever Jones’s demands for celibacy, rank-and-file members might transgress in the privacy of their own bedroom. To prevent this, Jones relied on guilt, public cross-examinations, on his own reputation as a clairvoyant, and informants. Some confessed their weaknesses. Some spouses turned in each other for “having sex,” but others formed pacts to continue their relations in secrecy. Some, especially those who lived in Temple communes and had ample opportunity for sleeping around, simply yielded to their desires haphazardly. Couples formed and dissolved, people gossiped. Jones could not program his people like robots, but he did limit and direct them.

  Those who ascended to the planning commission and of course to Jones’s staff had an inside view of the Temple’s sexual dynamics. As Jones’s roster of lovers lengthened, he tended to dote over sexual conduct.

  The p.c. often met in the attic of the Redwood Valley commercial complex owned by the Temple. In this adult Loft, Jones played games with people’s lives. The planning commission members were often sexual partners. Continually he tested their allegiance, playing men against women, polarizing. The men were charged with “male chauvinism” or homosexuality; in turn the men thought the women were “bitchy” man-hating feminists. In one of his more mind-boggling statements, Jones claimed that all good socialists had to know themselves in all ways, including sexually—which meant all good socialists must be sodomized.

  Jones’s sexual contact with men generated tremendous conflicts within some of them. He made his lessons in buggery all the more humiliating by always assuming the dominant position. As he conquered his partners, he told them again and again that it was for their own good. He derived no pleasure at all from the act, he told them, but made sure they did, arousing them with practiced physical manipulation, stimulating their prostate glands so as to bring them to climax. He left his victims both guilt-ridden and humiliated.

  Jones went out of his way to find male partners who showed not the slightest homosexual inclinations. Backstage at a Los Angeles service, he looked at a newcomer named Tim Carter in a fatherly fashion and patted him on the back of the head. “Son, if you want me to fuck you in the ass, I will,” he offered. When the shocked Vietnam veteran replied in the negative, Jones left the door open, saying, “Just so you know I’m here if you want me.”

  He particularly liked awakening macho types, respected church members or “studs” to their “homosexuality,” though he rarely took on black males. As he said later on tape, he delighted to hear brawny men squealing with pleasure as he mastered them. Yet Jones also engaged himself with more effeminate men, some of whom were already practicing homosexuals or bisexuals.

  Although Carter was not humiliated or punished for his strict heterosexuality, Mike Prokes was. Prokes—a former Modesto, California, high school football player—had bragged to friends in the Temple about a time he and a high school buddy took turns in a darkened motel room with a girl who believed she was with only one lover. In the church, he was accused of making plays for teen-age girls and was called up in front of the church leaders, who concluded that Prokes did not feel comfortable with women his own age and needed to face up to his homosexuality. Jones was there, ready to help.

  Jones helped others too, humbling and compromising them in a number of ways. Later, their confessions reinforced Jones’s image as a selfless heterosexual superlover. One particular man committed his feelings to paper as part of his postsex therapy:

  “I felt that when you related to me, you were doing so to serve me without being condescending at all. Your choice of words, your warmth and tenderness made me feel that you deeply loved me. ”

  “Your fucking me in the ass was, as I see it now, necessary to get me to deal with my deep-seated repression against my homosexuality. I have at times felt resentment at being fucked even though I knew your motives were utterly pure.... It was also due in part to the humiliation of being discovered by [my wife] and Karen.”

  “I did find being fucked in the ass pleasurable, but I felt so ‘unnatural’ about it that the fear outweighed it.... I know beyond doubt you are the very best sexual partner in the world and I don’t think I’ve ever thought I could really compete with you.”

  Jones’s relations with women were characterized by his own insatiable ego, garnished with elements of therapy, the reward system, the “groupie” phenomenon and the old minister-troubled parishioner gambit. Despite his selfless posturing, Jones reveled in his exploits, demanding that his partners publicly praise his prowess and telling his congregation, “I’ve been reported to be a good lover....” Some women sought out Jones for sex because he was, by his own definition, the only sex symbol available, the “only heterosexual” male, the ultimate lover, selfless and sensitive and all-powerful. Other women naturally turned to him for their sexual needs just as they turned to him for other types of sustenance and guidance. And they surrendered to him if he approached them.

  The stories—or myths—of Jones’s sexual “generosity” were aired openly in p.c. Once, Jim and Marceline were called to a house where a young Temple girl threatened suicide with a butcher knife. According to the story, Marceline suggested that Jones make love to the girl. In another story, “a traitorous bitch” was rendered malleable—and loyal to the cause—by Jones’s “selfless” gift of himself. Some subjects
of such stories, despite their alleged instability, won places on Jones’s staff. For example, there was Annie Moore, Carolyn Layton’s younger sister. Artistic, whimsical, witty, she had a knack for making others laugh and feel good about themselves. Like Carolyn, who was nine years older, Annie was a dedicated worker—her profession was nursing—and she was also sensitive to the disadvantaged. But, although she sympathized particularly strongly with black people and studied Yazoo Delta blues music, she disdained Peoples Temple at first for isolating her sister from the family. The week after she graduated from high school, Annie visited Carolyn in Ukiah and toured the Temple care homes. She came away moved by the experience and, like her sister, could not pass up Peoples Temple.

  This same young woman, according to Temple lore, soon needed Jones’s loving sexual therapy because she was suicidal. Supposedly, her own sister summoned Jones to make love to her, thus “saving” her. As a Temple member, Annie Moore went on to nursing school, where she once again became her old self with an outrageous sense of humor.

  Jones did admit to a strong sex drive, though he never acknowledged any selfish pleasure seeking. In private, he told the women he was “helping” that he “needed it.” Sometimes he forced himself on them; later, he would explain to his confidantes that he had asked the women for sex only so they would not feel guilty about pressuring him into it.

  Jones’s affairs created jealousies within the church. When others realized that he was engaged in special relationships, some envious women criticized his partners for being selfish or petitioned him for similar favors. Childishly, they squabbled for Jones’s attention. Finally Jones, tired of all the demands, announced one day: “Okay, who wants it?” By his count, Jones satisfied that day sixteen men and women. Later, he represented it as a leveling experience, meant to wipe out petty competition and jealousy.

  The wisdom among those who had enjoyed Father’s special attention was that sex with Jim Jones was incomparable. Jones convinced his partners that his own needs were secondary, his lovemaking an alternative to the abusive, inconsiderate sex of male chauvinists. Jones seduced with his mind as much as his body. But this student of people’s needs did not neglect the physical. He jogged to keep his oversized calf muscles in tone; he claimed a larger-than-average organ and experimented with drugs to prolong his erections.

  Though some were unsatisfied or found him clumsy and rough, many a woman came away in a blush, feeling she was his favorite. But those who nursed such delusions for long found themselves called elitists. The competition and rivalry was particularly bitter within Jones’s own staff; some who had regular or multiple sexual contacts with Jones became possessive. Some fell in love with him and went through all the stages of a love affair, from infatuation to seduction to letdown, to the realization that Jones was community property and that they better accept the bittersweet role of sometimes lover. In a much shorter time span, they repeated Marceline’s experiences. And like Marceline, most remained loyal church members.

  In the topsy-turvy world of Peoples Temple, those who felt worthless could be elevated and energized by a brief session with Father. Intimacy with the Temple’s man-god fountain of principle raised self-esteem. Jones motivated some of his followers this way, making them feel special, vowing his love and showing it physically. Always behind the lovemaking was an implicit form of blackmail: the compromising sexual encounter might later serve to silence the person or keep him or her in the cause.

  When his partners were called upon to sing of their lover’s talents, some embellished or fabricated. Sometimes Jones, in turn, complained about them. Twice he stood on the stage during a planning commission meeting, ranting about insatiable sexual demands being placed on him. On one occasion he invited all his partners to stand to describe the exquisite sessions with him. Of a hundred people, about thirty took to their feet. His sexual practices caused some dissension, however. He seemed to always sleep with whites—in fact, the p.c. was only about a quarter black, and few if any of them had had sex with him. In his defense, Jones noted that black people had been sexually humiliated over the centuries by whites, so he did not want to impose on them at all.

  Though deeply wounded by her husband’s extramarital sex, Marceline tried to repress any overt signs of jealousy or disapproval. Nonetheless, Jones’s references to his philandering, indirect and otherwise, drove her out of meetings in tears. Some members felt sorry for her; others thought her selfish or overly emotional.

  Marceline’s pain made Jones feel guilty, though not guilty enough to stop his affairs. In a way, Jones still loved her—and they did have a semblance of a man-wife relationship. But from an organizational standpoint, he had to placate her because the potential for an internal Temple split lived within her broken heart. The image of the “rainbow family” remained a valuable one to him, and Marceline was a popular church figure, revered as “Mother” for her demonstrated sensitivity and kindness. Jones extended token privileges to her, some of which caused resentment among other members. She was permitted to keep her wedding rings and jewelry when others surrendered theirs to the cause. She drove a better car than most. And she and the children dressed better than most members, in partial compensation for the other sacrifices associated with being kin to Jim. Marceline apparently accepted the pain as a natural consequence of being wife of a movement leader. Yet every day, she came closer to realizing that her presence in the Temple could no longer be based upon her love of Jim Jones.

  Like a teen-age girl in a small town, Carolyn Layton retreated from Redwood Valley before her pregnancy became obvious. The Temple taboo against bringing more children into the world applied to Jones’s favorite mistress as well as to other members. But she, unlike a number of other women the dashing minister impregnated, did not abort the baby. Instead, she spent her pregnancy in Berkeley with her parents, Rev. and Mrs. John Moore, while Jones concocted a story that she was on a mission in Mexico.

  The Moores, though happy to see their daughter again, were less than pleased about her relationship with a married minister. Repeatedly they suggested she somehow clear up the sordid entanglement. Barbara Moore wanted Jones to divorce Marceline in order to marry her daughter, but that was a mother’s wishful thinking.

  During Carolyn’s pregnancy, Jones often visited the Moores’ home. Around her parents, he acted attentive and concerned for Carolyn’s well-being, and everyone survived the ambiguity and tension of the visits. Once they even dined out at a restaurant together. Carolyn, not at all depressed at the prospect of giving birth, anticipated the event as might any expectant mother. She seemed to enjoy the time with her parents, who bent over backwards not to appear judgmental.

  In January 1975, Carolyn gave birth to a dark-haired boy who was named Jim Jon but called Kimo. So the child would be legitimate, Mike Prokes, at the request of Jones, went through the formality of marrying Carolyn and giving the child his surname. Yet on the paternal side of the family tree listed in Kimo’s baby book, Carolyn made only two entries—Lynetta Jones as grandmother, “Carolyn” as father.

  In the church, it became common knowledge that Jones was Kimo Prokes’s father. In fact, in order to explain his contradictory action of allowing a pregnancy, Jones claimed that it happened accidentally while he was teaching Carolyn how to use her body if she got in a jam on a secret mission. Kimo—and John Stoen—became extensions of the Jones family.

  TWENTY

  Training Young Minds

  At 7:30 A.M. sharp, Esther would stand at the door to the boys’ room, crowing, “Time to get up!” With varying degrees of reluctance, Stephan, Jimmy, Jr., and Lew would pry themselves out of bed in the dormitorylike quarters. Breakfast was mandatory. When their bellies were full, they walked out to the road to await the school bus.

  Although he had many reasons to enjoy school, Stephan Jones also dreaded it. He may have been the toughest kid in his age group, the guy the girls chased, a fine athlete and a good student, but he wondered whether he was normal. No one ever invi
ted Stephan Jones home after school, nor did he invite them. He did not feel free to make friends with nonchurch members. Like other Temple children, he was conditioned to think that nonmembers disliked black people.

  In his early school years, his brothers were among the few non-white students. Although he and Jimmy fought like banshees at home and once in the school cafeteria, Stephan defended his brother when outsiders were involved. In the third grade, he did nothing more than shake in anger when a girl sang a ditty with the stanza, “Ran like a nigger through the woods.” But by the eighth grade, he was taking physical action. He shut a boy’s head in a drawer for calling Jimmy a “nigger,” and he was pelted with rocks and chased home once for sticking up for his brother. And in high school, he and other Temple members would fight back when redneck boys hassled the Temple’s black students.

  Throughout school, there was extra pressure on Temple children not only to get good grades but to behave, to properly represent an integrated organization. They were to keep the church secrets and do nothing to call attention to themselves. Despite the guidelines, they managed to lead fairly normal school lives. And even Stephan Jones, with additional pressures and image responsibilities, met the triple standards of school achievement—academics, athletics and leadership.

  Temple children, like others, fell in love with athletics, and no amount of sermonizing against the evils of competition could spoil it. Though Jones himself usually stayed away from the school games, Marceline came out to root for her boys as they ran track and played football, baseball and basketball. She was proud and happy for them. The family kept clippings about the athletic achievements of the Jones boys, including those of Tim Tupper, a school chum of Stephan’s adopted by the Jones family and treated as a son.