Church defended

Press, 28 October 1982, Page 10

Church defended

PA Wellington Dr Mose Durst, president of the Moonies church, has defended his organisation against charges of brainwashing young people and taking them away from their parents.

Every vital religious movement in history had been persecuted, he said in Wellington.

The mainline churches, especially in America where the Unification Church was based, were some of the most vociferous critics, he said. “That is because they are losing young people and we are gaining them — they can’t understand why," he said.

“There is this mythology

of Dracula — body-snatching, claims that we have the evil eye, and that our leader is a charlatan."

Dr Durst asserted that parents whose children joined the movement, complained only in a small number of cases. “The children we are talking about have an average age of 28," he said.

The children made their own decisions to distance themselves from their parents, and the church, in'fact, made strenuous efforts to bring about reconciliations, he said.

In most cases where parents opposed the church, it was because they belonged to a different denomination and did not understand what

had happened. Mary Lee Hall, of Taranaki, who joined the Unification Church, was frightened of her family when they went to America to bring her back to New Zealand, Dr Durst said.

She was frightened because the family came with hostility. The family’s San Francisco court action had been worthless.

“There was no criminal act involved, so we didn’t ■

have to produce somebody we didn’t have. It is insane — the whole process.”

Dr Durst said he was in New Zealand to convince the media to drop any anti-Moon feelings.