On June 6, 1984, Case Number 36937 was filed in Superior Court of California, County of Yuba, by Samuel L. Sanders, Plaintiff, versus Defendants: Fellowship of Friends, Inc., a corporation; Robert Burton; Miles Barth; Frank Annis; Gerard Haven; Helga Ruth Mueller; Abraham Goldman; Charles Frank; Charles Randall; Clair Bowen; and Does 1 through 50, inclusive.
The Lawsuit Complaints:
1. Fraud
2. Conspiracy to defraud
3. Breach of fiduciary duty
4. Conspiracy to breach fiduciary duty
5. Injunction
6. Damages
[ed. - From the ICSA website, link no longer functional.]
Fellowship of Friends
Rabbit Creek (California) Journal
June 19, 1984
Samuel L. Sanders, a former member of the Fellowship of Friends, led by onetime elementary school teacher Robert Burton and based in part on the teachings of Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff and his student P.D. Ouspensky, has brought suit for $2.75 million against Burton, 8 other named defendants, and 50 John Does for crimes ranging from fraud to sexual perversion.
The complaint, filed June 6 in Yuba County Superior Court of California, charges that Burton and the Fellowship’s board of directors conspired to funnel money out of the Fellowship for their own enrichment. It also alleges that Burton used mind control to bring the membership under complete submission to his will, that he sodomized young male members, sometimes by force, resulting in “serious and in some cases irreparable mental and physical damage,” and that the board of directors adopted a resolution endorsing his behavior. An injunction prohibiting Burton from engaging in “perverted sexual conduct” without informing partners that such activity is not part of the Fellowship’s “Fourth Way” philosophy is also sought.
Fellowship of Friends, which claims 1,500 members worldwide, is headquartered at the 1,000 acre Renaissance complex, which includes a winery and an art collection valued at $1 million, located in Oregon House, California. Mr. Burton and the other defendants denied the charges brought in the suit and said they would “stand on the reputation they have built with the community.”
"Cathie L." wrote on the Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog, June 29, 2015:
How I Left the School and Got a Life
In 1984-85, I was working at a law office in Marysville. One of the attorneys there was working with the FOF on defending the suit that had been been filed by Sanders et al. I had access to privileged information, depositions, by which I learned what had “allegedly” been going on at the Blake Cottage/Galleria. I put “allegedly” in quotes because it was intuitively clear to me that these allegations were true.
I had lived in the Court of the Caravans in the late 1970s, before the Blake Cottage was torn down. I remember seeing young male students walking back and forth from the cottage on the road to the Lincoln Lodge, or outside my caravan window, cutting across the field in the small hours of the morning. At the time I thought nothing of it, but when I read the depositions, one of which was by a man I personally knew, it all started to fall into place. Prior to that, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I remember thinking what a hypocrite Robert was, with all anti-infrasex exercises like “no sex before marriage” and “no relationships for one year after ending one.” I had thought he was celibate! Poor little fool, oh yeah, I was a fool, oh yeah.
I left in 1985, around the time MB [Miles Barth] left. I moved to the Bay Area where my parents had a home; I hadn’t severed all ties with them, fortunately. I got a job at a law firm in San Francisco, where another FOF student happened to work. Thank goodness for networking!
[Coincidentally with post #47 about the failed rocket launch today, I was working at this San Francisco law firm when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986. I remember the employees assembling in the conference room to watch the newscast, and the sense of deep sorrow and shock I felt, especially about Christa McAuliffe’s death. Another story….]
MB held a large meeting for former students around that time (late 1985- early 1986?) He spoke to the group about his reasons for leaving, but I can’t recall what he said. Maybe what he said was, “I’m not going to talk about my reasons for leaving.” [ed. - Exactly.]
He announced that he intended to start a series of small groups if anyone was interested, to continue discussing the Fourth Way ideas that he felt had value, whatever could be salvaged from the wreckage, I guess. He seemed to want to continue teaching. I signed up for the groups and went to several meetings at MB’s apartment in San Francisco. This was extremely valuable to me as a way of processing the departure from the cult and maintaining some kind of connection with ideas I still believed were useful, and with people who shared an interest in them. Eventually I moved on.
In the mid-1990s, Stella started an email group for former members on a toadhall.com listserv (some of you Internet old-timers may remember what a listserv is!) There was a lot of material “processed” there as well. One project that grew out of Stella’s list was a chapbook of poetry by list members. It was called Virtual Exposure. I still have a copy of it. In 1995, someone from the toadhall list published a directory, with names, former names, and addresses, an interesting bit of FOF history and memorabilia, which I also still have.
Ames Gilbert wrote: “We also admitted that, though we had new friends, they were few and far between, and even fewer with which one could have a conversation like we were having right then and at the level of what we felt we were communicating.”
That’s true for me too. You had to be there to really understand it. The ties run deep. Maybe that’s something many former cult members, and perhaps soldiers, survivors of concentration camps and other shared trauma, have in common.
