Page 5 - Defecting Temple News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

We needed to be totally committed to this cause, period. and you can't be part way. you can't do it part way. >> it was told over and over again that we were going to be -- everybody was going to be killed. >> suicide drills and beatings became as much a part of the temple's internal life as social service was to its public face. devotion to jones had to be total. >> one of the very powerful things in the church was that you weren't really allowed to express how you really felt. it was like, i would be there and i would look around and i would think, am i the only one that feels this is bizarr...

"i threatened to kill president nixon." and they'd just want you to sign it. don't date it, just sign it. >> my attorney, when i told him all the papers i signed and all the blank papers i signed, he couldn't believe it. i mean, he screamed at me, "how could you do something so stupid?" i said, "you want to tell me you'd be in a room with 120 peers around you, and you were told everybody is going to sign a piece of paper, that you're not going to sign it? would you do that? that you would know you would not leave that room beaten and/or dead?" >> i would like to kill grace stoen and tim stoen....

Deborah leyton blakey, 25-year-old member of the temple's innermost circle, had escaped from guyana and she was going public. >> it took me six weeks to plan it. i told nobody, not even the embassy, until the day i knew i was to leave. you can't trust anybody at that point. >> he said she's going to spread lies. the next thing you know, the fbi, cia, all of them will be here on us. and my god, they will treat us worse than they did the jews in the concentration camps. >> jim had a pathological obsession with anybody being taken away from his fold. it made him completely crazy. so when debbie d...

Magazine grabbed hold of it. the article would shine fierce light into the temple's darkest shadows, and jones knew it. the walls would soon come tumbling down, and he wasn't about to wait around for the crash. >> it came out. jim basically called people saying, "pack up your stuff, you're leaving today." people went out with one day's notice they were leaving the country forever. >> we knew we weren't coming back to the u.s. ever. ♪ >> by summer's end, hundreds of members had descended on jonestown, the jungle was now home to peoples temple. >> to jim the mass exodus to guyana was about run...

That. not only becoming members, but also becoming examples in their community, and it spread. >> as the numbers of faithful grew, jones and the temple became a potent and untouchable force in california politics. >> everybody was afraid to come out against him because they felt he had more power and more clout, and he did.