Grab Waco: A Survivors Story Translated By David Thibodeau Edition

.stars.

I was asked by a publisher to read amp review "A Place Called Waco: A Survivor's Story, " I wondered why, given that David Thibodeau's memoir was published in, Now I see a TV miniseries titled "Waco" is set to air in January, and suspect the publisher hopes buzz about the show will generate renewed interest in the book.
In a new afterword to the paperback edition, Thibodeau himself makes the tiein clear, describing his excitement over meeting members of the cast and production

crew.


The memoir is wellwritten, though windy and repetitive between the parts readers will come for: the sections about cult leader Koresh's sexual infatuation with underaged girls about the initial assault on the Mount Carmel compound by ATF agents about the final siege and assault by the FBI and ATFdays later, about the fiery deaths of men, women, and children trapped in the compound with Koresh.


Thibodeau was an aspiring rock musician in Los Angeles when he fell in with members of a Christian rock band led by David Koresh.
He gradually fell under Koresh's sway, and after some dithering found himself a committed member of the cult, living fulltime at the compound, yet not a member of Koresh's inner circle, the "mighty men.
"

I wish Thibodeau had made more of an effort to describe Koresh's "teachings," which from the bits he does reveal seem to be utter nonsense, as most Revelationsbased apocalyptic cult preaching is.
When it comes to Revelations and the End Times, I take my spiritual guidance from a fictional character, Lee Child's Jack Reacher, who in one novel makes the commonsense observation that Revelations has been breathlessly promising the imminent arrival of Armageddon every day for,years.


Was Thibodeau, despite his halfhearted denials, an allin member of the cult There's no doubt in this reader's mind: with a straight face, Thibodeau recounts Koresh sidekick Steve describing his own background this way: "I went from England to Hawaii, changed into a heathen, lived a swinging life of booze and broads, partying with the fast crowd, the likes of Pat Boone and Clint Eastwood.
" One feels one is inside the addled mind of Jack Chick, reading something like that, Cultists mimic normal humans, but there's always a tell to let us know they're from an alternate universe, Pat Boone

Thibodeau is honest enough to question some of what he thought he knew about Koresh, He drops hints of Koresh's perfidy here and there while simultaneously downplaying them, but my impression is that Thibodeau, afterward, came to see Koresh for what he obviously was, a charlatan who frightened willing believers with tales of mystical Seals, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the cleansing fires of God's wrath but mainly a creep who perved on preteen girls.


Even if your motivation for reading this memoir is hatred of the jackbooted thugs of the ATF and FBI and their murderous assaults on Koresh's compound, you cannot avoid concluding that Koresh was guilty on many counts, from bedding ten and elevenyearold girls and cracking jokes with insiders about the tightness of their vaginas, to claiming God told him in a vision only he was allowed to have sex with Branch Davidian women including the wives of married couples, to amassing an arsenal of semiautomatic and automatic weapons, to browbeating his band of believers into staying with him to the fiery end, to murder and worse.


Take this for what it's worth: in the last chapter Thibodeau recounts congressional testimony from ayearold girl who waswhen Koresh first had sex with her, who went on to repeat Koresh's crude remark about another preteen girl's vagina.
While Thibodeau is honest enough to include this damning information, he immediately backpedals by casting doubt upon the girl's credibility, I wonder if he's been following the news lately, and if he has, whether he thinks the women recounting their experiences with Harvey Weinstein and Roy Moore are lying as well.
That is where I lost what little sympathy I had for David Thibodeau,

Of course there's a solid link between the disastrous federal assaults on civilians at Ruby Ridge and Waco, and the growth of domestic rightwing militia terrorism, starting just two years after Waco with Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, all the way to the Bundy militia today.
Thibodeau forthrightly discusses the link in his memoir, detailing as well his own postWaco involvement with the movement as a speaker at militia and survivalist rallies.


If you bring prejudices to the book you will leave with them intact, as I did, I guess I'm glad I read Thibodeau's memoir, I didn't learn much I didn't already know, but I better understand my own conflicted view of federal authority now that I know the details of what the ATF and FBI did to women and children at Waco.
Nevertheless, I remain repelled by cultists of any stripe, particularly endtimes hucksters and the people who believe them, There is something wrong with their brains,

A final note: I read the Kindle edition, a digitized version of the original paperback plus the author's more recent afterword.
As is too often the case, the Kindle edition is loaded with formatting errors, but still readable, I have read numerous memoirs of cult survivors, but I have never had such a negative reaction to an author, By the time I finshed this novel, I wanted to slap Thibodeau, . . repeatedly. I had to constantly remind myself that he is a cult victim and has gone through extensive conditioning and was probably never properly deprogrammed.
Even though to a certain extent it is probably the lingering effects of his time in Waco, in his book Thibodeau comes across as shockingly ignorant at best and complicit and enabling at worst.
I might be able to muster up sympathy for him at the end of the day because he has been through a horrific ideal, but this book is incredibly misguided.


My biggest frustration with this book, and by extension the author, is Thibodeau's continued admiration of David Koresh, Despite admitting the fact that Koresh committed statuatory rape, Thibodeau continues to praise Koresh as a great spiritual leader, To me, going to a child molestor to explain spiritual enlightenment is not unlike going to a murderer and asking them to explain the value of human life.
Thibodeau consistently insists that Mount Carmel was a religious community and not a cult but his ignorant defense of Koresh only convinces me that yes, he was in fact a member of a cult.
One of the most infuriating aspects of this book is Thibodeau's incredibly narrow definition of child abuse, Judging by what he wrote in this book, Thibodeau only views physical hitting or striking as child abuse, He readily admits that Koresh had sex with underage children all while rather stupidly insisting that all of the abuse allegations were unfounded.
Statutory rape IS child abuse, a particularly cruel and heinous form of child abuse, Minors are not capable of consent, Therefore, any sexual contact with a minor is considered rape even if they were "married" or appeared to consent, To be fair, he does mention that Koresh's child brides made him uncomfortable, but he never outright condemns Koresh for the abuse, In fact, he seems more upset over the fact that Koresh's abuse caught the attention of law enforcement than the fact that Koresh severely harmed the cult's most vulnerable victims, the children he claims to care so much about.
He continues to insist that the governments child abuse claims were "unfounded" but this is clearly inaccurate by his own admission! In addition to heaping an unreasonable amount of praise on a clearly questionable leader, Thibodeau consistently dismisses the accusations of numerous women and children, including a fourteen year old girl who testifies against Koresh.
His rather feeble response is always along the lines of "I never saw him do that, I know him he wouldn't do that, " This does not hold water, I'm not sure if he was aware of it, but numerous children, including Koresh's own biological children have since come forward and claimed that physical and sexual abuse was common place and the adults of Mount Carmel were aware of it if not willing participants.
In interviews since, Kiri Jewell claimed that her own mother took her to a motel to have sex with Koresh, Sky Okimoto, Koresh's son, claimed that his mother hit him with the Helper paddle until he bled, The same paddle that Thibodeau insists was only used for "light spankings to discipline the children", According to these same children, they were also subject to emotional abuse in the form of intense marathon Bible sessions that included terrifying descriptions of armageddon, being trained from a young age to fight and be prepared to die for or have sex with Koresh, a constant paranoia of the outside world, no real education, and being forced to live in horrific living conditions.
I first suspected that I was not going to like this book, when Thibodeau described an underground bus as a tornado shelter without any sort awareness that this not a safe place to take shelter.
At first I thought that maybe, his statements were the results of the book originally being published so quickly after the initial events of the siege it was originally published in, a mere six years after the events at Waco.
However, the version that I read was rereleased before the Waco mini series based on the events was released, The series was based on this book and incidentally critically panned largely because it was found to be sympathetic to Koresh and Thibodeau provided an additional epilogue that was painfully tone deaf.
Thibodeau assures the surviving children of Waco that he will always be there for them and that they were loved, These are the same children that he discredited in the previous chapter, The same children who were abused by his beloved spiritual mentor, The fact that he doesn't seem to grasp this disconnect just proves to me that he was completely conditioned and needs to seek help.


In addition to his problematic views on child abuse, Thibodeau offers a pretty weak explanation for other highly suspicious activities that took place on the compound.
He insists that the majority of the firearms on the compound were sold to provide funds for the community, My initial reaction to that was to groan outloud and exclaim "COME ON!" Of all the ways to fund a community, why on earth would you choose such an unpredictable method of earning money Not to mention the monumental risk of having that many firearms around children Like other claims Thibodeau makes in the book, this claim has been more or less disproved.
In, a former UPS delivery man revealed that he went to the Waco sheriff after accidentally discovering that a package that he was going to deliver to the compound was filled with hand grenades In the US, it has been illegal for civilians to own hand grenades since.
He also discovered that he unknowingly delivered grenade launchers, AKs, ARs, and magazines, If this is true, the ATF would have been within their jurisdiction to inspect the compound, despite the fact that Thibodeau insists that they overstepped their authority.
Besides the weak explanation of the guns, Thibodeau does not seem to find Koresh's "no has sex but me and I can pick whoever I want regardless of their age or marital status" rule unreasonable or suspicious.
He spends a significant amount of time complaining about his lack of a sex life more time than he spends worrying about the child brides and without any real concern about who might be harmed by this practice I might add, but seems to suggest that this was spiritually good for all of them.
His involvement with Thibodeau also dramatically altered his physical appearance he claimed to like his emaciated frame and led to him abandoning his love of music.
Thibodeau insists that he has strong instincts, but the fact that he seems unaware of how deeply he was controlled by Koresh,

Despite the fact that Thibodeau and Clive Doyle I have read his memoirs as well have praised Koresh's spirual guidance, both are mum on the specifics of their belief system.
Whether this is because it has some questionable morals that they do not want the public to know or if there just wasn't much of an established system, I honestly don't know.
From what I read, Koresh more or less infiltrated the Branch Davidians group that was settled in the area and combined it with elements from both Christianity Biblical preaching and Judaism celebrating passover.
Thibodeau consistently claims that the group was persecuted for their religious beliefs, but never outlies what those beliefs are, It seems very non sequitar, Apart from the acceptance of child brides there was very little objection to any religious beliefs or their communal living situation,

The only reason that this book gets two instead of one is because despite the infurating justification throughout the book, Thibodeau does present a few valid points about the siege.
The government did a horrific job of addressing the situation, Koresh was a monster, but the majority of the victims were innocent and the ATF did not conduct the negotiation with the delicacy needed to help cult victims.
The excessive violence and cruel siege tactics that of the ATF was out of line, especially with so many children on the premise.
The media was also a bit hasty to condemn the entire compound without really acknowledging that they too were victims of cruelty,

Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever get a conclusive account of what actually occurred for a very tragic reason, The people most affected by Koresh's abuse probably died in the fire and were victims of both Koresh AND the mishandled siege, Nine adults survived the blast and the two written accounts that I know of were written by Koresh's Mighty Men members of Koresh's inner circle.
Both accounts seem particularly biased and unwilling to address certain topics and present a very skewed perspective, The most charitable I can be for Thibodeau is to give him the benefit of the doubt, He is despite my intense frustration at him a victim as well, Even as I reread my review and realized how much of my frustration leaked out, I can at least acknowledge that he might have been unaware of some of the abuse or is still so conditioned to defend Koresh that he can't help himself.
Waco was a terrible tragedy thanks to some horrific mishandling of both parties, It's important to remember this horrific event and its victims and learn from it so that it can never happen again, I just wish that the victims had a more reliable speaker, .