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Jim Jones's Malpractice Claim Against Peoples Temple

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On November 18, 1978, Reverend Jim Jones drove nine hundred and nine members of his church Peoples Temple to their deaths in one of the largest mass-murder suicides on record. The event occurred at their settlement in Jonestown, Guyana where members ingested a grape flavored Kool-Aid under the belief they were committing an act of revolutionary suicide. This act is the culmination of years of manipulative tactics used by Jones to maintain his complete authority and sway over his congregation. Congressman Leo Ryan led a congressional investigation designed to answer the concerns of relatives about their family members residing in Jonestown and to examine malpractice claims against Peoples Temple. On November 17, 1978, Ryan arrived in Jonestown …show more content…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how Jim Jones slowly and manipulatively built his congregation through a recognition that he could capitalize on and exploit individual’s troubles in order to achieve, keep, and act out his authority. The social, religious, and economic climate of the 1960s combined with the chaos of the 1970s created the dependency, idealism, and rationalization that Jim Jones used to slowly yet blatantly manipulate his way to power and eventually create Jonestown.
Jim Jones was born in rural Crete. Indiana on May 13, 1931, to Lynetta and James Jones. Early on Jones was different from the other children he grew up around. He was an outcast and spent much of his time alone during the day. This loneliness combined with a lack of affection at home had a considerable impression on Jones’s personality and caused him to desire power and a sense of community that he was willing to achieve through manipulative

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There are articles that ask the question, how did Jones convince people to move to this settlement in the middle of nowhere? It was a slow gradual change. There were many who stated with him from his first church in Indianapolis, but many did leave along the way. As Jones went on he gained more loyal supporters. He used religious tactics at first, preaching messages from the Bible but as he went on his message changed after he had convinced these people to stay with him.

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Summary: This article is about a man named Jaime Prater who was born and raised in Jesus People USA (JPUSA), a religious community where the leadership clothes you, feeds you, educates you, and basically raises you. JPUSA were started by hippies who used to travel through the USA, but soon settled down in Chicago, and is now run by an authoritarian leader and councilship members. Jaime Prater was born into this community and thought of it as his family, but when he was 8 years old he was molested. He took it to the council, but they shut it down to stop spreading rumors and isolated him. In isolation, he felt lonely and scared for three and a half years, and left the comminity in his early 20’s after he realized that he didn’t belong.

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The cult leaders Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite and Neville Cooper were highly charismatic men who proclaimed a compelling message of a better and different world, who as their followers saw as saviors, in part because of the way they portrayed themselves, with having the fixes for their frustrations. For Jones, his appeal was about his Christian approach to their social problems and his beneficial community work Peoples temple offered. With Applewhite his appeal was about giving purpose to those who joined, offering answers to their impossible questions and explanation for why they felt lost. Cooper uses the bible and Christianity to appeal to followers, having them believe this is only way to truly honor God and worship him, by following the rules Cooper set. The majority of the Peoples Temple members were African

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PART A: For my historical investigation I will be researching the Jonestown Massacre. I plan to use news articles and sources from the event to answer the research question “How did Jim Jones create a following and use his influence to incite mass hysteria?” I will use sources such as news articles from the time period, as well as sources created by members of the Peoples Temple cult. I intend to use these sources to learn about the massacre and find out exactly what motivated the hysteria that caused the self-inflicted deaths of over 900 people.

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The followers in Jonestown executed every task Jones asked them to, and this decreases cult member’s agency because they become less responsible for their actions. Those in Jonestown followed every order their leader commanded to please him, and this is exactly what happened in the Stanley Milgram Experiment. The American Psychological Association states, “In the middle of the jungle in Guyana, South America, nearly 1,000 people drank lethal cyanide punch or were shot to death, following the orders of their leader, Jim Jones… And when people are uncertain, they look to others for cues on what to do, research has shown.” Jones’ church members were willing to do anything for him, even kill themselves.

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As they were boarding the plane Men with guns approached them and killed Leo and four members of his delegation. That same morning after the shooting Jim Jones ordered his followers to ingest poisoned punch. Jim had all the children ingest the poison first as a way to the parents'' voluntarily ingest it themselves that made them believe there was no purpose In them living anymore, so it made a the parents decision easier on digesting the poison. November 18, 1978 will always be known as the “Jones Massacre that killed 900 members of a cult run by Jim

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Furthermore, I learned from this documentary that Jim Jones was someone that did not practice what he preached and a manipulator that had a lot of power, but I was surprised by the amount of people he had such an impact on. He nurtured and protected them when society turned them away and I recognized that is how he gained all of that power. Unfortunately, this power he had resulted in the mass suicide of nine hundred and nine people in Jonestown,

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These members yearned for bliss and happiness, but instead found themselves in terrible conditions. These members primarily concerned themselves with humanitarian efforts in the Peoples Temple’s communities. Hypocritically, Jim Jones treated his worshippers abusively. Jim Jones used a technique called self-incrimination to punish members of the cult. Jones taught followers to give him “written statements about their fears and mistakes and then, if they disobeyed him, he used that information to humiliate them or subject them to their worst fears during public meetings.”

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Jim Jones was the leader of The Peoples Temple and was responsible for the death of more than 900 people including children on November 18, 1978.(“Jonestown”) Jones was the leader who seemed of good heart but in reality he was an egotistical person who only wanted power and able to control people for his own benefit. Jones had a way to put a new idea into people's minds that society was corrupted and that by making their own organization that they would be able to escape that world by coming and joining him. He would come up with all sorts of ways into making the people think he was a god to them. ”All of the children addressed Jones as “Dad,” undoubtedly a somewhat upsetting experience for their parents to go through.

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The People’s Temple and Branch Davidian groups are two very different entities. Jim Jones founds People’s Temple in Indiana under the banner of equality for all ages, races, and genders, and David Koresh takes control of the existing Branch Davidian group in Waco Texas and changes the group into a study on the Book of Revelation and the seven seals to serve his wants. Both of these groups hold different ideals for what perfect society should be like, but even though the utopian visions of People’s Temple the Branch Davidians are different, the way these groups go about achieving their goals during their times are extremely similar. Even though both groups are apocalyptic in nature with themes of death and catastrophe surrounding their ends,

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In Jones’ perspective, the event was “an act of ‘revolutionary suicide’[...] the best testimony we can make is to leave this goddam world” (David Talbot, 202). However, from the perspective of his followers, they saw and heard “infants screaming and crying[...] the children begin their death throes--vomiting and bleeding through their noses and gasping for breath[...] dozens of people being dragged to the tub of purple-colored poison[...] about sixty adults were forcibly injected with the potion” (Talbot, 202). If Talbot only wrote about Jim Jones’ experience, I would have interpreted the deaths of all 913 members at Jonestown to be because of their unquestionable loyalty towards their leader; however, based on his followers’ experience, I now interpret their deaths as a result of a massacre. This reveals that different stories provide different interpretations of information, which can inform or misinform a reader. In a situation where both perspectives of an event are convincing, it can prevent readers from forming a clear interpretation or fully processing the information due to uncertainty.

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They reached Guyana and Jim Jones had stated that if they did end up leaving the church, it would be a betrayal to him. This should have been a huge red flag if nothing else had worked before this, but it was not. Everyone was just extremely miserable in their lives and wanted a sense of meaning but ended up dead in the jungle instead.” AQUINAS: “This is why faith and reason are inseparable.

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Jim Jones became increasingly more drastic. He moved out of the country, refused people from leaving, killed those who tried, and eventually killed the entire Temple. Jones may have been a troubled man, and there may have been aspects of the group that were negative or cultish, however, without the scrutiny and attention from the media, those things may have remained benign rather than leading to the death of almost 1000 people. Regardless, the originally innocent People’s Temple spiraled in part by the heavy push of the US media.

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Introduction Silence. It was quiet and still in Jonestown when the People’s Temple died. Bodies laid everywhere after one man gave the order to give up. Jim Jones was their leader. Jim Jones forced the members to obey him, no matter if they didn’t want any part of what he wanted them to do.

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Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple Cult “Jim Jones of the Peoples’s Temple began as a sound, fairly mainstream Christian minister” (Sects, ‘Cults’ & Alternative Religions). Before all the madness Jones seemed like a caring person, that wanted to bring peace to a town he made, Jonestown. Instead it turned into something more horrific. Jim Jones was the manipulative mastermind behind the traumatic events that happened in Jonestown, Guyana, this essay will discuss interviews by people who are survivors of the mass suicide, and dive into the crazy conspiracies that have emerged, and finally conclude with the death of the Peoples Temple.

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