Stretching the Truth

I recently listened to a podcast by two young women about Jim Baker and The Source Family, and to the credit of one of the young women she had made an effort to find newspaper articles in search of factual information about Baker, and she talked about finding this article in the San Bernardino Sun from 1955 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6134211/1955-nov-6-zimm-judo/ about the time that Jim Baker judo chopped and killed his neighbor in a dispute about the way that Baker took care of the guy's dog, while the guy was in jail, and she also referenced the article saying how Baker had claimed to the reporter that he had won 'the 1948 World Judo Championship with Wild Bill Zim of Argentina' fueling my interest to find out if that was a valid claim made by Baker.  Here's another newspaper clipping from 1955 where Jim Baker made the same claim.

With a simple google search I found a website about Wild Bill Zim, a wrestler from New York (not Argentina) who did participate in a judo exhibition with Baker in 1948 and quickly lost to Baker, for obvious reasons such as Wild Bill was a wrestler and did not practice judo and wasn't proficient at it, as was Jim Baker.  So, the exhibition wasn't a World Judo Championship by any means which makes you wonder why Jim Baker would make such a claim.  I don't recall Jim Baker ever talking about any of his past exploits and if he did, I was not present and only learned about them years after The Source Family had disbanded and one person took it upon herself to try and resurrect the whole thing.  I had never heard of Jim Baker being called 'the world's strongest boy', as my old friend, Robert aka Omne stated in the 2012 film.  But, considering Jim Baker's younger days growing up during the Great Depression in Cincinatti at a time when people would often claim being 'the strongest' of this or that; it came as no surprise that Baker may have elaborated about himself.  Here is an interesting link about 'the world's strongest men from around the time when Jim Baker was growing up https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/early-strongmen-photographs/#:~:text=21-year-old%20Swansea%20tailor%20Harry%20Pelta%2C%20winner%20of%20the,supports%20a%20200-pound%20motorcycle%20and%20its%20rider.%201932..  Baker was trying to make a name for himself, and so I can understand why he might have embellished his past accomplishments in order to appear as the strongest or a world champion of something.

Wild Bill Zim's son found several newspaper articles in the Cincinatti Times from 1946 through 1949 about Jim Baker and sent them to me and I've included links to those articles.  I found contradictions about Baker's father, where in the San Bernardino Sun article Baker told the reporter that his father was a Chicago detective killed by gangsters, and in another article it states that Baker's father was a professional wrestler and that Jim lived with him in Vallejo, California in 1938.  It was my understanding that Jim Baker's father left him and his mother in Ohio when Baker was very young, and that was what the majority of former members like me understood to be true.  In Charlene Peter's book about the Source Family she wrote that Baker's father was a firefighter. 

There is also the claim that Jim Baker earned a Silver Star at Guadalcanal during World War II for shooting down 13 Japanese bombers, although some have searched the Army database for Marines awarded a Silver Star and could not find a citation for James Edward Baker.  Although, an article about weightlifting in Strength and Health magazine from 1945 about Jim Baker mentions him 'sporting a decoration for conspicuous gallantry'.  Here is that article: 

 Another version was that Baker had punched his commanding officer while on the USS Chicago and was being taken to the brig when the Japanese began to attack the ship, and that he didn't actually receive a Silver Star citation, due to him assaulting an officer. 

At least these newspaper articles from 1940's Cincinatti gave me more insight into the kind of young man that Jim Baker was and how in one article he was described as being 'a hustler in capital letters' https://www.newspapers.com/clip/20267738/1949-jan-26-jim-baker-judo-champ-muscle/?fbclid=IwAR1FFOz-e31eieBuMePXS0eI1IeasoyB-ibf6838FSO5uNpjXgNhusHThU8---a young man into weightlifting and physical fitness who taught judo and joined the Marines who may have stretched the truth about his accomplishments and titles.  It's easy to see how stretching the truth served Jim Baker's purpose again when he gathered a group of much younger, adoring followers around him convincing them that he was their 'earthly spiritual father' and then deciding to have multiple 'spiritual wives' in addition to his only legal wife at the time, Robin Baker to have them all wait on him and pamper him in obedience and supplication.    

Here are more articles that mention Jim Baker from The Cincinatti Times.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120347408/1946-oct-21-baker-teaches-co-eds/?fbclid=IwAR10dbiWcRojF1eAHkyrtJqm4Z6HuqSek_Z8gY1NzmTvt_vV8fA_EHyHXCw

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349123/1949-feb-8-jim-baker-vs-zim-judo/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349333/1949-feb-9-baker-vs-zim-judo/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349444/1949-feb-11-baker-vs-zim-judo/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349605/1949-feb-12-judo-jim-beat-zim-quickly/

I found this website with historical photos taken at Venice Beach from 1949 when bodybuilding and weightlifting were hugely popular which shows the health and fitness culture that Jim Baker had become a part of when he was in Los Angeles. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/original-muscle-beach-1949/?fbclid=IwAR26MEWky-LZic1A7CaH_pMiChiYFYdK_-jcATxxrORb2XG_akM_qFE3XuM

Anyway, I believe in giving credit where credit is due to Jim Baker for whatever he did accomplish in his life.  It's just that I cannot give him credit for being 'an earthly spiritual father' or a 'wise and enlightened spiritual teacher' when he repeatedly transgressed the personal and sexual boundaries of many of the women, after he formed The Brotherhood of The Source; especially young women who were 14, 15, 16 and 17 years old.  Whether or not it was the early seventies when 'free love' and 'sexual liberation' abounded as part of the counterculture; it doesn't excuse the fact that Jim Baker, the father of a daughter should have known better.

Rewriting History

The definition of rewrite history is the following:  select or interpret events from the past in a way that suits one's own particular purposes.  So, if Charlene Peters aka Isis Aquarian who claims to be the record-keeper and historian of The Source Family along with her other self-appointed titles such as High Priestess and Temple Keeper could be accused of anything; it's the fact that she has rewritten the history of The Source Family to suit her own sanitized, whitewashed and embellished storyline leaving out any mention of the sexual ritual called qudosh, along with her efforts to minimize or underscore the fact that babies died at The Father House in Los Angeles and were buried on the hillside.  Babies who might have survived had they been given medical treatment of any kind.  But, dead babies is a subject which Charlene has tried to underplay, as if those infant deaths had been unpreventable and 'just happened'; when the truth and reality is the fact that no one dared go against Jim Baker's tenet that no one seek or use outside medical help of any kind.  But, Charlene knows the public would not look kindly upon a cult leader who allowed infants to suffer and die, under his watch.  Which is exactly why Charlene went to extremes to obliterate any mention of qudosh when she had the person copying the cassette tapes labeled 'meditation tapes' remove any parts of the tapes where Jim Baker talked about qudosh. 

Covering up and hiding the truth about something that became the most important of Jim Baker's so-called 'aquarian teachings' became very important to Charlene Peters for two reasons:  1) because she wanted to promote herself  2) because Jim Baker warned that anyone who revealed the practice of qudosh would face a lifetime of regret.  Charlene was banking on the fact that no one who was in The Source Family who was either ordered by Jim Baker to perform qudosh or who participated in any way; would never publicly talk about such a thing or admit to having performed.  She was counting on the silence of former members not to reveal the practice of qudosh.

Charlene has a book signing coming up at UC Santa Barbara for her most recent Source Family scrapbook, but I can't help but wonder how the UCSB library would feel about sponsoring and helping promote Charlene's sanitized, whitewashed and embellished version of the history of The Source Family, if they learned that a sexual ritual where a man ingested a woman's menstrual blood was the central most important 'teaching' of Jim Baker's.  Charlene has managed to get UCSB to have an ongoing exhibit titled Lifting the Veil which is so ironic considering she would never want the veil to be lifted enough to reveal the practice of qudosh! 

Concealing the truth about what really went on within The Source Family is unethical in my view, because isn't truth a cornerstone of ethics?  Charlene should have just told the truth about the practice of qudosh, instead of continuing to hide the fact, or using the lame excuse how it was not to be revealed, because of it being some kind of sacred teaching not meant for anyone outside of The Source Family.  

I was sent a copy of the unedited film from 2012 shortly after it premiered at SXSW in Austin, and there was an interview segment with former member, Zinaru who talked about how things changed 'with the introduction of blood', but Charlene had that part of his interview edited out from the final version of the film.  Another example of Charlene's machinations to remove any mention of the practice of qudosh.

The practice of qudosh has left the majority of former Source Family members like myself with feelings of shame, regret and remorse for allowing ourselves to follow Jim Baker's misuse of his power over all of us and performing something that nobody wants to ever talk about.  I know what it's like to admit to having performed qudosh and the embarrassment that goes along with that, but I also feel anger towards Jim Baker for ordering and subjecting me to perform that sexual ritual.  I would rather my adult son not ever learn about or know about qudosh, but it's the truth.  Leaving out the sexual ritual of qudosh from the story allows Charlene to continue promoting herself and her sanitized narrative.  Which is also why I made the decision to speak out and tell the truth about the practice of qudosh, because I feel the public have the right to know.  I understand wanting to present The Source Family as being some New Age benign, harmless rock and roll communal group from the early seventies, but that is simply not the whole truth.  The truth is The Source Family became a cult around the personality of Jim Baker where we all obediently followed and obeyed his orders and directives.  When Jim Baker ordered anyone in The Source Family to perform qudosh with whomever he chose; you did what was expected of you.