Posted on 06/05/2005 3:29:08 AM PDT by happinesswithoutpeace
Police Probing Hate Crime Against Girl, 14
Group Says It's Attacked Because Of Beliefs
PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- Police in Plymouth are investigating a possible hate crime against a 14-year-old girl.
The victim said a woman attacked her because of religious beliefs. The girl belongs to a group known as Twelve Tribes, the Commonwealth of Israel. The fundamentalist Christian sect has several local communities, including one in Dorchester.
NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff reported that there are 35 of the communities across the United States and 50 worldwide. In Dorchester, the group owns and operates a health food store. The group appears similar to Amish groups, wearing homemade clothing and home-schooling their children.
The girl who was assaulted, Aremah Delabruere, said she was attacked because of her beliefs while she was walking with her mother and her siblings on Sandwich Street in Plymouth Monday night about 7:30 p.m.
"And she said, 'You are a disgrace to God,' and she started punching me," Delabruere said.
Police said Erin L. Monaghan, 25, of 85 Summer St., allegedly got out of a car and attacked the teenager.
"I was trying to fight back, I was kicking and stuff, but I couldn't. She was bigger than me," Delabruere said.
Witnesses confirmed the attack, police said. Monaghan was charged with assault and battery, a civil rights violation and possession of marijuana.
The Twelve Tribes community in Plymouth lives communally in a large house and runs a store and bakery on Court Street called "Common Sense." They share jobs, households and possessions and believe the world is on a course toward one world government and one world religion, heading toward the brink of destruction. Their founder, Elbert Spriggs, has been called a cult leader by some experts. He founded the sect in Tennessee in the 1970s.
"What we believe is outside the mainstream, and so we're going to be attacked. Whether verbally or people throwing rocks through our windows. All we can do in response is to continue to live our lives," Twelve Tribes leader Kevin Gadsby said.
Gadsby said many of the group's members have been assaulted before but this is the worst attack he can remember since the group moved to the town about four years ago. He said Monday's assault will be prosecuted as a hate crime.
Department of Redundancy Department
Assault is a crime.
Maybe she should have smoked a little bit before attacking the girl. If she had, this never would have happened!
She would have attacked a bag of Doritos instead.
:-)
You gotta feel bad for the little girl.. she is walking home..thinking about how the world is on a course toward one world government and one world religion, heading toward the brink of destruction, and BAM instead of the rapture she gets clocked in the jaw by an irate hippie.
What is the world coming to?
LOL! Right.
Why do I smell hoax?
Do you really?
This is just about sects.
Everybody lies about sects.
Let's just move on.
I read in another article that the puncher fessed up to it.
ROTFLMAO
Here is that other one...
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=87875
or followed her back to the bakery...would have been a great customer and she might have found a friend.
Thanks. The fact that that the 14 year old was attacked in front of her mother/siblings(only witnesses), is of an "Amish" type sect and wanted fight back seemed out of place for me.
I guess they are a "Harrison Ford" type sect? :-)
What was momma doing during this???
Prosecute criminal acts, not thoughts.
"Hate Crime"=Thought Police.
I live in New England and it was reported locally. Dorchester is not a small town, there must have been lots of witnesses
Let me get this straight. The religious group's leader said that his group believes "the world is on a course toward one world government and one world religion, heading toward the brink of destruction".
If he could switch 'world religion' for 'socialism', he'd could easily qualify as a conservative and even an honorary FReeper.
It was in Plymouth, not DOT.
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