—By Father Moses DavidJuly 17, 1977DFO NO.590

Copyrighted July 1977 by the Children of God

[Note: These paragraph numbers were not in the original version.]

1. HERE IS AN EXPOSURE OF THE 62 LIES OF EL DIARIO DE LAS PALMAS, or the Las Palmas Daily‚ in their edition of Friday, July 8, 1977, on Pages One and Eight. This time our enemies have gone entirely too far in accusing us of the most sordid, heinous and cruel crimes imaginable and unimaginable!

2. WE ARE GOING TO BE COMPELLED TO TAKE LEGAL ACTION against them if they do not apologise‚ retract their false statements and publish this listing of our answers to the 62 lies which they have told about us in this one article.

3. TO ACCUSE THE INNOCENT OF CRIMES of which they are not guilty is a crime in Spain, punishable by law, with one to six months in jail! So this is not a mere civil suit of which we are speaking, but an actual violation of criminal law‚ of which this newspaper is guilty in the very false charge of which they have accused us!

4. WE ARE DETERMINED TO PRESS THIS MATTER until it is either corrected and apologised for or they have been duly taken to court and punished for these lies. On Page One they dare to print a picture of two of our precious nurses and our children with a title of:

5. "MARKET OF CHILDREN", LIE NUMBER 1‚ accusing us of conducting some kind of a market for the sale of Children, which of course is the most ridiculous, heinous, vicious, malicious lie they could possibly have told and is totally untrue!

6. WE HAVE NEVER SOLD ONE OF OUR CHILDREN in this entire world!—And to prove it we still have the 1300-some children with us who have been born amongst us—every one legally registered with the authorities as they should be, and as they have been in Tenerife, and all of them still with us their parents.

7. LIE NUMBER 2 says on this first page that "The Family of Love is dedicated to the sale of children", which is an absolute lie of course! We are dedicated to the love of God and the love of fellow man, the love of each other and the friends and Family, and to no other purpose do we exists.

8. LIE NUMBER 3 says that I, "David Brandt, the spiritual father, has been thrown out of Tenerife". I have not been thrown out of Tenerife, nor have I ever been thrown out of Tenerife by anyone or anybody or any authorities or otherwise!

9. I LEFT TENERIFE VOLUNTARILY of my own free will and accord to take a rest and vacation for my own personal health‚ free from the harrassment of our vicious lying enemies like this newspaper, and reporters like theirs who have never once interviewed me or asked me personally any of these questions, and therefore know nothing about me nor my family except lying hearsay from our enemies which they publish as supposedly the truth.

10. NOT ONLY HAVE I NOT BEEN THROWN OUT of Tenerife by anyone, much less the authorities, but I intend to go back there as soon as possible, as soon as I feel rested enough to do so and when these charges have been disproven and our enemies and lying reporters cease to harrass us!

11. THE AUTHORITIES THEMSELVES there, having conducted investigation after investigation, are convinced that we are not guilty of any of these ridiculous charges, and have been extremely friendly toward us, very hospitable, and even apologetic that these lies of our enemies have given occasion to cause any type of investigation whatsoever.

12. LIE NUMBER 4 SAYS THAT I WAS "HUNTED BY THE AMERICAN POLICE"‚ which is an outright lie! I have never been hunted by the American police that I know of. In fact, in America our organisation has been investigated by the police, local police, state police, the FBI and the CIA, all of them, and been given a clear bill of health by every one of them, in spite of all the lying accusations of our enemies.

13. EVEN THE ENEMY-INSPIRED (AND PAID) DISTRICT ATTORNEY of New York could find nothing wherewith he could legally charge us‚ because all of these charges were simply untrue!

14. LIE NUMBER 5 ACCUSES US OF "PANTHEISM" or the worship of many gods, which is an outright lie! Because we have only one God, God our Father in Heaven, the God of the Bible, whose Son is Jesus Christ, the one and only Creator of the Universe!

15. WE ARE STRICTLY MONOTHEISTS and have never been pantheistic in any sense of the word, so this is an outright lie! If you want to say that we enjoy "the dolce vita", as quoted here, or the "sweet life", I would say yes, by all means! Any Christian who loves Jesus Christ and who knows God and His love enjoys a very sweet life as a rule, thank God!

16. LIE NUMBER 6 ACCUSES US OF "CRIMINAL ACTIVITY on a high scale"! We have never been guilty of criminal activity on any scale and the police know it! Why don't you ask them for yourself?

17. LIE NUMBER 7 SPECIFICALLY ACCUSES US OF "SELLING EACH BABY of these precious Priestesses" for a ridiculous sum of dollars. Each baby of these precious Priestesses of Love are still with us‚ every one of them in the care of its own mother or its nurse, and not one of them has ever been sold in our entire history nor ever will be! This is a pernicious, malicious, vicious, sickening lie of the Devil's own people!

18. LIE NUMBER 8 is significantly enough the headline of Page 8 in which we are repeatedly accused of being "A Market of Children"—"The Family of Love, Market of Children"—an absolute lie! We are not a market of anything, much less children! So therefore,

19. LIE NUMBER 9, which says "their goal is to sell children" is absolutely untrue! Our goal is to have children for the glory of God as gifts of God, and to rear and train them in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord to live all their lives for His Love and His Glory, and our goal is the salvation of the souls of men that they might find the love of Jesus Christ their Saviour and be saved. Nothing more, nothing less!

20. LIE NUMBER 10 ACCUSES US OF "LIVING TOGETHER IN COMPLETE PROMISCUITY", a total and absolute lie because we do not believe in sexual promiscuity or so called "free love". As in any family we have couples, marriages and children, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. In fact, according to our latest statistics which we publish openly every month in our total worldwide family of over 8,000 dedicated workers for the Lord‚

21. WE HAVE EXACTLY 789 COUPLES, or in other words, 1578 husbands and wives in the Family with a total of over 1300 children, plus 805 single women and nearly twice as many single men, 1427, plus nearly 3000 other young people living outside of our homes and at present unable to live in.

22. TO SAY THAT WE LIVE IN COMPLETE PROMISCUITY IS AN ABSOLUTE LIE! Our couples live together normally as any husbands and wives and care for their own children as any normal mothers and fathers.

23. LIE NUMBER 11, TO SAY THAT WE "SQUANDER MONEY" IS ALSO RIDICULOUS in that‚ according to the number of our Family in Tenerife, we spend our money on nothing more than our actual expenses, which amount to approximately only about 7,000 pesetas per month each!

24. THIS IS A GREAT DEAL LESS THAN THE AVERAGE CANARIAN HIMSELF EARNS PER MONTH, and is considered virtually the minimum wage in Spain, but would be considered poverty level in the United States! So I would hardly say that we are squandering money. This is much less than the average tourist spends in that holiday Island.

25. IN LIE NUMBER 12, IT IS SAID THAT WE ARE CONDUCTING SOME KIND OF A "DIRTY COMMERCE", which is an absolute lie! We are not conducting anything dirty nor any kind of commerce, so this is just another lie!

26. IN LIE NUMBER 13, THEY SAY "THIS IS UNDER THE COVER OF FREE LOVE"‚ which of course is not true because we do not believe in the sexual relationships usually known as "free love", nor total promiscuity. Again I say, we believe in husbands and wives, mothers and fathers and children.—And we believe in keeping our children too! We have never sold one of them!

27. LIE NUMBER 14 SAYS THAT THESE INVESTIGATIONS HAVE PERMITTED "PROOF". Their investigations have produced no proof whatsoever of any of these lying accusations! If they have "proof", why don't they produce it, why don't they bring it forth and give it to the police?

28. THEY CANNOT, BECAUSE IT DOES NOT EXIST, AND THEY KNOW IT! They are simply lying as they try to smear us and our good work for the Lord.

29. LIE NUMBER 15 CALLS US A "POWERFUL MAFIOSO ORGANISATION". We have nothing to do with the Mafia whatsoever, although we may have quite a few friends amongst them for all I know. But personally we are not connected in any way with the Mafia.

30. LIE NUMBER 16 SAYS THAT I "CAME IN FLIGHT FROM THE UNITED STATES". Their insinuation here is that I was being chased by the police‚ which is totally untrue, as the American authorities will testify. Not only that, I came not from the United States to Tenerife, but from England, flying directly from London where I had resided for three years.

31. LIE NUMBER 17 SAYS THAT I WAS "CONSIDERED IN SWEDEN AN UNDESIRABLE PERSON" which is a total lie because I have never even been in Sweden! So therefore Lie Number 18, that I "left Sweden to go to Holland", is also another lie, and I am sure that the Swedish authorities can attest to this fact.

32. LIE NUMBER 19 SAYS THAT OUR "GIRLS NEVER TALKED ABOUT THEIR LIVES", which of course is ridiculous because they spend a great deal of time talking to people about their lives and their own personal testimonies and how Christ won their hearts with the love of God, and how their lives were changed and why they have come to live with the Family to serve the Lord.

33. THEN THIS DIRTY ARTICLE CONTRADICTS ITSELF IMMEDIATELY by even quoting the life story of one of our girls immediately following this lie! How can they say that they never talk about their lives when here she's giving her life story!

34. LIE NUMBER 20 SAYS THAT "YOUR FEELINGS DON'T COUNT ANYMORE once you've joined the Family". That is an outright absolute lie! If anything, if you will ask any member of our Family you will find that feelings count more than ever and we are much more sensitive to each other's needs, much more loving toward each other, much more concerned about each others wants, and much more considerate of each others feelings than we have ever been before!

35. LIE NUMBER 21 SAYS THAT IT'S ONE OF OUR THEME SAYINGS THAT "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO YOUR HUSBAND IS, you need to love all the same." Well, that is simply not true! It does matter who your husband is, and we expect our wives to stick to their husbands and our marriage relationships to last permanently even without divorce‚ except in the rarest of cases.

36. SO IT DOES MATTER WHO OUR HUSBANDS ARE! But it is certainly true that we do believe we should love everyone, although I must confess it's a little difficult to love a newspaper and its reporters who tell such big and horrible lies about us!

37. LIE 22 ACCUSES US OF A "MISAPPROPRIATION OF CHARITY" or a misuse of love. He says that to translate love into physical love is a "misuse of love"! Then I wonder why so many great charitable organisations exist in the world, who through love are trying to translate that love into physical love of their fellow men by housing and feeding and clothing them and caring for their physical needs and ills in schools‚ hospitals and so on?

38. IF LOVE IS WITHOUT PHYSICAL APPLICATION THEN IT'S LIKE "FAITH WITHOUT WORKS, which is dead!" To say that you love someone and yet not try to help them physically in whatever way they may need, food‚ clothing, shelter and so on, this is not love! So we are not "misappropriating charity" but we are using love for the right purposes.

39. LIE 23 SAYS THAT "NOBODY KNOWS IF THESE GIRLS REALLY KNOW WHO'S BEHIND ALL OF THIS ORGANISATION". Well, everyone of our girls in the Family know exactly who is behind our organisation, and it's God and His Son Jesus Christ! And everyone of them knows it because everyone of them knows Him personally, thank God!

40. LIE 24 SAYS THAT IN ORDER TO JOIN THE FAMILY YOU MUST "BLINDLY BELIEVE" in me, which is an outright lie! To join the Family you must not blindly, but simply as a little child believe in God and His Son Jesus Christ and His Word, the Bible, and all of this by faith. Faith is not blind but sees much more than the writers of this lying article!

41. LIE 25 SAYS THAT YOU MUST BE "A MILLIONAIRE OR A LANDOWNER TO JOIN THE FAMILY". This is an outright lie, as the vast majority are not millionaires and very few of them were even landowners, and this is not a requirement for joining the Family whatsoever!

42. WE HAVE MANY MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE JOINED THE FAMILY UTTERLY DESTITUTE and had nothing but the clothes on their backs! And it is said of the certain disciples in Lie Number 26 that those who came from La Laguna were required all of these points except for being millionaires or landowners.—And this again of course is not true.

43. NEITHER DO THEY HAVE TO "BLINDLY BELIEVE" IN ME—but they come into the Family with their minds open to truth, their hearts open to love, and their eyes wide open to reality.

44. LIE NUMBER 27 SAYS "CONTRACEPTIVES ARE NOT ALLOWED"— once again an outright lie! They are disapproved of as being contrary to the natural processes of God, but they are not forbidden.

45. LIE 28‚ WHAT A DETESTABLE LIE THIS IS, CALLING US A "DETESTABLE COMMERCE"! All I can say is that this article is detestable and its writer is detestable and the newspaper which published it are the ones which are engaged in detestable commerce on the basis of such lies!

46. LIE NUMBER 29 SAYS THAT "ALL THE CHILDREN born of the Family in Tenerife were registered under the name of the same father", which is absolutely a total lie! A trip down to the Civil Registry can easily disprove this as the civil authorities there know that this is not true and never has been true! The only children there ever to be registered under the name of the same father were a set of twins!

47. IN LIE NUMBER 30 AGAIN it's said that the girls were "forbidden to use contraceptives", which any one of them will tell you they are not forbidden to do. This is entirely up to them and according to their own free will, faith and personal choice. But we have definitely taught them, as the Pope himself has taught, that this is certainly contrary to the laws and the will and Word of God!

48. TO SAY IN LIE NUMBER 31 THAT "90% OF THE GIRLS GET PREGNANT EVERY YEAR" IS REALLY RIDICULOUSLY FUNNY IT IS SO FALSE! Any one with a lick of sense knows that according to the statistics of pregnancy averages this would normally not even be possible, and it certainly has not occurred amongst our girls or we would have had 13,000!—So it's closer to 10% than 90%!

49. LIE 32 SAYS THAT A "DOCUMENTATION SHOWS THAT ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE SECT ARE AMERICANS", which is an outright lie! The authorities at the Immigration can easily attest that this is not true. We have many members of other nationalities, particularly Spanish.

50. LIE 33 SAYS THAT WE TEACH OUR MOTHERS THAT "THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE PARTICULAR FEELINGS TOWARD THEIR CHILDREN, as with their husbands", that they must only be of a general character. This is absolutely not so! Our wives love their husbands and our mothers very much love their children.

51. LIE 34 SAYS, "NOTHING HAS BEEN GIVEN TO YOU PERSONALLY BY GOD"‚ and it's put in quotes as though some of us had said it, which is a lie, because we do not believe this. God gives us many things personally for which we are very thankful, particularly our own children!

52. LIE 35 SAYS THERE IS "A LACK OF ATTACHMENT OF THE MOTHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN"—this is an absolutely heinous‚ awful, diabolical, outright total lie! Because our mothers are particularly attached to their children, much more than I have seen attachment between the parents and children of many worldly parents.

53. WE HAVE A MUCH GREATER INTEREST IN OUR CHILDREN in many respects. We are concerned not only for their physical welfare‚ but their spiritual welfare as well. Anyone visiting one of our homes can easily see that our mothers are very much attached to their children.

54. LIE 36 IN A HEADLINE SAYS THAT "THE CHILDREN AR SOLD for ten or twenty thousand dollars"! Again we have the same horrible lie stated as though it were an absolutely proven fact that we sell our children, which we never do and never have and never will! This is an awful, terrible, horrible‚ lie!—And it makes us furious enough to want to punch the writer in his lying mouth!

55. LIE 37 SAYS THAT "NOT EVEN 10% OF OUR CHILDREN REACH THE COLLECTIVE SCHOOL"—another outright lie! Because all of our children that are born in the Family eventually reach our collective schools, which begin at the age of two or three according to the Montessori Method. All of them attend our own home schools, so this is another outright lie!

56. LIE 38 SAYS "OUR SCHOOLS EXIST ONLY AS A DISTRACTION", another lie! Our schools exist for the help and development and teaching of our own children in the facts of life and the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and they are very successful in so doing. You will find that our children are better trained, better educated and more knowledgeable than the average!

57. LIE 39 SAYS THAT THERE IS "PROOF" OF THESE CHARGES, but of course there is no proof! And Lie Number 40 says again that "the children are sold". Our children are never sold and we gain nothing whatsoever monetarily from the birth of our children, other than the joy and the love and the reward of being good parents and to rear our children for the glory of God, none of whom are ever sold!

58. LIE 41 SAYS that the identity of some unknown man called Silverton "is related with that of the Prophet of Love", or me, which is an outright lie! I never heard of the guy before these liars started their lying campaign against us! I know nothing of him whatsoever, and I would have nothing to do with anybody engaged in such a horrible traffic as the sale of babies!

59. LIE 42 SAYS "I HAVE USED MANY OTHER NAMES in the United States"‚ which of course is not true as the authorities can attest. I use a pen name, as have many writers throughout history, including Mark Twain, Charlotte Bronte and many more! Again Lie 43 insinuates that I had to "flee the United States just in time to escape the authorities"‚ another lie, totally untrue, as the authorities there know.

60. LIE 44 SAYS THAT WE "MERELY AS A DISTRACTION" CAMPAIGNED AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR and in favour of the hippies, and helped drug addicts and disoriented youth in a very generous way. Well‚ we certainly did campaign against the war and tried to "help the hippies and the drug addicts and disoriented youth in a very generous way", that's for sure! But we did not do it "as a distraction", so this is Lie Number 44! We did it sincerely out of the love of God and our fellow man‚ to try to help those who needed help and to try to stop a vicious, horrible, useless, destructive, senseless and terrible war!

61. LIE 45 AGAIN SAYS THAT I WENT TO SWEDEN, where I have never been‚ and Lie 46 "where I was considered an undesirable person"‚ which couldn't be true since I haven't been there!

62. LIE 47 SAYS THAT "HIS RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY WAS DISQUALIFIED"—by whom and how? Sweden has been very open and receptive to our message, and our religious philosophy has proven quite popular there according to the amount of our literature distributed in that good country!

63. LIE 48 SAYS OUR ACTIVITIES "DIDN'T CONTINUE THERE VERY LONG" IN SWEDEN. How could they? I was never in Sweden myself! But as far as the Family is concerned our activities are still continuing in Sweden!

64. LIE NUMBER 49 SAYS, "THIS IS THE SAME AS HAPPENED IN TENERIFE", which could not be possible since I was never in Sweden, and the same has not happened in Tenerife for the plain and simple reason that I did not have to leave Tenerife, and certainly not because of the authorities compelling me to leave. I left Tenerife voluntarily for a rest, as I've stated before, a rest from just the kind of harrassment that this newspaper is waging against us!

65. LIE 50 SAYS that "Swedish teenagers started to disappear" and one was "related to the father of the sect". Well, I don't know if Swedish teenagers started to disappear or not, but I certainly know that none of those who are supposed to have disappeared was in any way related to me, so this is a lie!

66. LIE 51 SAYS "THIS CAUSED A GRAVE SCANDAL in the country", which is not so! How could it cause a grave scandal in he country when I was never there and never had anything to do with any of the so-called disappearances of girls from Sweden?

67. LIE 52 SAYS THAT THEREFORE "HE LEFT FROM THERE".—Once again, how can I leave from a country where I have never been? And Lie 53 says that from there I went to "Central Europe". I have never been in Central Europe except in Austria, if that could be called Central Europe, and it was not after any visit to Sweden because I've never been to Sweden, so that's a lie!

68. ONCE AGAIN‚ LIE 54, I WAS NOT "THROWN OUT" OF THE ISLAND of Tenerife‚ as the authorities know. And Lie 55, very grossly understates the number of our followers throughout the world as being only 70,000, when there are now actually nearly two million!

69. ALSO LIE 56 SAYS OF US THERE ARE ONLY "6,000 IN SPAIN". We have approximately, 7,000 converts per month in Spain! So having been in Spain for several years, there are now surely several hundred thousand of our followers in Spain‚ as attested by the circulation of our Letters of one–half-million every month! So we must have closer to a half-million followers in Spain now rather than a mere six thousand!

70. LIE 57 SAYS THAT "NOBODY HAS BEEN ABLE TO DISCOVER WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM", and this is not true for the plain and simple reason we have told many people many times, including the police, exactly where our money comes from. Nevertheless‚ I don't think it's this newspaper's business or anybody else's business where our money comes from, do you? But it seems to me it should be pretty obvious that it comes from the businesses and work of our Family throughout the world and their gifts to us.

71. LIE 58 AGAIN MENTIONS "BIG SUMS OF MONEY". I don't think that 7,000 pesetas (or before the recent devaluation about $100 per month per person is very big money, do you? It is barely enough to pay our mere living expenses, and even lower than the expenses of most families because we share all things in our family and we live cooperatively in a very economical way which helps us to save a great deal.

72. LIE 59 CALLS US "A PERFECT COMMERCIAL CHAIN". Well, we may be a chain, a chain of communities, a chain of cooperation, a Family chain a of love throughout the world, but we are certainly not commercial! We do not exist for commercial reasons and this is not our purpose. We are a religious, philanthropic, educational and charitable Family, but certainly not commercial, so this is a lie!

73. LIE 60 AGAIN ACCUSES US OF LIVING IN "AN ORGY OF FREE LOVE"‚ which of course is not so, as we have told you. Lie 61 says "they pay from ten to twenty thousand dollar for each child in the United States", implying that they pay us for these children, which is a lie!

74. AND LIE 62, THEIR FINAL LIE, ONCE AGAIN SAYS THAT "WE FLED from the United States", insinuating that it was from the authorities for some kind of crimes, which of course is another lie!

75. DEARLY BELOVED READER, I TRUST THAT THIS ARTICLE WILL PUT AN END TO THE LIES of this newspaper and others, and that they will never again print such ridiculous falsehoods, prevarications, untruths, outright lies and criminally libelous false statements against us!

76. THEREFORE WE DEMAND THAT THIS NEWSPAPER GIVE US RIGHT OF REPLICA, or right of reply to their false charges‚ by printing in full these our answers to their numerous lies‚ along with an apology for writing and publishing these lies against us, and a retraction of them as being false!

77. OTHERWISE WE ARE GOING TO BE COMPELLED TO CHARGE THEM WITH THE CRIME OF CRIMINAL LIBEL against us, of which they are obviously guilty, having accused the innocent of crimes for which we are not guilty! We are not the guilty ones, but this newspaper is certainly guilty, and they had better repent and make it right very quickly or they are going to be very sorry and suffer for their sins!

78. WE ARE CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO PERMIT either them nor any others to continue such a vicious lying smear-campaign against my innocent family who are doing nothing wrong‚ committing no crimes and only trying to love one another, love God and help others.

79. SO IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY WE HAVE SUCH ENEMIES and why they lie about us, just think about Jesus!—All He preached was love, all he tried to do was help people, yet did He have enemies? Yes, He surely did!—And who were they?—They were the enemies of Love!

80. AND WHO ARE THESE ENEMIES OF LOVE? Well, just look back in to the Gospels and see who Jesus' enemies were! They were the leaders of the established religion of his day who hated Him because He had exposed them and their hypocrisy by His own simple living and life of love!

81. THEREFORE THEY WENT ABOUT TO TRY TO KILL HIM, their Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Prophet of Love, because He had revealed they had no love themselves! And the people knew their hypocritical leaders had no love, and therefore the leaders were exposed, and they were furious because of it!

82. SO IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY WE HAVE ENEMIES and why they lie about us and persecute us and try to smear us in this heinous horrible diabolical demon-inspired devilish way, we suggest you get a copy of our little pamphlet on almost any important street in the Islands or on the Peninsula of Spain, a little pamphlet called "The Anti–God War!"—or "The 202 Lies of Interviu!"

83. "I WISH THERE WERE MORE MOTHERS LIKE SOME OF THESE GOOD CATHOLIC MOTHERS who really give themselves to it and make it their life's work. It's not easy.—It's probably one of the hardest jobs there is in the whole world, bringing up children. It takes the strength of Samson and the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job!" (Moses David's Letters: "What Is That in Thy Hand?", NO.315, and "Real Mothers", NO.389.)

84. SINCE WE LOVE AND CHERISH EACH ONE OF OUR CHILDREN SO MUCH we cannot imagine how the author of this ridiculous article, the mysterious "M.I.R." could have such a wild imagination as to have written such trash!

85. REALLY, SIR, HAVE THE NEWSPAPERS OF TODAY COME TO SUCH A POINT OF DESPERATE DEGENERATION that they have to create sensational, untrue stories such as these just to fill their pages in order to sell them? To me this article sounded more fit to be a chapter of a fictional mystery story than a non-fictional unbiased news service to the people.

86. DON'T YOU THINK THAT THE COMPETENT AUTHORITIES in both the Canaries and the Peninsula would have put us behind bars long ago if we were guilty of any one of these hideous crimes which your article has accused us of? There is not one iota of proof of any one of the lies contained in your newspaper, and that is why we are not in jail.

87. I CHALLENGE YOU OR ANYONE ELSE TO PROVE THAT OUR FAMILY HAS ANY CONNECTION WHATSOEVER WITH THIS HIDEOUS CRIME OF MARKETING OF CHILDREN, either here or in the U.S. or anywhere in the world! Since our beginning nine years ago we have had exactly 1,262 children born within our 823 communities in 74 countries throughout the world, and we keep accurate records and statistics of each of them.

88. WE STILL HAVE EVERY ONE OF THESE 1,262 CHILDREN LIVING WITHIN OUR FAMILY AND WE HAVE NEVER SOLD ONE AND WOULD NOT DREAM OF IT! I will be so interested to watch you try to prove our guilt of participation in any of these crimes if we take you court, as of course you realise that the burden of proof is on you the accuser.

89. SIR, CONSIDER THE FACT that the above-mentioned author by inverting these ridiculous stories lets the readers believe, among other insinuations, that the good‚ just and responsible authorities of the Tenerife Civil Registry lent themselves to dirty manipulation‚ such as the one of the registering many children "under the name of one father", "always under American citizenship", or under the name of an "unknown mother".

90. FOR YOUR INFORMATION, my husband and I have two beautiful twins born in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, registered very must under our own names and having Italian citizenship, the only ones registered in the name of one father! Why don't you investigate these facts at the Civil Registry of Puerto do la Cruz?

91. OUR ENEMIES HAVE LIED ABOUT US A GREAT DEAL during our brief nine year history, which doesn't shock us too much, as in Jesus Christ's own time His lying enemies accused Him of being a drunk, a glutton, a blasphemer, demon-possessed, a companion of harlots and a friend and a friend of published and sinners.

92. IN FACT‚ THEY HATED JESUS SO MUCH THAT THEY FINALLY CRUCIFIED HIM! Since that day, history has repeated itself time and time again with the anti-Christ enemies of God devoting themselves to the persecution of the true Christians, the full-time disciples of Christ.

93. JESUS SAID, "IF THEY HATED ME THEY WILL HATE YOU ALSO, and if they persecuted Me they will persecute you also." (Jn.15:20.) I am not writing this rebuttal to our friends nor to our enemies, as our friends know us and don't need as explanation, and our enemies would not believe one media.

94. I AM WRITING THIS FOR THE SAKE OF THE INNOCENT PUBLIC who have never had the opportunity of meeting our Family and whose only source of information is the news media.

95. THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME FACE TO FACE WITH OUR FOLLOWERS themselves cannot help but admit that we are sincere and honest and law-abiding people trying to help the world, happy, living in homes joyfully together, sharing what we have with others‚ visiting hospitals, jails, schools, orphanages, old folks' homes and singing on radio and television stations in order to share our joy with others and spread God's love to encourage as many as we can.

96. IT IS VERY OBVIOUS THAT THE AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE NEVER MET ANY OF US or Father David, our spiritual founder‚ who is a wonderful Christian man full of love for others and who is especially fond of the Canarians and Spaniards. Although this sordid mass of lies in your article does not deserve any more attention, as Father David's personal secretary I would just like to set the record straight:

97. 1. DAVID WAS NEVER EXPELLED FROM TENERIFE or from any other country (ask the competent authorities if you wish.)

98. 2. HE HAS NOT COMMITTED ANY CRIMES nor is a fugitive from the laws of any country.

99. 3. HE HAS NEVER BEEN IN SWEDEN.

100. 4. HE HAS NEVER HAD ANY CONNECTION whatsoever with this so-called "Silverton", whom for all we know may be just another creation of "M.I.R.'s" imagination.

101. 5. I ALSO HAVE TO CORRECT HER in her uneducated and imbecilic statement that 90% of the women in our family are pregnant. This is contrary to the usual law for pregnancy averages. We did find one true statement in the entire article.

102. IT IS TRUE THAT WE DO NOT BELIEVE IN ANTI-GOD BIRTH CONTROL nor the use of contraceptives (but these are not forbidden), because we believe in having children for the glory of God as the gifts of God, and certainly not for sale for we love them! We believe as the Bible says‚ "Children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward." (Psalm 127:3.)

103. I UNDERSTAND THAT THE DIRECTORSHIP OF YOUR NEWSPAPER HAS VERY RECENTLY BEEN CHANGED, so perhaps, Sir, you personally knew nothing of the publishing of this vicious‚ unfounded article. But this is not the first time that an article of this same sensational sort of misinformation has been published by your newspaper and others.

104. WE HAVE DONE AS JESUS SUGGESTED BY TURNING BOTH CHEEKS‚ as a matter of fact several times, but now we are determined to put a stop to these vicious lies once and for all, and there fore we are prepared to go to any necessary legal lengths to do so.

105. WE WELCOME GOOD, HONEST, UNBIASED NEWS COVERAGE and have always been very cooperative to give interviews to reporters or interested individuals who are seeking the truth, but it is very obvious that "M.I.R." was not! In fact not one single representative of your newspaper has ever visited us in person to find out the truth!

106. THROUGH THE PUBLISHING OF THIS REPLY WHICH CONTAINS THE TRUE FACTS you are given the opportunity to rebuild the credibility of your newspaper to the reading public, who we believe are very interested in knowing the truth. I don't know your personal situation, whether or not you have a wife and children, but if you do‚

107. CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW YOUR WIFE WOULD FEEL if she casually picked up the morning newspaper and saw a photo of her children smeared all over the front page under the bold red headline: "Mercado de Ninos"?!—Yours sincerely, hoping to see this truth in print in your paper!—BARBARA CANEVARO, the Duchess di Zoagli and Castelvari

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family