Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 4, 1993 TAG: 9305040087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WARM SPRINGS LENGTH: Long
\ Jan. 5, Brenda Borree found herself hiding behind a tree in rural Bath County, waiting for a neighbor to give her a ride to freedom.
The ride ended at Roanoke's airport, where she caught a flight to Chicago - back to family and friends she had left almost 15 years earlier to begin a new life in the mountains of Virginia.
Borree, 42, believes she had been under the spell of people she now calls religious charlatans.
"They told us if we left, we'd go insane" or try to commit suicide, Borree said. "On the plane, I kept thinking, `I'll let God judge me.' . . . I didn't realize they had no power over me until the plane touched down" in Chicago.
"They" are Cyle (pronounced like Kyle) and Eursula Van Alstine.
To outsiders, the Van Alstines have been known as the owners of an art studio on Cottage Row at the posh Homestead resort in nearby Hot Springs.
But to Borree and members of the Temple of Light Universalist Church, the Van Alstines were "spiritual masters" through whom ancient "holy ones" - manifestations of an eternal "Spirit" - would "channel" their words to mankind.
In lawsuits filed in Bath County Circuit Court in the past two weeks, Borree and five other former church members are seeking $2.1 million in compensatory and punitive damages from the Van Alstines.
Plaintiffs in two of the suits are Borree; her husband, Dennis; Caroline Dix; and Karl and Mary Louise Weiner.
They charge breach of contract, fraud and misrepresentation in the church's ownership of a 92-acre Bath County tract formerly known as the "Bill Brinkley Farm." In a separate suit, they accuse the Van Alstines of sexual assault and of causing emotional distress.
Another former church member, Michael J. Smith, has filed a separate suit asking that the farm and the Van Alstines' art business be liquidated. Smith's suit also seeks damages for emotional distress.
The plaintiffs ask the court to determine the value of assets held by the church and the Van Alstines and for a plan to distribute them.
The Van Alstines were out of town because of a death in the family for about a week after the suits were filed. Numerous attempts to get in touch with them by phone or visits to the gallery were unsuccessful.
A woman - identifying herself only as a neighbor - who answered the Van Alstines' phone one night last week said "the whole thing is basically a land battle."
The woman contended that those filing the suits are using "talk about religion, sex and cults . . . as a lever" in their battle for the church property.
The Bath County commune "has always been more of a land co-op than an active church," she said.
Two of the lawsuits require a reply by Thursday, though the defendants could ask for an extension, lawyers said.
The Van Alstines have a reputation of being quiet, friendly folks among the people who work near them at the Homestead.
A couple walking along the row last week complimented Cyle Van Alstine's paintings and said business had been brisk at his shop the week before.
At that time, paintings were being sold at discounts of 50 to 80 percent off their original asking price, said the couple, who asked that their names not be used.
Smith, a Highland Park, Ill., native, said in an interview in his Covington lawyer's office that he now feels embarrassed by his connection with the Temple of Light Universalist Church.
He joined in 1978 after finding a flier on his car windshield advertising what he said was the Chicago church's classes on "life after death, meditation, that kind of thing."
So Smith went to a meeting, found the Van Alstines to be people who "sounded like they really knew the subjects . . . likable and friendly, very interesting."
Within a year, the Van Alstines - who had predicted a national economic collapse and an earthquake that would rock Chicago - decided to look around the country for a retreat "where we could study metaphysical things on a full-time basis," Smith said.
Unlike some other separatist groups, the church was not obsessed with an apocalyptic end of the world, Smith said, and didn't stockpile weapons.
When the Van Alstines found the Brinkley Farm, Smith said, he was called in and asked to put up $20,000 as a down payment and to get extensive lines of credit at area banks.
He did that, he said, and in June 1979 about half of the church's 35 or so members moved to Virginia.
Church members continued to pay the Van Alstines for the classes they were required to attend three nights a week. They also paid the mortgage on the property, Smith said, and weekly fees for upkeep of the property's road.
Both Borree and Smith, 48, had outside sales jobs to bring money into the church, while others were confined to the farm, they said.
Though Cyle Van Alstine sold some paintings, Smith contends he actually provided the Van Alstines' primary financial support, working seven days a week, often for 12 or 16 hours a day.
For a couple of years, Smith said, that support included paying $740 a month for a Las Vegas apartment for Eursula Van Alstine's son from a previous marriage.
At the farm, Smith said he paid for the construction of two log homes - one for himself and his then-girlfriend, Caroline Dix, and one for the Van Alstines.
\ Good to bad to worse
Smith originally was deeded five acres for his home, but was later influenced - he alleges in his suit - to deed that property back to the church trustees.
Over time, he said, he grew more and more disenchanted not only with his financial situation, but with his spiritual one.
In the beginning, the Van Alstines were "the most loving, caring individuals you could imagine," Borree said.
"Basically, we were taught to follow our hearts," she said. "It appealed to me because they told me I would be a great teacher, serving God. That I would be a healer."
She was reared a Baptist, Borree said, but she "didn't feel it was deep enough. This was more in the direction I wanted to go."
But the tenor of the classes and the lifestyle changed once they settled into the Virginia farm site, the former church members said.
"We'd be put in a meditative state by Eursula, then Cyle would take over," Borree said. "He'd always find something wrong or be in a mood - [angry] because we weren't evolving."
Smith said he had expected to learn "how to love, how to become more creative, how to approach a higher consciousness."
At first, Smith said, church members believed "we were going to learn our lessons so well that we would be able to extend the influence of our great spirituality to others. That was until we failed our classes. Then our only [spiritual] hope was in serving the Van Alstines."
Smith and Borree contend that individuals were subject to continual humiliation and degradation, even in front of strangers. They were chastised for their appearance, smell, lack of zeal or insufficient financial support, they said.
The situation "became more and more abusive. We couldn't get it right . . . . There was continual harassment of everyone," Smith said.
\ The `yoga of sex'
Eventually, he said, sex was introduced into one of the three weekly classes for the Van Alstines' followers.
Members were told that the yoga of sex "was supposed to lead to enlightenment the quick way," Smith said. "It was the only way for us `sinners.' We were often told we were not good enough for conventional yoga paths [to enlightenment] and this was the only path where we had a chance."
Smith's lawsuit says members had to engage in "`sexual performance with others in open settings, in open view of others, and other acts of degradation."
The other suit alleges that the Van Alstines "caused [members of the church] to participate in sexual intercourse . . . to perform unnatural sexual acts and otherwise caused them to suffer sexual assault and abuse."
"I didn't really want to do it," Smith said, "but if I didn't, I would have been a total outcast."
"It might look like a Hugh Hefner kind of life," he said, "a paradise through free love," but it wasn't. "I think sex is special. It was not special" but humiliating, he says, to have to participate in the "forced performances."
\ A child denied
Church members were not to have sex for procreation, though, Borree says.
When she and her husband went to the Van Alstines for permission to try to have a child in 1980, Borree said, their request was denied.
Van Alstine, "pretending to write from `channels' . . . said I was not interested enough in the mission" of the commune, Borree said. "A child was not part of the mission," Borree said she was told.
Consequently, she and another woman were surgically sterilized.
Borree said she became suicidal and sought medical treatment for depression.
Borree, a former activities supervisor for a 300-person mental-health institution, said she began to pull away from the Van Alstines over a period of about a year and a half before she left.
By November, she was ready to leave the church but was afraid of what would happen to her husband if she did, Borree said.
There was more and more arguing after that, she said, and Cyle Van Alstine threatened to use the "energy force" released through the sexual yoga to enforce conformity.
One night, she said, "I got down on my knees in his living room - in front of his wife and my husband - and said, `go ahead' " with the punishment. Nothing happened, she said.
In January, her resolve hardened and she left. Her husband followed her the next day.
Over the past three months all but two church members - besides the Van Alstines - have left, Borree said.
Smith left, he said, financially and spiritually broke.
He now is running a small seafood company and has found a new place to live.
"It's going to take a long time to get over this experience. I feel like I've been gutted, that I'm empty inside. . . . Intimacy with a woman is going to be very hard. I don't know how [a woman] will relate to this."
Though she believes she came out of the 15-year association with the Temple of Light Universalist Church fairly strong, Borree said, she doesn't know exactly where she stands spiritually.
"There are a lot of pieces to be taken apart, re-evaluated and put back together."
Smith says he now "wouldn't even know how to tell others to approach spirituality."
But, "to no person or institution give up your free will. . . . Be very careful with anyone who is very friendly, who knows you so well, understands you so completely, then wants your time and money.
"Ask what they can do for you, not what you can do for them."
Memo: Correction ***CORRECTION***