Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 20, 1995 TAG: 9507200066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
\ Whatever the ultimate political and legal fallout from House hearings on the 1993 Waco tragedy, the first day belonged to Kiri Jewell.
In testimony that riveted a jammed hearing room and stunned bickering Republicans and Democrats into solemn silence, Kiri, a 14-year-old former member of the Branch Davidian group, graphically described being sexually assaulted by cult leader David Koresh when she was 10.
``You couldn't really think about not doing what he said to do,'' she said.
Among the things she learned: ``The best way to shoot yourself if necessary ... was to put the gun into your mouth back to the soft spot above your throat before pulling the trigger.''
The politically infused hearings present a stark contrast in views.
Was Koresh, a self-styled messiah, victimized by overzealous law enforcement officials?
Or was he, as overseer of a sect that stockpiled firearms and permitted sexual and other physical abuse of children at his Mount Carmel compound, a madman who resisted a legal warrant with gunfire that killed four ATF agents?
Scheduled to appear later is Attorney General Janet Reno, who approved the April 19, 1993, assault that resulted in 80 deaths, 21 of them children. An administration source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Reno may for the first time suggest that she was ``lied to and misled'' by FBI officials.
The allegations of child molestation were chillingly reinforced by Kiri who, with her mother, joined Koresh when he was living in California in the mid-1980s. She was 5.
``He only spanked me twice, though I knew he spanked other people or had them spanked,'' Jewell said. ``He used the big wooden boat oar they used for adults, not the wooden spoon they called the `Little Helper.'''
Jewell spoke of Koresh's sexual relations with 13- and 14-year-olds and said she slept together with him, her mother and another woman at times.
Koresh ``made us watch movies that showed sex and war.'' Kiri said she was terrified by one film's rape scene, ``but I would have been more scared to try to leave the room while he was there.''
In the hush of the suddenly tomblike hearing room, she related how her own sexual initiation occurred in 1991 in a Texas motel.
Her mother later asked her, ``Did he take you?'' Kiri answered yes and her mother ``wasn't mad or anything.''
Jewell last saw her mother in 1992. She had gone to Michigan to see her father and he obtained a court order to gain custody.
Jewell once asked her mother what they would do if they ever left Mount Carmel. ``She said, 'we'll never leave, so why ask?'''
by CNB