Blackmail From Outside The Body

There was a time when a former member tried to speak out against The Body, and he almost succeeded in his plan. First, the ex-member wrote about his experience inside The Body and passed it on to churches all over the Kenai Peninsula. Once the faith community was warned, he got the attention of a reporter in Kenai, and this reporter actually investigated the story on a much deeper level than would be required for an ordinary newspaper article. For the people who had their lives destroyed by the church, it seemed like the cult would be exposed and there might be justice on the horizon.

The problem was that Marc B, the leader of The Body, was aware this was going on and he was prepared to kill the story with a classic smear tactic. The ex-member attempting to blow the whistle suddenly became a child molester in Marc’s version of events. The story was bullshit, but the lie did what it was supposed to do. The blackmail spread and soon the reporter was wary of using the former member as a source. No article was published.

Pieces of this missed opportunity are in a post to a message board we believe Marc B wrote himself. Further context for this is in another article on this website but all you need to know is that Marc was retaliating against the whistleblower and a preacher who had his back. The text is rambling and ridiculous, but in the following sample you’ll notice the newspaper is mentioned.

It’s tragic that nothing ever hit the press.

A few years after this all went down we found the reporter and got her version of the story, which was more about the attempted whistleblower than the cult itself.

What really stuck out about our conversations with the journalist was her memory. Remarkably, years after her reporting, she could recall almost everyone involved in the group, including the children. It seemed the only people she couldn’t recall were Marc B (the cult leader) Gary P (Marc’s right hand man) Melissa P (who abandoned six children) and the tragic Carrie C. If you click around this site, you’ll notice these are the people most often referenced and that’s because THEY’RE THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THIS STORY.

The reporter eventually came up with the cult leader’s name after struggling a bit, but it was odd that his ex-wife and son came to mind first.

Here’s that awkward monster reveal:

In hours of taped interviews this was the only instance where Marc was named. Other than the very first time she told us the story of The Body, the cult leader was never even spoken of as a central character. We’ll expand on this topic further in a future article.

What the reporter could recall without hesitation was that the former member she spoke with was a pedophile. This came up a lot.

After researching the matter of the whistleblower molesting children independently, there’s been no evidence discovered to back up the rumors. We even spoke to the alleged victim, who passionately denied the story. With some certainty, we think it was blackmail from the start.

At a certain point we even asked the reporter directly about the issue of her story being a potential smear. She told us that not only were the allegations true, she had the whistleblower confessing on video, though she did tone down the nature of his perversions.

What’s interesting is that we have the audio from the filmed interview that was conducted and there’s nothing like what the reporter claimed she had on tape anywhere in the recording. Was that section deleted?

And why would the whistleblower confess to such a thing to a reporter anyway?

Also curious- why was a newspaper reporter filming the former cult member for a print story at an outlet with no multimedia capability?
Perhaps the most important item of all is what it would mean if the story about the confession didn’t have a reasonable explanation behind it. Was this simply misremembered? What would be the motivation to perpetuate a dangerous story like this?