Trader Joe's stopped selling Tribal Trading beeswax candles, but was unaware of the Twelve Tribes connection. In the group, children obey parents, blacks obey whites, women obey men - and everyone obeys Yoneq. They're psychologically beaten up - there's no room for flexibility. You do what you're told. Cult members give up their possessions and money to the group and get room and board in exchange for work in the group's cottage industries.
Members usually live together in one large house.
Spriggs, meanwhile, jets between homes in Brazil, France and the United States, checking on the flock that finances his heavenly crusade. Spriggs' success was based, almost from the start, on free labor. Spriggs believes children should be beaten from infancy to instill discipline. An undisciplined child is an unloved child, and an unloved child is an abused child. Members of the Twelve Tribes do not practice or condone abuse or neglect of children. . . .