Opinion ID: 1311766
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Facts as to Tracy Leal

Text: In June 1979 19-year-old Tracy Leal completed her freshman year at San Diego State University. She had found the college large and impersonal; she considered transferring to Humboldt State University in northern California, but desired to visit the school before applying for admission. To that end she bought a bus ticket to Humboldt and set out on Sunday, June 7. The trip required changing busses in San Francisco. While waiting for her bus in San Francisco, Leal was approached by Unification Church member Collette Zielinski, who was witnessing for the Church. Zielinski told Leal she was waiting for a friend arriving from Switzerland. Leal remarked that she loved to ski and had always wanted to go to Switzerland. Zielinski said her friend was also a skier and perhaps Leal would like to talk to her. Church member Bradford Parker then arrived, and Zielinski and Parker told Leal about the house in which they lived. They said they were part of the Creative Community Project, described as a group of socially concerned professional people involved in good works such as giving food to the poor. They invited Leal to have lunch and go sightseeing with them, then join them for dinner at the house. They assured Leal she could catch another bus to Humboldt later that evening. Leal asked if Zielinski and Parker were part of a religious group, and said she did not want to get involved with them if they were. They replied only that the people in their group all came from different religious backgrounds. Leal accepted their invitation. That evening Leal went to the group's house for dinner. Like David Molko, she was kept apart from other dinner guests and was held in constant conversation with Church members. She heard the same lecture, saw the slide show on Boonville, and received the same invitation to go there. She accepted the invitation, signed the same kind of form, [8] and a few minutes later was on the bus to Boonville. Like Molko, she did not know Boonville was part of the Unification Church. At Boonville Leal experienced the same exercise-lecture-discussion regimen Molko received five months earlier. On Tuesday, her second day at Boonville, she asked Joshua, a codirector of the camp, whether the group was part of a religious organization, and specifically whether they were Moonies. Joshua said they were not Moonies, but were a form of Christian group. He said, however, they were keeping quiet about it for a while because they did not want to frighten people away. After two days at Boonville, Leal went for a two-week seminar at Camp K. During this period she experienced the same type of doubts and fears as had Molko. At the end of the two weeks, she again asked Zielinski and Parker if the organization was part of the Moonies. They assured her it was not. Later that evening they added that, while they were not Moonies, they did follow some of the teachings of Reverend Moon. Five days later  twenty-two days after recruiting Leal at the bus depot  they informed Leal they were in fact part of the Unification Church. Leal remained with the group after learning its identity. During the next two months her family visited her and tried to convince her to get away from the Church for a while. She told her parents she would not leave the house with them for fear of being abducted and deprogrammed. On September 1 Leal flew to Boulder, Colorado, for a month-long series of advanced lectures, at the conclusion of which she became a formal Church member. From Boulder she went to Los Angeles, where she sold flowers on the street to raise money for the Church. On October 29, Leal was abducted from a Los Angeles street by deprogrammers hired by her parents. The deprogrammers successfully persuaded Leal to abandon her association with the Unification Church.