Cult starves 'demon' toddler who wouldn't say 'amen': police

[JDanger]

A toddler whose remains were found inside a suitcase in Philadelphia was starved to death by members of a religious cult, including his mother, in part because he refused to say "amen" after meals.

Ria Ramkissoon, the mother of Javon Thompson, was charged with first-degree murder over the boy's death. Baltimore police said that three other members of a group called 1 Mind Ministries have also been charged with first-degree murder.

Police and Ramkissoon's family say the group is a cult.

Members did not seek medical care for Javon when he stopped breathing, and the boy died in his mother's arms, according to court documents that described police interviews with a confidential informant and two children. He would have been about 19 months old when police say adults stopped feeding him in December 2006.

Ramkissoon, 21, was being held in the psychiatric ward of Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Centre, and a bail review was postponed until Tuesday. Her public defender declined comment.

The three other people charged - Queen Antoinette, 40, also known as Toni Ellsberry or Toni Sloan; Marcus Cobbs, 21; and Trevia Williams, who turns 21 on Tuesday - were already in custody. They were arrested in May in New York City on warrants charging them with failure to appear in court in Baltimore. Those charges stemmed from a scuffle with police in a child custody dispute.

A fifth alleged cult member, Steven Bynum, has been charged in a warrant with first-degree murder and remains at large. He was believed to be in New York.

Ramkissoon's family said she should not be held responsible for her son's death.

"She had no control over that situation at all," her stepfather, Craig Newton, said.

Ramkissoon's mother, Seeta Khadan-Newton, told The (Baltimore) Sun it wasn't her daughter's decision not to feed the boy.

"My daughter was a victim, just like my grandson," Khadan-Newton said. "Somebody made that decision to not feed that child, and my daughter had to follow instructions."

According to court documents, Ramkissoon joined 1 Mind Ministries after Javon was born. Ramkissoon's mother last saw her daughter in April 2006; she later sued for custody of her grandson, writing in a letter to a judge that "the cult leaders" were preventing her from contacting her daughter.

The documents show police interviewed two school-age children who had been part of the group but were taken away from members by Philadelphia police. The children told investigators that members stopped feeding Javon in December 2006, in part because the boy refused to say "amen" after dinner. Members also viewed Javon as "a demon".

Another unnamed informant told police that after Javon died, Antoinette left the boy's body in a room for more than a week, claiming "God was going to raise Javon from the dead", the documents show.

Afterward, Antoinette burned the boy's clothing and a mattress and placed his body in a green suitcase, which she would periodically open and spray with disinfectant to mask the odour, police claim in the court documents.

In early 2007, the group members left Baltimore for Philadelphia. They left the green suitcase and other luggage inside a shed belonging to a man they befriended while there, police said, and then relocated to Brooklyn, New York.

Police recovered the suitcase in April after they got a tip from the confidential informant. The remains of a small child were inside. DNA tests are pending to confirm the boy's identity.

Link

[Vertmorpheus]

Yeah, God wants you to do that, I'm sure.

I can see how such terrible things happen though,in that sick sense way... the way some ppl cling to ideas and the way kids just push and push issues, its just in their nature as self educators to find out what happens when you take things to ridiculous extremes... so not going to work out in interactions with adults that never got past that stage emselves.

Sad stuff. Poses questions all round, least of all for any of us prone to reincarnation-themed beliefs.

Takes some seriously bad juices to turn off some ofthe mammalian or even just the animal words strongest of instincts... heres the rest of the planet , feeding half the kids in the street come lunchtime or leaving scraps out for possums, just for having a pair of eyeballs and fur, essentially... and theres people that do/allow others to do things like that... its almost disorientatingly foreign... the buildings and things are all familiar but the contexts are just way off.

VM

[apothecary]

amen.

[devance]

'a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.'

Apparently a university student type outlook.

Not so easy as that.

But the university is a hothouse of lurid [sexual]pulsating tropical growths that can't grow anywhere else.

Which is the reason they soon wither in the real world and the smart ones stay there as they are the new leaders of a golden age of propaganda..

But enjoy the liberalism, experience will be the harsh education.

[Teotzlcoatl]

'a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.'

THAT's the deppressing qoute from Fear and Loathing about the '60s.

These people where just fuckin' nuts.

[ThunderIdeal]

it's in sina's sig. i prefer the one about how you can see the watermark, because that one ^ IS depressing.

[JDanger]

And there I was thinking Sina was an original genius.