Alma Sandoval

Professor Delaporte

Religious Communes

April 24, 2016

Synanon

Although information found on Synanon was minimal at first, there was more research than I gave it credit for. As I explored the web, I was able to locate primary sources during Synanon’s reign by the FBI that cracked down from their very first suspicions as to who Synanon was to eventually finding exposed information about the wrongdoings of the organization and arresting the leader, Dedreich, for several crimes. It amazes me to see how successful Synanon was during its primal time and the amount of money they made, which was roughly about $10 million per year. With all this profit, he was able to open up more locations for his members that served as residential facilities. One was a location for pregnant women, another one was for children, another one for board members, etc. Synanon was a life that was rather joyful but also extremely terrifying, it was a place where rules were not meant to be broken but then were by their very own leader, a place where violence did not exist yet transformed into its very own violent cult, a place that provided help to those battling alcohol or drug addictions but then turned their backs on them. Synanon’s mission and objective eventually became hypocritical and it surprises me to see how long they were able to cover majority of what they did for a while. For example, hustling, beating not only men and women but children to if they ever decided to leave Synanon, forcing men to get vasectomies and some women abortions, monetary profits that directly went to Dedreich as he decided what to spend it next on, which seemed to be a mini armada of boats, weaponry and other items that could be incorporated to his military training on members. Its just shocking to see the significant transformation of an organization start out as positive and end in negative results. For many of these members, going through some of the harsh treatments was traumatic but if they dared to leave they were known for being a “splittee” and Dedreich never wanted to hear about or see that person ever again once they decided to leave Synanon. In a sense, he viewed it as not only insulting but disgraceful which only made his role and actions as a leader worse resulting into his arrest and then plea bargain to give up Synanon. His leadership is strongly comparable to that of Jim Jones, who at first was a positive religious movement and once all members became a community and moved away from home both did not want their members to have any contact to their friends and family. However, Jones’ role led to the mass suicide of over 900 people. Although they somewhat differentiate both start off as an organization that eventually becomes distorted with time and the interesting part is that a month after Paul Morantz’ rattlesnake attack, Jones declares upon his members a revolutionary suicide. Both organizations were portrayed in a bad light among media and tabloids, which exposed majority of the time why they were not your typical religious organization. Synanon only became a religious organization for tax purposes because of their selfish leader and Jonestown was actually a religious organization under the reign of a man who was and still is considered a maniac and murderer.