Michael Hawron

Michael J. Hawron, (also known as Isaac Numbers, Ike, Tony and Michael Anthony) was a long-time member of The Family. During the 1980s, he reportedly helped manage the organization's finances from Hong Kong where he lived until 1989 when he returned to the United States. In the early 1990s, he used the name "Michael Anthony" when acting as a spokesperson for The Family and appeared on U.S. national television in a Larry King Live interview with Rick Dupuy and others. In recent years, Hawron has self-published several books including memoirs in which he recounts his travels and life as a "missionary" without ever mentioning the decades he spent in The Family.

Alleged child abuse

in the late 1980s, The Family began to face an existential crisis as teenagers born and raised within the group began to rebel against the abuse and isolation imposed upon them by the cult's structure, beliefs and practices. Some of them had a thirst for knowledge that led them to defy the cult's strict prohibition on any outside publications and start reading "Systemite" novels and encyclopedias while others were not enthusiastic about the expectation that they should share sexually with adults old enough to be their parents and grandparents. The Family's top leadership, then concentrated in Japan where David Berg lived, developed a number of new programs in response to these developments in an attempt to retain control of their children to ensure the cult's survival and continued existence.

One of their responses was the Victor program in which problem children were subject to an intense regimen (lasting for several years in some cases) of severe physical and psychological abuse often combined with forced hard labor and imprisonment at "detention homes" and "Victor camps" around the world. Michael Hawron, then known as Isaac Numbers, was one of its key architects along with other leaders at the HCS. One of its first victims was Hawron's son, "James," who was condemned by the cult for being too intellectual, reading encyclopedias, collaboratively writing short fiction with teenage "pen pals" living in other Family Homes and having a negative attitude towards sex.

In a Family publication dated July 1989, Michael Hawron recalled in detail how he beat and terrorized his son "James" with a "big plastic" cane before personally escorting him to an illegal "Teen Detention Home" in Macuau where "James" and other children were subjected to further abuse for long period of time. Others sent to the same facility included David Berg's granddaughter, Merry Berg. In a 1995 UK child custody case ruling, Lord Justice Ward described the treatment of children at this facility as "a form of torture", "barbaric and cruel" and "a form of physical and mental atrocity mercilessly dished out to young, often already emotionally damaged children."

Writings

Family Publications

• TSM#4 The Madhouse of Higher Education! — Isaac Numbers recounts his college days at M.I.T. as part of a campaign to discourage children raised in the The Family from leaving the cult to obtain an education
• FSM 104: Contend For Our Teens! The Story of Teen James! — 1989-07 — In this FSM, Isaac Numbers and [Sara Kelley]] describe the severe psychological and physical abuse of Hawron's then 13-year-old son for offenses such as reading an encyclopedia and having a "negative attitude towards sex"

Self-published books

• Entertaining Detours: Unique Tales from My Journey Along the Road Less Traveled (True Tales Trilogy Book 1) — 2015-09-17
• The Little Town with the Big Heart (True Tales Trilogy Book 2) — 2016-11-15
• Awesome Footsteps: A Missionary's Memoirs (The True Tales Trilogy Book 3) — 2018-02-05
• Just Good Clean Fun: A Spy's Life Adventure — 2017-07-30

References

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