Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Jennings Brown
Warning: This story contains graphic sexual description.
A California-based spiritual organization renowned for its natural wine is being sued by several former members who allege the leader sexually assaulted them along with “hundreds—if not thousands of other young men” and the group trafficked members to the U.S. to satisfy the leader’s “uncontrollable compulsion to engage in sexual conduct with scores of men.”
Six former members of the Fellowship of Friends filed a state lawsuit against the sect—which some experts have referred to as a “cult”—and its leader Robert Earl Burton in late November. The 84-year-old teaches that most people exist in a state of “waking sleep” and urges his students to immerse themselves in high culture and art—like Renaissance paintings, rare books, opera, ballet, and wine—to become more “present” and achieve higher consciousness.